What he had now was what he'd feared. A svstem so confident of its superiority that it had become useless. At almost every level there were ones like those old men, especially now when they could least afford it.
The Premier and the rest of the Politburo would have been even more frightened if they had known that their vaunted KGB, the biggest, most efficient, most feared intelligence structure in the world, was underneath it all even worse than the other useless men in the Premier's dacha. A thin man with large wrists had beaten his way through all of them and taken back the one lead they had to the American weapon. This had happened quite naturally in the one other country where they felt most secure. This Zemyatin found out from his own men within the KGB, even before they tried to cover for themselves.
Zemyatin knew that if his Russia were going to survive, he would have to make all those comfortable KGB boys much less comfortable. The world was not a fine desk from which you ordered someone killed. It was blood. And pain. And treachery. And very, very dangerous.
Even as he entered 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, the massive concrete building in Moscow that was KGB headquarters, he felt the tiredness of combat. But this time there was a sense that events could not be turned. Zemyatin brought with him two old combat soldiers he could rely on to put a bullet in someone's head without arguing. Nothing fancy. Stick the gun in their faces and pull the trigger. He could reasonably expect everyone to follow his orders, but he was too tired now to work with people who might ask him questions.
He went right to the British desk of the KGB and ordered the heads of other desks to be in the room. He ordered the general who had seen what had happened at the missile base to be there also.
Assembled in this one office were forty-two generals. Zemvatin told no one why they had been called. The young general in charge of the British desk tried to restrain his tension. He had phoned the field marshal just an hour earlier to report the minor difficulty encountered in England. The field marshal had hung up on the general after telling him he would be over soon. Stay there, had been the only order. All of them had been kept there for half a day. Good. Now the room buzzed with the upper echelon of the KGB. Some looked to Zemyatin, who sat in a chair with his two old friends behind him. Zemyatin said nothing, gathering his strength by drinking a glass of water.
The conversation among the generals drifted to personal things. Zemyatin did nothing. He let their talk wander to all the things they thought were important: watches, dachas, special Western goods, the price of a woman in Yemen. Several were embarrassed to be standing near him, because no one took it upon himself to ask why they had been called. They all wanted someone else to do it.
Finally Zemyatin nodded to one of the two old soldiers he had brought with him.
"Anyone but this one," he said, pointing to the young general of the British desk. "I'll need him for a while," He said it so casually that no one seemed to notice. They continued talking. The shot rattled every eardrum in the room. It shivered the gilt on the chairs. The old soldier had taken a big-caliber pistol, still smoking acrid gunpowder now, and shot the brains out of the KGB officer closest to him, the one who had smiled when the old soldier approached.
For just one moment there was incredible silence in the room. Everyone was stunned, everyone but Zemyatin and his old Russian infantrymen.
"Hello," he said. "I am Alexei Zemyatin. I am sure most of you have heard of me in one way or another." The Great One had just gotten their attention.
"We are engaged in a battle of survival of the motherland. This man has failed," he said, pointing to the young general sitting behind the desk. Little beads of perspiration now formed under the young general's immaculately combed hair, slick with Italian lotion. The young general gulped. Zemyatin wondered if he had ever seen a dead body before. The others were all wondering, of course, why the British desk officer had not been shot if the British desk had failed.
"I want you to listen. We had been assured that we had a fancy psychological profile coming in on a woman who could lead us to a weapon we deem vital. Correct?"
The young general nodded. He tried not to look at the body. So did the other superior officers of the strongest intelligence network the world had ever seen.
"I wanted information. I wanted what was simple. We had been assured that an American operating alone was no danger, even though Americans do not operate alone. It takes three of them to go to the bathroom. But America had sent one man looking for this woman. And what were we told?"
The young general's voice barely got out the words: "We said he had been taken care of."
The other officers in the room were sure the general was going to be shot. Some of the older ones had not seen an execution in an office since the days of Stalin. They wondered if the bad old days were coming back.
"He'd been around the block or something like that. London was downtown Moscow, you said. You were so sure, weren't you?"
The general nodded. "Louder," said Zemyatin.
"I was sure," said the young general. He wiped his forehead with the perfectly tailored sleeve.
"I said here, as I said fifty, sixty years ago, that your enemy is perfect until he shows you how to kill him. No tricks. No games. Blood. Think. Blood. Think. Think." No one answered.
"There is no gadget so exotic and useless that you will not copy it from the Americans. Well, we don't have time for that. Your motherland faces destruction. Your motherland faces a threat far more powerful and odious than anything we have seen before. Your motherland needs your brains, your blood, and your strength. Now, boychik. Tell us all about this American."
"He penetrated our most secure London system, and got the woman who knows about this weapon that ... concerns you, a weapon I am not sure about . . ."
"Anything else?" asked Zemyatin.
"I guess I failed," said the young general. He adjusted his gold Rolex. He had thought he might be killed someday in some foreign land, but not here at KGB headquarters in his own office.
"You don't even know how you failed. That is the danger. You don't even know how you failed."
"I lost the woman. I underestimated the American."
"Anyone can lose a battle. Do you hear me? Do you all hear me? We have lost many battles," boomed Zemyatin, and then he was quiet to let it all sink in. "We are going to lose more battles."
And he was quiet again.
"But," he said finally, raising himself from his chair and purposely stepping on the dead body of the man he had ordered shot at random, "we need not lose any war. The failure of our young boychik here has probably escaped every one of you."
Zemyatin paused for only a moment. He knew he wasn't going to get an answer. They were all too shaken. Which was exactly as he had to have them.
"The failure is something this young man did not do. He did not find out the methods by which this American operated. Today we know little more than we did before we lost that battle. We did not find out how to kill him. Now, from this day forth, I want the entire world network to look for this American and the woman. And I personally will prepare the team to go after them. Who is in charge of execution squads?"
There was an embarrassed mumble in the rear of the room. Finally someone said:
"You're stepping on him, sir."
"Doesn't matter. Give me his number-two man. As for the rest of you, there is nothing more important in your lives right now than finding the whereabouts of that American and the woman. We do have her picture and identifying material, don't we? Or are we just dealing with her psychological profile?"
"No. We have her picture," said the young general. The man in charge of Russia's execution efforts was simply named Ivan. His last name was Ivanovich. He was really a staff officer and explained at the outset that he had never actually killed anyone. Perhaps, suggested Colonel Ivan Ivanovich, Field Marshal Zemyatin would prefer one more skilled in the art of killing. The young paper shuffler had a face clean as a washtub, and lips like rosebuds.
What were they making policemen of nowadays? wondered Zemyatin. Still, he had to have some intelligence to have risen so far.
"No, no," said Zemyatin. "You're all the same. What we are going to do, Ivan, is let this American show us how to kill him. Until then, he is perfect."
This time there was no reference to old theories being outmoded. The first random shot into the crowd had settled that. It had unsettled the most settled bureaucracy in the Kremlin. Now he might be able to get some work out of these incompetents.
There had been no reports of weapons testing in the last two days. This lull had given Russia time to build more raw-button missiles. Meanwhile, a man and a woman had to be found somewhere in the world, and if the KGB did one thing well, it was keeping track of the world. There was more useless information coming into Moscow than even the computers stolen from the Americans could handle. But on this day, the entire network shifted to searching for three things. A man. A woman. And a weapon.
Alexei Zemyatin felt the tingle of war come just a touch closer that cold night. The Americans had sent their best to protect the woman in charge of the experiment. Therefore, there wasn't even the slightest doubt that they were behind this weapon as a weapon.
If they had been honest, a fact Zemyatin would never have believed too readily, why steal the woman back? And why use a heretofore secret force? One only exposed a secret to protect a geater one. It meant war. And yet, the millions who would die in this one made Alexei Zemyatin push the waiting time to the limit. They would look for things. Watch America closely. Maybe the experiments would stop. Maybe there was a flaw in the weapon. Maybe it did not work in certain situations.
Russia would continue to build its raw-button missiles.
The day of war would remain the same. He had designated it to make America prove to him that they were not preparing their own final solution to communism. And the only way it could be proven now was for his security system to find the three things he had requested of them.
Zemyatin walked with just a single bodyguard that night through the streets of Moscow, hearing drunks sing sad songs and watching an occasional dark car head busily out of the city toward the better apartments, He breathed deeply. The air was good. He even wondered, if they did get a good first launch, how much-if any-of this would be left.
He also wondered what the Americans thought they would win by such a conquest. Stupidity in an enemy bothered Zemyatin. There was still time for him to stop the crude nuclear assault system which continued to add more sites. Still time. He did not know that even now an American was going to erode the very mildest hope of peace, because he had something more important to think about than the survival of the human race. His career was in jeopardy.
Chapter 10
Reemer Bolt hadn't heard from Kathy since immediately after the test. It did not matter. The system had cost CC of Massachusetts more than the magic fifty million dollars. The figure was magic because now the corporation could not, under any circumstances, fail to push forward without being destroyed. In a way this financial disaster had put Reemer Bolt in the driver's seat, and he realized there was only one last bug to work out. One little obstacle that had nothing to do with the machine itself.
"Praise the Lord," said the chairman of the board. "It does work, then?"