In the shadows of the big trees, Alexander Barnett waited with his photographer. When the door to the west entrance opened briefly, the photographer pointed the infrared camera and zoomed across five hundred yards to focus on the emerging men. He clicked the shutter three times and then pulled the camera down from his face. “That’s all there are, I guess.” The two men went up the street to their car and drove to a processing lab of CBA.
In thirty-five minutes, the photographer and Barnett were staring excitedly at the pictures laid out on a white cloth. Barnett picked up each one in turn and purred happily: “Old Sam Riordan himself, paying a social call on Bill Stark. Now what the hell would he be doing in the White House at midnight? Sam hasn’t been up past ten o’clock for twenty years, I bet.” Barnett tapped Riordan’s picture against his teeth and said: “There’s a very rotten smell here. Let’s see if we can smoke it out of them.” He went to a wall phone and put through a call to New York and the director of CBA News.
Joe Safcek slept for hours in the uncomfortable cabin of the C-135. When he awoke, the neat farmland acres of Germany were underneath. Then the huge airfield at Frankfurt-on-Main appeared, and the jet landed and taxied past the beautiful terminal complex on the right side, where commercial planes were lined up at different gates. The C-135 pulled to the left and cut its engines before an old hangar. When Safcek and Gorlov emerged with Richter, four military policemen formed a bodyguard around them and escorted them into a lounge.
Safcek was amused by the special convoy and said to Richter, “I feel like a VIP.”
Richter answered: “You are. Their orders are to keep everyone away from you.” He left unsaid what further orders they had if anyone did approach the team.
The three men sat down at a table and looked at a menu. The MPs got them what they ordered, and they ate in silence, surrounded by curious busboys and the four MPs, who watched stolidly while their charges finished their snacks. Karl Richter had constant refills on his coffee. Joe Safcek drank coffee and smoked two cigarettes. Gorlov asked for a tumbler of vodka and swallowed it at a gulp. Then the MPs took them back to the refueled plane. The doors closed, the engines roared, and the C-135 went back into the air. It headed southeast toward the Mediterranean.
Thursday, September 12
Marshal Moskanko and his three deputies, Marshals Bakunin, Omskuschin, and Fedoseyev, were forty miles northwest of the Soviet capital, holding a morning situation conference. They had entered a bungalow at the top of a hill and descended an elevator five hundred feet into the bowels of the earth, where the defense command for all Soviet military forces maintained headquarters. A labyrinth radiated from a central control room lined with electric maps listing all American offensive and defensive weapons systems in position. Moskanko and his deputies went immediately to a huge television screen which covered a fourteen-by-twenty-foot section of a side wall. They stared at the image, and the defense minister said, “They’re still on a war footing. Look at those bombers taking off.” The picture showed a long line of B-52 aircraft taxiing to the end of runways and sweeping down the long path into the sky. A Cosmos satellite hanging motionless over Torreon Airbase in Spain was relaying these indications of enemy readiness.
“Torreon normally handles only twelve planes on a daily basis, but now we see at least twenty-four on the line,” the ascetic-looking Marshal Bakunin, master of the rocket forces, said in his precise manner. “Not only that but each SAC station is similarly beefed up. The missile sites are also on at least condition yellow, so they are ready to go within twelve minutes.”
Moskanko nodded acknowledgment to Bakunin, who was not only a fellow marshal but his brother-in-law as well. The defense minister left the television screen to go into a white-walled office. He greeted a man in civilian clothes who deferred to him by standing until he was seated. Moskanko was brusque with his visitor. “What about Rudenko?”
“He’s still alive at Lubianka. We’ve had Fedor working with him for three days, and the pig is stubborn. He has admitted nothing of real importance, though he did testify that he knew some people at the American Embassy. Rudenko says it was merely in the line of duty. When we confronted him with the microfilming equipment from his apartment, he said it had been planted there.”
The man speaking was Vassili Baranov, deputy director of the Soviet state security police. The hawk-nosed director continued apologetically: “We don’t want to lose Rudenko before he tells us what we want to know. Fedor has had to be extremely careful with him.”
Moskanko interrupted. “We must break him. Someone in our laser program gave him blueprints to pass on to the Americans. He could not just walk into the research center like a ghost. If you cannot do anything with your fists, use something else.”
Vassili Baranov suggested sodium pentothal. The defense minister told him to arrange for it immediately, and the state security officer left by helicopter to execute this latest directive.
Marshal Moskanko rejoined his deputies. They were in the map room, standing over a table cluttered with charts of the frontier in Europe. The stocky peasant Omskuschin was explaining the disposition of NATO forces in West Germany.
“The Americans are in a terribly weakened position. Their forces there are down fifty-five percent from their peak in 1965, and, of course, their allies have not made up the loss over the years. I have two tank armies poised along the Elbe which can reach the English Channel in fourteen days. The West German army is the shield. Once we have pierced it, there is very little to hold us.”
Moskanko interrupted. “You will not even have to fight your way through, comrade. When the American President realizes the position he is in, he will not resist. You will be able to walk to the Channel and pick flowers all the way.” The expansive Moskanko eased himself into a chair and smiled at his fellow marshals.
“Omskuschin,” the defense minister continued, “I know how eager you are to test out your armored-warfare ideas on those flat plains, but you must prepare to be disappointed. Stark will fold up like an accordion, and your vehicles will continue to collect rust in their motor pools. It will not be like 1945 when you took your Stalin tanks into Berlin.”
Omskuschin made a face at the defense minister, who laughed loudly and slammed the top of the table with his fist. “No, comrades, it will all fall into our laps without a man lost.”
Marshal Bakunin did not smile at the remark. The bespectacled deputy stared moodily at the maps in front of him until Moskanko noticed his gloom.
“A problem?”
Bakunin stirred from his silence and turned his somber face to Moskanko. “Yes, a problem. I have been thinking of the one thing that could upset all our plans. What if the American Stark reacts differently from our expectations? What if his advisors convince him to fight? All indications show he would rather appease than face us. All indications show that the American people have lost their spirit, that they are divided among themselves and want to forget their commitments around the world. But, my dear friend, this is an entirely different situation. America is about to fall, and Stark may somehow find the strength to stand up to us. A rat scurries away until he is cornered, but then he fights to save himself from extinction. And we have not given Stark any alternative to total surrender. He is up against a wall and might just attempt to bring it down on us along with himself.”
Moskanko was angry. “What is wrong with you, Pavel Andreievich? Are you losing your nerve?”