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  Traffic in a wide street sucked them into its flow. The curbs were lined with parking meters. Rykov pointed out Regan’s Drugs, the movie theater, Woolworth’s, John’s Men’s Shop, a beauty salon, real-estate and insurance offices. A red light halted them beside an open-fronted lunch counter and Johnnie Ray was singing “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home” on the jukebox. They went on past a Safeway Market with an enormous asphalt car park and General Grigorenko said, “You don’t see as many motorcars on the streets of Leningrad. What was the cost of this?”

  Rykov pointed off to the left. “The nursery school. We allow Illegals with children into the program if the children are younger than eighteen months. They’re raised in English.”

  Yashin’s wintry expression never changed. “One might suspect the Americans grow enough of their own.”

  The taxi slid to the curb by a big Spanish stucco edifice, FEDERAL OFFICE BUILDING engraved in concrete above the entrance. Rykov preceded them through the revolving door and saw the general give the device a narrow look full of nervous distrust. Yashin gave the surroundings no more attention than he would have paid a Moscow worker’s flat. Andrei trotted to the elevator bank and inserted a key and the car took them to the fifth floor.

  “Your quarters are at the rear. We’ll try to anticipate your needs but you’ll have to regard yourselves as confined in quarantine.”

  “I’m sure it’s all quite necessary,” Yashin said.

  Rykov took them into his office and closed the door. Andrei arranged chairs, and from the way General Grigorenko’s eyes followed Andrei around the room it was evident Grigorenko didn’t like his being there, but if Yashin could bring a witness Rykov was entitled to the same privilege according to the rules of protocol. Rykov pressed a button under the lip of his desk and sat back. “We can begin right away if you like.”

  “By all means,” said Yashin.

  An old man brought in a large tray and set it down and left the room. Chilled glasses of vodka, dishes of smoked whitefish on bread, and sour pickles. Andrei passed them around.

  Rykov settled his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. “You’ll want a general briefing, but first let’s clear the air. When you return to the Kremlin there will be nothing to prevent you from remembering a great many ugly things that did not happen here. You might try to persuade the Politburo that my operation here is slipshod and worthless, nothing but a danger to the Soviet Union and a grave drain on her resources. When men in your position make such statements, rebuttals from men in my position mean little.”

  Yashin murmured, “You forget your superior. What about Tolubchev?”

  “Naturally his assurances would be discounted because ultimately the responsibility for Amergrad is his. He authorized it and he has no choice but to defend it. Who would believe him?”

  The narrow face did not change. “You have a lively imagination.”

  “Have I.”

  “What do you want, Comrade—my assurances of support?”

  “Only your assurances of an open skepticism. I never ask the impossible.”

  “Show us what you have to offer. Then we’ll see.”

  “In a moment. It remains to be said that the state security files are at my disposal at all times.”

  Yashin didn’t stir. It was Grigorenko who stiffened. “You’re threatening us with blackmail?”

  “You? Hardly.”

  “Never mind,” Yashin said. He appeared remote, detached. He understood well enough. The government was unsteady, the post-Stalin purges had stripped the top levels of functionaries, and those who remained were a meager cadre intent on training a new generation to fill the bureaucracy’s vacancies. Yashin and his comrades could not afford the loss of further Party executives. Yet Rykov’s threat was explicit: destroy Rykov and you risk destroying men whose services are vital to the Soviet Union. The ammunition waited in his NKVD files.

  He was offering Yashin a simple trade and making it clear he was not asking for support, only indifference.

  Yashin lit his pipe. He had not conceded yet. “We’ll see,” he said again. “You may proceed.”

  Rykov sat back. “Andrei?”

  Andrei clasped his hands behind him and assumed a gentle ex cathedra manner. “The first group of trainees is to matriculate in three weeks’ time. They’ll be seeded in at discreet intervals over a period of eighteen or twenty months. These agents may not be called on to act for many years, and in the meantime their whole concern will be to behave like Americans. That’s why their training here has to be exhaustive, and incidentally expensive. Once in place they will have no contact with active Soviet field agents. Their instructions will come from Moscow—directly, without the use of established rezidentsii or safe-houses.

  “When and if a Moscow Control is sent out to activate them, he’ll have to make contact without the use of any ritualistic devices like codes and countersigns—they can’t be expected to remember obscure passwords over a span of ten or twenty years.

  “When contact is made the procedure will be simple. Control will address the agent by his real name, his Russian name, and he’ll supply the names of both the agent’s parents. In turn the agent will give him the full names of all four of his grandparents. Any enemy agent who gets deep enough into things to learn those names and their proper use will know so much about us that nothing would add to the damage already done.

  “No agent is to take into his confidence anyone outside his own immediate cell, even if it’s someone he thinks he met here at Amergrad. If he’s not a member of the same cell he’s to be treated as if he’s a real American. The only communication between cells will be between cell leaders and of course agents and leaders will know only what they need to know for the execution of their own missions.”

  Andrei shifted his stance and his voice changed slightly. “They’re going to be seeded into a place called Tucson, in the Southwestern desert. Population around fifty thousand. Industries, at the moment, cattle, copper mining, tourism. The town provides services and transport for the surrounding agricultural and mineral districts.”

  “Cowboy country,” Grigorenko said. “Why?”

  “Our analyses indicate Tucson will become an important defense center within a few years. It’s in the same part of the country as the aircraft and missile plants in California and Utah, it’s not far from the Alamogordo test range, the nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos, and the Nevada nuclear testing sites. It’s four hundred miles inland from the nearest coastline, which makes it invulnerable to naval air attack, and the weather and topography encourage year-round aircraft and missile operations. The Army has a sophisticated artillery and electronics testing facility nearby at Fort Huachuca and in Tucson itself there are two Air Force bases—Davis Monthan, part of the Strategic Air Command, and Marana, a pilot-training field. We feel Tucson will become a vitally important base for intercontinental bombers and long-range rockets armed with nuclear warheads, as well as a center for research and weapons factories.”

  Yashin said, “Of course that’s an opinion. You can’t be absolutely certain it will develop that way.”

  He was talking to Rykov, and Rykov answered him: “We deal with probabilities, indications, suggestions.”

  “Circumstantial evidence.”

  “Yes. When you’ve got enough of it and it all points in the same direction, you can be fairly sure you’re on the right track. But absolute certainty? No. That’s beyond our power.”

  “Then you’re committing the Soviet government to a course of action based on guesswork.” Yashin’s face shifted toward Andrei. “You may proceed.”

  Color flooded Andrei’s face. “As I said, our Illegals will be seeded into Tucson on a steady basis. The infiltration will continue into 1956, by which time we expect to have seeded nearly three hundred highly trained Amergrad agents into the city.”

  Grigorenko sat up. “Three hundred agents to spy on one town?”

  “Spy on it? No. We’re not concerned with cloak-an
d-dagger charades. Our people are under orders to do nothing which could jeopardize their cover. Even if they see a chance to obtain secret information—even if they think it’s vitally important—they’re not to touch it. In fact if they discover a Soviet agent spying on secret activities they have orders to do their patriotic duty as Americans by turning the spy in to the American authorities.”

  “Absurd,” Grigorenko said. “Madness.” He turned his face toward Yashin.

  Yashin said only, “Go on.”

  Flexor muscles contracted Andrei’s hands but he went on gamely, his smile fixed and meaningless, and Rykov let him handle it by himself because Andrei would never learn how if someone was always there supporting him.

  “We’ve projected a heavy multiplication of military installations in Tucson over the next twelve years. The purpose of the Rykov plan is to have our agents in place before the installations are even built—the Americans won’t suspect people who are already entrenched important members of the community.”

  “Important members?” Grigorenko lifted his hand and turned it over. “Overnight?”

  “People come from everywhere to the Southwest. For their health, retirement, a lazy bourgeois life. Our Illegals will be part of the stream.”

  “You said ‘entrenched.’ You can’t just walk in and overthrow the power structure.”

  Andrei twitched but he did not look at Rykov. “It’s a transient city. There’s no traditional hierarchy—very few old families, no settled political structures taken for granted. We expect the population of Tucson to double in six years and that will give us an immigration of new voters who weren’t there before and therefore can’t be counted on to support old-time politicians. In American municipal politics the party labels have no meaning, all the candidates spout the same capitalist rubbish, but individual faces come and go constantly and our people will have no difficulty insinuating themselves into both major parties in five or six years.”

  Yashin stirred. “You talk as if you intend to take over the entire city.”

  “Yes, quite. Not only the city, but the Air Force bases, the aircraft plants, and the guided-missile installations—as they are built. They’ll all be looking for personnel, particularly administrators and engineers with military experience. That’s why we’ve recruited quite a few of our people from the Red Air Forces. We’ll be in control of the entire war machine in that sector of the United States—our people will be established in every echelon from military officers and plant executives all the way down to flight-line mechanics and factory janitors. When the final stage of the Rykov plan takes effect we’ll own the Tucson military complex as if it were a Russian air base on the outskirts of Moscow.”

  Chapter One

  March 197-

  The red scrambler operational telephone was always in the corner of his vision. Smith turned the page of the specifications manual and shifted his buttocks on the hard seat of his chair and checked his watch again to remind himself that boredom was finite: his shift in the subterranean doomsday room would end and presently he would return to sunshine above ground. Smith had an earnest young face and an AFBSD patch on his Air Force uniform. Smith, Arthur, NMI, First Lieutenant USAF, 036754991.

  The windowless room was sealed like an orbital capsule and the sterile console panel glittered with screens, toggles, dials, buttons—all the self-conscious set-decoration of computer technology. Antiseptic air whispered from ducts in the thick walls and there was a subliminal rumble of life-support machinery; the recirculation systems were designed to keep Smith alive long enough to do his job after the atmosphere above ground had been rendered poisonous by CBW or nuclear attack.

  There was a big pane of reinforced bulletproof glass to his right and beyond it was a mirror duplicate of his cell occupied by Lieutenant Haas, Martin G., who had a bald spot and a mild case of facial acne. Omnidirectional microphones fed into cross-circuited PA systems so the two men could talk with each other but couldn’t reach each other physically. Around their necks on dogtag chains hung magnet-coded keys; to unleash the power of Silo Six, both lieutenants had to set their controls identically, insert their keys and simultaneously turn them. It was thought, or at least hoped, that this duplication would prevent Unauthorized Implementation, which was a euphemism for what happened when a man went off his nut and decided to set the world on fire by himself. No one man could launch the birds. The firing locks were separated by twenty feet and impregnable glass and the initial contact had to be made simultaneously (half-second leeway), so that even if one man somehow neutralized the other and obtained both sets of keys, he couldn’t lock down one key and walk over and turn the other one. There was no way around it: it took at least two people to destroy the world.

  If the order came down it would come by way of the scrambler telephone, melodramatically red, dialless. The phone would buzz and its light would flash and when it was picked up it would speak in a series of code letters which had to match the codes sealed inside the heavy envelopes that lay in the rectangular trays beside the phones. The codes were changed regularly and at the end of each shift the envelope was destroyed, unopened, in a security shredder which made confetti of it, incinerated the scraps and then fed the ashes into an acid bath. Except in training simulation Smith had never been authorized to open a code envelope and he believed he never wanted to, just as those who had designed the ultimate weapon believed they did not want to find out what would happen if it was used.

  The system which ended with Silo Six began with the billion-dollar Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) and its ultrasensitive radar scopes designed to single out hostile missiles coming over the top of the world. Once an attack was detected, the warning would be fed into the sixteen-million-mile system of electronic circuits that led into the fourteen vast computers of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), buried in a five-acre command post 1,500 feet beneath the granite summit of Cheyenne Mountain, thirteen miles south of Colorado Springs near Pike’s Peak.

  Preliminary Yellow Alert signals would go out instantly to all operational stations—Polaris and Poseidon submarines, airborne SAC bombers, aircraft carriers, military bases on four continents, and the Missile Wing Commanders of each ICBM and Safeguard ABM base. Simultaneously, signals would go out by microwave scrambler to activate the cased radiotelephone that was carried by a Secret Service agent who was never more than ten paces from the President of the United States.

  If an incoming attack was confirmed the Red Alert condition would be flashed to all stations. The identity of the attacker would be known by the trajectory of the incoming missiles: NORAD’s computers could analyze paths of approach and decide within milliseconds where the missiles had been launched.

  Intercontinental war moved at eighteen thousand miles per hour and under most foreseeable circumstances the President would have little more than eight minutes to order retaliation.

  The President’s order would be transmitted directly to NORAD and to Strategic Air Command’s Looking Glass airborne headquarters—an aircraft orbiting in a random flight path and carrying sufficient high-ranking Air Force generals to guarantee temporary survival of the command structure, even if NORAD should be destroyed.

  From NORAD or Looking Glass the order would be forwarded electronically through circuit relays to each operational commander on station. In Tucson the order would be received by the Missile Wing Commander, who was on twenty-four-hour call.

  Tucson’s missiles were kept in eighteen separate complexes, which were grouped in six Residency Operations Groups. Each ROG had a Launch Commander, whose command post was an underground blockhouse, its horseshoe wall crowded with radar and closed-circuit television screens in tiers above a curved desk where console operators with earphone headsets and chin microphones sat in tilt-back swivel chairs.

  Almost everything was turned over to computers; the men in the blockhouse were there mainly to monitor procedures and make sure nothing went wrong. Target information would be c
oded automatically onto magnetic tapes and programmed into the Minuteman Integrated Command and Control System (MICCS). The Launch Commander and his officers would complete their final drill—verification procedures and double-lock systems—and issue the coded final command over the red buzzer phones of the two Launch Operators in each silo. At any point up to actual ignition the procedure could be halted immediately by a countermand from the President.

  The ROG which serviced Silos Four, Five and Six occupied a massive network of space and machinery radiating out from the command blockhouse in low underground caverns connected by ringing concrete corridors and miles of pipes and cables. Ventilator blowers made a soft muted roar and massive machines stood ready to slide back the topside reinforced trapdoors to expose the ICBMs for launching. In Communications, reels of tape poured out of decoding machines. Hundreds of men monitored incoming data. And in Silo Six the two lieutenants hovered over their red telephones.

  On Friday, March 29, Jaime Spode left the Rayburn Building and turned his topcoat collar up. A knot of filthy cars went by in the slush, snow tires humming, white exhausts spuming. Spode picked his way across the mess and tramped along the rim of Capitol Hill toward the new Senate Office Building. He could have taken the subway but he wanted to avoid the girl he had seen going down the Rayburn entrance.