MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.

Mikhail Sergetov looked around at a group of men still pale at what might have been.

"Comrade Defense Minister," the General Secretary said. "Can you tell us what has happened?"

"It would seem that submarines launched a number of cruise missiles at some of our northern airfields. Their aim was evidently to destroy a number of our Backfire bombers. How successful they were I do not yet know."

"Where did they launch their missiles from?" Pyotr Bromkovskiy asked.

"East of Murmansk, less than thirty kilometers from our coast. A frigate saw and reported the launch, then went off the air. We have aircraft searching for him now."

"How the hell did he get there! If that submarine had launched ballistic missiles at us," Bromkovskiy demanded, "how much warning would we have had?"

"Six to seven minutes."

"Wonderful! We cannot react that fast. How can you let them get so close!"

"They won't get out, Petya, I promise you that!" the Defense Minister replied heatedly.

The General Secretary leaned forward. "You will see to it that this can never happen again!"

"While we are all here, Comrades," Sergetov spoke up. "Can the Comrade Defense Minister review overnight developments on the German Front?"

"NATO forces are strained to the breaking point. As the KGB has told us, their supplies are critically low, and with the diplomatic developments of the past few days, I think we may safely assume that NATO is on the verge of political disintegration. All we have to do is keep the pressure on, and they must collapse!"

"But we are running out of fuel also!" Bromkovskiy said. "The offer the Germans have given us is a reasonable one."

"No." The Foreign Minister shook his head emphatically. "This gives us nothing."

"It gives us peace, Comrade," Bromkovskiy said quietly. "If we continue-consider, my friends, consider what we were all thinking a few hours ago when the rocket warning came in."

For the first time, Sergetov realized, the old man had made a point they all agreed with. After weeks and months of promises and plans and assurances on how things could be kept under control, that one false alarm had forced them to look at what lay over the edge of the abyss. For ten minutes they feared that control had been lost, and all the Defense Minister's bluster could not make them forget that.

After a moment of consideration, the General Secretary spoke. "Our representatives are meeting with the Germans in a few hours. The Foreign Minister will report to us tomorrow on the substance of their new offer."

On that note the session ended. Sergetov tucked his notes in his leather briefcase, left the room alone, and walked downstairs to his official car. A junior aide held the door open when a voice called.

"Mikhail Eduardovich, may I ride with you? My car has broken down." It was Boris Kosov, chairman of the Committee for State Security, the KGB.

36 - Shootout at 31 West!

"Shall we take a drive today, Mikhail Eduardovich? Perhaps we can talk?" Sergetov's blood chilled, though he did not let it show. Was it possible for the Chief of the KGB not to look sinister? he wondered. From Leningrad, like Sergetov, Kosov was a short, rotund man who had taken over the KGB after running the Central Committee's shadowy "General Department." He had a jolly laugh when he wanted to, and in another guise could be the personification of Grandfather Frost, the State's acceptable version of Santa Claus. But he was not in another guise now.

"Certainly, Boris Georgiyevich," Sergetov said, and pointed at his driver. "You may speak freely. Vitaly is a good man."

"I know it," Kosov replied. "He's worked for us the last ten years." Sergetov only had to watch the back of his driver's neck to know that Kosov spoke the truth.

"So what shall we talk about?"

The Director of the KGB reached into his briefcase and came out with a device about the size of a paperback book. He flipped a switch and it gave off an unpleasant buzz."

"A clever new device made in the Netherlands, he explained. "It gives off a noise that renders most microphones useless. Something to do with harmonics, my people tell me." Then his manner changed abruptly.

"Mikhail Eduardovich, do you know the significance of the American attack on our airfields?"

"A troublesome development to be sure, but-"

"I thought not. Several NATO convoys are at sea. A major one left New York several days ago. It carries two million tons of essential war materiel, plus a complete American division, to Europe. In destroying a number of our bombers, NATO has significantly reduced our ability to deal with the convoys. They have also cleared the way for direct attacks against Soviet soil."

"But Iceland-"

"Has been neutralized." Kosov explained what had happened to the Soviet fighters at Keflavik.

"You're telling me the war goes badly? Then why is Germany making overtures for peace?"

"Yes, that is a very good question."

"If you have suspicions, Comrade Director, you should not bring them to me!"

"I will tell you a story. Back in January when I had my bypass surgery, day-today control of KGB passed to the First Deputy Chairman, Josef Larionov. Have you met little Josef?" Kosov asked.

"No, he never took your place at Politburo meetings-what about the Defense Council?" Sergetov's head snapped around. "They did not consult you? You were recovering then."

"An exaggeration. I was quite ill for two weeks, but naturally this information was kept quiet. It took another month before I was back working full time. The members of the Defense Council had no wish to impede my recovery, and so young, ambitious Josef was called in to give KGB's official intelligence assessment. As you might imagine, we have many schools of thought in the intelligence services-it is not like your precious engineering where all things are broken into neat little numbers and graphs. We have to look inside the heads of men who often as not do not themselves know what they think on an issue. Sometimes I wonder why we do not employ gypsy fortune-tellers... but I digress.

"KGB maintains what we call the Strategic Intelligence Estimate. This is a document updated on a daily basis which gives our assessment of the political and military strength of our adversaries. Because of the nature of our work, and because of serious mistakes made in the past, we have three assessment teams who make the estimate: Best Case, Worst Case, and Middle Case. The terms are self-explanatory, are they not? When we make a presentation to the Politburo, we generally use the Middle Case estimate, and for the obvious reasons we annotate our estimates with data from the other two."

"So when he was called in to give his assessment to the Politburo-"

"Yes. Young Josef, the ambitious little bastard who wants my job as a wolf wants a sheep, was clever enough to bring all three with him. When he saw what they wanted, he gave them what they wanted."

"But when you returned, why didn't you correct the mistake?"

Kosov gave his companion an ironic smile. "Misha, Misha, sometimes you can be most engagingly naive. I should have killed the son of a bitch, but this was not possible. Josef suffers from poor health, though he is not aware of it. The time is not yet right," Kosov said, as though discussing a vacation. "KGB is split into several factions at the moment. Josef controls one. I control another. Mine is larger, but not decisively so. He has the ear of the General Secretary and the Defense Minister. I am a sick old man-they have told me this. Except for the war I would have been replaced already."