Alekseyev came in next, holstering his pistol.

"Comrades, please go back to your seats. Evidently there is a plot to seize the Kremlin. Fortunately, I was just arriving for my appointment when this column of troops passed by. Sit down, Comrades!" the General ordered.

"What the hell is going on here?" the Defense Minister asked.

"When I entered military school thirty-four years ago I swore an oath to defend the State and the Party from all enemies," Alekseyev said coldly. "Including those who would kill my country because they don't know what the hell else to do! Comrade Sergetov?" The Petroleum Minister pointed to two men. "You Comrades and Comrade Kosov will stay. The others will be leaving with me in a few minutes."

"Alekseyev, you have signed your own death warrant," the Minister of the Interior said. He reached for a telephone. Major Sorokin lifted his rifle and destroyed the phone with a single round.

"Do not make that mistake again. We can very easily kill you all. That would be much more convenient than what we have in mind." Alekseyev waited for a moment. Another officer ran into the room and nodded. "We will now leave, Comrades. If one of you attempts to speak to anyone, you will all be killed immediately. Two-by-two-start moving!" The KGB colonel who had just set off his second Kremlin bomb took out the first group.

After they left, Sergetov and Kosov came up to the General.

"Well done," said the Director of the KGB. "Things are ready at Lefortovo. The men on duty are all mine."

"We're not going to Lefortovo. A change in plans," Alekseyev said. "They go to the old airport, and after that I helicopter them to a military camp commanded by someone I trust."

"But I have it all arranged!"

"I'm sure you do. This is my new aide, Major Sorokin. Major Sergetov is at that camp right now, making final arrangements. Tell me, Comrade Director, does Sorokin look familiar to you?"

He did look vaguely familiar, but Kosov couldn't place him.

"He was a captain-since promoted for bravery-in the 76th Guards Airborne Division."

"Yes?" Kosov sensed the danger but not the reason.

"Major Sorokin had a daughter in the Young Octobrists. Seventy-sixth Airborne is home-based at Pskov," Alekseyev explained.

"For my little Svetlana," Sorokin said, "who died without a face." All Kosov had time to see was a rifle and a white flash.

Sergetov leaped out of the way and looked to Alekseyev in shock.

"Even if you were right to trust the chekist, I will not take orders from one. I leave you with a company of loyal troops. I must get control of the Army. Your job is to get control of the Party apparatus."

"How can we trust you now?" Agriculture asked.

"By now we should be on our way to control of the communications lines. All will be done in accordance with our plan. They will announce an attempt to topple the government, prevented by loyal troops. Later today one of you will appear on television. I must go. Good luck."

Directed by their KGB guides, the motorized battalions headed for the television and radio stations, and the main telephone exchanges. They moved rapidly now, responding to emergency calls to secure the city against an unknown number of counterrevolutionaries. In fact they had not the least idea what they were doing, only that they had orders from a four-star general. That was enough for the officers of the 77th Motor Rifle. The communications teams had done well. The division political officer appeared at the Council of Ministers building to find four Politburo members on the telephones giving orders. All was not as it should be, but the Party men seemed to have things under control. The other members, he learned, had all been killed or wounded in a vicious attack by the Kremlin Guards themselves! The director of the KGB had detected the plot barely in time to summon loyal troops, but died heroically resisting the attackers. None of this made much sense to the divisional zampolit, but it didn't have to. His orders made perfectly good sense, and he radioed instructions to the divisional commander.

Sergetov was surprised at how easy it was. The number of people who actually knew what had happened was under two hundred. The fighting had all taken place within the Kremlin walls, and while many had heard the noise, the cover story explained it well enough for the moment. He had several friends in the Central Committee, and they did what they were told in the emergency. By the end of the day, the reins of power were shared among three Party men. The other Politburo members were under armed guard outside the city, with Major Sorokin in charge of their care. Without instructions from the Minister of the Interior, the MVD troops took their orders from the Politburo, while the KGB wavered leaderless. It was the final irony of the Soviet system that, headless, it could not save itself. The Politburo's pervasive control of all aspects of Soviet life prevented people now from asking the questions that had to be asked before any organized resistance could begin, and every hour gave Sergetov and his clique more time to consolidate their rule. He had the aged but distinguished Pyotr Bromkovskiy to head the Party apparatus and act as Defense Minister. Remembered in the Army as a commissar who cared about the men he served with, Petya was able to anoint Alekseyev as Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff. Filip Moiseyevich Krylov retained Agriculture and acquired Internal Affairs. Sergetov would be acting General Secretary. The three men formed a troika, which would appeal to their countrymen until more of their people could be brought in. One paramount task remained.

43- A Walk in the Woods

There is no more natural fear than of the unknown, and the greater the unknown, the greater had to be the fear. SACEUR had four intelligence reports side by side on his desk. The only thing they agreed on was that they did not know what was happening, but that it might be bad.

For that I need an expert? SACEUR thought.

A snippet of information from a ferret satellite had given him the word that there was some fighting in Moscow, and told him of the movement of troops to communications centers, but State television and radio had kept to a normal schedule for twelve hours until a news broadcast at five in the morning, Moscow time, had broken the official word.

An attempted coup d',tat by the Defense Minister? That would not be good news, and the fact that it had been put down was only marginally better. The monitoring stations had just heard a brief speech by Pyotr Bromkovskiy, known as the last of the Stalinist hard-liners: maintain calm and keep your faith in the Party.

What the hell did that mean? SACEUR wondered.

"I need information," he told his intelligence chief. "What do we know about the Russian command structure?"

"Alekseyev, the new Commander-West, is evidently not at his command post. Good news for us, since we have our attack scheduled in ten hours."

SACEUR's phone buzzed. "I told you no calls-go ahead, Franz... Four hours? Potsdam. No reply yet. I'll be back to you in a little while." He hung up. "We just received an open radio message that the Soviet Chief of Staff urgently wishes to meet with me in Potsdam."

"'Urgently wishes, Herr General?"

"That's what the message said. I can come by helicopter and they'll provide a helicopter escort to a meeting place." SACEUR leaned back. "You suppose they want to shoot me down because I've done such a great job?" The Supreme Allied Commander Europe allowed himself an ironic smile.

"We have their troops massing northeast of Hannover," the Chief of Intelligence pointed out.