He began to get into his fatigues. Irina propped both pillows behind her, drew her knees up and leaned forward. She was hunching her shoulders together, pressing her breasts against each other as if to suffocate something.

He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks; he felt her hand on his arm. “What?”

“Nothing. I only wanted to touch you.”

“You’ve got such a strange look on your face, Irina.”

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “May I stay, Alex? Is there something useful I can do here?”

“It would be better if you went back.”

“Why?”

“The rest of them are confined to barracks and the training areas. They’d resent it.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I’d want to spend the evenings with you-the nights.”

“Yes.”

“There isn’t time for it.”

“Doesn’t it help, knowing you’ve got someone who cares what happens to you?”

“Of course it does.”

“I want to be here, Alex. I want to watch it take shape. I’ve got a stake in this.”

He threaded his belt through the loops, waiting for her to come out with it.

She said. “There were a lot of Free Poles in the brigade. Auchinleck was putting together a great deal of human flotsam to hold back the Afrika Korps. The Poles volunteered to fight in North Africa. Vassily didn’t like desert warfare-he was toying with some silly idea of taking the rest of the regiment back to China. Then Leon told him about this project and naturally it galvanized him-he forgot about China. But this scheme wasn’t Vassily’s idea. And it wasn’t Leon’s.”

It hit him and he turned slowly, adjusting to it, absorbing it.

Bitterness bubbled to the surface and Irina said, “I couldn’t trust anyone but Leon to listen to me. The rest of them-even my father-I knew they’d turn me aside. They’re not in the habit of listening to a woman’s ideas,”

She combed the hair away with her fingers and tossed it back. “Do you know how long ago it came to me? It was when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. A week before Hitler invaded Poland. Almost two years ago. I knew one of them would violate the pact-one of them would attack the other and that would be our chance.

“The whole conception was mine, darling. The coalition, the design for a new government, the choice of Felix to be the figurehead. Dear old Leon saw the possibilities at once. We’ve worked together ever since. We had to think of every objection-we had to have an answer for everything.”

She watched him without guile but he took his time thinking it out.

She said, “May I stay now?”

“I can’t refuse you, can I.”

“No.” she said. “I planned it that way, don’t you see?”

He buckled the holsters flat against his waist and when Sergei locked the bolt of the Mannlicher rifle Alex opened the door and went through it quickly. Walking down the short driveway and across the narrow highway he had time to survey the barrens on either side. Sergei was back there in the corner of the house with two windows to observe through and if anything stirred in the brush Alex would hear the pane shatter when Sergei’s rifle moved.

Everything in him twanged with taut vibration. He heard the distant screech of the gulls and the movement of a vehicle somewhere. The gate sentry demanded his pass and got it and then he was crossing the tarmac toward the main hangar, still ready to dive flat.

It was a little far to hear the glass breaking out now but the haze hadn’t lifted and he didn’t think a long-range shot would do the job under these conditions; if they really meant to kill him this time they wouldn’t chance it until conditions were optimum. It still was possible they hadn’t meant to hit him at all; it might have been a warning but if so it was meaningless because there’d been no message. That was the crux: in Boston the shooting had had all the earmarks of a deliberate miss but on the face of things that didn’t make any sense since it served no purpose he could discern. There was an answer to it somewhere but he didn’t have enough facts to know where to look for it and therefore the only thing he could do was assume the worst but go on about his business. If the threat had been contrived to slow him down it wasn’t going to succeed.

He stepped into the hangar and took a very deep breath and tramped back toward tht office.

Irina had given him something new to chew on and part of him resented it because he couldn’t spare much of his mind to explore it. She was telling the truth about the scheme: there’d be no point in lying, it was too easy to confirm. But that didn’t mean she’d told the whole truth. She was holding something back.

John Spaight was waiting in the office and Alex said, “Let’s get to work.”

9

“We haven’t got any time at all,” the Undersecretary growled. “Kiev is in flames. They’ve got Guderian down there now-Third Panzer Division at the spearhead. Von Mannerheim has Leningrad encircled. Von Bock has three armies and three Panzer groups within two hundred miles of Moscow. Stalin’s losing people at the rate of twenty thousand a day-casualties and prisoners. It’s going to be over within a month.”

Colonel Glenn Buckner was so tired he had to keep blinking. It was nearly three in the morning. He stuck to his guns. “It’s far too early to cancel the operation. This time of year a hundred and forty-odd years ago Napoleon was right at the gates of Moscow and we know where that got him.”

“Napoleon didn’t have a Luftwaffe or three Panzer groups.”

Buckner said, “We’ve got people in Fairbanks doing tests on mechanized equipment. When it gets cold enough you can’t run a tank-the oil solidifies.”

“It’s not cold in Moscow, Glenn. It’s raining for God’s sake. That’s the best possible weather for tank warfare-a little mud lubricates the cleats. Right now Rommel would probably rather be on the Russian front where he wouldn’t have sandgrit ruining his panzers right and left.”

Buckner tried a new tack. “You and I both spent enough time in there to know what those people are like when they get stubborn.”

“They’re not stubborn now. Stalin’s had to take ruthless measures to keep them in the lines at all. They’re bugging out the first chance they get.”

“Don’t you see that’s exactly why we’ve got to proceed with Danilov’s operation? It’s the only chance we’ve got to get the Russians back on their feet and back into the war against Hitler.” He couldn’t suppress the yawn any longer but it gratified him that the Undersecretary responded in kind.

The Undersecretary took his hand down from in front of his mouth. “We’re just wasting time and money and materiel. The war in Russia will be decided long before these White Russians get off their butts. All we’re doing is lining their coffers.”

Buckner let his silence argue for him. When the rest of them had been fighting to gear up for war production the Undersecretary had concentrated his attentions on deciding what decorating scheme to use in the overhaul of the State building. But he had the Secretary’s ear-they were old cronies-and because he’d spent two years in the Moscow Embassy he’d been assigned as liaison between Foggy Bottom and the Chairman of JCS: it made him Buckner’s opposite number. He was a clever politician and Buckner had to depend on his sense of self-aggrandizement-his willingness to subordinate prejudice to ambition.

Buckner said, “We’re not gambling much. If it fails it hasn’t hurt us. If it succeeds we’ll both be looking good.”

“If I saw any chance of it succeeding…”

“What have we got to lose? A handful of airplanes. Some fuel, some ammunition, a little money. Hell if we lose the planes we can write them off on the books as training accidents.”

“That’s not the point and you know it. The repercussions if a whisper of this ever gets breathed…”

“If Stalin loses the war we’re not going to have to worry about his good opinion of us.”