Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin (39 page)

The Archer was in the front of the lead truck. He wondered to himself why he trusted the defected Major so fully, but decided that this was not a good time for that particular worry. The battalion commander came out of his bunker, his mouth working on some food as he watched the soldiers jump out of the trucks. He was waiting for the unit commander, and showed some annoyance as the side door on the BMP opened slowly, and a man in an officer's uniform appeared.

“Who the devil are you?”

“Allahu
akhbar!” the Major screamed. His rifle cut down the questioner. The heavy machine guns on the infantry carriers ripped into the mass of men eating their
noon
meal while the Archer's men raced to the half-manned bunkers. It took ten minutes before all resistance ceased, but there was never a chance for the defenders, not with nearly a hundred armed men inside the camp. Twenty prisoners were taken. The only Russians in the post—two lieutenants and a communications sergeant—were killed out of hand and the rest were placed under guard as the Major's men ran to the motor pool.

They got two more BTRs there and four trucks. That would have to be enough. The rest they burned. They burned everything they couldn't carry. They took four mortars, half a dozen machine guns, and every spare uniform they could find. The rest of the camp was totally destroyed—especially the radios, which were first smashed with rifle butts, then burned. A small guard force was left behind with the prisoners, who would also be given the chance to join the mudjaheddin—or die for their loyalty to the infidel.

It was fifty kilometers to Kabul. The new, larger vehicle column ran north. More of the Archer's men linked up with it, hopping aboard the vehicles. His force now numbered two hundred men, dressed and equipped like regular soldiers of the Afghan Army, rolling north in Russian-built army vehicles.

Time was their most dangerous enemy. They reached the outskirts of Kabul ninety minutes later, and encountered the first of several checkpoints.

The Archer's skin crawled to be near so many Russian soldiers. When dusk came, the Russians returned to their laagers and bunkers, he knew, leaving the streets to the Afghans, but even the setting sun did not make him feel secure. The checks were more perfunctory than he expected, and the Major talked his way through all of them, using travel documents and code words from the base camp so recently extinguished. More to the point, their route of travel kept them away from the most secure parts of the city. In less than two hours the city was behind them, and they rolled forward under the friendly darkness.

They went until they began to run out of fuel. At this point the vehicles were rolled off the roads. A Westerner would have been surprised that the mudjaheddin were happy to leave their vehicles behind, even though it meant carrying weapons on their backs. Well rested, the guerrillas moved at once into the hills, heading north.

The day had held nothing but bad news, Gerasimov noted, as he stared at Colonel Vatutin. “What do you mean, you cannot break him?”

“Comrade Chairman, our medical people advise me that both the sensory-deprivation procedure, or any form of physical abuse”—torture was no longer a word used at KGB headquarters—“might kill the man. In view of your insistence on a confession, we must use . . . primitive interrogation methods. The subject is a difficult man. Mentally, he is far tougher than any of us expected,” Vatutin said as evenly as he could. He would have killed for a drink at the moment.

“All because you bungled the arrest!” Gerasimov observed coldly. “I had high hopes for you, Colonel. I thought you were a man with a future. I thought you were ready for advancement. Was I mistaken, Comrade Colonel?” he inquired.

“My concern with this case is limited to exposing a traitor to the Motherland.” It required all of Vatutin's discipline not to flinch. “I feel that I have already done this. We know that he has committed treason. We have the evidence—”

“Yazov will not accept it.”

“Counterintelligence is a KGB matter, not one for the Defense Ministry.”

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain that to the Party General Secretary,” Gerasimov said, letting his anger out a bit too far. “Colonel Vatutin, I must have this confession.”

Gerasimov had hoped to score another intelligence coup today, but the F
LASH
report from
America
had invalidated it—worse still, Gerasimov had delivered the information a day before he'd learned that it was valueless. Agent Livia was apologetic, the report said, but the computer-program data so recently transmitted through Lieutenant Bisyarina was, unfortunately, obsolete. Something that might have helped to smooth the water between KGB and the Defense Ministry's darling new project was now gone.

He had to have a confession, and it had to be a confession that was not extracted by torture. Everyone knew that torture could yield anything that the questioners wanted, that most subjects would have enough incentive in their pain to say whatever was required of them. He needed something good enough to take to the Politburo itself, and the Politburo members no longer held KGB in so much fear that they would take Gerasimov's words at face value. “Vatutin, I need it, and I need it soon. When can you deliver?”

“Using the methods to which we are now limited, no more than two weeks. We can deprive him of sleep. That takes time, more so since the elderly need less sleep than the young. He will gradually become disoriented and crack. Given what we have learned of this man, he will fight us with all of his courage—this is a brave man. But he is only a man. Two weeks,” Vatutin said, knowing that ten more days ought to be sufficient. Better to deliver early.

“Very well.” Gerasimov paused. It was time for encouragement. “Comrade Colonel, objectively speaking you have handled the investigation well, despite the disappointment at the final phase. It is unreasonable to expect perfection in all things, and the political complications are not of your making. If you provide what is required, you will be properly rewarded. Carry on.”

“Thank you, Comrade Chairman.” Gerasimov watched him leave, then called for his car.

The Chairman of the KGB did not travel alone. His personal Zil—a handmade limousine that looked like an oversized American car of thirty years before—was followed by an even uglier Volga, full of bodyguards selected for their combat skills and absolute loyalty to the office of chairman. Gerasimov sat alone in the back, watching the buildings of Moscow flash by as the car was routed down the center lane of the wide avenues. Soon he was out of the city, heading into the forests where the Germans had been stopped in 1941.

Many of those captured—those who had survived typhus and poor food—had built the dachas. As much as the Russians still hated the Germans, the nomenklatura—the ruling class of this classless society—was addicted to German workmanship. Siemens electronics and Blaupunkt appliances were as much a part of their homes as the copies of Pravda and the uncensored “White TASS” news. The frame dwellings in the pine forests west of
Moscow
were as well built as anything left behind by the czars. Gerasimov often wondered what had happened to the German soldiers who had labored to make them. Not that it mattered.

The official dacha of Academician Mikhail Petrovich Alexandrov was no different from the rest, two stories, its wood siding painted cream, and a steeply pitched roof that might have been equally at home in the Black Forest. The driveway was a twisty gravel path through the trees. Only one car was parked there. Alexandrov was a widower, and past the age when he might crave young female company. Gerasimov opened his own door, checking briefly to see that his security entourage was dispersing as usual into the trees. They paused only to pull cold-weather gear from the trunk of their car, thickly insulated white anoraks and heavy boots to keep their feet warm in the snow.

“Nikolay Borissovich!” Alexandrov got the door himself. The dacha had a couple who did the cooking and cleaning, but they knew when to stay out of the way. This was such a time. The academician took Gerasimov's coat and draped it on a peg by the door.

“Thank you, Mikhail Petrovich.”

“Tea?” Alexandrov gestured toward the table in the sitting room.

“It is cold out there,” Gerasimov admitted.

The two men sat on opposite sides of the table in old over-stuffed chairs. Alexandrov enjoyed being a host—at least to his associates. He poured the tea, then dished out a small amount of white-cherry preserves. They drank their tea in the traditional way, first putting some of the sweetened cherries into their mouths, then letting the tea wash around them. It made conversation awkward, but it was Russian. More to the point, Alexandrov liked the old ways, As much as he was married to the ideals of Marxism, the Politburo's chief ideologue kept to the ways of his youth in the small things.

“What news?”

Gerasimov gestured annoyance. “The spy Filitov is a tough old bird. It will take another week or two to get the confession.”

“You should shoot that Colonel of yours who—”

The KGB Chairman shook his head. “No, no. One must be objective. Colonel Vatutin has done very well. He ought to have left the actual arrest to a younger man, but I told him that it was his case, and he doubtless took my instructions too literally. His handling of the rest of the case was nearly perfect.”

“You grow generous too soon, Kolya,” Alexandrov observed. “How hard is it to surprise a seventy-year-old man?”

“Not him. The American spy was a good one—as one might expect. Good field officers have sharp instincts. If they were not so skilled, World Socialism would have been realized by now,” he added offhandedly. Alexandrov lived within his academic world, the Chairman knew, and had little understanding of how things worked in the real one. It was hard to respect a man like that, but not so hard to fear him.

The older man grunted. “I suppose we can wait a week or two. It troubles me to do this while the American delegation is here—”

“It will be after they leave. If agreement is reached, we lose nothing.”

“It is madness to reduce our arms!” Alexandrov insisted. Mikhail Petrovich still thought nuclear weapons were like tanks and guns: the more, the better. Like most political theorists, he didn't bother learning facts.

“We will retain the newest and the best of our rockets,” Gerasimov explained patiently. “More importantly, our Project Bright Star is progressing well. With what our own scientists have already accomplished, and what we are learning about the American program, in less than ten years we will have the ability to protect the Rodina against foreign attack.”

“You have good sources within the American effort?”

“Too good,” Gerasimov said, setting down his tea. “It seems that some data we just received was sent out too soon. Part of the American computer instructions were sent to us before they were certified, and turned out to be faulty. An embarrassment, but if one must be embarrassed, better that it should result from being too effective than not effective enough.”

Alexandrov dismissed the subject with a wave of the hand. “I spoke to Vaneyev last night.”

“And?”

“He is ours. He cannot bear the thought of that darling slut of a daughter in a labor camp—or worse. I explained what is required of him. It was very easy. Once you have the confession from the Filitov bastard, we will do everything at the same time. Better to accomplish everything at once.” The academician nodded to reinforce his words. He was the expert on political maneuvering.

“I am troubled by possible reactions from the West . . .” Gerasimov noted cautiously.

The old fox smiled into his tea. “Narmonov will have a heart attack. He is of the proper age. Not a fatal one, of course, but enough to make him step aside. We will assure the West that his policies will continue—I can even live with the arms agreement if you insist.” Alexandrov paused. “It does make sense to avoid alarming them unduly. All that concerns me is the primacy of the Party.”

“Naturally.” Gerasimov knew what was to follow, and leaned back to hear it yet again.

“If we don't stop Narmonov, the Party is doomed! The fool, casting away all we have worked for. Without the leadership of the Party, a German would be living in this house! Without Stalin to put steel in the people's backbone, where would we be, and Narmonov condemns our greatest hero—after Lenin,” the academician added quickly. “This country needs a strong hand, one strong hand, not a thousand little ones! Our people understand that. Our people want that.”

Gerasimov nodded agreement, wondering why this doddering old fool always had to say the same thing. The Party didn't want one strong hand, much as Alexandrov denied the fact. The Party itself was composed of a thousand little, grabbing, grasping hands: the Central Committee members, the local apparatchiki who had paid their dues, mouthed their slogans, attended the weekly meetings until they were sick to death of everything the Party said, but still stayed on because that was the path to advancement, and advancement meant privilege. Advancement meant a car, and trips to Sochi . . . and Blaupunkt appliances.

All men had their blind spots, Gerasimov knew. Alexandrov's was that so few people really believed in the Party anymore. Gerasimov did not. The Party was what ran the country, however. The Party was what nurtured ambitions. Power had its own justification, and for him, the Party was the path to power. He'd spent all of his working life protecting the Party from those who wished to change the power equation. Now, as Chairman of the Party's own “sword and shield,” he was in the best possible position to take the Party's reins. Alexandrov would have been surprised, scandalized to learn that his young student saw power as his only goal, and had no plan other than status quo ante. The
Soviet Union
would plod along as before, secure behind its borders, seeking to spread its own form of government into whatever country offered the opportunity. There would be progress, partly from internal changes, partly from what could be obtained from the West, but not enough to raise expectations too much, or too rapidly, as Narmonov threatened to do. But best of all, Gerasimov would be the man with the reins. With the power of the KGB behind him, he need not fear for his security— certainly not after breaking the Defense Ministry. So he listened to Alexandrov's ranting about Party theory, nodding when appropriate. To an outsider it would look like the thousands of old pictures—nearly all of them fakes—of Stalin listening with rapt attention to the words of Lenin, and like Stalin, he would use the words to his own advantage. Gerasimov believed in Gerasimov.