The Cardinal of the Kremlin

  “Spontaneous?”

  “Yes! Not spontaneous. Real test should be surprise. So my orders sent me to different place and said to shoot at different time. We have general aboard from Voyska PVO, and when see new orders he is banana. Very, very angry, but what kind of test is it without no surprise? American missile submarines do not call on telephone and tell Russians day that they shoot. You either are ready or not ready,” Ramius noted.

  “We did not know that you were coming,” General Pokryshkin noted dryly.

  Colonel Bondarenko was careful to keep his face impassive. Despite having written orders from the Defense Minister, and despite belonging to a completely different uniformed service, he was dealing with a general officer with patrons of his own in the Central Committee. But the General, too, had to be wary. Bondarenko was wearing his newest and best-tailored uniform, complete with several rows of ribbons, including two awards for bravery in Afghanistan and the special badge worn by Defense Ministry staff officers.

  “Comrade General, I regret whatever inconvenience I have caused you, but I do have my orders.”

  “Of course,” Pokryshkin noted with a broadening smile. He gestured to a silver tray. “Tea?”

  “Thank you.”

  The General poured two cups himself instead of summoning his orderly. “Is that a Red Banner I see? Afghanistan?”

  “Yes, Comrade General, I spent some time there.”

  “And how did you earn it?”

  “I was attached to a Spetznaz unit as a special observer. We were tracking a small band of bandits. Unfortunately, they were smarter than the unit commander believed, and he allowed us to follow them into an ambush. Half the team was killed or wounded, including the unit commander.” Who earned his death, Bondarenko thought. “I assumed command and called in help. The bandits withdrew before we could bring major forces to bear, but they did leave eight bodies behind.”

  “How did a communications expert—”

  “I volunteered. We were having difficulties with tactical communications, and I decided to take the situation in hand myself. I am not a real combat soldier, Comrade General, but there are some things you have to see for yourself. That is another concern I have with this post. We are perilously close to the Afghan border, and your security seems ... not lax, but perhaps overly comfortable.”

  Pokryshkin nodded agreement. “The security force is KGB, as you have doubtless noted. They report to me, but are not strictly under my orders. For early warning of possible threats, I have an arrangement with Frontal Aviation. Their aerial-reconnaissance school uses the valleys around here as a training area. A classmate of mine at Frunze has arranged coverage of this entire area. If anyone approaches this installation from Afghanistan, it’s a long walk, and we’ll know about it long before they get here.”

  Bondarenko noted this with approval. Procurer for wizards or not, Pokryshkin hadn’t forgotten everything, as too many general officers tended to do.

  “So, Gennady Iosifovich, exactly what are you looking for?” the General asked. The atmosphere was somewhat milder now that both men had established their professionalism.

  “The Minister wishes an appraisal of the effectiveness and reliability of your systems.”

  “Your knowledge of lasers?” Pokryshkin asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “I am familiar with the applications side. I was on the team with Academician Goremykin that developed the new laser communications systems.”

  “Really? We have some of them here.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Bondarenko said.

  “Yes. We use them in our guard towers, and to link our laboratory facilities with the shops. It’s easier than stringing telephone lines, and is more secure. Your invention has proven very useful indeed, Gennady Iosifovich. Well. You know our mission here, of course.”

  “Yes, Comrade General. How close are you to your goal?”

  “We have a major system test coming up in three days.”

  “Oh?” Bondarenko was very surprised by that.

  “We received permission to run it only yesterday. Perhaps the Ministry hasn’t been fully informed. Can you stay for it?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Excellent.” General Pokryshkin rose. “Come, let’s go to see my wizards.”

  The sky was clear and blue, the deeper blue that comes from being above most of the atmosphere. Bondarenko was surprised to see that the General did his own driving in a UAZ-469, the Soviet equivalent of a jeep.

  “You do not have to ask, Colonel. I do my own driving because we do not have room up here for unnecessary personnel, and—well, I was a fighter pilot. Why should I trust my life to some beardless boy who barely knows how to shift gears? How do you like our roads?”

  Not at all, Bondarenko didn’t say as the General speeded down a slope. The road was barely five meters wide, with a precipitous drop on the passenger side of the car.

  “You should try this when it’s icy!” The General laughed. “We’ve been lucky on weather lately. Last autumn we had nothing but rain for two weeks. Most unusual here; the monsoon’s supposed to drop all the water on India, but the winter has been agreeably dry and clear.” He shifted gears as the road bottomed out. A truck was coming from the other direction, and Bondarenko did all he could not to cringe as the jeep’s right-side tires spun through rocks at the road’s uneven edge. Pokryshkin was having some fun with him, but that was to be expected. The truck swept past with perhaps a meter of clearance, and the General moved back to the center of the blacktopped road. He shifted gears again as they came to an upslope.

  “We don’t even have room for a proper office here—for me at any rate,” Pokryshkin noted. “The academicians have priority.”

  Bondarenko had seen only one of the guard towers that morning as he ran around the residential facility, and as the jeep climbed the last few meters, the Bright Star test area became visible.

  There were three security checkpoints. General Pokryshkin stopped his vehicle and showed his pass at each of them.

  “The guard towers?” Bondarenko asked.

  “All manned round the clock. It is hard on the chekisti. I had to install electric heaters in the towers.” The General chuckled. “We have more electrical power here than we know how to use. We originally had guard dogs running between the fences, too, but we had to stop that. Two weeks ago several of them froze to death. I didn’t think that would work. We still have a few, but they walk about with the guards. I’d just as soon get rid of them.”

  “But—”

  “More mouths to feed,” Pokryshkin explained. “As soon as it snows, we have to bring food in by helicopter. To keep guard dogs happy, they must eat meat. Do you know what it does for camp morale to have dogs on a meat diet when our scientists don’t have enough? Dogs aren’t worth the trouble. The KGB commander agrees. He’s trying to get permission to dispense with them altogether. We have starlight-scopes in all the towers. We can see an intruder long before a dog would smell or hear one.”

  “How big is your guard force?”

  “A reinforced rifle company. One hundred sixteen officers and men, commanded by a lieutenant colonel. There are at least twenty guards on duty round the clock. Half here, half on the other hill. Right here, two men in each of the towers at all times, plus four on roving patrol, and of course the people at the vehicle checkpoints. The area is secure, Colonel. A full rifle company with heavy weapons on top of this mountain—to be sure, we had a Spetznaz team run an assault exercise last October. The umpires ruled them all dead before they got to within four hundred meters of our perimeter. One of them almost was, as a matter of fact. One pink-faced lieutenant damned near fell off the mountain.” Pokryshkin turned. “Satisfied?”

  “Yes, Comrade General. Please excuse my overly cautious nature.”

  “You didn’t get those pretty ribbons from being a coward,” the General observed lightly. “I am always open to new ideas. If you have something to say, my door is never locked.?
??

  Bondarenko decided that he was going to like General Pokryshkin. He was far enough from Moscow not to act like an officious ass, and unlike most generals, he evidently didn’t see a halo in the mirror when he shaved. Perhaps there was hope for this installation after all. Filitov would be pleased.

  “It is like being a mouse, with a hawk in the sky,” Abdul observed.

  “Then do what a mouse does,” the Archer replied evenly. “Stay in the shadows.”

  He looked up to see the An-26. It was five thousand meters overhead, and the whine of its turbine engines barely reached them. Too far for a missile, which was unfortunate. Other mudjaheddin missileers had shot the Antonovs down, but not the Archer. You could kill as many as forty Russians that way. And the Soviets were learning to use the converted transports for ground surveillance. That made life harder on the guerrillas.

  The two men were following a narrow path along the side of yet another mountain, and the sun hadn’t reached them yet, though most of the valley was fully lit under the cloudless winter sky. The bombed-out ruins of a village lay next to a modest river. Perhaps two hundred people had lived there once, until the high-altitude bombers came. He could see the craters, laid out in uneven lines two or three kilometers in length. The bombs had marched through the valley, and those who had not been killed were gone—to Pakistan—leaving only emptiness behind. No food to be shared with the freedom fighters, no hospitality, not even a mosque in which to pray. Part of the Archer still wondered why war had to be so cruel. It was one thing for men to fight one another; there was honor in that, at times enough to be shared with a worthy enemy. But the Russians didn’t fight that way. And they call us savages ...

  So much was gone. What he had once been, the hopes for the future he’d once held, all of his former life slipped further away with the passage of every day. It seemed that he only thought of them when asleep now—and when he awoke, the dreams of a peaceful, contented life wafted away from his grasp like the morning mist. But even those dreams were fading away. He could still see his wife’s face, and his daughter‘s, and his son’s, but they were like photographs now, flat, lifeless, cruel reminders of times that would not return. But at least they gave his life purpose. When he felt pity for his victims, when he wondered if Allah really approved of what he did—of the things that had sickened him at first—he could close his eyes for a moment and remind himself why the screams of dying Russians were as sweet to his ears as the passionate cries of his wife.

  “Going away,” Abdul noted.

  The Archer turned to look. The sun glinted off the plane’s vertical rudder as it passed beyond the far ridges. Even if he’d been atop that rocky edge, the An-26 would have been too high. The Russians weren’t fools. They flew no lower than they had to. If he really wanted to get one of those, he’d have to get close to an airfield ... or perhaps come up with a new tactic. That was a thought. The Archer started ordering the problem in his mind as he walked along the endless rocky path.

  “Will it work?” Morozov asked.

  “That is the purpose of the test, to see if it works,” the senior engineer explained patiently. He remembered when he’d been young and impatient. Morozov had real potential. His documents from the university had shown that clearly enough. The son of a factory worker in Kiev, his intelligence and hard work had won him an appointment at the Soviet Union’s most prestigious school, where he had won the highest honors—enough to be excused from military service, which was unusual enough for someone without political connections.

  “And this is new optical coating ...” Morozov looked at the mirror from a distance of only a few centimeters. Both men wore overalls, masks, and gloves so that they would not damage the reflecting surface of the number-four mirror.

  “As you have guessed, that is one element of the test.” The engineer turned. “Ready!”

  “Get clear,” a technician called.

  They climbed down a ladder fixed to the side of the pillar, then across the gap to the concrete ring that surrounded the hole.

  “Pretty deep,” he observed.

  “Yes, we have to determine how effective our vibration-isolation measures are.” The senior man was worried about that. He heard a jeep motor and turned to see the base commander lead another man into the laser building. Another visitor from Moscow, he judged. How do we ever get work done with all those Party hacks hanging over our shoulders?

  “Have you met General Pokryshkin?” he asked Morozov.

  “No. What sort of man is he?”

  “I’ve met worse. Like most people, he thinks the lasers are the important part. Lesson number one, Boris Filipovich: it’s the mirrors that are the important part—that and the computers. The lasers are useless unless we can focus their energy on a specific point in space.” This lesson told Morozov which part of the project came under this man’s authority, but the newly certified engineer already knew the real lesson—the entire system had to work perfectly. One faulty segment would convert the most expensive piece of hardware in the Soviet Union into a collection of curious toys.

  5.

  Eye of the Snake/ Face of the Dragon

  “THE converted Boeing 767 had two names. Originally known as the Airborne Optical Adjunct, it was now called Cobra Belle, which at least sounded better. The aircraft was little more than a platform for as large an infrared telescope as could be made to fit in the wide-bodied airliner. The engineers had cheated somewhat, of course, giving the fuselage an ungainly humpback immediately aft of the flight deck that extended half its length, and the 767 did look rather like a snake that had just swallowed something large enough to choke on.

  What was even more remarkable about the aircraft, however, was the lettering on its vertical tail: U.S. ARMY. This fact, which infuriated the Air Force, resulted from unusual prescience or obstinacy on the part of the Army, which even in the 1970s had never shut down its research into ballistic-missile defense, and whose “hobby shop” (as such places were known) had invented the infrared sensors on the AOA.

  But it was now part of an Air Force program whose coverall name was Cobra. It worked in coordination with the Cobra Dane radar at Shemya, and often flew in conjunction with an aircraft called Cobra Ball—a converted 707—because Cobra was the code name for a family of systems aimed at tracking Soviet missiles. The Army was smugly satisfied that the Air Force needed its help, though wary of ongoing attempts to steal its program.

  The flight crew went through its checklist casually, since they had plenty of time. They were from Boeing. So far the Army had successfully resisted attempts by the Air Force to get its own people on the flight deck. The copilot, who was ex-Air Force, ran his finger down the paper list of things to do, calling them off in a voice neither excited nor bored while the pilot and flight engineer/navigator pushed the buttons, checked the gauges, and otherwise made their aircraft ready for a safe flight.

  The worst part of the mission was the weather on the ground. Shemya, one of the western Aleutians, is a small island, roughly four miles long by two wide, whose highest point is a mere two hundred thirty-eight feet above the slate-gray sea. What passed for average weather in the Aleutians would close most reputable airports, and what they called bad weather here made the Boeing crew wish for Amtrak. It was widely believed on the base that the only reason the Russians sent their ICBM tests to the Sea of Okhotsk was to make life as miserable as possible for the Americans who monitored them. Today the weather was fairly decent. You could see almost to the far end of the runway, where the blue lights were surrounded by little globes of mist. Like most flyers, the pilot preferred daylight, but in winter that was the exception here. He counted his blessings: there was supposed to be a ceiling at about fifteen hundred feet, and it wasn’t raining yet. The crosswinds were a problem, too, but the wind never blew where you wanted up here—or more correctly, the people who laid out the runway hadn’t known or cared that wind was a factor in flying airplanes.

  “Shemya Tower, this is Charlie B
ravo, ready to taxi.”

  “Charlie Bravo, you are cleared to taxi. Winds are two-five-zero at fifteen.” The tower didn’t have to say that Cobra Belle was number one in line. At the moment, the 767 was the only aircraft on the base. Supposedly in California for equipment tests, it had been rushed here only twenty hours earlier.

  “Roger. Charlie Bravo is rolling.” Ten minutes later the Boeing started down the runway, to begin what was expected to be yet another routine mission.

  Twenty minutes later the AOA reached its cruising altitude of 45,000 feet. The ride was the same smooth glide known by airline passengers, but instead of downing their first drinks and making their dinner selections, the people aboard this aircraft had already unbuckled and gone to work.

  There were instruments to activate, computers to recycle, data links to set up, and voice links to check out. The aircraft was equipped with every communications system known to man, and would have had a psychic aboard if that Defense Department program—there was one—had progressed as well as originally hoped. The man commanding it was an artillery-man with a masters in astronomy, of all things, from the University of Texas. His last command had been of a Patriot missile battery in Germany. While most men looked at airplanes and wished to fly them, his interest had always been in shooting them out of the sky. He felt the same way about ballistic missiles, and had helped develop the modification that enabled the Patriot missile to kill other missiles in addition to Soviet aircraft. It also gave him an intimate familiarity with the instruments used to track missiles in flight.

  The mission book in the Colonel’s hands was a facsimile print-out from the Washington headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) telling him that in four hours and sixteen minutes the Soviets would conduct a test firing of the SS-25 ICBM. The book didn’t say how DIA had obtained that information, though the Colonel knew that it wasn’t from reading an ad in Izvestia. Cobra Belle’s mission was to monitor the firing, intercept all telemetry transmissions from the missile’s test instruments, and, most important, to take pictures of the warheads in flight. The data collected would later be analyzed to determine the performance of the missile, and most particularly the accuracy of its warhead delivery, a matter of the greatest interest to Washington.