DISCLAIMER: If you recognize people or organizations from the television
series, they belong to Shoot the Moon Productions and Warner Brothers.
I've borrowed them with love and deep appreciation for the many years of
enjoyment I've received from them and am making absolutely no money from
this enterprise. If you recognize them from history, no infringement is
intended on them; they merely serve to provide the story with an authentic
setting. If you don't recognize them from either of those two sources,
they're products of my very odd imagination and I claim full responsibility
for their imaginary actions.
ARCHIVE: Send me a private message on the PAX TV SMK Forum – TheRev.
STYLE CAUTION: My favorite authors are Tom Clancy, James Clavell, Clive Cussler, Colleen McCullough, and Harry Turtledove, all of whom write complex plots that weave in and out and sometimes hang over into their next book(s). My apologies ahead of time to anyone who needs a map to read any of these terrific writers, as I seem to have developed a similar style through osmosis. To anyone who isn't a fan of theirs for this reason, proceed at your own risk. To anyone who likes the style of this story but hasn't read one or more of the above authors, I highly recommend them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I actually was in Poland on a Holocaust Education trip with a group from Boston University during the early part of March, 1989. During our time in Warsaw we stayed at the same hotel as the Solidarity delegation to the Round Table Talks. Lech Walesa really did make a production of shaking hands with our entire tour group on two different occasions, although within the month he went on to make extraordinarily anti-Semitic remarks, so during one of our follow-up meetings, we ceremonially burned the "souvenir" pictures we had taken with him. However, nothing so exciting as this story happened to any of us, or I'd probably be in a very different line of work than the one a crisis of faith in the gas chambers at Majdanek left me open to pursue...
Prologue * Warsaw, Poland * March 9, 1989 * 8:45 a.m. (GMT+1)
Sunday morning in Boston lingered at the edges of distant memory for Sandra Reese that Thursday morning as she stood outside the Hotel Europejski with her single travel bag. She waited in the raw late-winter wind for the rest of her tour group to come out from breakfast so they could start the next part of their journey. After a day on three different airplanes belonging to two different airlines, three days visiting concentration camps and villages long since bereft of their ancient Jewish populations, and a dozen three-quarter frozen meals "heated" in the only Kosher oven remaining in Warsaw, Sandra could think of nothing except the warm climes, the lively culture, and the spicy Mediterranean foods of Israel that waited at the other end of the day.
A long Zil limousine pulled up; for the fourth morning in a row, Lech Walesa and several other Solidarity leaders pumped her hand for the cameras as they made their way to the car for the ride to the historic Round Table Talks. Yesterday's negotiations were either very good or very bad for Solidarity, Sandra thought as she watched the limo move off in the direction of the neo-gothic Palace of Culture in the distance. They were so loud in their drunkenness last night.
"Excuse me, miss, but I think you dropped this," a boy in his mid-teens whispered in her ear, interrupting her reverie. He pressed a small book into her hand. "Page 12," he added in a heavily accented hiss, dropping her hand and strolling away toward Old Warsaw without a backward glance.
Completely unnerved, Sandra pulled the book up into her line of vision. It was the official tourist guide to Auschwitz/Birkenau, with text in 5 languages celebrating the martyrdom of a relative handful of Communist partisans at the complex – without once mentioning the 2.5 million or more Jews who died there at the hands of the Nazis. Page 12, she noticed, seemed perfectly normal.
The instincts honed from years watching her father at his work told her to throw it away. However much glastnost and perestroika had changed the political landscape of East-West relations, the KGB and their understudies in the East Bloc countries could still make quite a bit of trouble for an American caught with contraband items or sensitive material – and if her father's work didn't convince her, the two weeks she had once spent in "protective custody" in Moscow should have. The budding professor of political science in her, however, demanded that she keep the book to be examined at much greater length when she arrived back at school on Monday night. With a laugh at her own doubts, she tucked the booklet into her purse and mumbled a mild curse at her companions, who were now five minutes late for assembly. The bus was ten minutes late, but the Americans had learned first-hand that on Polish time, 10 minutes late was really 20 minutes early. The bus driver probably had to go ask someone for the keys anyway, she chuckled – it was another rapidly assimilated truism that he with the keys has the power in Poland.
*****
"I delivered it just like you told me to, Mister," the teenager said to the anonymous man who had offered him 200 Zlotys to do the job. They met at a café three blocks from the hotel.
"Good," the man said, carefully counting out the money. "There's another 25 for good measure. Go to your supervisor and tell him you found the money behind a box in the storeroom. He'll let you keep it."
"Edvard? He'll ask for his share."
"Nice try. Trust me, he'll let you keep it. You never saw me or the girl, right." The harsh brown eyes bore into the teen's, infusing the wisdom of agreeing.
"Right."
"Good." The man turned abruptly and limped away, leaving a richer but bewildered messenger behind to wonder what exactly he had never done that required such secrecy.
Chapter 1 * Lublin, Poland * March 11, 1989 * 2:50 a.m. (GMT+1)
"Father Jaruslav, you should need no more evidence than what you were told by the cardinal himself," a short, well-muscled blond man said in the thick Ukrainian-accented Polish that told everyone where he had grown up within the patchwork country. "The Catholic Church is defying the voice of the Pope himself and crawling back into bed with the Communist Party." The speaker stood at the window of a small office in a building that backed onto the grounds of Majdanek, a Nazi death camp that had not been beautified for visitors in the way of Auschwitz/Birkenau. The view was depressing at the best of times, he thought as he waited for a reply; at night, backlit by the klieg lights in the main compound, the vast field of decrepit barracks was a fleet of surrealistic arks trying vainly to escape the Flood.
"Of course, you are right, Gregor. I have just prayed for so long that it would never come to this to prove our point. Somehow, 'Thou shalt not kill' doesn't seem to sit very well with the idea of killing to achieve religious freedom." Jaruslav Milowanowicz was a tall, emaciated man in his late twenties; he paced habitually and wore his despair on his sleeve for all to see.
Gregor Borodin snorted. "Most wars are fought in the name of religion, one way or another. Just think of this as a limited war if that conscience of yours needs soothing."
"You have a point, my friend. Do we know yet if the timing I suggested has been approved?"
"Unfortunately, no," Borodin replied with a shrug. "Those above us are taking their own sweet time arranging affairs around this operation."
Jaruslav grimaced. "I still think that it would be a mistake not," he wagged a finger at his companion, "to do it on Good Friday."
"I agree," Gregor nodded, hiding the smile that wanted to play on his pockmarked face, and thinking to himself, Judas Iscariot.
Maplewood Drive, Arlington, Virginia * March 10, 1989 * 8:55 p.m. EST (GMT- 5)
Lee Stetson called to his wife from their study. "Amanda, honey, can you come in here for a few minutes?"
Amanda laughed at her mother's expression as she excused herself from the conversation they were having, tossing the damp dish towel down on the center island as she made her way toward her husband's persistent voice. It was unusual for him to pay much attention to the secured-line phone and fax machine on their weekends off-duty, so she knew that this must be important.
"The flash traffic desk got a message coded for me from the CIA station chief in Warsaw," explained the dashing secret agent whose heart she had captured. "I thought you ought to hear it too." With that, Lee opened the speakerphone connection and dialed the duty officer at the Agency.
"Do you have anyone in Poland?" Amanda stood behind him and massaged his shoulders.
"I did. Piotyr was killed in late '83... just after we met, in fact. I haven't heard a peep from his network since the day I escaped to Berlin."
The tri-tone whistle that indicated an encrypted line sounded, and a voice on the other end said, "Flash traffic desk. Chris Kringle speaking."
"Santa, it's Lee Stetson again."
Amanda put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh as Kringle replied, "Oh, I so wish I could exact revenge on my parents for that. I presume you're calling about the Warsaw message, Scarecrow."
"That's the one."
"I have it in hard copy and it's encoded. How do you want it?"
Lee traded looks with his wife and partner before he answered. "Can you fax it to me, Chris? My partner is faster at the decoding thing than most people in your department."
"Sure thing. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Stetson – even if it is by telephone."
"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Kringle."
"Thank you for not laughing out loud. I'm sure you wanted to. And please, call me Chris." There was a smile in the tone, albeit a resigned one. "It's dialing right now."
Amanda did laugh a little this time. "Amanda, and you're right. I think I can understand why you might want to get your parents back for naming you what they did."
"I don't know, I think it's kind of cute," Lee said in his best I'm trying not to double over in hysterics voice.
"Then you try getting the Post Office and Social Security to take you seriously. And never try to live in an apartment on 34th Street," Chris added dryly.
Lee looked blankly at Amanda, who grinned at her husband's lack of holiday knowledge as she replied, "I can see why that might be a problem. We're getting the first page, Chris."
"Is it clean enough to read?"
"It's crystal clear."
"I don't get 34th Street," Lee interjected, standing up to join his wife at the fax machine.
"I'll explain it later, honey. Chris, the second page looks good too."
"Okay, that's it, then, Amanda. Anything else, Lee?"
"Somebody explain 34th Stree – "
"Good night," Chris said, leaving Amanda to satisfy her partner's curiosity by severing the telephone connection.
Lee swiped the thermal facsimile paper away from his wife and held it up out of her reach. "34th Street," he begged.
Amanda rolled her eyes and swatted her husband's chest playfully. "It's an old Christmas movie called The Miracle on 34th Street. It's all about a Macy's Santa Claus whose says his real name is Kris Kringle and there's a court case and a little girl who desperately wants her mother to find love and to buy the house that – oh, we'll rent the movie and have Christmas in July or something."
"Another 'happily ever after' holiday movie," he teased, setting the paper back into her outstretched hands. "I'd settle for a Christmas Eve without Eastern Bloc agents trying to gun us down."
Amanda laughed and sat down on the couch that had once graced Lee's apartments. "Hand me the decoder key book, please."
It took Amanda exactly four minutes and 32 seconds to decipher the contents of the message from the Warsaw station chief, but once she had it deciphered, it still made no sense to her. She handed Lee her notes with a perplexed shrug and sat back to wait for him to break the underlying code.
Lee read the message twice before he remembered the right cipher, then a third and a fourth to be sure he had it right. He sighed before he handed it back to Amanda. "Try it yourself. Remember your key words."
Amanda looked at it again, studied it for a long moment. She read it out loud. "Still nervous. Information optimistic: account opening Zamosc exceeds insurance bonding – ebullient! Stock interest under independent evaluation. Trade assistance tomorrow Bielawa, Friday Starachowicz. Nathan." Then it clicked. "3-1 word encoding. INFO COMES BU STUDENT STEFAN."
Lee beamed at her. "You got it. The question is, what does it mean?"
"Let's start with, 'Who's Stefan?'"
He shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe the courier's name is Stefan. Or he could be part of Piotyr's old network, I suppose. As for 'BU student', I haven't the foggiest."
"Can it wait? I think there's a little girl in the living room who wants to finish her game of Chutes and Ladders before bedtime." Marlena Marley had been staying with the Stetson-King family since she, her mother, and Jamie King were rescued from Middle Eastern terrorists at the end of January.
Sheepishly, Lee grinned down at his wife. "Uh... I think I kind of told her she could stay up as late as she wants tonight, since it's her last night with us..." Marlena's mother Joanna was finally being released from the hospital tomorrow, and the family was to go to New Mexico to be with other family while the older woman continued her recuperation.
Amanda clucked at him. "Then you are responsible for getting her out of bed and into good humor tomorrow before her mother gets here." She pushed herself off the couch and strolled out of the office, making sure to hide her own wide smile as her husband gaped fish-mouthed behind her. Tomorrow morning would be very entertaining.
The Christian Quarter, Jerusalem, Israel * March 11, 1989 * 3:00 p.m. (GMT+2)
Outside a souvenir shop near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, two American women appeared to be people watching. One, startled by something she saw, poked the other in the shoulder while she stared across the narrow street. "Sandra, di- d- did you realize that those two guys have been following us since we came through the Arab Quarter?"
Sandra Reese turned her friend away from the men. "Yes, I did. There's nothing we can do about them except let them do what they will – you know what Rabbi Galinowicz said. Now, come on, Christina, these places aren't open all day and we can't come tomorrow."
"But why are they following us?" Christina Milano persisted.
"Maybe they think we're attractive," Sandra replied with an exasperated sigh. "Just keep going and make sure you don't wander off. We'll be fine."
Dubiously, Christina looked behind her again before she felt herself being dragged away from the shop toward the church. "Okay, okay," she muttered, giving in uneasily.
She would not have given in at all had she been able to read her friend's mind. Since long before the Arab Quarter, Sandra thought. They've been there since we arrived at the hotel Thursday night. She didn't want to go any further with that thought; the possibilities were too many and too scary to contemplate, and she knew them entirely too well.
Maplewood Drive * Arlington, Virginia * 11:00 a.m. (GMT-5)
"Marlena, you have to be in a good mood," Lee cajoled the cranky three-year old. "Aunt Amanda made me promise that you would be happy today if I let you stay up." He sat on the bed she had been sleeping on in Dotty's room during her stay, wishing that the family had been able to have the fun of the night before without the 1:30 a.m. bedtime for all concerned.
Through narrowed purple eyes, the girl studied him before she spoke. "You get in trouble 'f I'm bad?" The phrase if I am came out "fime" as she lay sprawled out on top of the covers, still in her Kermit the Frog pajamas.
Sorrowful hazel eyes conveyed the seriousness of his answer. "Yes, I think I will."
"Big trouble?" she pressed.
"Big trouble," he affirmed, taking the tiny hands in his own large ones and kissing them with fatherly affection.
"What do I get 'f I'm good?" A twinkle appeared in her eyes.
Lee laughed, relieved. "A hug and a visit from the tickle monster?" he asked hopefully.
"And a piggyback ride to Aunt Amanda's room," she bargained. "And downstairs."
He was getting off lightly. "Deal. Want your hug first?"
Marlena moved with the quickness only a small child can have into his arms, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. "I love you, Uncle Lee."
"I love you, too, Munchkin." He squeezed fiercely, not quite believing that another child had found its way into his heart in the same way Jamie and Philip had. Perhaps Amanda was right – the more love you give away, the more love you have to give away.
Marlena's going-away party was already in high gear when Billy and Jeannie Melrose arrived with a gift for Marlena from Francine Desmond, who had the weekend watch command and thus was stuck at the Agency coping with a crisis in Central Asia. Marlena squealed when the torn wrapping paper revealed a Barbie - who was promptly christened Miss Francine in honor of her donor. She immediately asked for an Uncle Ian doll. "Miss Francine is so lonely because he is in Cal'forn'a," Marlena enunciated carefully, causing much laughter among the adults. Francine would be both thrilled and annoyed with the girl's perception of her new and deepening relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Ian Marlowe, USMC.
At some point in the afternoon, the subject turned to international affairs, specifically recent events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
"So, Joanna, I know that in your spare time, you've worked on the full dossiers for most of the Soviet leadership. What do you make of all this?" Billy asked, genuinely curious to see what the lead profiler for the Special Protective Services Agency would know that he and his staff didn't.
"Well," she started, shifting in the wing chair, "I find it odd that the conservatives Gorbachev threw out of power last fall went so quietly. From everything I've read about Comrade Ligachev, he's hardly one to have gone from #2 in the party power structure one day to a silent nobody the next."
"But Jo, it's the Soviet Union. I may not know much about the subject, but I do know that their system is intolerant of opposition," Dr. Andy Forest said from the floor beside her, protecting her in an odd twist on their usual relationship. America's most important biochemist rested his head on her arm lovingly. "Andrei Sakharov is proof positive of that," he added, making a connection to something with which he was far more familiar.
"True," Jo replied with a smile. "But this is a 'kinder, gentler' Soviet Union than in the days of Stalin and Beria, or even of Khrushchev. Ligachev could easily have gotten something to Pravda that might have been published – even as some kind of editorial that explained the necessity of booting the lot of them. It's been done before."
Billy pondered her statement for a second. "Are you suggesting that he was silenced more permanently?"
Joanna shook her head vehemently. "Not by Gorbachev, no. On the other hand, Gorbachev has some powerful supporters within the KGB..."
"Oh, come on, JoJo. They stopped executing Politburo members 30 years ago," Lee declared, his finger pointing with staccato emphasis at her. "Maybe the guy just decided to retire to the Black Sea to go fishing or something."
Amanda shook her head at her husband. "Or maybe he's biding his time waiting for Mr. Gorbachev to make a mistake. Sometimes that's far more effective than speaking out right away."
"And it would allow him to marshal his forces, so to speak. Ligachev wasn't the only one who lost his job that day," Billy reminded them all. "Several of the top ranking members of the military and of the Defense Council also got the boot. Who knows where they are or what they're planning."
Near the Kremlin * Moscow, USSR * March 12, 1989 * 1:10 a.m. (GMT+3)
"I don't think this plan of yours is all that wise, Feodor Petrovich," a portly gray-haired man in the bemedaled uniform of a Marshall of the Soviet Union said to his host as six men sat around a handsome dining table in the elaborate flat. A half-dozen empty vodka bottles lay scattered across the table, their contents punctuating the conversation in loud belches and high- pitched laughter at the slightest provocation, as now.
"Would you have another one, Igor Maksimovich?" Feodor Petrovich Kaminsky shot back, his authority in the group bringing abrupt silence. "Mikhail Sergeivich wants to 'modernize' the Motherland, but what he is really doing is throwing out 70 years of hard work without so much as a nod to the men who kept us strong."
A wizened little man at the foot of the table cackled with grim glee. "By that, of course, you mean us and the men who came before. I like the... Russianness... of your plan, Feodor Petrovich, but I wonder if it is not a bit too complex. And too reliant upon good timing, perhaps."
Others echoed the sentiments before Kaminsky hushed them with a raised palm. "Comrades, I appreciate your concerns, and I admit that there are more elements of risk than I would like. I would point out, for all of you, that we do have assets in Poland other than the ones involved directly in this plan, so there is limited danger to our abilities there. The girl we think might be the courier – if there is one – is being followed in Jerusalem as we speak and we will have teams waiting for her when she returns to America. It may be nothing, or it may be quite a lot."
The wizened man grunted. "We need to know more about this child. It would have been so easy six months ago when we were all employed rather than pensioned off."
"I, too, wish we could do this from a position of power," Kaminsky acknowledged. "However, since we have been shut out except for a few deeply hidden assets, there is little that I can do otherwise to gather information. If we are to bring Comrade Ligachev and the rest of our faction back into power, then we must take some risks with the assets we have – or they go to waste." The silence of acquiescence followed for a moment. "Bah!" he spat. "Even the KGB is liberalizing."
Igor Maksimovich shook his head glumly. "I heard that the last protester they picked up in Red Square had three decent meals and a soft mattress to sleep on before they shot her."
The seven men laughed as only Soviet apparatchniks can laugh at such grim humor.
St. Maria's Roman Catholic Church, Warsaw, Poland * 10:45 a.m. (GMT+1)
The Roman Catholic priest stood tall and proud in his form-fitting cassock and alb, greeting his parishioners with a pleasant smile and words of encouragement and comfort. The smile hid his inner turmoil; the Cardinal had told him in no uncertain terms that St. Maria's would no longer host the underground university where the Solidarity movement and several other anti-Communist groups came together to glean anything and everything their members could out of lectures, classes, and discussions. The Church, far from being a leading voice for freedom in Poland with the power of the Polish Papacy behind it, was now toeing a line that ran much closer to the Communist Party than to Solidarity.
"Father Milos," the man in front of him now said, "your homily was distinctly... how should I put this?... Inflammatory this morning." A row of gleaming Party awards decorated his suit coat over his heart.
"Comrade Danielowicz, I trust that this is true every Sunday," the priest returned, reflecting on the irony of a senior Communist Party official attending Mass regularly and openly. Only in Poland.
Not sure how to respond, the man gave the priest a desultory handshake and sulked away. The next man, however, greeted the priest enthusiastically.
"And the Lord's peace to you, as well, friend Stefan," Father Milos returned. "You found the homily helpful, I presume?"
Harsh brown eyes softened in pleasure as the man pulled the priest into a bear hug. "We have passed the information to the American your friends identified. It is in God's hands now, no?" he whispered.
"Yes, it is. Let us hope that she is as observant at home as she was at Auschwitz."
The man called Stefan nodded again, but this time his eyes were dull and sad. "I could not risk more than a warning message to my American friends, either. We will just have to pray that these small things are enough to get their attention, or Poland may become the 16th Soviet Republic before May Day."
After that disturbing prediction, Father Milos kept a grimace off his face with great effort and turned to the next churchgoers in line as though nothing of any import had been said.
Jericho, Israel * 1:20 p.m. (GMT+2)
Christina Milano could not shake the feeling that she was being watched. Ever since she noticed the two men following her and Sandra the previous afternoon, the eerie sense of eyes scrutinizing her every move made her want to hide in a closet in her hotel room instead of going out with the group for the Saturday evening entertainment or on their Sunday tour of Qumran, Jericho, and the Dead Sea area. Sandra had persisted, of course, and thus Christina sat beside her friend on an ancient stone wall in Jericho, listening with less than half an ear to the archaeologist from the Israeli Antiquities Commission. Her attention focused instead on the dark- haired, handsome European across the street, the one who looked so similar to one of the men from the Christian Quarter...
"Chris! Earth to Chris!" Sandra hissed urgently in her ear, stirring her from her petrified state.
"What?" she asked irritably.
"We're getting back on the bus. Are you coming, or would you rather walk back to Jerusalem?"
With a heavy sigh, Christina hefted herself off the wall. "Does that guy look familiar to you?" she asked her friend, gesturing with her elbow to the lurker who smoked a cigarette as he leaned against a streetlight.
Sandra turned to study the man. "He's gorgeous!" she exclaimed, making swooning gestures with grand brazenness. "Hey, Rabbi! Give me a minute, can you?"
Aaron Galinowicz smiled back at her from his place beside the archaeologist and waved her across the street; 27 years as a college chaplain had taught him many things that seminary never would have or could have. And Miss Sandra Reese, gentile though she be, he thought, had chutzpah when it came to approaching men.
Christina rolled her eyes and stomped away, her opinion clear in the set of her shoulders.
Sandra shook her head with a grin. Steeling herself with false bravado against the icy churning in the pit of her stomach, she approached the dark- haired man. "You know, if you're attracted to one of us, it's okay to come out and say it," she said by way of greeting as she struck an inviting pose beside the light pole.
The man squinted at her as he blew smoke through his nostrils. "What makes you think I'm the least bit interested in you or your friend?" he asked in excellent, German-accented English.
"You've been following us," she replied in equally excellent, Berlin- accented German.
"Sie sprechen Deutsch," he responded in some surprise.
"Aber natürlich," she shrugged. "Wie heißen Sie?" Naturally. What's your name?
Caught in her questioning gaze, the man took a long drag on his cigarette and an even longer time to exhale, this time through his mouth as though trying to create rings of hazy smoke to impress her. He smiled, showing tobacco stained teeth. "I'm sorry to have bothered you," he apologized, once again in English. "You're a little younger than I thought."
She glared at him coldly, mastering the fear that still gnawed at her insides. "Das ist nicht meine Sorge." That's not my problem. With that, she turned on her heel and marched off at double time to catch up with the rest of the group.
The German continued to lean against the pole long after the bus had pulled away, knowing that although he had been spotted and effectively taken out of the field, others would continue their vigil, hoping for a break that would help them discover just who Sandra Reese really was and which American agency she really worked for.
KGB Headquarters, Moscow, USSR * March 13, 1989 * 9:30 a.m. (GMT+2)
"You are very brave to come here, Comrade Secretary," noted the man in whose office Feodor Petrovich Kaminsky sat.
"Were Comrade Stalin still in power, I would not be alive to tempt fate at all, and were Comrade Khrushchev still in power, I would think it far more temptation to fate than I do under the current leadership." Kaminsky shrugged as he sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, looking as though he rather than his host belonged in the small, dingy, poorly lit room. "You have news for me, Georg Alexeivich?"
Nodding, the heavyset KGB agent pulled a nondescript folder from his top desk drawer and passed it across the desk to the former Second Secretary for Defense wordlessly.
Kaminsky took it and leafed through the thick pile of paper inside, looking for the specific coding on top of a page that would tell him to pull it out to read. It took him two tries to locate the two pieces of paper that G.A. Tolstoy wanted him to see; with some resentment at the necessity, Kaminsky pulled out his Western-style reading glasses and slid them over his nose and ears before he could finally begin to read the report. "Bozhe moi," he whispered, fully aware of the irony of that statement in this building.
"Yes, interesting, isn't it?" the other man replied. "However, I doubt that the imperialist, capitalist God would be so kind as to arrange this for us, so she must be at least a courier – or perhaps even an agent in her own right by now."
"You are positive about this identification?"
"Absolutely. We cross-checked the surveillance tapes and photos from the American sector in Berlin as soon as someone recognized the girl's name from the incident in 1986."
Kaminsky stared through his host for several minutes in silence, not noticing that Tolstoy lit a cigarette, smoked it down to a short stub, and lit another from the embers while the senior man thought. "God or no God, this is too good to pass up. Lieutenant General Alexander Reese's daughter serving as a courier for an American intelligence operation. Like father like daughter..."
"How can we take advantage of it? You know the General Secretary will never approve an operation against her."
With a derisive snort, Feodor Petrovich tossed the two news-laden pages onto the desk before him. "Comrade Gorbachev has not approved anything we're doing, including the surveillance that led to this discovery."
Properly chastised, the active KGB agent hung his head and took note of his instructions. When Kaminsky stood and walked out ten minutes later, Georg Alexeivich waited a beat, then echoed his superior's decidedly un-Party Line: "Bozhe moi." My God.
ARCHIVE: Send me a private message on the PAX TV SMK Forum – TheRev.
STYLE CAUTION: My favorite authors are Tom Clancy, James Clavell, Clive Cussler, Colleen McCullough, and Harry Turtledove, all of whom write complex plots that weave in and out and sometimes hang over into their next book(s). My apologies ahead of time to anyone who needs a map to read any of these terrific writers, as I seem to have developed a similar style through osmosis. To anyone who isn't a fan of theirs for this reason, proceed at your own risk. To anyone who likes the style of this story but hasn't read one or more of the above authors, I highly recommend them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I actually was in Poland on a Holocaust Education trip with a group from Boston University during the early part of March, 1989. During our time in Warsaw we stayed at the same hotel as the Solidarity delegation to the Round Table Talks. Lech Walesa really did make a production of shaking hands with our entire tour group on two different occasions, although within the month he went on to make extraordinarily anti-Semitic remarks, so during one of our follow-up meetings, we ceremonially burned the "souvenir" pictures we had taken with him. However, nothing so exciting as this story happened to any of us, or I'd probably be in a very different line of work than the one a crisis of faith in the gas chambers at Majdanek left me open to pursue...
Prologue * Warsaw, Poland * March 9, 1989 * 8:45 a.m. (GMT+1)
Sunday morning in Boston lingered at the edges of distant memory for Sandra Reese that Thursday morning as she stood outside the Hotel Europejski with her single travel bag. She waited in the raw late-winter wind for the rest of her tour group to come out from breakfast so they could start the next part of their journey. After a day on three different airplanes belonging to two different airlines, three days visiting concentration camps and villages long since bereft of their ancient Jewish populations, and a dozen three-quarter frozen meals "heated" in the only Kosher oven remaining in Warsaw, Sandra could think of nothing except the warm climes, the lively culture, and the spicy Mediterranean foods of Israel that waited at the other end of the day.
A long Zil limousine pulled up; for the fourth morning in a row, Lech Walesa and several other Solidarity leaders pumped her hand for the cameras as they made their way to the car for the ride to the historic Round Table Talks. Yesterday's negotiations were either very good or very bad for Solidarity, Sandra thought as she watched the limo move off in the direction of the neo-gothic Palace of Culture in the distance. They were so loud in their drunkenness last night.
"Excuse me, miss, but I think you dropped this," a boy in his mid-teens whispered in her ear, interrupting her reverie. He pressed a small book into her hand. "Page 12," he added in a heavily accented hiss, dropping her hand and strolling away toward Old Warsaw without a backward glance.
Completely unnerved, Sandra pulled the book up into her line of vision. It was the official tourist guide to Auschwitz/Birkenau, with text in 5 languages celebrating the martyrdom of a relative handful of Communist partisans at the complex – without once mentioning the 2.5 million or more Jews who died there at the hands of the Nazis. Page 12, she noticed, seemed perfectly normal.
The instincts honed from years watching her father at his work told her to throw it away. However much glastnost and perestroika had changed the political landscape of East-West relations, the KGB and their understudies in the East Bloc countries could still make quite a bit of trouble for an American caught with contraband items or sensitive material – and if her father's work didn't convince her, the two weeks she had once spent in "protective custody" in Moscow should have. The budding professor of political science in her, however, demanded that she keep the book to be examined at much greater length when she arrived back at school on Monday night. With a laugh at her own doubts, she tucked the booklet into her purse and mumbled a mild curse at her companions, who were now five minutes late for assembly. The bus was ten minutes late, but the Americans had learned first-hand that on Polish time, 10 minutes late was really 20 minutes early. The bus driver probably had to go ask someone for the keys anyway, she chuckled – it was another rapidly assimilated truism that he with the keys has the power in Poland.
*****
"I delivered it just like you told me to, Mister," the teenager said to the anonymous man who had offered him 200 Zlotys to do the job. They met at a café three blocks from the hotel.
"Good," the man said, carefully counting out the money. "There's another 25 for good measure. Go to your supervisor and tell him you found the money behind a box in the storeroom. He'll let you keep it."
"Edvard? He'll ask for his share."
"Nice try. Trust me, he'll let you keep it. You never saw me or the girl, right." The harsh brown eyes bore into the teen's, infusing the wisdom of agreeing.
"Right."
"Good." The man turned abruptly and limped away, leaving a richer but bewildered messenger behind to wonder what exactly he had never done that required such secrecy.
Chapter 1 * Lublin, Poland * March 11, 1989 * 2:50 a.m. (GMT+1)
"Father Jaruslav, you should need no more evidence than what you were told by the cardinal himself," a short, well-muscled blond man said in the thick Ukrainian-accented Polish that told everyone where he had grown up within the patchwork country. "The Catholic Church is defying the voice of the Pope himself and crawling back into bed with the Communist Party." The speaker stood at the window of a small office in a building that backed onto the grounds of Majdanek, a Nazi death camp that had not been beautified for visitors in the way of Auschwitz/Birkenau. The view was depressing at the best of times, he thought as he waited for a reply; at night, backlit by the klieg lights in the main compound, the vast field of decrepit barracks was a fleet of surrealistic arks trying vainly to escape the Flood.
"Of course, you are right, Gregor. I have just prayed for so long that it would never come to this to prove our point. Somehow, 'Thou shalt not kill' doesn't seem to sit very well with the idea of killing to achieve religious freedom." Jaruslav Milowanowicz was a tall, emaciated man in his late twenties; he paced habitually and wore his despair on his sleeve for all to see.
Gregor Borodin snorted. "Most wars are fought in the name of religion, one way or another. Just think of this as a limited war if that conscience of yours needs soothing."
"You have a point, my friend. Do we know yet if the timing I suggested has been approved?"
"Unfortunately, no," Borodin replied with a shrug. "Those above us are taking their own sweet time arranging affairs around this operation."
Jaruslav grimaced. "I still think that it would be a mistake not," he wagged a finger at his companion, "to do it on Good Friday."
"I agree," Gregor nodded, hiding the smile that wanted to play on his pockmarked face, and thinking to himself, Judas Iscariot.
Maplewood Drive, Arlington, Virginia * March 10, 1989 * 8:55 p.m. EST (GMT- 5)
Lee Stetson called to his wife from their study. "Amanda, honey, can you come in here for a few minutes?"
Amanda laughed at her mother's expression as she excused herself from the conversation they were having, tossing the damp dish towel down on the center island as she made her way toward her husband's persistent voice. It was unusual for him to pay much attention to the secured-line phone and fax machine on their weekends off-duty, so she knew that this must be important.
"The flash traffic desk got a message coded for me from the CIA station chief in Warsaw," explained the dashing secret agent whose heart she had captured. "I thought you ought to hear it too." With that, Lee opened the speakerphone connection and dialed the duty officer at the Agency.
"Do you have anyone in Poland?" Amanda stood behind him and massaged his shoulders.
"I did. Piotyr was killed in late '83... just after we met, in fact. I haven't heard a peep from his network since the day I escaped to Berlin."
The tri-tone whistle that indicated an encrypted line sounded, and a voice on the other end said, "Flash traffic desk. Chris Kringle speaking."
"Santa, it's Lee Stetson again."
Amanda put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh as Kringle replied, "Oh, I so wish I could exact revenge on my parents for that. I presume you're calling about the Warsaw message, Scarecrow."
"That's the one."
"I have it in hard copy and it's encoded. How do you want it?"
Lee traded looks with his wife and partner before he answered. "Can you fax it to me, Chris? My partner is faster at the decoding thing than most people in your department."
"Sure thing. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Stetson – even if it is by telephone."
"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Kringle."
"Thank you for not laughing out loud. I'm sure you wanted to. And please, call me Chris." There was a smile in the tone, albeit a resigned one. "It's dialing right now."
Amanda did laugh a little this time. "Amanda, and you're right. I think I can understand why you might want to get your parents back for naming you what they did."
"I don't know, I think it's kind of cute," Lee said in his best I'm trying not to double over in hysterics voice.
"Then you try getting the Post Office and Social Security to take you seriously. And never try to live in an apartment on 34th Street," Chris added dryly.
Lee looked blankly at Amanda, who grinned at her husband's lack of holiday knowledge as she replied, "I can see why that might be a problem. We're getting the first page, Chris."
"Is it clean enough to read?"
"It's crystal clear."
"I don't get 34th Street," Lee interjected, standing up to join his wife at the fax machine.
"I'll explain it later, honey. Chris, the second page looks good too."
"Okay, that's it, then, Amanda. Anything else, Lee?"
"Somebody explain 34th Stree – "
"Good night," Chris said, leaving Amanda to satisfy her partner's curiosity by severing the telephone connection.
Lee swiped the thermal facsimile paper away from his wife and held it up out of her reach. "34th Street," he begged.
Amanda rolled her eyes and swatted her husband's chest playfully. "It's an old Christmas movie called The Miracle on 34th Street. It's all about a Macy's Santa Claus whose says his real name is Kris Kringle and there's a court case and a little girl who desperately wants her mother to find love and to buy the house that – oh, we'll rent the movie and have Christmas in July or something."
"Another 'happily ever after' holiday movie," he teased, setting the paper back into her outstretched hands. "I'd settle for a Christmas Eve without Eastern Bloc agents trying to gun us down."
Amanda laughed and sat down on the couch that had once graced Lee's apartments. "Hand me the decoder key book, please."
It took Amanda exactly four minutes and 32 seconds to decipher the contents of the message from the Warsaw station chief, but once she had it deciphered, it still made no sense to her. She handed Lee her notes with a perplexed shrug and sat back to wait for him to break the underlying code.
Lee read the message twice before he remembered the right cipher, then a third and a fourth to be sure he had it right. He sighed before he handed it back to Amanda. "Try it yourself. Remember your key words."
Amanda looked at it again, studied it for a long moment. She read it out loud. "Still nervous. Information optimistic: account opening Zamosc exceeds insurance bonding – ebullient! Stock interest under independent evaluation. Trade assistance tomorrow Bielawa, Friday Starachowicz. Nathan." Then it clicked. "3-1 word encoding. INFO COMES BU STUDENT STEFAN."
Lee beamed at her. "You got it. The question is, what does it mean?"
"Let's start with, 'Who's Stefan?'"
He shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe the courier's name is Stefan. Or he could be part of Piotyr's old network, I suppose. As for 'BU student', I haven't the foggiest."
"Can it wait? I think there's a little girl in the living room who wants to finish her game of Chutes and Ladders before bedtime." Marlena Marley had been staying with the Stetson-King family since she, her mother, and Jamie King were rescued from Middle Eastern terrorists at the end of January.
Sheepishly, Lee grinned down at his wife. "Uh... I think I kind of told her she could stay up as late as she wants tonight, since it's her last night with us..." Marlena's mother Joanna was finally being released from the hospital tomorrow, and the family was to go to New Mexico to be with other family while the older woman continued her recuperation.
Amanda clucked at him. "Then you are responsible for getting her out of bed and into good humor tomorrow before her mother gets here." She pushed herself off the couch and strolled out of the office, making sure to hide her own wide smile as her husband gaped fish-mouthed behind her. Tomorrow morning would be very entertaining.
The Christian Quarter, Jerusalem, Israel * March 11, 1989 * 3:00 p.m. (GMT+2)
Outside a souvenir shop near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, two American women appeared to be people watching. One, startled by something she saw, poked the other in the shoulder while she stared across the narrow street. "Sandra, di- d- did you realize that those two guys have been following us since we came through the Arab Quarter?"
Sandra Reese turned her friend away from the men. "Yes, I did. There's nothing we can do about them except let them do what they will – you know what Rabbi Galinowicz said. Now, come on, Christina, these places aren't open all day and we can't come tomorrow."
"But why are they following us?" Christina Milano persisted.
"Maybe they think we're attractive," Sandra replied with an exasperated sigh. "Just keep going and make sure you don't wander off. We'll be fine."
Dubiously, Christina looked behind her again before she felt herself being dragged away from the shop toward the church. "Okay, okay," she muttered, giving in uneasily.
She would not have given in at all had she been able to read her friend's mind. Since long before the Arab Quarter, Sandra thought. They've been there since we arrived at the hotel Thursday night. She didn't want to go any further with that thought; the possibilities were too many and too scary to contemplate, and she knew them entirely too well.
Maplewood Drive * Arlington, Virginia * 11:00 a.m. (GMT-5)
"Marlena, you have to be in a good mood," Lee cajoled the cranky three-year old. "Aunt Amanda made me promise that you would be happy today if I let you stay up." He sat on the bed she had been sleeping on in Dotty's room during her stay, wishing that the family had been able to have the fun of the night before without the 1:30 a.m. bedtime for all concerned.
Through narrowed purple eyes, the girl studied him before she spoke. "You get in trouble 'f I'm bad?" The phrase if I am came out "fime" as she lay sprawled out on top of the covers, still in her Kermit the Frog pajamas.
Sorrowful hazel eyes conveyed the seriousness of his answer. "Yes, I think I will."
"Big trouble?" she pressed.
"Big trouble," he affirmed, taking the tiny hands in his own large ones and kissing them with fatherly affection.
"What do I get 'f I'm good?" A twinkle appeared in her eyes.
Lee laughed, relieved. "A hug and a visit from the tickle monster?" he asked hopefully.
"And a piggyback ride to Aunt Amanda's room," she bargained. "And downstairs."
He was getting off lightly. "Deal. Want your hug first?"
Marlena moved with the quickness only a small child can have into his arms, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. "I love you, Uncle Lee."
"I love you, too, Munchkin." He squeezed fiercely, not quite believing that another child had found its way into his heart in the same way Jamie and Philip had. Perhaps Amanda was right – the more love you give away, the more love you have to give away.
Marlena's going-away party was already in high gear when Billy and Jeannie Melrose arrived with a gift for Marlena from Francine Desmond, who had the weekend watch command and thus was stuck at the Agency coping with a crisis in Central Asia. Marlena squealed when the torn wrapping paper revealed a Barbie - who was promptly christened Miss Francine in honor of her donor. She immediately asked for an Uncle Ian doll. "Miss Francine is so lonely because he is in Cal'forn'a," Marlena enunciated carefully, causing much laughter among the adults. Francine would be both thrilled and annoyed with the girl's perception of her new and deepening relationship with Lieutenant Colonel Ian Marlowe, USMC.
At some point in the afternoon, the subject turned to international affairs, specifically recent events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
"So, Joanna, I know that in your spare time, you've worked on the full dossiers for most of the Soviet leadership. What do you make of all this?" Billy asked, genuinely curious to see what the lead profiler for the Special Protective Services Agency would know that he and his staff didn't.
"Well," she started, shifting in the wing chair, "I find it odd that the conservatives Gorbachev threw out of power last fall went so quietly. From everything I've read about Comrade Ligachev, he's hardly one to have gone from #2 in the party power structure one day to a silent nobody the next."
"But Jo, it's the Soviet Union. I may not know much about the subject, but I do know that their system is intolerant of opposition," Dr. Andy Forest said from the floor beside her, protecting her in an odd twist on their usual relationship. America's most important biochemist rested his head on her arm lovingly. "Andrei Sakharov is proof positive of that," he added, making a connection to something with which he was far more familiar.
"True," Jo replied with a smile. "But this is a 'kinder, gentler' Soviet Union than in the days of Stalin and Beria, or even of Khrushchev. Ligachev could easily have gotten something to Pravda that might have been published – even as some kind of editorial that explained the necessity of booting the lot of them. It's been done before."
Billy pondered her statement for a second. "Are you suggesting that he was silenced more permanently?"
Joanna shook her head vehemently. "Not by Gorbachev, no. On the other hand, Gorbachev has some powerful supporters within the KGB..."
"Oh, come on, JoJo. They stopped executing Politburo members 30 years ago," Lee declared, his finger pointing with staccato emphasis at her. "Maybe the guy just decided to retire to the Black Sea to go fishing or something."
Amanda shook her head at her husband. "Or maybe he's biding his time waiting for Mr. Gorbachev to make a mistake. Sometimes that's far more effective than speaking out right away."
"And it would allow him to marshal his forces, so to speak. Ligachev wasn't the only one who lost his job that day," Billy reminded them all. "Several of the top ranking members of the military and of the Defense Council also got the boot. Who knows where they are or what they're planning."
Near the Kremlin * Moscow, USSR * March 12, 1989 * 1:10 a.m. (GMT+3)
"I don't think this plan of yours is all that wise, Feodor Petrovich," a portly gray-haired man in the bemedaled uniform of a Marshall of the Soviet Union said to his host as six men sat around a handsome dining table in the elaborate flat. A half-dozen empty vodka bottles lay scattered across the table, their contents punctuating the conversation in loud belches and high- pitched laughter at the slightest provocation, as now.
"Would you have another one, Igor Maksimovich?" Feodor Petrovich Kaminsky shot back, his authority in the group bringing abrupt silence. "Mikhail Sergeivich wants to 'modernize' the Motherland, but what he is really doing is throwing out 70 years of hard work without so much as a nod to the men who kept us strong."
A wizened little man at the foot of the table cackled with grim glee. "By that, of course, you mean us and the men who came before. I like the... Russianness... of your plan, Feodor Petrovich, but I wonder if it is not a bit too complex. And too reliant upon good timing, perhaps."
Others echoed the sentiments before Kaminsky hushed them with a raised palm. "Comrades, I appreciate your concerns, and I admit that there are more elements of risk than I would like. I would point out, for all of you, that we do have assets in Poland other than the ones involved directly in this plan, so there is limited danger to our abilities there. The girl we think might be the courier – if there is one – is being followed in Jerusalem as we speak and we will have teams waiting for her when she returns to America. It may be nothing, or it may be quite a lot."
The wizened man grunted. "We need to know more about this child. It would have been so easy six months ago when we were all employed rather than pensioned off."
"I, too, wish we could do this from a position of power," Kaminsky acknowledged. "However, since we have been shut out except for a few deeply hidden assets, there is little that I can do otherwise to gather information. If we are to bring Comrade Ligachev and the rest of our faction back into power, then we must take some risks with the assets we have – or they go to waste." The silence of acquiescence followed for a moment. "Bah!" he spat. "Even the KGB is liberalizing."
Igor Maksimovich shook his head glumly. "I heard that the last protester they picked up in Red Square had three decent meals and a soft mattress to sleep on before they shot her."
The seven men laughed as only Soviet apparatchniks can laugh at such grim humor.
St. Maria's Roman Catholic Church, Warsaw, Poland * 10:45 a.m. (GMT+1)
The Roman Catholic priest stood tall and proud in his form-fitting cassock and alb, greeting his parishioners with a pleasant smile and words of encouragement and comfort. The smile hid his inner turmoil; the Cardinal had told him in no uncertain terms that St. Maria's would no longer host the underground university where the Solidarity movement and several other anti-Communist groups came together to glean anything and everything their members could out of lectures, classes, and discussions. The Church, far from being a leading voice for freedom in Poland with the power of the Polish Papacy behind it, was now toeing a line that ran much closer to the Communist Party than to Solidarity.
"Father Milos," the man in front of him now said, "your homily was distinctly... how should I put this?... Inflammatory this morning." A row of gleaming Party awards decorated his suit coat over his heart.
"Comrade Danielowicz, I trust that this is true every Sunday," the priest returned, reflecting on the irony of a senior Communist Party official attending Mass regularly and openly. Only in Poland.
Not sure how to respond, the man gave the priest a desultory handshake and sulked away. The next man, however, greeted the priest enthusiastically.
"And the Lord's peace to you, as well, friend Stefan," Father Milos returned. "You found the homily helpful, I presume?"
Harsh brown eyes softened in pleasure as the man pulled the priest into a bear hug. "We have passed the information to the American your friends identified. It is in God's hands now, no?" he whispered.
"Yes, it is. Let us hope that she is as observant at home as she was at Auschwitz."
The man called Stefan nodded again, but this time his eyes were dull and sad. "I could not risk more than a warning message to my American friends, either. We will just have to pray that these small things are enough to get their attention, or Poland may become the 16th Soviet Republic before May Day."
After that disturbing prediction, Father Milos kept a grimace off his face with great effort and turned to the next churchgoers in line as though nothing of any import had been said.
Jericho, Israel * 1:20 p.m. (GMT+2)
Christina Milano could not shake the feeling that she was being watched. Ever since she noticed the two men following her and Sandra the previous afternoon, the eerie sense of eyes scrutinizing her every move made her want to hide in a closet in her hotel room instead of going out with the group for the Saturday evening entertainment or on their Sunday tour of Qumran, Jericho, and the Dead Sea area. Sandra had persisted, of course, and thus Christina sat beside her friend on an ancient stone wall in Jericho, listening with less than half an ear to the archaeologist from the Israeli Antiquities Commission. Her attention focused instead on the dark- haired, handsome European across the street, the one who looked so similar to one of the men from the Christian Quarter...
"Chris! Earth to Chris!" Sandra hissed urgently in her ear, stirring her from her petrified state.
"What?" she asked irritably.
"We're getting back on the bus. Are you coming, or would you rather walk back to Jerusalem?"
With a heavy sigh, Christina hefted herself off the wall. "Does that guy look familiar to you?" she asked her friend, gesturing with her elbow to the lurker who smoked a cigarette as he leaned against a streetlight.
Sandra turned to study the man. "He's gorgeous!" she exclaimed, making swooning gestures with grand brazenness. "Hey, Rabbi! Give me a minute, can you?"
Aaron Galinowicz smiled back at her from his place beside the archaeologist and waved her across the street; 27 years as a college chaplain had taught him many things that seminary never would have or could have. And Miss Sandra Reese, gentile though she be, he thought, had chutzpah when it came to approaching men.
Christina rolled her eyes and stomped away, her opinion clear in the set of her shoulders.
Sandra shook her head with a grin. Steeling herself with false bravado against the icy churning in the pit of her stomach, she approached the dark- haired man. "You know, if you're attracted to one of us, it's okay to come out and say it," she said by way of greeting as she struck an inviting pose beside the light pole.
The man squinted at her as he blew smoke through his nostrils. "What makes you think I'm the least bit interested in you or your friend?" he asked in excellent, German-accented English.
"You've been following us," she replied in equally excellent, Berlin- accented German.
"Sie sprechen Deutsch," he responded in some surprise.
"Aber natürlich," she shrugged. "Wie heißen Sie?" Naturally. What's your name?
Caught in her questioning gaze, the man took a long drag on his cigarette and an even longer time to exhale, this time through his mouth as though trying to create rings of hazy smoke to impress her. He smiled, showing tobacco stained teeth. "I'm sorry to have bothered you," he apologized, once again in English. "You're a little younger than I thought."
She glared at him coldly, mastering the fear that still gnawed at her insides. "Das ist nicht meine Sorge." That's not my problem. With that, she turned on her heel and marched off at double time to catch up with the rest of the group.
The German continued to lean against the pole long after the bus had pulled away, knowing that although he had been spotted and effectively taken out of the field, others would continue their vigil, hoping for a break that would help them discover just who Sandra Reese really was and which American agency she really worked for.
KGB Headquarters, Moscow, USSR * March 13, 1989 * 9:30 a.m. (GMT+2)
"You are very brave to come here, Comrade Secretary," noted the man in whose office Feodor Petrovich Kaminsky sat.
"Were Comrade Stalin still in power, I would not be alive to tempt fate at all, and were Comrade Khrushchev still in power, I would think it far more temptation to fate than I do under the current leadership." Kaminsky shrugged as he sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, looking as though he rather than his host belonged in the small, dingy, poorly lit room. "You have news for me, Georg Alexeivich?"
Nodding, the heavyset KGB agent pulled a nondescript folder from his top desk drawer and passed it across the desk to the former Second Secretary for Defense wordlessly.
Kaminsky took it and leafed through the thick pile of paper inside, looking for the specific coding on top of a page that would tell him to pull it out to read. It took him two tries to locate the two pieces of paper that G.A. Tolstoy wanted him to see; with some resentment at the necessity, Kaminsky pulled out his Western-style reading glasses and slid them over his nose and ears before he could finally begin to read the report. "Bozhe moi," he whispered, fully aware of the irony of that statement in this building.
"Yes, interesting, isn't it?" the other man replied. "However, I doubt that the imperialist, capitalist God would be so kind as to arrange this for us, so she must be at least a courier – or perhaps even an agent in her own right by now."
"You are positive about this identification?"
"Absolutely. We cross-checked the surveillance tapes and photos from the American sector in Berlin as soon as someone recognized the girl's name from the incident in 1986."
Kaminsky stared through his host for several minutes in silence, not noticing that Tolstoy lit a cigarette, smoked it down to a short stub, and lit another from the embers while the senior man thought. "God or no God, this is too good to pass up. Lieutenant General Alexander Reese's daughter serving as a courier for an American intelligence operation. Like father like daughter..."
"How can we take advantage of it? You know the General Secretary will never approve an operation against her."
With a derisive snort, Feodor Petrovich tossed the two news-laden pages onto the desk before him. "Comrade Gorbachev has not approved anything we're doing, including the surveillance that led to this discovery."
Properly chastised, the active KGB agent hung his head and took note of his instructions. When Kaminsky stood and walked out ten minutes later, Georg Alexeivich waited a beat, then echoed his superior's decidedly un-Party Line: "Bozhe moi." My God.