"But just as important."

"Hey, Jack, I know. Battle of Midway, like. Joe Rochefort and his band of merry men at FRUPAC back in '42 saved our country a lot of ha.s.sles with our little yellow friends in WestPac when they told Nimitz what was coming."

"Yeah, Robby, well, looks like we have more of the same sort of friends. If there's operational stuff in here, I want your opinion of it."

"I can do that already. Their army and what pa.s.ses for a navy are talking in the open about how they take us on, how to counter carriers and stuff like that. It's mostly pipe dreams and self-delusion, but my question is, why the h.e.l.l are they putting this in the open? Maybe to impress the unwashed of the world-reporters and the other idiots who don't know s.h.i.t about war at sea-and maybe to impress their own people with how smart and how tough they are. Maybe to put more heat on the ROC government on Taiwan, but if they want to invade, they have something to do first, like building a real navy with real amphibious capability. But that would take ten years, and we'd probably notice all the big gray canoes in the water. They've got some submarines, and the Russians, of all people, are selling them hardware-just forked over a Sovremenny-cla.s.s DDG, complete with Sunburn missiles, supposedly. Exactly what they want to do with them, I have no idea. It's not the way I'd build up a navy, but they didn't ask me for advice. What freaks me is, the Russians sold them the hardware, and they're selling some other stuff, too. Crazy," the Vice President concluded.

"Tell me why," POTUS commanded.

"Because once upon a time a guy named Genghis Khan rode all the way to the Baltic Sea-like, all the way across Russia. The Russkies have a good sense of history, Jack. They ain't forgot that. If I'm a Russian, what enemies do I have to worry about? NATO? The Poles? Romania? I don't think so. But off to my southeast is a great big country with a s.h.i.tload of people, a nice large collection of weapons, and a long history of killing Russians. But I was just an operations guy, and sometimes I get a little paranoid about what my counterparts in other countries might be thinking." Robby didn't have to add that the Russians had invented paranoia once upon a time.

This is madness!" Bondarenko swore. "There are many ways to prove Lenin was right, but this is not the one I would choose!" Vladimir Il'ych Ulyanov had once said that the time would come when the capitalist countries would bid among themselves to sell to the Soviet Union the rope with which the Soviet Union would later hang them. He hadn't antic.i.p.ated the death of the country he'd founded, and certainly not that the next Russia might be the one doing what he had predicted.

Golovko could not disagree with his guest. He'd made a similar argument, though with fewer decibels, in the office of President Grushavoy. "Our country needs the hard currency, Gennady Iosifovich."

"Indeed. And perhaps someday we will also need the oil fields and the gold mines of Siberia. What will we do when the c.h.i.n.ks take those away from us?" Bondarenko demanded.

"The Foreign Ministry discounts that possibility," Sergey Nikolay'ch replied.

"Fine. Will those foreign-service pansies take up arms if they are proven wrong, or will they wring their hands and say it isn't their fault? I am spread too thin for this. I cannot stop a Chinese attack, and so now we sell them the T-99 tank design . . ."

"It will take them five years to bring about series production, and by that time we will have the T-10 in production at Chelyabinsk, will we not?"

That the People's Liberation Army had four thousand of the Russian-designed T-80/90 tanks was not discussed. That had happened years earlier. But the Chinese had not used the Russian-designed 115-mm gun, opting instead for the 105-mm rifled gun sold to them by Israel Defense Industries, known to America as the M-68. They came complete with three million rounds of ammunition made to American specifications, down to the depleted uranium projectiles, probably made with uranium depleted by the same reactors that made plutonium for their nuclear devices. What was it about politicians? Bondarenko wondered. You could talk and talk and talk to them, but they never listened! It had to be a Russian phenomenon, the general thought, rather than a political one. Stalin had executed the intelligence officer who'd predicted-correctly, as it turned out-the German attack of June 1941 on the Soviet Union. And that one had come within sight of Moscow. Executed him, why? Because his prediction was less pleasing than that of Levrenti Beriya, who'd had the good sense to say what Stalin had wanted to hear. And Beriya had survived being completely wrong. So much for the rewards of patriotism.

"If we have the money for it, and if Chelyabinsk hasn't been retooled to make f.u.c.king washing machines!" Russia had cannibalized its defense infrastructure even more quickly than America had. Now there was talk of converting the MiG airplane plants to automobile production. Would this never stop? Bondarenko thought. He had a potentially hostile nation next door, and he was years away from rebuilding the Russian Army into the shape he wished. But to do that meant asking President Grushavoy for something that he knew he couldn't have. To build a proper army, he had to pay the soldiers a living wage, enough to attract the patriotic and adventurous boys who wanted to wear their country's uniform for a few years, and most particularly those who found that they enjoyed uniformed life enough to make a career of it, to become sergeants, the middle-level professional soldiers without whom an army simply could not function, the sinews that held the muscles to the bone. To make that happen, a good platoon sergeant had to make almost as much money as a skilled factory worker, which was only fair, since the demands of such a man were on the same intellectual level. The rewards of a uniformed career could not be duplicated in a television plant. The comradeship, and the sheer joy of soldiering, was something to which a special sort of man responded. The Americans had such men, as did the British and the Germans, but these priceless professionals had been denied the Russian Army since the time of Lenin, the first of many Soviet leaders who'd sacrificed military efficiency in favor of the political purity the Soviet Union had insisted upon. Or something like that, Bondarenko thought. It all seemed so distant now, even to one who'd grown up within the misbegotten system.

"General, please remember that I am your friend in the government," Golovko reminded him. Which was just as well. The Defense Minister was-well, he spoke the right words, but he wasn't really able to think the right thoughts. He could repeat what others told him, and that was about it. In that sense, he was the perfect politician.

"Thank you, Sergey Nikolay'ch." The general inclined his head with the proper respect. "Does that mean that I can count upon some of these riches that Fate has dropped into our lap?"

"At the proper time I will make the proper recommendation to the president."

By that time, I will be retired, writing my memoirs, or whatever the h.e.l.l a Russian general is supposed to do, Bondarenko told himself. But at least I can try to get the necessary programs drafted for my successors, and perhaps help choose the right man to follow me into the operations directorate. He didn't expect to go any further than he already had. He was chief of operations (which included training) for his army, and that was as fine a goal as any man could ask for his career.

"Thank you, Comrade Minister. I know your job is also difficult. So, is there anything I need to know about the Chinese?"

Minister Golovko wished he could tell this general that SVR didn't have a decent pipeline into the PRC anymore. Their man, a second-deputy minister, long in the employ of the KGB, had retired on grounds of ill health.

But he could not make the admission that the last Russian source inside the Forbidden City was no longer operational, and with him had gone all the insights they needed to evaluate the PRC's long-term plans and intentions. Well, there was still the Russian amba.s.sador in Beijing, and he was no one's fool, but a diplomat saw mainly what the host government wanted him to see. The same was true of the military, naval, and air attaches, trained intelligence officers all, but also limited to what the Chinese military wished them to see, and even that had to be reciprocated every step of the way in Moscow, as though in some elegant international waltz. No, there was no subst.i.tute for a trained intelligence officer running agents who looked inside the other government, so that he, Golovko, could know exactly what was going on and report on it to his president. It wasn't often that Golovko had to report that he did not know enough, but it had happened in this case, and he would not confess his shortcomings to this soldier, senior one or not.

"No, Gennady Iosifovich, I have nothing to indicate that the Chinese seek to threaten us."

"Comrade Minister, the discoveries in Siberia are too vast for them not to consider the advantage to be had from seizing them. In their place, I would draw up the necessary plans. They import oil, and these new fields would obviate that necessity, and make them rich in the foreign exchange they seek. And the gold, Comrade, speaks for itself, does it not?"

"Perhaps." Golovko nodded. "But their economy seems healthy at the moment, and wars are not begun by those already rich."

"Hitler was prosperous enough in 1941. That did not prevent him from driving his army to within sight of this building," the chief of operations for the Russian army pointed out. "If your neighbor has an apple tree, sometimes you will pick an apple even if your belly is full. Just for the taste, perhaps," Bondarenko suggested.

Golovko couldn't deny the logic of that. "Gennady Iosifovich, we are of a kind. We both look out for dangers even when they are not obvious. You would have made a fine intelligence officer."

"Thank you, Comrade Minister." The three-star toasted his host with his almost empty vodka gla.s.s. "Before I leave my office, it is my hope to lay before my successor a plan, the accomplishment of which will make our country invulnerable to attack from any country. I know I will not be able myself to make that happen, but I will be grateful for the ability to set a firm plan in place, if our political leadership can see the merit of our ideas." And that was the real problem, wasn't it? The Russian army might be able to deal with external enemies. It was the internal ones which formed the really intractable problem. You usually knew where your enemy stood, because you faced them. Where your friends stood was more difficult, because they were usually behind you.

"I will make sure you present the case yourself to the cabinet. But"-Golovko held up his hand-"you must wait for the right moment."

"I understand, and let us hope the Chinese allow us the time for that moment." Golovko tossed off the last of his drink and rose. "Thanks for letting me come in to bare my heart to you, Comrade Chairman."

So, where is he?" Provalov demanded.

"I do not know," Abramov replied tiredly. "We've identified one person who claims to know him, but our informant has no idea where he lives."

"Very well. What do you know?" Moscow asked St. Petersburg.

"Our informant says that Suvorov is former KGB, RIF'd in 1996 or so, that he lives, probably, in St. Petersburg-but if that is true, he does so under an a.s.sumed name and false doc.u.ments, or 'Suvorov' is itself a false name. I have a description. Male, fifty or so, average height and build. Thinning blond hair. Regular features. Blue eyes. Physically fit. Unmarried. Thought to frequent prost.i.tutes. I have some people asking around those women for more information. Nothing yet," the St. Petersburg investigator replied.

This is amazing, Lieutenant Provalov thought. All the resources we have, and we can't develop a single reliable piece of information. Was he chasing ghosts? Well, he had five of those already. Avseyenko, Maria Ivanovna Sablin, a driver whose name he couldn't remember at the moment, and the two putative Spetsnaz killers, Pyotr Alekseyevich Amalrik and Pavel Borissovich Zimyanin. Three blown up spectacularly during a morning rush hour, and two murdered in St. Petersburg after having done the job-but killed for succeeding or failing?

"Well, let me know when you develop anything."

"I will do that, Oleg Gregoriyevich," Abramov promised.

The militia lieutenant hung up his phone and cleared his desk, putting all his "hot" files into the locked drawer, then he walked downstairs to his official car and drove to his favorite bar. Reilly was inside, and waved when he came through the door. Provalov hung up his coat on a hook and walked over to shake hands. He saw that a drink was waiting for him.

"You are a true comrade, Mishka," the Russian said to his American friend as he took his first slug.

"Hey, I know the problem, pal," the FBI agent said sympathetically.

"It is this way for you as well."

"h.e.l.l, when I was a brand-new brick agent, I started working the Gotti case. We busted our a.s.ses bagging that lowlife. Took three juries to put him in Marion. He's never coming back. Marion is a particularly nasty prison." Though "nasty" in American terms was different from the Russian. Russian prisons didn't really bear thinking about, though Reilly didn't worry much about that. People who broke the law in any society knew about the possible consequences going in, and what happened when they got caught was their problem, not his. "So, what's the story?"

"This Suvorov. We can't find him. Mishka, it is as if he doesn't exist."

"Really?" It both was and was not a surprise to Reilly. The former, because Russia, like many European societies, kept track of people in ways that would have started a Second American Revolution. The cops here were supposed to know where everybody lived, a carryover from the Bad Old Days when KGB had kept a third of the population as informers on the other two-thirds. It was an uncommon situation for the local cops not to be able to find someone.

The situation was not surprising, however, because if this Suvorov mutt really was a former KGB officer, then he'd been expertly trained to disappear, and that sort of adversary didn't just die of the dumbs, like most American and Russian hoods did. Nor would he die from talking too much. Your average criminals acted-well, like criminals. They bragged too much, and to the wrong people, other criminals for the most part, who had the loyalty of rattlesnakes and would sell out a "friend" as readily as taking a p.i.s.s. No, this Suvorov guy, if he was who and what the informants said he was, was a pro, and they made interesting game for interesting hunts, and usually long hunts at that. But you always got them in the end, because the cops never stopped looking, and sooner or later, he'd make a mistake, maybe not a big one, but big enough. He wouldn't be hanging with his former buds in KGB, people who would help keep him hidden, and would only talk among themselves and then not much. No, he was in a different milieu now, not a friendly one, not a safe one, and that was just too d.a.m.ned bad. Reilly had occasionally felt a certain sympathy for a criminal, but never for a killer. There were some lines you just couldn't cross.

"He has dived into a hole and then covered it up from inside," the Russian said, with some frustration.

"Okay, what do we know about him?"

Provalov related what he'd just learned. "They say they will be asking wh.o.r.es if they might know him."

"Good call." Reilly nodded. "I bet he likes the high-end ones. Like our Miss Tanya, maybe. You know, Oleg, maybe he knew Avseyenko. Maybe he knows some of his girls."

"That is possible. I can have my men check them out as well."

"Can't hurt," the FBI agent agreed, waving to the bartender for a couple of refills. "You know, buddy, you've got yourself a real investigation happening here. I kinda wish I was on your force to help out."

"You enjoy this?"

"Bet your a.s.s, Oleg. The harder the case, the more thrilling the chase. And it feels real good at the end when you bag the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. When we convicted Gotti, d.a.m.n if we didn't have one big party in Manhattan. The Teflon Don," Reilly said, hoisting his gla.s.s, and telling the air, "Hope you like it in Marion, boy."

"This Gotti, he killed people, yes?" Provalov asked.

"Oh, yeah, some himself, and others he gave the orders. His number one boy, Salvatore Gravano-Sammy the Bull, they called him-turned government witness and helped make the case for us. So then we put Sammy in the witness-protection program, and the mutt starts dealing drugs again down in Arizona. So, Sammy's back inside. The dummy."

"They all are, as you say, criminals," Provalov pointed out.

"Yeah, Oleg, they are. They're too stupid to go straight. They think they can outsmart us. And y'know, for a while they do. But sooner or later . . ." Reilly took a sip and shook his head.

"Even this Suvorov, you think?"

Reilly smiled for his new friend. "Oleg, do you ever make a mistake?"

The Russian grunted. "At least once a day."

"So, why do you think they're any smarter than you are?" the FBI agent asked. "Everybody makes mistakes. I don't care if he's driving a garbage truck or President of the f.u.c.king United States. We all f.u.c.k up every so often. It's just part of being human. Thing is, if you recognize that fact, you can make it a lot further. Maybe this guy's been well trained, but we all have weaknesses, and we're not all smart enough to acknowledge them, and the smarter we are, the less likely we are to acknowledge them."

"You are a philosopher," Provalov said with a grin. He liked this American. They were of a kind, as though the gypsies had switched babies at birth or something.

"Maybe, but you know the difference between a wise man and a fool?"

"I am sure you will tell me." Provalov knew how to spot pontification half a block away, and the one approaching had flashing red lights on the roof.

"The difference between a wise man and a fool is the magnitude of his mistakes. You don't trust a fool with anything important." The vodka was making him wax rhapsodic, Reilly thought. "But a wise man you do, and so the fool doesn't have the chance to make a big screwup, while a wise man does. Oleg, a private can't lose a battle, but a general can. Generals are smart, right? You have to be real smart to be a doc, but docs kill people by accident all the time. It is the nature of man to make mistakes, and brains and training don't matter a rat-f.u.c.k. I make 'em. You make'em." Reilly hoisted his gla.s.s again. "And so does Comrade Suvorov." It'll be his d.i.c.k, Reilly thought. If he likes to play with hookers, it'll be his d.i.c.k that does him in. Tough luck, bro. But he wouldn't be the first to follow his d.i.c.k into trouble, Reilly knew. He probably wouldn't be the last, either.

So, did it all work?" Ming asked.

"Hmph?" Nomuri responded. This was strange. She was supposed to be in the afterglow period, his arm still around her, while they both smoked the usual after-s.e.x cigarette.

"I did what you wished with my computer. Did it work?"

"I'm not sure," Nomuri tried as a reply. "I haven't checked."

"I do not believe that!" Ming responded, laughing. "I have thought about this. You have made me a spy!" she said, followed by a giggle.

"I did what?"

"You want me to make my computer accessible to you, so you can read all my notes, yes?"

"Do you care?" He'd asked her that once before, and gotten the right answer. Would it be true now? She'd sure as h.e.l.l seen through his cover story. Well, that was no particular surprise, was it? If she weren't smart, she'd be useless as a penetration agent. But knowing what she was . . . how patriotic was she? Had he read her character right? He didn't let his body tense next to hers, remarkably enough. Nomuri congratulated himself for mastering another lesson in the duplicity business.

A moment's contemplation, then: "No."

Nomuri tried not to let his breath out in too obvious an expression of relief.

"Well, then you need not concern yourself. From now on, you will do nothing at all."

"Except this?" she asked with yet another giggle.

"As long as I continue to please you, I suppose!"

"Master Sausage!"

"Huh?"

"Your sausage pleases me greatly," Ming explained, resting her head on his chest.

And that, Chester Nomuri thought, was sufficient to the moment.

CHAPTER 16.

The Smelting of Gold Pavel Petrovich Gogol could believe his eyes, but only because he'd seen the whole Red Army armored corps on the move in the Western Ukraine and Poland, when he was a younger man. The tracked vehicles he saw now were even bigger and knocked down most of the trees, those that weren't blown down by engineers with explosives. The short season didn't allow the niceties of tree-felling and road-laying they used in the effete West. The survey team had found the source of the gold dust with surprising ease, and now a team of civil and military engineers was pushing a road to the site, slashing a path across the tundra and through the trees, dropping tons of gravel on the path which might someday be properly paved, though such roads were a problem in these weather conditions. Over the roads would come heavy mining equipment, and building materials for the workers who would soon make their homes in what had been "his" woods. They told him that the mine would be named in his honor. That hadn't been worth much more than a spit. And they'd taken most of his golden wolf pelts-after paying for them and probably paying most generously, he allowed. The one thing they'd given him that he liked was a new rifle, an Austrian Steyr with a Zeiss scope in the American .338 Winchester Magnum caliber, more than ample for local game. The rifle was brand-new-he'd fired only fifteen rounds through it to make sure it was properly sighted in. The blued steel was immaculate, and the walnut stock was positively sensuous in its honeyed purity. How many Germans might he have killed with this! Gogol thought. And how many wolves and bear might he take now.

They wanted him to leave his river and his woods. They promised him weeks on the beaches at Sochi, comfortable apartments anywhere in the country. Gogol snorted. Was he some city pansy? No, he was a man of the woods, a man of the mountains, a man feared by the wolves and the bear, and even the tigers to the south had probably heard of him. This land was his land. And truth be told, he knew no other way to live, and was too old to learn one in any case. What other men called comforts he would call annoyances, and when his time came to die, he would be content to die in the woods and let a wolf or a bear pick over his corpse. It was only fair. He'd killed and skinned enough of them, after all, and good sport was good sport.

Well, the food they'd brought in-flown in, they'd told him-was pretty good, especially the beef, which was richer than his usual reindeer, and he had fresh tobacco for his pipe. The television reporters loved the pipe, and encouraged him to tell his story of life in the Siberian forests, and his best bear and wolf stories. But he'd never see the TV story they were doing on him; he was too far away from what they occasionally called "civilization" to have his own TV set. Still, he was careful to tell his stories carefully and clearly, so that the children and grandchildren he'd never had would see what a great man he'd been. Like all men, Gogol had a proper sense of self-worth, and he would have made a fine storyteller for any children's school, which hadn't occurred to any of the bureaucrats and functionaries who'd come to disturb his existence. Rather, they saw him as a TV personality, and an example of the rugged individualist whom the Russians had always worshipped on the one hand and brutally suppressed on the other.

But the real subject of the forty-minute story that was being put together by Russian national television wasn't really here. It was seventeen kilometers away, where a geologist tossed a gold nugget the size of his fist up and down like a baseball, though it weighed far more than the equivalent volume of iron. That was merely the biggest nugget they'd found. This deposit, the geology team explained to the cameras, was worthy of a tale from mythology, the garden, perhaps, of Midas himself. Exactly how rich it was they'd learn only from tunneling into the ground, but the chief of the geology team was willing to wager his professional reputation that it would beggar the South African mine, by far the richest found to date on the planet. Every day the tapes the cameras made were uploaded to the Russian communications satellite that spent most of its time hanging over the North Pole-much of the country is too far north to make proper use of the geosynchronous birds used by the rest of the world.

This was not a problem for the National Security Agency. NSA has stations worldwide, and the one located at Chicksands in England took the feed of the Russian satellite and instantly cross-loaded it to an American military-communications satellite, which dispatched the signal to Fort Meade, Maryland. Agreeably, the signal was not encrypted and so could be immediately forwarded to Russian linguists for translation, and then off it went to CIA and other national a.s.sets for evaluation. As it played out, the President of the United States would see the footage a week before the average Russian citizen.

"d.a.m.n, who is that guy, Jim Bridger?" Jack asked.

"His name is Pavel Petrovich Gogol. He's the guy credited with discovering the gold deposit. See," Ben Goodley said. The camera took in the row of gilded wolf pelts.

"d.a.m.n, those could be hung in the Smithsonian . . . like something out of a George Lucas movie . . ." SWORDSMAN observed.

"Or you could buy one for your wife," Goodley suggested.

POTUS shook his head. "Nah . . . but . . . maybe if it was a gilded sable coat . . . you think the voters could handle it?"

"I think I defer on such questions to Mr. van Damm," the National Security Adviser said after a moment's consideration.

"Yeah, might be fun to see him have a cow right here in the Oval Office. This tape isn't cla.s.sified, is it?"

"Yes, it is, but only 'confidential.' "

"Okay, I want to show this one to Cathy tonight." That level of cla.s.sification wouldn't faze anybody, not even a major city newspaper.

"You want one with subt.i.tles or a voice-over translation?"