"Then you will share that obsession with my husband and his friends when you honor us with your presence."

Mathilde offered the back of her gloved hand. Yevgeny bent forward and brushed her fingers with his lips. When he straightened and opened his eyes, she was gone.

Room SH219 in the Hart Office Building, home to the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence, was reputed to contain the most secure suite of offices in a town obsessed with security. The unmarked door opened into a foyer guarded by armed Capitol Hill policemen. The conference room was actually a room suspended inside a room so that the walls and floor and ceiling (all made of steel to prevent electromagnetic signals from penetrating) could be inspected for bugs. Even the electrical supply was filtered. Inside, mauve chairs were set around a horseshoe-shaped table. On one wall hung a map of the Intelligence Committees' area of interest: the world. Elliott Winstrom Ebbitt II, the Director of Central Intelligence since Bill Caseys death in 1987, had barely settled into a catbird seat when the a.s.sault began.

"Mawning to you, Di-rector," drawled the Texan who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He had a smile plastered across his jowls but it didn't mislead anyone; the Senator had been quoted in the New York Times Times the previous week saying there were some in Congress who favored breaking up the Company into component parts and starting over again. "Won't waste your time 'n ours p.u.s.s.yfootin' 'round," he began. He looked through bifocals at some notes he'd scrawled on a yellow legal pad, then peered sleepily over the top of the gla.s.ses at the Director. "No secret, folks in Congress are p.i.s.sed, Ebby. Been almost two years since the last Russian soldier quit Afghanistan. Still can't figure out what the CIA could've been thinkin' 'bout when it delivered Stinger missiles to Islamic fundamentalists. Now that we're bombin' the bejesus out of Saddam Hussein, chances are good some of them-there Stingers will wind up bein' shot at our aircraft." the previous week saying there were some in Congress who favored breaking up the Company into component parts and starting over again. "Won't waste your time 'n ours p.u.s.s.yfootin' 'round," he began. He looked through bifocals at some notes he'd scrawled on a yellow legal pad, then peered sleepily over the top of the gla.s.ses at the Director. "No secret, folks in Congress are p.i.s.sed, Ebby. Been almost two years since the last Russian soldier quit Afghanistan. Still can't figure out what the CIA could've been thinkin' 'bout when it delivered Stinger missiles to Islamic fundamentalists. Now that we're bombin' the bejesus out of Saddam Hussein, chances are good some of them-there Stingers will wind up bein' shot at our aircraft."

Ebby said, "I would respectfully remind the Senator that giving Stingers to the mujaheddin was a Presidential decision-"

"Casey recommended it," a Republican Congressman from Ma.s.sachusetts told the Director. "You could make a case that he talked Reagan into it."

"How many Stingers are still out there and what are you doing to get them back?" another Congressman asked.

"We reckon roughly three hundred and fifty are unaccounted for, Congressman. As for recuperating them, we're offering a no-questions-asked bounty of one hundred thousand dollars a Stinger-"

The Chairman snapped his head to one side to clear the mane of white hair out of his eyes. "I expect an Islamist could get more for a Stinger in the Smugglers' Bazaar in Peshawar. The long an' the short of it, Ebby, is that everyone's patience is wearin' rice-paper thin. Here we are, sh.e.l.lin' out somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-eight billion dollars of the taxpayers' money a year on intelligence. And the single most important event since the end of the Second World War-I'm talkin 'bout the dee-cline 'n fall of the Soviet empire-goes unpredicted. h.e.l.lfire, the CIA didn't give us a week's warnin'."

A Senator from Maine rifled through a folder and came up with a report stamped "Top Secret." "A couple of months ago you personally told us, in this very room, Mr. Ebbitt, that-and I'm quoting your words-'the most likely outcome for 1991 is that the Soviet economy will stagnate or deteriorate slightly."'

"It sure as h.e.l.l deteriorated slightly!" scoffed the Chairman. "The Berlin wall came tumblin' down November of '89; Gorbachev let the satellites in East Europe squirm off the Soviet hook one by one; Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Ukraine are talkin' autonomy- and we're settin' here twenty-eight billion poorer and readin' 'bout these earth-quaking events in the newspaper."

A Democratic Congressman from Ma.s.sachusetts cleared his throat. "Senator, in all fairness to Mr. Ebbitt, I think we are obliged to acknowledge that he's done a lot to clean up the CIA's act since Director Casey's day. I don't think I need to remind anyone in this room that, in Casey's time, we had him testifying into a microphone and we listened on earphones trying to decipher his mumblings. And we didn't succeed. Mr. Ebbitt, on the other hand, has been very open and straightforward with us-"

"I 'preciate that much as you do," the Chairman said. "But the problem of gettin' a handle on intelligence-the problem of gettin' some early warnin' for our bucks-remains. We woulda been a h.e.l.l of a lot better off if'n the CIA'd apprised us of Saddam Hussein's dishonorable intentions vis-a-vis Kuwait."

"Senator, Senators, Congressmen, we've been moving in the right direction on these matters," Ebby said, "but Rome wasn't built in a day and the CIA isn't going to be reconstructed in a year or two. We're dealing with a culture, a mindset, and the only thing that's going to change that over the long run is to bring in new blood, which, as you gentlemen know, is what I've been doing. As far as drawing an accurate portrait of the Soviet Union's leadership, I want to remind the Senators and Congressmen that you've put pressure on the CIA over the years to cut back on covert operations-nowadays we run roughly a dozen programs a year, compared with hundreds in the fifties and sixties. One of the results of this policy is that we don't have a.s.sets in Moscow capable of telling us what Gorbachev and the people around him are up to. We don't even know what information they're getting. As for the stagnation of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev himself didn't put his hands on reasonably accurate economic statistics until two or three years ago, and it seems unfair to criticize us for not knowing what he himself didn't know. Looking back, we can see that when he finally discovered how bad things really were, he decided the only way to rejuvenate a stagnating command economy was to move to a market-oriented economy. Just how fast and how far he plans to move is something that Gorbachev himself probably hasn't figured out."

"And how does the Company a.s.sess his chances of arresting the downward spiral of the Soviet economy?" inquired a Republican Congressman.

"It's a good bet that things will get worse before they get better," Ebby replied. "In Russia there are individuals, communities, organizations, factories, entire cities even, that have no rational economic reason to exist. Pruning them away is as much a social problem as an economic problem. Then there is the challenge of meeting the raised expectations of the workers-coal miners in the Kuzba.s.s or the Don Basin, to give you one example, want to find more on the pharmacy shelves than jars filled with leeches. It's anybody's guess whether Gorbachev, with his talk of perestroika and glasnost, will be able to satisfy their expectations. It's anybody's guess whether he'll be able to buck the vested interests-buck the KGB and the military establishment, buck what's left of the Communist Party which fears Gorbachev will reform them out of existence. It's anybody's guess whether the revolution-and there will be a revolution, gentlemen-will come from below or from above."

"What do you make of all this talk in the papers 'bout a putsch?" the Chairman demanded.

"There are people in the Soviet superstructure who would obviously like to set the clock back," Ebby said. "Speaking frankly, we don't know how serious the rumors of a coup are."

"I think we need to give Mr. Ebbitt credit," the Congressman from Ma.s.sachusetts remarked. "He doesn't bull his way through these briefings. I for one appreciate that when he doesn't know something, he says he doesn't know."

"I second the motion," said a Republican Congressman.

"Still 'n' all, these rumors need to be checked out," the Chairman persisted. "Is there a clique workin' behind the scenes to undermine Gorbachev? How strong are they? What kind of support can they expect from the military? What can we do to support Gorbachev or undermine his opponents? And what should we make of those rumors 'bout the KGB having large amounts of foreign currencies stashed away somewhere in the West?"

"There is sketchy evidence that sizable amounts of Soviet foreign currency holdings may be finding their way into German banks," Ebby confirmed. "The front man handling the mechanics of the operation is said to be someone in the Central Committee-his ident.i.ty remains a mystery. Who is giving the orders, to what use this money will be put has yet to be determined."

"What role do you see Yeltsin playing in all this?" asked one of the Congressman who had remained silent up to now.

"Yeltsin is coming at Gorbachev from the other direction," Ebby said. "The two men detest each other-have ever since Gorbachev expelled Yeltsin from the Politburo in '87; in those days the Party was above criticism and Yeltsin made the fatal mistake of ignoring this cast-iron rule. Nowadays, Yeltsin openly attacks Gorbachev for slowing down the pace of reforms. I think it can be said with some a.s.surance that Yeltsin, who was elected Russian President by the Russian Republics Supreme Soviet last year and thus has a strong power base, sees himself as the logical successor to Gorbachev. Our reading is that he wouldn't mind seeing Gorbachev shunted aside on the condition that he's the one doing the shunting."

"Which pretty much pits Yeltsin against the KGB and the military and the Communist Party hacks who are squeamish about reforms," someone said.

"He has more than his share of enemies," Ebby agreed.

The briefing went on for another three-quarters of an hour, with most of the time devoted to a discussion of Saddam Hussein's ability to wage chemical or biological warfare in the wake of his stunning defeat in the Gulf War. At noon, when the meeting finally broke up, even those who tended to be critical of the Company conceded that Ebby had a firm grasp of current events and was doing his level best to shape the CIA into an organization that could cope with the post-Cold War world.

"How'd it go?" Jack asked quietly.

"As well as could be expected," Ebby told his Deputy Director, "all things considered."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that the policy wonks still don't understand the limitations on intelligence gathering. They spend twenty-eight billion a year and they don't feel they're getting their money's worth if questions go unanswered or events go unantic.i.p.ated."

"They don't give us credit for the ones we call right," Jack griped.

"They give us credit," Ebby said. "But they want us to get it right a hundred percent of the time."

The two stood off to one side in the executive dining room at the Company's Langley headquarters watching as Manny, Deputy Director/Operations since the previous summer, presented gold wrist.w.a.tches to three veteran case officers who had been encouraged to take early retirement. (Encouraged, in the sense that all three had been offered new a.s.signments, two in listening posts in the Cameroon Republic, the third in a one-man Company station in the Canary Islands.) The chairs and tables had been pushed against one wall to make room for the hundred or so Operations personnel at the ceremony. Manny, at forty-four the youngest DD/0 in memory, blew into the microphone to make sure it was alive. "It's always painful to see old hands take their leave," he began. "John, Hank, Jerry, I speak for everyone in the DD/0 when I tell you that we'll miss not only your expertise but your company. Between the three of you, there's exactly seventy-six years of experience-seventy-six years of manning the ramparts of the Cold War. These wrist.w.a.tches are a token of our esteem and the country's appreciation for your long and meritorious service."

There was a smattering of applause. Several voices from the back cried "Speech, speech."

"What bulls.h.i.t," Jack muttered to Ebby. "These jokers were never interested in scoring. They sat around various stations waiting for opportunities to fall into their laps. Even then they always played it safe."

The oldest of the three retirees, a corpulent man with bushy eyebrows fixed in a permanent scowl, stepped up to the microphone. Bitterness was draped across his face like a flag. "Thought I'd pa.s.s on a joke that may or may not be about the Central Intelligence Agency," he said. Manny, standing at his side, shifted his weight from one foot to another in discomfort. "Goes like this: A Federal census taker comes across a family of hillbillies living in a shack in Tennessee. Barefoot kids everywhere. The adults have rifles in one hand and moonshine jugs in the other. The father says there are twenty-two in the family. He whistles with his thumb and middle finger and everyone comes a-running."

Some of the DO people began to t.i.tter-they had heard the story before.

"The census taker counts heads but finds only twenty-one. Turns out that Little Luke is missing. Then someone shouts from the outhouse-Little Luke has fallen through the privy hole. Everyone runs over to take a look. The father shrugs and wanders off. The census taker can't believe his eyes. Aren't you going to pull him out?' he shouts. 'Shucks no,' the father calls back. 'It'll be easier to have another than clean him up.'"

Half the DO staffers burst into laughter. Others raised their eyebrows. Manny gazed at the floor. The officer who told the joke turned his head and looked across the room directly at the DCI.

"Jesus H. Christ," Jack moaned angrily. He would have strode over to have it out with the retiring officer then and there if Ebby hadn't put a hand on his arm.

"These guys were hotshots when they started, but they're burnt out," Ebby said in a low voice.

"That doesn't give him the right-"

"Getting rid of the deadwood is a painful experience for everyone concerned. Grin and bear it, Jack."

Later, in the DCI's seventh-floor Holy of Holies, Jack flopped into a seat across the desk from Ebby. "What he said back there-there may be some truth to it," he moaned. "There are people in Congress who'd prefer to start from scratch rather man give us a chance to clean up the mess Casey left behind him."

"Ran into several of them when I testified this morning," Ebby said.

Jack leaned forward. "I've given this a lot of thought, Ebby. Fighting Columbian drug lords or Islamic terrorists or Russian arms merchants is too much of a sideshow to justify the twenty-eight billion spent on intelligence every year. Look at it another way: How are we going to recruit the best and the brightest if our archenemy is Cuba?"

"You have another idea of what we should be doing?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Jack got up and strolled over to the door, which was ajar, and kicked it closed. He came around behind Ebby and settled onto on a windowsill.

Ebby swiveled around to face him. "Spit it out, Jack."

"I nibbled around the edges of the subject with you when Anthony was kidnapped by the fundamentalists in Afghanistan. We were in a no-win situation then, we're in a no-win situation now. Congress ties our hands with oversight and budget restrictions and strict limitations on Presidential Findings-my G.o.d, Ebby, it's actually against the law for us to target a foreign leader, it doesn't matter that he may be targeting us."

"I remember that conversation-at the time I told you that the CIA was an endangered species and couldn't afford to get involved in what you had in mind."

"At the time," Jack retorted in annoyance, "I told you that we wouldn't have to get involved. We could get others to do the dirty work for us-"

"It would be a violation of our charter-"

"Take this Gorbachev thing-even if we knew what was going on we'd be helpless to do anything about it."

"I'm not sure I want to have this conversation-"

"You're having the conversation-"

"What do you mean by doing something about it?"

"You know what I mean? We could get Torriti to put a toe in the water. Ezra ben Ezra still runs the Mossad-he could be counted on to contribute resources to an enterprise that keeps Gorbachev in power and Jewish emigration from Russia going."

Ebby turned sarcastic. "Contribute to an enterprise-you make it sound so congenial. You make it sound almost legal."

"Those dollars being stashed in Germany by the Russians-If we could get our hands on some of them, the enterprise could become a self-financing ent.i.ty operating outside of Congressional appropriations and oversight."

"Casey tried to pull that off by selling arms to the Iranians and using the money to support the contra rebels in Nicaragua. I don't need to remind you that it blew up in his face."

"We're supposed to be a shadowy organization, Ebby. I'm only suggesting that we start to operate in the shadows."

Ebby sighed. "Look, Jack, we've fought the same wars, we bear the same scars. But you're wide of the mark now. Because the enemy doesn't have scruples is no excuse for the Company not having scruples. If we fight the wars their way, even if we win, we lose. Don't you see that?"

"What I see is that ends justify means-"

"That's a meaningless catch phrase unless you weigh each case on its merits. Which ends? Which means? And what are the chances of a particular mean achieving a particular end?"

"If we don't score, and soon, they'll break up the Company," Jack said.

"So be it," Ebby said. "If you want to continue working for me," he added, "you'll do so on my terms. There will be no enterprise as long as I'm running the show. I'm the custodian of the CIA. I take that responsibility very seriously. You read me, Jack?"

"I read you, pal. Like the man says, you're right from your point of view. But your point of view needs work."

2.

PERKHUSHOVO, FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1991.

"I HAVE IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE," a.s.sERTED THE KGB CHAIRMAN, Vladimir Kryuchkov, "that the American CIA has succeeded in infiltrating its agents into Gorbachev's inner circle."

At the end of the table, the Minister of Defense, Marshal Dmitri Yazov, a dull, plodding old soldier with a broad chunky face, demanded, "Name names."

Kryuchkov, happy to comply, identified five figures known to be intimate with the General Secretary. "Any idiot can see that Gorbachev is being manipulated by the CIA-it is part of an American plot to sabotage first the Soviet administration, and after that the economy and scientific research. The ultimate goal is the destruction of the Communist Party and the Union, the crushing of Socialism and the elimination of the Soviet Union as a world power capable of holding American arrogance in check."

The eighteen men and one women seated around the long outdoor picnic table listened in consternation. Yevgeny, taking in the scene from a place half way down the table, decided that the last time he had seen so many VIPs in one place was when the television cameras panned to the reviewing stand atop Lenin's Tomb during Red Square May Day parades. At midmorning, the limousines had started arriving at the stately wooden dacha on the edge of the village of Perkhushovo off the Mozhaysk Highway. The guests had sipped punch and had chatted amiably in a large room overheated by a tiled stove as they waited for the latecomers to turn up. One ranking member of the Politburo secretariat had complained about the cost of sending a daughter to a Swiss boarding school and the people listening had nodded in empathy. Eventually everyone had pulled on overcoats-the last snow of the winter had melted but the air was still chilly-and trooped outside to thwart any microphones that might have been installed inside the dacha. Vladimir Kryuchkov's guests hunted for their nametags and took the places a.s.signed to them around the long picnic table set up under a stand of Siberian spruce. Beyond the trees, the lawn sloped down to a large lake on which several dozen teenagers were racing small sailboats. From time to time shrieks of exaltation drifted up hill as the helmsmen wheeled around the buoys marking the course. To the left, through the trees, armed guards could be seen patrolling the electrified fence that surrounded the property.

Mathilde, sitting directly opposite Yevgeny, dispatched a smile of complicity across the table, then turned to whisper in the ear of her husband, Pavel Uritzky. An austere man who made no secret of his deep aversion for Jews, he nodded in agreement and addressed Kryuchkov, presiding from the head of the table. "Vladimir Alexandrovich, the story of CIA spies within Gorbachev's inner circle may be the drop that causes the bucket to overflow. It is one thing to disagree with Gorbachev, as we all do; to reproach him for abandoning the fraternal Socialist states of Eastern Europe, to criticize him for spitting on our Bolshevik history, to fault him for plunging headlong into economic reforms without having the wildest idea of where he was taking the country. It is quite another to accuse him of being manipulated into doing the dirty work of the American CIA. Have you exposed your charges directly to the General Secretary?"

"I attempted to warn him during our regular briefings," Kryuchkov replied. "I can tell you that he invariably cuts me short and changes the subject. He obviously does not want to hear me out; the few times I have managed to get a word in, he has waved a hand in the air as if to say that he does not believe my information."

"Knowingly or unknowingly, Gorbachev is selling the Soviet Union to the devil," Mathilde declared with great pa.s.sion.

"The country is facing famine," claimed the Soviet prime minister, Valentin Pavlov, from the other end of the table. "The economy has been reduced to total chaos. n.o.body wants to carry out orders. Factories have cut production because they lack raw materials. The harvest is disorganized. Tractors sit idle because there are no spare parts."

"Our beloved country is going to the dogs," agreed Valentin Varennikov, the general in charge of all Soviet ground forces. "Tax rates are so prohibitive no one can pay and remain in business. Retired workers who have devoted their lives to Communism are reduced to brewing carrot peelings because they can no longer afford tea on their miserable pensions."

Mathilde's husband slapped the table with the palm of his hand. "It's the fault of the Jews," he insisted. "They bear collective responsibility for the genocide of the Russian people."

Mathilde said, "I wholeheartedly agree with my husband-I hold the view that Jews must be forbidden to emigrate, and most especially to the Zionist ent.i.ty of Israel, until a tribunal of the Russian people has had a chance to weigh their fate. After all, these Jews were born and educated here at state expense-it is only fitting that the state be compensated."

One of the foreign ministry apparatchiki, Fyodor Lomov, the great-grandson of a famous old Bolshevik who served as the first Peoples Commissar of Justice after the 1917 revolution, spoke up. "It is well known that Jewish architects designed Pushkin Square so that the great Pushkin had his back turned to the motion picture theater, the Rossiya. The symbolism escaped no one." Lomov, a bloated figure of a man with yellowish liquor stains in his snow-white goatee, added, "The zhids and Zionists are responsible for rock music, drug addiction, AIDS, food shortages, inflation, the decline in the value of the ruble, p.o.r.nography on television, even the breakdown of the nuclear reactor at Chern.o.byl."

As the meeting went on, the plotters (as Yevgeny began to think of them) exposed their resentments and fears. Emotions ran high; there were moments when several people were talking at once and Kryuchkov, like a teacher managing an unruly cla.s.sroom, had to point to someone so the others would give way to him.

"Gorbachev deceived us into thinking he intended to tinker with the Party structure. He never let on that he intended to destroy it."

"Malicious mockery of all the inst.i.tutions of the state is commonplace."

"I speak from experience-authority on all levels has lost the confidence of the population."