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  “Yes, comrades, he is,” Andropov said. “His letter is a genuine and sincere thrust at the political stability of Poland, and thus of the entire Warsaw Pact. The Catholic Church remains politically powerful throughout Europe, including our fraternal socialist allies. If he were to resign the papacy and travel back to his homeland, that in itself would be a huge political statement.

  “Josef Vissarionovich Stalin once asked how many army divisions the Pope had. The answer is none, of course, but we cannot disregard his power. I suppose we could try diplomatic contacts to dissuade him from this course . . .”

  “A complete waste of time,” the Foreign Minister observed at once. “We have had occasional diplomatic contacts in the Vatican itself, and they listen to us politely, and they speak reasonably, and then they take whatever action they want to take. No, we cannot influence him, even with direct threats to the church. They merely see threats as challenges.”

  And that put the matter squarely in the middle of the table. Andropov was grateful to the Foreign Minister, who was also in his camp for the issue of succession. He wondered idly if Brezhnev knew or cared about what would happen after he died—well, he’d care about his children’s fate and protection, but that was easily handled. Sinecure Party posts could be found for all of them, and there would be no future marriages to require the china and tableware from the Hermitage.

  “Yuriy Vladimirovich, what can KGB do about this threat?” Brezhnev inquired next. He is so easy to manage, Andropov reflected briefly and gratefully.

  “It may be possible to eliminate the threat by eliminating the man who makes it,” the Chairman replied, with an even, unemotional voice.

  “To kill him?” Ustinov asked.

  “Yes, Dmitriy.”

  “What are the dangers of that?” the Foreign Minister asked at once. Diplomats always worried about such things.

  “We cannot entirely eliminate them, but we can control them. My people have come up with an operational concept, which would involve shooting the Pope at one of his public appearances. I have brought my aide, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy, to brief us in on it. With your permission, comrades?” He received a collection of nods. Then he turned his head: “Aleksey Nikolay’ch?”

  “Comrades.” The colonel rose and walked to the lectern, trying to keep his shaking knees under control. “The operation has no name, and will have none for security reasons. The Pope appears in public every Wednesday afternoon. He generally parades around Saint Peter’s Square in a motor vehicle, which offers him no protection against attack and comes within three or four meters of the assembled multitude.” Rozhdestvenskiy had chosen his words carefully. Every man at the table knew biblical matters and terminology. You could not grow up, even here, without acquiring knowledge of Christianity—even if it was just enough to despise everything about it.

  “The question then is how to get a man with a pistol to the front rank of spectators, so that he can take his shot at sufficiently close range to make a successful shot likely.”

  “Not ‘certain’?” the Minister of the Interior asked harshly.

  Rozhdestvenskiy did his best not to wilt. “Comrade Minister, we rarely deal in absolute certainties. Even a skilled pistol shot cannot guarantee a perfect shot against a moving target, and the tactical realities here will not allow a carefully aimed round. The assassin will have to bring his weapon up rapidly from a place of concealment, and fire. He will be able to get off two, possibly three, shots before the crowd collapses on him. At that point, a second officer will then kill the assassin from behind with a silenced pistol—and then make his own escape. This will leave no one behind to speak to the Italian police. For this, we will use our Bulgarian socialist allies to select the assassin, to get him to the scene, and then to eliminate him.”

  “How will our Bulgarian friend get away under these circumstances?” Brezhnev asked. His personal knowledge of firearms allowed him to skip over technical issues, Andropov saw.

  “It is likely that the crowd will concentrate on the assassin, and will not take note of the intelligence officer’s follow-up shot. It will be virtually silent and there will be a great deal of crowd noise. He will then simply back away and make his escape,” Rozhdestvenskiy explained. “The officer we want on this is well experienced in operations of this kind.”

  “Does he have a name?” Alexandrov asked.

  “Yes, comrade, and I can give it to you if you wish, but for security reasons . . .”

  “Correct, Colonel,” Ustinov put in. “We do not really need to know his name, do we, comrades?” Heads shook around the table. For these men, secrecy came as naturally as urination.

  “Not a rifleman?” Interior asked.

  “That would risk exposure. The buildings around the square are patrolled by the Vatican’s own security force, Swiss mercenaries, and—”

  “How good are these Swiss militiamen?” another voice asked.

  “How good do they need to be to see a man with a rifle and to raise an alarm?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked, reasonably. “Comrades, when you plan an operation like this one, you try to keep the variables under strict control. Complexity is a dangerous enemy in any such undertaking. As planned, all we need to do is to insert two men into a crowd of thousands and get them close. Then it’s just a matter of taking the shot. A pistol is easily concealed in loose clothing. The people there are not screened or searched in any way. No, comrades, this plan is the best we can establish—unless you would have us dispatch a platoon of Spetsnaz soldiers into the Vatican Apartments. That would obviously work, but the origin of such an operation would be impossible to conceal. This mission, if it comes off, depends only on two people, only one of whom will survive, and who will almost certainly escape cleanly.”

  “How reliable are the participants?” the Chairman of the Party Control Commission asked.

  “The Bulgarian officer has personally killed eight men, and he has good contacts within the Turkish criminal community, from which he will select our assassin.”

  “A Turk?” the Party man asked.

  “Yes, a Muslim,” Andropov confirmed. “If the operation can be blamed on a Turkish follower of Mohammed, so much the better for us. Correct?”

  “It would not hurt our purposes,” the Foreign Minister confirmed. “In fact, it might well have the effect of making Islam look more barbaric to the West. That would cause America to increase its support for Israel, and that would annoy the Muslim countries from whom they buy their oil. There is an elegance to it all, which appeals to me, Yuriy.”

  “So, the complexity of the operation is entirely limited to its consequences,” Marshal Ustinov observed, “and not to the undertaking itself.”

  “Correct, Dmitriy,” Andropov confirmed.

  “What are the chances that this operation might be linked to us?” asked the Ukrainian Party Secretary.

  “If all we leave behind is a dead Turk, connections will be very difficult to establish,” the KGB Chairman replied. “This operation has no name. The number of people involved is less than twenty, and most of them are in this room, right here. There will be no written records. Comrades, the security of this operation will be absolute. I must insist that none of you speak about this to anyone. Not your wives, not your private secretaries, not your political advisers. In that way, we can ensure against leaks. We must remember that the Western intelligence services are always trying to discover our secrets. In this case, that cannot be allowed to happen.”

  “You should have limited this discussion to the Defense Counsel,” Brezhnev thought aloud.

  “Leonid Ilyich, I thought of that,” Andropov responded. “But the political implications of this matter command attention by the entire Politburo.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” the General Secretary agreed with a nod. What he did not see was that Andropov had carefully followed this course so as not to be seen as an adventurer by the men who would someday soon elect him to his own head chair. “Very well, Yuriy. I cannot object to tha
t,” Brezhnev said thoughtfully.

  “It’s still a dangerous thing to contemplate,” said the Secretary of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. “I must say that I am not entirely comfortable with this plan.”

  “Gregoriy Vasil’yevich,” the Ukrainian Party boss responded, “about Poland—if their government falls, there will be consequences for me that I do not find attractive. Nor should you,” he warned. “If this Pole returns home, the results could be ruinous to all of us.”

  “I understand that, but murder of a chief of state is nothing to be undertaken lightly. I think we ought to warn him first. There are ways to get his attention.”

  The Minister for Foreign Affairs shook his head. “I’ve already said it—a waste of time. Men like this do not understand what death is. We could threaten his church members in the Warsaw Pact, but that would probably only have the opposite effect of what we desire. It would give us the worst of all worlds, the consequences of attacking the Roman Church without the option of eliminating this troublesome churchman. No.” He shook his head. “If it is to be done, then it must be done properly, decisively, and speedily. Yuriy Vladimirovich, how long to accomplish this mission?”

  “Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy?” the KGB Chairman asked.

  All heads turned to the colonel, and he did his best to keep his voice level. This was very deep water for a mere colonel. The entire operation now rested on his shoulders, a possibility he had somehow never fully considered. But if he was to get his general’s stars, he had to take this responsibility, didn’t he?

  “Comrade Minister, I would estimate four to six weeks, if you authorize the operation today, and so notify the Bulgarian Politburo. We will be using one of their assets, for which their permission is necessary.”

  “Andrey Andreyevich?” Brezhnev asked. “How cooperative will they be in Sofia?”

  The Foreign Minister took a moment. “That depends on what we ask them and how we ask it. If they know the purpose of the operation, they might dally somewhat.”

  “Can we ask their cooperation without telling them what it is for?” Ustinov asked.

  “Yes, I think so. We can just offer them a hundred new tanks or some fighter aircraft, as a gesture of socialist solidarity,” the Minister for Foreign Affairs suggested.

  “Be generous,” Brezhnev agreed. “I’m sure they have a request floating in the Defense Ministry, yes, Dmitriy?”

  “Always!” Marshal Ustinov confirmed. “It’s all they ever ask for, more tanks and more MiGs!”

  “Then load the tanks on a train and send them to Sofia. Comrades, we have a vote to take,” the General Secretary told the Politburo. The eleven voting members felt a little bit railroaded. The seven “candidate,” or nonvoting, members just watched and nodded.

  As usual, the vote was unanimous. No one voted no, despite the fact that some of them had doubts concealed in their silence. In this room, one did not want to stray too far from the kollectiv spirit. Power here was as circumscribed as everywhere else in the world, a fact upon which they rarely reflected and on which they never acted.

  “Very well.” Brezhnev turned his head to Andropov. “KGB is authorized to undertake this operation, and may God have mercy on his Polish soul,” he added, in a bit of peasant levity. “So, what is next?”

  “Comrade, if I may . . .” Andropov said, getting a nod. “Our brother and friend Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov will soon depart this life, after long and devoted service to the Party we all hold dear. His chair is already empty due to his illness, and needs filling. I propose Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov as the next Central Committee Secretary for Ideology, with full voting membership in the Politburo.”

  Alexandrov even managed to blush. He held up his hands and spoke with the utmost sincerity. “Comrades, my—our—friend is still alive. I cannot take his place while he still lives.”

  “It is good of you to put it that way, Misha,” the General Secretary observed, using the affectionate abbreviation for his Christian name. “But Mikhail Andreyevich is gravely ill and has not long to live. I suggest that we table Yuriy’s motion for the moment. Such an appointment must, of course, be ratified by the Central Committee as a whole.” But that was less than a formality, as everyone here knew. Brezhnev had just given his blessing to Alexandrov’s promotion, and that was all he needed.

  “Thank you, Comrade General Secretary.” And now Alexandrov could look at the empty chair at Brezhnev’s left hand and know that in a few weeks it would soon be his officially. He’d weep like all the others when Suslov died, and the tears would be just as cold. And Mikhail Andreyevich would even understand. His biggest problem now was facing death, the greatest of life’s mysteries, and wondering what lay on the other side of it. It was something everyone at the table would have to face, but for all of them it was sufficiently distant to be dismissed . . . for the moment. That, Yuriy Andropov thought, was one difference between them and the Pope, who was soon to die at their hands.

  The meeting broke up just after four in the afternoon. The men took their leave, as always, with friendly words and shaken hands, before they went their separate ways. Andropov, with Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy in tow, headed out toward the end. Soon he would be the last to leave, as was the prerogative of the General Secretary.

  “Comrade Chairman, a moment, if you would allow it,” Rozhdestvenskiy said, heading for the men’s room. He emerged a minute and a half later with an easier stride.

  “You did well, Aleksey,” Andropov told him, as they resumed their way out—the Chairman took the steps down instead of the elevator. “So, what did you make of it?”

  “Comrade Brezhnev is frailer than I expected.”

  “Yes, he is. It didn’t help him very much to stop smoking,” Andropov reached into his coat pocket for his Marlboros—at the Politburo meetings, people now avoided smoking, out of deference to Leonid Ilyich, and the KGB Chairman needed a cigarette right now. “What else?”

  “It was remarkably collegial. I expected more disagreement, more arguing, I suppose.” Discussions between spooks at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square were far more lively, especially when discussing operations.

  “They are all cautious players, Aleksey. Those with so much power at their fingertips always are—and they should be. But they often do not take action because they fear doing anything new and different.” Andropov knew that his country needed new and different things, and wondered how difficult it would be for him to bring them about.

  “But, Comrade Chairman, our operation—”

  “That’s different, Colonel. When they feel threatened, then they can take action. They fear the Pope. And they are probably right to. Don’t you think?”

  “Comrade Chairman, I am a colonel only. I serve. I do not rule.”

  “Keep it that way, Aleksey. It’s safer.” Andropov entered the car and sat down, and immediately became lost in his thoughts.

  AN HOUR LATER, Zaitzev was finishing up his day and awaiting his relief. Then Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy appeared at his side without warning.

  “Captain, I need you to send this out to Sofia immediately.” He paused. “Does anyone else see these messages?”

  “No, Comrade Colonel. The message designator labels it as something to come to me only. That is in the order book.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way.” He handed over the blank.

  “By your order, Comrade Colonel.” Zaitzev watched him head off. He barely had time to get this done before taking his leave.

  MOST SECRET

  IMMEDIATE AND URGENT

  FROM: OFFICE OF CHAIRMAN, MOSCOW CENTRE

  TO: REZIDENT SOFIA

  REFERENCE: OPERATIONAL DESIGNATOR 15-8-82-666

  OPERATION APPROVED. NEXT STEP INTERMEDIATE APPROVAL

  BULGARIAN POLITBURO. EXPECT FULL APPROVAL TEN DAYS OR

  LESS. CONTINUE PLANNING FOR OPERATION.

  Zaitzev saw it telexed off, then handed the copy to a messenger to be hand-delivered to the top floor. Then he took hi
s leave, walking a little more swiftly than usual. Out on the street, he fished out his cigarette pack to get himself another Trud before going down the escalator to the metro platform. There, he checked the ceiling clock. He’d actually walked too quickly, he saw, and so let the train go without him, fumbling with his cigarette pack as an excuse if anyone was watching him—but then again, if anyone were watching him now, he was already a dead man. The thought made his hands shake, but it was too late for that. The next train came out of the tunnel exactly on time, and he boarded the proper carriage, shuffling in with fifteen or so other workers. . . .

  And there he was. Reading a newspaper, wearing an unbuttoned raincoat, his right hand on the chrome overhead bar.

  Zaitzev wandered that way. In his right hand was the second note that he’d just fished out of his cigarette pack. Yes, he saw belatedly, the man was wearing a bright green tie, held in place by a gold-colored tie bar. A brown suit, a clean white shirt that looked expensive, and his face was occupied with the paper. The man did not look around. Zaitzev slid closer.

  ONE OF THE things Ed Foley had studied at The Farm was how to perfect his peripheral vision. With training and practice, your eyes could actually see a wider field than the unschooled realized. At CIA camp, he’d learned by walking down the street and reading house numbers without turning his head. Best of all, it was like riding a bicycle. Once learned, it was always there if you just concentrated when you needed to. And so he noticed that someone was moving slowly toward him—white male, about five-nine, medium build, brown eyes and hair, drab clothes, needed a haircut. He didn’t see the face clearly enough to remember it or to pick it out of a lineup. A Slavic face, that was all. Expressionless, and the eyes were definitely in his direction. Foley didn’t allow his breathing to change, though his heart might have increased its frequency by a few extra beats.