“Suppose the United States were to initiate a preemptive nuclear strike against China. What then?”

“You talk impossibilities, Viktor.”

At ten minutes to three the Chaika reached the big gray building and Rykov walked across the curb and entered his kingdom with a dusting of snow on his hat and shoulders. It matted itself and melted slowly as he limped along the corridor taking the uneasy salutes of subordinates. A major wearing stars on his red epaulets stopped him in the hall to talk about the reemergence of the samizdat magazine Novy Mir and Rykov brushed him aside. The samizdat publications were vile and seditious and it was KGB’s job to suppress them but in recent years it had become like trying to stamp out armies of ants with a boot heel. Samizdat, the underground press, mimeographed and circulated surreptitiously from hand to hand, denigrated the nation and the Party. Some of them had Western assistance. They promulgated the kind of dissidence that had weakened the Russian will and threatened to crumble Russia’s inner strengths. Some of the writers whose work appeared anonymously in samizdat were clever young intellectuals whom the state had feted as cultural heroes—ingrates, traitors, dupes. Rykov was catching up with them one by one but the flood seemed endless. The big Minsk-32 computers analyzed samizdat texts for frequency-of-words and rhythm-of-style to pinpoint the identity of the anonymous authors and in time Rykov always ran them down, but the monster had infinite heads; it was impossible to decapitate it.

It was a grave issue but today he had no time for it—he left the major standing flatfooted in the corridor and limped on toward the lifts. In the bullpens paper tapes writhed on the floors, spilled by automatic typing recorders and decoders. The lift took him up to his own floor; it was quiet here. He went into the great office, hung up his things, sat down at his desk and punched Andrei’s intercom line. “Has the Marshal arrived yet?”

“No. He’s due in five minutes.”

“Bring him straight in.” Rykov switched the machine off and closed his eyes, the better to concentrate his thoughts.

Marshal Grigorenko’s flat beefy face was closed up tight: he distrusted Rykov always.

Andrei ushered Grigorenko into the office and Rykov, as he got up to greet the Marshal, motioned to Andrei to stay.

He got right down to it. “Even at the top of one’s profession there are always men who can destroy you and subordinates who can plot intrigues against you. We’re none of us beyond accountability.”

“Just so,” Grigorenko said.

Rykov said, “You have your own agents in the Chinese People’s Army. What do they tell you?”

“Is KGB now begging the help of GRU?”

“If your information is the same as mine then we must act, Oleg. You must see that.”

“Act how? It isn’t our place to make policy.”

“Please don’t avoid the question. Is your information as alarming as mine?”

“I haven’t seen yours, Comrade.”

“You’ve seen what I’ve presented to Kazakov and Yashin and Tsvetnoy and Strygin. Chug Po and Lo Kai-teh are already fighting between themselves to decide which of them will become chief of state for the new Chinese republic of Mongolia. Fei Yung-tse has already staked out eastern Siberia for himself. The Chinese Cabinet ministers are dividing up the spoils before a shot has been fired; surely you can’t believe they’re only playing hypothetical war games as Comrade Strygin insists? Yuan Tung actually sought to employ one of my own agents to obtain the latest defense charts of Vladivostock—you’ve seen that report. The Seventeenth Chinese Army has been moving into underground shelters a battalion at a time at Hulun. Practice exercises? Strygin is blind because he wants not to see—but you and I can’t afford that luxury. Oleg, it is you and I who will be purged when the war is over and the troika seeks scapegoats to punish.”

“Go on.”

At least he had the big oaf’s attention. “In the mountains east of Ulan Bator six of China’s most senior and experienced missile scientists have surfaced with full-scale staffs. Rail shipments into all those forward offensive-missile-site areas have quadrupled in the past week. They’ve moved two hundred long-range heavy bombers into the Lop Nor area. General Chi Thian has stockpiled enough food and matériel in underground lead-lined bunkers to keep his army fed and equipped in their bomb shelters for two months without resupply. You’ve seen it all.”

“And what is it you want of me?”

“There’s going to be a war. Is GRU ready for it?”

Grigorenko sat with hands on knees, the weight of his belly sagging against his thighs. “You can be sure we are ready. Three-quarters of a million men, seventy Warsaw Pact divisions deployed along the border.”

“And three million Chinese facing them.”

“We have ten missiles for their one.”

“Russia has been defeated by the Tartar hordes of Genghiz Khan, the Swedes, the Poles, the Japanese—beaten by everyone, because we’ve always been too slow to react, always been too backward.”

“Comrade, they haven’t made a single move toward breaking off diplomatic relations. They’re only shaking a fist at us, hoping we’ll back away from the contested frontier areas rather than risk war. If they seriously intended to bomb us, surely they wouldn’t be so obvious about it.”

It was the troika line, straight out of Agitprop and Pravda and Izvestia. They were all desperately anxious to believe it was only a Chinese bluff. If you wanted badly enough to believe a thing, you did believe it.

Rykov said, “But let’s assume that they are in fact ready to attack us. Assume further that they do attack. Take an arbitrary date—Sunday the seventh of April. Two days from today. GRU carries a heavy responsibility for defense. Are you ready for that?”

The Marshal rubbed his chin. “You’re talking foolishness,” he said disagreeably.

“It’s only a hypothetical question. Answer it.”

“You know full well our nuclear bases are ready at all times to retaliate instantly.”

“Yes. To rain nuclear missiles on China’s major cities and missile bases—but suppose China’s missiles have already been fired and the central Maoist elite has fled the cities and is holed up in bombproof shelters under the mountains of Lushan in central China. So our retaliation does nothing more than kill off a few hundred million of the little yellow bastards, which does no great injury since they’re over-populated anyhow. And when both sides have exhausted their nuclear arsenals the Chinese ultimate weapon comes into play—the individual footsoldier. Chinese tanks roll into Mongolia and Siberia. Chinese troops invade Soviet territory and overrun our bases. They have three times our manpower—ten times our manpower if we restrict the discussion to our forces in the Far East. Now I’m asking you, are we prepared for that?”

“You’re saying footsoldiers will be able to fight effectively over territory that has been devastated by nuclear weapons.”

“Not necessarily. The missiles of both sides are aimed primarily at cities and military concentrations.”

“You forget fallout.”

“One has to assume that life goes on. You’re evading me, Comrade Marshal. Why?”

“Because I think your hypothesis is untenable.”

“Just for one moment assume it isn’t. Then what is your answer?”

“You’re trying to goad me into admitting we’re in an unsatisfactory state of war preparation. It isn’t true. Our troops are better equipped than theirs, better trained, better led.”

“That’s not the issue. The issue is their level of alertness. The speed with which they can be mobilized. In the event the Chinese launch a full-scale invasion forty-eight hours from now, will our forces be able to respond swiftly enough to stop the Chinese in their tracks and fling them back into China? That’s the only question I’m asking you, and it’s the only question you haven’t answered.”