Pasha smiled. "A pleasure."

Lukin left KGB Headquarters well afterseven that morning.

Lights were coming on all over Moscow ashe drove to 'his home on the eastern end of Kutuzovsky Prospect.

The olive-green BMW 327 Lukin owned hadbeen built in 1940, was still reliable and ran sweetly, and the car was the oneworthwhile luxury his KGB officer status allowed.

He parked on the street outside theone-bedroom apartment he and his wife occupied near the Moscow River. It was ina district once favored by Moscow's wealthy merchant class, but now thebuildings looked shabby from the outside, the pastelgreen paintwork cracked andpeeling, but inside the plumbing and the heating always worked, a minor miraclein Moscow. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and let himself inquietly.

The apartment was cold and Nadia wasstill asleep. He filled an enamel kettle in the tiny kitchen and lit the gasstove to make coffee. As he removed his overcoat and unbuttoned his shirt, hecrossed to the window and looked down, resting his forehead against the coldpane of glass.

As Lukin stood there he thought about thearrests that morning.

He had lost his temper with the captainbut the arrogant fool deserved it, though no doubt Lukin would receive areprimand.

He knew several of the doctors on thelist by reputation. All respected physicians with no hint of crime in theirpast. The arrests puzzled him, especially since most of them were Jews. Nodoubt he would find out eventually why they had been taken to the Lubyanka.

The KGB Headquarters on DzerzhinskySquare which housed the Lubyanka prison was a huge seven-story complex ofoffice blocks that took up the whole northeastern end as far as the top of KarlMarx Prospect. The building was actually a hollow square, with a courtyard inthe center, the front and side wings up to the top six floors of which weredevoted to the various KGB offices and departments.

And although it contained eight separatedirectorates, or specialized sections, which dealt with internal and externalSoviet security, only four were considered important enough to hold the titleChief Directorate, of which each had a separate and distinct function.

The 2nd Chief Directorate, to which Lukinbelonged, was perhaps the most important and largest.

A purely domestic security branch of theKGB, its responsibilities were the most wide-ranging, and included thesurveillance of all foreigners and foreign businessmen resident or visiting theSoviet Union, foreign embassies and embassy staff; the hunting down and arrestof Soviet nationals who had fled abroad or escaped from prison camps or who hadcommitted murder or serious crimes; the supervision of artists, actors andactresses; recruiting and controlling informers-, and curbing the black market.And last, but hardly least, the pursuit and capture of enemy agents from themoment they entered Soviet territory.

There was one other noteworthy section inthe bowels of the KGB building: the Lubyanka prison itself, a grim maze oftorture chambers and windowless cells where Lukin knew the doctors weredestined to be sent.

He poured himself hot coffee and spoonedin three spoonfuls of sugar. As he went to sit at the kitchen table, the dooropened.

Nadia stood there wearing a pale bluedressing gown. Her head of red hair was down around her shoulders. He saw theslight rise in her belly and smiled.

"Did I wake you?"

She smiled back sleepily. "Youalways wake me. Are you coming to bed?"

"Soon."

Even that early she looked very pretty.Far too pretty for him, Lukin always thought. She was nineteen and he thirtywhen they first met at the summer wedding of a friend. As the wedding bandplayed, she had smiled across the table at him and said impishly, "What'sthe matter?

Don't KGB officers dance?"

He smiled back. "Only if somebodyshoots at them."

She had laughed, and something in hergirlish laugh and the way she had looked at him with her soft green eyes madehim know he was going to love her. Within six months they had married. And now,three years later, she was four months pregnant and Lukin felt happier than heever imagined.

She came over to sit on his knee andbegan to massage his neck. He could feel her small, girlish breasts brushagainst his chest.

"How was your night shift?"

"You don't want to know, mylove."

"Tell me anyhow."

He told her about his morning's work.

:"You think it's true about thedoctors?"

"It's probably Beria up to histricks again. He enjoys killing."

He felt the hands stop massaging his neckand saw the shock on his wife's face.

."Yuri, you shouldn't say suchthings. You never know who might be listening."

"But it's true. You know how thehead of State Security gets his kicks?

Marakov, his driver, told me. He'sdriving along and Beria sees a pretty young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteenyears old. He has her arrested on trumped-up charges and rapes her. If shedares to protest, he has her shot. Sometimes he has her shot anyway. Andnothing is done to stop him."

"Yuri, please. Skokov might helistening."

Every apartment block, every house, hadits KGB informer. Skokov, the block janitor who lived on the ground floor, wastheirs. It wasn't beyond the man to crease his ear against someone's door.Lukin saw the fear in his wife's eyes and stood and cupped her face in hishands and kissed her forehead.

"Let me get us some coffee."

Nadia shook her head. "Look at you.You're tense. You need something better than coffee."

"And what would you suggest?"

Nadia smiled. "Me, of course."

Lukin saw her pull back her dressing gownto reveal her flimsy pink underwear. Even though she was petite, she hadperfect legs and full hips, and there was something faintly erotic about thegentle rise of her stomach which embarrassed him.

She smiled. "A surprise for you,Yuri Andreovitch. I bought them on the black market."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Where else in Moscow can a womanbuy underwear like this? You don't think Comrade Stalin would have me sent toSiberia for a pair of panties?"

As she laughed she brushed herselfagainst his body. Lukin smiled despite himself. "Do you know what theFrench say?"

"No, but I think you're going totell me."

"When a woman opens her legs for aman, her secrets fly away like butterflies."

He looked into her face. "But withyou, somehow the secrets multiply."

He kissed her forehead and her arms wentaround him. "I love you, Nadia."

"Then come to bed."

He gently caressed her belly. "Youdon't think making love would be bad for the baby?"

"No, silly, it would be good for thebaby." She giggled. "Make the most of it while you can. In anotherfew months you'll have to keep your fly closed."

She took his hand and led him into thebedroom. The bed was still warm as Lukin and his wife made love, and beyond theglass the early morning traffic hummed as Moscow came awake.

Washington, D.C. January 22nd Thecollection of wooden buildings on the bank of the Potomac River looked to thepasserby like a dismal, run-down barracks.

The walls inside were pockmarked withholes, the plaster ceilings were smudged with damp stains, and the rain leakedthrough the fragile roof. The view from the two-story building was equallydismal: a decayed red-brick brewery and a distant roller-skating rink. Only ahandful of the shabby buildings had the distinction of overlooking the famousreflecting pool further along the river.

Originally a First World War armybarracks, the ramshackle collection of wooden huts had later housed the officesof the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the organization responsible forAmerica's wartime foreign intelligence. Transformed only in name and functionfour years after the Second World War, the buildings now housed America'sCentral Intelligence Agency.