“I think she suspects but doesn’t know”
“And Mr. McGarvey” Potok nodded. “He knows. He would have gotten it from the reprogrammed rocket’s guidance system”
“That makes him a very dangerous man as concerns Israel’s safety”
“Yes, sir”
“What’s he doing here” Potok shook his head. “I don’t know”
“Nor do you wish to hazard a guess”
“Not this time”
“I see” Shamir said. “Well, then, find out”
“How far may I take it” Potok asked, keeping even the slightest inflection out of his voice. Shamir didn’t seem surprised by the direct question, but then Potok had never known the man to show surprise. “If he knows, as you say, from the reprogrammed missile, then the Americans know”
“Yes, sir”
“But they have said nothing. Perhaps he has been sent as an emissary”
“Would they have sent such a man as him on such a mission”
Shamir shrugged. “Perhaps”
“Then he has come as a friend. Again Shamir shrugged. “Which places you in a delicate situation. Fully as delicate as Israel finds itself in. Friend or foe, I suspect that soon enough the entire world will be privy to our little secret. It is up to us to keep it a secret for as long as possible, and then to safeguard what we have from attack. Whatever it takes.
After Potok left, Shamir sat for a long time staring out of his fifth-floor window toward the lights of the Shalom Meir Tower a few blocks away. It was the tallest building in Israel. A beacon, he thought, not only for hope as it had been designed, but now for guided missiles as well. Years ago, or was it centuries, he sometimes wondered, he had come to this city when it was mostly a collection of whitewashed homes, churches, mosques, and a few synagogues, all lorded over by the British. The future then had been very uncertain, as it had again seemed so in 1948 when their fight for independence had come. So many lives lost, so much blood spilled on both sides, so much senseless destruction, and now it threatened to happen again. Shamir was an ardent student of history. It seemed at times like these that we were indeed doomed to repeat our mistakes. If the Russians took over the Middle East, this part of the world would surely sink into the dark ages.
Sanity and reason would be lost for a very long time to come. Harry Truman, or had it been one of his successors, had been correct when he’d prophesied that the advent of nuclear weapons meant the abolition of all-out war. No one in their right mind would begin a war that could go nuclear. But if those weapons, as terrible as they were, no longer existed, what would hold back the horde?
He turned after a long time, picked up the telephone, and started to dial a Washington number, but before the connection was made he hung up.
He and the general went back a long way together. But he decided that he didn’t want to hear it from a friend. He would rather find out the truth himself.
EAST GERMANY The skies were overcast across much of central Europe. When Arkady Kurshin stepped from his plane and crossed the tarmac into East Berlin’s Schbnefeld’s Airport it was very dark and raining, a chill wind blowing from the northwest. The weather matched his mood. He’d come so close in Kaiserslautem that he’d almost been able to taste his success.
With a growing disbelief he had watched McGarvey simply pulling the plugs on the missile. Even now it was difficult to believe. Again in Paris he had come close. It would have been so easy to wait until dark, then sneak into McGarvey’s apartment and kill him. This far away the hate still burned strong within him. On the basis of his Soviet Russian diplomatic passport, one of several he carried, he was passed through customs with no delay. Outside a car and driver were waiting for him. He tossed his single bag in the back and climbed in the front. The driver, dressed in civilian clothes, said nothing as he pulled out into traffic, nor did he seem inclined to speak, so Kurshin sat back in his seat with his own morose thoughts for the twenty-minute drive out to Friedrichshagen on the Grosser Mijggelsee. Their intelligence about En Gedi was ironclad, Baranov had assured him, as was their information from the Pentagon. Had McGarvey not interfered, the rocket would have launched, and by now he would be on his way back to Moscow a hero, instead of here with his tail between his legs. “You understand”
Baranov had said before Kurshin had crossed the border into Western Europe, “that the price of our failure will be steep. They will know that I have a penetration agent working in their midst”
“I will not fail, Comrade General” Kurshin had promised. But he had failed. And perhaps this very night he would get his nine ounces-a Russian euphemism for a ninemillimeter bullet in the back of the head.
They skirted the small residential town and on the northwest side of the lake took a narrow dirt track down toward the water’s edge, the hills steep here, the pine trees very thick. They were stopped three kilometers off the main road by a pair of KGB guards armed with the new AK74 assault rifles equipped with night vision scopes. Kurshin had to present his papers. As one of the guards held a flashlight on his face, the other one got in back, opened his suitcase, and took his gun.
“You’re late” one of them said. “His plane was delayed” the driver explained. The flashlight was withdrawn and the rear door was slammed.
One of the guards was speaking into a walkie-talkie as they continued up the road toward dim lights just now visible through the trees and rain.
Kurshin shifted in his seat so that he could feel his left leg just above the ankle with the toe of his right shoe. The small.32 caliber automatic was still secure in its holster. Fuck your mother, he thought, using the national expression of disgust, but he wasn’t going to let himself be gunned down so easily. If need be, he would kill Baranov and make his escape. The narrow road opened onto a broad gravel driveway that led up to a large house, almost a mansion, rising out of the side of the hill. They parked in front. Kurshin got out of the car and started to reach in for his bag. “I’ll get that for you” the driver said. Kurshin shrugged and went up to the house, the front door opening for him. Inside the main stairhall he gave his coat to another burly man in civilian clothes, who laid it over the back of a chair and started to pat him down, but Baranov appeared at the head of the broad stairs.
“That will do, Gregory” he said. The guard stepped back. “Come, Arkasha” Baranov called down, his voice soft and congenial. Kurshin went up the stairs and at the top Baranov embraced him, holding him tightly for a long moment or two before kissing him. Then arm in arm they went down the corridor and into a study, a big fire burning in the fireplace across from a comfortable grouping of heavy chairs and couches. The room was book-lined and pleasantly warm. “Cognac or vodka”
Baranov asked. “Vodka” Kurshin replied. Baranov waved him to a seat while he poured their drinks. “It is too bad about Germany, but we are not finished yet” He turned, smiling. “Unless of course you mean to give up and return to Moscow, or perhaps shoot me to death with that little ankle gun of yours” Kurshin was startled, but he didn’t allow it to show. Baranov laughed as he came across the room and handed him his drink. “Didn’t I tell you once, Arkasha, to trust in me? I have friends everywhere. How else do you think I could get out of Moscow unobserved?