Grigorenko snapped, “The Russian soldier is no coward.”
“The spirit of collective sacrifice requires more than courage, I think. It requires a national will.”
“Stalinist claptrap,” Strygin said.
“Evidently,” Rykov murmured, “I have made the mistake of fragmenting the evidence. Each week I come to you with bits and pieces, and each week you point out tome that they are merely bits and pieces. Quite so. Let me rectify the mistake: let’s look at the total picture.
“Six hundred years ago the Mongols invaded Russia without warning. Since the 1600’s we have been fighting skirmishes with the Chinese along the Amur River. Until a hundred and fifty years ago the Mongols were still in possession of the Volga and Crimea regions and their rule imposed such oppression and ignorant backwardness on our people that today we still struggle to get out from under the memory and experience. Because of those little yellow bastards we’re two centuries behind and we simply sit here waiting for them to do the same thing again because Peking calls itself a Communist regime and we all tend to follow the stupid idea that the enemy of one’s enemies is perforce one’s friend.”
Strygin sat upright. “That’s absurd. You’re confusing Chinese with Mongols.”
“They’re all the same.”
“No. Genghiz conquered Russia but the Chinese never have. Russia has never once made the kowtow of obeisance to China since Baikov’s mission to Peking three hundred years ago—but forget that. History’s always a good hiding place; it won’t argue back. Let’s talk about now.”
“All right.” Rykov’s words fell heavily, dropped like shoes, spaced out: “Consider the evidence. The Chinese have enlarged their satellite-tracking station near Nanking, they’ve installed huge electronic complexes in the mountains in the Khentei, and they’re constantly expanding the nuclear facilities at Lop Nor, Paotow, and Lanchow. According to the figures I submitted last week they’ve stockpiled at least eight hundred hydrogen warheads of all sizes. Their missile program has grown faster than we anticipated and as you know they have an initial ICBM capability now sufficient to destroy almost half the major cities in the Soviet Union.”
“Yes,” Strygin said, “but at what cost to themselves?”
Rykov’s head turned. “They can sacrifice four hundred million men—more than our entire population—and still win. And they’ve no reluctance to do that, as long as the loyal Maoist elite survives. China has one billion people and they face a famine—in less than thirty years she’ll have two billion; today if there’s a bad crop year millions of them starve, and tomorrow even if it’s a good crop year millions of them will starve. Look at it, then: China has got to expand into new agricultural lands. Where’s she going to find them? In Japan or India or Indochina? Those areas are even more overcrowded than she is. No, she’s got to move into our underpopulated frontier regions.
“To do that,” he finished in a different voice altogether, “the Maoists are willing to risk a nuclear exchange—precisely because they believe we are not willing to.”
He spread his hands in the universally expressive gesture.
“Rubbish,” Alexai Strygin said.
“Perhaps. But each year we spend debating the point gives the Chinese another year to close the gap in military strength.”
Yashin said, “You’re saying we had better crush them while we still can.”
“I’m saying that one day I’m going to report to you that the Chinese will start to push buttons within twenty-four hours and you are going to have to be ready to react instantly and without any more of this idiotic debating.”
Strygin muttered, “As always Viktor ignores the political actualities.”
“If we were justified in intervening in Czech affairs in 1968, there’s no reason we can’t apply the same doctrine to China.”
Strygin uncrossed his legs. “He talks reasonably,” he said to Yashin, “but the premises aren’t reasonable. All this talk of preparedness is a smoke screen. We’re quite ready to repel any Chinese attack, nuclear or otherwise, and Viktor knows it and Peking knows it. No. He’s saying we ought to get ourselves in a frame of mind to hit them before they can hit us. He wants a Soviet blitzkrieg. Viktor and his friends carefully avoid mentioning the obvious critical factor that negates their whole position—the Americans are on the fence right now, maintaining detente with us and putting out feelers to China in the Warsaw talks, but if we attack China they’ll have their excuse to destroy us. Don’t forget the Pentagon is in the hands of generals who can’t tell one Communist from another; as far as they’re concerned Russia is stronger than China, therefore Russia ought to be whipped. We’re strong, but we’re not strong enough to fight China and America together.” And Strygin smiled like a schoolmaster.
Yashin leveled his palms on the desk, pushed his chair back and stood. “Alexai is quite right. Our eastern defenses are on a constant alert and our missiles are pointed down Peking’s throat. If there is to be war let the Chinese start it, because only then will the Americans ally themselves with us. Let’s have no more talk of preemptive strikes. The KGB will spend more time providing information and less time trying to alter the policies of the Soviet Government. Now you must excuse me, I have an appointment.”
That had been yesterday. Now Rykov sat in his office in the Arbat, pushing the China reports around on the desk and reflecting on the meeting. He had listened to Strygin’s appeasing whine and Yashin’s careful chastisements before; emotionally immune to them, he was neither angry nor dismayed. But the clarity of his own vision made him impatient with them. Yashin had the distraction of his personal vanity and Strygin had his comfortable ambition and his large family of artists and intellectuals. Rykov had none of those dilutions; he was a superior servant of the State because his whole and only dedication was to the State. He had been widowed eight years ago; there were no children; he had no weaknesses for material things, no wish for personal aggrandizement.
It was a time of great trial for the Soviet Union—perils within and without. Russia was encircled by external enemies and these had their allies within the Soviet Union—forces of decadence, flaccid muscles, sagging purpose, the aged weariness of a revolution running down. Viktor Rykov, childless, clear-headed, unsentimental, uncorrupted by bourgeois prejudices, had to protect the nation from all its enemies—that was his duty and that was what his talents best equipped him to do, and he thought dispassionately that the Soviet Union was fortunate to have such a man as Viktor Rykov in these tragic times.
With red ink he underlined items in the China dispatches and scribbled a number beside each underlining and leaned forward to study the result. The decodes had come up from the cipher rooms within the past twenty-four hours; they represented the sum of one day’s intelligence activity by KGB agents and affiliates. Even in clandestine operations the vastness of bureaucracy had to be obliged and everything had to be committed to paper. Some were radio-code receptions, some were dispatches carried openly on paper in diplomatic pouches, some were blowups of films and microdots carried by courier agents, some were clippings and tear sheets from the world press, government publications, transcripts of radio broadcasts by government figures, advance copies of prepared political speeches—espionage relied heavily on the gathering en masse of nonsecret, openly available material. From enough of it came signs of trends, shifts in momentum, changes in attitudes. The first thing a police detective did to find a man was to look him up in the local directory. In intelligence it was the same: the cinematic exploits of cloak-and-dagger spies were the least part of espionage.
Rykov’s red-underlined selections were brief:
1. Peking University. Chan Po-ku has been absent four days and has not appeared at his home during that time. His classes have been taken over by an assistant.