By the time Van Riker felt the first warmth of the Bahamas sun, a new air attaché was arriving at the United States Embassy in Moscow. He had a meeting scheduled in the Kremlin and had specified some of the men who must be there. He had named some scientists and military men and NKVD personnel, and—to the Russians' surprise—he named a man whose identity they had thought was secret, a man whom even most of the high-level NKVD foreign-bureau staffers did not know. Valashnikov.
Now, Valashnikov was twenty-eight years old—a good twenty years younger than all the other Russian military there, so young that in previous generations other officials would have assumed he was related to the czar. But in this generation, when they saw his smooth young face and the piercing black eyes of youth, they knew that here was probably a future chief of staff. Here was a genius. Here was a man who would, at the very least, command armies by the time he was their age. Command armies, if not the entire nation, although at this time he was only wearing the uniform of an NKVD colonel. So they were polite to Valashnikov, despite his youth and relatively low rank, for no one else in the room was less than a general.
"Gentlemen," said the American air attaché, "my government has asked to meet with you to explain a new development in missiles, a nuclear warhead."
The Russians nodded dully, all except the one young man. He appeared more interested in cleaning his fingernails.
"It is essential for the effectiveness of the weapon that you know of its existence," the attaché continued.
"In that case, we are all leaving," said Colonel Valashnikov.
The older men looked at him, shocked. As they saw him go to the door, they too began to rise, because no one wanted to be the only person left in the room.
But Valashnikov stopped at the door, his pink cheeks beaming with the flush of victory. "So much for your weapon. We choose not to listen or believe and your weapon is nothing."
The men in the room saw the American smile weakly.
"But we are reasonable men," said Valashnikov. "If capitalists choose to spend their workers' wages on things which are nothing, we will be considerate." And Valashnikov returned to his seat at the table, as did all the others, realizing that Valashnikov had already won an important battle. The Americans would now have to tell them much more than they had intended if they wanted the Russians to believe it. And all this without even a threat. The boy colonel was a genius. A genius.
Those officers who did not know Valashnikov made it a point to look at him warmly and to smile during the meeting, which was now, of course, between the American general and the
"I am here to tell you about the Cassandra missile," said the American. And he told of a nuclear warhead made up of smaller warheads, some with their own projection devices. He talked about umbrella coverage and multiple reentry. Some Russians took notes. Others—those who had fought the great tank battles against the Nazis and did not know rocketry or nuclear warfare—listened with pretended understanding, grateful for men like Valashnikov, whose knowledge made it possible for them to ignore things like science and international politics.
"What you are describing is stupid," said Valashnikov. "That is the dirtiest nuclear warhead I have ever heard of. It is irresponsible in the extreme. It would have, at best, only vague accuracy. You would barely hit our continent with it. After you've fired it, don't expect to be eating fish from the sea for the next five generations. If there are five generations. Absurd!"
"Thank you," said the American general coolly. "Thank you for understanding the Cassandra. It will only be fired if you should attack first and succeed. In other words, you now know that if we lose a nuclear war, you've lost, also."
"Idiot!" shouted Valashnikov. "I rejected a similar device two years ago, before it got off the drawing board. It's unstable, you fool. Even in the ground it's unstable."
But the American general was not listening to him. He was headed toward the door, with a blank smile on his face. It was his turn not to listen.
When the American was gone, Valashnikov's anger vanished and he gave a little shrug. To the chief of staff he explained that the way to handle the Cassandra was to find it and leave it where it was. "You see," he explained to the field marshal, "the weakness of the Cassandra is partly psychological, which is also its strength. Let me explain. If you believe no one will dare attack you, you become lax. If you believe you have the perfect defense, then you begin wasting your money on such things as social improvements and the like. Now if we find where it is, then ignore it, we leave them their illusion. Until we decide to attack. And of course our first strike in an attack is the Cassandra."
"What if they have two Cassandras? Even three?" asked the field marshal who had begun his military career with a saber and now saw himself ending it as a scientific philosopher.
Valashnikov shook his head. "It's technical, and I think our scientists would bear me out. You are not going to have two Cassandras or three. Because if two or three should go, it could—in the simplest sense—create a planetwide Dresden effect."
"You mean the bombing in World War II where the very air burned, it was so hot?"
"Correct," said Valashnikov. "Only here it would literally have the oxygen feeding a nuclear fire so hot and so consuming that conceivably all oxygen would be burned from the planet. All life. No. Two or three Cassandras goes beyond irresponsibility into insanity. Insane the Americans are not."
"Don't be so sure," said the adviser on international relations. "Look at what they just did in Cuba."
Everyone laughed. It was a good tension breaker.
To the NKVD chief and to the chief of the foreign bureau Valashnikov explained that the Cassandra would not be all that difficult to find. At least five feet of it had to be above ground and encased, probably in marble or at least some form of rock material. Also, the Cassandra had another drawback that would be most noticeable.
"Bronze," said one of the scientists, smiling. "Of course. Bronze. A shield of bronze twenty feet in diameter. Removable for firing."
Valashnikov nodded. And imitating the American, he said, "Gentlemen, we have a great problem ahead of us. We must find a giant piece of marble with a bronze center, far away from any American population center. And in case we don't recognize it instantly, the center has to be perfectly round. A real problem, gentlemen. It should take us days, at least, gentlemen."
Everyone laughed except the field marshal. "How many days?" he asked. He had seen many things go wrong, from cavalary charges to the new tank the Germans were supposed to be so afraid of that they would never attack. He still had scars from when he had escaped from the flaming turret of one of those tanks in June 1941.
"Well, for one thing, Comrade Field Marshal, we have our own observation satellites, and they can pick up marble and bronze with ease."
"Statues are made of marble and bronze," said the field marshal. "And there are many statues in America."
"Yes, there are, comrade, and someone who has served with the czar would be well aware of statues and the like. And so is the NKVD. I don't think we are going to miss a marble and bronze configuration of the likes that hides the Cassandra in some desert somewhere. Besides, its construction must have taken many workers many months. Our agents will know of it."
"What if it is not in desert? What if it is in city?"
"I doubt they would put something as unstable as the Cassandra in a city, Comrade Field Marshal. They could not keep secret the labors of so many workers for so long."