She put everything back in the envelope, the envelope back in the magazine, and caught sight of herself in the mirror as she turned to leave. “Yes,” she told her reflection. “Oh yes!”
Thirty hours after leaving his group at Lukomskoye, Kuznetsky was driven down Lenin Prospekt toward Moscow’s hub. It was his first sight of Moscow, actually of anything bigger than a village, for more than two years.
He had never liked Moscow, and had somehow contrived to spend only a few months of his twenty-six Soviet years in the capital. A homesick Muscovite had once drunkenly explained to him that his city combined the best of the West, its commitment to reason, with the best of the East, its spirituality, and therefore qualified as paradise on earth. Kuznetsky had always thought it was the other way around: the East’s lack of reason allied to the West’s lack of spirituality — a soulless bazaar.
He’d had a good night’s sleep at the Partisan HQ on the city’s outskirts, once he’d given up the bed for the more familiar texture of the floor. It was surprising how quickly one lost the knack of civilized living; he’d had problems with the cutlery at breakfast and the toilet had seemed almost obscene.
He’d also lost more weight than he’d realized. The NKVD colonel’s uniform he’d left behind in 1942 was now several sizes too large, and it reeked of mothballs.
The Kremlin loomed across the river. The car swept across the bridges, past the Borovitsky Tower and across Marx Prospekt into Frunze Street, drawing up at the massive portals of the Defense Ministry. The driver opened his door and Kuznetsky climbed out. The guard at the door examined his pass and called for someone to escort him up to Sheslakov’s office. On the way he consciously pulled himself together. He was out of practice at playing politics, but there was no need for anyone else to know that.
His guide knocked at the door, but Kuznetsky pushed past him and entered without waiting for a reply. Old habits die hard, he thought. Never surrender an initiative.
The man sitting behind the desk seemed unperturbed. He’d probably received the same training. Kuznetsky took the seat offered by the man’s flourish of the jade letter opener and for several moments neither spoke.
His host, Kuznetsky observed, was a medium-built, middle-aged man with graying hair. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a well-cut dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark red tie. Most unusual, the shirt collar and tie were loosened at the neck, giving him a vaguely dissolute appearance. He had high cheekbones and deep-set dark eyes — Tartar blood probably — and a mouth that seemed on the verge of an ironic smile. The eyes contained the same air of amused condescension. Whoever this man was, Kuznetsky thought, he was sure of himself.
Sheslakov examined Kuznetsky with the same thoroughness. He was tall, over six feet, with thick, dark hair and the sort of profile you saw on hero-of-the-revolution wall posters. He did look American, but he could have passed for a Russian easily enough. The eyes — Fyedorova always told him to look at the eyes first — were quite extraordinary. Not because of anything intrinsic — because of the total contrast they offered to the rest of the man. The mouth, the posture, the sense of physical power, all shouted “Fighter”; the eyes whispered “Calm,” the calm of killers and saints. He knew now what Fyedorova had meant by a wild card.
“Colonel Kuznetsky,” he said, “you have been provisionally selected to lead an operation outside the Soviet Union. It is not an NKVD operation, nor a GRU operation. Both apparats are working together under the direct authority of the Atomic Division, which is itself responsible only to the Secretariat.” He paused. Kuznetsky said nothing, only nodded slightly. “Your participation will be on a voluntary basis; you will understand why when you read this.” He passed across a thin folder, the words “American Rose” stenciled on the cover in red.
Kuznetsky stared at the words. “The United States?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He read for twenty minutes, increasingly absorbed, pausing only once to examine the old woman who came in and lay back on the cot under the window. Who the hell was she? And why was she staring at him?
Finally he closed the folder and placed it gently on the edge of Sheslakov’s desk. “When will the bait be offered?” he asked.
“At the moment of maximum psychological impact. After the Allied invasion of France, which we expect on June 6, and before our summer offensive, which is set for June 22. The combination of a known disaster and an imminent one usually provides a potent mixture.”
Kuznetsky looked amused. Very neat as Americans would say. “And what if the Germans throw the Allies back into the English Channel?”
“That is unlikely.”
“I wouldn’t know. There are a lot of hopeful assumptions built into this. Maybe correct ones. But it feels like thin ice.”
“There is very little margin for error,” Sheslakov admitted. “But that is unavoidable when we have to be more concerned with avoiding detection and exposure than anything else… You are willing?”
“I am not a believer in voluntary work, Comrade, but in duty. I will go for that reason.” And, he admitted to himself, out of curiosity. What would America look like after twenty-six years? And how would it feel to be back there?
“Come in, Anatoly Grigorovich,” Zhdanov boomed, “sit down, tell me some good news.”
Sheslakov took the proffered chair. “Thank you, Comrade Secretary. I do have good news — the First Priority is within our reach.”
Zhdanov’s ears pricked up almost visibly. “How?” he asked, offering Sheslakov the first Havana cigar he’d seen since the war’s beginning.
Sheslakov lovingly applied the match, savoring the moment and taking an almost sadistic delight in the other man’s ill-concealed impatience. “You recall your submission to Stavka on” — he consulted his notes — “April 28 concerning the possible theft of American Uranium-235. To summarize — you pointed out that the amount we could steal would be militarily useless even if we could contain the political damage.”
“I have not forgotten.”
“Both problems can be avoided.” He took another puff on the cigar. If only Cuba were run by Communists! “The Americans, knowing how much material had been stolen, would know how many bombs we could make.”
“That seems self-evident.”
“Ah, but there is a hidden assumption, that our building of atomic bombs would necessarily be linked with our theft of the material.”
“But it would be.”
“Indeed, but the Americans need not know that. If we can both steal the material and convince the Americans that we have not stolen it, then the problem is solved. Our possession of atomic bombs will then be ascribed to our own domestic development program, and the Americans will have no idea how many bombs we really have.”
“We’ll still have only two, which the military say will be worse than useless.”
“We will have only one. We must explode the first to show the Americans we actually have the capability. I’m afraid the military, as usual, is behind the times. They just don’t understand that these atomic bombs are not ordinary weapons; the mere threat of using them will be enough. If both sides have them, no one will dare use them, and the calculations that matter will concern men and tanks and ships again. What is important is not actually having the atomic bomb, but instilling that fear into the Americans.”
Comprehension dawned on Zhdanov’s face, then swiftly made room for more furrows of concern. “Who else would steal it then?” It was such a stupid question that Sheslakov let Zhdanov answer it for himself. “A ruse de guerre. Soviet soldiers in German uniforms.”