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“Which we took from Hitler,” the commander of Construction
Troops chortled, “and he took from Paris!” He laughed at the humor of his comment, the laugh turning into a hacking cough through which Zorin waited, watching as the old man's meaty jowls began to glow crimson and he spat loudly into his handkerchief.

“It's a three-stage plan,” Zorin said, moving to the first table on the wall and slapping his pointer onto it in fine staff officer fashion. “First, redeploy into Ukraine, the Baltic countries, and Kazakhstan.”

The marshals all spoke up at once.

“I thought first might be ‘defeat the Chinese'?” said the commander of Protivovozdushnaya Oborona Strany, or PVO-Strany, the air defense force that is the Russian
NORAD
. “Do you have a plan for that?”

“What?” Zorin asked theatrically and with genuine amusement. “Your fair-haired General Razov hasn't been able to brush his little situation aside?”

“It's not a situation, it's a war,” Gribachov said with irritation that was growing evident, “and it's not General Razov's war, it is Russia's war. Our war. One to which, I might add,” he said, pointing at Zorin's charts, “we have committed the vast majority of the forces on which you undoubtedly count to implement your little Napoleonic scheme.”

“You all know there is a way to end the war with China,” Zorin said coldly. “The plans have been circulating since the fighting last time, since Razov became Hero of the People with his little winter skirmish! We could end the war once and for all if we just summon the will to use all the weapons at our disposal. We could end the threat from China for a
hundred
years!” he shouted, again slamming the table with his hand. Several of the old men exchanged looks.
They know what I'm talking about,
Zorin thought in disgust,
but they're too weak even to spill Asian blood.

After a long silence, Zorin said, “Stage Two: demand the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Eastern Europe.”

“And just why are they going to do that?” another marshal asked Zorin.

“Because we
will
them to,” Zorin said, leaning in a gap between two marshals out over the conference table. “And because they are stretched too thin. Unless they intend to send their relatively unprepared reservists into war on the Korean peninsula,” Zorin said, nodding at the picture of the White House Briefing Room on television, “they will have to extract their front line troops from Europe, won't they?”

There was silence from the officers, and Zorin's gaze finally settled on Marshal Gribachov, whose eyes drilled back into his own.
“Did you have something to do with General Park's decision to invade South Korea?” Gribachov asked.

Zorin smiled, enjoying his transition from staff officer to actor on the world stage. “It does put the Americans in a bind, doesn't it?”

“And when you retake Kazan, Dmitri the Terrible,” the commander of the Western Strategic Direction said to Zorin in a sudden burst of mockery, “do you plan to build your own commemoration in Red Square or just rechristen St. Basil's to mark the event?”

The insult and laughter that followed chilled Zorin to the bone, and time for him moved slowly now. He turned to Gribachov and got a disappointed shake of the old man's head. Suddenly, the beauty and grandeur of the wood-paneled room, with its plush Oriental rug, heroic works of art, and towering gold samovar seemed but an oasis amid the despair and poverty into which all else had fallen. And at the center of the oasis were these dozen old men, still growing fat on the fruits of their position, having grown too fat and too old to do anything to stem the tide of decline.

“You have tempted fate,” Gribachov said finally, “first with the Americans, and now with us. You have played a high-risk game with the Americans, the results of which you do not fully understand, and in so doing have imperiled the very nation you sought to protect. And the game you have obviously played with us, General Zorin—it too has its risks.” He picked up the phone in front of him on the table. “Send for Major Lubyanov,” he said, not waiting for Zorin's Stage Three. He replaced the receiver, smug in a confidence born of years of nearly supreme authority and power. Looking up at Zorin, he said, “You are relieved of your duties. Return to your office and remain there until we call.”

Zorin's face betrayed nothing as he strode from the room. As the last of Zorin's aides shut the door, a loud popping sound from inside the heavy wood indicated that the latch had engaged, and now all was quiet.

Major Lubyanov, head of the
STAVKA
security detail, arrived with four soldiers in full combat gear and approached Zorin and his silent aides.

Lubyanov and his men stopped in front of Zorin, and for an instant a flicker of doubt passed through Zorin's mind. But Lubyanov said, “They didn't go for it?” Zorin relaxed. Of course his plans would work. He was a master at planning, and always had been. It had been his plans from right here in Moscow that had been used by Razov in the first border clashes with China last year that had earned Razov, junior to Zorin by many years, his fame and early promotions. Razov had ad-libbed, deviating slightly as the situation
dictated, but it had nonetheless been Zorin's logistics schedules, tables of organization and equipment, and charts of every factor from petroleum-oil-lubricant consumption to unit morale that had won those first battles. The fact that fighting was raging on Chinese territory today and not Russian was due to those planning successes.

“Does everybody know what to do?” Zorin asked the officers gathered outside the conference room.

The men were silent, wavering.

“We—
we
would bring them the victory,” Zorin lashed out in muted tones at the hesitant group, jabbing a finger at the closed conference room door, “and
they
would rise to the reviewing stand, waving their fat hands in the air and listening to the ‘U-u-r-r-a-a-hs!' of the troops. We showed them the way. It's as clear as the noses on their bloated faces! If we do nothing, it's over. We spend the rest of our careers”—he paused—“no,
we
go to prison, and the army becomes a glorified border patrol—first at the Chinese border and then at the Urals—keeping the Asians out of Europe for the next few centuries until we're so inbred that
we're
the Asians!”

“We've always accepted it as our historical duty,” one aide said, seizing upon the higher goal, “to hold the Asians off at the back door of Europe.”

“The only people prospering in Russia are the Ukrainians and the Georgians,” another aide said. “The ‘Mafia.' ”

“And the Jews,” a third added.

“The old fools' decrepit minds are closed,” Zorin said. “They just want to live out the remainder of their padded lives. But they could have
saved
our country! And now they feel they've seen the last of us. We've had our chance. We just had to wait our turn and then we too would be able to feed at the trough, but now we've thrown it all away. That's what they're thinking.”

Zorin watched carefully for the nodding heads and mentally segregated those loyal officers from the thoughtful ones who indicated nothing, not wanting to betray their reservations. They all knew the contingency plans if the marshals rejected the proposal. The contacts had already been made, with Major Lubyanov and his security detail, with communications and others. “But this could be a blessing in disguise,” Zorin said. “It's forced our hand.”

There was no more discussion. No words were spoken about the morality of their act.
After all,
Zorin thought, glancing one last time at the familiar door into the main
STAVKA
conference room,
the old men's hands are hardly clean. The same had been done on their orders before.

They dispersed and moved quickly. Calls were made. The commander of the Taman Division, whose troops were already in their
armored vehicles on the streets nearby, was called. A captain in the central communications facilities.

And, of course, the ordnance specialists.

General Zorin himself approached the two officers, one major and one captain, from the RVSN, the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, as they sat in a small waiting area of the command facility. One was reading the Russian language version of
Der Zeitung,
the other rested his head on his hand, trying to nap while sitting. The two
chyorny chemodanchiki,
the “little black suitcases” with their nuclear code books and communicators, rested at their feet.

“Major, I am General Zorin. I have been instructed to order you two to hand over your communicators.”

The men stared at Zorin, suddenly alert. “I'm sorry, sir,” the senior officer said. “We're not allowed to release them to anyone other than the relief officers, no matter who orders it.”

Zorin eyed them for a second, and then nodded, saying, “You're entirely correct, Major,” and turned to leave. As he did, he reached into his tunic and retrieved his 9-mm silenced Makarov automatic. When Zorin turned back, the major was fumbling with his own shoulder holster and the captain was looking at him wide-eyed. The hollow explosion and jerk of the pistol in Zorin's hand surprised him, even though he had meant to pull the trigger. The thonk of the bullet's firing and distinct clacking of the slide blown back and then returned forward by its spring was loud but relatively low in pitch and would not pierce the insulated doors and walls of the
STAVKA
conference room.

A large black stain appeared around the single jagged tear in the breast pocket of the major's jacket as he slipped out of the chair and crumpled wide-eyed to the floor. His body's fall was impeded by his legs, which bent back under him at the knees.

Zorin turned to the captain, whose jaw was slack. The pistol jerked again as a terrific red splatter sprayed the wall behind the padded chair on which the captain sat, his face shattered by the bullet that struck squarely along the bridge of his nose. Zorin picked up the two black briefcases and walked to the door. Standing in the open doorway, he hesitated, forcing himself to turn around and look back at the first two people he had ever killed. It was curious how little the sight affected him. Neither the gore of the captain's head nor the open-eyed, vacant stare of the major had the effect he had expected. There was no shocking sense of the finality of the act he had just taken, just two lifeless forms.

He closed the door, distracted—and somewhat disappointed—by the absence of any stronger emotions.

Frustrated by the communication problems, the commanders of the Ukrainian Strategic Direction and of Long-Range Aviation—generals in the Russian Army who had risen to the exalted honorary title of “Marshal”—left the conference room and headed for their offices upstairs. As they got to the elevator of the secure inner sanctum in which they met, they saw two nervous soldiers in full combat gear instead of the usual dress uniform of
STAVKA
. The soldiers stepped in front of the elevator doors, blocking any access.

“Get the hell out of my way!” the commander of the Ukrainian Strategic Direction ordered.

One of the soldiers shouted, “Starshi-
na-a-a!
” down the hallway—calling for the senior sergeant—but stood his ground in front of the elevator.
“Starshina-a-a!”
he shouted again, glancing nervously from the generals to the hallway behind them.

The old generals froze. They immediately sensed the danger of the situation—of the reaction of the soldiers to them, of the emptiness of the normally busy offices—which was so unlike that to which they were accustomed. The sound of brisk footsteps caused the old men to break their stares and turn to see the Starshina, a senior noncommissioned officer, walking toward them. “If the generals would please return to the conference room, I have been instructed to inform you that there is an important communication awaiting you there.”

In the end, they returned at gunpoint, the faces in the conference room growing pale when they looked into the eyes of the returning generals and the muzzles of the rifles behind them. The two men sat and described what had happened in monotones. Some of the other officers grew irate and strode to the door, but it was now barred from the outside. Telephones were lifted from their cradles, but they were now completely dead—not even an apologetic operator promising to look into the problem.

Gribachov pounded the table. “How could we have been so
stupid!”
he said, shaking his head in disbelief that he had relied on the one telephone call to security to ensure Zorin's arrest.
One little detail overlooked,
he thought.
How?
But he knew the answer.
Complacency,
he thought as two of the old marshals stood at the door attempting to hoist a plush leather chair into the air for use as a battering ram.
The power,
Gribachov thought.
I grew too comfortable with—

In the next few hundredths of a second, the insulated subfloor of the conference room vaporized in the initial flash of heat from the 110 pounds of high explosives placed in the storage room below. The bomb had lost little of its potency despite its almost twenty-year wait on the shelf of the ordnance storage facility of what had been the
Soviet Union's Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty, the KGB. Designed to be buried in an air pocket under a paved street, the charge was molded into an arc and detonated in a burn calculated to direct its explosive force upward.

After the flash vaporized the insulation, the blast wave hit the cables, beams, hardwood flooring, and Oriental carpet of the conference room above with the force of a speeding freight train. The wood flooring shattered into tiny splinters and the steel reinforcement beams bent straight upward along the walls. The fragile flesh and bones of the old men were, together with the rug, chairs, and table, disintegrated by the force of the blast wave and the shredding of the wood splinters that the wave of pressure carried and then flash-burned to ash by the heat of the energy released in the explosion. All the contents of the room were carried up through the empty consoles in the communications room above and embedded into that room's concrete ceiling and walls.