Captain Sergetov noted how carefully that had been phrased. "Our people are angry, Comrade General. They are enraged over the incident in the Kremlin, the murder of the children. I think 'enthusiasm' is not a great exaggeration."

"And you, Ivan Mikhailovich?"

"Comrade General, my father told me that you would ask this question. He told me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of it, and that the important thing is to safeguard our country so that similar tragedies will never again be necessary."

Alekseyev did not reply at once. He was chilled by the knowledge that Sergetov had read his mind three days before, and dumbfounded that he had confided so enormous a secret to his son. But it was good to know that he had not misread the Politburo man. He was a man to be trusted. Perhaps his son also? Mikhail Eduardovich evidently thought so.

"Comrade Captain, these are things to be forgotten. We have enough to occupy us already. You will work down the hall in room twenty-two. There is work waiting for you. Dismissed."

BONN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"It's all a sham," Weber reported to the Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he'd flown to Bonn hadn't even left the ground yet. "The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and deliberate sham."

"We know that, Colonel," the Chancellor replied testily. He'd been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips with the sudden German-Russian crisis.

"Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto accident-the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking-and was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at Lammersdorf. The station's security posts were just relocated a month ago. This document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have them both."

"He came into Germany long before-" The Chancellor was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.

"Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham, all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of them consistent with a full-scale assault across our borders. He is now at our military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his admission."

"What of the chance that this is all some sort of Russian provocation? Why weren't these documents brought over when they crossed the border?"

"The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we've been upgrading the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer, and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well. The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them-is most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man-" Weber explained the circumstances of the accident. "We have every reason to believe that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent -she sells dresses for some Paris designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First they accuse us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It's not logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a Soviet invasion of Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately before hostilities commence."

"But to do such a thing-even if such an attack is planned.