"Good evening, Major." In a guarded wing of the military hospital, the chief of CIA's Bonn Station sat down with his British and French counterparts and a pair of translators. "Shall we talk about Lammersdorf?" Unbeknownst to the Germans, the British had a file on Major Chernyavin's activities in Afghanistan, including a poor but recognizable photograph of the man remembered by the Mudjahaddin as the Devil of the Kandahar. General Jean-Pierre de Ville of the French DGSE handled the questioning, since he spoke the best Russian. By this time Chernyavin was a broken man. His only attempt at resistance was killed by listening to a tape of his drug-induced confession. A dead man to his own countrymen, the major repeated what these men already knew but had to hear for themselves. Three hours later, Flash-priority dispatches went to three Western capitals, and representatives of the three security services prepared briefing papers for their counterparts in the other NATO countries.

14 - Gas

WANDLITZ, GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

SCENARIO 6

Spring-summer weather patterns (moderate humidity and temperatures; rain probability 35% per day); westerly and southwesterly winds of 10 to 30 km/hr at ground level, indexed for altitude; use of highly persistent agents against communications nexi, POMCUS sites, airfields, supply, and nuclear weapon storage facilities (normal computed delivery error rate, see Appendix F of Annex 1). The chief of the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic read on to the bottom of the abstract, despite the acid churning in his stomach:

As with Scenarios 1, 3, 4, and 5, any warning of over 15 minutes will ensure virtually complete MOPP-4 protection of alerted combat and support personnel. The problem of civilian casualties remains, since over a hundred targets of the categories cited above are near major population centers. Biodegradation of persistent agents such as GD (the expected Soviet agent of choice; for an analysis of Soviet literature on this topic, see Appendix C of Annex 2) will be slowed by generally mild temperatures and weather-reduced sunlight photochemical action. This will allow the agents in aerosol form to drift on wind currents. Given minimum source concentrations of 2 milligrams per cubic meter, predicted vertical temperature gradients, and cloud-width inputs, we see that the downwind toxic vapor hazard to large areas of the FRG and DDR will be approximately 0.3 (plus or minus 50% in our calculations, allowing for expected impurities and chemical breakdown in the chemical munitions) as great as that at the targets themselves.

Since open Soviet literature calls for source (that is, target) concentrations well beyond median lethal dose (LCT-50), we see that the entire German civilian population is at the gravest risk Expected allied retaliation to such chemical strikes would be largely psychological in nature-the use of Soviet munitions alone will effectively contaminate most of Greater Germany; it is expected that no part of Germany east of the Rhein can be considered safe to unprotected personnel, beginning 12 hours after the first munitions are expended. Similar effects may be expected in parts of Czechoslovakia, and even western Poland, depending on wind direction and speed. Such contamination must be expected, moreover, to continue at least 1.5 times the mean persistence level of the agents used.

This is the last (and statistically most likely) of the scenarios outlined by the contract specifications.

SECTION VIII: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As the reader will appreciate, although given tactical warning of only a few minutes, alerted military formations can confidently be expected to sufferfew casualties (albeit with 30-50% degradation of combat effectiveness;this degradation likely, however, to equate to both sides), expected casualties es civilians will actually be greater than those anticipated from a Level-2 exchange of tactical nuclear weapons (200 warheads @ { 100kt yield, seeAppendix A of Annex 1) at a mix of military and civilian/industrial targets. Thus, despite the fact that chemical munitions are not of themselves directly damaging to fixed industrial assets, serious near- and long-term economic effects must be expected. Even the use of nonpersistentagents at the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) cannot but have major impact on the civilian population due to the heavily urbanized character of the German countryside and the patent inability of any government to provide adequate protection for its civilian population.