Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [50]
"Yes, Comrade Chairman," the colonel said, coming to attention with the receipt of the order. "The priority?"
"Immediate," Andropov replied, in the most casual of voices.
"I shall see to it myself, Comrade Chairman," Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy promised. His face revealed nothing of his feelings. Indeed, he had few of those. KGB officers were not trained to have much in the way of scruples, at least outside politics, in which they were supposed to have a great deal of faith. Orders from above carried the force of Divine Will. Aleksey Nikolay'ch's only concerns at the moment were centered on the potential political fallout to be had from dropping this particular nuclear device. Rome was more than a thousand kilometers from Moscow, but that would probably not be far enough. However, political questions were not his to ask, and he scrubbed the matter from his mind—for the moment, anyway. While he did so, the intercom box on the Chairman's desk buzzed. Andropov flipped the top-right switch.
"Yes?"
"Your first appointment is here, Comrade Chairman." His secretary announced.
"How long will this take, Aleksey, do you suppose?"
"Several days, probably. You want an immediate assessment, I assume, followed by what sort of specific data?"
"Correct. For the moment, just a general assessment," Yuriy Vladimirovich said, "We're not planning any sort of operation just yet."
"By your order, Comrade Chairman. I'll go down to the communications center directly."
"Excellent. Thank you, Aleksey."
"I serve the Soviet Union" was the automatic reply. Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy came to attention again, then left-faced for the door. He had to duck his head going out into the secretary's room, as most men did, and from there he turned right and out into the corridor.
So, how does one get close to the Pope, this Polish priest? Rozhdestvenskiy wondered. It was, at least, an interesting theoretical question. KGB abounded with theoreticians and academics who examined everything, from how to assassinate chiefs of foreign governments—useful in the event that a major war was about to be undertaken—to the best way to steal and interpret medical records from hospitals. The broad scope of KGB field operations knew few limitations.
One could not have guessed much from the colonel's face as he walked to the elevator bank. He pushed the button and waited for forty seconds until the doors opened.
"Basement," he told the operator. The elevators all had operators. Elevators were too good a potential dead-drop location to leave unattended. Even then, the operators were trained to look for brush-passes. Nobody was trusted in this building. There were too many secrets to be had. If there were one single place in the Soviet Union in which an enemy would want to place a penetration agent, this building was it, and so everyone looked at everyone else in some sort of black game, always watching, measuring every conversation for an inner meaning. Men made friends here as they did in every walk of life. They chatted about their wives and children, about sports and weather, about whether to buy a car or not, about getting a dacha in the country for the lucky ones with seniority. But rarely did men chat about work, except with their immediate workmates, and then only in conference rooms where such things were supposed to be discussed. It never occurred to Rozhdestvenskiy that these institutional restrictions reduced productivity and might actually hinder the efficiency of his agency. That circumscription was just part of the institutional religion of the Committee for State Security.
He had to pass a security checkpoint to enter the communications room. The watch NCO checked his photo pass and waved him through without much in the way of acknowledgment.
Rozhdestvenskiy had been here before, of course, often enough that he was known by face and name to the senior operators, and he knew them. The desks were arranged with a lot of space between them, and the background noise of the teleprinters prevented ordinary conversation from being overheard