are in St. Petersburg, and might have been implicated in the elimination of Amalrik and Zimyanin. It would appear that their comradeship was lacking,” Yefremov observed dryly. “So, Provalov, do you have anything to add?”
“No, it would seem that you have covered all likely investigative avenues.”
“Thank you. Since it remains a murder case, you will accompany us when we make the arrest.”
“The American who assisted us ... ?”
“He may come along,” Yefremov said generously. “We’ll show him how we do things here in Russia.”
Reilly was back in the U.S. Embassy on the STU, talking to Washington.
“Holy shit,” the agent observed.
“That about covers it,” Director Murray agreed. “How good’s their presidential-protective detail?”
“Pretty good. As good as the Secret Service? I don’t know what their investigative support is like, but on the physical side, I’d have to say they’re okay.”
“Well, they’ve certainly been warned by now. Whatever they have is going to be perked up a notch or two. When will they do the takedown on this Suvorov guy?”
“Smart move is to sit on it until he makes a move. Figure the Chinese will get the word to him soon—like now, I suppose—and then he’ll make some phone calls. That’s when I’d put the arm on him, and not before.”
“Agreed,” Murray observed. “We want to be kept informed on all this. So, stroke your cop friend, will ya?”
“Yes, sir.” Reilly paused. “This war scare is for real?”
“It looks that way,” Murray confirmed. “We’re ramping up to help them out, but I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. The President’s hoping that the NATO gig will scare them off, but we’re not sure of that either. The Agency’s running in circles trying to figure the PRC out. Aside from that, I don’t know much.”
That surprised Reilly. He’d thought Murray was tight with the President, but supposed now that this information was too compartmentalized.
I’ll take that,” Colonel Aliyev said to the communications officer.
“It’s for the immediate attention of—”
“He needs sleep. To get to him, you must go through me,” the operations officer announced, reading through the dispatches. “This one can wait ... this one I can take care of. Anything else?”
“This one’s from the President!” “President Grushavoy needs a lucid general more than he needs an answer to this, Pasha.” Aliyev could use some sleep, too, but there was a sofa in the room, and its cushions were calling out to him.
“What’s Tolkunov doing?”
“Updating his estimate.”
“Is it getting better in any way?” Comms asked.
“What do you think?” Ops replied.
“Shit.”
“That’s about right, comrade. Know where we can purchase chopsticks for us to eat with?”
“Not while I have my service pistol,” the colonel replied. At nearly two meters in height, he was much too tall to be a tanker or an infantryman. “Make sure he sees these when he wakes. I’ll fix it with Stavka.”
“Good. I’m going to get a few hours, but wake me, not him,” Aliyev told his brother officer.
“Da.”
They were small men in the main. They started arriving at Never, a small railroad town just east of Skovorodino, on day coaches tacked onto the regular rail service on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Getting off, they found officers in uniform directing them to buses. These headed down a road paralleling the railroad right-of-way southeast toward a tunnel drilled ages before in the hills over the diminutive Urkan River. Beside the tunnel was an opening which appeared to the casual viewer to be a siding for service equipment for the railroad. And so it was, but this service tunnel went far into the hillside, and branching off it were many more, all constructed in the 1930s by political prisoners, part of Iosef Stalin’s gulag labor empire. In these man-made caverns were three hundred T-55 tanks, built in the mid-1960s and never used, but rather stored here to defend against an invasion from China, along with a further two hundred BTR-60 wheeled infantry carriers, plus all the other rolling stock for a Soviet-pattern tank division. The post was garrisoned by a force of four hundred conscripts who, like generations before them, served their time servicing the tanks and carriers, mainly moving from one to another, turning over the diesel engines and cleaning the metal surfaces, which was necessary because of water seepage through the stone roof. The “Never Depot,” it was called on classified maps, one of several such places close to the main rail line that went from Moscow to Vladivostok. Cunningly hidden, partially in plain sight, it was one of the aces that