The harsh tortured whisper made Defense want to shudder. "Yes," he replied. "Of course."
"He realizes that the plan includes preparations for an attack on the Soviet space stations?"
Defense shook his head. "That did not come up in our conversation."
The angry one almost smiled. "So be it. We can explain the value of a preemptive strike to him later. Gradually. If time permits."
The meeting of the State Security Committee had been long and bitter and sometimes loud. The Kremlin had often rung with the shouts of angry men, and many times such rancor had led to violence.
General Secretary Bereznik was determined to restore harmony.
"Comrades!" he called sharply, slapping a heavy palm on the table before him. They all jerked their attention to him, dropping their hot arguments for the moment.
"Comrades, we should be directing our energies to the solution of this problem. Wrangling will produce no positive results."
"Firing on our scientific expedition is an inexcusable provocation!" Marshal Prokoff shouted.
"But we killed one of their men," said the Foreign Minister, his puffy face florid with passion. "There was shooting on both sides."
"They are increasing their orbital missions," repeated the Intelligence Minister. "More satellites and more attacks on our satellites."
The General Secretary glared in helpless frustration. 334
Sometimes he wished he had Khrushchev's boldness: it was canny old Nikita who had often carried a pistol to these meetings.
"My father gave his life for the Soviet Union at Stalin- grad," Prokoff was saying heatedly, "and I will not allow any foreign transgressor to destroy what he fought to preserve."
"But what of the Chinese?" someone asked, his voice quavering from the general din around the table- "What are they going to do?"
At the far end of the table the Nameless One got to his feet. All the arguing stopped dead. He was not truly name- less, of course, but he insisted on using his unpronounceable Tadzhik tribal name, so the Russians jokingly called him the Nameless One. What he thought of the joke, no one knew; he neither smiled nor complained.
Ah, thought the General Secretary, now a little clear thinking will enter the discussion. I was wondering how long he would remain silent. But he suppressed a shudder as he nodded acknowledgment at the Nameless One. The man was uncanny, frightening in the way that a snake frightens: inspiring a terror that goes far deeper than rational under- standing. None of the men around the table was a stranger to force or violence. But for an Asian to reach the inner counsels of Mother Russia took a special sort of cold, ruthless ambi- tion.
"It is clear," he said in his icy, quiet, slightly sibilant tone, "that we face a crisis of will." The Nameless One was neither tall nor imposing from the standpoint of physical size. His face was thin, with a slightly Oriental cast to the glitter- ing, hypnotic eyes. His ears were slightly pointed, his hands long and thin and graceful.
"The peoples of the Soviet Union urgently need the coal that our scientists have discovered in Antarctica—especially if we are to continue selling natural gas to the West in return for hard currency. The Americans desire that coal, also, for their own needs and markets. Our strategic deterrent force is matched by their missiles. Our antimissile network of satel- lites is incomplete, and so is theirs. We are in a stalemate, unless . . ."
He let the word hang while the ministers and military 335 officers leaned forward on their chairs.
"Unless," he went on, "we are prepared to steel our- selves for the next step."
Marshal Prokoff nodded firmly. "Put the bombs in orbit."
"Exactly," agreed the Nameless One.
"But that would be a violation of a treaty that we solemnly ..."
The General Secretary rapped his knuckles on the table- top. "That treaty was signed more than three decades ago. The world is very different today."
