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“How good is this nuclear pledge of ours, this umbrella? First
of all, we're the ones holding the nuclear stick over their heads. We won't nuke ourselves for our own strikes against Russia. But over and above that, would we really launch nuclear strikes against another country for firing at Russia? Would the Russians believe that we would strike, say, France or Germany or Japan, if they went nuclear? What if the Russians were the aggressors? Why would they believe us when we make that pledge?”

“They don't have much of a choice,” the President said, “do they? They'll just have to trust us. That's where you come in.”

Lambert resisted shouting
“Me?”
and instead looked around the desk at the inquiring eyes. He felt his face turn red, blushing without knowing why.

“Somebody has to take this to them,” Thomas continued. “Somebody, preferably, who has an entrée to
STAVKA
. I know Razov, but I have been ruled out because the President thinks this should come from the civilian side. We could just send a grunt, a courier. Hell, we could just fax it to them, or get them on the phone.” Lambert was already shaking his head: it was far too important for that. “But we all feel that this may come down to a sales job, and the main thing that's going to entail is cultivation of a sufficient level of trust among the Russians to cease fire around Moscow
and
to recall their submarine force.”

“You speak Russian,” the director of the CIA said. “Our linguists say your accent sounds like a Russian comedian imitating an American tourist, but your grammar and vocabulary are adequate to go without an interpreter.”

“And more importantly,” the President said, “we want you to make your case directly to
STAVKA
. You're also a lawyer, and although you have no courtroom experience, most of us here have seen you hunker down like a badger on one point or another.” They all laughed.

“But to complete my earlier comment, Greg,” Thomas said, “we need somebody to go who has some stature, who can speak with some authority and make promises, if necessary, on smaller points that may be what it takes to push them over the top. We need someone with all the attributes that we have described, and that someone is clearly you. But there is a downside. There is a very big downside.”

“If things go sour,” the CIA director said, “if they turn on you, out of desperation or even as a result of simple, cold decisions made according to the exigencies of their deteriorating situation, we understand that we are delivering into their hands a supercomputer,” he said pointing with his index finger at Lambert's head, “a supercomputer filled with facts and charts and tables and plans that would
be absolutely invaluable to our enemy in time of war.”

“We would temporarily suspend your clearance to any classified information,” the President said, “to let what it is that you do know grow as stale as possible over the day or so it would take to insert you into Moscow.”

“But even so,” Thomas picked it up, shaking his head, “even so, Greg—”

“You want me to pull the plug on the ‘supercomputer' if they threaten torture,” Lambert interrupted to conclude for him. There was silence. Greg thought about it for a moment. His parents, of course, would be devastated. Who else? When no one else came to mind, Greg nodded.

“We'd implant a tiny crown on your molar,” the CIA director said. “If you exerted maximum force combined with a grinding action of your teeth, the cap would crush between your upper and lower jaws. The concoction, which is a strychnine derivative, is tasteless, but our people put a bitter-tasting additive in for confirmation purposes, and you would also feel a pretty instant numbing of your jaw, I'm told. Death would be by respiratory failure within seconds.”

Greg listened distractedly, his mind stuck on his last thought.
Absolutely no one.
He had absolutely no one waiting for him, even if he did come back. And they knew that.

“It's as much,” Thomas said, his head hanging, “it's as much for your own protection, Greg, as anything.”

“They would come at you quickly,” the CIA director said. “You'd have very little time before they got the chloroform on your face and you lost consciousness. While you were out cold, they'd find the crown and remove it. You'd be . . . helpless, then. They'd come at you from behind, but what you need to watch out for is—”

“Two or more men coming at me from the front,” Lambert interrupted, “looking at a newspaper together and talking, or carrying something heavy between them, or doing anything that explained why they were so close together. One man would grab my upper body from behind and then apply the chloroform to my face, the two men approaching from the front would secure my arms, and people would speed up in a car or come out of hiding and grab my legs from the sides to carry me to a car or van.” Lambert looked at the silent group who stared at him. “When I went to the Defense Intelligence Agency just out of school they let the analysts know when there were vacancies in CIA classes. I was in my twenties, and it seemed like a neat thing to do, so I took Evasive Driving, courses like that, at ‘The Farm' in West Virginia. One of the courses was Bag ‘n' Tag, the course on kidnapping.”

“I know, Greg,” the director said, and there was an awkward silence for a few moments.
That's another reason I was chosen,
Lambert thought.
My resume fits the job description.

“So I go to Moscow,” Greg said. “I can set that up with Filipov. He's still Razov's aide-de-camp.”

“And Greg,” the President said, “this is very, very important. If you don't contact us within two hours after you pass over to their lines, we're going to have to assume the worst and begin our assaults on the Bastion and on Moscow ahead of schedule, before you might reveal anything of value to them. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just tell them you've got to call us as soon as you cross over,” the director of the CIA said. “Two hours, Greg. That way they won't be able to act on intelligence they might have extracted from you before we step off. And when you do call in, if there is any foul play, anything untoward occurring of which you need to alert us, just say, ‘Would you please repeat that? I didn't catch what you said.' If we have any doubts as to duress on this end, someone will ask during the communication, ‘Can you supply more details?' in as appropriate a place as possible. If you respond in any manner other than ‘I am not under any duress,' then we will assume that you are and will disregard all statements made by you or by the Russians.”

“Just one more thing, Greg,” the President said, “and this is very important too. You need to tell the Russians what we will do if they fire at us from the Bastion.” The small group fell silent, and in the stillness Lambert's skin crawled. “If—
if
they fire at us from the Bastion, we intend to evacuate the populations of every Russian city we have captured, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. We will then mine the cities with nuclear demolition munitions and destroy them. All of Russia's principal cities that we have not captured would simply be destroyed by submarine-launched missiles or bomber attack, population and all. Every last one of them. If it at all seems an issue, if
STAVKA
appears in any way to be considering this Operation Samson or anything of the sort, you should make those intentions perfectly clear. It's ‘the stick,' Greg, in our ‘carrot-and-stick' proposal.”

Greg nodded.

“And Greg,” the President said, staring intently at him now.
“This
—what I'm telling you now—is not a bluff. I will do it, as God is my witness, I swear to you, I'll do it.” A chill washed over Lambert completely now as he stared back at the President. This was it—this was “the ball game.”

Creation sleeps! ‘Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

—Edward Young
Night Thoughts
Night I, line 23

“Looks like a company, maybe more,” the reconnaissance platoon leader said to Lambert and Lambert's escort as his heavy binoculars rested on the sandbags piled in front of the observation post. The fluttering of the large white flag held with some difficulty in the stiffening breeze by the soldier standing next to Lambert was the only other sound along the quiet front line. On the way up to the FEBA, the Forward Edge of the Battle Area, Lambert had passed hundreds of huge M-1 tanks and Bradley armored fighting and scout vehicles placed all along the sides of the road into the city. All sat poised under heavy camouflage netting and were surrounded by crews busily making last-minute repairs or handing main gun shells up to the turret in a human chain. He looked up at the gray sky to see the huge ledge of dark clouds coming in from the north. There was a storm gathering.

“I got movement,” the platoon leader said, and the major who had escorted Lambert up to the last observation post before the Russian lines said, “Any vehicles?”

“BTR-80s—about a dozen of 'em—back by the road.”

Lambert looked over at the major standing beside him, whose chafed and wind-dried face wrinkled around his eyes as he squinted, looking off in the distance. “Paratroopers” was all he said to Lambert, not taking his eyes off the Russians.

There were guns, Lambert realized, pointed at them that very second from across the few hundred meters of charred and pitted earth.
“No-man's-land.”
As the lieutenant reported the details of the disembarking Russian airborne company, as much for the crews of his platoon's heavy weapons as for Lambert and his escort, Lambert felt again the sense of missed timing, of choices made and options
passed, that had led him to this place. They had been through war. He had not.

He looked down at the men in the Observation Post, which had been dug into the dark soil at the edge of the treeline and obviously improved over the few days of the “envelopment” of Moscow to the east and west. They lay behind their weapons—one man with an M-16 atop which was mounted a massive night sight, another two behind an automatic 40-mm grenade launcher, and two men with Squad Automatic Weapons. All were filthy, covered in artificial foliage with weapons to their shoulders, their fingers on the triggers and their minds on killing.