Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

“They’ll never sell it to us!” shouted Kerensky.

“They are not fools, Comrade Marshal,” Ivanenko cut in quietly. “Their Condor satellites must have warned them al­ready that something is wrong with our spring wheat. But they cannot know what or how much. Not yet. But by the autumn they will have a pretty fair idea. And they are greedy, endlessly greedy for more money. I can raise the pro­duction levels in the gold mines of Siberia and Kolyma, ship more labor there from the camps of Mordovia. The money for such a purchase we can raise.”

“I agree with you on one point,” said Rudin, “but not on the other, Comrade Ivanenko. They may have the wheat, we may have the gold, but there is a chance, just a chance, that this time they will require concessions.”

At the word concessions , everyone stiffened.

“What kinds of concessions?” asked Marshal Kerensky sus­piciously.

”One never knows until one negotiates,” said Rudin, “but it’s a possibility we have to face. They might require conces­sions in military areas. ...”

“Never!” shouted Kerensky, on his feet and red-faced.

“Our options are somewhat closed,” countered Rudin. “We appear to have agreed that a severe and nationwide famine is not tolerable. It would set back the progress of the Soviet Union and thence the global rule of Marxism-Leninism by a decade, maybe more. We need the grain; there are no more options. If the imperialists exact concessions in the military field, we may have to accept a drawback lasting two or three years, but only in order all the better to advance after the recovery.”

There was a general murmur of assent. Rudin was on the threshold of carrying his meeting. Then Vishnayev struck. He rose slowly as the buzz subsided.

“The issues before us, Comrades,” he began with silky rea­sonableness, “are massive, with incalculable consequences. I propose that this is too early to reach any binding conclusion. I propose an adjournment until two weeks from today, while we all think over what has been said and suggested.”

His ploy worked. He had bought his time, as Rudin had privately feared he would. The meeting agreed, ten against three, to adjourn without a resolution.

Yuri Ivanenko had reached the ground floor and was about to step into his waiting limousine when he felt a touch at his elbow. Standing beside him was a tall, beautifully tailored major of the Kremlin guard.

“The Comrade Secretary-General would like a word with you in his private suite, Comrade Chairman,” he said quietly. Without another word he turned and headed down a corridor leading along the building away from the main doorway. Ivanenko followed. As he tailed the major’s perfectly fitting barathea jacket, fawn whipcord trousers, and gleaming boots, it occurred to him that if any one of the men of the Polit­buro came to sit one day in the Penal Chair, the subsequent arrest would be carried out by his own KGB special troops, called Border Guards, with their bright green cap bands and shoulder boards, the sword-and-shield insignia of the KGB above the peaks of their caps.

But if he, Ivanenko alone, were to be arrested, the KGB would not be given the job, as they had not been trusted al­most thirty years earlier to arrest Lavrenti Beria. It would be these elegant, disdainful Kremlin elite guards, the praetorians at the seat of ultimate power, who would do the job. Perhaps the self-assured major walking before him; he would have no qualms at all.

They reached a private elevator, ascended to the third floor again, and Ivanenko was shown into the private apartments of Maxim Rudin.

Stalin had lived in seclusion right in the heart of the Krem­lin, but Malenkov and Khrushchev had ended the practice, preferring to establish themselves and most of their cronies in luxury apartments in a nondescript (from the outside) com­plex of apartment blocks at the far end of Kutuzovsky Pros­pekt. But when Rudin’s wife had died two years earlier, he had moved back to the Kremlin.

It was a comparatively modest apartment for this most powerful of men: six rooms, including a well-equipped kitchen, marble bathroom, private study, sitting room, dining room, and bedroom. Rudin lived alone, ate sparingly, dis­pensed with most luxuries, and was cared for by an elderly cleaning woman and the ever-present Misha, a hulking but silent-moving ex-soldier who never spoke but was never far away. When Ivanenko entered the study at Misha’s silent ges­ture, he found Maxim Rudin and Vassili Petrov already there. Rudin waved him to a vacant chair, and began without preamble.

“I’ve asked you both here because there is trouble brewing and we all know it,” he rumbled. “I’m old and I smoke too much. Two weeks ago I went out to see the quacks at Kuntsevo. They took some tests. Now they want me back again.”

Petrov shot Ivanenko a sharp look. The KGB chief was still impassive. He knew about the visit to the super-exclusive clinic in the woods southwest of Moscow; one of the doctors there reported back to him.

“The question of the succession hangs in the air, and we all know it,” Rudin continued. “We all also know, or should, that Vishnayev wants it.”

Rudin turned to Ivanenko.

“If he gets it, Yuri Aleksandrovich, and he’s young enough, that will be the end of you. He never approved of a professional taking over the KGB. He’ll put his own man, Krivoi, in your place.”

Ivanenko steepled his hands and gazed back at Rudin. Three years earlier Rudin had broken a long tradition in So­viet Russia of imposing a political Party luminary as chair­man and chief of the KGB. Shelepin, Semichastny, Andropov—they had all been Party men placed over the KGB from outside the service. Only the professional Ivan Serov had nearly made it to the top through a tide of blood. Then Rudin had plucked Ivanenko from among the senior deputies to Andropov and favored him as the new chief.

That was not the only break with tradition. Ivanenko was young for the job of the world’s most powerful policeman and spymaster. Then again, he had served as an agent in Washington twenty years earlier, always a basis for suspicion among the xenophobes of the Politburo. He had a taste for Western elegance in his private life. And he was reputed, though none dared mention it, to have certain private reser­vations about dogma. That, for Vishnayev at least, was abso­lutely unforgivable.

“If he takes over, now or ever, that will also mark your cards, Vassili Alekseevich,” Rudin told Petrov. In private he was prepared to address both his proteges familiarly by using their patronymics, but never in public session.

Petrov nodded that he understood. He and Anatoly Krivoi had worked together in the Party Organizations Section of the General Secretariat of the Central Committee. Krivoi had been older and senior. He had expected the top job, but when it fell vacant, Rudin had preferred Petrov for the post that sooner or later carried the ultimate accolade, a seat on the all-powerful Politburo. Krivoi, embittered, had accepted the courtship of Vishnayev and had taken a post as the Party theoretician’s chief of staff and right-hand man. But Krivoi still wanted Petrov’s job.

Neither Ivanenko nor Petrov had forgotten that it was Vishnayev’s predecessor as Party theoretician, Mikhail Suslov, who had put together the majority that had toppled Khrushchev in 1964. Rudin let his words sink in.

“Yuri, you know my successor cannot be you, not with your background.” Ivanenko inclined his head; he had no il­lusions on that score. “But,” Rudin resumed, “you and Vassili together can keep this country on a steady course if you stick together and behind me. Next year I’m going, one way or the other. And when I go, I want you, Vassili, in this chair.”