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Kotov slipped the stopwatch into the pocket of his wide riding breeches and stepped out of the shadows:
“Skiff, Tom – to me!”
Two cadets jumped up with the speed possible after such a strenuous march and ran up to him, stretched out ‘into the front’.
“You’re still three kilometers away from that hillock. Hill 236 on the map. Off you go! Clock’s ticking!”
The guys looked at each other, and gritting their teeth, set off in the direction indicated. Kasatkin, who arrived in time to hear this, looked mockingly at the major.
“Why are you torturing those kids, Cat?”
The major chuckled:
“Better me than the sadists from the enemy counterintelligence… Or do you disagree, Captain?”
“Well, I’m all for it,” Kasatkin said, though he was confused. “Only the standards apply to everyone, and you’re working this pair to death…”
“They are not ‘everyone’,” the major said nonchalantly and, having saluted the captain, set off after his soldiers. The captain shrugged.
“As you say, Comrade Major, as you say… Tokmo rarely escaped from death on foot…”
“And neither from me,” said Kotov, showing off his amazing hearing to his confused subordinate without turning around. “Get your men on their feet and get to the hill.”
It was like that about a month and a half ago. Today, such crosses are childish compared to what they had to experience and learn in such a short time. These two, undergoing special training through an accelerated course, showed amazing results in all disciplines. The major was glad that he had chosen the correct candidates. It was he who suggested recruiting not yesterday's schoolchildren or demobilized conscripts, but graduates from specialized universities who had received excellent knowledge of the disciplines necessary for their future assignments. And athletes at that, of course.
And this doctrine of choice justified itself. Skiff and Tom have already passed subjects that were taught to ordinary cadets at the end of the second and third years of the special school. Their academic higher education and the general level of erudition stood these recent Moscow students in good stead.
They had no need for actual combat experience in the upcoming assignment, despite the selection committee’s recent emphasis on it. They will become representatives of intelligence on a qualitatively new level – intellectual, scientific, technological. The current situation posed these challenges, and they had to be met.
At a quarter after eight, both cadets showed up at the door of the ‘red corner’. Ivan glanced at Andrey and pushed the shutter aside and looked inside.
“May we?”
The major sat in the far corner of a vast room filled with straight rows of folding chairs, like in movie theaters. At a small stage, Kotov had set a table and settled down beside it. Two more chairs were empty, waiting for the cadets.
“Come in, cadets. Come in, have a seat. As I understand it, this might be a long conversation. But as my grandmother used to say, there is no truth in one’s legs.”
Yesterday's students did not hesitate, taking their places opposite the major. He looked them over with a calm gaze.
“Should I start, or will you explain the essence of the problem yourselves?”
Ivan breathed in and started:
“Comrade Major…”
“Sergey Vladimirovich,” Kotov interrupted him quietly.
“What?”
“No ranks here, Vanya, so call me by my first name and patronymic, okay?”
“Yes, comrade… Sergey Vladimirovich. In general, we’d like to understand what moral and professional qualities separated us from millions of our compatriots? And why are we not allowed to spend most of our free time with the other cadets, instead having to sit in our rooms? Well, something along that vein…”
Ivan looked back at Andrey for support, but he just nodded. Kotov looked at their frowning faces and burst out laughing. The youths looked at each other again, and now Andrey asked:
“Was that not the right way to put it?”
Kotov shook his head, then raised his palms, soothing them.
“No, not at all… Everything’s in order. It's just no one’s ever asked that within these walls since the founding of this charitable institution. As you may have noticed, in general here, it is not customary to ask questions. But I understand you: this is the Suvorov style. ‘Every soldier must know his own maneuver…’ That's right, only in this case, a soldier must also think like a commander. I'm not talking about the army now, but about intelligence specifically. In our case, excessive knowledge is a burden, and therefore, our cadets learn about their assignments at the very last moment. But in your case, everything is different, and you felt it. Why?”
After a pause and noting the increased attention of the cadets, the major continued:
“Because you really are special. There are several reasons for this. To start with, you were the first to come here not from the army, but after graduating with university diplomas. This provided a certain intellectual starting level and set a new bar. Second, what you have to do is fundamentally different from most of the tasks that graduates of this institution usually face…”
“The country of the language we’re studying,” Ivan muttered. He remembered a conversation in the dean's office of his alma mater, that had suddenly seemed so long ago, as if from another life. Kotov heard this and nodded.
“You’ve almost guessed that right, although here only every first person becomes an ‘illegal’. But that’s not the point right now. Let me try to explain it in a simpler way…”
“Just try your best, comrade… ‘Cat’… We hope we are clever enough to understand,” Andrey said, inserting his two cents with maximum irony and winking at his friend. The major, however, did not hold with the cadet's humorous tone.
“The task the Party and the Soviet Government set before the three of us is extraordinary. Ordinary operators can’t pull it off, even those with extensive experience working abroad. I’ll clarify the situation as best I’m able to.”
He got up, tugged at his shirt, straightening its folds under the belt of the harness on his back, and went to the window. He tore open the heavy, dark-brown velvet curtains. The August evening was slowly dying behind the large glass panes.
“I want to make it clear, right away,” he said over his shoulder, “that tonight's conversation does not fit into the framework of your training course and is purely private…”
“Why…” Ivan began, but Kotov cut him off sharply:
“Don’t interrupt, Skiff. All in good time. I won’t dwell on the details. I’ll just brief you on the state of world politics and the situation surrounding the upcoming tasks. You’ve already realized, Ivan, that you’re going to act in Argentina. Tomorrow you’ll begin studying the features of this Latin American country. Its geography, climate, economy and political system. In the immediate post-war years, our intelligence mostly engaged in counter-espionage. We lost some of its positions on the world stage. In Latin America, especially, we weren’t always strong.
“After the Second World War, the Americans firmly settled there. This is unsurprising – Uncle Sam has always sought to warm his thieving paws on the wealth of others, and Latin America is oh-so-generous with its resources! However, we aren’t interested in these countries’ minerals. We’re looking for certain people, war criminals, hiding something from the world that is very important and no less dangerous for us and our country if it falls into enemy hands. When we find these people, we will have to determine on the spot the importance of what they have. Based on our findings, the Center will decide what to do with them.”
“That much is clear…”
Andrey shifted impatiently on the uncomfortable wooden seat. Kotov’s face showed nothing but polite attention.
“Our question remains: why us?”
The major was silent for a while, chewing his lips thoughtfully, as if trying out the taste and shape of his response first. Then he shook his head.
“Honestly, guys, it wasn’t my idea. The heads are quite a bit smarter. But in a nutshell… The idea is to attract the most educated people for the work, whom a future adversary would in no way be able to connect with our intelligence agencies. That is why we based your training on individual plans with minimal contact with the other cadets and teachers.”
“And we’re alone, just like that?” Ivan asked with the most innocent look. Andrey looked at him in surprise, and Kotov only grunted respectfully. But he answered:
“No, young man, far from it… Our intelligence would be good if we left it to chance: even or odd, hit or miss. History knows no subjunctive moods, and intelligence abhors accidents. Well, at least when we can avoid them as much as possible. Other groups are also preparing. And the most prepared contingent will go on a mission, believe me… So, as the leader of the world Revolution, Comrade Lenin used to say, ‘…study, study and study again!’ For now, I can only say that at this stage, you are number one. The rest is up to you. Go for it…”
September 14, 1950
16:20
Special Object of the MGB: 101
School
Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov threw open the curtains in the study and froze for a second. Fiery September came into its own outside the walls of the building. The crimson of fall enveloped the suburbs, and the forests stood in their colorful splendor, but the sun was baking with summer-like heat, and several muscular guys in shorts and t-shirts were chasing the ball on the football ground.
Sudoplatov turned around and looked at the cadets, frozen in attentive anticipation. Skiff and Tom each took a desk in the first row. Their notes were closed, it even seemed they both were holding their breaths. Sitting in the ‘gallery’ – the back row – Kotov grinned at something through his mustache.
“Well, that’s it, lads,” the Major General said sternly, giving meaning to the situation. “Today, I’ll brief you on the upcoming mission. This is necessary, not only so that we imbue you with all the importance and complexity of the task, but also so that you understand the essence of the preparation that you will undergo in the future.”
He walked over to the blackboard and chalked ‘1943’ on the black surface.
“So, in ’43, the very middle of the Great Patriotic War, a turning point was about to occur. Soon, we would chase the Krauts along Piterskaya street or the old Smolenskaya, as we once did with Napoleon, doesn't matter…
“At this time, the famous physicist Niels Bohr fled from German-occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden. Through his equally famous colleagues, Lise Meitner and Hannes Alfvén, he turned to the Soviet Government and our physicists, in particular Kapitsa. He said that development was underway in Germany of super-powerful weapons based on the fission of an atomic nucleus. This wasn’t a complete surprise for us. The first time our scientists had heard about this back in 1940, they felt that the current technological base could not create such a weapon. Nevertheless, the Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences for the Study of Nuclear Energy Problems took note. Under Professor Khlopin, they recommended the Government and all specialized scientific institutions keep track of all publications on this topic abroad.
“Before 1943, the British had already tried to launch the ‘Pipe Alloy’ project to create a uranium bomb. Our information showed they had absolutely no luck with this. The attitude of our command and government changed radically when information came from America about the first nuclear chain reaction that Fermi carried out. Clearly, the creation of a superbomb was not far off. They tasked us with coordinating the activities of various intelligence units and throwing all our resources into obtaining materials from the American research. Since it was the Americans, in the opinion of our leading scientists, who were the most advanced in this matter.
“The head of the American nuclear program was Oppenheimer. He was a 44-year-old physicist who wasn’t even a Nobel laureate. This surprised our scientists quite a bit, especially since he worked side-by-side with the same Niels Bohr, who advocated the termination of all research in this direction!
“I don’t need to go into the details of the nuclear race right now. Just imagine, the most brutal war known to mankind had already crippled the country. I myself, besides atomic espionage, also had to organize a partisan movement…
“Under these circumstances, suffering from a near-complete lack of financial, material and human resources, our scientists had to create from scratch a new branch of science and industry – nuclear power. We were helped to a great extend by intelligence collected by our brave illegal intelligence officers, who collected information about the so-called ‘Manhattan Project’. By your future colleagues, by the way. Thanks to them, we have not lagged far behind the United States in the development of nuclear weapons and could maintain parity and avoid a new, now thermonuclear war.”
Sudoplatov fell silent, walked over to the teacher's table, then poured into a glass from a half-empty decanter and drank it. He swallowed greedily as if reliving all the tumultuous events of those recent, terrible years…
“Well, that’s just words,” he said sharply as if at once sweeping aside the affairs of bygone days and urging people to turn to the present day. “There was a war going on, we had to solve many problems simultaneously, and we somehow got through it. By focusing on the Los Alamos laboratories, we somehow lost sight of the German physicists. They, too, turned out to have advanced quite far in their research. Fission of the atomic nucleus was discovered in Germany by Hahn and Strassmann back in 1938, independent of the work of scientists in other countries. Only when other countries generated similar reports, did the idea of turning purely scientific discoveries into a superweapon for the Third Reich take root.
“Given how the technology developed in Germany, the focus there was on creating a nuclear reactor. The Germans were quite successful. Constant Allied bombing, which destroyed their heavy water plants, frequently slowed their research down.
“Yet, in 1940, Germany was head and shoulders above the rest of the countries taking part in nuclear research. The lack of raw materials initially created some problems. Yet, after Hitler annexed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he had the uranium mines near the town of Jachymov at his disposal. The occupation of Belgium also gave him about a thousand tons of uranium oxide, imported by the Belgians from their African colonies. Invading Norway brought Germany the only heavy water plant in the world at that time, which is used to slow down nuclear reactions. All this together allowed the German Werner Heisenberg to create the world's first ‘uranium machine’, as the nuclear reactor was then called.
“The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the Second World War made the development of atomic weapons a priority for the United States. In Germany, with its lack of resources, funding for nuclear research became a side issue. Hitler did not believe in creating an atomic bomb until the end of the war on the Eastern Front. The hardest campaigns of the winter of 1941-42 and the defeat of Hitler's troops at Stalingrad showed that the war will be protracted. British secret services also conducted the secret operation called ‘Gunnerside’, during which they put out of action that same heavy water plant in Norway. Norwegian partisans destroyed the remaining stocks of heavy water, or deuterium oxide. German researchers finally switched to ‘broke’ mode: no money, no resources. Meanwhile, the end of the war was near.
