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made full colonel in the army when he was thirty. Zharkov trained him himself since childhood. Rumor has it that the boy started attending the Nichevo directorate meetings as soon as he was out of short pants. Zharkov wasn't taking any chances about who was going to succeed him. Alexander lived and breathed Nichevo until he joined the army and was sent out on military patrol. He was in Poland when his father died. He came back to head up Nichevo."
    "And you think he's behind the men moving into Cuba?"
    "It's got the signs. No explanation and no apparent reason. It's got Zharkov's stamp all over it."
    "Would he be behind Finland?" Corfus asked.
    Starcher stubbed out his cigar with some viciousness. "That I don't know. I don't think so." He looked at his watch. "It's almost six," he said. "I want you to take up a watch."
    "Sure," Corfus said, rising. "Here?"
    "No, I'll stay here. Riesling will contact me if everything's clear. But if there's trouble, his fallback is always at the Samarkand Hotel. I can't be seen with him, of course. Bad policy."
    Corfus smiled. "I understand."
    "You've met him?"
    "Once. I know his face."
    "Good. If he shows up at the Samarkand, he's hot, understand?"
    Corfus nodded.
    "You'll have to move quickly. Get him to the safe house on Ohkotney as soon as you can. I'll wait here for your call."
    "What if he doesn't come?" Corfus asked.
    "Wait till nine o'clock at the bar—that's the most visible area—then order dinner. It'll give him a little more time in case he needs it. I'll page you at the Samarkand if he contacts me first."
    Corfus hesitated by the door. "And if he doesn't get in touch with either of us?"
    But Starcher wasn't listening. He was back at the window, peering out through the drapes at the small man standing, shivering, in the snow.

Chapter Three
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    A t six o'clock, Riesling was still two hours outside Moscow . He had stolen one car in Leningrad, then switched autos at Kalinin, hotwiring an old ZIL parked on a busy street.
    Punchy. He hadn't slept for days. That was it. The dead policeman in Helsinki, the harrowing sojourn through the Russian border, the long drive from Leningrad. All of it had exhausted him.
    And the medallion. He felt for it in his pocket. Even its touch was frightening, ominous. It weighted him with the same feeling he used to get on the football field at school, the dull ache when he was running for the ball during a critical point in the game. As the ball soared overhead, he knew— by the wind, by the awkwardness of his legs, his balance imperceptibly off, by some despairing cry within—that he wasn't going to catch the pass. It was during those moments, as if he had some special insight, beyond reason or the connotation of words, that he knew he was going to lose.
    "Just get to Starcher," he said aloud, letting go of the medallion in his pocket.
    He searched his rearview mirror. Clean, no gray Fiat. All right. He'd lost the car, with its lone occupant wearing a white stocking cap, somewhere in Kalinin. More likely, he'd never been followed in the first place. In all probability, the man in the stocking cap was an ordinary Russian, a factory worker, a telephone man, just someone driving into Moscow with no more sense of Riesling's identity than the man in the moon.
    He shook his head to clear it. When you begin to suspect everyone, when the stink of treachery permeated every corner of your world, you were finished. The suspicion would break you. It distracted you. In time, it killed you.
    "Burnout," he muttered. No one was following him. He'd just spent too long on the job.
    Once he reached Moscow, he would ask Starcher to recommend an immediate transfer. To anywhere. And a leave. He would go to Monte Carlo or the Aegean and drink himself stuporous and find a woman. And let all the men in all the white stocking caps go back to all their jobs at all the docks and factories or wherever they all worked, and to hell with them. No more. Not for