The Tashkent Crisis

by William Craig

  Six miles southwest of Washington, D.C., a station wagon drove slowly through the dead of night along a side road. Inside, a man dressed in coveralls was using a pencil flashlight to read a map. He spoke rapidly to the driver: “Frank, according to this, we should stop about fifty feet ahead.”

  The driver nodded and edged to the side of the road near a clump of trees. The men stomped through tall grass until they came to a dip in the ground. “Here we are, Frank.” The flashlight roved over the map one last time as he made sure. “Put the stuff right in the middle of the hollow.”

  Frank bent down and dug into the soil with a spade. He scooped out a hole eighteen inches deep and placed a satchel charge in it.

  The men went on in a straight line another fifty feet, and Frank dug again. He put another satchel in the second hole. Then the two men walked casually back to the station wagon. They drove toward Washington until the driver spoke: “Mr. Markle, we’re far enough away now.” Herbert Markle, the Commissioner of Natural Gas Utilities, pulled a small black box out from under the seat, checked it for a moment and then pressed a red button. Behind them the sky filled with fire, and in seconds, the sound of an awesome explosion rocked the car. More explosions, bigger than the first, followed with triphammer velocity. The night was suddenly daylight around them.

  The commissioner growled: “Hurry, Frank. I have to go home and check in with the boss.”

  The desert still surrounded the Operation Scratch team, but the flat plain had given way somewhat to grassy rolling hills dotted with occasional trees and patches of wildflowers. Joe Safcek watched the mileage gauge carefully, and from time to time he glanced through the right side of the windshield. Eleven miles north of Tashkent, Boris Gorlov pointed suddenly and exclaimed: “Off there in the valley.” Then they all saw the cluster of brick buildings nestled between two low hills that nearly shielded it from a casual passerby.

  Safcek drove on until a following car passed him. With the road clear in both directions, he suddenly pulled over, jumped out, and shouted: “Follow me, Luba.” Nodding to Boris, the colonel added: “Make it look good, fellas,” and he plunged down the embankment to a culvert beside the road. He made a mental note of it as a good place to leave the car that night.

  Peter Kirov immediately went to the right rear tire, knelt down, and unscrewed the air-pressure covering. Then he put the eraser end of a pencil against the valve and held it there while the tire slowly flattened.

  Boris opened the trunk and took out a spare, jack, and nut remover. He put them down beside Peter and sank onto the grass to have a cigarette. Peter looked up and down the road once more, saw no one approaching, and joined his partner.

  Safcek and Luba had reached a low hillock two hundred yards in from the highway. They lay side by side inches from the crest. The colonel peered over. “Give me my glasses, Luba.” She reached into a bag and pulled out a pair of field binoculars, which Safcek trained on the valley floor a mile and a half away. The laser complex leaped up at him.

  While Luba wrote furiously on a small pad, Safcek analyzed the enemy before him.

  “The main road circles up to the gate from my left. The gate itself has three men on it, all armed with AK-47s. There’s a fence maybe ten feet high running around the camp on all sides. Probably electrically charged judging from the wires on the top. Let’s see.” Safcek shifted his gaze. “The big building has forty or fifty soldiers walking their posts. To the left are a row of homes, the scientists’, Richter figured. It looks pretty peaceful in that section at least.”

  The colonel focused away from the camp to find further security measures. Under a clump of trees he saw two trucks with SAM surface-to-air missiles on their backs. In front of the gate, he noticed a gully running perhaps two hundred yards out toward the highway. It was the bed of an old stream, dried up years before. Safcek examined the gully for several minutes, noting the natural cover it seemed to afford anyone approaching the installation. Then he whispered: “Luba, they have dogs out on patrol.” He was following a guard walking carefully along the gully floor while holding a hound of indeterminate extraction on a leash. The guard stopped finally, turned, and went back up the gully toward the main gate. Luba grabbed Safcek’s arm and pointed.

  The roof of the big building was swinging back from its moorings. A siren began to moan in the distance. In two minutes the black interior of the laser works was exposed, but Safcek could not see clearly into the depths. As he cursed his luck, the enormous barrel of the secret weapon emerged and probed the sky. At least fifty feet of it was naked to the colonel’s inspection and he scanned it carefully. “There’s a line of concentric rings spaced a foot apart all the way down. The gun is made of some sort of silver metal. And the aperture at the front is approximately fifty feet in diameter.”

  The siren sounded again, and the laser slowly retreated into its lair. The roof slid back into place, and Joe Safcek was finished with his observations. “That’s a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s firing, I imagine.” They dropped back from the crest and started toward the car.

  Boris and Peter were hard at work. Seeing a car bearing down on them from the north, they had begun fixing the tire. Peter was unscrewing the nuts from the wheel, while Boris stared diffidently at the automobile, which slowed and suddenly pulled over to the opposite side of the road. Two policemen got out; one was unbuttoning his hip holster.

  Boris looked up at the visitors who came straight to the side of the car.

  “Trouble, Lieutenant?” one asked.

  “Just a damn flat. My friend here is the mechanic.”

  Peter smiled at the strangers.

  “May we see your papers, please.”

  “Of course.” Boris and Peter handed their forged documents to the officers, who read them carefully.

  Joe Safcek and Luba were only fifty feet away and in the culvert when they heard the voices. They fell to the ground immediately and listened as Boris talked with the police.

  “Can you tell us where we can get something to eat farther on?”

  One of his inquisitors frowned over the documents and then smiled: “In Leninskoye, you’ll find a great little restaurant called Vanya. And it’s cheap, too.” He handed back the papers, saluted, and walked back to his car with the other policeman. Boris waved once as the auto sped down the highway toward Tashkent.

  When it was just a speck, Boris whistled, and Joe and Luba climbed into view within seconds. Peter threw the tools into the trunk, kicked the new tire, and got into the car with the others. Safcek drove north two hundred yards past a sign that read, “Unauthorized personnel not admitted.” He noted the side road leading to the main gate, made a U-turn, and began the return trip to the sanctuary of the mosque. He warned Boris and Peter to keep low in case the police came back along the same road, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. In twenty minutes, the car was swallowed up in the traffic of Tashkent, and the members of Operation Scratch resumed their roles as fascinated tourists in the heart of Soviet Central Asia.

  Inside the laser complex, Professor Anatoly Serkin, now the acting director, finished checking data on the weapon after the test run. His fellow scientists continued to avoid discussion with him about the abduction of Andrei Parchuk as he wandered through his last inspections. It had been that way all day. A heavy, almost mournful silence pervaded the laboratory area.

  At 5:15 P.M., Serkin went home for a brief, quiet supper with Nadia and Galina. He spoke little, and only Galina’s insistence on playing with a toy roused him to any enthusiasm. He finally tucked her into bed and joined his wife for coffee on the porch. Sensing his deep depression, Nadia tried to get him to talk about Parchuk’s kidnapping. She put her arms about his neck and whispered tenderly to him, but he pushed her away abruptly.

  “Nadia, Parchuk is a dead man.” There was despair in his voice. “When State Security gets its hands on you, you’re already at the grave. And how he looked when they drove off! That was just a sample.”

  She broke
down at the remembrance of his description. Serkin stroked her hair softly.

  “Just pray for him, Nadia. Pray for his soul.”

  Serkin could not continue. He stumbled off the porch and back down the road to his office.

  In the radio room at Peshawar, Karl Richter had time on his hands. Richter was now only a bystander. He had given Safcek and the others all the information the United States intelligence community had at its disposal. He had been satisfied that no other team had ever gone on an assignment with such a wealth of hard facts about the enemy. Yet he was fearful for the people he had seen leave by helicopter. That they could actually accomplish a mission so hazardous deep inside the Soviet Union was almost inconceivable. Richter had watched Joe Safcek during the briefings and been completely impressed with the man’s calm professionalism. At times, he found himself believing that Safcek and his group had a chance. Then he would remember Grigor Rudenko, who defied the odds for years but finally was unmasked and destroyed. And Joe Safcek was facing obstacles far more formidable than Grigor had faced. Richter was convinced the Russians would trap him as they had trapped Grigor, who was now probably buried in an unmarked grave.

  Grigor Rudenko lay on his cot at Lubianka. His mouth was a constant aching void, crusted with blood, and oozing pus from infected wounds in the gum. But he was alive by grace of his inquisitors. In the past twenty-four hours, they had brought him to the interrogation room twice and forced more sodium pentothal into his arm, and Grigor had dreamed more beautiful dreams and told the man in the white coat about his contacts with the British Embassy and the materials he had passed to American intelligence for many years and about a man named Karl Richter who was his best friend and original espionage drop. The interrogators were fascinated with his long rambling stories and intended to keep him alive to dredge every detail of his Jekyll and Hyde existence from him. They were ecstatic at having found a master spy in their midst.

  They even began to feed him a light soup, which he forced past his torn lips and swallowed gratefully. A nurse came to his cell and bathed his tortured body with a cooling sponge. In his waking moments. Grigor thought about his wife and children. In his induced dreams, he always reverted to his carefree boyhood in the United States. There Grigor could laugh and relax while he confessed heinous crimes against the Soviet state.

  Now, at 1 P.M., Moscow time, on the afternoon of September 13, they came for him again. The man in the white coat was waiting in the antiseptic hospital room, but he had no needle in his hand. Vassili Baranov, deputy director of the state security police, was there too, and he nodded pleasantly to Rudenko, who refused to acknowledge him. Baranov told Rudenko to sit on a chair in the corner. A bright light was switched on over his head, and it shone directly into his battered face. Rudenko sat there for fifteen minutes, wondering when his interrogation would begin.

  Then the door opened, and two secret police officers entered, supporting a man between them. Rudenko squinted to recognize him. But the light blinded him. Baranov spoke sharply, and the man was brought directly in front of Grigor, who could see that the victim had a broken lower jaw, which hung loosely away from his face. Blood masked his mouth.

  “Grigor, this is your old friend, Parchuk.”

  Rudenko stared into the man’s terror-stricken eyes.

  “He’s my wife’s uncle. Why is he here?” Rudenko mumbled.

  Parchuk was bent forward, his head down. One of the secret policemen tapped him lightly on the broken jaw, and the old man groaned loudly and raised his head to stare at the form under the light. Parchuk began to wail. Baranov ran to him and screamed: “Stop this, Parchuk. Look at him and see what stubbornness gets you.”

  The old professor sobbed: “Grigor, Grigor, I am so sorry I did this to you.”

  Baranov said: “That’s all I wanted to know.” He took his pistol and placed the barrel in the professor’s right ear.

  “Say good-bye to Grigor, traitor.” As the professor tried to swing away from the gun, Baranov pressed the trigger, and a bullet ripped into Parchuk’s head. He crumpled into a heap.

  Grigor Rudenko stared at the body, but felt too numb to utter a sound. Baranov ordered the corpse taken out and said calmly to Rudenko, “Let’s you and I have another chat.” He led Grigor to the table where the man in the white coat waited with the needle.

  Grigor Rudenko was listening again to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. He now looked forward to his visits to the antiseptic white room at the end of the hall because he could hear his favorite ballet in the brief intervals when he was not under the influence of sodium pentothal. That pleasure combined with his visits to Sheila and Karl during his reveries made Grigor eagerly anticipate the moments when Baranov summoned him for friendly chats.

  As Dr. Senski plunged the needle into his vein, Grigor tried to keep time to the music with his hand but he floated slowly away from Lubianka.

  Baranov’s voice was calm and quite pleasant.

  “Grigor, I never mentioned this before, but did you ever have any dealings with other embassies in Moscow?”

  Karl Richter interrupted Baranov, and Grigor was happy. “Grigor, you drive, and I’ll be in the back seat with Maureen. And don’t keep turning around with wisecracks.”

  “What about the French, Grigor?”

  “I knew Maurice Debran there very well.”

  “Hasn’t he been transferred back to Paris?”

  “Stop driving so fast, Grigor. You’ll kill us all.” Sheila was very nervous but suddenly laughed gaily when Grigor pulled into the lovers’ lane near the lake.

  “Yes, he went back last Sunday.”

  “Did you see him off?”

  “No, but I was at his apartment on Saturday night.”

  “Did you give him anything?”

  Grigor kissed Sheila’s lips. Her eyes were closed and her honey-colored hair tickled his nose.

  “I gave him the other set of blueprints and notes about the laser.”

  “The other set?”

  “Yes, Parchuk gave me two in case one was lost …”

  Baranov’s voice had changed. He was tense, rough in his pursuit of Rudenko.

  “The same as the set that Brandon had?”

  “Exactly.”

  Baranov groaned audibly. “Bastard! I should have known he’d be too smart to trust it all to that American teacher.”

  Sheila lay looking up at him, her head in his lap, and he was murmuring: “Will you wait for me?” She reached for his mouth with her lips.

  “Grigor, who was supposed to be Debran’s contact?”

  “I don’t know. Someone in the CIA.”

  “In Paris?”

  Grigor’s hands moved on her back.

  “In Paris?”

  “Yes, yes, but I don’t know who.”

  “Are you sure you don’t know?”

  Sheila was breathing rapidly, and Grigor looked quickly into the back seat, but Karl and Maureen had gotten out and walked down to the lake.

  “Are you sure, Grigor?”

  “Yes. You know that I’m telling you the truth. Debran has friends in the CIA who pay him for different jobs.”

  “Did he know what was in the package you gave him?”

  He could feel her mouth against his ear.

  “Did Debran have any idea what he was delivering?”

  Grigor crushed Sheila against him.

  “Answer me, Grigor.” Baranov was relentless. “Answer me.”

  Sheila put her arms around Grigor and tried to hold him to her. “Don’t go away now,” but he had drawn back to quiet the insistent questioner.

  “Debran knew nothing. Are you satisfied?”

  The exasperated Baranov said: “Take him out of here. I have to report this to Moskanko right away.”

  Fire trucks from fourteen communities had been called in to try and contain the explosion of the natural gas pipeline feeding into Washington. Two enormous breaks were allowing millions of cubic feet of gas to escape into the atmosphere. The billowing f
ires had advanced hungrily on a huge forest, which blazed quickly. By 7 A.M., the area was a holocaust, consuming virgin timber and threatening to spread into populated areas.

  In the White House, President William Stark heard the news on the morning TV show from New York. He picked up the phone and called Markle at his home. When the commissioner came on the line, Stark knew he was totally depressed by his night’s work. “Herb, in one half hour, initiate phase two. Correct?” Markle sighed wearily and agreed.

  “And Herb, after that I’ll take over. You just agree with everything you hear. OK?”

  “OK, Mr. President Don’t worry about me. But I just hope this doesn’t get out of hand.” Stark reassured him and hung up.

  At 8 A.M., a thunderous explosion rocked the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, north of the city. Two miles beyond the city limits, on a deserted hill, another natural gas pipeline burst in two places, creating a tremendous fire through the heavily timbered land. Fire-fighting equipment was called in from forty miles distant to contain the inferno.

  Stark heard this news within minutes from Robert Randall, who met him in the Situation Room. Stark listened to a description of the explosion and then asked Randall what Safcek was doing. “He’s not supposed to report in to Richter until ten A.M., our time. By then he’ll know what he’s going to do about the laser.”

  “By the way,” Randall said, “Ambassador Tolypin and the entire Soviet Embassy staff flew to New York from National at eight A.M. When reporters asked them what was going on, they refused to talk.”

  Randall picked up the transcript of the Soviet cruiser’s conversation and handed it over to Stark: “The duty officer says you’ve heard this one. What do you think?”

  Stark shrugged. “It’s just an attempt to rattle me, I’m sure. They’re trying to stampede us in these last fifteen hours.”

  A phone call came in for the President from Markle.

  “Mr. President, the explosions we’ve had this morning north and south of the city have caused possible breaks all along the lines through the city. We may have as many as fifty from the stresses caused by the blasts. I wanted to warn you about seepage.”