Now Dogin looked at the men. Like him, their expressions hadn't changed. "This was not unexpected," said the Minister of the Interior. He moved the photograph of his parents closer, running the back of his fingers down the glass. He seemed to be speaking to them. "Foreign Minister Zhanin has won the election. It's the time, you know. Everyone's giddy with liberty, but it's liberty without responsibility, freedom without sanity, experimentation without caution. Russia has elected a president who wants to create a new currency, make our economy a slave to what we can sell abroad. Eliminate the black market by making the rubles and goods it holds utterly worthless. Eliminate political rivals by making it impossible to oust him lest it upset foreign markets. Eliminate the military as an adversary by paying the Generals more money to serve his policies than to protect Mother Russia. 'Like Germany and Japan,' he tells us, 'an economically strong Russia needs fear no enemy.' " Dogin's eyes narrowed as he looked at his father's image. "For seventy years we feared no enemy. Your hero Stalin did not rule Russia, he ruled the world! His name itself came from stal-- steel. Our people were made of it then. And they responded to power. Today, they seek comfort and respond to audacity and empty promises."

"Welcome to democracy, my dear Nikolai," said General Viktor Mavik, a barrel-chested man with a booming voice. "Welcome to a world in which NATO courts the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, nations of the former Warsaw Pact, to join the Western alliance without so much as consulting us."

Deputy Finance Minister Yevgeny Grovlev leaned forward, his sharp chin resting on his thumbs, his slender fingers steepled under his hooked nose. "We must be careful not to overreact," he said. "Zhanin's reforms won't happen fast enough. The people will turn on him faster than they did on Gorbachev and Yeltsin."

"My adversary is young but not stupid," Dogin replied. "He wouldn't have made promises without agreements being in place. And when he pulls them off, the Germans and Japanese will have what they failed to obtain in World War II. The United States will own what it failed to get during the Cold War. In one way or another, they will all possess Mother Russia."

Dogin turned his eyes to one more map: the map of Russia and Eastern Europe on his computer screen. He pressed a key and Eastern Europe grew larger. Russia vanished.

"A keystroke of history and we're gone," he said.

"Only by our inactivity," said lanky Grovlev.