Of the three of them Fyedorenko, as general secretary of the CPSU, was nominally the most junior. And in theory they were all equal, each Politburo member having only one vote. But nothing is ever as it seems in Russia. In reality, Bulganov had little power and in the months since the old man’s death, Fyedorenko had severely undercut the scope of Suvarov’s authority. As party secretary and chairman of the Central Committee, Fyedorenko, like the Pope, was primum inter pares, “the first among equals.” Once Suvarov had been a superb in-fighter, who had helped to depose Khrushchev after the Cuban fiasco. Recently he had been in ill health and seemed to lack the stamina to withstand Fyedorenko’s incursions, yet he was still a formidable presence, for all his facelessness, and Fyedorenko had no idea whether or not he would support the Molotov Plan.

The remainder of the ministers were seated down the length of the table. Nearest to Bulganov sat Alexei Andreyev, the head of the KGB and at fifty-nine, the youngest minister in the room. He was stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit and was considered attractive by the KGB secretaries among whom he cut such a wide and democratic swathe that he was facetiously called “the Father of Soviet Intelligence” among the KGB small-fry. Fyedorenko knew he could count on Andreyev’s support, since the Molotov Plan had been a KGB operation from the beginning.

Directly across from Andreyev, Marshal Orlov, defense minister and head of the Red Army, was nervously drumming his pen against the note pad, impatient for Fyedorenko to begin. He was the only other man in the room who knew of the Molotov Plan and was its strongest supporter, having maintained for years that the outcome of the revolutionary struggle against the West would inevitably require a military solution. A tall, grizzled, but still powerful man in his seventies, he had fought under Marshal Zhukov, whom he regarded as the savior of Mother Russia, during the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, and it was no secret that he thought of himself as Zhukov’s natural successor.

Next to Orlov sat the foreign minister, Ivan Kishinev, a suave diplomat in banker’s pinstripes, his salt and pepper hair slicked neatly back. He had the sleek air of a fat cat, the kind who would be equally at home at an embassy party or a conference of businessmen in Brussels. Indeed, the slang expression for a fat cat, nachalstvo, occurred to Fyedorenko. Kishinev was “smooth enough to piss down your back and convince you it was raining,” as the old Russian saying went. His was the face most familiar to westerners, always providing a façade of reasonableness to the zigs and zags of Soviet policy. In truth, Kishinev was a bit too enamored of the West, Fyedorenko thought with a frown. If he was to have opposition, it would come from Kishinev.