"The body parts will be burned at two widely separated locations. This will be accomplished long before you get the tape. That ends our message. We await further instructions" And the tape returned to the dramatization of the 1920 Olympics - or was it 1924? Bock wondered. Not that it mattered, of course.

"Yes, Colonel?"

"One of my officers has failed to check in." The Colonel was from Directorate T, the technical branch of the First Chief Directorate. The holder of a doctor's degree in engineering, his personal specialty was missile systems. He had worked in America and France, ferreting out the secrets of various military weapons before being promoted to his current job.

"Details?"

"Captain Yevgeny Stepanovich Feodorov, age thirty, married, one child, a fine young officer on the major's list. He was one of the three I sent into Germany at your direction to check out their nuclear facilities. He's one of my best."

"How long?" Golovko asked.

"Six days. He flew into Berlin via Paris last week. He had German papers, good ones from downstairs, and a list of ten names to investigate. His instructions were to maintain a low profile unless he discovered something important, in which case he was to make contact with Station Berlin - what's left of it, I mean. We scheduled a periodic check-in, of course. He didn't make it, and after twenty-four hours, I got the alert."

"Could it be that he's just careless?"

"Not this boy," the Colonel said flatly. "Does the name mean anything to you?"

"Feodorov wasn't his father ?"

"Stefan Yurievich, yes. Yevgeniy is his youngest son."

"Good God, Stefan taught me," Golovko said. "Possibility of ?"

"Defection?" The Colonel shook his head angrily. "Not a chance. His wife is in the chorus with the opera. No - they met in university and married young over the objections of both sets of parents. It's a love-match like we all wish we had. She's a stunningly beautiful girl, voice like an angel. Only a zhopnik would walk away from her. Then there's the child. He is by all reports a good father." Golovko saw where this was leading.

"Arrested, then?"

"I haven't heard a whisper. Perhaps you might arrange to have that checked. I fear the worst." The Colonel frowned and stared down at the rug. He didn't want to be the one who broke the news to Natalia Feodorova.

"Hard to believe," Golovko said.

"Sergey Nikolay'ch, if your suspicions are correct, then this program we were tasked to investigate is a matter of grave importance to them, is it not? We may have confirmed something in the most expensive way possible."

General-Lieutenant Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko was silent for several seconds. It's not supposed to be like this, he told himself. The intelligence business is supposed to be civilized. Killing each other's officers is a thing of the distant past. We don't do that sort of thing anymore, haven't done it in years decades

"None of the alternatives are credible, are they?"