Bock and Russell left. They circled the bottom level, just so that Gunther could be sure he had the configuration memorized. Then that became unnecessary when he found a stadium diagram printed on a small card.

"Seen what you wanted?" Marvin asked, when they got back to the car.

"Yes, possibly."

"You know, that's pretty subtle," the American mused aloud.

"What do you mean?"

"Dickin' with the TV. The really dumb thing about revolutionaries is that they overlook the psychological stuff. You don't have to kill a lot of people, just pissin' them off, scarin' them, that's enough, isn't it?"

Bock stopped at the parking-lot exit and looked at his companion. "You have learned much, my friend."

"This is pretty hot stuff," Ryan said, leafing through the pages.

"I didn't know it was that bad." Mary Patricia Foley agreed.

"How are you feeling?"

The senior field officer's eyes twinkled. "Clyde has dropped. Waiting for my water to break."

Jack looked up. "Clyde?"

"That's what I'm calling him - her - whatever."

"Doing your exercises?"

"Rocky Balboa should be in the shape I'm in. Ed's got the nursery all painted up. The crib is put back together. All ready, Jack."

"How much time will you be taking off?"

"Four weeks, maybe six."

"I may want you to go over some of this at home," Ryan said, lingering on page two.

"Long as you pay me." Mary Pat laughed.

"What do you think, MP?"

"I think SPINNAKER is the best source we have. If he says it, it's probably true."

"We haven't caught a whiff of this anywhere else "

"That's why you recruit good penetration agents."

"True." Ryan had to agree.

The report from Agent SPINNAKER wasn't quite earth-shaking, but it was like the first rumble that got people worrying about a major quake. Since the Russians had taken the cork out of the bottle, the Soviet Union had developed an instant case of political schizophrenia. Wrong term, Ryan reflected. Multiple-personality disorder, perhaps. There were five identifiable political areas: the true-believing communists, who thought that any divergence from the True Path was a mistake (the Forward-to-the-Past crowd, some called them); the progressive socialists who wanted to create socialism with a human face (something that had singularly failed in Massachusetts, Jack thought wryly),- the middle-of-the-roaders who wanted some free-market capitalism, backed up with a solid safety net (or craved the worst of both worlds, as any economist could say); the reformists, who wanted a thin net and a lot of capitalism (but no one knew what capitalism was yet, except for a rapidly expanding criminal sector); and on the far right, those who wanted a right-wing authoritarian government (which was what had put Communism in place over seventy years before). The groups on the extreme ends of the spectrum had perhaps 10 percent each in the Congress of People's Deputies. The remaining 80 percent of the votes were fairly evenly split among the three vaguely centrist positions. Naturally enough, various issues scrambled allegiances - environmentalism was particularly hot and divisive - and the biggest wild card was the incipient break-up of the republics that had always chafed under Russian rule, all the more so because of the political coda imposed from Moscow. Finally, each of the five groupings had its own political sub-sets. For example, there was currently a lot of talk from the political right of inviting the most likely Romanov heir-presumptive back to Moscow - not to take over, but merely to accept a semi-official apology for the murder of his ancestors. Or so the cover-story went. Whoever had come up with that idea, Jack thought, was either the most naive son of a bitch since Alice went down the rabbit hole or a politician with a dangerously simplistic mindset. The good news, CIA's Station Paris reported, was that the Prince of all the Russias had a better feel for politics and his own safety than his sponsors did.