Red Storm Rising

It was a bitterly cold day in Moscow. Snow piles were heaped at the roadsides. The sky was a frigid crystal blue. And the car's heater didn't work. Flynn drove while his friend read aloud through the handout. The draft treaty proposal took up nineteen annotated pages. The Reuters correspondent was a Londoner who had begun as a police reporter, and since covered assignments all over the world. He and Flynn had met many years before at the famous Caravelle Hotel in Saigon, and shared drinks and typewriter ribbons on and off for more than two decades. In the face of a Russian winter, they remembered the oppressive heat of Saigon with something akin to nostalgia.

"It's bloody fair," Calloway said wonderingly, his breath giving ghostly substance to his words. "They propose a builddown with elimination of many existing weapons, allowing both sides to replace obsolete launchers, both sides to reach a total of five thousand deliverable warheads, that number to remain stable for five years after the three-year reduction period. There is a separate proposal to negotiate complete removal of 'heavy' missiles, replacing them with mobile missiles, but to limit missile flight tests to a fixed number per year-" He flipped that page and rapidly scanned the remainder. "Nothing in the draft treaty about your Star Wars research...? Didn't he mention that in his statement? Patrick, old son, this is, as you say, dynamite. This could as easily have been written in Washington. It will take months to work out all the technical points, but this is a bloody serious, and bloody generous, proposal."

"Nothing about Star Wars?" Flynn frowned briefly as he turned right. Did that mean that the Russians had made a breakthrough of their own? Have to query Washington about that... "We got us a story here, Willie. What's your lead? How's 'Peace' grab you?" Calloway just laughed at that.

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

American intelligence agencies, like their counterparts throughout the world, monitor all news wire services. Toland was examining the AP and Reuters reports before most news bureau chiefs, and comparing them with the version transmitted over Soviet microwave circuits for publication in the regional editions of Pravda and Isvestia. The way items of hard news were reported in the Soviet Union was intended to show Party members how their leaders felt.

"We've been down this road before," his section chief said. "The last time, things broke down on this issue of mobile missiles. Both sides want them, but both sides are afraid of the other side having them."

"But the tone of the report-"

"They're always euphoric about their arms-control proposals, damn it! Hell, Bob, you know that."

"True, sir, but it's the first time that I know of that the Russians have unilaterally removed a weapons platform from service."

"The 'Yankees' are obsolete."

"So what? They never throw anything away, obsolete or not. They still have World War II artillery pieces sitting in warehouses in case they need them again. This is different, and the political ramifications-"

"We're not talking politics, we're talking nuclear strategy," the section chief growled back.

As if there were a difference, Toland said to himself.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Well, Pasha?"

"Comrade General, we truly have a man's work before us," Alekseyev answered, standing at attention in the Kiev headquarters of the Southwest Theater.

"Our troops need extensive unit training. Over the weekend I read through more than eighty regimental readiness reports from our tank and motor-rifle divisions." Alekseyev paused before going on. Tactical training and readiness was the bane of the Soviet military. Their troops were almost entirely conscripts, in and out in two years, half of whose uniformed service was occupied just in acquiring basic military skills. Even the noncoms, the backbone of every army since the Roman legions, were conscripts selected for special training academies, then lost as soon as their enlistment periods ended. For that reason, the Soviet military leaned heavily on its officers, who often performed what in the West was sergeants' work. The professional officer corps of the Soviet Army was its only permanent, only dependable feature. In theory. "The truth of the matter is that we don't know our readiness posture at the moment. Our colonels all use the same language in their reports, without the slightest deviation. Everyone reports meeting norms, with the same amount of training hours, the same amount of political indoctrination, the same number of practice shots fired-that is, a deviation of under three percent-and the requisite number of field exercises run, all of course of the proper type."

"As prescribed in our training manuals," the Colonel General noted.