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'I have ahere in a few minutes' time, Comrade General–RUMID, GRU and of course MGB After that, if action is agreed, I shall have awith my Head of Operations and Head of Plans In case liquidation is decided upon, I have taken the precaution of bringing the necessary operative to Moscow This time I shall myself supervise the preparations We do not want another Khoklov affair'

'The devil knoe don't TelephoneI wish to report to the Praesidiu' 'Certainly, Comrade General'

General G put back the receiver and pressed a bell under his desk At the same time he switched on the wire-recorder His ADC, an MGB captain, came in

'Have they arrived?' 'Yes, Co them in'

In a few h the door and, with hardly a glance at the man behind the desk, took their places at the conference table They were three senior officers, heads of their departments, and each was accooes alone to a conference For his own protection, and for the reassurance of his department, he invariably takes a witness so that his department can have independent versions of ent on at the conference and, above all, of as said on its behalf This is iation No notes are taken at the conference and decisions are passed back to departments by word of mouth

On the far side of the table sat Lieutenant-General Slavin, head of the GRU, the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Army, with a full colonel beside him At the end of the table sat Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID, the Intelligence Departed man in plain clothes With his back to the door, sat Colonel of State Security Nikitin, Head of Intelligence for the MGB, the Soviet Secret Service, with a , Comrades'

A polite, careful murmur caht he was the only one to know, that the roo his ADC, had decided to utter the bare ood discipline and the needs of the State

'Let us sarettes and lit one with an Ahters round the table General G pinched the long cardboard tube of his cigarette so that it was alht side of his mouth He stretched his lips back fro in short clipped sentences that ca of a hiss froarette

'Comrades, we meet under instructions from Comrade General Serov General Serov, on behalf of the Praesidium, has ordered me to make known to you certain matters of State Policy We are then to confer and recommend a course of action which will be in line with this Policy and assist it We have to reach our decision quickly But our decision will be of supreme importance to the State It will therefore have to be a correct decision'

General G paused to allow the significance of his words time to sink in One by one, he slowly examined the faces of the three senior officers at the table Their eyes looked stolidly back at him Inside, these extremely ih the furnace door They were about to learn a State secret, the knowledge of which erous consequences for the in the quiet room, they felt bathed in the dreadful incandescence that shines out froh Praesidium

The final ash fell off the end of General G's cigarette on to his tunic He brushed it off and threw the cardboard butt into the basket for secret waste beside his desk He lit another cigarette and spoke through it

'Our recommendation concerns a conspicuous act of terrorism to be carried out in enemy territory within three months'

Six pairs of expressionless eyes stared at the head of SMERSH, waiting

'Comrades,' General G leant back in his chair and his voice becan policy of the USSR has entered a new phase Formerly, it was a ''Hard'' policy–a policy [he allowed himself the joke on Stalin's name] of steel This policy, effective as it was, built up tensions in the West, notably in Aerous The Americans are unpredictable people They are hysterical The reports of our Intelligence began to indicate that ere pushing America to the brink of an undeclared atomic attack on the USSR You have read these reports and you knohat I say is true We do not want such a war If there is to be a war, it is ill choose the tion Group led by Admiral Radford, were helped in their firebrand schemes by the very successes of our ''Hard'' policy So it was decided that the ti our aims A new policy was created–the ''Hard-Soft'' policy Geneva was the beginning of this policy We were ''soft'' China threatens Quemoy and Matsu We are ''hard'' We open our frontiers to a lot of newspaper h we know h and make jokes at receptions in Moscow In the est test boanin and Khrushschev and Comrade General Serov [General G carefully included the names for the ears of the tape-recorder] visit India and the East and blackguard the English When they get back, they have friendly discussions with the British Aoodwill visit to London And so it goes on–the stick and then the carrot, the smile and then the frown And the West is confused Tensions are relaxed before they have time to harden The reactions of our eneanized Meanwhile the coh at our jokes, cheer our football teaht e release a few prisoners of e wish to feed no longer!'

There were smiles of pleasure and pride round the table What a brilliant policy! What fools we areof them in the West!