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The skull lifted and the hard bulging brown eyes looked straight down the table into the eyes of General Vozdvishensky General Vozdvishensky ed to look back calmly and even with a hint of appraisal

That is a deep one, thought General G Let us put the spotlight on him and see how he shows up on the sound-track

'Coold flashed from both corners of his mouth as he stretched his lips in a chairhest tree has an axe waiting at its foot We have never thought that our departments were so successful as to be beyond criticism What I have been instructed to say to you will not have coe with a good heart and get down to business'

Round the table there was no answering smile to these platitudes General G had not expected that there would be He lit a cigarette and continued 'I said that we have at once to recoence field, and one of our departments–no doubt my own–will be called upon to carry out this act'

An inaudible sigh of relief went round the table So at least SMERSH would be the responsible depart

'But the choice of a target will not be an easy matter, and our collective responsibility for the correct choice will be a heavy one'

Soft-hard, hard-soft The ball was now back with the conference 'It is not just a question of blowing up a building or shooting a prieois horseplay is not contemplated Our operation must be delicate, refined and aience apparat of the West It e which the public will hear perhaps nothing of, but which will be the secret talk of government circles But itthat the world will lick its lips and sneer at the shame and stupidity of our enemies Naturally Governood It will be a piece of ''hard'' policy And the agents and spies of the West will know it, too, and they will marvel at our cleverness and they will tree their minds Our own operatives will be stireater efforts by our display of strength and genius But of course we shall deny any knowledge of the deed, whatever it may be, and it is desirable that the conorance of our complicity'

General G paused and looked down the table at the representative of RUMID, who again held his gaze ianization at which ill strike, and then to decide on the specific target within that organization Comrade Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky, since you observe the foreign intelligence scene from a neutral standpoint [this was a jibe at the notorious jealousies that exist between the ence of the GRU and the Secret Service of the MGB, perhaps you would survey the field for us We wish to have your opinion of the relative ience Services We will then choose the one which is the e'

General G sat back in his tall chair He rested his elbows on the arers of his joined hands, like a teacher preparing to listen to a long construe

General Vozdvishensky was not disence, mostly abroad, for thirty years He had served as a 'doorman' at the Soviet Embassy in London under Litvinoff He had worked with the Tass Agency in New York and had then gone back to London, to Aanization For five years he had been Military Attaché under the brilliant Madame Kollontai in the Stockhole, the Sovietthe war, he had been for a while resident Director in Switzerland, or 'Schon, and there he had helped sow the seeds of the sensationally successful but tragically one several times into Germany as a courier to the 'Rote Kapelle', and had narrowly escaped being cleaned up with it And after the war, on transfer to the Foreign Ministry, he had been on the inside of the Burgess and Maclean operation and on countless other plots to penetrate the Foreign Ministries of the West He was a professional spy to his finger-tips and he was perfectly prepared to put on record his opinions of the rivals ho swords all his life

The ADC at his side was less co pinned down in this way, and without a full depart He scoured his brain clear and sharpened his ears to catch every word

'In this matter,' said General Vozdvishensky carefully, 'one ood spies and it is not always the biggest countries that have the most or the best But Secret Services are expensive, and small countries cannot afford the co-ordinated effort which produces good intelligence–the forgery departestive apparatus that evaluates and coents serving Norway, Holland, Belgiureat nuisance to us if these countries knew the value of their reports ortheir inforer powers, they prefer to sit on it and feel important So we need not worry with these smaller countries,' he paused, 'until we co on us for centuries They have always had better information on the Baltic than even Finland or Gererous I would like to put a stop to their activities'

General G interrupted 'Co spy scandals in Sweden One more scandal would not make the world look up Please continue'