CHAPTER 1

Sed'maya Ognevka, Russia

Konstantin Chernenko, newly appointed General Secretary ofthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union, stood high on the cliffsoverlooking the point where a part of the Volga River empties into the Caspian Sea. He and other high ranking Communist Partyofficials, as well as several other persons of the KGB and those inpolitical power within the Soviet Union, were gathered together toattempt to formalize a plan whereby the Soviet Union could takeover the United States and several over countries of the world. Itwas an extremely ambitious plan, but many of those gathered therewith him had said it could be done. He wasn't entirely sure aboutthat. He was more skeptical than convinced.

He stood gazing at the Volga and out across the Caspian Sea.Since he had taken over the Communist Party and was running theSoviet Union, he had already had to make many difficult decisions.But in his mind, he felt the decision he was trying to make now wasperhaps the toughest of all and undoubtedly the most far ranging. Ifsuccessful, the Soviet Union would rule most of the world and beable to take advantage of all the resources of the world.

It was March, 1984, just a month after his taking over power.And now he was being called upon to make a decision that couldpossibly rock the world if it succeeded, or could possible bringdown the Soviet Union and all who had participated, if it failed.Deep within himself he felt the chances of failure were far greaterthat those of success. He stood there thinking deeply whilecontinuously running his fingers through his thick shock of snowwhite hair. He wondered why he was being forced into makingdecisions about the operation that had been proposed. It was anoperation that was almost incomprehensible to him. It was so farranging and complex that he did not see how it could succeed.

Three days later, after much discussion and haggling, as wellas much consternation on the part of Chernenko, the groupunanimously voted to authorize the First Chief Directorate of theKGB to proceed with plans they called Hayaro. Translated intoEnglish it meant Surcease. Surcease, the operation that was intendedto give the Soviet Union power over practically all the world. TheEnd of the old order and the Beginning of a new order of theworld. Could it be done?

Adolph Hitler had had visions of Germany ruling a largeportion of the world and look what it got him. Chernenko still hadmany doubts about the success of it, but he had no doubt aboutthe consequences if it failed. He thought they ought to take somelessons from history. If it failed, the Soviet Union would likelyno longer exist as it was now. Being a hard line Communist, heshuddered to think what might happen if the Communist Partylost control of the people of the countries around the world thatit controlled. Would there be chaos in those countries? Maybe, ormaybe not! Time would tell.

Chernenko would give the Director of the KGB, the wordallowing the First Chief Directorate head to proceed, even thoughhe felt it was a long shot. Chernenko did not know at the time,but he would not see the ending of the plan. His tenure in officewould be short, brought on by his death a year later. It would bethe chore of his successor to see to it that the plan continued on.Mikhail Gorbachev would have it fall into his lap.

* * *

Langley, VA-CIA The Headquarters of theNational Clandestine Service-Office of SpecialOperations-Directorate of Intelligence

Three years later:

He sat looking at the message which had just been handedto him. Charles Minter, Deputy Director and Head of SpecialOperations, a part of the Division of the National Clandestinepart of the CIA, the section of the Central Intelligence Agencythat carried out many clandestine or covert operations around theworld. Charles was the head of the division of Special Operations.This was the most secret of the secret, only known to exist by a fewindividuals within the CIA headquarters. He was often referred toby those who worked for him, or with him, as 'Number One.'

He was mystified by the message he held in his hand. It wasfrom Bellnikov, alias Tom, French, and probably a few others alias'along the way. General Genada Bellnikov, Chief of the FSB's(formerly called the KGB under the old Soviet regime) mostfeared Directorate, the First Chief Directorate, the one which wasin constant struggle and combat with the U. S. Russian FederationBlock section of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence. Therewas only one person in the FSB with a higher ranking. That wasthe Director. Bellnikov's rank of General assured him of all theamenities and the good things the old Soviet Union, now theRussian Federation, could provide. Most would say he had it made,a good bet to become the next head of the FSB.

It had taken the message five days to get to Minter. This toldhim the message was extremely important. Bellnikov had takenextra precautions in getting it out. He had avoided the normalchannels and the high speed radio transmissions that could originatefrom several different countries. The air waves were constantlymonitored so it could be intercepted, and possibly decipheredbecause of the recent defection of the man from the US NationalSecurity Agency. The Soviets were keeping the defection quiet forthe time being. But the CIA and most of the intelligence worldknew. The US public was also being kept in the dark for the timebeing. At least they wouldn't admit the defection until such time asit began to leak to the news media.

But word of the defection had leaked to Minter and he'd beguntaking precautions, advising everyone to be extremely cautiousin what they sent out the normal ways. He didn't want any of his"illegals" being compromised if he could help it.

He was especially proud of his network of illegals, those whogave their lives to live in dread and fear, possible exposure, andalmost friendless. The illegal operatives were subject to prosecutionby the government they worked against, while legal spies were notsubject to prosecution. The legal spies, if uncovered, would simplybe sent home following a lot of negative rhetoric by the discoveringcountry.

It had taken him years to get his band of illegals to the pointthey were today. He had painstakingly selected and trained thosewho would be out there stealing or gathering the secrets needed bythe CIA to help keep the enemy at bay. These people had a lonelyexistence in a foreign country, just trying to make a contributionto hold the other side in check until the US could get a strongerhandle on them, perhaps breaking their economy.

That could be done if the people and Congress would just giveus a little more time and more money, he thought. And especially ifthey would just keep their noses out of the business and let us doit the way we need to. That would be the best thing they could do,he thought. Those in Congress who thought they knew everythingabout how intelligence should be gathered and how to go about thedaily actions needed to gather it, had their heads up their own rearends, Minter thought. The hang-up was that Minter had no way todecode the message. He had put the boys in analysis on it, but thatdidn't assure success. They might never figure it out. Even with allthe acres and acres of computers, reportedly in the neighborhoodof ninety acres, the NSA hadn't been able to break it as of yet.

Too many keys in the cipher machine it seemed. If it went abovesixty keys, it would be difficult, but if it went to the maximum ofone hundred and twenty eight keys that was known, it would beimpossible. That is unless someone slipped up and sent a straightmessage which could be compared with the message. In the pastthat had happened now and then, leading to breaking of codes ofenemy countries.

Minter had tried to begin the decipher process by using theten dollar bill he kept locked in his safe by subtracting the serialnumbers from the numbers at the beginning of the message. Thatused to work on some of the old messaging systems, but not so inthis case. It gave him no clues. Often times this would at least givehim a telephone number to call for more information. But this timethe numbers did not mean anything that he could determine. Wouldhe get any help from the NSA?

He knew that the boys in NSA weren't always the mostcooperative folks to work with. Maybe it was a turf issue of somesort. There seemed to be some sort of jealousy still preventing theirworking together sometimes. Even though the Director of the newNational Intelligence (DNI), formerly the (DCI)—Director ofCentral Intelligence, was technically in charge of the intelligencegathering of all the intelligence agencies of the US, the others stilldid pretty much did their own thing. And they strongly protectedtheir own turf, as the FBI did.

As the DNI always said, it was a fallacy to believe that theDirector of National Intelligence or the Central IntelligenceAgency could politically run all those other intelligence agencies.He might have a strong say in what was going on budget wise, butin the end they would do just about what they pleased. Mostly hehad to be satisfied with running the CIA. This country had finallyrealized the need for complete cooperation between intelligencegathering agencies and had make an effort to consolidate all effortsunder one umbrella, an umbrella that would make the efforts muchmore effective and world encompassing. This umbrella was theNational Intelligence Board. But that Board was still struggling tofind ways to assure cooperation between agencies.

His own boys finally told him the code seemed to be, at leastin part, some sort of out-dated monoalphabetic substitution system.Those systems hadn't been used in ciphering by intelligence peoplefor a long time. If it was one of those, then maybe that was thereason Bellnikov chose to use it. Minter had sent Lou Perry, hisassistant, to NSA to see if he could get more information about theintercepted maritime radio message transmission which was beingdecoded. Fortunately, the analysis boys had broken that radio codea few days earlier, with a little help from a "friend" in an unfriendlyembassy. They had had a little time to work on the message. It hadbeen monitored and received at the suggestion of that "friend." Hehoped they would have a little more time to receive and decoderadio messages before the Russians found out their maritime codehad been broken. Too bad we couldn't break the main FSB code.

Aside from the United States, the Russian Federation was theonly country who could afford the technology to have a cipheringsystem which was unbreakable as long as someone didn't give itaway. We needed one of their used one time code pads to possiblyassist us.

But on the other side of the coin, he hoped the code had reallybeen broken and it wasn't some sort of setup to throw them off.The old KGB and the present FSB had done things such as that inthe past to confuse, or to plant doubt in the minds of intelligenceagencies around the world. You just couldn't trust those peopleacross the water in matters like this sometimes. But then, youcouldn't even trust your own organization sometimes.

As he sat pondering what it was all about, Donna, his assistantbuzzed him. "Lou's here," she said.

"Send him in."

The door opened and Lou sauntered in as he usually did. Onewould look at Lou and be completely fooled. He didn't look smart,nor did he look devious. He looked sort of common, as someonehad once said. Maybe that was why he'd been a successful fieldoperative for so many years. He was deceptive, he was smart, andhe was quick. Common! He certainly wasn't common, it was just alook and manner he'd developed and cultivated over the years. Hehad out-smarted and out-fought some of the best the other side hadput out against him.

Minter walked to the water dispenser and filled a cup with coldwater. He turned and walked back behind his desk.

"Looks like we might have something here," Lou said. Hesauntered around behind the desk and stood beside Minter.

He continued, "If it is some sort of monoalphabetic substitutionsystem message, and the key which we've hung on to from the olddays is still good, the rearranged alphabet seems to make sense. Itranslated the cypertex letters into the plaintext letters and then Iran it through the computer and here's what it says." He pointed toa series of letters. "Look at these letters. We've put them together inseveral sorts of forms, but the one which seems to make the mostsense says, "Surcease now organized and functioning It is nearingtime of implementation. Implementation thought to be withinsix or seven months." He pointed out the word Surcease runningdiagonally through the jumble of letters. Then he pointed out theother words within the letter puzzle. "What do you think?" heasked. Minter took the paper and swiveled his chair so that his backwas to Lou. His eyes quickly took in all the letters and words on thepaper. Finally he turned and looked at Lou.

He flipped the switch on the intercom that would get Donnaon the line. When she answered he said, "Is there any way you canget me a cup of coffee that's fit to drink. And bring one for Lou. Helooks as if he needs a strong shot of something."

Donna answered, "Do you want me to send out for someStarbucks?"

Charles said, "If that's the only way you can get some that's fit todrink. You might try the cafeteria first, but I doubt what they havethere is drinkable at this hour of the day."

He turned his attention back to the information Lou hadbrought. After several minutes of looking at it, he replied, "I agreewith your conclusions. But what does it mean?"

"Well, Webster says surcease means to come to an end, cessation,or to discontinue."

Minter inquired, "If the message is correct, they're notreally stopping something. It says Surcease now organized andfunctioning. To me that means they've got a plan going on, andthat plan is going to put an end to something, or someone, whichthey want out of commission. And I'd surmise that once the endis accomplished, some elaborate plans will go into affect that willallow them to institute some other far reaching plans. Is it political,or is it a physical ending for someone or something? Or maybe it'sboth. Could be," he surmised. He drifted off into his own thoughts.Could it also mean the beginning of something new? He wondered.

Lou stood by as he watched Minter think. He watched Minter'seyes and he knew the computer-like brain behind the eyes wasrunning in high gear. He was processing, analyzing the ramificationsand the possibilities. He was a man who knew much and had anamazing ability to figure out complex schemes. He could alsoorganize and plan complex operations. He was the best. He wasNumber One. He was Alpha and he was KUDOVE!.

A few minutes later Minter's eyes engaged Lou's. Lou knew itwas time to talk.

"I'd say it means they've got something complicated goingwhich is to put an end to something. And I'd say, they have definiteplans of operations once the something has ended, meaningsomething that would be of great advantage to them both politicallyand economically. That's how they want things in this world to be,to their advantage." Lou was confident in his assessment as far as itwent. But that wasn't very far.

"We need a key to all this," Minter added. "We've got to findout what it means."

"How?" Lou asked.

A few minutes later Donna walked in and handed each a cup ofStarbucks coffee. She said, "Had to send out for it. As you thought,the cafeteria coffee isn't fit to drink right now." Minter looked ather and thought, that's a heck of a thing for me to have a personwith a Ph.D from Princeton doing. She was a lot more talentedthan that.

Lou thanked her. Charles turned back to Lou. "Frankly, I don'tknow how. I suggest you go over to NSA again and ask them tolook at the radio messages they've monitored in the last few weeksand see if there's anything which might help. Ask them to putthe word Surcease into the system and see what comes out. Andbe sure they add it to their watch list, in case it comes up againin some radio transmission." He stopped and seemed to be runningsomething through his mind.

He finally spoke, "This may indeed be a substitution system.Every substitution system has some consistencies within it. A ciphersystem worth a hoot does some hiding or cloaking of its repetition.That was why the Nazi's Enigma system was so difficult to break.The Brits worked on it a long time before they were able to figureit out. The Nazi's had a machine which was somewhat similar toone of the old typewriters we used to use. But the difference wasthat the machine had a series of wheels that always changed thealphabetical sequence by one letter every twenty six keystrokes. Thatmade it hard as hell to break a message. Think about that as you andthe others try to break this thing. Just think where we might bewith this Surcease thing now if we could decode every message oftheirs that goes into the air like we could during World War II."