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administer it.” Moore was the former Chief Judge of the Texas State Court of Appeals. “They don't have those rules yet, not when the Politburo can reach out and execute anyone they don't like without a semblance of an appeals process. It must be like living in hell. You can't depend on anything. It's like Rome under Caligula—if he got a notion, that notion had the force of law. Hell, though, even Rome had some laws the emperors had to abide by. Not our Russian friends.” The others couldn't really appreciate how horrid a concept that was to their Director. He'd once been the finest trial lawyer in a state noted for the quality of its legal community, and then a learned judge on a bench replete with thoughtful, fair men. Most Americans were as accustomed to the rule of law as to the ninety feet between bases on a baseball diamond. For Ritter and Greer, it was more important that, before his legal career, Arthur Moore had been a superior field spook. “So, what the hell do I tell the President?”
    “The truth, Arthur,” Greer suggested. “We don't know because they don't know.”
    That was the only truthful and rational thing he could say, of course, but: “Damn it, Jim, they pay us to know!”
    “It comes down to how threatened the Russians feel. Poland is just a cat's paw for them, a vassal state that jumps when they say 'jump,' ” Greer said. “The Russians can control what their own people see on TV and in Pravda—”
    “But they can't control the rumors that come across the border,” said Ritter. “And the stories their soldiers tell when they come home from service there— and in Germany, and in Czechoslovakia, and in Hungary, and what they hear on Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.” CIA controlled the first of those outlets directly, and, while the other was theoretically almost independent, that was a fiction nobody believed. Ritter himself had a great deal of input on both propaganda arms of the American government. The Russians understood and respected good agitprop.
    “How squeezed do you suppose they feel?” Moore wondered aloud.
    “Just two or three years ago, they thought they were on the crest of the wave,” Greer announced. “Our economy was in the toilet with inflation and we had gas lines, the Iran mess. They'd just got Nicaragua to drop into their lap. Our national morale was bad, and…”
    “Well, that's changing, thank God,” Moore went on for him. “Full reversal?” he asked. It was too much to hope for, but at heart Arthur Moore was an optimist—otherwise, how could he be DCI?
    “We're heading that way, Arthur,” Ritter said. “They're slow to catch on. They are not the most agile of thinkers. That's their greatest weakness. The top dogs are wedded to their ideology to the point that they can't see around it. You know, we can hurt these bastards—hurt 'em bad—if we can analyze their weaknesses thoroughly and come up with a way to exploit them.”
    “You really think so, Bob?” the DDI asked.
    “I don't think it—I damned well know it!” the DDO shot back. “They are vulnerable, and best of all, they don't yet know that they are vulnerable. It's time to do something. We've got a President now who'll back our play if we can come up with something good enough for him to invest his political capital. Congress is so afraid of him, they won't stand in the way.”
    “Robert,” the DCI said, “it sounds to me like you've got something rattling up your sleeve.”
    Ritter thought for a few seconds before going on. “Yes, Arthur, I do. I've been thinking about this since they brought me in from the field eleven years ago. I haven't written a single word of it down.” He didn't have to explain why. Congress could subpoena any piece of paper in the building—well, almost any piece—but not something carried only in a man's mind. But perhaps this was the time to set it down. “What is the Soviets' fondest wish?”
    “To bring us down,” Moore answered. That