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persons you have here who are no longer to work on the project. All of them are security risks."
    Tarkovsky scanned the list. "But these are eminently qualified personnel, Comrade," he protested. "Some of them I have worked with for years. I am not sure I can carry out the project without them."
    "Nonsense," Nekrasov said, coldly. "Your field is space science, Comrade Tarkovsky. Leave state security to me." A not-so-oblique reminder of his former position. "Dismiss these people. Other positions, less sensitive, will be found for them. Then send me a list of persons to replace them. Make it a long list, with at least three hundred percent redundancy factor. Many of those you propose will also have to be vetoed for security reasons."
    Tarkovsky was stunned. Did this KGB paranoid think that qualified people were as easy to find as strongarm men for his goon squads? Even so, a Class One priority meant that he could transfer in personnel from almost any other space project. He had never had such power, such a budget, at his disposal. Very few Soviet scientists ever had. But it meant that Peter the Great was no longer his project. As of now, it belonged to Sergei Nekrasov. He lit one of his coarse, cheap cigarettes, stalling.
    "Comrade, I have been involved with our space effort as long as there has been a Soviet space program. I am sure that none of my colleagues has ever received such a carte blanche . . . ."
    "You want to know whether I have the authority to do this?" Nekrasov asked, bluntly. "I assure you that I have. Do you think such a thing could be carried out without the full support of the highest authority?" His glare was in no way mitigated by the thickness of his lenses. "Believe me, Comrade Tarkovsky, as closely as I shall be watching this project, they will be watching me."
    Tarkovsky smoked the raw tobacco without tasting it. He had just been told that the Deputy Premier's future was in his hands. Failure might well prove fatal.
    "It can be done, Comrade Nekrasov," he said. "Just as I proposed it. It will be done."

CHAPTER TWO

    WASHINGTON, D.C.

    Sam Taggart slapped his alarm clock into silence as he rolled from his bed. He ached all over. The months of therapy had put him back in operating condition, but it would be a long time before all the effects of his injuries wore off. He crossed the spartan little efficiency apartment and went into the bathroom, switching on lights as he went. At six o'clock on a winter morning, Washington was still dark.
    He splashed water into his bleary eyes, brushed his teeth and shaved. He was deeply tanned in winter because he had been recuperating in Florida. Against the tanned skin, the new scars on flank, chest and shoulder were pale pink. There were also older, whiter scars. Before leaving the bathroom he stepped on the scale and noted that he was still about ten pounds below his normal weight. He decided to step up his exercise program at the gym no matter what the damned doctors said and add a few more calories to his diet.
    He dressed and went downstairs and across the street to the early-opening diner where he usually had breakfast. He ordered ham and eggs and pancakes and hash brown potatoes, deciding to put his higher-calorie regimen into effect immediately. The waitress, who was familiar with his habits, left a pot of coffee on his table. She studied him from behind the counter as she waited for the cook to fix his order. He hadn't been in for a long time, and he had changed a little since she had last seen him. He was a little thinner, for one thing, and he hadn't had a whole lot of weight to spare in the first place. The skin was stretched more tautly across his prominent cheek bones. His already broken nose looked as if it had been broken again. Most of her early-morning customers were government workers heading toward their jobs. If he was a government man, it wasn't a desk job he was holding down.
    Taggart read the newspaper while he waited for his order, downing