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Page 316
open. ''Out, General," he said in his scratchy voice.
Zenobiev led the way into the base of the Spassky Tower. Two shock army soldiers with assault dries at the ready fell in behind. Kalinin noted that the interior halls of the Spassky were well guarded by at least twice the normal number of troops. So Aleksandr Cherny wasn't the fool the Soyuz conspirators had believed him to be. Once alerted to dangerby whom, Kalinin wonderedhe had moved decisively.
Kalinin kept pace with the provost colonel. If Cherny knew about the plot, did he know about the Device? Kalinin swallowed hard. His throat felt dry. The missile was to have been in readiness to fire even before Kondratiev arrived in Moscow for Orgonev's funeral. The time for it to launch itself was now five days away. That close we came, he thought bitterly. Soyuz as a movement was dead and buried. The conspirators were still above ground, but for how long?
Zenobiev signaled for the elevator to take them into the upper Spassky Tower. When the lift reached an intermediate story in the Spassky, Kalinin was led into a bare room containing one piece of furniture, a chair. Colonel Zenobiev said, "Sit. You will be called."
Without waiting to see that his instructions were obeyed, the colonel turned and marched from the room, closing the door behind him. The two troopers who had accompanied them into the tower took station on either side of the single door, their Kalashnikov rifles held across their broad, peasants' chests. Their faces were immobile. Kalinin addressed them in Russian.
"I want to smoke."
They gave no indication of having heard him. He tried to remember what he knew about the Thirtieth Shock Army. Very little, actually. It was not a military formation of distinction, but the kind that was good only for high-casualty battle. It was, in fact, exactly the sort of unit Kalinin had intended weeding out of the Russian army once the Soyuz troika had appointed him Minister of Defense.

 
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