He told himself these things, but something inside him would not listen. Georgi Vasilievich was a policeman, a good policeman, who recognized a lie even when it was one he was telling to himself. No, the truth was that he was getting old. He was tired. Perhaps General Petrovich was right to insist that he take his vacation, that he spend several weeks in the sanitarium for rest and therapy. He had been working hard, as had all in the GRU, the chief intelligence directorate of the Soviet General Military Staff. Unrest in the military was evident at all levels. The work load was impossible. And it was being conducted with no reward, no appreciation from the people, no appreciation from their superiors, who were too distracted in the new turmoil created by Gorbachev to reward with even a word the efforts of…

The path turned and brought him to the rotunda at the seashore. He always stopped at the rotunda. In the week he had been making this trip since Dr.

Vostov had prescribed the walk, Vasilievich had paused at the rotunda, both coming and going, to admire the view and to catch his breath.

Vasilievich had a heart condition. One could not argue with that fact. He had experienced a heart attack. But it was four years earlier, and his health reports had been well within the bounds of acceptability from the moment he had been released from the hospital. The rest would, he had reluctantly concluded, be good for him. But, fortunately, in Yalta he had found more than the sight of the sea and woods to occupy him. He had discovered a puzzle that he believed he had now solved.

Georgi Vasilievich put his large arthritic hands on the railing and looked out at Machtovaya Rock, its gray bulk split in two. He had been told by an old woman who helped clean

the sanitarium that archaeologists had found a cave beneath the rocks, under the water level, where ancient ancestors of man once dwelt.