The Key to Midnight

behind Mirror had been simple. He was expected to become a business entrepreneur. He was expected to prosper, and if he could not turn a large buck on his own, KGB money would be funneled into his enterprise by various subtle means and an array of third parties. In his thirties, when his community knew him to be a respectable citizen and a successful businessman, he would run for a major public office, and the KGB would indirectly contribute substantial funds to his campaign.
        He followed the plan - but with one important change. By the time he was prepared to seek elective office, he had become hugely wealthy on his own, without KGB help. And by the time he sought a seat in the United States House of Representatives, he was able to obtain all the legitimate financial backing he needed to complement his own money, and the KGB didn't have to open its purse.
        In Moscow the highest hope was that he would become a member of the lower house of Congress and win reelection for three or four terms. During those eight or ten years, he would be able to pass along incredible quantities of vital military information.
        He lost his first election by a narrow margin, primarily because he had never remarried after the loss of his first wife, who had died in childbirth. At that time, the American public had a prejudice against bachelors in politics. Two years later, when he tried again, he used his adorable young daughter, Lisa Jean, to win the hearts of voters. Thereafter, he swiftly rose from the lower house of Congress to the upper - until he developed into a prime presidential candidate.
        His success had been a thousandfold greater than Moscow had ever hoped, and even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surviving Marxist element in the new government of Russia held a tight rein on Tom Chelgrin. He was more valuable than diamond mines. Where once he had labored to obtain and pass along highly sensitive military information, he now worked somewhat more openly to transfer billions of U.S. dollars in loans and foreign aid into the grasping hands of his masters, who had lost the Cold War but still prospered.
        Eventually his success became the central problem of his life. Even while the Cold War had still been under way, Thomas Chelgrin - who had once been Ilya Lyshenko -had lost all faith in the principles of communism. As a United States Congressman and then as a Senator, with his soul in hock to the KGB, he was called upon to betray the country that he had learned to love. By then he didn't want to pass along the information they sought, but he could find no way to refuse. The KGB owned him. He was trapped.

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        'But why was my past taken from me?' Joanna demanded. 'Stolen from me. Why did you send me to Rotenhausen?'
        'Had to.' The senator bent forward, racked by a vicious twist of pain. His breath bubbled wetly, hideously in his throat. When he found the strength to sit up straight again, he said, 'Jamaica. You and I were… going to spend a whole week down there… at the vacation house in Jamaica.'
        'You and Lisa,' she corrected.
        'I was going to fly down from Washington on a Thursday night. You were at school. Georgetown… A senior. Summer term. There was a project you had to finish. You couldn't… get away until Friday.'
        He closed his eyes and didn't speak for so long that she thought he had lost consciousness, even though his breathing was still ragged and labored. Finally he continued:
        'You changed plans without telling me. You flew to Jamaica… on Thursday morning… got there hours ahead of me. When I arrived that evening, I thought the house was deserted… but you were in your bed upstairs… napping.'
        His voice grew fainter. He was striving mightily to stay alive long enough to explain himself in hope of gaining her absolution.
        'I had arranged to meet some men… Soviet agents… in the last years of the Soviet Union, though none of us realized it then. I was handing over a suitcase of reports… important stuff related to the strategic defense initiative. You woke up… heard us downstairs… came down… overheard just enough to know I was a… a traitor. You barged into the middle of it… shocked and indignant… angry as hell. You tried to leave. You were so naive, thinking you could just leave. Of course they couldn't let you go. The KGB gave me a simple choice. Either you… had to be killed… or