When Alexander Zukov was born and it was discovered he was, indeed, a male child, no one was surprised. After all, his grandmother Sofia had predicted it, and his mother and father had named him months before his birth, so strong was their faith in Sofia's power of divination. He was called Sasha, after the fashion of boys named Alexander, and in honor of his grandfather.

Like all very young children, there came a time when Sasha began to relate to the world around him, an epiphany that is every child's transformation from the unknowing to the knowing.

That capacity for self-awareness, the time after which he would have some recall, came to Sasha when he was almost a year old. Perhaps because it was his first recollection, it was somehow more vivid, but all other memories followed.

It was late in the evening, after he had been put to bed, supposedly to sleep, when he stood up in his crib to get a better view of his mother, for he could hear her laughter somewhere near him. Sasha looked through the darkness of his bedroom, and the open doorway in front of him, to the well-lit hallway beyond. There in the corner of the hall, the child's father and grandfather took turns in a game, each attempting to stand on his head and drink water from a glass.

It was a friendly competition and, of course, each man tried to distract the other. Then, each laughed when the other failed. Although Sasha could not see them, his mother and grandmother were laughing too. As each man failed in turn the women commented derisively on his weakness, lack of balance, and poor coordination.

Both men were Russian army officers, career military men who took themselves seriously and who maintained that sense of dignity and reserve that military life in all armies requires of those given command responsibility.

On this night, in this apartment, however, dignity and reserve gave way to the competition between father and son, made louder and more difficult by too much vodka. After each man had tried several times, it became evident that there would be no winner. Finally, the women took the glass of water away from them, and declared the game over.

Secretly relieved, the men nevertheless protested good-naturedly, each accusing the other of bribing the women to save his pride. During a pause in this genial interplay, the baby's laughter pealed from the darkened bedroom.

Tanya Zukov, Sasha's mother, looked at her mother-in-law, Sofia, and said "I believe our baby has discovered his toes," then added, "he'll be asleep in a moment."

Still, she arose and walked through the bedroom door toward the child. Before her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she heard Sasha vocalizing excitedly. Then she saw him standing in his crib, one arm outstretched in the direction of the doorway.

As Tanya approached him, Sasha happily repeated one of the few words he knew: "Papa, Papa, Papa." He looked imploringly at his mother, then to the lighted hallway beyond, then back to her face again. Suddenly, Tanya knew! He understood! He was not laughing at his toes. He was laughing at his father and grandfather.

He, too, was aware that their behavior was out of character, and he wanted his mother to understand he knew that. She did. "Sofia," Tanya called, "come look, and bring the men. Sasha has something to tell us."

So it was that Sasha's first memory was a happy one. For the first time, he recognized activities in other humans, and, moreover, was understood by them. He remembered too, after his mother had turned on the bedroom light, that his father and grandfather were dressed the same way.

By the end of his second year he knew they dressed much alike because they were soldiers, and by the end of his third year, he knew that he too would be a soldier; in fact, it never occurred to Sasha he would be anything else.

Nigel Snow, an English exchange student, had actually been the one who spotted the floating corpse. Nigel had been out for his ritual early morning run along the stone embankment above the Moscow River when he noticed something in the water below.

He stopped, then inched as close to the revetment as the guardrail would permit and looked more closely. There was no doubt about it; that was a human body, floating face down.

In the center of the back, right between the shoulder blades, there appeared a faint brown stain.

The body was dressed in a uniform with a wide black leather belt and, though the lower legs were barely visible beneath the surface, what appeared to be black leather boots.

Nigel froze as he took in the view below. Here was not merely a dead person, he suddenly realized, but a crime scene.

"Jesus Christ," he said aloud, "I've got to tell someone." Fifteen seconds later, Nigel was in the middle of

Moskvoretski Bridge flagging down a bus. Since he was a student at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, and fluent in Russian language, he had no trouble communicating his discovery.

Within an hour a Moscow police boat had picked up the floating corpse. Nigel Snow was forgotten and it was reported that an American tourist had discovered the body.

Because the deceased was a military man, Moscow police called the Russian Military General Staff office. Five minutes and three calls later, the news arrived at the Glavnoye Razvedochnoye Upravleniye (GRU), that most secret of the fifteen general staff directorates, which handled military intelligence; an office not merely secret, but whose title was virtually unpronounceable by non-Russians; the intelligence community worldwide was grateful for the acronym GRU.

When it was discovered the dead man was no less than General Sergi Zukov, a GRU staff officer himself, the apparatus of Soviet military intelligence woke. Like a huge octopus sensing a threat, it began to gather itself.

In another hour, 370 agents worldwide had been alerted, likely scenarios discussed, and assets readied. The octopus was on the move.

General Sergi Zukov had been missing for a week and another intelligence officer, Major Anatoly Bessalov, had disappeared with Zukov. It was assumed he too was in the river. Police divers searched the river for days to no avail. Because of the circumstances, an autopsy was ordered immediately, and a panel appointed to hear results. During the autopsy it was discovered that Zukov had indeed been shot in the back, and, in an act of exceptional savagery, shot once in each ear.

Autopsy x-rays had shown that the bullets to Zukov's head had each entered the ear angling upwards. In such a manner, the bullet paths had crossed and both 9-millimeter slugs had lodged against the inside of the skull, causing massive brain trauma.

Dr. Olga Kalugin did the autopsy. In her fifties now, she had been pretty as a young girl, not beautiful, but pretty. Her nose was a little too flat, too Slavic, but her eyes were large and kind. Gradually, as her career in forensic medicine grew, as she accumulated case histories of stinking corpses hacked to pieces by madmen, the phantom of dreadful experience drew its cold hand across her face and left a stone mask of indifference there. Olga had investigated the deaths of those murdered by the State, and those executed by the State because they had murdered without permission from the State. Now chief medical examiner for Moscow, Olga was called on when the State wanted to be certain it was on solid ground, and Olga Kalugin was as certain as one can be.

In reporting to the joint civilian-military...