ith Western
agents, nor anyone else, for that matter. Of course, it might have been an
exception.

He left the Ministry, his face thoughtful as he climbed into his waiting
Zil. This assignment was going to be a lengthy one. He'd have to wind up
various affairs here in Moscow, personal as well as business. He might be
away for a year or more.

There was a sheet of paper on the seat of his aircushion car. He frowned
at it. It couldn't have been there before. He picked it up.

It was a mimeographed throw-away.

It was entitled, _FREEDOM_, and it began: _Comrades, more than a hundred
years ago the founders of scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, explained that the State was incompatible with liberty, that the
State was an instrument of repression of one class by another. They
explained that for true freedom ever to exist the State must wither away._

_Under the leadership of Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev and now Zverev, the
State has become ever stronger. Far from withering away, it continues to
oppress us. Fellow Russians, it is time we take action! We must...._

Colonel Simonov bounced from his car again, shot his eyes up and down the
street. He barely refrained from drawing the 9 mm automatic which nestled
under his left shoulder and which he knew how to use so well.

He curtly beckoned to the plainclothes man, still idling against the
building a hundred feet or so up the street. The other approached him,
touched the brim of his hat in a half salute.

Simonov snapped, "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, colonel."

Ilya Simonov thrust the leaflet forward. "How did this get into my car?"

The other looked at it blankly. "I don't know, Colonel Simonov."

"You've been here all this time?"

"Why, yes colonel."

"With my car in plain sight?"

That didn't seem to call for an answer. The plainclothesman looked
apprehensive but blank.

Simonov turned on his heel and approached the two guards at the gate. They
were not more than thirty feet from where he was parked. They came to the
salute but he growled, "At ease. Look here, did anyone approach my vehicle
while I was inside?"

One of the soldiers said, "Sir, twenty or thirty people have passed since
the Comrade colonel entered the Ministry."

The other one said, "Yes, sir."

Ilya Simonov looked from the guards to the plainclothes man and back, in
frustration. Finally he spun on his heel again and re-entered the car. He
slapped the elevation lever, t