y, "that is,
except the party elite, who are running the whole thing. Everybody
sacrifices for the sake of the progress of the whole country."

"I know," Paul said. "Give me enough time and I'll find out what this
lecture is all about."

The Chief grunted at him. "The Commies are still in power. If they
remain in power and continue to develop the way they're going, we'll be
through, completely through, in another few years. We'll be so far
behind we'll be the world's laughing-stock--and everybody else will be
on the Soviet bandwagon."

He seemed to switch subjects. "Ever hear of Somerset Maugham?"

"Sure. I've read several of his novels."

"I was thinking of Maugham the British Agent, rather than Maugham the
novelist, but it's the same man."

"British agent?"

"Um-m-m. He was sent to Petrograd in 1917 to prevent the Bolshevik
revolution. The Germans had sent Lenin and Zinoviev up from Switzerland,
where they'd been in exile, by a sealed train in hopes of starting a
revolution in Czarist Russia. The point I'm leading to is that in one of
his books, 'The Summing Up,' I believe, Maugham mentions in passing that
had he got to Petrograd possibly six weeks earlier he thinks he could
have done his job successfully."

Paul looked at him blankly. "What could he have done?"

The Chief shrugged. "It was all out war. The British wanted to keep
Russia in the allied ranks so as to divert as many German troops as
possible from the Western front. The Germans wanted to eliminate the
Russians. Maugham had carte blanche. Anything would have gone. Elements
of the British fleet to fight the Bolsheviks, unlimited amounts of money
for anything he saw fit from bribery to hiring assassins. What would
have happened, for instance, if he could have had Lenin and Trotsky
killed?"

Paul said suddenly, "What has all this got to do with me?"

"We're giving you the job this time."

"Maugham's job?" Paul didn't get it.

"No, the other one. I don't know who the German was who engineered
sending Lenin up to Petrograd, but that's the equivalent of your job."
He seemed to go off on another bent. "Did you read Djilas' 'The New
Class' about a decade ago?"

"Most of it, as I recall. One of Tito's top men who turned against the
Commies and did quite a job of exposing the so-called classless
society."

"That's right. I've always been surprised that so few people bothered to
wonder how Djilas was able to smuggle his book out of one of Tito's