The war had been under way for three hours.<br > In the heavily guarded command center under the<br >rock and ice of Severnaya Zemlya island the atmosphere<br >crackled with tension. The moving symbols on the<br >situation map in the amphitheater below the visitors <br >gallery indicated early successes. Warsaw Pact armor，<br >led by crack troops of the First Soviet Shock Army， had<br >overrun NATO s forward defense: already they were<br >more than a hundred kilometers inside the German<br >Federal Republic.<br > The steeply pitched gallery had been designed to ac-<br >d~mmodate a hundred people: the Minister of Defense;<br >the commanders of the Soviet Army， Navy， and Air<br >F~ce and their battle staffs; key members of the Polit-<br >buro， and a heavy protective force from the Committee<br >for State Security. But as the wall clocks came up on the<br >fourth hour of the invasion， the only three occupants of<br >the gallery were Colonel Yevgeny Denisovich Santodn，<br >the War Plans chief; Yud Pavlovich Koniev of the<br >KGB; and General Piotr Ivanovich Galitzin， Com-<br >mander of the GRU， the Military Intelligence Direc-<br >torate of the Soviet General Staff.<br > The air was icy. The computer required an ambient<br >temperature of ten degrees Celsius and no concessions<br >had been made to human comfort in the hastily con-<br >strutted shelter. The three men in the gallery and the<br >soldier-technicians on the floor below wore heavy cloth-<br >hag. The hardened chamber smelled of ozone and stale<br >tobacco despite the frigid wind that blew from the air-<br >conditioning ducts.<br > Koniev， the KGB man， said， "Can we find out what<br >is happening in Moscow?"<br > 3<br ><br >