"Why didn't we use Sunflower in Vietnam?" asked Walter Forbier.

"That's just it. We don't have to."

And the officer explained that the real purpose of Sunflower was to keep a counterkiller team floating in Western Europe, just so that the Russians knew that if they used Treska, America would use Sunflower. "Like an atomic arsenal neither side wants to use." America had it, so Russia wouldn't use it.

And it worked, he said. Except for an occasional body here and there, the two squads floated through Western Europe in relative luxury, each letting the other know it was around. But neither acted.

The only thing that could terminate Sunflower would be the KGB's decision to terminate Treska.

Forbier said he was looking forward to joining Sunflower, and he planned privately on being with the team in Rome in time for Christmas. He was off by 4 1/2 years and that was reduced training time, allowing him six months credit for his Marine experience.

Five years of training.

He learned French and Russian so well he could dream in them. He learned energy control, to be able to function for a week with only a half-hour's sleep. Parachuting for Sunflower was jumping out of the plane with your chute in your hands and putting it on in midair.

He learned the feel system of firearms. You didn't use sights, you used feel. Sights were mechanical, and fine to teach thousands of people how to get a bullet flying in the general direction of their target. But the feel system required working with a weapon so that the flight path of the bullet was an extension of your arm. You imagined a yardlong rod behind the barrel of the gun and the curving drop of your bullet, and, after four hundred rounds a day for four years, you just knew what was in your flight path. This had to be done with one weapon only, and the weapon became part of you. For Walter Forbier, it was his .25 caliber Beretta.