Deep Cover (48 page)

Forrester's watch read six-ten. It was more than a mile to the airport.

Spode slowed for a red light at Ajo Road but nothing was in sight on the crossroad and Spode gunned through the stoplight. The big car lunged along the dips, bobbing and swaying. Ramsey Douglass was slumped in the front passenger seat. “See that clump of cottonwoods? Drop me there—I'll walk the rest of the way.”

Spode took his foot off the gas and pulled off the road in the shade. “Half-mile walk from here.”

“I'll make it.” Douglass opened the door but Spode pointed the pistol at him and Douglass nodded wearily. “All right. He's sitting in a parked Oldsmobile on the Nogales Highway right across the road from the Matthewson-Ward front gate. I picked the spot for him because you get a good reception there and it's only a mile from here.”

Spode said, “If he ain't there we'll know where to get our hands on the rest of you.”

“I'm trusting
you
.”

“Yeah,” Spode said dubiously.

Douglass got out of the car and Spode hit the accelerator and left him standing flatfooted by the side of the road. They broke out past the cottonwoods with the speedometer needle quivering toward eighty. “Time's it?”

Forrester had been watching Douglass cross the road and dog-trot along the shoulder in the low lancing sunlight. He looked at his watch and said. “Fourteen after six.”

“Jesus.”

A little more than an hour before, Orozco's men had picked up Douglass' Volkswagen coming out of the Davis Monthan gate. They had forced him off the road and taken him at gunpoint.

They had held Douglass in the bricked-in back lot of a motorboat dealership on Twenty-second Street. Forrester and Ronnie and Spode had crashed three stoplights getting there.

Top had put his gun on Douglass and told the two operatives they could go: they weren't to know what it was about.

Forrester had started without preamble: “Tell us where Belsky is.”

“Belsky?”

Spode said, “Dangerfield.”

“Sure,” Douglass said.

Forrester told him, “You're finished anyway. You may as well.”

Why? Because this bitch has blown my cover?” Jittery or not he had absorbed a great deal very quickly. He wasn't even asking questions about Ronnie's presence; the fact that she was with Forrester and Spode was enough. Douglass shook his head. “Forget it.”

“If Belsky goes through with it now the United States will know Moscow was behind it. You see that, don't you? The United States will annihilate Russia. Do you want that? You can stop it, Douglass.”

Clearly Douglass hadn't thought of that. His face changed slowly; a creeping pallor drained his cheeks. But then he scowled and stabbed a finger toward Ronnie. “Where's Les Suffield?”

She appeared almost drowsy; she only shook her head, mute, and Forrester said, “Dead.”

“How?”

“Accident,” Forrester answered.

“That's why she went over to you?”

Ronnie's face came up. “Nicole is dead too, isn't she? You're like me, Ramsey—you've nobody left to lose.”

Douglass' head shook like a metronome. After a moment Top Spode said, “Not much time. I'll have to start prying him open.”

Douglass looked up with a glance of petty irritation. “You could try.” Then a crafty new thought tightened his face. “Listen—what's in this for me, then?”

They had discussed that earlier. Spode wanted to lock him up, muzzle him until it was all done, but Forrester had vetoed it:
They're expecting him to show up. If he doesn't they'll get jumpy and God knows what they might decide to do.

Spode had objected:
Outside of Ronnie he'll be the only one who'll know you uncovered their network. If he tells the rest of them it puts you in a hell of a spot. You'll get all of them on your ass like a ton of bricks, trying to shut you up.

But Forrester had an answer to that. Douglass could hardly finger him without raising suspicion against himself: Forrester wouldn't have turned Douglass loose unless Douglass talked—that was the way Belsky would see it. No; Douglass
wasn't going to say anything about Forrester. And anyhow if Forrester did reach Belsky then Belsky would know; so Douglass offered no threat to anyone but himself.

Douglass asked again, “What's in it for me?”

“Give us Belsky,” Forrester answered. “We'll turn you loose. You can escape on the plane with the rest of them.”

Douglass turned a slow circle on his heels, head down, thinking. When he looked up he said, “What about her?”

“Ronnie stays behind,” Forrester said. He was watching her but he saw no change in her expression.

“Oh that's ducky,” Douglass said, but it was easy to see his thoughts: Ronnie would be the only Russian who knew Douglass had betrayed them; if Ronnie wasn't aboard the plane there would be no one to accuse Douglass. Nevertheless Douglass said, “If she's not on the plane they'll figure she's gone over—blown all of us. The rest of us will suffer for it when we get home.”

“Home,” Ronnie said under her breath.

Spode said, “You'll just have to take your chances about that. Ronnie's not the only one who won't be there. What about Nicole and Trumble and Craig?”

“Dangerfield knows about them. He saw them dead.”

“What about Les Suffield, then?”

“Is he honest-to-God dead? I thought you were trying to put one over.”

“He's dead. So's Ronnie. They both died in a car crash this morning. That's what you'll tell them.”

“Now I don't know what to believe. Anyhow Dangerfield won't buy it.”

“He'll have to.”

Forrester said, “He'll have other things to think about.”

“Not him. He's never missed a trick, that one.” Douglass ran his tongue over his lips. “Look, you're saying you'll pretend you never heard of me—you're saying I can get on the plane and nobody will ever find out you busted me.”

Spode said, “You've got one other choice. You refuse to lead us to Belsky and you'll stay right here till you rot. You
know what happens to you then—from our side or from theirs.”

Douglass filled his chest slowly.

“You were heading for the airport,” Spode said.

“Was I? You tell me.”

“We'll take you down there. You'll have to walk in—tell them you had a flat tire just outside. When we let you out of the car you'll tell us where to find Belsky.”

“What if I do? You won't budge him, you know. He's got his orders and that's all he knows. He's that kind.”

“Let us deal with him,” Forrester said. “Where is he?”

“I'll think about that. You want to drive me to the airport? Fine. I'll let you know when we get there.”

Six-seventeen. After Douglass had told them where to find Belsky they had sped down to the highway and now Spode said, “There's the Olds. Douglass was telling the truth.”

“Let me have your gun, then,” Forrester said.

“Nuts. We'll do this my way—both of you get down below the windows back there. Belsky knows this is Suffield's car. If he sees just me driving he'll think it's Suffield. I'll pull his teeth and then you can have him.”

There was a fair flow of traffic on the highway; Spode made the left turn and rolled slowly along the shoulder to ease up behind the parked Oldsmobile. Before Forrester bent down below the level of vision he had a glimpse of a man with a walkie-talkie in the driver's seat.

Ronnie trembled violently. He held her tightly down and heard Spode open the door and get out, the crunch of Spode's shoes on the gravel. Spode's voice floated back, harsh: “Remember me? Now open up real slow and step out.”

Forrester whispered, “Stay down and stay quiet.” And he sat up and opened the door.

There was nothing alive in Belsky's round face except the eyes: eyes hard as glass. They came around toward Forrester like the slowly swinging gun turrets of a battle cruiser.

Forrester walked forward slowly. His breathing was tight
and shallow, his sphincter contracted, his palms damp. “My name is Alan Forrester, Belsky.”

“I know who you are.” The eyes did not flicker at the sound of his real name: the man had learned defense and survival in a hard school.

“Call them off,” Forrester said. “You can do it—with that walkie-talkie. Call them off and get them out of this country and nothing will be said about it.”

“Nothing? Surely.”

Forrester could hear the beat of his own heart. The twilight seemed to grow brighter, every tiny sound louder. Cars rushed past on the highway, spewing dust. Spode's gun was concealed by the hang of his coat but it was visible enough to Belsky.

Forrester said, “Your cover is blown. We know who you are. If you fire the missiles now we'll know the Russians fired them, how it was done. We'll be forced to retaliate directly and totally.”

He saw Belsky hesitate for the fraction of a moment but then Belsky said, “It's beyond my power to stop what has been set in motion by my superiors, Senator. I cannot change policy; it's not my function. You may shoot me but that will not prevent anything from happening. The missiles will be ignited within five or six minutes; there's nothing you can do to stop them now. A phone call would get no results in time.”

“What are the targets?”

“I can tell you that, I suppose, since you seem to know the rest. The target is China.”

The design was complete in Forrester's mind now, and as he studied Belsky's bland middle-aged face with its gemstone eyes he realized his gamble had failed. He had lost.

In Silo Six Lieutenant Smith stood up and stretched; he had been five hours in the chair. Haas spoke to him, and the voice came over the electronic box: “We're going to the post movie. Want to double tonight?”

“We were thinking about going bowling.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“But it's never much sweat to talk Madge into a movie.”

It was 1827 hours.

The red telephone buzzed.

At its base the little light began to wink.

Smith stared. A long time seemed to go by. His face flooded; pressure almost burst his throat. His hands lifted involuntarily toward his face. He whispered, “Oh dear God. Oh sweet dear God.”

He reached for the receiver.

There was a piping buzz from somewhere inside Belsky's Oldsmobile and Belsky's face hardened with sudden urgency.

“I beg of you don't shoot me now!”
And he was wheeling, diving inside the car, opening a case on the seat—not an attaché case after all, Forrester realized; a radio. Spode was staring, transfixed, and Forrester saw Belsky remove something from the case and plug jacks into sockets and push several buttons. Belsky had a notepad and when the speaker began to utter dots and dashes Belsky jotted feverishly. Forrester heard the sucked intake of Top's breath and involuntarily looked at his watch.

They were like that in frozen tableau for an indeterminate time and then Belsky wrenched up the walkie-talkie and pressed a button and yelled into it: “Winslow, can you hear me? From Father Christmas abort. Winslow! From Father Christmas abort!
Abort!”

Belsky had the earpiece at his head and it made a brief squawking sound.

“Yes. From Father Christmas. Abort—abort—abort.”

He put it down and backed out of the car. “It may have been too late,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. His eyes swept past Forrester and settled on the desert brush to the northeast, this side of the mountains, where the missiles would erupt if the countermand hadn't stilled them in time.

Epilogue

Smith had inserted his key; his eyes, and those of Haas, were on the countdown clock. The code envelope lay on the floor behind him and the codes lay in the tray, a perfect match for the signal he was receiving over the red telephone against his ear. The computer's voice was metallic, without expression.

The computer said, “Execute.”

The last of the word was cut off by a new connection clicking in.

“Countermand. This is Colonel Winslow. Countermand has been received and acknowledged.”

Smith whipped his hand from the key as if it were white-hot. Winslow's voice was going on in his ear: “We have received a Presidential order to stand down.… Prepare to make
secure.…” Smith wasn't listening. He covered his face with his hands and wept.

Ensign Sakhalov broke the lock when he heard the pistol report and wheeled into the First Secretary's office with his machine pistol off safety.

He found the Second Secretary sitting in a chair drawing a plump hand across his face. First Secretary Rykov lay by the desk with his head in a puddle of his own blood. The pistol was in the Second Secretary's hand. Ensign Sakhalov stared at the scene and then said, “Why do you pretend you shot him, Comrade Secretary? There is blood on the pistol but none on your hand. You took the pistol from him after he killed himself.”