Prisoners of Tomorrow (50 page)

In other words, they rose to the occasion. Here was an occasion that surely beckoned.

She was still feeling despondent when Olga returned. The Russian woman slipped in without knocking, and closed the door behind her.

“Did the message go off all right?” Paula asked.

Olga nodded and stood leaning against the door with her eyes closed for a moment, as if allowing tension to drain away. “Top priority, so Ivan will send it straight on.” She went over to the empty chair in front of the console and sat down, noticing as she did so the red cylinder, which Paula had put back on the shelf. “Has Brusikov been back?”

“Yes. He wasn’t very amused.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That it was the wrong man. You were misled by the hat and the coat—an unlikely similarity in appearance.”

Olga nodded, and sat staring at the console for what seemed a long time. Paula watched her but had nothing to say. Eventually Olga turned her chair to face across the room. They looked at each other. At last Olga said, “It doesn’t seem enough, somehow.”

Paula nodded in a way that said Olga didn’t have to elaborate. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. And on reflection I’m not even sure they’ll believe that much.”

“Why shouldn’t they?”

“Who am I? Just the support half of the team.” Olga gave the impression that she had expected the reply but had allowed Paula to make it all the same, just to be sure they both understood the same things. Paula got the feeling that Olga’s thoughts had been running parallel to her own. Olga hesitated visibly. “Yes?” Paula prompted.

Olga looked up. “There is another way.”

“What way?”

“Ask the Russians to connect you to America via one of their regular channels—it could be a private military link, not public TV. Show yourself here, in
Valentina Tereshkova,
alongside the Soviet leaders. Let your own people talk with you over the link, ask questions, and observe you responding and interacting. That way they will know that the Soviet leaders are here, and that they are here now.” Paula was so surprised by the proposal that for a moment she could only shake her head and stare incredulously. “Say you wish to talk with General Protbornov urgently, and tell him everything,” Olga urged. “He has access to the people who can arrange it.”

“But . . . everything? We’d have to reveal the channel. You’d lose your communications to Ivan. Ivan would be exposed.”

“I know. I’ve already thought of all that. What do things like that matter now? If there’s a war it will all be lost anyway.”

Paula swallowed hard. “That’s . . . that’s some decision you’re asking.”

“Is it? What is the alternative?”

A good point, Paula conceded. For when she thought about it, the only alternative to trying was to live the rest of her life, irrespective of the outcome, with the knowledge that she hadn’t tried. Put that way, it didn’t really leave much of a choice.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Major General Protbornov stared back across the desk in his office at the Internal Security Headquarters in Turgenev. For several seconds his rugged, heavy-jowled face was completely blank, as if it had just been solidly punched. Then he blinked and raised a hand to rub the corner of his eye. “Communications?” The heavy, rumbling voice assembled the word slowly, a syllable at a time, as if they were steps he was having to mount to overcome his disbelief. “Communications into American intelligence, from inside Zamork? How could this be possible?” Beneath their puffy lids, his eyes had taken on a bleak expression that already seemed to be looking into the face of demotion, arrest, and possibly even a firing squad.

Uskayev—the same blond, gray-eyed major whom Paula had last seen with Protbornov in the infirmary—drew a notepad closer across the top of his desk, which stood by the window to one side of the office. “Describe the mechanism of this communications method,” he said. “What form does it take?”

Olga sighed in the chair beside Paula. “We possess an electronic chip that is programmed to insert encoded text into the random-number-group fillers in the regular message stream to Earth,” she replied, speaking in a tired voice. “The chip is substituted for the standard one in the outgoing encryption processor located in the Communications Center.”

“How do you gain access to the Communications Center?”

“I don’t. I have an associate.”

“The name?”

Olga hesitated. Uskayev looked up sharply. Clearly if she’d come here asking for favors, she couldn’t expect to hold anything back. “Andrei Ogovoy, an engineer at the Communications Center,” she said. Uskayev wrote rapidly on his pad.

“Go on,” Protbornov said.

Olga described her channel down to the groundstation at Sokhotsk and the technique of disguising encoded replies as statistical data. She said that the channel had been extended to connect into the US military and intelligence communications system, but insisted, correctly, that she didn’t know how the link from Sokhotsk to the US operated.

“You say this person at Sokhotsk was communicating with you privately before there was any contact with the Americans,” Protbornov said when she had finished.

“Yes.”

“So this person must have set up the link to the Americans, and managed the transfer of messages after it was established. Who was this person who commanded such extraordinary opportunities?”

“The name?” Uskayev said, pen poised.

Paula stared woodenly ahead and heard Olga take in a long breath beside her. “Professor Igor Dyashkin,” Olga said. “Director of the operational facility at Sokhotsk.” Despite herself, Paula raised her eyebrows. Protbornov and Uskayev exchanged ominous glances.

Protbornov stared down at his hands in a way that said the sky might as well fall now, for all the surprises life had left to offer. He looked up. “So, you have your channel to the professor. And how did you progress from there to initiating contact with the Americans?”

“We didn’t,” Olga said. “They initiated contact with us.” Protbornov stared at her incredulously.

That had been expected. Paula explained, “I’m not a journalist with Pacific News Services. My companion and I came here on a mission for US military intelligence. It was our people. A message came over the channel from them, to us.” She looked at Uskayev and nodded resignedly before he could say it. “Bryce, Paula M., second lieutenant, United States Air Force, serial number AO 20188813, temporarily attached to the Unified Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“And your colleague?” Protbornov clearly wasn’t going to quit while he was on a roll.

“I only know him as Lewis Earnshaw. He’s with the UDIA. That’s all I know.”

Protbornov nodded, having disposed of those preliminaries, and clasped his hands. “So, you say the UDIA contacted you here, using the link through Professor Dyashkin. But how could they possibly have known about it?”

“I don’t know,” Paula replied.

“You can’t expect us to believe that,” Protbornov scoffed.

“She’s telling the truth,” Olga said. “We are both scientists. We don’t know what kinds of intrigues go on among you people. But that’s all immaterial now, compared to the reason why we’ve decided to come here and reveal everything.” She paused to let the point sink in. Protbornov waited. Olga went on, “To us, the messages we have been receiving indicate that the West believes the Soviet Union is about to launch a first strike. We think there’s a strong possibility that the West will decide to attack preemptively. Preventing such a catastrophe must take priority over other considerations—that is why we have been frank. We think there is a way it can be prevented, but we will need your help.”

Protbornov was looking astounded. “A first strike . . . by us? Preemptive attack? But this is ludicrous. Our whole leadership is up here, practically on vacation. Tomorrow we will be declaring
Valentina Tereshkova
open to international visitors. The ship bringing the first representatives from all nations, including the United States, is on its way here at this very moment. There will be celebrations, games, amnesties . . . Why would anyone be worrying about a strike at
this
of all times? Have they all gone mad down there?”

Olga was nodding. “I know, I know. It sounds insane. The irony is that those very things are what has caused the concern. It’s all a misunderstanding, and it mustn’t be allowed to lead to a calamity. But since the problem is one that stems from misinformation, it can be rectified by correct information. That is what we need you to help us do.”

Uskayev had put his pen down and was listening with a dazed look on his face. Protbornov moistened his lips and nodded curtly without change of expression. “Explain what it is you wish us to do,” he said.

Olga told him about the reconnaissance expeditions by Zamork prisoners to investigate alleged weapons installations around the colony. The muscles in Protbornov’s throat convulsed in spasms as one revelation followed another, but he heard her through without interrupting. “But from the tone of their responses, the Americans didn’t seem satisfied by the negative findings,” Olga concluded. “We think they suspect that false information concerning the locations was planted to mislead them.” She described the Americans’ latest request for confirmation that Soviet leaders were in fact at
Tereshkova,
and interpreted it as indicating Western suspicions that the Soviet broadcasts might be prerecordings made months ago. If the West so concluded, then the only motivation they’d be able to deduce would be that the Soviets were about to launch a strike. Olga ended, “The only way to eliminate that risk is to convince them of their mistake. Paula has agreed to talk to her own people over a live connection into the US communications network is one can be set up. If she’s seen here, alongside the arriving leaders and conducting a responsive dialogue with Washington, all doubts would be dispelled. Can you do it?”

Protbornov’s bushy eyebrows knotted. “What you’re asking, and in so little time . . . It would require the highest authority. And with all of them so preoccupied at this time . . .”

“This is a state emergency,” Olga said. “I know the procedures exist. We have volunteered everything. Will you try?”

The general sat immobile for almost a minute, staring at the desk, his expression unchanging. Finally he spread his hands wide along the edge of the desk and stood up. “Wait here,” he instructed, and left the room.

Major Uskayev busied himself with completing his notes and then entering them into a terminal by his desk. Paula and Olga waited without speaking. There was a tap on the door, and a woman in uniform entered to deposit some papers in a basket by the door. She took more papers from another basket and left. Paula thought of all the effort, ingenuity, perseverance, and courage that had gone into setting up Olga’s channel to Ivan—now revealed as Dyashkin—the link to Foleda, the secret workshop below Zamork, and Earnshaw’s private espionage operation. Now that she had a moment to reflect, she was horrified at how much would be lost because of what she and Olga were saying here today. But if they were right, all that and infinitely more would otherwise have been lost anyway. She tried not to dwell on what it meant if they were wrong. . . . No, that wasn’t possible. They
had
to be right. She convinced herself with the certainty that comes only with the knowledge that being wrong would be to lose everything.

Protbornov returned twenty minutes later with a captain and four armed guards. The entire party, including Uskayev, took an elevator down inside Security Headquarters and followed a series of passages that took them underneath the Government Building. Here they ascended again and came to a corridor, where the escort conducted them to one of the doors and took up positions outside. Inside was a conference room, where two men were waiting. One was in his early forties, short, with thick black hair and bushy brows. Protbornov introduced him as Comrade Kirilikhov from the Party’s Central Committee. The other was older, with thinning hair and a sallow, tired complexion; his name was Sepelyan, and he was from the Soviet Ministry of Defense. An orderly brought in tea. Protbornov said that Turgenev was keeping a channel open to Moscow, where the appropriate people to take the matter higher were being sought.

Step by step and in greater detail, the two women went through the whole story again. Kirilikhov expressed amusement at the suggestion of Western doubts about Soviet leaders really coming to
Tereshkova,
since he himself had arrived from Earth a mere twelve hours previously. Protbornov listened glumly while Olga described once more how prisoners inside Zamork had talked with American military intelligence in Washington, and Paula told how they had been burrowing around the whole colony like rabbits. She listed the locations that they had checked, and summarized the findings she had communicated to Washington. “It was hardly something that could be called espionage,” Olga pointed out. “She simply confirmed what the Soviet government itself had been saying publicly for years.”

“Yes, that point has not been missed,” Kirilikhov said, nodding. He shifted his gaze to Paula. “But you say you have reason to believe that the credibility of your reports was not rated highly in Washington?”

“From the tone of the responses, yes,” Paula said. “Probably because of my position.”

“As a support specialist, not a trained agent,” Olga explained.

“Ah.” Kirilikhov nodded.

Sepelyan studied his fingers while he weighed up the things that had been said. “So why should they believe you any the more if we put you on a line to Earth? You could have been turned—brainwashed. They still think we do things like that, don’t they? Or maybe we have somebody standing off-camera, pointing a gun at your head. After what you’ve told us, would it be enough to convince them?”

There was a short silence. Protbornov shrugged. “What else can we do?”

“It’s something, at least,” Kirilikhov said.

Sepelyan sat forward to the table. “I was thinking about this other agent that came with you, this . . .”

“Lewis Earnshaw,” Uskayev supplied.

“This Mr. Earnshaw. He is the professional, you say, yes? Experienced. Believable. If we could get
him
to appear on the line also and confirm the story, might that do the trick? Those who know him, his own boss, maybe . . . Would they believe their own man?”