On the surface, a silent ominous shaking of
the Earth interrupted the diatribe from the party member. A faint
rumbling sound rolled from the elevator shaft followed by the
shouts of panicked men. After another moment the elevator creaked
into action, cranking upward. The mining camp burst into
turmoil.
Amid wild shouts and men scurrying in every
direction, Yuan turned and walked slowly back to his tiny dormitory
room. There he sat on his mat, removed the letter from his tunic,
carefully spread it out, and began to read once again.
*****
God!
He had exulted then, reveling in the feeling
of immense forces responding to his control, lifting him to a
soaring state of grace like a surfer in the curl of a perfect
wave.
Now crashing waves, forlorn and bitter,
pounded bun. He cradled the smooth butt of the small pistol in his
palm and recalled with agony the feelings that had swept through
him then, now so completely foreign. He drifted into a dream, back
to that day of ecstasy...
He stood before the penthouse window and
gazed at the sweep of the sleeping city of Vienna arrayed at his
feet, the Cathedral of Saint Stephen and the Hapsburg summer palace
lit with spotlights, suburban street lamps diffusing into the gloom
of the dark woods beyond. He played again in his mind the complex
themes, a fugue for the intellect only he could hear, now poised
for the final resolution: the long hours of meetings, the frenzied
stolen moments for his own work, the pills to keep it all going,
and passionate interludes with the woman.
He knew that he had dominated the meeting of
the International Atomic Energy Agency both by his fresh ideas and
the force of his personality. He would help them in their pitiful
stumblings to control the dirty monster they had created. What they
did not suspect was that the true focus of his energies were the
moments stolen for his own work, a vision that had become a reality
in his mind only this evening, a reality that swept away as
irrelevant not only all that they did in the meeting, but the
concerns of a major piece of mankind.
He thought of the steps he would have to take
to realize that which he now knew to be possible, the resources he
would have to muster, the personnel to be assembled and, when
necessary, pirated from competing efforts. As so often before, he
could see the object of his desires take shape like a gigantic
erector set, each element responding effortlessly to his will. He
basked in the knowledge that he could do it on his own, with the
power he already commanded. The world would bumble along unknowing
until he chose to reveal his supreme accomplishment in its
fullness. He felt the drug wearing off, but had no compulsion to
renew the charge. No artificial aid could give him the feeling that
presently coursed through his veins.
The view before him was replaced by one of
time, spanning into the future, ten, a hundred, a thousand years —
his name spilling as readily from a schoolchild’s lips as that of
Washington, Lincoln, as that of any resident of this proud city,
Beethoven, Napoleon, Freud, as that of any scientist, Einstein.
“Paul?” The sleepy voice, muffled by covers
and accent, came from the bed.
Silently, he continued to face the window,
but his thoughts turned to her. What a delightful find she was. On
top of everything else, what luck to come across this political
fugitive at one of the parties scheduled to fill their evenings.
Not only was she beautiful, a stimulating outlet for his more
physical passions, but a consort guaranteed to tweak the maximum
number of bureaucratic noses. The Russians were still smarting from
her recent escape through Czechoslovakia with three male friends.
He hoped that her promptly taking up with a well-known American
scientist and lavishly sampling the best capitalistic delights
Vienna had to offer would embarrass the hell out of them. As for
his side, they would never be sure she wasn’t a plant, and there
would be shocked speculations about their pillow talk throughout
the western security establishment. He chuckled to himself.
“Paul, it’s nearly four a.m. Come to bed.”
Her voice was low, sultry, inviting. He heard the rustle of
bedclothes and knew she was looking at him.
Neither could a woman give him the feeling
that suffused him now, the intense mental orgasm of an
Earth-shattering idea come to fruition, but you can’t make love to
a concept. He thought ahead of the day to come. An hour with her
now, to relax, a couple of hours’ sleep, then a couple more to
continue his calculations over breakfast before the meeting
resumed.
He turned and walked softly across the dark
room to the bedside. For a long moment he stood looking down at
her, the covers pulled up to her chin, the halo of short black hair
in stark contrast to the pillow. He could not see her face clearly
in the faint city light reflected in the window, but he could
picture the lovely contours of her face, the high Slavic
cheekbones, the sparkling eyes reflecting intelligence, a free
spirit, and, deep within, an irrepressible sadness.
He reached for the covers near her feet and
slowly drew them down, exposing her nakedness, the bed-warmth of
her body palpable in the darkness. He leaned over and gently
pressed his lips to the sweet angle where breast joins rib...
The desk before him came back into focus. The
papers strewn across it screamed at him, confirming the feeling
that had been in his gut for months, ignored. It had all gone
wrong, disastrously wrong! Everything his career had stood for was
demolished. Rather than emerging as manlind’s savior, he had
visited an incomprehensible horror on an unsuspecting populace.
That he, of all people, could have made such an error!
He looked towards the fire flickering in the
grate and lifted the pistol.
Maria Latvin glanced at her watch as she
pulled the long serrated-blade knife from the drawer. 3:45 a.m. I
can’t keep him from working all night, she thought, but at least I
can keep food in his stomach. She turned to the butcher block
island in the centre of the kitchen and carved two thick slices
from the loaf of pumpernickel. She spread a healthy layer of Dijon
mustard on the bread then carefully stacked interlaced layers of
corned beef, Swiss cheese, ham, turkey, and finished off with some
lettuce. From somewhere in the quiet house she heard a sound, a
muffled pop. She could not identify it, but the noise caused her to
slip into a fatigue-driven reverie.
After six weeks of furtive, exhaustive
trekking and hiding, they slogged through the snow, eyes fixed on
the chain link fence topped with ragged strands of barbed wire.
They were in a clear, unforested area, lightly patrolled since the
approach was exposed. Then they heard that pop. A half kilometre
away, a squad of Czechoslovakian soldiers aimed at them and more
pops came. Their guides pointed at the place where the fence was
closest and ran for the copse of trees and cover. Maria remembered
her eyes almost frozen shut with tears of joy and fright during
their adrenalin-charged dash through the drifts, hauling the
ladder, planting it, scrambling up, leaping and landing. In Austria
!
Austria. Vienna. Paul, sweeping her into a
vortex that left her head and heart swimming. Now, two years of
travel to places of which she had not known to dream, interspersed
with retreat to this magnificent isolation, a feeling of freedom so
strong it made her ache.
Paul. Strong, excited in his high moods, his
energy drawing her like a magnet. The sudden, unexpected periods of
despondency worried her, though, and this was one of the worst. She
had learned to be patient. With time, he would bounce back.
She put a steaming cup of coffee on the tray
next to the sandwich. She carried the tray through the living room,
past the massive adobe fireplace and into the hall leading to the
study.
“Paul, I -”
She froze in the doorway of the study,
gripping the tray, knowing in an instant that it was all gone. She
walked slowly across the room and set the tray on the edge of the
desk. She looked at the familiar, handsome face, the thick brown
hair laced with silver, the well-shaped head lolling against the
back of the high-backed desk chair.
Then she forced herself to look at the small,
neat hole a few centimeters above his ear. There was hardly any
blood, but it was so dark, a bleak desolate pit that reminded her
of all she had struggled to leave behind. The hole was in such an
odd place. Not the temple, but higher, further back. Perhaps he had
flinched, his spirit rebelling even as his finger tightened on the
trigger. The small silver-plated twenty-two caliber pistol still
dangled from his forefinger. Such a trivial weapon to still such a
vibrant life.
A month ago he was fired with enthusiasm for
this project that he had begun before they had met. He had been
working on it in Vienna. Then the depression set in, ever
deepening. Now something had pushed him over the edge. She examined
the scattered pages on the desk. They were filled with
incomprehensible calculations. What had the letters and numbers
meant to him? she wondered. Which among them triggered this
ultimate retreat? She felt what they meant to her — the end of a
freedom too good to last.
In the stillness of the room, the faint
flutter shouted at her. Her eyes locked on him. Yes!! There it was
again! She knelt by his side, placed two fingers on his throat, and
nearly fainted with relief at the weak irregular beat that massaged
her fingertips.
At midmorning Isaacs concentrated on the
report he had received from Baris the previous afternoon concerning
new arms stashes in eastern Mozambique. The photographs were
unmistakable, but the big question went unanswered. Whose were
they? Baris’s group had concluded they were not an unadvertised
ploy by the Marxist government, nor did they belong to the active
guerrilla movement. They seemed to mark a new force whose motives
and intentions were a cipher. Boswank had to get somebody in on the
ground.
A commotion in the outer office caught his
attention. He heard Kathleen announce over the intercom and through
the door as it crashed open, “Mr. Deloach to see you.”
Earle Deloach raced across the room and
leaned with his fists on Isaacs’s desk, highly distraught,
eyeglasses askew on his round face, a lock of normally slicked-back
hair dangling over his temple. He passed a hand fitfully at the
errant strand, causing more disarray.
“They’ve blown it up!” he shouted.
Isaacs rose quickly and circled his desk.
“Who’s blown up what?” he asked as he closed
the connecting door.
“My FireEye! The Russians! They blew it
up!”
“Here, sit down Earle,” said Isaacs, firmly.
He guided Deloach by the elbow into a chair. “Now what are you
talking about?” he asked, regaining his own chair. “Are you sure?
What did they do?”
“One of their satellites — Cosmos... Cosmos
2112 — from a couple of hundred miles away, must have been a laser.
Didn’t just fry a few circuits; we have photos from one of our
other satellites. FireEye’s gone! Vaporized!”
“Oh, damn!” exploded Isaacs, wrenched by a
decidedly schizophrenic reaction. His gut knotted with the instant
realization that this was the Russians’ idea of a justifiable
reaction to the Novorossiisk affair. The first step into the abyss
of a new unknown mode of war. War in space. At the same time a
quiet professional voice inside him gave grudging praise. Clever
bastards, this voice said, the Cosmos 2112 was one of the recently
launched satellites they had not been able to categorize. It had
been camouflaged well. He had convinced himself that it was, after
all, a recon satellite. A working laser! Well, they tipped their
hand there, might be some profit to be had, anyway. Aloud to
Deloach he said, “Why would they pick on FireEye? Because it’s our
latest?”
“Well,” Deloach looked chagrined, “we decided
to have a quick look at the Novorossiisk after all.”
Isaacs leaned forward intently. “We?” But he
already knew.
“Yes, uh, Kevin and I got to talking after
the meeting with the DCI yesterday morning. No one seemed to have
any ideas, so we thought it couldn’t hurt to at least take a look.
I had an orbit change worked up to minimize maneuvering fuel and we
slid the orbit a little.”
And afterwards, thought Isaacs, it would have
slid to a station over Tomsk. That underhanded son-of-a-bitch!
“So you maneuvered over towards the Med,”
said Isaacs in a biting tone, “and the Russians chose to regard
that as an aggressive act, and they raised the ante out of sight by
blowing FireEye out of the sky with a laser we didn’t even know
existed.
“Good Lord, Earle! Do you know what you’ve
done? Not only lost a seventy-seven million dollar satellite, but
drawn us into a whole new kind of war we’ve been desperately trying
to avoid.”
“How was I to know?” Deloach cried,
hysterically defensive. “We’ve looked at their carriers before, all
the time.”
“Hey, okay,” Isaacs calmed his voice. “The
Novorossiisk was special, but you couldn’t know they would react
this way. The important thing now is to prevent any escalation and
to find out what really did happen to the Novorossiisk so we can
defuse the whole thing.
“Earle, thanks for filling me in. The
Director will want a meeting. We’ll work it out.” He rose and
Deloach stood in turn.
“Okay,” said Deloach with resignation, “but
dammit, the gear on FireEye was a work of art. It’s like losing a
baby.”
“We know that, Earle, but you can do it
again. The next generation will be even better.”
As Isaacs ushered him out, Deloach’s mind was
already turning over a couple of the sweet ideas he’d been forced
to omit from FireEye when the budget was drawn. He could do it
better and cheaper now.