“I know. I can’t wait to nail them too.”
Roarke looked hard at the acting secretary. “By two thirty Stark has to know if Safcek made it. After that he’s got to give the word to Incirclik. I’ll be waiting right here by the phone. With great pleasure, may I add.” He smiled at his newfound friend.
On the horizon to the right, a dull glow appeared, and Safcek remarked: “They’re busy tonight, that’s for sure. Must be floodlights all over the grounds.”
Checking the gauge he saw only one kilometer left to go. Slowing the car, he began searching for the culvert they had found in the afternoon. When he saw it, he pulled the automobile over and checked the road carefully in both directions. No lights marred the highway.
Safcek maneuvered the car down the slight slope and onto an even stretch of ground hidden from view. He shut off the engine and lights. In the darkness that engulfed them, the two agents heard only the rustle of the desert wind and an occasional insect. Safcek read his luminous watch: “Twelve thirty. We’ll have to hurry.
“Let’s go over this one last time. I’ll carry the bomb; you cover me with the automatic rifle. We’ll walk through the underbrush about one mile and aim for the gully. Watch out for the guards and the searchlights. Also don’t forget to keep the mines checked out. The detector should keep us out of trouble on that score.”
She listened carefully. “How long do we have to clear out before the bomb goes off?”
“It’ll be on automatic once I set it. Thirty minutes.”
“Ready?” he asked gently. She nodded, and they went back to the trunk, where Safcek handed Luba the automatic and a small hand-detector for mines. He strapped on a Walther PPK pistol and picked up the bomb container. “To hell with the satchel charges,” he muttered. “We’re running so late now that it will have to be the big bomb or nothing.” Then he closed the trunk lid and whispered: “You go first.”
In the bright moonlight, Luba picked a path down the slope and across a meadow running about five hundred yards toward the light in the northeast. Safcek carried the bomb case in his right hand and cautiously walked in her footsteps. She was picking her way very carefully, acutely aware of possible land mines. The moon kept hiding behind the clouds, and Safcek lost Luba twice in the sudden gloom. It was taking much longer than they had expected. She moved slowly, the rifle in her left hand, the detector sweeping back and forth in her right. At the top of the first rise, she stopped, and Safcek caught up to her. They looked down and saw the laser complex a mile distant, bathed in bright lights from six searchlights probing relentlessly over the perimeter, touching down in narrow swaths and crossing one another now and then in their constant vigils. Beyond the searchlights, the buildings were themselves almost darkened. The main structure, totally windowless, as Safcek had noted during the afternoon, loomed darkly above its neighbors.
The gully Safcek had picked for the detonation point lay in darkness, too, except for moments when the searchlights found it and examined it for intruders.
As Luba started to work cautiously down the hill, Safcek whispered to her to hold, and he watched the searchlights closely to establish whatever pattern they might have in the gully area. It was irregular, obviously hand-manipulated by guards in the watchtowers. Safcek cursed audibly, and Luba turned to him.
“What’s the matter, Colonel?”
“Those damn lights are unpredictable. I can’t get a fix on them, and we need one in order to make our run into the gully.” He hesitated and watched them for a time, hoping to find he was wrong. He was not. From the trees, the guards sent random probes into the gully, directing their beams in a careless, infuriating manner.
Safcek nudged Luba and said, “We can’t wait.” He pointed toward the shadowy gully and added: “Let’s make straight for there. When I touch you again, stop. Don’t speak in the meantime.”
She headed down the slope without a word, and he followed with his container. She was going even slower now as they came closer to the danger zone. Her detector moved ceaselessly over the ground as she placed her feet down gingerly. At each step she halted to consider the next.
Six hundred yards from the fence around the laser complex, Luba heard the first noise. She dropped to the ground. Safcek fell behind her. The voices of two men drifted to them on the warm air, and a man laughed. Luba looked back over her shoulder to Safcek and pointed into a clump of trees just outside the fence and off to their right. Safcek felt his breath coming in short gasps. The voices seemed to come closer and then suddenly faded and were gone. Only the labored breathing of the two agents broke the stillness. After some minutes they got up and inched forward again.
The maddeningly slow pace continued. Luba was ten feet in front, probing the ground with the detector, when Safcek looked one more time at his watch and did some quick arithmetic.
He trotted ahead to her and touched her on the shoulder. “Luba, all the delays,” he whispered. “It’s one twenty now. The only way we might make the rendezvous with the chopper would be if we started back this minute. And even so, we’d have trouble going through that block on the highway again.”
As she waited for him to continue, she stood still beside a tree. Her face was shadowed by the limbs, which blocked out the moonlight.
“So I want you to take the chance to get away. Take the car and keep heading north. You can melt into the countryside. You’re a native here. And your mother will hide you.”
He saw her teeth suddenly as she smiled at him.
“Colonel, I can never see my mother again. It would mean her death if I did. And I have no other life that I care about.”
Joe Safcek looked down at the tiny girl. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure, Colonel. Please believe me.”
“OK, then, let’s keep moving.” He pushed her forward.
It was 10:25 P.M. inside the Kremlin walls.
Marshal Moskanko appeared enraged with the man before him. Vladimir Krylov leaned against the desk as he tried to focus his mind on his benefactor. Why was Moskanko glaring at him? Why didn’t he go and glare at someone else? Krylov decided to bring great powers of concentration upon the formidable face of the man who was directing his nation’s government.
“Vladimir Nikolaievich,” Moskanko said disgustedly, “you are a disgrace. Look at yourself. You are nothing but a dope addict. And you call yourself Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!” The defense minister’s expression had changed to a mocking grin.
Krylov drew himself up. “Comrade Moskanko, I cannot stand the thought of what you intend to do to the people of America.” He felt he had put that well and forcefully. “So I”—he paused, feeling time flowing by him on all sides as he searched his mind—“so I have no intention of being available for consultation on what to do in the next hours.” His hands, at least would be clean.
The defense minister laughed loudly as if from a great distance. “Vladimir Nikolaievich, we never had any intention of seeking your advice. We knew you were a coward.”
The premier of the Soviet Union flushed. “I am no coward, Marshal, but I do have a conscience and could never live with myself if I was part of a plot to kill millions of people.” Again he paused for he did not know how long. “I’ve done some bad things in my life but never have I contemplated the cold-blooded deaths of half the inhabitants of the world.” Krylov stood straight before his master. “Your group has gone mad.”
Moskanko was not offended. “Vladimir Nikolaievich, you may say whatever you want. You do not matter anymore. You are just excess baggage to us now. When we are ready, we will give you a nice little dacha out in the country, where you can brood and smoke and rot. In the meantime, stay out of my way. It will all be over in nine hours.”
Vladimir Nikolaievich Krylov was not finished. He sat down heavily and waved his finger at the bemedaled soldier. “Comrade Moskanko, you will bring desolation to our land.… The Americans will fight in the end.… Stark may be torn, but he will finally face you do
wn and send his missiles against us.” Rarely had Krylov felt so confident of himself, of his words.
Yet Moskanko replied. “You are wrong, Vladimir Nikolaievich. His position is hopeless. He will be lucky not to lose his job before the ultimatum expires.”
Krylov disdained to reply. He gave his attention instead to the music of balalaikas playing only for him.
“If he fights,” the defense minister was now saying, “he will have to be a completely different man from the Stark we know. He has always been eager to make accommodations with us. First in the Middle East, where he left the Israelis more or less on their own. Then in Asia, where the United States has lost much of its influence. No, my dear Vladimir Nikolaievich, Stark is a compromiser, an appeaser who takes the course of least resistance. That is why we will win.”
The marshal rose from his chair. “So you see, Comrade Premier, you have no guilt to worry about. And after this, you will have nothing else to worry about. You are quite finished.”
He stared at Krylov, whose hand rubbed his two-day growth of beard in a rhythmic movement. The premier’s face was furrowed in concentration, looking as if he were about to say something portentous. But Krylov said nothing to his tormentor, who was now moving rapidly toward the door.
Moskanko issued an order to the guard in the next room: “Don’t let him out. Make sure his phones are disconnected.” The defense minister strode briskly out of the building where Vladimir Nikolaeivich Krylov was now a prisoner listening to distant music.
The searchlights continued to probe unrelentingly around the perimeter. Safcek and Luba were now only 250 yards from the entrance to the gully. She was being even more careful as she made the final approach. Her hand counter swept in a wider arc, and she moved more hesitantly.
Safcek checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 1:37 A.M. When he heard a low whistle off to the left behind a group of saplings, he knew they might soon stumble upon a dog patrol. It was enough to make up his mind. Safcek ran to Luba and whispered: “This is OK.”
“But it’s out in the open!”
“That’s all right. It won’t take long.”
She crouched beside him while he pulled the box handles apart and lifted the lid. She looked inside and saw hundreds of tiny Styrofoam pellets. Safcek reached into them and drew forth a Colt .45 automatic pistol, which the Styrofoam had cushioned from buffeting. He took the gun out and held it gingerly by the barrel. In the moonlight, it glinted dully. Even in his haste, Safcek had to marvel at the sophisticated weapon. In the butt of the gun, a marble-sized ball of Einstinium 119 particles rested inside a thin coating of plastique. Above it was a transitorized battery; two wires ran from the battery into the plastique cover. Attached to one of the wires was a tiny vial of prussic acid. On the outside of the butt was a single black button. When forcefully pressed it would break the vial, causing the acid to eat into the wire. In thirty minutes’ time, with the electrical contact broken, the plastique would implode onto the transuranic particles, forcing them into a precise density. In a millisecond, the resultant nuclear explosion would obliterate the laser works.
“You just press the button, Colonel?” She took it in her hands.
“That’s all, Luba. And then run like hell.”
Peter Kirov’s message to the Center in Moscow had put the state security forces at the laser on special alert. Inside a concrete blockhouse within the compound, a sharp beep echoed off the walls at 1:39 A.M. as infrared body-heat sensors signaled the presence of intruders. The duty officer rushed to a television monitor while a sergeant pushed a button to focus a camera on the violated sector.
The officer saw two badly blurred shapes standing just at the edge of a line of trees. He could not further identify them except that they seemed to be wearing uniforms. One of the strangers was holding something and examining it closely.
“What is their range?”
“Two hundred yards beyond dog-patrol boundary, sir.”
The duty officer nodded. “Take them now.”
Joe Safcek had wasted enough time. “Give it to me, Luba,” and she held the pistol out to him. As he reached for it, the gun began to dance away, and Luba slowly sank into the grass. Frantically, Safcek grabbed again at her hand, but it was gone, and the pistol had disappeared. The frustrated colonel was suddenly dizzy and nauseated. Struggling desperately to plant his feet firmly, he started to curse at Luba for falling asleep when he needed her. But he realized he, too, wanted to rest for a while, and his body went down onto the lush softness of the clearing, and he lay beside Luba.
Four men wearing grotesque gas masks approached the forms in the clearing. They moved slowly, warily. Their rifles were trained on the trespassers.
In the blockhouse, the duty officer watched the monitor while he spoke to the patrol by walkie-talkie.
“Be careful with them. They may not have gotten enough gas. We have a malfunction in the lines out there.”
The bodies had begun to move. One of them staggered to his feet, and looked wildly about for something on the ground. The other one was moving about on hands and knees. Both were shaking their heads as if to clear them. The one standing suddenly lunged toward an object on the ground, and the duty officer shouted: “Shoot them.”
Joe Safcek felt a terrible pain as a bullet hit him, and he fell onto Luba’s riddled body.
The masked men came up and one of them prodded Safcek with the tip of his rifle. He toppled over and lay face up in the meadow.
The patrol leader reported: “A colonel and a lieutenant. The lieutenant is a woman. The colonel has a bullet in his right shoulder. The woman is a mess, but she’s alive.”
“Any weapons on them?”
“The usual, a Walther pistol, an AK-47 rifle. It is too dark out here to tell if that’s all.”
“Bring them in. We will pick up any other equipment when it is light.”
The duty officer switched off the radio and noted the time in his log: 2:05 A.M.
In the Oval Room, Stark sat with Randall. The President was on the intercom to the Situation Room.
“Any news from Safcek?”
“No, sir.”
“How about the satellites?”
“Midas Twenty-Six reports nothing. Same for Samos Ten.”
Stark punched the button off and returned to his foreign-policy advisor.
“We’re already running late on the detonation, right?” Randall asked.
“I’m afraid so. It should have gone up by now, and the chopper will soon be at the rendezvous, a good two hours’ drive from the laser. Maybe he ran into trouble but is still in a position to set it off even though he may never get out. He’d do it that way if he had to.” Stark spoke with more optimism than he felt. After all the hours of waiting, the President was losing hope in Operation Scratch. For a fleeting moment he damned himself for ever putting so much faith in it. He felt foolish for okaying it, for having counted on it to solve his problem. Stark caught himself and told Randall, “Get ready for a long night.”
The time was 3:18 P.M. The ultimatum period had entered its final eight hours.
At 3:45 P.M., Washington time, the thing Herb Markle had feared happened. At an intersection in the Anacostia Flats, workmen had just started checking the natural gas pipeline. One of them dropped a tool on the pavement. It sparked, and great puffs of flame burst around the men and rose seventy-five feet into the air. Two of the workers were engulfed in the fire. While some of their co-workers tried to reach them and smother the flames, others ran about shouting at pedestrians and those in cars to get out of the area. It was too late. A monstrous explosion lifted the street four feet in the air, and fire erupted from the ground. One explosion followed another as buildings in a two-block area fell and burst into flame. Cars were melted down. Hundreds of witnesses to the disaster scurried back and forth looking for an escape route. Sirens sounded in the distance, and soon fire engines came charging into the holocaust. Hoses were quickly run out. Some hydrants had been destroye
d, and the fire department had to splice lines in from working pumps many blocks away. Flames from the burning neighborhood reached into the sky to join the billowing clouds from Virginia and Maryland.
Herb Markle heard the news almost instantly. He buried his face in his hands, crying: “Oh God, what have I done?” His secretary heard him and wondered what the remark meant.
Markle called the White House and insisted on being put through immediately to the Oval Room. Randall answered and heard the hysterical Markle demanding to talk to Stark. Randall would not let the distraught man talk to the President in his condition and told him Stark was in a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Markle said he would not accept any further responsibility for the deaths, that it was Stark’s fault, Randall snapped: “Listen, Markle, you keep your mouth shut. Someday, you’ll know what this is all about, but in the meantime, you’d better get a hold on yourself and protect the President of the United States. I’m warning you, not asking you. For Christ’s sake, shape up!”
Almost incoherent by this time, Markle nevertheless haltingly agreed to maintain silence.
The last two agents from Operation Scratch were brought inside the compound they had tried to destroy. Luba Spitkovsky was placed on the table in the infirmary. The doctors examined her multiple wounds, conferred, and ordered her taken immediately by ambulance to the main hospital in Tashkent. Then they moved on to the unconscious Safcek. His single wound had bled profusely.
The doctors worked swiftly, removing the bullet and cleaning the gaping hole.
Two hundred miles to the southeast, a khaki-colored helicopter raced toward the Soviet border at an altitude of one hundred feet. In the cockpit, an anxious radio operator tapped out a message to Karl Richter in Peshawar. It began, “Dear John, Dear John.” At his desk, Karl Richter decoded the fateful words and transmitted them immediately to President Stark in the Oval Room of the White House:
“Mr. President, Safcek did not make the rendezvous. The chopper waited as long as it could—until three fifteen A.M.—and there was no sign of him on the road.”
The Tashkent Crisis Page 19
