by Ben Bova
The IPF gives us all the info we need, he thought, but makes us do the dirty work. They can't let themselves get caught interfering with the internal workings of a country, but they can hire us to do it. If that isn't IPF interference, then what the dingdong dell is it?
They're smart, damnably smart. They don't want the nations to know that they're taking over the whole world, but little by little that's just what they're doing. While Cardillo and the others rot in prison, the Peacekeepers are doing just what the rebels said they'd do: building a world government for themselves.
They. My father is one of them. Their leader, in fact.
Hazard shook his head as if trying to clear cobwebs from his thoughts. Dad makes a damned good world leader, he admitted to himself. But Augustus was a damned good emperor, too. And look what followed him. Tiberius.
Caligula.
His thoughts were stopped dead as Julio sauntered into the bar. No mistaking the face: receding hairline, bum scar on the left cheek.
Holding back the impulse to leap up and grab the technician. Hazard watched as Julio ordered a beer at the bar and then took it to one of the tables toward the rear of the room. He was trying to look casual about it, but he was so tense that his legs seemed unable to bend at the knees.
Hazard could not see that far back into the crowd, so he picked up his glass of wine and pushed through the pack of the crowd. Yes, there he was, with a big German-looking guy, blond and square-jawed. Handing Julio a thick envelope.
The payoff, no doubt. Hazard put the wineglass to his lips while he snapped a picture of the two men with the minicamera built into his belt buckle.
As if the German heard the shutter click, his head snapped up and he stared directly at Hazard. As calmly as he could, Jay put his glass down on the bar and made his way toward the washroom.
Inside, he flattened against the tiled wall just next to the door, waiting for the German to come in after him. A minute passed. Jay opened the door and stepped out into the bar again. Julio and the German were gone.
Shinola! Hazard groused to himself, diving into the crowd, shoving his way to the front.
Kelly's table was empty too. She's following them. But which way did they go?
The Ramblas was filled with strolling people: young couples, families with little children, elder men and women enjoying their Sunday afternoon outing.
Jay saw that Kelly's coffee cup was no longer on its saucer. It had been placed at the edge of the table, its tiny handle pointing outward. H« started off in the direction the handle pointed, pushing, dodging around knots of people, almost running in his haste to find Kelly and the men she was trailing.
His heart pounding, he spotted her after less than a minute.
Pulling up alongside her, he admitted breathlessly, "The blond guy ... he saw me and took off."
"The nervous type," Kelly said.
The two men were walking briskly about half a block ahead of them.
"Where's Pavel?"
"He's around somewhere, don't worry," said Kelly.
"You ought to get away from me. If they turn around and see us together . . ."
"Yeah. Right."
Just as Hazard started to move away from Kelly, the German did turn around. He pushed Julio in one direction, then started sprinting in the other.
"Follow the blond!" Kelly shouted, taking off after Julio.
Hazard dodged around a family of half a dozen children, the mother pushing still another infant in a carriage, and ran after the German. He was racing up the promenade, knocking over people like a football runner. He barged straight into an elderly couple and sent both the man and the woman sprawling. Hazard ran after him, gaining as he jumped over the fallen bodies.
Suddenly the German whirled, a gun in his hand.
Hazard dived for the ground as the pistol boomed twice.
People screamed and scattered. Stone chips cut Hazard's face where a bullet smacked into the pavement, inches from his head.
Scrambling to his feet, Hazard saw the German dashing across the narrow street where cars inched along bumper to bumper. He raced after him, cutting in front of an Hispano Electric jammed with teenagers. The driver blared his horn at Hazard and screamed at him. It was in Spanish but her meaning was clear.
Down a narrow alley lined with shops the German ran.
Hazard close behind him. This ancient part of the city, the Gothic Quarter, was honeycombed with twisting alleys that had been turned into a sprawling shopping arcade, a kind of bazaar. No cars allowed, only the ubiquitous motor scooters weaved in and out among the pedestrians.
People scattered every which way, shrieking with sudden fear and anger as the gun-waving German plowed through the throng. The blond turned and took swift aim again.
Hazard slammed into a doorway. Two more shots. He heard the flat crack of the bullets whizzing past.
Hazard stuck his head out and saw the German running again. The crowd that had been ambling along the alley, window-shopping, made way for him like the Red Sea parting before the Israelites. Hazard ran in the German's wake, gaining on him.
He ducked into a side alley. Hazard ran after him, lungs burning. He skidded to a stop before turning the comer.
Perfect spot for him to stop and set up a shot at me.
As Hazard cautiously approached the comer of the old stone building, he heard a motor scooter's raucous snarl.
People screaming. A shot, then another. The screech of tires on worn paving stones. All in less than five seconds.
He peered around the comer. The pedestrians were flattened against the shop windows and doorways. A motor scooter was skidding down the alley on its side, striking sparks, its motor racing and wheels still spinning, the young woman who had been driving it tumbling over across the stone pavement, her arms and legs flailing, her leather jacket covered with bright red blood, her long hair crimson with blood, half her face blown away.
The German was down on one knee, aiming at a second scooter roaring straight at him, its young male driver bent over his handlebars, his lips pulled back in a snarl of vengeance.
Hazard watched as the German tried to fire the pistol. It was either empty or jammed. The scooter slammed into him with the sound of a hammer hitting a watermelon. Its driver went flying over the handlebars, hit the pavement with a bone-snapped thud, and rolled head over heels to end up almost touching his murdered girlfriend.
Hazard rushed to the German. He was not dead yet, but in enormous agony. Blood leaked from his mouth. His eyes were glazed with pain and shock. Every bone in his body must be broken, Jay thought.
The crowd began cautiously approaching the dead and dying bodies. Off in the distance Hazard heard the wail of a police siren. He backed away, edging through the thickening crowd, unable to understand their murmuring Catalan, and made his way back toward the Ramblas. His legs were shaking, vomit was surging inside him, burning his throat.
He stopped at one of the small fountains built into the comer of a building and doused his face with cold water.
Leaning against the stone wall, he forced himself to take deep lungfuls of air. By the time he got back to the hotel where he, Kelly and Pavel were staying, he had himself under some semblance of control. Barely.
He and Pavel shared one room, Kelly had the adjoining one. Spacious, high-ceilinged rooms with sturdy furniture that had seen decades of wear. Their windows overlooked the noisy, bustling Ramblas.
Opening the door, Hazard saw the unconscious form of Julio sprawled on his bed. Pavel was sitting on the edge of the bed, Kelly over at the desk, pecking away at the keyboard to her lap computer.
They both looked up as he entered.
Kelly leaped to her feet and ran to Hazard. "You're hurt!"
"Just scratches."
She threw her arms around his neck. "I heard shots. I was so worried . . ."
Gently Hazard disengaged her arms. The look on Pavel's face was awful: he was trying to hide his jealousy and failing miserably.
"You got him," Hazard said to the Russian.
Pavel blinked and squared his shoulders. "Yes, we got him. And the information we wanted." He lifted an empty hypodermic syringe from the bedside table.
"What about the other one?" Kelly asked.
Hazard explained what had happened.
"Is he dead?" asked Pavel.
"Probably. I couldn't hang around and wait for the police to arrive. Somebody might have told them I'd been chasing him."
Kelly went to the door that connected to her room. "I've got a first-aid kit in my bag."
Frowning at her urgency, Pavel said, "He might have told us more about Shamar's plans."
"He's not going to talk to anybody for a while," Hazard countered.
In the quiet moonlit night, the power plant looked strangely small and simple to Hazard. No smokestacks, of course. But no cooling towers, either. No huge dome of a containment building. Just a small windowless flat-topped concrete structure with an even smaller one-story office building attached at one side, down at the end of the long pier.
They're going to generate a thousand megawatts from something that small? Hazard asked himself. Intellectually, he knew that inside that modest building a tiny manmade star had been created, fed by nothing more than heavy hydrogen. No moving parts. No spinning turbines or armatures or massive machinery that looks so impressive.
The more advanced the technology, Hazard thought, the simpler and smaller the hardware.
The three of them were sitting in a rented Honda-Ford sedan, dressed in black turtlenecks and slacks, wearing noiseless black sneakers. Hazard was behind the wheel, Pavel beside him, and Kelly in the back with the drugged Julio sleeping peacefully.
"Security's a snap," Kelly had told them, once she had analyzed Julio's truth-serum ramblings back at the hotel.
Looking at the fusion power plant buildings from their parking spot along the waterfront. Hazard had to agree with her. A chain link fence was all the physical security he could see. Of course, there were all sorts of electronic safeguards as well, but Kelly assured them that she could get past them with no trouble.
They don't expect to be attacked. Hazard realized.
There've been no demonstrations against fusion power.
The Peacekeepers have given everybody the illusion that war and terrorism are a thing of the past. They're not worried about security.
His mind drifted back to the final briefing they had undergone, in Cole Alexander's jet seaplane, moored in the harbor of Gibralter.
"I want that nuke," Alexander had told them. Insisted on it, despite their misgivings. Kelly had argued against it.
So had Pavel and even Barker.
"Damned dangerous to bring that thing aboard this plane," the pilot had grumbled. "Foolish thing to do."
Alexander gave him a parody of a smile. "Safe as a church, Chris. Why, in the bad old days a B-1 bomber would carry thousands of megatons worth of bombs. No sweat."
"I flew a NATO bomber back then," the crippled Englishman retorted, "and I always sweated."
"The bomb comes to me," Alexander repeated, tapping the glass top of the map table for emphasis. "That's the deal. We'll land in Barcelona harbor just before dawn and take it and you guys"—he waved a finger at Kelly, Hazard and Pavel—"back to Valledupar."
"I don't like it," Hazard said.
"I don't care if you like it or not," Alexander snapped.
"But why do you want it?" Kelly asked. "Why not deliver it to the IPF?"
Alexander's smile twisted slightly wider. "Shamar's got a nuke, doesn't he? I want to be able to deal with him on equal terms."
Sitting in the car, sizing up the fusion power plant.
Hazard realized that Pavel had said nothing during the discussion about the nuclear weapon. Not a word. It wasn't that he had nothing to say, or that he didn't care. Hazard knew the Russian better than that. He's got his orders from Moscow, Jay told himself. Whatever his personal opinions about this might be, he'll do what Moscow has told him to do.
"All right," Kelly said from the shadows of the car's rear seat. "It's time to get moving."
"You sure he's going to be okay?" Hazard jerked a thumb at Julio. The man was utterly limp, head laid back against the seat cushions, mouth gaping open. He was breathing deeply, evenly.
"Nothing will wake him for at least four more hours,"
Pavel assured him.
They left the car and walked to the gate blocking the entrance to the pier. Kelly fiddled with a palm-sized black box and the lock flickered its tiny red lights, then clicked open.
"Pretty easy," Hazard muttered.
"Opening the lock is no problem," Kelly explained.
"Opening it without its sending an alarm to the central security program — that's the tough part."
The three of them sprinted down the length of the pier.
This was the most vulnerable part of their mission: out in the open, under the bright moon, with no place to hide.
Despite all the electronic gadgetry, if some security guard should happen to look in their direction they would be instantly spotted.
But the building was windowless and no one patrolled outside. They got to the shadow of its wall, panting slightly from the run. Hazard leaned against the concrete. It felt warm. From the day's sunlight, he told himself. It's not radioactive.
The city's lights were glittering as far as the eye could see, far outnumbering the stars shining in the pale sky. The waters of the harbor lapped gently and sparkled in the bright moonlight. A romantic spot, Hazard thought briefly.
If he and Kelly were here alone, under other circumstances . . .
"Up to the roof," Kelly whispered.
Pavel led the way. Up to the roof to a skylight and down a snaking nylon rope. In swift succession they touched down on the floor. The fusion reactor was a small dome of stainless steel, barely taller than Hazard himself. But he knew that within that dome were several layers of the toughest, densest alloys that human ingenuity could create, with pipes that carried liquid sodium, deuterium, and other strange fluids. And at the core of it all a minuscule star glowed fiercely, radiating hot neutrons that could fry a man to cinders in less time than it would take him to fall to the floor.
There were other, bulkier shapes of machines in the area.
Power converters and electrical conditioning equipment, dimly seen in the reduced night lighting of the ceiling panels, high overhead. The building was just one large enclosure, almost filled with machinery except for the walkways intended for human and robotic maintenance personnel. The place hummed with power. The fusion generator was working, converting heavy hydrogen to electrical energy, cleanly, cheaply, with almost the same efficiency as the Sun itself.
Water in, energy out, Hazard thought. But still a part of him was frightened to be this close to the raging plasma glowering at the heart of the fusion reactor. The area was warm with throbbing hidden energies, the air seemed to crackle with electricity.
Don't be an idiot! he told himself. There's not enough material in the reactor to make an explosion. He knew that.
But still his insides trembled.
Like three cat burglars, they glided silently along the walkways until they reached the long metal-clad channel of the power converter. It was rectangular in shape, painted bright blue.
"Should be wedged in under here," Kelly whispered, dropping to her knees for a better look.
Pavel knelt beside her. "Is that it?"
A metal box the size of a very large suitcase. It had been painted the same shade of blue as the generator channel, but Hazard recognized the shape.
"That's it," he hissed.
He and Pavel flattened themselves on the floor and tugged the case loose while Kelly stood guard over them.
Then she used the electronics gear she carried to open the locks.
Hazard swung the lid back and played his penlight across the panel. "Bingo," he said.
"First thing we do is deactivate it," Kelly s
aid.
It took nearly half an hour, but finally she said, "Okay. It's on safe now. Won't go off even if you chomp it up in an ore grinder." She grinned at Hazard.
He smiled back at her.
Then he heard himself say, "There's one more thing we've got to do."
"What?"
"Remove the fissionable material."
Kelly's eyes glinted with sudden terror in the shadowy lighting. Even Pavel looked shocked.
"I'm not turning this device over to your father or anybody else," Hazard said, "in a condition where it could be used."
Pavel nodded vigorously. "I agree."
They both turned to Kelly.
She hesitated, biting her lip. Finally she said, "It's too dangerous. You're talking about plutonium. The risks . . ."
He cupped her chin in his hand. "I have to do it, Kelly. Nobody should have a live nuclear bomb to play with. Not even your father."
"I know," she whispered bleakly.
"Then I'll have to take the fissionable material out of it."
"But it's so dangerous."
"Not if you know how. I've worked with warheads before. The plutonium's always protected by plenty of shielding." As he spoke, Hazard realized that this is what had been making him jumpy, earlier. Not the fusion plant.
He had known, in his subconscious, that he was going to try to disarm the bomb. He had been carrying the tools for the task ever since they had left the seaplane at Gibraltar.
"What do we do?" Pavel asked.
"Get out of my way," Hazard replied. "This is a one-man job."
"There's nothing . . .?"
"Go back to the doors that connect with the office building and make sure nobody disturbs me." Silently he added. And that'll keep you far enough away so that if I do spill the Plutonium, you'll have a chance to get away.
Plutonium is not only fiercely radioactive; it is a deadly chemical poison as well.
Kelly was almost gasping with fear. "I won't leave you!" she insisted. "I can watch the doors from here. I won't leave you alone!"
