by Alex Dryden
‘And there’s been no progress?’ Petrov asked, ‘since the 1950s?’
‘None of any significant kind. There needs to be a cheap way to produce muons and that has never been found. Muons can only produce as much energy as it takes to produce that energy. The only things that can produce muons almost indefinitely – and therefore produce inexhaustible energy – are something called pions. But no method has been discovered to do this.’
‘And you’re going to tell me, I hope, what a pion is.’
‘A pion is also a subatomic particle – any one of three, in fact. There is effectively an endless supply of them. All the seas in the world produce an almost infinite number of pions. But how to make these pions produce muons – that is what scientists have been working on for more than sixty years. It is called an “almost success”. In other words, it’s useless.’
Anna sipped from the vodka cup again and looked back at Petrov once more.
‘If muon nuclear fusion could be realised by channelling ordinary seawater to produce an endless supply of muons, then a city such as Norilsk could be run from a building no bigger than a small house. All its factories, all its transportation systems, all the domestic use of a city of a hundred and seventy-five thousand people. There would be no danger of radioactive escape or of nuclear waste. All it would need is a pipe, carrying seawater, to the city. Or simply an energy line from a fusion centre based by the sea. Every car on the planet could be run on electricity provided by muon catalysed fusion. Safely, cleanly, without waste. Every village, town and city on the planet.’
Petrov stood. He realised he’d drunk half a cup of vodka. But he poured himself another and saw that Anna’s hand was stretched up towards him, with its cup also empty. Then he sat down again opposite her.
‘And this is what you believe Professor Kryuchkov had discovered? How to make muons from pions – from the sea! From seawater! From almost nothing!’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Petrov was bemused. He couldn’t understand what he was hearing, and yet he could. But there was one other thing at the back of his mind that now worked its way to the front. It was something that utterly and completely baffled him.
‘But if this discovery of Kryuchkov’s is so momentous,’ he said, ‘so world-changing, so beneficial to the planet, why does the Kremlin wish to conceal it? Why have they killed him? Why do they want to deny his discovery to themselves, let alone to the world?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
BURT MILLER STOOD on the shingle beach on Cougar’s rented island and looked towards the east – the Barents Sea and, beyond that, the Kara Sea, and then the mouth of the Yenisei river, three days’ journey from where he stood. The tenth of June had come and gone and Anna Resnikov had not made the first rendezvous.
Larry stood beside him, also looking into the blue expanse. The sun was low, but bright, the sea calm and empty of vessels. But the chill was intense. It was just after two o’clock in the morning.
‘The State Department has heard from our ambassador in Moscow,’ Burt murmured, barely audibly. ‘Pressure has been applied and it’s been partially successful.’
‘What’s the news?’ Larry asked his boss.
‘The Russians have released Eileen and Sky. That’s their concession so far. But they’re holding Clay in Krasnoyarsk.’
‘Why?’
Burt didn’t reply immediately. He just scuffed some stones beneath his feet and kicked one into the gently lapping waves. They were right on the shore, the water almost reaching their feet.
Burt turned and began to walk up the beach, away from the stone buildings and the prefab huts Cougar had erected, as if there were anyone who could hear them anywhere. Larry followed.
Finally, as he continued to walk slowly along the shingle, Burt spoke, but still in tones so low that Larry had to lean in slightly.
‘They’re charging him with murder,’ Burt said.
Larry was struck dumb.
He felt a deep anger coming from Burt, rather than hearing it in his voice. It seemed to steam invisibly out of him.
‘But that’s crazy,’ Larry exploded at last. His mind was working fast, thinking of the possibilities, the implications. ‘Have they found some link between him and Cougar? Is this their way of extracting something from us?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Burt replied.
‘Then what?’ Larry demanded, exasperated now by Burt’s low and halting delivery of information.
Burt stopped again and turned towards the sea. ‘He’s being charged with the murder of a German professor. A nuclear scientist. The man’s name is Bachman. According to our German friends he’s been missing for twelve days or more. Now the Russians say they’ve had his body all along. They’ve also found a briefcase of his, they say. Contains the usual things a man takes on a short trip.’ Burt stopped talking again and Larry restrained his impatience this time. ‘But along with the underwear and the shaving things and the change of shirt, they found a bald wig in the case,’ Burt said finally. ‘The Russians say the wig contains DNA that matches Clay’s.’
Larry was ready to explode.
‘Where’s the evidence?’ he almost shouted now.
‘Oh, the Russians are being surprisingly co-operative,’ Burt answered quietly. ‘They’ve invited FBI investigators to Krasnoyarsk.’
‘But it’s obviously a fix!’ Larry said. ‘They’ve just planted the DNA. They must know something about what Clay was doing in Siberia. They’ve let the other two go and kept him. So. They must be asking for something. They must be trying to screw us.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Burt said again, towards the sea. ‘They’re not asking us, or the CIA or the State Department, or any of us, for anything at all. They’re charging him with murder and they intend to pursue it. They want nothing, no bribe, to make them drop the charges, as they usually would. They see it as some kind of publicity coup, perhaps. A way to show the world they can solve a murder committed by a foreigner, even if they somehow fail to solve the murders they commit against their own journalists and MPs and anyone else in Russia who dissents from the Kremlin’s line.’
‘But it’s an obvious set-up, for Christ’s sake!’ Larry said, demanding the answer he wanted now, screwing his right foot into the shingle in anger. ‘You know that! They know he’s connected to us and they’re going to frame him. “Stop sending your spies on to our soil”, that’s their message, that’s what it’s about.’
Burt turned towards him, for the first time since the conversation had begun. ‘Of course, we’ve been making our own inquiries,’ he said softly. ‘That was also my opinion, naturally. A frame-up. This Bachman had been to Norilsk. He’d intended to meet Kryuchkov, but we hear he apparently failed. Kryuchkov no longer meets anyone. We believe he met another man in a hotel in Norilsk, however. Perhaps something passed between them, we don’t know. But Bachman was a marked man after that.’
‘But not marked by Clay! Jesus, Burt, stop talking this crap! It’s obvious the Russians are sending a warning shot across our bow. They know Clay isn’t who he says he is, that’s all. Maybe they even know he works for us, or believe he’s CIA. Who knows? But that’s what they’re doing. Straightforward extortion.’
Burt briefly put a hand on Larry’s shoulder. He knew Clay was close to the man standing next to him on the beach. He saw his distress. It was Larry who had recruited Clay initially and then Cougar had hired him after all the normal checks on the man had yielded favourable results. So it wasn’t Larry’s fault, Burt was thinking, but, nevertheless, Larry would blame himself. Burt knew that.
He removed his hand from Larry’s shoulder.
‘I repeat, they’re not trying to extort anything from us,’ he said. ‘And as I say, we’ve been making our own inquiries,’ he continued. ‘And not just in Russia. We’ve been working on this back in the States twenty-four hours a day.’ He paused. He didn’t want to go on. But finally he sighed and began to complete the story. ‘It seems Clay has a bank accoun
t in a small private bank in Mexico City. Under the name Santorio Mondragon, would you believe. There’s five million dollars in the account.’
Larry looked at him aghast.
‘The provenance of the money has been harder to discover. But we have, finally, discovered it. In double-quick time too. A company called Friar Tuck Investments…’ Burt gazed up into the sky. ‘Where do they get these names?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Santorio Mondragon… Friar Tuck… It baffles.’ Then his face turned down towards the shingle and, from the side of his face, Larry saw that he was frowning. ‘The company doesn’t exist, of course,’ Burt continued. ‘Or, at least, it exists solely for the purpose of depositing money to Santorio Mondragon. To Clay,’ he added delicately. ‘It is in reality a snake’s nest of entities, a poisonous soup of different ingredients, a consortium, in other words, of different companies, all of which are competitors in the normal way of things, but who, on this occasion, share the same interest.’
Burt violently kicked a pebble into the sea. Larry was too stunned to speak or even think.
‘Apparently, representatives of this consortium knew about Bachman’s visit to Kryuchkov and, even though he failed to meet the Russian professor, they must have had reason to believe that he’d taken something with him back to Krasnoyarsk, something the people in the consortium wanted very badly indeed. Evidently, this was communicated to Clay. A little taster of five million dollars was paid into the account in Mexico City. No doubt the eventual reward, if Clay found what they were looking for, would have been ten, a hundred times greater. What this consortium want is the same thing that we want – Kryuchkov’s magic formula,’ Burt said dryly. ‘If it exists. And I now believe it does. In any case, assuming Clay did kill Bachman, did he find anything on the German? Kryuchkov’s equations? If he did, the Russians have now relieved him of them. But they’ll never let him go. Maybe he’s hidden a copy of them – if indeed he did find anything on Bachman. Maybe he’s even smart enough to keep the equations in his head. Who knows?’ Burt paused. ‘I’m sorry, Larry,’ he said, turning towards the taller man. ‘But it seems that Clay did murder Bachman. And if he found anything, no one’s going to get a sight of it in the West or anywhere else. Clay’s lost, buried for good, he’ll probably catch typhoid, or “commit suicide”, or get shivved by a fellow prisoner in a Russian cell in Moscow or Krasnoyarsk, or far out of the way in one of their prisons in the middle of Siberia. Once the Russians have presented us and the FBI with irrefutable evidence, he’ll be tried in camera for the murder and convicted. Correctly, I’m afraid. That will be almost a first for Russia; a correct conviction. Then he’ll simply be disappeared. Too dangerous to remain alive – if he did get sight of what Kryuchkov has found. If he didn’t, the Russians won’t care. They won’t take the risk. They’ll kill him. In one of their well-appointed dungeons. If he’s lucky, they may not even bother to torture him first.’
Burt now stuck his gloved hands in his pocket. Larry hadn’t asked him the question he expected him to ask. Not yet. But Larry’s mind was for the moment twisted into a fist of conflicting lines of thought that were tighter than a golf ball.
‘Bachman,’ Larry said. He felt a fury grip him. ‘The Bachman you courted so assiduously before this operation began.’ He looked like he might lunge at Burt. ‘Was Bachman working for us? For Cougar?’
Burt turned towards him and looked him directly in the eyes. ‘Larry, you should know better than anyone that Cougar doesn’t employ amateurs.’ Then Burt gave a hollow laugh of incredulity. ‘You think I’d employ Bachman? Really, Larry. But someone did, or may have done.’
Larry stood silently and the silence stretched into more than a minute as he tried to believe Burt.
‘So Anna is our only chance,’ he said finally.
‘Just as she always was,’ Burt added.
‘If she’s still alive,’ Larry wondered.
‘If she’s still alive or not, we’ve had another piece of news,’ Burt said. ‘Last night, out of Moscow. A formal press announcement, as it happens. To all the wire services. Professor Vasily Kryuchkov is dead. A heart attack, the Kremlin is saying. The Kremlin is hailing him as a Hero of Russia, a nuclear scientist greater than Sakharov, greater than anyone, they’re saying. He’s to be given a state funeral. And this time – now he’s dead – all his international colleagues will be invited to meet him at last. At his funeral.’
‘They’ve murdered him,’ Larry whispered.
‘I would say so, yes,’ Burt replied. ‘The lid is being slowly screwed shut.’
He turned to Larry.
‘When’s the next rendezvous?’ he said.
‘In five days,’ Larry replied faintly. ‘I’ll be on the ship. It should be arriving not far from us here in the next twenty-four hours. That’s when I’ll board.’
‘Good. For God’s sake, get her out, Larry.’
And then at last Larry’s mind began to form itself itself into some kind of order. The second question Burt had been waiting for rose slowly through its dark depths and finally broke the surface.
‘Who is the consortium?’ Larry asked him. ‘Who the hell is Friar Tuck Investments?’
Burt looked up at the taller man again.
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it, Larry. It’s the people who stand to lose most from Kryuchkov’s discovery – to lose everything, in fact. Our own people, our own oil companies in the West. Our all-powerful energy companies. The richest corporations in the world.’ Burt paused. ‘They’ll be wiped out completely.’
He brooded towards the sea.
‘Who knows?’ he continued slowly. ‘Maybe our own government is involved in the cover-up? To support our all-important energy companies. In return for their support, of course, for our government. Maybe,’ he said, and there was now a look of slight alarm on his face, ‘maybe I don’t know everything there is to know about our own men of power.’
There was a silence between the two men. Only the lapping of the water, as it rolled on to the shingle, disturbed the total peace of the pristine island.
‘Can you imagine the kind of sum they offered poor Clay to avoid that fate,’ Burt said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ANNA STILL SAT on the earth floor. The fire had gone down and Petrov got to his feet and put more wood in the burner. It flared warmth into the choom and they both felt it in their bones. It reinvigorated her. She was beginning to feel strong again.
‘What date is it?’ she asked.
Petrov realised he had no idea. His links with his previously normal life seemed to have been severed almost completely. He looked in blank surprise for a moment, then got to his feet again and rummaged in his pack by the grass bed on the far side of the tent from Anna. He finally found his watch.
‘The twelfth of June,’ he read.
Four days, she thought, four days until the next possible pick-up. And she knew that each delay was bringing greater danger to the men who came into the small gulf off the Kara Sea in the 24-hour daylight. But it was the nearest pick-up point to Finland and the most remote from people, the best. Three hundred miles to the north of where she sat, a hundred miles east of Dikson, Siberia’s northernmost town. Around a thousand miles from the North Pole.
But even then, even if she made it, she would be returning with only failure.
Petrov waited. She hadn’t answered his question from earlier. And so he tried again, uncharacteristically forceful now in his demand for an answer from her. ‘Why?’ he asked again. ‘Why is the Kremlin destroying all the evidence of this discovery? Even down to the presumed murder of Kryuchkov?’
Anna stretched out and then curled her unwounded leg into her thigh. She felt the good muscles respond as if they were eager to get going, to be on the move again. To go north.
‘The Russian economy,’ she began, ‘is hopelessly dependent on oil and gas. The Government is interested in no other investment in the country. And now there’s the oil and gas they wish to exploit under the Pole – with this new m
obile nuclear reactor they’ve built up at Dikson to power the drilling. Oil and gas make up at least thirty per cent of Russia’s GDP. They are two thirds of all Russian exports. They account for around half of the Federal State budget. A one dollar decrease in the price of oil on the world markets means a one per cent reduction in Russia’s GDP. And, of course, a similar increase results in the opposite.’ She stretched out her leg again, so that both were straight out and flat to the floor of the choom. ‘Without oil and gas, Russia would be a truly Third World country. It would disintegrate as a world power. It couldn’t afford its Space projects or its nuclear technology. It couldn’t survive in its present form. Its people would become poorer than they are even now. It couldn’t afford its vast security and intelligence services that keep the lid on popular discontent. Russia would have to change at last. Start to become a modern economy. But that’s not what Russia’s leaders really want, no matter what they say. Most important to the Kremlin and its spy cronies, without oil and gas the thieves who strip the State energy companies for their own personal advantage will no longer be able to do so.’ She clasped her hands in front of her and leaned her neck back, stretching her torn body as best she could. ‘In the West,’ she continued, ‘in certain Western intelligence agencies, in any case, they believe Vladimir Putin is now unofficially the richest man in the world. The graft and percentages that come to him and others from the State’s companies are vast.’ She paused and looked Petrov in the eye for the first time during this exchange. ‘That’s why they don’t want Kryuchkov’s discovery to reach the world. The spy elite in the Kremlin will become irrelevant. No more the siloviki – the men with power – but the men without power. And so they’re prepared to inflict ever further damage on Russia and the rest of the world with their pollution and their drilling and extraction and their highly dangerous and volatile nuclear reactor up at Dikson, ready to be dragged to the Pole. And the world, including your people, the Evenki, will pay the ultimate price for their greed.’
