“Not quite yet—” Clegg cut him off. “I’ve got something else you’d better hear.”
8
Arny
Carboni
Anya Ostrov had been called back to Moscow. A plainclothes lieutenant met her at Sheremetyvo airport with a black Chaika limousine and carried her fast into the central city. He parked outside the old Lubyanka prison, now converted into office space for the KGB headquarters, the Center.
The shabby old building had been scrubbed and repartitioned and repainted, but agony and terror and despair still clung like the scent of death to its dingy corridors. Inside, the lieutenant identified her for the sentries. They grinned in appreciation of her figure, but she found no pleasure in their admiration.
Though the bright summer day was hot for Moscow, she shivered a little, following the frayed red carpet down into the guarded offices of the Surveillance Directorate. Boris Shuvalov rose to meet her in a gloomy little room that once had been a torture cell.
“My dear Anya!” His voice seemed too warm, his smile mechanical. “We’ve been waiting.” He sent the lieutenant outside and locked the soundproof door. His quick animal eyes tried to read her features. “Have you brought the Belcraft file?”
“Not yet, Boris.”
“Nyet?” His voice lifted. “Why not?”
“The situation—” She spread her arms as if a gesture could explain. “It has become unexpectedly difficult.”
“Your earlier reports led us to believe—” His sallow face turned savage. “We have told Colonel Bogdanov that you would have the file with you. Today! He’ll be unhappy.”
“You promised too much.” The room was hot. Brightness shone on his bloodless face, and his cologne failed to hide the odor of his sweat. Keeping her distance, she sank into the chair before his desk. “Who is Bogdanov?”
“A señor officer of the First Chief Directorate. Now acting secretary of Group Nord.”
“Group Nord?” In spite of her, the words came huskily. “Must Nord be involved?”
“Naturally.” An impatient shrug. “Nord was formed for just such contingencies. It includes the chiefs of all our foreign operations divisions. Call it a general staff in command of all our outposts along the invisible front. The colonel has just been named acting head. He is deeply concerned about the American genetic experiments. Most eager to receive your reports.” He shook his head, thin lips set. “The colonel does not forgive failure.”
“We haven’t—haven’t failed!” Angry with herself, she knew she had spoken too hotly. “I hope the colonel can understand we had no way to foresee this—this most unfortunate situation.”
“Comrade, let me warn you.” His tone grew as cold as his emotionless ferret eyes. “This is no game with nice fat prizes for whatever clever ploys you may have invented. It is war for the survival of Mother Russia, perhaps for the survival of all—”
“I know.” She caught a weary breath and wiped at the moisture on her own fair face. In spite of her makeup, its lines of sleepless strain betrayed more years than she liked to show. “I hope the gravity of the situation will persuade the Center to arrange the price my informer is demanding.”
“Why any price? Can’t you use old Roman’s millions?”
“They aren’t enough.” With effort, she drew herself straighter. “If you’ll let me explain—”
“The colonel accepts no alibis.”
“Comrade, here is the situation.” Her voice turned crisper, as if the words had been rehearsed. “Our most useful informer in the EnGene laboratory has been a man called Arny—Arnoldo Carboni. He is employed as a computer programmer. His exceptional abilities have forced most of the research staff to trust him with the details of their discoveries. Working long hours, often at night, he has been able to make the duplicate printouts that I have secured for the Center.”
“But the Belcraft file?” A brittle accusation. “Which you promised—”
“Comrade, if I may speak—” She let her own voice rise. “Dr. Victor Belcraft has become a special problem. Our own experts now call him the ablest man on the EnGene staff. They keep demanding his research notes. Those are difficult. He came to mistrust Carboni. He is also at odds with other members of the staff, perhaps because of some idealistic objection to the production of a biological weapon. Recently, he has worked almost alone. He understands computers. For the past few months he has been writing and running his own programs—”
“You’ve reported most of that.” He waved impatiently to stop her. “But you led us to understand you would bring copies of his private—”
“I was wrong.” She shrugged. “If I’ve failed anywhere, it was a failure to understand Carboni. I thought all he wanted was money. He presented himself to us as a pathological gambler obsessed with an idea that he could beat the casinos at the Las Vegas resort with systems of play designed on his own computer. We’ve paid him many thousand American dollars, which he seems to have thrown away—all just to trick us.”
Her fair skin flushing, she caught an indignant breath.
“We taught him skills to open the office safe where Belcraft kept his laboratory notes and paid him eighty thousand dollars to photograph them. He has done that. He has delivered convincing copies of cover pages and a few revealing passages, but he won’t give up the entire file. Not for money. Not even for a million, unless we also meet his main demand.”
“Which is—?”
“Alyoshka.”
“That traitor?” Shuvalov’s wet face reddened. “Impudent idiot! Does he think he commands the Kremlin?”
“He expects to,” she said. “He offers what he calls a reasonable trade. Freedom for Leon Alyoshka and his wife and daughter to migrate to Israel or America, or anywhere they like, with suitable guarantees that they will never be molested. In return—and the same guarantees for his own safety—he will surrender the Belcraft file.”
“Impossible! The Colonel couldn’t—” Shuvalov surged to his feet. “It’s blackmail! The USSR will never submit. Never! Not to some American hoodlum.”
“Carboni is no idiot.” Feeling calmer, she wanted to smile at his agitation. “He knows well enough that his offer is hard for us to accept, but he has refused to give us any other option. He demands Alyoshka’s freedom in exchange for the files—and he knows how much we want them. He has been keen enough to work out the exchange like a seasoned professional.”
“Don’t you employ your own professionals?”
“Who have failed.” She shrugged. “I have discussed the problem with the agent Scorpio, who has been my contact with Carboni. Professional enough, though I despise him. He reports that Carboni no longer has the photos in his own possession. Carboni says they have been placed where they will reach the American CIA if anything happens—”
His hostile headshake checked her.
“Comrade—” She caught her breath and lifted her head to face him. “I’m convinced that Alyoshka must be released if we want the photos.”
“I don’t know—” He stood scowling at her for half a minute, then retreated abruptly into an inner office. She let herself sag wearily back into the chair till he returned. “I have referred the matter to Colonel Bog-danov. He wants to question you himself.” He moved toward the door. “At once!”
9
Marty Marks
Standing with that withered little woman in the stale heat of number nine, Belcraft turned with her to watch the TV. A gangling, mud-spattered youth was sliding into the chair under the newscast logo. His face was grimed and swollen, and new blood beaded a jagged scratch down one unshaven cheek. His breath rasped fast, as if from a run. He sat a moment, peering behind him, and then turned to blink into the camera through black-rimmed glasses. One lens was cracked and smeared.
“Folks, I got—got back!” His voice came out with a nervous squeak, and he gulped to smooth it. “Back to the KBIO newsroom on the downtown tower. Here again to continue my own exclusive report on disaster in Enfield. Dunno how lo
ng—”
He paused to get his breath and mop his face with a dirty rag that smeared the oozing blood.
“Needed that break. On the mike since six, all by my lonesome. Stopped for a bathroom break. And something else I needed. Another good swig of Old Smuggler out of the news director’s private bottle.” He tried to grin. “Don’t think he’ll mind—”
“Hogwash!” Mrs. Bard sniffed. “A stinking drunk.”
The door slammed behind her. “—back on the penthouse terrace,” Marty Marks was rushing on, as if in terror of interruption. “Looking down on Central and Grand from eighteen stories up. A whole new scene since last time. Streets worse than a madhouse then. Wrecked cars and trucks and buses piled up at every intersection. Most on fire. People swarming out of houses and running everywhere, wild to get away. Except a few crazy kids smashing into a liquor store, staggering out with bottles they never had time to tap.
“No motion now. Bodies piled on top of bodies they’d tried to crawl over, crazy to get away. Bodies everywhere, on the sidewalks and the pavements and the roofs I could see—and not a soul alive anywhere. A stillness in the streets that’s worse than all the car horns and the engines roaring and the sirens and the screaming. All I heard was a chopper overhead. Somebody looking, I guess, for what they’ll never—”
Abruptly silent, Marty Marks came half to his feet and turned to listen, his lank frame tense. Poised for a moment as if for flight, he sank slowly back into the chair.
“Nothing, folks.” He pushed the glasses higher on his nose. “A nasty minute when I thought I had company. Anybody coming up here would likely bring something I’m in no hurry to get. Can you blame me?”
Swabbing his face, he flinched when he touched the scratch on his cheek.
“A funny feeling, folks. Ever since I was just a whimpering kid I wanted to be a TV anchorman. Somebody like Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. A crazy dream, because I never had the looks or the voice or the wits for it. But tonight’s my night. As long as I last—” Shivering a little, he twisted to listen again. “For anybody just tuning in, I’ll try to sum it up— what I know, which ain’t all that much. Like I been saying, it all began early today, out at the EnGene Labs. Maybe forty blocks southwest of downtown. What is it?” Eyes wide and strange, he stared into the camera. “Who knows?
“Nobody never told us nothin’. First thing anybody outside knew, they were calling from the labs to report an accident. Some hazardous substance escaping. Never said what it was, but they wanted the cops to seal their premises off.
“Demanded a news blackout. Under orders, they claimed, from Washington. The cops did divert traffic away from the plant. One of our mobile units went out to get the story, but the cops wouldn’t let ‘em in. They did catch an EnGene scientist while he was held up, yelling at ‘em to let him inside, but he claimed not to know a thing.
“The cops kept him out till he called Washington. In a few minutes they had orders from the local FBI to let him in. His last mistake, I reckon. Never came back out. The G-men went to work on our news director. Claiming they had a red alert—if you know what that is.
“They made him agree to sit on the story, but the mobile crew kept taping what they could, digging for answers. Trying to run down the truth about EnGene and what it was to Washington. Prying for comment on crazy tales they picked up. Rumors EnGene had been doing illegal biological research that must have got out of control. Never got a word from anybody that admitted knowing anything.”
Marty Marks stopped to listen again.
“Okay, folks.” Gingerly avoiding the scratch, he mopped sweat off his grimy forehead and pushed the broken glasses back up his nose. “That’s all I know about how the thing began. Just past noon, the labs blew up. Could have been a gas explosion—our news people had smelled escaping gas.”
Explosion? Belcraft shivered in the hot room, wondering if that blast had killed his brother.
“—other buildings caught.” He heard Marty Marks again. “Cops let the first fire trucks inside the lines, but they hadn’t done much before something knocked them out. Something—you tell me what! Equipment still there, but standing still. Nobody fighting the fires. A lot of buildings still blazing now, all across the southwest side of town.
“Middle of the afternoon, bigger wheels got here from Washington. Our mobile unit caught ‘em at the airport, landing in a military transport. Claimed to come from an outfit we’d never heard of before. Bioscience Alert.
“A funny thing about Bioscience Alert. They claimed to be unofficial. Just a handful of scientists concerned about what they called the promises and the dangers of genetic engineering. But they all had special badges and emergency authority straight from the top. Giving orders to the FBI and the CIA and the state police and everybody else. Threatened to have our own people shot if we reported anything about them.”
Marty Marks grinned bleakly into the camera.
“They ain’t here to stop me now, and I’ll say what I know. They took things over. Ordered the cops to pull back their lines and evacuate everybody in six blocks of the lab. Our camera crew climbed on a roof to take what happened when they went in. Half a dozen men looking like spacemen in masks and plastic suits. Went in toward the fire and never came out. What did come out—”
Marty Marks stopped to listen, sweating, yet still shivering.
“What it is, I don’t know. Don’t reckon they did. Nothing you could see or hear, but it kills people. Quick! Wherever, it catches ‘em. On the streets and in their houses when they try to hide and in their cars when they try to get out. Never any warning they’ve got time to tell about.
“It spread from the dead. With the wind, I reckon, because the cops kept calling our weatherman for wind forecasts. As long as he stuck around. Winds light all day, which I guess is lucky. It hit the cops and firemen first, close around the lab. Those that tried to run never got far. Not if they’d already caught it—whatever it is.
“The cops still alive—along with whoever was left of the G-men and those Washington bigshots—they tried to stop the spread of it. Moved the roadblocks back when it got past their lines. Dynamited the river bridges and the viaduct over the railroad yards.
“The last I heard of McGrath—he is or was our news director—he was reporting a run-in with one of those Bioscience wheels. About the news blackout. If the country is in danger—sure as hell it is—McGrath thought the public ought to be told. The wheel said no. McGrath said to hell with him. Called the studio to stand by for a direct broadcast from the mobile van.
“We stood by, but he never came on. The rest of the day crew checked out to cover the story—or more likely to get out of town. I stayed here to put McGrath on the air. Night crew never showed up. Not that I blame anybody. Good friends of mine. Just hope to God they took off in time. Could be the wheels had somebody shoot McGrath. Could be the wind from the lab caught them all.
“Suicide to try the streets now, so I’m still here. On the air!” A haggard grin. “At six o’clock, when nobody turned up and I felt damn sure nobody would, I decided to tell what I can, as long as I can talk—to hell with Washington and Bioscience Alert!
“One thing more—not that I know what it means.” Biting his lower lip, Marty Marks twisted to listen again. Blood-pinked sweat oozed down his dark-stubbled chin. He squinted again into the camera. “All quiet down below, last time I looked. But things are—shining.
“Everything, I reckon, that ever was alive. Bodies. Clothes they had on. Grass and trees down the street in Eisenhower Park. Shining with a pale gray light. Burning, I first thought, but there ain’t no smoke. Not except from those blazes, off toward where the lab was.
“Don’t ask me what makes the shine. I don’t know. Don’t know if anybody ever will. But I’m signing off for now. Time for a break, and another good snort of Phil’s Old Smuggler. Maybe a snack, if I can find anything— a couple of the staffers used to bring lunches, and I don’t think they ever had time to eat.”
Behind the desk, Marty Marks stood up and stretched himself.
“So that’s all for now. Can’t guess how much time I’ve got left. Or what time you’ve got—anybody out there still cool enough to listen. But I’ll take another gander from the penthouse terrace and get back to tell you what I see. If I can get back. Just one more word, while I can talk.”
Suddenly swaying, he sat down again.
“If you see anybody comin‘ out of Enfield, don’t let ‘em—”
The nasal voice faded. The blood-streaked features relaxed into an empty leer. The mouth yawned open. The dirty lenses slid off the vacant eyes and struck the desk with a tiny clatter. Marty Marks slumped slowly out of view. Nothing else moved. The studio was silent.
10
Alyoshka
Anya followed Shuvalov out of the Lubyanka. They found the plainclothes lieutenant waiting with the Chaika. Fast again, he drove them out of Moscow, southwest across the ring road and on into the empty-seeming greenbelt.
Well inside the forest they passed a billboard that read HALT! NO TRESPASSING! WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT. Out under the dull sky again, he parked beside a guardhouse identified with a gold-lettered sign. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CENTER. Khaki-clad sentries checked Shuvalov’s pass, frowned over the visas in Anya’s passport, and telephoned the colonel before they were passed through the turnstile.
Inside the tall chain link fence, the seven-story office building of the First Chief Directorate made a striking contrast to the grimy old prison, its window-walls of aluminum and glass shimmering out of well-kept lawns and flower beds.
Bogdanov was a dark massive man with thinning gray hair and a face like the nose of a battle tank. He sat facing them across a wide, uncluttered desk. As if to accent his air of implacable iron, the room was fragrant with a mass of fresh cut roses in an antique brass vase on the end of the desk. His career had begun on a livestock collective, and he still had the manner of a butcher. He kept them standing while his slaty eyes narrowed to inspect Anya as if she had been a fallow heifer. She had reddened in spite of herself before he nodded curtly for them to sit.
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