The president closed the file.
“And Collins was always Collins.”
He sighed. “Are you as sure as you are about the suicide?”
“Even more so,” I declared.
“But there was one day last year,” the president began. Then he made a rather clumsy show of pushing through more files, lending a banal officiousness to the insulting moment. This was what my leader had been doing while waiting for my plane. Thumbing his way through old security papers that meant nothing.
“I don't care about last year,” I said.
“Collins went missing,” he snapped. “He was out on leave, and for fourteen hours, the man dropped out of contact with everybody.”
“He explained that later,” I pointed out. “The man was exhausted. He needed to be alone and regroup. And that's what I believe.”
“You do?”
“More and more.”
“He wasn't one of Abraham's agents?”
“If he was, then maybe I am. And you are too.”
My reply was too awful to consider. I read revulsion in the man's face and his fists. And I kept thinking that if I had bothered to vote in our last election, I never would have helped elect this dangerously incompetent man.
“I am not one of them,” he whispered.
“Maybe you are, and you don't know it,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“If our enemies can remake their faces and blend in everywhere, then why not rewire the thought patterns inside other people's heads? If they have that kind of magical technology, then why not inoculate the world with a tailored virus that makes everybody into loyal Muslims who have no choice but to accept the wisdom of this never-seen Abraham?”
Here was one proposition that had never been offered to the president. And he responded exactly as I expected, eyes opening wide, seeing nothing.
I laughed it off.
He hoped that I was joking now, but he didn't dare mention my suggestion again. Instead he posed one final question. “And why did Collins kill himself ?”
“Remember the dollar?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“On the bathroom floor, they found a coin in the blood. Do you remember that detail from the reports?”
He had to admit, “No.”
“Collins didn't see or speak to Ramiro for three days. Other than that, nobody remembers him doing anything out of the ordinary. But I have reason to believe that our prisoner gave him something. Something new. Something that was so difficult to accept that it took three days for Collins to wrestle with the concept. And then what the man did ... I'm guessing this, but I would bet my savings on it ... Collins went into his bathroom and ran a warm bath and got a knife and then flipped the coin. And the coin happened to come up tails.”
“Which means?”
“It's a quantum-inspired game. In this reality, tails meant that he would slit his veins and bleed out.”
“And if it was heads?”
“Then Collins would have done something a lot more difficult.”
“And what would that have been...?”
“Show the entire world what Ramiro gave him.”
“And what was that, do you think?”
“I wish I knew.” My laugh was grim and sad, and it suited both of us. “In my mind, I keep seeing Collins sitting in that bathtub, flipping the coin, working it until he got the answer he wanted.”
A phone set between us rang once, very softly, and then stopped.
The president gestured at the invisible sky. “Another plane's heading west. It'll arrive in another hour or two.”
His wave was a signal; my door suddenly popped open. It was still summer, but I could feel frost threatening.
“Do I still have full authority?” I asked.
Again, the presidential phone rang, begging for attention. He offered me a nod, saying, “For the time being, yes.”
“Full authority?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He stared at me for another moment. Then he quietly asked, “What do you think our world's chances are?”
“Very poor,” I offered.
“Why?”
I had to say, “With people like us in charge, sir ... our enemies don't have to do much at all.”
* * * *
9
The sound was soft but insistent, coming from the middle of my apartment door. I heard the first rap of the knuckles, but I did nothing for what seemed like a very long time. Aware of the bed beneath me, I looked at my hands in the faint blue glow of the nightlight, and then I turned and gazed at the red face of the clock on the edge of my nightstand. Eight minutes after three in the morning, I read. Twice. Then the knock quickened, and I sat up and put on my only robe and took the time to find my slippers before letting my visitor inside.
“You're not watching,” Jefferson began.
I said nothing.
He looked at the darkness and rumpled sheets, his expression puzzled. Then his face fell back into a kind of breathless horror.
“What?” I asked.
He couldn't say it.
What passed for the outside was gloomy, not dark. A single guard stood in the middle of the enormous tunnel, meeting my eyes before she retreated into the shadows.
After my guest stepped inside, I said, “Come in.”
Once the door was closed, Jefferson turned on my ceiling light. Then he showed me a tired, frazzled expression that set the tone. “Now Russia has been hit.”
“Hit?”
“Bad.”
I said, “Fuck.”
“Moscow,” he told me.
I sat on the edge of my bed.
“Half a megaton,” he muttered, standing in the middle of the small room, hands dangling at his sides.
I stood up again, slippers popping as I walked to my television. The filtering software had a lot of work to do before we could be trusted to see the news. That's why the thirty-minute delay, and that's why the world before me was nearly two thousand seconds in the past.
A handsome Russian was sitting at a news desk, speaking quickly but with a surprising measure of poise. It was easy to believe that Jefferson was wrong. Nothing awful had happened. Not understanding the language or the Cyrillic lettering streaming past, it was easy to embrace the doubts assuring you, “This is nothing. Nothing.”
Then the feed switched abruptly, picking up CNN. An older but equally attractive newscaster sat several thousands of miles from the tragedy. But he didn't have any trace of Slavic stoicism. Practically screaming, he declared, “In the morning, without warning, Hell was released just a mile from the Kremlin!”
Jefferson collapsed in my only chair.
I reclaimed my bed, watching the first in a series of inadequate views of an unfolding disaster. The flash was only as bright as the amateur equipment could absorb. The images jumped, and I could hear people screaming in Russian ... and then the camera and I were being carried into the subway, the screen going black when the power abruptly shut off...
The next view was a ten-second snippet from some high-rise far enough away to be spared by the blast.
The third was from someplace very close, and more recent. A digital camera was shoved over a concrete wall, showing a firestorm that was starting to grow wings.
“It's their turn now,” I whispered.
Jefferson didn't seem to hear me.
I glanced at my guest and then looked away. “Russia almost seemed to be blessed,” I mentioned.
“This is bad, Carmen.”
“Yeah.”
“No,” he said.
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
The last decade had been relatively sweet for Russia. Pragmatic and naturally authoritarian, it had managed to avoid most of the mayhem. And it didn't hurt that when the Middle East turned to smoke and warlords, the Russians happily sold their oil and natural gas to the EU and a few select friends, increasing their own wealth many time
s over.
Again, I asked, “What do you mean?”
Jefferson dipped his head.
The television jumped to the BBC. The Prime Minister had a few sturdy words to offer about giving support to all the victims of this latest misery.
I muted the sound.
Which helped Jefferson's focus. With a conspirator's whisper, he told me, “I was just in touch with somebody.”
“Who?”
He named the CIA director, using the friends-only nickname.
I said nothing.
Jefferson gave my brown carpet a long, important study.
“What else is wrong?”
The man looked old and extraordinarily tired. What he knew was so urgent that he had to practically run over here to tell me. But now he lacked the courage to put into words what a confidential voice had told him five minutes ago, from the other end of a secure line.
“Has there been another explosion?” I prodded.
“No,” he managed. Then he added, “Maybe.”
“Shit, Jefferson—”
“Do you know how we were after Indian Point? Down here, I mean. We were terrified that the big assault was finally coming. But then we heard that an old Soviet warhead did the damage. Which meant it wasn't Abraham.” He breathed faster, his face red as a blister. “And this bomb wasn't Abraham's either. The yield and isotope readings point to it being one of ours. One of eight.”
“Eight? What eight?”
He rubbed his belly.
“Just say it, Jefferson.”
“I just learned this for the first time,” he reported. “After Indian Point, when everything was crazy ... Washington dead and millions fleeing ... somebody with the necessary skills ripped open an Air Force bunker and took out eight high-yield marvels, any one of which matches what we're seeing here...”
I said, “Fuck,” once again.
He nodded.
“But the failsafes,” I said. “Soviet bombs are one thing. But how could somebody make our damned things detonate?”
“Like I said, these people have skills.”
The horrific images had returned, and we watched in silence for another minute or two.
“What's Russia doing now?” I asked.
“Their president's in St. Petersburg. And he's talked to our president two, maybe three times.”
“The Director told you this?”
“Yes.”
“Seven more nukes?”
“What if somebody wants payback for Indian Point?” he asked me.
Or himself.
“But the Russians weren't responsible,” I said. “At least not directly, they weren't.”
“But what if we're responsible for this?”
“Who's ‘we'?”
Wearing an interrogator's face, he stared at me. “I know where you went last week, Carmen. Believe me, I have friends. I have connections. I know whose limousine you sat inside.”
I stared back at him.
Then I carefully told him, “No. We had nothing to do with Moscow. Our president's too scared of phantoms to pick a fight with an old enemy.”
Jefferson bristled slightly. “What do you mean? ‘Phantoms'?”
I didn't answer.
He said, “Carmen,” twice, and then gave up.
A truce was declared, ushering in ten minutes of silence. I pushed the television back up to a comfortable volume, and using e-mail and my private sources, I pieced together a chain of events roughly the same as his.
“Their president wants to believe our president,” I reported.
Jefferson nodded.
“But if there's a second attack...”
He looked at me. For the first time, he had the roving eyes of a healthy male. As if emerging from a fog, Jefferson realized that he was sitting in a woman's apartment and she was wearing nothing but a nightgown and slippers and a fuzzy old robe.
If only to change the desperate mood, he wanted sparks.
I pulled the robe across my chest. Then I told him, “You should go back to your apartment.”
He said, “Maybe.”
“Now,” I said.
He stood stiffly and looked at me. Suddenly I could see Jefferson at his high school dance, standing beside the wrestling mats, too smart to bother asking any girl to accompany him out onto the gymnasium floor.
Against my wishes, I felt sorry for the poor guy.
Then I ushered him to the door and shut and locked it.
Alone, I slowly dressed, and after another hour of television, I stepped out into a tunnel that was beginning to go through the motions of dawn.
In the brightening gloom, I walked.
Then I ran.
I was pounding along my favorite stretch when I passed the round pond with its bluegill and a single dragonfly. Standing on the wooden deck was our resident fisherman. “Hey, Jim.”
He almost jumped at the sound of my voice.
“Any bites?”
He said, “Hi, Carmen,” and rolled his head. Then he flicked the fly out onto the windless water, and after a pause and a couple of deep swallows, he said, “Somebody just told me something.”
“What's that, Jim?”
Looking at his own hands, he explained, “It's this guy I know. He works security upstairs. And I know it's against every order, and we aren't supposed to talk—”
“You heard about Moscow?”
“And St. Petersburg.”
I had just enough time to ask, “What about St. Petersburg?”
Then the alarms began to blare—throbbing, insistent noises meant to jangle every nerve—and the fisherman threw down his gear and sprinted toward the nearest elevator. But he was too late. The field station on the ground had declared a lockdown emergency, and according to protocols, every exit disabled itself. Just once, Jim struck the steel door of the elevator with a fist. Then after a moment of quiet muttering, he returned to the pond. His face was as white and dead as the salt surrounding us. Not quite meeting my eyes, he said, “I'm sorry, ma'am. That won't happen again.”
And then he picked up his tackle and silently struck out for home.
* * * *
10
For nine days, our prisoner was allowed to keep his normal routine. Guards brought hot meals, clean clothes, and the expected little luxuries. His plumbing and lights worked without interruption, and at appropriate intervals, we spared enough power to brighten his exercise yard. The only significant change was that I stopped meeting with Ramiro. But he didn't mention my absence, not once, just as he refused to discuss what must have been obvious. The shrill alarms would have been audible from inside his cell, and less than an hour later, the first in a sequence of deep, painful rumbles passed through the surrounding salt bed.
Fuel was limited, which was why the tunnel lights were kept at a midnight glow. And that's why the vegetation began to wither and drop leaves, including inside Ramiro's yard. The dying umbrella trees garnered a few extra glances, I noted. Then after six days, Ramiro's milk turned to the dried variety, and there was a sudden influx of fried bluegill in his dinner, and the banana slices on his morning yogurt were brown at the edges. But his guards provided the largest clues. Even a sloppy observer would have noticed the miserable faces. Not even the hardest professional could hide that level of raw sadness. Ramiro would have kept track of which guards skipped their watch and who was pulled early when they felt themselves about to start blubbering. But again, he didn't say one word that was at all removed from the ordinary.
Jefferson was a minor revelation. That sturdy old bureaucrat threw himself into the disaster, holding meetings and ordering studies. Key machinery had to be identified, inventories made of every spare part. Our generators were industrial fuel cells, and it was a minor victory when two extra barrels of methanol were discovered behind a pile of construction trash. For two days, the practicality of hydroponics was explored. But a determined search found no viable seed, save for some millet and cracked corn meant for his assistant's pet parakee
t. Our home was a prison, not a long-term refuge. But at least there were ample stocks of canned goods and MREs, and the water and air were agreeable to purification. Plus, there were quite a few handymen in our ranks. Most estimates gave us at least six months and perhaps as many as eight months of comfortable security. That was a point worth repeating each day, at the beginning of our mandatory meetings.
With nobody watching us, Jefferson was free to transform himself. He announced that there were few secrets worth keeping anymore. Only Ramiro remained off-limits. Then he told the grim, brief history of our latest war. All of us were invited to his apartment to watch the recordings that he'd made of news broadcasts and secret communications, and then the final pitiful message from the field station. Few accepted his invitation, but that didn't matter. Word got out quickly enough. Everybody knew what had just transpired, and the long-term prospects, and in a fashion, just how extraordinarily lucky we had been.
Through it all, Jefferson dispensed clear, critical directions as well as praise and encouragement, plus the occasional graveyard joke.
I preferred to keep to myself, investing my waking hours in the endless study of Ramiro.
Sometimes when he was alone, the man would suddenly grin. I had never seen that expression on him before. It wasn't a joyful look, or wistful. What I saw was an empty expression—a broad sycophantic look that I have seen in other faces, on occasion, particularly when people are struggling to believe whatever thought is lurking behind their bright, blind eyes.
Ramiro would fall asleep at his usual time, but then he'd wake up again, usually around three in the morning, and lie very still, staring up into the darkness for an hour and sometimes much longer.
Instead of new books and movies, he requested titles that he already knew—as if granting his mind an easier, more familiar path to walk.
On the ninth day, I had a tall cold glass of lemonade brought with his lunch, and he drank it without complaint.
On the tenth morning, Jim opened the cell door and said, “Sir,” before ushering the prisoner down the short hall to the exercise yard. After the usual bookkeeping, he took his post inside, standing before the only door. Some of Ramiro's guards had shown worrisome symptoms. But after his initial panic, Jim had turned outwardly calm, sturdy. Maybe if I had paid closer attention, I would have seen some clue. But then again, even the best interrogator must accept the idea that she knows more about the beginnings of the universe than she will ever learn about the shape of a person's true mind.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2008 Page 33
