The Watchmen

by Brian Freemantle

  As they drove north, leaving the Gorki outskirts behind, Dimitri Danilov recognized that his impression from the air was confirmed on the ground. The military manufacturing plants were carefully created individual parts of an entire and composite whole, each factory separated by its perimeter fence and barriered—sometimes tower-dominated—private approach road.

  It was one of several realizations, ranging from the fact that even this close the taiga through which they were driving still appeared black, not green, to the complete reversal in how he was being treated. From the one extreme of his dismissively ignored arrival there hadn’t been a waking moment when he hadn’t been in the watchful presence of either Oleg Reztsov or Gennardi Averin or both, like now. And the plainclothed presence of two men at an adjoining breakfast table that morning had been almost embarrassingly obvious. He wondered if they’d already reported his slipping the side plate knife into his pocket before asking for envelopes at the reception desk.

  Identifying another of Danilov’s already reached awarenesses, Reztsov indicated a service road controlled by both barriers and a tower and said, “See what I mean about the degree of security? Nothing left of these plants that wasn’t intended to.”

  “Exactly,” Danilov replied.

  “I meant officially,” said the stiff-faced police chief.

  “We’re already getting street rumors,” said Averin from the front seat, trying to come to his superior’s rescue. “The gangs are worried about the sudden interest we’re taking in them.”

  Danilov didn’t bother to challenge the ridiculously premature claim or ask why the interest had been so sudden. “What about Viktor Nikov?”

  “The most interesting of all,” said the major. “Not at his home or any of his garages. Hasn’t been seen for several days, apparently.”

  “Why not, do you think?” questioned Danilov. He hadn’t told them of Pavin’s discoveries in Moscow about Nikov’s defense witnesses.

  “Who knows?” Reztsov shrugged.

  “The question we’ve got to answer, along with all the rest,” suggested Danilov.

  According to Danilov’s separate parts-of-a-whole assessment, Plant 35 was at the very edge of the straggling installation. Beyond the barrier and tower checkpoint there were two more manned control points before they reached the gates themselves, where their identities were confirmed for a fourth time.

  Professor Sergei Alexandrovich Ivanov, the director of Plant 35, was a hugely bearded, limp-haired man with the distracted demeanor of an academic and the physical appearance of a Mongol wrestler. The office was a box, like all the boxes—some empty and without lights, most of the others seemingly inactive, despite their being occupied by white-coated or protectively dressed staff—that had preceded it. Ivanov’s white coat was not newly stained but dirtily ingrained by wear. There was so little room that Averin had to remain standing. There was no hospitality prepared for the visit, which Danilov believed the scientist, whom he guessed to be well beyond seventy, had genuinely forgotten. Danilov said, “You know what happened in New York?”

  There was a hesitation before the bearded man said, “Yes. Of course.”

  Danilov offered the FBI photographs of the missile and said, “You recognize it?”

  The frowned hesitation was longer this time, before the director said almost wistfully, “These were a very long time ago. I’d almost forgotten.”

  “But they were produced here!” demanded Danilov, impatient with nostalgia.

  “Before my appointment,” said the man, instantly defensive. “It was a ridiculous idea, trying to improvise a hybrid. The rocket wasn’t designed to deliver it. But in the sixties everything and everybody was paranoid: Everyone’s finger on the red button, no one thinking beyond the official line.” He frowned toward the two policemen, and Danilov identified the never-lost communist legacy of fear of informants and provocateurs.

  “As long ago as that?” queried Danilov.

  “The prototype was developed here in 1961. I stopped the program myself when I got here in 1975,” said Ivanov. “Absurd. Could never properly have worked without its own delivery systems.”

  “How many such warheads were built?” pressed Danilov.

  Ivanov gave a shrug of uncertainty. “Who knows throughout the Soviet Union?”

  The disappointed Danilov said, “They weren’t only made here?”

  “Of course not,” said Ivanov, as if the question were naive. “Inconceivable though it seems now—as it was then, scientifically or ballistically—this thing”—he swept a disparaging hand toward the photographs, still laid out on his desk—“this thing was to be our recovery for Khrushchev being faced down by Kennedy over Cuba. It didn’t matter that it never flew properly, or that the rockets Khrushchev put on Cuba didn’t have a guidance system that would have gotten them to Florida. Central Planning decreed they had to be produced and so they were, by the hundreds—”

  “Hundreds!” broke in Danilov, in stomach-dropping despair.

  Ivanov gave another empty shrug. “At least. The prototype was produced here; it proved to be totally ineffective. But what did that matter at that time? Moscow always knew better. They demanded a stockpile—set a norm which we initially met but couldn’t sustain so the production was extended.”

  “To where?” Reztsov broke in.

  Ivanov’s shoulders rose and fell again in what Danilov guessed to be a habitual responsibility-avoidance gesture. “Moscow, I believe. Two definitely just outside Leningrad, as it was then. And in the republics that were then part of the Union. Kiev, certainly. There was a great concentration of weaponry—nuclear, too—in the Ukraine because of its geographic position, so close to the West.”

  “What about these numbers?” demanded Danilov, pointing to the print that specifically showed them on the side of each canister. “What do they signify?”

  “Stock designation,” identified Ivanov.

  “So they identify the manufacturing plant?” seized Danilov, suspecting an admission.

  “No,” said Ivanov. “They were issued from Moscow, for Moscow’s records, not ours. The zero in both lines of numerals: That’s Moscow.”

  “What about the emergency phone number?” persisted Danilov.

  “Seven numerals,” the professor pointed out. “That’s Moscow again.”

  “There’s a treaty. Signed in 1993. Everything should have been destroyed,” reminded Danilov.

  “You can’t just pour these things down a sink, flush it away. There’s been a start.”

  “This warhead didn’t work and was developed more than thirty years ago!” protested Danilov.

  “Because it didn’t work it was considered the least important. We still work to Moscow’s instructions: Follow ministry guidance.”

  Danilov knew he shouldn’t have been surprised at the inference of a treaty being abrogated—Washington was probably only making token gestures, as well—but he was. How many people at the emergency meeting—Sergei Gromov, from the Defense Ministry, in particular—had known about the extent of the program and Moscow’s control of it? “How many of these do you still have here at this plant?”

  Ivanov groped in a desk drawer. Papers erupted at once, and he disturbed more shuffling through the lucky dip tub, finally emerging triumphantly with a three-ring binder it took him several more minutes to pick through. Still triumphant, he announced, “Fiftysix!”

  “When was that count taken?”

  The shrug came again. “There’s no date. It’s a program that ended a long time ago, as I said.”

  “So it’s an old figure?”

  “Yes,” conceded the man.

  “It wasn’t verified, before our coming today?”

  “No.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if one—or more than one—was missing?”

  “No. I don’t see how there could be, though.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “What!”

  The question came from Reztsov, not the director. Danilov
didn’t respond to the police chief. Instead he repeated to Ivanov, “Can I see them? They’re inert—harmless—in storage, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Ivanov said doubtfully.

  “So we could look at them?” persisted Danilov, not knowing to what question the older man had been responding.

  “I suppose so,” said Ivanov, still doubtful.

  “Then I’d like to. Now.” As Danilov rose, intending to carry out his breakfast knife idea, another occurred to him. He decided to wait. The other three men followed hesitantly. They went along a different corridor from the one along which they’d approached. Some of the protectively suited and helmeted scientists in the nowoccupied offices were working with their arms and hands encased in sleeves and gloves forming permanent parts of the sealed chambers at which they stood.

  Danilov said, “The process of destruction?”

  “There is always a defensive need,” said Ivanov. “Parts of our country are far closer to those known to possess chemical and biological capability than we ever were to the United States of America.”

  So the 1993 agreement wasn’t just being abrogated, it was being positively ignored, Danilov realized. He watched the elevator’s indicator light blink down to the fourth basement level, which he calculated from the time it took to pass the preceding three basement tiers to be at least half a mile underground. Danilov wondered how many hundreds—thousands—of germ warfare weapons were stored above and below him; there had been a fifth and sixth level on the indicator panel. There’d been no security check on their entering the elevator—Ivanov had not even used an electronically operating pass key—and there wasn’t on the level at which they emerged. The basement was simply an enormous, gouged-out cavern, the central corridor disappearing into a joined, arrowhead point of infinity at its unseen end. It remained closed despite their walking for at least five minutes toward it, to get to a numbered door, and Danilov judged that underground the chemical and biological facility of Plant 35 extended at least three times the building’s size above ground. He adjusted that estimate to five times the size when he followed Ivanov into the side chamber the far end of which he still couldn’t see.

  It was stark and simple, row after row of floor-to-ceiling metal framing, each double warhead in its special, clamped pod about a meter from the one next to it. Danilov didn’t need to multiply row number by row content to know this one storage chamber alone contained at least four times Ivanov’s estimate of surviving warheads.

  Obviously aware of it himself—but seeming genuinely confused—the huge, bearded man said, “Our records must be wrong. It was always difficult to be accurate, maintaining norms.”

  Danilov knew it had been. But the falsification had invariably been to exaggerate the insisted-upon production figures to appear to comply with the demand, not to underestimate it. The fresh wash of frustration was wiped away almost immediately by anger. He was being treated like a fool by the local militia on one hand and suffering the chaos of norm-fulfilling, responsibility-avoiding centralized bureaucracy on the other. Just as quickly he curbed the fury, sure there was still a way he could beat both: certainly to prove whether what smashed into the UN building had come from here.

  Every module in orderly lines before him was printed with the same stenciled lettering as in the American photograph, and there was similar batch numbering. None of those he saw as he passed, however, matched those in the photograph, but the designation of Plant 35 appeared to be in identical stenciling. None was dated after 1975. He continued slowly down the corridor, between the racks, isolating the break halfway down, to his left. There was a gap of three empty frames before the storage continued. None of these warheads was dated. Pointing to those beyond the separation, Danilov said, “Why the division?”

  “They haven’t been filled,” said Ivanov. “That’s why they’re undated. Must mark my arrival, when I stopped the program.”

  “Good!” Danilov said briskly. “I’m impounding one now under presidential authority. Have it removed from the frame for me to take it with me.”

  “What … ?” said Reztsov, his voice trailing. “I don’t—”

  “A comparable exhibit,” said Danilov. He wasn’t looking at the other three men. Instead he went back to the lettered canisters, taking from one pocket the envelope and from another the table knife he’d picked up that morning from the hotel.

  “Now what are you doing?” Reztsov demanded impatiently, as Danilov began carefully scraping both the letter and numerical paint and undercoating into an envelope.

  “Forensic exhibit,” Danilov said shortly.

  “For what?” asked Reztsov.

  “Proof,” answered Danilov, although still concentrating on the facility director. “To whom do you report the loss or theft of materiel?”

  “It doesn’t happen,” insisted Ivanov.

  “It has now,” said Danilov.

  “Yes,” agreed Ivanov. “I suppose it has. Moscow. That’s who has to be told. That’s who I thought you were, someone from the Defense or Science ministries.”

  “I don’t envy you this investigation,” said Reztsov, on their way back into the city. “Don’t envy you at all.”

  Yuri Pavin’s third anxious call came as Danilov entered the National Hotel, the canvas-wrapped missile casing under his arm. He took the call in the lobby booth.

  “Is he dead?” Danilov demanded at once.

  “That’s not clear,” said the colonel. “Television reports are naming him as being there; he was in charge. And they’re saying at least sixteen people died. But the bureau is refusing to name them until all the next of kin have been informed.”

  The woman who answered Cowley’s extension when Danilov called Washington direct said she wasn’t authorized to give out any information but that she’d pass Danilov’s name and inquiry on and suggested that he call later. Danilov telephoned Moscow again, for Pavin to initiate the inquiries he wanted.

  And then, alone in his room, Danilov spent some time on the empty warhead and the paint scrapings to complete the idea that came to him in the missile basement, pleased bad Russian workmanship and material made it comparatively easy. He’d feared he might have needed a tool, pincers or pliers, for the warhead, but he didn’t. Finally satisfied, he put the empty containers in the clothes closet.

  When he located CNN on his room television, a reporter was talking to the camera from a forest track about a scene of total devastation where no devastation was visible. But then the picture changed to a helicopter shot of a crater already turned into a lake from the flowing creek, with every tree snapped or totally flattened for what the reporter said was a radius of a hundred yards. Unnecessarily, because it could be seen, the man added that although it had been extinguished, the underbrush was still smoldering from the fire that followed the explosion. The death toll had risen. It now stood at seventeen.

  “Hi! Can I sit with you?”

  Hollis looked up, startled, at Carole Parker standing by his otherwise empty table. “Yes … please. Of course.” He tried to get politely to his feet but she’d sat before he was able.

  “Whatever was on your mind certainly wasn’t here!” she said.

  “Thinking about a lot of things,” said Hollis. His determination not to receive the next contact call from the General was wavering. He knew he shouldn’t—that to do so was ridiculous—but part of him, a bit part, wanted to take it.

  “Must have a lot to think about, being the manager.”

  “It’s a lot of responsibility.” Why was Carole Parker, pursued by every man in the branch, choosing to sit with him?

  “Surprised you haven’t been head-hunted yet by one of the bigger groups.”

  “I’m happy here.” He hoped he wasn’t sweating. He had the same sort of empty-stomached feeling he’d felt on the day of the UN attack.

  “You mean you wouldn’t go to somewhere like New York or Chicago if you got an offer!”

  Hollis laughed, hoping his chest wouldn’t tighten up
as it did sometimes when he was excited. “I’ll decide that when I get the offer.”

  “I wouldn’t mind transferring to a department like yours.”

  “Why don’t we talk about it sometime?”

  “I’d like that.” She smiled.

  7

  Dying—being dead—did hurt: It was the worst pain Cowley had ever known. His head was being crushed and he wanted to stop, to push away, whatever or whoever was doing it, but he couldn’t move his hands or his arms—any part of him. Nothing would move or do what he wanted. Paralyzed. He tried to call out for it to stop, and his throat felt as if there were words but he couldn’t hear himself speak, although someone was saying something a long way away. When he tried to open his eyes it was too bright, searing light burning directly at him. It hurt even more and got worse, if it was possible to get worse, when he jerked his head to one side to avoid the glare. There were a lot of hands on him, pushing and feeling, and his name, his name being said over and over again, but still it was a long way off. He tried to say yes, that he could hear whoever it was, but there was no sound of his saying it. The faraway voice said they’d try to stop the pain but to keep his eyes closed, which he didn’t need to be told. There were more voices, the noise of talking, but he couldn’t separate the words, not enough to make any sense of them. The pain did start to go—not go, not completely, but lessened so that it didn’t feel as if his head were being crushed to the point of bursting, making him scream. He wondered if he had actually screamed because there was this feeling, like a vibration in his throat that there was when you talked.