The shadow war

by Glen Scott Allen

  "Your President Reagan," Nikolai said, "used to say ' doverai no proverai, ' trust but verify. These days, little trust, much verify. Teams there all the time, from United States, from International Atomic Energy Commission…" Nikolai smiled again, but now with a trace of wickedness. "Even from newspapers. Perhaps if you knew such people…"

  Benjamin returned Nikolai's wicked smile.

  "And you, Nikolai," he said rather jauntily, "just happen to be looking at two very rich French journalists."

  ***

  After a little more discussion, Nikolai agreed that, yes, there was a possibility, however slim, that they could reach the place designated on Leverotov's map. But he absolutely refused to allow Natalya to travel with them to Uzhur.

  They argued for an hour, pacing back and forth in the church basement. Finally, they reached a compromise: Nikolai would fly on ahead to Krasnoyarsk, then take the train to Uzhur and make contact with Vasily. Natalya and Benjamin would take the train from Dubna, through Moscow and on across Russia to Uzhur-a trip that would require four days. That way, he insisted, he would have plenty of time to sniff out the situation with Vasily and determine whether there was any chance for their plan to succeed before they arrived-and before he put his daughter's life in danger.

  Just in case something happened to him-he didn't specify the "something," but all of them understood what he meant-he gave them a letter for Vasily, a letter wherein he asked the Lieutenant Colonel to give them whatever help he could, in good conscience, offer.

  "I wrote in note, nothing you ask makes risk for Russian Federation," Nikolai said. "He would not violate his duty. But," and he winked, "Vasily is also not hostile to vziatki… to bribes, if amount high and risk low."

  Nikolai also explained that, regardless of their credentials, none of them would be able to enter the "military" Uzhur, and, since there were no hotels in the civilian town, he would contact one of his old friends there and ask him to put them up for a few days. He gave them the phone number of a Boris Silma, a man who had served with him and fallen in love with the wild territory and retired to Uzhur.

  "Boris hunts, raises rabbits, smuggles vodka into China. He will welcome you. Especially if you bring dollars."

  Benjamin suggested purchasing cell phones for all of them so they could stay in touch. Natalya and Nikolai looked at each other, laughed.

  "Unless we stay in Petersburg or Moscow," Natalya said, "they would not do us much good."

  "And around Uzhur," Nikolai added, "there is, what you say, blanket. Only military frequencies work. Besides," Nikolai said somewhat darkly, "we either meet there, or we don't."

  They left Ratmino separately, Nikolai to make his phone calls-but from Olga's, not his own apartment-and Benjamin and Natalya to gather their things from the Dubna Otel, then take a taxi to a smaller train station outside of Dubna.

  Two hours later, Nikolai met them at the small station, where the Dubna-Moscow train would stop briefly; it wasn't really a station, but rather a mere concrete platform with a rusted iron roof.

  Nikolai embraced Natalya, kissed her on both cheeks, and told her to be very careful. Then he took Benjamin aside and gave him a small bundle.

  "What's this?" Benjamin asked.

  "Insurance," Nikolai said. He opened the bundle.

  Inside was a compact black automatic pistol with a brown hand grip. A small five-pointed star was embossed in the middle of the grip.

  "Is Makarov," said Nikolai. "Good weapon."

  Benjamin looked at Nikolai with a mixture of surprise and horror.

  "Nikolai," he said, "are you kidding? I've never used one of these. I'm an 'academician,' remember?"

  "Is easy," Nikolai said. He quickly showed Benjamin how the safety operated, how to remove and check the clip. Then he rewrapped the gun and gave it to Benjamin.

  "I would never get it on plane anyway," he said. "And I feel better if I know you have it."

  "I'm not sure I will," said Benjamin. But he stuffed the bundle into his parka pocket. Then he shook Nikolai's hand.

  "Udachi!" Nikolai said. "Good luck, Mr. Levebre!"

  "And good luck to you, too, Nikolai," answered Benjamin.

  Then he followed Natalya onto the train.

  CHAPTER 46

  Benjamin had of course heard of the Trans-Siberian Railway; he just never imagined he'd actually be on it, journeying across three thousand kilometers of Russia to a secret Russian rocket base in Siberia-all so he could perform a supremely unlikely act of burglary.

  But those four days of train travel gave Benjamin a better idea of just how vast a country Russia truly was.

  Once east of Moscow, the landscape became covered with seemingly limitless pine forests. When there weren't forests, there were fields-immense fields of wheat and barley that stretched to the horizon. At Yekaterinburg-where, Natalya grimly pointed out, the Romanovs were executed by the Bolsheviks-they crossed the Ural Mountains, the divide between Europe and Asia. They were now officially in Siberia. When Benjamin evidenced surprise at this, Natalya explained that, contrary to what most Westerners thought, Siberia wasn't just the frozen north of Russia; Siberia was, in fact, the entire eastern half of the country.

  Along the way they passed through the huge oil fields around Tyumen, with numberless red-and-gray oil derricks nodding up and down and looking like the feeding skeletons of prehistoric monsters; through Omsk, a metropolis filled with blocky, white modern buildings nestled against the Irtysh River; through Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city, famous for its enormous, domed ballet theater, as well as its scientific facilities, both public and secret.

  Most of the time they tried not to think about what lay ahead. They talked of their childhoods. Natalya surprised Benjamin by revealing that, as a teenager, she'd been a leader of the Komsomol, the Communist Youth Union. Benjamin said it was difficult to imagine her as some sort of "Commie boss."

  "Oh," she said, "I was quite stern. You should see a photograph of me from that time. I look positively sinister."

  "But you didn't join the Party?"

  "No," she said. "By that time, the thaw of glasnost was already beginning, Gorbachev was breaking up the country, and everyone knew the Party's days would soon be over. And by then my father had made his… discoveries. We knew the truth about my grandfathers' work for the NKVD. If I had joined the Party, it would have broken my father's heart."

  But Natalya was far more interested in hearing about Benjamin's history. He talked about what he considered his absolutely uneventful childhood.

  "It was not nearly so exciting as living in a secret city in Siberia," he said. But Natalya seemed interested in every detail: if he'd been a Boy Scout (what she called the American Pioneers, and yes, he had, making it to Star); who his girlfriends had been in high school (only two, he'd said, which surprised her, but both blondes, which didn't); why he'd never gotten married ("Of course, because I hadn't met you"-an answer she labeled "a blatant compliment").

  Mostly, however, they watched the passing landscape, read newspapers they bought in stations along the way, and, inevitably, talked about the whole khren in which they'd become entangled.

  "I've been thinking about these 'wobbles' Jeremy discovered," Benjamin said one night as they passed through a countryside utterly devoid of city lights of any kind. "It's just hard for me to understand how people, then or now, could manufacture enemies and a war just to remain in power. It seems… inhuman."

  "Or perhaps all too human," Natalya replied. She was sitting next to him, had been resting her head on his shoulder. Now she sat up.

  "Our whole history is of people willing to do anything to stay in power. Everyone was a potential enemy, everything was a possible plot against the Soviet people."

  "For years before World War the Second, Stalin had told the people that the Nazis were their enemies. But when Molotov signed the nonagression pact with Germany, in a single day suddenly Germany became our friend, and Britain our enemy. They were told it was all part of
Father Stalin's grand strategy. And they accepted this lie without question."

  She took a page from the London Times Benjamin had been reading, drew a diagram.

  "This picture was distributed on millions of leaflets handed out in Moscow and Leningrad."

  "You see?" she said. "Instead of letting Churchill pit the Soviets against the Nazis, allowing the British to stay above the fray, Stalin wanted people to believe the nonaggression pact forced London into that role, leaving the Soviets on top."

  "Interesting," said Benjamin, thoughtfully examining Natalya's drawing.

  "Understandable?" she asked.

  "No… I mean yes. It's just that, well, I've seen something before, something that reminds me of your little triangles."

  And then he told her about how Nabil Hassan had interpreted the symbol he'd found in the engraving of Horatio Gates: as a secretive power bringing two enemies into conflict, then, he'd put it, "sitting back in silence."

  "Whether the Gray Cardinals are from your Revolution or ours," said Natalya firmly, "their methods are always the same."

  "I just don't…" His voice trailed off.

  "What?" Natalya prodded.

  "If our Gray Cardinals were behind the Newburgh conspiracy two centuries ago…" He paused, then looked up at her. "What happened to them?"

  "When the 1905 revolution failed," Natalya said, "most of the Bolsheviks were arrested and exiled. But the ones who escaped went underground. They had struck too soon. They needed to wait for better times. Or, as was the case, worse times." Her eyes became quite steely. "Perhaps your American conspirators were similarly slumbering. Waiting."

  Benjamin smiled at her. "You are the professional paranoid." He tried to make his voice sound teasing, playful-but it was a distraction.

  For at that moment, Benjamin had his first suspicion of what Scenario 55 might have been all about.

  And, if he was right, it was monstrous.

  ***

  Once they reached Achinsk, they had to give up that private compartment and the relatively luxurious accommodations of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and switch to a small commuter train for the final leg to Uzhur.

  In Achinsk, Natalya saw a notice that a new, modern express rail service was coming soon to the Achinsk-Uzhur line.

  "How things have changed," she said. "When I was a child, even this train was a secret."

  As they moved deeper into southeastern Siberia and closer to the Chinese border, Benjamin noticed that the landscape became pockmarked, as though it had been bombarded eons before by giant cannonballs.

  "Something like that," said Natalya. She explained to him that modern geologists knew this part of Siberia as one of the densest asteroid impact areas on all Earth. She opined that this was something the oldest locals understood on some instinctive level, for Uzhur had always been considered a place of dark, supernatural power. It was said that he who controlled Uzhur controlled all of Northern Asia.

  But for all its supposed mystical power, the civilian Uzhur proved to be a very small town, indeed; one of only 17,000 inhabitants. To Benjamin, it looked like photographs he'd seen of old Western mining towns, with one-story houses and public buildings scattered intermittently, separated by rickety wooden fences and small kitchen gardens. Only the main roads were paved; the rest were rough lanes of dirt and gravel barely wide enough for a single car.

  They asked at the train station for directions to Boris Silma's. The stationmaster knew Silma, and it was clear from the look he gave them that, if they were there to see "Bear" Boris, he assumed they were on some sort of illicit business. Looking simultaneously curious and disapproving, he told them that they could call Silma from the station phone; the twenty-dollar bill Benjamin gave him seemed to still his suspicions.

  Natalya made the call. She spoke in rapid Russian, and something Boris said made her go very quiet. Then she said a few more words, said, "Harasho, spasiba," and hung up.

  She came to Benjamin. She looked stricken.

  "Nikolai is not here," she said. "He called Boris from Dubna, said to expect him two days ago. But he has not arrived."

  Benjamin held her arms. "Perhaps it's nothing," he said. "Perhaps he just couldn't get a flight, or he was delayed."

  "Perhaps," said Natalya, but it was clear she didn't believe him. "I will call him from Boris's house."

  They waited for Boris outside the station. It was cold here; not just chilly, but the kind of cold that Benjamin could feel even through his thick parka. There was no deep snow yet-Natalya said the streets would soon be impassable and everyone would move about on skis-but there were patches of snow everywhere and frost on the trees and rooftops.

  By the time Boris arrived in a battered and rusting hardtop UAZ Russian jeep, Benjamin was beginning to feel like his face was an icicle. The vehicle clearly had a military past: where there was still paint, it was a drab olive green; where there was not, there was either orange rust or patches of black undercoat.

  Boris bounded out of the jeep, swept Natalya up in his arms, kissing her on both cheeks and speaking in a torrent of Russian. Benjamin could see why his nickname was Bear: Boris was over six and a half feet tall, thick limbed, and with a heavy black-and-gray beard.

  When Boris was done greeting Natalya-he'd looked slightly askance at her brunette hair but said nothing about it-he turned to Benjamin, removed his glove, and offered his hand. Benjamin removed his as well-he instantly felt the cold work into his exposed fingers-and Boris took it in an almost painful grip.

  "Greetings to my country!" Boris said. "Welcome, America!"

  "Thank you," Benjamin said, feeling his hand beginning to go numb. "Spasiba."

  "Ah!" Boris's face lit up. "Vy govorite po russiki?"

  "No," Benjamin said. "Two words: spasiba and privet."

  Boris looked somewhat taken aback, then smiled broadly. "Is okay. I speak American."

  He gathered their two bags and tossed them into the back of the jeep. Natalya climbed into the cramped front seat and Benjamin, pushing aside boots and traps and boxes of loose rifle ammunition, climbed into the back.

  As they bounced over the dirt roads of Uzhur, and then the even rougher outskirts where Boris lived, Boris and Natalya carried on a conversation. Benjamin couldn't understand specifics, but it was clear they were discussing Nikolai's failure to arrive in Uzhur.

  Boris's house was in truth a one-story cabin. "Is only for business," Boris said, removing their bags from the jeep. "Real house in Achinsk." He didn't explain what sort of business he conducted from a wooden cabin in the wild woods far outside Uzhur.

  Once inside, he immediately offered Benjamin and Natalya a small glass of vodka each. Benjamin was exhausted, just wanted to lie down, but a look from Natalya told him this was a ritual they must indulge. He accepted the glass, Boris roared, "Za vashe zdorovye!" and he and Natalya tossed theirs back in a single gulp. Benjamin started to sip his, and Boris protested.

  "Nyet, nyet," he said, and motioned for Benjamin to toss the vodka off as he had. Benjamin smiled, saluted him with the glass, and did so.

  The vodka burned his throat, and he bent over, coughing, much to Boris's amusement. And then Boris poured another shot for each of them, pronounced another toast Benjamin didn't understand, and they repeated the procedure.

  This time Benjamin didn't cough. And at least, he noticed, he was beginning to feel the warmth return to his hands and face.

  It was then Natalya asked Boris to use his telephone.

  "Da, da," he said. "But not always work." He showed Natalya where it was, and she went into the other room where it was located.

  Benjamin looked around Boris's "business" house. It seemed more of a hunting lodge than anything else. There were bear and fox heads on the walls, and everything was made of either wood or stone. Boris went to the stone fireplace and began making a fire.

  Natalya returned from the other room looking even more worried.

  "There is no answer," she said to Benjamin. "Not at Olga's, no
t at his apartment."

  While Natalya and Boris carried on another animated conversation, Benjamin looked around the cabin. He noticed a well-stocked gun rack on one wall and a shelf lined, row upon row, with unmarked, clear-glass bottles. There were also numerous foot lockers that looked ex-military, a huge meat refrigerator, a very old television set complete with rabbit ears antenna, and what appeared to be an ancient CB radio.

  Photographs were set unevenly along the walls, most of them showing Boris posing with other men over the bodies of bears, deer, and in one case a white-and-black tiger; there were also other, older photographs with Boris in a uniform of the Red Army, standing in groups of men, their arms around each other's shoulders, all of them smiling and looking young, brave, and cold. Upon closer examination, Benjamin recognized one of those men as a younger Nikolai Orlov.

  Finally Natalya and Boris finished talking, and Boris turned to the stove and began making coffee.

  "I told him we must continue," Natalya said. "Wherever Nikolai is, whatever has happened to him, it is what he would want. What he would insist upon."

  Benjamin looked at her. He thought again of how much he admired her strength, her calm resolve in the face of the unexpected. Perhaps Natalya sensed his thoughts, as she came to him and held his arms, looking into his face. He didn't need to say anything; she knew he couldn't but agree with her.

  "And so, Monsieur Levebre," she said, "I believe we have an interview to arrange."

  CHAPTER 47

  "The general says, if the order comes through, he will not hesitate to follow his duty to the Motherland. He will launch his missiles."

  As Natalya translated what General Voroshilov had just said, Benjamin scribbled notes, as though he were taking down every word. But in fact he was scribbling nonsense-in French, just in case the general knew more English than he let on.

  They were sitting in General Voroshilov's surprisingly cramped office, in the base administration building, which from the outside looked like an average grocery store. Of course, most grocery stores didn't have soldiers patrolling their hallways with AK-47s.