The shadow war

by Glen Scott Allen

  The moment Benjamin had seen the gates of the military base through the windshield of Boris's jeep, he began to regret his decision to allow Natalya to come along. The high fence, obviously electrified; the dozens of soldiers, all armed with automatic weapons; the forbidding expressions on their faces… all of it made him want to tell Boris to turn the jeep around. Added to that, Natalya had pointed out the large monument of Comrade Lenin. Benjamin thought he saw a malicious smirk on Lenin's lips, as though he was saying Who do you think you are fooling?

  At the gate, a soldier took their names, referred to a checklist, then looked very long and hard at their press credentials. Finally, he waved them through, but telling Boris he must park his jeep and wait outside. Boris told Natalya that was okay, there was a soldier's bar nearby where he could wait.

  Benjamin asked the questions during the interview and Natalya translated General Voroshilov's answers. The general-a large man with a wide face and a thick neck that the tight collar of his uniform only emphasized, and an easy smile that Benjamin felt wasn't to be taken as quite what it seemed-was obviously eager to praise the dedication and sacrifice of his men, and himself, and at the same time to make it clear that he had under his command the power to devastate large areas of the Western world. He said, looking very stern, that their Voyevoda rockets each had the destructive capacity of 1,200 Hiroshimas.

  During all this propaganda, Benjamin looked properly impressed. But finally, Benjamin brought the interview around to the only question he really cared about: What about security? For instance, what if terrorists tried to get to his missiles?

  The general looked disdainful, laughed. Even though he was kind enough to entertain two French journalists today, he said, it was not long ago that they would not have been allowed within one hundred kilometers of the base.

  And what about the missile silos themselves? asked Benjamin; how well were they protected?

  The general spoke at some length, his tone that of an indulgent parent lecturing a child. The entire territory was protected, he said, by cameras and night-vision equipment and special electronic sensors. Each silo was surrounded by an electric fence carrying thousands of volts. He said even the famous Siberian bear wasn't clever enough to cross those fences. Once, one had tried and been "burnt to nothing more than smoking fur." Even the elite Russian Spetsnaz, the Special Forces, had not been able to penetrate their defenses.

  As Benjamin jotted down a steady stream of words, his heart sank. This was going to be even more difficult than they'd thought.

  Finally, Benjamin said the general had been most helpful. But there was one more favor he could do for them, something to give their article "real spice." He said they would like to interview one or two of the other people involved in the defense of the base, to get some further perspectives on the truly excellent safeguards in place; such assurances, Benjamin said, would go a long way toward quelling Western fears about "loose Russian nukes." Could they, for instance, speak to-and here Benjamin leafed through his notes, as if checking a name-a Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Kalinin, commander of base security?

  From the look on General Voroshilov's face, Benjamin was certain he would say nyet. But he seemed to consider it for a moment, then smiled, said something that Natalya translated as, "Of course, we have nothing to hide"-which he accompanied with a wink and a chuckle-and then pressed a button on his phone-intercom system.

  Suddenly, Benjamin had a horrible thought: What if Voroshilov was summoning Vasily to his office? What if he would insist they interview Vasily there, in front of him?

  But it turned out the general was merely finding out Vasily's location on the base. He then summoned the guard outside, barked some instructions at him, and told Natalya that the soldier would accompany them down the hall to Vasily's office. He shook their hands, insisted they send him a copy of their article, which he promised to mount on his wall, and saw them out the door.

  The moment they entered Lieutenant Colonel Kalinin's office, Benjamin caught a look of recognition in his eyes. Vasily looked perplexed for a moment, then instructed the soldier to wait outside, and bid them to sit down.

  Once they had, he immediately turned to Natalya and said, "Brunette hair does not become you, Natashka. Not even as a French journalist."

  Benjamin went cold. But Natalya returned Vasily's look with a steady gaze.

  "How are you, Vasily Nikolaevitch," Natalya replied. "My father sends his greetings. And this." And then she handed him the note Nikolai had given them in Dubna.

  Vasily took the note, read it quickly. He looked at them, then stood up and went to the window, still holding the note. He read it again. Then he turned to them.

  "Is this a theater?" he said. "Some sort of American James Bond movie?" He came and stood in front of them, leaning against his desk. "Or is it a joke? Because if it is, it is not a very amusing one."

  "No," Natalya said firmly, "it is no joke. Not when my father has disappeared." She indicated Benjamin. "Not when a colleague of this man has been killed, all to bring us here."

  Vasily looked thoughtful. He went back around his desk and sat down, placing the note carefully on the desk before him.

  "And what do those events have to do with Uzhur-4?" he asked.

  Benjamin leaned forward. "What we need," he began, "is simply to see one of the missile silos."

  Vasily raised his eyebrows. "Simply?" he said. "Now you are making a joke."

  "Not one of the active silos," said Natalya. "Number thirty-four. It is empty, I believe."

  Vasily looked at her. "That is something I could not say," he said.

  "But if it were," Benjamin said, "and if we just needed, say twenty minutes there. Just to… well, look at it." The expression on Vasily's face didn't change. "And if," Benjamin continued, "it was worth, say, twenty thousand dollars for those twenty minutes."

  Vasily leaned back in his chair. "Twenty thousand dollars?" he said. "For twenty minutes of 'just looking'?"

  "Yes," said Natalya.

  "And not to take pictures?" Vasily asked.

  "No," Benjamin said. "No pictures. In fact, we don't even wish to see inside the silo-which, if it is full of concrete, as Nikolai told us, wouldn't make much of a picture, anyway."

  "Then what-," Vasily began.

  "There is an access well," Natalya said, "next to the silo. For equipment. Equipment which was never installed."

  Vasily thought about that. "But the hatch to the well is sealed. And there are alarms and mines around the silo, even if it is… decommissioned."

  "And that seal," Natalya said, "those alarms and mines, they can all be turned off?"

  Vasily rocked in his chair. "For twenty minutes," he said, quite noncommittally.

  "Exactly," said Benjamin. "That's all we need."

  Vasily turned his chair so he was facing out the window. Again he glanced at Nikolai's note on the desk.

  "Nikolai was a very good officer," he said. "A good rocketchiki. A good friend. He may not have told you, but I owe him a great deal. Perhaps my career."

  "And he believed in what we are trying to do," Natalya said. "Enough to summon me all the way from the United States. Enough to risk his own life."

  "Twenty minutes," he said again, still looking at the note. Then he looked up at Benjamin.

  "Do you know, I am charged with keeping safe weapons that could destroy the world. Each year, I am underground eighty, maybe one hundred days. Since I came here, I don't even want to know how many years that is from my wife. And for this, they pay me five hundred dollars a month." He smiled. "For such a request, I think a thousand dollars a minute is not enough."

  Benjamin smiled.

  "And five thousand dollars a minute," he said. "Is that enough?"

  CHAPTER 48

  As one followed the main road north out of Uzhur, past the endless expanses of pine trees, about forty kilometers outside of the town one came to a fork in the road: to the left the road was asphalt and continued north to Achinsk; to th
e right the road was barely discernable and headed off into the menacing, treeless expanses of windswept gray hills, some of them rising in steep, almost impossible angles. If one was brave or foolish enough to take the fork to the right, after another five kilometers even the dirt road soon transformed into frozen marshland. To anyone looking down from on high, it would seem as if the road had simply disappeared into the landscape.

  But what wasn't apparent to any such skyborne observer were the tracks that ran on through the now sparsely wooded marshland: two parallel snakes of concrete, each a meter wide and just a few inches beneath the bog's surface. Parts of the tracks were covered in snow, other parts in dust, but if one looked closely enough, one could make out the slight concavity in the surface that marked their path.

  After two kilometers of following these tracks, one encountered another road, this one of earth packed under the weight of a dozen steamrollers, then carefully combed with graders to erase its surface perfection. This last leg of one's journey lasted another five kilometers. By the time one reached the end of that road that wasn't a road, one was clearly in the center of nowhere.

  It was very early in the morning. The sun hadn't risen yet, though there was a pale light along the horizon to the east. Boris's jeep was grinding slowly along. All three of them were drinking coffee, trying to stave off the bitter cold in the air-especially as the heater in Boris's jeep didn't work.

  Next to Benjamin in the backseat, the barrel of a hunting rifle Boris had insisted on bringing fell against Benjamin's thigh. He carefully pushed it aside, wondering what possible good Boris thought it would do them.

  Then he remembered the Makarov in his parka pocket. Just as nonsensically, Natalya had insisted he take it along. "Just in case." Just in case what? he'd wanted to ask. In case I'm attacked by a bear?

  She had been cold and distant ever since they arrived at Boris's cabin. Boris had kindly given his small bedroom over to them, but when Benjamin turned in for the night, Natalya stayed up talking with Boris in the living room.

  "We are going to, how do you call it, catch up on old times?" But there was something in her manner that didn't strike Benjamin as nostalgic.

  After he'd turned in, he heard the murmur of their voices for some time, and once or twice it seemed Natalya's voice had risen in anger. But eventually she'd come to bed, snuggled against Benjamin, holding him fiercely.

  But when he turned to her, she put a hand to his face.

  "I do not wish to make love. Not now. Please, just hold me." The look in her eyes was intense… as though she feared Benjamin might be snatched away from her any minute.

  And now, in the jeep, she was silent, staring at the bleak, fantastic landscape. Benjamin could only assume she was thinking of what lay ahead, wondering if Vasily would keep his word, would stay bought.

  They continued winding their way through the low hills. Benjamin had told Boris he could direct him to the area of silo thirty-four from Vasily's instructions-an offer that clearly insulted Boris.

  "Everybody knows where damn holes are," Boris said. "No secrets around here."

  The trees had completely given out now. Surrounding them was a vast, barren wasteland, interrupted only by the many small hills bordering the road. Natalya told Benjamin that some of these hills concealed ventilation shafts, even small huts. She had no idea whether any of them were still used, but from what Vasily had told them, they wouldn't need to worry about being observed-not, that is, until they were within half a mile of shakhta thirty-four.

  The agreement they had finally worked out with Vasily was this: at precisely 6:00 A.M., the control switches for the alarms, fence, mines, and cameras around shakhta thirty-four would all experience a temporary glitch, a glitch that would last exactly twenty minutes. No more. In that time, Benjamin had to cross the one hundred meters of mined ground, climb the fence, open the hatch to the service well, complete his "looking," and then retrace his steps. After that… Benjamin had nodded, remembering General Voroshilov's story about the bear reduced to smoking fur.

  Finally, they reached the spot where Vasily had told them to leave their vehicle, behind a low hill that shielded the silo from view. After this point, sensors in the ground would pick up the weight of a truck or jeep, but not that of a single human being.

  Benjamin had already decided that he would be that single human being.

  They stood by the jeep, shivering in the fierce wind even in their parkas, finishing their coffee and waiting for the hands on their watches to be diametrically opposed. Those hands now seemed to crawl, as though time itself had slowed in this alien landscape.

  Finally, when their watches read 5:58, Natalya took Benjamin in her arms and pressed against him. She looked up into his face. The wind was forcing tears from her eyes-or at least Benjamin thought it was the wind.

  "Please," she said, "be careful." She kissed him, her lips suddenly warm against his mouth.

  Benjamin looked into her eyes-those blue-green eyes that seemed even brighter in the near-dawn darkness.

  "Is time," Boris said. "You should go."

  Giving Natalya a last kiss on the forehead, Benjamin turned and started off. He went quickly down the road, away from the jeep, around the hill.

  Now he could see the silo area. It was absolutely flat, obviously processed by huge equipment to the uniformity of a tabletop. Perhaps one hundred meters away, he could see a chain-link fence, about three meters high, and beyond the fence he could make out the flat, regular shapes of concrete structures.

  He stopped briefly at the end of the road. Vasily had told them this was where the minefield began. He made to put one foot beyond the road-then stopped, looked again at his watch. It was 6:01. If Vasily had switched off the mines when they agreed, then it was now safe to proceed; if he hadn't… there was nothing Benjamin could do about it.

  He ran.

  He heard the thumping of his feet against the hard earth and, where there were patches of snow, his boots crunched through the frosted surface. He could feel his breath now, was surprised he was already feeling the exertion. The fence seemed to recede rather than come closer; it was farther away than he'd thought.

  And then surprisingly he was at the fence. If the current was still on, one touch would send thousands of volts through his gloves and into his body. There would be a flash, a shower of sparks, and he would be just another "smoking bear" clutching the fence in a death grip.

  He thought of throwing something against the fence, wasn't sure that would even work, then realized there wasn't time, anyway.

  He grabbed the fence.

  He felt only the cold of the metal through the fingers of his gloves.

  He began to climb, hand over hand, working the toes of his boots into the gaps in the chain link. He reached the top, pulled himself upright, threw one leg and then the other over, and then jumped down.

  Now he could make out the structures more clearly. There were a few small metal boxes; probably, he thought, containing the alarms and other devices Vasily had switched off.

  Directly ahead was his target: a rectangular concrete apron perhaps fifty meters long and fifteen wide. And in the center of the apron was a huge, eight-sided concrete slab. This was the lid of the missile silo. He could see the two parallel metal tracks that extended straight out from the lid along the length of the apron; these were the rails that the lid would ride along when an explosive charge sent it violently sliding away from the top of the silo, so that the "sausage" inside could roar up into the sky and off on its arc of death.

  Only, for this silo, number thirty-four, there was no explosive charge, no nuclear sausage inside.

  But there were still the alarms and sensors on the apron-the ones Vasily had switched off. Or so he hoped.

  He reached the apron. The only sound was his breathing and the rush of the wind.

  He wanted to look at his watch, but resisted it as a waste of precious time. At the end of the apron, behind the silo lid, he saw a small dome, with a hatch
in its center. This was the service well.

  He went to the dome and brushed the snow away from the top of the hatch. There was a wheel set in the center.

  Vasily hadn't told them about the wheel. Should he turn it clockwise? Or counterclockwise? He decided to rely on the universal thinking of engineers and moved his hands counterclockwise.

  It didn't budge.

  He tried again. Still, it wouldn't move.

  Perhaps it should move the other way after all. He looked more closely at the wheel.

  There was a tiny glint of metal just under the wheel: the thread of the large screw device that operated the hatch. He looked at the angle, tried to think: If it was sloping that way, wouldn't that mean…?

  Over the wind, he thought he could hear his watch ticking. It was the loudest sound he'd ever heard.

  Once more he grasped the wheel, tried to turn it, again counterclockwise. But his gloves wouldn't hold a grip.

  Pulling his gloves off with his teeth, he grabbed the wheel in his bare hands. Instantly, he felt the frigid cold of the metal against his bare palms. Bracing his feet on either side of the dome, he twisted the wheel once again counterclockwise with all of his strength.

  With a creak of protest, it moved, ever so slightly.

  He stood, took a deep breath, and bent again over the wheel. This time it turned farther. A few more turns, and he heard a distinctive click from inside the mechanism. He lifted the hatch.

  Still no alarms.

  In the dim light, he could barely make out a ladder descending into the well. Leaving his gloves on the hatch, he backed down the ladder. The rungs were also of metal, so cold they burned his hands.

  According to Nikolai, what he was looking for was a small alcove in the well, about halfway down. Had there been a missile in the silo, it would have been filled with electronic equipment. Now it should be empty-except for whatever Leverotov had placed inside.