by Bill DeSmedt
“It is merely that—forgive me, but I hadn’t pictured you taking part in a termination action. Not your line of work at all, even if the targets were not formerly your friends.”
“Termination?” It was Sasha’s turn to show surprise. Astonishment, really. “But I thought—”
“Termination,” Grishin repeated evenly, careful not to let his tones betray the flash of anger he felt toward this indispensable, yet hopelessly naive and criminally negligent subordinate. Not for the first time in their long association, Grishin had to fight down a sudden urge to personally snap his young colleague’s spine for him.
“Why, Sasha?” he said. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“Well, that is, the message itself seems clear enough.”
“Yes, ‘Return them.’ This is precisely the riddle I called you here to unravel. On the one hand, the probe tells me how to find your friends. On the other, it tells me to bring them back here to Rusalka, alive. But why? Why spare them?”
“Let me reverse the question, Arkasha: why go to so much trouble to kill them now?”
Was that sweat sheening Sasha’s forehead in the dim light? Could it be that the sentimental fool still harbored some sympathy for these enemy agents?
“Mounting a raid at so great a distance, on the adversary’s home ground, is hardly without risk,” Sasha went on quickly. “And I see no gain to offset it. If Dzhon and Marianna are truly spies, they have doubtless already told what they know.”
“I expected as much from Merkulov, Sasha, not from you. Surely you can see that what they now know and what they might still discover are two different things.”
“But how can you be sure they have not discovered the truth already?”
“Sure? How can I be sure?” Grishin paused to lower his voice again before continuing. “Because we have yet to see the first flight of cruise missiles come sailing in over the horizon! That is how I can be sure. For that will in all likelihood be our first and only indication that CROM appreciates the Project’s true potential. Not that things are not bad enough already.”
“What do you mean, bad enough?”
Grishin suddenly felt very tired. His fingers mussed his graying, carefully combed hair. “CROM, it seems, already feels it has enough to move against us. Virtually the entire Chantilly operations staff has departed on an unscheduled exercise. An exercise coinciding with an unannounced redeployment of American naval assets stationed in the Western Mediterranean. They are still moving cautiously. Cautiously enough to show they have yet to put all the pieces together. But time grows short, my friend, very short indeed. Are you certain we cannot pull up our own timetable?”
“The probes say no, Arkasha. But we are halfway through the acceleration phase even now. Only some twenty-six hours remain on the clock. Add perhaps another three or four hours for calibration, and to sequence the probes properly. We could be ready for the omega sequence by, say, eight A.M. on Friday.”
“Even that may be too late. And we are so close!” Grishin pounded his fist on the desktop, causing the distorted metal cylinder before him to bounce and sing.
He fixed Sasha with a baleful glare. “I need the answer to my riddle now: What is so essential about bringing these spies back to Rusalka?”
Sasha sat there immobile, his mind racing furiously. He did not believe for a minute that his friends were spies. That was, had to be, just Grishin’s occupational paranoia talking. Still, delusional or not, it marked Dzhon and Marianna for death.
Unless the paranoia itself, the obsessive secrecy that had shrouded their every move, might contain the seeds of its own solution.
“Arkasha,” he said softly, “I believe I may understand your riddle.”
Grishin said nothing, but the glint of menace faded from his eyes, to be replaced by a scintilla of hope.
Sasha took this as license to go on. “I cannot help but think that the probe’s command bears on the larger problem. Properly interpreted, it will lead us to the success that its own arrival portends.”
Grishin frowned. Sasha knew his master detested the counterintuitive logic needed to divine the probes’ meanings. He hastened to the point. “What if our adversaries knew of the danger a precipitous strike might bear with it?”
“Danger? I do not understand.”
“What if they knew about Vurdalak? Knew an attack would set the world-eater free once more?”
“They, they would have to stand down!” Grishin’s eyes were shining now. “Sasha, this is brilliance. Sheer brilliance! I have lived so long with the necessity of concealing this secret that I have never even considered what impact its disclosure at the proper moment might have.” Then, quickly as it had appeared, the gleam winked out. “It will not work.”
“Because?” Lead him, lead him.
“Because no one would believe it. At most, CROM has only some videos of untended laboratory workstations and a recording of a single seismic event. Will they make the logical leap from those few observations to the conclusion that we now hold the power to end the world in our hands? I think not. You might, or your Mr. Knox, perhaps. But it is extremely unlikely that I would arrive at such a conclusion—plodding, unimaginative functionary that I am. And, I can assure you, my counterparts in CROM are far closer in spirit to me than to you.”
“I will not have you comparing yourself to those gray bureaucrats, Arkasha. You, who have brought us to the very brink of this glorious victory!” Perhaps one more hint. “And yet, perhaps they are not all so close-minded. The woman, for instance. For all that circumstances make her an adversary, still she seemed bright, and open to the possibilities. What might happen if she were to see Antipode itself?”
Sasha stopped. Grishin was still looking at him, no longer seeing him. “Yes-s-s. She knows the half of it already. She, if anyone, might be made to believe, and believing, might convince her superiors. Enough to give them pause, to stay their hand for the few hours more we need.”
“And do not forget Dzhon,” Sasha added, “I sense that he may understand this better than anyone on the other side. We could need him to convince her?
“Is there a possibility he might penetrate the ultimate purpose behind Antipode as well?”
“I think not, Arkasha. No, surely not. But he will accept the reality of Vurdalak, of that you may be certain.”
“Very well. Both of them. The message does say ‘them,’ does it not?” Yes! Thank you, Arkasha! Aloud he said, “It does. And may I suggest again that I accompany the team to ensure that—how shall I put it?—that your instructions are followed to the letter?”
They looked at one another, sharing a single, unspoken thought: Yuri was useful, but sometimes suffered from poor impulse control.
“I see your point,” Grishin said. “Yes, yes, of course you must go along.”
Then, to himself: “ ‘Return Them’—I see it now! It was staring us in the face all along. To think, I was trying to stop them from uncovering the truth, and now that is our only hope!”
The despair was gone. Grishin seemed to loom larger, to fill the room with newfound energy and ebullience. One final time, his gaze, no longer cold now, came to rest on Sasha.
“Aleksandr Andreyevich Bondarenko,” Grishin spoke at last, his broad grin belying the formality of his words, “I order you, I command you: Return Them!”
“You will also need a helicopter, Dzhek.” Medvedev thumped a thick index finger on the project plan’s Arrange Transport task-box. “A Mikoyan-2 or -3 should do for so small a team; no need to go to the expense of chartering one of the big 8s. What do you think?”
Jack Adler looked down at the diagram and nodded cautiously. He was having a hard time adjusting to the transformation that had come over Medvedev once Jack’s paper had been posted. Russians had a long tradition of yielding to the inevitable, but this was ridiculous.
Grumbling that if Jack were going to insist on returning to Tunguska this summer, he might as well do it properly, Medvedev had hauled
out the charts and checklists for the expedition just completed and spread them all over the desk. Then, over the past two hours, he’d cobbled together a strawman budget and schedule that, to Jack’s unpracticed eye, looked eminently doable. He’d even volunteered to come along himself. “To see this marvel with my own eyes,” as he put it.
Medvedev brushed a couple of stray worksheets aside and unearthed the desk clock. “Time for lunch, Dzhek!” He slapped his ample belly. Then, with a nod toward his handiwork, “We have made a good beginning in any case, eh?”
Left to himself, Jack surveyed the snowdrifts of grid paper and ledger sheets that had all but buried the pristine desk surface he’d worked on this morning. Amazing that Medvedev could organize anything, much less an entire expedition, in this mess. What was the kitchen going to look like when he got done making lunch? From the clatter of pots and pans downstairs, it didn’t sound good.
The epicenter of chaos having shifted elsewhere, Jack seized the opportunity to reimpose order. It was a good five minutes of sticking stray documents back in their folders before he’d exhumed Medvedev’s PC from its burial mound of prior-year Tunguska reports. As luck would have it, that was when it happened.
The computer, which had hitherto been silent, cleared its throat and said, “Aha!”
30 | Midnight to Dawn
THE HUMID EXHALATIONS of the earth enveloped the little landing strip in a fine, ground-hugging night mist. The Wilkes County airport tower poked up through it like the last spire of a drowned city. Overhead, though, the sky was clear and filled with stars. From the foot of the Lear’s boarding ramp, Marianna watched Jon roll up in the rental car he’d reserved via the Wilkesboro Avis website—a late-model white Corvette.
“This was all they had left on the lot,” he said.
“Uh-huh.” She flashed a grin to show he wasn’t fooling anybody: boys and their toys.
She stowed the carry-on she’d somehow hung onto ever since JFK, then settled into the passenger seat. “How long a drive is it to this Weather top place?”
“Couple hours. But there’s no point going there tonight; we can’t get in. Mycroft won’t lower the drawbridge again till ten-thirty tomorrow morning. End of civilization notwithstanding.”
That’s right. He’d warned her about his friend’s weird work habits. At least Jon had managed to email this Mycroft person enough material to get him started before Weathertop’s self-imposed communications lockdown went into effect at ten P.M. The night shouldn’t be a total waste.
“The rent-a-car website had hotlinks to local restaurants and hotels,” Jon was saying. “I found us an overnight a few miles up the road. A little B&B, looked nice.”
Maybe the night wouldn’t be a waste at all.
It was midnight by the time they rolled into the sleepy North Carolina hamlet of Millers Creek. The live-oaks lining the town’s main street breathed a night breeze cool and heavy with the promise of rain. Across a rivulet barely visible in the starlight, the village clocktower tolled the hour.
The Catawba Inn was easy to find—the only building in town with its porchlight still on and its sidewalk not yet rolled up for the night.
The desk clerk, whom they’d evidently kept up hours past his bedtime, yawned and asked “One room or two?”
“One,” Marianna put in quickly, rather than give Jon a chance to say the wrong thing.
They lay nestled together like spoons in a drawer.
“Mmmm, that was nice,” Marianna said. “A whole ’nother side of consulting practice I’d never realized existed.”
“Archon is, after all, a full-service agency,” Knox murmured in her ear, regretting the facile comeback even as he said it.
I don’t know how to deal with this, he realized. For me, there may be no way to deal with this.
He ran his fingers through her hair. We are the same breed of cat, you and I. We live by our words, build worlds out of our words, distance and defend ourselves with our words, until our words are all there is to us.
How good it would be, for once, to let go of all the words—the insulating, isolating words—and just be.
His right hand cupped one small, perfect breast, its nipple still erect from her orgasm. She snuggled back against him, turning her face for a kiss. With the fingers of his left hand, he sought the core of her.
“Jon,” she whispered as he entered her again, “I won’t talk any more if you don’t.”
In her line of work, Marianna only ever seemed to meet two types of men—two types of prospective bedmates, anyway. Type One felt intimidated by her. Sometimes they tried to hide it, sometimes not; it was worse when they tried. Type Two fancied themselves to be in some kind of macho competition with her. That, at least, had its amusing side. A relationship with either type was a recipe for disaster, pure and simple. She knew. She’d tried.
Jon didn’t seem to fit into either category. He wasn’t afraid of her, and he didn’t try to dominate her. Much. He just had his own thing going.
Maybe all consultants were like this? But, no, she suspected that, even in his chosen profession, Jon broke the mold.
She looked down to where he was nuzzling her breast, his head cradled in her arms. He didn’t mind that she was so small on top. On the contrary, he seemed enchanted by what he’d called her “bite-sized” breasts.
Enchanted, she thought dreamily, by all of her.
Oh, Jon, I don’t care if I ever sleep again—let’s just play all night long, okay?
She moaned as he teased her nipple with his teeth and tongue. She stroked his hair. Could it be that she was falling in . . .
Oops! Let’s not go there. Don’t even think the ‘L’ word, Marianna!
Jonathan Knox drifted in a mixed state between sleep and wakefulness. It was here, on the borderlands of oblivion, that his old demons, puissant and menacing, were wont to prowl, ever ready to transform dream into nightmare.
Not tonight.
Tonight he felt utterly at peace. Suffused with peace. Adrift, floating on the gentle tides of night.
He envisioned the little town out beyond the open window, its houses dark, their roofs rimed with starlight, outlined against the dark backdrop of the sheltering hills. He smelled the freshness of the air, pregnant with rain, laden with ozone from the coming storm. The Perseids weren’t due till next week, but he imagined he saw twin meteors inscribe lines of fire across the starry summer sky.
Without perceptible transition, his perspective altered. Now he was looking down as from a great height on the villages and isolated farms dotting the hills hereabouts, scattered lights of human habitation glowing like candles in the dark. Off to the east, the luminous spiderweb of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metroplex glimmered on the horizon.
Then it was as if the Earth plummeted away beneath him. Vertiginous as it was, he felt no fear, only exhilaration. Far, far below now, the eastern seaboard was embroidered with dim radiance where its coastal cities met the night sea in a weave of lights emblematic of the interconnectedness of all things.
And now he could see the arc of the world itself, the curve of the world, the whole of the world, infinitely beautiful, infinitely precious.
Infinitely fragile, if what he suspected were in the least way true.
The sun was just peeking around the eastern rim of the dark planet.
He watched as sunrise sped across the breadth of the Atlantic, igniting the vast, slow pinwheels of summer storm systems in transient blazes of glory. Watched as the sun emerged full and warm from behind the limb of the Earth . . .
. . . And shone its beams through the window of an inn in Millers Creek, North Carolina.
Knox opened one eye. The clock on the nightstand read 6:13. Marianna was awake and sitting up, though he wasn’t sure why. Their audience with Mycroft wasn’t on for hours yet. Maybe she’s a morning person. 7hat was going to take some getting used to.
A single shaft of sunlight angled across the bed, traveled up the taut planes of Marianna’s nak
ed back, and turned the fine, downy hairs on one superbly toned shoulder all to gold. It’s good to be a mammal, Knox thought in drowsy appreciation. Then she turned and reminded him how really good it could be to be a mammal.
Marianna stood and stretched unselfconsciously. Knox watched through half-closed eyelids as she began an aerobic routine. She made it look like a form of erotic ballet. By morning light her areolae were the pale, velvety auburn of young rose petals, the ‘V’ of her pubic tuft shone jet black against her tawny, tight-muscled abdomen. A sheen of sweat bathed her torso.
A man could get used to this. Just then she segued into a lethal-looking kickboxing sequence.
Well, most of it, anyway.
Marianna was midway through her cool-down series when a voice from behind her said, “Good morning.”
She lowered her arms and turned to see Jon still lying in bed, propped up on one elbow.
How does he manage to get better-looking every time I look at him?
“Good morning, yourself. If I’d known you were awake I’d have made you join me.” Considering how little she’d seen him exercise, he looked to be in pretty good shape. He’d certainly managed to keep up with her last night.
“Actually, I had something like that in mind,” he said, smiling. The tented topography of the bedsheet draping his torso left little doubt as to what that “something” was.
Marianna glanced at the clock; the meeting with Mycroft was hours away. Plenty of time. She walked slowly, very slowly back over to where he lay. She was still hot and slick with sweat from her workout. This might be very nice.
“It’s exercise too,” he said, reaching up for her.
31 | The Way to Weathertop
BY HALF PAST eight Marianna and Jon were checked out of the inn and back on the main road, headed west toward a line of low mountains on the horizon.
