The Doomsday Box

by Herbie Brennan

  Nothing happened. He pressed it sharply again, then several more times in quick succession. “What’s the matter with this thing?”

  Opal leaned across him and pressed the button herself. The elevator still did not move. “Are you sure the door’s closed properly?”

  “Yes.” Michael tested the door anyway. Even from where she was standing, Opal could see it was definitely shut. She struck the button again with her closed fist.

  “There’s something wrong with the stupid thing!” Michael slammed the doors open impatiently. “Come on—there must be stairs.”

  They came out of the elevator and ran the length of the corridor. It stopped at a dead end. Michael turned. “We can’t go back that way,” Opal hissed urgently. “He must know we’re missing by now.”

  “The stairs are probably near the elevator,” Michael said. “Besides, we don’t have any choice.”

  They ran back, with Opal expecting to meet Menshikov, brandishing his gun, at any second now. There was no sign of a stairwell, but Michael suddenly pushed a door marked lestnyca in Cyrillic, and there it was. “How did you know?” Opal asked in admiration.

  Michael shrugged. “Lucky guess. I thought it looked different from the apartment doors.”

  Together they began to run down the stairs. Menshikov’s apartment was on the fourth floor, but they met no one on the stairway until they reached the ground floor and emerged to find a uniformed guard between them and the entrance doors. Fortunately he was turned away from them, and they pulled quickly back out of sight. Michael indicated they should go back up. Opal followed with some trepidation. Once Menshikov discovered the elevator was broken, the staircase was the next place he would try. But Michael stopped at the first landing. “Let’s see if we can find somewhere to hide,” he told her quietly. “We can try to get out later when the guard moves on.”

  “If the guard moves on,” Opal said.

  “I didn’t notice him when we were coming in.”

  It was a good point. Maybe the guard did his rounds of the ground floor, or even the entire building. Maybe it was just bad luck they’d found him between them and their escape route.

  There were footsteps on the stairs below them. “Oh God!” Michael murmured. He grabbed her hand, pushed the door, and pulled her out into the second-floor corridor. Opal noticed he had begun to sweat quite badly and wondered if he was feeling as fully recovered as he pretended. But there was nothing she could do about that now. They began to run along the corridor, with Michael pushing every door he came to. None opened. Behind them, someone shouted.

  “Here!” Opal said a little breathlessly, and pulled him into a side corridor. Someone was definitely running after them now: she could hear the footsteps clearly.

  They got lucky almost right away. The third door Michael tried opened at once. She had the briefest glimpse beyond it before he pulled her inside and slammed it behind them, leaving them in darkness. Opal felt his arms slide around her protectively and held her breath, listening. They were in some sort of storage space for cleaning equipment and supplies. The harsh smell of bleach and chemicals was all around them.

  With a wildly thumping heart, Opal heard the running footsteps approach, peak, then fade as their pursuer passed their door. She stifled a sigh of relief, but felt her body relax, and sank gratefully a little more deeply into Michael’s arms. He was right. If this was the guard chasing after them, they should be able to retrace their steps and get out of the building before he realized his mistake. She was turning her head to whisper to Michael when the door jerked open.

  An involuntary scream died in Opal’s throat as Menshikov said, “It’s okay to come out now.” He glanced around them to take in the storage area and grinned. “Unless you plan to join the cleaning staff.” Opal stared at him in horror. He hadn’t taken time to put on his uniform jacket or tie, but his pistol was stuck carelessly into the belt of his trousers. Michael gasped something into her ear, and she realized from the sudden trembling of his body that despite his bravado, his reserves of strength had all but given out.

  “What is it you want from us, Colonel Menshikov?” she spat, suddenly more angry than afraid. But she already knew. He wanted them back in his apartment where, she thought, he would drop the charade of being an American agent and return to the methods he’d used at Lubyanka. Except this time, she doubted Michael would be the only one tortured. But they had no choice now except to go with him. Even if Michael was able to run again, Menshikov could cripple him with a single shot.

  “Was it something I said?” Menshikov asked as he closed his apartment door behind them. This time he did lock it, using a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket, before he put on the security chain. Then he turned toward them, smiling slightly, one eyebrow raised. When neither of them replied, his expression sobered. “Don’t run again until we’ve sorted things out. This is a high-security building. It wasn’t built by the KGB, but it was built for the KGB. Top brass live here, for the most part. You can’t just walk in or out. The elevator won’t work unless you do a particular pattern of presses on the start button. There are guards on every floor. They’re discreet for the most part, but they’re there. The front doors won’t open unless you use a key, and they’re reinforced bulletproof glass, so you’d need a tank to smash through them. What I’m saying is, you had no chance of getting out on your own and every chance of getting arrested again if I hadn’t found you.”

  Opal said, sullenly, “What happens now, Colonel Menshikov?”

  “What happens is I have to figure a way to persuade you to trust me,” Menshikov said. “I really thought I was winning until you made a break for it. You going to tell me what spooked you?”

  Opal shrugged. There was no reason now why she shouldn’t tell him. “You claimed to be Agent Cobra. We know you’re not.”

  Menshikov stared at her for a long time. “How?”

  Opal opened her mouth to tell him, then closed it again. The KGB might know all about Cobra, but if they didn’t, she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell them. It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps she shouldn’t even have said the little she did say. But it was too late now. “We just know.”

  “So,” Menshikov said, “you’re not going to talk.” He reached down and withdrew the firearm from his belt. “Maybe this will persuade you.”

  Opal took an involuntary step toward Michael, instinctively trying to protect him with her body. But Menshikov did not shoot. Instead, he did something entirely unexpected. With a jerk of his wrist he reversed the gun so that he was holding it by the barrel, and pushed it toward Opal. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot me.”

  Chapter 36

  Danny, the U.S. Embassy, Moscow, 1962

  What are we going to do?” Fuchsia asked as soon as they were alone together. “We can’t just not do anything.”

  Danny shook his head. “We won’t just not do anything.” Ambassador Thompson had done his best to be reassuring, trying to tell them he was certain their friends would turn up eventually, that it was great news they were no longer in KGB hands, and that the embassy staff were doing everything in their power, yada yada yada, and Danny had bought none of it. He wasn’t at all sure the KGB had let Opal and Michael go. Why should they? And he knew the business of the embassy doing everything in its power was so much bull. There were all sorts of diplomatic implications here, and Danny would have bet a pound to a penny Ambassador Thompson wouldn’t want to rock the boat too much. After all, as far as he was concerned, the four of them had been foisted on him by the CIA, and he’d no idea what they were really up to. If they got themselves into trouble, he might even want to distance the embassy from the whole business. Despite all the promises of help and cooperation, Danny had the sneaking suspicion they could be on their own. If something was going to be done to help Opal and Michael, they would probably have to do it themselves.

  Which was fine, except for one thing. He’d no idea what to do.

  “We need to think,” Fuchs
ia said. “Go on, Danny, you’re good at that.”

  She was sort of cute, Danny thought irrelevantly, then dragged his mind back to the problem. After a while he said, “Look, I know I’m always asking you to do things you can’t do, but is there any way your time talent can help us here?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Danny said, “but you figured out they went to Lubyanka. Couldn’t you do the same now? Look into their future and see where they’ve ended up?”

  Fuchsia stared at him helplessly. “I was watching the car when it took them away so I could see where it would end up. Finding Michael and Opal now isn’t that easy. If they were here with us it would be different. I could just look along their time line like I did with the car. But they’re not, so I don’t have a starting point.”

  “What about starting at KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square? We know they were taken there.”

  “From here? I don’t know.” She thought about it for a moment, then said hesitantly, “I suppose I might. Outside of a solid time line, space and time are all a bit of a jumble when I do this, so it’s not all that easy to find things, but it’s easier when I’ve been to a place for some reason; and I’ve been to Lubyanka Square.”

  “Would you try? Just for a moment? Just to humor me?”

  They were back in Fuchsia’s room and she was perched on the edge of her bed. Now she stretched out, closed her eyes, and gave the peculiar little jerk of her head. A moment later, she opened her eyes again. “Yes.”

  “You can see it?”

  “Yes.”

  Danny licked his lips. “Okay, this is a long shot. Could you look at KGB headquarters and see if you can find Opal and Michael’s time line coming out of it?”

  Fuchsia sat up again. “Danny, there are hundreds of time lines coming out of KGB headquarters. It could take me hours to find the right one.”

  Danny took a deep breath. “Try,” he told her. “Just focus on Opal, or Michael, or both of them if that’s any help. Or scan across the time lines until you get a glimpse of them. Or just try to find time lines that sort of look like them.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Danny. Most of it’s just not like that.”

  “You have to try,” Danny pleaded. “We’re their only hope.”

  Fuchsia lay down again without another word.

  It was the longest five minutes of Danny’s life before she opened her eyes again. “That was very, very difficult,” she said crossly.

  “But did you manage it?”

  Fuchsia beamed suddenly. “Yes, I did!” she said. “I know where they went to and I even know where it is because we passed it when we were running from that awful man—I remember it clearly. It’s not even very far from here. Shall we tell Ambassador Thompson?”

  “Tell him what?” Danny asked. “That you have a weird psychic power that lets you see the future so you can track where people are? I don’t think he’s going to believe you.”

  “So we go look for them ourselves?”

  Danny nodded.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Fuchsia said flatly.

  “Good or not, it’s the only idea I have. My feeling is Ambassador Thompson doesn’t want to get too far involved in this. I mean, he was happy enough to make inquiries, maybe even send a diplomatic protest if the situation warranted it. But we’re not talking James Bond here—he’s not about to send in the cavalry to rescue a couple of kids when he doesn’t even know what they’ve been up to.”

  “It’s going to need the cavalry,” Fuchsia said soberly. “They were taken away in a big black car by an armed man in uniform. I’m not sure the KGB have let them go at all. I think they’ve just been taken to some other KGB place where it might be easier to—” She stopped, looking at Danny.

  “All the more reason for getting them out as soon as possible,” Danny said.

  “But how? These people are the KGB.”

  “You only saw one man,” Danny said.

  “One man with a gun! And there may be others at the place he took them—it was some sort of apartment building and there were gates and there might be dozens more KGB inside. How are we going to tackle that, just the two of us?”

  Danny took another deep breath. “I’ll think of something.”

  He expected her to argue, but she only said, “Okay, Danny.”

  It was weird to have somebody trust you that much—weird and a bit scary. He covered his feelings with an attempt at briskness. “All right, let’s go see how the land lies. Maybe we can find some way of getting them free. But you have to appreciate how urgent this is. We don’t know what the KGB is doing with them, and even if we get them away tonight, we still have to contact Mr. Stratford and set up another meeting with Cobra.”

  “Yes, I know all that. So let’s get started.” She stood up and headed for the door.

  Danny stared after her foolishly, then caught himself and ran to follow.

  Chapter 37

  Opal, Menshikov’s Apartment, Moscow, 1962

  What are you doing?” Opal asked. She stared at the gun in her hand as if it had just materialized from Mars.

  “I’m trying to show you idiots you can trust me. Look—” He walked to the door, unlocked it, removed the security chain, and pushed it ajar. “There. Now you can leave anytime you want. You’ve got the gun, so I can’t stop you. You can walk out of here and find out for yourselves if what I said was true about the guards and getting out of the building. I’ll even tell you how to get past them. Any guard stops you, just say you’re guests of Colonel Menshikov. Got that? That way, they’ll bring you back here or let you out the front door or whatever you want. They’ll check with me, of course, but I’ll tell them to cooperate. If you do decide to leave, try to get back to the embassy as fast as possible, but remember, you’ll be on your own out there.”

  Opal looked from the gun to the man and back again. If this was a setup, would a real KGB colonel hand over his sidearm and open the door? Somehow she doubted it. But she still couldn’t get her head around what was happening, what Menshikov—Cobra?—claimed was happening. “If you’re Cobra,” she began, then stopped. If he was Cobra, how could he prove it? He’d already handed over his gun and opened the door.

  “Opal,” Michael said, frowning. “Maybe . . .” He didn’t finish, but then, he didn’t have to. Menshikov’s gesture had obviously thrown him as well.

  Opal changed tack. “You can’t be Cobra,” she said bluntly. “We’ve seen Cobra.”

  This time it was Menshikov’s turn to look puzzled. “You can’t have,” he said.

  Something clicked over inside Opal’s head. Her earlier suspicions had gotten them nowhere. She turned away from Menshikov and set his gun down on the table. If she didn’t trust him with some information, they were stuck here, glaring at each other and dancing round suspiciously. Besides, if he really was a KGB colonel, what good would the information be to him? Their mission was no threat to the Soviet Union. It concerned something that wouldn’t even happen until decades after the Soviet Union finally collapsed. The worst that could happen was that she’d confirm his suspicions they were not what they seemed. But almost certainly he knew that already, and besides, despite what he’d just said, she knew, realistically, there was no way out of here without his cooperation. She glanced quickly at Michael, turned back to Menshikov, and said, “You say you’re a CIA operative. So are we. Our mission was to meet up with Cobra. Which we did. Or at least we were about to when we were taken by the KGB. But before that happened, Michael and I got a good look at Cobra, and he’s nothing like you.”

  “How did you know what he looked like?”

  Opal hesitated. She knew the real Cobra, whoever he might be, was on an undercover mission of some sort. Which was information of use to the KGB. Identifying the real Cobra could be a coup for Menshikov, if he really was Menshikov. She was still hesitating when he said, “There was a photograph among Michael’s belongings when he was arrested.
You carried an identical picture. Was that the man who was identified to you as Cobra?”

  Of course it was. Any fool could have guessed that agents carrying identical pictures must be using them for identification. Opal threw caution to the winds. “Yes.”

  “The man in the picture is Boris Aleksey Lobanov,” Menshikov told her bluntly. “He’s a KGB field agent. I know him quite well.” He caught her eye and held it. “Looks like you and your friends were given a bum steer, young lady.”

  Opal stared. She knew she believed him. He’d produced the Lobanov name without hesitation. What she didn’t know, what completely bewildered her, was what was going on here. But all this depended on whether the man in front of her was telling the truth. She believed him, but she was still prey to the nagging doubt that she might be wrong. And suddenly, as she stood there staring at him, she realized there was one way of making sure—and convincing him of the truth about them. “Listen carefully,” she said. “I can understand your reluctance to deal in real names, but I want you to tell me yours. You’ve trusted us with everything else, so it can’t make any difference to you at this stage. If you do tell me your real name and it’s what I think it is, then I will tell you something that will prove we’re who we say we are as well.”

  “My name is Carradine,” said Cobra without a moment’s hesitation.

  “You have a son,” Opal said. “A little boy named Gary.”

  Cobra’s jaw dropped. “You can’t know that. He was only born a week ago. We haven’t christened him yet, but my wife wants to call him Gary. The information isn’t even on my CIA files.”

  Opal blinked. Mr. Carradine must be younger than she thought. More to the point, they’d definitely, absolutely, certainly made contact with the real Cobra, here, now, and in this room. She turned to Michael with a smile of relief. He was looking at Cobra, astonished.

  Opal turned back. Apart from everything else, this would allow them to complete their mission. “We know that because—and you’re going to find this hard to believe—Michael and I are—”