by A. W. Mykel
SENTINEL would maintain constant surveillance of the house. A Division Two team would be held in readiness, until it was safe to get them in without Scotland Yard interference. Getting Pilgrim and Badger in was one thing. Getting an entire Division Two team and all of its equipment in was another. And Honeycut didn’t want to risk getting British Intelligence into the matter. What they didn’t need was MI5 snooping around and finding that journal first.
With what they now knew from the initial results of the analysis of the ashes found in the fireplace and the report filed by Pilgrim and Badger, Division Two could get in there again and do the place over right. It would take only a day, but until it was safe to get them in again, it would be a waiting game. As long as no one else got in there and found it first, Honeycut was content to give it the time it needed. He wasn’t happy about it, but he accepted it.
Leonid Travkin paced to the window of the small room and looked out, not really seeing the deep, frozen snow that lined the streets below. He pursed his lips and shook his head. He had just listened to Alexi Kuradin quickly run through his plan. It disturbed him. It was not a good plan at all. He had expected more from him.
The evening before, he had brought Kuradin stacks of files that he had specially requested. There were numerous dossiers of sleeper agents within the United States, never before used, just waiting for the word to become active agents all across the country. There were files on assassins past their best and known to American Intelligence. There were schematics and descriptions of the most advanced cybernetic systems in the Soviet Union—and one very special dossier, of an agent who fit the highly specific requirements outlined by Centaur.
Travkin turned away from the window and slowly walked back to the table in the center of the room, his eyes looking downward.
“The plan is not…not…” He was searching for words, for a way to tell him. “…not exactly what I would expect from you, Alexi. I have serious doubts—”
“Good, very good. That is precisely the reaction I was hoping for,” Kuradin interrupted. A wry smile crossed his face. “Now, let me explain it a little further. Let me give you the thinking behind the plan.”
Travkin sat. He would listen. If the explanation did not satisfy him, he would remove Kuradin from the mission. He hoped that it would not be necessary. Kuradin’s record had been absolutely brilliant to that point, one-hundred-percent success. “I was hoping that you had more to tell me, Alexi,” Travkin said. He looked up and waited.
“First, you must understand that this can be no ordinary plan. Our adversary is a much more superior intellect than we have ever faced before. We must not engage in a chess game with it. We cannot hope to beat it if we do. It can outthink us at every turn. It is a biocybernetic intellect beyond anything we can imagine, with a spectacular array of powers at its disposal and a secret force of agents who follow its direction with startling efficiency.” He began to pace around Travkin.
“Its strengths are flawless logic and speed. It will race through its alternatives faster than our comprehension will permit us to accept. Yet, it has weaknesses.” Kuradin stared at him, as though waiting for a response.
Travkin looked blankly at him. He couldn’t think of a single weakness. He shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
Kuradin raised an index finger upward. “Its weaknesses are…” He paused for effect. “…logic and speed,” he said, the sly smile returning.
Travkin’s eyes narrowed in anticipation.
“It is built on a basis of logic; its function depends upon it. It will list all of the possible alternatives that it faces as the facts are made known to it. It will then choose the most appropriate one. This is where our advantage lies. We know what our first move will be, it does not. We, too, can determine the alternatives that we will face—but always one step ahead. And it is here that we will defeat it. We will let it run ahead of itself…and us. We walk when logic dictates run and turn left when right is the way to go. We choose the least logical alternative, while it selects the most. We beat it by keeping it off balance and going through the back door, when the front is the only way out.”
Yes, this was the Alexi he knew. Travkin began to feel much easier. Kuradin reviewed the plan again from the beginning, explaining the alternatives that would be available to them and the underlying possibilities for success that existed. If one failed, the next came into play. Every loss was turned into a gain. All that was essential was that Kuradin remain alive. And to help assure that, he employed the assistance of a man of very special talents—Otto Ten Braak, the one-time ultimate assassin.
“But, why have you chosen Ten Braak?” Travkin asked. “He is past his prime. The Americans know him too well. Certainly, using him will only make it easier for them to find you,” he said.
“That is precisely the point,” Kuradin shot back quickly. “And we will help them do just that. But we will lead them to Ten Braak, not Centaur. They will flock to him, Pilgrim and the others. And they will find him most difficult,” Kuradin said.
Otto Ten Braak was a skilled assassin, second to none in his deadly arts. Without the element of surprise, he could not be taken. True, he was past his best and too well known. He was not as artful as the younger generation of specialists now employed by the Soviets, but he was still more deadly than any man alive. His methods were his own and very effective.
Kuradin admired excellence of any kind, and Ten Braak had once been the best. That should earn him a place of honor, not a “retirement” at the hands of a new operative, sent to take him from a roof top, or in an elevator, or while in a shower. That left a man of his honor nothing. A man should always be left something. Only a mission of such importance was fitting, one he would probably never survive, but one that would be vital to the success of the plan. It was the ultimate mission, leaving him the hero he deserved to be.
It was clear to Travkin now. Ten Braak was to take on Pilgrim.
The two men were very much alike in many ways, each deadly and efficient. Ten Braak was an instrument of death like no other in the world—every inch of him, every instinct, deadly and skilled in the art of delivering destruction. It would be a confrontation of one deadly intellect versus another. But, if handled properly, the advantage would belong to Ten Braak.
Kuradin explained the role that Travkin would play from Moscow. Timing was critical to the plan. Certain bits of information had to be leaked at precisely the right moments. Even if the plan went to the last alternative, it could be successful. That’s when the information contained in the file that Kuradin had so carefully outlined would come into play. At that point, only Moscow could carry success.
Travkin was taken aback as Kuradin explained the final contingency. The fact that Centaur was a dying man would work in their favor. Travkin was distressed by the knowledge that his friend was dying.
“I did not know, Alexi. I would have never asked—”
“Nonsense,” Kuradin interrupted, “I will die regardless.”
“But your family. Surely you wish to spend every possible moment with them. Your daughter, the grandchildren, I know how you love them. Alexi, my friend, I can get another agent to take the assignment. A new plan can be made—”
Kuradin silenced him by raising his hand. “Leonid, only I can make this plan work. And it is for my family that I do this. I do not, for one minute, believe that the Americans would not use this computer against us aggressively. When the moment is right, they will act. I cannot let my loved ones face a future of destruction at the hands of an unbeatable enemy. We must have that computer, too, to maintain the balance of power.
“You know, and I know, that detente is a word that will last only as long as the balance of power exists. As soon as one power has the capability to destroy the other, swiftly, neatly, and with minimum retaliation and devastation, it will cease to be a part of our vocabulary. We are fortunate that the Americans believe in it more than we do, or it would already be too late. It’s a terrible thought,
but if that computer were ours right now, and the Americans did not have it, America would already be a wasteland of corpses. Detente has been only a means to buy us time to find the ultimate weapon of destruction that would not devastate the rest of the world. It’s true, Leonid. You know it is. The only way to peace is to keep both sides capable of a mutual horror.”
Travkin said nothing. His friend was naive and idealistic. Yes, the balance of power was the only workable plan to peace. The mutual threat of destruction generated enough fear to keep the fingers from pressing the buttons, but it would never be the final answer. Man is only an animal. He follows his instincts and nature just as the lower animals do, but in a more complex and ordered way. In nature, the strong supplant the weak. Every society in nature is ruled by the strong. It is determined who is the stronger by confrontation. This computer would only be the first. Man would race against man to develop the next one, each more capable than the last, until he was finally convinced that he was the stronger and could not lose. Then it would happen, as the wars of the past had happened, the confrontation for power would take place. And there would be winners and losers, with only the dead finding lasting peace.
“Besides,” Kuradin broke in, cutting Travkin’s train of thought, “I have purely selfish motives, as well,” he said with a smile. “My ego demands the ultimate challenge and victory. After all, am I not stealing the world’s greatest secret? I will be remembered as Russia’s greatest spy,” he laughed.
Travkin laughed, but he knew better. This man, who had been content to let his exploits and accomplishments remain anonymous for so long, did not possess the ego that he alluded to. He was already Russia’s greatest spy. It wasn’t important that the world know it; it was only important that Alexi Kuradin know it. And one unanswered question remained in Centaur’s mind. Was Pilgrim better than he was? This was the issue that his ego demanded be resolved.
“Well, Leonid. What do you think of the plan now?” Kuradin asked.
It was brilliant. Travkin had not been disappointed, after all. Only Centaur could have thought of it—so simple, almost too simple to work, yet, it should not fail. Travkin rose and faced his friend. “It has my approval. When will it start?” he asked.
“It already has,” he answered. “When you leave here today, we shall not see one another again until it has succeeded.”
And if it fails, we shall never see one another again, Travkin finished in his mind.
The two looked at each other for several long moments, then embraced warmly. They bid each other farewell, and Travkin left. As he walked down the steps to the snow-lined streets below, he thought about the gentle, little man upstairs. He hoped he had not seen his friend for the last time.
ELEVEN
All the lessons of our previous campaigns were applied toward ultimate victory in Russia. The Luftwaffe coordination and support was superb.
By December we were at the gates of Moscow, having annihilated over two-thirds of the estimated Red Army strength.
Entry No. 20 from the partially
recovered Wolf Journal
The nightmare had awakened Justin. He felt strangely bothered as the details of that dream turned over and over in his head. What could it all mean? he wondered.
In it, Spartan was in the study, sitting at his desk. The other man—the stalker—came into the house without a sound. Spartan sensed his presence, but did not make any attempt to secure a weapon. Instead, he climbed up on top of the desk. The desk was important. It had to be protected. The intruder entered the room with a shotgun. Spartan did not look at him. He just sat on the desk, waiting. The intruder fired, knocking Spartan off the desk. Then the intruder climbed up on top of the desk and began a vigil. But what was he waiting for? Justin wondered.
Then, suddenly, Justin and Fanning were there. They were searching the study. The intruder was watching them, but he could not be seen.
Then Justin was alone in the study. Fanning was somewhere else in the house. Suddenly, it dawned on Justin that the desk was the key. Something about it told him that. He climbed up on top of it, just as Spartan had done. He sat and waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he waited.
The intruder appeared. The shotgun was pointed at Justin.
Where was Fanning? Justin needed help. Where was he?
The muzzle of the gun was smoking. Then Justin knew that Fanning must be dead. The intruder had already gotten him.
The gun discharged. Justin could feel himself being knocked off the desk by the blast, although there was no realization of pain.
The intruder made sure of his work, then climbed back up on the desk and resumed his vigil.
Then Justin had awakened.
The stalker. The thought of him stirred anxiety in Justin. He was out there. He could be coming at any moment. From the darkness.
My gun! Where is my gun? Justin’s mind raced.
Every night-sound became him. He gave away nothing. He took you when you were vulnerable.
Where is my gun?
There is an inherent paranoia that goes with the profession. A man couldn’t survive in this business without it. But, if he let it, it would take over completely. Then he wasn’t worth a damn anymore. It was starting in Justin.
It was time to get out, before the profession swallowed him whole. It did that to men, becoming all that they knew and had. Then it killed them. He didn’t want to become one of its casualties. He used to know why he did this for a living and what the things were that he believed in, that let him justify taking a life so easily. It had become so easy; he had become so unfeeling. There was never any guilt.
He had gotten his baptism of fire on his second mission. He had hesitated, breaking the first rule he had been taught, that to hesitate was to die. The escape was a narrow one.
These men had tried to kill him. After his recovery from the initial hesitation, his actions became swift and natural. There was no thought in his mind but to react. There were no moralistic rationalizations, no quarrels of conscience, just automatic response. There was no time to think about the first man he had killed. Before his brain had slowed down, there were five more.
He never counted them or remembered their faces after that. And he never hesitated again. And something in him was never the same—he had enjoyed it.
Barbara rolled over and nestled her back into his arms. He looked at her asleep beside him. She was beautiful when she slept. And she felt warm next to him. God, but she felt good. Smelled nice, too.
He toyed with the thought of waking her. He wanted to make love to her. He was sneaky that way. They had some of their greatest lovemaking in the middle of the night like this, everything twilight, clouded and soft—and warm.
He ran his hand gently up her stomach to her breasts. She had lovely breasts. He affectionately called her “Jugs” when they were alone. His fingertips tenderly traced her nipples. What heaven. He let his face linger in her hair.
His hand went softly down her side and glided over her hips, coming to rest on her behind. He began gently tracing her ass, moving slowly to her inner thighs, to the softness and the warmth of her.
She stirred ever so slightly.
He felt her tenderly, tracing the bulges and valleys.
She stirred again.
He began the gentle tracings through the soft hair, into her mounting wetness. He kissed her ear softly.
She stirred.
He began gentle kisses on her neck, his fingers probing delicately, more deeply into the wetness.
“It’s about time, you animal,” she purred. “I’ll give you just one hour to stop that,” she said, turning to him.
They kissed tenderly. She was ready. Vulnerable. Vulnerable! The stalker took you when you were vulnerable! Where is the gun?
Barbara’s body became like fire against his, as the kisses picked up in tempo, grew deeper and more urgent.
The gun! About four steps away. How long in seconds to get to it?
He kissed d
own her neck to her breasts, his lips and tongue softly caressing her nipples, his hand tracing, probing softly, deeper.
She was making soft, sighing sounds. Heat rushed through her body. Her face and lips were burning with the passion.
Justin went lower, kissing her stomach.
The sighs increased into more passionate moanings.
He kissed her hips, her thighs, making well-placed tracings with his tongue.
She was nearing the edge.
Not yet!
About four steps away. Loaded, one in the chamber. Remember the safety!
“Now, Justin. I want you now,” she whispered.
He continued kissing. He knew her body and her limits. There was a difference between “now” and “NOW!”
He kissed into the warmth.
Her moans increased sharply. She was on fire. “Now, Justin. Please? Now.” Her breathing was deep, wild.
He kissed on, deeper.
The gun…is about four steps…
“Oh, God…that’s…that’s nice. Hmm…mmm…Justin. Now, baby. Oh, please, honey.” She squirmed and moaned. This was the very edge.
“Now…oh…oh, NOW. Justin, I want you…NOW!”
He rose quickly to take her at her peak.
The gun…the gun is…is…screw the gun!
The stalker was no longer there.
Irwin Honeycut waited as the President’s direct line to the SENTINEL complex rang. On the second ring, it was answered.
“This is the President speaking,” the deep, resonant voice said.
“Hello, Mr. President. This is Irv, again. I’ve got more for you on the Spartan situation. I’ve got an important matter that’s related to this to talk to you about, too,” Honeycut’s graveled voice rasped out.
