His footsteps echoing down the corridor, Rushenko came to a blank nickel-steel door. There was no name on the door. To place a name there would be to give a name to the ministry that had no official existence.
In the beginning, it had been called Shchit-Shield-a name suggested by the sword-and-shield emblem of the old KGB. It was completely paperless, having no files or public phone number. But after a while, it became clear even a name was a security risk. So a formal name was dispensed with. A ministry that enjoyed no official sanction should not enjoy a name, reasoned the architect of Shield, Colonel Rushenko.
The headquarters of the ministry changed from time to time. At first it was a Moscow prison. Later it masqueraded as a publishing company specializing in Russian-language sequels to Gone with the Wind.
The current incarnation had been the brainchild of Rushenko, because it enabled his people to keep an eye on the American FBI, which in this most insane of eras had itself established a branch office in the very same part of Moscow.
Rushenko stood before an ivory panel, his firm mouth addressing a copper microphone grille. A laser lens emitted a steady crimson glow at eye level.
A voice crackled, "Identify."
"Radomir Eduardovitch. Colonel."
"Place your fingertips to the five lighted spots."
Touching a fan of five points of light that appeared beneath the laser eye, Rushenko allowed the optical reader to scan his fingerprints. He was then asked to peer into the red laser lens.
The laser-harmless unless his fingerprints were not found on file-scanned the unique vein pattern in his retina, and only then did the door hum open. The alternative was a smoking hole bored from brow to the back of his skull.
Inside was a reception area done in old-style socialist heroic decor, with a honey blond woman in a simple maroon skirt and red turtleneck jersey seated at a massive desk. It was a different blond woman each month. A different heroine of the Motherland who would willingly drink poison in the event of unauthorized penetration so that the secrets of Shield would go to the grave with her.
"You are expected, tovaritch."
And Rushenko smiled to hear the old form of address again.
"Thank you, comrade."
Nowadays people were sudar-"sir"-or gospo-din-"Mr." It sounded too elitist for Rushenko and his socialist ears for he had been educated under the old system. Only here in the labyrinth of Shield was it acceptable to address others as "comrade."
In a red-walled conference room without windows but illuminated by high-intensity floor lamps to defeat the depressive psychological effects lack of sunlight caused, Rushenko met with the other section chiefs of Shield. They only convened in case of crisis or intelligence and policy discussion. It was safer that way. All wore the insignialess black uniforms of the defunct Red Army, as did Colonel Rushenko, revealed when he removed his greatcoat and astrakhan hat.
"There has been an event in the United States," he was told by a man whose name he didn't know, a former KGB operative like himself.
"Interesting," said Colonel Rushenko.
"An installation called the BioBubble was destroyed utterly by a power of unknown destructiveness."
"A bomb?"
"We think not. We think a ray."
"A laser?"
"No laser is this powerful. To do this, the laser beam would have to possess a circumference of three acres."
Glances of unease passed among stone-faced men. For security reasons, no one knew the identity of his comrades. The people's hero who had recruited them had taken his life once his task was accomplished to ensure their anonymity.
"Star Wars?"
Rushenko shook his head. "Such a laser in orbit would be so large as to reveal itself. It is not a new weapon of the supposedly cancelled US. Strategic Defense Initiative."
"Could it be ours?" a shaggy-haired man with suspicious Georgian eyes asked.
"Zhirinovsky talks of the Elipticon," an Estonian remarked.
Colonel Rushenko shook his heavy Kazakh face. "Zhirinovsky talks of foolishness. But he is useful to us."
"Colonel Rushenko, I have in my possession a file copied from the old KGB archives. It speaks of a weapon such as this."
"I am listening."
"It is a very dangerous weapon. If deployed, it could render our nuclear deterrent obsolete."
Colonel Rushenko frowned darkly. "Our nuclear deterrent is all but obsolete. Half the missiles are inoperative or under repair. We no longer test, so there is no way to know if they will launch or detonate on impact. For all we know, the current leadership has its collective finger on the trigger of a water pistol."
"You mistake my meaning, comrade. This weapon could make the surviving good missiles useless hulks resting in their silos and launchers like so many loaves of bread in so many paper sacks."
"How?"
"We have only a flimsy grasp of the event, but if the Americans are experimenting with this device, we will stand naked beneath it."
"We have assets in the Evil Empire?"
"Yes. Kinga the Bitch."
Rushenko shuddered. "A true nutcracker, that one."
"Let us send her into the field. Perhaps she will learn something useful."
"And if she is caught?"
"She has been hypnotized to give up under interrogation the name of an FSK control she once dallied with and who left her. Let the FSK take the blame."
Colonel Rushenko nodded. "Then I will see that it's done."
With that, the meeting was adjourned, and Rushenko was left with a computer linked to a Chinese-red telephone that, thanks to a friendly telephone lineman, ran through the FSK switchboard and thus accessed the superior government Vertushka phone system.
It took three hours to obtain a modem connection with the international Internet. It was another embarrassing proof of how much Russian technology had deteriorated since the old regime was overthrown.
In the glory days of the USSR, it would never have taken more than two.
Chapter 16
When Dr. Cosmo Pagan heard that the U.S. space shuttle had been melted down en route to the launch pad, he was trying to find Mars through the twenty-four-inch antique refractor at Lowell Observatory outside Flagstaff.
As observatories went, it wasn't much-a white, wood-frame Victorian structure perched on a promontory. In the cloudless dry Arizona air, it was a perfect spot to observe the Red Planet.
Here, Percival Lowell had mapped out the canals that later astronomers sought in vain. But Lowell had seen them, and before he died, Cosmo Pagan wanted to see them, too.
Mars wasn't being cooperative. Unable to sight it by fiddling with the right ascension and declination, Pagan swung the blue telescope tube by hand and peered through the brass-bound sighter.
Finally he got a fix.
There it was, the Red Planet, just as Lowell had described it in his notebooks over a century ago. Lowell saw a dying planet kept alive by a planetwide network of irrigation canals. His findings had fired the imaginations of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and other great chroniclers of the Mars that had in turn ignited Pagan's youthful dreams.
Regrettably the Mars of canals and princesses and four-armed, green-skinned giants had evaporated with the Viking and Mariner probes and subsequent discoveries.
It was too bad. Even at his mature age, Dr. Pagan would rather green Martians than red deserts. After all, there were red deserts on earth, too. Here in Arizona. And in Mongolia, where the Red Gobi had an uncannily distinct Martian feel to it-not that Dr. Pagan had ever been to the Red Gobi. There were no news cameras in the Red Gobi. He never went anywhere where there wasn't the possibility of face timeor at least good black ink.
Though discredited, Lowell hadn't toiled in vain, Cosmo thought. If not for him, there would have been no "War of the Worlds" or Warlord of Mars to set Cosmo Pagan on the road to his red destiny. By that reasoning, Percival Lowell had not lived in vain.