In the basement of the main building at the National Security Agency compound resided a machine unlike any other computer in the world, for it was custom-designed and manufactured by the NSA's own staff, in conjunction with outside contractors. This hypersecret device — nicknamed "Pandora's Box" by her architects — was not very big, and to the untrained eye it looked like nothing more than a black polyhedron, four feet by four feet by eight feet, laid lengthwise. There were no gauges or displays on the exterior aluminum panels of the polyhedron, but inside was an intricate series of gallium arsenide computer chips that enabled it to process data many times faster than even a Cray-Y/MP supercomputer. So powerful was Pandora that it generated tremendous heat and had to be cooled by a custom-designed air-conditioning system. The chilled vapors were funneled up through the floor, causing a constant hum.
When the Eardrum satellite downloaded its stewpot full of electronic signals to the NSA's earth-station dish, they were first converted into digital information, then fed into Pandora. The mystical computer digested the data, then worked them like a wrangler at a cattle chute — rapidly sorting the electronic signals by carrier band and type of transmission. After the sorting was complete, Pandora plucked out the gemstones in the stewpot — such as a Defense Ministry telephone call from Moscow to Murmansk, or a conversation on a Zil limousine radio car phone — and routed them to an analyst for examination.
If the electronic signal was telemetry — which was the transmission of data from a satellite to the ground, like a spy satellite photograph — Pandora had a slick trick up her sleeve. She could take the date, time, and bearing of the telemetry signal, then triangulate the position between the Pacific and Atlantic Eardrums and compute an orbital path for the satellite. This path information was matched against the orbits of known Soviet satellites so the source of the telemetry could be identified. If there wasn't an existing Russian orbital plot in Pandora's memory banks that matched up with the signal, then the signal was flagged on an analyst's computer screen.
As it was now.
"Coffee, Evan?"
Evan Littleton checked the dregs of his cup. "Yeah, gimme a warmer."
"Gotcha," said his colleague, Ernie Marks, who grabbed the cup and trotted down the hall to the coffee machine.
Littleton stretched, then tapped his keyboard to call up another bunch of signals from the Eardrum satellite for analysis, and found there were two flags blinking on his screen. He found it difficult to concentrate on this, his first day back from vacation. The bespectacled Littleton had gone crosscountry skiing in Vermont with his girlfriend of six months, who worked in the cryptanalytic division. They had come back engaged.
But now he put the thought of his betrothal out of his mind and tried to focus on the two blinking flags. The first one, Littleton guessed, was probably a Progress "drone" space capsule ferrying supplies up to the Russian Mir space station. The Progress drone had no crew and was navigated totally by an on-board computer and ground controllers. After it docked automatically with the space station, its cargo of food and supplies was unloaded, then it was jettisoned and sent back into the atmosphere to burn up. Littleton was 98 percent sure it was a Progress drone because the amount of telemetry was tiny, and it bore the characteristics of other Progress signals. A "no brainer," Littleton thought.
The second flagged signal was harder to figure. Its orbital path showed a polar inclination with an altitude of 122 miles. It matched nothing in the current inventory of orbiting Russian vehicles, which included more than ten thousand pieces of space hardware. He typed in the word analyze and hit enter. There was a slight delay as his request queued up for Pandora behind several others. Then, in a blink, the words were erased and replaced with the cryptic message:
ANALYSIS: VOICE COMSEC SIGNAL ORIGIN:
TERRESTRIAL: 67 DEGREES, 21 MINUTES NORTH;
171 DEGREES, 14 MINUTES EAST.
CELESTIAL: 71 DEGREES, 38 MINUTES NORTH;
173 DEGREES, 51 MINUTES EAST.
63 DEGREES, 12 MINUTES NORTH;
169 DEGREES, 23 MINUTES EAST.
ALTITUDE: 122.7 MILES INCLINATION: 83 DEGREES
"VOICE COMSEC" meant it was a voice radio transmission and the communication was secure, or scrambled — which was typical of communications on a manned Russian Soyuz mission. This, however, puzzled Littleton, because he hadn't seen any alert memos about an upcoming Soyuz launch. (The Soyuz was the Russian manned-vehicle workhorse.) Also, the tracking data showed part of the transmission was moving and the other part was stationary, which indicated the space vehicle was communicating directly with a ground station. This was unusual, too, because the Soyuz ordinarily communicated with ground stations via the Kosmos 1700 satellite system — just as American spacecraft did with the TDRS satellites. But Littleton shrugged. Things like this had happened before. Those Russkies racked up over a hundred launches a year, and it was easy to lose track of one before lift-off — even a Soyuz.
He typed in the codes to transmit his data on the two flagged telemetry items to NORAD, where the orbital path information would be matched with the exact vehicle.
Ernie Marks returned with the coffee. "Here you go, Slugger. Or should I say skier? Or should I say married skier?"
Littleton grinned.
"Anything of interest?" Marks asked.
"Naw, not really. I just sent a couple of unknowns to NORAD for identification. Looks like a recently launched Progress drone and a Soyuz. Maybe the Soyuz is heading up to the Mir to change crews. It's about time, I suspect."
"Hmmmm," murmured Marks as he pushed his glasses up on a crop of sandy hair — a sure sign that he was puzzled. "I don't remember seeing anything in the alert memos about a Soyuz on the pad."
"Yeah, well, it's happened before. Anyway, it's NORAD's problem now." Littleton didn't even mention the ground communication link. "Besides, I got a shitload of stuff to wade through this afternoon. Can't fiitz around with this."
"Yeah," agreed Marks. "Leave it to our esteemed colleagues in Colorado."
It never occurred to either of them that a voice transmission above the Soviet Union could be anything but a Russian spacecraft.
Grigory Vostov had retired early and was sound asleep when he awoke to a pounding on his apartment door in the Mulzeny Prospekt. Groggily he gained consciousness and flipped on the bedside light.
"Who could that be?" mumbled his wife.
"Mmmphf," was the only response the middle-aged, overweight scientist could muster as he pulled on his robe and slippers and absently scratched his scalp of dark, thinning hair.
Unlike the typical Russian, Vostov did not have a fearful knee-jerk reaction to a knock on the door in the middle of the night. That was because his technical genius insulated and protected him from the vagaries of Russian political life, and bequeathed upon him and his family the benefits of the nomenklatura, or the elite of Soviet society. Quite simply, he knew himself to be an indispensable man in the Soviet Union. The country and the Party would protect him because they needed him. Therefore he had no fear of them, or of the knocking on the door. In fact, he was severely incensed at having his slumber disturbed. His ample girth waddled through the richly appointed seven-room apartment — a regal privilege by Moscow's standards — and stopped at the door. "Who is there?" he demanded.
"State Security," came an equally demanding voice through the door.
Although Vostov had friends on the Politburo, this response unsettled him, and caused his sleepiness and aloofness from politics to evaporate. He was indispensable — wasn't he? He had nothing to fear — did he? Carefully he opened the door, and was stupefied to find a KGB colonel, captain, and sergeant facing him.