“Disinformation didn’t destroy Hope Valley,” Lyman Scott reminded him.
“No, a renegade Ivan general did, if we’re to believe Chernopolov. One town — no more — because maybe that’s all their superweapon was ever capable of destroying. A single demonstration to make us think they’ve got more than they really do.”
“That’s stretching things, George.”
“Is it? We all know the purpose of Ulysses. We put it up there to provide immediate verifiable warning of a missile launch from anywhere in the world. Effectively, the message to our enemies was that the best they could hope for was a simultaneous launch on warning. Stalemate. Suicide. But then the Soviets come up with a one-shot demonstration and we deactivate it, thereby exposing ourselves to the full brunt of their nuclear arsenal.”
The President tamed to Sundowner. “Have you checked out Ulysses?”
Sundowner nodded. “All systems functional.”
“What about the beam weapon?”
“Without a detailed, in-person inspection, I couldn’t tell if it had been placed on board or not. It’s possible. Size is the greatest restriction, but the death beam wouldn’t have to be terribly big.”
The President turned to Stamp. “What about security surrounding construction and deployment?”
“There are inconsistencies present in the logs,” the CIA chief reported, “and I can’t swear to the proficiency of the security employed. All scientists directly involved have been interrogated and they all admitted that Ulysses could have been under light guard when the various snafus arose.”
Sundowner remembered something. “Snafus set the project back nearly a year at the outset. Some of this was before my time, but as I recall, the first prototype of Ulysses didn’t fit all the specs and was replaced with the model now in orbit. But we’ve still got the prototype. Since the modifications required are mostly cosmetic, we could have it ready to launch within ninety-six hours, seventy-two if we’re lucky and if the records are up to date.”
Lyman Scott nodded. “Then we could delay deactivation of Ulysses until we can get a temporary replacement up.”
“And we can make sure the Russians know it,” suggested Kappel, “so if I’m right about their intentions, they’ll know we’ve managed to stay one step ahead of them. Beat the bastards at their own game.”
“Mr. President,” began Mercheson, “if we are agreed on this subject, there is another that should be raised. We now have a rogue agent operating in the field, not formally working for us, pursuing a substance that has become superfluous to our needs, and possessing more information than we can afford to have released.”
“Yes,” the President sighed, “I’m aware of that, along with McCracken’s means for dispensing that sort of information. We needed him before. We don’t anymore.”
“Sir?” Ryan Sundowner spoke tentatively.
“Nothing melodramatic, Ryan. I just want him brought in and isolated until we can explain everything to him. The longer he’s out there, operating on his own, the greater the threat he poses, not just because of what he might say but because of what, under the wrong circumstances, he might be forced to say. We can’t survive the truth of this coming out any more man we can survive the death beam itself. McCracken’s reputation as a rogue is well earned. We can’t trust him out there. He’ll understand our reasoning.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“You’re forgetting the woman who was killed, Mr. President. That’s what drew him into this in the first place, and it’s my guess he won’t be able to pull out so easily until he’s settled that score.”
The President’s eyes went cold. “Then we’ll have to find some way to persuade him.”
“So when he calls in, I should—”
“For the reasons you just alluded to,” broke in CIA chief Stamp, “it should be someone else whom he reaches, someone well versed in such matters.”
“McCracken trusts me.”
“The stakes have changed,” said the President. “It’s a matter of convincing him, and if that falls short, knowing instantly what other steps to resort to.”
“Other steps,” Sundowner echoed, but his mind had strayed to a fact he didn’t dare raise now: one of the men in this room was a Soviet mole. How would that affect Blaine’s response to being called in?
Natalya came awake, groggily aware of being in motion. Her eyes cleared slowly to the sight of the straps which bound her to the seat of an eight-passenger private jet. A few seats ahead sat a pair of guards, absently watching her. Her head ached horribly from serums and sedatives. But the rest of her seemed whole, though slowed significantly.
She closed her eyes tight again before the guards noticed she was conscious.
Think! Put it together piece by piece in your head. Retrace the passage of time ….
Her last lucid sequence of thoughts had come at Bangkok’s Post and Telegraph Department. She had seen General Raskowski first and then Katlov, a man she had seen killed in the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha. But obviously he hadn’t died at all. Obviously everything that had occurred, starting with the initial contact in Moscow, had been by the general’s direction. So Katlov was alive and had passed information to her which she in turn passed to General Secretary Chernopolov, again by Raskowski’s design. Deception on top of deception.
But why? Where was the sense?
After her capture, the fuzziness began. She was taken to a warehouse on the outskirts of Bangkok where truth serum was administered. She had been trained to resist it, but she could only hold back so much, letting go when the strain shook her insides. General Raskowski had questioned her personally. When he was satisfied with her responses he began to feed her a constant diet of sedatives, with the most recent one administered just prior to takeoff.
She was fully awake now, though her reasoning process continued to function lazily.
“Paz will straighten things out. I have faith in him.” It was the general’s voice. He was emerging from the front cabin, with another man by his side: Katlov.
“I’m still worried,” Katlov said. “I haven’t been comfortable with our troop deployment in Pamosa Springs from—”
Raskowski silenced him as they drew closer to Natalya. He leaned over and shook her shoulder. Natalya opened her eyes, forcing herself to look even more dazed than she was.
“And how are you doing, my dear?”
Natalya tested the straps and felt the uncomfortable dryness in her mouth as she spoke. “Your concern for my comfort is refreshing.”
“I couldn’t allow you the temptation of starting an incident which could only result in further harm to yourself.”
“You wanted me to make my report to the General Secretary,” she offered lamely.
“Of course I did, my dear,” he said in a gentlemanly tone. “And you were most obliging, relayed to him everything I wanted you to.”
“Which you relayed to me through the walking corpse Katlov over there.”
“Shot with blanks.”
“I killed a man who had blanks in his gun. My God….”
“I’m impressed by your show of guilt,” Raskowski said. “But you perceived exactly what was expected of you.”
“Would you like to know what I perceive now, General? I perceive a man who has betrayed his country.”
Raskowski’s features reddened, nostrils flaring back like a bull about to charge. “Me a traitor?” he said, incredulously, almost shouting. “You are the traitor, you and all the spineless dreamers whose visions will drive our country into the ground. There is a cancer in the body of the Soviet Union, a cancer that must be cut out if our people are to survive and prosper.”