Gunshots followed her as she floored her car. Despite an incessant screech and a strong smell of gasoline mixed with friction-burned rubber, Natalya concentrated on the tarmac. Airport security would be responding, but that was hardly a bother. She sped along the cement, swerved to avoid one parked jet, and headed for an open gate that would take her to freedom.
The Toy Factory never slept; there were not enough hours in the day to accomplish all of its tasks. The past week had seen the normally hectic activity turn frantic. With little chance that stores of Atragon sufficient to power Bugzapper could be found in time, the search was on for an element to take its place. So far that search had yielded nothing.
The man in charge of these labors was Robert Tibbs, who had been with the Bureau of Scientific Intelligence for seven years. His devotion to his work was total, and many days came and went without his leaving the grounds. Because he often worked well past normal hours, the Toy Factory staff had christened Tibbs “Captain Midnight.” He was known to become so obsessed with a particular assignment that for days on end he wouldn’t sleep, eat, or change his clothes.
The last week had seen him whipped into the most unyielding frenzy of his career. He had not left the lab once in two full days, other than to refill his canteen from a cooler of water down the hall. He had assigned himself the task of sifting through those few substances deemed by his subordinates to have any chance at all of serving as a surrogate power source. Thus far all those that had passed into his lab had passed into the waste basket.
But the latest substance intrigued him, resisting his attempts to dismiss it. True, there were dozens more tests to be performed. At least, though, there was hope, and Captain Midnight was ready to grasp at anything.
He returned to his lab with freshly filled canteen in hand and flipped a single switch which illuminated a trio of pinkish crystals on his work table.
“Okay, fellas,” he told them, “let’s get back to work….”
Chapter 22
The plane bound for Madrid from Athens started into its descent and McCracken shifted uneasily in his seat. Whatever over twenty-four hours of rest had done to soothe the wounds he’d suffered at Fass’s villa had been offset by the cramped, uncomfortable flight. It had been early Saturday morning before Blaine felt well enough to travel and to discover that the quickest way to reach Marrakesh was actually to fly first to Madrid and then switch planes.
Escaping from Fass’s villa on Thursday night had not proven difficult. Still wearing the uniform of one of the mad Greek’s guards, he moved from one group to another until the simplest opportunity to walk out presented itself. Returning to Athens had yet to be considered and with the wounds inflicted by Fass’s Minotaur, the trek promised to be rough. He stayed off the roads but near them, since he would need to appropriate a car.
He found one on a hill overlooking the Sfakia River. Two young lovers were busy in the backseat and Blaine, with the help of his gun, had little trouble talking them into a loan. The next few hours were spent driving to a port. He was back in the Athens hotel room he had shared with Natalya by early morning on Friday.
Taking care of his wounds was the next order of business and inspection of them revealed a doctor would not be required. For the most part they were puncture wounds, already closed but still extremely painful. Blaine paid the hotel clerk to fetch antiseptic, bandages, and other implements and then spent the next hour cleaning, stitching, and dressing the wounds, after which he collapsed at last on the bed.
He awoke nearly an entire day later with the realization that his first task was to call Sundowner with an update on his progress. Some more bills pressed into the clerk’s hand gained him use of the hotel’s only phone. He waited an hour after requesting an overseas line and another twenty minutes before the operator called back with the connection to Sundowner’s contact exchange.
“This is a Deep Seven Cover reroute,” a mechanical voice greeted him, a tape recording obviously. “Reinitiate at the following exchange. …”
McCracken memorized the exchange as he’d been trained to, forming immediate patterns in the numbers to keep them from sliding from memory. Something was wrong. This wasn’t the procedure, wasn’t what he had set up with Sundowner. But the scientist was calling the shots.
“You have reached Deep Seven Cover station,” a real male voice greeted this time.
“I want Sundowner. Get me Sundowner.”
“Negative. His line is down. I have alternative—”
McCracken hung up the phone, face flushed with anger. Something had happened in Washington and whatever it was it had isolated him from Sundowner. They wanted him to talk to someone else. Why? He thought of the Farmer Boy. Was he getting so close to the Atragon that Raskowski’s mole had maneuvered the crisis committee into a change of strategy? He didn’t know.
But he knew that matters had taken a turn for the worse. He was being cut off. It was a truth he constantly had to face. There was no one he could trust.
No one except …
He picked up the phone and repeated the whole lengthy procedure, an hour this time, of putting through a call. He reached the contact number for Johnny Wareagle. A message would be sent to the big Indian, and Blaine could only hope his friend would be in a position to receive it.
All this accomplished, he set out for the airport and the first flight he could catch for Madrid.
Victor Ivanovitch gathered up the morning papers to read with his coffee, as he customarily did at the start of each day. The Soviet chargé d’affaires at the Syrian embassy in Algiers was actually a career intelligence officer with twenty years’ experience in the KGB. The increasingly strategic importance of Algeria over the last few years had called for a man of Ivanovitch’s seasoning to be stationed here. Though the Soviets carried on few “wet” missions in the port city, they needed to keep an eye toward future manipulation. Ivanovitch was an expert in such matters and he infinitely preferred the Algerian desert climate to that of Moscow. A Soviet who hated snow might be unpatriotic, but for Ivanovitch the warm sun was as natural as his morning ritual with papers and coffee.
The phone on his desk buzzed twice.
“Yes?” he said in Arabic, a language he had come to speak as well as his own over the years.
“You have a call, sir. Line ten.”
Ivanovitch stiffened. The Syrian embassy had only nine official lines. The tenth existed only for direct, and unusual, contact by a mission operating within his sector. Strange, he had not been informed of any….
“I’ll take it,” he told the operator as he reached for a second phone and lifted the receiver to his ear. “How may I help you?”
“All happy families resemble each other,” said a female voice, “but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Ivanovitch stiffened even more. The first line of Anna Karenina! How could it be? Alerts were signaled by reciting the agreed-upon first line of a Russian book. Anna Karenina was the current code.
“I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” the KGB man told the caller. “Try the party at …” He proceeded to provide a drop point address. As soon as the call was terminated a messenger would be sent to the drop with a note telling the caller when and where in Algiers to meet him. Something must be up, something very big. Ivanovitch’s flesh tingled with excitement. Only the deepest Soviet agents were furnished with the regular alert code. He was finally about to see action again.