“I was summoned to a meeting of the Presidium. Marshal Moskanko wished to confirm some aspects of my initial report on the first test-firing of the laser. He conducted a lengthy seminar on the implications of the weapon in the struggle with the West.”
“Where did you stay, Professor, while you were in the city?”
“At the Rossia. I have recipts from there if you want to see them.”
“Did you get to do any shopping?”
Parchuk hesitated briefly. He looked at the grim-faced men before him and lied: “No, I didn’t have any time for that.”
“You didn’t go to the GUM store at all?”
Parchuk was frightened as they tried to corner him.
“No, I had no free time.”
One security officer rose from his chair, walked swiftly over to Parchuk, and slapped him on the cheek. The scientist covered himself with his hands, while his eyes filled with tears. The security man hovered over him menacingly. “You are nothing but trouble, Parchuk. We have been watching you for years.”
Parchuk shook his head while trying to compose himself. The security officer pried his hands loose from his face and with one powerful blow broke his jaw. Parchuk fell to the floor, unconscious.
“Pick the bastard up and take him to Moscow. We’ll show him to Rudenko and see what he says then.” Parchuk was dragged out of his office and hoisted into the back seat of a car.
In the compound of scientists’ homes, several curtains parted to watch the abduction. Behind one, a man cursed as he saw Parchuk shoved unconscious into the black government car. The man clutched the drapes in his fist until the car drove off at high speed. He went to the kitchen table, put his head down, and sobbed in anguish at losing part of his life.
The man was Anatoly Serkin, a thin-faced, bespectacled, thirty-eight-year-old physicist. He was Parchuk’s protégé, his prize pupil. They had met at Leningrad Government University, where Parchuk held a chair in quantum physics and optics. Parchuk liked the intense, volatile Serkin, partly because the younger man was struggling under the burden of supporting a wife and a child while attempting to earn his doctorate. Serkin and his wife, Nadia, lived in a one-room apartment with a bed in the middle of the floor and children’s toys scattered everywhere. When Serkin invited Parchuk to dinner one night, the professor was deeply touched at the way the young couple tried to please him. He was even more impressed when he sat down at the pink table that served for every meal. His steaming bowl of soup fell off the shaky leaf onto his lap. After a moment’s shock, Parchuk began to laugh uproariously while the embarrassed couple mopped the floor and his suit. The accident dissolved any social barriers between the hosts and their guest. After brandy, coffee, and Prokofiev’s Symphony Number 3, played on Serkin’s decrepit record machine, the professor left the dingy apartment happy for the first time in months. His wife had been a victim of the Nazi massacre at Kharkov, and Parchuk had been a very lonely man for all the long years since. Childless, he had only memories of a wonderful woman to sustain him in his twilight. It was not enough. Though he wrapped himself in a protective cocoon of books, music, and research, Parchuk needed people to talk with, to listen to him, and care for him. The Serkins provided that during the next years.
When, more in tribute to his scientific brilliance than his politics, the Presidium of the Soviet Union bestowed the leadership of the laser program on Parchuk, he took Dr. Serkin with him to Tashkent. All scientists were confined to a restricted area, but the authorities tried to make life there as pleasant as possible. Each family had its own home. Food was plentiful. Recreation, though limited, was available. The Serkins and their child, Galina, loved the desert and the very infrequent trips into the city of Tashkent, where they examined vestiges of the Mongol and Tartar cultures that had made Tashkent a world-famous capital.
Parchuk was absorbed in his work and rarely left the grounds. But nearly every evening he wandered over to the Serkins for dinner. He and Anatoly would talk of Dostoyevsky and Gorki and of the exciting advances being made around the world in their specialty. For each it was a safety valve from the pressures imposed on them by officials demanding results on the laser.
It was Parchuk and Serkin who solved the greatest problem connected with the laser, controlling the diffusion of the concentration of light once it encountered the ionosphere layer. When the two men worked out the theoretical approach to containing the intense beam, it was merely a matter of time before the Russians managed to test-fire a prototype into a forest in Siberia near Irkutsk.
Elated with the results, Parchuk went to Moscow to report progress to the Presidium. After that first trip, he came back to Tashkent deeply troubled. The Soviet marshals had indicated great interest in the offensive capabilities of the laser. When he was summoned to Moscow the next time, he took the blueprints and other data with him, not telling anyone, not even Serkin, what he was thinking of doing with them. It was on that second trip that Marshal Moskanko, the Soviet defense minister, had ordered him to annihilate the Israeli atomic center as a first step in world domination. The next target would be the United States of America. Parchuk and Serkin had never thought their creation might be used to enslave the world. They had believed the laser was just a defensive weapon, and had not reckoned with the Soviet military leaders. On his second day in Moscow that time, Parchuk got in touch with the only man he felt he could trust in such a situation, Grigor Rudenko, husband of his niece, Tamara.
He returned to Tashkent with equal feelings of grief and guilt. When they aimed the laser into the Sinai and killed more than a thousand human beings, Parchuk felt too ashamed to face Serkin. The younger man, too, was appalled at what they had done.
Now Parchuk was gone, and Serkin wept for him on the kitchen table. Nadia found him there when she came to make breakfast. She collapsed when he told her what had happened to their dearest friend. While Nadia tried to recover, Anatoly Serkin went to his record player and put on Prokofiev’s Third Symphony, Parchuk’s favorite.
Joe Safcek liked his hideout. In exploring the mosque, he had found a subterranean vault, containing the remains of warriors and holy men from centuries past. They had been laid to rest in scooped-out caverns in the walls. Safcek unceremoniously moved fragments of bone to one side and tenderly placed the rectangular package holding the atomic bomb.
While he surveyed the rest of the building, Luba and Peter laid out their collection of handguns and automatic rifles. On the second floor, Boris set up the radio, which had an effective range of six hundred miles.
At 8 A.M., Safcek returned and said: “We couldn’t have found a better place. No traffic outside. At about one we’ll take a scouting trip. In the meantime, why don’t we relax a bit? Anything to eat, Luba?”
Luba, who had not regained her former vivacity, busied herself getting cartons of rations from a knapsack. She handed them out to the men without a word and went back to a corner, where she eased down onto the dirt floor and opened up her breakfast. Joe Safcek munched his cold rations slowly and asked Luba for some coffee. She got up again and started to prepare it over a tiny field stove. When it was offered to him, Safcek smiled at the girl and asked, “Something on your mind I should know about?”
She hesitated for just a moment, then shook her head and went back to her position. Joe watched her settle down and then drank the strong coffee slowly. It burned his tongue but he liked it too much to care. Safcek tried to ignore Luba’s moodiness while he mentally arranged the next hours in his mind.
Friday, September 13
