Luba shrugged and walked over to the body. She pulled Boris’s eyelids down over his sightless eyes and stepped back.
They carried Boris Gorlov down the stairs to the dusty cellar floor and laid his body beside his murderer’s. Safcek went to the wall where the bones of ancient men rested, and knocked dust and bits of bone back into the farthest recesses. Then he returned to lift Boris to his final resting place. Blood dripped steadily onto Safcek’s wrists, as he carefully placed Boris in the makeshift grave. He pulled Gorlov’s tunic up under his chin to hide the ghastly effects of Kirov’s knife, then stepped back and went to the other corpse. They searched the double agent. He also had left nothing behind. Luba grabbed Kirov’s legs, and Safcek grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him to the grave just above Gorlov. Peter’s head lolled back and forth as they dumped him into the cavern. Joe Safcek could not look at the broken face.
He sat down on a box of rifle ammunition.
“We’ll have to make a few changes now that there’s only two of us. We can’t carry too much. You can manage the AK-47. I left six satchel charges in the trunk instead of twelve. We wouldn’t be able to handle more and still move quickly. They should be enough to get us through any kind of interference before we’re as close as we need to be for setting up the bomb.”
They made one last equipment check. Luba staffed ammunition into her pockets, and then the agents passed by the crypt for the last time. Safcek hesitated a moment, reached up and tried to straighten Peter Kirov’s bent left arm. He could not. He let it flop onto the body and snapped. “C’mon, Luba. We’re running out of time.”
It was 11 P.M. in Tashkent, one hour later than they had told Richter they would be leaving the mosque. The last phase of Operation Scratch was already well behind schedule.
Zero hour was eleven hours and eighteen minutes away.
Helicopters from the D.C. metropolitan police department hovered over the avenues leading from the city and reported on the congested traffic.
The blaze in northern Virginia had eaten its way nearly to the Potomac. Its smoke had blown across the river and onto the clogged highways. Motorists were nearly blinded by the billowing clouds, which obscured the sun and caused a premature twilight.
In Bethesda, the fires had finally been contained but only after sixty-five homes had been consumed in the inferno. Traffic was detoured northeastward into the Baltimore area.
In the White House, William Stark could see the mountainous clouds of smoke drifting toward him from the Potomac. Herb Markle had called shortly before, deploring the extent of the damage, but Stark had quickly silenced him, warning him to keep his nerves under control and his story straight Markle reported that there were indeed several leaks in the pipelines and that his men were sealing them off as rapidly as possible. Markle did not think there would be any further trouble in the downtown area.
Stark had brought his executive committee together for a hasty working lunch. Roarke reported on the requested standdown and confirmed that all stations had retreated from a war footing and were practically defenseless. Manson said that all friendly nations were besieging the State Department for further information on Tolypin’s charge at the UN that the U.S. was provoking a war. Randall announced that the Soviet naval task force was now one hundred miles due east of Montauk and slowing down to keep its proposed rendezvous at exactly 8 P.M. that night. Sam Riordan said Macomber was due in by suppertime. He also had a gruesome postscript on the blueprints story — Perkins had just called again from Paris to say that Maurice Debran had been found dead on the Métro tracks. Riordan had one other item. He mentioned that Krylov had not been seen publicly for two days. Perhaps he was holed up inside the Kremlin itself.
“Sam,” the President commented, “Krylov may be staying put, but I think it’s about time we made plans to get out of town. I want all necessary personnel at their assigned places in the mountain by nine P.M. tonight. It’s imperative we have a working organization in case the Russians push their timetable ahead and let go before the deadline.” Then he added: “Or in case we have to go to war with them.”
General Roarke pursued this issue. “Incirclik has the two SR-71’s ready to go. They’ve hidden them in a special hangar at the end of the field and posted armed guards around the perimeter. General Ellington says they can take off with fifteen minutes’ notice.”
Stark acknowledged this information with a grunt, and changed the subject.
“Now that Clifford Erskine is dead, you will not bother to report to John Dunham. Though he’s acting Secretary of Defense, I’m not going to delegate anything to him until this thing is over. Understood?” Roarke nodded happily, and Stark went on to discuss the state of evacuation. Randall estimated that by 8 P.M., the vast bulk of citizens would be across the river into Virginia and as far north as Baltimore. So far, the operation had gone quite smoothly with only minor traffic accidents.
In the darkness, Joe Safcek and Luba drove through Tashkent. Because nighttime traffic was nearly nonexistent, Safcek realized his presence in the streets was unusual and drove accordingly.
Luba watched the occasional pedestrian warily. On Navoi Street she noticed a policeman lounging on the corner. Out of the side of her mouth, she mentioned him to Safcek, who nodded and kept his face forward. The policeman ignored them, and they moved slowly past the Opera House and the islands of roses in the middle of the street. It was oppressively hot, and Luba rolled down the window and breathed deeply. They passed the Uzbekistan Legislature Building, where a huge statue of Lenin stared back at them.
“Colonel, do we have to use the atomic bomb?”
“I’m afraid so, Luba. It’s impossible for us to break completely through their screen by ourselves. It would take a task force with tanks to get into the compound and lay charges in that building. This way we can set it off in the gully that runs up to the main gate and neutralize the whole area.”
“Well, why can’t we set it off here along the road instead of running the risk of being caught near the plant?”
“We could, Luba, except that I have to be absolutely sure that the explosion will get the weapon. An atomic bomb is a very unpredictable thing. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some people who were only eight hundred yards from Ground Zero survived. Buildings remained upright at the same distance. So, the closer in I can get with this one, which isn’t as powerful as those were, the surer I’ll be that the place will go up completely. There are a lot of hills around here, and I can’t afford to let them deflect the blast away from the laser.”
“But what will be the effects of the bomb?”
“I’m not sure. Back at the Pentagon, they said the total destruction by fire and blast should not exceed an area of eight square miles.”
“I hope you’re right,” Luba groaned. “My mother lives in Chirchiz, and that’s only ten miles east of here.”
“Oh, God, I forgot that!” The colonel tried to think of something to reassure her. “I do know this is a very clean bomb. The radiation effects are almost totally negligible.”
Luba thought about it and sighed. “If anything did go wrong, she’d probably never know what hit her, and I’m sure if I told her what I was doing and why, she’d tell me to go ahead. I think my mother hates the state worse than I do, if that’s possible.” Luba stopped, and Safcek said: “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I have no choice. You know that.”
Luba reached across to him and squeezed his right arm tightly. “Please don’t think of it again.”
He looked at her hand, and she pulled it away suddenly. In the silence that followed, Joe Safcek busied himself with the road ahead and the mileage gauge, which had clicked off three kilometers beyond the city.