Untraceable

by Sergei Lebedev

  The Island was revived almost immediately, it was so good, so needed, so convenient. The Iron Curtain was lowered, the threat of a third world war was growing, and the old testing ground was back in business.

  But now it was divided among several competing agencies. The arguments slowed down testing, led to mistakes and quiet sabotage, to scientific backbiting.

  Uncle Igor, Igor Zakharyevsky, truly revived the Island. He had long wanted to leave the old City and found a new one: even more closed, equipped with cutting-edge technology, and subordinate only to him in science; it was his ticket to immortality, the chance to be elected a full academician on the secret list.

  While Kalitin was in school, Zakharyevsky collected allies, led intrigues, pushed his idea at the very top. The result was the birth of a new unnamed city, known only by a number. All the sections divided up by bureaucratic battles were gathered into a whole. Uncle Igor made sure the future laboratory was classified top secret, which, as Kalitin knew better than most, since he later headed it, turned the Island into a black hole, a scientific domain free of all local and agency oversight, exempt from almost every kind of control.

  Essentially, Zakharyevsky could work on whatever he wanted. None of his colleagues had the right or possibility to evaluate the quality of his programs, methods, and goals. Kalitin knew how prodigious sinecures arose, colonies of scientific drones, who worked for decades—until the top patron fell—on some expensive nonsense as long as it could be wrapped in the right slogans and appeared to follow the Marxist line; becoming encrusted in factories, vacation homes, polyclinics, but not bringing even a grain of knowledge.

  Kalitin was also devoted to Zakharyevsky because he had not created the Island for the sake of fool’s gold. They were both attracted to true knowledge that did not depend on the direction of the ideological wind; only such knowledge gave long-lasting power.

  Zakharyevsky was supported by the KGB: where there are secrets, there are bonuses for concealment, new staff, control, operative work. Kalitin also suspected that the head of security on the Island, a former Stalinist general moved into active reserves, was also seeking a quiet, opaque harbor in the new unsettled times; he, or rather his colleagues from the old guard, helped Zakharyevsky.

  Kalitin often imagined the Island as a matryoshka doll, consisting of layers of increasing secrecy.

  The first, external layer was the country itself with its closed borders. The Island was not mentioned in reference books, the press, or radio, nor was it indicated on maps. An entire region was closed to foreigners. The American spy satellites—the Island had the schedule of their passing overhead, when outside work and field testing were not allowed—were supposed to see a maximum security prison.

  Kalitin knew the neighboring settlements were filled with informers, that the Island was enmeshed in invisible security threads, surrounded by hidden sentinels; only the river was allowed to flow past unhindered. But the river was an ally, a guardian of secrets. The river protected the Island, and its images reflected in the water remained unrecognized. Tourist boats traveled along the far shore, where nothing could be seen through binoculars. Kalitin liked being part of the power that changed schedules and routes, a power that could bend time and space, so that the Island could remain just an island for outsiders: an almighty and all-pervading power.

  Naturally, on the Island, which now had the status of a city spreading along the banks of the river, there were numerous degrees of proximity to the secret core, separated by fences, barbed wire, checkpoints, patrols, passes, nondisclosure agreements, and in-depth investigation of candidates. The periphery, the outline of the Island, could be seen from without, could be calculated from correspondence and financial documents.

  But the closer to the core, the more illusory became the very existence of the inner Island, known to a contracting circle of the initiated. Only a few individuals knew about the laboratory, so covert that it did not exist on a single list of secrets.

  All the previous reincarnations of the Island seemed to come together in the laboratory. It was sanctuary, prison, altar, and test ground. A new synthetic entity, an abstraction, cut off from the outside world. The laboratory.

  His first sight of the Island was from the ferry. A late autumn sunset was busy over the river, and the Island appeared from clouds of fog, alien to everything, aloof, magical. Kalitin felt it was a sign, and he appreciated, understood, and fell in love with the Island at that moment, guessed all its features, advantages, obvious and hidden gifts—and was prepared to give his life to the power that had created the Island, because it was preordained for him, responded to the deepest desires of his being.

  Kalitin was not a faithful Communist. He knew the clichés and rituals well, and had a party membership card—without it he would not have risen beyond laboratory head. Kalitin was attracted by the paradoxical freedom-in-prison that the Island offered in a land of ideologized, dogmatically mediated science.

  He was a knowledgeable, intelligent chemist. No genius, compared to others. He needed that closed, hermetic world, in order to exist, to work. It did not have the gravity of morality, and he was able to rise to the heights of circumscribed genius by inventing Neophyte, the most perfect of his creations.

  All of Kalitin’s previous life was built on the idea of the Island’s singularity. He knew it the way a mollusk knows its shell, and he carried it with him even when he was deprived of it. He knew that there were other closed cities, other refuges; but only the Island and Kalitin were inseparable. That inseparability was never doubted; even the house on the mountain slope he had come to love was only an imposed replacement, pathetic in comparison.

  And suddenly—the fire had died down, the coals covered in gray ash—he felt that the Island was no longer unique.

  Just as love contains the bitter seed of its own death as it matures, the total sense of merging with the Island brought an alien, unknown sensation; Kalitin realized, admitted, that he had been so devoted, so surrendered to it in vain. If not for that lulling, weakening loyalty, something else could have appeared in his life long ago.

  For example, another Island.

  The thought was almost blasphemous, but in it, despite himself, Kalitin felt the painful burn of hope.

  His memory, as if agreeing to rejection and betrayal, offered up a contemporary appellation: bikini. Bikini Atoll. Atoll. Island.

  Kalitin imagined it—a circular, palm-covered reef placed on an underwater volcano, surrounded by infinite ocean. The blue waters of the inner lagoon. The white, one-story laboratory building with heavy shutters against the sun—many substances do not like light, they need coolness and shade. A reliable dock for the delivery boats from the mainland. A four-legged tower with a roof, the silver finger of the searchlight dissolving in the night, dancing on the waves . . . After all, they—the fabulously wealthy—could do more than cure him. They could buy him an Island.

  Island.

  Island.

  Island.

  Kalitin’s hands shook. The bottle knocked against the crystal glass and made it ring. He wept with tears postponed for two decades, no longer salty; belated, warm, ugly, desired.

  CHAPTER 12

  Shershnev opened the railway line magazine. He needed a distraction. An ad: a happy couple running along a white sand beach, a hammock, a bottle of wine, palm trees. Reduced fares on direct flights to Asia.

  He was unhappy from the start with the travel plan imposed by the bosses and the cover story they provided. He would have done it fast, in one day. Fly in, complete the op, fly out. That’s how the agents from the neighbors took out Vyrin.

  But they came up with an allegedly touristic route for them—probably because of the scandal that followed Vyrin’s death and the increased counterintelligence regimen. They land in one country, sort of coming in through the back door; travel to another country, rent a car there . . . It might be good for covering up their intention, but the route was too long and fraught with problems, missed connec
tions, inevitable in travel.

  And so it began. They had printed tickets for the train, car 2, seats 49 and 47. When the train pulled into the station, there was no car 2: 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

  He ran with Grebenyuk to the locomotive: Maybe there was another train right ahead? And then came the cars numbered in the twenties? No, the numbering started with car 22.

  It wasn’t a trap. Not a trick. Just the usual stupidity, a glitch in the reservations system. Shershnev saw the train was full and didn’t know if they would be allowed to board with the wrong tickets. Back home he would have shown his ID and they would be found seats in business class. But here? What if they had to go get new tickets?

  It all worked out, of course. The conductor apologized and told them to take any seat they could. But Shershnev couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was a weak but clear resistance to their mission, emanating from no one, coming out of nowhere. That happens in the spring sometimes, when you go out skiing in the morning and the snow starts getting sticky in the sunshine—not enough to slow the skis but enough to lose the smoothness and ease, and you need to exert more effort.

  Shershnev knew that the subject had taken the same path many years ago. Allegedly on a business trip to negotiate the purchase of equipment. A delegation of a dozen or so. He probably would not have been allowed to go to America. Even in those lax times. But the subject traveled to a country that just a year or two ago had still been socialist. Where friendly security services were still in place; where Soviet intelligence had recently had not just a residency at the embassy but a full-fledged and, most important, legal presence. The subject moved into a hotel with the rest. He visited the manufacturing complex, had dinner with the group that evening. And he vanished during the night.

  They established that he had gotten train tickets. Back then his route remained within the borders of one country. Today there were two states: they separated in 1993. No one knew whether the subject got off somewhere along the way or traveled to the end.

  They were on the trail. The cold, scentless trail of the defector. Shershnev knew how to support and develop the connection between hunter and prey; he enjoyed shooting hares along the blacktop or chasing a fox. But now Shershnev did not want that connection to appear. He sensed that it was becoming two-sided, unlike his other missions.

  He did not pity the subject and he was ready to execute the order. But he was beginning to understand him, since he had also lived in those ambiguous years and had experienced the same fear, when it seemed that the service he had just joined could be disbanded. He remembered the despair of his father who did not want to retreat, to remove the hammer and sickle badge from his cap, to change his military oath; the fear of informers afraid to inform, the fear of generals removed from staff, the fear of the recent coup plotters who ended up in prison. And that was nothing, there was even the fear of the guard dogs.

  Shershnev understood clearly why the subject had defected. Yet that understanding was superfluous since it seemed to excuse the subject’s action. Grebenyuk was only five years younger. Not having witnessed that moment of weakness in the omnipotent service, Grebenyuk would not experience such doubts.

  In the end, Shershnev did not have doubts, either. He was merely musing, but these thoughts seemed dangerous to him, for he was used to controlling his reflections; Grebenyuk had surely been told to watch his partner and would later write a report—as would he himself. Shershnev tried to push away the unsummoned thoughts so that not even a shadow of them crossed his face.

  When he read the circumstances of the subject’s defection, Shershnev noted that some things were redacted. Not for secrecy, but because they created something like an alibi. Shershnev easily read between the lines, filling in the censored facts: the entire country was undergoing the same thing then and it was not hard to picture what had happened in the closed city.

  Power outages. No more special food deliveries, empty shelves in stores. Delays in salary payments, which had turned into play money by then anyway. Talk that the closed city status would soon be removed. Paradise lost—they had been living there with everything done for them, unlike the entire country standing in lines.

  More gaps in the wall around the city; they had stopped repairing it. Theft—from the workshops, from the lab. New companies, cooperatives, created by bosses embracing perestroika and grabbing up big pieces and crumbs for themselves. Cold radiators in winter.

  According to the documents, the subject tried to adjust to the new life. A foreign commission on disarmament was allowed on the Island for the first time. They didn’t see anything, they weren’t allowed in the laboratory or the warehouses, but the fact itself was important. A trusted person reported that the subject tried to initiate contact with two of the inspectors. Both were known and there were reports on them.

  The first was a real scientist and also a recruiter, who had been asked by interested Western firms to find suitable candidates, buy up some valuable brainpower, as well as do the inspection. The subject did not tell him what he really did, and the recruiter did not follow up.

  The second was a real recruiter who had helped his country’s intelligence. He focused on scientists working on top-secret topics. The old man opened up to him and they had a conversation. The deal was almost done. But the security department interfered and they began investigating the subject.

  Here came the most interesting episode. Formally, there was enough evidence to charge him for revealing state secrets, for “treason to the homeland,” which was then still subject to the death penalty. But the investigation was quickly ended. The old man got off with a reprimand—too easy even for those strange times.

  Shershnev guessed the rest. A few months later a famous banker who knew the secret origins of some new fortunes was killed. The banker died quickly after a sudden collapse of his inner organs. The autopsy did not show poisoning, and the banker would have been buried if the investigators had not learned that his air conditioner had been repaired the day before; they found a small vial that was not part of the unit.

  The case was reexamined three times, but never reached the courts. All the analyses were classified. The vial had been developed at the laboratory headed by the subject and was made for the remote use of exceptionally toxic substances; however, no trace of any substance was found. That was a trace in itself.

  Pointing to Neophyte.

  Untraceable and imperceptible—they were given a brief lecture on the contents of the vial.

  It was obvious that the order had not come from the state, for then there would have been no investigation at all.

  Someone had leaked the substance from the lab to the black market and it fell into the hands of amateurs. Rather, semiprofessionals who knew how to use it properly but failed to clear away the evidence.

  A few months after the assassination, the subject, passive, used to life behind seven seals, and able to make contact only with two observers who had ended up on his doorstep, cleverly and efficiently made his escape. He took advantage of the security chief’s vacation, handed the newbie deputy faked arrangements for his trip and ran off.

  The triangle was coming together. The subject had been forced to give up the substance and then was blackmailed with a charge of revealing a secret. He was probably also paid, paid a lot—his product was invaluable. Then when an internal investigation of the murder was started, the subject got spooked. He realized they could make him the scapegoat. Or quietly get rid of him to keep him from giving evidence. He took the money and the product and got away.

  Who could have blackmailed him? It must have been the security chief. A colonel, an officer of the active reserve, who had joined state security through Party selection from the manufacturing sector. He had a degree in technology. He was quite capable of orienting himself in these new conditions, figuring out just what he was guarding, trapping the subject, and organizing the sale. Conveniently, the security chief could blame the theft on Kalitin when he defected. That’s prob
ably why they allowed him to escape, Shershnev thought.

  Wisely, Shershnev did not reveal any documented interest in the security chief. He thought he knew his name, a simple name like the ones given to them on their fake passports. He had seen it among other signatures on some secret agency document.

  The former head of security, if he had returned from the active reserve, could be one of the people issuing the order to get rid of the subject.

  That did not make the order illegal in Shershnev’s eyes. He would have executed a personal order from the bosses, unconnected to the interests of the service. For example, he would have killed that banker. But now he was feeling unwanted sympathy for the subject. They were connected like sound and echo, like a pair of substances composing a binary poison. The scientist created a substance, Shershnev deployed it; they shared all the real work, took the risk. Shershnev sensed it was wrong for them now to be once again forced together.

  Shershnev looked at Grebenyuk. The major was asleep, or pretending to be. Neat little houses flashed by the windows. The conductor was serving coffee from the restaurant car. He stood up to stretch, rolled his shoulders, and the young woman across the aisle—in good shape, she probably worked out—gave him an understanding smile. Shershnev saw his reflection in the window out of the corner of his eye; the man at whom the woman smiled. Suddenly Shershnev wanted to remain as that person, an unknown passenger traveling from Point A to Point B, to get off the train with her in a suburb. With the full brunt of his character, Shershnev attacked himself for that thought. He felt anger rising against the subject, who had somehow tricked him into compassion.

  The conductor mumbled the station name. Grebenyuk opened his eyes. One more stop, and then the end. The destination. Prague.