“I’ll tell you something else, Austin. After what happened today you’re as guilty by their rules as I am. Which still makes you, compared to the politicians who’ve been ordering up our wars, a saint.” He held up his glass in a toast.
Jackson McKay came into his office in grim silence. Goldman knew the signs. Every move and expression of McKay’s told him the session at the White House could have gone better.
McKay threw his coat across a chair, dropped heavily behind his desk. “The ship, no question but that it was nuclear.”
“There was a storm there,” Goldman said, “and the bomb wasn’t that big, so—”
“I know, I know. Whoever destroyed that ship counted on the storm to wipe away the evidence. Normally it might have done so. But for a change we were in some luck. One of our nuclear submarines—part of the Polaris fleet that’s on station—was about a hundred miles from the Dorina when the bomb exploded. They picked up pressure waves at that distance, and their search equipment got a fix on the general area. The Pentagon ordered them to the surface and to get their sensors out. Fortunately they were pretty much downwind of the blast. Even with a storm it’s not easy to hide radioactive sodium. The stuff was still so hot some of the radiation counters went completely off scale.”
“It still seems strange,” Goldman said, “that anybody would use a nuke to get rid of an ocean liner. Any chance it was political?”
“No,” McKay said heavily. “CIA confirmed a quarter of a billion dollars worth of precious gems, jewelry. They haven’t confirmed the customer. Just that it’s somewhere in the Communist bloc. Anything on those computer runs on the pilots?”
They had been processing a meticulous trackdown of every top man in SAC who had left the organization and might not be accounted for. “We thought we had good leads on four men. Henry Williamson, Sam Franks, John Freeman and Bill Baxter. All former aircraft commanders. They’re still in the flying business and they’re all accounted for.”
“Who determined that and how?” McKay demanded.
“We’ve run the checks, Jackson. Record of their whereabouts, who they fly for, where they live, confirmation through files and records and—”
“And so much thin air if someone wants to cover up their tracks,” McKay broke in. “Doesn’t anyone keep in his head that we’re dealing with real professionals? Didn’t they ever think, for example, of doubles? I suppose,” he said acidly, “you’ve even got reports of our people observing these four?”
“Of course,” Goldman said.
“It’s not good enough, Oscar. Damn it, you get the word to our people that I want fingerprints. Fingerprints of each man. Just keep in mind how someone like Williamson or Franks or any of them might set up a cover by taking the time and trouble to locate a man who looks like himself, about the same age and build. The man’s a pilot. If there’s enough money involved and it’s required, plastic surgery is always available. The man becomes a very serviceable double. A damn near spitting image made to order.
“All our man has to do then is play it the way he likes. Maybe he wants to knock out his own past. Maybe money is it. Whatever. But he is a man who wants to be in two very different places at the same time. The only way to check this, Oscar, the only way, is to get fingerprints and check them out with those we have on file, get them from the FBI or SAC or whomever. And I want you personally to go over the prints we get. Do it now, Oscar. Get those prints taken as soon as possible.”
Goldman got to his feet, prepared to leave. McKay stopped him. “Let me fill you in on the rest. The President’s foremost concern is that these people are far beyond anything to do with money. I agree with that and I know you do too. That means they’ll spend anything to protect their operation. They’re actually a government unto themselves.
“The real question is, Oscar, what happens when these people decide to hold an entire city or even a small country ransom? It’s likely to happen if they keep operating this way. They’ve already destroyed a city. And an ocean liner. When they decide to flex their muscles, God help us. It won’t be any experiment. It will be a lesson in terror. And until we get more information, until we separate people from shadows and non-identities, there isn’t any way we can stop them. And you know why?” McKay raced ahead in answer to his rhetorical question. “Because there are always people willing to sell out. They’ll sell anything or anybody for the right price. Even if gutting a city with nukes is involved. The President, fortunately, is aware that if we ever manage to identify this group, we’ve got to move against them. We’ll coordinate with the Russians, the British and maybe the French. It will be—”
“Self-preservation.”
“But something else worries me.”
“I know,” Goldman said. “Steve. And Schiller”
“We won’t be able to protect them. If, that is, they’ve managed to find out who they are. And if they’ve managed to get close to them. And they’re still alive.”
“I have the feeling they are,” Goldman said.
“That won’t hold up in an official report. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’m inclined to agree. Still, how do you explain gut feelings to the White House? Well, if Steve has somehow hooked on with this group, then he and Schiller may well have no way of communicating with us. If we do identify and locate the organization we’d have to move immediately. If Steve and Marty are there—”
“They get clobbered along with the rest,” Goldman finished for him.
“Austin, you wonder why you already know so much about this outfit? What the hell could I tell you about Pentronics that anybody who wants to know can’t find out? We’re not only known throughout most of the world, we advertise in military and professional journals all through Europe and Africa. Pentronics actively solicits business.”
Sam Franks reached for a fresh cigar. For more than an hour he had discussed the operations of the front organization. Despite what he had seen, Steve was still stunned to hear that Pentronics did more than three billion dollars gross annually, and this came from open contracts. He paid full attention to Franks, even as a part of him marveled that this same man talking easily and pleasantly with him could and had just as easily given the signal that wiped from existence every human being in an entire city.
“We’re covered in every way,” Franks continued. “We’re the very model of a legitimate outfit. But if anyone ever does get on to us, he’s got to be able to prove it. No, let me change that. He has to survive long enough to point the finger. We’ve a good record for taking care of people with long noses.”
Steve remembered what he’d heard from Goldman and McKay. They’d lost a great many people—capable, experienced agents.
“Let’s say we’re caught red-handed,” Franks offered. “Being caught is a long way from having someone do something about it. And who blows the whistle? And even if it’s blown, who comes in to get us? It won’t be any international organization, that’s certain. They’re too busy being paralyzed with bickering for us to worry about. So it would be an individual government, or at most a combination police and military action by one or two. Well, even that combination needs proof. We have contacts everywhere. We own a fairly choice assortment of officials and generals. But if it all goes to hell, there’s the ultimate answer.”
“Such as,” Steve said, suspecting what the answer would be.
“Once your people are in someone else’s hands, Austin, you can’t keep them from talking. Between drugs and other techniques everyone talks sooner or later. So what happens even if an entire complex of ours is invaded or taken over? We erase it. We go in with an appropriate-sized nuke and we erase it all.”
Franks studied the man sitting across from him. “You got pretty upset about today, didn’t you?”
Steve nodded.
“Still shook?”
“I am.”
“You ever get screwed up in the belly in Nam after one of your missions?”
“I threw up a couple of times,” Steve said,
his voice flat.
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I know you and I know your background, and if you didn’t feel the way you do right now, I wouldn’t trust you. Changing what’s been shoved into your skull all your life doesn’t happen with a snap of the fingers. You’ve got to sweat it out of yourself.”
“How about you, Sam. Did you go through it?”
Franks got to his feet with a sudden movement and began pacing the floor. He looked like an angry animal.
“I don’t like being a sacrificial goat, Austin. If it’s in the line of duty, that’s different. You of all people know the score. You put your tail on the line and that’s it. But you don’t watch yourself get sold down the river, because that’s a violation of everything you’ve been willing to die for.”
He stopped suddenly. “One thing, Austin, bitter or not, whatever I did I made sure that I wasn’t selling my country down the river. Nothing they’d done to me could make me do that. But I wouldn’t just lay there on my back while some political animals walked all over me. That stopped right then and there. It hasn’t and it won’t change for me—”
He stopped as the apartment door opened. They both turned to see Mikhail Oleg standing in the doorway, looking at them with a strange air of hesitation.
“What the hell is the matter, Mike?”
Oleg glanced at Franks, turned to Steve. “Did you know the truth about him?” the Russian asked suddenly.
Steve felt his skin chill. “The truth about who?” he said, all the time knowing it must be Marty Schiller. He didn’t miss the inflection in Oleg’s voice, the use of the past tense.
“He is an agent—he was an agent for the CIA,” Oleg said, the words clipped. “He was a fake, sent to infiltrate us. He conspired with his leaders,” Oleg accused the absent man, “to dupe and use you, Austin, while trying to uncover us.”
“Oleg, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Steve said. He stood before his chair, his shoulders hunched.
“That is true enough,” the Russian told him. “If it were not true, you would be dead this very moment.” Oleg turned to Franks. “Schiller was acting. All the time. He led this fool”—he gestured at Steve—“into that fight in the television studio. Schiller made certain the Boeing would be where it was when they reached the airport. An escape!”
He walked slowly into the room, facing Steve. “The great Colonel Austin, manipulated every step of the way. They pulled the strings and he danced like a puppet. He—”
“Oleg, I’ll break you in half.”
“Hold it, Austin.” The words snapped from Sam Franks. “Let him have his say.”
“He’s crazy, Sam. Marty could never—”
“There is no mistake,” Oleg said. “We have the proof. Down to the fingerprints. When he was younger, Schiller was in the wartime OSS. How did we find out? The British government stupidly kept on file a secret record of Schiller. They never destroyed it. His fingerprints, everything. We managed to obtain that record. It is all there, every detail. It matched our suspicions and—”
“Then how the hell,” Steve flared, “do you know I’m not a plant?”
Oleg laughed at him. “I said you were a fool, Colonel Austin, but you are not a spy. And Colonel Franks feels you have great potential. If there were the slightest evidence, suspicion, you would now be with your friend.”
“Where is he, Oleg? I’ll ask him myself. You can be there when I do. And if what you say is true, I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing. There is nothing left to do.”
“Where the hell is he?”
Oleg looked at Franks. “You did not tell him?”
“Tell me what?”
“That he was aboard the Dorina when the bomb went off.”
CHAPTER 15
“Let’s get the record straight,” Sam said. “Schiller was your friend. I’m sorry you had to lose someone close to you. But like Mike said, Schiller was a plant. We checked it out coming and going, Austin, just like we checked you out. Schiller was still active. This was his assignment.”
Steve knew if he was to continue his mission, there really wasn’t anything more to say. He also knew that if he’d had the long background in this field that marked Schiller’s records he’d also be so many free atoms floating in the sky.
Oleg had nailed it. The British secret files on Marty Schiller. What a rotten break. OSO had covered its records well enough. Sure, Marty had been in the wartime OSS. So what? Lots of people had done that sort of work. But the British were so proud of minute details, and some obscure office had kept up its file on Marty, and the records showed him moving from OSS to CIA and then to OSO, and remaining active in his work. Giveaway. Oleg might not have been dead sure about his suspicions. There might have been some doubt. But from Oleg’s viewpoint, and Sam Franks’, so what? Marty wasn’t that important. There were plenty of professional mercenaries around. So Marty, even if there was some question about him, was expendable. Oleg just had a sense of the macabre about him. Poetic justice and all that nonsense. No one could ever prove how Marty had been killed, because there weren’t any witnesses. They were all dead.
But there was nothing about Steve Austin as an agent with OSO. Only that OSO had funded an experimental program involving multiple amputees. And Steve’s appearance before those amputees was perfectly natural. He’d appeared at a dozen Veterans’ Administration hospitals to demonstrate what could be done with bionics. A sort of personal Project Hope.
But no one by the name of Steve Austin existed in OSO records. A cover name had been assigned to him, and that cover name wasn’t on paper. It was simply told to a very small group. So as far as all official records of OSO were concerned, even if they could be stolen, there wasn’t a single mention anywhere of Steve Austin as a member of that group. As intended.
And the reason he was alive this very moment.
Later that evening Sam Franks told him they were going to disappear for a couple of weeks. Franks told him, “Knock off a city of blacks and you get wagging heads. Knock off a boat with all those gems and they’re screaming for the terrible criminals. That’s you and me, Austin.”
“And so what do we do now?”
“What every successful criminal does. We are going on vacation, including a private villa at the Riviera—posh, sun and sand, private chef, and plenty of cooperative ladies.”
In the weeks following, Steve Austin tried his best to will impatience from his mind, and to keep silent about the obscenity he felt in what he’d seen and been part of—and most personally the death of Marty Schiller. If he’d ever needed a special motive for seeing this thing through, Marty’s sacrifice had given it to him. Besides, there was no way out while they were on the Riviera, and there was so much more to this whole Pentronics operation and to Sam Franks he felt he still needed to know. OSO had programmed him. The instinct to bust out and blow the whistle now before another bomb went off could tip his hand too soon, allow the as yet unborn subsurface part of the organization to regroup, and risk an even more horrible catastrophe later. Breaking off the top of this malignant weed and leaving the roots might only spread and strengthen it.
Jackson McKay had even predicted this moment when he had told Steve he might even have to be involved in detonating a nuclear device. Well, there had been a nuke, if one of the smallest tactical ones, aboard the Dorina, and it had obliterated the ship and everyone aboard. Before he could break away from this crowd, if he could, he might be in a situation where another nuke would be brought to terrifying life. He had to weigh immediate horror to future horror on a wider scale. It was a position that would take time to adjust to—in the head and the gut. He needed those few weeks on the Riviera, and what Sam Franks had planned for a “shaking out” period afterward.
Sam lined it up in customary style. He pulled a Lockheed Jetstar from the Pentronics flight line and assigned it to their three-week fly-around-the-world. The Lockheed was a beautiful bird with four new bypass engines, an extra set of tan
ks slung beneath the wings. Sam provided false passports and a thick folder of identification papers for themselves, the airplane, and others with them. They had a relief team of two pilots and a navigator, and for “everything else,” as Sam put it, a secretary, two stewardesses, and a versatile Girl Friday.
Sam had an unbreakable rule in that department. None of his people ever did anything, including drinking coffee, with a lady unknown to the organization. He’d once killed a man for violating that rule, which seemed wasteful until they drugged the woman and discovered her to be an agent for Interpol. They both had an accident driving on a mountain road in Italy—falling rock, a terrible accident, Sam explained.
The three weeks were especially useful to Steve, as Sam included in the tour an eyeball review of Pentronics facilities. By the time the trip was behind them, Steve felt he knew a great deal of value about the Pentronics organization and its facilities.
But there was no way to get the information back where it would do some good. Details of evidence were needed for the American government to move. Details alone would justify a secret meeting with the Soviet government. But he couldn’t very well give an hour’s worth of such information over a phone (if he could get a call through undetected), and if he couldn’t leave the scene because of the interwoven security web of Pentronics what could he do?
Wait. Play his part. Do his job better than anyone else, because that’s what Sam brought him in for, because anything less would qualify him for Sam Franks’ dead-wood pile.
It was true there were apparent opportunities for Steve to steal a jet. With his bionics capabilities he knew he would have little problem killing a few guards and getting a bird off the ground. But most of the airplanes with any range to them never had fuel for more than a few minutes’ flight. Basic security procedures.
There were others, however, that were kept fully fueled. Steve probably could have busted into one of those and taken off. He was no stranger to the maintenance hangars, following Sam’s edict that “if you fly em, you also baby ’em.”
Cyborg 02 - Operation Nuke Page 12