by Ben Bova
And they still are. The troops will go in there and try to find my body. When they don’t, they’ll send patrols out looking for me. Or helicopters.
He bent down to reach for An Linh again, but as he did his eye caught a flicker of something high up in the sky. Looking up, he saw contrails, six of them. Planes flying so high that they could be neither seen nor heard. In two groups of three they came across the sky from the west.
And the ground erupted beneath them. The hills where the attackers’ artillery had fired from simply disappeared in a carpet of flame and thundering, earthshaking explosions. Even at this distance Stoner felt the ground tremble. He sank to his knees, his eyes unable to move from the distant scene of destruction. Methodically, dispassionately, the hillsides where the rocket artillery had been hidden were pounded into flaming rubble. Nothing could live through the terrible bombardment. Nothing.
The dust clouds that marked the troop-carrying vehicles began to veer away from the trail that led to the village and scatter madly across the countryside. To no avail. One by one, each vehicle was sought out and blasted into oblivion. Stoner could not see how, or what weapons were being used. It was as if the finger of an angry god reached down from the heavens and snuffed each vehicle out of existence.
The Peace Enforcers, Stoner knew. Too late to save the village, but not too late to avenge it. Were they angry, whoever flew in those planes, whoever directed those devastating weapons? Or were the Peace Enforcers merely technicians who calmly touched buttons on computer keyboards as they flew seven or eight miles above their targets? Did they realize that they were blasting apart human flesh, pulverizing bones and brains, killing men? Or did they keep their eyes and their thoughts focused on display screens that reduced the facts of mass death to bloodless equations and neat graphs?
It was all the same to the troops on the receiving end of the Peace Enforcers’ weaponry. In a matter of moments half a dozen sooty black pyres marked the spots where the troop carriers had been. The hills where the artillery had been sited were ablaze.
The six white contrails, so high above in the pure blue sky, circled the area once, then headed back the way they had come. The village was avenged. Death for death.
But how can we give life in place of death? Stoner asked himself. How can we stop men from killing each other?
He looked down at An Linh again. Her eyes fluttered open. She slowly turned her head, scanning the devastation all around her.
“Am I going to die?” she asked in the voice of a frightened child.
Reaching for her, Stoner said with a confidence he did not feel, “No. I won’t let you die. I’ll take care of you.”
He picked her up again, feeling the burden of her life in his arms, and began walking blindly away from the ruins of the village, through the dead land, toward the east.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon in Moscow, one of those rare days when the sun shone out of a clear sky, when people smiled at one another on the streets and the brightly colored onion domes of church towers gleamed brilliantly.
“After all these years,” said Kirill Markov happily, “you finally come to visit me.”
Jo grinned at him, masking the haunting fears that followed her. “I never realized what a beautiful city Moscow is.”
“Ah!” Markov beamed. “The city is smiling for you. Even nature herself is at her best, to honor the occasion of your visit.”
They were standing on the balcony outside Markov’s office. Across Red Square, the brick wall of the Kremlin stood as stoutly as ever. But the flamboyant domes of the Archangel Cathedral and the palaces seemed like fairyland towers to Jo. She wore a demure doeskin suede chemise of deep forest green, cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt and solid gold buckle. Markov, never a fastidious dresser, was in a rumpled gray suit and darker turtieneck pullover.
“All of Moscow is at your feet, beautiful lady. What can I do to please you?”
“You always knew how to turn a girl’s head.”
Markov’s smile was also a mask. “Dearest Jo, in the old days I spoke to charm you into a horizontal relationship. But now, at my age…”
Jo arched an eyebrow. “You’re a dangerous man, Kirill.”
“Not as dangerous as you.”
“Oh?”
“Do you remember the swimming we did at Kwajalein? And the sharks?”
She burst into loud laughter. “And the outrigger that you managed to turn over!”
“I managed?” He feigned outrage. “There were two of us in that canoe. And to this day I’m not certain it wasn’t sabotaged by reactionary elements among the natives.”
Laughing together, they stepped back through the French windows into Markov’s office. It was a modest room, large enough for its purpose but not so big as to awe visitors. Markov had accepted it from his predecessor when the academy had voted him its new director. The furniture was solid and functional, unchanged from earlier days. The gleaming silver samovar was also the same as before. The only things Markov had introduced into the office had been a splendid carpet from Samarkand to replace the threadbare one he had found there when he had moved in, and a small shelf of books he had written while a professor of linguistics at the university.
Markov went to the samovar to pour tea while Jo sat in the cushioned armchair beside his desk. She accepted a delicate china cup and saucer from him; the hot tea steamed deliciously.
“And how fares Mother Russia?” Jo asked as Markov settled himself in the creaking leather swivel chair behind the desk.
He scratched at his scraggly white beard with one hand while placing his teacup down on the desk.
“Russia will survive,” Markov said. “The land, the people—they will endure. But the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…” He sighed heavily.
“Is it really going to break up?”
Markov shrugged.
“After all these years,” Jo murmured. “I just don’t understand why it’s happening, Kir! Now that the burdens of nuclear weaponry have been lifted from our backs, now that your economy finally seems to be doing better.”
“This is not America, my lovely one.”
“But what’s wrong? Why are you having all these upheavals? Can’t your people tolerate prosperity? Do they have to be miserable?”
With a sad shake of his head, Markov gestured to the gray metal computer sitting on his desk. “There is the culprit,” he said. “One of them, at least.”
Jo frowned at him. “The computer?”
“We cannot run a modern nation without computers,” Markov said, “any more than you can run your corporation without them.”
“Yes, but…”
“But,” Markov went on, “we cannot control the people once they have computers. There are hundreds of thousands of them in the Soviet Union. Perhaps millions. People use them to communicate with each other. The government has no control over what they say, what they learn.”
“But how can that cause such problems for you?”
Markov smiled at her, but there was bitterness in it. “Dearest Jo, coming from America it is difficult for you to understand. The Soviet Union has been built on discipline, on order, on control of the people by the government. Suddenly that control weakens, perhaps evaporates altogether. It’s like suddenly giving sight to a person who has been blind all his life. He goes crazy!”
“And that’s what’s happening to your country?”
“Yes. Thanks to computers and communications satellites and all the other miracles that you of the West take for granted, the peoples of the Soviet Union have started running amok.”
“How bad is it?” Jo asked. “I mean, really?”
“It seems that nothing will placate the Moslems, short of civil war,” he said, sighing again. “The Uzbeks and Kazakhs …all of them want their own separate nations. And naturally, our Baltic friends are making the same demands.”
“But the Ukraine?”
Markov shrugged. “I am merely the head of the Ac
ademy of Sciences. I do not deal with politics.”
Jo gave him a skeptical look.
“Well, perhaps just a little,” Markov admitted.
“The betting in New York is that your government will offer the other socialist republics a commonwealth arrangement—the way the Brits handled their former colonies like Canada and Australia.”
“That is being discussed,” Markov admitted.
Jo sipped at the tea. Then, “It’s funny. I mean really funny, to laugh at.”
“What is?”
“The way everybody on Wall Street and in Washington is reacting to your problems.”
“I see nothing funny—”
Jo overrode him. “When I was a kid, everybody in the States who made more than the minimum wage was looking forward to the day when the Soviet Union fell apart.”
“Yes,” Markov murmured. “They called us an evil empire in those days.”
“But now that the Union is breaking up—they’re all scared to death. Especially the Wall Street types. They don’t want the Soviet Union to dissolve.”
“Naturally. It would interfere with their markets. They’ve learned how to deal with Moscow. Let them try trading with the Uzbeks!”
“I’m going to have to try,” Jo said. “Vanguard Industries was contracted to build the fusion power station just outside Tashkent….”
“A joint endeavor with the Soviet electrical power commission,” Markov pointed out.
“Of course. But now, nobody seems to know who’s responsible for what.”
Markov hunched forward in his chair. It made a hideous groaning creak.
“You ought to have that oiled,” Jo said.
He cocked a brow at her. “I have. I think it’s me, not the chair.”
She laughed as he tapped an outstretched finger on the keyboard of his desk computer several times.
“Call this man,” Markov said, swiveling the display screen so that she could read it. “If anyone in Tashkent can make a decision for you, he can.”
Jo nodded and spoke the name and number into her wrist communicator. “Would you call him for me, Kirill? Introduce me to him?”
“I would be happy to. But once he gets a look at you, he will be anxious to help you in any way he can. He will be like butter in your hands.” Markov thought a moment, then added, “Rancid butter.”
“That bad?”
“The political uncertainties have opened the door to unparalleled opportunities for corruption. Our devout Moslem friends may be ready to give their lives for Allah, but they are even more ready to sell anything else to the highest bidder.”
Jo took another swallow of the unsugared tea, replaced the cup on its saucer with a tiny clinking sound. Markov leaned back in the creaking chair, smiling bleakly at her. For several moments the room was silent except for the traffic sounds wafting through the French windows from the street below.
“Kirill,” Jo began, speaking slowly, hesitantly, “if it became necessary…would it be possible for me to come to Moscow…to live here for an indefinite time?”
Curiosity made Markov’s eyes go round. “Live here? In Moscow?”
“Under your protection.”
He blinked twice. Then, “You mean under the protection of the Soviet government?”
Jo nodded.
“Are you in such danger?”
“I may be.”
“But from whom? One of the most powerful women in the capitalist world, who would dare to threaten you?”
Smiling bitterly, she answered, “Someone more powerful than I am, of course.”
“I see. You prefer not to tell me.”
“It’s my husband,” Jo admitted.
Markov’s face went from curiosity to shock.
“This isn’t a marital disagreement,” she quickly added. “It involves corporate politics and global power. I think my life is in danger.”
“From your own husband.”
“Yes.”
He made a snorting little sound that might have been a halfhearted attempt at a laugh. “At my age! After a lifetime of faithful Communist zeal, one of the world’s leading capitalists seeks refuge in the Soviet Union—or what’s left of it.”
“I’m seeking shelter from a friend,” Jo said softly.
“Ah, Jo, if only you had asked me ten years ago. Or even five! We would have set the skies ablaze, the two of us.”
She smiled at her old friend. Even eighteen years ago, when they had worked together on Kwajalein, Kirill had pursued her with madly passionate rhetoric. But she had never felt threatened by him. He had an Italian attitude toward women: those who said yes to him were far less interesting than those who did not. Jo knew even then that this was a man who could be her friend without sex, despite all his amorous talk. With most men she could never be so relaxed. Sex was always a factor in every other relationship. No matter what they said, most men saw women first as sexual opportunities and only second as business associates or social friends—if then.
Markov prattled on, trying in his clumsily boyish way to amuse her, thinking that the serious expression on her face was from fear or sadness. Actually Jo was thinking that there were only two men in her life she had ever felt truly happy with. Kirill was one of them, a kindly, gentle, brilliantly clever big brother to her. The other was Keith, the man she had loved, the man she had wanted so desperately to love her.
“You are thinking about him, aren’t you?”
Jo stirred in her chair, directing her attention back to the Russian.
“I recognize that look in your eyes,” Markov said with a heavy sigh. “You were thinking about Keith.”
She looked away without replying.
“I saw him, you know.”
“You did?”
“More than a month ago. He called me from Paris and I flew there to meet him. I was under orders to return him here, but he refused to come with me.”
Looking into Markov’s eyes, Jo saw how troubled he felt.
“He’s changed, hasn’t he?” she said.
The Russian actually shuddered. “He was always a remarkable man, but now…”
Jo wondered briefly if the office were bugged, then decided she really didn’t care. “He told me that he thought the alien had somehow gotten into his mind, while he was frozen in the spacecraft.”
With a nod, Markov said, “He eluded a team of special agents. It was as if he could make himself invisible.”
“Have you tried to find him?”
“Of course. Our best information is that he went to Africa, to the region where the war is going on.”
“One of his children is married to a Peace Enforcer.”
“Yes, so we learned,” Markov said. “Our own people among the International Peacekeeping Force thought for a day or so that he might have reached a village in Chad called Katai. It was a special project of the Peace Enforcers. A model village.”
“But he wasn’t there?”
Markov shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “By the time we realized he might have been there…”
“He had gone?”
“We don’t know,” Markov said, shaking his head sadly. “The village was attacked—a senseless, stupid, pointless attack. The Peace Enforcers struck back almost immediately and wiped out the attackers, but it was too late. The entire village was annihilated.”
“And Keith?” Jo’s voice rose half an octave.
Markov threw his hands up. “We simply don’t know. The villagers were slaughtered. High-powered artillery. There was no trace of him in the ruins, but he might have been blown to pieces.”
“No,” she said, fighting down the trembling inside her. “Not Keith. He got out of it alive.”
“The official report says that none of the villagers escaped.”
“But Keith did. I know he did. He must have!”
Markov stared at her. Her fists were clenched on the arms of the chair, her whole body rigid. He asked himself silently, If Keith escaped, then where is he? Why
has there been no trace of him for weeks? But he did not voice the question.
To break the tension that had suddenly made the room unbearable, Markov asked instead, “But who would have launched an attack on the village? It was utterly senseless. The village was far removed from the fighting. There was no strategic value to it.”
Jo’s fists unclenched slowly. She asked, “You said it was a model project of the International Peacekeeping Force?”
“Yes.”
“Then whoever ordered the attack wanted to humiliate the IPF.”
Markov shook his head again. “How could that be? None of the warring factions in central Africa is stupid enough to attack the IPF.”
“What makes you think it was one of the factions in the war?”
“But who else?…”
Jo closed her eyes wearily. It all made sense. The monomaniacal sense of a madman. Someone who wanted the war to drag on endlessly. Who wanted to destroy the International Peacekeeping Force. Someone who wanted to kill Keith Stoner.
“Who is it?” Markov asked again.
Jo looked at him and lied, “I don’t know.” But she knew that she would have to return to her husband. She could not seek the safe refuge that Markov was willing to give her. She had to return to Everett Nillson. If Keith was still alive, she had to prevent her husband from killing him. If Keith had died in that massacred African village, she had to avenge his murder.
CHAPTER 28
Cliff Baker eyed Madigan suspiciously. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
The lawyer shrugged, trying to make it look nonchalant. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Baker frowned. “That’s what somebody told the Trojans, and look what happened to them.”
They were walking down a shadowy underground corridor, featureless walls and floors of concrete that smelled damp and felt clammy. Dim naked bulbs dangling every fifty feet from the pipes that ran overhead were the only illumination, throwing feeble pools of light against the chilling darkness.