Summit

by Richard Bowker

  He hung up and went back downstairs.

  "Let me make a couple of calls, and then we can go," Hill said.

  This suddenly felt as absurd as it must have sounded to Marcia. But he had made the decision. "All right," he murmured. And he sat by the piano while Hill made his calls. Then the two of them walked out to Hill's gray Toyota.

  * * *

  He was less scared in the airplane than he had been in the Toyota. He didn't like cars any more than he liked phones, and his most recent attempt at driving lessons had ended in failure, like all the others. Hill was a pleasant, if colorless, companion. He had nothing further to say about the purpose of the meeting, however, and that meant there was virtually nothing to say.

  A limousine was waiting for them at the suburban airfield where they landed, and they sped through the countryside toward their destination. Fulton felt more comfortable in a limousine; he had ridden in plenty of them in his time.

  His first view of CIA headquarters was a little surprising. Not because it was so large—he expected that—but because it was so ordinary. It looked like just another office building, surrounded by parking lots, and probably inhabited by secretaries and bureaucrats as colorless as Hill. Well, this was the way the world worked, he supposed. He had just never thought about it before.

  They went inside, and he was taken into a small room where he had to sign some things and someone gave him some kind of badge to wear. Then they got in an elevator that took them to the seventh floor. Hill smiled at him as they ascended. "I think you'll find this quite interesting," he said.

  "It had better be," Fulton replied. But it was already more interesting than the way he would have spent his day otherwise.

  The sign on the door said:

  ~~~

  RODERICK WILLIAMS

  Deputy Director of Intelligence

  ~~~

  Hill went inside without knocking, nodded to a pair of secretaries and a security person, and continued on into the inner office.

  It was large and impressive, with big picture windows on the far wall and an American flag in the corner. Three men were seated at a gleaming mahogany table on the left side of the room. They stood up when Hill and Fulton entered. A white-haired man with rosy cheeks advanced toward them.

  "Mr. Fulton, it's so good of you to come, especially on such short notice," he said in a deep voice. "We're most grateful." He pumped Fulton's hand and led him over to the table. The man's grip was strong. Fulton's hands were valuable; he didn't like having one of them pumped. "Coffee?"

  Fulton shook his head. The white-haired man looked a bit pixieish, like a favorite bachelor uncle, but his manner suggested that he was used to being in charge. Fulton wondered if the man had ever killed anyone—or was that just another misconception he had?

  "Mr. Fulton, my name is Roderick Williams. As the sign on the door says, I am the deputy director around here. The gentleman to your left is Bertram Culpepper."

  Fulton looked at a short man in a three-piece suit. He was bald and overweight, and his tiny eyes were a little bloodshot. He was smoking a cigarette, which he waved in greeting. "Mind if I smoke?" he asked.

  Fulton considered. "Yes, I do."

  A look of absolute anguish passed over Bertram Culpepper's face, but he obediently stubbed out the cigarette. "I'm deputy director of operations at the CIA, Mr. Fulton," Culpepper said. "That means I'm in charge of all the spies."

  "I thought the CIA was nothing but spies."

  Culpepper laughed a polite little laugh, and seemed to have difficulty keeping it from turning into a cough. "Not at all, not at all, Mr. Fulton. Most of the CIA's work is much less exciting—reading up about grain harvests in Albania, you know, or doing a computer analysis of thousands of satellite photographs. That's Jim Houghton's area." Culpepper motioned to a black-haired man across the table, who nodded to Fulton. Strangely, Houghton looked more like Fulton's image of a spy than did Culpepper or Hill—handsome, suave, self-assured.

  "Thank you for coming, Mr. Fulton," Houghton said. He had a cultured Boston accent. "Before we begin, I just wanted to tell you how much I admire your work. I've seen you perform several times."

  "Well, thanks." He looked around. Williams smiled and gestured to everyone to sit down.

  "First, Mr. Fulton," Williams said, "I should say that we are aware of certain causes you have espoused over the years, certain statements you have made—in short, we are aware that you have not always been in sympathy with the American government."

  "The American government is okay. It's war I don't like," Fulton replied.

  "Of course. In any case, all we ask is that you listen to what we have to say with an open mind. We can't force you to keep what we say secret, but we earnestly request that you do so. All right?"

  Fulton shrugged. "All right."

  Williams smiled. "Great. Lawrence, will you start the show?"

  Hill got up and closed the metal blinds that hung in front of the picture windows. Then he pushed a button, and a screen appeared on the wall opposite Fulton. He pushed another button, and a woman's face appeared on the screen.

  Fulton stared at it. The slide was grainy and slightly out of focus—blown up from a snapshot, perhaps. The woman had short blond hair. She was young and pretty, with high Nordic cheekbones and wide eyes. She was wearing a shapeless coat and a scarf, and appeared to be walking in front of a store. Fulton could make out the Cyrillic letters on the store's sign.

  "This woman's name is Valentina Borisova," Williams said. "She is the most dangerous human being in the world."

  Williams paused melodramatically. Fulton looked at Williams as he made the pronouncement, waiting for something more. Surely there would be more. When nothing further was said, his eyes returned to the photograph. Valentina Borisova was not a very dangerous-looking woman. In the photograph, she looked scared. Her head was turned slightly, as if to glance behind her and make sure no one was following. Her gray eyes seemed moist, as if on the verge of tears. The photograph made Fulton feel very strange.

  A woman steps toward him out of the darkness, holding a rose in front of her...

  But maybe someday.

  "Why is she dangerous?" he managed to say.

  "Miss Borisova is a professional psychic in the employ of the KGB. That's the Soviet equivalent of the CIA, Mr. Fulton."

  Fulton nodded. He was ignorant about many things, but he had heard of the KGB.

  "Miss Borisova's particular ability is to change minds," Williams went on. "Not the way you and I think of changing minds, but by some sort of ESP. She uses a device developed by this man."

  Hill changed the slide. Valentina Borisova vanished abruptly, and Fulton was looking at a bearded man with his mouth open and a hand upraised, as if issuing a call to battle.

  "His name is Maxim Trofimov," Williams said. "He is a researcher at the—what is it, Jim?"

  Houghton glanced at his notes. "The Laboratory of Bioelectronics of the A. S. Popov All-Union Scientific and Technical Society of Radio Technology and Electrical Communications," he intoned.

  "Sounds impressive, eh?" Williams said with a grin. "Anyway, that's where a good deal of the psychic research is being done in the Soviet Union, and Trofimov is one of their leading lights. He has developed a machine that he calls a 'hyperspace amplifier,' but everyone else simply calls it 'the pyramid.' Using it, Borisova can evidently affect the mind of a person nearby. She can change that person's most deeply held beliefs. She can, for example, turn a capitalist into a dedicated communist."

  Williams paused again, evidently looking for a response. What was going on here? Fulton wondered. He was nervous; he was excited. "Like a hypnotist?" he asked. "The power of suggestion?"

  "Somewhat. Except that she need not be in the presence of her subject. And the effects are much longer lasting. In fact, we have no reason to think they are not permanent. And most important, the subject has no knowledge that anything has happened to him, no way of telling that it is anything but a legi
timate 'conversion.'"

  "How do you know about it, then?"

  Williams nodded. "Good question. Bertram, why don't you take it from here?"

  Bertram Culpepper was trying very hard not to smoke. His hands were playing with a book of matches, going through the comforting gesture of lighting up until he willed them to stop at the last possible instant. Watching him didn't make Fulton feel any less nervous. "This is all top secret, of course," Culpepper said. Telling secrets probably didn't help Culpepper's state of mind. "We have a source of information who is present when Borisova does this thing that she does. There is apparently a kind of dialogue that takes place at the same time to give the targeted person a rational basis for believing in his so-called conversion."

  "The dialogue is hardly sufficient to account for what we have observed, however," Williams was quick to interject. "And this source has provided us with the names of some of the people Borisova has 'converted.' Lawrence?"

  Another slide, another face. This one lean, pale, self-confident.

  "Archibald St. Crispin," Williams said. "Second Secretary at the British embassy in Moscow. You may have read about his defection a couple of years ago."

  Fulton hadn't. Williams gestured, and another face appeared. Thick glasses, thin black hair brushed straight back.

  "How about this fellow?" Williams asked. "Howard Morrison. A State Department trade official who visited Moscow eighteen months ago. By the time he came along we had our source of information in place, so we knew about him right away. We caught him passing government secrets to a Soviet embassy official here in Washington. We interrogated him afterward, and he really had become a convinced, dedicated communist—as a result, so he maintained, of an afternoon's discussion in some Russian's apartment. He's in prison now, and we've watched carefully to see how complete his conversion has been. Believe me, there's no evidence that the effect wears off with time."

  Williams paused again, and again Fulton wondered what he was supposed to say, what the meeting was leading up to. "I don't understand why this makes her the most dangerous person in the world," he remarked.

  "Because, Mr. Fulton, we don't know what she's capable of. Because we don't know how to stop her. Basically, because we don't understand her power. And until we do, this woman scares me more than any number of nuclear warheads."

  "But what about the scientist—Trofimov? Wouldn't he be the one to worry about? After all, it's his machine."

  Williams nodded to Houghton. "We have studied Trofimov and his hyperspace amplifier just as much as it's possible to study them," Houghton said. "We stole the plans and built our own. We hired psychics and tried to make it do what Valentina Borisova apparently makes it do. We had leading scientists study every word the man has written. In fact, the machine doesn't work. It can't work."

  "In fact," Williams said, "Professor Maxim Trofimov is a crackpot, and his machine is a bunch of junk. I know a good deal about these things, Mr. Fulton, and he espouses just about every loony and half-loony idea out of pop parapsychology, from pyramid power to charged ion beams to the ganzfeld. We can't make it work, and he couldn't make it work either. Until he found Valentina Borisova."

  "She's the key," he continued excitedly. "Why her? Is she just some sort of genetic freak-—a sport of nature that can't be replicated? We know her mother was involved in a nuclear accident out in Siberia while she was pregnant with her. Or is there something more going on? Did she train herself, for example? Can she train others? Lately she seems to have been less successful. Why? We have to find out. And if we can't find out, at least we have to keep the Soviets from using her. Which means we have to get our hands on her."

  At the word "hands," Fulton noticed, Culpepper looked down at an almost-lit match, and once more caught himself in time. Fulton had to look away. "You want her to defect," he said.

  "Precisely," Williams agreed. "And that's where you come in."

  Fulton waited.

  "Our information is that she's in love with you," Houghton explained.

  "Obsessed with you is more like it," Williams said. "Has pictures of you everywhere, plays your records all the time. You're her weakness."

  Fulton waited for them to say something more. Once again, they didn't. "So you're going to lure her to America with the promise of meeting me?" he asked.

  "Not exactly. We'd like you to do the luring."

  "In Moscow?"

  Williams nodded.

  This sounded bizarre to Fulton. Everything sounded bizarre to him now. What were they up to? "Just go there and ask her?" he said. "Won't the Russians get suspicious?"

  "But you see, you've been invited. Have you heard of the Moscow Peace Festival?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Well, you're a fan of disarmament, so I'm sure you know about the big push Grigoriev is making to get a comprehensive arms-reduction treaty signed. He's got everybody stirred up, and he's making America look like a warmongering villain to the rest of the world. Anyway, a big part of his campaign is a Peace Festival in Moscow this September—that's only a few weeks before the big summit with President Winn at the United Nations. Now, Russia is forever having peace festivals, it seems to me, but Grigoriev promises that this one is going to be the biggest, most important of all. For one thing, he's going to get a lot of distinguished international statesmen to show up, presumably to put pressure on Winn to make concessions at the summit. For another, he's promised to announce dramatic foreign policy initiatives at the festival. And what he'd like to cap the thing off would be a major artistic event—like, for example, Daniel Fulton's return to the concert stage."

  "We understand that your manager has already received the invitation," Culpepper said.

  Fulton nodded. Hershohn hadn't mentioned it to him, but there was no reason why he should have. "So I go over there and bring this woman back with me?"

  "Just make the offer," Williams said. "She's sure to be at the recital and the reception afterward—she's important enough to have a great deal of pull. We hope you'll have a chance to talk to her, feel her out, and if things look good, make the initial proposition. We think she'll be receptive—our source says she's very unhappy. If she says yes, we'll take it from there."

  "What happens if she does come to America?" Fulton asked. "Do you just put her to work doing the same thing against the Russians?"

  Williams shrugged. "Only if she agrees to it. Certainly we would want to test her, to try and find out what makes her tick. But we can't—and won't—do anything without her cooperation. The main thing is to get her away from the Soviets, before she does more damage."

  "Think about what our alternative will have to be," Houghton murmured, "if we can't convince her to defect."

  The alternative seemed clear. "You'll kill her," Fulton said.

  "It's a tough business, Mr. Fulton," Williams said.

  "And what makes you think I'd agree to get involved in this business?"

  Williams ran a hand through his white hair. "Because I think you're a patriot," he replied. "I know you haven't always sounded particularly patriotic—and that's why Grigoriev wants you at his Peace Festival. But you're an American—you were born and raised here, you became rich and famous here. The country isn't perfect, but you're part of it—it's part of you. It's in danger now, and it's asking something of you. I don't think you'll turn America down. What do you say?"

  Fulton stared at Williams. Such a strange-looking little man. What was going on inside his head? What did he know that he wasn't saying? Were there plots within plots here, the way there always seemed to be in spy movies? Most important of all, did Williams understand the difficulty of what he was asking him to do? "I haven't played in public for three years," Fulton said. "This is not a trivial thing you want from me."

  Williams nodded. "If we could get you over there some other way without arousing the Soviets' suspicions, we would. But we can't."

  Silence.

  Fulton felt his fingers moving on his thighs. He listened to
the piece his mind was playing. Liebestraum. Liszt's love-dream. The music had never stopped; he had just stopped hitting the keys. He gazed at the other people in the room. Houghton looked uninterested in his decision. Culpepper looked as if he were nervously awaiting his debut at Carnegie Hall. Hill sat apart from the rest, his face opaque.

  Fulton had left his silent, empty house to come here. Had that been the first, predestined step?

  He thought of Valentina Borisova's harried, frightened eyes. Those eyes were difficult to get out of your mind.

  Eyes wide and moist, hands clutching at her fake pearls...

  We are soul mates.

  "All right," he whispered.

  Williams broke into a grin. "Well, that's terrific, Mr. Fulton. Believe me, your country will be forever in your debt."

  Fulton shrugged. He wasn't interested in the country being in his debt. "What happens now?"

  "Hill will be your contact," Culpepper said, gesturing with his matchbook at the CIA man. "He'll handle the specifics of the operation with you. You won't have to meet the three of us again."

  "I can go home, then?"

  "With our gratitude and best wishes," Williams said.

  Everyone insisted on shaking his hand. He tolerated it. As he left the room with Hill, he saw Culpepper lighting a cigarette with relief and exhaustion.

  Fulton felt better as soon as they got outside. The decision had been made. He could live with it.

  Hill seemed to sense Fulton's state of mind. "I can't help you with the piano playing, but I can help you with everything else," he reassured Fulton. "It shouldn't be hard."

  "You probably say that to all the civilians who do the dirty work for you," Fulton muttered. But was it dirty work? He stood in the parking lot. It was hot here. What was he doing in Washington, or wherever this was? His life had changed completely in a few hours. He had chosen to change it. "Tell me. Did you really think I'd go along with this scheme?"

  Hill grinned. "Once you agreed to hear us out, I was sure of it," he said. "The others had their doubts, but not me. I know a patriot when I see one. Come on. I'll take you home."

  Fulton followed Hill to the waiting limousine. What, he wondered, did a patriot look like?