Summit

by Richard Bowker

  "You never know. Anyway, I've got to do it."

  "Come in then and let me listen."

  Fulton followed Khorashev into his studio. He was absurdly nervous. Three years was a long time, and he didn't know what had been lost during it. This was one way to find out. He sat down at the Bosendorfer. "Beethoven and Chopin," he said.

  "No Russians?"

  "For an encore."

  Khorashev nodded. "You're the boss. Whenever you're ready, my friend."

  A silent air conditioner cooled the room. The piano's lid was closed; ragged scores were stacked high on it. The matryoshka doll stared at Fulton from the crowded bookshelf. Time to begin. Time to find out what he had inside him.

  His hands descended onto the keys.

  Le-be-wohl.

  Les Adieux sounded, well, all right. As expected, it was nowhere near the real thing; he never lost himself in the music, he never reached the levels to which a real audience could bring him. But it wasn't embarrassing. The interpretation was solid, and he hit only a couple of clinkers, even in the whirlwind final movement. It would do for starters.

  "Bravo," Khorashev said when it was over. "You haven't lost your touch, my friend."

  "We'll see. On to the Pathétique?"

  "By all means."

  The Pathétique was a more youthful Beethoven, but equally impassioned. After it was finished, Fulton had a glass of water and stretched his fingers. Then on to his Chopin set, played without a break. A different land of passion, a different kind of genius. When he stopped, his shirt was soaked, the room was silent, and Khorashev was by his side. "Is too bad you are wasting your talent playing for the commissars, my friend," he said. "America needs you more."

  Fulton drank another glass of water. "Any advice?"

  "Of course. Plenty. If you want to hear it."

  "As long as you don't tell me I played everything too fast."

  Khorashev smiled. "Only the Chopin. Chopin must be savored, like fine wine."

  Fulton smiled too. "That's the advice old people give when they can't play a piece as fast as it should be played."

  Khorashev shook his head. "Eat lunch with me, Daniel, and we'll have a good argument."

  "Nothing would please me more."

  They had lunch, and savored some fine wine, and it was late afternoon before Fulton was ready to leave. "Will you wish me luck playing for the commissars, Dmitri?" he asked as the two of them stood by the door.

  "I will, although you won't need it."

  Fulton gazed at his friend. "Do you wish you were going to Moscow instead of me?"

  Khorashev grimaced. "You can't return home again, Daniel. This is where I belong."

  "All right, then. Adieu, Dmitri."

  Khorashev suddenly grabbed his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. "Do svidanya, my friend. And good luck."

  * * *

  The telephone startled Fulton from a revery about the Pathétique. As usual, he decided not to answer; he hated the way the thing forced itself into your consciousness, its obscene ringing demanding that you pay attention to it. He refused. After four rings his answering machine clicked on and did its job.

  At the beep there was a sound of a throat clearing, and then a familiar voice. "Daniel, this is your mother speaking. I just called to, uh, wish you luck. Your father and I hope that everything goes well for you in Moscow." There was a pause. "Daniel, if you're listening right now, it would mean a lot to your father and me if you'd pick up the phone." Another pause. "If not, give us a call before you go. We haven't heard from you in some time." And another. Fulton stared at the phone until his mother spoke again. "Well, then, uh, goodbye, Daniel."

  The machine clicked off.

  Fulton closed his eyes. You can't return home again. He could picture his mother in the living room of their house in Evanston, amid all the photographs of him, with that familiar grim, aggrieved look on her face, finally getting up the courage to make the call. His father was probably sitting across from her, telling her to take it easy, if you want to talk to him then call him up, it's not like losing the Civil War. His advice was always correct, always useless. She had made the call, but it had hurt, and he doubted that he'd get another.

  And why hadn't he answered? It wasn't like he'd lose the Civil War by picking up the phone. But he couldn't do it.

  There had been so few times when he had felt like part of a family growing up that he simply didn't know how to function with his parents as an adult. His mother had little interest in Christmas and birthdays and other such nonsense. Why should she give him presents, when she was already giving him every ounce of her energy and determination? Why should he think about such things, she would tell him, when he had such a glorious future to prepare for? His father was less fearsome, but also less interested. He had his own life to live. He was happy for Daniel's success, but he left the decisions to his wife. And if he noticed that Daniel's strange childhood was creating problems that might never be resolved, he didn't do anything about it.

  Fulton's mother had wanted a genius; she had got one, he supposed. But now she wanted a normal person too, and that seemed to be asking too much. Maybe it was her fault, but how could he be free from blame?

  Fulton had become rather good at disguises, but disguises couldn't hide him from the person who mattered most. Sometimes he was forced to look hard at himself, and he didn't like what he saw.

  He thought of Moscow. He thought of Valentina Borisova. Maybe he would change—maybe everything would change, in Moscow.

  He opened his eyes and stared at his left hand playing the swaying rhythm of Chopin's Barcarolle on his thigh. Too fast? No, just right. He smiled. Normal or not, he was ready for his recital.

  Chapter 15

  The Zil limousine streaked down the center lane reserved for official vehicles. Inside, Pavel Fyodorovich Grigoriev peeked out through the gray curtains at the Muscovites studiously trying to avoid noticing the motorcade. The less you notice, the safer you are, if you're one of the ruled. If you're one of the rulers, however, you must notice everything, or you are doomed. And that was why he was sitting in this limousine with his rival, Igor Volnikov.

  "Will there be a demonstration?" he asked.

  "I'm afraid not," Volnikov replied. "It drains her too much. She's like a car battery with only so many starts left in her. Best not to waste the battery on pleasure trips."

  "This is not exactly a pleasure trip," Grigoriev noted.

  "Forgive me, Comrade Secretary," Volnikov said with a grin. "I overextended the simile."

  Grigoriev was mildly surprised that Volnikov knew what a simile was. He had better not underestimate this man.

  Grigoriev wanted to see the reality behind the reports. If Volnikov was going to defeat him, he had to know firsthand how it happened.

  Also, there was that suggestion Stashinsky had given him. An awful suggestion, but one that could not be ignored.

  The motorcade pulled into the courtyard of a nineteenth-century gray stone building, and Grigoriev got out of the Zil. The day was sunny, but the breeze gave a hint of the long winter just around the corner. KGB guards swarmed all over the place. The white-haired director of the institute was there to greet the bigwigs, and then he disappeared; this was too secret for him to know anything about, even though it went on in one of his own laboratories. The KGB had a way of taking over when something interested them.

  Volnikov led the way into the laboratory. It was a large room filled with electrical equipment and dominated by a strange-looking transparent glass pyramid. There were brief introductions, and Grigoriev added the people to his mental files: Trofimov, the bearded scientist who was going to explain it all; Rylev, the typical up-and-coming KGB officer, calculatedly obsequious; and finally the woman Borisova, younger than he had expected and prettier, with wide, gray eyes that gazed at him unafraid. "We have been hearing a lot about you," he said as he shook her cool hand.

  "I'm so pleased," she replied, in a tone that contradicted her wor
ds. It is not good to be noticed.

  Grigoriev smiled. She was the only interesting person in the place.

  They sat down. Grigoriev accepted a glass of tea, and after a few preliminaries Trofimov began the explanation, clearing his throat and clutching at his stringy tie. Grigoriev wondered how many days the man had rehearsed for this. "On behalf of the Laboratory of Bioelectronics, I want to welcome you to the Popov Institute. I would like to begin by reminding you of what V. I. Lenin once said..." He fumbled through his notes for the quotation. It would not do to get more than a paragraph into a speech like this without a quotation from Lenin. "'On any given level of scientific development, our knowledge of the world remains incomplete.' I recognize that many people might consider what we are doing here frankly incredible, but it must be admitted that not all facts are yet known, and so I ask you to consider the results of our work, not how strange or extraordinary the work seems. I should point out, by the way, that this is not an entirely new endeavor for Soviet science. As far back as the 1920s, the distinguished academician L. L. Vasiliev conducted experiments in telepathic hypnosis, in which a subject was put to sleep at the mental suggestion of someone in another room. And there have been more recent experiments...."

  Grigoriev shifted pointedly in his chair. Trofimov took the hint and hurried on. He was worried, of course, because the kind of research he did could be—and had been—condemned as antimaterialistic and therefore un-Marxist: suggestions of a spirit world and the like. And even if its results could be explained without invoking the spirit world, it felt wrong to a Marxist. The world should not work this way. That might have been part of Grigoriev's problem with the whole business. He listened.

  "The work we are doing is in a field that has come to be called psychotronics," Trofimov went on. "Psychotronics involves the interaction of mind and environment. It has been conclusively proved, I believe, that there is such a thing as 'mind over matter.' But what is its physical cause? And can it be harnessed, so that we can reproduce certain effects at will?

  "My theory is that the brain generates a certain kind of extremely low-frequency radiation that is capable of affecting and changing the environment. This is the previously undetected energy that Nina Kulagina, for example, used in her remarkable feats. But I believe that such energy can also be used to affect another brain; brains, after all, are also a part of the environment. The energy bypasses the external sensory mechanism—so that the person is not aware of it—and directly affects the cortical activity of the target brain. I have built the device you see before you"—gesturing toward the pyramid—"to amplify and direct this energy. My approach has been eclectic. I have neglected no method that has been shown to have a positive effect on the production and transmission of this energy. For instance, I use a modified ganzfeld to shield the subject from unnecessary sensory inputs when transmitting.

  "My experimental work has demonstrated that my hyperspace amplifier, as I call it, is effective to a distance of several kilometers, and that the energy produced can cause permanent changes in the cognitive functioning of the target brain. It was when the value of these results to the Soviet people began to be understood that, um, my work stopped being experimental."

  "I thought that this woman was the only one who could make your machine work," Grigoriev remarked, gesturing at Borisova.

  Trofimov clutched at his tie. "Well, you must understand that I still consider the hyperspace amplifier to be in an early stage of development. Preliminary results were often equivocal. When Comrade Borisova started producing results that weren't, um, equivocal, we naturally worked only with her, especially when, um, we realized the benefits to the Soviet people. I am fully confident that others will be found who will produce equally good results."

  "But none have been found so far."

  Trofimov nodded reluctantly. "That is true."

  Grigoriev went over to look at the pyramid. He asked a few questions, which the scientist answered in excessive detail. He didn't try to follow the replies. He was thinking of how hard he had worked—in improving the economy, in building his fragile consensus on disarmament, in increasing Soviet prestige and power around the world. They were all superhuman tasks.

  And here was this little contraption, and Volnikov smiling smugly next to it.

  He sighed and wandered away. The woman interested him more. She was sitting by herself in a corner of the laboratory. He went over to her. "Why is it that you are the only one who can do this?" he asked her.

  She stared at him, and he sensed her trying to decide how to react. Should she fear him or trust him? He could predict the outcome of the struggle. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said.

  Caution was rarely a mistake in this country. "But surely you must have some idea," he persisted.

  "Perhaps I have just been lucky."

  "You don't sound as if you mean that."

  Her wide eyes met his, and he had a feeling he was finally going to get the truth. "The machine is killing me," she said. "Should I therefore consider myself fortunate that I'm the only one who can use it?"

  "Is this true?"

  The KGB officer—Rylev—appeared at his side. Had he been eavesdropping on the entire conversation? "Borisova's episodes in the hyperspace amplifier are quite stressful," he explained, "and she requires a recovery period after each one. She receives excellent medical attention, however, and there is no evidence that her life is in any danger."

  Her eyes moved to Rylev, and it was not difficult to discern the hatred behind her gaze. "Do you disagree with that?" he asked her.

  She shrugged again. "I'm not a doctor," she said. "I only know how it makes me feel. And it makes me feel like death."

  And then she stood up and walked away from them.

  "As you can see, she is very difficult to handle, Comrade Secretary," Rylev murmured. "It's common with people of her type—antisocial, artistic, you understand. She is really the only problem with the entire project."

  Grigoriev looked at him. "But without her there is no project," he observed. "And that's your real problem." Then he too strode away from the KGB man.

  * * *

  "Well, what is your opinion, Pavel Fyodorovich?" Volnikov asked as the Zil sped them back to the Kremlin.

  "Most interesting, Igor Ivanovich."

  Volnikov laughed. "All right, the scientist is strange, and the girl is even stranger, but you have seen the reports. It works. And what else matters?"

  "I don't know," Grigoriev admitted. He had wanted Stashinsky to come with him, but the foreign minister had turned him down. "What's the point?" he had asked. The point was that Stashinsky had suggested the girl be killed in order to prevent Volnikov's project from succeeding, and the least he could do was accompany Grigoriev to view the intended victim. But Stashinsky was uninterested. "The girl seems rather unstable," Grigoriev observed.

  "She's stable enough," Volnikov replied. "We have studied her for a long time. We understand her. You're going to the American pianist's recital?"

  "Of course."

  "She'll be there. Watch her there, if you like. She'll be all right."

  "It's not at recitals that she worries me."

  Volnikov shrugged. "You have to trust me. I know what I'm doing."

  But they both knew he would never trust Volnikov, and that meant there was nothing more to be said. Grigoriev turned away. The Peace Festival, and then the summit with President Winn. He had worked so hard for all of this, and so much depended on it. But it might all collapse because of Valentina Borisova.

  And yet he couldn't have her killed. Perhaps he was too weak—Stashinsky would certainly think so. But he had gazed into her eyes and seen her fear, and he knew that he couldn't do it. Volnikov would have to be defeated some other way.

  And if Volnikov could not be defeated, Grigoriev wondered what he would do.

  Chapter 16

  Roderick Williams did not like the NSC guy who had been dumped on him. Colonel Thomas Poole was a little too prim and p
roper for his taste, and much too nosy. But he supposed it was a small enough price to pay for the problem with Doctor Coyne. Loud had taken care of Coyne's wife, and research on the drug was allowed to continue, although obviously with much stricter safeguards. And in return all Williams had to do was let Poole poke around, ask questions, and sit in on a few meetings.

  It was a pain at first. Poole wanted to know everything about Williams's pet operations, from the formula of the drug Coyne had come up with to Daniel Fulton's sex life. Williams had immediately complained to Loud, who for once backed him up. An uneasy compromise had been reached, with Loud the arbitrator if the two of them couldn't agree. That at least kept some things out of the guy's hands.

  But it didn't keep him away from meetings like this one with Culpepper, Houghton, and Lawrence Hill. Poole had said relatively little so far about Operation Cadenza, as they had code-named the attempt to get the Russian psychic to defect. Williams hoped he would continue to keep quiet.

  "Everything is proceeding as planned," Hill told them. "I'll be leaving for Moscow tomorrow, and I'll talk with Fulton after he meets the girl."

  "Doesn't the KGB know you?" Houghton asked.

  "Probably, but they'll have no reason to associate me with Fulton. They'll think I'm in Moscow to observe the Peace Festival—I understand we have other Company people there for that very purpose. I'm just going to stay in the embassy and not bother anyone, unless there's a problem."

  "Fulton's been cooperating?" Culpepper asked, lighting up a cigarette.

  "He's been an angel. We've actually become rather friendly over the past couple of months."

  "Does that surprise you?"

  Hill shrugged. "I don't know. He seems rather lonely. I think this whole business has, well, energized him—given him a sense of purpose."

  "Are you sure he has the same sense of purpose we have?" Colonel Poole asked.

  There was brief, uncomfortable silence. "I don't think I understand," Hill replied.

  "Isn't it possible that he's being an angel because he's working for the Soviets?"