Summit

by Richard Bowker

  No, this operation was not going to succeed; Dexter Barnaby would not see the error of his ways. But Valentina was not going to let anyone suspect that she wasn't trying.

  Late in the afternoon Rylev called each of them in turn into his room to discuss progress and give orders. Valentina was second, after Trofimov.

  Rylev's room was larger than hers, and immaculate. He was sitting at a round table with a pad of paper in front of him. Nothing was written on the pad. He smiled at her. "Well, Valentina, you seemed to be very conscientious today."

  "I'm doing my best."

  "Are you feeling all right? I heard you were out of sorts last night."

  "I'm very tense," she said carefully. "You know what I'm about to go through. You know what it does to me."

  "Well, how can we make things more pleasant for you? You understand that we can hardly let you go or sight-seeing."

  Why not? Why couldn't she be free? "Of course," she replied. "Perhaps if I could just get out of this building for a while. Just to take a walk up and down the street."

  Rylev stroked his chin. Valentina wished she could read his mind. "I see nothing wrong with that, I suppose," he said finally. "You'll need an escort, of course."

  "Of course," Valentina agreed, stifling an urge to shout for joy. "You can come with me if you like."

  Rylev laughed—not the laugh of her dream, no, almost a pleasant laugh; she almost liked him at this moment. "Unfortunately I won't be able to," he replied. "I have to dine with the ambassador and try to head off his curiosity about what we are up to here. I'll send a couple of people to your room in a while, and they can take you for a stroll through the park."

  "I would appreciate that very much."

  Rylev nodded, obviously pleased with her gratitude. She was being a very good girl. She left his room and returned to her own in a fog of excitement and happiness. It was going to happen.

  For a few moments as she waited in her room she felt a rush of nostalgia and regret. Her life had not been entirely bad, after all. There had been good people like Olga, and long summer evenings at her dacha, and so many wonderful concerts at the conservatory. But none of it was very significant, when compared to the horrors she had endured, and the happiness that awaited her.

  And then she thought of the danger. But that didn't matter either. She simply had to do it, no matter what the chance of success.

  Some time later—she couldn't have said how long—there was a knock on the door. Two heavyset men were in the corridor. They had the stupid but dangerous look of KGB functionaries. "I'm Boris and this is Pyotr," one of them said. "We're to take you for a walk."

  Valentina breathed deeply. She had to get her emotions under control. "Thank you," she managed to say. She headed out of the room.

  "One moment," Boris said.

  She froze. Was it all a trick? Had she given herself away somehow? "What?" she whispered.

  "It's raining out. Don't you want to wear a coat?"

  "Oh, yes. Of course. I didn't know." She panicked for a moment. Where was her coat? They wouldn't let her leave unless she found it. Her life would be ruined. She opened the closet door, and her life was saved. She put the coat on. "Shall we go?" she asked Boris.

  "Yes. Of course." She strode down the corridor between the two men, heading for freedom.

  * * *

  The man in the red Vauxhall had to go to the bathroom. He simply didn't have the bladder for this kind of work. They say that having to go to the bathroom blots out all higher mental activity. You can think only about that one overwhelming need. He was certainly approaching that state. He couldn't hold out much longer. He'd heard of people developing some kind of infection from this and dying. What a dreadful way to go. He'd have to call in and ask for a replacement. Or worse, he'd have to—

  Across the street, the door opened and two men and a woman came out. One of the men opened an umbrella. When they reached the sidewalk, they turned right.

  It was her. No doubt about it. Thank God.

  "Heading south," he said softly.

  "Okay," came the response in his ear.

  There. That had worked out fine. Now where would he find the nearest...

  * * *

  Valentina walked past the streetlamp she had seen the night before, but she wasn't free yet. Boris—or was it Pyotr, she had already forgotten which was which—held an umbrella over her. The other man stayed at her right elbow, his eyes taking in everything and everyone around them. The soggy fallen leaves were slippery underfoot. It was cold and gray, and the world seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  "Wretched weather," the one with the umbrella muttered.

  A young couple walked by, wearing blue jeans and yellow rain slickers. The girl reached over and kissed the boy on the cheek. He laughed and said something in a British accent.

  "Supposed to be like this again tomorrow," the other Russian said.

  Valentina felt dissociated from her body; it was all she could do to keep walking. This wasn't her. This was a process she had to endure until she found the real Valentina—just past that streetlamp, beneath that tree. The real Valentina had to be here somewhere, and when she found her, she could start to live again.

  "I'd rather be cold than wet, wouldn't you?" the man with the umbrella said.

  A boy on a bicycle. A policeman guarding the entrance to a building. An old man walking a dog. A car hissing by. Footsteps echoing along the endless street.

  "You complain just as much when it's cold," the other one said.

  A middle-aged couple approached; they were arguing. The woman moved in front of Valentina. "Excuse me," she said in an American accent. "But isn't that where Charles and Di live? My husband says I'm crazy, it's just a museum, but I know I read it in People magazine or someplace. Could you tell him he's the one that's crazy?"

  The KGB man with the umbrella moved to get past her. "We know nothing," he muttered in Russian.

  "Please," the woman said. "I'm sure I'm right." She reached out to touch him on the arm, and Valentina caught a glimpse of something long and sharp, and suddenly he was staggering backwards. A car door opened, and he disappeared inside. Then the man was grabbing Pyotr—or was it Boris?—and Pyotr's grip on her arm suddenly loosened. She looked at him: his face was wet; his eyes were wide open and did not move. Then someone pulled him inside the car too. Valentina was left alone with the couple. "I think you'd better go, dear," the woman said, and Valentina noticed another car; another open door.

  "I—" she tried to say, but the couple was already strolling off down the street.

  "I'm sure this is the place," the woman said. "Maybe I read it in the Enquirer."

  Valentina got into the car.

  * * *

  "You have beautiful, beautiful skin, dollink. How do you manage it, with those awful Russian winters?"

  The elegant bald man was moving his slim fingers over her face. He spoke English with some kind of foreign accent: Hungarian? Valentina was too nervous to try to figure it out. She looked at the other man in the front seat: silver-haired, wearing a tan raincoat. He was smiling. "My name is Chuck Dennison, Miss Borisova. How're you doing? Janos here is going to change your appearance. Just till we get you to America, you understand. This way, if the Russians do find out you're gone before we've left the country, it'll be a lot harder for them to catch you."

  Janos opened a plastic case and started applying makeup to her face. "Such a shame," he murmured. "But all in a good cause, no?"

  The windshield wipers clicked back and forth in the rain. Valentina thought of her little Zhiguli. She would never see it again. But she would see Daniel.

  "Oh, and the hair," Janos gushed. "What I wouldn't give for your hair. It is a gift, dollink. Treasure it." He was arranging a black wig on her head. His hands were quite gentle. She was almost enjoying this.

  "There's a seven-thirty flight we can make, Miss Borisova," Dennison said. "We took the precaution of booking seats on all the flights. We didn't know when
you'd be able to get out of there."

  "Call me Valentina," she whispered.

  "Actually, I'd like to call you Andrea. That's the name on your passport."

  He leaned over the seat and showed her. At the same instant Janos held up a mirror and let her witness the transformation. Andrea Dennison. Her skin was coarser, her hair was black and stiff; there were crow's feet underneath her eyes. Even her mouth seemed different: wider, perhaps, more sensuous. She looked fifteen years older; she looked like the photograph in the passport. She was a new person—the one she had been waiting for at the end of her walk.

  "It's amazing," she said.

  Janos smiled. "Don't wash your face or even rub it, my child. And try not to cry."

  "And don't speak unless you absolutely have to, Andrea," Dennison said. "Let your husband do the talking."

  She nodded her understanding. She didn't mind being older, didn't mind losing the skin and the hair that Janos admired so much. She had been dead before; now she was alive. "Thank you," she whispered.

  "No tears, please. No tears, child."

  They arrived at the airport. Dennison got a couple of suitcases out of the trunk, and the car drove off, with Janos waving good-bye from the backseat. They walked into the terminal, and Dennison handled everything: tickets, baggage, passports. It was so easy. She watched the faces of the strangers passing by her as she waited for the flight, and at first she was afraid that one of them would return her gaze and somehow manage to drag her back. But none did. They would be looking for Valentina Borisova, she realized, and the Valentina Borisova they were looking for no longer existed.

  When she and Dennison finally boarded the plane and it took off, Valentina looked down at the lights of the airport disappearing beneath her and tried not to cry. She breathed deeply and exhaled, and it felt as if she were doing it for the first time, in a brand new body. Dennison patted her hand. "Nothing will happen now," he said. "We're home free."

  Home, she thought. Free. The words had never sounded so good.

  Chapter 27

  Professor Trofimov was the last to know. He had retired early to his bedroom and read; if there had been any unusual activity that evening, he had failed to notice it. And, of course, no one had bothered to inform him.

  It would have been wonderful if he could have sensed it—the way, in some experiments, a mother cat senses that its far-off kittens have been drowned. But he was not sufficiently attuned to his own mental processes; he did not have the ability to slough off the years of "civilization" that so overwhelmed his—and almost everyone's—psychic powers. He was a scientist, not a psychic, and he had to make the best of it.

  And so he did not sense what had happened, and when he went to sleep he was troubled only by the usual dream—of being in the hyperspace amplifier himself, alone and failing—of Rylev's hard, cold stare as the minutes passed with no results—of laughter, always finally the laughter, distant titters that grew to loud, harsh guffaws, filling his mind so that he couldn't think, couldn't do anything except feel the world's derision. That dream had nothing to do with Valentina Borisova.

  He found out about her when he walked into the conference room before breakfast the next morning. Yuri was packing up his equipment. "What's going on?" Trofimov demanded.

  Yuri shrugged and exhaled a lungful of smoke at him. "Ask the boss."

  Trofimov despised Yuri. He went to find Rylev, who was sitting in his room, sipping a glass of tea. "Why is Yuri dismantling his equipment?" he asked.

  Rylev stared at him. Trofimov couldn't stand that stare; it made him feel guilty even when he had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. He knew he was blushing, and he hated himself for it.

  "Borisova has disappeared," Rylev said finally in a monotone.

  "What?"

  "She took a walk last night and didn't come back."

  Trofimov felt a sudden, desperate fear. "What happened? Did she defect? Was she kidnapped?"

  Rylev shrugged. "We don't know. She's gone, that's all."

  The fear was making him sweat. He was all alone inside his machine now. Damn her, why was she the way she was? And abruptly the fear turned to anger. This wasn't his fault. It was Rylev's fault—he was the one who should be feeling guilty. "How could you let this happen?" he screamed. "It's intolerable. You've got to find her."

  Rylev stared at him. "We're looking," he said.

  Rylev's calmness only infuriated him more. "If the Americans have her, we must protest. We must demand that she be returned to us. What does Moscow say about this?"

  Rylev looked down and sipped his tea, and Trofimov realized that Moscow had probably said plenty about this. "There will be no protests," Rylev said. "The summit is coming up in New York in a few days, and General Secretary Grigoriev doesn't want any problems with the West. Besides, we don't know for sure that the Americans have her."

  "Well, what are we supposed to do, then? Just sit around here and hope she shows up?"

  "We're going home," Rylev said.

  "Home? When?"

  "Today."

  "But I thought you said you were still looking for her."

  Rylev shrugged. "Someone else is looking for her. Not me."

  And through his fear and anger Trofimov managed to see some good coming out of this: Rylev was finished. He had failed far worse than Trofimov himself had ever failed, and his failure would not go unpunished.

  But without Valentina there might be punishment enough for all.

  Everyone possesses psychic ability; Trofimov was convinced of this. A lifetime of study and experimentation had also convinced him that his hyperspace amplifier was the key to tapping this ability. Why, then, was Valentina the only one who had ever successfully used the machine? He didn't know. He was convinced that he would find out someday, and then these people would understand who was the true genius behind all the marvelous successes that had been achieved. But until he found out...

  Until he found out, there was only Valentina. And now she was gone. Trofimov did not want to return to being a lonely voice crying in the wilderness, trying to convince blind bureaucrats and cynical scientists of what was so clear to him. He needed Valentina. How could she do this to him? "She defected," he said. "I'm sure of it. She always was selfish. They'll pay her more in America and give her all the concert tickets she wants."

  Rylev did not look interested in his theory about Valentina. "Pack," he said. "You'll receive further orders in Moscow."

  "It's your fault," Trofimov went on. "How could you let her escape? We're all going to be ruined, thanks to you."

  Rylev reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and took out a gun, which he placed on the table next to his empty glass of tea. "Go away," he said, and his icy tone was every bit as frightening as the sight of the gun.

  Trofimov stood there for a moment, just to show that he could not be intimidated, and then he turned and strode out of the room.

  Once he was in the corridor, though, he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. They had to find her. Had to.

  * * *

  Olga Chukova was overjoyed when she found out. Valentina was free! She hid her reaction, of course, as she hid all her feelings. And after a while, her joy began to be tinged with fear. There would be consequences, of course, and they would not be good ones. She had always known the end would come for her eventually, but it had always been some nebulous tomorrow that she could somehow ignore. This was different.

  But nothing happened. Only the most superficial of interrogations, and then they were all bundled off to the airport and back to Moscow. Perhaps, she dared to think, it would be all right. Without Valentina, the project would cease. Perhaps then they would ignore her. She could go back to being a poorly paid doctor, unloved and unnoticed. That would be all right with her.

  But she knew it wouldn't happen. Rylev wouldn't let it happen. He would let her feel a moment's hope and then, eventually, he would crush her.

  Back in her tiny apartment, her plants wer
e brown but not dead, the cracks in the plaster were no larger than before, and someone had actually fixed her dripping kitchen faucet. Life could have been worse. She sat down for a while and thought about how excited Valentina had been before the recital. Olga had wept for her then, and now Valentina had found happiness. There was no happiness for Olga Chukova.

  Later she went to the food store. It was one of those modern places where you didn't have to stand in endless lines for every purchase, but it still smelled of pickled garlic, and there still wasn't much on the shelves. If she left the Popov Institute, she would lose the food distribution that provided her with some of the delicacies that never reached the stores. This was the least of her worries, she supposed. She bought the makings of a stew and headed home.

  On the way she saw him lurking in a doorway. Her first impulse was to avoid him at all costs, to run away, to pretend that he didn't exist. But then she realized that now was as good a time as any to put an end to it. If he didn't come around, she didn't have to speak to him. Right? So she strode up to him. "Hello, Volodya."

  "Olga, my bumblebee, what a pleasant surprise."

  She smiled and shook her head. "I hardly think you're surprised, Volodya. Although I'm surprised they haven't told you not to bother with me anymore."

  Volodya raised one of his bushy eyebrows. "What do you mean, my little cherub?"

  "I mean that she's gone over to your side, so there's nothing more for me to tell you."

  "My side? I don't understand."

  "They haven't told you yet? They did what I said they should do, back in the Alexandrovsky Gardens—do you remember? They saved her. Tell them I'm grateful. And tell them to leave me alone."

  Volodya smiled. A kerchiefed babushka bustled past them, muttering about people blocking public doorways. "Ah, Olga, we are just pawns in their games," he said. "They tell us nothing. I am truly happy for your friend. But you can't mean you don't want to see me anymore."

  "That's exactly what I mean, Volodya. I have enough perfume. I don't need to go to the Bolshoi again. I just want to go back to living a normal, terrible life like everyone else. It probably isn't possible, but I'd like to try."