She gazed at him, perplexed and terrified. "I don't know. I don't know anything."
Then she looked at Daniel, whose face was filled with pain. "The summit," he murmured.
Hill nodded. "The summit, at the UN, where General Secretary Grigoriev and President Winn are going to discuss the future of our planet. Wouldn't it be nice if President Winn could be made to listen to reason the way I was—could have some of the garbage cleared away, so that he can see things as they really are?"
Valentina felt the guilt returning, stronger than ever. She should have been a clerk; she should have killed herself. How could it have come to this? "You want me to break President Winn?" she whispered.
"You're the Soviet Union's most powerful weapon, Valentina. It only makes sense that it would use this weapon against its most powerful enemy."
She couldn't make sense of it. It was too awful. She couldn't think. "I won't do it," she said.
"We're sure you'll do it, Valentina, if the stakes are high enough."
She couldn't stand any more guilt. She shook her head. "I'm an American now," she said. "I'm not going to help you people, no matter what you do to me."
Hill nodded. "I understand," he said. "But you see, we've gone to all this trouble letting you meet Daniel and run away to him just so you wouldn't be able to say that. Excuse me for a moment." He left the room then, and returned with Abigail, who gazed at them with her usual sullen expression. "Abigail, break the index finger of Mr. Fulton's left hand," he instructed her.
"Yes, sir."
Abigail strode over to the sofa. Valentina tried to get in front of Daniel, but Abigail flung her to one side and grabbed him. He struggled, but she tripped him almost casually and turned him face down on the floor. Then her knee was on his neck and she had hold of his left hand.
Valentina screamed and jumped on top of her. "No!" she shouted. "No! Stop!"
Hill dragged her away as Abigail bent Daniel's index finger slowly back. "You see why we had to do it, Valentina?" Hill asked, pinning her arms to her side. "This is the only way we could be sure you'd cooperate."
"Whatever you want," she sobbed. "Just leave him alone."
"All right, Abigail," Hill said.
Abigail let go of Daniel's hand and stood up. She didn't seem happy to be called off. Daniel turned over. He looked pale and frightened. "Don't do it, Valentina," he gasped. "It'll kill you."
It was all her fault, she thought, and now she would have to pay for it. That was fair, she supposed; she should have paid for it a long time ago. "I'll be all right," she lied. "Don't worry, Daniel."
Daniel looked at Hill. "You bastard."
"I understand how you feel," Hill replied, still holding her. "There's nothing personal in this, you understand. I'm really very fond of you, Daniel. It's just that I'm fighting for a cause I believe in."
"Is any cause worth the pain you're inflicting on innocent people?"
"Well of course," Hill said. "That's what causes are all about." He let go of her arms. She was too numb to move. "Valentina and I are leaving now, and you're going to stay, Daniel. Please don't try to escape, because we don't want to hurt you more than necessary."
And then Hill was leading her out of the room. She looked back over her shoulder as she was leaving, and Daniel was still sitting on the floor in a daze. "It'll be all right," she called out to him again. It was all she could think of to say, but she didn't believe it, and she knew he didn't believe it either.
* * *
Hill made her put her wig back on and become Andrea Dennison once again. He himself donned a wig, eyeglasses, and a fake mustache. "We need to be disguised," he explained. "We're going to the Soviet UN Mission, and American intelligence people keep track of comings and goings there. Odds are we'll end up on some videotape that no one will ever get around to looking at, but we can't be too careful."
Valentina didn't care about the disguise. She could only think about the illusion of happiness that had just been shattered, and the torture that now awaited her. "Is that where it's going to happen?" she asked.
He nodded. "Your colleagues will be joining you shortly, if they aren't there already. Everything is in place."
He sat in the backseat with her. Chuck Dennison was driving. "How long have you people been planning this?" she asked.
Hill looked pleased at her curiosity. It was time to show off. "For a long time, Valentina. Ever since I came back to America and happened to stumble across a CIA plan to get you to defect. They knew a lot about you and your infatuation with Fulton, thanks mainly to your good friend Doctor Chukova."
Valentina closed her eyes. "Olga is an American spy?"
"To begin with she was," Hill replied. "She fell for some smooth-tall and black-market type, I understand. When I informed the KGB about the CIA plan, I expected them to simply get rid of Chukova and plug the leaks. But they had a better idea. They turned Chukova into a double agent, you see, so that she told the Americans only what we wanted them told."
"She betrayed me?"
"Well, it was either that or the firing squad, you have to understand. Your friend was in a lot of trouble. Anyway, the KGB made sure your targets appeared to be failures. The targets did nothing out of the ordinary after you were finished with them. And meanwhile a female KGB officer was found who was willing to risk her life by becoming your double."
"My double?" Valentina whispered.
"That's right. Plastic surgery, months of training—she took on a whole new identity. Yours. She's at CIA headquarters right now—doing very badly on all their tests of psychic ability, I presume. You see, I convinced the CIA to put me in charge of the plan to get you to defect, so it was all fairly straightforward once we talked Fulton into going to Moscow. The KGB arranged a phony operation in London to smooth the way for us. And when you got there, there were two defections. First, I took your double and brought her to the CIA. Then Chuck here got you. The logistics were a little complicated, but it all worked out perfectly."
Valentina shook her head. It was as if she were suddenly seeing the past few months through a dark, sinister filter. "I don't understand—the double—"
"The double is to convince the CIA once and for all that there's nothing to this psychic business. If anyone has the slightest suspicion about Winn in the future, they'll just forget about it. How could the Soviets have done anything to him, they'll think. We have Borisova, after all, and she's a fraud."
Hill sounded quite proud of himself. He should be, she supposed. Thanks to her, he was convinced that what he was doing was right. If only she were a fraud, none of this would be happening. Now Daniel was part of her tragedy. And the world was part of it too, because she would break Winn if it was the only way to save Daniel, and what that would do for the Soviet Union she could only begin to imagine.
She had foolishly kept hoping for happiness and mercy in a world that provided little of either. She should have known there would be no escape.
They turned a corner, and suddenly she understood just how inevitable her tragedy had been.
The building was about a dozen stories high, with a spiked fence in front of it. It was made of white glazed brick, which gave way to black granite at the bottom. A cement canopy covered the entranceway; a faded green carpet led up to it. Over the doorway a camera blinked red, red, red, as it took photographs of everyone who approached.
It was the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, a small gold plaque on the door said. And it was the building of her dreams, a building she had invented somehow to contain all the horror of her struggles. In her dreams she had always managed to find a way out; she had always returned to reality. But how would she find a way out when the building itself had become real?
Dennison pulled up in front of a garage next door, rolled down his window, and put a card in a red slot on the wall outside. Another camera blinked at them. A voice spoke and Dennison said something back in Russian. The garage door opened, and they drove into the darkness inside.
&
nbsp; Valentina felt as if she were entering her grave.
Chapter 32
It took some persuasion before Doctor Walpole let Bill Sullivan observe the testing of Valentina Borisova. "I really should get permission," he said when Sullivan called him.
"Oh, come on, Mark," Sullivan said. "I don't want to debrief her, I just want to watch for a while."
"Okay, but what's the big deal with getting permission?"
"I'm a spook, Mark. Spooks don't like to ask permission."
Doctor Walpole grimaced. "I've worked here six years, and I've never really gotten used to spooks."
"That's a good sign, Mark. When you start getting used to them, it's time to quit. I'll be right over."
They met outside the lab, and Walpole led him down an antiseptically white corridor. "The pressure's really on for this one," Walpole said. "Roderick Williams is calling me four times a day. It's the endorphin business, you know. He's still trying to make up for that."
Sullivan had heard some rumors about the endorphin business. "How's Doctor Coyne?"
Walpole shrugged. "No one will say, which means that there's still a problem, I guess. He just isn't here anymore. It's like he never existed. This is a tough business."
"Tell me about it."
A guard stood outside one of the doors at the end of the corridor. He silently studied their credentials for a moment, then stood aside and let them enter.
They walked into a dimly lit room; there were large observation windows in the far wall looking out into the bright lab beyond. A couple of men sat at monitoring equipment in front of the windows. In the lab, a blond woman was lying inside a glass pyramid.
Sullivan walked over to one of the windows. His heart was pounding. She was only a few feet away, but he couldn't seem to see her face clearly through the pyramid. He looked around and saw a couple of TV screens among the monitoring equipment. "Can I get a close-up of her?" he asked.
One of the men reached forward and turned a knob. The face came into focus—eyes closed, an expression of slight strain on her features. Her blond hair was splayed on the pillow beneath her head. Sullivan stared at her for a long time, and then the gray eyes opened and seemed to stare back at him. "Nichto," she whispered, and he heard the word clearly through the microphones in the lab.
Nothing.
The face looked tired and unhappy.
One of the men clicked on his own microphone. "That's okay, Valentina. Do you feel like trying again?"
She shrugged. "Whatever you want," she said in English. And she closed her eyes once more.
Sullivan turned around. "She's not doing very well, is she?" he asked Walpole.
"You could do better," Walpole said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I told them she was tired. It's very tricky getting positive results in tests of psychic ability. Conditions have to be just right. And then when you do get the results, you have some people saying it's just the laws of probability catching up with you."
"She looks like she's cooperating."
"She's been an angel. But that doesn't mean she's a psychic."
"Obviously." Sullivan shook his head. "Thanks for your time, Mark."
"Don't mention it. And I mean that."
* * *
"I need to see Houghton," Sullivan said to Celia over the phone.
"Sorry, Bill. He's all tied up."
"It's a national emergency."
"Everything's a national emergency. There's a summit coming up in a couple of days, or didn't you hear? The White House wants all the latest information on the entire universe."
"Look, when you see him, just say one sentence to him: 'Sullivan has evidence that Borisova's a fake.' Can you do that much for me?"
There was a pause. "Okay," Celia said finally. "But that's it, understood?"
"Understood."
Sullivan hung up and waited. He longed for a drink. The call came half an hour later.
* * *
Houghton stared at him, his hands pressed together in front of his mouth. Sullivan sat on the other side of the large desk and desperately tried not to feel inferior. Snotty-nosed rich kid, he thought, but it didn't seem to help. "I received a report from Moscow station," he said. "Osipov sent them an emergency message. Trofimov and Chukova are coming to New York."
Houghton nodded. "So? Work it out for me."
"They were supposed to leave Moscow immediately, but we haven't seen them on any of the incoming Aeroflot flights. Could be the plan changed. But it could be they were disguised, or we just plain missed them. Also, the Soviets are obviously shipping over a lot of stuff in the diplomatic pouch in preparation for the summit. It could contain the parts for Trofimov's machine."
"You think they're going to try for President Winn?"
"Why not? Why should they just go after spies and diplomats? Why not aim for the top?"
"Because they don't have Borisova anymore. We do."
"Maybe," Sullivan said, "we don't."
Houghton raised an eyebrow. "She's a fake, you said."
Sullivan had thought that might intrigue him. Houghton had always seen a Soviet disinformation plot lurking in the shadows. "That's my theory," Sullivan said.
"What's your evidence?"
"The evidence is that they're sending these people to New York after her supposed defection. Are they going to try to pull this off without her? Doesn't seem likely, since she's the only one who's been able to do it. So maybe the defector wasn't Borisova. She looks like Borisova, but that doesn't prove anything. Also, she's failing all the tests over at the lab. That doesn't prove anything either, but at least it's consistent with my theory."
Houghton shook his head. "What's the point of a double? If they want to break Winn, why not send their whole team over here in disguise, including Borisova, and give it a try?"
"Disinformation," Sullivan said. He was going to have to go through it step by step, apparently. "We have their one supposed star, and she turns out to be a dud. We decide there's nothing to any of this psychic stuff, my job is cut out of the next budget, and meanwhile Winn has been turned into the ultimate Soviet agent of influence."
Sullivan fell silent and waited while Houghton worked it through. He hated what was coming. "But the defection was our operation," Houghton pointed: out, as Sullivan had expected he would. "If your theory is correct, they must have penetrated it—right from the very beginning. Otherwise they wouldn't have had time to prepare a double. It doesn't make sense, unless they were in control of the operation."
Sullivan nodded. "But Lawrence Hill was in control of the operation," he murmured.
Houghton swiveled a bit in his chair. "Is that what you 're suggesting, Bill? That Hill is a Soviet agent?"
"He was in Moscow at least some of the time when Trofimov and Borisova started," Sullivan pointed out, "—and this was back before Chukova came on board, back before we started finding out who they were after. He would've been a natural target. If we assume that this psychic stuff works, he's got to be a suspect."
"But if Hill's a Soviet spy," Houghton reasoned, "then the Soviets know that Chukova works for us, because Hill sure knows it. If she's still alive, then she must be working for them too, and all the information we've gotten from her would therefore be suspect—including this report that she's coming to New York."
Sullivan couldn't argue with the reasoning. "If she is a double agent," he said, "my impression is that she's not a willing one. The tone of this report suggests to me that it's for real."
Houghton's expression was blank. Not very persuasive, Sullivan knew. But he was the expert. He was the one whose opinion Houghton should trust. "So what do you suggest, Bill?" Houghton asked.
"We've got to interrogate both Hill and that supposed defector in our lab. Put them on the lie detector. Find out what the truth is. And if we come up with anything, we've got to convince the president to cancel the summit."
Once again, pretty weak. But what else could they do? Houghton nodded absently as he stared into th
e distance. "Well, thanks for the information and analysis, Bill," he said finally. "Why don't you write it up for us as well?"
"What are you going to do?" Sullivan asked.
Houghton smiled his most condescending smile. "Need to know, Bill. Be assured that we will take the appropriate action."
"You've got to believe me!" Sullivan shouted. "This is important." He wanted his tone to be powerful and demanding, but instead it sounded thin and pleading.
Houghton's smile didn't waver. "Of course it's important. Write it up, Bill. We'll follow through on it. Now if you'll excuse me..."
Houghton picked up a paper on his desk and started to read it. Sullivan hesitated for a moment, trying to think of some last, clinching comment, then gave up and silently left Houghton's office.
* * *
Colonel Thomas Poole had an exceedingly good memory, but still it took him a moment to recall the overweight man with the florid complexion who was standing at the entrance to his office. "Mr. Sullivan," he said. "What can I do for you?"
Sullivan came into his office. He looked grateful that he didn't have to explain who he was. "Operation Cadenza," he said. "I have some new information on it."
Poole motioned to a seat. "I'm all ears," he said.
Sullivan sat down and immediately started in on a strange story of disguises and KGB doubles and a plot to take over the mind of President Winn.
When he was finished, Poole leaned back in his chair. His mind raced. "This is fascinating," he said, "but why are you going outside your chain of command to tell me?"
"Because it's too important to worry about chains of command," Sullivan responded. "I told Houghton, but I'm not sure he was persuaded. I could tell Roderick Williams, but I'm afraid he might not buy it either, because he's hoping this operation will restore his reputation, and he's not going to want to admit we were duped. You have access to the president. You've got to convince him to cancel the summit. If he doesn't, he—and all of us—will be in grave danger."
"That sounds pretty melodramatic, Mr. Sullivan."
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