He returns eventually, looking grim and winded. "What's upstairs?" he demands.
"Nothing."
He rushes past her. She follows, worried that he will open the doors on the second floor and release the creatures inside. But he doesn't stop at the second floor. He continues up and up, flight after flight.
She hasn't done this. It never occurred to her to go up.
The darkness starts to fade.
There is a door.
He twists the knob. It's locked, but the door rattles encouragingly. He takes a step back and kicks it. It opens.
He steps outside. She follows.
They are on the roof. It is flat and covered with gravel. Fog surrounds them—or perhaps they are in the clouds. She can see only a few meters in front of her. "Gotta be a fire escape or something," Winn mutters, and he starts exploring.
He has found a way out of the building. He is resourceful as well as strong. She has to do something. She starts after him, and stubs her toe. She looks down. A brick is lying there on the roof. She reaches down and grabs it, then hurries to catch up with him.
"Damn fog," he says.
She likes being wrapped up in the fog, unnoticed, scarcely visible. She wishes she could spend her whole life in it. But that won't happen. And she has to act. Now.
She hits him over the head with the brick.
He roars and staggers; then he drops from sight.
She rushes forward and stops at the edge of the roof. He is dangling over the edge, his hands slowly losing their grip on the gravel. She falls to her knees and grabs hold of him. She can't let him die, any more than she can let him escape. His face is bloody and twisted with fear and pain. Beneath him she can see nothing but fog. He is slowly dragging her down with him. It would be so nice to fall into the fog—a moment of pain at the end, perhaps, and then nothing. But she must not let that happen.
"Can't—hold—" she gasps. But she has to. Oh God, she has to.
* * *
Doctor Chukova watched the wildly spiking brain waves on the EEG and the racing, erratic pulse, and she knew Valentina could not last much longer. Over the speaker the summit droned on, but who could tell what horrors were taking place inside the poor girl's mind? "We must stop it," she announced. "There is a danger of ventricular fibrillation."
She made a move toward the pyramid. She saw Rylev silently staring at her. She closed her eyes and stopped.
* * *
"No!" she screams. This is a dream, and she must have dream-strength. She pulls, her muscles on fire, her lungs sucking in the moist air. And eventually he starts to rise. He scrambles onto the roof beside her. They spend a moment on all fours, both gasping for breath, trying to recover from the nearness of death. And then he looks at her with hatred—yes, with hatred—and he attacks.
* * *
Grigoriev was still speaking, but Winn couldn't follow him. Too many facts and figures. Winn was usually very good about facts and figures, but now he listened to them as if in a fog. What was this all about, anyway? Numbers of warheads and kinds of missiles and ranges and targets and the timetables for scrapping them and the worldwide correlation of forces. It all seemed to pass through his mind without sticking. The main issue was—was something else. He couldn't quite focus on any of it. This was not good.
But he couldn't think what to do about it.
* * *
He attacks, but much of his strength is gone, and the fight is even. They pummel each other on the rough surface of the roof. His face is covered with blood now. It is in his eyes, and he seems to be having difficulty seeing. She is so exhausted that her punches have little effect. If she could find the brick again... but she can't. He is on top of her. She has no strength to move, to hit—scarcely enough to breathe.
And then he topples over in mid-punch. The brick has done its job, apparently; he has bled too much. He lies still on the roof next to her.
She listens to his chest to make sure he is still alive. Yes.
It's over, then. She struggles to catch her breath. She looks around.
And she realizes it isn't over.
She has to get him back to the room. That's the way the dream-logic works; she is sure of it. She must close the door on him before she can truly conquer him. But she can't. She can't drag him across the roof and down the stairs and along the endless corridor. And even if she could, she has lost her bearings, and no longer knows where the door is. She needs to rest; she needs to think. The fog has to go away. It's hopeless.
And so she sits beside the unconscious president in the swirling fog, and she starts to cry.
* * *
And eventually Winn began to realize that Grigoriev was making some sense. A lot of sense, in fact. Oh, the details still escaped him, but clearly Grigoriev was as interested in peace as he was. They were both reasonable men—he could see that now. Why couldn't something be worked out?
In fact, some of the other things Grigoriev had been saying—
No. That was crazy.
He didn't feel quite right.
"I wonder if you'd excuse me," he said to Grigoriev. "I have to go to the bathroom."
"Of course." Grigoriev rose politely, and Winn went next door.
What was the matter? Nothing, really. He just had to clear his head for a moment. He stared at himself in the mirror. Sometimes you see yourself from a different angle, in a different mirror, and suddenly your face looks totally unfamiliar—and yet it doesn't. It's you, you know it's you; you've just found another way to look at yourself.
Winn felt that way now. Silly feeling. It was just a different mirror.
They should do something about disarmament. He couldn't remember any of the suggestions his advisers had made to him. That didn't matter, though. He and Grigoriev would work something out. He looked at his watch. Not much time left in today's session. Time enough to accomplish something, perhaps. He returned to Grigoriev, who smiled at him.
Winn smiled back. "All right," he said. "To get somewhere in negotiations, each side has to make some concessions. I know you've made some recently—the reduction in Warsaw Pact forces and so forth. Now tell me: what do you want from me?"
Grigoriev looked a little puzzled. "You mean—what concession?"
"That's right. So that we can have a treaty worked out by the end of this summit."
Winn waited while Grigoriev thought.
* * *
Was this it, then? Had it happened? Evidently, although the change had not been as—as miraculous as he had been led to expect. Grigoriev tried not to look upset. He was doing his duty; he knew what to ask for.
And if he got it, his career was finished.
* * *
"It has come to my attention," Grigoriev said, "that researchers in your intelligence community have developed a drug that has a powerful and beneficial effect on a person's behavior without affecting his intelligence or alertness. It works, I am told, by interacting with certain natural opiates in the brain. Are you by any chance familiar with this drug?"
The word came to Winn through the fog. Endorphins. Stupid name. "Yes, I am."
"I think this drug is sufficiently important that you should share its formula with our scientists in the Soviet Union."
Winn was puzzled. He had been expecting a discussion of tanks or bombers or something. Not this. "Hand over the formula to you?"
"That's right. You'll recall that President Reagan made a similar offer with regard to the Star Wars technology—before it was even developed. We believe this drug is of equal importance."
Well, that didn't seem like such a terribly big deal. He recalled that it was a potential cure for depression. Yes. What was wrong with giving them a cure for depression?
But something made him pause for a moment. He remembered the meeting where he had been briefed on that drug. That was the first time he had noticed Tom Poole. And now Poole had been murdered—by the Soviets. The KGB, Loud had speculated, not Grigoriev. Well, he would find out. He looked Grigor
iev in the eye. "Pavel, did you have anything to do with the murder of a member of my National Security Council staff named Colonel Thomas Poole?"
Grigoriev's eyes widened. "I have never heard of the man, I assure you."
"So you had nothing to do with his murder—either directly or indirectly?"
"Nothing. I swear it, Ted."
Winn was satisfied. He could tell when a man was lying, and Grigoriev was not lying. "All right, then. I'll get the formula for you. Maybe we can set up a working group to figure out a timetable for handing it over as part of the treaty."
"I think it would be preferable," Grigoriev said, "if you were to give it to me by the end of the summit. Frankly, some of my advisers trust Americans less than I do. You guard the fruits of your science jealously. They would want our scientists to inspect the formula and make sure it is genuine."
That seemed a little strange, but why not? A concession was a concession. "I have no problem with that," Winn said. "I'll bring it to the session tomorrow morning, then."
"That would be wonderful."
"And then we can get down to business on a treaty."
"Nothing would please me more," Grigoriev said.
Funny. He didn't sound all that pleased.
Chapter 41
Rylev listened to the two leaders exchange pleasantries as the first day of the summit came to an end. He stood up. "Turn off the machine," he ordered Trofimov, who obeyed promptly.
Chukova rushed over to tend to Borisova, who lay white and motionless on the cot.
"How is she?" Rylev asked after the doctor had had a few moments to tend to her.
Chukova looked at him with hatred. "She's alive."
"Can she talk?" He wanted to find out exactly what had happened, what she had experienced.
"Haven't you tortured her enough for today? She can scarcely breathe, let alone talk."
Rylev shrugged. "Take care of her. We're going to need her again tomorrow."
"She can't possibly—"
"Yes, she can," he said, and he turned away.
"What do you think?" Lawrence Hill asked.
"I think," Rylev said, "that it's almost time to start celebrating. But first I've got to talk to Volnikov."
* * *
Back in Moscow, Volnikov listened with satisfaction to Rylev's report. Winn had agreed to their outrageous request for the drug's formula. When he actually handed it over, they would have the proof they needed. He had been broken. He was theirs. Grigoriev would resign, and it was obvious who his successor would have to be.
The Poole business was working out as well as could be expected. News of the murder had gotten up to the president already. He was angry about it, but not as angry as he would have been if he had found out that Poole was really the Soviet agent, instead of this insignificant CIA man.
Unfortunately, they had not yet found and disposed of this CIA man. Until they did, he could still be a problem for them.
"Be vigilant, Konstantin Konstantinovich," Volnikov said to Rylev. "We need the woman again tomorrow. She must be kept safe."
"Don't worry," Rylev replied from half a world away. "We aren't going to fail now."
* * *
"Why so glum?" Grigoriev's wife asked him as the limousine brought them back to Riverdale. "The statements you both made to the press sounded quite optimistic."
"Tanya, would you still love me if I were an inspector of mines in Siberia?"
Tanya laughed. Then she looked at him, and she stopped laughing. "It can't be that bad," she murmured. It was more a question than a statement.
Grigoriev patted her hand and smiled. "Perhaps not," he said. "Perhaps not." Perhaps not Siberia. But it would be bad enough. Once you lost your base of power, you were nothing, and your enemies could strike with impunity. And you did not become leader of the Soviet Union without making enemies. He continued to smile, but he knew his wife understood.
At least he didn't need an answer to his question. He knew she would still love him, even in Siberia.
* * *
The idea seemed more daring to Winn, now that he was away from that room, now that he was no longer talking to Grigoriev. He recalled the worries about that drug getting into the hands of the Soviets. Potential military uses. Still, the damage couldn't be all that serious. And the need to make a gesture, to get things moving in the right direction, probably outweighed all other considerations. If relations were good between the two countries, no one would have to worry about potential military uses. There were so many ways the two superpowers could help each other, and the world, if only both sides could get past their mutual suspicion and animosity.
He thought about talking it over with his advisers, but decided against it. He had a feeling they wouldn't approve, and of course their reasons would be good ones. But they hadn't been in that room; they didn't know Grigoriev the way he did. Their opinions didn't count.
The thing to do, he decided, was to get the formula and bring it to the session tomorrow morning. Then he could make the final decision on the spot.
He knew that it would be the right one.
* * *
Roderick Williams had been feeling sorry for himself. Poole was dead, Sullivan was a Soviet agent, and this whole Borisova business was apparently a Soviet trick—aimed, apparently, at his own gullibility in psychic matters. Doctor Coyne was still staring out his wonderful window at the wonderful rain, still a victim of his own drug, a drug for which they were having no luck in finding an antidote. And George Loud was still director of Central Intelligence, still letting it be known that he was dissatisfied with the way things were done around here, still correcting Williams's grammar. Some days you just want to go home and get drunk.
And then his secretary told him the president of the United States was on the line.
That was good news. Right? "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Roderick, I have a favor to ask," Winn said.
"Anything, Mr. President."
"The drug you people developed. The one that had to do with the—the—"
"Endorphins."
"Right. Bring me the formula."
"You mean, when you get back from the summit?"
"No. Tonight. In New York, at the Plaza. I've left word with my chief of staff that you're to be admitted as soon as you arrive."
Tonight? That seemed strange. Why so soon? "May I ask, sir—"
"No, you may not. Bring it."
"Of course, sir."
"And Roderick?"
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"You're not to tell anyone about this."
"Yes, Mr. President."
End of conversation, if not the end of his questions. What was going on? Why did Winn need the damn formula? And why the secrecy?
Probably using it as a bargaining chip in the summit. It was strange that he needed the actual formula, but that was beside the point. The point, Williams realized, was that he had run the project that had produced the drug. And now the president of the United States needed it. If nothing else was going right, at least Williams would get credit for that. Suddenly things were looking up.
Williams went to his personal safe, opened it, and took out the manila envelope that contained the formula and Coyne's notes. He made a copy of everything and returned the envelope to the safe. Then he put on his coat, called for a security escort, and headed straight for the airport.
The president would have the information he needed in plenty of time for the morning session of the summit.
* * *
Rylev sat on his bed and closed his eyes. The years of planning and work were almost over. And when he and Volnikov had reached their goal, there would be glory and advancement for the two of them, and victory for the motherland. Just one more day.
Fulton, he thought. He had agreed to let Borisova see the American pianist tonight. He considered not bothering; she wasn't going to be in any condition to enjoy his company. Still, she might get nasty if Fulton didn't show up. And Rylev didn't want any pr
oblems. Not now.
He went to arrange the visit.
Chapter 42
Bill Sullivan lay on the bed in his dingy hotel room and watched Winn and Grigoriev on the evening news. There was nothing obviously wrong with Winn as he spoke to the press, Sullivan had to admit. Oh, he was more conciliatory toward the Soviets than usual, but that wasn't surprising at a joint appearance with Grigoriev. And you wouldn't expect any overt treason, if Lawrence Hill's behavior was any guide.
Sullivan did think he detected some confusion in Winn's expression, a little hesitation in his words. But maybe he was seeing only what he wanted to see. If the proof were right out there in the open, it might conceivably convince Houghton and the rest; he might not have to be in this alone.
He certainly wasn't getting very far without any help. He was in a hotel that was one step up from a flophouse, with a hangover and a dwindling supply of cash and no idea what to do next. He wasn't very good at this business; that much was clear.
A knock on the door startled him from his brooding. He sat bolt upright on the bed, his heart pounding.
"Mr. O'Reilly? It's Arnie, the night room-clerk. Um, like, we're having a problem with the heat, so I'm supposed to bring people extra blankets." Pop.
Arnie had a thick New York accent. He sounded like he was chewing bubble gum. Sullivan picked up his gun and tiptoed over to the door. He stood beside it and waited.
"Mr. O'Reilly? You in there? It's supposed to get pretty cold later on." Pop.
A commercial for a denture cleaner replaced Grigoriev and Winn on TV.
If there were a lot of them in the corridor, he didn't have a chance. But maybe this guy was just checking out a lead. He reached over and opened the door.
Nothing happened. Then Arnie spoke again, only without a New York accent this time. "Bill? Why don't you just come on out, Bill? There's no need for violence among friends."
Arnie didn't sound entirely sure of himself. Good. He was probably alone, then. Sullivan pictured him on the other side of the thin wall, probably with his gun drawn too, a mirror image of his prey. Sullivan wasn't going to beat him by force. He thought for a moment, and then tossed his gun onto the floor. He stepped into the doorway, hands in the air.
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