The Alpha Deception

by Jon Land

  After stepping from the shower he used two towels to dry every inch of his frame. He put on a freshly pressed uniform. With the shades of his townhouse carefully drawn he could smell the fresh wool and see himself in the mirror as he was meant to be seen. Soon he would be free to wear the uniforms at his leisure once again. Soon his position within the Soviet Union would require him to. The wrongs were going to be set right. He was going to make them so. He was a man totally in control of his own destiny.

  And the world’s.

  The general towel-dried his hair once more and combed it neatly. The meeting he was about to chair would take place by conference call instead of in person, but he had showered and changed for it nonetheless. He pulled on his elevated boots and headed downstairs toward the windowless back room where the technological implements for these meetings had been set up.

  Raskowski’s starched uniform snapped stiffly as he quickly passed the large bay window he had forgotten to draw the curtains over. No one saw him. No one was looking. Soon the whole world would be watching.

  It didn’t have to be this way. He had brought the results of his Alpha project to the Politburo in loyalty and good faith, and he had suffered only embarrassment and heartache as a result. Raskowski refused to take their rejection lying down, but there were just too many of the weak old men and younger ones calling themselves “reformers” to beat back. He accepted his exile with enough grace to assure the opportunity to enact the “disappearance” he was planning. He had already recruited men in all levels of the Soviet government and military who felt as he did. When he made his move, they would be with him.

  The key, though, remained the death ray. Once all tests were pronounced successful, Raskowski managed to launch the satellite that made his plan operational. All over the Soviet Union his people began laying the foundation for the tumultuous upheaval to come. Every phase of the operation, every minute detail, had been thought out to the letter. The destruction of Hope Valley went off brilliantly, as did his indirect contact with the Americans. All was perfect.

  Until the unthinkable occurred. A scientific miscalculation, not his at all, threw the entire plan into jeopardy. It was left to Raskowski to lift it from the heap, to reform his strategy in a daring and nearly impossible plan. Impossible for others perhaps, but not for him. The true basis of brilliance, he had always believed, was the ability to deal with change. On the battlefield especially, and that was what the whole world had become. Only a handful of people were privy to the revised operation, and that was the way it would stay. Timing was everything now. The slightest slipup or miscalculation would destroy everything.

  The back room contained only a single table and chair. Atop the table rested three speaker-phones: white, red, and green. Each of his main Soviet subordinates spoke over the same one every time and Raskowski had come to think of them, as they themselves did, in terms of the color of their speakers. Raskowski sat down in the single chair and eased it gracefully under the table, careful not to wrinkle his uniform.

  “Green, are you there?” he asked at precisely eleven A.M. Bangkok time.

  “Yes, sir,” the voice answered in Russian.

  “White?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Red?”

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Very good. Then let us begin. My report, comrades, is simple. Everything is proceeding on schedule, as planned.”

  “What of the American response to our second message sent through Turkey?” asked White.

  “Befuddlement and fear. Did you expect any less?”

  “I expected considerably more,” White said. “I feel we are waiting too long to use the ray to its full capabilities.”

  “The reasons for that strategy have already been discussed. Let us not waste time reiterating.”

  “You had planned to provide us with the details of the final stage today,” Red reminded him.

  “I’m afraid that must be put off for a brief time.”

  “So this continues to be a question of trust,” noted Green. “You ask us to trust you, yet you do not return the favor.”

  “Moscow is too small a city to take the risk. I’ve learned that already in my career. I do not intend to make the same mistake twice.”

  “All the same,” said White, “if we are in possession of the means to destroy America, it seems foolish not to employ it before the Americans have time to formulate a more active response.”

  “At least a larger demonstration,” suggested Green.

  “Comrade Green,” Raskowski started, groping for the advantage, “you have already informed me that your override of the Omsk communications facility cannot take place for at least four more days. At that time the Russian people will be informed of the ultimatum the true leadership of our country has issued the United States. With that time frame in mind, what could we possibly gain from escalating matters now? I would suggest, then, that you, all of us, remain concerned purely with our own individual roles. Time can only work for us. The more we give the U.S., the more she will realize her hopelessness. If she accedes to our demands, then her surrender will pave the way for our ascension to power. If she does not and we are forced to destroy her, the Soviet Union will be left as the lone superpower, and the present impotent leadership will have no choice but to abdicate to us.”

  For a few moments only breathing emerged from the speakers. Finally Red spoke again.

  “When do you plan to inform us of the precise timetable for the final stage?”

  “In two days. Three at most.”

  “I can accept that,” Red told him.

  “And I.”

  “And I.”

  Raskowski smiled, relaxed now. “Then I believe our business for today is concluded, comrades. I will contact you again soon through the usual channels. Das Zvedanya.”

  Chapter 19

  “BANNA ES SU SEI! Banna es su sei!”

  Natalya Tomachenko shoved through the crowd of young Thai children who continued to plead for money with their hands outstretched. She had arrived in Bangkok yesterday afternoon and checked into the Siam Intercontinental Hotel to await contact from Raskowski’s underling. His name was Katlov and the intelligence reports she had read before leaving Moscow had no trace of him. He would be checking for a certain name daily in the hotel register, and when it appeared a letter would soon arrive with further instructions for her.

  True to his word, it had arrived just one hour before, instructing her to wear a blue hat and to walk from her hotel to Taa Phra Chan Pier and then take a boat to the Thonburi Floating Market. She had obtained the hat from a shop in the hotel and set straight out into the hot and humid Bangkok day. Thunderstorms were in the forecast. She loved the city for its vitality and pace, and also for the way it clung to ancient traditions and manners. The streets were crowded but locals generally moved aside to let tourists pass.

  As she walked Natalya’s thoughts turned to Blaine McCracken. She was attracted to him mostly out of admiration for his personal honor. Natalya knew what he had been through, knew what his government had done to him. In a sense it was not much different from what her government had done to her. The difference was that in America McCracken had found room to slide out. It was Natalya’s lot to have to make her own room.

  Even before he and his former employers parted company, though, McCracken’s career had been marked by a relentless individualism. In one respect he was a mercenary, a hired killer. Yet in another he was a liberator, a man who stood for something. Somehow these two opposites had meshed within him, creating a man of incredible complexities who was quite comfortable with himself.

  His physical appearance personified this. Not handsome, maybe not even good-looking, but still attractive and sensually appealing. He didn’t try to be anything and ended up being much. Natalya could admit only to herself that Friday night she wanted more than anything to invite him to her bed. But she hadn’t let herself. It would have revealed more of herself than she was prepared to. Her
shields were her greatest resource. In a world of men, she needed them always. She was an outsider in their world, tolerated by her superiors and feared by her enemies who inevitably underestimated her. But Blaine McCracken hadn’t tried to estimate her at all. His only personal comment stung her for the insight he possessed, as if he could look into her soul and read its message.

  What have they got on you, Natalya?

  She hadn’t told him because as much as it hurt to think about it, it would hurt even more to discuss. She had come from a family of soldiers, heroes whose coffins were weighed down by many medals. Her father had been the lone exception, an outspoken professor of philosophy whose frustration mounted with each book that was refused publication in the Soviet Union. For a time Natalya could barely tolerate him herself, considering him an embarrassment to the State. It had been a pair of uncles who had secured her appointment for her, one of the conditions being that she renounce her father, which she did willingly and with a minimum of guilt.

  The guilt came later, for he never disowned her, respecting her choice as she had never respected his. The early years of her work brought them closer, as she rose through the ranks and saw increasingly that the opinions that had branded him an outcast were justified. She had just had her request for reassignment out of the field accepted when her father was sentenced to a gulag, and her KGB superior quickly made it plain that his only hope for a pardon lay in her agreeing to continue to work on “wet” affairs, the wettest in fact. They promised her just one mission would do the job and she agreed. Her father, they said, would be waiting at home when she returned.

  Natalya could barely get her key into the door, she was so excited. At last they would have time together to make up for the lost years. When the door swung free her eyes fell on her KGB control, seated in any easy chair flanked by a pair of his mindless henchmen.

  “My father,” she said flatly.

  “Some legal problems,” came his businesslike response. “Nothing to concern yourself with. The paperwork tends to be slow in these matters. In the interim we have another mission which you might want to consider. Not part of the deal of course, merely a show of good faith on your part.”

  The control didn’t elaborate; he didn’t have to. His message was clear. She resisted, and he kindly offered to let her visit her father. In three short months he had aged a dozen years. But still he bore her no ill feeling. She promised him he would soon be out without telling him that to assure his release she had sold herself to the forces he hated most.

  At the end of her next mission, she was greeted with the news that he had, in fact, been released. She was taken straight to him, but not to his home of thirty years near the university. More technicalities, her control explained, which led to his being placed in a small guarded flat in Gorky. The implication was clear. A return to the university could come only after she completed yet another mission. That was it. They had her. Then, after two further missions, when he was finally allowed to return to teaching in a much lower position, the news came that he had progressive heart disease and only a visa to the United States could save his life. Just one more mission and he’ll have it, her control had told her three missions back.

  Well, this was the mission that would finally win her father that visa. If she could add a few years to his life, perhaps it would make up for the years they had lost together. Natalya had become a child of the State instead of her father. She had realized too late the bitter lesson that the State was a loveless parent that cared for its children only as far as those children could provide for it. But Natalya was providing only for herself now. This time she would complete the mission with the means to finally end their extortion. Her conversations with the General Secretary had been recorded, and she would use them against him unless he cooperated. Eventually this might mean her death, but she owed it to her father to try.

  Her thoughts had so engrossed her en route to the pier closest to Thammasart University that she barely noticed the thunder and pelting rain which drove a hot scent off the asphalt and had soaked through her clothes in seconds. A three-wheeled gas-driven taxi known as a samlor pulled up alongside her.

  “Need a ride, miss?” the rain-soaked driver asked her.

  Natalya was about to beg off when she realized the man had addressed her in English.

  “And might you offer a suggestion as to where I should go?” she answered in Russian.

  He smiled, teeth full and white. “The floating market, miss, of course!” In Russian.

  Natalya climbed into the back of the samlor. The driver started off, leaning on his horn to clear the muddied streets of the hordes spilling off the sidewalk.

  No further words were exchanged. Natalya knew now that the route to Katlov would be long and intricate; the defector from Raskowski’s ranks was not about to take chances. The complexity was unnerving yet reassuring. Precautions had been taken. The chances of a run-in with the general’s people seemed substantially reduced.

  The nameless samlor driver delivered her to Taa Phra Chan Pier. In the klong below sat endless rows of rickety boats with single drivers waiting for potential fares. They began beckoning to Natalya as soon as they saw her approach.

  “I will handle everything, miss,” the driver whispered and led her to a boat near the end of the row. Its driver sat placidly in the stern with a straw hat tipped over his eyes.

  “Aye!”

  The boatman pushed his straw hat back, and Natalya saw he had no front teeth. The samlor driver helped her down into the bow.

  “Thonburi Floating Market,” he told the boatman in Thai. “And be quick about it.”

  The boatman started to ease out from the pier, and minutes later they were drifting slowly south, their boat hugging the side to keep the center clear for larger boat traffic. Much of the city of Bangkok is crisscrossed by canals known as klongs, some as wide as a street, others barely two meters, and many marked for extinction by the demand for more roadways. Many of the klongs are lined by shops where the tourist can dock his boat at a private jetty. The klongs recede deep into the Thonburi district, where they finally reach the floating market: a collection of narrow skiffs packed to the brim with fresh fruits and vegetables advertised with screams and shouts by the boat merchants seeking to sell them. Cheap jewelry and pottery are available as well.

  In years past the floating market was a necessary element for survival in Bangkok. Locals did all their shopping there, and the ebb and flow of the economy was tied directly to the weather. But more recently it has become a tourist attraction more than anything else.

  The Thonburi Market lies within a serpentine collection of narrower klongs in the northwest section of Bangkok. Natalya saw the first of the shops thirty minutes into the ride. If the weather had been better, boat traffic would have been as thick as a New York rush hour. The rain, though, had kept most tourists away, and Natalya’s boatman was able to easily negotiate through the waters.

  The rain had slackened to barely a drizzle as Natalya’s boatman pulled to a halt next to an old woman selling an assorted collection of fresh vegetables. The boatman spoke with the old woman briefly, and she proceeded to pack one box full of her best merchandise.

  “Baht 500,” her toothless driver called to Natalya.

  She handed him the proper collection of bills and he exchanged them for the box of vegetables, stowing it just before Natalya as he swung his craft back around.

  “Your next instructions are inside,” he said in English, not looking at her.

  Natalya eased herself forward and removed the top of the box. When no note was immediately visible, she began to move the vegetables aside until a sheet of yellowed paper was revealed. She left it in the box as she read.

  Dusit Hall of the Royal Palace.

  Natalya sighed. The grounds of the Royal Palace were located back near Taa Phra Chan Pier, where she had embarked for the floating market. She was being run around in a circle, but she was in Katlov’s hands and subject totally to his wh
ims.

  The toothless boatman deposited her in almost the very spot he had picked her up, and Natalya walked the short distance to the Gate of Wonderful Victory from which a wide street led into the outer courtyard of the Royal Palace. There were more than a hundred individual buildings situated on the grounds, starting with a number of government-occupied ones. As she moved further into the complex, the buildings grew older and richer in history.

  Dusit Hall was an art gallery located within Dusit Maham Prasad, an elegant white building. The hall was actually a large inner chamber, the only part of this building open to visitors. She walked about past the various paintings, murals, and statues, trying to keep herself patient. Suddenly a blue-suited Asian was at her side readying his camera before a massive painting.

  “Your next stop is the Wat Phra Kaeo,” he said, regarding her briefly. “Go to the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha.”

  The man snapped a series of pictures and moved on. Natalya turned and headed back for the door.

  The Wat Phra Kaeo was the most sacred of all buildings in Thailand, accessible through a side gate from the palace courtyard. Natalya paid a separate admission and was immediately awed by what lay before her. The complex, with gold-layered domes and pillars of white marble, was like nothing else here. Its beauty lay in its simplicity, as if it had been built with humility but with great reverence to the spirit housed within.

  Natalya passed down a long corridor lined with murals, at the end of which lay a staircase flanked by bronze lions. Visitors were requested to remove their shoes before proceeding up and Natalya complied. At the top, directly before the entrance to Buddha’s chamber, a larger pair of lions maintained their eternal vigil between golden pillars. Natalya walked between them and into the chamber.