The Sky is Falling td-63

by Warren Murphy

  "Well, I can't give you anything more assured than a sunrise, sir."

  "Give me the facts. I will work out the confusion. On what do you base your flamboyant conclusions?"

  "We have her psychological profile."

  "That head business?" said Zemyatin, referring to the experiments in parapsychology and psychology that the KGB prided itself on. People who could read minds. Others who could bend objects without touching them. People who could do all manner of hocus-pocus Zemyatin had seen Gypsies do for coin when he was a boy. Now the entire government was financing this nonsense. Not only was it all still a form of charade, but America was ironically still sending the CIA agents to discover what Russia had found. It was a lovely little trap if anyone wanted to remove a few enemy operatives, but, like most ventures of this kind, was meaningless even there. It only paid to remove operatives when an opponent was short of them. America had operatives falling over operatives in more secret organizations than the KGB had yet discovered.

  "Psychological profiles are valid, sir," said the general. "Our profile of Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell explains why she came with our agent."

  "To you, yes. Excuse me, young man, if I want more facts. Why do you believe she came with you out of pure motives? Why do you believe she is telling the truth?"

  "The psychological profile tells us we are dealing with a woman who is a form of sociopath. Somewhere in her early childhood, her development took a strange turn. She undoubtedly was a beautiful and somewhat spoiled child. But her normal love patterns were somehow thwarted, and her sexual drive linked itself strongly to violence and suffering."

  "I am looking for a weapon, General," said Zemyatin.

  "Yes. Yes. Of course. Please. These sorts of people can hide their aggressions and hostilities very well . . . and I might add they usually are quite successful in life ... until one time when they actually see and feel intense suffering. Then they will do anything to satisfy their insatiable urge to see more violence and suffering. You see, they are basically a bomb ready to go off within themselves. Many people are like that. War brings it out in them."

  "People are not bombs. They are human beings. These games-"

  "More than games, sir. Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell will tell us more and give us more than if we used some old bodyguard of Lenin with a nightstick. This woman has been awakened."

  Zemyatin was not insulted. A jackass could do nothing better than bray at a horse. He was despairing and did not conceal his sigh. "How do we know these things?"

  Now the young general smiled.

  "We knew that the experiment was to take place in Malden, England. We didn't know its source then, but we knew the leadership was looking for it."

  "Yes, that was good," said Zemyatin. He did not mention that, with the awesome amount of the Soviet treasury that was poured into the KGB operations, they not only should have found the site but the weapon itself and had it for him on his desk. Nevertheless, one fought battles with whom he had. Not with whom he wished. Zemyatin's Russia had the KGB. To replace this man now would take time. However, if he had time, Zemyatin knew he could find someone else. Or do something to shatter this man's self-satisfaction. That complacent face could get them all killed.

  "While we were a bit rushed setting up the surveillance, we did manage to make sure there would be no local police or intelligence operations from the British near there. We created what we like to call an environment."

  "An environment?" asked Zemyatin.

  "Yes. We observed the experiment and the experimenters. We saw that Dr. O'Donnell was taking a great deal of unusual pleasure in the suffering of these animals. We . . ."

  Zemyatin raised a hand.

  "I want that weapon. Get it now. She knows where the weapon is. Twist her arm. It works. Use an injection. That works. Get the weapon."

  "Field Marshal? Do you think it is a pistol we are looking for? Some new kind of cannon? Just for example, we could put twenty American weapons right here on this desk, sir, and we wouldn't have the remotest idea of how they work. Today it is computer technology. The weapon isn't the pieces of metal. The weapon, Field Marshal, is here . . ." said the general, pointing to his brain. "That's where the weapon is. The knowledge. Now, this effort was a maximum priority in time and effort, correct?"

  Zemyatin nodded.

  "We might be able to put that weapon in your lap tomorrow, but there are very good odds we wouldn't know how to work it for three years. Maybe never. I could boot up a computer now, and without the knowledge of how it works, it would be only a hunk of metal. The weapon is the knowledge, and knowledge is in the mind."

  "Most people in the world will tell you everything on their minds, sometimes for a kind word in a harsh environment, or if they think they are going to lose their lives," said Zemyatin.

  "In a simple world or a simple time," said the general.

  "How long will it take until we have her mind?" said Zemyatin.

  "A day. Two days," said the younger man. "I appreciate your wisdom and what you have done for the motherland. We are good at what we do, even though you might have your doubts. Let me dispel those doubts, comrade."

  "Young man," said Zemyatin. "You will never dispel my doubts, and the one thing I worry about for the future of the motherland is how few doubts you have. Only lunatics don't doubt."

  "We act instead of worry."

  "I want you to continue your search for the weapon. I do not want you to let up in any way on any front. You may think you know, but you don't."

  "Certainly," said the younger general with a confident smile.

  "No. No. You don't understand."

  "You are right," said the general. "We would not mind being told why this weapon seems more important to you than their space lasers or new deliveries of atomic devices. We have found that the more we know, the better we can serve you."

  Zemyatin did not answer. It was an old saw in Intelligence that five people could not keep a secret. Zemyatin suspected the real number had to be two. He did not care about the reports that said the Americans were disorganized and could not move quickly without committees and teams of men. There just might be someone in America who, knowing the effect of missile batteries, would have the wisdom to launch immediately and then dictate terms of surrender. He would do that. And the one way to let America find out how truly dominant she was at this time was to tell one more person who would tell another person that indeed the U.S. weapon could render all of Mother Russia's weapons useless.

  Zemyatin knew his country had neither time nor leeway.

  And here was one of the bright new stars of the KGB sitting complacently behind his luxurious desk as the world headed toward a showdown. A showdown Alexei Zemyatin was not about to lose, not after all the millions of lives that had gone up until now into defending his country.

  "Tell me. What do you know of the agent the Americans sent?"

  "He was 'run around,' so to speak."

  "It didn't bother you that they sent one person?"

  "It is possible, Field Marshal, that the Americans do not think this weapon is as important as you do."

  "Americans don't send one of anything to do anything. Americans work in teams. They have teams, and now we see one man. It is a man, isn't it?"

  "There is an old axiom, General. An enemy is perfect until he shows you how to destroy him."

  "Yes, sir. That was quite popular in the First World War among pilots involved in dogfights. Those were old, slow prop-driven aircraft in which individual pilots shot at each other. There are electronic devices and formations now."

  Zemyatin did not answer the general but rose slowly. There was a gold letter opener on the luxurious desk. Zemyatin picked it up and fondled it.

  "It belonged to a princess, Field Marshal. Would you like it?" asked the general politely.

  Alexei Zemyatin noticed how smooth and comfortable the face was. Its very complacency terrified him. Carefully he closed his fingers tight around the gilt leather pommel of the lett
er opener. He smiled. The general smiled back. Then Zemyatin leaned forward as though to hand the letter opener back to the general. But as the general reached forward to take it, Zemyatin, driving himself with his rear foot, pushed the point into a smooth fat cheek.

  The general lurched backward, his eyes wide in shock, red drops splattering the perfect green uniform. His cheek spit blood.

  "War is blood," said Zemyatin. "You should know what the rest of us have felt. I hope you understand what it is about a bit more now."

  The general understood that the one they called the Great One was too powerful to move against at this time, possibly anytime. He was a dinosaur, from an age long gone. And he had to be humored. The cut not only continued to bleed, but it needed stitches. It was the first time in the general's life he had ever been wounded. For some reason he could not explain, it made him slightly more unsettled than he thought he should be. He never once suspected that he was reacting precisely the way the old man had intended him to. The young general was not giving in to the old man's crude brutality when he ordered a trace and analysis thrown at the American agent who had arrived in Great Britain. He was just humoring the old man, he told himself. He also requested an immediate response on the woman. The answer back from the chief London unit of the KGB was that the general should stop worrying. Dr. O'Donnell was not only beginning to talk, but she was secure in the safest safe house in all England. After all, what was good enough for Henry VIII should be good enough for the KGB.

  Chapter 6

  The first thing Remo did was get an exact description of Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell. She had red hair and was gorgeous. One of the technicians said she was "a knockout." Another one amplified on this:

  "A real knockout."

  The eyes were blue, the breasts were perfect, the smile was elegant, the face was exquisite.

  No one could tell him more. Remo realized that beautiful women were never really described in detail but in the way people felt about them. Which did him no good.

  In the car, he explained his problem to the British intelligence and military officers who were still conscious. "I am looking for a redheaded knockout of a woman," said Remo.

  "Aren't we all," said an officer.

  "Try Soho. Got a brunette there last week. Woman did wonders with leather," said the unit chief.

  "I am looking for the redhead who ran this test."

  "Can't tell you that, old boy. This whole thing's hush-hush. If you hadn't been such a brute you wouldn't have even found out where this test was," said the station chief.

  "Let's try something else. Who said this was hush-hush? Who said you should try to run an ally around the block?"

  "Can't tell you that. That's even more hush-hush," said the unit chief. However, when he discovered that he could end the incredible pain in his legs, where the American seemed to be exerting just the slightest pressure, by telling what he knew, he decided it wasn't that much of a secret after all.

  "It's an agency we have. Doesn't even have an MI code. Good people. Right sort of schools and such. Best we have, and they don't make much ado about normal intelligence labels. You do know what a label is, don't you?"

  "No," said Remo. "I just do my job. Where are these guys?"

  "These guys, as you call them, are known as the Source. You don't just jolly well drop in on them. They don't have some crude concrete building, with guards and snooping devices and people with guns. They are, in brief, the very best there is."

  "Maybe you don't know it," said Remo, "but we are on the same side. We have been for the last century and I expect we always will be. So where is the Source?"

  "You'll never get through to them. They're not some little station disguised off Piccadilly surrounded by plaster walls and a few gunmen. The Source is absolutely British and your newfangled hand tricks couldn't get you within a hundred yards of them."

  "Newfangled? I didn't show you anything that wasn't thirteen centuries old when you people were painting yourself blue," said Remo.

  The place Remo was not supposed to be able to penetrate was on the way from Malden to London, about twenty miles outside the city limits.

  The inpregnable edifice sat on a small hillock surrounded by hundreds of yards of lawn. The lawn was not for decoration. Remo knew that centuries before, all the trees would have been felled by peasants or captives or slaves. The land was always cleared around castles so that the enemy would be vulnerable as it approached. This castle was massive stone, twenty feet thick, smoothed so that attackers could not climb its high walls. There was even a wide moat. And parapets. And slit holes no bigger than a fist for the famous English longbow.

  "This? This is supposed to be impenetrable?" asked Remo.

  "Yes. Just try your newfangled techniques on that, old chap! "

  "That," said Remo, "is your typical Norman castle, perfectly devised to stop Anglo-Saxon rebels, and other Norman lords, It's got a moat, a drawbridge, access to the outer walls from inner ramps to roll up vats of boiling oil. It also has the mandatory escape tunnel that runs under the moat for use if all of the aforesaid shouldn't work."

  Remo reeled off this information quickly like a child reciting, which was the way he had learned it. He never thought it would come in handy. It was one of those early lessons in tradition. There was the Norman castle, the Roman stockade, the Japanese palace, the French fortress, and all those old defenses he thought were ridiculous to learn about because they weren't used anymore.

  Remo had the car stop two hundred yards from the drawbridge.

  "Giving up?" said the intelligence chief.

  "No. You don't enter a Norman castle from a drawbridge. You can do the walls, but why bother? I like to surprise people."

  Remo smiled and left the car. He would find what he was looking for between two hundred and one hundred and fifty yards from the moat. By now it would be well overgrown, but even when in use, it was disguised by rocks. Usually it was placed west of the castle so that the rising sun would be behind it. They liked to use the passages in daylight, because at night attackers would respond to sound. It was the escape tunnel, its location known only to the reigning Lord. The Japanese had long before abandoned that sort of escape route because of the danger of assassins using it. The British had never had that problem and had left the tunnels.

  The beautiful aspect of these tunnels was that they always came from the lord's bedroom, always the safest place, and the point an assassin would invariably have to attack. The lord of the castle would deliver a stirring speech about holding out to the last man, then in the privacy of his sleeping room, don the clothes of his enemies, and with his immediate family make his way into or behind enemy lines. It was a perfect escape from any Saxons or Normans against whom they might be fighting a losing battle.

  Remo could have gotten into this castle within the first month of his breath training. He felt the earth under his feet and tried to sense some different stone formation beneath. He stayed very quiet, smelling the fresh grass and sensing the odor of the oak and new life all around him. His steps became smooth glides, his arms like divining rods which seemed to rise so that his fingertips and the ground they hovered over rested on the air between them. A bird chirped in nearby trees away from the castle. Behind him the heavy gasoline chug of the car spit heavy fumes into the pure air.

  Remo kept his pace, shutting his eyes because he could not find this place with his eyes. Time had made them useless.

  Inside the car, the remaining conscious Britons discussed the peculiar American.

  "What's he doing?"

  "Damned well waltzing for all I know."

  "He's not doing anything. Just gliding around there. His eyes are closed."

  "Strange one."

  "Bit brutal, yes?"

  "I don't know. We're supposed to be his allies, after all. Why are we hiding these things from him?"

  "We're not hiding anything."

  "We're not exactly giving information freely."

  "Well, we're no
t hiding anything."

  "Don't think we should have at the beginning, if you ask me. The Americans are our friends. Who are we really protecting?" asked the military officer.

  "You worry too much. Ask too many questions. People won't like you after a while if you behave like that," said the intelligence-unit chief.

  "There. He's stopped. Over there. Now what's he doing?"

  "By Jove, look at that."

  The thin American with the thick wrists paused, quivering, then slowly, as though on some invisible quicksand, slipped down into the earth and was no longer seen.

  Remo had found the escape tunnel.

  There were those who knew of Guy Philliston, some who even said they knew him personally, and then there were his dear, dear friends.

  Guy Philliston's dear, dear friends ran England. Pretty much the way they had always run England since the Industrial Revolution. It was not some great diabolical consortium of vested interests plotting against the common man. Many of them liked to call themselves common men. Guy Philliston's dear, dear friends were those people who generally made things work to a degree. They lunched together, theatered together, sometimes transgressed with one another's wives, and if they were really close, introduced one another to their tailor. They got government posts in whatever government happened to be elected, and generally, when there was a post to fill, filled it with one of their own. Governments might change, the Queen might die, but the dear, dear friends of Guy Philliston went on forever, in empire and in dissolution, in conquest and in defeat.

  Thus it was that when Her Majesty's Secret Service found itself riddled with Russian agents, one section chief after another turning up in Moscow with the most sensitive of British secrets, this group turned to one of its own.

  It occurred at the races in the right box. The men wore gray gloves and gray top hats and impeccable race attire. The Queen had entered. They rose out of respect.

  "Guy," said his friend to Lord Philliston, "bit of a muck-up at MI-5."

  "Rather," said Guy Philliston. He had heard at lunch the day before that Russia had not only gotten away with a master list of every British agent in the Middle East, but because the list was so incredibly sensitive, no one had dared make a duplicate. Now only Russia knew who Britain had under the sun where the West's oil energy lay buried.