The Sky is Falling td-63

by Warren Murphy

  "That is frightening, Smith."

  "This is not a springtime of peace, sir."

  "I wonder what my cabinet will think. What the Joint Chiefs will think."

  "You don't have much of a choice, sir. You have to give orders."

  "You know, Smith, the buck hasn't stopped here. The whole world has."

  "Good luck, sir," said Smith.

  "And good luck to you."

  "Good luck to all of us, sir," said Smith.

  The man chosen to bring the secret to Moscow was in his early sixties, a close friend of the President's, a billionaire, a fervent anticommunist, and the owner, of among other things, a technological corporation in the forefront of science.

  When he saw what he was supposed to deliver, he almost accused the President of being a traitor. Laid out quite neatly, even to partial Russian translation, was the diagram of America's major missile defense system.

  "I won't do it," said McDonald Pease, who possessed a crew cut, a Texas twang, and a doctorate in nuclear physics.

  Then he heard about the new missile sites, and he softened a bit. Then he heard about a device that may have been the cause of the Russians' alarm, and he softened totally,

  "Of course I'm going. We could all fry like biscuits in a desert. What sort of hound dog lunatic would play around with our little ozone shield? Sweet rib-snappin' muskrat. There won't even be a roach left on this planet. Give the Ruskies everything. Let's get this world back to being just generally dangerous. Holy cowdung. What is going on?"

  "Your plane's waiting, Hal," said the President. That was McDonald Pease's nickname. With a first name like his, a nickname became mandatory.

  With this one move the President was not only revealing a major American secret, but committing perhaps the shrewdest bargainer in the West. Pease would need it all, the President knew. What he did not know was that McDonald "Hal" Pease did not stand a chance, and was going to make matters even worse by being honest.

  Chapter 12

  McDonald Pease arrived in Moscow aboard a specially chartered jet given clearance to land in a vacant airstrip by the Soviet government.

  He wore a Stetson hat and a four-thousand-dollar London suit. The chill wind of the autumn snows almost ripped the skin off his face. He didn't care. He hated these people. The only thing they ever did was steal technology and put poison into the minds of people better left to their own devices.

  But more than that. He felt they were the most consistent liars the world had ever seen-and that was going some, considering his business partners and worldwide diplomacy, which he knew was a polite term for fraud.

  The reason the Ruskies and other Marxists excelled at the blatant lie, Pease calculated, was the way they treated the word. In the tradition of the monotheistic religions, the word was supposed to carry the truth. Not that Christians, Jews, and Muslims always told the truth. But they were supposed to.

  In Marxist-Leninist ideology, words were just tools to exhort. Agitprop. It had been that way since the beginning of Marxist-Leninist ideology and it was that way now. So even though the world was at the brink of destruction, it still turned the stomach of McDonald "Hal" Pease to be bringing plans for an American defense to the Russians themselves in an effort toward mutual trust.

  Trust? Who knew what they meant by trust? The word probably had a special meaning, like their meaning for "peace." Namely, that lull in fighting between wars that would ultimately lead to their conquest of the world.

  A Russian offered his own coat so that Mr. Pease would not freeze.

  "No," said Pease. He let the wind tear at his skin.

  Besides, they had brought cars right to the airplane. He counted all his people entering the cars and counted them again when they left. He'd started with twelve, and twelve got out of the cars inside the Kremlin walls.

  The Premier had that typical Russian face: something that looked squashed. He had thick stubby hands. He expressed cautious optimism that America was willing to share her secrets.

  They were in a large room. Behind the Premier were twelve Russian officers in wicker chairs. There were two translators and a large mirror on one of the walls. The fluorescent lights wouldn't have passed muster, thought Pease, in a Mexican junk heap.

  "I am here," said Hal Pease, his twangy voice almost cracking in pain, "because we face a common danger. I understand that you do not trust us, and I am here to convince you that we are on the same side in trying to save the world."

  The Russian Premier nodded. These Russians had necks like barrels, thought Pease. They'd make good football players.

  "We know that you are building great amounts of new nuclear weapons, weapons that we believe are lacking the usual safety devices. For the first time in the history of atomic warfare, a nation has not taken proper precautions. "

  Pease heard his words translated as he spoke. He saw the bull neck turn. The Russian Premier answered, and the translator began:

  "We did not introduce atomic weapons into the world. We, like the rest of the nations, are victims of the atomic weapons which you introduced to this planet. Now you tell us we do not have the proper safety precautions. That is a lie. We are a peace-loving people, and have always been so. We would not endanger ourselves or the world with devices so heinous as you say."

  "Get off it," said Pease. "We know you have 'em. You know you have 'em. Now, dammit, we're here to give you something to show you our good faith. You don't have to keep up that silly lie, fella."

  The Premier and the translator exchanged a few words. Hal Pease didn't need the translation. He had been told to go to hell.

  "All right. Here it is. We're going to give you our command defense structure. What we want is your understanding that we are not behind this irresponsible attempt to pierce the ozone shield. All we ask is that you pause in your march toward world destruction."

  The translator began explaining the Russian love of peace, and Hal Pease told him he wasn't interested. It made him want to vomit when the Russian officers began poring over the layout of the American defenses. He saw several nods. They knew they were getting the real thing. One of the officers disappeared for about five minutes and then returned. He only nodded to the Premier. Then the Premier disappeared. The Premier was gone for a shorter time.

  The translator was not even needed. Pease could tell by the way the Russian Premier folded his arms that he had been rejected.

  The translator started on a denial of the new, more unreliable weapons, and Pease cut him off.

  "Hey, buddy. Are you out of your mind? We just laid out our belly to you bastards. What do you want? You want a war? What are you going to win? Will you answer me that? Will you go to your boss and tell him he is crazy? You're starting something no one will win, and meanwhile, if we don't blow ourselves up, we're all sure as hell going to fry like a mess of chili beans."

  He got the same blunt lie about Russia's peaceful intentions.

  "Look, there is a thing going on with the ozone layer that scares us as much as it scares you. We wanted to prove it to you by showing you our defense plans. Now here they are and you're still stonewalling. We need your help in getting to the base of the fluorocarbon danger. Dammit, we know it hit your territory. We know you have to know about it. We want to work with you toward saving the whole damned world. What are you going to win if the world is a damned parched cinder?"

  The Premier thought a moment, left, and then returned. "If you want the truth," said the Premier through the translator, "we know for a fact that you Americans are the biggest liars on the face of the earth."

  Hal Pease almost went right at his thick Russian throat, right there in the Kremlin. Trembling, he contained himself. He needn't have bothered. If he had punched out the eyes of the Russian Premier, he couldn't have done more damage than he already had.

  Alexei Zemyatin watched behind the one-way mirror. He watched and heard the American claim that he knew there was someone else pulling the strings and that that person should realize t
hat the end of the world was the end of the world for both Russia and America.

  By the man's passion, Zemyatin was almost willing to trust. Except Alexei Zemyatin knew what the man was doing, and long ago he'd learned not to trust his emotions. Too many people depended on his decision for him to trust something so unreliable as instinct. Sometimes it could be correct, of course. But it never supplanted a fact.

  And too many men had already been lost trying to find out facts for Zemyatin to indulge in that absolute essence of egotism: a hunch.

  So he felt that the man was telling the truth. But that wasn't nearly as important as what he had known for the last half-hour.

  Even as Mr. McDonald Pease's plane had taken off for Russia, the Americans were testing their weapon. And there was no question that it was the American government, not some renegade, some little business somewhere that didn't report to the government. Zemyatin could accept that businesses would run wild. He knew how healthy and uncontrollable the black market was in Russia, where there wasn't supposed to be a black market. No market at all except the state providing beautifully for everyone's needs.

  But the price had already been paid for the truth. The report, compiled from many sources-some of them now in American prisons because their safety had-ceased to be a factor-had ironically arrived the very moment Mr. Pease began his speech. Alexei had listened with only half an ear. What he read in the report froze his bones. It was like all the German troops massing just before their invasion of Russia: The trains, the armor, the munitions, the food. None of it could be missed. The Americans were far shrewder, shrewder even than he had previously thought.

  The Americans had just determined the day before that they could make all Russian armor in Europe and Asia useless. They could leave Mother Russia with only infantrymen and tanks that could not move.

  America was preparing to slaughter the armor-denuded Russian infantryman in numbers that would make the Nazis blush. There was going to be a land invasion of Russia itself. And it was going to work, even with the lesser forces of NATO. A push right into Russia's heart, and any resistance would be ruthlessly crushed. First the missiles, next the armor, then Russia's heart would be taken out and baked dry. Of course.

  Even while the American technicians and Russian military technicians were poring over the large maps and the fields of detection, which were, as the Russians were determining, absolutely genuine, Zemyatin was demanding details. In the details lay the truth.

  Officers were running in and out of the field marshal's private room with scraps of paper, reports, and sometimes the officer who had received the initial report.

  The Americans had indeed done a test. It was picked up immediately because Russian monitors had been on the alert. Incidentally, he was told, the British had picked it up, too. Although badly damaged, the British system was still functioning.

  "The Americans did not warn the British of our penetration. They had to know. From what I have been informed they had to know."

  "They did know, sir, but there is no indication at this time, Comrade Field Marshal, that they have notified their supposed allies in any way."

  "Didn't bother to notify," said Zemyatin. He felt he needed water on that one.

  "Something bad, sir?"

  "When you are in a fishing contest, and your opponent has caught a minnow, do you stop to take it away from him?"

  "The Americans are after bigger fish?"

  "The Americans are far shrewder than we ever imagined. At this point, if they believed I had a secure advantage, should they disabuse me of it? Go ahead."

  "Shorter duration this time in firing. More precise."

  "Weapons-grade accuracy," said Zemyatin.

  "Apparently, sir."

  "So that if they used it on, say, an entire front, it could be so brief as to not endanger the rest of the world." Zemyatin, of course, had hit upon the key giveaway: the device was a weapon. There was a time that Russia itself had stacked so many heavy atomic weapons that to use them, their scientists determined, would ruin life for themselves. Ironically, when cleaner weapons, as they were called, were invented, that would be the signal not that the inventions were more humane, but that they were more likely to be used in a war.

  The Americans had made the fluorocarbon device weapons-grade.

  "I might add, sir," said the officer, "that we had networked the entire American continent to locate the source."

  "It failed?"

  "No, sir. We located the source, at great risk of manpower. I think the Americans must have caught about fifteen of our people. The priority was not safety but success."

  "Yes. Good."

  "We had cars alerted. Actually, people driving with dishes on their vehicles once the device was fired."

  "That would attract attention."

  "That is why we lost so many operatives. But it also enabled us to establish that the beam was generated just north of the American city of Boston, in an area of high military and industrial technology."

  Zemyatin knew the area. It was a secondary atomic target in the Russian order of battle, war nuclear. The primaries were the missiles and then came the bases that created them. The armies, of course, could be ignored, considering the leadership.

  But far from rejoicing, Zemyatin had warned the Russian generals not to rejoice in American incompetence. If one remembered the Second World War, the Americans had also been considered incompetent then, and they had won a war on two seas defeating armies that had had years of preparations.

  In the Russian order of battle, American ground forces had been designated as a low priority. Now, with what he was seeing out of America, they were suddenly becoming a major priority if there was no great Russian armor to oppose them.

  The test had consisted of fifty new cars, expensive cars, finer than the Russians could build.

  "Within five seconds, Comrade Field Marshal, every one of those cars was inoperative. Not even the paint was damaged."

  "How inoperative?"

  "All the electronics had failed."

  "Not another mark on them?"

  "Not a scratch. But more important, the agent who got this information was picked up by the Americans. And they questioned him as to what he knew about it, as though he were the cause."

  "Correct deception."

  "But that is not all. As you know, America is a commercial country. We discovered who owned that land, who had bought the cars, and who had paid for people to attempt to start them."

  "Yes."

  "Not the military."

  "Of course not," said Zemyatin.

  "Dummy corporations. We have estimated that it cost them at least three times as much to disguise who ran the experiment as it did to conduct it."

  "CIA." said Zemyatin.

  "Of course," said the officer. "Dummy corporations, money without end. Our old friends."

  Zemyatin let out a grunt as though he'd been punched. And then, with a sense of helplessness he had not felt since he was a boy, said to the young officer:

  "See? I have said it a thousand times. Here it is. You are laughing again at the American officer corps. You thought their invasion of Grenada was a sloppy operation. You were so confident. Look at this. Look at what they have done."

  "We still have our missiles, Field Marshal," said the young officer.

  "Yes. Of course we still have them," Zemyatin said, dismissing him as the Premier left the table on the other side of the soundproof one-way mirror. If the young officer should find out about that missile battery made useless, he would probably have to be killed along with any of those who had told him.

  The Premier entered.

  "The officers say the American diagrams are genuine. Absolutely genuine. I guess we should share with them now what we know about this weapon. After all, Field Marshal, what is the point of any of us living in a world where we cannot live? It is a good point that the American millionaire made."

  "If he came to you with a bow and arrow, would you take down your
pants, bend over, and spread your cheeks, Premier?" said Zemyatin.

  "I am still your Premier."

  "They give you their defense arrangements because they don't need them. They will not matter in the next war. The only thing between us and an American tank outside these walls is their lack of knowledge of what they can do to our missiles. That's all."

  And then he explained what the Americans had done with the cars.

  "If they can make useless the advanced technology of Porsche, Cadillac, Citron, and all the glossy Japanese junk, do you really think they will have problems with the crude electronics of a Russian tank? Is that what you think?"

  "They lied to us," said the Premier.

  "Did you think they were honest? Our tanks will be useless. Our infantry will be useless. They will only provide a bloody road on which the American armies can march to Moscow and take it. And Leningrad. And Siberia. This time there is no retreat. There is only one thing we want, and that is for them to give us that weapon. Admit they have it, and hand it over."

  "They are liars. They are the biggest liars in the world."

  "The other side of the one-way mirror, Premier," said Zemyatin, nodding to where the American was waiting. Both American and Russian staffs were still exhanging information in the friendliest manner engineers could manage, the neutrality of scientific fact. "That they gave us this information about their defenses is the final proof for me that they have the better one, the one that opens the skies and makes our missiles and tanks useless."

  Zemyatin watched the Premier return to the American and tell him he was a liar. He saw that the American was outraged. It was the sort of act he would have believed, if he did not have proof that the Americans were lying.

  Later, on the way back to America, Mr. McDonald Pease was told that the coin of cooperation was to be paid in the weapon he was still insisting America wanted help in tracking down.

  He was told, in case America did not know, that it was north of Boston. Pease wired this information directly back to America.

  America knew that, he was informed. They were still looking for the weapon.

  Harold W. Smith heard from his President again and this time the trust was tinged with doubt.