The Sky is Falling td-63

by Warren Murphy

"With knives and forks and everything?"

  "Certainly. He is going to eat with us."

  "I am not a boychik," said General Ivanovich, entering the apartment. "I am a general in the sword who protects the party and the people. I am forty-four years old, bodyguard."

  "Do you want a saucer with your cup?" asked the old bodyguard.

  "Set a whole place," came Zemyatin's voice.

  "A whole place, big deal. A whole place for a pretty little boychik," said the old man, shuffling off to the kitchen.

  While there were no grand Western furniture in this apartment as there was in the lush dachas outside the city for men of lesser rank than the Great One, there was enough radio and electronic machinery to staff the most advanced Russian outpost. Zemyatin always had to be informed. Otherwise, it was a simple apartment with a few books, a picture of a young woman, taken many years before, and pictures of her as she grew older. But there was that unkempt feeling in this bachelor apartment; those little things that women gave to the lives of men to create the weather of their lives was missing.

  The dinner was boiled beef, potatoes, and a raw salad, with tea and sugar for dessert. The seasonings tasted like someone had just grabbed the first box off the shelf.

  "I hate to tell you this," said General Ivanovich, "but we have had multi-analysis of the pictures, of the reports, of everything. We have not found a single flaw. We may be facing the one man who does not show you how to kill him."

  "Eat your potatoes," said Zemyatin.

  "But if you are not going to, don't mash them. He'll eat them tomorrow," said the bodyguard. "You wanted the saucer?"

  "A full setting for the general," said Zemyatin.

  "He may not even want tea," said the bodyguard.

  "So he'll leave it," said Zemyatin.

  " 'So he'll leave it,' " mimicked the bodyguard. "So I'll clean it up." He shuffled back from the bare table with the linoleum place mats into the kitchen.

  "Ivan," said Zemyatin. "The reason I say we must assume that every enemy is perfect is that I am sure no one is perfect. All that has happened is that you have not found the American's flaw yet. So where, we must ask ourselves, have we been looking? This is crucial in our thinking-"

  The bodyguard came back into the living room, brushing his shoulder into the conversation.

  "Here is your cup. Here is your saucer," said the bodyguard. He banged the saucer down on the table.

  "Thank you," said Zemyatin. "Now, Ivan, the world situation is this-"

  "The glass on the saucer doesn't even have tea in it, but the pretty boychik has got himself a saucer. You want two saucers for the tea you don't have?"

  "Give him tea," said Zemyatin.

  "I am not sure about the tea," said General Ivanovich. "I would like to get on with this. We are dealing with a strange new element-"

  "Take the tea," said Zemyatin.

  "Tea," said General Ivanovich.

  "He doesn't want tea. You made him take tea."

  "I'll have the tea," said General Ivanovich. His bright, perfectly green uniform stood out like a shiny button in a rag factory compared to the old bathrobe Zemyatin wore, and the floppy trousers with the old lug of a pistol stuck in them that the bodyguard wore.

  "Just because he tells you do to something, you don't have to do it. He pushed Russia around. Don't let him push you around."

  "He is my commander," said General Ivanovich,

  "Bully, bully, bully. We all get bullied by Alexei. Alexei the bully."

  By the time the bodyguard got back with the steaming tea, Zemyatin had outlined the situation with brilliant simplicity. Unfortunately, the bodyguard wouldn't leave until General Ivanovich took at least one sip of the tea. It burned his tongue.

  "He's not a Russian, Alexei," said the bodyguard, "He didn't put a sugar cube in his mouth."

  "He's a new Russian."

  "None of us are that new. He doesn't want the tea. Look."

  "Would you mind if we defended Mother Russia in the midst of your dinner?" said Alexei.

  "Every time you want needless saucers, we have got a national emergency," said the bodyguard.

  "You are probably wondering why I keep him," said Zemyatin.

  "No," said ivanovich, who was even now learning to think like the Great One. "Obviously he does the necessary things very well. You can within a doubt trust him to do certain things. In brief, sir, he does work."

  "Good. Now, this killer they have. We don't know his flaw yet. All right. Good. Let's put that aside for just a moment. I don't care whether we kill him or not. A few men here or there does not matter."

  "There is something else," Zemyatin continued. "The Americans have a weapon we are interested in."

  "Would you identify it for me?"

  "No," said Zemyatin. "But they were testing it in London, when this man appeared on the scene to snatch away our one lead to it. This extraordinary man. This man whom we don't know how to kill yet. Then he turns up in a South American country. Then he turns up in Hanoi. Why?"

  General Ivanovich knew from the way the older man spoke that he was not supposed to answer this. "Because, as we gather from reports now coming in, he is looking for the same weapon."

  "Is it possible they don't have the weapon? Maybe the British have the weapon."

  "Logical, but we know everything the British have. We know all their layers of counterintelligence. Now I have told you more than I wanted about other departments. No matter. We must ask ourselves, why are they committing this weapon? As a deception?"

  "If it were anyone other than the one I have seen," said Ivanovich, "I would say snatch him and get the information from him."

  "What we are seeing on almost every level is an America far more cunning than we ever thought possible. Could I have misjudged, and is there another explanation for all this? I ask because we are approaching a point from where there is no return. A major decision awaits. It will be like a bullet that cannot be recalled. The world will never be the same. Our world. Their world. Never the same."

  General Ivanovich thought a moment. "I'll tell you, sir, that before those pictures, before seeing what I have seen both through my own eyes and through the eyes of experts, I would have said yes, you are misjudging the Americans. I had never seen anything the Americans had done, outside of electronics, that would justify our respect."

  "And now?"

  "And now I know of a man ... a killing machine whose chin can dislodge the neck vertebrae of another human being. We have tried to put him down twice. And he appears twice. Is he new? Did he come just this month from nowhere? No. He has been around."

  "Right," said Zemyatin. "But strangely, they are sending him after this thing we believe they have."

  "If they are still looking for it, do they have it?" asked the general.

  "Ah," said Zemyatin. "The Americans who never hid things that well before would ordinarily not hide things that well now. But look at this killer they had hidden so well. Who does he work for? We don't know. So they are smarter than we think. What a great deception to make one think one does not have the weapon until it is used, or tested some more."

  "The question is, Comrade Field Marshal, are the Americans that cunning?"

  "An enemy is perfect until he shows you how to kill him. I never thought we would see the day when I am hearing about one human being who is perfect. There must be something we do not know."

  Ivanovich had an idea. His desk had been bothered, of late most intensely, by offers of the North Korean allies to perform services in the international arena. Before devoting all his time to the field marshal, Ivanovich had handled these diplomatic requests himself. Now he had shunted them off to a subordinate.

  "Our friends in Pyongyang want to provide a service. They say that we insult them by not making them full partners in the socialist struggle. They have had some success recently and of course have trumpeted it to us. Why not use them on this American?"

  "Throwing another piece of dung," said Zemyatin. "
What could they possibly have that we don't have? The random purposeless killing for which they have an appetite interests me not at all."

  "They have succeeded in killing an SDEC director, a man we couldn't even locate. And now, as a gift of pride, they are going to give us the pope himself. No more meddling in our western Polish border. The pope. The SDEC director dead and the pope about to be dead."

  "Let me tell you about the Koreans. There is a saying that when one brings a Korean to wield a knife, one hires not a servant but a master. It's true. Never trust a Korean assassin."

  "I am not saying trust."

  "This is something you might not know, boychik, but it is an ancient saying. The czars tasted the bitterness. One of the first things we did was to get their records. I was the one who made the decision to employ some of the czar's best policemen. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Mother Russia used special Koreans extensively. Do you know who got killed as often as a czar's enemy? The czar. There is a saying in this country that nothing comes out of Korea but your own death. No to Koreans. No. Never. I say it. The czars before us said it. And our grandchildren will say it."

  General Ivanovich snapped to attention while sitting. His back became straight, his heels touched, his chin lifted to level, and Zemyatin knew the young man was afraid again. But the old field marshal had not said this to instill fear. It was something he had trusted over the years, an order he had given when the KGB first began using satellites. Use anyone but a Korean. The KGB had followed it blindly like good bureaucrats.

  One of the electronic consoles beeped, and the old bodyguard shuffled over and quickly had it going.

  Ivanovich looked back at Zemyatin, the Great One, who gave a small nod. The young general understood that there had been a question as to whether this information could be shared with him in the room. Without even a spoken answer, the field marshal's shrug indicated the exact level of information that was allowed to be discussed with the general present:

  "They have fired it again," said the old bodyguard.

  "Where?" said Zemyatin.

  "Egyptian Sahara. An area of one hundred square kilometers. Our people are there already and risking quite a bit to get us the information. The Egyptians work closely with the Americans."

  "One hundred square kilometers. That's an area any army would occupy. An entire army."

  "And fired in a single second."

  "That is their last test. Their last. No more testing. What would they have to test for?" said Zemyatin.

  "Is this the weapon the American is protecting?" asked the young KGB general.

  Zemyatin dismissed the question with a hand. The old man thought awhile, his face becoming even older, more grave. Lines of death showed. The eyes seemed to be looking into hell.

  Finally, the younger man asked:

  "What is our next step toward their special person? Should we accelerate some tracking operation on him at this point?"

  "What?" said Zemyatin as though coming out of a sleep.

  "The American."

  The bodyguard touched the clean crisp general's uniform. "Leave," he said. The American was of no importance now.

  Shortly thereafter reports came in of two more firings in the area. On a map it clearly showed that in a strip of Egyptian desert equal to the size of the Balkans, Russia's soft underbelly, the sand had come under such intense solar heat that it had fused into a hard, slick, slippery surface not unlike glass.

  To Zemyatin it was clear why they had chosen the Sahara. The transformation of the sand to glass was the one instant effect observable from a satellite. The Americans could, as he was doing now, plot the range of their weapon. All they would have to do was recalibrate, and lay Russia defenseless. There would be no more tests. The attack, he was sadly sure, could come at any moment. It was time to launch his own. In this moment, Alexei Zemyatin, the man who had only wanted to be a good butler as a boy, would show his true military genius.

  He ordered the Premier to immediately inform the Americans that Russia would now share information about the fluorocarbon beam that could harm them all. He did this by telephone because it was faster.

  "Tell them there have been certain effects on the missiles. Just certain effects. Do not tell that the missiles are or are not destroyed. Certain effects."

  "But, Alexei . . ."

  "Shhh," said Zemyatin. It had been suspected but not yet proven that the Americans could bug any telephone line in the world from outer space. "Do it. Do it now. Have it done by the time I get there. Yes?"

  His bodyguard noted that the young general had not drunk his tea.

  Zemyatin was driven by another old bodyguard to the Premier's dacha. The weather was crisp and hard and there were many soldiers outside. They stood in greatcoats and shiny boots looking formidable. Alexei was still in his bathrobe.

  He walked through the soldiers outside, and through the officers inside, and nodded the Premier into the back room. The Premier wanted to take some generals with him.

  "If you do I'll have them shot," said Zemyatin.

  The Premier tried to pretend he had never been so lavishly insulted in front of his own military. Zemyatin had never done this before. Why he was starting now, the Premier did not know. But there were certain formalities that should be observed.

  "Alexei, you cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the leader of your country."

  Zemyatin did not sit. "Did you contact the Americans?"

  "Yes. They are sending their Mr. Pease back again."

  "Good. When?"

  "They seem to be as nervous about this as they say we should be."

  "When will he be here?"

  "Fifteen hours."

  "All right, we will have some technical people add to what we know to stretch out our information. Figure eight hours for the first conference, then we all sleep. That should get us another twelve hours. We will stretch this for two days, forty-eight hours. Good."

  "Why do we give them faulty information for forty-eight hours?"

  "Not faulty. We just won't give them the fact that their beam totally destroys the electronics in our missiles until the second session, and in that session we keep them locked up with us until the forty-eighth hour has passed."

  "Why, are we giving them the truth about our missiles being useless?"

  "Because, my dear Premier, it is the one thing they don't have yet," said Zemyatin. "Look. At this moment they have everything they need to launch an attack with this weapon and do it successfully. Everything. We would be through. They could sit in Moscow tomorrow and you could throw stones at them."

  "So why give them the last thing they do not know?"

  "Because it is the only thing for which they might delay. The only thing they need now is absolute assurance that our missiles-not their own, which I am sure they have tested this weapon on-but ours, do not work when hit by the unfiltered sun's rays. They will delay because we will give ourselves up on a silver platter."

  "Do we want to do that?"

  "No. What we have done is past the point of no return. While they are delaying for the last thing they need, our new missiles will go off."

  "You mean in two days?"

  "Within two days."

  "When exactly?"

  "You do not need to know. Just talk peace," said Zemyatin. He did not, of course, trust the head of the Russian government with this information now that the top bureaucrat had given him permission to launch the missiles in their very building. That was the reason for the time data given to every commander who perilously trucked the huge cumbersome death machines into the new Siberian sites. Alexei Zemyatin did not trust all of them to fire at once, given a sudden order. The trigger on the gun had already been pulled. Two days from now the holocaust would come out of its barrel.

  In Washington, McDonald "Hal" Pease was told that the Russians were willing to share secrets now. They had realized that they shared a fragile planet with the rest of the human race.

  "I'll be
lieve it when I see it," said Pease.

  Chapter 16

  If there was a remote chance that Alexei Zemyatin might call off the attack on the suspicion that America might not itself be really planning its own attack, a simple cassette would smother that faint suspicion with brutal finality. Actually there were twenty little cassettes in a cheap plastic case with a colorful brochure. The packages cost three dollars each to manufacture, and sold for eight hundred.

  They promised to bring out the leadership potential in every man. What they did was hypnotize people into ignoring reality. On his steady corporate rise Reemer Bolt had bought many such self-fulfillment programs. Their basic message was that there was no such thing as failure.

  There were facts and there were conclusions. One had to separate them. When Reemer Bolt looked at a field of useless cars, it was not a fact that he was ruined, his cassette program told him. The fact was that fifty cars had been ruined. The fact was that he had notched his company one step closer to ruination. But Reemer Bolt himself was not ruined.

  Look at Thomas Fdison, who, when he had failed in ninety-nine different ways to make a light bulb, said he had not failed. He had really discovered ninety-nine ways not to make a light bulb on his sunny road to success.

  Look at General George Patton, who had never let ideas of failure bother him.

  Look at Pismo Mellweather, who had produced the cassette tapes. Mellweather was a millionaire many times over, even though he'd been told as a child he would never amount to much. Teachers had even called him a swindler. He had spent time in jail for extortion and embezzlement. But now he had homes in several states because he had dared to face his own self-worth. The key to succeeding was not succumbing to the false notion that you had failed in some way.

  Failure, the tape said, was a state of mind just like success. One only had to accept the fact that one was a winner and one would become a winner. Pismo Mellweather had sold three hundred thousand of these cassette programs with the astronomical markup, and had made himself a success for life.

  Reemer Bolt had bought one of those programs and had listened to it so many times that at moments of despair he would even hear Pismo Mellweather's voice. And so while he now looked at a field of disaster, by nightfall he was able to see the car experiment not as a failure, but as just another way the miracle device should not be used.