by Paul Kenyon
"What do you mean?"
"I've been busy the last couple of hours. I found Professor Thing's formula for growing giant ruby crystals." She patted the packet of papers in her side pocket. "Maybe our side can put it to better use."
He gave her a shrewd glance. "We're supposed to share the fruits of this mission with the Russians. That was the deal between Washington and Moscow."
She looked amused. "I don't think Washington will complain. Do you?"
"Are you going to tell Alexey?"
"I don't think so."
"You're going to double-cross him?"
She was silent a long time. Finally she said, "I love him. A little. I think. But I don't trust him." She gave a clear, untroubled laugh.
They herded the crowd of technicians outside and made them stand a safe distance from the dome. Then Wharton gave a wry little salute and handed her the detonator.
"You do the honors, Baroness."
She looked up in horror. Alexey was standing nearby. He'd heard Wharton call her "Baroness." That was all the lead a first-rate GRU man needed.
She shrugged. It couldn't be helped. Her cover was blown. She'd build a new one, somehow.
She paused for a last look at the colossal dome. Around her, everybody suddenly grew silent. Farther down the slope, the crowd of Chinese technicians, who had been noisy as a flock of chickens until now, stopped their gabbling and drew together.
The dome looked like some tremendous, glistening confection against the clear blue of the sky. The early morning sun was just peeping over the vanilla frosting of the mountain peaks, reminding her inescapably of a bloodshot eye.
"Goodbye, old Thing," she murmured and closed the switch.
There was a huge reverberating explosion. The entire dome seemed to lift and break apart in midair. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing but a vast round crater at the top of the mountain.
"Let's go," the Baroness said. "It's a long, long way to our pick-up point. The whole Chinese army's going to be on our trail."
They set off down the mountain in the early morning light. Nobody bothered to look back.
20
"It wasn't very nice of you, Penny," Alexey said.
"No, it wasn't," she agreed.
"But I'd have done the same in your place."
"I'm sure you would have, darling."
They lay on their hips, facing one another. The sleeping bag was a warm fluffy cocoon. The little peaked tent, made of materials designed for the moon, had no trouble coping with a mere seventy below zero. It had been waiting for them, with their other equipment, on the opposite mountaintop where they'd left it.
She could feel his long stiff rod deep inside her, where it had rested comfortably for the last hour. They'd drained their immediate urgencies during the first part of the night with a half-dozen bouts of feverish lovemaking. They both knew it was their last time together. Now they were stretching out their pleasure in a long, lazy coupling, halting the slow rocking movements whenever they felt themselves beginning to give way to the blind flash of orgasm. They'd whispered endlessly together during the interludes, the tantalizing awareness of their interlocked flesh lending spice to the talk.
She threw a leg over his hip and nuzzled his cheek. "How did you find out I had Professor Thing's crystal-growing formula?"
"I'm a good pickpocket," he laughed. "Same as you."
"And where are the papers now, darling?"
"I put them back in your pocket."
"Why didn't you keep them?"
"There are five of you and only one of me. After we cross the Amur, there'll be five of you and two hundred and fifty million of us."
"So you're planning to steal the secret of the giant rubies for Russia? Aren't you going to share it with us?"
"I think not."
"We're in a cynical profession, aren't we, darling?"
"We mustn't let it interfere with the important things, though." He put both hands on her buttocks and moved in and out a couple of times. The Baroness felt a pleasurable rush of warmth.
"No, we mustn't." She nipped the lobe of his ear.
He took his hands off her bottom and propped himself up on one elbow. "I know that you know that I know that you're a Baroness. Or at least that it's a nickname for you. What do you plan to do about that?"
She ground her pelvis against his and made a rotating motion. "Why should I do anything at all, darling?"
"You know I'll check it out?"
"And if you do?"
"I have a feeling I'm going to discover who the legendary Coin is. Are you planning to arrange a fatal accident for me before we reach the Amur?"
The rotating motion felt good. She kept it up. "What do you think?"
"I think not. I think that in the last analysis you value my life more than your cover. Or will until we become enemies again."
"Are you willing to gamble your life on that, darling?"
Alexey had one hand on her thigh, helping out the rotary motion by moving her leg back and forth like a pump handle. "Yes. In this business you have to trust your instincts. Besides," he stopped pumping for a moment, "you'll need me on the other side of the Amur, when all those Russian troops are waiting."
She rubbed her breasts against his chest. "Alexey… you don't have to blow my cover, do you? I'll just get a new one. It won't make any difference in the long run."
"It's my duty," he said soberly. "Still, I hate to think of those bastards in the KGB knowing who Coin is. They're a bunch of murdering pigs."
"But the GRU aren't?"
"No, we're much nicer." He pulled back too far and slid all the way out. He wriggled back into position and inserted himself into her again. "But whatever is in our files, they find out about sooner or later. They spy on us all the time. Of course, we do the same to them."
He ground his pelvis against hers. The combination of sensations — rough outside, smooth and slick inside — made her yelp with sudden delight. Her yelp triggered a shuddery groan from him.
She placed a firm hand on his behind. They were both breathing fast. There was a sheen of perspiration between them.
"I think we'd better stop," he said.
"I think we'd better continue."
She hiked her leg further up his hip and began climbing up and down his tumid pole. He put a hand on her spine, his fingers sensitive as a cellist's, and contributed a heaving, rolling motion. They were totally aware of one another.
"Faster, darling, faster," she panted.
There was a blind, incredibly prolonged spasm of ecstasy coming their way, she knew. But it was still a long, long way off.
* * *
Skytop's broad back was a blur ahead of her, half-concealed by the swirling snow. She looked around to make sure that the others hadn't fallen too far behind. The Amur was five miles wide at the crossing point she'd chosen, but the storm gave them cover from inquisitive Chinese eyes.
"We're in Russian territory now," Alexey said beside her. "We must have crossed the midpoint of the river."
His eyes strayed involuntarily to the pocket where she kept the packet of papers.
"Perhaps we'd better stop." She called sharply: "Tommy?"
Sumo came running up. Ahead, Skytop had halted and turned around. The others straggled toward her.
"Why are we stopping?" Alexey said uneasily.
"Don't worry about it, darling," she said.
Sumo was consulting a little flat box with a meter on it. "I think we're just about right," he said.
Alexey looked at the circle of faces. He gave a crooked smile. "There's a Red Army battalion waiting for us on the other side," he said. "Moscow will be very interested in the results of this expedition. You'll be stripped, searched and interrogated whether I'm with you or not."
"Perhaps we'd better not go on, then."
"I give you my word that no harm will come to you. You'll all be on your way to America within days."
The Baroness gave him an amused glance. "But wit
hout the papers?"
"Without the papers."
"I don't think so, Alexey darling. Sorry."
He shook his head. "Penny, you're eight hundred miles from the ocean. You have to cross either Russian territory or Chinese territory to get there. Both sides of the border are heavily patrolled. You haven't a chance in the world of making it."
Sumo said sharply, "Back! Move back!"
There was a tremendous grinding sound. The ice under their feet trembled.
"Right on schedule," Sumo said.
An enormous black hump crashed up through the ice, not fifty yards from where they stood. It tossed aside great frozen slabs as large as the side of a barn.
"Let's go," the Baroness said. She started toward the towering dark shape. Alexey put a hand on her arm.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"That's right, darling. An American nuclear submarine. I had Sumo whistle it up for us on his transmitter."
"But this is a violation of Soviet territory."
"Like those Russian submarines that sail into Norwegian fiords?"
He laughed in spite of himself. "Vy pravy! But you'll never get back to the mouth of the Amur without being detected."
"It got here without being detected. Eight hundred miles inland."
Alexey hesitated. "I'll give you a five hour lead. I'll take my time crossing to the Soviet side, and when I report the American submarine…" he glanced at his watch "…I'll fudge the time by five hours. That should keep the most intensive part of the search two hundred miles behind you. I'm sorry, Penny, that's the best I can do."
"That's more than good enough, darling. It's very generous of you." She tilted her face up and kissed him. "Da sveedanya, darling. I doubt that we'll see one another again. Take care of yourself."
He gathered her in a bearlike hug and planted a bruising kiss on her lips. "Da sveedanya, Penny. I'll remember you."
A hatch had opened at the top of the conning tower. A sailor stood there, clad in arctics, his hand resting on the barrel of a machine gun. "Step lively, folks!" he shouted. "The skipper's getting nervous!"
Alexey released the Baroness. She sprinted lightly across the ice toward the submarine, Skytop and the others following her. Alexey watched them all climb the ladder and disappear into the black sail. He waited until the tall shape had disappeared from sight, then shouldered his pack and began the long walk toward the Russian bank of the river. He was careful to give a wide berth to the patch of black water that the submarine had opened up in the ice.
* * *
"And how are we going to travel eight hundred miles down the Amur without getting blown out of the water?" the Baroness said.
She was in the captain's quarters, two decks below. It was an antiseptic-looking room, painted a hospital green. The air was cool and fresh. It was hard to believe that all that water was on top of her. It was even harder to believe that all those fresh young American faces she'd seen along the decks and companionways, pampered by ice cream and apple pie and movies and canned music, were carrying on so matter-of-factly in the midst of a quarter-billion Russians and seven hundred million Chinese.
Commander McNeil was a vigorous, ruddy man in his forties. He set his cup of black coffee down on his desk and said, "Well, for one thing, the Amur's covered with several feet of ice from here to Nikolayevsk. That'll mess up their radar and sonar. It'd be trickier trying to navigate open water. For another, it's a huge river — wide as an inland sea at some points. Plenty of leeway. Lots of places for us to hide."
"What else?"
The captain hesitated. "Well, miss, they tell me you're cleared for classified material at any level. It must be so. You're important enough for them to send a nuclear sub to fetch you out of Russia. Well, we're being shadowed by an electronic decoy. Programmed to follow us at any distance up to twenty miles. Mimics our radar and sonar reflections, the sound of our engines, even our household noises. We can fire 'em out of a tube. It's only about thirty feet long, but as far as Russian detection equipment is concerned, it's as big as we are."
"When do we hit the Tatar Strait?"
He hesitated again. "At our present speed, in about fifteen hours."
She stretched languidly. The captain's eyes widened. The skintight garment she'd turned out to be wearing when she took off her snow gear was as revealing as a wet skivvy shirt. He began trying to frame a diplomatic way to suggest that she cover up when she went out into the passageway.
"Very good, Captain," she said. "Now if you can find me and my people some bunks, I think we'd all like to sack out."
* * *
The President's man was jubilant. He grinned benevolently at the other members of the special group. The big windowless conference room was filled with relaxed conversation. The President's man waited tolerantly for a minute or two before he cleared his throat. The talk stopped. Cigarettes were stubbed out. Coffee cups were put down.
"The President's very pleased," he said. "He's been talking to Moscow, and they're going to overlook the incursion by our submarine, in view of the success of the mission. Their own man — the only one who survived, apparently — gave them a full report on the attempt to wreck the Soyuz-Apollo space docking. They were horrified. The docking mission was very important to them. And they're grateful that we helped them get revenge for the murder of the three Vrach cosmonauts."
Defense leaned across the table. "I bet they're not so grateful that we got away with the ruby-growing formula."
"That's the puzzling part. Their man doesn't seem to have told them that Coin kept the specifications. Probably afraid to admit it. At any rate, we're certainly not going to tell them."
"What a coup!" DIA said. "NASA says the ruby laser can be adapted to power space stations from the ground. Or beam solar power back to earth. Our own lab boys think it might be adapted into a ground weapon someday, though it's a bit cumbersome for that. But it ought to have plenty of industrial uses."
State said, "Too bad this Professor Thing couldn't have stayed in the U.S. and worked for our side. How the hell did we ever allow the Chinese to get their hands on him in the first place?"
"You should know," CIA said sourly.
"Sam," the President's man said, turning toward the NSA director, "your Coin is a miracle worker. I still don't understand how he pulled it all off. Getting inside the Russian cosmodrome at Baikonour, being in the hands of the Russians all that time without getting blown, walking away with the ruby formula without causing an international incident…"
"Hell, Henry," NSA said, "they don't even tell me!"
The President's man looked around at all the faces, then back at NSA. "Well, keep Coin's identity a secret. He's too valuable an agent to blow."
After the meeting broke up, CIA caught up with NSA in the vast 980-foot-long corridor that sliced through Fort Meade. He took NSA by the elbow and steered him toward the center of the corridor, out of earshot of the marine sentries lining the walls.
"I hate to break the news, old buddy, but we're making progress cracking Coin's identity."
"Oh?" NSA said noncommittally.
"We've got a description," CIA said smugly. "He's a big sandy-haired fellow. One of the agents picked up by that nuclear sub had the same description as the man who blew our Russian, Innokentyi Pavlovitch. Had three other men and a girl with him, but he's the one, all right."
"That doesn't sound like much to go on," NSA said blandly, "but keep working on it, fellah."
"You'll be the first to know."
* * *
Alexey slouched in the doorway across the street from the building, puffing a cigarette and trying to look like a man waiting for a date. The sidewalks were filled with hurrying Norwegians on their way home from work. Downtown Oslo was busy this time of day.
A furtive little man darted out of the office building he was watching and hurried down the street, looking back over his shoulder. Alexey recognized him. He was one of the Norwegian government clerks the KGB caseworker had
on the string. He was the KGB man's last client of the day. There wouldn't be any interruptions now.
He crossed the street quickly and walked up the rickety stairs to the third floor. The place smelled of sardines, machine oil and all the other exudations of the tired, hole-in-the-wall businesses that crammed the building.
The KGB man was behind a frosted-glass door that said he was an exporter of fish products. Alexey pushed the door open and walked inside.
The KGB man looked up from behind his desk. He was a saturnine, tallow-faced individual named Mursky. In Norway he was known as Solberg.
"Hello, Alexey," he said in Russian. "How are things at Arbat Square?"
"Humming," Alexey said. "We heard a strange rumor that you think you know the identity of the American agent, Coin."
Mursky smiled unpleasantly. "I discovered the GRU tap this afternoon, comrade. You won't be hearing much in the future."
Alexey stretched his long legs and put his feet on Mursky's desk. "Seeing that the cat's out of the bag, comrade, we thought you might let us in on the secret."
"In due course, Alexey, in due course. I haven't even informed my own superiors yet. There were a few loose ends I wanted to tie up before I could be sure."
Alexey took a cigarette out of his pocket and let it dangle, unlit, from his lip. "As long as I'm here, why not be prevetleevy and tell me? I have a special interest."
"So I heard." Mursky was enjoying himself. "You spent all that time in China with the lady and never got her picture or her fingerprints."
"Don't rub it in, Mursky. Have pity."
Mursky shrugged. "Why not. My chief will know in an hour. And your chief will know an hour after that." He took a thin folder out of his desk and spread it open. "It was quite a piece of detective work. I don't mind telling you that I'm proud of it."
"That's the zapiska, eh?" Alexey said, leaning forward.
"Yes. So far it contains only my notes. I'll type them up tonight."
"Don't keep me in suspense, comrade."