The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  It was in this ad hoc framework that Q-Kink Kommand and the Q Kink Team coalesced like iron filing on the magnet of Bear’s personality one month three weeks, and two days after its inception at a meeting in a little room at Redstone Arsenal.

  “Where are we?” Bear asked that night. He was momentarily distracted by the eating going on by the leaders of his team who squatted around a conference table littered with small white boxes of Chinese takeout. Bear watched his manners, conscious in an old world way about O’Hara watching him eat for fear of offending a lady. She was a Marten in her own movements, her hands fluttered delicately around their chopsticks and she took tiny lady-like bites with her incisors that never ever dribbled. She worked steadily to consume a tenth what the men swallowed wolfishly in tandem. In contrast, if Wong resembled any bird it was a vulture. He shared the table manners of the Chinese, with a fine unconscious disregard of slurping, chewing and swallowing in a cacophony that would have drowned out the engine noise inside a helicopter with the doors open. He sprayed sauces about randomly from the tails of noodles sucked through his lips. Bear looked at his bulging cheeks indulgently and imagined his own mother passing out from watching the display.

  O’Hara spoke first, setting her chopsticks aside consciously—always neat. She tapped her lips with a paper serviette before continuing a previous conversation.

  “Final legal approval for the whole Anglewood complex is now in our hands and the rent is actually pretty cheap. We transferred about a hundred thousand bucks to Army Material command and they have essentially leased the caves to us for the duration. As our military cover they think we are storing some things there on behalf of NASA but frankly they seem not to care very much. My perception is that they regard the Bat Cave here as a huge white elephant and are actually glad to get a little money back and free up the tiny budget they were spending on a pain-in-the-ass pachyderm they got gifted with. In addition, the Boys have discovered I have a budget now and are busy ordering up a storm from every catalog they can lay their hands on. Lots of tools and things, though I think it would have been even more if Baxter had not given them a guided tour of the workshops here in the cave and they saw the mountain of equipment they already had access to. Killien and Pinta especially are like pigs in shit—I have to pry them off the computer’s materiel databases with pleas that they should not order cyclotrons and bars of pig iron just because they can. I explained that until we know what we are actually going to build we should avoid competing with Wal-Mart in stocking our shelves. The Wongers have also made some requests though theirs are sensibly more modest compared to the damn Non-Commissioned Officers. I swear! I think NCOs must spend their whole lives living in a famine of worldly goods!” She shook her head as if a mosquito had buzzed her ear. “Luckily, Van Ziegler already has all the materials and machines he wants except for some routers and cables and is too busy wiring the cave as fast as he can to order much else. At least I think he is . . . isn’t he . . . ?” She looked at John for confirmation.

  Wong nodded as if they had practiced their reporting on Vaudeville.

  “He keeps bitching at me about the workmen doing the wrong thing and not being properly cleared, but I told him to shove it up his rear since they are just running wire. The only way I could get the living spaces, workshops and common areas done to time-table was to put folks working on them 24x7 and screw the security risks. We have to balance getting the job done with doing it with the right people . . .”

  “Expensive . . .” O’Hara added, the troll instinctively showing its big comptrolling incisors for a moment—an ugly sight, but one of genetic predisposition rather than a real sense of virtue.

  Bear nodded, but said nothing—he could care less about the money and O’Hara’s knee jerk was merely part of her clothing and contained no malice.

  “We are on schedule though.” Wong countered. “As far as I am concerned we can fully move into the Anglewood Cave complex within the week.”

  “Good work. Will security be ready?”

  Wong checked his notes, chomping noisily around a piece of General Tso Chicken. He had a little smutz of sauce now on his chin for local color while he gabbled around the gobble that he shoved momentarily in his cheek between sentences.

  “Outer fence is repaired. Inner fence is just finished.” Chew. “Guard house is a three room mobile and was delivered two days ago. Electricians and plumbers are working the guardhouse and the quarters inside the cave.” Chomp. Swallow. “The wiring and phones for both are due . . .” He belched noisily. Bear smiled at O’Hara as her eyes met his in quiet embarrassment. She smiled back—they both loved Wong which was a good thing considering his culinary grossness. “. . . to finish tomorrow. Plumbing will be at least two more days. Caveman Craig says the badging is ready and his contract security employees are all due within two days. We extended the Kitchen spaces out onto the loading docks so the folks who are handling the feeding will never get any further inside than the kitchen and dining areas. I added an office for them with TV and phone so they will have a space to hang out and not be under foot inside the cave. All three work for . . .” He smacked his lips, poked around in the little white cardboard box with his chopsticks and then cleared his throat and referred to a note his tongue groping unconsciously along his upper gums for loose meat between teeth for his fellows to admire. “. . . Sheraton contract services with nice bonuses but with a ‘kill’ clause so if the food sucks we can roll them over quickly to a competing outfit and fire them quicker still if they get too curious about the project itself. I have personally briefed them not to get curious. They get it. The new Q Kink quarters are opposite the galley out front so guests can reach the living spaces with a pass, but absolutely no non-Q-Kink personnel can go unescorted beyond the big doors back into the caves once we seal it with access codes and a guard post.”

  “How about our power grid?”

  Wong nodded and flung his Chinese food discard box four feet across the room and into the wastepaper basket in a deft swish—just restraining himself from doing a one man wave.

  “The cave draws power from the local power grid—There are three backup power generators already in place in the cave and they have all been serviced, tested and are ready to go though they are really ancient stuff—I am guessing 1950’s technology which means parts are hard to find, but that they actually work well and are not likely to fall apart since they were made in the days of steel rather than plastic. The power grid itself within the cave is completely dated and the wiring is kind of primitive since lots of the wire deeper in the caves was pulled before modern codes were put in place, but I don’t give a sh . . .” He glanced at O’Hara.” . . . shoot about most of it. My electricians have updated from the quarters and front door end and are steadily improving back towards the labs. Expect all 115 volt and 220 volt electric and lighting to be done in four days as far as the labs and adjacent rooms. I will probably have them keep going for a few rooms beyond the labs in case something comes along later that we did not foresee. The labs themselves are almost ready in the primitive state we discussed initially. The last layer of paint will be put on in three days and be dry in two days after that.”

  “So does five days feel pretty firm for move in?” asked Bear.

  Wong nodded with a shrug, eyebrows raised and a sideways nod of his head.

  “Looks that way to me . . . the outdoor patio and gardening will take a day longer, but that won’t slow us down here in Dis.” Wong finished.

  “Dis?” O’Hara asked.

  Bear laughed.

  “Dante’s Inferno . . . 8th or 9th level or hell . . . nasty city . . . kind of like Somalia . . . and parts of Jersey.” Bear explained.

  Bear then looked at O’Hara with an eyebrow lifted inquiringly.

  She shook her head to clear it. Bear could use the weirdest references. Like Mayan historian or an English major

  “I
agree! Five days . . .” Maureen said smoothly and evenly as if picking up a cue for a line in a play. As a team they were clicking as smoothly as the rods in a recently tuned internal combustion engine. “I have some furniture and gym equipment being delivered in four days and it should be assembled and in place by day five close of business. Bills will be paid a little late . . . just as part of our cover, but not late enough to raise any eyebrows or cause close scrutiny. To the locals, we are just another struggling candy business groping for profit. I’ve put our name forward in the local chamber of commerce, incorporated us in Nevada and I’ve even had Jelly Belly candies make up some samples with our own logo on it so we can give them away at local events and fairs . . . should make our cover slightly believable.”

  Bear grinned happily.

  “You guys amaze me.” He said honestly, careful to make the admiration frank in his voice.

  They smiled back; pleased as children at parental recognition. Bear knew they looked to him for affirmation. It was a joy to give it. To an outsider it looked superficially like Q-Kink Kommand stroking itself, but the complexity of a productive human dynamic was working and not to be interfered with by the unwashed.

  There was a pregnant moment and then Maureen spoke.

  “So . . . we’ve got mountains of junk lined up and lots of good people to play with the stuff and a perfectly nice place to play with it in . . . but . . . what will we actually be building as far as the eggheads go?” The Eggheads were Bear’s problem in the grand dynamic of human interaction. They were his property now in the eyes of the others and those eyes regarded him curiously.

  Bear scratched his chin and looked into Maureen’s eyes.

  “A fair enough question—In general the answer is ‘whatever the eggheads want.’ The specific answer is not yet decided, but I recognize it’s my problem. Now that Feathersgait is finally on hand . . . it is time for me to sic them on finding us an objective and see if this bird can fly.”

  “And hope it isn’t Icarus flapping the wings on the long fall from the sun . . .” Wong added helpfully, picking his teeth while holding his other hand up in front of his mouth another of his curious gestures from a distant eastern past.

  Bear fixed him with a jaundiced eye which Wong missed since he was admiring a piece of vegetable on the end of his toothpick.

  “Thank you for that, mon petite. Excellent positive mental attitude! What a fellow you are . . .” Bear said sarcastically. “Let’s hope you haven’t got Cassandra’s genes . . . oh . . . and you’ve got a little something just here . . . .” He pointed to the corner of his lips.

  Wong dragged his forearm across his mouth and Maureen giggled. It sounded a so much like Wong giggling that Wong giggled in echo which set her going again.

  Bear shook his head. He wasn’t sure that top secret projects were supposed to be this much fun. He grinned.

  Qing Li sat on a park bench with half used bag of peanuts that he had already used to let the local squirrels gorge. He appeared to be reading a paper and had it scattered around convincingly. Not that it was all a smokescreen; he actually had read most of it while he waited. The US economy was in the dumps as usual and Li’s stock portfolio had lost three percent in value in a week. Layoffs were everywhere, a recession loomed and the trade deficit with China was redefining the difference between huge and humongous. The situation was normal and he leaned back contentedly in the sun. He did not see the sun much in either of his professions. Computer programmers were normally in the dark and by definition spies too lurked in the shadows as much as possible.

  According to espionage doctrine he would never meet someone who was being recruited. He would instead send someone expendable. If he did meet them personally he was meant to meet them only one time and Li had chosen an out of the way park in a small Alabama town to do it in this case. It was an odd admixture of amateur and old school spy craft, but these days he suffered from a sense of futility from it all. In his youth he had talked a good communist game, his mind fully bloated with a Marxism that was destined to sweep the world. His first few years in America he’s lived with a fine sense of paranoia about the extreme efficiency of western intelligence. He’d seen counter espionage agents lurking around every corner waiting to pounce. Having now lived in the western world for decades he had wised up. Western intelligence was stretched too thin to turn over the rocks that hid Li. Because he felt safe Li cared less and less about the mechanics of the great game and any threat they posed. He understood that the counter-intelligence assets of the FBI were just as inefficient as any other bureaucracy anywhere in the world. Having lost the adrenaline edge of fear he now only went through the motions of espionage and felt quite safe meeting the information source even knowing that a man of Asian ancestry was still a rarity in rural backwaters like this one.

  The person for whom he was waiting finally came three minutes late and sat on the other end of the bench as instructed. Li’s contact in Alabama who had alerted him to new activity at Redstone had made the initial approach to this individual. Money had changed hands along with instructions to be here at this place and time. Money always seemed to work with Americans when you wanted information. It was one of the joys of capitalism. In a country where people worshiped the principal that everything had its price, event national secrets were for sale. Li hoped it was the money and not risk that had attracted the man. Action junkies were idiots who got bored too fast—greed was forever.

  Li asked questions to the air and the squirrels, rarely even glancing at to the object of his conversation. The first questions established that this was indeed the expected individual—that Li had intended to meet and he was nervous as most first time traitors were. The formulaic chit chat along the lines of ‘the birds fly south in the winter . . . ‘ were responded to with a tremor in his voice and nervous glances about. The exchange was quite unnecessary since Li had digital photos of the contact from his recruiter—the nonsense of code words seemed to put the new contact’s mind somewhat at ease though. It felt like professional spy-craft to an amateur. Then, Li established with quick questions that the contact had knowledge of other actual projects ongoing at Redstone. Li had people inside two of them and was peripherally aware of two more. The new contact passed that test easily enough. It was looking good.

  “Then there is the new one . . .” The contact said.

  Li’s ears stood up fully at last. It was what he was waiting for. It was the thing that had been hinted at by his original agent. Li was counting on it. He needed it. A brand new project meant many things for Li. Foremost was credibility for him just when he needed it. The first one to report something to Beijing got high points in the intelligence community. It was imperative that Beijing relearn to listen when he spoke and the tool that would make it happen made his sluggish adrenaline finally run.

  “It has an odd name . . . Project Q-Kink.” The contact said eyes flicking and voice dropping to a near whisper.

  “What is its function?” Li asked looking casually around for vehicles that might be monitoring their conversation. There were several that could, but they all had something wrong with them—parked badly to observe or take pictures. There was a housewife pushing her stroller by the swing sets, but she had a real baby that threw up on her shoulder to prove it. She changed its diaper sniffing its contents suspiciously. No agent in the world would shove his nose in a dirty diaper. There was an old man snoozing on another bench two hundred meters away. The drool on his coat was not faked and the smell of age and medications from his cloths was real enough. Li doubted the FBI hired octogenarians. It was mid-morning and along the periphery of the park there appeared to be two housewives jogging. They were real too since their hips were far too heavy for trained agents . . . they were true American suburban women whose bodies were going to hell from drinking coke twelve times a day and eating four or five meals. All was well. He turned his face to the sun, content that the
universe was in order.

  “I am told the project is a new device for communication with the fleet. It concerns submarines.” The contact said finally—reluctant at last to turn traitor.

  Li’s blood pressure raised again to a higher level still, a hound now fully catching the scent of a raccoon. Submarines were the current pet of the Chinese navy. Their intelligence arm would chew an arm off if something allowed them to counter the Americans in the shallow waters of the China Sea. ‘Submarine’ was the only current generation buzzword Li needed to rivet their instant attention and elicit their backing to get more information.

  Li smiled modestly in a satisfied way with his eyes closed. The time when projects were quite new was also the best moment to infiltrate them. They would still be gaining staff and getting someone on their staff at the ground floor was much easier than later when everyone was well known and a new person would stand out. Now was the time to strike.