The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  They’d soon find that the Germans felt exactly the same way.

  Moscow, Russia

  March 9, 1992

  As soon as Grainger met his target, Matsak, in the lobby, sparks began to fly.

  “Your Western standard of living has made your people lazy and complacent, sapped your creativity. Our lower standard of living gives us the great competitive advantage. We will soon outdo you in all forms of capitalism!” Alexander Matsak of the Science Ministry told Grainger flatly through chapped lips. “Help us now, and you will be our great friend. We wish alliances with our peers in the US, rather than with our inferiors from lesser powers. On the American side, your country should either keep its promises of assistance or stop proclaiming them publicly. The Russian people think we in the new government are getting all these dollars you are not sending and keeping these fairy-tale dollars for ourselves. On our side, it damages our government’s credibility to proclaim that the mighty US talks of assistance but does not deliver. Other nations are already doing, while the US is still talking. Soon we will not need you. And we will not forget.”

  Nan Roebeck was pretending to examine black pottery for sale to tourists inside the hotel entryway. When she heard Matsak’s words she turned, mouth already opening.

  Grainger forestalled whatever she might have said: “Nan, I didn’t see you. Let me introduce you to Deputy Director Matsak, of the Privatization Committee of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Educational Policy. Mr. Matsak, this is my boss, Nan Roebeck, Assistant Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Special Projects for the US Department of Commerce.”

  Nan strode over to shake hands with Matsak. The lanky Russian grasped her outstretched right hand in his and raised it firmly to his lips, stopping her cold and completely short-circuiting her game plan.

  Grainger sympathized with Roebeck but couldn’t help giving Matsak credit for sizing up the enemy and moving in fast to neutralize any possible threat. Roebeck was even more confused by the gallant gesture than a woman of the nineties might have been. She stuttered. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hand when Matsak released control of it.

  The work modalities for this sort of mission were coming back to Grainger fast. It felt as natural as breathing to tick off bureaucratic protocols, track the infinitesimal wins and losses that added up to success or failure. Play the old game, the old way.

  To give Roebeck time to recover, Grainger handed her Mat-sak’s visit card. The obverse, in Russian, said that Matsak was a general officer.

  Roebeck frowned, studying the Cyrillic. “An army general? Good to meet you, sir.”

  “In these days, Ms. Roebeck, I use my Ministry titles only. Everything before the new regime is long ago and far away. Are you directing Mr. Grainger in his search for unique Russian technology? Perhaps I can be of service. My Ministry has the charter for privatizing the best of Russian science. Russian scientists need hard currency. We have created a semi State organization to facilitate interaction with the West and to protect our scientists’ know-how. No matter what you wish to see from the former military-industrial complex, we can help you find the best of it.”

  Having given his pitch, Matsak waited for Roebeck to answer.

  Grainger was praying that Nan could handle this tough, seasoned, turn-of-the-century bureaucrat. Just say something nice and get out of here, he thought, wishing he could use his comm membrane to alert her.

  Matsak was drawn and pale. His translucent skin had a greenish cast from exhaustion or poor nutrition or both. He had a receding hairline and a full beard beneath an aquiline nose and long-lashed, burning eyes. Around those eyes were dark circles like bruises. His suit was domestic. His shoes were gray Russian leather. They seemed at first to be orthopedic. His shoulders were flecked with dandruff. His tie was silver-gray silk, slubbed from wear. He carried a battered briefcase.

  This was a man staggering under a workload beyond anyone’s ability to manage. Grainger had recognized Matsak the moment the man had stepped through the door, without having to reference the gray tie or the briefcase. Commitment burned in Matsak like fire. The intensity of it radiated like physical heat from his person.

  This was one of the people who would make this revolution work or die trying.

  Nan Roebeck, regaining her composure, said, “Mr. Matsak, we’ve just been meeting with the Academy of Sciences about accessing some of your unique technology. I think the meeting was very—”

  “Stupid,” Matsak interrupted. “You Americans still do not understand, I suppose? Or you just wish to exhibit the appearance of action? Which is it? You meet with this official, that functionary, what do you think happens? Each Russian wants the contact to be his alone, go through his channels, no one else’s. Then what happens? They fight among themselves. They argue about who will get what. Aahb-so-lute-ly, the difficulty of access increases. The price to you goes up with each ministry or department involved. In our new Russia, your officials can no longer deal through their old channels. You must accept this.”

  “But—” Nan began.

  “No excuses, please.” Matsak shook his head dolefully. “We have told your side this repeatedly. Now, if you wish to deal with the Academy, then go deal with them.” The Ministry man took two steps backward. “In my opinion, they cannot get you what you want. They have to come to us for permission to make any deal. We are the signature authority. Yeltsin has signed a paper saying this. So what have you accomplished?” His voice was very low and sibilant. His cheeks were flushed. He had no time for amateurs.

  Nan said archly, “Tim … I have another meeting.” She looked at her watch huffily. “Mr. Grainger has my full authority to bring to bear on our joint interests … I’m sure we’ll meet again, if you and Mr. Grainger can determine a specific area of—fruitful—discussion.”

  Matsak was incredulous that she hadn’t responded placat-ingly to his accusations. He watched disbelievingly as Roe-beck turned her back on him and climbed the stairs into the bowels of the Métropole.

  “Perhaps this meeting is over? Perhaps we are wasting our time. This woman is your superior?”

  “She’s a senior official,” Grainger said dryly. “I’m my own authority.”

  Matsak peered sharply at him for a moment, and then began to laugh. He came up to Grainger in two quick strides and clapped him on the back. “Bolshoi privy et, tovarisch.” A big hello, comrade. “I have been waiting a long time to meet an American with authority, like myself. We who get things done are in constant conflict with those whose life is dedicated to avoiding action. Now, say me what you want. Concretne stoh?” Concretely, what? “And do not be shy.”

  “Here?” In a hotel lobby?

  “I have a driver outside, a car. We may go wherever you wish.”

  “I wish, Deputy Matsak,” Grainger said, taking his cue from the other man’s candid style, “to meet scientists in the area of geochronometry and spacetime physics, who may be working on temporal realignment programs. I have such a program of my own and money to spend on anything that may accelerate it.”

  “Ah, a real deal. So. This is well. Mr. Grainger, we will be working together very hard. Call me Sasha. And I will call you…?”

  “Tun. I’d like to meet whomever you suggest, in any discipline, who might be working on concrete programs in this technology area.” He felt light-headed, maybe from the anti-radiation shot in combination with everything else he’d injected into himself. Maybe from elation. He’d hit pay dirt.

  “Then, Tim, we must go to a house phone. I will make some calls. It is late, you must realize. I suppose some scientists may be available here, but the most important ones are not in this city, in any case. Will you go with me tonight—just a short drive from Moscow—to meet such scientists? See an enterprise? A laboratory demonstration?”

  “I’d love to get out of this city, Sasha,” Grainger said honestly, aware of the privilege of using the diminutive. “If I see what I want, I can buy it, cash on the spot—hardware, technic
al report, whatever meets my criteria. I can give you technical detail in your car.”

  Matsak was nodding. “To the phones then. Lead the way. And spacebo, keep your woman official from complicating my job by involving too many other officials. What we do must stay between us, Tim, until we’re sure we can make a contract. Specifically, until we have permissions of my senior officials. Perhaps even after that, depending on what is involved.”

  “You’re saying she’s not invited?”

  “I say you that only principals need attend. I also say you that I suppose prudence is advisable. I have all the contacts, all the friends I need to make a contract. Different friendship networks cannot be included, or nothing will come of our labor. How many days are you staying in Moscow?”

  They were walking toward the house phones. Grainger could feel how real this Matsak was. Roebeck had made a bad mistake, perhaps a critical one. “I’ve got maybe a week.” If they found any technology to buy, they’d better buy it quick. If they could steal what they needed or destroy the revisionists’ program out of hand, so much the better, but time was still an issue. Time, in Grainger’s line of work, was always the issue.

  “Not much time for complex negotiations,” Matsak said as if reading Grainger’s mind, “but let me see what I can do. Our only option may be to undertake some visits which will take place quite late tonight. Is it possible for you?”

  “It is possible for me,” Tim Grainger affirmed as they reached the phones. He was feeling hot, flushed. Probably a mild fever reaction from the shots.

  Matsak pulled a worn black leather folder from his breast pocket and thumbed through it.

  The Russian’s tone as he talked on the phone was nowhere as gentle as he’d been with Roebeck. Grainger caught a few phrases, including voyenna technologie, which roughly translated meant “military technology,” followed by growled colloquial and scatological orders.

  Grainger picked out, Yop t’voyu robotnicki, and then stopped trying. “Fuck your workers” was an indicator of intensity but not substance.

  This hotshot Matsak was capable of rousting people out of their homes, or beds, and opening up some sort of laboratory or facility after hours. That was all Grainger could glean, and all he needed to know. He’d gotten to somebody with juice. If he could hold on to the momentum building here, he’d see whatever Matsak had to sell. He could only hope that the Ministry of Science official had access to what ARC was trying to find.

  If Tim Grainger believed in luck, he’d have thanked his lucky stars that he, and not Roebeck or Chun, had drawn Mat-sak’s number from the contact list that Central had established. This general had plenty of use for women, but not as peers. If Grainger’s card had contained any ranking data, Matsak probably would have decided that Grainger was too junior to be worth his time. As it was, Grainger hoped he could maintain the fiction of parity in this culture where friendship networks and parity were just about all that mattered anymore.

  When Matsak was finished on the phone, he patted his pockets ostentatiously. “Do you have American cigarettes, Tim? I have left mine in the car.”

  Right. The game begins. “I have to buy some anyway. Can I get Marlboros here?”

  “Certainly, I suppose.” Off they went to get cigarettes. Tim bought two cartons for twice what he expected to pay, and gave one carton to Matsak. “Please accept these as a personal—not state to state—token of appreciation.”

  Matsak’s lips twitched and he flipped open his briefcase with a practiced gesture, balancing the case against his hip as he stashed the carton within.

  “Have one of mine,” Grainger said, seeing that Matsak wasn’t going to crack that carton in public. He hadn’t smoked since he was a kid on Sunrise Terrace. He held out the pack.

  Matsak said, “Let us get a coffee to go with it.”

  “An espresso would be great, if we can find a place to serve it.”

  “Express? I suppose they will serve it wherever you want,” Matsak said and, lighting his cigarette in hands cupped against a nonexistent wind, led the way to the front restaurant. There, dinner was being served in elegant style with pink linens and crystal. Matsak strode up to the maître d’, spoke quietly, and personnel scrambled to accommodate them.

  When they were seated, a tray was wheeled up containing a teapot, coffeepot, chocolate pot, condiments, and cakes.

  “Express?” Matsak said with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  “Espresso? Sure, please,” Tim Grainger replied. He was absolutely sure now that Matsak was wired like a radar trawler. “What about your driver? And the scientists? They’re waiting for us.”

  Matsak sprawled back in long, spidery indolence, cigarette in one hand, espresso cup in the other. “Express without a cigarette is like sex with a condom.” He sighed, puffed, and sipped. “As for who waits … The driver—is a driver. So what if he waits? Only Americans worry about these things. My scientists, they have been waiting for years to talk to someone who could even ask such questions as you are asking. I suppose they will wait until we are ready. Tell me more about what you wish to find.” At the other end of the room, a violinist began to play softly.

  Tim Grainger knew he’d now pierced the veil. This was the real Russia. As Churchill had said, Russia was like dogs fighting under a blanket. Maybe Matsak was going to pull off the blanket, maybe not. But he knew each dog beneath it by name and fighting form.

  “Concretne stoh?” Concretely, what? Tim’s long unused Russian was beginning to stir. “There’s a problem we’re facing which we can’t solve with US technology. We’ve heard that some Russian scientists are working on temporal alignment. Maybe it’s involving scalar waves and Maxwell’s field equations. Maybe it’s using psychotronic research somehow. I’m not a technology snob. We’ll crack this nut any way we can, conventionally or unconventionally. And I’m not the technical expert on this trip. That’s our other team member, an Oriental-American named Chun Quo. She’s at another meeting right now but I’ll get her if you wish.”

  “Nyet, nyet, nyet. Don’t get her. If you say me she is meeting with other Russians, let her pursue that path independently.” His flat, angry coldness returned. “In my opinion, I suppose she will not find this group of scientists through any other channel. But it is unfortunate that she is asking. It draws unhelpful attention.”

  “I thought,” said Grainger, putting his pack of opened cigarettes on the table so that Matsak could chain-smoke if he wished, “that whatever problem one group was working, others were also working, as a methodology here.”

  “Maybe this is so in some parts of our technical establishment. But I am not so sure about such a method with this technology. This is closed city technology. A closed city is a science city. No one there is … average. The closed city network will outlast all upheavals of our state’s shape and form. It still spans the former Soviet Union. And in it, our best scientists are working in concentrated groups and secluded situations on…special projects.”

  “Working for how long? What I’m looking for is relatively mature. At the stage of fieldable systems, or at least hardened prototypes.” If what Grainger was looking for was really in a closed city, as Central had predicted, that didn’t necessarily mean that only one group was working on it, but might mean that a relatively mature project was ongoing. Whatever project Matsak had in mind might just be advanced enough to cause the kind of problem Central was trying to preempt.

  Matsak’s answer was evasive. “Working for lifetimes, I suppose. They raise their children there. They go to school there. If your intelligence is great enough to allow you to reside in a closed city, life is…still good.” He waved his hand and a long ash spilled to the floor. “We may go to one. Tonight if you wish. I have already arranged for the official invitation for your visit. It is a few hours drive from Moscow, nothing more. Do you wish it?”

  “Hell, yes,” Grainger said. Without an official invitation, even Matsak probably couldn’t have arranged this visit. Without an invitation, any v
isit would have to be kept too far off the record to be sustainable.

  Matsak took another cigarette. “You are not smoking,” he observed.

  Anything for God and continuum. Grainger picked up a Marlboro and lit it, dragging cautiously. His head spun. Every hair on his body stood on end. Years of abstinence hadn’t diminished old desires. He knew after that one drag that he was lost, that he’d be happy to match Matsak cigarette for cigarette, despite the fact that Central would put him in detox as soon as he got back there.

  Grainger must have closed his eyes. When he focused again, Matsak was signing the check.

  “You’re my guest,” Grainger protested. The waiter with the initialed check scurried away.

  “Please, do you see currency changing hands here? When I am in your milieu, you will be my host. Here, it is my duty. Now you will tell me just whom your colleagues have contacted. I must assess the damage.”

  Only then did Grainger remember that Nan Roebeck was alone in a meeting with Orlov. “Sergey Orlov of the Foreign Ministry…”

  Matsak winced elaborately and shook his head. “So sorry, Tim Grainger. This is a bad miscalculation. Now that your friend is in the hands of the Foreign Ministry, we should leave her there. No one trusts them from the Yeltsin government. They are outsiders, Gorbachev holdovers, trying to use foreigners to secure their jobs and regain lost power. If Yeltsin were stronger, he would fire them all in one day, call them back to Moscow, and have them shot. But, of course, we don’t do such things anymore. Not since we have new senior officials who were just yesterday boys standing on top of tanks waving flags.” He waved his cigarette to illustrate. “In my opinion, these Foreign Ministry officials are the enemies of revolution. You should tell your friend not to trust the hardliners. All that has changed with them is the names of their jobs, not their offices, not their tactics, not their hearts.”