The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  “You mean you want to level with them?” Dave said.

  Mel nodded. “Exactly.” Dave winced.

  “There are methods of field interrogation,” Ehud said grimly. “If it’s that important, we can get it out of them.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Mel said. “We’ll have to hang on to them until tonight, anyway. Once Mustapha is out and we’re ready to go, the only choices will be to let them go, take them with us, or shoot them. Whichever we pick, anything we’ve told them about what we know now will have ceased to matter.”

  Dave heaved a sigh and nodded. “Whatever you think’s best. You seem to have a bigger picture than the one they told me. One day you and I are gonna have to do a lot of talking.”

  Mel looked at Ehud. “Are you asking me?” Ehud said.

  “You’re in command.”

  “Of the ground operation. This is politics. What Benjamin says is good enough for me, too. I’ll support whatever you decide to do.”

  They went back over to the two Russians. From tags, insignia, and equipment, they had established that one was a lieutenant in the Soviet VDV, or Vozdushno-Desantnyye-Voyska, airborne shock troops, from a specialist group known as the Vysotniki. The other, Nordic looking, with fair hair, was carrying credentials that identified him as a major of the KGB. Mel beckoned the latter to his feet and took him aside, again calling Ehud over as interpreter.

  .“What would you say if I were to tell you that I think we’ve both been set up?” Mel asked the Russian. “You thought this place was ours, and we thought it was yours. But obviously it’s neither. Whatever’s going on here, for once we’re on the same side.”

  The major looked openly contemptuous. “I’d say it was a trick.” Yes, he thought, sure they were on the same side. They both wanted to steal the same missiles. The only difference was that the Russians would be stealing them back, whereas the Americans wouldn’t.

  “What do you know of an American defense scientist who is being held in that camp down there?” Mel asked.

  “Why should I know anything?”

  “He was supposed to be passing information to your side.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that is why you are here?” the Russian asked.

  Mel took a long breath. “Yes. Tonight we are getting him out.”

  Brazhnikov snorted. Lies. He knew full well why Shears was here, and why he had come all the way from the U.S.A. It was a line to find out why they were here. But as he thought about it, Brazhnikov grew less satisfied with that explanation. For if the presence here of the Israelis and the two Americans was connected with the missiles—whether or not the missiles had been flown out in the Syrian airliner—then they would know perfectly well why the Soviets were here. What would all the mystery be about?

  “If what you say is true, then the Palestinians here would be controlled by us,” Brazhnikov said.

  “Yes,” Mel agreed.

  “But that is obviously not the case. If it were, we would be able to walk about the place openly, would we not? But we don’t. Therefore what you say is not true. Therefore there is no scientist of yours down there.”

  “Unless he was being held by someone else,” Mel said.

  Brazhnikov shrugged. “If he exists, it is your problem, not mine.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at it this way,” Mel said. “If we were wrong about who controls this place, you could be, too. And the only way either of us will get it right might be by knowing what the other knows. I can’t put it plainer than that.”

  The Russian stared at him, obviously in a dilemma. Mel had nothing more to say. Ehud waited impassively, while Dave watched from a short distance back. The hardness in the Russian’s eyes flickered for just a moment, and Mel thought he had gotten through. But before that spark could catch, Moshe’s voice called from one of the guard positions at the rim of the hollow, “Aircraft approaching, heading directly this way. ” The distant drone of its engines reached them moments later.

  They squeezed back under the cover of the rocks and motioned for the two Russians to do the same. The aircraft was a large one, coming over low from the northwest, an airliner. As it came nearer, the form resolved itself into an Ilyushin with Syrian Arab Airlines colors. “It’s the one that took off earlier,” Jacob said. The plane straightened into an approach, wheels and flaps down, and swept down and past them to their right, and touched down on the end of the strip just visible beyond the tip of the spur. The roar came of the engines reversing thrust to brake, and the note dropped.

  Ehud checked something in the notepad that he had taken from the other Russian, and then looked up, puzzled. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  “What’s not what?” Mel asked him.

  Ehud nodded toward where the plane had just disappeared from view. “That plane’s registration code was SY7719A. The one that took off this morning was SY4362F. It isn’t the same one.”

  Dave shook his head, baffled. “Exactly what in hell is going on in this place?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. “But it’s getting more and more mysterious.”

  CHAPTER 65

  Major Yuri Brazhnikov of the KGB was getting weary of it. For over two hours the two Americans, Shears, who went by the name Mohican, and the one they called Benjamin, had been arguing relentlessly. The lawyer was the worst. In fact Brazhnikov had begun to suspect that perhaps he really might be a lawyer, and that whatever else he did was really his cover. He had saturated Brazhnikov with every tactic of logic, suggestion, and persuasion. At one point Brazhnikov had appealed to the blue-eyed Israeli paratrooper who was doing the interpreting, “Get on with the thorns under the fingernails or the cigarette lighter to the foreskin if you’re going to. I can understand that—I’ll even hold it for you. But get him off me!”

  And yet, at the same time, there was something about this young American’s quiet but impassioned sincerity that touched a sympathetic note somewhere. Brazhnikov had read that the new American administration was heralded as one of honesty and bluntness. This Shears seemed an embodiment of it. In other circumstances, at another time, perhaps they could have been close friends.

  In the end, Brazhnikov agreed to something that “Benjamin” suggested. The Israelis had apparently been expecting an aircraft hijack, and it seemed evident that the business with the two Ilyushin aircraft was connected with it. That had been as mystifying to the Russians as it was to the others. Brazhnikov used the Israelis’ radio to contact Chelenko in Damascus. They allowed him to send a short message giving the two aircraft identification codes and asking for details of their current whereabouts. The Israelis themselves had maintained a strict radio silence.

  It was almost four in the afternoon when Zvi, who was crouched by the radio pack, called across to Ehud and Mel. “It’s Hydro. We’ve got a reply.” They brought Brazhnikov across from the cave, where he and Dorkiev had been given a meal and some coffee. Ehud stood by with an automatic and Mel stood behind while the Russian squatted down next to Zvi.

  “Hydro, this is Snowball One. We read you, over,” Brazhnikov advised.

  “Hello, Snowball.” It sounded like Aram Kugav’s voice. Chelenko was doubtless with him. “I have the information you requested.”

  “Go ahead, over.”

  “SY7719A is the registration of an Ilyushin 127 of the Syrian Arab Airline fleet. It is currently flying as flight two-eight, Damascus to Havana, which departed at ten hundred hours today. SY4362F is a nonexistent registration.”

  “Thank you, Hydro.”

  Another voice came on, more guttural. “Hydro One here.” That was Chelenko’s personal call-sign. “What is going on there? Where are you? Snowball Four has been reporting that—” Ehud leaned forward and switched off the set.

  Brazhnikov sat back and looked inquiringly up at his captors. “Well, what now?”

  Mel sat down opposite him and looked at him earnestly. “Think about wha
t this means. Your people have just said that 7719A is on its way to Cuba. But we know it isn’t. It landed here almost six hours ago. An aircraft belonging to the state airline of one of the Soviet Union’s allies has been hijacked, and the world doesn’t know about it yet. Whatever’s going on can hardly be in your country’s interests, can it? But if it was supposed to be in our interests, we’d already have known about it, surely. I put it to you again, Major, other things may be as they may, but on this issue we both stand to lose. Your silence is only helping them, whoever they are. It’s not helping you, me, America, or the Soviet Union.”

  Brazhnikov looked at him. Again he found himself wanting to believe. Zvi looked at his watch and then at Ehud. “It’s getting on,” he said. “We should decide who’s going down to meet Pierrot.” With the captives to take care of, the original schedule would have to be modified.

  “I think just you and Haim, with Benjamin,” Ehud said.

  “So you really have come to collect a scientist?” Brazhnikov said. “You were serious.”

  “I’ve never been more serious,” Mel told him.

  Brazhnikov drew a long breath deep into his chest, held it for a few seconds, and then exhaled it sharply. “We have information that certain missing airframes and components have found their way to this location to construct two complete SA-37 air-launched missiles, complete with low-yield nuclear warheads,” he said. “Our mission here is to reconnoiter for a possible assault to seize them back again. I assumed that the Americans were behind it, and that you are here for the same reason.” The astonishment on Mel’s face told him all that he needed to know about how correct that assumption had been.

  “What made you think we were mixed up in it?” Mel asked.

  “Well, wouldn’t the Americans be the first people one would suspect of wanting a working Soviet missile?” Brazhnikov looked at him, hesitated for a moment, and then allowed himself to smile. “And besides, we know something about the circles you move in… Mr. Melvin Shears, lawyer from Boston.”

  Possibly an indiscretion, Brazhnikov conceded inwardly; but the look on Mohican’s face was worth it. So was that on the Israeli’s as he translated.

  Ehud, watching, took in what was happening and motioned to Zvi. He indicated the two Russian soldiers with a nod of his head. “Return their weapons to them, Zvi,” he said quietly. And then to Brazhnikov, “I take it you have others here.”

  “There are four more,” Brazhnikov said. “They’re probably wondering what the hell has happened to us.”

  “And they have a radio?”

  “Yes.”

  Zvi came over and handed the two Russians their assault rifles, sidearms, and other items. “Zvi,” Ehud said to him. “Let the major use the radio to contact the rest of his unit. Make it brief. Give them the map reference of Purple. They can make their way here.”

  While over to the side, Dave Fenner turned toward Mel, ashen-faced. “I’ve just realized what day this is,” he whispered.

  • • •

  Brett was by now accepted as a regular at the Saturday evening movie show, without having to fix anything or give English lessons to earn it—although he still did such things, partly to break the monotony and partly because he had no particular reason not to.

  Tonight, he was even less interested in the offering than usual, as he sat near the door at the back, where Hamashad had placed him. It was an appallingly amateurish Indian romance set in the days of the British Raj, with the hero a prototype mix of every revolutionary hero from Lenin to Che, with a strong, incongruous dose of Gandhi, and the British recognizable as the bad guys everywhere by virtue of their inferior barbers and launderers. But the worse the movies, the more the audience seemed to enjoy them, and the noisy enthusiasm abounding tonight was just what Brett wanted. The day had passed agonizingly as he waited for dusk, his tension mounting as hour dragged after endless hour. He had stood for much of the time at the window of his quarters, staring out at the desert. It was a strange feeling to think that the Israelis were out there somewhere, watching the camp invisibly; that they had come this far and were out there because of him…

  It was well after six when Hamashad returned and whispered something in the ear of the guard who was at the back with Brett. The guard nodded and disappeared out the door. Hamashad looked quickly around, then waved Brett quickly toward the door. Brett slipped out as smoothly and with as little fuss as that. They went quickly through the canteen area adjoining, to some store rooms along a corridor by the kitchens. It was dark outside, and the truck that was due to go up to the airstrip was parked near the door. It had been a busy day for some reason, with more traffic than usual making the trip. Hamashad said that large quantities of food had been taken up there, including one shipment consisting of nothing but crates of soft drinks. He had speculated jokingly that perhaps the government was going to open a supermarket there. “It would be typical socialist economic planning!”

  Brett stood inside the door, with the truck just a few feet away outside. Again, everything was quick and simple. Hamashad came out of another door and said something to the two Palestinians who were loading the truck, drawing them around to the other side. Then Brett came out, ducked underneath the vehicle, and lodged himself up on top of the rear axle housing and transmission shaft. The truck was fitted with high suspension for desert duty, and there was adequate room even for someone of his size. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Hamashad would report him as being back in his quarters after the movie, which meant it would be daybreak before he was missed. But by that time he hoped to be airborne and on his way to Israel.

  • • •

  In Washington, D.C., the time was approaching 11:30 a.m. It was a fine, if cool, day, and because of the significance of this, the accession to office of the first administration of the new millennium, and especially with the slow realization that was dawning on the public of exactly what the new philosophy of government was going to mean, the capital had drawn a larger than usual crowd for the inauguration ceremony, due to take place at 1:00. While final preparations were being made for the parade, and officials buzzed importantly this way and that on last-minute errands, many people were already milling around below the Capitol steps, and scores of senators and representatives were already in evidence.

  Among the people who had made a special effort to come to Washington for the event were Robert Winthram and William Evron. Over the years they had worked in their own way to uphold principles that made civilization worthwhile, and in that way had contributed to the outcome that was being made visible today. It hadn’t been a revolution of bombs and bullets, or mob riots, or liquidations; but it had been a revolution, nevertheless, and perhaps a more meaningful one for those very reasons. For it had been a revolution in the name of reason, fought, not by demagogues thirsting for power, but by those who would renounce power in order that it revert to where it rightfully belonged. How well it would be used now would depend on the people. It was an astonishing expression of confidence and trust, and it seemed appropriate for the two men to be here today to see their faith in the ultimate decency of humanity being vindicated.

  Also from Boston in the crowd was Alan Dray, from Platek, whose patents were attracting interest from all kinds of unlikely investors now that the state Compliance Board had backed down—guesses were that it wouldn’t be around for much longer; his legal difficulties seemed to be abating, and business prospects improved.

  And Ed Gilman was there from Denver. His woes hadn’t gone away yet. Financial backing for the fission-fusion project was still being blocked, but now that he knew the real opposition was political, and the technical and economic objections a sham for public and media consumption, he had hopes that the situation would improve rapidly once the new administration got itself fully in gear.

  The Constitutional representatives and senators who had flooded Congress over the previous six years were all here, naturally. The president and his entire cabinet, of course. And so, almost to t
he last one, were the thousands from the state-level legislatures who had taken the Constitutional philosophy out to the nation, and who would spearhead the call for a convention to pass the new amendment as one of the new government’s first official tasks. It wouldn’t have been true to say that the entire body of the Constitutional organism was here, for it was too vast; but its head and its motivating force was. What drove it and inspired it was gathered in one place for the first time ever. Deprived of what was concentrated in Washington today, the rest of what had taken years to nurture and grow would quickly disintegrate, wither, and die forever. It would never be rebuilt.

  • • •

  Syrian Arab Airlines Flight 28, by that time flying southwest, a few hundred miles off Nova Scotia, Canada, reported a fault indication in one engine. The captain requested a revised flight plan, closer to land, in case he had to put down in an emergency. It was standard procedure in such circumstances, and Air Traffic Control at Halifax complied. The plane’s new course would take it virtually down the eastern seaboard of the U.S.A.

  CHAPTER 66

  Brett was through the main gate and out of the camp. The road was bumpy and littered with rocks, and the lurching and pounding threatened to throw him off at every yard to be crushed beneath the truck’s doubled rear wheels. The axle box and transmission-shaft casing were slippery with grease, and there seemed to be nuts, bolt heads, and sharp edges everywhere, cutting and bruising him whichever way he tried to twist as he fought to keep a grip. He should have thought to equip himself with some pieces of rope for improvising slings to hang onto, he told himself belatedly. Yet despite the discomfort, he had to concentrate on counting off the sequence of left and right bends that Hamashad had described. The trouble was that the truck swerved so much to navigate between the bumps and depressions that he had difficulty telling just where the bends were.