Conspiracy (2 page)

“Three parts in two billion,” the corporal said. “Shee-it.”

“One Cobor grenade takes out a city block. If all of them in Unit Seven went, I figure we’d have to drive this thing just about up to Canada before we could open the windows. So we try to work careful, you know what I mean?”

The corporal nodded and didn’t say anything more until they were up on the service road.

3

“I think the Russians are stalling us,” Sharon said, talking to Rachel Quinn.

Keith loved the way her blue eyes flashed and her delicate, fine-boned features set with determination. From the day he had met Sharon, his instincts had told him not to let her get away. He hoped they would have some time together here in Madrid, before the team got on the bus for Seville and their first game of the tournament.

As Sharon continued on the phone, Keith crossed the tiny office to the window and looked out over Madrid. The summer sun was low in the sky, tinging the rooftops with gold and shadows. To his right, across the busy six-lane Paseo de la Castellana, stood the imposing oval shape of Bernabeau Stadium. 

At the top of the stadium, the sunlight glittered on the glass walls of a newly-built office penthouse, giving the enclosure the look of a small jewel set in an absurdly massive ring. On the penthouse was an illuminated sign with the logo of UBC, the network Sharon worked for.

Keith wondered how it would feel to be playing in Bernabeau for the championship. He had been in league championships before, of course, both in America and in Europe, but the World Cup would be another thing altogether. 

The feeling would be awesome, he thought. He knew five men who had played in World Cup finals, three from Holland and two from West Germany, and not one of them had been able to treat the experience lightly. “You’re in there and you think you’ll go deaf with all the screaming and the opposition looks ten feet tall,” one of them had said, “and then suddenly you’re knocked down and, before you know it, it’s over and you’re in the locker room peeling off your socks and wondering if you’ll ever be able to do it again.”

Keith wondered if he would get the chance to do it even once. He rarely let himself hope, because he knew that no one expected the United States to be in the running after even the first week of play. Probably the only time he would be playing in Bernabeau would be at tomorrow morning’s practice—three hours of workout time at the stadium, made available as a courtesy of the Spanish to each of the other twenty three teams here for the finals. Tomorrow was the Americans’ turn. 

All the other teams, even Saudi Arabia, had already been in. The order of entry was based on the number of teams each country had sent to a World Cup final during past years, and served to illustrate how far away the Americans were from the top contenders.

And at thirty-five, Keith Palermo didn’t have many more World Cups ahead in his playing career. Four years from now, when the games moved to Colombia, he would be lucky still to be playing NASL soccer. So he was ready to give this one his best shot.

“Tell the crew to sit tight,” Sharon was saying. “It’s not as though they had anything else planned for this half hour, and by then maybe I’ll know what our Russian friends are up to.”

From where he stood, Keith could hear the telephone receiver crackle with Rachel Quinn’s outraged response. Sharon held the receiver at arm’s length until the tirade had passed. Then she spoke again. “I won’t argue with you, Rachel, and I’m not going to release the crew, either. We’ve got a show to put on.”

Keith asked, “Why don’t you have her do my interview now, instead of on Tuesday? I’ll go over there now, and you can clear up the rest of your work.”

Sharon spoke into the telephone once again. “There’s been a change. I just learned that Keith Palermo is on his way to your studio now to fill in for Katya.”

She put the receiver back into the cradle before Rachel could offer any further objections.

“Sounds like she’ll be a lot of fun to talk to,” said Keith.

“Just her way of handling the pressure when she’s not in control. By the time you get over there, she’ll be the perfect professional.”

He shook his head in admiration. “And how does Sharon Foster handle the pressure?”

Sharon hesitated for a moment, then she smiled. “Oh, sometimes I go out to dinner with a national soccer hero.”

4

About twenty feet from the first igloo, the sergeant stopped and killed the engine. 

At this distance he could see that the skin of brown rubberized paint that coated the concrete was unbroken, and he could verify that the vinyl seals around the heavy steel door had not been disturbed. Any farther away, the fine details tended to blur. He had meant to have his eyes checked the last time he was on leave in Salt Lake City, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

The corporal was staring at the igloo. “Big,” he said.

“Forty feet wide, twenty feet high. You want to get out the masks? They’re under your seat.”

The corporal handed him a mask, not taking his eyes off the igloo. “Suppose they bombed that thing. What do you think would happen?”

“It’s all according to the lethality of the warhead, impact area, weather conditions, and so on. You had any training with bombs?”

“Yeah, what I mean is, supposing it was a direct hit. A nuclear.” He pronounced it “nookular,” and the sergeant set his jaw.

“Nuclear?” the sergeant asked, and went on, saying it correctly each time. “Nuclear’d wipe the whole thing out. I’d rather see a nuclear here than a conventional explosive. Nuclear heat would oxidize all these poisons.”

“Wouldn’t make any difference to me. We wouldn’t be around to see it, either way.”

“I’m not thinking about us,” the sergeant said. “Get your mask on. We’ll start your training.”

The air outside the vehicle was hot and dry, and the sergeant felt the prickle of sweat breaking out on his upper lip and forehead. But he knew it was nerves, not the heat. The sweat came out every time he got ready to walk into an igloo, day or night, winter or summer. 

“Lemme tell you something,” he said as they went forward. “If you’re scared at all now, that’s good. Keeps you alert. The time to start worrying is when you think this patrol can’t be fucked up.”

He spoke a little louder because of the mask. The corporal said he’d be careful and looked back down the access road to the guard station, a square-cornered, one-story building constructed of cinder blocks, with only a small radio antenna dish to break the flat roof line. On the far side of the building was a guard’s shelter, empty, and a gate blocking the main road that came from Dugway Proving Ground, where the rest of the platoon was stationed. 

The guard’s shelter was empty during patrols because only three men were on duty at any one time, and the third man had to watch the electronic equipment. Besides, from his position inside the station he could see anything coming up the road. There were no trees on the plateau to block the view, only scrubs of mesquite and tumble weed. You could see for miles. When the sergeant was down at the base, it sometimes made him feel lonely with so much empty countryside around him.

Today he could see something on the road coming their way. A car, or maybe a jeep; you couldn’t tell because it was at least two miles off.

“Company,” he said. “Probably the inspection team from Denver.”

A layer of dust and sand covered the asphalt pavement on the service road. As they walked across, the sergeant looked for the tire tracks of the patrol that had come through at night, but the wind had blown them away. That irritated him. Some guys didn’t mind the dust, but he did. It left a yellow-gray film that dulled the shine on everything, from the fenders of his vehicle to his boots. It worked its way inside his handgun and had to be cleaned out before every patrol. His wife especially hated to see the dust around his bare ankles when he took off his socks at night.

He punched the day’s code into the electronic lock of Unit One. The door was thick and heavy, but it swung open easily.

“All right,” he said. “Now I’ll show you why I don’t want to see us hit with anything conventional.”

He motioned the corporal down the fifteen metal steps to the floor of the igloo, which had been dug in some ten feet below surface level. The corporal hesitated as he went down. He was looking at the bank of two-hundred-watt fluorescent lights that hung from the top of the white concrete dome, and at the ordinary wood platform beneath it in the center of the floor.

On the platform was a cage of chicken wire, in which sat a single white rabbit. The rabbit was alive; it was safe to enter. The sergeant left the door open, following the mandated procedure to maintain a clear path for an emergency exit.

Around the rabbit and the platform were the bombs. Gray cylinders with a dull metallic sheen, each five feet long and one foot in diameter, their noses rounded like torpedoes. They were stacked row upon row, all around the perimeter of the circular igloo and almost up to the platform in the center, with only enough empty space to form aisles for the loading cart that was parked at the foot of the steps.

“You see the problem?” asked the sergeant as he followed the new man down. 

His voice reverberated between the smooth steel surfaces of the bombs and the hard curve of the concrete ceiling, and he spoke more softly. The sergeant didn’t want to sound too disrespectful of the army to the new man; that wasn’t good for morale, and besides, he had a personal rule not to badmouth his employer while he was on the job. If you didn’t like Uncle Sam, he often told himself, you didn’t piss and moan, you got out. On the other hand, if you saw a problem and had a constructive solution to propose, you
spoke
out.

The air inside the igloo smelled of steel and machine oil. The sergeant realized he was taking shallow breaths, even though he had the mask for safety. He forced himself to inhale deeply as he took the final step down to the concrete floor. Fear might be healthy, but you couldn’t let it work on you. You had to work on it. That was another of his favorite sayings, and he made a mental note to pass it along. He would check the corporal’s respiration rate coming into the next igloo.

“You know, we’ve got seven hundred tons of Sarin gas right in here with us,” he said, “and it’s got less protection than a single nuclear missile.”

By the time they were climbing out of igloo number six, the sergeant had fully explained his theory that the gas ought to be stored in tunnels between the igloos, where the steel tanks couldn’t be ruptured by falling cinder blocks. He had also given his views on the safety regulations developed for toxic substances control, and was just beginning to get warmed up on his favorite topic, the increasing Soviet menace, when they were out in the fresh air again and he saw the corporal taking off his mask.

“Hey,” he said, as he locked the door of Unit Six behind him. “We’re not through yet. There’s eight more to go.”

“Itches,” said the corporal. “My face itches like hell.” He was bent over, his back to the sergeant, rubbing the flesh around his chin and cheeks.

5

Sharon took the elevator up to the Soviet press office. In the cab were instructions in five languages, thoughtfully provided by the Spanish government. Sharon remembered some of her German from high school, but the others were impenetrable. She hoped Zadiev, the press liaison who had lodged a protest against tonight’s UBS program, would have an interpreter.

Walking down the polished marble corridor, she thought about how little she really knew of the current state of U.S.-Soviet relations. She followed the news as part of her profession, but Soviet motives had always seemed a cold, far-off mystery to her. And lately, after the Soviet economic offensive that had stunned the West, the Russians seemed even more unpredictable. 

Speculation had run freely; it was widely rumored that these World Cup games here in Spain were of vital importance to the Soviet strategy because of the
futbol
passion among so many Third World and OPEC nations. Might the complaint the Russians were making about the documentary that UBC’s Dan Richards had done of their team be somehow connected? 

Sharon suddenly felt out of her depth, as though she might make some unknown error tonight that could be used by the Russians in ways she had never imagined.

She cut off the thought as she reached the gray metal door outside the Russian offices; there was no point in making her own job more difficult. With an inadvertent smile, she remembered Keith Palermo’s parting words from a few minutes earlier “Just don’t let ’em talk you into having dinner up there.” His dark eyes had held her gaze briefly, light hearted and serious at the same moment. She was glad he was here in Madrid, and happier still that she would be seeing him later this evening.

The door was flung open suddenly, catching her off guard. She looked up. A tall thin man with ruddy cheeks was staring at her.

“I’m looking for Yuri Zadiev,” she said.

Cool blue eyes flickered with amusement. “I’m Zadiev,” he said. His accent sounded vaguely British. “Did you knock? I didn’t realize you were here.”

6

The sergeant came over to take a look. The skin on the new man’s face looked red, the way it would look if he’d shaved too close. But that could have been from the rubbing. The sergeant’s own skin felt normal, except for the sweat that had started coming out again.

“Feels like hives,” the corporal said. “You think I could be allergic to these things?”

“Not supposed to be. They line the masks with foam. Hypoallergenic.”

The corporal was inspecting his mask up close, turning it over in his hands. The sergeant watched him for a minute, trying to figure it out.

Then he noticed the jeep parked at the far end of the access road, outside the guard’s station. And a man down there standing beside the jeep. He couldn’t make out the uniform, or see just what the man was doing. It looked to him as though the guy was watching them through binoculars.