James P. Hogan (29 page)

Every time she looked at the clock, another slice of time had been shaved off the interval that remained until ten tomorrow morning. She found herself dreading the thought of reentering the embassy. If a KGB officer’s wife had come under suspicion, it would be automatic for his reliability to be questioned too. Who were these people from Moscow who wanted to talk to them? Why the need for passports? She didn’t believe the explanation that Felyakin had given.

It was around midnight when Enriko finally appeared, having left the car at the embassy and taken a taxi. He and Shepanov had been drinking together, and although he wasn’t sufficiently far gone to be called drunk, it showed.

This happened from time to time. Anita saw it as a safety valve against the stresses that made ulcers, high blood pressure, and nervous problems routine occupational hazards of a KGB officer’s life – and Enriko always had enough sense not to let it get out of hand. But whereas he usually came home bright-eyed and talkative after an evening of drinking with friends, on this occasion he returned morose and distracted. Obviously there was something heavy weighing on his mind.

“What is it?” Anita asked him.

“Nothing.”

“Look, I can see something’s wrong. But I can’t read minds. How can I help if you won’t say what’s the matter?” He just looked at her strangely for a while and wouldn’t answer.

Finally, after he had poured himself another drink and was sitting opposite her on the couch in the lounge, he said, “Shepanov is heading for trouble, you know. He has problems with his marriage, and that is leading him into a problem with drink. It’s a familiar story.”

“I’ve heard gossip around the compound about his wife and one or two names,” Anita replied. “Yes, it happens.”

“And he’s lonely away from Russia and his friends. He likes having someone to talk to. But sometimes he opens up too much and says things that he shouldn’t.” Enriko seemed to be working up to something. Anita waited. Then he took a gulp from his glass and asked suddenly, “How much do you know about that woman scientist from Novosibirsk that your former husband took up with?”

Instantly Anita stiffened. Normally her reaction would have been to remind him that they had agreed not to talk about such matters, but it was too close to the things that had been preying on her mind all evening. Instead she asked, “What do you mean? What about her?”

“Oh, I’m not interested in your personal affairs or anything like that. But what about her… politically?” Enriko took another drink, and for the first time Anita wondered if he really had gone past the limit. “Was her loyalty ever in question?”

Anita stared at him for a few seconds, trying to fit what he was saying in with the other things that had happened that day. “Why?” she asked. Her voice was strangely dry and hollow. “What’s happened?”

Enriko looked up to meet her eyes directly. “Shepanov told me tonight that she was arrested three months ago on charges involving illegal dissident activity. That, of course, would put Dyashkin under suspicion straight away.” Enriko didn’t have to spell out the rest. All of Dyashkin’s close associates and relatives would also be subject to investigation, and especially Anita as his ex-wife. That was something that Enriko could have done without as far as his own career prospects were concerned. “Were you ever mixed up in anything like that?” he demanded.

“Of course not. I went through enough screening before we were married. You know yourself how rigorous they are.”

“They have made mistakes, nevertheless.”

Anita felt herself grow cold and start to shake. She needed to escape for a moment to compose herself. “Let me get you a coffee,” she said.

“Anita, look at me. I ask you again – Were you ever involved in anything like that?”

She forced herself to react angrily. “I told you, no! Sober up, you’re being ridiculous. Would you like a coffee?”

Enriko slumped back on the couch. “Yes, maybe I should….”

Anita got up and hurried through to the kitchen, Her mind was too agitated to think while she opened a cabinet and took out the coffee and two mugs. Then, as she stood staring at the jar in her hands, the realization came over her that if she went back to the embassy tomorrow morning, the only way she would ever leave it again would be under escort, heading for the airport to board a Moscow-bound plane. Enriko would no doubt weather through eventually, She wouldn’t last a day. Very likely she was finished already.

She stood there, gnawing at her lip, dismissing from her mind preposterous thoughts of what she could do. Then she slowly raised the jar of coffee in both hands, hesitated for a moment, and smashed it on the floor. By the time Enriko appeared in the lounge doorway, she was already past him in the hall, slipping on her coat. He looked at her uncertainly. “What was that? Are you all right? Where are you going?”

“The coffee jar – it slipped. I’m just going to get some more at the shop on the corner. Be a dear and clean it up while I’m gone, would you?” And before Enriko could reply, she had let herself out the hall door and was heading for the stairs. The apartment was only one floor up, and instead of using the front entrance, she went on down another level and left the building via a side door from the parking basement.

Anita walked several blocks, then took a cab to Knightsbridge on the south side of Hyde Park. She went into a hotel that she knew there and sat for a while, steadying herself with a drink in the upstairs bar and thinking what to do next. Then, reaching the conclusion that she had no other choice, she went to a phone booth in the lobby and called the special number she had been given by her contact at SIS.

In an operations room of the British Special Intelligence Service located in a labyrinth that had existed beneath Whitehall since the days of World War II, the duty officer who took the call consulted a supervisor, and then sent out a radio signal coded for emergency priority. Two miles away in Chelsea, the signal activated an ordinary-looking communicator in the pocket of a jacket that had been thrown over the back of a chair, underneath a pile of clothes. The unit had been set to reject incoming calls. However, it contained special-purpose circuitry that caused the standard setting to be bypassed.

Jeremy had been waiting months for this. The chateaubriand for two had been splendid, the wine impeccable, and the atmosphere enchanting. Now, with the soft strains of violins and the scent of roses pervading her bedroom, the evening was almost complete.

Daphne kissed him on the mouth and lay back, smiling seductively as she opened her robe to uncover her perfect body. Jeremy allowed his eyes to feast on the sight. “I say,” he murmured. “I’ve always had a thing about flimsy little knickers like those. Is what’s underneath as pretty as the rest?”

“Why don’t you find out?” she whispered.

His hand stole down from her cheek, lingered at her breast to excite her nipple, then stroked downward, over her stomach, as the muscles tensed in eager anticipation.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!…

“
Bloody Christ, not now
!… Blast! Blast! Damn and blast the buggering sods! They can’t —”

“What is it?” Daphne shrieked, sitting up.

“I have to call in.”

“You said you were off all night.”

“I am. I mean… Oh, it’s too complicated to explain now.”

“Can’t you turn the bloody thing off?”

“It’s somewhere under all this stuff…”

“Be careful with that dress, darling.”

“There. Oh, God!…”

Daphne pulled her robe back around her and reached for a cigarette. She sighed resignedly. “The phone’s there. Better luck next time?”

“Oh, there will be a next time, then?”

“But of course. In fact, I think you did it on purpose, just to heighten the suspense.”

“You really are insane. But I’ll still take the rain check.”

“Rain check?”

“Oh, it’s what the Americans say.”

“What does it mean?”

Jeremy stopped as he was about to punch in the number. “Do you know,” he said, suddenly bemused, “I have absolutely no idea.”

Jeremy collected Anita in a cab from a rendezvous at Hyde Park Corner and took her to an address south of the river, in Lambeth. When they arrived, Sylvia was already there with another woman from SIS. Two agents would be there twenty-four hours a day until Anita was moved, and the police would be keeping a watch on the outside discreetly.

“What do you think will happen next?” Anita asked them.

“That’s not up to us,” Sylvia answered.

“Since the Americans have been showing so much interest in you, it wouldn’t surprise me if you ended up being whisked off over there,” Jeremy said.

“I do hope I haven’t been a nuisance,” Anita told them.

Sylvia laughed. “Of course not. It’s our job. What a silly thing to say!”

“Never let it be said that we allowed anything to come before King and Country,” Jeremy recited staunchly. Sylvia gave him a curious look. He sniffed disdainfully. “I rather think I’ll go and put on some tea.” With that he marched out of the room and across the hallway outside – stopping to deliver a hefty kick at the umbrella stand on the way.

Getting anything organized in Zamork on the systematic basis that McCain had in mind would require ways of evading the informers and electronic surveillance devices – and if McCain’s theory of the whole operation having been set up as an “information mine” was correct, the Russians were unlikely to have settled for half-measures.

Rashazzi and Haber had developed several techniques for locating and disabling concealed microphones, and were experimenting with ways of neutralizing the bracelet monitors. To mask these activities and at the same time provide some amusement for himself, Rashazzi had been training his mice to eat the polyvinyl insulating coatings of Russian electrical wiring, and then releasing the mice into the spaces behind the floors and walls. When Russian technicians arrived to trace the faults that the two scientists’ tamperings sometimes caused in the security system, they invariably found short-circuited wiring that looked for all the world as if it had been nibbled by busy rodent teeth, usually with mouse droppings nearby. The ruse didn’t last long, however, and instructions came down through Luchenko for Rashazzi to get rid of the mice. Then they mysteriously escaped from their cages and presumably disappeared into the hole that just as mysteriously appeared in the wall underneath the tank in one of the B-3 toilet cubicles. Their mobility must have been extraordinary, for within days repair crews were rushing frantically all over Zamork in response to a plague of electrical failures and burned-out lighting circuits. Luchenko was in trouble with the block supervisor, and Rashazzi lost a stack of accumulated privileges, but the reactions went no further than that.

The exercise provided a smoke screen for finding out more about the security system, but it really didn’t solve the overall problem. The Russians had long been adepts at deception, and it was never possible to be sure that the surveillance measures uncovered at one level were not decoys intended to divert the prisoners’ attention while a more cunningly hidden level continued operating unimpaired. Long after Rashazzi and Haber had become experts at ferreting out wired microphones, for example, they discovered another kind embedded in the walls, which operated without any telltale leads at all: they were connected by strips of conducting paint, which were then concealed by a layer of ordinary paint. Rashazzi made a probe tipped by a pair of fine needles that could detect the strips, but it was tedious work.

It was possible to play various games to try and deduce if a particular location was being monitored, such as deliberately staging a provocative-sounding dialogue there and watching for any Russian response. The trouble was that Russians could play games like that too, by weaving their net with a wide mesh and purposely allowing the small fry through in order to catch the bigger fish later. How many were willing to be fall guys to find out?

McCain concluded there could be no safe way of communicating inside Zamork’s regular environment. The outside work details offered better prospects, but he had no control over who was assigned to them – and he himself was confined to working inside Zamork, anyway. But then, he asked himself, was it so essential to get out or Zamork itself, after all? Surveillance devices would be in the places where people went: in the billets, corridors, mess areas, and so on. But in addition to places like those, the structure included spaces behind the walls, machinery compartments between decks, and shafts carrying cables and ducting off in all directions. If there were some way of getting into places like that…

McCain put the question to Rashazzi one morning as they were walking along Gorky Street, staying close to a tractor hauling a trailer loaded with trays of rattling pipe fittings.

“Albrecht and I have been looking into that for some time,” Rashazzi said. “The problem is that the wall-and floor-panels everywhere carry a system of conductive strips on the back that will cause open circuits and set off alarms if they’re moved.”

“Couldn’t you jumper the connections or something before the panels were lifted, so the circuit wasn’t broken?” McCain asked.

“You could, if you knew the circuit layout. But you can’t trace the layout until you lift the panels. So it’s a vicious circle. A lot of people around Zamork have gotten themselves stretches in solitary through fooling with it. It’s a tricky business.”

McCain fell silent and stared moodily at the floor as they walked. Without some way of being able to talk and exchange information freely, he wasn’t going to get anywhere.

The outer torus of
Valentino Tereshkova
was a little over three miles around, which meant that the total length of the colony’s road system was not large. Therefore the Russians hadn’t bothered shipping up heavy road-maintenance machinery to stand idle most of the time; they made use of the labor force already available there instead. When centralized planning failed to produce enough bolts to match the number of holes that Scanlon was drilling, bedframe production ceased while the planners brooded over their schedules, and McCain was sent on an outside assignment with the road-resurfacing gang that Koh was with, working near the edge of one of the agricultural zones. He hoped this would give him the chance he’d been waiting for to talk with Koh in less restrictive surroundings.