Sabotage (16 page)

Believing they would kill Hugh if she did, Doreen refused to leave. At fourteen, Malcolm was afraid to go without her, so he stayed in Lipetsk. He and Barrington remained unschooled for three years, but they would often visit the home of a local scientist whose son they'd befriended. The man's name was Andrei Avdeenko. His boy was Fyodor. Aware of their interest and acumen, Andrei would tutor the children in physics. When they weren't studying or playing, Fyodor would share his collection of comic books featuring Norse deities.

“Andrei had purchased them as a gift from a Danish merchant,” Victoria said. “The boys couldn't understand the language, but they followed the pictures.”

“Hence the lasting interest in Norse mythology,” Austin said. “And the names of all the Glitnir projects. Those comics, could they be—”

“The ones in my dorm room? Yes. Fyodor gave them to me when I was five. A family relic.”

“So what happened to Doreen?”

“In the early winter of 1958, she was contacted by a member of MI6 saying they'd decrypted a letter from the Lipetsk base. It was from Hugh. A vehicle was sent to drive Doreen and the children to Finland, where they'd catch a plane to London.”

“Imagine her relief.”

“For the children, yes. But she stayed in the Soviet Union, fearing they'd kill Hugh otherwise. My dad and Barrington returned to England alone to live with my great-aunt Susan. After studying at the Harrow School, my dad was accepted to MIT. As an undergrad he made frequent trips to London to help the British locate the Clares. The Secret Intelligence Service got them back in sixty-six.”

The taxi passed a row of breweries along the tree-lined canals before veering onto Nevsky Prospekt. They reached an intersection and waited at the signal. A neon orange car whizzed through the junction and nearly caused an accident. The driver barked something about New Russians.

“So Hugh was held in the Soviet Union for fourteen years.”

“And the boys, four. In the early eighties, my dad learned Fyodor had become a professor of nuclear physics at Leningrad State University. That's when they reconnected.”

They turned onto a dimly lit street, and the cabbie pulled to the curb. Austin paid the fare. The taxi drove away, leaving them at the entrance of a dilapidated apartment complex.

Victoria pushed a button by the door, and they were buzzed in. Fetid odors assailed their nostrils in the lobby, if it could be called that. It was a dark cavity that smelled of urine. Pipe drips landed on their heads. Wrinkled newspapers lay scattered on the ground, soaking in the moisture. The plaster of the walls was not merely chipped but gouged, leaving exposed the building's plumbing. The sight conjured an ugly metaphor in Austin's head: the building was a body, and he was staring at its entrails.

“You sure this is the right place?” he asked.

Victoria nodded. “Hard to believe anyone could let a home decay to this extent, much less live here. Tenants feel no sense of ownership. Most of these apartments are communal. No one takes responsibility if the building rots.”

They stepped onto an elevator with scarcely enough room for the two of them. A collapsible door sealed them from the shaft, and the box began an upward crawl.

“To think a nuclear physicist lives like this.”

“Talk to people in the city,” she answered. “You'll find many people hold advanced degrees, yet they're selling trinkets on street corners—more profitable than the careers their degrees afford.” The elevator screeched to a stop, and the door folded open. “This way. Fyodor is expecting us.”

They knocked on an old, beaten door and heard movement on the other side, followed by clinks of shifting bolts. In the crack of the doorway stood a man of medium height with curly hair, a flimsy build, and distinct Slavic features, the slant of his forehead continuing the line of his nose. Squinty, magnified eyes blinked behind thick glasses that gave him a permanent look of intense scrutiny. His shirt was half buttoned and half tucked.

The apartment's cheerful décor seemed unbefitting of the complex. Scant, but bright furnishings invited a measure of warmth into a clean, humble residence. A painting of an Italian hillside rested over an oak rocking chair. A basket teeming with red flowers hung on a kitchen wall. Shelves were stacked full of black-and-white photographs of late relatives, including Andrei, and the living room was rich with foliage.

Avdeenko opened his arms and embraced Victoria.

“My dear girl!” he said. He kissed her left cheek, then her right, then her left again. “I can't tell you how pleased your visit makes me. And this time you flatter me by bringing a friend.”

She returned his embrace. “Wonderful to see you, Uncle Fyodor. I've missed you. This is my classmate, Austin Hardy.”

Austin offered a hand and said with a grin, “Victoria hasn't stopped talking about you.”

“Only good things, I hope.”

“You can be sure of that. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“A student of science is always welcome here. So you take aeronautics with Malcolm. A challenging course, I imagine.” His cheery tone took a dive. “If only we were meeting under happier circumstances. Victoria, I worry for your father. It is a good thing you have come. Both of you, please step inside. May I pour some drinks?”

“Tea would be nice. Thank you,” she said.

“I'm fine, thanks,” Austin said.

Avdeenko put a kettle on the stove while Victoria sank onto the sofa. Admiring the old photographs, Austin found a stuffed animal sitting on the shelf.

“A wolf,” he said. “There must be a story here. Do you have children?”

“That's Sköll. And no, I do not,” Avdeenko said from the kitchen. “That was a birthday gift from Victoria ten years ago. I'm sure she's shared her appreciation for Norse mythology.”

“Sköll is the wolf who chases two horses carrying a chariot holding the sun,” said Victoria. “I thought it was the perfect gift for a physicist, a man who spends his life hunting answers to the cosmos.”

“You have both come a long way for answers tonight,” said Avdeenko. “I'm ready for questions.”

Austin brought him up to speed on his night in Clare's office, and how he'd found the professor's cell phone lying on the ground. “We connected with you when we heard your voicemail message. You'd mentioned finding bugs. Where exactly did you find them?”

“There were two. I first discovered one in my mobile device. My cell phone had been running out of battery faster, despite indications of strong charge on the display screen. It was getting hotter than usual and made little buzzing noises before I'd make a call or immediately after I'd hang up. Usually, the buzzing and the static don't start till the phone starts dialing. It was the buzzing that finally clued me to the fact that someone might have installed a program. Sure enough, someone was intercepting my calls remotely. Later I dissected my landline and found evidence of wiretapping.”

“So what did you do?” asked Victoria.

“I reformatted my cell phone to wipe the bug. As for the landline, I installed a scrambler, and usually leave the earpiece off the hook to waste time on the interceptors' recorders. When the replays aren't filled with static, they will be stuffed full of gibberish.”

Austin said, “We have a theory as to why someone tapped you.”

“I'm all ears,” Avdeenko said.

“You'll have to excuse some gaps and holes in our knowledge. Hopefully you can fill those in.”

“I will try.”

“It sounds from your voicemail message like you consulted for Professor Clare on his most recent project, Baldr.”

Avdeenko looked alarmed. “You know about it?”

“Not much, but we suspect the tapping was an effort to learn about the technology and monitor its progress. We think someone wanted to overhear your conversations with Clare. When the time was right, the interceptors sent an agent to kidnap the professor and steal his technology. The briefcase must have had something to do with it. Stealing Baldr had to be a slick in-and-out. The kidnappers had to move before the technology could be transferred to the military. Your collaboration kept them apprised of the project's timeline.”

“It's plausible.”

“But now to why we're here: What exactly is Baldr?”

The kettle began to whistle, and Avdeenko filled Victoria's cup. He sat in a chair opposite them, looking troubled.

“You can trust Austin, Uncle Fyodor,” Victoria assured him, sipping her tea. “Dad did. He knows about Glitnir Defense and Dad's real line of work. Only one aspect is still foggy to both of us—the inventions themselves. We're only asking about the latest.”

“You don't have to persuade me,” said the physicist. “Under ordinary circumstances, my lips would be sealed. But judging now … Malcolm's life, and a great many more … Wait here.”

Avdeenko disappeared into his bedroom and returned with a box-shaped apparatus of naked wires and circuitry behind a funnel-shaped tube. He placed the contraption on the floor.

“This is my Herf Gun,” he said. “A home-built High Energy Radio Frequency weapon constructed using my own microwave oven. Do you want to see me use it?”

Austin eyed the machine warily. “Do we?”

“I think you do. Remember, this is just the preamble to a full explanation.”

Avdeenko opened a cabinet filled with small electronic toys. He pulled out a remote-controlled car and set it on the ground next to the contraption, handing the control to Austin.

“Turn it on,” he instructed. “Take her for a spin. Just don't crash into my microwave.”

Austin took the control and flipped the switch. The car reacted with a click. He oriented the automobile down a clear path and accelerated. Before the car hit the other wall, he jammed the stick to the left. The car spun out and circled back toward them. He began steering in circles and figure eights.

“Now,” Avdeenko pronounced, “watch this.”

He aimed the contraption's funnel at the car and pulled a trigger.

The car rolled to an immediate stop.

There had been no sputtering, as they might expect from a drained battery. It had merely died.

Austin jiggled the controls, holding down the accelerator. No response from the car. “It's broken,” he said.

“More than that,” Avdeenko said. “It's fried.”

“What happened?” Victoria asked.

“The Herf Gun's high-intensity waves, focused by a parabolic reflector, induced destructive voltage spikes within the car's circuitry, disrupting its electronics. The toy's cooked. It will never work again.”

Austin set down the remote and took a closer look at the car. “Fascinating.”

“It's hard for us to fathom what we cannot see or hear. For instance, the myriad radio waves and particles bombarding our bodies every instant of every day. We can't escape them, nor do we perceive them. The car, on the other hand, did experience the consequences of the waves I shot through it.”

“So that's what Baldr is? A Herf Gun?”

“Far from it,” Avdeenko said. “The Herf Gun is an approximation, a gadget that creates an effect similar to Baldr's on a microscale. And you wouldn't want me to point the Herf Gun at you. It would probably damage your nervous system. You'd hardly know up from down. The vertigo, motion sickness, and nausea would be terrible. You'd have trouble breathing. High energy waves would damage tissue. It would be a very painful experience.” He tossed the toy car into the trash. “Baldr would have the same effect the Herf Gun had on my toy car, but on a larger scale, and without physically harming humans.”

“What exactly is it?” Victoria asked.

“Baldr is a weapons satellite, an arsenal of nuclear weapons orbiting Earth.”

“I thought it wouldn't harm humans,” said Austin.

“Not physical harm. Economically, culturally, and politically, it could mean life and death.” This was a circuitous route to addressing their confusion, but Austin was sure it would pay off with clarity. “You assume the nuclear warheads are intended for detonation on Earth.”

“As opposed to?”

“Space,” Avdeenko said. “Or high in the atmosphere, witnessed from one very dark piece of land.”

Victoria shook her head. “I don't understand how a nuclear explosion in space could have the same effect as your contraption.”

“I haven't explained it yet.” As Avdeenko filled her teacup with more hot water, Austin glanced at the bared fangs of the toy wolf, Sköll, on the shelf. Had it been alive, the animal would have been bounding straight at him. Austin's attention returned to Avdeenko's voice. “When a nuclear weapon detonates, it creates a burst of radiation called EMP, or an electromagnetic pulse. Coupled with a fluctuating magnetic field, the shockwave creates voltage surges and a destructive current within electronics, frying the circuitry.”

“How long have scientists known about these pulses?” Victoria asked.

“Since early nuclear tests, but not until conducting further research did we realize the magnitude of the effects. The Starfish Prime test of 1962 sent ripples through nuclear physics intelligence circles at the time of its detonation, far surpassing calculated consequences. The nearly one-and-a-half-megaton weapon exploded four hundred kilometers above the mid-Pacific, burning out streetlamps and setting off burglar alarms as far as Hawaii, thirteen hundred kilometers away. The bomb would have had even greater effects had it gone off over a point on Earth with a stronger magnetic field.

“Around the same time, the USSR produced three pulses during nuclear tests over Kazakhstan. These tests were smaller, but they were far more damaging because of their proximity to civilization. Several factors determine the shockwave's destructive power. First is the altitude of detonation. A nuclear explosion fifty kilometers above the North American continent could affect five or six states, whereas an explosion five hundred kilometers above land could wipe out all of the country's electricity, and bring the economy of the United States to a standstill.