The Day Before Midnight (46 page)

They dropped to one knee and began to squeeze bursts off into the Soviet position, stunned at how quickly and totally the scurrying figures fell before them, and how long it took the Russians to respond and how easy it all had been.

Yasotay stared in stupefaction. In that second he knew the position was lost.

Delta moved in from the right, firing as its men deployed. The helicopters were a ruse, the infantry was a ruse, the brilliant American commander had somehow gotten the Delta unit up the hard cliffs to the right in the dark—impossible, impossible! thought Yasotay bitterly—and sent them in.

Now it was only a matter of seconds.

He saw the defenses were disintegrating, that he could not fight an enemy on two fronts, he was flanked, his complex scheme of drawing the frontal into the trenches had come undone. Now the job was simply to get the tunnel defense team down, and devil take the rest.

Yasotay fired a burst at the rushing figures from the right, but like the brilliant troops they were, they came low and hard, with disciplined fire and movement. He could see them now at the far end of the trench, firing their M-16s from the hip, long, raking bursts into his troops, while others broke off and hit his trenches from the side. More and more of them were coming, and as they came, they killed without mercy.

It sickened Yasotay that men so good should die so fast.

Yasotay pulled his whistle out and bleated two brief blasts, waited a second, and then bleated two more.

He watched as his soldiers rose in a scurry from their positions, first the Red Platoon, then the Blue Platoon, each putting out a covering fire as the troopers from Delta closed in from the right and the infantry poured over the main trench at the front. He saw the choppers landing and still more men pouring out and scrambling toward him; then it was time to run himself.

Turning, he slithered through the fire back to the ruined structure that housed the elevator shaft access. Time was short; flares hung in the sky, hissing and popping; everywhere tracers arced through the atmosphere, and where they struck they kicked up blossoms of dust. It all had a terrible slow-motion sensation to it, the desperate run to the elevator shaft, the insistent bullets taking his men down.

He made it.

“Tunnel team inside.”

Fifteen men, the maximum, wedged their way into the car; with the fifteen below, that would give him thirty.

“The gun?” his sergeant major yelled.

The gun? Here it was. Yasotay had to face it, the hardest choice. He had one heavy automatic left. He thought of the mad, fat American standing out in the snowy meadow firing the M-60 from the shoulder as their own fire splashed around him. Before he died, goddamn him, his bullets had shattered the breach of Yasotay’s H&K-21. Now he had one belt-fed weapon, the M-60; if he took it, he doomed the boys up top. They wouldn’t have the fire to hold the Americans off. Yet if the Americans got into the tunnel, he’d need the damned thing.

“Major Yasotay,” the sergeant major shouted again. “The gun?”

Yasotay hated himself.

“In the elevator,” he said. “It has to go down.”

“Gun forward,” yelled the sergeant major, and the weapon was passed through the crowd until it reached the elevator.

“You boys, God bless you,” Yasotay called. “You hold
them. You hold them till hell freezes. It’s for the motherland and your children will love you for it.”

“We’ll hold the bastards till Gorbachev comes to accept their surrender,” said a voice in the darkness, sheer bravado, for now it was very late, Yasotay could tell.

He bent quickly to the computer terminal still mounted in the seared metal side of the elevator shaft.

He typed
ACCESS.

The prompt came:

ENTER PERMISSIVE ACTION LINK

He typed in the twelve numbers the general had made him memorize, pressed the command key, and the thing winked at him.

OK

He stepped inside the elevator, and the door closed with a pneumatic whoosh, sealing him in for the journey down and sealing out the vision of night combat left behind.

“And where have you been, dear Comrade Arbatov?” asked the KGB man Gorshenin. “The alert for a possible defection went out at seven
P.M.
when you failed to arrive for your communications duty.”

“I was detained, comrade,” said Arbatov, blinking, wondering why Magda hadn’t alibied for him. Like some idiotic spy melodrama, the lamp in the KGB security office on the third floor had been turned so that it broadcast a steady, irritating beam in his eyes. So stupid! “On a mission. As I explained to Magda Goshgarian, who agreed to stand in for me.”

“The notification of your defection comes from your own unit commander, Comrade Klimov.”

“Comrade Klimov is mistaken.”

“Hmmm. Comrade Klimov is not the sort to be mistaken.”

“Yes, well, this once, he’s mistaken. Look, would I have come back to finish up my night duty if I were trying to flee the coop? Wouldn’t I be at some FBI estate eating steak and squeezing the bottoms of tarts?”

Gorshenin, a humorless youngster of thirty-two with a brightly lit bald head and two dim little technocrat’s eyes behind his glasses, looked at him without emotion. These young ones never showed emotion: they were machines.

“Explain please your whereabouts today.”

“Ah, comrade, you know that GRU operations are off limits to KGB, no? I can’t inform you, it’s the rules. Both units operate here by strictly enforced rules. Or would you
prefer the Washington station be entirely staffed by GRU and all you KGB lads could go on to some interesting city like Djakarta or Kabul?”

“Attempts at levity are not appreciated, comrade. This is serious business.”

“But, comrade, that’s just it, it
isn’t
serious.” Gregor was using all his charm, making sly eye movements at the young prick, smiling with sophisticated wisdom and slavish eyelash flutters. “Frankly, this young Klimov and I don’t get along. I’m old school, orthodox, hardworking, play by the rules. Klimov is all this modern business, he wants corners cut, this sort of thing. So we are locked in struggle, you know. This is just a little business to
embarrass
me.”

Gorshenin eyed him coolly. He touched his finger to his lips.

“Hmmm,” he said. “Yes, yes, I know how such things can happen in a unit.”

“So it’s merely
personal
, you see. Not
professional.
That’s all. A misunderstanding between the generations.”

Gorshenin licked at the bait. Went away. Came back, licked some more. Then bit.

“So, there seems to be a morale problem in GRU?” he said.

“Oh, it’s nothing. We’ll work it out amongst ourselves. Most of our chaps are good fellows, but sometimes one bad apple can—well, you know the saying. Why, only yesterday Magda was saying to me—”

But Gorshenin was no longer listening. His
eyes
were locked in an abstract of calculus. He whirled through his calculations.

“Ah, say, old fox, do you know what would be the wonderful solution to your problems?”

“Eh? Why, the only solution is that I’ll just wait it out.”

“Now, Gregor Ivanovich, don’t be hasty. You know how excitable young Klimov is. Suppose he were to really fly off the handle? It could be the Gulag for you, no?”

Arbatov shivered.

“Now, Gregor Ivanovich, consider. A transfer to KGB!”

“What! Why, that’s pre—”

“Now, wait. Stop and consider. I could get you in, at the same posting. A man of your experience and contacts. Why, you’d be invaluable.”

Gregor made as if to study the proposition.

“It could be a very profitable move for you. Very comfortable too. None of this backbiting, this snipping and nipping like two hungry pups in a crate.”

Gregor nodded, the temptation showing like a fever on his fattish face.

“Yes, it sounds interesting.”

“Now, of course, I’d have to have something to take to Moscow. You know, I couldn’t just say, we want this man, we must have this man. I’d have to
have
something, do you know?”

You are such an idiot, young Gorshenin. A real agent-runner is smoother; he’s got that easy, cajoling charm, that endless persistence and sympathy as he guides you on your way to hell. Arbatov should know: he’d guided a few toward hell.

“A present?” he said as if he were a moron.

“Yes. Oh, you know. Something small, but just to show you were enthusiastic, do you know? Something minor but flashy.”

“Hmmm,” said Arbatov, considering gravely. “You mean something from the Americans?”

“Yes! Something from the Americans would do nicely.”

“Well, actually, it’s a fallow time. You know how it is in this business, young Comrade Gorshenin. You plant a thousand seeds and then you must wait to harvest your one or two potatoes.”

Gorshenin appeared disappointed.

“A shame. You know I’d hate to have to turn you back to Klimov with a bad report on our interrogation. He’d not see the humor in it.”

“Hmmm,” said Arbatov, gravely considering again. “KGB has the GRU code book, of course.”

The idiot Gorshenin swallowed and the greed beamed from his eyes like a television signal. The code book was the big secret; it was the treasure; if KGB could get its hands on
just one code book for just one hour, it would be able to read GRU’s cable traffic for years to come. And the man who brought it in … !

“I’m sure we do,” said Gorshenin, poorly affecting nonchalance. “I mean the things are left around in installations all over the world.”

Such a terrible lie, so thin and unconvincing. The books were, of course, guarded like the computer codes that launched the SS-18s.

“Yes, well, a shame. You see, though the book is locked except when the communications officer uses it to decode or to encode high priority messages, he’s an old friend of mine, and one night he called up and realized he’d left delicate medicines there. Barbiturates, did you know the poor man was addicted? Anyway, in his despair he gave me the combination. I was able to retrieve his drugs for him. I actually committed the combination to memory.”

“Surely it has been changed,” said Gorshenin too quickly.

“Perhaps, but not the last time I had communications duty.”

The two men looked at each other.

A small object was pushed across the table at Arbatov. It was a Katrinka camera.

“Aren’t you late for your duty in the Wine Cellar, comrade?” Arbatov glanced at his watch.

“Very late,” he said. “It’s nearly midnight.”

The hole glistened open, dilating as the metal around it liquified. Jack thought of a birth: a new world would come out of this orifice. The black hole would spread and spread and spread, consuming all. A terrible sadness filled him.

“There, go on. Go on,” insisted the general. “You’re almost there, go on, go on!”

The flame ate the metal, evaporating it.

Suddenly there came the sound of the opening of the elevator door and the rush of boots. Men raced down the outside corridor. Shouts and alarms rose. For just a second Jack thought the American Army had arrived, but it was only the Russian. The language rose and yelped through the halls.
Orders were hurled at men by NCOs. Jack heard ammunition crates being ripped open, the clank and click of bolts being thrown, magazines being loaded, automatic weapons being emplaced. He heard furniture being shoved into the corridor as barricades were hastily erected. The atmosphere seethed with military drama; Jack was in the middle of a movie.

The general was talking earnestly in Russian with the tough-looking officer who’d come to Jack’s house that morning. They nodded their heads together, the younger man explaining, the general listening. Then the two of them departed from the capsule to check the preparations.

Jack stood. He was alone with the guard who’d shot him. His leg had stiffened and the pain was immense. He had a throbbing headache.

“You speak English, don’t you?” he said to the boy who stared at him with opaque eyes, blue as cornflowers. He had a rough adolescent complexion and teeth that could have used braces. But he was basically a good-looking, decent kid, a jock, maybe a rangy linebacker or a strong-rebounding forward.

“Do you know what they’re going to do?” Jack said. “What have they told you? What do you guys think
is
going on? You guys must not know what’s going on.”

The guard looked at him.

“Back to work.”

“These guys are going to fire the rocket. That’s what’s in here, the key to shoot the missile off. Man, they’re going to blow the world away, they’re going to kill mil—”

The boy hit him savagely with the butt of his AK-47. Jack saw it coming and with his good athlete’s reflexes managed to tuck his face just a notch and take the blow at the hinge of the jaw rather than in the mouth and cheek, and though he knew in the instant the pain and concussion erupted in his head his jaw was broken, he had a perverse pleasure in the fact that his teeth hadn’t been blasted out. He sank with a mewling scream to the floor, and the boy began to kick him in the ribs.

“No, God, please, no!” Jack begged.

“American pig shit motherfucker, kill all our babies with your goddamned rocket!” the boy howled in pain as genuine as Jack’s.

Jack thought he’d blacked out, but the kicks stopped—the boy was dismissed to the tunnel defense team by the tough major or whatever—and the major pulled Jack to his feet.

“Watch what you say, Mr. Hummel,” he said. “These kids know their pals are upstairs getting killed. They’re in no mood for charity.”

“Fuck you,” Jack screamed through his tears. “The Army’s coming in here and they’re going to kill your asses before you get this goddamned key, and—”

“No, Mr. Hummel,” said the general. “No, they’re still hours away. And you’re minutes away.”

The major raised his pistol and placed it against Jack’s skull. His eyes were drained of emotion.

“Do you wish to say ‘fuck you’ now, Mr. Hummel?” he asked.

Jack wished he had the guts to say it. But he knew he didn’t. It was one thing to be brave in the abstract, it was another thing with a goddamned gun up against your head, especially when everything about the Russian suggested that without blinking an eye he’d pull the trigger. Hell, they could cut the last inch or so of metal away with a Bic lighter, that’s how little was left.