Prisoners of Tomorrow (35 page)

Anita hesitated and searched for words. “He was . . . well, considerate enough in our dealings, I suppose . . . not ungenerous. We had ups and downs occasionally, but on the whole we got along all right. You could have described it as a friendly accommodation, not exactly romantic . . .”

“Was it successful sexually?”

Anita nodded. “Yes, I’d say so.”

“But you’ve just said he was pure KGB,” Foleda pointed out. “Earlier, you painted a pretty clear picture for us of your ideological convictions. They’re very strong. Wasn’t there any basic emotional conflict here? A paradox, maybe?”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” Anita said.

“Didn’t it bother you to go to bed with a dedicated officer of the KGB?” Barbara asked her.

Anita looked at her squarely, then at Foleda. “No. He was quite good, if you must know. And it is fun. Why not make the best of it?”

“Did he have other women, too?”

“If he did now and then, it wouldn’t have surprised me.”

“Would the thought have troubled you?”

“No.”

“How about yourself?”

“Never among the embassy staff. I couldn’t afford to risk compromising my own work.”

“But elsewhere? Your illegal contacts in London?”

“There was one, yes.”

“You didn’t contact him the night you decided to get away—before you called the SIS number?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It simply wasn’t that strong a thing. I needed help, not friendship.”

Foleda nodded, satisfied, while Meech scribbled furiously at the far end of the table and tapped buttons on his screenpad. It would have been easy for Anita to have tried harder to justify her action by depicting herself as having had a rougher time from her husband, and putting more blame on him for the problem. What she had said didn’t have the ring of a cover story about it.

There was a short pause. Anita refilled her water glass from the pitcher on the table, took a sip, and lit a cigarette.

“Getting back to Professor Dyashkin,” Kehrn said over his shoulder from across the room. “You and he were married when, did you say?”

“August third, 2003,” Anita replied.

“And divorced? . . .”

“2011. I forget the precise date.”

“In Moscow.”

“Yes.”

“Which was after he’d begun his affair with Olga . . .”

“Olga Oshkadov. Yes.”

“But before he moved to Sokhotsk.”

“Where?” Anita frowned. “I’ve never heard of that place.”

Kehrn made a pretense of forgetfulness. “Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. You didn’t keep in touch, did you?” Meech nodded to himself unconsciously as he recalled earlier answers onto the screen for comparison. Kehrn came back to the table and rummaged through some papers. “Presumably you have heard of
Valentina Tereshkova,
though,” he said.

Anita shrugged lightly. “The space colony? Why, of course. In fact, wasn’t it in the news yesterday?”

“Does it hold any special significance for you?”

“No, none. Should it?”

“Does it hold any significance for Professor Dyashkin? Do you connect him with it in any way? Did he ever talk about it?”

Anita could only shake her head. “If he was connected with it somehow, I was never aware. He never mentioned it in any special sense—only the casual references that anyone might make concerning things that appear in the news.”

“And you said that you didn’t know he’d moved to Siberia?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I knew he’d moved to Siberia. I didn’t know exactly where. Was it to the place you mentioned a moment ago?”

The interview went on in a similar vein until it was time for lunch. Kehrn went through with Anita to the table that the house orderlies had set in the dining room, where two CIA officers who would be questioning Anita further in the afternoon were due to meet them. Foleda announced that he would go for a stroll around the pond at the rear of the house to feed the ducks and get some air before joining the party. Barbara accompanied him.

“What do you make of it?” he asked her.

“I still think she’s genuine. In fact, I’m more convinced than I was in London.”

“Uh-huh. What else?”

“Well, if Professor Dyashkin is also mixed up with the Friday Club, and his ladyfriend Olga has been arrested, that maybe answers one of the big questions we’ve been asking: Why does he want to defect? He can feel the heat closing in on him, and wants an option for an out.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it.” There was a note to Foleda’s voice that said perhaps it was too obvious. He stopped as a flotilla of ducks arrived from across the pond and waited a few feet out from the bank for pieces of breadrolls he’d picked up from the plates that had come in with the coffee earlier. “Then, how’s this for a long shot?” he said. “Let’s suppose that Olga was moved up to
Tereshkova
for some reason, and that she’s inside the prison camp there. We already know that Dyashkin is at the receiving end of the Blueprint transmissions. See my point?”

Barbara nodded. “It’s a good bet that Olga’s the person at the other.”

“That’s the way it looks to me.” Foleda broke another roll and tossed the pieces into the water.

“How can we find out for sure?”

“Easily—by asking Dyashkin. He must know who is it he’s talking to.”

“Would he tell us?”

“Why shouldn’t he? He confirmed that Lew McCain and the Bryce girl are up there. And besides, he’s sweating and he might want us to get him out, so he’s not of a mind to refuse favors.” Foleda turned back from the pond. “Now let’s string all those facts together. We’ve never been able to discover how he works his end of the Blueprint line, but we know he’s got some way of sending messages up to Mermaid. Now we’re pretty certain his contact up there is Olga, and Olga was arrested for anti-Soviet activities. Now let’s assume that Olga’s inside the same place that Lew McCain and Bryce are in . . . and bearing in mind that we already possess a link between us and Dyashkin . . . See the possibilities?”

Barbara shook her head and blinked at the audacity of what Foleda was suggesting. “Then, maybe we could use his line to get through to our own people up there,” she completed.

“A neat idea, eh? Who knows what kind of use we might find for a connection like that?” Foleda threw the last of the bread. “Well, the ducks look happy. Let’s go back and get some lunch ourselves.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The secret belowdecks workshop became known as “the Crypt.” By the time McCain, Rashazzi, and Haber got there, Haber was breathing heavily from the exertions of the journey, which was still strenuous, even with the rope ladder that Rashazzi and McCain had attached at the light-fixture panel. The worst part was getting down from the pipe-supporting frame underneath the billet floor. Now that they could examine and neutralize the security circuits from the rear, what they needed was an easier way in. They had identified several out-of-the-way places in the Core where entry might be possible, which would have the added advantage of making the Crypt available during the day. Besides giving them more productive time, this would provide relief from the exhausting loss of sleep that was beginning to affect all of them.

By now the Crypt was powered and lit from a junction box that Rashazzi had tapped into, and had acquired a spacious workbench, boxes, storage racks, and a staggering assortment of tools, test equipment, instruments, electronic components, and jars of chemicals, gadgets, and parts, which the two scientist-thieves had materialized from a score of hiding holes that McCain had never suspected, and the whereabouts of which he still hadn’t the foggiest notion. The laser was at one end of the bench. Scanlon had managed to purloin a broken research model from the scrap heap at the university in Landausk, where he’d been working since bedframe production was suspended. It needed some replacement parts, which the two scientists said they could hand-make, and a new electronic control unit. In addition, a number of other contraptions and devices were at various stages of construction.

“Come this way, Lew,” Rashazzi said. “This is what we wanted to show you.” He beckoned McCain through into the space behind the bench. Haber followed, after collecting a notebook and some other items from the bench. Supported between two boxes was a shallow cylinder cut from one end of a drum about three feet across, containing six inches or so of water. The hole in the center was plugged, and a loop of stiff wire sticking up through the water from the plug formed a handle to pull it out. On the floor between the two boxes and underneath the cylinder was a bowl for the water to drain into. It seemed a very simple arrangement, and McCain could attach no significance to it. He waited curiously.

Haber had placed a meter rule across the dish with its edge above the center of the plug, and was waiting with a pencil and notebook. “Ready when you are,” he told Rashazzi.

Rashazzi picked up a dropper and used it to deposit spots of a purple dye at intervals across the liquid. Then he grasped the wire handle and, taking care not to disturb the water, slowly drew the plug out. The water began falling through into the bowl beneath. “The liquid has had over twenty-four hours to settle,” Rashazzi said, watching. “That’s to allow any swirling introduced during filling it to dissipate completely. Did you know that when water in a bathtub back on Earth forms a vortex, the direction of rotation usually doesn’t have anything to do with the way the Earth spins, as most people think? It’s an accidental consequence of the motion left over from when it flowed in and how it was sloshed about. To see the true effect of the Earth’s rotation, you have to eliminate such residual currents.”

“No, I didn’t,” McCain answered tonelessly, staring at the falling surface of the water and trying hard not to let his feelings show at that particular moment. If they were going to preoccupy themselves with this kind of academic fussing, the whole effort was a waste of time already. What good could come out of it?

As the water level in the dish fell, the drops of dye elongated into threads along the flow lines and traced out the counterclockwise swirl that was beginning to appear, slow on the outside and getting faster nearer the hole. Rashazzi leaned over the dish to read the measuring scale, and used a stopwatch to time the rotation speed at increasing distances from the center. “One, one point three; two, one point nine; three, two point four . . .” he recited to Haber, who scribbled the numbers down. McCain watched the process without interrupting.

When the dish was empty and the experiment over, Rashazzi straightened up and remarked, “Conservation of angular momentum, you know. That’s what makes vortexes form.”

McCain grunted noncommittally. The principle was the same as with twirling ice skaters, where pulling in the arms causes them to spin faster.

Rashazzi went on, “If an element of the fluid possesses momentum about the center, its rotational rate must increase as the radius it’s at decreases. The same thing causes tornadoes and hurricanes. You can see how the water in a tub at Earth’s north pole, for example, would be rotating.”

“Sure,” McCain said.

“And what about at the equator? Would you agree that the water in that case is not rotating?” Rashazzi asked. McCain looked uncertain. “It’s not rotating around the hole—in the plane perpendicular to the hole’s axis,” Rashazzi said.

McCain nodded. “Okay. So?”

Rashazzi looked across at Haber. “The situation on a rotating cylinder, such as a floor inside the ring of
Valentina Tereshkova,
is identical to that at the Earth’s equator,” the German explained to McCain. “There should be no vortex induced by rotation.”

It took a second for the point to register. Then McCain stared bemusedly at the bottom of the empty dish, looked up again, gestured vaguely with his hand. “But? . . .”

“Exactly.” Rashazzi nodded. “There’s something odd about the mechanics of this place. Since the colony rotates a lot faster than Earth does, the effect is much stronger here. It can overwhelm the residual currents I mentioned earlier. We’d have noticed it long ago if all the sinks and showers here didn’t have suction drains—not one good old-fashioned plughole anywhere.”

McCain shook his head as if to clear it. This was all completely unexpected. “Have you got any idea what it means?” he asked.

“Not really,” Rashazzi admitted. “But the motion of the colony must be more complicated than we’ve supposed. It wasn’t something we wanted to even talk about upstairs. I’m not sure what it might mean.”

“That game that Nunghan and his friends play out in the mess area was what first made us curious,” Haber said. “If you look very carefully, marbles don’t roll straight over long distances. There’s a slight curve. That’s something else you shouldn’t get in a rotating cylinder. We established that it wasn’t due to any slope in the floor, but it wasn’t possible to measure anything accurately without being conspicuous. That was why we needed a place like this.”

“And also the laser,” Rashazzi said. “If we can get it up to the surface level somehow, there are some other things we’d like to try with it. For example, if we can—”

At that moment a rasping sound came from a buzzer fastened to one of the supporting pillars. It meant that something had broken one of the infrared beams that Rashazzi had installed to cover approaches to the Crypt. Instantly Haber flipped a switch to put out the light. They moved back against the wall and waited. After a minute or so, lights flickered in the direction of the walkway through the pump and storage-tank area, accompanied by the sounds of people approaching. They came to the side branch that led to the Crypt and followed it. There were three lights, and a muttering of voices. McCain and the others tensed. The approaching figures were moving purposefully, not in the manner of people searching, but of ones who knew where they were going. They reached the edge of the sunken level and shone their beams down into the space below to pick out the three men crouching in the darkness. McCain, Rashazzi, and Haber moved out from the wall resignedly, holding their hands high and empty in front of them.

Then, from out of the darkness beyond the lights that were blinding them, an English voice said cheerfully, “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you chaps. It’s just what you might call a good-neighbor visit.” It was Peter Sargent, from upstairs in B-12.