Prisoners of Tomorrow (47 page)

“Would we be allowed to?” Rashazzi asked. “From what you’ve just said, mightn’t that whole area—the Crypt, all of it—have been under surveillance all along? I know we’ve checked it enough times and never found anything, but still . . .”

“I’ve got a hunch that it really might be clean,” McCain said. “If there were bugs and we discovered them, the whole game would be up. So maybe the Russians wouldn’t risk it.”

“You mean they’d rely on stooges to know what’s going on down there?”

“Exactly.”

Rashazzi’s eyes flickered over McCain’s face. “Any guesses who?”

“Any of the escape committee, maybe. I’ve never trusted that Indian, Chakattar. Then there’s our bunch . . . Who knows?”

“Albrecht is okay,” Rashazzi said.

“I guessed that.” McCain nodded. “Okay, so how about that floor? Let’s assume that whatever’s down there, nobody will be expecting anyone to be coming through that way.”

Rashazzi thought for a while before replying. “With a slow drill and plenty of lubrication, we could bore a pilot hole through quietly, with a good chance of not attracting attention. Then we could push a fiber-optic pipe down for a look around. We’ve got a good range of tools now. The only real limit on how long a man-size hole would take is the amount of noise we could afford to risk. That would depend on what we find down there.”

“Then, let’s start right away,” McCain said.

Rashazzi nodded. “I assume this like the geometric anomalies—we keep it to ourselves?”

“Absolutely.” McCain nodded emphatically. “And one more thing. Obviously we can’t trust any method of communication out of here that’s controlled by the Russians. That means we’ll want the laser. How’s it going? Has Paula finished what you wanted on the power supply?”

“Yes, just about.”

“So you and Albrecht can do the rest?”

“I think so.”

“Good. I want to have it operating ASAP.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It was late morning. In Hut 8 on the surface level, Eban Istamel had connected the output from a cassette player to the wire that had been uncovered from the bug hidden in the ceiling vent, in order to confound any unwelcome listeners. Two of the hut’s other occupants were on work assignments at Turgenev and one of the agricultural stations, and the third was away in the Services Block library. Paula sat staring wearily across the table at the electronic chip that Olga was showing in the palm of her hand.

Olga’s voice was appealing but firm. “There isn’t a lot of time, Paula. The bus will be leaving soon, and I’m due to be back at work in Turgenev for the rest of the day. From the way you described it, the situation sounds serious. Nobody could blame you for deciding to act on your own initiative. So I did take it upon myself to preload the message that I asked you to draft this morning. It’s in this chip now, ready to be sent.” She gestured toward the sheet of paper lying by Paula’s elbow. The message Olga had written was directed to Tycoon/ from Pangolin/ in the standard format that Paula used, but had blank spaces after the slashes.

The text listed the hub X-ray-module emplacement, the Agricultural Station 3 laser, the Landausk microwave projector, and the other installations that Tycoon had specified in his request to Sexton. Along with each item was a summary of what had been found there and a terse concluding assessment: findings negative—source invalidated. findings negative—source invalidated . . . findings negative—source invalidated. “All I need from you now,” Olga said, “is your completion code for Moon and a new initializer.” “Moon” had been the initializer in Foleda’s last incoming communication.

Paula got up and crossed the room to stare out through the window. The Polish historian from the hut in the next row higher up the slope was out fussing with his tomato plants again. Paula crossed her arms in front of her and rubbed her shoulders as if she were cold. They had been through all this earlier, before Olga went to Turgenev. Although Paula was surer than ever of the stand she had taken with Earnshaw, her anger had abated. Now she just felt tired of it all.

“If the information is true, what harm can it do to set the West’s suspicions at rest?” Istamel asked from where he had been leaning by the side of the washroom door, listening. “They’re always telling everybody about how incurably suspicious
Russians
are, after all. And don’t get me wrong—I’ve got no reason to feel especially friendly toward Russians. But I’ve always said American propaganda exaggerates everything just as much. They’re all as bad as each other. It’s the line of work that does it. Which side they’re on doesn’t make any difference.”

Olga had told Istamel simply that they had a way of communicating secretly with one of the American intelligence services. She hadn’t said how. Paula would have been happier if Olga hadn’t said anything at all, but Olga evidently regarded the whole business as sufficiently serious to warrant his involvement and advice. Paula wasn’t sure what position or influence the Turk had that should cause Olga to value his opinion in this way—but people didn’t ask unnecessary questions in Zamork. And besides, Olga must have had good reason to consider him reliable, for they were talking about her own channel to Ivan, too.

“Look, I’m not sure you quite understand,” Paula said. “What my opinions might be as an individual, and my capacity in the mission that I came here on, are not the same thing. Intelligence work isn’t what I do. I’m a scientist. I was only in a technical-support role.”

“But you came on an intelligence mission, all the same,” Olga said. “Doesn’t that make it just as much your duty to report back what you can?”

Paula drew a deep breath. “I still don’t like the thought of deciding something like this on my own. Why can’t we get Lew Earnshaw up here? Maybe if you two tried talking to him, it might make him see sense. Couldn’t we at least give it a try first?”

“The Crypt is cut off,” Istamel reminded her. “We can’t get him up here.”

“Is that maintenance crew still working down the shaft?”

“It’s worse than it was this morning. They’ve got half the wall opened up and cables everywhere. It could go on for days.”

“And do you have days?” Olga asked. “Remember how urgent Tycoon’s last message sounded. We don’t know what might be going on down there. A crucial situation may have developed, and its outcome could depend on what we know. Nobody’s going to hold anything against you for doing what you thought might help prevent a war.”

“Yes, it might prevent a war,” Eban repeated, nodding gravely as if the realization had only just struck him. “A war that would affect everybody in the world, wherever they are, whatever side they are on, and even if they’re not interested in either side. Perhaps this is a situation where it is not possible to permit the luxury of thinking like an American. You must try to think just as a member of humanity—of a community that knows no frontiers, whose only interest lies in truth.”

“Like a
scientist!”
Olga said.

A long silence followed. Paula continued staring out the window. The scene outside hadn’t changed, and wouldn’t change. Neither would her predicament. The decision had to be faced. There was no escaping it. She turned. Olga and Istamel were waiting silently, she at the table, he still leaning by the far door. Paula looked at them for a moment longer, but capitulation was already written in her eyes. She came back to the table, sat down heavily, looked across to Olga, and nodded. “The completion for ‘Moon’ is ‘Rise,’” she said.

Olga drew the sheet of paper over and wrote the word in the first of the blank spaces. She looked up. “And a new initiation word from your list?”

There was a silence. Olga and Eban remained motionless while moments passed that seemed to drag like hours. A woman’s voice called out to somebody on the pathway between the huts outside.

“‘Pin,’” Paula answered.

They had cut a section out of the floorplating, guided by the small test holes that Rashazzi had drilled to keep them inside the square of underfloor ribbing. Below was an interdeck space one to two feet deep. McCain sat by the edge and watched, while Rashazzi used a holder fashioned from stiff wire to push the fiber-optic cable down into the hole they had drilled through the lower surface at one of the corners. Rashazzi peered into the viewing piece attached to the other end of the cable, and after a few seconds began rotating the top of the holder for an all-round view of whatever was below.

“See anything?” McCain asked.

“Nothing. It’s all dark.” Rashazzi passed the viewer to McCain. McCain hunched forward and lifted it to his eyes. The entire field of view was pitch black. He spent longer than Rashazzi had, panning slowly through a full circle, but there wasn’t a glimmer of anything. McCain withdrew the holder and held it up over his head while he looked into the viewer again. A fuzzy but discernible image of the shapes and shadows produced in the pump bay around them by the lamp that Rashazzi had hung overhead marched across his field of vision. The fiber optic was working okay.

“We could drill a second pilot hole and put a light down,” Rashazzi suggested.

“We could fart around like this for weeks, too,” McCain said.

“You want to carry on?”

“It looks dead enough down there to me, Razz. Hell, we’ve gotten this far. Sure, let’s go the rest.”

Rashazzi probed with a gauge to assess the thickness of the panel, and selected a sawblade with the pitch he estimated would work the most quietly. He fitted it into the handle and began cutting two-handed with slow, deliberate motions, using the hole to gain a start. They had experimented with a power saw in the Crypt, but rejected it as too noisy. After a few minutes, Rashazzi rested his hands and McCain took over.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Rashazzi said after a while as he watched.

“So what’s new? You’re always thinking about something.”

“About the laser.”

“What about it?”

Rashazzi reached up and moved the lamp to illuminate better the area that McCain had cut to. “You don’t trust this communications channel that they’ve got upstairs . . . because it goes through Russian intermediaries.”

“Damn right.”

“Just because they’re Russians? The fact that they are dissidents doesn’t carry any weight?”

“I don’t
know
that. I’ve only been told it—secondhand, thirdhand, who-knows-how-many-times-hand. Who can believe anything they’re told in this place?”

“You think the KGB might be reading it?”

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t be on the list of things I’d be most surprised to learn about the world.”

Rashazzi rubbed the tip of his nose with a knuckle, as if pondering how to put what was on his mind. Finally he said, “But you wouldn’t be any better off with the laser, even if you did get it talking straight into the US military network. You’d have to use the existing channel to advise them what frequency they should watch for, the code you plan to use, and so on. If the KGB get that information too, they’ll be able to intercept anything that comes or goes over the laser, just as easily. You won’t have gained anything.”

McCain sat back and returned the saw to Rashazzi. “True,” he agreed.

“But you must have figured that out already.”

“Yes, I had.”

Rashazzi looked up and frowned. “So, what use is it?”

“Camouflage,” McCain said. “If we’ve got informers around, I wouldn’t want word to get back that we’ve stopped working on the laser. It would be too much of a giveaway that we’re suspicious. Also, my partner from upstairs is in on it, and I don’t like the sound of the people around her up there. It reeks of a setup. I don’t want her carrying back an impression that anything’s changed down here. We carry on with the laser as planned.” Rashazzi nodded in a way that said it made sense, and resumed cutting.

When the panel was fully cut, they lifted it clear and lodged it to one side. The beams from their flashlights failed to reveal anything significant in the darkness below. The space seemed to be quite large and open. McCain lowered a weighted line, which bottomed at ten feet or so. He swung his legs down and let himself down hand over hand, and Rashazzi followed.

This was not another machinery compartment. They were in a long, bare room, entirely without furnishings or contents of any kind. And yet, strangely, there seemed to be something familiar about it as they probed upward and around with the beams from their lamps. They were near one end of the room, and in the middle of the end wall was a doorway. Rashazzi directed his lamp along the length of the room and picked out the shape of another door at the far end. And then McCain realized why it looked familiar: it was a standard Zamork-style billet, without partitions or any of the fittings, but the same shape and size. Rashazzi had noticed it too. He moved toward the door and hesitated, but there was no bracelet-interrogation signal from above. He tried the lights, but they were dead. The door opened when he pushed it. He went through, and McCain joined him outside.

They were looking down into a larger space now, from a railed walkway. There was a similar door behind them to the left of the one they had come out of, and another to the right. There was a whole row of them they saw, no longer with surprise, as they proceeded along the walkway.

“We’re not going to find any weapons down here, Razz,” McCain said.

“I know.”

“You know what this is?”

“Yes. What’s it doing down here?”

“I don’t know. Are they planning to turn the whole place into a prison?”

For they were in a standard Zamork billet block. They had come down through the ceiling of one of the upper-level billets, and knew where the stairs down to the lower level would be even before they saw them. They went down, moved out into the central mess area, and sure enough, there were the two levels of billets facing them from the other side. All empty and silent. They walked to the end of the mess area, but instead of the bars and gate as existed in all of the blocks above, they found a solid wall with ordinary-looking double doors. McCain tried one of them, found it unlocked, and eased it open an inch, then instantly caught Rashazzi’s shoulder as a signal to keep back and stay quiet. There was light outside, and the sounds of voices and movement. They moved closer to the crack to peer through.