Summit (2 page)

* * *

Roderick Williams had a new boss, and he wasn't sure how to approach him with this.
George, I have some good news and I have some bad news.
No, he didn't think George Loud had much of a sense of humor.
Sir, I regret to inform you that we may have lost one of our best
—Even worse. No sense making it sound
too
gloomy. Williams sighed. If only the guy was one of
us.

Things went in cycles at the Central Intelligence Agency. The previous director of Central Intelligence had been a career operative who let the good old boys do what they wanted in order to save America from its wily and godless enemies. That meant the new DCI had to be an administrator, brought in to control the rogue elephants who were trampling on basic American rights. And that in turn meant that Roderick Williams, deputy director of Intelligence and one of the good old boys, had a lot of explaining to do.

"Mr. Loud will see you now."

Williams ran a hand through his shock of white hair and stood up. He was damned if he was going to be frightened of the guy. Still, he knew his career was on the line, and it wouldn't do to make a mistake. He strode into the DCI's office.

"Rod, how good to see you," Loud whispered, reaching across his huge desk to shake Williams's hand. Loud's grip was limp. Williams hated being called Rod, and he hated the way Loud whispered. It was an affectation, he was sure. Probably had to do with the guy's name—reverse psychology or something. It was stupid.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, George."

"Don't mention it. What can I do for you?"

Williams sat down across from Loud. If the cycles had gone a little faster,
he
could have been DCI now. If he could outlast Loud, maybe he still would be. Of course, he might not make it through this meeting. He took a deep breath and began. "George, we have a problem here—but also, the way I look at it, we have an opportunity. See, we've been running some experiments...."

It took a while, and it was not pleasant. Loud was short and bald, and he looked and sounded like a meek little bureaucrat, but he certainly had a way of making his feelings known. "Get your records together, Rod," he said finally. "I'm taking this to the president."

That was exactly what Williams didn't want to hear. "George, if I might say so, I think that would be a bit precipitous."

"Precipitate."

"What?"

"Precipitate.
The word you want is
precipitate
, not
precipitous
."

"Oh. Thanks." Asshole. "What I mean is, couldn't we try to keep this in-house for a while longer? There's still a chance Coyne will snap out of it, and then we've got a whole new ball game."

"And if he doesn't, we get accused of a cover-up."

"No one's covering anything up. We're just trying to find out all the facts before bothering President Winn. He'll crucify you if you go to him without enough information. You know that."

Loud glared at him. "Why don't we have all the facts now?"

"Because this is cutting-edge science, George, and our best scientist has become, er, incapacitated. Just give me a week, okay?"

Loud tapped a pencil on his desk. "A week," he said finally. "No more."

"Thanks, George. You won't regret it."

Loud looked as if he was regretting it already. Williams left his office in a hurry.

Could have been worse,
he thought. But he was still in big trouble. Coyne wasn't being particularly cooperative, and Coyne's wife was worse, and the other scientists didn't seem to be getting anywhere in figuring the thing out. What a mess.

Then he thought of Lawrence Hill's Soviet operation, and his mood brightened. It was tricky, but if anyone could pull it off, Hill was the man. He hurried back to his office and left a message to have Hill call him. They had to get going on Operation Cadenza. It was just the thing to bail him out.

When he was off the phone, he stared out his window at the Virginia countryside for a few moments, and then went looking for a dictionary.

He wasn't at all sure Loud was right about that word.

Part 1

Les Adieux

~

It is impossible to vanquish an enemy without first learning to hate him with all the powers of your soul.

—N. S. Khrushchev

Chapter 1

Dieter Schmidt was glad to be going home. He despised Russia and he despised Russians, and three years was long enough.

There was not a season here that did not make him miss Germany. It was spring now, and Russia was turning to mud. The people were starting to go outside hatless and coatless, and he was forced to see more of their doughy white skin, their thick, shapeless bodies, their ill-fitting suits and faded dresses. In the parks, he knew, the more adventurous of the women would be sunbathing in their underwear, a custom that almost made him sick with revulsion. Who could find these women attractive, with their steel teeth and their cheaply dyed hair and their square, sullen faces that looked middle-aged at thirty? Who could find this gray city attractive, with its absurdly outsized monuments and endless, dreary high-rise apartment buildings? Who would want to live through the fierce cold and the fierce heat, under the endless, impudent stares of people who wanted only to destroy your nation?

He hurried past an orange-vested babushka sweeping the sidewalk and thought of home, of bright blond frauleins and neon signs and restaurants that really had everything listed on the menu—of being able to write and speak without worrying about the enemy....

Not exactly, of course. He would still be in the fight. But he would be home, fighting an enemy for whom he had a little more understanding and sympathy. It could only be better.

Reasonably sure that no one was following him, he turned off Gorky Street toward the address that had been given him. He wasn't home yet, unfortunately, and there was still business left here in Moscow.

* * *

"He's on his way," Yuri announced. He sat in a corner of the room, wearing headphones and smoking a Belomorkanal.

Colonel Rylev nodded and turned to Professor Trofimov. "Ready?" he asked.

"Of course, of course," Trofimov replied, wiping his hands on his white lab coat.

They both turned to look at the woman.

* * *

She lies alone in darkness, waiting. Waiting to dream. Her mind is empty now except for one thing: terror.

Dreams can kill. And worse.

And the dream is about to begin.

* * *

Pavel Fedorchuk was waiting for the knock on the door. He was a small man, with jet black hair and eyes that were in constant motion. He was wearing a crisp new pair of Wrangler jeans and a sweatshirt that said Property of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary Swim Team. A Duran Duran album was playing on his stereo. He was smoking a Marlboro; the ashtray on the table in front of him was overflowing..There was a half-empty bottle of vodka and a loaf of black bread next to the ashtray.

When the knock came, he promptly stubbed out the cigarette and went to open the door. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bullet wound received in an ambush outside Kabul. "Coming," he muttered.

Dieter Schmidt was in the corridor, looking unhappy. He walked inside without a word, and Fedorchuk quickly closed the door behind him.

Schmidt looked around. The apartment was in darkness, except for one bare light over the table where Fedorchuk had been sitting. "We shouldn't meet," Schmidt said in heavily accented Russian. "This is very dangerous."

"Don't worry," Fedorchuk replied. "This is the last place anyone would expect you. Want some vodka?"

Schmidt shook his head, not attempting to hide his distaste as he saw the half-empty bottle. Fedorchuk shrugged and sat down at the table. Schmidt sat opposite him. Duran Duran howled in the background. "I don't understand why you came to us instead of the Americans or the British," Schmidt said.

"Why should it matter?" Fedorchuk asked, lighting up another Marlboro. "The glory will be yours instead of theirs."

"If this is on the level. If we decide to take you."

"Well, that's what we're here to talk about, right?"

"Of course. Let us begin, then."

"Yes. Let's begin."

* * *

She lay strapped to a cot inside a large Plexiglas pyramid. Halved table-tennis balls were taped to her eyes, and headphones covered her ears. Sensors were attached to various other parts of her body; the wires ran to a console outside the pyramid. A white sheet was draped over her legs. She didn't move. She looked like a mutant insect, an electronic corpse.

The people outside the pyramid heard Duran Duran scratchily through a speaker Yuri had turned on. "I despise that music," Professor Trofimov muttered, and he turned away from the woman. Rylev glanced at him, then shrugged, and he too turned away.

Doctor Olga Chukova stood apart from them, in front of the console. Her eyes stayed on the console's dials and digital readouts. She could not bear to look across the room at the woman about to dream.

* * *

"Let us begin, then."

"Yes. Let's begin."

How does the dream start? She never tried to figure it out. Her mind is ready, and the machine is ready, and it starts. Why worry about it further? Out of the darkness the familiar scene appears. She can barely hear the distant voices through her earphones, but they don't matter very much. What matters is the building in front of her.

It is too dark to see anything clearly, but the building appears to be made of some kind of white brick. Its door is open—a mouth waiting to swallow her. Above the door a light blinks in the darkness—red, red, red—like a bloodshot eye trying to see her more clearly. She has to enter this building.

She moves forward, her legs unsteady beneath her. She walks down a couple of steps, holding on to a black iron railing, and then she is in the open doorway. She takes a couple of breaths to control her terror, and she goes inside.

There is enough light to show that she is in a large, empty entrance hall. She has tried in the past to examine this hall—to see whose portrait hangs on the far wall, to read the papers on the bulletin board to the left, but she has never succeeded. All that is clear is a large grandfather clock, which stands like a sentinel in the middle of the marble floor, its hands always pointing to ten past nine.

A failure of imagination, perhaps, or perhaps that is simply the way this world is. She feels as if she is inside a photograph that is slightly out of focus at the edges, and no amount of squinting will make certain things come clear. At any rate, she does not even try this time; instead she walks slowly past the clock and up the steep staircase.

The second floor is her goal. It is an endless corridor, an endless gauntlet she must run, an endless nightmare to which she must now return. She closes her eyes for a moment, then starts down the corridor. She knows every door she passes and the secret that lies behind it; every secret is part of the nightmare. The doors are closed. She keeps walking until she reaches one that is open.