The Doomsday Conspiracy (21 page)

"Of course there are flying saucers," her aunt said.

"They fly over Russia all the time. You should sell your story to a newspaper.

Olga had considered doing it, but she was afraid that she would be laughed at. The Communist party did not like its members to get publicity, especially the kind that might subject them to ridicule. All in all, Olga decided that, Dmitri and Ivan aside, her vacation had been the highlight of her life. It was going to be difficult to settle down to work again.

The ride along the newly built highway from the airport into the center of Kiev took the Intourist bus one hour. It was Robert's first time in Kiev, and he was impressed by the ubiquitous construction along the road and the large apartment buildings that seemed to be springing up everywhere. The bus pulled up in front of the Dnieper Hotel and disgorged its two dozen passengers. Robert looked at his watch. Eight P.M. The library would be closed. His business would have to wait until morning. He checked into the huge hotel, where a reservation had been made for him, had a drink at the bar, and went into the austere whitewashed dining room for a dinner of caviar, cucumbers, and tomatoes, followed by a potato casserole flavored with tiny bits of meat and covered with heavy dough, all accompanied by vodka and mineral water. His visa had been waiting for him at the hotel in Stockholm, as General Hilliard had promised. That was a quick bit of international cooperation, Robert thought. But no cooperation for me.

"Naked" is the operational word.

After dinner Robert made a few inquiries at the desk and meandered over Page 125

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to Lenkomsomol Square. Kiev was a surprise to him. One of the oldest cities in Russia, it was an attractive, European-looking city, situated on the Dnieper River, with green parks and tree-lined streets. Churches were everywhere, and they were spectacular examples of religious architecture: There were the churches of St. Vladimir and St. Andrew, and St. Sophia, the last completed in 1037, pure white with its soaring blue bell tower, and the Pechersk Monastery, the tallest structure in the city. Susan would have loved all this, Robert thought. She had never been to Russia. He wondered if she had returned from Brazil yet. On an impulse, when he returned to his hotel room, he telephoned her, and to his surprise the call was put through almost immediately.

"Hello?"

That throaty, sexy voice.

"Hi. How was Brazil?"

"Robert! I tried to telephone you several times. There was no answer."

"I'm not home."

"Oh." She had been trained too well to ask where he was.

"Are you feeling well?"

For a eunuch, I'm in wonderful shape.

"Sure. Great. How's Money-Monte?"

"He's fine. Robert, we're leaving for Gibraltar tomorrow." On Moneybags's fucking yacht, of course. What was the name of it? Ah, yes. The Halcyon.

"The yacht?"

"Yes. You can call me on it. Do you remember the call letters?" He remembered. WS 337. What did the WS stand for? Wonderful Susan?

... Why separate?... Wife stealer?

"Robert?"

"Yes, I remember. Whiskey Sugar 337."

"Will you call? Just to let me know you're all right."

"Sure. I miss you, baby."

A long, painful silence. He waited. What did he expect her to say?

Come rescue me from this charming man who looks like Paul Newman and forces me to go on his two-hundred-and-fifty -foot yacht and live in our squalid little palaces in Monte Carlo and Morocco and Paris and London and God alone knew where else. Like an idiot, he found himself half hoping she would say it.

"I miss you, too, Robert. Take care of yourself." And the connection was broken. He was in Russia, alone.

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Day Twelve Kiev, the Soviet Union

Early the following morning, ten minutes after the library opened, Robert walked into the huge, gloomy building and approached the reception desk.

"Good morning," Robert said.

The woman behind the desk looked up.

"Good morning. Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm looking for a woman whom I believe works here, Olga-"

"Olga? Yes, yes." She pointed to another room.

"She will be in there."

"Thank you."

It had been as easy as that. Robert walked into the other room past groups of students solemnly studying at long tables. Preparing for what kind of future? Robert wondered. He reached a smaller reading room and walked inside. A woman was busily stacking books.

"Excuse me," Robert said. She turned.

"Yes?"

"Olga?"

"I am Olga. What do you wish with me?" Robert smiled disarmingly.

"I'm writing a newspaper article on perestroika and how it affects the average Russian. Has it made much difference in your life?" The woman shrugged.

"Before Gorbachev we were afraid to open our mouths. Now we can open our mouths, but we have nothing to put in them." Robert tried another tactic.

"Surely there are some changes for the better. For instance, you are able to travel now."

"You must be joking. With a husband and six children, who can afford to travel?"

Robert plowed on.

"Still, you went to Switzerland, and-"

"Switzerland? I have never been to Switzerland in my life." Robert said slowly, "You've never been to Switzerland?"

"I just told you." She nodded toward a dark-haired woman who was collecting books from the table.

"She's the lucky one who got to go to Switzerland." Page 127

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Robert took a quick look.

"What's her name?"

"Olga. The same as mine." He sighed.

"Thank you."

A minute later, Robert was in a conversation with the second Olga.

"Excuse me," Robert said.

"I'm writing a newspaper article on perestroika and the effect that it's had on Russian lives." She looked at him warily.

"Yes?"

"What's your name?"

"Olga. Olga Romanchanko."

"Tell me, Olga, has perestroika made any difference to you?" Six years earlier, Olga Romanchanko would have been afraid to speak to a foreigner, but now it was allowed.

"Not really," she said carefully.

"Everything is much the same."

The stranger was persistent.

"Nothing at all has changed in your life?" She shook her head.

"No." And then added patriotically, "Of course, we can travel outside the country now."

He seemed interested.

"And have you traveled outside the country?"

"Oh, yes," she said proudly.

"I have just returned from Switzerland. Is very beautiful country."

"I agree," he said.

"Did you get a chance to meet anyone on the trip?"

"I met many people. I took bus, and we went through high mountains. The Alps." Suddenly, Olga realized she shouldn't have said that because the stranger might ask her about the spaceship, and she did not want to talk about that. It could only get her into trouble.

"Really?"

asked Robert.

"Tell me about the people on the bus." Relieved, Olga responded, "Very friendly. They were dressed so-" She gestured. Page 128

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"Very rich. I even met man from your capital city, Washington, D.C."

"You did?"

"Yes. Very nice. He gave me card."

Robert's heart skipped a beat.

"Do you still have it?"

"No. I threw it away." She looked around.

"Is better not keep things like that." Damn!

And then she added, "I remember his name. Parker, like your American pen. Kevin Parker. Very important in politics. He tells senators how vote."

Robert was taken aback.

"Is that what he told you?"

"Yes. He takes them on trips and gives gifts, and then they vote for things his clients need. That is the way democracy works in America." A lobbyist. Robert let Olga talk for the next fifteen minutes, but he got no further useful information about the other passengers. Robert telephoned General Hilliard from his hotel room.

"I found the Russian witness. Her name is Olga Romanchanko. She works in the main library in Kiev."

"I'll have a Russian official speak to her."

FLASH MESSAGE TOP SECRET ULTRA

NSA TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR GRU

EYES ONLY

COPY ONE OF (ONE) COPIES

SUBJECT: OPERATION DOOMSDAY

8. OLGA ROMANCHANKO-KIEV

END OF MESSAGE

That afternoon Robert was on an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu154 jet to Paris. When he arrived three hours and twenty-five minutes later, he transferred to an Air France flight to Washington, D.C. At two A.M. Olga Romanchanko heard the squeal of brakes as a car pulled up in front of the apartment building where she lived, on Vertryk Street. The walls of the apartment were so thin that she could hear voices outside on the street. She got out of bed and looked out the window. Two men in civilian clothes were getting out of a black Chaika, the model used by government officials. They were approaching the entrance to her apartment building. The sight of them sent a shiver through her. Over the years, some of her neighbors had disappeared, never to be seen again. Some of them had been sent to the Gulags in Siberia. Olga wondered whom the secret police were after this time, and even as she was thinking it, there was a knock on her door, startling Page 129

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her. What do they want with me? she wondered. It must be some mistake.

When she opened the door, the two men were standing there.

"Comrade Olga Romanchanko?"

"Yes."

"Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye." The dreaded GRU. They pushed their way past her into the room.

"What-what is it you want?"

"We will ask the questions. I am Sergeant Yuri Gromkov. This is Sergeant Vladimir Zemsky." She felt a sudden sense of terror.

"What's-what's wrong? What have I done?" Zemsky pounced on it.

"Oh, so you know you have done something wrong!"

"No, of course not," Olga said, flustered.

"I do not know why you are here."

"Sit down," Gromkov shouted. Olga sat.

"You have just returned from a trip to Switzerland, nyet?"

"Y-yes," she stuttered, "but i~it was. ... I got permission from-"

"Espionage is not legal, Olga Romanchanko."

"Espionage?"

She was horrified.

"I don't know what you are talking about." The larger man was staring at her body, and Olga suddenly realized she was wearing only a thin nightgown.

"Let's go. You are coming with us."

"But there is some terrible mistake. I'm a librarian. Ask anybody here whoHe pulled her to her feet.

"Come."

"Where are you taking me?"

"To headquarters. They want to question you." They allowed her to put on a coat over her nightgown.

She was shoved down the stairs and into the Chaika. Olga thought of all the people who had ridden in cars like this before and had never returned, and she was numb with fear.

The larger man, Gromkov, was driving. Olga was seated in the back with Zemsky. He somehow seemed less frightening to her, but she was Page 130

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petrified by who they were and what was going to happen to her.

"Please believe me," Olga said earnestly.

"I would never betray my-"

"Shut up," Gromkov barked.

Vladimir Zemsky said, "Look, there's no reason to be rough with her. As a matter of fact, I believe her."

Olga felt her heart leap with hope.

"Times have changed," Comrade Zemsky went on.

"Comrade Gorbachev doesn't like us to go around bothering innocent people. Those days are past."

"Who said she's innocent?"

Gromkov growled.

"Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. They'll find out soon enough at headquarters."

Olga sat there listening to the two men discussing her as if she were not there.

Zemsky said, "Come now, Yuri, you know that at headquarters she will confess, whether she's guilty or not. I don't like this."

"That's too bad. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Yes, there is."

"What?"

The man next to Olga was silent for a moment.

"Listen," he said, "why don't we just let her go? We could tell them she was not at home.

We'll put them off for a day or two, and they will forget all about her because they have so many people to question." Olga tried to say something, but her throat was too dry. She desperately wanted the man beside her to win the argument. Gromkov grumbled.

"Why should we risk our necks for her? What do we get out of it? What is she going to do for us?"

Zemsky turned and looked at Olga questioningly. Olga found her voice.

"I have no money," she said.

"Who needs your money? We have plenty of money." Gromkov said, "She has something else." Before Olga could reply, Zemsky said, "Wait a minute, Yuri Ivanovich, you can't expect her to do that."

"That's up to her. She can either be nice to us or go down to headquarters and get beaten up for a week or two. Maybe they'll keep Page 131

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her in a nice shizo."

Olga had heard about shizos. Unheated four-by-eight-foot cells with wooden-plank bed and no blankets.

"Be nice to us." What did that mean?

"It's up to her."

Zemsky turned to Olga.

"What do you want to do?"

"I-I don't understand."

"What my partner is saying is that if you're nice to us, we could just drop this whole thing. In a little while, they'll probably forget about you."

"What-what would I have to do?"

Gromkov grinned at her in the rearview mirror.

"Just give us a few minutes of your time." He remembered something he had once read.

"Just lie there and think of the czar." He giggled. Olga suddenly understood what they were getting at.

She shook her head.

"No, I could not do that."

"Right." Gromkov started speeding up.