The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (58 page)

Ohmigosh!
she realized with a start.
Giant-Killer
...
of course! It’s the beans! The KGB must have poisoned the jelly beans!

She quickly looked across the room at the anonymous, nondescript aide who had delivered the jar to Reagan. The man’s face was slick with perspiration as he stared at Gorbachev with a look of horrified fascination. He wasn’t just nervous, Roberta concluded instantly; he looked guilty as hell, like a man who saw his own soul being damned right in front of his eyes.
They made him do it,
she realized beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The KGB got to the Gipper’s gofer!

A flashbulb went off, practically in Roberta’s face. Reagan and Gorbachev smiled for the camera, and she knew that Gorbachev was only seconds away from tossing a whole handful of poisoned jelly beans into his mouth. His enemies in the Kremlin would no doubt try to pin the blame on the United States, she guessed, maybe even on Reagan himself. Talk about a diplomatic catastrophe!
I
have to do something right away,
she thought frantically,
preferably without causing a major international incident
. ...

“Watch out for that cat!” she yelled as shrilly as she could, startling Gorbachev and alerting Isis, who came racing out from beneath the buffet table with a strip of dried haddock between her jaws. The speeding feline zoomed straight across the room and up Gorby’s leg, causing him to let go of the jelly beans in surprise and giving Roberta the excuse she needed to “accidentally” drop the entire jar onto the hardwood floor, where it shattered in an explosion of glass and tainted gelatin. “Oops!” she said in Russian, not that anyone was listening except maybe the American translator, Sommers, who reached out
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quickly to steady Roberta.
Wow,
she thought, surprised by the ex-tennis champ’s strength,
that’s quite a grip she’s got.

Letting go of Gorbachev’s leg, Isis twisted in the air, landing on her feet in the middle of the crowded reception hall. Freaked-out diplomats scurried away from the demonic black cat, while Secret Service agents and their Russian competitors raced each other to capture the unsanctioned feline, diving for the floor and getting in each other’s way even as Isis made a break for it, disappearing under a twelfth-century Viking couch. “There it went!” Nancy Reagan shouted helpfully, pointing at the gap between the couch and the floor with a forkful of broiled puffin. “Don’t let it get away!”

Giddy with relief that disaster had been averted, Roberta fought hard not to giggle as she watched the First Lady’s antics with undeniable amusement. Nancy was notoriously superstitious where astrology was concerned.
Wonder how she feels about black cats?
Roberta thought.

Unnoticed in the confusion, she discreetly toyed with the servo in the pocket of her gray serge business suit, locking an exceiver signal on the intricate circuitry in Isis’s sparkling silver collar, so that, by the time the incensed bodyguards succeeded in dragging the hefty whalebone couch away from the wall, there was no sign of the cat at all, merely a wisp or two of a faintly ectoplasmic blue mist. “Good heavens,” Roberta blurted out loud. “This place really
is
haunted!”

She glanced down at her feet, where the deadly jelly beans were now strewn amid slivers of broken glass. “I’m so sorry, Mr. President, General Secretary,” she said ingenuously, shrugging her shoulders sheepishly. “That animal just came out of nowhere!”

“No harm done, young lady,” Reagan assured her. He and Gorbachev both looked anxious to put the bizarre incident behind them.
Somehow I’m guessing this won’t make the official press release,
Roberta thought, figuring that all parties involved were pretty much equally embarrassed. “So, Mikhail,” Reagan said expansively, taking Gorbachev by the arm and guiding him toward the buffet table. “What do you say we sample some of our hosts’ fine cuisine?”

Translating on the run, Roberta hustled to keep up with the gabbing world leaders, sparing only a second to glance over her shoulder at
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that suspicious-looking young aide, who looked on the verge of fainting, perhaps from relief that he hadn’t actually killed the leader of a major world superpower.
I’ll have to tip off our contact in the CIA about that guy,
she realized, making a mental note to do so at the earliest possible opportunity.
Or maybe Seven will want his friend McCall to “equalize” the culprit?

In the meantime, she quietly congratulated herself (and, okay, Isis) on a job well done, even if she suspected that it would take more than some briny hors d’oeuvres to bridge the gap between Reagan’s and Gorbachev’s positions on SDL That was their negotiators’ problem, though, not hers. She had succeeded at the absolutely essential task of keeping Gorby alive.

How’s that for a new twist in espionage?
she thought, a mischievous smirk creeping onto her face.
This has to be the first time an undercover agent has ever saved the day by spilling the beans!

811 EAST 68TH STREET, APT. 12-B

NEW YORK CITY

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 9, 1989

THE BERLIN WALL WAS COMING DOWN
, and Roberta was stuck watching it on TV. CNN, to be precise, which she was monitoring via the Beta 5. On the supercomputer’s circular display screen, hordes of ecstatic Germans, from both East and West, celebrated atop the now-obsolete Wall, while others went at the hated, graffiti-covered barricade with picks and hammers. Honking horns, pealing bells, and jubilant cheers joined with the pounding techno music blaring from dozens of boom boxes to effectively drown out the earnest efforts of on-site news commentators to provide a historical context for the riotous festivities. Tears flowed, and champagne bottles popped, as the city, divided for nearly three decades, came together once more.

It looked like one heck of a party, and Roberta was sorely tempted to get in on the action. Leaning back in Seven’s well-worn suede chair, her feet upon the now-creaky walnut desk, she eyed the empty matter-transmission vault speculatively, then sighed and shook her head. As much as she wanted to hop the Blue Smoke Express to Berlin, Seven was counting on her to hold down the fort while he and Isis finished off their mission in Bulgaria, where even now they were working behind-the-scenes to insure that the collapse of that
[380]
coun
try’s thirty-five-year-old Communist government took place in a peaceful manner. Seven and the cat been gone for hours now with no word, but Roberta wasn’t too concerned yet. So far, the Iron Curtain appeared to be melting away with surprisingly little blood and thunder.

Who would have ever imagined it?
Roberta thought, agog at the rapid-fire changes transforming the face of Eastern Europe. She and Seven had been working overtime for weeks now, trying to keep one step ahead of what appeared to be the complete and total meltdown of the Warsaw Pact. Not that she was complaining, of course; she still had vivid memories of being chased toward the Berlin Wall by barking guard dogs and trigger-happy East German soldiers, like that time she and Seven pilfered those files from the Russian Embassy.
Good grief,
she thought, with apologies to Charlie Brown.
Was that really fifteen years ago?

Roberta suddenly felt very old. She had turned forty a few months ago, and though her shoulder-length hair was still honey-blond, the color came out of a bottle these days. She liked to think that she’d held on to her figure, though; if nothing else, saving the world on a near-weekly basis gave her plenty of exercise.
It’s certainly been an interesting couple of decades,
she reflected philosophically. She’d traveled the world (and several places beyond), visited both the past and the future, risked her life a couple zillion times, and, most important, helped make the world a better place.

After a rocky start, what with AIDS and the Iran hostage crisis and all, the eighties seemed to be ending with peace and democracy and positive vibrations breaking out all over, as if the entire world had just taken a Prozac.
So much for the Cold War,
she mused, munching on a slice of pineapple pizza and trying not to drip any melted cheese onto her turtleneck sweater and old bell-bottoms.
Wonder if this means that Seven and I are finally out of work?

As if in response to her unspoken query, the door to Seven’s office came open with a bang. A single powerful kick was enough to knock the wooden door, which Roberta had conscientiously locked before rotating the Beta 5 out from its hiding place behind the bookcase,
[381]
right off its hinges. Caught by surprise, with her feet still awkwardly perched on top of the desk, she choked on her pizza as a trio of intruders barged into the office, led by a bearded young man wearing a snow-white turban and a red Nehru jacket. Roberta recognized the invader at once, even though she hadn’t laid eyes on him for at least five years.

“Khan!”

She reached wildly for her servo, resting atop the desk, where she had actually been using it as a pen, to scribble down notes on a memo pad, but a single gunshot shattered the polished obsidian desktop directly between her and the servo, making her yank her hand back abruptly. Looking up in alarm, she spotted a Glock automatic pistol, complete with silencer, in the youthful superman’s grip.
Guess he’s graduated from killer Frisbees,
she noted acerbically, recalling Seven’s description of the deadly
chakrams
Khan had employed in Moscow a few years back.

“No tricks or ill-considered heroics, please,” he warned her calmly, striding confidently toward her. He pocketed the servo while keeping the Glock aimed directly at her heart. “Good evening, Ms. Lincoln.” He boldly looked her over, his dark eyes appraising her without a hint of shame or discretion. Roberta was suddenly grateful that she’d gone with the bell-bottoms instead of a miniskirt today. “The years have been kind to you.”

“Thanks,” she said coolly Shoving her chair back from the desk, she carefully lowered her feet to the carpet. “You’re looking good, too, I suppose. Aside from the ugly black gun, that is.”

Khan would be nearly twenty now,
she calculated. No longer the wide-eyed teen Seven had rescued from Delhi years ago, let alone the strangely charismatic toddler she had first met at Chrysalis way back in ’74, he had only grown more impressive—and dangerous—over the intervening years. Magnetic brown eyes looked out on the world with complete assurance, while his deep voice and assertive manner were those of a born leader. Beneath the mandatory black beard, a Sikh tradition, his once-boyish features had evolved into those of a strikingly handsome young man. He could have been a model or movie star,
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Roberta figured, had not his lab-approved DNA and overweening arrogance steered him toward more grandiose and unsettling ambitions.

Although Khan had been keeping a low profile since killing all those Soviet soldiers outside Lenin’s Tomb in ’86, Seven had tried, with mixed results, to keep track of the Indian superman’s activities over the past few years. Unconfirmed rumors and reports had placed Khan all over Asia and the Indian subcontinent: inciting the 1987 pro-democracy uprising in South Korea, fighting alongside the Afghan rebels in their guerrilla war against the Soviet Union, and, perhaps most ominously, personally arranging the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq, the leader of Pakistan’s military government, leading to the eventual return of democracy in India’s nearest neighbor and rival.

Granted, not all such reports proved accurate. At one time, about four months ago, she and Seven had come to believe that Khan had, in fact, perished during the bloody government crackdown in Tiananmen Square—until equally unverifiable reports credited him with the supposedly “natural” death of the Ayatollah Khomeini on the very same day. Still, even if only half of what they had heard was true, Khan had certainly been keeping busy since ’86, albeit in a sneakily covert way.

Sarina Kaur would be very proud of her son,
Roberta thought,
which isn’t necessarily good news for the rest of us.
Her gaze crept furtively toward the green translucent cube resting atop the desk like a snazzy crystal paperweight. The cube was actually a portable, artificially intelligent interface with the Beta 5.
If I can just get my hands on that cube for a few moments, I might be able to send a distress signal to Seven
—
or even Isis!

“So who are your new buddies?” she asked Khan, stalling for time. She tipped her head toward the two strangers flanking Khan. They looked like hired muscle to her, with beefy bodies and silent, sullen expressions. One was Arab in appearance, while the other looked African, but they were both too homely and thuggish-looking to be genetically engineered, which provided Roberta with some small measure of relief. One new-and-improved
Ubermensch
was more than enough.

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“Why, these are but two of my many followers,” Khan said grandly, introducing the brutish pair with a sweeping gesture. “They share my vision of the new world order to come, in which, at long last, the suffering masses of humanity will be governed by those, such as myself, best equipped to manage world affairs.” He glanced over at the Beta 5, which continued to display televised images of festive Germans dancing upon the disintegrating Wall, and nodded in approval. “This is my moment, Ms. Lincoln. In the imminent collapse of the once-mighty Soviet Union, I see a power void crying out to be filled by a new breed of superior men and women. The time draws near when I, and others like me, shall be able to step from the shadows to claim our rightful place as the destined rulers of humanity.”