The Sam Gunn Omnibus (13 page)

I reached over and pounded the master switch on the console. Just like the
technician I bounded toward the ceiling. The power generators wound down and
went silent.

Zworkin stared up at me open mouthed as I cracked my head painfully and
floated down toward him again.

I could not kill Sam. I could not murder him in cold blood, no matter what
the consequences might be.

“What are you doing?” Zworkin demanded.

Putting out a hand to
grasp the console and steady myself, I said, “We should not run this test while
the Yankee spy is close enough to watch.”

He eyed me shrewdly,
then called to the two dumbfounded technicians. “Out! Both of you! Until your
commander calls for you again.”

Shrugging and exchanging
confused looks, the two young men left the laboratory module. Zworkin pushed
the hatch shut behind them, leaning against it as he gave me a long quizzical
stare.

“Grigori Aleksandrovich,”
he said at last, “we must do something about this American. If ground control
ever finds out about him—if
Moscow
ever finds
out...”

“What was it you said
about the diamond crystals?” I asked. “Do you think the imperialists know about
our experiments here?”

“Of course they know!
And this Yankee spy is at the heart of the matter.”

“What should we do?”

Zworkin rubbed his chin
but said nothing. I could not helping thinking, absurdly, that his acne had
almost totally disappeared.

So we allowed Sam aboard
the station once again and I brought him immediately to my private cubicle.

“Cripes!” he chirped. “I’ve
seen bigger coffins. Is this the best that the workers’ paradise can do for
you?”

“No propaganda now,” I whispered
sternly. “And no more blackmail. You will not return to this station again and
you will not get any more diamonds from me.”

“And no more ice cream?”
He seemed entirely unconcerned with the seriousness of the situation.

“No more anything!” I said,
straining to make it as strong as I could while still whispering. “Your visits
here are finished. Over and done with.”

Sam made a rueful grin
and wormed his right hand into the hip pocket of his coveralls. “Read this
,
” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

It had two numbers on
it, both of them in six digits.

“The first is your
private bank account number at the Bank of Zurich, in Switzerland.”

“Russian citizens are
not allowed to ...”

“The second number,” Sam
went on, “is the amount of money deposited in your account, in Swiss francs.”

“I told you, I am not—”
I stopped and looked at the second number again. I was not certain of the
exchange ratio between Swiss francs and rubles, but six digits are six digits.

Sam laughed softly. “Listen.
My friends in New York have friends in

Switzerland. That’s how
I set up the account for you. It’s your half of the profit from those little
stones you gave me.”

“I don’t believe it. You
are attempting to bribe me.”

His look became pitying.
“Greg, old pal, three-quarters of your Kremlin leaders have accounts in
Switzerland. Don’t you realize that the big conference in Geneva is stalled over—”

“Over your report to the
CIA that we are manufacturing diamonds here in this station!” I hissed. “You
are a spy, admit it!”

He spread his hands in
the universal gesture of confession. “Okay, so I’ve passed some info over to
the IDA.”

“Don’t you mean CIA?”

Sam blinked with
surprise. “CIA? Why in hell would I want to talk to those spooks? I’m dealing
with the IDA.”

“Intelligence Defense
Agency,” I surmised.

With an annoyed shake of
his head, “Naw—the International Diamond Association. The diamond cartel. You
know, DeBeers and those guys.”

I was too stunned with
surprise to say anything.

“The cartel knew you
were doing zero-gravity experiments up here, but they thought it was for
diamond film and optical quality diamond to use on your high-power lasers. Once
my friends in New York saw that you were also making gem-quality stones, they
sent word hotfooting to Amsterdam.”

“The international
diamond cartel..

“That’s right, pal,”
said Sam. “They don’t want to see diamonds manufactured in space kicking the
bottom out of their market.”

“But the crisis in
Geneva,” I mumbled.

Sam laughed. “The
argument in Geneva is between the diamond cartel and your own government. It’s
got nothing to do with Star Wars or Red Shield. They’ve forgotten all about
that. Now they’re talking about m
oney!”

I could not believe what
he was saying. “Our leaders would never stoop—”

Sam silenced me with a
guffaw.

“Your leaders are
haggling with the cartel like a gang of housewives at a warehouse sale. Your
president is talking with the cartel’s leaders right now over a private two-way
fiber-optic link.”

“How do you know this?”

He reached into the big
pocket on the thigh of his suit. “Special video recording. I brought it just
for you.” With a sly smile he added, “Can’t trust those guys in Amsterdam, you
know.”

It was difficult to
catch my breath. My head was swimming.

“Listen to me, Greg.
Your leaders are going to join the diamond cartel; they’re just haggling over
the price.”

“Impossible!”

“Hard to believe that
good socialists would help the evil capitalists rig world prices for diamonds?
But that’s what’s going on right now, so help me. And once they’ve settled on
their terms, the conference in Geneva will get back to dealing with the easy
questions, like nuclear war.”

“You’re lying. I can’t
believe that you are telling me the truth,”

He shrugged
good-naturedly. “Look at the video. Watch what happens in Geneva. Then, once
things settle down, you and I can start doing business again.”

I must have shaken my
head without consciously realizing it.

“Don’t want to leave all
those profits to the cartel, do you? We can make a fair-sized piece of
change—as long as we stay small enough so the cartel won’t notice us. That’s
still a lot of money, pal.”

“Never,” I said. And I meant
it. To do what he asked would mean working against my own nation, my own
people, my own government. If the secret police ever found out!

I personally ushered Sam
back to the docking compartment and off the station. And never allowed him back
on Mir 5 again, no matter how he pleaded and wheedled over the radio.

After several weeks he
finally realized that I would not deal with him, that when Grigori
Aleksandrovich Prokov says “never” that is exactly what I mean.

“Okay friends,” his
radio voice said, the last time he tried to contact us. “Guess I’ll just have
to find some other way to make my first million. So long, Greg. Enjoy the
workers’ paradise, pal.”

THE OLD MAN’S
tone had grown distinctly wistful. He stopped, made a deep
wheezing sigh, and ran a liver-spotted hand over his wrinkled pate.

Jade had forgotten the
chill of the big lunar dome. Leaning slightly closer to Prokov, she asked:

“And that was the last
you saw or heard of Sam Gunn?”

“Yes,” said the Russian.
“And good riddance, too.”

“What happened after
that?”

Prokov’s aged face
twisted unhappily. “What happened? Everything went exactly as he said it would.
The conference in Geneva started up again, and East and West reached a new
understanding. My crew achieved its mission goal; we spent two full years in
Mir 5 and then went home. The Russian Federation became a partner in the
international diamond cartel.”

“And you went to Mars,” Jade prompted.

Prokov’s wrinkled face became bitter. “No. I was not picked to command the
Mars expedition. Zworkin never denounced me, never admitted his own involvement
with Sam, but his report was damning enough to knock me out of the Mars mission.
The closest I got to Mars was a weather observation station in Antarctica!”

“Wasn’t your president at that time the one who—”

“The one who retired to Switzerland after he stepped down from leading the
nation? Yes. He is living there still like a bloated plutocrat.”

“And you never dealt with Sam Gunn again?”

“Never! I told him never and that is exactly what I meant. Never.”

“Just that brief contact with him was enough to wreck your career.”

Prokov nodded stonily.

“Yet,” Jade mused, “in a way it wa
s you
who got Russia into partnership with the diamond cartel. That must have been
worth hundreds of millions each year to your government.”

The old man’s only reply was a bitter, “Pah!”

“What happened to your Swiss bank account? The one Sam started for you?”

Prokov waved a hand in a gesture that swept the lunar dome and asked, “How
do you think I can afford to live here?”

Jade felt herself frown with puzzlement. “I thought the Leonov Center was
free....”

“Yes, of course it is. A retirement center for Heroes of the Russian
Federation. Absolutely free! Unless you want some real beef in your Stroganoff.
That costs extra. Or an electric blanket for your bed. Or chocolates—chocolates
from Switzerland are the best of all, did you know that?”

“You mean that your Swiss bank account...”

“It is an annuity,” said Prokov. “Not much money, but a nice little
annuity to pay for some of the extra frills. The money sits there in the bank
and every month the faithful Swiss gnomes send me the interest by e-mail.
Compared to the other Heroes living here I am a well-to-do man. I can even buy
vodka for them now and then.”

Jade suppressed a smile. “So Sam’s bank deposit is helping you even after
all these years.”

Slowly the old man nodded. “Yes, he is helping me even after his death.”
His voice sank lower. “And I never thanked him. Never. Never spoke a kind word
to him.”

“He was a difficult man to deal with,” said Jade. “A very difficult
personality.”

“A thief,” Prokov replied. But his voice was so soft it sounded almost
like a blessing. “A blackmailer. A scoundrel.”

There were tears in his weary eyes. “I knew him for only a few months. He
frightened me half to death and nearly caused nuclear war. He disrupted my crew
and ruined my chance to lead the Mars expedition. He tricked me and used me
shamefully....”

Jade made a sympathetic noise.

“Yet even after all these years the memory of him makes me smile. He made
life exciting, vibrant. How I wish he were here. How I miss him!”

“HEY, THAT’S NOT BAD,” SAID JIM GRADOWSKY AS HE
turned off the recorder.
He grinned across his desk at Jade. “You did a good job, kid.”

She was sitting on the
front inch and a half of her boss’s couch. “It’s only a voice disk,” she said
apologetically. “I couldn’t get any video.”

Gradowsky leaned back
and put his slippered feet on the desktop. “That’s okay. We’ll do a simulation.
There’s enough footage on Sam Gunn for the computer graphics program to paint
him with no sweat. The viewers’ll never know the difference. And we can
recreate what Prokov must’ve looked like from his current photo; I assume he’ll
have no objection to having his portrait done in 3-D.”

“He might,” Jade said in
a small voice.

Shrugging, her boss
answered, “Then we’ll fake it. We’ll have to fake the other people anyway, so
what the hell. Public’s accustomed to it. We put a disclaimer in small print at
the end of the credits.”

So that’s how they do
the historical documentaries, Jade said to herself, suddenly realizing how the
networks showed such intimate details of people long dead.

“Okay, kid, you got the
assignment,” Gradowsky said grandly. “There must be dozens of people here in
Selene and over at Lunagrad that knew Sam. Track ‘em down and get ‘em to talk
to you.”

She jumped to her feet
eagerly. “I’ve already heard about a couple of mining engineers who’re over at
the base in Copernicus. And there’s a hotel executive at the casino in Hell
Crater, a woman who—”

“Yeah, yeah. Great. Go
find ‘em,” said Gradowsky, suddenly impatient. “I’ll put an expense allowance
in your credit account.”

“Thanks!” Jade felt
tremendously excited. She was going to be a real reporter. She had won her
spurs.

As she reached the door
of Gradowsky’s office, though, he called to her. “Don’t let the expense account
go to your head. And I want a copy of every bill routed to me, understand?”

“Yes. Of course.”

The weeks rolled by. Jade found that the real trick of interviewing people
was to get them started talking. Once they began to talk the only problem was
how much storage space her micro-recorder carried. Of course, many of her
intended subjects refused to talk at all. Almost all of them were suspicious of
Jade, at first. She learned how to work around their suspicions, how to show
them that she was not an ordinary network newshound, how to make them
understand that she
liked
Sam Gunn and wanted
this biography to be a monument to his memory. Still, half the people she tried
to see refused to be interviewed at all.