The Sky is Falling td-63 Read online

  "I want you to listen. We had been assured that we had a fancy psychological profile coming in on a woman who could lead us to a weapon we deem vital. Correct?"

  The young general nodded. He tried not to look at the body. So did the other superior officers of the strongest intelligence network the world had ever seen.

  "I wanted information. I wanted what was simple. We had been assured that an American operating alone was no danger, even though Americans do not operate alone. It takes three of them to go to the bathroom. But America had sent one man looking for this woman. And what were we told?"

  The young general's voice barely got out the words: "We said he had been taken care of."

  The other officers in the room were sure the general was going to be shot. Some of the older ones had not seen an execution in an office since the days of Stalin. They wondered if the bad old days were coming back.

  "He'd been around the block or something like that. London was downtown Moscow, you said. You were so sure, weren't you?"

  The general nodded. "Louder," said Zemyatin.

  "I was sure," said the young general. He wiped his forehead with the perfectly tailored sleeve.

  "I said here, as I said fifty, sixty years ago, that your enemy is perfect until he shows you how to kill him. No tricks. No games. Blood. Think. Blood. Think. Think." No one answered.

  "There is no gadget so exotic and useless that you will not copy it from the Americans. Well, we don't have time for that. Your motherland faces destruction. Your motherland faces a threat far more powerful and odious than anything we have seen before. Your motherland needs your brains, your blood, and your strength. Now, boychik. Tell us all about this American."

  "He penetrated our most secure London system, and got the woman who knows about this weapon that ... concerns you, a weapon I am not sure about . . ."

  "Anything else?" asked Zemyatin.

  "I guess I failed," said the young general. He adjusted his gold Rolex. He had thought he might be killed someday in some foreign land, but not here at KGB headquarters in his own office.

  "You don't even know how you failed. That is the danger. You don't even know how you failed."

  "I lost the woman. I underestimated the American."

  "Anyone can lose a battle. Do you hear me? Do you all hear me? We have lost many battles," boomed Zemyatin, and then he was quiet to let it all sink in. "We are going to lose more battles."

  And he was quiet again.

  "But," he said finally, raising himself from his chair and purposely stepping on the dead body of the man he had ordered shot at random, "we need not lose any war. The failure of our young boychik here has probably escaped every one of you."

  Zemyatin paused for only a moment. He knew he wasn't going to get an answer. They were all too shaken. Which was exactly as he had to have them.

  "The failure is something this young man did not do. He did not find out the methods by which this American operated. Today we know little more than we did before we lost that battle. We did not find out how to kill him. Now, from this day forth, I want the entire world network to look for this American and the woman. And I personally will prepare the team to go after them. Who is in charge of execution squads?"

  There was an embarrassed mumble in the rear of the room. Finally someone said:

  "You're stepping on him, sir."

  "Doesn't matter. Give me his number-two man. As for the rest of you, there is nothing more important in your lives right now than finding the whereabouts of that American and the woman. We do have her picture and identifying material, don't we? Or are we just dealing with her psychological profile?"

  "No. We have her picture," said the young general. The man in charge of Russia's execution efforts was simply named Ivan. His last name was Ivanovich. He was really a staff officer and explained at the outset that he had never actually killed anyone. Perhaps, suggested Colonel Ivan Ivanovich, Field Marshal Zemyatin would prefer one more skilled in the art of killing. The young paper shuffler had a face clean as a washtub, and lips like rosebuds.

  What were they making policemen of nowadays? wondered Zemyatin. Still, he had to have some intelligence to have risen so far.

  "No, no," said Zemyatin. "You're all the same. What we are going to do, Ivan, is let this American show us how to kill him. Until then, he is perfect."

  This time there was no reference to old theories being outmoded. The first random shot into the crowd had settled that. It had unsettled the most settled bureaucracy in the Kremlin. Now he might be able to get some work out of these incompetents.

  There had been no reports of weapons testing in the last two days. This lull had given Russia time to build more raw-button missiles. Meanwhile, a man and a woman had to be found somewhere in the world, and if the KGB did one thing well, it was keeping track of the world. There was more useless information coming into Moscow than even the computers stolen from the Americans could handle. But on this day, the entire network shifted to searching for three things. A man. A woman. And a weapon.

  Alexei Zemyatin felt the tingle of war come just a touch closer that cold night. The Americans had sent their best to protect the woman in charge of the experiment. Therefore, there wasn't even the slightest doubt that they were behind this weapon as a weapon.

  If they had been honest, a fact Zemyatin would never have believed too readily, why steal the woman back? And why use a heretofore secret force? One only exposed a secret to protect a geater one. It meant war. And yet, the millions who would die in this one made Alexei Zemyatin push the waiting time to the limit. They would look for things. Watch America closely. Maybe the experiments would stop. Maybe there was a flaw in the weapon. Maybe it did not work in certain situations.

  Russia would continue to build its raw-button missiles.

  The day of war would remain the same. He had designated it to make America prove to him that they were not preparing their own final solution to communism. And the only way it could be proven now was for his security system to find the three things he had requested of them.

  Zemyatin walked with just a single bodyguard that night through the streets of Moscow, hearing drunks sing sad songs and watching an occasional dark car head busily out of the city toward the better apartments, He breathed deeply. The air was good. He even wondered, if they did get a good first launch, how much-if any-of this would be left.

  He also wondered what the Americans thought they would win by such a conquest. Stupidity in an enemy bothered Zemyatin. There was still time for him to stop the crude nuclear assault system which continued to add more sites. Still time. He did not know that even now an American was going to erode the very mildest hope of peace, because he had something more important to think about than the survival of the human race. His career was in jeopardy.

  Chapter 10

  Reemer Bolt hadn't heard from Kathy since immediately after the test. It did not matter. The system had cost CC of Massachusetts more than the magic fifty million dollars. The figure was magic because now the corporation could not, under any circumstances, fail to push forward without being destroyed. In a way this financial disaster had put Reemer Bolt in the driver's seat, and he realized there was only one last bug to work out. One little obstacle that had nothing to do with the machine itself.

  "Praise the Lord," said the chairman of the board. "It does work, then?"

  The board was meeting in the director's room, a comfortable spacious room with wood floors, open windows, and a sense of an exiting tomorrow in it. It was used for board meetings and for presenting possible customers CC's solutions to their chemical problems.

  "We can direct the ozone opening across an entire ocean for a controlled period," said Bolt. "Gentlemen, we have put a window into the ozone and we control the sash cords. What we can deliver is no less than the most powerful force in our universe."

  Bolt stood up when he said this. He paused. There were smiles on the faces of the board of directors. Reemer Bolt had dreamed of a day l
ike this. And now it was happening. Men with the money giving him approval. Actually, if he had told them that everything was still not a disaster, they would have been pleased. But this had replaced their fear with greed. He smiled back.

  There was applause. Light at first, then hearty. Reemer Bolt knew how to work an audience.

  "And we have the patent." More applause.

  "And we submitted this patent in such a way that no one will know exactly what we have until we make our announcement."

  More applause.

  "Gentlemen. You have gambled and you have won." Applause.

  "You have bet on tomorrow, and that was yesterday. You own today. The sunlight and all."

  There were a few technical questions which Bolt delayed answering "until Dr. O'Donnell returns."

  "This is CC of M's most important project," said one of the directors. "This is the whole story now, so to speak. Why isn't Dr. O'Donnell here?"

  "She has phoned and told us she is taking what I believe is a well-deserved rest."

  More applause. Even for this. Reemer Bolt owned these men. The phone call was not so much a request for a vacation as a hurried message from a phone booth, saying she would get back to him soon and not to do anything without her. And then: "He's coming back now. I have to hang up."

  "Him? Who's him? A he?"

  "Not like you, darling," Kathy had said, blowing a kiss through the phone and hanging up. So his orders had been to do nothing. But he knew what that was about. She wanted to take the big share of the credit for the device's success. If there was one thing Reemer Bolt prided himself on, it was his knowledge of women. After all, he had been married many times.

  So he told the board that Dr. O'Donnell had done well within her limited area, and that her presence was not necessary for pushing on the success of CC of M's sun access device.

  "I don't know if I like the name 'sun access,' " said one of the directors. "Everybody has access to the sun. We've got to sell something exclusive."

  "Good point, sir. 'Sun access' is just a working name," said Bolt.

  "I think 'Mildred' might not be a bad working name," said the director. He was a stuffy sort, quite erect, who smoked long cigarettes neatly and then tortured the cinder into submission.

  "Why 'Mildred'?" asked another director.

  "My mother's name," he said.

  "Perhaps something more sellable," said the other director.

  "Just a working name. I like it."

  "Why don't we let Mr. Bolt continue? He's brought us this far."

  More applause. Reemer Bolt had dreamed of a day like this.

  "Where to now, Reemer?" said the chairman of the board. He did not smoke. He did not drink the water set in front of him, and his applause was the weakest. He had a face with all the human warmth of cold cooking fat. "Toward making you all the richest men in the world." Applause.

  "Good. What's your direction?"

  "Multifaced, yet with a strong directional thrust, only when we devise the maximum benefit avenue for us to drive down. In other words, we have so many damned streets to take, we want to make sure we have the best one."

  "Sounds good, Mr. Bolt. Which streets are you considdering?"

  "I don't want to lock us in right now. I think the worst thing we can do is go running off in a direction just to run. I don't want to look back at these days and think we had the power of the unfiltered sun in our hands and then we let it get away because we didn't think."

  "I am not asking you not to think. What direction?"

  "Well, let's look at what we have. We have controlled access to unfiltered sun, the power rays, so to speak. They are ours. And they are ours safely. You know that in any experiment like this there was a danger we could rip the ozone shield and turn the earth into a cinder. Then none of our ideas would have been any good." Bolt looked everyone in the face and paused. There was no applause. "So," said Bolt. "We now move into the applications phase with a fantastic advantage."

  "Yes?" said the chairman of the board. "What are we going to do with this thing to get our fifty million dollars back and make money? Who are we going to sell this to? What are we going to use it for? I have read your secret reports, and so far all we can do is ruin lawns and kill animals painfully. You think there is a market for that?"

  "Of course not. Those were just experiments to define what we have."

  "We know what we have. What are we going to use it for?"

  The chairman of the board had hit the last little bug. "I don't want to rush this. I want Marketing to come up with a good range and a direction I can stand behind," said Bolt.

  "Bolt, that fifty million dollars costs us one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars a week in interest. Please don't take your time in coming up with an application we can sell."

  "Right," said Reemer Bolt. And he got out of that boardroom as quickly as he could because he didn't want anyone asking him about ideas for commercial use.

  The problem with something that cost fifty million dollars to develop was that you couldn't use it for something small. You had to have something big. Big. Big.

  That was what Reemer Bolt was yelling at his staff the following morning.

  "Big industry. Big ideas. Big. Big."

  "What about as a weapon? It would make a great weapon. And fifty million dollars would be pennies for something that might end all life on earth if used improperly. "

  "Not fast enough. The money's there, but the government takes forever. A weapon is the last resort. There has got to be something we can do with this thing. Something big: Big industry. It's got to revolutionize something."

  Then a lower-level employee had a magnificent idea. It didn't have to do with animals. And it didn't have to do with lawns. But it did have to do with a baking effect.

  None of them knew as they were congratulating themselves that even to a lower-level Russian general, the experiment they were planning could only be a prelude to ground action all across the European front.

  Even if Bolt had known, he might not have dwelt on that. Here was an idea that would not only get CC of M out of the hole, but possibly revolutionize a major industry. And even better yet, a lower-level employee had thought it up. He would have no troubie taking full credit for it.

  "Are you sure this is the right jungle?" said Remo.

  "Sure," said Kathy. She was still suffering from jet lag and the atrocious landing at Chitibango airport in San Gauta. The runway was built for smuggling out cocaine and bringing in tourists who liked to discover new vacation spots unspoiled by other tourists. San Gauta was always being discovered for the first time. It was the sort of place that photographed magnificently.

  What did not appear in the photographs were the bugs and the room service. In all Gauta there were only four people who could tell time. And they were all in the Cabinet. The rest of the people thought that the only time one had to respect in this little tropical paradise was bedtime and dinnertime. Bedtime was determined by the sun and dinnertime by one's stomach.

  Only crazy foreigners and the Maximum Leader for Life had to tell time. The Maximum Leader needed the time device to know when to meet airplanes, start parades, and most of all to declare when time was running out.

  In the 1950's Generalissimo Francisco Eckman-Ramirez declared time was running out against atheistic communism. During the sixties it was imperialism. During the seventies it became, on alternate days of the week, either Cuba or America. Now, the new time running out was for population control.

  The Generalissimo was not exactly sure how it worked, but somehow the Western World, especially America, was to blame for the incredible promiscuity of the San Gauta maiden and the magnificent sex drive of every San Gauta male. Ordinarily bad sanitation disease, and the starvation that had afflicted this area for aeons kept an almost mathematical balance of people.

  But because of all the warnings that time was running out, Western agencies began shipping food, cleaning up sewers, and teaching new methods of living lon
ger. They sent down doctors and nurses. There was medicine. The shame of so few babies living to maturity had been conquered. Which led to more grown-ups. Which led to more grown-ups making more babies. The whole place was like a giant guppy tank run amok. And now time was truly running out on San Gauta for Generalissimo Eckman-Ramirez. With all the people crowded together, pollution was getting worse. Starvation was getting worse and then came the worst assault of all. It was a combination of liberal Protestants, Jewish intellectuals, and an order of nuns. Between them they came up with a massive social program to eradicate all evils.

  They presented it in such a way that anyone who allowed the current state to persist appeared to be some form of devil. Therefore, anyone fighting that person was on the side of good. Willing to fight the Generalissimo were the usual hill bandits who had specialized for generations, even before the arrival of the Spaniards, in pillage, rape, and the murder of innocents: women, children, unarmed farmers in the field.

  But now they put a little star on a red flag, called the pillage and rape "guerrilla warfare," and announced their goal as liberation. What they wanted to liberate was what they had always wanted to liberate: everything the townsfolk couldn't protect.

  They were immediately armed by the Cubans, which left the Generalissimo reaching out for the Americans to help him counter their new and better weapons. Whereas before, a village or two might suffer an attack by the hill bandits once a year, now the attacks came weekly. Whereas before, the national army might respond once or twice a year by shooting some cannon into the hillsides, now there were daily fusillades.

  The death count became enormous, especially as the nuns returned with stories of atrocities to America, where they called upon their countrymen to donate money to fight barbarism. This was not altogether a lie. The Generalissimo was indeed barbaric. But so were the liberating forces whom the nuns in their innocence now declared as saviors. The one thing the nuns never seemed to entertain was the possibility that they themselves were indeed innocents and didn't know what was going on. But they were always good for a story of suffering.