Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78 Page 9

  Had it started when he joined the KGB as a signals intelligence analyst? Or before that, the first time he

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  felt that urge which was to dominate his life and nearly end his career at the age of thirty-one? Or had it truly begun the day they came to cell number twenty-six in the basement of Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. His cell.

  It was cold in Lefortovo. For a prison that had known many famous occupants, from survivors of the czarist days to framed American journalists, it was unremarkable. A stone cell with a blue steel cot and scratchy camel-hair blankets.

  Rair Brashnikov had spent less than two months in that cell, shunned except for the daily portion of runny soup and a mashed-potato-and-fish mixture in a cracked bowl shoved through the feed window of the rust-colored door.

  Then one day they came for him.

  They were two corporals and the prison's commandant. One of the corporals opened the cell with a grating brass key.

  Rair Brashnikov cowered in his bunk. It was too soon. They had come for him too soon.

  "Nyet. Not today. I do not want to die today," he whimpered, pulling the coarse blanket over his head.

  "Come with us, thief," said the commandant. "Do not be a woman."

  He was hauled out of the cell by the corporals, set on his feet, and handed his soft gray slippers. The men towered over Brashnikov, who had barely met the KGB's minimum-height requirement. He had the nimble body of a ballet dancer.

  It was the middle of the night, which puzzled Brashnikov. Usually they shot prisoners at dawn. Of course KGB firing squads were normally reserved for captured spies, not cashiered KGB intelligence captains like himself.

  Instead, snapping their fingers as a warning to the guards that a prisoner was being transferred, they escorted him to a garage and put him blindfolded into a car. Minutes later he found himself in a heavily

  guarded office. It was the office of the general who ran the KGB. Semoyan. He was in KGB headquarters.

  "Leave him," General Sernoyan had said. His face was a dour mask. "Sit."

  Rair Brashnikov took the hard wooden chair the general indicated with a careless wave.

  "You are thief, Rair Brashnikov," General Semoyan said. His voice was matter-of-fact, not accusing.

  "Da," Rair had admitted. His eyes leapt to the general's T-shaped desk. There was a gold pen in a holder. Rair wondered if it was solid gold or merely gilt.

  "You have been convicted of stealing KGB office supplies and selling them on black market."

  "I cannot help myself," Rair blurted out. "I have had this urge since I was boy."

  "Do not make excuses, Tovarich Brashnikov. I am told you are very clever thief, if such a thing can be said of a man who steals from his motherland and his comrades in uniform."

  "I will never do it again," Rair promised, leaping to his feet. He leaned on the general's desk. His eyes welled up with tears.

  "I believe you," said General Semoyan. "Now, sit down. Please."

  "Thank you," said Rair Brashnikov, palming the general's pen from its onyx holder. The pen felt heavy. Yes, true gold. Rair slipped the pen up his frayed cotton sleeve.

  "We are prepared to reinstate you, comrade," the general continued, "at your former rank of captain, with all back pay and benefits. Your past crimes will be expunged from your record."

  "For that I will do anything," Rair promised. He wrung his hands so the pen would not fall out. "Just name the thing."

  "You will go to USA."

  "America?" Rair Brashnikov's voice had been filled with disbelief. The general misinterpreted this as fright.

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  "You will be protected while you are between missions," General Semoyan assured him.

  "America," Rair repeated. His mind was racing. The best electronic equipment came from America. The finest blue jeans. The food was incredible in its diversity. Red meat, it was said, was actually red in America. Not gray like Soviet gristle steaks.

  The general's voice broke into his reverie. "If you fear it so, we can find another agent."

  "Nyet!" said Rair Brashnikov. "I will undertake this mission. Just tell me what to do."

  General Semoyan stood up. "Then come with me, Captain Brashnikov."

  They escorted him to a room where a uniform with captain's bars was waiting for him. He was allowed to dress once more in civilized clothing with warm leather shoes on his feet, and, his black hair wet with fragrant hair oil, Rair emerged from the dressing room, his black eyes shining like rosary beads. The general's gold pen was tucked into a regulation sock.

  Under guard, with General Semoyan in the lead, restored Captain Rair Nicolaivitch Brashnikov was brought deep into the subterranean bowels of KGB headquarters in Dzershinsky Square.

  They halted before a thick steel door while security guards manipulated a complicated electronic lock. Above the door, in Cyrillic lettering, was a large sign:

  REVERSE ENGINEERING DIRECTORATE

  Rair Brashnikov wondered what reverse engineering meant as he was led into an antiseptic white room. Men in white smocks stood like students around a workbench. The air was tinged with ozone.

  "Step up to bench, please," General Semoyan said. The others crowded around under the unstable fluorescent lighting.

  On the bench were two objects. They appeared to be identical.

  "This is component of the rocket motor of our new

  shuttle spaceplane," General Semoyan told Brashnikov, tapping one of them.

  "It is quite . . . shiny," Rair ventured. In fact it was very shiny. Rair wondered what it might fetch on the black market. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. There were too many witnesses in this room'. He could not palm it in full view of all these men.

  The general hefted the other object.

  "And this is component from American shuttle," he said. "Do they look similar to you?"

  Rair took the second component in his hands and turned it over and over. The old urge tugged at his heart. Reluctantly he replaced it on the bench's grainy surface.

  "Yes," he said firmly. "They are identical. A testament to the ability of Soviet technicians to match much-vaunted Americans."

  "No," the general said. "A tribute to good fortune and what we call reverse engineering."

  "I do not know this term, 'reverse engineering,' " Rair admitted. He wondered what this had to do with America.

  "You understand principle of engineering a tool or machine part, nyetl One begins with prototype. From this, blueprint is made. And from blueprint, many copies are built. Here is blueprint of the rocket-motor part. See? It shows in exacting detail how the components are to be manufactured, how to machine fine thicknesses of parts and how to join parts together to result in a working mechanism."

  "Da, I understand," said Brashnikov.

  "No, you do not. While this Soviet component was built from Soviet blueprint, it is not total story. For these blueprints are not drawn from Soviet prototype. They were created from this American component. One of our agents obtained this from its point of manufacture. We took it apart, calibrated measurements and deduced materials, and developed blue-

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  prints. Thus, without incurring cost and time required to develop component that might or might not work properly first time, we have attained ability to mass-produce this part. Thus our shuttle soared as well as its American counterpart."

  "Reverse engineering," Rair said blankly.

  "Reverse engineering, da. For despite what you may have read in Pravda or Izvestia or whatever it is thieves read, Soviet technology still lags far behind the West. Even now, we have hundreds of agents in U.S. attempting to acquire working parts to everything from microwave ovens to neutron bombs."

  "Whatever works," Rair said, inadvertently recoining an American catchphrase. He was trying to be diplomatic.

  "But," General Semoyan went on, "even with all of our agents, America is too productive. Too creative. Often by the time a find comes into our hands and can be duplica
ted, it is already obsolete by Western standards. In short, we cannot steal American technology as fast as Americans can create and improve it."

  "This is ironic," Rair said.

  "This is tragic," the general countered. "For if this trend continues, we will be left far behind. Even now, almost seventy years after American society was first transformed by mass-produced automobile, Mother Russia still cannot build a decent affordable car."

  Rair nodded unthinkingly. He drove a Lada.

  General Semoyan laughed grimly. "Instead of making glorious revolution, we should have been making Model T's. And today, American computer technology is so far ahead of us, they will bury us in microchips. Khrushchev is no doubt turning in grave."

  "I will be happy to steal as much American technology as you would like," Rair Brashnikov said bravely, "but I fear I am not equal to this mighty task."

  "Nyet, you are not. No ordinary man is. But we can make you so. Bring it," the general said to a hovering technician.

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  The technician came back with a black box the size of a light traveling suitcase. It had a combination lock and two keyholes. The technician removed a small key from a chain around his throat and undid the locks. Then he worked the combination.

  "What that man did, the unlocking, would defeat any thief," General Semoyan said coolly. "Even you, Brashnikov."

  "Yes," Brashikov said, but he really meant "no." He was confident he could pick any lock. But he was afraid to seem like too much of a thief. He still couldn't take his eyes off the shiny shuttle components.

  But when the technician opened the case and revealed a heap of white plastic, Brashnikov forgot all about the components.

  "This," the general said proudly, "will allow you to defeat locks, doors, vaults, walls-even the most impregnable fortified military installations in USA."

  The technician lifted the thing out of the case. It hung from his hands like a cosmonaut suit. Gloves and thick-soled boots lay in the case, along with what appeared to be a collapsed helmet. They were slick like plastic, but the skin was networked with pale plastic filaments.

  "Please demonstrate our prize for Captain Brashnikov," General Semoyan ordered.

  One of the technicans-the shortest of them-struggled into the suit. It took the help of two others to pull the skintight material on. It was like getting into a scuba suit that was a size too small. They sealed it in the back by Velcro flaps. The helmet went on the same way.

  Rair noticed with interest that the face shield was not transparent glass or plastic, but a kind of opaque white cellophane. After the helmet was in place, the cellophane expanded. Then it contracted. Its rhythmic expansions were obviously the result of the technician's respiration.

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  "The facial membrane is like two-way mirror," General Semoyan explained as he noted Brashnikov's perplexed expression. "He can see out, but no one can see his face. It has added advantage of being permeable to oxygen, but proof against all known forms of chemical agents. However, its prime purpose is that no matter how well we train a man to prepare himself for rigors of wearing device, the human eye is designed to flinch from perceived obstacles, even when brain knows those obstacles cannot possibly harm it."

  "I do not understand," Rair said as the technicans turned the man around. They hooked two white cables to ports on the suit's shoulders. The other ends were hooked up to an ordinary car battery. Then they fitted the battery into a webbed sling that attached to the man's back like a rucksack.

  The man in the suit turned around and waited, his blank blister of a face crinkling as he breathed.

  General Semoyan smiled expansively.

  "If you are curious about the material, Captain Brashnikov, go ahead, touch it. Feel it if you wish."

  Brashnikov touched the man's chest. It felt slick, like plastic. It was plastic, Rair decided, possibly some kind of rubberized plastic. The sewn-in tubes also felt plasticky. Fiberoptic cables, he decided.

  "Does it feel solid to you?" the general asked pleasantly.

  "Yes, of course. It is very substantial. Is it bulletproof?"

  The general laughed loudly. "Yes," he said. "But not in the way you think. I mean, did it feel solid to the touch?"

  "Yes," Rair said. What did the general mean? Of course it was solid. What else could it be?

  "And this," General Semoyan asked, rapping on the bench. "Is it solid?"

  Rair Brashnikov ran his fingers along the edges of the bench. He was careful to keep his fingers away from the shuttle parts which sat so carelessly, so temptingly within reach.

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  "Yes. It is oak."

  "If you were to examine this table or that suit under an electron microscope, you would see that it is not as solid as it appears. For all matter in the universe is composed of atoms, all clustered together like the stars in the night sky."

  "I know my science," Rair said defensively. "I have read of this."

  "Then you doubtless understand that atoms are very, very tiny. And that they are protected by electrons whirling at speeds so high that they form protective shell like whirling blades of high-speed fan. And there are spaces between atoms as vast as void between stars."

  "Yes."

  "That table, that man, even you and I, are composed of vast empty spaces in which these tiny spheres cluster. You, when you are struck, you feel impact. You feel pain. Because these electrons protect empty spaces. From earth, stars in cosmos look to be mere inches apart, but we know that is not so. It is very opposite with atoms. We can see denseness which make them solid to touch, but not spaces between."

  "I do not follow," Rair admitted.

  "Then follow this." The general signed to the technician in the white plastic suit.

  The technician reached down to his belt buckle. For the first time, Rair noticed a white rheostat on the buckle. The man turned it. Then, softly, the suit glowed.

  Rair watched. His eyes hurt suddenly. He tried to focus them. But they wouldn't focus. The man seemed to blur at the edges. The veinlike network of filaments pulsed and ran with tiny golden lights. Even the webbing straps that held the battery pack in place grew indistinct.

  Rair looked away. A blueprint on a wall was crystal clear. But when his gaze returned to the man in the suit, he couldn't quite focus on him.

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  "The effect you are trying to understand is result of hypervibration," General Semoyan announced. "Suit is vibrating at trillions of pulses per millisecond. This is why we have dubbed it our zibriruyushchiy kostyum, or vibration suit."

  Rair walked around the man in the suit. There was something very odd about him now. Something he could not quite put his finger on.

  When he looked closer at the man's concealed face, he recognized it. The featureless membrane expanded out like bubblegum bubble, but there was no crinkling sound anymore.

  "If he spoke, we could not hear his voice, although he can understand us," the general explained.

  "Will he become invisible?" Rair asked. Reasonably, he thought.

  "That would be perfect, but no. You may touch him if you wish."

  Rair hesitate. "Will it hurt?"

  "Nyet, you will feel no pain. Nor will he."

  Rair Brashnikov still held back. Why would they want him to touch the suit again? He reached out careful fingers. The tips of his fingers disappeared into it.

  "Ahhh!" he cried, recoiling as if stung. "My hand!"

  "Your hand is fine," General Semoyan assured him.

  "I felt . . . nothing," Rair said in a dull incom-prehending tone. He was pleased to see that he still had fingertips.

  "Exactly," General Semoyan said. "It is much like known phenomenon of colliding galaxies. Astronomers know that in cosmos, galaxies sometimes collide. But there is no resulting catastrophe, for suns merely pass one another, so great are spaces between them. Vibration suit is vibrating so that its atomic structure is fluid, like water. When you place your hand within the field, suit compensates for your atomic s
tructure. Its electrons are repelled by your electrons. The spaces

  merge, but atoms remain apart. Thus, your hand coexisted in the same physical space as his chest. At least, that is our theory."

  "No bullet, no hand could harm him," Rair breathed, inching closer.

  "No wall can stop him either." General Semoyan smiled. "Comrade, please demonstrate."

  As Rair Brashnikov watched with wide black eyes, the man in tht suit walked through the solid oak bench. He passed from it to one wall, walking as soundlessly as a ghost. He passed through the wall. Then he was gone. Utter silence filled the room as they stared at the blank white wall.

  Soon the technician stepped from another wall. He emerged from it as if coming through a dense fog. Except he was the fog and the wall was solid.

  "This is astonishing! This is incredible!" Rair Brashnikov shouted eagerly. "Who says Russian technology is backward? Who says we cannot compete with West? If Soviet science can produce such a wonder, there is nothing we cannot do!"

  "We stole the suit from the Japanese," General Semoyan said dryly.

  Rair subsided. "It is Japanese?"

  "Another reason why you were chosen, captain. Aside from your criminal past, you are short and slim enough to fit into the suit. It was built by the Nishitsu Corporation, and is designed for the average Japanese male physique. We believe it is a by-product of their recent superconductor breakthroughs."

  ''You do not know?" Raid asked in surprise. "Why not take it apart and make blueprints, then build suit that will fit sturdy Russian?"

  General Semoyan shook his leonine head.

  "It is too complicated. We dare not dismantle it for fear of not being able to restore suit to proper operating order. Better to risk the suit in the field than to lose it to our incompetent technicians."

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  The technicians in the room shifted their feet and looked down in embarrassment.

  General Semoyan cleared his throat. The technician in the suit turned it off. The blurry indistinctness of his outline faded with the lambent glow of the suit itself.

  "We will train you to walk in suit," General Semoyan told him as the man was helped out of the suit, "to pass through solid objects without hesitation or fear. Then we will let you loose in America, with a shopping list of what we most need. Are you prepared for this, Captain Brashnikov?"