Countdown (9 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
McGarvey held his breath to listen. There were no sounds ahead. He concentrated on the darkness, his gun up, ready to fire the moment he spotted the pinpoint of a muzzle flash.
“We're running out of time, you and me,” he called softly into the darkness.
Another silenced shot was fired, the bullet ricocheting with a whine off the brick wall. The flash was to the right. McGarvey aimed slightly left and squeezed off a shot, then quickly shifted sides to the left and immediately back to the right.
There was no answering fire.
“Who are you?” a voice came from the darkness, speaking English with a flat midwestern accent.
McGarvey could not pinpoint the voice. He turned his head left so that his own voice would bounce off the opposite wall of the tunnel. “Are you sure you want to know, Arkady Aleksandrovich?”
“You have me at a disadvantage.”
“Yes,” McGarvey said. “You and Comrade KGB Chairman Baranov. He and I are old friends, you know.”
McGarvey thought he heard a splash of water straight down the tunnel, but then there was silence.
He waited ten seconds and then started forward.
“I'm coming for you, Arkady,” he said.
Still there was silence.
Forty feet farther down the tunnel he came to a body. It was Jim Hunte. McGarvey could tell from his uniform, and the tool kit slung over his shoulder. He felt the man's body, his fingers discovering a small amount of blood and a bullet wound on his face just above the bridge of his nose.
Christ! In the dark!
McGarvey leapt to his feet. “Kurshin,” he shouted, his voice echoing and reechoing off the tunnel walls and ceiling. “Kurshin, you sonofabitch, I'm coming for you!”
There was no answer.
McGarvey turned on his heel and, mindless now of the noise
he was making, raced down the tunnel toward the collection vault. There had been three of them. Two were accounted for. The last one was probably long gone by now. There probably was little or no time left before the launch.
he was making, raced down the tunnel toward the collection vault. There had been three of them. Two were accounted for. The last one was probably long gone by now. There probably was little or no time left before the launch.
In the collection vault McGarvey snatched up the electronic trigger that Yegorov had dropped, and stuffing it in his pocket climbed the metal rungs up the side of the vault and pulled himself into the transporter.
If need be, he told himself grimly, he would destroy the rocket if it actually started to lift off.
A slightly built man dressed in civilian clothes, blood streaming down his face, was bunched up beside the bucket seat in front of the firing console. He rolled over and groaned.
McGarvey nearly shot the man before he realized that he was no threat, and was probably very near death.
Lights were flashing all over the fire control panel in a bewildering sequence of reds and greens and ambers. Whatever was happening was occurring at an increasingly rapid pace.
“Answer me, you bastard,” Collingwood's voice boomed from the radio speaker.
McGarvey found the radio console at the front right seat and yanked the microphone off its hook.
“This is McGarvey. I'm in the transporter. The Russians are dead or gone, and so is Hunte. This thing looks like it's ready to launch, get someone over here on the double.”
He threw down the microphone, undogged the main hatch, swung it open with a metallic clang, and turned back to Schey, gently turning the man over on his back and straightening out his legs. The man's eyes fluttered open.
“There isn't much time,” McGarvey said. “Do you understand?”
Schey's eyes seemed to come into focus and he looked up at McGarvey.
“Your friends are dead. How do I interrupt the firing sequence?”
The East German managed a tight little smile of triumph.
“It's over,” McGarvey said. “You've lost. How do we shut this goddamned thing down?”
Schey's eyes closed and he gave a big shuddering gasp. At first McGarvey thought he was dead, but the man's breathing steadied out.
McGarvey got to his feet as the first of Collingwood's people showed up at the hatch.
“I don't know what to do,” he shouted. “This thing is on a countdown.”
The first technician through the hatch shoved McGarvey aside and quickly scanned the board. The second man came through and crowded in beside him.
“They've got a timer on it,” he snapped, pulling a screwdriver out of his pocket. The other man did the same and together they unfastened the dozen screws holding the firing control panel in place.
The first man gingerly lifted the panel away from the console, stretching out the wires beneath. They both sucked air a second later.
“Twelve seconds,” one of them said.
The other was pawing through the wires. He looked up. “It's on a failsafe,” he said.
“Impossible,” the other man replied.
“This sonofabitch is going to launch in another ten seconds, and there isn't a fucking thing we can do about it.”
McGarvey had backed up to the hatch, other technicians and security people crowding around the transporter.
The two technicians at the console leapt up and bodily shoved McGarvey out the door. “Clear the area, this sonofabitch is about to launch!” one of them shouted.
Everyone scattered. McGarvey rushed around to the side of the transport trailer, the umbilical cords snaking out from the tractor to an electrical panel beneath the missile.
Baranov had planned something. Whatever it was, it would be brilliant and devastating. What?
He had taken a huge risk not only by having Kurshin and the others steal the missile, but by so openly displaying the depth of his intelligence information.
Whatever target they had programmed the missile to hit would be important. London? Paris? Where?
The technicians and security people were halfway across the square. Someone was shouting.
The delay circuitry was failsafe, the technician had shouted. McGarvey pulled out the trigger for the plastique.
The seconds were ticking. No time. Christ, there was no time!
He tossed the trigger to the pavement and stepped forward to the four umbilical cords. Each was connected to the firing panel by a thick electrical plug. McGarvey grabbed one of the large cables and yanked it out of its socket.
There were a lot of sirens. He yanked the second plug and the third. His time had run out. Ten seconds had to have elapsed.
He yanked the last plug out of its socket at the same moment a big spark jumped from the contacts to the side of the trailer, and nothing happened.
For several long seconds McGarvey stood there, his knees weak, his heart hammering in his chest. But nothing had happened. Nothing!
“THE SONOFABITCH JUST PULLED the plug,” Phil Carrara, deputy director of operations, said, his voice tinged with a bit of awe.
“At that point he didn't have anything to lose,” Trotter replied.
“Except his life.”
The two of them had ridden up to the seventh floor and when they stepped off the elevator they crossed directly to the DCI's conference room adjacent to his officer. It was a few minutes before eight in the morning, but Trotter, who'd gotten no sleep on the military jet over, was still on European time where it was early afternoon. He was dead tired.
They were met in the anteroom by the director's security people. Trotter turned over his pistol before they were allowed inside.
The room was long and broad, big windows looking out over the new section of headquarters which had just been completed the year before, and beyond, the rolling wooded hills of the old Bureau of Public Roads property.
The DCI, Roland Murphy, who had retired from the Army as a major general to take the assistant directorship, was hunched over the long conference table looking at a series of maps and photographs. He was a very large man, with a bull neck, beefy arms, and thick eyebrows over deep-set eyes. He'd taken over as DCI two years ago after the death of Donald Powers.
With him at the table were Lawrence Danielle, the new deputy director of central intelligence, and Howard Ryan, the Agency's general counsel. In contrast to Murphy, Danielle was a small man with a permanently pinched expression on his face, and a voice that was so soft listeners often had to strain to hear him. He'd worked his way up through the ranks over the past twenty years, and had even served as an interim DCI a number of years ago before Powers had been hired for the job, and again for a short period before the president had talked the general into taking over the helm.
Ryan was relatively new to the Agency. Like Carrara he had come over from the National Security Agency. He was an extremely precise man, whose father ran one of New York's top law firms. “This sort of excitement is better for the blood than corporate law,” he was fond of saying. And he was sharp.
They all looked up when Trotter and Carrara entered the room and approached the long table.
“You look like hell,” Murphy rumbled brusquely.
“No sleep on the flight over, General,” Trotter said. “I just got in, as a matter of fact.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryan went over to the sideboard to pour him a cup from the silver service. Trotter's eyes strayed to the maps and photographs.
“Has Phil briefed you on the latest?”
“No, sir,” Trotter said, looking up. “Just that there have been some new developments overnight.” Actually Carrara had told him that this was a council of war.
“That's the understatement of the year,” Murphy said, shaking his leonine head. “I've got to see the president at nine-thirty, which gives us just a little over an hour to figure out what the hell we're going to do.”
Ryan came back with the coffee and handed it to Trotter.
“Thanks,” Trotter said. “What's happened?”
“First things first. What about this free lance of yours, McGarvey? Is he all right?”
“Disappointed. He's on his way back to Paris by now, I suspect. We had no reason to hold him.”
“Kurshin just disappeared into thin air?” Danielle asked, his voice soft.
Trotter nodded glumly. “By the time we got everything sorted out, he was long gone. No trace whatsoever except for the latex mask he had worn. We found it along with Brad Allworth's uniform in the transporter.”
“We have a confirmation that the body the French police found along the railroad tracks outside of Paris was Allworth,” Ryan said. “He was shot in the forehead at close range. Nine-millimeter slug. Almost certainly a Graz Buyra. The SDECE has been very cooperative.”
“Well, I'll tell you one thing. McGarvey saved our asses,” Murphy said. “In a very big way.”
“Sir?” Trotter asked.
“The technicians pulled that Pershing apart overnight. Its guidance system was reprogrammed just as you expected. But the target profile was not for any city. No one could make any sense of it until they pulled the flight coordinates out of the inertial guidance system.”
“Where?” Trotter asked.
Murphy glanced down at a message flimsy on the table. “Latitude thirty-one degrees, five minutes north, and longitude thirty-five degrees, twenty-four minutes east. Too far north and east for it to be Tripoli.” He turned the map around so that Trotter could see it, and he stabbed a blunt finger at a spot
along the southern edge of the Dead Sea. “En Gedi,” he said. “More specifically the Israeli nuclear research facility eight miles from the town.”
along the southern edge of the Dead Sea. “En Gedi,” he said. “More specifically the Israeli nuclear research facility eight miles from the town.”
Trotter didn't understand, and it was evident on his face.
“What is it?” Danielle prompted.
Everyone was looking at him. Trotter felt as if he were on stage, his audience waiting for his next line.
“From where I sit that doesn't make much sense,” he said.
“Go on,” Murphy ordered.
“Israel has two such installations in addition to their facilities for enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuels, as well as at least one heavy water plant.”
“Get to the point.”
Trotter glanced at the map. “We're fairly certain that this was the big operation we were expecting from Baranov. Kurshin is his handpicked man. Frankly I don't think he'd bother with a simple research reactor.”
“Why?” Danielle asked.
“For one thing, he placed Kurshin in a high-risk situation. He wouldn't have done that for such meager pickings. In the second place, by reprogramming that missile he's tipped his hand that he's got a damned good pipeline either into the manufacturer of the guidance system ⦔
“Goodyear,” Ryan interjected.
“Yes. Either that or into the Pentagon itself.”
Danielle and Murphy exchanged glances.
“The Pentagon,” the DCI said.
“Do we know who it is?” Trotter asked.
“Not yet, but the list is narrowing.”
“But don't you see, General, that's my point. Whatever the KGB has got going in the Pentagon, and of course we've long suspected something like this, Baranov wouldn't tip his hand merely to destroy one of Israel's two research reactors.”
Murphy sighed deeply and shook his head. “No, he wouldn't.”
“There's more?” Trotter asked.
“You bet,” Murphy replied. “Four days ago an NSA satellite picked up what was believed to be an alarm situation at the En Gedi facility. It was turned over to the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Inspection Service. They sent two of their people over to have a look; one of them coincidentally was Lorraine Abbott who has done a little work for us in the past. The other was a Brit.”
Inspection Service. They sent two of their people over to have a look; one of them coincidentally was Lorraine Abbott who has done a little work for us in the past. The other was a Brit.”
Trotter said nothing.
“Scott Hayes, the Brit, reported that he was satisfied that the Israelis were telling the truth. Apparently a leak in one of the steam valves. Nonradioactive.”
“Dr. Abbott didn't believe them?”
“No. As a matter of fact she's still over there snooping around. She's convinced they're lying. She has a feeling that whatever happened was a hell of a lot more important than a simple steam leak.”
“Why?”
“She's being watched by the Mossad, and the Israelis have all but ordered her out of the country. The clincher came out at the facility, though. She and Hayes were shown around by a man who identified himself as a Crises Management Team leader. Lev Potok. He's Mossad.”
“What are they hiding?” Trotter asked.
“Something important enough for Baranov to go after it,” Murphy said.
“We think that Israel has a stockpile of battle-ready nuclear weapons,” Ryan said.
“We've suspected that for some time now. But there's been no proof ⦔ Trotter stopped. “En Gedi?”
Murphy nodded. “That's our best guess.”
“Then the Russians know about it. Baranov would have to be sure about his information to take such a risk.”
“And he won't stop,” Murphy said.
“No.”
“You and McGarvey are our resident Baranov experts,” Murphy was saying.
Trotter was thinking ahead of the DCI. Baranov would certainly not stop with one failure. He would keep at it until he succeeded. With Israel's nuclear capability destroyed there would be no stopping an all-outâSoviet-backedâattack. This time the Arabs would probably succeed, and the entire region would join the Soviet blocâoil and all.
“The ball is in your court,” Murphy said.
“Why not tell the Israelis what we know?”
“So that they could prepare themselves?” the DCI asked.
Trotter nodded.
Murphy shook his head. “No good. We're in a very delicate balance over there, you know that, John. Almost anything could tip the scales one way or the other, and there'd be an all-out shooting war. It's a gentleman's agreement between us. Call it a politically necessary fiction. If we acknowledge to Israel that we know they have battle-ready nuclear weapons, they will be forced into doing something. They would have to for their own sake. Just as we would be forced into demanding they dismantle those weapons.”
“Which they would not do,” Trotter said.
“No,” the DCI agreed. “As I said, the ball is in your court.”
“I don't know if McGarvey will agree to it.”
“Convince him,” Murphy said. “But his primary mission is going to have to be confirming that the Israelis actually do have nukes, and that they're stored at En Gedi.”
“We're going to spy on our allies?”
“It's a tough world.”
Kurshin held the telephone tightly to his ear as the secure connection to Moscow via the embassy's satellite communications link was completed, and Baranov came on the line. He did not sound happy.
“What are you doing in Paris?”
“I failed,” Kurshin said simply. He was calling from a telephone booth at the end of a narrow side street off the Rue de la Fayette in an area of nice apartment buildings.
“Yes? What about the others?”
“I disposed of the East German as you directed me to do. But Ivan was shot to death in the sewers.” Kurshin's grip tightened on the telephone receiver. The man had come to the second-floor window across the street.
The line was silent for a long time, but Kurshin didn't really
mind. He was content for the moment to watch the man in the window above looking down at the street. He was evidently searching for something or someone. Here I am, Kurshin muttered to himself.
mind. He was content for the moment to watch the man in the window above looking down at the street. He was evidently searching for something or someone. Here I am, Kurshin muttered to himself.
“Tell me everything that happened, Arkasha,” Baranov was saying. “How did they know about the sewer? Did Schey say something to someone? Perhaps one of his friends?”
“I don't know, but there were two men in the sewers. One of them was wearing an Army uniform. Captain's bars. But the other one ⦔ The window curtains fell back and the man above was gone.
“Yes?” Baranov prompted.
Kurshin turned back to the telephone. “The other one knew my name.”
“Impossible.”
“Nevertheless it is true. And he knew your name. He said that you and he were old friends.”
“All that in a dark sewer? You talked to him then. You perhaps became friends? So much so that you decided to spare his life? What, Arkasha? Tell me, I am listening.”
“I tried to kill him, and yes we had that discussion. But he was very good. He was willing to wait there in that tunnel with me to die when the rocket took off.”
“Which it did not. And you cannot tell me what this one looked like.”
“Oh, yes,” Kurshin said. “I did not leave the area. When I came up to where the car was waiting I drove immediately back to the square, to see ⦠if he was successful.”
“He was.”
“Yes, he was,” Kurshin said, the thought still terribly rankling. “He came out of the transporter and pulled the umbilical cords from the missile. Schey told us the launch was impossible to stop. But this one did it with his bare hands.”
There was a low, harsh sound on the telephone. Kurshin almost thought the KGB director was chuckling.
“It must have come within a split second of the firing impulse, but the missile did not launch.”
“You got a good look at him?”
“Yes, I did, Comrade Chairman. A very good look. It is a face I shall never forget.” He looked up. The man had come back to the window. “In fact I am looking at him again this very moment, and as soon as I hang up I shall kill him.”
“What?” Baranov suddenly screamed. “You are in Paris ⦠you're calling from outside the embassy?”
“Yes,” Kurshin replied, the first inkling that he had made a mistake coming to him.
“Describe him to me,” Baranov ordered.
Kurshin did.
“You say you are looking at him now? Can he see you?”
“I don't think so,” Kurshin said. The man had gone again from the window. “No, he is gone now.”
“Then hang up the telephone, you idiot. The man you have described is Kirk McGarvey. And since you have already come up against him and are still alive, you may consider yourself extremely lucky.”
“But ⦔
“Get out of there now, Arkasha. We will meet twenty-four hours from now in the usual place. But go before it is too late.”
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