Summit (47 page)

The policeman recognized the car, and simply waved Sullivan on. He pulled up in front of the garage door next to the Soviet Mission and inserted the card in the slot beneath the speaker.

"Why are you back so soon?" a voice crackled over the speaker.

"Orders," Sullivan replied in Russian. The all-purpose answer. He hoped his accent was okay; it had been perfect once. You have to hold your mouth in a different position to speak Russian—pretend it's full of rocks or something. In a Russian's clothes, with a Russian's face, maybe he could find the inspiration to pull it off.

"Where's Yevgeny?"

"Back at the house. Didn't need him this time."

Sullivan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He could feel himself start to sweat. Would it ruin his disguise? The card finally came back to him and the metal door rolled up. He drove the car into the garage, and the door rolled closed behind it.

"Over there," Fulton whispered. Sullivan went down a ramp and pulled in next to a black Mercedes. They got out.

Someone waved to him from a booth on the other side of the ramp. He waved back. "Through here," Fulton said.

They opened a door and walked into a brightly lit corridor. At the end of the corridor a soldier stood guard over an elevator; he looked sleepy. Sullivan held out his ID as they approached. "Seventh floor," he said.

The soldier glanced incuriously at the ID, nodded, and turned a key to open the elevator. They stepped inside. Sullivan pressed the number of the floor, and the doors hissed shut on them.

They didn't look at each other as the elevator rose. Sullivan fingered his gun. The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened.

Another guard faced them, this one looking considerably more alert than the one in the basement. He ignored Sullivan's proffered ID. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"Rylev," Sullivan said with a shrug. Fulton hadn't told him the name of the Russian in charge, but it couldn't have been anyone but Rylev.

"Why don't they tell me anything?" the guard complained. "New people come in and take the place over, total strangers start wandering the corridors, and they expect me to do my job better than ever."

"Sorry," Sullivan murmured.

"Not your fault, I suppose. I just hope they don't blame me if anything screws up around here. But of course they will. The new people are too important to be blamed. Go ahead."

The guard stepped aside, and they got off the elevator. Fulton gestured to a door down the corridor on the left. They walked toward it. Sullivan could feel the guard watching them. Out of idle curiosity—or a sudden suspicion that was headed for certainty? Fulton hurried ahead of him—too fast—and opened the door.

Sullivan was two steps behind, his hand ready on his gun. He closed the door and took in the scene. Fulton was already kneeling beside Valentina's bed. A woman in a white coat was rising from an armchair near the bed. She stared at him. There was no else in the room. Sullivan knew who the woman was. "Doctor Chukova," he whispered.

She continued to stare at him and nodded warily.

"Would you be interested by any chance in defecting?"

* * *

She was interested indeed. At first she thought it was a dream, and then she was sure it was another KGB trick, but neither explanation made sense. The American seemed to know everything, and he hastily provided a better explanation—one that was almost too good to be true. He had come with Fulton to free Valentina. She would help them, and win her own freedom at the same time. What more could she ask for?

There was a major problem, however. "Valentina can't make it," she said. "She hasn't recovered yet."

They looked over at the bed. Fulton was speaking to her. Could she understand?

* * *

"We've come to take you out of here, darling, but you have to help. Can you get up? Can you walk? You've got to try."

Through the darkness and the fog, a voice, a face, a hand touching hers. It had touched her hand, her face before, only to disappear. She couldn't let it disappear again. "Daniel?"

"Yes, yes. It's me. You can leave your dream-world behind, Valentina. You don't ever have to go there again. But you have to get up and walk."

A face, a hand—a room.
A real room. Real?

"Daniel?"

"Yes! Please try, darling. We don't have much time."

There was still fog, yes, it might never go away. And Winn was still unconscious beside her; he was real too. But there was something more, and somehow she knew how to reach it now. She slowly got to her feet, and the gravel on the roof turned to something softer, and she was leaning against a warm, firm chest, and she could hear the heart inside beating its soothing, regular beat. And suddenly she knew she was going to be safe. This heart would never let her down.

* * *

Doctor Chukova checked Valentina quickly. She was weak and groggy, but otherwise seemed all right. Could they do it, then? She and the American tried to work out a plan while Fulton tended to Valentina. The American explained how they had bluffed their way in; it seemed at least possible that they could bluff their way out. The streets of New York weren't so very far away, really. And when they had reached those streets, she would have defeated Rylev and lifted the guilt she felt over what she had done to Valentina. She would be free.

When the plan was settled, she opened the door and led the way back down the corridor to the elevator. Valentina shuffled along behind, leaning heavily on Fulton.

"We're going to a meeting downstairs with the ambassador," she said to the guard.

The guard looked puzzled and annoyed. "Meeting? No one told me about any meeting." He gestured at Valentina. "That woman's in her nightgown," he added, as if that proved the idiocy of the whole situation.

Doctor Chukova put on an exasperated expression. "Of course she's in her nightgown. She's ill, and I'm her doctor. And of course there's a meeting. Didn't Rylev inform you?"

"No, he didn't. No one tells me anything. I'll ask him now." And he went to pick up the phone next to the elevator.

"Well, wake him up if you want to," she said. "Just don't say I told you to call."

The guard hesitated. "Why isn't he going to the meeting, then? I thought he was supposed to be in charge of all this—whatever it is."

Doctor Chukova was about to respond when she saw something that made her heart sink.

Professor Trofimov was walking down the corridor toward them. He was staring at Valentina.

* * *

It
was
her, Trofimov realized. With the pianist. Hadn't someone told him that the pianist had been here earlier and left? And next to Chukova was a nervous-looking fellow he didn't recognize—KGB, probably. But since when were the KGB nervous? "What's going on?" he demanded. "Why isn't she in bed?"

"We have a meeting with the ambassador," Chukova explained.

"That's nonsense. I heard he was at the other place—Riverdale, is it?—with Secretary Grigoriev. Valentina should be in bed."

The guard turned and picked up his phone, and then something awful happened. The nervous-looking fellow had a gun in his hand, and he fired one shot into the guard's head, which exploded with blood. The report was astonishingly loud. And then the man turned and looked as if he were going to aim at him, and that was all Trofimov stayed to see. He dived into a room across the hall and locked the door, panting with terror.

He was a scientist. He was not paid to be brave.

* * *

Rylev and Hill were toasting the success of the day's events when they heard the shot. They dropped the vodka and picked up their guns, and they were out the door before the shot finished echoing.

* * *

The elevator wouldn't work without the guard's key. But which key was it? "No time," the American said, fumbling with the dead guard's large key chain. "We'll have to take the stairs."

Doctor Chukova heard the footsteps and the shouted questions, and she knew they would never make it down seven flights. She pried the guard's automatic weapon loose from his hands. "Go," she said. "I'll hold them back."

The American paused for just a moment, and then nodded. He shot away the lock on the door to the stairs, and the three of them headed down.

Doctor Chukova stepped back into the doorway. She tried firing the weapon once to make sure she knew how. The bullet went wildly off somewhere and the recoil drove her back a step. All right. Then they started coming. She hit the first one in the shoulder. He screamed with pain, fell to the floor, and fired back. He missed. Then there was someone else coming from the other direction. She fired and missed, but he took the hint and retreated around the corner.

Then she saw Rylev and his American friend, and Doctor Chukova knew why she had volunteered to stay behind. Rylev's gun was out, and he was already firing at her, but it didn't matter. She took careful aim, bracing herself against the door-jamb, and squeezed the trigger. He staggered and reached down to his chest. She fired again, and he fell to the floor.

Freedom
.

Doctor Chukova smiled. She didn't even notice the other man take aim at her. She didn't even feel the bullet enter her body and free her forever.

* * *

Down.
Valentina was so tired of stairs. They went on forever, and they never set her free.

"Come on. Please, darling."

She would keep on going for him. But it seemed so useless and so hard. So hard.

* * *

She was clinging to his left arm as they careened down the stairs. Fulton could feel the wound bleeding again, but he couldn't worry about that. He held the gun in his right hand, and he was ready to kill.

Someone opened a door and poked his head into the stairwell. Sullivan aimed his gun at him, and the door closed immediately. What floor? A shot from above splintered the banister next to Fulton's hand.
Oh sweet Jesus.
He pulled Valentina over closer to the wall. More faces, more shots. Someone loomed in front of him, and one of the shots was Fulton's. The man fell at his feet. Valentina screamed.

What floor?

* * *

Suddenly there were no more stairs, just a locked door. What was waiting for them on the other side? Didn't matter; there was nowhere else to go. Sullivan shot away the lock and opened the door. The only person in the corridor was the same sleepy guard who had let them onto the elevator a lifetime ago. He was on the phone, and he looked very unhappy when he saw them. Sullivan shot him in the chest.

"To the car," he shouted to Valentina and Fulton as they came panting after him. He started off down the corridor.

"The other way," Fulton shouted back.

Oh God.
Sullivan looked around. Fulton was right; the stairs were on the opposite side of the corridor from the elevator, and that had confused him. He ran back down the corridor and caught up with Fulton and Valentina as they went through the door into the garage.

The bullet hit him in the leg as he closed the door behind him. He took a step, and the pain was a sheet of lightning passing through his body. He stopped.

Well, that was that.

Try to think clearly.

He reached into his pocket and got out the car keys. He handed them to Fulton, who had come back and was trying futilely to help. "Go without me," Sullivan said.

"But I can't—"

"Go!" It was bad enough he had to die. At least he should have something to show for his death. Fulton didn't need encouraging; he was in love. He and Valentina disappeared. Sullivan turned to face the door.

The first man through got it in the stomach and fell backward inside. Another one peeked out and Sullivan put a bullet within an inch of his nose.

And then there was another sheet of lightning, and Sullivan fell. He looked around. He hadn't noticed that door at the far end of the garage, damn it, and now they had hit his other leg.

He had never been cut out for this job.

But he had been brave, hadn't he? Can't blame a man for lying on the ground when he has bullets in both his legs. Right, Maureen? Right, Danny?