Firechild (6 page)

“Colonel Clegg, you don’t make military policy.” Kneeland’s voice took on an edge of its own. “The President does, in consultation with people who have earned his trust. EnGene has been receiving confidential funding because his expert military and strategic advisers approved confidential funding.”

Lifting a hand to hold off Clegg’s rejoinder, he lectured the others like the professor he had been.

“I must clarify the basis for that decision. Progress in science isn’t something you can turn off or on. When the time has come for a new step forward, it won’t wait for any man or any nation. Lorain and Belcraft aren’t the only genetic engineers who have reached what you might call the brink of creation. Others—in Russia, in half a dozen countries—are only one jump behind us.

If a biological superweapon is going to be possible, we want America to own it. Even if lives must be lost—” Clegg rapped a question, “How many lives?” Kneeland’s wild eye darted at the ceiling, but his voice flowed evenly on.

“The nukes are bad enough, but genetic war could become a worse nightmare. Genes don’t have to be mined and run through billion-dollar refineries. Each of us carries our own. Bioscience labs are cheap enough to build. If anybody does perfect a weapon, genetic proliferation will come soon and come fast. The weapons could be spores, deployed by the wind—”

“God’s first power, desecrated into an instrument of death!” Clegg had come without the brown beret, and the blood-colored handprint had begun to show through his ashy makeup. “And you admit—”

“We’ve nothing to admit.” A rap of anger. “Whatever we’ve done was done in good faith, planned to bolster the national defense. If genetic weapons are to exist, we need them in time to develop defenses against them. Perhaps it’s true that we’ve lost a city. Its sacrifice may well save the nation.”

“If you and your Pentagon friends are willing to sacrifice innocent cities—” Clegg’s hard jaw jutted out. “What else must we expect?”

“That’s impossible to say.” Kneeland shrugged again. “At this early point, our field reports don’t make much sense. When I left the President, he was tied up with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Strategic Air Command in a conference call. Cheyenne Mountain has been alerted, but up to now NORAD hasn’t picked up any hint of missiles.

“Pending something definite about what the hell is happening, we’re alerting everybody. Civil defense, the military, the CIA and the FBI, state governments in the threatened areas—but very quietly, not to ignite a greater panic. We are confident that the danger can be contained and eliminated—if in fact any widespread danger does exist.”

“If Enfield is dead,” Clegg muttered sourly, “I think a worldwide danger does exist. A danger even to our own survival.”

“You don’t know that.” Kneeland’s odd eye stabbed suddenly aside, and his voice rose sharply. “We don’t in fact know anything. We won’t until broken communication links can be restored.” Both eyes back in focus, he squinted at his watch. “At this early point, that’s all I can say. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to get back—”

“Not quite yet—” Clegg cut him off. “I’ve got something else you’d better hear.”

8

Arny

Carboni

A
nya Ostrov had been called back to Moscow. A plainclothes lieutenant met her at Sheremetyvo airport with a black Chaika limousine and carried her fast into the central city. He parked outside the old Lubyanka prison, now converted into office space for the KGB headquarters, the Center.

The shabby old building had been scrubbed and repartitioned and repainted, but agony and terror and despair still clung like the scent of death to its dingy corridors. Inside, the lieutenant identified her for the sentries. They grinned in appreciation of her figure, but she found no pleasure in their admiration.

Though the bright summer day was hot for Moscow, she shivered a little, following the frayed red carpet down into the guarded offices of the Surveillance Directorate. Boris Shuvalov rose to meet her in a gloomy little room that once had been a torture cell.

“My dear Anya!” His voice seemed too warm, his smile mechanical. “We’ve been waiting.” He sent the lieutenant outside and locked the soundproof door. His quick animal eyes tried to read her features. “Have you brought the Belcraft file?”

“Not yet, Boris.”

“Nyet?”
His voice lifted. “Why not?”

“The situation—” She spread her arms as if a gesture could explain. “It has become unexpectedly difficult.”

“Your earlier reports led us to believe—” His sallow face turned savage. “We have told Colonel Bogdanov that you would have the file with you. Today! He’ll be unhappy.”

“You promised too much.” The room was hot. Brightness shone on his bloodless face, and his cologne failed to hide the odor of his sweat. Keeping her distance, she sank into the chair before his desk. “Who is Bogdanov?”

“A señor officer of the First Chief Directorate. Now acting secretary of Group
Nord.”

“Group
Nord?
” In spite of her, the words came huskily. “Must
Nord
be involved?”

“Naturally.” An impatient shrug.
“Nord
was formed for just such contingencies. It includes the chiefs of all our foreign operations divisions. Call it a general staff in command of all our outposts along the invisible front. The colonel has just been named acting head. He is deeply concerned about the American genetic experiments. Most eager to receive your reports.” He shook his head, thin lips set. “The colonel does not forgive failure.”

“We haven’t—haven’t failed!” Angry with herself, she knew she had spoken too hotly. “I hope the colonel can understand we had no way to foresee this—this most unfortunate situation.”

“Comrade, let me warn you.” His tone grew as cold as his emotionless ferret eyes. “This is no game with nice fat prizes for whatever clever ploys you may have invented. It is war for the survival of Mother Russia, perhaps for the survival of all—”

“I know.” She caught a weary breath and wiped at the moisture on her own fair face. In spite of her makeup, its lines of sleepless strain betrayed more years than she liked to show. “I hope the gravity of the situation will persuade the Center to arrange the price my informer is demanding.”

“Why any price? Can’t you use old Roman’s millions?”

“They aren’t enough.” With effort, she drew herself straighter. “If you’ll let me explain—”

“The colonel accepts no alibis.”

“Comrade, here is the situation.” Her voice turned crisper, as if the words had been rehearsed. “Our most useful informer in the EnGene laboratory has been a man called Arny—Arnoldo Carboni. He is employed as a computer programmer. His exceptional abilities have forced most of the research staff to trust him with the details of their discoveries. Working long hours, often at night, he has been able to make the duplicate printouts that I have secured for the Center.”

“But the Belcraft file?” A brittle accusation. “Which you promised—”

“Comrade, if I may speak—” She let her own voice rise. “Dr. Victor Belcraft has become a special problem. Our own experts now call him the ablest man on the EnGene staff. They keep demanding his research notes. Those are difficult. He came to mistrust Carboni. He is also at odds with other members of the staff, perhaps because of some idealistic objection to the production of a biological weapon. Recently, he has worked almost alone. He understands computers. For the past few months he has been writing and running his own programs—”

“You’ve reported most of that.” He waved impatiently to stop her. “But you led us to understand you would bring copies of his private—”

“I was wrong.” She shrugged. “If I’ve failed anywhere, it was a failure to understand Carboni. I thought all he wanted was money. He presented himself to us as a pathological gambler obsessed with an idea that he could beat the casinos at the Las Vegas resort with systems of play designed on his own computer. We’ve paid him many thousand American dollars, which he seems to have thrown away—all just to trick us.”

Her fair skin flushing, she caught an indignant breath.

“We taught him skills to open the office safe where Belcraft kept his laboratory notes and paid him eighty thousand dollars to photograph them. He has done that. He has delivered convincing copies of cover pages and a few revealing passages, but he won’t give up the entire file. Not for money. Not even for a million, unless we also meet his main demand.”

“Which is—?”

“Alyoshka.”

“That traitor?” Shuvalov’s wet face reddened. “Impudent idiot! Does he think he commands the Kremlin?”

“He expects to,” she said. “He offers what he calls a reasonable trade. Freedom for Leon Alyoshka and his wife and daughter to migrate to Israel or America, or anywhere they like, with suitable guarantees that they will never be molested. In return—and the same guarantees for his own safety—he will surrender the Belcraft file.”

“Impossible! The Colonel couldn’t—” Shuvalov surged to his feet. “It’s blackmail! The USSR will never submit. Never! Not to some American hoodlum.”

“Carboni is no idiot.” Feeling calmer, she wanted to smile at his agitation. “He knows well enough that his offer is hard for us to accept, but he has refused to give us any other option. He demands Alyoshka’s freedom in exchange for the files—and he knows how much we want them. He has been keen enough to work out the exchange like a seasoned professional.”

“Don’t you employ your own professionals?”

“Who have failed.” She shrugged. “I have discussed the problem with the agent Scorpio, who has been my contact with Carboni. Professional enough, though I despise him. He reports that Carboni no longer has the photos in his own possession. Carboni says they have been placed where they will reach the American CIA if anything happens—”

His hostile headshake checked her.

“Comrade—” She caught her breath and lifted her head to face him. “I’m convinced that Alyoshka must be released if we want the photos.”

“I don’t know—” He stood scowling at her for half a minute, then retreated abruptly into an inner office. She let herself sag wearily back into the chair till he returned. “I have referred the matter to Colonel Bog-danov. He wants to question you himself.” He moved toward the door. “At once!”

9

Marty Marks

S
tanding with that withered little woman in the stale heat of number nine, Belcraft turned with her to watch the TV. A gangling, mud-spattered youth was sliding into the chair under the newscast logo. His face was grimed and swollen, and new blood beaded a jagged scratch down one unshaven cheek. His breath rasped fast, as if from a run. He sat a moment, peering behind him, and then turned to blink into the camera through black-rimmed glasses. One lens was cracked and smeared.

“Folks, I got—got back!” His voice came out with a nervous squeak, and he gulped to smooth it. “Back to the KBIO newsroom on the downtown tower. Here again to continue my own exclusive report on disaster in Enfield. Dunno how long—”

He paused to get his breath and mop his face with a dirty rag that smeared the oozing blood.

“Needed that break. On the mike since six, all by my lonesome. Stopped for a bathroom break. And something else I needed. Another good swig of Old Smuggler out of the news director’s private bottle.” He tried to grin. “Don’t think he’ll mind—”

“Hogwash!” Mrs. Bard sniffed. “A stinking drunk.”

The door slammed behind her. “—back on the penthouse terrace,” Marty Marks was rushing on, as if in terror of interruption. “Looking down on Central and Grand from eighteen stories up. A whole new scene since last time. Streets worse than a madhouse then. Wrecked cars and trucks and buses piled up at every intersection. Most on fire. People swarming out of houses and running everywhere, wild to get away. Except a few crazy kids smashing into a liquor store, staggering out with bottles they never had time to tap.

“No motion now. Bodies piled on top of bodies they’d tried to crawl over, crazy to get away. Bodies everywhere, on the sidewalks and the pavements and the roofs I could see—and not a soul alive anywhere. A stillness in the streets that’s worse than all the car horns and the engines roaring and the sirens and the screaming. All I heard was a chopper overhead. Somebody looking, I guess, for what they’ll never—”

Abruptly silent, Marty Marks came half to his feet and turned to listen, his lank frame tense. Poised for a moment as if for flight, he sank slowly back into the chair.

“Nothing, folks.” He pushed the glasses higher on his nose. “A nasty minute when I thought I had company. Anybody coming up here would likely bring something I’m in no hurry to get. Can you blame me?”

Swabbing his face, he flinched when he touched the scratch on his cheek.

“A funny feeling, folks. Ever since I was just a whimpering kid I wanted to be a TV anchorman. Somebody like Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. A crazy dream, because I never had the looks or the voice or the wits for it. But tonight’s my night. As long as I last—” Shivering a little, he twisted to listen again. “For anybody just tuning in, I’ll try to sum it up— what I know, which ain’t all that much. Like I been saying, it all began early today, out at the EnGene Labs. Maybe forty blocks southwest of downtown. What is it?” Eyes wide and strange, he stared into the camera. “Who knows?

“Nobody never told us nothin’. First thing anybody outside knew, they were calling from the labs to report an accident. Some hazardous substance escaping. Never said what it was, but they wanted the cops to seal their premises off.

“Demanded a news blackout. Under orders, they claimed, from Washington. The cops did divert traffic away from the plant. One of our mobile units went out to get the story, but the cops wouldn’t let ‘em in. They did catch an EnGene scientist while he was held up, yelling at ‘em to let him inside, but he claimed not to know a thing.

“The cops kept him out till he called Washington. In a few minutes they had orders from the local FBI to let him in. His last mistake, I reckon. Never came back out. The G-men went to work on our news director. Claiming they had a red alert—if you know what that is.