Last Gasp (18 page)

She scooped up the mail from the mat and left it on the hall table without looking at it, and went straight into the kitchen, switching on the radio to drown the silence. There was no lingering regret at Frank’s departure. That particular episode had played itself to a standstill months before he got the job in Boulder with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Still, it had been two years and a few months of her life. She hadn’t even missed the sex much, which had been the only department where they saw, in a manner of speaking, eye to eye.

Cheryl made lemon tea, trying to decide whether or not she was hungry, and carried the glass in its plastic holder into the living room and flicked on the TV for company. Clint Eastwood was killing somebody with a Magnum .45. Had someone killed Theo not with a gun but with a car? For five years she had lived with that unanswered question. The police had filed it away under “Hit and Run.” Just another fatality to add to the road accident statistics. Cheryl had no contradictory proof, except the inadmissible kind of doubts, fears, suspicions.

Why did she remain unconvinced? It could have been an accident. Yes, it could have been but wasn’t. Because Theo had been a pain in the ass to the authorities, that’s why. Because he kept plugging away with articles and lectures and letters to journals and newspapers, telling everyone and anyone who’d listen. Because he knew what was coming and certain people knew it was coming and didn’t want others to know.

Her mind was a muddle and she was tired. She’d taken on her father’s crusade, and as with him it had become an obsession. It had also become her reason for living, her entire life.

She finished her tea and went through the hall to the bedroom, collecting her attaché case on the way but leaving the mail untouched and therefore not seeing the envelope with the Russian postmark, which was third in the pile.

The mail would still be there in the morning, and tomorrow, thank God, was another day.

“Everyone needs a label,” John Ware said. “That’s why I’d like you to do this series for us. You’ve established a reputation and the public trusts you.”

He might have been taken more for a city stockbroker than the editor of a monthly political and current affairs magazine. Pinstripe suit. Old school tie. Well-fed face and plump pink hands resting on the starched white tablecloth. And accent to match. “What was that thing you did for the BBC?”

“ ‘Personal Crusade,’ ” said Chase.

“Good stuff, pitched at just the right level. Intelligent without being abstruse. I spoke to several people and they were most impressed.”

“I’m glad several people watched it.”

“What I’m after is hard-hitting factual stuff, fully documented. None of that “a spokesman said” or “a highly placed source informed me” crap. Opinions like that are two-a-penny. Or at any rate the price of a phone call. You get the idea.”

Chase did, though he wondered at John Ware’s motives. Most likely the editor wanted a big topical theme to boost his AB readership. A chance remark in a Fleet Street pub had sparked off the idea to hire Gavin Chase to research and write a series of pieces on environmental problems worldwide, so here he was, being given the full expense-account treatment and lashings of bonhomie in the Unicorn Press Club at ten-past-three on a dismal Tuesday afternoon.

“Now, as to timing,” John Ware said, with the briskness of a stockbroker closing a deal. “How soon could you leave for the States?”

“Three weeks,” Chase said, having already thought about it. He’d need that length of time to make arrangements.

“What about your bits for TV? Contractual obligations?”

“I’m not under contract. They just call me in on a free-lance basis whenever they need an ‘expert’s’ viewpoint.” Chase spoke casually, with a hint of irony. “As you say, John, everyone has to have a label.”

“No personal ax-grinding though,” the editor warned him. “Keep it hard and factual and to the point.” He raised his brandy glass. “Here’s to a successful trip and a terrific series.”

Chase acknowledged the toast and drank. Obviously John Ware, editor in chief of the glossy
Sentinel,
saw nothing amiss in sealing a bargain such as this with five-star Cognac.

Chase took a chance that the tube was running and walked up Chancery Lane to Holborn Station. You could never be sure since London went bankrupt which services were operating and when. He was in luck and rode through, changing at Oxford Circus to get on the District Line, to Chiswick Park. The easiest way would have been via Notting Hill Gate, but nobody used that station unless he was black or Asian.

He walked through the drizzle to his flat in Wellesley Road, passing the lines of derelict cars rusting at the curbside. At Belgrave Court he showed his ID to the armed security guard and was admitted. Every window was wreathed with barbed wire. He had a standing arrangement with a neighbor whose little girl went to the same school as Dan to collect his son and look after him till five. The little girl, Sarah, fussed around Dan like a mother hen, but at least he was safe and off the streets.

The word processor that served as his desk in the book-lined living room was inches deep in copies of
Science, Nature, New Scientist,
and Science Review. These supplied background research for a two-thousand-word piece on computer weather modeling, as yet only half-written.

Meeting Theo Detrick in Geneva eight years ago had changed his life; getting married to Angie and then divorced had changed it even more, Chase suspected.

For it was actually her leaving him that spurred him on to pursue his new career. While still married he’d been contributing bits and pieces to the scientific press, so it wasn’t a completely new departure when he terminated his ICI Research Fellowship at Durham and came to London to try his hand at free-lance science journalism. It was one hell of a gamble, though, and the first couple of years had been tough, especially with a young child to support and bring up. For a while he was even reduced to graveyard-shift lab work. Then the journalism started to pay, and when television came along he was able to provide an above-average standard of living for Dan and himself. At thirty-five he was beginning to feel established at last, though he still found it a precarious and unsettling occupation, subject to the vagaries of the media and the whims of editors.

But as John Ware had pointed out at lunch, television had made Gavin Chase’s reputation as a science popularizer. Much to his own surprise he’d made the transition from straight science reporting to the mass media, where the personality selling the message counted for as much, if not more, than the message itself.

The sight of the work to be finished made him restless, though it was probably pointless until two cups of strong black coffee had cleared the brandy fumes. Besides, there was the ritual of Dan’s bath and bedtime story, which Chase looked forward to. He sometimes grumbled that it disrupted his schedule and derailed his train of thought, but it kept him sane and put things in their proper perspective. The end of the world would have to wait until after Dan’s bedtime story.

Ironic, really, that he had the women’s movement to thank. With the change in the social-sexual climate of opinion, every custody case was considered on its merits, without bias one way or the other. Angie had forfeited her rights to the child when she left the family home and, in the words of the judgment, “cohabited with another person in a separate dwelling.” The other person was not Archie Grieve (she’d never slept with him, Chase learned) but a tall, balding BBC light-entertainment producer called Derek Chambers, whose name occasionally popped up on variety shows and quiz games for the mentally retarded.

They were welcome to each other, in spades. Chase had cried few tears. If not Chambers it would have been some other specimen in the television menagerie. A cameraman or a sound recordist or the prop boy.

He heaved himself up and answered the phone. A features editor wanting to know how much he knew about viruses from outer space. He promised to stop by her office the day after tomorrow. His fingers were hardly off the receiver when it rang again: Could he sit in on a discussion on energy conservation followed by a phone-in for Capital Radio a week from Thursday? He said yes, he could, and it was only when he’d put the phone down that it occurred to him that very soon—by the end of the week—he’d have to refuse all further offers of work. Three weeks from today he’d be on his way to America, and there was a vast amount to sort out in the meantime—not only Dan and who’d look after him, but also planning and fixing up his itinerary for the seven-week trip.

New York, New Jersey, Boston, Washington, Denver, the West Coast ... a lot of ground to cover ... MIT, Cornell, Smithsonian, NOAA, Scripps ... the list began to run out of control and he told himself to put it aside until tomorrow when the computer modeling article would be out of the way.

Shortly after five o’clock Dan appeared, escorted to the door by the conscientious Sarah, taking her role as surrogate mother very seriously.

“Daniel has been a naughty boy,” she informed Chase primly, standing there in pinafore and pigtails, arms folded. “He won’t do as he’s told!”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the matter?”

“He would
not go
to the toilet,” Sarah said, frowning through her dimples.

Father and son silently regarded each other with identical blue-gray eyes. Like Chase’s, the boy’s hair was dead straight and hung over his eyes in a sweeping curve, though it was fair and fine, not thick and black.

“Oh. Well. Never mind,” Chase said. “Perhaps he didn’t want to go. Thanks for looking after him.”

Sarah nodded, duty discharged, and trotted off along the corridor.

“I did want to,” Dan confided as Chase closed the door, and in a burst of scandalized six-year-old indignation, “But her, Bossy Boots, wanted to come with me and pull my pants down!”

“Pity. That’s probably the best offer you’ll get for at least ten years,” Chase said.

The odd-colored eyes of Yuri Malankov, officer, third grade, were fixed coldly and disconcertingly on the dead-center of Boris Stanovnik’s forehead.

It was a trait Boris remembered well from the days when the young Malankov had worked as his lab assistant: his inability, or refusal, to look anyone directly in the eye. Malankov was shut away in the barred and bolted fortress of his narrow, dogmatist head.

They were sitting facing each other across a plain table in one of the hundreds of anonymous rooms of the seven-story building at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. In prerevolutionary days it had housed the All-Russian Insurance Company; now it was the headquarters of the Committee for State Security, the official nomenclature of the KGB.

This was typical KGB psychology, Boris knew, to disorient the interviewee by making the surroundings bleakly impersonal. Yet knowing this didn’t make the effect any the less intimidating.

“You say the letter was to a friend, yet it was addressed to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.” Malankov didn’t relax his remorseless empty gaze.

“Dr. Detrick is a marine biologist at Scripps. I write to her there, just as she writes to me at the Hydro-Meteorological Service. I don’t see anything strange in that.”

“The letter contained more than personal news and friendly salutations. It made specific reference to a project that is of vital importance to the people of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

“Why, yes, but of course,” Boris said easily. He blinked in surprise. “We exchange gossip about the work we’re engaged in. All scientists do. But you know that already, Yuri, from the time you spent with the service.” He smiled. “There was nothing in the letter of a confidential nature. Certainly nothing that’s classified.”

Malankov’s eyes went down to the typewritten sheet in front of him, which Boris guessed was a transcript of the letter. Where was the original? After interception had it been sent on? Unlikely. But Malankov had said “letter”—in the singular—which filled Boris with hope.

“You must be aware how sensitive this project is,” said Malankov. “Particularly at the present time.”

Statement or question? Boris chose not to respond. Let the KGB weasel take the lead; that was his job.

Malankov kept his eyes lowered, his sallow face expressionless. “Any information, no matter how innocuous it might seem, could add to the overall intelligence picture compiled by our imperialist enemies,” he said, as if quoting verbatim from the official handbook. “A hint here, a clue there, a careless phrase. We must be eternally vigilant, Professor, about matters that concern national security.”

Boris nodded agreement, though he was genuinely puzzled. “I’m sorry, but I thought you were referring to Project Arrow, the Ob and Yenisei rivers diversion scheme. I don’t see how that can have anything to do with national security. Its purpose is to provide much needed arable land in western Siberia. It has no military significance at all, so far as I’m aware.”

“I was using the term in its widest sense, of course,” Malankov said, a fraction too hurriedly, and for a fleeting moment actually looked into Boris’s eyes, as if anxious about something. “We must never forget that national security embraces all aspects of political and economic activity. We are defending our heritage and culture, our way of life, against Western subversion. Plentiful food for our people is a powerful weapon of war. Men cannot fight on empty bellies.”

Boris smelled a very large rat. This chunk of party dogma was Malankov’s clumsy attempt at a cover-up. In his haste and ignorance he’s exposed precisely that which he was striving to conceal. Yet Boris was still puzzled: How did Project Arrow fit into a military context? In what way exactly?

“I understand that,” he said gravely, his mind working furiously. “But I should point out that my letter contained nothing that the Americans don’t already know. The Western press has reported the scheme since its inception in the mid-seventies.”

“Speculation, Professor—not technical detail,” Malankov said sternly. “They’re certainly not aware how near we are to achieving our goal. Your letter hinted that your work on the project will soon be over.”