Russian Spring (20 page)

Coldwater’s office was painted a nauseating institutional lime green and was floored with institutional tan carpeting. His desk was more of the same; a big steel model humanized with tacky wood-grained plastic veneer, with the inevitable computer terminal sitting on it. One wall was bookcases in the same style. There were two overstuffed-looking armchairs in front of the desk, upholstered in cheap brown Naugahyde. The only items of decor were an American flag beside the desk and a photo of the President behind it.

Lester Coldwater himself looked to be about fifty, slightly overweight in a blue pinstriped suit, with somewhat unruly graying hair, and watery-looking blue eyes behind modish swept-back glasses.

“Sit down,” he said by way of greeting.

Perhaps it was the decor, which reminded Jerry of nothing so much as his high school guidance counselor’s office, perhaps it was the hurry up and wait, perhaps it was Coldwater’s vibes, but whatever the reason, by now Jerry was good and pissed off and it was loathing at first sight.

He dropped down into one of the chairs across from the desk, and folded his arms across his chest. “So?” he said.

Coldwater punched something up on his computer console. “So, Mr. Reed, it is my duty to inform you that you may be about to commit a violation of the amended National Security Act recently signed into law by the President.”

“How so?” Jerry said, beginning to get a little nervous, but damned if he would give anything away to this guy.

“You are familiar with the terms of the amended National Security Act, Mr. Reed?”

“No,” Jerry said. “I’m no lawyer, and I have no interest in politics.”

Coldwater punched something else up on his screen. “According to our information, you have received a formal offer of employment from the European Space Agency—”

“How did you find that out?” Jerry blurted, then instantly regretted
it.

“Not my department, Mr. Reed,” Coldwater declared diffidently. “Do you care to deny it?”

Jerry thought about it for a moment. Obviously they knew all about the offer, probably down to the salary and fringe benefits. There would be no point in getting cute, or, on the other hand, in offering anything.

“No,” he said. “Is that a crime?”

“Not unless you accept it,” Coldwater said. “Since you have had access to a medium-security military project, you are forbidden by the amended National Security Act to accept employment outside the United States or for a foreign company inside the United States. Should you do so, it may be construed as espionage and prosecuted accordingly. Since such an offer has been formally made by
ESA
, you are now required to sign an affidavit that you will not accept it, in order to retain a valid American passport.”

He reached into a drawer, pulled out a document, slid it across the desktop at Jerry, then took a ballpoint pen out of his breast pocket and put it down beside the paper.

“And if I refuse to sign?”

“Then I am required to request that you hand over your passport.”

“And if I won’t?”

Coldwater sighed. He shrugged. “Not my department, Mr. Reed. Suffice it to say that you will not be permitted to leave the Embassy with the document in your possession.”

Jerry stared at the affidavit. He was beginning to get frightened, but he’d be damned if he’d sign anything without knowing what he was doing. “I don’t have to sign anything without the advice of a lawyer,” he told Coldwater. “That’s my right as an American citizen, now isn’t it?”

“Not under the terms of the amended National Security Act,” Coldwater told him. “By accepting a medium-security clearance when you went to work on satellite sleds at Rockwell, you waived your right to counsel in such matters.”

“What! But that was years ago—this amended National Security Act didn’t even exist then.”

“Indeed,” Coldwater said. “That was why Congress, in its wisdom, made Section 12 retroactive.”

“That’s got to be unconstitutional!” Jerry snapped, his head reeling. “I’m not signing something I don’t understand without legal advice!”

“As you wish,” Coldwater said blandly. He thumbed on his intercom. “Would you please ask Al Barker to come down here to discuss Mr. Reed’s situation with him?”

Coldwater stood up, checked his watch conspicuously. “It’s getting to be lunchtime,” he said, moving toward the door. “I might as well let you and Barker use my office. . . . ”

“And what is this Al Barker’s
department?
” Jerry asked.

Coldwater opened the door, looked back at Jerry patronizingly. “Let us not be crude, Mr. Reed,” he said, stepping through the door, then closing it behind him, leaving Jerry alone and feeling very much like an errant high school student waiting in the guidance counselor’s office for the principal to arrive.

Pankov took forever to sleaze up to the point. He mopped his brow with the back of his hand, he asked for a cup of coffee, he complained about the flight from Brussels. He glanced furtively at the unmade bed, then at Sonya, and sat down primly on a chair without making even a perfunctory pass or so much as an off-color remark, and that, somehow, was the most ominous part of it.

“What on earth are you
doing
here, Grigori Mikhailovich?” Sonya finally demanded when she could stand it no longer.

Pankov grinned at her most nervously. “Much as I would like to be able to say that this is a matter of romantic ardor, Sonya Ivanovna,” he said, “alas, the fact is that I am here in your boudoir at last on official Red Star business. . . . ”

“I do not understand. . . . ”

Pankov seemed to be staring right through her as he reeled off a stammering little speech that sounded like something he had memorized on the plane and probably was.

“We are on the verge of completing a deal with Common Europe worth scores of billions of rubles.
ESA
, you are no doubt aware, due to your, ah, liaison, shall we say, with Jerry Reed, is in the process of building prototypes of its spaceplane, the so-called Daedalus. . . . ”

“Why are you telling me this?” Sonya demanded. “What does it have to do with—”

“Patience, patience, Sonya Ivanovna!” Pankov said. “I am a bit over my head here myself, to tell you the truth, so please do not interrupt, or I will start to forget everything!”

He was starting to sweat again. He mopped his brow with a napkin from the breakfast table and took a gulp of tepid coffee before continuing. “Where was I . . . ? Ah yes,
ESA
and a European consortium wish to purchase Cosmograd modules in order to assemble some sort of hotel, improbable as it may seem, in Geosynchronous Orbit, in order to make the Daedalus economically viable, though how this is to work, I do not quite—”

“Yes, yes, they will build a space station in order to give their Daedalus someplace up there to go to, so that they can justify its cost to the bankers,” Sonya said irritably. “Jerry has explained all this to me. . . . ”

“He has?” Pankov said, staring at her in some perplexity. “Well then perhaps you already know that they also want to purchase Energia rockets, which they would use to place large tanks of fuel into orbit in order to fuel up tugboats which will somehow pull their Daedalus to their space station. . . . ”

Pankov groaned. “Modules! Space hotels! Tugboats!” he cried. “Does any of this make any sense to you?” he asked plaintively.

“Everything but why you have come all the way from Brussels to babble about this to me!” Sonya snapped, by now entirely exasperated. “Will you
please
come to some sort of point, Grigori Mikhailovich?”

“Point? Point? Ah yes, the point! Well the point is that Red Star refused to sell them the Energia rockets, insisting instead on selling them the fuel in orbit, since that would be much more profitable, and the Europeans refused to go along with this, since it would make their space station dependent on the price of Soviet fuel F.O.B. Low Earth Orbit. . . . ”

“The point, Grigori Mikhailovich, the point! Will you please get down to business!”

“Business? Well, yes, that much I do understand. After a lot of what I am told was extremely hard-nosed negotiation, Red Star hammered out a compromise with the Common Europeans. We sell them the Cosmograd modules and the Energia rockets and use the proceeds to purchase 49 percent of a transnational consortium to build the Daedalus spaceliners. A sweet deal for Red Star, is it not?”

“Wonderful! Ingenious! Marvelous! But what on earth does it have to do with me! What are you
doing
here?”

“Yes, yes, I was getting to that,” Pankov said, and his voice became calmer and surer, which did not reassure Sonya the least little bit.

“You see, the key item is the tugboats, without which
ESA
cannot get its spaceplanes to its hotel, or build it either. But
ESA
does not have the technology to build such tugboats, and neither does the Soviet Union, though I am told our military would indeed very much like to have it, and without them the whole deal is dead, hundreds of billions of rubles, or so I am told. . . .”

“Only the Americans have this technology, with their satellite sleds . . . .,” Sonya said slowly. “And that is why
ESA
is spending all this money to persuade Jerry to work for them!”

Pankov heaved an enormous sigh of relief and gave her an immense smile that would have fairly been called “winning” had it not been plastered across the face of such a slimy creature. “Yes, yes, exactly, Sonya Ivanovna, thank God you
do
understand!” he exclaimed.

“Understand
what?
” Sonya said, but her perplexity this time was
unfortunately somewhat feigned, for despite herself, she was all too afraid that she was finally beginning to get it.

“Why we are extending your vacation time with full pay for the duration,” Pankov told her.

“For the duration of
what?
” Sonya asked him, knowing all too well what this was coming to, but determined to make Pankov sweat as much as possible by way of futile vengeance.

“Must I?” Pankov said miserably, wringing his hands.

Sonya simply gave him a stare of silent incomprehension.

“This is not my doing at all, you understand, Sonya Ivanovna,” Pankov whined. “I have been ordered to transmit this request by Sergei Dakolov, who was informed by
his
superior, who was informed by the Red Star Tower back in Moscow that high Party circles . . . ah . . . find it desirable that you . . . uh . . . continue your liaison with this Jerry Reed until he defects and that you do everything in your . . . er, power, to persuade him to do so. . . .”

“Defect!” Sonya exclaimed. “Who says Jerry has to
defect?
And to whom? It’s all just a matter of accepting a job offer, isn’t it?”

Grigori Mikhailovich Pankov, having at last delivered himself of the entire unwholesome message from his superiors, seemed finally to pull himself together well enough to revert to his normal petty-bureaucratic persona.

“No, it is not,” he said in his pompously authoritative office manager’s voice. “As to whom,
ESA
will no doubt secure him a Common European passport. As to who says he has to defect, that, of course, will be the Americans. After all, what is required of him is that he aid
ESA
in developing their own version of a key piece of Battlestar America technology. The Americans will do whatever they can to prevent this from happening short of violating French sovereignty, which means they will most certainly not allow him to remain in Common Europe on an American passport when he signs an employment contract with
ESA
.”

“
If
he signs an employment contract with
ESA
. . . .”

Pankov gave Sonya a look that she knew all too well. “It is your duty as a loyal employee of Red Star, S.A., and a patriotic citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, who, I might add, has been blessed with an unlimited travel visa for Western Europe on her passport, to see to it that Jerry Reed goes to work for
ESA
,” he said in his best officialese.

“And if I refuse to have anything to do with this sleazy business?”

Grigori Mikhailovich Pankov shrugged. “If you refuse to cooperate with the wishes of high Party circles, while there may no longer be a gulag,” he said, “Red Star
does
have a position vacant for a clerk-typist in Vladivostok.”

This time they didn’t let Jerry Reed stew in his own juices for very long. It couldn’t have been five minutes after Coldwater left before Al Barker more or less burst into Coldwater’s office, and if he didn’t quite slam the door behind him, he certainly shut it with a thunk of crisp authority.

Barker was a black man of medium height and wiry build, wearing a very well tailored dark green suit, which on him somehow managed to convey the aura of a uniform. He had high cheekbones, close-cropped hair salted with gray, and cool hard eyes that looked used to command. He strode crisply across the office without introducing himself, sat down behind Coldwater’s desk, bolt upright on the swivel chair, put his forearms on the desk, fixed Jerry in an unwavering gaze, and came right to the point.

“I’ll give it to you straight, Reed,” he said in short clipped syllables. “You have been a perfect asshole and you are in deep dark shit. You are in mental possession of classified Battlestar America material, and you may rest assured that the cretin who let you out of the country with a Common Europe visa on your passport will never be in a position to make such a stupid mistake again.”

Barker steepled his fingers, pursed his lips, and regarded Jerry with a sort of sour resignation.

“Now one could say that was not really your fault, Reed,” he admitted. “After all, you were offered a free vacation by the
ESA
headhunters, you didn’t play cute and hide your destination, somebody fouled up and let you out of the country, and the worst that could be said was that you were an avaricious jerk.”

“How. . . . how did you know about—”

“How did we know about
ESA
’s game?” Barker snapped. “Jesus Christ, Reed, what sort of incompetents do you think we are? You show up here and ensconce yourself in the goddamn
Ritz
and start pissing away money like there’s no tomorrow, and we’re not supposed to notice? You show up at a big
ESA
reception with
André Deutcher
, and we’re not supposed to be bright enough to count to two?”