Sigma One (45 page)

Pat's stomach turned inside out and he became nauseous with Radcliff's proclamation. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. All he had worked for so many years was finished. Done! Through! He couldn't stand to hear any more and gat up and started toward the door.

Radcliff noticed him leaving in spite of the darkened room. "Pat," he asked, "where do you think you're going? You still have a briefing to give."

Pat didn't answer. "You give the briefing, you bastard," he thought and then exited without saying a word.

He was numb and on the same dark spiral he had been on the day after the first committee meeting when he was told of the ninety day ultimatum. Only this time there wasn't any escaping it: SIGMA ONE was dead. This time there wasn't any Amanda to go and get Burt and rescue the project. This time there wasn't any chance at all. This time Radcliff had pulled the plug and he and all he had dreamed and hoped for was sliding down the drain and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it. He felt hopeless.

He punched the cypher code with hands that felt like clay and left. The door clanked shut behind him silencing Radcliff's continued protests. As he walked slowly down the hall to his office, nausea overtook him. Hurriedly, he quickened his pace and found a wastebasket. He wretched, and afterward, felt utterly weak and had to stop.

As he paused in the hall to regain his strength, he scanned each vault door and imagined each being emptied of its contents. It would surely happen. Soon the NSF would become a warehouse--vacant. Lives would be shattered; hopes ruined. The building and all its contents would then be discarded, like a robin's egg after the hatchling has cracked it and crawled out of the shell. Only the building wouldn't have brought a new life into the world and be remembered with fondness like the egg one sees discarded on the lawn in spring. Instead, the building would become a burial ground for an idea that perhaps could have changed the world.

Burt lay in the back of the rented Dodge Arrowstar and slept while Debbie drove. He was still groggy from the effects of the drug given him by Kamarov, but other than a splitting headache, he was normal. Kamarov was seated next to her and was going over the diagrams showing the missile guidance computer Burt had scrawled from memory earlier. Kamarov had seen them all before back at the institute in Moscow and this re-familiarization was more to pass the time than anything else while they sped toward Morrow Bay and away from Sacramento where they spent six hours with Daniel.

Kamarov put the diagrams down and looked up at Debbie who was staring straight ahead watching the road. He studie
d her face. She was beautiful, but she was also very tired. The last two days had taken their toll. Her eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by deep circles which showed through in spite of her makeup. Still, he thought, she is beautiful. In Moscow there weren't many blondes, and the ones he did know weren't nearly as fair. Their skin was ruddier and they had more wrinkles from the cold winters. No, Ms. Andrews was far too pretty to be a Moscovite.

Debbie felt his stare and turned toward him and spoke. "It was nice of you to share your medicine with Burt back in the motel, Andre. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't." Her voice was tender, but not inviting.

"You needn't thank me, Ms. Andrews," Kamarov said politely. "I owe you both my life. Had it not been for you, I probably would have been captured by now. Besides, it was because Burt linked that he became crazy. And because he linked we escaped."

"But you didn't need to give him the last of the medicine. Now neither of you has any more," Debbie responded.

"I know. And although we will need it soon, I had no other choice back then. If I had not given it to him, he might have hurt himself." He paused and then added, "or you."

Andre reached over and took her hand from the wheel. She pulled it away, but he held on. Some of the tiredness in her eyes melted away and was replaced with angry fire at his touch.

"I know you don't agree with what we have to do." Andre said. "But it is the only way, Debbie. Burt may have been acting crazy the other night when he suggested it, but I have given what he said much thought and I agree with him. Only by showing both our governments that we have control over them and not the other way around can we ever expect to be free."

"But Andre, it's too dangerous," Debbie protested. "If either of you links again, Burt especially, without the medicine, I mean. You're risking your lives and you'll...."

She didn't get time to finish. Andre interrupted. His voice was cold and harsh. "And what kind of lives do you think we can lead now? Tell me that. Both governments will come for us. You remember what happened back in the casino. You remember the agent with Huxley. " He then grabbed her wrist and turned it for her to see. "You remember the way they handcuffed you....the way the metal gouged your flesh!"

She looked down at the bruises and the swollen cuts on her wrist. It still ached, and the pain made her know he was right. The U.S. government would stop at nothing to get Burt.

Andre spoke again. Some of the earlier harshness remained, but mostly his voice was filled with resignation and acceptance that the risks they would be taking by launching a test missile at Washington and one at Moscow to prove their determination, would be worth the gain. He squeezed her hand gently. "It's the only way, Debbie. The only way!"

Tears filled her eyes and she pulled her hand away. She knew the Soviet had spoken the truth. It was the only way.

But that didn't make it easier to accept, or any less dangerous.

As the winter sun dipped into the Pacific and the warm California sky was changing from blood red to a deep violet, in Washington, night had already fallen and a chilly winter wind howled outside the Huxley residence. Flecks of damp snow, like spittle, peppered the windows and every so often, the ice-laden branches of a nearby tree scraped the roof.

Patrick Huxley was home alone seated in his living room staring hollow-eyed straight ahead. He didn't notice the wind or the sound the branches made. He was too busy trying to focus on the Escher which hung on the wall opposite him. It was difficult to do so. It was dark and the shadows which fell on the painting made it nearly impossible for him to see the detail he loved so much, but he preferred to keep the lights off. It matched his somber mood. Besides, he had studied the picture enough over the years that in his mind he could lose himself in the surrealistic reflection of the room wrapped on itself in the globe held in Escher's hand without them. Pat knew the picture's every line, and just as Escher must have examined his life at least once while he painted the image of himself which stared back at him, Pat examined his own life now.

He didn't like what he saw.

For nearly twelve years, he had dedicated every waking moment to the ideal of building a nuclear-weapon-free society by perfecting SIGMA ONE. He had given everything to that dream including neglecting his wife and daughter. He had even had been brought to the brink of an illicit affair as a result of spending so much time away from home and absorbing himself with work instead of concentrating on the things that really mattered: his family. He did this all in the name of the greater good. But while he was protecting the world for future generations, his family was slipping farther and farther away, like a leaf caught in a slow moving stream.

Each moment he had invested in SIGMA ONE had been one he had robbed from those who loved him. Yet he stole without conscience or remorse.

He could never get those moments back.They were gone forever.

And for what?

Now his dream was gone as well. The committer and Radcliff had seen to that. Their shortsighted paranoia had caused them to yank it from his hands. Now Pat was just as miserable and empty-handed as the compulsive gambler who threw one too many craps and lost it all. And just like the gambler, who searches frantically in his pocket for one more buck--the buck that will turn things around when the dice finally hit, Pat was searching his mind for alternatives; searching for some way to make it all right. But he had run the account dry. He had nothing else to bet. He was emotionally bankrupt and soon enough, monetary bankruptcy would follow as
the NSF was dismantled and he was removed from his post of leadership. Soon he would be worth more to his family dead than alive!

"So why wait?" A voice inside him asked.

"Get it over with, Huxley!" The voice said repeatedly.

"But be smart! Be real smart!" The voice cautioned in a whisper.

"Make it look like an accident. Insurance doesn't pay for suicides."

Pat blinked the tears from his eyes and got up. He was talking to himself, agreeing with the voice. He'd be smart. He'd be real smart. He would make it look like an accident. Then he noticed the note Sarah had written, the note saying she and Alice had left, and as it fell from his lap to the floor, he desperately he grabbed for it, but when he reached to get it, he stumbled against the end table. The bourbon bottle he had nearly emptied crashed to the floor soaking the note and causing the ink to run down the page blurring the words.

Pat reached down and picked up the bourbon-soaked piece of paper and crumpled it in his hand. He ignored the shards of glass which bit into his flesh as he raised his fist and began to wail.

"I'm sorry, Alice."

"I'm sorry, Sarah!" He sobbed.

Tears streamed down his face.

"I'm truly, truly sorry to both of you!"

"But I'll make it better."

"I will!"

"I promise             

"I'll make it better..."

"Oh, God, I'll make it better………." he spoke into his fist while the

b
lood trickled down his forearm. That's when he left and staggered out into the cold and got into his car to make it all better.

He didn't hear the phone ring as he pulled his car out onto the icy road.

Lieutenant Andrew Banachek rolled over and stretched his muscular arms toward the nightstand as he searched for the screaming alarm clock. He found it and pounded it--not once, but twice. The first hit only wounded it and it continued its dying wail until he pummeled it the second time.

"Seven fifty?" Banachek moaned as he focused his eyes on the dimly lit numbers on the face of the digital clock.

"Colonel Banes is gonna kill met He'll have my ass in a sling for sure!" He moaned to himself again and tried to wake up.

He was already halfway out of the bed when Marla, a blonde perky cocktail waitress he had picked up at the officer's club the night before, poked her head out from under the covers.

"Come back to bed, honey," Marla squeaked in a poor Betty Boop imitation. "We have time for one more before you go to the base, don't we?"

Banachek looked over at the clock again and then down at her, now nude from the waist up having let the covers slide down her torso as an added incentive to stay with her.

Banachek grinned and thought to himself. "Oh hell, I'm late anyway." Besides, he
rationalized, the launch wasn't scheduled until twelve thirty and as the launch destruct officer he really didn't have that much to prepare for. In fact, they had rehearsed the sequence seven times before over the last few months and he could perform his duty in his sleep if he had to.

He looked back at Marla and brushed his black short hair out of his eyes and then removed his jockeys and climbed back into bed.

"Okay, Honey, " he said as he mounted her. "But it's got to be quick."

"Um, okay, soldier boy," Marla cooed. "But not too quick I hope," she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

Fifty miles north of Banachek's apartment which was located just outside the gate of Vandenberg Air Force Base, Walker and his three men pulled their cars to a halt and took their positions outside the Andrew's house. It was a chilly Morrow Bay day and the flat light from the overcast skies washed out the normally vivid colors of the picturesque coastal landscape giving everything an ashen-bleak cast. It was not the type of day that the local Chamber of Commerce would have any pictures made of their peaceful hamlet, nor the type of day sailors relished. The high clouds meant a storm would soon be pounding the coast.