Skyprobe (17 page)

Ingrid was behind Shaw now, with Rencke holding his gun in her spine, while ahead a Chinese worker, also armed, led the way. Another armed man came down behind Rencke. As they descended a concrete lid moved smoothly into place overhead, sealing the entry. The steps continued downward for some thirty feet, then they came into the comparative warmth of an enclosed concrete-lined gallery in the form of a passage leading to left and right in a circle around the main pit housing the big metal plate that had brought the helicopter down. The man ahead led them to the left, past a number of doors. The place was quiet, though in the background was the deep hum of dynamos and the sound of forced-draught air intakes; and as they passed some of the doors there was the subdued but insistent whine of machinery, while at others they heard, faintly, the
bleep-bleep
of radar, or the high-speed shorts and longs of radio transmissions. The underground base was roughly built and had an unfinished look about it—it was thoroughly utilitarian and austere—but it was a monstrous place to find in this barren, bitter island off Russia’s north-east coast. Their footsteps echoed on the bare concrete floor, like so many knells of doom for Skyprobe IV, which was probably even now being continually tracked in its orbit from this pirate outfit in the Kuriles.

Their guide stopped at a door some distance beyond the others. He turned smartly, covering the prisoners with his gun. The other man closed in in rear. Rencke said with an air of portent, “In a few minutes, after I have spoken to him, you will meet one of Communism’s most brilliant scientific brains, Commander ... a man of impressive achievement.”

Rencke opened the door and went in, and one of the Chinese closed the door behind him.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later a green light glowed above the doorway and Shaw and Ingrid were pushed into the room ahead of the guns. The apartment was as bare and utilitarian as the passages, and it was stuffy with stale, used air. There were a number of steel filing-cabinets, some hard chairs, and a trestle desk with two telephones on it, one coloured red, the other white. The man behind the desk looked ordinary enough—a thin, pale man in his early forties, wearing heavy hom-rimmed spectacles and dressed in a long white coat over dark trousers. His eyes, hard and dedicated and much magnified by the thick lenses, reminded Shaw irresistibly of a frog.

But—it was a familiar face in some respects. Shaw fancied he had seen that frog-like look before . . . in photographs, a few years earUer, though for the moment anyway he couldn’t place the man.

Rencke moved round the prisoners towards the desk. “Doctor,” he said, “this is the man Shaw of the British Defence Intelligence Staff . . . and Ingrid Lange, of whom you also know.”

The man behind the desk rose with solemn politeness and reached out his hand. He said, “I am so glad to meet you, Commander Shaw—it is a most unexpected but fortunate surprise. I have heard much of you, very much. I am Dr. Anatoli Kalitzkin.” He looked expectant. “You have heard of me also, perhaps?”

Anatoli Kalitzkin
! Shaw was rocked, but he remembered now. The face had altered from the photographs, probably as a result of plastic surgery, but it was Kalitzkin all right. He said, “Yes, I’ve heard of you.” Four years ago the Western security services had buzzed with rumours about this man. Kalitzkin, comparatively young as he was, had been until then one of the Soviet’s top scientists, a man of brilliant brain as Rencke had said, a man of great administrative ability and drive, a leading light in the Russian space research programme and one of the men behind the moon-probe—the nearest Russia could approach, in fact, to the West’s Professor Danvers-Marshall, a man of very similar calibre professionally. But Kalitzkin had the reputation of being a cold fish, unemotional and detached and ruthless in the interests of scientific advance. He had never married and was believed to have few personal relationships. He lived for his work alone. Then four years ago he had suddenly vanished from the scene; his name had no longer been mentioned and his posts had been filled by other men, much lesser men by all accounts. It had been assumed that either he had died or had been liquidated, or imprisoned on some ideological charge, but the intrigued West had never learned the facts of what had really happened to him.

Not until now. . . .

Kalitzkin gave a tight, formal bow in Ingrid’s direction. Indicating the chairs he said, “Please will you sit.”

Shaw and Ingrid each took a chair; Rencke followed suit. Kalitzkin resumed his own seat, while the armed guards stood back against the door with their guns ready for use. Kalitzkin pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead and rubbed at his eyes before replacing the lenses. Shaw noticed that the scientist looked tired and strained, as though from many months of unceasing work and responsibility. Kalitzkin wasted no more time on pleasantries now. Abruptly he said, “I should tell you this, that I am the head of the interception operation here in the Kuriles, and as such am in charge of the safe landing arrangements for the American capsule, and its crew, at this base. But I shall come back to this point in more detail shortly, Commander. First I believe you will want to know what we propose to do with you now that you have joined us. I shall satisfy your natural curiosity.” He leaned forward, elbows planted on the desk, palms together, his chin resting on the tips of his extended fingers. His expression was earnest and his eyes were bright behind the thick spectacles. “In the first place, I believe you can be a most useful person for us to have in our hands, both now and after the diversion, on account of your unrivalled experience and excellent knowledge of Western intelligence and its methods. There is much that you will be able to tell us—”

“If you think—”

“Please, Commander Shaw!” Kalitzkin held up a hand in a schoolmasterly gesture of admonition. “I realize, of course, that you will tell us nothing until certain pressures have been applied. But let me continue. There is, as it has happened, also another reason why you can be useful: you can assist us in our actual diversion plans.” He caught Rencke’s eye.

“Really?” Shaw was icily polite. “You’re expecting rather a lot, aren’t you, Dr. Kalitzkin?”

“Possibly,” the Russian agreed, inclining his head. “But, again, we would not expect your immediate co-operation, naturally. There will be persuasion, of course. . . .”

“Of course! In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me just what those plans are—and also exactly who you mean by ‘us.’ Judging from the fact you have Chinese around the place, I take it both Russia and China are behind the threat to Skyprobe IV. Now, I find that extremely interesting! Have the two Communist countries managed to find a common cause over this, Doctor?”

Kalitzkin shook his head. “Not exactly, Commander. Not exactly . . . there are, I regret to say, all too few matters upon which our Eastern governments see eye to eye, as you know. Indeed, the Kremlin itself has no knowledge of what we propose to do here, nor even, we believe, of our existence as a cohesive body. Peking is not directly concerned either, though—”

Shaw interrupted, “Let’s get this straight, shall we? Are you telling me you’re going it alone, that you’ve had no help from the Communist governments at all?” He waved a hand around the compartment. “Where did your resources come from, in that case? This isn’t exactly luxury, but it’s solid and it’s here. This outfit wasn’t put together with old ashcans!”

Thinly, Kalitzkin smiled over the tops of his fingers. Shaw noticed that, suave and correct and polite as the Russian was, his smile never once touched his eyes. He was too cold, too detached for that. “I am not doing this entirely on my own, Commander. I and my group have been given, and are being given, every possible background assistance and practical support throughout the world, and all the actual operational help we require—but not, and I must stress this, not by the official governments, who are in no way involved.”

“Then who—?”

Kalitzkin said in a tone that came close to reverence, “WUSWIPP, Commander Shaw! Indeed it is WUSWIPP that is carrying out the diversion of the capsule. I am merely an employee, the scientist in charge here in the Kuriles, as I have told you already.”

“And WUSWIPP is?”

“The World Union of Scientific Workers for International Progress in Peace. We use the English form as being more convenient outside Russia, in a world where English is so universal a tongue—and, you see, we are not purely Russian in any case, but are ourselves universal.” He gave a quiet laugh. “I can see you have not heard of us, and this is totally unsurprising to me, Commander! We preserve our secrecy excellently and we are very much more efficient at this kind of close secrecy than are any of your Western peoples. As I have told you, even the authorities in the Soviet Union know nothing of the existence of our organization.”

“But—what are you aiming for, Kalitzkin? Where do you differ from the Kremlin? Aren’t you all Communists?”

“But most certainly we are, Commander—all of us, without exception! Those of us who subscribe to the ideals of WUSWIPP are much more convinced Communists than are most of the men in the official Russian party. You see, our belief is in total Communism—by which I mean the political integration of Russia with China, and thus an end for all time to the differences between our two great countries—differences which so seriously weaken our joint march towards the World Communist State—or rather, what should be a joint march towards that end.” He shook his head. “No, the Russian and Chinese Governments in Moscow and Peking are not themselves concerned in what we mean to do, and as for the men in Moscow, they know nothing of what we are planning—”

“Which means, I take it, that the men in Peking do know?”

Kalitzkin smiled again; blandly. “Allow me to return to this point shortly. I was speaking of the men of the Kremlin. They do not know, for instance, that for the past two years we and our workers have been constructing this base against the time when a worth-while prize would offer itself, as we knew it would, one day.”

“But Russia and China have given unofficial assistance?” Shaw pressed. “When you said Russia didn’t know about your plans . . . you were speaking purely on an official level?”

Kalitzkin shook his head vehemently. “Not Russia, no. They know nothing—nothing! China has supplied workers, mainly unskilled men to excavate the silo, also she has supplied earth-moving machinery and other equipment. Our good friend Rencke, and others who think as we do, have supplied, or rather have arranged the supply of, the precision instruments and the highly specialized equipment we needed. Comrade Rencke is an ubiquitous man, Commander, with fingers in very many pies all over the world, and he is a very excellent agent. The firms who supplied our equipment through his good offices . . . they had no idea where their products were going! I and my fellow scientists of WUSWIPP have supplied the knowhow and the administration and have set up the control factor. Russia, my dear Commander Shaw, knows nothing of this. Naturally, we at this base are in constant touch with the world’s news and we know that Moscow is genuinely alarmed about the possible threat to the capsule—and thus, indirectly, because of public opinion in the West, alarmed also about a possible threat to her own territories by way of reprisal. They are scared that war will result.”

“Aren’t you, Kalitzkin? Doesn’t the threat of a war worry you?”

Kalitzkin shrugged. “I cannot say that it does. It would be unfortunate, of course, but—”

“It doesn’t worry you, that you could be responsible for the deaths of millions of people throughout the world— including Russia?”

Kalitzkin said calmly, coldly, “This prospect does not alarm me if in the end Communism is best served—and there is also my work, Commander. Perhaps you do not realize what a tremendous achievement it is, to be able to divert a spacecraft from its course! You do not realize what enormous power this will give to the combined East eventually. However, to return to what I was saying: I need hardly tell you, I think, that we have covered all possible angles in the interests of our complete security, and that our agents are in fact allaying the Russian fears of war and of the existence of our—”

“What, exactly, do you mean by that, Kalitzkin?”

Kalitzkin leaned across the desk. “I mean that we have our own men in the Kremlin, men who are expertly sowing the seed of the plant which says to the official leadership that in fact
there is no threat
, that it is all a trick of capitalism to prepare the people of the West for a war which they intend to start one day though not now—a capitalist scheme to poison the minds of men against Communism in a world that is tending more and more to accept the
fact
of Communism and to wish to live side by side with it—”

“But what’s the point of all this?” Shaw interrupted. “Even if you do get the capsule down where you want it, what in heaven’s name are you going to do with it? Do you imagine you can control space, or interfere with all Western space projects for all time, from here? Is that what you’re after?”

“No, Commander, that is not our aim—though it could well become a by-product of our success, of course.” Kalitzkin gazed thoughtfully at Shaw. “I will tell you what our objective is—but first I must fill you in on a little detail.” He rubbed again at his eyes behind the glasses. “The Kremlin has for some months past wished to get hold of Professor Danvers-Marshall—and to this end they have used the presence in Poland of his wife’s illegitimate daughter to apply pressure to him through her. Now this, we in WUSWIPP of course knew also, and we have made certain arrangements with Danvers-Marshall, who was under the impression that our agents were the agents of Moscow. Now, Danvers-Marshall has not been entrusted with any knowledge of the whereabouts of our base—he knows, of course, that the capsule is to be diverted, but he believes that he is going to defect to Russia and re-join his wife, who in fact has been delivered to our associates in that country. However, what is really going to happen is this: we intend to hand the capsule and the men in it, including Danvers-Marshall himself, to the Peking Government, with the object that they use them as bargaining counters with Moscow to secure a greater sharing of Russian technical know-how in the widest sense, and, among other things, to help to put Peking firmly into the space race—with a resultant rise in China’s prestige throughout both the Communist and the uncommitted worlds. The ultimate objective of this, Commander, is the integration of which I spoke earlier—we wish, by increasing China’s power and prestige, to force integration upon the Soviet Union.” He shrugged. “Naturally, this is a long Term project . . . and one which may not come to its full fruition in my lifetime. I know this well. But we all strive, and we can all make the humble beginnings that lead to great ends.”