Summit (31 page)

"Home? When?"

"Today."

"But I thought you said you were still looking for her."

Rylev shrugged. "Someone else is looking for her. Not me."

And through his fear and anger Trofimov managed to see some good coming out of this: Rylev was finished. He had failed far worse than Trofimov himself had ever failed, and his failure would not go unpunished.

But without Valentina there might be punishment enough for all.

Everyone possesses psychic ability; Trofimov was convinced of this. A lifetime of study and experimentation had also convinced him that his hyperspace amplifier was the key to tapping this ability. Why, then, was Valentina the only one who had ever successfully used the machine? He didn't know. He was convinced that he would find out someday, and then these people would understand who was the true genius behind all the marvelous successes that had been achieved. But until he found out...

Until he found out, there was only Valentina. And now she was gone. Trofimov did not want to return to being a lonely voice crying in the wilderness, trying to convince blind bureaucrats and cynical scientists of what was so clear to him. He needed Valentina. How could she do this to him? "She defected," he said. "I'm sure of it. She always was selfish. They'll pay her more in America and give her all the concert tickets she wants."

Rylev did not look interested in his theory about Valentina. "Pack," he said. "You'll receive further orders in Moscow."

"It's your fault," Trofimov went on. "How could you let her escape? We're all going to be ruined, thanks to you."

Rylev reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and took out a gun, which he placed on the table next to his empty glass of tea. "Go away," he said, and his icy tone was every bit as frightening as the sight of the gun.

Trofimov stood there for a moment, just to show that he could not be intimidated, and then he turned and strode out of the room.

Once he was in the corridor, though, he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. They had to find her. Had to.

* * *

Olga Chukova was overjoyed when she found out. Valentina was free! She hid her reaction, of course, as she hid all her feelings. And after a while, her joy began to be tinged with fear. There would be consequences, of course, and they would not be good ones. She had always known the end would come for her eventually, but it had always been some nebulous tomorrow that she could somehow ignore. This was different.

But nothing happened. Only the most superficial of interrogations, and then they were all bundled off to the airport and back to Moscow. Perhaps, she dared to think, it would be all right. Without Valentina, the project would cease. Perhaps then they would ignore her. She could go back to being a poorly paid doctor, unloved and unnoticed. That would be all right with her.

But she knew it wouldn't happen. Rylev wouldn't let it happen. He would let her feel a moment's hope and then, eventually, he would crush her.

Back in her tiny apartment, her plants were brown but not dead, the cracks in the plaster were no larger than before, and someone had actually fixed her dripping kitchen faucet. Life could have been worse. She sat down for a while and thought about how excited Valentina had been before the recital. Olga had wept for her then, and now Valentina had found happiness. There was no happiness for Olga Chukova.

Later she went to the food store. It was one of those modern places where you didn't have to stand in endless lines for every purchase, but it still smelled of pickled garlic, and there still wasn't much on the shelves. If she left the Popov Institute, she would lose the food distribution that provided her with some of the delicacies that never reached the stores. This was the least of her worries, she supposed. She bought the makings of a stew and headed home.

On the way she saw him lurking in a doorway. Her first impulse was to avoid him at all costs, to run away, to pretend that he didn't exist. But then she realized that now was as good a time as any to put an end to it. If he didn't come around, she didn't have to speak to him. Right? So she strode up to him. "Hello, Volodya."

"Olga, my bumblebee, what a pleasant surprise."

She smiled and shook her head. "I hardly think you're surprised, Volodya. Although
I'm
surprised they haven't told you not to bother with me anymore."

Volodya raised one of his bushy eyebrows. "What do you mean, my little cherub?"

"I mean that she's gone over to your side, so there's nothing more for me to tell you."

"My side? I don't understand."

"They haven't told you yet? They did what I said they should do, back in the Alexandrovsky Gardens—do you remember? They saved her. Tell them I'm grateful. And tell them to leave me alone."

Volodya smiled. A kerchiefed babushka bustled past them, muttering about people blocking public doorways. "Ah, Olga, we are just pawns in their games," he said. "They tell us nothing. I am truly happy for your friend. But you can't mean you don't want to see me anymore."

"That's exactly what I mean, Volodya. I have enough perfume. I don't need to go to the Bolshoi again. I just want to go back to living a normal, terrible life like everyone else. It probably isn't possible, but I'd like to try."

He looked hurt. He probably was. But she knew him, and she knew the pain wouldn't last long. He wasn't the kind to brood about the past. "I thought I meant more to you than that, Olga."

He had tricked her and blackmailed her and ruined her life, and now he was trying to make her feel sorry for him. No, it wouldn't do. "Good-bye, Volodya." She turned and walked away.

He followed her, struggling to keep up as she strode along the sidewalk. "I am still your friend, Olga. I don't forget my friends. You know where you can find me. If you ever need anything, just say the word."

"Good-bye, Volodya," she repeated. She was afraid to say anything else, afraid she would lose her resolve and give in to him one more time. She hurried into her apartment building at last, and felt grateful when he didn't follow her inside. She glanced back as she waited for the elevator that always took forever to reach the lobby, and he was still there, staring in through the glass doors, like a puppy waiting for its master.
Good-bye, Volodya,
she thought, and then the elevator arrived.

Vladimir Ivanovich Osipov watched Olga disappear into the elevator. He liked Olga. He would miss her. But that was life—people come and go; each new day brings a new heartache as well as a new adventure. Olga didn't like the adventure—well, he could understand, but that wouldn't spare her the heartache.

He turned and walked away, fingering the tape recorder in his pocket. He supposed he should let them know what she had told him. It hardly seemed to make any difference, if what she said was true. But then, who was he to know what made a difference?

Chapter 28

Sullivan stared at the report from Moscow. Osipov had some interesting news. Chukova was back in the Soviet Union, and Borisova wasn't. The plan had worked, then. She had defected.

So where was she? No need for him to know.

But perhaps there was, because soon after he got the report he was called to a meeting—in the DCI's conference room, where he had never set foot before. What did Loud want with him?

He knew everyone in the meeting, except for a military man who seemed quite at home. There was Houghton and Culpepper and Roderick Williams, who looked very happy; there was Mark Walpole, a bearded scientist from the labs. And there was Sullivan's old friend Lawrence Hill.

Hill shook hands with him warmly. "How are you doing, Bill?" he asked.

"Pretty good," Sullivan lied. "I didn't know you were involved in this business."

Hill shrugged. "You know how it is."

"Yeah." Somehow Hill's presence didn't make him feel very good about the meeting. But George Loud's abrupt entry prevented him from brooding about it.

Loud looked like an accountant, and Sullivan had heard grumbling that the guy was more interested in budgets than in intelligence. But he didn't trust that kind of grumbling. He had a feeling that Loud knew exactly what he was doing, and was smart enough to get it done.

"I've called you all here," Loud whispered, "because you are the people who have been involved in Operation Cadenza, and I want to make sure I understand what's going on. So, um, Rod, perhaps you could summarize for us."

Operation Cadenza,
Sullivan thought. Now he knew its name.

Roderick Williams cleared his throat. "Well, George, as you know, it started with an op plan from Bill Sullivan here, which just sort of lay, er, laid around until Lawrence Hill made a case for it, and we decided to give it a try. He carried it out flawlessly, if I may say so, and we now have in our possession perhaps the most important defector in history."

Loud tapped a pencil against the table.
"Lay
is correct, I believe," he murmured.

"Right. I wasn't too clear on that one."

"Most people aren't." Loud kept tapping. "And are we sure yet that she is, as you say, the most important defector in history? The Soviets haven't said a word about her."

"Well, I think we can assume that they know a protest won't get her back," Williams said. "Apparently the risk we took paid off—Grigoriev doesn't want to endanger the summit over this."

"Uh-huh," Loud responded noncommittally. He turned to Houghton. "And what kind of information has she given us so far?"

"She seems to be quite cooperative," Houghton said. "She provided us with a list of her targets, and we could confirm most of them through our penetration of her project. The others were apparently prior to when Doctor Chukova became involved. We're working with Counterintelligence on those."

"Anything so far?"

Houghton shook his head. "They look clean. Borisova herself seems to be unsure how successful she's been. It all takes place in her mind, and nobody bothers to tell her how that relates to reality. She assumed something was happening, because they kept making her do it, but presumably that could be some sort of a smoke screen, if what we're really dealing with here is disinformation."

Sullivan's heart sank. Houghton still didn't buy it.

"Do
you
think it's disinformation?" Loud asked Houghton.

"Quite possibly," Houghton said.

"But to what purpose?" Williams demanded. "They've gone to a huge amount of trouble if all they want to do is confuse us."

Houghton shrugged. "I don't know what their purpose might be. But I don't think we can dismiss the disinformation hypothesis until we have better evidence that this woman is for real."

"All right, then," Loud said. "What about the testing?"

It was Doctor Walpole's turn. Bill Sullivan had worked with him before; he was one of the Science and Technology Directorate's experts on parapsychology. He had big ears and thick glasses, and he looked uncomfortable in a suit. "We're only just starting," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose, "and we can't really expect to get much in the way of results just yet. She's exhausted and confused and frightened, which is not the state of mind most conducive to producing the sort of phenomena we're talking about."

"But you also have a replica of the machine she uses?"

Walpole nodded. "I don't think the machine has anything to do with her powers, however—if they exist. It's a piece of junk, if you ask me. There may be a placebo effect, though. The machine may make it easier for her to use her powers, in other words, because she
thinks
it's helping her."

"Bert," Loud said, turning to Culpepper. "If she does have some sort of psychic ability, can we use her in our own operations?"

Culpepper shrugged and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Of course. We thought we'd wait before bringing that up with her, though. Win her trust and so on."

"I think the opportunity for research here might be more important than carrying out operations," Doctor Walpole said. Culpepper rolled his eyes.

"Well, perhaps there'll be opportunity for both," Loud murmured. He tapped his pencil some more. "We have her," he said in the same low voice, "and it's all still pretty vague, isn't it?"