The Doomsday Box (24 page)

Which was fine, except for one thing. He'd no idea what to do.

“We need to think,” Fuchsia said. “Go on, Danny, you're good at that.”

She was sort of cute
,
Danny thought irrelevantly, then dragged his mind back to the problem. After a while he said, “Look, I know I'm always asking you to do things you can't do, but is there any way your time talent can help us here?”

“How?”

“I don't know,” Danny said, “but you figured out they went to Lubyanka. Couldn't you do the same now? Look into their future and see where they've ended up?”

Fuchsia stared at him helplessly. “I was watching the car when it took them away so I could see where it would end up. Finding Michael and Opal now isn't that easy. If they were here with us it would be different. I could just look along their time line like I did with the car. But they're not, so I don't have a starting point.”

“What about starting at KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square? We know they were taken there.”

“From here? I don't know.” She thought about it for a moment, then said hesitantly, “I suppose I might. Outside of a solid time line, space and time are all a bit of a jumble when I do this, so it's not all that easy to find things, but it's easier when I've been to a place for some reason; and I've been to Lubyanka Square.”

“Would you try? Just for a moment? Just to humor me?”

They were back in Fuchsia's room and she was perched on the edge of her bed. Now she stretched out, closed her eyes, and gave the peculiar little jerk of her head. A moment later, she opened her eyes again. “Yes.”

“You can see it?”

“Yes.”

Danny licked his lips. “Okay, this is a long shot. Could you look at KGB headquarters and see if you can find Opal and Michael's time line coming out of it?”

Fuchsia sat up again. “Danny, there are
hundreds
of time lines coming out of KGB headquarters
.
It could take me
hours
to find the right one.
”

Danny took a deep breath. “Try,” he told her. “Just focus on Opal, or Michael, or both of them if that's any help. Or scan across the time lines until you get a glimpse of them. Or just try to find time lines that sort of look like them.”

“You don't know what you're talking about, Danny. Most of it's just not like that.”

“You have to try,” Danny pleaded. “We're their only hope.”

Fuchsia lay down again without another word.

It was the longest five minutes of Danny's life before she opened her eyes again. “That was very, very difficult,” she said crossly.

“But did you manage it?”

Fuchsia beamed suddenly. “Yes, I did!” she said. “I know where they went to and I even know where it is because we passed it when we were running from that awful man—I remember it clearly. It's not even very far from here. Shall we tell Ambassador Thompson?”

“Tell him what?” Danny asked. “That you have a weird psychic power that lets you see the future so you can track where people are? I don't think he's going to believe you.”

“So we go look for them ourselves?”

Danny nodded.

“I'm not sure that's such a good idea,” Fuchsia said flatly.

“Good or not, it's the only idea I have. My feeling is Ambassador Thompson doesn't want to get too far involved in this. I mean, he was happy enough to make inquiries, maybe even send a diplomatic protest if the situation warranted it. But we're not talking James Bond here—he's not about to send in the cavalry to rescue a couple of kids when he doesn't even know what they've been up to.”

“It's going to need the cavalry,” Fuchsia said soberly. “They were taken away in a big black car by an armed man in uniform. I'm not sure the KGB have let them go at all. I think they've just been taken to some other KGB place where it might be easier to—” She stopped, looking at Danny.

“All the more reason for getting them out as soon as possible,” Danny said.

“But
how
? These people are the KGB.”

“You only saw one man,” Danny said.

“One man with a
gun
! And there may be others at the place he took them—it was some sort of apartment building and there were gates and there might be dozens more KGB inside. How are we going to tackle that, just the two of us?”

Danny took another deep breath. “I'll think of something.”

He expected her to argue, but she only said, “Okay, Danny.”

It was weird to have somebody trust you that much—weird and a bit scary. He covered his feelings with an attempt at briskness. “All right, let's go see how the land lies. Maybe we can find some way of getting them free. But you have to appreciate how urgent this is. We don't know what the KGB is doing with them, and even if we get them away tonight, we still have to contact Mr. Stratford and set up another meeting with Cobra.”

“Yes, I know all that. So let's get started.” She stood up and headed for the door.

Danny stared after her foolishly, then caught himself and ran to follow.

W
hat are you doing?” Opal asked. She stared at the gun in her hand as if it had just materialized from Mars.

“I'm trying to show you idiots you can trust me. Look—” He walked to the door, unlocked it, removed the security chain, and pushed it ajar. “There. Now you can leave anytime you want. You've got the gun, so I can't stop you. You can walk out of here and find out for yourselves if what I said was true about the guards and getting out of the building. I'll even tell you how to get past them. Any guard stops you, just say you're guests of Colonel Menshikov. Got that? That way, they'll bring you back here or let you out the front door or whatever you want. They'll check with me, of course, but I'll tell them to cooperate. If you do decide to leave, try to get back to the embassy as fast as possible, but remember, you'll be on your own out there.”

Opal looked from the gun to the man and back again. If this was a setup, would a real KGB colonel hand over his sidearm and open the door? Somehow she doubted it. But she still couldn't get her head around what was happening, what Menshikov—Cobra?—claimed was happening. “If you're Cobra,” she began, then stopped. If he was Cobra, how could he prove it? He'd already handed over his gun and opened the door.

“Opal,” Michael said, frowning. “Maybe . . .” He didn't finish, but then, he didn't have to. Menshikov's gesture had obviously thrown him as well.

Opal changed tack. “You can't be Cobra,” she said bluntly. “We've seen Cobra.”

This time it was Menshikov's turn to look puzzled. “You can't have,” he said.

Something clicked over inside Opal's head. Her earlier suspicions had gotten them nowhere. She turned away from Menshikov and set his gun down on the table. If she didn't trust him with some information, they were stuck here, glaring at each other and dancing round suspiciously. Besides, if he really
was
a KGB colonel, what good would the information be to him? Their mission was no threat to the Soviet Union. It concerned something that wouldn't even happen until decades after the Soviet Union finally collapsed. The worst that could happen was that she'd confirm his suspicions they were not what they seemed. But almost certainly he knew that already, and besides, despite what he'd just said, she knew, realistically, there was no way out of here without his cooperation. She glanced quickly at Michael, turned back to Menshikov, and said, “You say you're a CIA operative. So are we. Our mission was to meet up with Cobra. Which we did. Or at least we were about to when we were taken by the KGB. But before that happened, Michael and I got a good look at Cobra, and he's nothing like you.”

“How did you know what he looked like?”

Opal hesitated. She knew the real Cobra, whoever he might be, was on an undercover mission of some sort. Which
was
information of use to the KGB. Identifying the real Cobra could be a coup for Menshikov, if he really was Menshikov. She was still hesitating when he said, “There was a photograph among Michael's belongings when he was arrested. You carried an identical picture. Was that the man who was identified to you as Cobra?”

Of course it was. Any fool could have guessed that agents carrying identical pictures must be using them for identification. Opal threw caution to the winds. “Yes.”

“The man in the picture is Boris Aleksey Lobanov,” Menshikov told her bluntly. “He's a KGB field agent. I know him quite well.” He caught her eye and held it. “Looks like you and your friends were given a bum steer, young lady.”

Opal stared. She knew she believed him. He'd produced the Lobanov name without hesitation. What she didn't know, what completely bewildered her, was what was going on here. But all this depended on whether the man in front of her was telling the truth. She believed him, but she was still prey to the nagging doubt that she might be wrong. And suddenly, as she stood there staring at him, she realized there was one way of making sure—and convincing
him
of the truth about
them.
“Listen carefully,” she said. “I can understand your reluctance to deal in real names, but I want you to tell me yours. You've trusted us with everything else, so it can't make any difference to you at this stage. If you do tell me your real name and it's what I think it is, then I will tell you something that will prove we're who we say we are as well.”

“My name is Carradine,” said Cobra without a moment's hesitation.

“You have a son,” Opal said. “A little boy named Gary.”

Cobra's jaw dropped. “You can't know that. He was only born a week ago. We haven't christened him yet, but my wife wants to call him Gary. The information isn't even on my CIA files.”

Opal blinked. Mr. Carradine must be younger than she thought. More to the point, they'd definitely, absolutely, certainly made contact with the real Cobra, here, now, and in this room. She turned to Michael with a smile of relief. He was looking at Cobra, astonished.

Opal turned back. Apart from everything else, this would allow them to complete their mission. “We know that because—and you're going to find this hard to believe—Michael and I are—”

The door of the apartment slammed back with a crash. “All right,” a gruff voice said in English. “This is the CIA. We have the building surrounded. Lie down on the floor with your hands above your head!”

D
anny stared up thoughtfully at the building. It was obviously an apartment building with pretentions of style. Oddly, he was familiar with the architecture, which didn't look Russian at all, but was the sort of thing he'd seen often enough in London during his thieving days. Except that in London the apartments usually had that grubby, seedy look buildings get when they're half a century old, whereas this one looked nearly new. “You sure this is the place?” he asked Fuchsia.

“Definitely,” Fuchsia told him. She looked worried. “We can't get in, can we?”

“Wouldn't be too sure about that,” Danny murmured. In fact, the security was pretty primitive. There was a high wire-mesh fence around the courtyard that surrounded the building, but there was no electrification or razor wire to stop you climbing it. Heck, there wasn't even barbed wire—probably somebody thought it was too unsightly for the posh inhabitants. The entrance gate was secured by a heavy-duty lock—nothing electronic or coded, no fancy swipe cards or iris recognition or any of those problems. He could probably pick the lock, given a bit of time, although with people coming and going he didn't fancy his chances of not being caught. His best bet, he thought, was to forget the gate altogether and use the big ornamental tree growing at the far end of the parking lot. The dense growth of branches meant he could climb it unseen, and there was an overhang that would give him access to the far side of the fence. He could drop down and be on the ground in seconds.

He doubted the building itself would present too many problems. The front doors might even be open. You'd be surprised how often that happened in an apartment building. Tenants were in too much of a hurry, or just couldn't be bothered, to close them properly. And if they weren't open, there was always some idiot who'd leave a window unlatched on the upper levels. If you weren't afraid of heights—and Danny wasn't—you could always crack in somewhere. The old window latches from the sixties weren't up to much either. You could usually persuade one to open with a credit card and a bit of patience, not that there were many credit cards then—now!—but Danny had brought some neat little gimmicks he could use.

He had only two real worries, and one was guards. You'd never find them in modern London. Minimum wage was far too high and besides, everybody relied on technology for their security: CCTV and all that sort of nonsense. But Soviet Russia was a different kettle of fish. If this was a KGB building—and he strongly suspected it was—armed guards were a real possibility. He hadn't seen any, admittedly, but that didn't mean they weren't there.