The Doomsday Conspiracy (20 page)

"Look," Mann said, "take whatever you want. There's no need for violence and-"

"Sit down, please."

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The second man walked over to the liquor cabinet. It was locked. He smashed the glass and opened the cabinet. He picked up a large water glass, filled it with scotch, and carried it over to where Mann was seated.

"Drink this. It will relax you."

"I-I never drink after dinner. My doctorThe other man put the gun to William Mann's temple.

"Drink it, or the glass is going to be full of your brains." Mann understood now that he was in the hands of two maniacs. He took the glass in his shaking hand and took a sip.

"Drink it down."

He took a larger swallow.

"What-what is it you want?"

He raised his voice, hoping that his wife might hear and come downstairs, but it was a vain hope. He knew what a sound sleeper she was. The men were obviously here to rob the house. Why don't they just get on with it?

"Take anything," he said.

"I won't stop you."

"Finish up what's in the glass."

"This isn't necessary. I-" The man punched him hard above his ear. Mann gasped with pain.

"Finish it."

He swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one gulp and felt it burning as it went down. He was beginning to feel giddy.

"My safe is upstairs in the bedroom," he said. His words were beginning to slur.

"I'll open it for you." Maybe that would wake his wife and she would call the police.

"There's no hurry," the man with the gun said.

"You have plenty of time for another drink." The second man went back to the cabinet and filled the glass to the brim again.

"Here."

"No, really," William Mann protested.

"I don't want it."

The glass was shoved into his hand.

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"Drink it down."

"I really don't-" A fist slammed into the same spot above his ear. Mann almost fainted from the pain.

"Drink it."

Well, if that's what they want, why not? The quicker this nightmare is over with, the better. He took a big swallow and gagged.

"If I drink any more, I'm gonna be sick." The man said quietly, "If you get sick, I'll kill you." Mann looked up at him and then at his partner. There seemed to be two of everybody.

"What do all of you want?"

he mumbled.

"We told you, Mr. Mann.

We want you to repent."

William Mann nodded drunkenly.

"Okay, I repent." The man smiled.

"You see, that's all we ask. Now..."

He put a piece of paper in Mann's hand.

"All you have to do is write 'I'm sorry. Forgive me.'" William Mann looked up blearily.

"That's all?"

"That's all. And then we'll leave."

He felt a sudden sense of elation. So this is what it's all about. They're religious fanatics. As soon as they left, he would call the police and have them arrested. I'll see to it that the bastards are hanged.

"Write, Mr. Mann."

It was difficult for him to focus.

"What did you say you want me to write?"

"Just write 'I'm sorry. Forgive me.'"

"Right." He had difficulty holding the pen. He concentrated very hard and began to write.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me."

The man took the paper from Mann's hand, holding it by the edges.

"That's very good, Mr. Mann. See how easy that was?" The room was beginning to spin around.

"Yeah. Thank you. I've repented. Now would you leave?" Page 120

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"I see that you're left-handed."

"What?"

"You're left-handed."

"Yes."

"There's been a lot of crime around here lately, Mr. Mann. We're going to give you this gun to keep."

He felt a gun being placed in his left hand.

"Do you know how to use a gun?"

"No."

"It's very simple. You use it like this...." The man lifted the gun to William Mann's temple and squeezed the banker's finger on the trigger. There was a muffled roar. The bloodstained note dropped to the floor.

"That's all there is to it," one of the men said.

"Good night, Mr. Mann."

FLASH MESSAGE TOP SECRET ULTRA

CGHQ TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR NSA

EYES ONLY

COPY ONE OF (ONE) COPIES

SUBJECT: OPERATION DOOMSDAY

7. WILLIAM MANN-FORT SMITH-TERMINATED

END OF MESSAGE

Day Ten Fort Smith, Canada

The following morning, bank examiners reported a million dollars missing from Mann's bank. The police listed Mann's death as a suicide. The missing money was never found.

Day Eleven Brussels, 0300 Hours

General Shipley, the commandant at NATO headquarters, was awakened by his adjutant.

"I'm sorry to wake you up, General, but we seem to have a situation on our hands."

General Shipley sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He had had a late night entertaining a group of visiting senators from the United States.

"What's the problem, Billy?"

"I just received a call from the radar tower, sir. Either all our equipment has gone crazy or we're having some strange visitors." Page 121

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General Shipley pushed himself out of bed.

"Tell them I'll be there in five minutes."

* * * The darkened radar room was filled with enlisted men and officers gathered around the lighted radar screens in the center of the room. They turned and sprang to attention as the general entered.

"At ease." He walked over to the officer in charge, Captain Muller.

"What's going on here, Lewis?"

Captain Muller scratched his head.

"It beats me. Do you know any plane that can travel twenty-two thousand miles per hour, stop on a dime, and go into reverse?" General Shipley was staring at him.

"What are you talking about?"

"According to our radar screens, that's what's been going on for the last half hour. At first we thought it might be some kind of electronic device that's being tested, but we checked with the Russians, the British, and the French, and they're picking up the same thing on their radar screens."

"So, it couldn't be something in the equipment," General Shipley said heavily.

"No, sir. Not unless you want to assume that all the radar in the world has suddenly gone crazy."

"How many of these have appeared on the screen?"

"Over a dozen. They move so fast that it's hard to even keep track of them. We pick them up, and they disappear again. We've eliminated atmospheric conditions, meteors, fireballs, weather balloons, and any kind of flying machine known to man. I was going to scramble some planes, but these objects-whatever they are-are flying so damned high that we'd never be able to get near them."

General Shipley walked over to one of the radar screens.

"Is anything coming in on your screens now?"

"No, sir. They're gone." He hesitated a moment.

"But General, I have a terrible feeling they'll be coming back." Ottawa, 0500 Hours

When Janus finished reading General Shipley's report aloud, the Italian stood up and said excitedly, "They are getting ready to invade us!"

"They have already invaded us." The Frenchman.

"We are too late.

It is a catastrophe." The Russian.

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"There is no way-" Janus interrupted.

"Gentlemen, it is a catastrophe we can prevent."

"How? You know their demands." The Englishman.

"Their demands are out of the question." The Brazilian.

"It's no business of theirs what we do with our trees. The so-called greenhouse effect is scientific garbage, totally unproven."

"And what about us?"

The Gorman.

"If they forced us to clean up the air over our cities, we would have to shut down our factories. We would have no industries left."

"And we would have to stop manufacturing cars," the Japanese said.

"And then where would the civilized world be?"

"We are all in the same position." The Russian. 'u have to stop all pollution, as they insist, it would , the world's economies. We must buy more time until Wars is ready to take them on." Janus said crisply, "We are agreed on that. Our diate problem is to keep our people calm and to avoid spread of panic."

"How is Commander Bellamy progressing?" The Canadian.

"He's making excellent progress. He should be finished in the next day or two."

Kiev, the Soviet Union ike most of her countrywomen, Olga Romanchanko had become disenchanted with perestroika. In the beginning, all the promised changes that were going to happen in Mother Russia sounded so exciting.

The winds of freedom were blowing through the streets, and the air was filled with hope. There were promises of fresh meat and vegetables in the shops, pretty dresses and real leather shoes, and a hundred other wonderful things. But now, six years after it had all begun, bitter disillusion had set in. Goods were scarcer than ever. It was impossible to survive without the black market. There was a shortage of virtually everything, and prices had soared. The main streets were still filled with rytvina-huge potholes. There were protest marches in the streets, and crime was on the increase. Restrictions were more severe than ever. Perestroika and glasnost had begun to seem as empty as the promises of the politicians who promoted them. Olga had worked at the library in Lenkomsomol Square, in the center of Kiev, for seven years. She was thirty-two years old and had never been outside the Soviet Union. Olga was reasonably attractive, a bit overweight, but in Russia that was not considered a disadvantage. She had been engaged twice to men who had moved away and deserted her: Dmitri, who had left for Leningrad; and Ivan, who had moved to Moscow. Olga had tried to move to Moscow to be with Ivan, but without a propiska, a Moscow residence permit, it was not possible. Page 123

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As her thirty-third birthday approached, Olga was determined that she was going to see something of the world before the Iron Curtain closed around her once again. She went to the head librarian, who happened to be her aunt.

"I would like to take my vacation, now," Olga said.

"When do you want to leave?"

"Next week."

"Enjoy yourself."

It was as simple as that. In the days before perestroika, taking a vacation would have meant going to the Black Sea or Samarkand or Tbilisi, or any one of a dozen other places inside the Soviet Union. But now, if she were quick about it, the whole world was open to her. Olga took an atlas from the library shelf and pored over it. There was such a big world out there! There was Africa and Asia, and North and South America. ... She was afraid to venture that far. Olga turned to the map of Europe. Switzerland, she thought. That's where I'll go. She would never have admitted it to anyone in the world, but the main reason Switzerland appealed to her was that she had once tasted Swiss chocolate, and she had never forgotten it. She loved sweets. The candy in Russia-when one could get it-was sugarless and tasted terrible. Her taste for chocolate was to cost Olga her life. The journey on Aeroflot to Zurich was an exciting beginning. She had never flown before. She landed at the international airport in Zurich filled with anticipation. There was something in the air that was different. Maybe it is the smell of real freedom, Olga thought. Her finances were strictly limited, and she had made reservations at a small, inexpensive hotel, the Leonhare, at Limmatquai 136. Olga checked in at the reception desk.

"This is my first time in Switzerland," she confided to the clerk, in halting English.

"Could you suggest some things for me to do?"

"Certainly. There is much to do here," he told her.

"Perhaps you should start with a tour of the city. I will arrange it."

"Thank you."

Olga found Zurich extraordinary. She was awed by the sights and sounds of the city. The people on the street were dressed in such fine clothes and drove such expensive automobiles. It seemed to Olga that everyone in Zurich must be a millionaire. And the stores! She window shopped along Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street of Zurich, and she marveled at the incredible cornucopia of goods in the windows: There were dresses and coats and shoes and lingerie and jewelry and dishes and furniture and automobiles and books and television sets and radios and toys and pianos. There seemed to be no end to the goods for sale. And then Olga stumbled across SprungIi's, famous for their confections and chocolates. And what chocolates! Four large storefront windows were Page 124

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filled with a dazzling array of them.

There were huge boxes of mixed chocolates, chocolate bunnies, chocolate loaves, chocolatecovered nuts. There were chocolate-covered bananas and chocolate beans filled with liqueurs. It was a feast just to look at the display in the windows. Olga wanted to buy everything, but when she learned the prices, she settled for a small box of assorted chocolates and a large candy bar.

Over the next week, Olga visited the Zurichhorn Gardens and the Rietberg Museum and the Grossmunster, the church erected in the eleventh century, and a dozen other wonderful tourist attractions. Finally, her time was running out.

The hotel clerk at the Leonhare said to her, "The Sunshine Tours Bus Company has a fine tour of the Alps. I think you might enjoy that before you leave."

"Thank you," Olga said.

"I will try it." When Olga left the hotel, her first stop was to visit SprungIi's again, and the next stop was at the office of the Sunshine Tours Bus Company, where she arranged to go on a tour. It had proved to be most exciting. The scenery was breathtaking, and in the middle of the tour, they had seen the explosion of what she thought was a flying saucer, but the Canadian banker she was seated next to explained that it was merely a spectacle arranged by the Swiss government for tourists, that there were no such things as flying saucers. Olga was not completely convinced. When she returned home to Kiev, she discussed it with her aunt.