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instant no one was looking at her, and she smiled to herself. "Yes, very
thorough," she agreed.
Then, Foleda reappeared and stated that the transmission from Tereshkova was
being put onto a conference circuit to involve other US officials also. He
requested live coverage from the square outside as Paula had offered.
Accordingly, she went on down and out of the building with a party that
included a number of Russian officers, engineers, and the camera and sound
operators. Protbornov, Olga, and the remainder of his group went back upstairs
to follow the exchange from the control room that Paula had been taken to on
her return from Zamork. A number of screens had been hooked into the
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conference circuit by the time they arrived. On them, the Russians had so far
identified Foleda's chief, Philip Borden, the director of the CIA and his
deputy, two senior military assistants to the defense secretary, a White House
presidential aide, and several faces from the offices of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. Protbornov was radiating triumph, and Olga looked coolly pleased with
herself.
Then a thunderous applause went up from the crowd on the screen showing
Paula in the square outside, as the doors at the rear of the terrace in the
background opened. The dignitaries who were already gathered parted to make
way for the familiar stock figure of First Secretary Vladimir Petrokhov,
flanked by his most senior ministers and key Party members, "Describe what's
happening now," Foleda said from one of the screens.
"Petrokhov and his group are coming out onto the terrace in front of me now,"
Paula replied on the other screen.
At that instant one of the engineers at the consoles on the other side of the
room looked up sharply, "Laser contact! We're picking up a laser transmission
from the roof. Positive acknowledgment from Sokhotsk. It's relaying out to
Tereshkova now."
"Text?" Protbornov snapped.
"Just a call for acknowledgment, sir, coded 'Tycoon/High from Sexton.'"
Absolute silence descended on the room. Even while the operator was speaking,
the signal had been repeated on a portable laser set up by the military inside
Anvil two hundred thousand miles away, and transmitted back out in the
direction of Earth. Now everything depended on whether the
Americans had managed to organize some means of receiving it. Tension mounted
as the dialogue between Paula and Foleda continued on the screens. Then, on
the screen showing Foleda, a woman approached him from behind, caught his
shoulder, and whispered something urgently in his ear. He promptly excused
himself and left. In the Russian command room, the suspense became agonizing.
Shortly afterward, Borden was summoned away, too. More minutes of agony
dragged by. And then the engineer who had spoken previously shouted out in
jubilation, "Acknowledgment! A response is coming in from the Americans, via
Anvil!"
"Source identification?" another general, who was with Protbornov, queried.
Another of the engineers consulted readouts and tapped keys. "First report
indicates they're using the IROO observatory, sir."
"As we expected," the general said, sounding satisfied.
"Text?" Protbornov called.
"Text from Tycoon reads, 'Sexton/Two from Tycoon/Ball. Signal received.
Reading clear. Standing by. Over.'"
"By the czars, we've done it!" Protbornov breathed.
"Response intercepted from Sexton," the first engineer sang out again.
"Text reads, 'Consider it imperative that arrival Soviet VIP cadre Mermaid be
confirmed. Voluntary cooperation via Soviet TV judged inappropriate. Am
occupying position affording direct visual observation Turgenev center.
Personal positive identifications confirmed, list of names follows: Petrokhov,
Kavansky, Sanyiroky, Vlasov--'"
Whoops and shouts of jubilation broke out all around the command room.
Protbornov emitted a loud belly laugh and slapped Olga heartily on the back,
causing her to gasp, while the other senior officers crowded round to pump his
hand and offer congratulations. Across the room, on the far side of it all,
Major Uskayev smiled as he watched on one of the screens the view being picked
up through a telescopic lens by one of the KGB teams posted among the roofs
surrounding the air-processing-plant building. It showed the hatless head of
whoever was wearing the sandy-colored beard -- with the heavy-rimmed
spectacles and hair tinted to match the beard, it could have been McCain or
Scanlon -- peering down from behind a cowling at the edge of the roof, then
turning to say something, presumably to the one who was operating the laser.
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Then the head withdrew from view.
"How are we doing here?" Protbornov asked, having moved across the room.
"They're like puppets dancing on our strings," Uskayev said. "And they tried
so hard.... It's almost possible to feel sorry for them."
Behind the cover of the parapet of the air-processing-plant roof, Peter
Sargent unstuck his beard for a second to scratch underneath his chin. A few
feet back, sitting comfortably in the recess between a ventilator housing and
a stanchion supporting some pipes, Albrecht Haber finished tapping a sequence
into the keyboard connected to the laser.
"Bloody stuff makes you itch," Sargent said. "Where did Razz get it --
off a horse or something?"
"Who knows?" Haber answered. "That's the last of the names. What do you have
now?"
Sargent consulted the list of information that he'd compiled in a notebook.
"Ah yes, this should take a while. Ready? Message begins;
'Previously advised data confirmed as follows...'" Sargent started working
through the list of weapons emplacements that Paula had described before,
going into greater detail about how they had been penetrated, and reiterating
that the weapons didn't exist.
"Let's hope that Protbornov's people leave us alone for a while," Haber said
as he worked.
"Oh, I think they will," Sargent replied breezily. He stretched back and
looked up at the sky. "As long as we find things to say, we're doing a great
job of distracting the opposition for them. That means they'll be perfectly
happy to let us stay up here all day if we choose -- certainly until their
zero hour, anyway.... Care to pass the coffee and one of those sandwiches, old
chap?"
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Many airplane pilots have crashed to their deaths singing and laughing in
their last moments before losing consciousness. What makes hypoxia, or oxygen
starvation, so dangerous is its insidious onset and the delirious sense of
euphoria that comes just before total collapse, which makes the victim the
least qualified to judge the seriousness of the situation.
McCain felt anything but euphoric when he came round. His head felt as if it
had been split with a butcher's cleaver, everything spun nauseatingly, his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]