She opened the door halfway, listening at first; there was no sound. She
opened it fully. A quick glance revealed no one in the corridor except the
guards at the far end. They were not turning around. Moving rapidly, the
chair in both hands, she started into the hallway, positioning the chair
under the open duct vent. Pulling a third black scarf, like the two
covering her face and hair, from her side pocket, she unfolded it into a
square to cover the seat; then stood on it atop the chair seat. The
magnetic screwdriver was in
her left side pocket and she got it out; then reaching up into the duct,
she pulled the cover slightly closer and inserted it over the opening. She
started tightening the screws.
Natalia froze at the voice of one of the guards—a remark about hearing
something.
She shifted the screwdriver to her left hand to hold in place the screw on
which she was working; her right hand reached for the Bali-Song knife in
the hip pocket of her jump suit. The knife, unopened, in her right fist,
she held her breath, listening.
To kill an innocent Soviet guard was anathema to her—but she would if she
had to.
Natalia kept waiting.
There were no footsteps.
Dropping the knife back into her hip pocket, she resumed lightening the
screws in the vent cover.
Quietly, she stepped down from the chair, snatching the black silk scarf
and stuffing it into her pocket, the screwdriver having already been
returned to her other pocket. Then she picked up the chair, which she set
down to reopen Rozhdestvenskiy’s outer office door. Having brought the
chair inside, she replaced it exactly as it had been, that was crucial,
she realized.
Natalia crossed the room to Rozhdestvenskiy’s inner office door, her pack
in her left hand, swinging by the straps. It would not be locked- She
opened the door, snatching the Kel-Lite flashlight from her pack, scanning
the floor, the walls—if additional alarms had been installed, they were
not readily visible.
She closed her eyes, remembering the pattern of the pressure-sensitive
plates, the way in which Karamatsov had walked when leaving his office for
the night with her.
But it had to be the reverse. He was coining from the desk and the small
safe behind it; she was going toward it.
She took a long-strided step to her left, shifted her weight and brought
her right foot up, beside it. She waited. It was a silent alarm—but it
would bring the guards almost instantly. She took the next step, again to
her left, trying mentally to measure and match her dead husband’s stride.
She brought her right foot over, waiting again.
She was a third of the way across the room.
She took a broad step to the right, losing her balance momentarily, her
left foot almost touching the carpet in the wrong spot. She sucked in her
breath hard, regaining her balance, waiting, settling her left foot beside
the right.
Natalia took another step, then another and another.
She remembered how foolish Vladimir had looked, sitting on his desk,
swinging his feet around to avoid the plates flanking his desk on both
sides.
Now, she shifted her weight forward, onto her fingertips, then (hrew her
pack onto the desk top. The Kel-Lite was in the black belt around her
waist on which she carried a borrowed pistol. Had she lost one of her own
guns, the ones given her by President Chambers, it would have meant
instant recognition and arrest.
With the flashlight beam zigzagging at a bizarre angle with the rising and
falling of her chest, she leaned toward the desk, throwing her weight
forward and pushing herself up, jumping, tucking her knees up.
Natalia was on the desk top.
The safe was behind the desk and a little to the right of it. As she
turned, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—all made up for the
American Halloween,
she thought.
She had to move like a spider now, her pack once more on her back, jumping
to avoid the pressure-sensitive plates.
She stood on the desk, judging the distance, inhaled deeply, then jumped.
Her feet landed on the top of the small safe, and for a moment, her
balance faltered and she started to fall back. But she caught herself,
lurching her body forward, then rising to her full height.
Natalia breathed again.
Dropping to her knees, the flashlight in her right hand, she bent over the
safe door, upside down, shining the light on the combination lock.
Shifting the light into her left hand, she tried the combination.
The combination, as she had suspected, had been changed,
“Damn it,” she muttered in English.
She reached into her pack, extracting the specially sensitive stethoscope
there.
Untwisting the tubing, she touched the flat diaphragm chest piece to the
safe’s escutcheon plate, beside the dial.
The door was slightly recessed into the body wall of the safe. She leaned
over slightly more, working the combination to the dial’s right, then
left, then right again, listening. She heard a minuscule clicking in the
locking bolt linkage, then stopped. Her gloved fingers worked the dial
left, stopping when through the stethoscope’s binaural ear tips she could
hear another click.
Now right—listening for the click might be more faint. She heard it, but
had passed it.
“Damn,” she muttered again. She cleared the dial, then reworked the
combination she had already memor-
ized, this time without the earpieces to aid her; she had the numbers now.
She worked the handle, heard the bolt-activating gear rings click; the
safe opened under her hand.
Natalia reached inside the safe, to the lower shelf.
The six crates of documents were in the cryptoanalysis room, but
Rozhdestvenskiy would have the abstract or a copy of it.
Natalia found more than she had anticipated.
Squatting like an Indian on the top of the opened safe, she fished info
her pack for the camera. Shining the Kel-Lite on the documents’ faces,
working the shutter, she caught bits and pieces of words.
“Eden Project … in the event of massive nuclear exchanges between our
country and the Soviet Union . . . the ultimate statement of the Western
democracies . . . this utilization of the Space Shuttle Fleet . . .
manufacturing processes . . .” She flipped the page for the next shot.
tfIn the face of the near total destruction of life on the planet . . .”
She felt her heart skip a beat, then realized that it hadn’t; she was
being emotional. “. . . Bevington, Kentucky, and an as yet undesignated
site . . . precursed by bizarre atmospheric changes . . .” The third page
of the abstract was merely a list of names—she assumed those who had
compiled (he reports.
She photographed the next document, a simple-road map, (he kind once sold
in American gasoline stations, of the state of Kentucky, with a small town
in the mountains, Bevington, circled in red with an arrow pointed toward
it coming from the southeast.
Natalia began photographing the last set of documents; it was
Rozhdestvenskiy’s report. “. . . findings of
Soviet scientists have been verified and coincided with those of Western
scientists . . . raid on Bevington, Kentucky, in the south-central United
States . . .” Natalia would have called it more southeastern.
She glanced at her Rolex; she had to hurry. Rozhdest-venskiy might be back
at any moment. She photographed the second page without taking note of
anything written there, then the third and last page. He was admirably
concise in his writing she noted subconsciously. “. . . the construction
at the site called the Womb, and the bringing together of strategic
materials (here, is ihe only hope for the survival of the Soviet.”
She shuddered. Survival of the Soviet?
Was survival of the Soviet equivalent with the survival of mankind? she
asked herself, closing her eyes from the glare of the flashlight. A
doomsday device?
She prayed not; then felt the corners of her mouth raise in a smile—to
whom did a good Communist pray?
Carefully, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna replaced the documents exactly as
they had been in the safe, then she closed the combination, resetting the
dial to the number it had been set to before she had touched it.
Natalia stood up, on the top of the safe, shouldering the pack, her gear
secured inside it.
In the darkness, her eyes accustomed enough toil with the flashlight
packed away, she jumped to the floor, intentionally landing on one of the
pressure-sensitive plates. She ran toward the inner office door, knowing
the silent alarm was sounding.
She threw open the door, then ran across the outer office, throwing open
the door, turning into the corridor and running toward the panic-locked
emergency door.
“Halt!” The guard’s voice came in clumsy English.
Gunfire ripped into the wall bebide her as she hit the panic lock, the