“I don’t,” Hunt conceded. He spread his hands appealingly. “It’s a risk. But it’s a hell of a lot less of a risk than the one you were asking Calazar to take. And besides, the Ganymeans have taken enough of the risks already.”
Caldwell nodded curtly as soon as Hunt said this. “I agree. Let’s do it.”
“VISAR?” Calazar inquired, stifi somewhat dazed by the sudden turn of events.
“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” VISAR declared. “But if it
increases the odds above five percent, it’s worth a try. How soon can I start working on the movies?”
“Right away,” Caidwell said. He moved to the center of the group and suddenly felt the old, familiar feeling of being in command once again. “Karen and I will stay here to help out with that side of it. You’d better stay too, Chris, to explain the whole idea again. Vic needs to go to Washington to tell Packard what we want, and Lyn had better go with him because she knows the layout of the house.”
“It sounds as if we should consider you in charge of this operation,” Calazar said.
“Thanks.” Caldwell nodded and looked around the room. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go through the whole thing in detail from the beginning and work out as much as we can to synchronize the two ends of it.”
Hunt and Lyn arrived in Washington late that afternoon. Caldwell had already called Packard from Alaska, so they were expecting to find Packard, Pacey, and Clifford Benson of the CIA waiting for them. What they were not expecting to find was a contingent of Soviet military officers there too, headed by Mikolai Sobroskin. To their further and total amazement they learned that a Jevienese defector in the form of the scientist Verikoff was also present in another part of the building.
Most of the Russians were too stunned by what they heard from Hunt and Lyn to be capable of contributing very much to the proceedings. Sobroskin, however, digested their story quickly and confirmed from what Verikoff had already told him-that the office wing of Sverenssen’s house did indeed contain a full communications system into JEVEX, including a neural coupler. In fact Verikoff himself had used it on numerous occasions to make quick visits to Jevien. This led Sobroskin to propose a means o~ simplifying considerably the plan that Hunt and Lyn had described. “As you say, the big risk in forcing Sverenssen to do it is that JEVEX might be able to observe what is happening,” he said. “But perhaps there is no need for that at all. If we could just gain access to the device, Verikoff might be persuaded to do what is required voluntarily. JEVEX already knows Verikoff. It would have no reason to see anything amiss.”
Ten minutes later they all left the room and descended one
story of the building to enter a door that had two armed guards stationed outside it. Verikoff was inside with two more of Sobroskin’s officers. At Sobroskin’s request, Verikoff sketched a plan of Sverenssen’s house on a mural display, indicating the location of the communications room and the access door into the wing in which it was located, as well as describing the building’s protective features. “What’s your verdict?” Pacey asked, looking at Lyn, when Verikoff had finished.
She nodded. “One-hundred-percent accurate. That’s it, just the way it is.”
“He seems to be telling the truth,” Packard said, sounding satisfied. “And everything else he told Sobroskin checks with what Vie Hunt has told us. I think we can trust him.”
Verikoff’s eyes widened in surprise. He waved a hand at the sketch he had drawn, and then at Lyn. “She knows this already? How could that be? How could she know about the coupler?”
“It would take too long to explain,” Sobroskin said. “Tell us what kind of visual sensors JEVEX has around the house. Are there some in all rooms, outside, inside the communications room, or what?”
“Only inside the communications room itself,” Verikoff answered. He was looking from side to side uncomprehendingly.
“So JEVEX would not know about anything that was happening in the rest of the house outside that room,” Sobroskin said.