Glen Allen - The shadow war

Once they had, he immediately turned to Natalya and said, "Brunette hair does not become you, Natashka. Not even as a French journalist."

Benjamin went cold. But Natalya returned Vasily's look with a steady gaze.

"How are you, Vasily Nikolaevitch," Natalya replied. "My father sends his greetings. And this." And then she handed him the note Nikolai had given them in Dubna.

Vasily took the note, read it quickly. He looked at them, then stood up and went to the window, still holding the note. He read it again. Then he turned to them.

"Is this a theater?" he said. "Some sort of American James Bond movie?" He came and stood in front of them, leaning against his desk. "Or is it a joke? Because if it is, it is not a very amusing one."

"No," Natalya said firmly, "it is no joke. Not when my father has disappeared." She indicated Benjamin. "Not when a colleague of this man has been killed, all to bring us here."

Vasily looked thoughtful. He went back around his desk and sat down, placing the note carefully on the desk before him.

"And what do those events have to do with Uzhur-4?" he asked.

Benjamin leaned forward. "What we need," he began, "is simply to see one of the missile silos."

Vasily raised his eyebrows. "Simply?" he said. "Now you are making a joke."

"Not one of the active silos," said Natalya. "Number thirty-four. It is empty, I believe."

Vasily looked at her. "That is something I could not say," he said.

"But if it were," Benjamin said, "and if we just needed, say twenty minutes there. Just to… well, look at it." The expression on Vasily's face didn't change. "And if," Benjamin continued, "it was worth, say, twenty thousand dollars for those twenty minutes."

Vasily leaned back in his chair. "Twenty thousand dollars?" he said. "For twenty minutes of 'just looking'?"

"Yes," said Natalya.

"And not to take pictures?" Vasily asked.

"No," Benjamin said. "No pictures. In fact, we don't even wish to see inside the silo-which, if it is full of concrete, as Nikolai told us, wouldn't make much of a picture, anyway."

"Then what-," Vasily began.

"There is an access well," Natalya said, "next to the silo. For equipment. Equipment which was never installed."

Vasily thought about that. "But the hatch to the well is sealed. And there are alarms and mines around the silo, even if it is… decommissioned."

"And that seal," Natalya said, "those alarms and mines, they can all be turned off?"

Vasily rocked in his chair. "For twenty minutes," he said, quite noncommittally.

"Exactly," said Benjamin. "That's all we need."

Vasily turned his chair so he was facing out the window. Again he glanced at Nikolai's note on the desk.

"Nikolai was a very good officer," he said. "A good rocketchiki. A good friend. He may not have told you, but I owe him a great deal. Perhaps my career."

"And he believed in what we are trying to do," Natalya said. "Enough to summon me all the way from the United States. Enough to risk his own life."

"Twenty minutes," he said again, still looking at the note. Then he looked up at Benjamin.

"Do you know, I am charged with keeping safe weapons that could destroy the world. Each year, I am underground eighty, maybe one hundred days. Since I came here, I don't even want to know how many years that is from my wife. And for this, they pay me five hundred dollars a month." He smiled. "For such a request, I think a thousand dollars a minute is not enough."

Benjamin smiled.

"And five thousand dollars a minute," he said. "Is that enough?"

As one followed the main road north out of Uzhur, past the endless expanses of pine trees, about forty kilometers outside of the town one came to a fork in the road: to the left the road was asphalt and continued north to Achinsk; to the right the road was barely discernable and headed off into the menacing, treeless expanses of windswept gray hills, some of them rising in steep, almost impossible angles. If one was brave or foolish enough to take the fork to the right, after another five kilometers even the dirt road soon transformed into frozen marshland. To anyone looking down from on high, it would seem as if the road had simply disappeared into the landscape.

But what wasn't apparent to any such skyborne observer were the tracks that ran on through the now sparsely wooded marshland: two parallel snakes of concrete, each a meter wide and just a few inches beneath the bog's surface. Parts of the tracks were covered in snow, other parts in dust, but if one looked closely enough, one could make out the slight concavity in the surface that marked their path.

After two kilometers of following these tracks, one encountered another road, this one of earth packed under the weight of a dozen steamrollers, then carefully combed with graders to erase its surface perfection. This last leg of one's journey lasted another five kilometers. By the time one reached the end of that road that wasn't a road, one was clearly in the center of nowhere.

It was very early in the morning. The sun hadn't risen yet, though there was a pale light along the horizon to the east. Boris's jeep was grinding slowly along. All three of them were drinking coffee, trying to stave off the bitter cold in the air-especially as the heater in Boris's jeep didn't work.

Next to Benjamin in the backseat, the barrel of a hunting rifle Boris had insisted on bringing fell against Benjamin's thigh. He carefully pushed it aside, wondering what possible good Boris thought it would do them.

Then he remembered the Makarov in his parka pocket. Just as nonsensically, Natalya had insisted he take it along. "Just in case." Just in case what? he'd wanted to ask. In case I'm attacked by a bear?

She had been cold and distant ever since they arrived at Boris's cabin. Boris had kindly given his small bedroom over to them, but when Benjamin turned in for the night, Natalya stayed up talking with Boris in the living room.

"We are going to, how do you call it, catch up on old times?" But there was something in her manner that didn't strike Benjamin as nostalgic.

After he'd turned in, he heard the murmur of their voices for some time, and once or twice it seemed Natalya's voice had risen in anger. But eventually she'd come to bed, snuggled against Benjamin, holding him fiercely.

But when he turned to her, she put a hand to his face.

"I do not wish to make love. Not now. Please, just hold me." The look in her eyes was intense… as though she feared Benjamin might be snatched away from her any minute.

And now, in the jeep, she was silent, staring at the bleak, fantastic landscape. Benjamin could only assume she was thinking of what lay ahead, wondering if Vasily would keep his word, would stay bought.

They continued winding their way through the low hills. Benjamin had told Boris he could direct him to the area of silo thirty-four from Vasily's instructions-an offer that clearly insulted Boris.

"Everybody knows where damn holes are," Boris said. "No secrets around here."

The trees had completely given out now. Surrounding them was a vast, barren wasteland, interrupted only by the many small hills bordering the road. Natalya told Benjamin that some of these hills concealed ventilation shafts, even small huts. She had no idea whether any of them were still used, but from what Vasily had told them, they wouldn't need to worry about being observed-not, that is, until they were within half a mile of shakhta thirty-four.

The agreement they had finally worked out with Vasily was this: at precisely 6:00 A.M., the control switches for the alarms, fence, mines, and cameras around shakhta thirty-four would all experience a temporary glitch, a glitch that would last exactly twenty minutes. No more. In that time, Benjamin had to cross the one hundred meters of mined ground, climb the fence, open the hatch to the service well, complete his "looking," and then retrace his steps. After that… Benjamin had nodded, remembering General Voroshilov's story about the bear reduced to smoking fur.