S Ison - Russian Doomsday

They walked back to the cabin, and Sayer saw the women talking by what looked like an overgrown garden. Upon entering the cabin, he took note of the homey decor. It was an open concept cabin; the kitchen opened up to the living room, and there was a large wooden farm table at which to cook, satin smooth from years of use. The kitchen cabinets were cherry, their warm color accented by a white counter that looked like granite. He noted the large farmhouse sink. He knew Joy would love this.

They walked to the back of the cabin, and Pike opened a door. The room was little bigger than a closet, and had shelves with banks of batteries on one wall. Beside an electrical panel was the inverter. What struck Sayer was, the entire room was silver. It was lined floor to ceiling, like a mosaic of metal. Even the floors and the ceiling were covered. The seams were even sealed with some kind of metal tape.

“My faraday cage. At least, I hope it will be safe if there is an EMP. In between the sheets of metal, we put thinly-rolled copper sheet and sandwiched them. I figured it couldn’t hurt. We aren’t using the wind turbine at the moment, as it’s exposed. If we do have an EMP, it will be useless. So, we built a faraday cage of sorts around the mechanical housing of the turbine. If there is an EMP, we can take the cage off and, hopefully, the wind turbine will work,” Pike said, a huge grin on his face, “Besides, the solar panels give us plenty of power.”

Sayer whistled. “Dude, you’ve been busy as hell. I feel like a slacker. Geez, I should really feel ashamed of myself. I must bow to you. A friggin’ awesome job.” He pantomimed a low bow.

Pike laughed. “Sayer, I have to tell you, I’m scared shitless about the POSEIDON torpedoes. It was a wakeup call. It’s been all I can do not to just work 24/7 to get us in a place where we feel safe. We’re getting there, and we’re starting to feel like we’ll make it. There will always be stuff we feel we need to do, but each day it’s a little less stressful. I am sleeping better at night, not so many nightmares.”

“I hear you brother. I have to say, I’m really impressed with the work you’ve done and all that you’ve accomplished in such a short time. You’ve done very well,” Sayer said, and meant it. If the shit were to hit the fan tomorrow, these two would be okay. They could survive.

Robert stood on 10 thand Garfield Avenue. Stormont Vail Hospital, in the heart of Topeka, was at his back. He had his Bible in his hand and was preaching for all he was worth. People walked around him and he felt their looks. Some held pity, some ambivalent, most hostile.

He warned them vehemently, and repeated the same verse over and over, Joel chapter 2, verses thirty to thirty-two.

“And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.”

His voice was hoarse, yet he kept repeating his message. He’d had a dream, and in that dream he’d been told to tell people that judgement day was coming. If he was honest, he didn’t know if it was God telling him to, or his need to preach. He’d been so lost without his congregation. But, he went out each day, stood, and repeated his message.

He was growing thinner. He hadn’t been eating well, and had become very depressed and despondent. But when he was out here, he felt like his old self. He promised himself that he would continue until people started heeding his call.

Dina sat in her office, busy with her paperwork. She was also making notes on a colorful sticky note pad. She used different colors for each note. They were innocuous notes, but in the correct color order there was a message to be passed along to her handler. Each day was a different color combination. She crumpled the notes up and tossed them into the trash.

That was all she did. The janitor took the trash. She didn’t know what happened to the notes. She didn’t know who collected them or who read them. There were no electronics to be monitored. She knew everyone at work was watched and monitored.

She’d been given code words and different numeric combinations that would later be broken into intel that would be passed along up the food chain. All these codes had been memorized, so there was nothing written down to indicate they were codes.

She also had doodles that were codes, but those were to be used on different days of the week. Once more, all memorized, nothing tangible to lead back to her. Her instructor had pounded it into her head that any link to the United States would kill her. But before that, her interrogators would torture her. Dina kept that thought upper most in her mind. She was smart, and she was careful.

It was simple and very innocuous, and she felt safe. She wrote notes every day, even when she didn’t have messages to pass along, she just made sure the intel color combos weren’t used. This way, the trash was always full of colorful note papers. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to look at. She was sure someone went through all the trash at the facility. Everything was looked at, but she made sure she was consistent.

Borin had mentioned casually that he was having a meeting with Orlov in three days. She’d acted very impressed that he was so well thought of to see Orlov. He’d made love to her twice after that, so she knew he was telling her the truth. When he fed her false information, he never made love to her more than once, and left shortly after.

He was becoming easy to read. When he felt powerful and proud of an achievement, and she recognized that achievement, he was very randy. When he was telling her false information, his ego was left out of the equation. It was his way of testing her, she guessed. She never passed along anything he said at those times.

Today she was passing on news of the impending meeting. It was up to the geeks to figure out what she’d written and how to act upon the intel she passed along. She was never to act on any of the intel; that wasn’t her job. Her job was only to gather intel and pass it along. She was glad. She didn’t want that responsibility. This was dangerous work. She hadn’t known that as a teenager, but she knew it now and was cautious.

Once more, she wondered at the American agents who’d suckered her in. They had done this to a child. They had suckered her in without a thought to her life or future. She was simply a means to an end. She’d been so foolish and idealistic. After a few years, she’d learned that she was merely a tool. It was a hard pill to swallow sometimes. Sometimes she felt trapped, as if she wasn’t really living her own life. She was living a life for another country.

She wondered where she would have been today if she’d not met the young American, Gregg Green. She certainly wouldn’t be putting her life at risk every day, that was for sure. She knew they’d disavow her in a split second. She knew, also, that she’d never be safe. She thought perhaps, once this mission was over, she would simply disappear.

She was tired of working as a spy, tired of living someone else’s idea of a life. It would only take one careless move on her part and it would be all over. For now, however, she’d do her job. She had no other choice. But she would disappear, she promised herself, and live her own life her way.

Borin was becoming generous. He’d given her a pair of diamond earrings the previous evening, for which she’d thanked him with her body. Very pretty and tasteful.