Greg Ahlgren - Prologue

Natasha stiffened a little. She wasn’t sure if Igor were leveling with her, or subtly testing her true beliefs, a last-minute screening. “I find a lot to commend itself in Soviet business,” she said carefully.

Rostov scoffed. “You know what the radicals in America say, ‘Nobody in the Soviet Union works worth a shit since they get paid anyway.’ The Northeast District workers bust ass, because their pay depends on performance. We need that.”

He sounded genuinely contemptuous. Natasha took a chance. “And we use the Northeast District as our trading port to the rest of the world.”

Igor nodded. “None of that propaganda garbage now, Natasha. I must know that you see reality.” He resumed his seat.

“Of course,” Natasha answered.

“As the old China needed Hong Kong, we need the Northeast District. Over half of all American S.S.R. business goes through there—three-fourths of all business with Europe. If we screw with that we’re committing economic suicide. Basically put, everybody who’s anybody in the Party makes their real money through the Northeast District, and we—they’d—all like to keep it that way.”

“Of course.”

“But the damn thing about freedom is that people do unapproved things. Which we feel deVere might be doing.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with time travel? Probably rubbish. But whatever it is, we need to find out and either control it or stop it. My gut feeling, after working in the Agency for thirty years, is that it might be something.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Of course you will. Otherwise… well, we don’t need to talk about the ‘otherwise’ part, do we, Comrade Nikitin?”

“No,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable again.

Rostov glanced down at a file that lay open on his desk and flipped over a page. “There’s not much on your family in your personnel file, Comrade. That is unusual.”

“There wouldn’t be. My parents are dead. I was raised an orphan.”

Rostov nodded. “Killed in the Second Great War. Your parents were heroes.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You were raised in a home made possible by the Soviet system.”

“For twelve years.”

“I see you have a degree in history from Karl Marx University. Strange beginning for a future physicist. And you have an older sister,” Rostov continued, turning a page. “She has a rather nice apartment.”

Natasha stiffened slightly. “It’s sufficient.”

“Sufficient my ass,” Igor laughed. “It’s a hell of a lot nicer than most loyal comrades get. It’s downright bourgeois. I assume it’s due to your position as one of the most promising young agents we have. We like to keep people like you happy.”

“I’m sure we all appreciate it,” Natasha said.

“And I’m sure your sister wouldn’t much fancy moving back to… let’s see, what’s that hellhole, Jovanograd?”

Natasha blanched. “I’m sure she wouldn’t.”

“Of course not. And as I’ve said, we’re all anxious for your mission in Boston to succeed. I’d hate to wake up one morning and read about deVere in the newspaper, or in one of those intelligence briefings that come with the black tape, know what I mean? I don’t like surprises. And my superiors don’t like them much either.”

“Of course not. You can count on me.”

“Let’s hope so,” Igor had said.

But thus far she had come up with nothing she could send back to Yeltsengrad. The Agency certainly wouldn’t conclude from that that deVere and his cronies were clean—indeed, the total sanitization of his files would be a suspicious tip-off. But she was at a loss to formulate a cogent report to her superiors. And, there was nothing in deVere’s personal history that revealed any clues. For the umpteenth time, she checked the thick paper file she had brought from Yeltsengrad. Born October 2, 1972 in Manchester, New Hampshire. DeVere had grown up in Bedford, New Hampshire, on one of that town’s last dairy farms. Educated in public schools, then at Cal-Poly, a Master’s Degree from the University of Michigan, a PhD from Cornell, a teaching fellowship at MIT followed by the quick achievement of professorial status. A career straight and uneventful. No evidence of radicalism.

Natasha tossed the folder aside on her bed and reached for the nail polish. She had done her left toes first—she always did—and as she waited for the IM3 to hack into another folder she began applying the mauve to her right ones.

DeVere’s computer files were of little help. His career was uneventful until two years earlier when he had participated in the discovery of a subatomic particle now known as SU44, for sub-uranium 44. The discovery had made a mild splash in geek circles. A particle of SU44 could be accelerated to speeds faster than light without converting to pure energy so that it would momentarily appear in two physical locations simultaneously. This was a slight anomaly to Einstein physics, but its existence had been theorized for years. Not exactly Nobel Prize winning quality but interesting to physicists and warranting an inside story in the Boston Globe. Shortly thereafter deVere’s personal files included references to Stephen Hawking, Kip Sone and that Bennett David crackpot. Then eight months ago deVere had stopped making references about his research or his interests.

There was nothing further in his files. And this troubled Natasha the most: the sanitization of all his folders. No trace to sexually explicit websites, no chatting with unhappy marrieds, no anti-Soviet jokes clandestinely Gorenected between fellow closet Soviet-phobes, no gambling pools on college football bowl games, not even the storage of the television schedule for his beloved Red Sox baseball team. If deVere were up to something, he wasn’t storing the information in any of his computer files, and he wasn’t hiding it in written form at his office. It had to be recorded somewhere. What was he up to?

Natasha finished the toes on her right foot, studied them for a moment as she wiggled them around, and then impulsively slammed her laptop shut. She threw herself back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.

Maybe tonight she’d catch a break. Nigel was picking her up for a Sunday evening department barbecue at deVere’s home in Concord. She didn’t especially like Nigel—he wasn’t her type—but feigning reciprocal interest allowed her to get invitations. Without Nigel, there was no way a lab intern could have wrangled an invite to the department chairman’s home, especially since anyone with half a brain suspected she was Agency.

As an added benefit, Nigel was the old fashioned type who still paid the tab on his dates. On a lab intern’s salary—agents still had to live on their cover’s salary—that kicker was appreciated.

She wiggled her toes again. Satisfied they were dry, she removed the cotton balls and pondered what to wear. She smiled mischievously as she considered ignoring the heat and going with the short black leather shirt with open toed stilettos. THAT would cause a reaction, especially in a wolf like Ginter. Ultimately, she settled on perpetuating the struggling lab intern motif: flat Birkenstocks, bell-bottom jeans and a loose fitting white pullover top. With bra. And long hair put up, of course.

She got up and walked to the bedroom’s only window. The heat continued pouring in. Along the street windows were thrown open but she doubted that the other residents were experiencing any more relief than she was. Maybe, she mused, she should have given in to Igor’s clumsy advances and gotten the air conditioned Charles River digs. The night before leaving she had stood in her Yeltsengrad apartment looking out at a half darkened city when the phone rang. The caller ID showed it was Igor. Strange, as a matter of course, all calls from the Agency were ID-masked. He must be calling on a personal line, she thought, although why he didn’t mask that as well, she had no idea.