Warren Murphy: Blue Smoke and Mirrors

"Be as cagey as you want," the female voice said, "but what I have to trade is very big. And your man can only steal it if he knows what it is and where to find it. And I can supply that in return for safe passage to Russia and the usual arrangements."

"You are talking about defecting, nyetl"

"I am talking about the best damn trade you'll ever get handed to you. If you have any contacts that can verify my rank and current status, do it. I'll call back in an hour."

In that hour, Yuli Batenin set his staff to work. In short order they verified the existence of an OSI special agent named Robin Green, who was in fact miss-

192

ing and presumed absent without leave. There were several notations in her file that could not be explained. The matter of a half-demolished Holiday Inn in North Dakota and another damaged motel in Palmdale, California.

By the time the woman called back, Major Batenin knew he had a very big fish.

"You are genuine," Yuli told her. "Perhaps."

"Where should we meet?" she asked him.

Batenin named a popular steakhouse in Washington, famous for its prime rib. He arrived ten minutes late, and was led past the bar, where autographed portraits of the restaurant's political clients covered virtually every square inch of wall space.

He sat at a solitary table and ordered a gin and tonic, but when it came he told the puzzled waitress that he had made a mistake. He would prefer vodka.

At that remark, an attractive redhead with sparkling blue eyes slid into the booth, facing him.

"You are Green?" he asked.

"Right at the moment, I'm black and blue. But that's my name, all right. And you?"

"Call me Yuli," Batenin said, his dark eyes falling to her chest. She wore a clingy knit dress that was cut just low enough to display her ample cleavage. For a passing moment Batenin wondered if this could be a CIA sex trap. It was not uncommon. The KGB did it to Americans. The CIA did it to Russians. It was a game everyone played.

"I will provide nothing until you deliver," Yuli said carefully, knowing that his diplomatic immunity would safeguard him from arrest. And if this was a CIA trap, what was the worst they could do? Declare him persona non grata and ship him back to Moscow? This was exactly what Batenin wanted.

"Agreed," Robin Green said, leaning closer. Her perfume tickled his nostrils. "Now, listen carefully," she said after the vodka came and she waved the

193

waitress aside without ordering. "Your people are very anxious to obtain Stealth technology. No, I don't expect you to answer that. But I know that your spook- and I use the term advisedly-has been pilfering it hither and yon."

Batenin took a sip of his vodka. Headlights from a passing car threw the woman into sharp relief. It was then that Batenin decided that she could not be a CIA sex lure. Her face, under subtle makeup, showed bruises. Even her cleavage was a discolored yellowish-purple. She looked like she had been in a car wreck. He wondered what had happened to her.

"Okay," she went on, "you're probably aware that even with the first planes only now becoming public knowledge, the Stealth program is ten years old. By the time the Stealth bomber is fully operational, it's going to be obsolete. There's something new."

"I am listening," Batenin said coolly, taking another sip of his drink. His gaze raked the room. The other diners looked harmless. He sensed no eyes on him. He relaxed slightly.

"They've perfected the Stealth radar-absorbing material to a new plateau. Not just invisible to radar, this stuff is invisible, period. It's a transparent resin-based polymer mounted on a silicon-mica base. When it's pumped full of electricity, it is virtually invisible in flight. From a distance, you can't even make out the pilot or the engines. And best of all, it has all the radar-deflecting properties of existing Stealth material."

"This sounds, shall we say, preposterous?" Batenin said archly.

"No more preposterous than an electronic suit that will allow a man to walk through a solid wall," Robin countered. "Are you interested?"

"I must have more particulars. For my superiors."

"This stuff is so new, so experimental, that all the Air Force has now is a scale-model prototype. But it's operational. It's about to be shown to a secret con-

194

gressional committee. But until then they have it in a nuclear-weapons storage bunker. It's supposed to be impregnable, but your man should have no problem with it."

"You have the exact location of this bunker?" Batenin asked, his remote voice fluttering with the first hints of real interest.

"It's Bunker Number 445. Pease Air Force Base, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's going to be moved within the next two days, so your man had better move fast."

"How do I know this is not some inane American trap?"

"Look, I'm going to assume you checked me out, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So you know who I am, and you know my butt is in a sling over your agent's shenanigans. That means I know what he can do. And I know, just as you do, that nothing-no trap, no technology, no scheme-could possibly snare him. Right?"

Yuli Batenin nodded silently, his eyes staring into the distance. When they refocused, he said, "If this works out, I can definitely offer you what you want. Where can I reach you?"

"I'm hot," Robin Green said, rising to her feet. "So I'm going to be on the move until you get me on a plane. I'll check in periodically. Deal?"

"Done," said Yuli Batenin, who looked into the woman's frank American eyes but saw instead the lights of faraway Moscow.

18

Airman Henry Yauk thought it was ridiculous.

"What do you mean, no one's going to relieve us?" he asked his companion in the guard tower.

"That's the word," Sergeant Frank Dinan told him. "When we go off duty, we just go. We don't watt for relief and we don't hang around either."

"We just leave the nukes unguarded, is that it?" Yauk said angrily.

"That's it."

"Unbelievable. I know the base is being phased out, but isn't this a little premature?"

"Search me," Dinan said. He was looking out over the bunkers. Darkness had fallen. It was a warm Indian-summer night in New Hampshire. Moonlight brushed the grass-covered tops of the nuclear-weapons storage bunkers so that they looked like sleeping silver-furred monsters.

"I wonder if this has anything to do with opening up Number 445?" Yauk muttered.

"Search me," Dinan said again. Yauk frowned. He hated being paired with Dinan. The guy was a bogus conversationalist.

"I never saw them put a nuke back into a bunker like that. No special-purpose vehicle. No guards. Just a civilian truck."

Dinan said nothing. Yauk looked at his watch. His

195

196

frown deepened. Five more minutes until the end of their shift.

For as long as Airman Yauk had been an SP at Pease Air Force Base, the nuclear-weapons bunkers had never been unguarded. Officially, there were no nukes stored at Pease, even though it was a SAC bomber base, headquarters of the 509th Bombardment Wing. At any given time, five fully manned FB-111 bombers sat under open-ended hangars on the flight line, ready to be cart-started in the event of a nuclear war, cocked nuclear bombs cradled in their bays. Everybody knew that. Just as everybody knew that the twin rows of bunkers hunched behind the wire-link fences were nuclear-weapons storage containers.

Few civilians ever saw these bunkers, however, which was why the base public-affairs officer was able to keep a straight face whenever he was forced to categorically deny the official Air Force line that absolutely no nuclear weapons were quartered at Pease. The bunkers looked like prehistoric turtles that had died, their heads drawn into their shells and the grass of ages grown over their sloping sides. The grass was to prevent the bunkers from being indentifiable from the air. This, of course, was a joke. From the air it would look like the Air Force had fenced off a section of the base and set a solitary guard tower around it just so SP's like Airman Yauk could keep gophers off official Air Force grass.