Sidney Sheldon - The Doomsday Conspiracy

“Hello?” That throaty, sexy voice.

“Hi. How was Brazil?”

“Robert! I tried to telephone you several times. There was no answer.”

“I’m not home.”

“Oh.” She had been trained too well to ask where he was. “Are you feeling well?”

For a eunuch, I’m in wonderful shape. “Sure. Great. How’s Money … Monte?”

“He’s fine. Robert, we’re leaving for Gibraltar tomorrow.” On Moneybags’ fucking yacht, of course. What was the name of it? Ah, yes. The Halcyon. “The yacht?”

“Yes. You can call me on it. Do you remember the call letters?”

He remembered. WS337. What did the WS stand for? Wonderful Susan … Why separate … Wife stealer?

“Robert?”

“Yes, I remember. Whiskey Sugar 337.”

“Will you call? Just to let me know you’re all right.”

“Sure. I miss you, baby.”

A long, painful silence. He waited. What did he expect her to say? Come rescue me from this charming man who looks like Paul Newman and forces me to go on his 250-foot yacht and live in our squalid little palaces in Monte Carlo, and Morocco, and Paris, and London, and God alone knew where else. Like an idiot, he found himself half hoping she would say it.

“I miss you, too, Robert. Take care of yourself.” And the connection was broken. He was in Russia, alone.

Day Twelve

Early the following morning, ten minutes after the library opened, Robert walked into the huge, gloomy building and approached the reception desk.

“Good morning,” Robert said.

The woman behind the desk looked up. “Good morning. Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m looking for a woman who I believe works here, Olga …”

“Olga? Yes, yes.” She pointed to another room. “She will be in there.”

“Thank you.”

It had been as easy as that. Robert walked into the other room, past groups of students solemnly studying at long tables, preparing for what kind of future? Robert wondered. He reached a smaller reading room and walked inside. A woman was busily stacking books.

“Excuse me,” Robert said.

She turned. “Yes?”

“Olga?”

“I am Olga. What do you wish with me?”

Robert smiled disarmingly. “I’m writing a newspaper article on perestroika and how it affects the average Russian. Has it made much difference in your life?”

The woman shrugged. “Before Gorbachev, we were afraid to open our mouths. Now we can open our mouths, but we have nothing to put in them.”

Robert tried another tactic. “Surely, there are some changes for the better. For instance, you are able to travel now.”

“You must be joking. With a husband and six children, who can afford to travel?”

Robert ploughed on. “Still, you went to Switzerland, and …”

“Switzerland? I have never been to Switzerland in my life.”

Robert said slowly, “You’ve never been to Switzerland?”

“I just told you.” She nodded toward a dark-haired woman who was collecting books from the table. “She’s the lucky one who got to go to Switzerland.”

Robert took a quick look. “What’s her name?”

“Olga. The same as mine.”

He sighed. “Thank you.”

A minute later, Robert was in conversation with the second Olga.

“Excuse me,” Robert said. “I’m writing a newspaper article on perestroika and the effect that it’s had on Russian lives.”

She looked at him warily. “Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

“Olga. Olga Romanchanko.”

“Tell me, Olga, has perestroika made any difference to you?”

Six years earlier, Olga Romanchanko would have been afraid to speak to a foreigner, but now it was allowed. “Not really,” she said carefully. “Everything is much the same.”

The stranger was persistent. “Nothing at all has changed in your life?”

She shook her head. “No.” And then added patriotically, “Of course we can travel outside the country now.”

He seemed interested. “And have you travelled outside the country?”

“Oh, yes,” she said proudly. “I have just returned from Switzerland. Is a very beautiful country.”

“I agree,” he said. “Did you get a chance to meet anyone on the trip?”

“I met many people. I took a bus and we went through high mountains. The Alps.” Suddenly Olga realized she shouldn’t have said that because the stranger might ask her about the spaceship, and she did not want to talk about that. It could only get her into trouble.

“Really?” asked Robert. “Tell me about the people on the bus.”

Relieved, Olga responded. “Very friendly. They were dressed so …” She gestured. “Very rich. I even met man from your capital city, Washington, DC.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Very nice. He gave me card.”

Robert’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you still have it?”

“No. I threw it away.” She looked around. “Is better not keep things like that.”

Damn!

And then she added, “I remember his name. Parker, like your American pen. Kevin Parker. Very important in politics. He tells senators how vote.”

Robert was taken aback. “Is that what he told you?”

“Yes. He takes them on trips and gives gifts, and then they vote for things his clients need. That is the way democracy works in America.”

A lobbyist. Robert let Olga talk for the next fifteen minutes, but he got no further useful information about the other passengers.

Robert telephoned General Milliard from his hotel room.

“I found the Russian witness. Her name is Olga Romanchanko. She works in the main library in Kiev.”

“I’ll have a Russian official speak to her.”

FLASH MESSAGE

TOP SECRET ULTRA

NSA TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR GRU

EYES ONLY

COPY ONE OF (ONE) COPIES

SUBJECT: OPERATION DOOMSDAY

8. OLGA ROMANCHANKO – KIEV

END OF MESSAGE

That afternoon Robert was on an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu – 154 jet to Paris. When he arrived three hours and twenty-five minutes later, he transferred to an Air France flight to Washington, DC.

At two a.m. Olga Romanchanko heard the squeal of brakes as a car pulled up in front of the apartment building where she lived, on Vertryk Street. The walls of the apartment were so thin that she could hear voices outside on the street. She got out of bed and looked out of the window. Two men in civilian clothes were getting out of a black Chaika, the model used by government officials. They were approaching the entrance to her apartment building. The sight of them sent a shiver through her. Over the years, some of her neighbours had disappeared, never to be seen again. Some of them had been sent to the Gulag in Siberia. Olga wondered who the secret police were after this time, and even as she was thinking it, there was a knock on her door, startling her. What do they want with me? she wondered. It must be some mistake.

When she opened the door, the two men were standing there.

“Comrade Olga Romanchanko?”

“Yes.”

“Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye.”

The dreaded GRU.

They pushed their way past her into the room.

“What … what is it you want?”

“We will ask the questions. I am Sergeant Yuri Gromkov. This is Sergeant Vladimir Zemsky.”

She felt a sudden sense of terror. “What’s … what’s wrong? What have I done?”

Zemsky pounced on it. “Oh, so you know you have done something wrong!”

“No, of course not,” Olga said, flustered. “I do not know why you are here.”

“Sit down,” Gromkov shouted. Olga sat.

“You have just returned from a trip to Switzerland, nyet?”

“Y … yes,” she stuttered, “but it … it was … I got permission from …”

“Espionage is not legal, Olga Romanchanko.”