Ahern, Jerry - The Web

She brought her right foot over, waiting again.

She was a third of the way across the room.

She took a broad step to the right, losing her balance momentarily, her left foot almost touching the carpet in the wrong spot. She sucked in her breath hard, regaining her balance, waiting, settling her left foot beside the right.

Natalia took another step, then another and another.

She remembered how foolish Vladimir had looked, sitting on his desk, swinging his feet around to avoid the plates flanking his desk on both sides.

Now, she shifted her weight forward, onto her fingertips, then (hrew her pack onto the desk top. The Kel-Lite was in the black belt around her waist on which she carried a borrowed pistol. Had she lost one of her own guns, the ones given her by President Chambers, it would have meant instant recognition and arrest.

With the flashlight beam zigzagging at a bizarre angle with the rising and falling of her chest, she leaned toward the desk, throwing her weight forward and pushing herself up, jumping, tucking her knees up.

Natalia was on the desk top.

The safe was behind the desk and a little to the right of it. As she turned, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—all made up for the American Halloween,

she thought.

She had to move like a spider now, her pack once more on her back, jumping to avoid the pressure-sensitive plates.

She stood on the desk, judging the distance, inhaled deeply, then jumped.

Her feet landed on the top of the small safe, and for a moment, her balance faltered and she started to fall back. But she caught herself, lurching her body forward, then rising to her full height.

Natalia breathed again.

Dropping to her knees, the flashlight in her right hand, she bent over the safe door, upside down, shining the light on the combination lock.

Shifting the light into her left hand, she tried the combination.

The combination, as she had suspected, had been changed, "Damn it," she muttered in English.

She reached into her pack, extracting the specially sensitive stethoscope there.

Untwisting the tubing, she touched the flat diaphragm chest piece to the safe's escutcheon plate, beside the dial.

The door was slightly recessed into the body wall of the safe. She leaned over slightly more, working the combination to the dial's right, then left, then right again, listening. She heard a minuscule clicking in the locking bolt linkage, then stopped. Her gloved fingers worked the dial left, stopping when through the stethoscope's binaural ear tips she could hear another click.

Now right—listening for the click might be more faint. She heard it, but had passed it.

"Damn," she muttered again. She cleared the dial, then reworked the combination she had already memor

ized, this time without the earpieces to aid her; she had the numbers now.

She worked the handle, heard the bolt-activating gear rings click; the safe opened under her hand.

Natalia reached inside the safe, to the lower shelf.

The six crates of documents were in the cryptoanalysis room, but Rozhdestvenskiy would have the abstract or a copy of it.

Natalia found more than she had anticipated.

Squatting like an Indian on the top of the opened safe, she fished info her pack for the camera. Shining the Kel-Lite on the documents' faces, working the shutter, she caught bits and pieces of words.

"Eden Project ... in the event of massive nuclear exchanges between our country and the Soviet Union . . . the ultimate statement of the Western democracies . . . this utilization of the Space Shuttle Fleet . . .

manufacturing processes . . ." She flipped the page for the next shot.

tfIn the face of the near total destruction of life on the planet . . ."

She felt her heart skip a beat, then realized that it hadn't; she was being emotional. ". . . Bevington, Kentucky, and an as yet undesignated site . . . precursed by bizarre atmospheric changes . . ." The third page of the abstract was merely a list of names—she assumed those who had compiled (he reports.

She photographed the next document, a simple-road map, (he kind once sold in American gasoline stations, of the state of Kentucky, with a small town in the mountains, Bevington, circled in red with an arrow pointed toward it coming from the southeast.

Natalia began photographing the last set of documents; it was Rozhdestvenskiy's report. ". . . findings of

Soviet scientists have been verified and coincided with those of Western scientists . . . raid on Bevington, Kentucky, in the south-central United States . . ." Natalia would have called it more southeastern.

She glanced at her Rolex; she had to hurry. Rozhdestvenskiy might be back at any moment. She photographed the second page without taking note of anything written there, then the third and last page. He was admirably concise in his writing she noted subconsciously. ". . . the construction at the site called the Womb, and the bringing together of strategic materials (here, is ihe only hope for the survival of the Soviet."

She shuddered. Survival of the Soviet?

Was survival of the Soviet equivalent with the survival of mankind? she asked herself, closing her eyes from the glare of the flashlight. A doomsday device?

She prayed not; then felt the corners of her mouth raise in a smile—to whom did a good Communist pray?

Carefully, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna replaced the documents exactly as they had been in the safe, then she closed the combination, resetting the dial to the number it had been set to before she had touched it.

Natalia stood up, on the top of the safe, shouldering the pack, her gear secured inside it.

In the darkness, her eyes accustomed enough toil with the flashlight packed away, she jumped to the floor, intentionally landing on one of the pressure-sensitive plates. She ran toward the inner office door, knowing the silent alarm was sounding.

She threw open the door, then ran across the outer office, throwing open the door, turning into the corridor and running toward the panic-locked emergency door.

"Halt!" The guard's voice came in clumsy English.

Gunfire ripped into the wall bebide her as she hit the panic lock, the door opening outward into a corridor She slammed the steel fire door, hearing slugs impacting against it from the inside.

She reached up, clipping the wires for the alarm there into a bypass with alligator-clipped strands of wire of thinner proportion to suck off the electrical charge Then, with a wire cutter from the left hip pocket of her jump suit, she clipped the alarm wire She replaced the wire cutter after scratching the outside locking panel with it—to make it appear she had used a pick after neutralizing the alarm in order to originally gain access More gunfire—the door bulged in the center She released her weight against the door and ran up a small flight of stairs, hearing the door thrown open behind her, more gunfire, louder now, another command in English "Half"

She turned out of the stairwell into a darkened hall— the Egyptian exhibit She remembered strolling through it with her uncle. Now she ran its length—more running feet and shouts behind her, the gunfire ceased There was a row of sarcophagi and past it an exhibit depicting the dressing of a pyramid block "Appropriate," she thought, making an English pun on the word "dressing" in her mind She slipped behind the exhibit case, into a service closet, closing the door behind her.

In total darkness, she slipped the pack from her back, then began to unzip the jump suit with her right hand, her left hand working free the pistol belt She tugged the zipper down the rest of the way, then with both hands ripped away the scarves that had covered her face and

hair. She kicked off the crepe-soled shoes she had worn, reaching down for them in the dark—she thought she heard the skittering of a mouse or rat across the floor. She pulled the Bali-Song knife from the pocket of her jump suit, holding it closed in her teeth while she smoothed the white slip she had worn under the jumpsuit trousers, smoothed it down from where it had bunched around her hips.