“You’d better reconsider,” Kramer said. “An order from Moscow cannot be ignored. You know that.”
“I’ll consider it, but only when the situation justifies the tremendous loss of a trained agent in place. As of now, it doesn’t. All that’s indicated is that the operation proceed with extreme caution, which is what I intend to do.” He motioned toward the door. “Now get out. And you’d better not return directly to your consulate in Los Angeles. There’s a good chance that you’ll be followed.” He paused, then said: “Go visit your buddies in Mexico.”
Moffitt left first to check the parking area and driveway for tails. Kramer paused inside the front door.
“I will report what you have said. I warn you, do not separate yourself from the Command any further.”
Maraklov said nothing as Kramer looked out the door, got an all-clear flash from Moffitt’s cigarette lighter, went out.
After the agents had departed, James locked and bolted the door — and suddenly felt as if he was suffocating …
His mind’s eye could see unmarked cars roaring up the driveway toward his stairway, plainclothes FBI, CIA and DIA agents, led by Major Hal Briggs, coming up the stairs, kicking in his door, hauling him away in handcuffs, thrown into the back of a van with Kramer and Moffitt, who must have been arrested already … The federal authorities would interrogate them, separately, of course. He could trust Kramer to keep silent, insisting that he and Moffitt be returned to their consulate, but he was positive Moffitt would spill his guts just for an opportunity to get back at him. He would be identified as a Soviet agent and taken into custody, charged with espionage. His career was ruined. He’d never fly DreamStar again, never experience the indescribable experience of becoming one with that amazing machine …
Should he just sit here waiting, or escape right now? Activate his safe’s incendiary device himself so as to not risk Briggs or one of his men discovering the trip-wire and disarming the device? He’d take the money he’d hidden, go to Mexico, maybe further south, maybe to the wild interior of Brazil, out of reach of both American and Soviet intelligence units. He’d contact Moscow in hiding until he could be sure he was safe — from his own people as well as the Americans … He removed two of the books on the top shelf in front of the hidden wall safe. In case someone tried to break in he could reach in between the books, pop open the hidden panel and activate the incendiary device. He then shut off the lights, poured himself a glass of Scotch whiskey and sat down in the darkened living room.
Half a glass of Scotch later, sleep finally overtook him, but he was not getting any rest. For the first time since those first few months of his new life in America, Andrei Maraklov as Ken James remembered what real fear, real terror was.
Now that she was a senior civilian contractor on a small military installation, Wendy Tork’s hours were much more regular than in the early years when she had spent days in her laboratory, working on some irritating software bug. She remembered slaving over a computer terminal, staring at a screen full of lines of computer code. In the early eighties debugging software and artificial intelligence-based computerized programmers were practically non-existent — human programmers, sometimes armies of them, had to disassemble a compiled routine, then read thousands of lines of code to try to find an error. One never knew if the error was on the screen or a hundred lines away or in a completely different sub-routine. Once the error was supposedly found, the code was reassembled into its compact faster form and run. It was a wonder anything as sophisticated as the B-52 I Old Dog’s electronic countermeasures equipment, Wendy’s first major military project, ever worked in the laboratory — not to mention in combat. Now she had computers that designed other computers’ programs, and computers that checked and debugged those computers’ work, and a master computer that supervised all of them. Her job was mostly telling her computers what their jobs were and receiving reports from them on their progress. What had taken dozens of scientists and engineers years to accomplish now took one person a few days. Because of all that she could keep regular hours, enjoy a four-day work-weekmost of the industrialized nations of the world had switched to a four-day work-week by 1994—and spend more time at home.
But if most of the world had gone to the four-day work-week, the military, especially military aviators, had not. It seemed to go double for Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan. Since Wendy joined HAWC and moved in with him, her nights had often been long and lonely. Patrick had become an important administrator and commander at Dreamland research center, and it was not long before Patrick would call if he was going to be home more or less on time.
Tonight was one of those. He’d be home around seven, an early quitting time. Wendy doubted it and was right. She was wide awake when he finally did arrive home. He walked quietly as he could to the bedroom, tried to fumble his way, undressed without the lights.
“Hi.”
He threw his flight suit into the laundry hamper. “Sorry if I woke you. “
“Tough day?”
“You could say so.” He went into the bathroom briefly, then got into bed beside her. At first as he moved she pulled back with a shiver. His whole body was like ice — he’d taken one of his two-minute Navy shower sponge baths.
“You are freezing.”
“Sorry.” She allowed him to curl up beside her his warm breath on the back of her neck, punctuated by a kiss, then another. A moment or two later he asked, “How was your day today?”
“The morning was busy — I finally finished the software upgrades for the Megafortress. Pretty quiet this afternoon, I came home early.”
“Sorry about standing you up for lunch.”
“That’s okay. It looked like you were pretty busy. Anything serious with the plane?”
“No. Some over-G warnings showed up on the computer readouts, but we couldn’t find any damage. We worked right through lunch. I could have used some of the Nellis O-Club’s roast beef after that flight this morning.”
Wendy hesitated. “I didn’t have lunch at the Officer’s Club.”
“You ate at the cafeteria at HAWC?”
“No … I had lunch at Indian Springs.”
She could feel his body tense. “Indian Springs? What’s at Indian Springs?”
“The Thunderbirds Club.”
“You went to Indian Springs Auxiliary Field? How did you get there?”
“The Dolphin dropped us off.”
“Us?”
“Ken James and me.”
“Ken James took you to Indian Springs Field for lunch? Why?”
“Why not? I’ve never been there before. Ken made it sound like he goes there all the time.”
“I didn’t know the Dolphin ever stopped out there … Honey, I don’t think it would be a good idea to go to Indian Springs again.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s a restricted-use field. It’s supposed to be for official business—”
“Sure. Whatever you say, Patrick, but Ken seems to go there a lot.”
“Indian Springs is the fighter pilot’s hangout. But Ken also has a habit of stretching the rules. I don’t think there’s any problem, but let me check it out … “
“Okay.” She hoped it ended there. She was already sorry she’d brought it up at all.
“Damn it, if James can even find a rule, he’ll stretch it every last inch he can.”
“He says you grounded him and J. C. Powell today.”