Spode sat with his hand on the telephone. He was shaking a Coke bottle in his fist and spouting foam into his mouth from three inches away. Ronnie sat curled up in a chair beside the bed, feet drawn up under her, small fists propped under her chin.
“Nothing yet,” Spode said. “The sun’s up. We haven’t even got twelve hours left.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Orozco’s got all his people out looking for Douglass. They tried to find him through Nicole Lawrence but she’s dead.” His teeth were showing. “Killed herself.”
Ronnie closed her eyes. “Then it’s got to be Ramsey, doesn’t it? I don’t know any other members of his cell. My brother was my own cell leader and there were only the four of us—Les and Ross Trumble and Gus Craig and me. Ramsey and Nicole had a larger group—after the first few years there was a reorganization and we were assigned to them for orientation but we never met their people.”
Spode said, “Orozco’s posted a few men at the airport. They’ll start showing up out there but it won’t be until late in the afternoon. We’ve got to get to Belsky sooner than that. Maybe we’ll find Douglass. Maybe not. You’d better set a time limit—when you’re going to call the President.”
Forrester dug at his eyes, yawned wide and stood up tottering. “Just find Ramsey Douglass.”
Ronnie had not opened her eyes. When Forrester had washed his face in the bathroom he returned and she still hadn’t stirred. He knew what it meant: the panic had begun to hit her, she had started to think beyond the now. Her former comrades were about to get on an airplane and go back—home, Russia. But Ronnie had betrayed them and how she had no choices left. She could not go on board the plane with them because once it was discovered that Forrester was on their track they would know they had been betrayed; and Ronnie would be the logical, if not the only, suspect. They would torture her until she confessed, and then they would have their final revenge. No, she could not go with them. Yet she couldn’t remain behind, because then they would send people back to find her. The only way she could be protected from them was by turning herself in, a confessed enemy of the United States.
The phone rang and Spode jerked it to his ear, grunted, listened, grunted again and put it down. “Douglass isn’t home, he isn’t at Nicole’s, and he’s not at his office. They’re looking around the Air Base for him but that’s a lot of area to cover. May take all day.”
“Just find him,” Forrester said. “Just find him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rykov’s face had a puffed look; his eyes were shattered by bloodshot lines. Outside it was still dark, predawn; bare branches were silhouetted against the street lamps, jagged as cracks in a porcelain surface, and patches of snow had drifted across the glossy cobblestones.
Behind him Andrei said, “You shouldn’t stand like that. An assassin could shoot you easily from anywhere on the rooftops across the street.”
“It hardly matters now, does it.” But Rykov unrolled the blind to coyer the window and turned back to his desk. The enormous room seemed mausoleumlike; the only lamp lighted was the orange-shaded one on the desk. “In Arizona now it is past five in the afternoon.”
“About eighty-five minutes to go,” Andrei agreed. “You’ve failed, you know. You may as well signal Belsky to abort.”
“A cause is not lost so long as someone is willing to go on fighting, Andrei. I have not yet failed completely.” He added, “I assume Comrade Yashin has recommended as a matter of public sanitation that I be quietly executed. There can be no three-judge People’s Court of course. No public airing. I am to be terminated without fuss—suicided, perhaps? It would be fitting—Grigorenko would have his opportunity to trumpet that I had displayed the sincerest form of self-criticism. Or perhaps I am to spend the rest of my days in solitary confinement?”
“I shall do everything I can to see that you are comfortably maintained and that no one harms you.”
“Yashin will probably order you to kill me.”
“An order I should disobey.”
“Irrelevant, Andrei. He can always find someone willing to do it. I am not without enemies.”
“We have eighty-two minutes.”
The cabbage soup had gone cold on the desk; the piece of black bread sat on the saucer half-eaten. Rykov put a cigarette in his mouth. He had to hold the match with both hands.
“You must capitulate,” Andrei said. “The Chinese have already begun to withdraw their bluff. They saw it was not working.”
“They need to be taught their lesson, don’t they.”
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
The back of Rykov’s hand struck his cigarette and showered sparks over his chest. “In any case I’ve been discredited, I’m officially out of office—I haven’t much to lose, have I? One who is already in disgrace can easily afford to indulge his principles.”
He tried to catch some hint of expression on Andrei’s cheeks. Andrei only said, “If I fail to persuade you to abort, of course it means my own head.”
“There are worse things than death, Andrei. As the proverb has it, it is simpler to die than to live.”
“Seventy-four minutes,” Andrei said. “And it will require about twenty minutes for your signal to be relayed to Belsky and for Belsky to act upon it. Say fifty minutes.”
“I am a patriot, Andrei.” Rykov sighed with the hopelessness of a failure beyond his power to correct: it was the first time he had ever faced anything too big for him and the knowledge was bleak. “I am a patriot.”
“One of your difficulties, Andrei, is that you are constantly thinking about the rules of the game without ever asking whether the game itself has meaning. You cannot merely—” He felt the warning run of heavy saliva in his mouth; his shoulders hunched up and his throat filled and he made a dash for the lavatory sink, limping clumsily. He clung to the rim of the basin, vomiting with long agony.
When he rinsed his mouth and returned to the desk he said, “An insufficiency of fortitude. I never suspected it of myself.”
“No one envies you your dilemma,” Andrei said. “My dear Viktor, please see the truth of it. The Chinese are not ready for war. You would kill millions—tens of millions, hundreds of millions. You would risk destroying Mother Russia—destroying the earth.”
“There will be war, Andrei—war with China is inevitable. Best it be done now when we have the opportunity to win.”
“I have no cigarettes left.”
“I will get you a packet as soon as you have signaled Belsky.”
“Don’t be childish, Andrei.”
“I have no time left for patience. Thirty-eight minutes, Viktor.”
“Will you take my place at this desk in the morning?”
“In the morning if I am alive I shall retire to the country to farm.”
“The boredom will get on your nerves.”
“If you blow up the world, Viktor, we shall all be eternally bored.”
“Twelve minutes, Viktor. If my watch is not slow.”
“Why do you press me when you know I have won after all?”
“Because I believe that in the end like me you are a human being. To destroy other human beings is human. To destroy one’s entire species is not. If I have love for you it is because of your humanity, not your political strategies.”
“And what is it that you think makes me such a humanitarian in the end?”
“Your love for me, Viktor.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Lincoln skittered around the bend into Park Avenue, taking the curve too fast; it weaved violently on its springs. The tug pulled Forrester hard over against the rear right-hand door and Ronnie was squashed against him.
Spode was driving. “It may be too damn late.”