"Could be a leak from a chemical plant," Frank Kollar suggested.
"No, we thought of that," Ruth said. "The nearest chemical plant is two hundred and fifty miles away, and it processes oil-based products, not herbicides."
"Isn't that the stuff they used in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle?" Binch asked Chase. "A lot of the guys who served out there developed symptoms of dioxin poisoning."
"That's what led to the ban. There was a whole range of genetic disorders caused by--" Chase stopped abruptly, realizing what Binch had just said. Of course! 2,4,5-T was used as a defoliant in Vietnam because it checked the growth of broad-leaved plants in jungles and forests; it had little effect on the narrow-leaved grasses such as were found in croplands. Hence, farmers in this part of the country wouldn't use 2,4,5-T anyway; it would be worse than useless for inhibiting weed growths. "Are there any military bases in the area?"
Binch was thrown by the question, and it took him a moment to think. He scratched his ear. "Well, there's NORAD--that's the North American Air Defense Command--at Colorado Springs, underground inside Cheyenne Mountain. But it's the combat operations center, which is nonoperational in military terms."
"Don't forget the space center near Cheyenne," Ruth put in. "That controls all the spy satellites and military shuttles launched from the Vandenberg Spaceport in California."
Chase recalled that ever since the Reagan administration in the early eighties the United States had been spending billions of dollars developing space platforms for beam weapons and killer-satellite launch pads. The Vandenberg Spaceport north of Santa Barbara on the Cali-fornian coast was a miniature city with its own schools, shops, and housing projects, costing three billion dollars to set up and around one billion a year to operate. How far they'd actually got with their beam-weapon program was a matter of speculation, though it was rumored that shuttle launches were now running once every seventeen days.
But Vandenberg was nearly half a continent away. He said, "Do they launch anything around here, say within fifty miles?"
Ruth glanced uncertainly at Binch. "I believe they carry out test firings of experimental prototypes from the Martin Marietta Space Center."
"Where's that?"
"Near Denver. Look, I don't follow this," Ruth said perplexedly. "What's it got to do with 2,4,5-T and dioxin poisoning?"
"Nothing that I know of," Chase said, which was what he devoutly hoped was true.
He lay quite still, though from the sound of his breathing, shallow and irregular, Nina knew that her husband was awake. She moved her hand underneath the blankets, found and gripped his.
"There's nothing anyone can do," she murmured in the darkness. "Even if there was, it isn't up to you."
"Then who?"
"Somebody else. Somebody younger."
Boris laughed, a rumble deep in his chest. "The younger people are committed to party and progress," he told her emptily. "And those who aren't are either powerless or afraid."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Yes."
"Then why?"
His hand returned the pressure. "Nina, dearest, I've worked on the project for over ten years now. The work I've done has contributed to the development of a weapon of environmental warfare."
"Which you didn't know about. You were ignorant of its--"
"It's there, it exists, and I helped. I didn't know about it because I chose not to think about it, to open my eyes, to ask questions." He turned his head on the pillow. "Why do you suppose they planted Malankov in my laboratory all those years ago? It was to find out what I knew and if I suspected anything."
"You did the work in good faith."
"No," Boris said bitterly. "In blind faith."
"It isn't your fault!" she insisted.
"You talk about fault? What does that matter? Don't you see? This madness, this barbarity, exists, it's real. It's no longer a question of apportioning blame."
"But you blame yourself."
"I shall blame myself if I do nothing."
"You did something--you wrote to Theo's daughter."
"No, no, that was different." His head moved back and forth, restlessly. "It was only a vague fear then, a speculation. It hadn't occurred to me that the project would be used deliberately as a global threat. But that's exactly what it is and what they intended it to be all along-- global blackmail."
"Malankov didn't say that."
"Of course not." "Then how do you know? How can you be sure? Just because he happened to mention something about 'national security'? Boris, he could have meant any one of a dozen things--you know how their minds work."
"It's because I know how their minds work that 1 know what he meant," Boris said. "It isn't that he used those words, it was how he reacted. He knew at once he'd gone too far, let something slip."
Nina was silent for a while, thinking, yet hardly daring to think. Then she said, "It will--would be very dangerous sending this information to the West. Especially with Malankov watching you."
"Too dangerous," Boris agreed. "For both of us."
She was instantly relieved, thinking he'd changed his mind, and an instant later knew she was a fool. There was something in his voice that made her body tense itself. Her hand gripped his tightly.
"What are you going to do?" Heart in her mouth.
"Get out."
"Defect?" The word was like the taste of iron on her tongue.
"Yes."
"It can't be done," she whispered.
"Yes, it can," Boris said very calmly. "I've already begun to make the arrangements. Within a few days I'll know the date and what I have to do."
Fear lapped in, shrinking her mind to nothing. She became numb. Tears leaked out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her head onto the pillow.
"Boris, I don't want to lose you," she sobbed. "Oh, please no, God no!"
He gathered her body in his arms and held her close, feeling her mad heart shuddering in her chest. "Woman. Woman! You're not losing me. Did you think after all these years I'd leave you behind? We stay together, whatever happens. I'd rather lose my life than lose you, stupid woman."
The silver helicopter clattered in low over the trees and shimmied down onto the yellow criss-crossed landing pad. Sunlight flared off the clear plastic canopy and glinted goldenly on the conch-shell motif aft of the starboard door. The door swung open, a pair of white shoes emerged, a pair of white-clad legs, and even before the helicopter had properly settled the man in the white linen suit was striding across the pad. He went down the steps to where the lawns swept like a rolling green billow up to the house, passing through the ring of plainclothes guards standing idly with curled hands and hard immobile faces.
Two more guards stood aside as he entered the glass-walled elevator, which took him smoothly to the rooftop. A covered area extended to a sun deck, supported on concrete stilts, which overlooked the orderly ranks of firs descending to the blue haze of the Pacific. To the south, just visible beyond the ridge, the white ramparts and Gothic follies of San Simeon gleamed like bleached bone.
This stretch of Californian coastline still ranked--despite the motorcycle gangs, the religious fanatics, the cult anarchists--among the high-est-priced real estate in the world.
A white-coated Javanese manservant stood near the mirror-tiled recess that reflected row upon row of bottles, glasses, silver shakers, ice buckets, and numberless, identical Javanese manservants, left arms bent at the elbows forming rails for spotless white napkins. The myriad sallow-reflected faces remained blank though attentive as the man in white passed quickly through and out into the raw sunlight.
Cars hummed distantly on U.S. 1 below, and a light aircraft droned somewhere over the placid ocean.