"I am here," said Hal Pease, his twangy voice almost cracking in pain, "because we face a common danger. I understand that you do not trust us, and I am here to convince you that we are on the same side in trying to save the world."
The Russian Premier nodded. These Russians had necks like barrels, thought Pease. They'd make good football players.
"We know that you are building great amounts of new nuclear weapons, weapons that we believe are lacking the usual safety devices. For the first time in the history of atomic warfare, a nation has not taken proper precautions. "
Pease heard his words translated as he spoke. He saw the bull neck turn. The Russian Premier answered, and the translator began:
"We did not introduce atomic weapons into the world. We, like the rest of the nations, are victims of the atomic weapons which you introduced to this planet. Now you tell us we do not have the proper safety precautions. That is a lie. We are a peace-loving people, and have always been so. We would not endanger ourselves or the world with devices so heinous as you say."
"Get off it," said Pease. "We know you have 'em. You know you have 'em. Now, dammit, we're here to give you something to show you our good faith. You don't have to keep up that silly lie, fella."
The Premier and the translator exchanged a few words. Hal Pease didn't need the translation. He had been told to go to hell.
"All right. Here it is. We're going to give you our command defense structure. What we want is your understanding that we are not behind this irresponsible attempt to pierce the ozone shield. All we ask is that you pause in your march toward world destruction."
The translator began explaining the Russian love of peace, and Hal Pease told him he wasn't interested. It made him want to vomit when the Russian officers began poring over the layout of the American defenses. He saw several nods. They knew they were getting the real thing. One of the officers disappeared for about five minutes and then returned. He only nodded to the Premier. Then the Premier disappeared. The Premier was gone for a shorter time.
The translator was not even needed. Pease could tell by the way the Russian Premier folded his arms that he had been rejected.
The translator started on a denial of the new, more unreliable weapons, and Pease cut him off.
"Hey, buddy. Are you out of your mind? We just laid out our belly to you bastards. What do you want? You want a war? What are you going to win? Will you answer me that? Will you go to your boss and tell him he is crazy? You're starting something no one will win, and meanwhile, if we don't blow ourselves up, we're all sure as hell going to fry like a mess of chili beans."
He got the same blunt lie about Russia's peaceful intentions.
"Look, there is a thing going on with the ozone layer that scares us as much as it scares you. We wanted to prove it to you by showing you our defense plans. Now here they are and you're still stonewalling. We need your help in getting to the base of the fluorocarbon danger. Dammit, we know it hit your territory. We know you have to know about it. We want to work with you toward saving the whole damned world. What are you going to win if the world is a damned parched cinder?"
The Premier thought a moment, left, and then returned. "If you want the truth," said the Premier through the translator, "we know for a fact that you Americans are the biggest liars on the face of the earth."
Hal Pease almost went right at his thick Russian throat, right there in the Kremlin. Trembling, he contained himself. He needn't have bothered. If he had punched out the eyes of the Russian Premier, he couldn't have done more damage than he already had.
Alexei Zemyatin watched behind the one-way mirror. He watched and heard the American claim that he knew there was someone else pulling the strings and that that person should realize that the end of the world was the end of the world for both Russia and America.
By the man's passion, Zemyatin was almost willing to trust. Except Alexei Zemyatin knew what the man was doing, and long ago he'd learned not to trust his emotions. Too many people depended on his decision for him to trust something so unreliable as instinct. Sometimes it could be correct, of course. But it never supplanted a fact.
And too many men had already been lost trying to find out facts for Zemyatin to indulge in that absolute essence of egotism: a hunch.
So he felt that the man was telling the truth. But that wasn't nearly as important as what he had known for the last half-hour.
Even as Mr. McDonald Pease's plane had taken off for Russia, the Americans were testing their weapon. And there was no question that it was the American government, not some renegade, some little business somewhere that didn't report to the government. Zemyatin could accept that businesses would run wild. He knew how healthy and uncontrollable the black market was in Russia, where there wasn't supposed to be a black market. No market at all except the state providing beautifully for everyone's needs.
But the price had already been paid for the truth. The report, compiled from many sources-some of them now in American prisons because their safety had-ceased to be a factor-had ironically arrived the very moment Mr. Pease began his speech. Alexei had listened with only half an ear. What he read in the report froze his bones. It was like all the German troops massing just before their invasion of Russia: The trains, the armor, the munitions, the food. None of it could be missed. The Americans were far shrewder, shrewder even than he had previously thought.
The Americans had just determined the day before that they could make all Russian armor in Europe and Asia useless. They could leave Mother Russia with only infantrymen and tanks that could not move.
America was preparing to slaughter the armor-denuded Russian infantryman in numbers that would make the Nazis blush. There was going to be a land invasion of Russia itself. And it was going to work, even with the lesser forces of NATO. A push right into Russia's heart, and any resistance would be ruthlessly crushed. First the missiles, next the armor, then Russia's heart would be taken out and baked dry. Of course.
Even while the American technicians and Russian military technicians were poring over the large maps and the fields of detection, which were, as the Russians were determining, absolutely genuine, Zemyatin was demanding details. In the details lay the truth.
Officers were running in and out of the field marshal's private room with scraps of paper, reports, and sometimes the officer who had received the initial report.
The Americans had indeed done a test. It was picked up immediately because Russian monitors had been on the alert. Incidentally, he was told, the British had picked it up, too. Although badly damaged, the British system was still functioning.
"The Americans did not warn the British of our penetration. They had to know. From what I have been informed they had to know."
"They did know, sir, but there is no indication at this time, Comrade Field Marshal, that they have notified their supposed allies in any way."
"Didn't bother to notify," said Zemyatin. He felt he needed water on that one.
"Something bad, sir?"
"When you are in a fishing contest, and your opponent has caught a minnow, do you stop to take it away from him?"
"The Americans are after bigger fish?"
"The Americans are far shrewder than we ever imagined. At this point, if they believed I had a secure advantage, should they disabuse me of it? Go ahead."
"Shorter duration this time in firing. More precise."
"Weapons-grade accuracy," said Zemyatin.
"Apparently, sir."
"So that if they used it on, say, an entire front, it could be so brief as to not endanger the rest of the world." Zemyatin, of course, had hit upon the key giveaway: the device was a weapon. There was a time that Russia itself had stacked so many heavy atomic weapons that to use them, their scientists determined, would ruin life for themselves. Ironically, when cleaner weapons, as they were called, were invented, that would be the signal not that the inventions were more humane, but that they were more likely to be used in a war.