One of the electronic consoles beeped, and the old bodyguard shuffled over and quickly had it going.
Ivanovich looked back at Zemyatin, the Great One, who gave a small nod. The young general understood that there had been a question as to whether this information could be shared with him in the room. Without even a spoken answer, the field marshal's shrug indicated the exact level of information that was allowed to be discussed with the general present:
"They have fired it again," said the old bodyguard.
"Where?" said Zemyatin.
"Egyptian Sahara. An area of one hundred square kilometers. Our people are there already and risking quite a bit to get us the information. The Egyptians work closely with the Americans."
"One hundred square kilometers. That's an area any army would occupy. An entire army."
"And fired in a single second."
"That is their last test. Their last. No more testing. What would they have to test for?" said Zemyatin.
"Is this the weapon the American is protecting?" asked the young KGB general.
Zemyatin dismissed the question with a hand. The old man thought awhile, his face becoming even older, more grave. Lines of death showed. The eyes seemed to be looking into hell.
Finally, the younger man asked:
"What is our next step toward their special person? Should we accelerate some tracking operation on him at this point?"
"What?" said Zemyatin as though coming out of a sleep.
"The American."
The bodyguard touched the clean crisp general's uniform. "Leave," he said. The American was of no importance now.
Shortly thereafter reports came in of two more firings in the area. On a map it clearly showed that in a strip of Egyptian desert equal to the size of the Balkans, Russia's soft underbelly, the sand had come under such intense solar heat that it had fused into a hard, slick, slippery surface not unlike glass.
To Zemyatin it was clear why they had chosen the Sahara. The transformation of the sand to glass was the one instant effect observable from a satellite. The Americans could, as he was doing now, plot the range of their weapon. All they would have to do was recalibrate, and lay Russia defenseless. There would be no more tests. The attack, he was sadly sure, could come at any moment. It was time to launch his own. In this moment, Alexei Zemyatin, the man who had only wanted to be a good butler as a boy, would show his true military genius.
He ordered the Premier to immediately inform the Americans that Russia would now share information about the fluorocarbon beam that could harm them all. He did this by telephone because it was faster.
"Tell them there have been certain effects on the missiles. Just certain effects. Do not tell that the missiles are or are not destroyed. Certain effects."
"But, Alexei . . ."
"Shhh," said Zemyatin. It had been suspected but not yet proven that the Americans could bug any telephone line in the world from outer space. "Do it. Do it now. Have it done by the time I get there. Yes?"
His bodyguard noted that the young general had not drunk his tea.
Zemyatin was driven by another old bodyguard to the Premier's dacha. The weather was crisp and hard and there were many soldiers outside. They stood in greatcoats and shiny boots looking formidable. Alexei was still in his bathrobe.
He walked through the soldiers outside, and through the officers inside, and nodded the Premier into the back room. The Premier wanted to take some generals with him.
"If you do I'll have them shot," said Zemyatin.
The Premier tried to pretend he had never been so lavishly insulted in front of his own military. Zemyatin had never done this before. Why he was starting now, the Premier did not know. But there were certain formalities that should be observed.
"Alexei, you cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to the leader of your country."
Zemyatin did not sit. "Did you contact the Americans?"
"Yes. They are sending their Mr. Pease back again."
"Good. When?"
"They seem to be as nervous about this as they say we should be."
"When will he be here?"
"Fifteen hours."
"All right, we will have some technical people add to what we know to stretch out our information. Figure eight hours for the first conference, then we all sleep. That should get us another twelve hours. We will stretch this for two days, forty-eight hours. Good."
"Why do we give them faulty information for forty-eight hours?"
"Not faulty. We just won't give them the fact that their beam totally destroys the electronics in our missiles until the second session, and in that session we keep them locked up with us until the forty-eighth hour has passed."
"Why, are we giving them the truth about our missiles being useless?"
"Because, my dear Premier, it is the one thing they don't have yet," said Zemyatin. "Look. At this moment they have everything they need to launch an attack with this weapon and do it successfully. Everything. We would be through. They could sit in Moscow tomorrow and you could throw stones at them."
"So why give them the last thing they do not know?"
"Because it is the only thing for which they might delay. The only thing they need now is absolute assurance that our missiles-not their own, which I am sure they have tested this weapon on-but ours, do not work when hit by the unfiltered sun's rays. They will delay because we will give ourselves up on a silver platter."
"Do we want to do that?"
"No. What we have done is past the point of no return. While they are delaying for the last thing they need, our new missiles will go off."
"You mean in two days?"
"Within two days."
"When exactly?"
"You do not need to know. Just talk peace," said Zemyatin. He did not, of course, trust the head of the Russian government with this information now that the top bureaucrat had given him permission to launch the missiles in their very building. That was the reason for the time data given to every commander who perilously trucked the huge cumbersome death machines into the new Siberian sites. Alexei Zemyatin did not trust all of them to fire at once, given a sudden order. The trigger on the gun had already been pulled. Two days from now the holocaust would come out of its barrel.
In Washington, McDonald "Hal" Pease was told that the Russians were willing to share secrets now. They had realized that they shared a fragile planet with the rest of the human race.
"I'll believe it when I see it," said Pease.
Chapter 16
If there was a remote chance that Alexei Zemyatin might call off the attack on the suspicion that America might not itself be really planning its own attack, a simple cassette would smother that faint suspicion with brutal finality. Actually there were twenty little cassettes in a cheap plastic case with a colorful brochure. The packages cost three dollars each to manufacture, and sold for eight hundred.
They promised to bring out the leadership potential in every man. What they did was hypnotize people into ignoring reality. On his steady corporate rise Reemer Bolt had bought many such self-fulfillment programs. Their basic message was that there was no such thing as failure.
There were facts and there were conclusions. One had to separate them. When Reemer Bolt looked at a field of useless cars, it was not a fact that he was ruined, his cassette program told him. The fact was that fifty cars had been ruined. The fact was that he had notched his company one step closer to ruination. But Reemer Bolt himself was not ruined.
Look at Thomas Fdison, who, when he had failed in ninety-nine different ways to make a light bulb, said he had not failed. He had really discovered ninety-nine ways not to make a light bulb on his sunny road to success.
Look at General George Patton, who had never let ideas of failure bother him.
Look at Pismo Mellweather, who had produced the cassette tapes. Mellweather was a millionaire many times over, even though he'd been told as a child he would never amount to much. Teachers had even called him a swindler. He had spent time in jail for extortion and embezzlement. But now he had homes in several states because he had dared to face his own self-worth. The key to succeeding was not succumbing to the false notion that you had failed in some way.