“Yes. I see.”
“Now you must write back to him. You must gain his further trust. Perhaps we can arrange for the two of you to meet—in America, perhaps.”
“Me?” Markov gulped with surprise. “Go to America?”
“Suitably escorted, of course. I understand your wife would be an admirable bodyguard for you.”
His heart sank again. “Yes…naturally…”
“It’s only a suggestion. The germ of an idea. But I think it’s important that you correspond with this man Stoner. Write him a long and friendly letter. Tell him how fascinated you are with the problem of extraterrestrial languages. Imply much, but reveal nothing.”
“I can try…”
“We will help you to compose the letter,” Bulacheff said cheerfully. “And, naturally, we will make sure that it is exactly correct before we send it overseas.”
“Naturally.”
“Good!” Bulacheff got to his feet so suddenly that Markov thought he had been stung in the rear. “I knew we could depend on you, Kirill Vasilovsk.”
Markov rose from the couch and started toward the door, Bulacheff alongside him.
“It’s time we put your name in for nomination to the Academy,” Bulacheff said, gesturing grandly. “After all, you are one of the Soviet Union’s leading linguists…and a very important man to us all.”
Markov bobbed his head meekly and took the academician’s proffered hand. He could hardly contain himself as he pulled on his coat, out in the anteroom, and pulled his fur hat down over his ears. Not even the glower of the fat secretary bothered him.
Out on the street, it was snowing harder than ever. Nothing was moving. No one else was in sight. The drifts were piling across the building’s front steps, head high. But Markov laughed, dug his gloved fingers into the snow and patted a snowball into shape. He threw it at the nearest streetlamp, nearly lost to sight in the swirling storm. The snowball flew unerringly upward through the slanting flakes and hit the lamp. The light winked out.
Startled, Markov glanced around to see if anyone had seen him destroy state property. Then he doubled over with laughter, nearly fell on the snow. Straightening up, he leaned into the wind and started the long trek back to his apartment, a boyish grin on his face, his beard beginning to look like an icicle.
“It’s all right, Maria Kirtchatovska,” he shouted into the falling snow. “Your fears were groundless. I am an important man. I will be elected to the Academy!”
Up in his warm office, Bulacheff watched Markov disappear into the snowy evening shadows.
“Fool,” he muttered. Swiveling his creaking chair away from the frost-crusted window, he poured himself another vodka. “Impressionable fool.”
The trouble is, the old man thought to himself, he is a thoroughly likable man. Immature, perhaps, but likable.
Bulacheff sighed and gulped down the vodka. Well, he told himself, if it all works out the way I want it to, Markov will become an academician. If not…it’s just as well that he likes to play in the snow.
Chapter 14
EYES ONLY—NO FOREIGN NATIONALS
Memorandum
TO: The President
FROM: SecDef
SUBJECT: Project JOVE
DATE: 7 December
REF: 83–989
1. DARPA analysts conclude that moving the entire Arecibo staff out of their facility will cause inevitable security risks. I tend to agree.
2. It may be possible to upgrade the existing radar installation at Kwajalein (in the Pacific Ocean) to meet the requirements of Project JOVE. Kwajalein has a considerable amount of sophisticated electronics gear in place, much of it mothballed, as a result of being the terminal end of our Pacific Missile Test Range.
3. Security at Kwajalein should be much easier than at Arecibo. DOD personnel are already on-station there and capable of maintaining absolute security integrity.
4. The Arecibo radio telescope facility can be used for Project JOVE studies, as needed, by the existing Arecibo staff without revealing the classified elements of JOVE to them.
5. For the above reasons, I strongly recommend that we move Project JOVE to Kwajalein, rather than Arecibo.
“How did you get the letter out?” asked Lieutenant Commander Tuttle. He was standing, in uniform, before the fireplace.
Stoner looked at him for a long moment. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the flames, and the occasional pop of a knot in the firewood. McDermott sat across the coffee table, in the New England rocker. Stoner had the sofa to himself; he was in his sweat suit, they had caught him in the middle of his warm-up exercises, out by the pool.
“I slipped it into a letter I sent to a friend,” he answered carefully, “slapped a stamp on it and tossed it in with the reports and other crap that your couriers carry out of here every day.”
“You didn’t give it to Jo Camerata to mail for you?” McDermott asked, a tense edge to his raspy voice.
Stoner’s mind was racing. He made himself shrug. “She might have been the one who took that batch out; I really don’t know.”
Tuttle’s round face was grimly serious. “You realize that this is a security breach of prime magnitude.”
Stoner shook his head. “I didn’t tell them anything about what we’re doing. I merely wrote to a Russian author and asked if he’d heard anything about ETI lately.”
“You mentioned Jupiter!” McDermott growled.
“And radio pulses,” added Tuttle.
“And a lot of other things,” Stoner countered. “If you guys read that letter in its entirety, you’ll see that I didn’t really tip our hand—unless the Russians already know about the Jovian radio pulses, in which case there’s no breach of security.”
Tuttle gave an exasperated sigh. “You just don’t understand the security laws, do you?”
“Or won’t,” McDermott said.
“Maybe I just don’t care,” Stoner snapped.
“You could go to Leavenworth for this,” Tuttle said.
Feeling the icy calm that always came over him when he got angry, Stoner said, “Fine. Try it. You’ll have to put me on trial, and I swear to whatever gods there are that I honestly look forward to having a day in court. At least I’ll have a defense attorney; that’s more than you guys have allowed me so far.”
The little lieutenant commander shifted uneasily on his feet and glanced at McDermott, who said nothing.
“I’m going to get myself a drink,” Stoner told them, getting up from the sofa.
“Good idea,” Big Mac called after him as he headed for the kitchenette-bar. “Fix me a bloody mary while you’re there.”
Stoner grumbled to himself. Why can’t he want something simple, like a scotch on the rocks? As he searched through the cabinets over the sink for a can of mix, he heard Tuttle call, “Got any orange juice? I’ll take it with some ice.”
“Sure thing,” Stoner said. I work cheap, he added silently.
He could hear the two of them conversing between themselves while he built the drinks. By the time he had all three glasses on a tray, Tuttle and McDermott had a large map spread across the living room carpet and were studying it intently. Stoner looked down at the legend on the map as he put the tray on the coffee table. It said, Kwajalein Atoll.
“Don’t you guys have families?” Stoner asked, taking his own Jack Daniel’s. “I mean, it’s Sunday afternoon, five days before Christmas, for god’s sake.”
“We have work to do,” Tuttle said without taking his eyes from the map.
“You want to watch football on television?” McDermott asked derisively.