to tweak the maximum number of bureaucratic noses. The Russians were still smarting from her recent escape through Czechoslovakia with three male friends. He hoped that her promptly taking up with a well-known American scientist and lavishly sampling the best capitalistic delights Vienna had to offer would embarrass the hell out of them. As for his side, they would never be sure she wasn't a plant, and there would be shocked speculations about their pillow talk throughout the western security establishment. He chuckled to himself.
'Paul, it's nearly four A.m. Come to bed.' Her voice was low, sultry, inviting. He heard the rustle of bedclothes and knew she was looking at him.
Neither could a woman give him the feeling that suffused him now, the intense mental orgasm of an earth-shattering idea come to fruition, but you can't make love to a concept.
He thought ahead of the day to come. An hour with her now, to relax, a couple of hours' sleep, then a couple more to continue his calculations over breakfast before the meeting resumed.
He turned and walked softly across the dark room to the bedside. For a long moment he stood looking down at her, the covers pulled up to her dun, the halo of short black hair in stark contrast to the pillow. He could not see her face clearly in the faint city light reflected in the window, but he could picture the lovely contours of her face, the high Slavic cheekbones, the sparkling eyes reflecting intelligence, a free spirit, and, deep within, an irrepressible sadness.
He reached for the covers near her feet and slowly drew them down, exposing her nakedness, the bed- warmth of her body palpable in the darkness. He leaned over and gently pressed his lips to the sweet angle where breast joins rib...
The desk before him came back into focus. The papers strewn across it screamed at him, confirming the feeling that had been in his gut for months, ignored. It had all gone wrong, disastrously wrong! Everything his career had stood for was demolished. Rather than emerging as man— land's saviour, he had visited an incomprehensible horror on an unsuspecting populace. That he, of all people, could have made such an error!
He looked towards the fire flickering in the grate and lifted the pistol.
Maria Latvin glanced at her watch as she pulled the long serrated-blade knife from the drawer. 3:45 A.M. I can't keep him from working all night, she thought, but at least I can keep food in his stomach. She turned to the butcher block island in the centre of the kitchen and carved two thick slices from the loaf of pumpernickel. She spread a healthy layer of Dijon mustard on the bread then carefully stacked interlaced layers of corned beef, Swiss cheese, ham, turkey, and finished off with some lettuce. From somewhere in the quiet house she heard a sound, a muffled pop. She could not identify it, but the noise caused her to slip into a fatigue-driven reverie.
After six weeks of furtive, exhaustive trekking and hiding, they slogged through the snow, eyes fixed on the chain link fence topped with ragged strands of barbed wire. They were in a clear, unforested area, lightly patrolled since the approach was exposed. Then they heard that pop. A half kilometre away, a squad of Czechoslovakian soldiers aimed at them and more pops came. Their guides pointed at the place where the fence was closest and ran for the copse of trees and cover. Maria remembered her eyes almost frozen shut' with tears of joy and fright during their adrenalin-charged dash through the drifts, hauling the ladder, planting it, scrambling up, leaping and landing. In Austria !
Austria. Vienna. Paul, sweeping her into a vortex that left her head and heart swimming. Now, two years of travel to places of which she had not known to dream, interspersed with retreat to this magnificent isolation, a feeling of freedom so strong it made her ache.
Paul. Strong, excited in his high moods, his energy drawing her like a magnet. The sudden, unexpected periods of despondency worried her, though, and this was one of the worst. She had learned to be patient. With time, he would bounce back.
She put a steaming cup of coffee on the tray next to the sandwich. She carried the tray through the living room, past the massive adobe fireplace and into the hall leading to the study.
'Paul, I -'
She froze in the doorway of the study, gripping the tray, knowing in an instant that it was all gone. She walked slowly across the room and set the tray on the edge of the desk. She looked at the familiar, handsome face, the thick brown hair laced with silver, the well-shaped head lolling against the back of the high-backed desk chair.
Then she forced herself to look at the small, neat hole a few centimetres above his ear. There was hardly any blood, but it was so dark, a bleak desolate pit that reminded her of all she had struggled to leave behind. The hole was in such an odd place. Not the temple, but higher, further back. Perhaps he had flinched, his spirit rebelling even as his finger tightened on the trigger. The small silver-plated twenty-two calibre pistol still dangled from his forefinger. Such a trivial weapon to still such a vibrant life.
A month ago he was fired with enthusiasm for this project which he had begun before they had met. He had been working on it in Vienna. Then the depression set in, ever deepening. Now something had pushed him over the edge. She examined the scattered pages on the desk. They were filled with incomprehensible calculations. What had the letters and numbers meant to him? she wondered. Which among them triggered this ultimate retreat? She felt what they meant to her — the end of a freedom too good to last.
In the stillness of the room, the faint flutter shouted at her. Her eyes locked on him. Yes!! There it was again! She knelt by his side, placed two fingers on his throat, and nearly fainted with relief at the weak irregular beat that massaged her fingertips.
At midmorning Isaacs concentrated on the report he had received from Saris the previous afternoon concerning new arms stashes in eastern Mozambique. The photographs were unmistakable, but the big question went unanswered. Whose were they? Baris's group had concluded they were not an unadvertised ploy by the Marxist government, nor did they belong to the active guerrilla movement. They seemed to mark a new force whose motives and intentions were a cipher. Boswank had to get somebody in on the ground.
A commotion in the outer office caught his attention. He heard Kathleen announce over the intercom and through the door as it crashed open, 'Mr Deloach to see you.'
Earle Deloach raced across the room and leaned with his fists on Isaacs's desk, highly distraught, eyeglasses askew on his round face, a lock of normally slicked-back hair dangling over his temple. He passed a hand fitfully at the errant strand, causing more disarray.
'They've blown it up!' he shouted.
Isaacs rose quickly and circled his desk.
'Who's blown up what?' he asked as he closed the connecting door.
'My FireEye! The Russians! They blew it up!' 'Here, sit down Bark,' said Isaacs, firmly. He guided Deloach by the elbow into a chair. 'Nosy what are you talking about?' he asked, regaining his own chair. 'Are you sure? What did they do?'
'One of their satellites — Cosmos... Cosmos 2112 — from a couple of hundred miles away, must have been a laser. Didn't just fry a few circuits; we have photos from one of our other satellites. FireEye's gone! Vaporized!'
'Oh, damn!' exploded Isaacs, wrenched by a decidedly schizophrenic reaction. His gut knotted with the instant realization that this was the Russians' idea of a justifiable reaction to the Novorossiisk affair. The first step into the abyss of a new unknown mode of war. War in space. At the same time a quiet professional voice inside him gave grudging praise. Clever bastards, this voice said, the Cosmos 2112 was one of the recently launched satellites they had not been able to categorize. It had been camouflaged well. He had convinced himself that it was, after all, a recon satellite. A working laser! Well, they tipped their hand there, might be some profit to be had, anyway. Aloud to Deloach he said, 'Why would they pick on FireEye? Because it's our latest?'
'Well,' Deloach looked chagrined, 'we decided to have a quick look at the Novorossiisk after all.'
Isaacs leaned forward intently. 'We?' But he already knew.
'Yes, uh, Kevin and I got to talking after the meeting with the Del yesterday morning. No one seemed to have any ideas, so we thought it couldn't hurt to at least take a look. I had an orbit change worked up to minimize manoeuvring fuel and we slid the orbit a little.'
And afterwards, thought Isaacs, it would have slid to a station over Tomsk. That underhanded son-of-a- bitch!
'So you manoeuvred over towards the Med,' said Isaacs in a biting tone, 'and the Russians chose to regard that as an aggressive act, and they raised the ante out of sight by blowing FireEye out of the sky with a laser we
