proper, and there he got his second massive shock.
He expected on the inside just more of what was on the outside: more special ops pros all talking in hushed tones over detailed maps, discussing their “assault,” or whatever their term was. What he got was something out of Mark Twain: two country cronies sitting hunched together, their faces lost in shadow, swapping tall tales amid the clouds of weed gas and the smell of stale tobacco that brought a pain to your forehead. The butts, in fact, heaped like a funeral pyre in the cheap ashtray between the men. This was Mission Central? This was HQ? It felt like the general store.
“I remember,” he heard one of them saying, “I remember. The world ran on coal in those days.”
“Yep, by golly, and a sight it was, them days. We had over two hundred boys working in the Number Six hole, and, by damn, this was the center of civilization. Not likes he be now, with just a few hangers-on scruffin’ by. Everybody had a big black car and everybody had a job, Depression or no. Burkittsville was coal and coal was Burkittsville, by damn. I remember it like it was yesterday, not fifty years ago.”
Then one of the fogies looked up, and Peter caught a quick glimpse of his face in the light, even as he felt himself being appraised and then dispensed with rather magisterially. Involuntarily, he swallowed. He recognized the guy.
It had to be the famous or infamous Dick Puller, exactly the kind of nut case you could trust Defense to pull out of the files to take over in an unconventional situation. Even Peter knew of Dick Puller, his many moments of glory in far-off paddies and glades, and his one moment of frozen terror at Desert One.
What Peter saw was a sinewy man in his late fifties with a face that looked as if it were hacked from ancient cotton canvas. He had a tight sheen of short iron-gray hair, almost stubble. He had a flat little hyphen of a mouth. Peter saw also that he had large, veiny hands — strong hands, worker’s hands — and ropy arms. He had a linebacker’s body, lacking the vanity of precisely engineered muscles but possessing — radiating, in fact — a sense of extraordinary strength. He had eyes like an ayatollah: hard, black little stones that glittered. He was in old jungle fatigues, and had a Montagnard bracelet around his wrist. He wore jungle boots. Yes, goddammit, the faded stencil on his ample chest bore the legend PULLER.
“‘Course that damn cave-in closed it all down,” said the geezer. “A black day for Frederick County, Mr. Puller, if I do say so. The womenfolk wore widder’s weeds for a year Tore they moved away.”
“Dr. Thiokol,” Dick Puller suddenly said, not ever having been introduced formally to Peter, “Mr. Brady here tells me something very interesting about your installation. Something I doubt you even know.”
Peter was ready for this.
“That it’s built a thousand feet above the ruins of an old coal mine? I knew that. We had all the old documents. We took test borings. The mine has been sealed since ’thirty-four, when it collapsed. Our tests indicated no presence of geological instability. That mine is history, Colonel Puller, in case you had some delusion of going in there as a way of getting into the installation.”
Dick’s eyes stayed flat and dark as he answered Peter. “But our reports say that original old undeveloped Titan hole was left open to the elements since the late fifties. Lots of rain in thirty years, right, Mr. Brady?”
“Rains a lot in these parts, sometimes like a son of a bitch,” said Mr. Brady. He turned, his leathery old face locking on Peter’s. “Son, you must know about a mess of things, but I have to wonder what you know about coal. You open a coal seam to a mess of rainwater over a period of years, you get some damned interesting formations down through a mountain. Coal is
Peter looked at him.
Then he looked at Dick Puller.
“You get tunnels, Dr. Thiokol,” said Dick Puller. “You get tunnels.”
Gregor beat a hasty retreat from the embassy to the nearest source of booze, which was Capitol Liquors, three blocks away at L and Vermont, a harshly lit joint with a pretentious wine display for yuppie Washington, as if yuppies wandered into such a place. He went in, fought through the listless crowd of unemployed Negroes who passed the time here, and bought a pint of American vodka (he could not afford Russian) for $3.95. Outside, he opened it quickly, threw down a quick hit.
Ah! His oldest and dearest friend, the one who never let him down. It tasted of wood smoke and fire and bracing winter snows. It belted him like a two by four between the eyes. He filled with instant love. The cars whirling up the street, the American automobiles, endless and gaudy, he loved them. Klimov, little rat Klimov, he loved him. Pashin, Klimov’s powerful sponsor, he loved him.
“To Pashin,” Gregor announced to a man standing next to him, “a hero for our times.”
“You said it, Jack,” said the man, bringing the muzzle of a bottle of Ripple in a paper bag up to his lips, drinking. “Git
Fortified, Gregor lurched ahead. The sun was bright. It hurt his eyes. He put on his sunglasses, cheap things from the drugstore designed to look expensive. He felt much better now. He felt in control. He looked at his watch. He still had some time before his little job.
Gregor wandered around for a few minutes before he finally found what he was looking for, a public phone. You always call from a public phone. That was the oldest rule. In Russia you may be sure the public phones are tapped, but in America you were sure they were not.
Gregor found a quarter, called the number. A woman answered, a new voice, but he asked for Miss Shroyer. There was some fumbling, and finally she came on the phone.
“This is the Sears computer,” he said. “Your order is ready. It’s”—he squinted, reading the number of the phone—“it’s 555-0233. Have a nice day. This is the Sears—”
The phone went dead. He stood, talking into it anyway, holding the button down, seeing her leave her desk in the Crowell Office Building, pick up her coat, nonchalantly mosey down to the drinking fountain, take a long drink, duck into the ladies’ room, her fatness imposing, her huge back and bent shoulders like a cape, her personality bright and phony, to the pay phone in the next corridor.
The instrument against which he leaned produced a squawk surprising Gregor in his reverie, but he freed the receiver button.
“Gregor, good God! The chances you take! Suppose they are watching you? I told you, Gregor, never,
“Molly, oh, Molly!” sobbed Gregor. “God, darling, your voice, it sounds so wonderful.”
“You fat bastard, you’ve been drinking already, I can tell. Your words are all mushed together.”
“Molly, listen, please, yes, I had a little taste, that’s all—”
“Gregor, don’t be sloppy, you know how I detest it when you’re sloppy!”
“Molly, please, I had no other place to turn. This Klimov, he’s really after me this time. He wants me. It’s worse than ever. God, darling, they are going to send me back.”
“Gregor, you pulled this routine months back. It’s where we started.”
Gregor sobbed. The sound of his pain and his fright must have been amplified by the wires of the phone, for it seemed to release in Molly something his implorings had failed to touch: her pity. He sensed her compassion suddenly: he sensed her coming to him. He pressed on.
“Please, please, darling. Don’t fail me. You’ve got to get me something. Something soon. Something big. Something I can give them. Not just your chicken-shit minutes and the gossip. They can get that from the
“Jesus, you bastard,” she said. There was almost a laugh in her voice. “You’re so far beyond shame, you’re into squalor.”
“Please,” he begged again.
“Call me in a few days.”
“In a few days I’ll be on my way to Latvia or some awful place.”
“There is no Latvia, Gweggy.”
“That’s what I mean. Please, Molly. Oh, please, by tonight. I’ll call you at four.”
“You’re really pushing your luck.”
“Oh, Molly, I knew I could count on you.”
“I can’t — what? Oh, yes, sure.” This last was mumbled to an intruder. In seconds she was back, breathless. “Christ, I have to go, baby doll, they’re calling all of us for something.”
