'Do you know, I am charged with keeping safe weapons that could destroy the world. Each year, I am underground eighty, maybe one hundred days. Since I came here, I don't even want to know how many years that is from my wife. And for this, they pay me five hundred dollars a month.' He smiled. 'For such a request, I think a thousand dollars a minute is not enough.'
Benjamin smiled.
'And five thousand dollars a minute,' he said. 'Is that enough?'
CHAPTER 48
As one followed the main road north out of Uzhur, past the endless expanses of pine trees, about forty kilometers outside of the town one came to a fork in the road: to the left the road was asphalt and continued north to Achinsk; to the right the road was barely discernable and headed off into the menacing, treeless expanses of windswept gray hills, some of them rising in steep, almost impossible angles. If one was brave or foolish enough to take the fork to the right, after another five kilometers even the dirt road soon transformed into frozen marshland. To anyone looking down from on high, it would seem as if the road had simply disappeared into the landscape.
But what wasn't apparent to any such skyborne observer were the tracks that ran on through the now sparsely wooded marshland: two parallel snakes of concrete, each a meter wide and just a few inches beneath the bog's surface. Parts of the tracks were covered in snow, other parts in dust, but if one looked closely enough, one could make out the slight concavity in the surface that marked their path.
After two kilometers of following these tracks, one encountered another road, this one of earth packed under the weight of a dozen steamrollers, then carefully combed with graders to erase its surface perfection. This last leg of one's journey lasted another five kilometers. By the time one reached the end of that road that wasn't a road, one was clearly in the center of nowhere.
It was very early in the morning. The sun hadn't risen yet, though there was a pale light along the horizon to the east. Boris's jeep was grinding slowly along. All three of them were drinking coffee, trying to stave off the bitter cold in the air-especially as the heater in Boris's jeep didn't work.
Next to Benjamin in the backseat, the barrel of a hunting rifle Boris had insisted on bringing fell against Benjamin's thigh. He carefully pushed it aside, wondering what possible good Boris thought it would do them.
Then he remembered the Makarov in his parka pocket. Just as nonsensically, Natalya had insisted he take it along. 'Just in case.' Just in case what? he'd wanted to ask. In case I'm attacked by a bear?
She had been cold and distant ever since they arrived at Boris's cabin. Boris had kindly given his small bedroom over to them, but when Benjamin turned in for the night, Natalya stayed up talking with Boris in the living room.
'We are going to, how do you call it, catch up on old times?' But there was something in her manner that didn't strike Benjamin as nostalgic.
After he'd turned in, he heard the murmur of their voices for some time, and once or twice it seemed Natalya's voice had risen in anger. But eventually she'd come to bed, snuggled against Benjamin, holding him fiercely.
But when he turned to her, she put a hand to his face.
'I do not wish to make love. Not now. Please, just hold me.' The look in her eyes was intense… as though she feared Benjamin might be snatched away from her any minute.
And now, in the jeep, she was silent, staring at the bleak, fantastic landscape. Benjamin could only assume she was thinking of what lay ahead, wondering if Vasily would keep his word, would stay bought.
They continued winding their way through the low hills. Benjamin had told Boris he could direct him to the area of silo thirty-four from Vasily's instructions-an offer that clearly insulted Boris.
'Everybody knows where damn holes are,' Boris said. 'No secrets around here.'
The trees had completely given out now. Surrounding them was a vast, barren wasteland, interrupted only by the many small hills bordering the road. Natalya told Benjamin that some of these hills concealed ventilation shafts, even small huts. She had no idea whether any of them were still used, but from what Vasily had told them, they wouldn't need to worry about being observed-not, that is, until they were within half a mile of shakhta thirty- four.
The agreement they had finally worked out with Vasily was this: at precisely 6:00 A.M., the control switches for the alarms, fence, mines, and cameras around shakhta thirty-four would all experience a temporary glitch, a glitch that would last exactly twenty minutes. No more. In that time, Benjamin had to cross the one hundred meters of mined ground, climb the fence, open the hatch to the service well, complete his 'looking,' and then retrace his steps. After that… Benjamin had nodded, remembering General Voroshilov's story about the bear reduced to smoking fur.
Finally, they reached the spot where Vasily had told them to leave their vehicle, behind a low hill that shielded the silo from view. After this point, sensors in the ground would pick up the weight of a truck or jeep, but not that of a single human being.
Benjamin had already decided that he would be that single human being.
They stood by the jeep, shivering in the fierce wind even in their parkas, finishing their coffee and waiting for the hands on their watches to be diametrically opposed. Those hands now seemed to crawl, as though time itself had slowed in this alien landscape.
Finally, when their watches read 5:58, Natalya took Benjamin in her arms and pressed against him. She looked up into his face. The wind was forcing tears from her eyes-or at least Benjamin thought it was the wind.
'Please,' she said, 'be careful.' She kissed him, her lips suddenly warm against his mouth.
Benjamin looked into her eyes-those blue-green eyes that seemed even brighter in the near-dawn darkness.
'Is time,' Boris said. 'You should go.'
Giving Natalya a last kiss on the forehead, Benjamin turned and started off. He went quickly down the road, away from the jeep, around the hill.
Now he could see the silo area. It was absolutely flat, obviously processed by huge equipment to the uniformity of a tabletop. Perhaps one hundred meters away, he could see a chain-link fence, about three meters high, and beyond the fence he could make out the flat, regular shapes of concrete structures.
He stopped briefly at the end of the road. Vasily had told them this was where the minefield began. He made to put one foot beyond the road-then stopped, looked again at his watch. It was 6:01. If Vasily had switched off the mines when they agreed, then it was now safe to proceed; if he hadn't… there was nothing Benjamin could do about it.
He ran.
He heard the thumping of his feet against the hard earth and, where there were patches of snow, his boots crunched through the frosted surface. He could feel his breath now, was surprised he was already feeling the exertion. The fence seemed to recede rather than come closer; it was farther away than he'd thought.
And then surprisingly he was at the fence. If the current was still on, one touch would send thousands of volts through his gloves and into his body. There would be a flash, a shower of sparks, and he would be just another 'smoking bear' clutching the fence in a death grip.
He thought of throwing something against the fence, wasn't sure that would even work, then realized there wasn't time, anyway.
He grabbed the fence.
He felt only the cold of the metal through the fingers of his gloves.
He began to climb, hand over hand, working the toes of his boots into the gaps in the chain link. He reached the top, pulled himself upright, threw one leg and then the other over, and then jumped down.
Now he could make out the structures more clearly. There were a few small metal boxes; probably, he thought, containing the alarms and other devices Vasily had switched off.
Directly ahead was his target: a rectangular concrete apron perhaps fifty meters long and fifteen wide. And in
