'Okay now,' Benjamin interrupted him. 'That's where I just cannot go along with this. Think of those billions of dollars-'
'Exactly,' said Wolfe, looking him straight in the eye. 'Think of those billions. And then think of who stands to lose if they stop flowing.'
Benjamin nodded silently. 'Still, to do all this for money…'
'And power,' interjected Anton. 'To some, is more important than money.'
'I suppose,' said Benjamin. 'But there's a mystery neither money nor power explains. Why did Leverotov shoot himself back in 1968?'
'Once he saw numbers in missiles,' Nikolai said, pointing to the journal, 'he knew everything. He understood fake war. Was his fake war.'
'His last entries,' said Wolfe sadly, 'were about how his commitment to defending the Motherland now seemed like some immense farce. And now that he knew the truth, that the world was being held hostage to an enormous lie, he was afraid that the KGB team investigating the missile drill glitch would learn that he knew. So, he decided to hide the evidence, and then eliminate the only key to that evidence: himself.'
'I think it is tragic,' said Natalya, speaking for the first time. 'He must have felt entirely betrayed.'
'But had some little hope,' offered Nikolai. 'That I would understand, would find his journal, and somehow let truth be known. But I didn't. Until now, forty years too late.'
CHAPTER 53
Benjamin stood up and made his way to the coffeepot on the stove. He thought maybe some caffeine would make this extraordinary revelation clearer, or perhaps make it go away. Maybe he was still unconscious, dreaming it all.
Wolfe stood up, came over to him.
'We've had a little more time to adjust to this… discovery than you have, Benjamin,' he said. 'Remember what you told me about the Indian wars? That you thought this secret group of Puritans had used them, perhaps even provoked them, to gain power and hold on to it?' Benjamin nodded but didn't say anything. 'Well, this is the same idea, only with nuclear missiles instead of bows and arrows.'
Wolfe shook his head. 'There's still so much we don't know. But I assume once Arthur felt Fletcher's research was showing results, he brought him to the Foundation so he could control those results. Perhaps he even thought they could use that research to better hide any cracks in their forty-year-old cover-up. That's only one of the questions I plan on asking him.' He looked thoughtful for a moment.
'I also assume it wasn't Arthur that authorized Fletcher's murder. I think that was our rash friend Hauser's doing, when Fletcher asked to see what he thought was the original diary at the Morris Estate. Anton told me what you discovered at the Library of Congress. What with so much of the Foundation's funding coming from the Morrises, that sort of embarrassment might have put the kibosh on this contract with the State Department even after all this time. The Foundation couldn't have that.' He sighed, as though suddenly feeling the weight of so much betrayal and revelation. 'But once it was done, what better way to still discover whatever other cracks might exist in their cover-up than bringing me in to investigate? And once I brought my findings to Arthur, well then…'
'They'd eliminate you?'
Wolfe didn't answer.
'I still don't understand,' said Benjamin. 'Forty years of fear? Of scaring the whole world with this nightmare of a nuclear Armageddon? An Armageddon that was a fake? Why not just admit the fallacy of the whole thing? Why not just negotiate?'
'Ah, Benjamin, you idealist you. They didn't do this out of any fondness for the Soviets. They did it because the only alternative was detente. Real detente. They needed an enemy with nuclear teeth, but one that couldn't really bite.'
Natalya came over to the counter, put her empty plate in the sink. 'Lenin once said that 'even the Devil is an acceptable ally if it means staying in power,' ' she said.
Benjamin shook his head. 'But all those people…'
'Who kept doing exactly what they would have done anyway,' said Wolfe. 'As far as anyone outside the small group of conspirators knew, it was real. On both sides. They thought they were working for the Cause.'
Wolfe looked out the window into the apparently infinite darkness outside.
'And when you think about it, Benjamin, if there hadn't been such a conspiracy, the two political structures probably would have acted much the same way. Each needed an archenemy to keep their respective citizenries frightened and in line.' He placed a hand on Benjamin's shoulder. 'In the final analysis, it almost doesn't matter whether there was a conspiracy or not. We all got the cold war we needed.'
Then Benjamin had another thought.
'But all of this, everything you've discovered, it still doesn't prove that the Foundation is involved, only Arthur and Hauser.'
'As to that…,' began Wolfe.
At that moment, there was a small pop, and a tiny hole appeared in the window in front of them. At the same instant, the oil lamp on the table shattered. The spilled oil was immediately ignited by the heat of the lamp, and a small river of flame spread toward the papers on the table.
'The journal!' Wolfe shouted.
Then several things happened simultaneously: Wolfe crouched down behind the counter, pulling Benjamin with him; there was a second pop and the window shattered. Something struck the fireplace, sending out slivers of stone. Natalya threw one of the coats over the flames from the lamp even as Nikolai reached for another of the oil lamps and pulled it down from the table.
'The other lamps,' hissed Wolfe. 'Put them out!'
There was yet another crash, this time of some of the vodka bottles on the shelf. Clear liquid flew from the shattered bottles onto the floor, where it touched some of the burning oil. The vodka ignited with a wavering blue flame, and soon there were two fires: one on the table, and a second spreading across the floor.
Now all of them were crouched on the floor. Anton was yanking journal pages from the table, beating them on the floor to extinguish their burning edges; Natalya was trying to smother the fire on the floor; and Nikolai had reached the other lamps and turned down their flame, so now the only light was from the fireplace and the burning oil and alcohol.
'Is anyone hit?' asked Wolfe.
'Bastards don't need to hit us,' said Nikolai from the floor. 'Just burn house down.'
'Or burn book,' said Anton. He was sitting on the floor next to the fireplace, Leverotov's journal clutched to his chest.
'How many?' said Wolfe to Nikolai.
'One, maybe two,' answered Nikolai. 'But they probably have night scopes.'
'Who the hell is out there?' asked Benjamin.
'I would guess some old friends of Anton's from 12 Directorate,' Wolfe said. 'They've got as much a stake in keeping this secret as the Foundation. Maybe more.' He was looking around the cabin. Then he spotted Boris's gun rack. 'If only there was a way out of here other than the front door.'
'There is,' said Nikolai. 'In bathroom, hole in floor, little tunnel. For when militia come.'
'All right,' Wolfe said. 'Benjamin, you and Natalya and Anton, stay put. And stay low.'
He crawled across the floor to the gun rack. Reaching up, he grabbed one of the rifles by the stock, pulled it down from the rack. Even as he did so, another bullet struck the gun rack, splintering the stock of the remaining rifle. Wolfe slid the rifle across the floor to Nikolai. He pulled his automatic pistol out of his parka, began crawling toward the bathroom.
'Come on, Nikolai. If they think we're still inside, perhaps we can sneak around them.'
Nikolai crawled from the table, and both men moved slowly across the floor and into the bathroom. There was the sound of a section of the flooring being removed, and through the open doorway Benjamin could see the two men drop down through the floor to the ground beneath.
