The undertaking, code-named “Vulcan’s Forge,” had its genesis on Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946, when the United States conducted the first underwater nuclear test as part of Operation Crossroads. It took four years, until 1950, for the data from that test to reach Department 7, stolen by a female agent who seduced a lab technician at the White Sands Testing Grounds in New Mexico, where the volumes of information and tons of samples were warehoused. Pytor Borodin became involved due to a happenstance comment from a colleague, who mentioned that a hitherto unknown alloy had been created by the Bikini explosion. Borodin quickly became obsessed, going so far as to request a clandestine submarine reconnaissance to Bikini in late 1951 in order to collect additional samples of sand, water, and debris from the seventy-four ships the U.S. intentionally sank as part of the test.
For eighteen additional months, Borodin labored at his task until he was able to present a far-reaching plan to Boris Ulinev. It seemed tailor-made for the new direction Scientific Operations was to take.
The opening phase of Vulcan’s Forge called for the detonation of a nuclear weapon deep under the Pacific Ocean. Because all atomic materials were under the direct control of the army, Ulinev had his team secretly build one. This alone took more than a year. Department 7 also established a large dummy corporation and secreted money in various accounts in Europe and Asia. All in all, Vulcan’s Forge wasn’t ready to commence until the spring of 1954.
Once the opening gambit had been played, the only thing left to do was wait for nature to take her course. For forty years the waiting dragged by, through the height of the Cold War, through the opening of Eastern Europe, and through the collapse of the Soviet Union herself. During this time, Boris Ulinev died and was replaced, and his replacement was himself replaced, and so on, until Ivan Kerikov reigned as the head of a much diminished department. Of all the plots and projects launched by Ulinev in the 1950s, only Vulcan’s Forge remained viable.
Unfortunately, its raison d’etre had vanished. The mighty struggle between communism and capitalism was all but over. The massive arms race during the 1980s had brought the Soviet Union to her economic knees. Though gamely trying to keep pace in conventional and nuclear forces, Reagan’s gamble on Star Wars technology had chimed the death knell for Russia. The Soviet Union had no response to SDI but capitulation. America paid for the arms buildup with a four-year recession, but Russia paid with her very existence.
Bit by bit, Russia began withdrawing into herself. Aid to Cuba was slowed to a trickle, then shut off completely. Troops were pulled from the fifty-year occupation of Berlin. Aeroflot suspended most international flights. Within Russia, programs and departments began to vanish. The state-run diamond mines at Aikhal in central Siberia were surreptitiously sold to a London consortium linked to the Consolidated Selling System. The Blackjack bomber, the MIG-29 Fulcrum, and Russia’s aircraft carrier program were all shelved. Officers began committing suicide because they were worth more to their families dead than alive. The staff of the KGB was cut by more than fifty percent.
Bold projects like Vulcan’s Forge had no place in the New World Order. During his first four years as head of Scientific Operations, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kerikov had guarded and nurtured Vulcan’s Forge for pure patriotism and duty. But now, the very fabric of what he believed had torn through, and Kerikov started to protect the project from the auditors for simple greed. He planned to steal Vulcan’s Forge for himself in a coup as brilliant as the original plan laid down by Pytor Borodin forty years before.
Time, once so abundant, had run incredibly short for Kerikov. The Bangkok Accords had seemed a providential gift when first proposed, but now it had become necessary to delay them at a substantial cost in bribe money paid to the ambassador of Taiwan and to Gennady Perchenko and Perchenko’s superior in the Foreign Office.
Department 7 could ill afford the huge payoffs. Kerikov had been able to dodge the auditors for months, but now they were here, in his office, asking questions that he was unwilling to answer.
“Ah, here we are,” the ferret said, pulling a sheaf of notes from his briefcase. “It seems that your department paid for the refitting of a refrigeration ship called the
Kerikov felt a pressure building behind his eyes, a force that threatened to blow apart his entire head. Security concerning the refit of the
Kerikov opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk. “I happen to have something here that is very pertinent to that.”
The accountant leaned forward in his chair, eyes bright with anticipation.
There was only one round in the Makarov semiautomatic pistol, the one round Kerikov had planned to use on himself if the need ever arose. It blew a perfectly round hole through the accountant’s forehead, then splattered the contents of his skull onto the wall and door behind his slumping body.
Kerikov rummaged through his desk until he found a flimsy cardboard box of ammunition. He loaded one round into the pistol and slipped it back into the drawer. He pressed the intercom button on his black telephone.
“Yes, Mr. Kerikov,” his secretary answered.
“There has been a slight change in my plans, Anna.” Kerikov lit another cigarette. “Inform Evad Lurbud that I want him in Cairo as soon as possible; I believe he is still at my dacha. Also, I want you to get me the earliest flight to Bangkok. I’ll travel on the Johann Kreiger passport.”
“What about the KGB accountant?” Anna asked. Kerikov assumed from her tone that she had heard the shot.
“He’ll be resting here for a while. As soon as you’ve reached Lurbud and booked my flight, leave the building. When you’re questioned, tell them that you took an early lunch and know nothing. Good luck, Anna. And good- bye.”
“I understand.” If she was disappointed that their four-year affair was ending, she gave no indication.
Kerikov took some time going through the secure files in his wall safe, pulling out a select few that might one day prove useful or profitable. He knew after he boarded the flight to Bangkok, he’d never again return to Russia.
The Pacific
Valery Borodin bolted upright in his bed, a muffled gasp clutched in the base of his throat. His lean body was slick with nervous sweat, his dark hair plastered to his neat head. His chest heaved and his heart pounded as he fought to regain control of himself.
It took nearly two minutes to realize he was no longer the frightened six-year-old boy of his dream, being told by faceless uniformed men that his father had died in a laboratory accident. He was a man now, a respected scientist in his own right. Yet the haunting sobs of his mother still lingered in the quiet of his cabin aboard the motor ship
That dream had tortured him since the day those events actually occurred. It woke him most nights, but he had always remained silent, because his mother was grieving in the room next to his in the small Kiev apartment that the Department of Scientific Operations had allowed them to retain as recompense after the accident.
To Valery, that had been the worst, stifling the scream that always rushed through him, suppressing it, crushing it so he would not disturb his mother. To Russians, grief was something to be worn openly, passionately, yet he could not express it. He did not believe that his pain was worth encroaching on his mother’s. Years later, retelling this story always evoked sympathy from the listener, but never understanding. Somehow he got the feeling that people thought there was something wrong with him, some flaw.
It wasn’t until last year, in Mozambique, that Valery found someone who finally understood, an American girl who was herself a victim of losing a parent young.
He swung his legs off the narrow bunk of his private cabin. Had the Soviet government not developed a keen interest in his mind, Valery surely would have found a career in the ballet. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on his frame; muscled plane blended with supple joint in the perfect symmetry that comes not from hours spent in
