“It doesn’t make sense to you, Jon, and it doesn’t make sense to me, but it made sense to the Stalinists. Remember the KGB barrage battalions that would follow Soviet Army units into battle. Their mission tasking wasn’t to shoot at the enemy, but at any Soviet soldiers reluctant to die for the glory of the Workers’ Revolution. If it was a matter of state security they wouldn’t have even blinked.”
“But what the hell were they trying to hide?”
“Speaking frankly, I’ve been scared to think about it…Hello, what have we here?”
She knelt down and picked up something from beside the logbook. Smith saw that it was a man’s wallet. With her flashlight tucked awkwardly between her cheek and shoulder, Valentina started to leaf through it. Suddenly she stiffened, the flashlight slipping away to bounce on the cavern floor. “My dear God!”
Smith hastily stepped up beside her. “Val, what is it?”
Wordlessly she thrust the wallet into his hands. Balancing the lantern on a boulder top, Smith sank down on one knee and examined its contents.
Money, American money: half a dozen twenties, two fives, and a ten. Worn, well-used bills. A driver’s license, Michigan 1952, issued to an Oscar Olson. A Marquette city library card and a social security card both made out to the same name. A pair of ticket stubs to the AirView Drive-in Theater. A cash register slip for eighty-seven cents from Bromberg’s corner grocery.
“Val, what does this mean?…Val?”
The historian was standing beside him, a blank, totally stunned expression on her face. Suddenly, without speaking, she dropped to her knees beside the body of the aircraft commander, tearing at the front of the long-dead man’s flight suit. Buttons popped as she ripped it open, revealing a black and red checked lumberjack shirt. She clawed furiously at the collar, fighting the resistance of the stiffly frozen corpse. Cloth tore, and she produced the maker’s tag from the back of the neck.
“Montgomery Ward!” She almost threw the tag at Smith. Then she scrambled across the cavern floor and was at the body of the Misha’s political officer, forcing open his parka and flight suit, revealing a civilian suit jacket layered beneath it.
“Sears and Roebuck,” she whispered. “Sears…and…bloody…Roebuck!” Her voice rose to a strangled scream. “Smyslov, you son of a bitch! Where are you?”
“I am here, Professor.”
Smith stood up and turned at the quiet voice, and then he froze. Smyslov had come in behind them. He stood outlined in the glare of the flare Smith had left in the main part of the chamber, the ruddy light reflecting off the leveled Beretta automatic in his hand. “Put up your hands. Both of you. Please do not attempt anything. Other Russian troops will be here shortly.”
“What the hell is this, Major?” Smith demanded, slowly lifting his hands shoulder high.
“A very regrettable situation, Colonel. If you do not resist, you will not be harmed.”
“That’s a lie, Jon,” Valentina said calmly, coming to stand beside Smith, her voice and anger back under control. “The Russians’ alternate agenda is now fully in play. They can’t allow us to leave this cave alive.”
The Beretta’s barrel jerked in her direction. “That’s not…Something can be worked out…alternatives…” Smyslov gritted the words through clenched teeth.
“There are none.” Valentina’s words were understanding, almost kindly. “You know that. The Misha’s political officer made a cock-up of his job. There was too much left for us to find, and you couldn’t stop us from finding it. I know, Gregori, and, given a reference book or two, Colonel Smith could figure it out. We have to die, just like these other poor bastards in this cave had to die. There’s no other way to keep the secret.”
Smyslov didn’t reply.
“Since I can figure it out, how about letting me in on it now?” Smith asked, his eyes fixed on the shadowed features of the Russian.
“Why not indeed?” Valentina replied. “It all leads back to the attack doctrines of the Soviet Long Range Aviation Forces during the early Cold War…”
The gun muzzle elevated. “Keep silent, Professor!”
“There’s no sense in letting the colonel die in ignorance, Gregori.” Valentina’s tone was almost bantering but with a biting edge to it. “After all, you’re going to be putting a bullet through his brain here presently.”
She glanced across at Smith. “Remember, Jon, when I told you how all of the American bomber missions must, perforce, be one-way? The TU-4 Bull just barely had the range to reach targets in the northern states by flying over the Pole, but they didn’t have the fuel to get back again. The aircrews would have to bail out over the United States after dropping their bomb loads.
“With this as a given, the Soviets decided it was a matter of waste not, want not. The America bomber crews received special training. They were taught how to speak idiomatic American English. They were cycled through the KGB’s American town mock-up to adapt them to the nuances of the Western lifestyle, and they were instructed in espionage and sabotage techniques.
“It was intended that the surviving Soviet aircrewmen would merge with the masses of refugees that would be produced in the aftermath of a massive ABC attack on the United States. Once in place, they would spy, spread defeatist propaganda, and conduct sabotage, hastening the day of the theoretical Soviet triumph. Do I have that down properly, Gregori?”
Again there was no reply.
“And the wallet, the civilian clothes?” Smith prompted.
“All part of it, Jon. The KGB were meticulous about such details. The crews would be issued American-manufactured clothing purchased in the United States, real American currency, and superbly forged identification, complete down to the inconsequential little bits and pieces a person would routinely carry in a wallet or a pocket.
“But there was one problem.” Valentina’s voice flowed on, almost hypnotically. “The raving paranoia that raged inside Stalinist Russia. The party and high presidium knew that a fair proportion of their populace, including members of their most elite military formations, desired nothing more out of life than a suit of civilian clothes, a set of documents identifying them as anything other than a Soviet citizen, and a clean run at an unguarded border.
“While the Soviets might have loaded a live bioagent aboard a long-range bomber for a simple training mission, they would never have given the flight crew their American identity kits. The potential for defection would have been viewed as too great.”
Valentina’s hand stabbed at the wallet still held in Smith’s hand. “The clothing and identification would only have been issued for an actual combat operation. The real thing!”
Smith found himself staring at the wallet in his hand. “Are you saying what I think you are, Val?”
“Oh, I am, Jon.” Her voice began to lift, growing more piercing. “This is why the Russians were so bloody shaken over the discovery of that old bomber. That’s why their official schizophrenia over the whole subject. The damn anthrax has been a secondary concern for them all along. What they’ve really been worried about is our learning the truth! That the Misha 124 was a pathfinder aircraft for an all-out strategic bombing attack on the United States using nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons! The Pearl Harbor of World War Three!”
She let the words hang in the chill air of the cavern for a moment; then she tilted her head and addressed Smyslov directly. “How about it, Gregori? I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.”
They could hear Smyslov’s breath rasp, the mist it produced swirling around his head in the back glow of the flare. “Nations make mistakes, Professor. Yours has made its mistakes. We have made ours, greater perhaps than some. Can you blame us for trying to hide the fact that we almost destroyed the world?”