"You have no self, no ego, no identity, and therefore death has no sting. It is the gateway to everlasting life."
A gateway they were about to enter.
These twelve knew what was expected of them. They had been specially chosen to undertake the final sacred ritual, a ritual unknown to the thousands above in the chambers and galleries and cells who went on with their lives in blissful ignorance.
Bhumi Bhap gave the instruction, with his blessing, and each of the twelve took hold of one of the cast-iron wheels that controlled the stopcocks. The greased wheels moved easily. Fumes began to seep into the chamber, forced upward by the immense pressure of oil below. The candles guttered in the heavy, dense, choking vapor. Two went out. A third died. Then the vapor ignited and a fire storm billowed upward through the shafts of the mountain like a gigantic blowtorch.
Fed by the lake, the fire raced along passageways devouring everything in its path. It burst through doors into the tiny cells where people were sleeping, talking, meditating, and consumed every living thing in a single scorching blast.
Within a few minutes the temperature inside the mountain had reached several hundred degrees. Iron girders supporting the tunnels and chambers turned white and writhed in the heat. The hewn walls ran with molten threads of silver and copper. And still the fire raged on, ever more fiercely, feeding greedily on the reservoir of oil.
The temperature continued to rise. Rocks became incandescent. Cracks appeared and split into jagged fissures. The fire surged onward and upward and broke through the mountain's crust, blasting the rocky mantle high into the storm-darkened sky and spouting angry flames and smoke from a hundred pores.
Two miles away, in the leading truck laboring up the crooked trail, it seemed to Major Coogan that a volcano was erupting. The ground shook and rocks showered down from out of the sky. He stared blank-eyed through the windshield at the mountain with its halo of orange fire and curling black smoke outlined against the massing storm clouds.
It was an image of the end of the world, an image he would never forget till his dying day.
IV
2013
21
In the opinion of Col. Gavril Burdovsky, the woman was perfect.
He had chosen her himself and therefore had cause to feel smug and self-congratulatory. He was also aroused by her--one of the reasons he thought her ideally suited for the assignment. Unfortunately this left him with a gnawing ache that could only be assuaged by Natassya Pavlovitch's smooth firm body. The fact that he was an obese, balding man of fifty-seven and she a beautiful young woman of twenty-four seemed to him a trivial incompatibility.
"I trust you have everything you require, comrade," said the colonel, sitting on the corner of the desk and swinging a short bulbous leg in an attempt to make this final briefing casual, friendly--and dare he hope? --intimate. "The black silk underwear is satisfactory?" There was a slight tremor in his voice at the mention of this item.
"Yes. Thank you, sir." Natassya Pavlovitch was brisk, impersonal. She had been too well trained to display emotion in front of a superior.
Colonel Burdovsky nodded and stroked his pencil-thin moustache. The moustache was real and yet looked artificial, as if a strip of black paper had been stuck to his broad waxlike face with its hanging jowls.
"Good. Excellent," murmured Burdovsky, for a moment lost in wistful contemplation of the pale curve of her neck at the point where it disappeared into the enticing shadow beneath the collar of her dark-gray woolen suit. That the rest of her should be so soft and warm and pliable . . .
He cleared his throat and said gruffly, "You have all you need. Excellent."
"I do have a question, if the colonel will permit."
"Yes, of course." Burdovsky slid down awkwardly from the desk, straightened the tail flap of his uniform with an abrupt tug, and strolled behind her chair, hands clasped over his plump buttocks.
Natassya looked straight ahead, speaking to the desk. "Do we have 110 intelligence at all, Colonel, regarding Zone Four? The reports give no indication whatsoever of the research being carried out there."
"There are a number of speculations but nothing definite. The Americans thought they were being very clever in allowing our scientific people to inspect their facilities at Starbuck Island. Of course it was to satisfy us that the research was solely in connection with the Final Solution program."
He came to stand close behind her, breathing in her perfume.
