Boris nodded agreement, though he was genuinely puzzled. "I'm sorry, but I thought you were referring to Project Arrow, the Ob and Yenisei rivers diversion scheme. I don't see how that can have anything to do with national security. Its purpose is to provide much needed arable land in western Siberia. It has no military significance at all, so far as I'm aware."
"I was using the term in its widest sense, of course," Malankov said, a fraction too hurriedly, and for a fleeting moment actually looked into Boris's eyes, as if anxious about something. "We must never forget that national security embraces all aspects of political and economic activity. We are defending our heritage and culture, our way of life, against Western subversion. Plentiful food for our people is a powerful weapon of war. Men cannot fight on empty bellies."
Boris smelled a very large rat. This chunk of party dogma was Malankov's clumsy attempt at a cover-up. In his haste and ignorance he's exposed precisely that which he was striving to conceal. Yet Boris was still puzzled: How did Project Arrow fit into a military context? In what way exactly?
"I understand that," he said gravely, his mind working furiously. "But I should point out that my letter contained nothing that the Americans don't already know. The Western press has reported the scheme since its inception in the mid-seventies."
"Speculation, Professor--not technical detail," Malankov said sternly. "They're certainly not aware how near we are to achieving our goal. Your letter hinted that your work on the project will soon be over."
"And so it will. In a month's time I shall be sixty-four, and I intend to retire from the service next year. Hence the reference to my work coming to an end."
Malankov was plainly stumped. He cleared his throat in several stages, eyes focused on the safe middle distance. "I see. Yes, well, that would explain it. I understand now."
"Good, I'm glad that you do, comrade," Boris murmured, loading the last word with half-a-dozen shades of meaning: condescending, impatient, threatening--as if to say "I am Professor Boris Vladimir Stanovnik, one of this country's leading experts in microbiology, and you, Malankov, whatever status you might have attained, remain the incompetent, shifty, sniveling lab assistant with bitten nails and bad breath."
It was a psychological technique that Malankov himself might have used, given the opportunity, and it worked to good effect.
Boris rose to his feet, looming large in the tiny bare room, and it seemed that Malankov shrank perceptibly, a petty government official behind a cheap desk.
"Was there anything else? I realize you have to make these tedious and time-wasting inquiries."
Malankov was staring straight ahead at the third button on Boris's overcoat. "No, nothing. Thank you for coming in to see me, comrade."
The satisfaction Boris felt didn't last long. As he left the gray granite building in Dzerzhinsky Square he was thinking how wise it had been to send two letters, one to Scripps, the other to Cheryl's home address. It appeared to have worked: The KGB had intercepted one and missed the other. Unless they were cleverer than he gave them credit for and had withheld the information, hoping to trap him.
In any case, both had been cryptically worded--he had casually inquired how Cheryl was progressing with her father's work and expressed the hope that "there haven't been any new factors, such as the warming of polar currents, to exacerbate the Precambrian condition."
By this he wished to alert her to a possibility that had been worrying him for some time. The rather terrifying hypothesis that diverting the Ob and Yenisei rivers away from the Arctic Basin would bring about a general warming of the polar ocean. As phytoplankton thrived best in colder waters, this new factor could accelerate the effect caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide, killing off the phytoplankton more rapidly than predicted--possibly within a decade of the scheme being implemented.
Now these fears had been given a perplexing twist by what Malankov had let slip. Boris might have overlooked the reference to "national security" had not the weasel been at such pains to explain it away . . . but explain what away exactly? The diversion scheme as a strategic weapon? How would it work? By deliberately tampering with the global climate?
That didn't make sense--not that Boris could see, anyway--because its effects would be felt in Russia just as much as in the hated, feared, subversive West. So what
Secretary of Defense Thomas J. Lebasse was dying of cancer of the stomach, and he knew it. At best the doctors had given him two years, which was a year longer than he had given himself. His body disgusted him; it stank of putrefaction, the sweetish sickly odor of death.
