Atomsk: A Novel of Suspense

XIII. THE UTILIZATION CHAMBER

And in the Cossack's hand, its muzzle looking as big as a railway-tunnel mouth, there was a huge automatic pistol.

Dugan calmly put a finger to his lips for silence and finished putting Hundeshausen into bed. Doing this meant turning his back on the gun. It was ticklish, but he did it.

When he stood erect and turned around, the gun was closer. "You're a brave man," said the Cossack.

Dugan smiled, "You mean, putting Hundeshausen to bed? Anyone could have done it."

"You are not Russian," said the Cossack.

"No, of course not," said Dugan simply.

The Cossack looked him up and down. "You go first, gospodin," he said, using the old Czarist word for sir. "We'll talk in my room. And then we'll telephone from there. I think."

Dugan obeyed. When he reached the door, the Cossack said, "Left."

Dugan went to the left down the corridor. He was thinking that he did not even know that the man was a Cossack. He had just labeled him that at first glance. It was mighty little to go on — a towel around his middle, a strange tunnel in Atomsk, and the most precious military information in the world tucked away inside his head. It was a matter of duty, as well as pleasure, to get that head back to Tokyo now. He wanted to start talking with the Cossack; talking would get him out of anything — almost. But the man behind did not even commit the elementary mistake of putting his gun muzzle against Dugan's back, so that Dugan could estimate his position. All he did was to march along very quietly.

Pale dim-red bulbs illuminated each thirty-odd feet of the corridor. So far as Dugan could see, the corridor extended indefinitely forward in a very slight curve. He began trying to make up a sketch map of the dormitory corridor in relation to the hill outside, but again he found weariness creeping up on him. He swayed against the corridor wall and had to put out a hand to right himself.

"Easy now," said the pursuer. "Nothing suspicious or you get it in the back."

"Yes, comrade," said Dugan, "but I—"

"Don't comrade me and don't but me either. I know where you came from."

"Where?" asked Dugan.

"You know," said the tall man. But Dugan didn't.

Dugan had planned, in the shower room, that he would take Hundeshausen to his room, keep Hundeshausen awake long enough to pump all available information out of him, then gag him and tie him up and — equipped with sightseeing papers comprising Hundeshausen's identity card and passes — go out for a night's tour of Atomsk. Then he had thought of simply putting Hundeshausen under the bed, out of sight, and going to sleep in Hundeshausen's bed himself, for an hour or two. He could count on himself to awaken, and could have made the trip with greater physical strength and intellectual alertness. Finally, when Hundeshausen gave him the four names, he had wanted only to check the names back with documents or with further talk from Hundeshausen, and then to escape. But all these plans had gone awry. The Cossack was making plans. And he looked as if he could.

The tall man said, "Left."

They entered room 146.

The tall man said to Dugan, "What is your section number?"

"Section number?"

"You know your section number," said the Russian crossly. "Don't you understand Russian? Deine Verwendung-skammernummer," he added in German. "Your Utilization Chamber Number."

Utilization Chamber — that's what I'm supposed to be in, thought Dugan. A show of obstinacy would not be out of place. He kept silent.

The Russian said, "Don't you understand? If you don't tell me, I shall shoot you. Just for the example of it. I can get your number by picking up this telephone. But you've got to tell me yourself."

"Why?" asked Dugan.

"Because I order you to. I'll get your section overseer to come here and we will find out how you got into the quarters for the scientists. You're a brave man. I watched you back there. But don't you realize that your number is already up? We treat you guinea pigs pretty well. You all volunteered for it out of the northern camps. What do you want — a free ticket to Potsdam?"

"No," said Dugan. He measured this distance between himself and the Russian but did not betray his thought by the movement of his eyes.

"Well, then, your number?"

Dugan stayed quiet.

"I will shoot you. Now." The Russian's voice had authority but no heat. Dugan doubted he would do it — not that second.

Dugan stayed quiet.

"You want to die easy with a bullet?"

Dugan nodded.

"I tell you, you're a fool. They let you guinea pigs out easy with morphine or cocaine. It's a real treat."

Dugan said, "I don't want it." He was getting information by the split second.

The Russian hoisted one side of his rump on the table, tightened his grip on the gun, and said, "If you don't tell me your number, I'll shoot you now. Way, way down in the belly, where it will hurt a lot before you die." Suddenly he roared at Dugan, "Number!"

"Thirty-seven, rear section," said Dugan at random. The Russian stared at him. "There's no such number. Are you sure you're a guinea pig?"

Dugan said nothing until he felt that the man's amazement had probably produced adrenal effects. Then he spoke, quietly: "Call and find out. Who are you?"

"I'm the overseer of scientists but — Shut up! Who are you?" It was not a question but a cry. The man had been driven into excitement at last.

Not for nothing was Dugan a Hachi-dan of Kodokan, an Eighth-level Expert in the outstanding Japanese school of wrestling. His foot came up at what seemed an impossible angle. It rose with tremendous speed. The gun jumped out of the Russian's hand and clattered loudly against the wall. But it didn't go off. The Russian started to get into position for a fight, but Dugan was on top of him before he could move more than a few centimeters. Both men dropped their towels and stood for a mortal moment like antique Greek wrestlers.

Dugan pulled the head back and back and back. The Russian had been a brave man, but it was all over with him now. On an impulse, Dugan put his mouth close to the man's ear, hoping he might be conscious. The Russian was entitled to know why he died.

"My name," said Major Dugan, "is Colonel Andrew Smith, and I am a British spy."

Then he made the fourth Avoidable Twist, against which the Japanese wrestlers had warned him. He saw the Russian's eyes roll in understanding of the message just before the neck snapped.

Dugan had to hold on to the table to stay awake. He was fainting with anti-climactic fatigue himself. There was no clock in the room. He did not know what time it was. He had to get away. But the first passerby would shout the alarm or shoot to kill.

He threw the naked body into a cot and covered it with a blanket. The head lolled until he made a depression for it in the pillow. The feet kicked in a postmortal spasm. Dugan felt rueful. The enemy had been a brave man. But the men "under the brightness" at Hiroshima had been brave, too, and, if false and terrible dawns were to be kept from America, Dugan himself had to get back with the message. He finished tightening the covers. Only then did he dare close the door.

This was risky. Perhaps the overseer was known for never closing doors. Dugan grabbed the trousers and blouse off the chair and put them on. He got his feet into the calf-height boots but could not get them all the way on. Disgustedly he threw the boots aside and put on a pair of slippers. He put the gun in his pocket, looked around the room for identification papers, found none (Where had the fellow kept them?), took a small leatherette bound book instead. It bore the printed inscription SAMOE TAINOE SVEDENIE, so it was pretty obviously the equivalent of American "Top Secret."

Then, gun in hand, he set off down the corridor. There had been no switch with which to turn the light off or — if there were — he had not found it. Nor had there been anything to eat in the room.

He met one man in the darkest part of the corridor and said to him pleasantly, "We ought to have a fine day tomorrow—"

"Hope so," said the sleepy stranger, going right along. At Hundeshausen's room Dugan went in. He closed the door boldly and went over to the closet. Hundeshausen had too many clothes. They looked as though they would fit better than the Russian's. Poor Hundeshausen — he, or somebody else, would be charged with the murder anyhow. Dugan changed into a complete new set of clothes, including a good warm leather jacket into which his newly acquired gun fitted neatly. Even Hundeshausen's shoes were a pretty good fit.

Best of all, he found food hidden behind a pile of scientific pamphlets on the top shelf. There were several cans of Japanese crab meat, a can of excellent Soviet powdered coffee — of a brand which Dugan had tasted before, on his way to Atomsk — a box of English-type biscuits, half consumed, and several inches of liverwurst. Dugan buttoned his jacket and stuffed it all in.

Then he woke Hundeshausen up.

The German was irritable and incoherent, but he recognized Dugan as his friend. After repeated pinching of his shoulder, he asked:

"What you want?"

"I need my information to get to work. Glottwitz at the Elizabetheum Institute always said, 'Come prepared'."

"You're a fool. A swine. An etcetera."

"Just tell me, for tomorrow, which pile do I work on?"

"Which? Which? Which? There's only one."

"But how do I find it? I've got to go on duty before you wake up and I can't ask you then."

Hundeshausen cursed him. Dugan repeated the question: "How do I find it?"

Hundeshausen got up and with automatic sleeper's movements he lifted his pillow, took out a key, crossed to the table, unlocked a drawer, and mussed up the papers with his hand. "There it is," he said, "all of it." He smiled knowingly. "Even the Kuznets Syllabus with the deleted section 204."

"What about it?" asked Dugan, pinching the man's shoulder.

"They used his method after they liquidated him, so they had to suppress his manual. People like you can't look at it."

Dugan, turning papers, came to a printed map. In large letters across the top, where a title might have been, there was the instruction in Russian and German: "EACH COPY NUMBERED. RETURN THIS COPY BEFORE LEAVING YOUR TUNNEL." The map was correct, he knew.

Detailed, it was the same map which he had seen in Swanson's office while Sarah stood beside him.

It was the map of Atomsk itself.

Hundeshausen stared at the map. Annoyedly he mumbled, "Use your own verfluchtete map. You can't have mine."

"Just a question or two, good friend. Then I can find my way to where I belong."

Hundeshausen muttered, "Hurry up."

"Number Eighteen, where is it?" Dugan was thinking of the valve Irina mentioned.

"Turn right, fifth or sixth entrance down."

"And where do we assemble tomorrow if we get leave for May Day?"

"You won't," said Hundeshausen.

Dugan did not argue; he just pressed the point, "Where would they assemble — the ones who get leave?"

"In front of the Materials Section. That's right through Number Eighteen, except that you can't go through the hill, of course. And you can't go there, anyway. You don't have a Series Three Special Pass. Anyhow, give me my map back. Don't bother me, you Fascist. All you new people are the same." He lurched and reached for the map.

Dugan chopped his hand against the side of Hundeshausen's neck and knocked him unconscious. He put the German back to bed.

Then he unpacked the groceries which he had stuffed into the leather jacket. He tucked his blouse inside his belt and shoved the papers underneath it, up against his chest. Then, with great effort, he got the jacket halfbuttoned over the swollen blouse and rammed the foodstuff in by main force. He picked up the Russian's clothes, which he had worn from the other room. He crept down the corridor, gun in hand. He held it by the barrel. It was a lot quieter to kill that way, if he had to. He met no one.

In the shower room he threw the Russian's clothes on the floor and stepped back to the corridor and out to the tunnel mouth. A man came in. Dugan shrank aside and the man started to pass. Then the stranger made a mistake. He stopped and turned to look at Dugan more carefully. Dugan smashed the gun against the man's jaw and he crumpled.

Dugan saw that the man fell limply and silently. Dugan did not have time to do more than drag the body across the walk, over beyond the edge of darkness. He almost fell down himself in making the effort.

He raced up the steps, scooped under the roots of the bush for his miniature-tool kit which he had left on the way in.

The kit included a single syrette for an emergency injection. It was a strange compound, made up according to the audacious and rather dangerous standards of prewar Japanese pharmacy. Dugan had tried it only once before. It had given him far more awakeness and strength than he could possibly use, and had left him feeling keyed up and restless for days thereafter. But this time he had no hesitation.

He broke the end of the protective plastic rod, found a vein in his wrist, jabbed, thrust home.

Even as he administered the medicine to himself, he felt another wave of the intolerable fatigue and nausea sweeping over him. He tried to say to himself, "Major Dugan, you're not a young man." But there was no time here, no time now, for reconsideration. He reeled down the steps like a drunken man, blind with fatigue and dizzy with the initial impact of the stimulating drugs.

The reeling probably saved his life.

He collided heavily with a Soviet officer. The other man, whose uniform could be felt — heavy, warm, and epauletted — as Dugan grabbed his shoulder, stepped back with an oath and said:

"You drunken fool! Get back to your quarters! What are you looking for—?"

Thick-voiced Dugan replied, "Number Eighteen. I'm a plumber, comrade general, a plumber, got to fix a leak in the sprinkler. Need tools."

The colonel shook Dugan, holding him tightly by the upper arms, rocking him back and forth vigorously until Dugan's head almost snapped off. The violent motion made the drug strike home and in a single surging thrill of well-being Dugan felt himself come back to normal: physical, mental normal. He was ready again to fight.

But he kept his voice thick until the colonel, with surprising practical sense, walked him back to Number Eighteen, showed him the tool locker, and then stood over him, waiting for Dugan to plumb away at his plumbing. In a low, sheepish, but more sober voice Dugan said to the colonel:

"Comrade Colonel, I'm better now. It was just three little drinks. And such good vodka, too. If the Comrade Colonel will excuse me, I will rest a minute and will then do my work and I will go back to quarters and I will not go outside any more unless I have to and I hope the Colonel will not report it because tomorrow is May Day and I am usually a very careful man and I am even a member of the Communist Party and if the Colonel will wait a minute until we can go over to where there is a bright light I will show the Comrade Colonel my Communist Party membership card and my Trades Union card and my passes and all—"

While talking, Dugan was eyeing the man's position. If the colonel did not go away soon, he would have to be chopped down with the side of a hand — a process which, to be effective, meant killing in about one case out of ten. Dugan had no wish to kill human beings unnecessarily, but he was prepared to drop the colonel to the ground and, with the Russian stranger unconscious, to stuff him into the tool locker. Dugan himself had already gotten a large pair of parallel-jaw pliers, an excellent German monkey wrench, and a short length of steel which he could use for a crowbar. Best of all, he had found a hooded flashlight, where the beam could be controlled by shutters with a little fingertip control on the side. It was an aperture just like the aperture openings on the cheap, indestructible tough little Brownie Kodaks of his childhood.

The colonel looked down at Dugan and the assortment of tools. With contemptuous kindliness he said: "All right, get your work done. But get back to quarters and sleep off that jag before you get in trouble. I haven't got the time to admire your papers… Good night, comrade."

"Good night, Comrade Colonel," said Dugan humbly. The colonel left, disappearing rapidly into the night.

Dugan took stock.

First, he had obtained much of the necessary information concerning Atomsk. He had confirmed its location. By catching the reference to the "Kuznets Syllabus, Section 204," he had validated the information for which Generalissimo Chiang's spy had paid the price of a slow and horrible death. "Gauze nets of Silly Beast, suction 2 or 4" — what a waste of effort and life! He had gotten the four invaluable place names. Let somebody else go looking into them. Why didn't the United States farm out some of these jobs to the Turks or the French or other nations?

Second, he had found out that there was only one pile. Hundeshausen's papers, stowed away inside his shirt, ought to keep the scientific boys busy for a while. There was no use trying to memorize stuff like that. Later on, he would have to face the problem of how to get the papers all the way back to Washington. At the moment it looked as though it would be just as easy to deposit them on the edge of the crater Tycho on the moon; but time had a wonderful capacity of softening hard problems. Things got easier the more you thought about them. These papers were trash — waste — nothing at all — less than nothing at all, until Dugan got out of Atomsk, alive.

But he could not go out, having come thus far, without affirming his personal power over these people. They too were enemies. The vision of his Aleut ancestors flashed across his mind, their fur-rimmed faces gleaming as they drove their kayaks into surf. His mother's clan had been primitive aristocrats — fish-spearing nobles of the North Pacific, living between volcanoes and the rain. How had the Russians treated them? The Czarist Russian trader-officials had brought piety and a bad life to the islands before America took title in 1867. The Russian commonwealth, which had promised freedom and the common power for a little while after 1917, had been able to deliver to mankind nothing better than the Old Slave State in new and more deadly form. Russia had no place for him, Major Michael A. Dugan. Russia was merely one more stretch on the long tedious road leading nowhere. It would be good to let the Russians know that he had passed.

And therewith his mission would be fulfilled — the mission which bridged worlds, connecting the warm human welcoming world of Sarah Lomax to the mute brute danger of these silent but living hills. He could strip the mask from Atomsk by letting the Russians know he had come. He could fling back at them the assertion of his own personality, and at the same time fulfill the precise letter of his orders. He saw the orders again, as they lay on the mat beside his place in the roast-eel restaurant; he remembered that he had not dared look up because Sarah's unhappy face awaited him. Now, perhaps, he could finish Atomsk and when he next saw Sarah, he could see her without his mission throwing a crystal-hard pane of misunderstanding between them.

Atomsk might die or not die; but Atomsk would know, in time, that outside malignancy had hurt it. The camouflage and the silence would be made vain, just as much as if he had entered into the underground town with a roar of gunfire and glare of Very lights. One task would finish the job.

The third, last task, was the valve. If Irina knew what she was talking about, in her chatter to Aleksandr on the path, the valve was near entrance 18. But were those her exact words?

Dugan, hunched over his accumulated loads like a big but intelligent gorilla, tried to remember himself, hours ago on the tree limb, listening to the lovers down below. The words faded from blankness to brightness, by a curious reverse process, such as they use in the movies, and he saw them imprinted on the black screen of his own mind:

"…nad vocyemnadtsadtou…" In any language, that meant "over the Eighteenth" or "above Number Eighteen." But the question now was, how much upness did it take to signify the Russian word nad? Dawn was coming and there was not too much time to waste.

Furthermore, he did not know when the effects of the drug would wear off and let his temporarily suppressed fatigue come pouring back all over him, leaving him as limp as an old-fashioned rag doll.

Resolutely he seized the bushes beside the tunnel entrance and began to climb. It was difficult with one hand holding the tools, but he made it. There was probably an easier way to get up there, but he did not have time to search it out. When he was fifteen to twenty feet above the tunnel door, someone stopped in the doorway below him. Dugan froze into almost total immobility. The person waited for two or three minutes, which seemed like short eternities to Dugan. Then he moved away.

Dugan resumed his climbing. He was lucky.

About forty feet above the tunnel entrance, he came to a small latticed hut. It was locked with a formidable padlock.

Dugan twisted the flashlight head to its smallest aperture and with the resulting needle beam he looked over the little building. Though small and in the complete shadow of the trees, it was thoroughly camouflaged — brown with olive-drab splotches all over it. The whole roof was hinged, with the padlock on the downward side of the slope. The padlock was supplemented by a wire to which a soft lead seal had been attached. Dugan shrugged and said to himself,

"Okay, okay, if they want to make it hard on that side…"

He tapped the pins out of the hinges on the far side, using the steel rod from his portable telescope for the purpose. It ruined the instrument, but that was a small price. The blows, delivered by the German monkey wrench with his handkerchief wrapped around it, did not make too much noise. The pins came fairly easily. Dugan lifted the roof of the little building.

It was the size of a very small dog-house.

Inside there was the one big valve — something like an oversize faucet. At its base there was a steel arrow and three small wooden plates. Dugan flashed his needle beam on them. The left one said: RIVER OVERFLOW. The middle one said, quite simply: BOTH. The right-hand one said: SEPTIC TANKS ONLY. The needle now pointed straight at RIVER OVERFLOW.

Dugan wondered for a moment. Would it be better to put all the radioactive sewage into the tanks, thus flooding Atomsk with its own waste? Or should he shift the valve over to BOTH, so that the Russians would not discover their predicament until the next routine inspection of the valve?

He had an even better idea.

Using his steel rod, he shifted the big ring-topped valve until the needle pointed to BOTH. Then, holding the ring-handle straight in line with BOTH, he beat the indicator out of line until it pointed back to its original position on RIVER OVERFLOW. He rubbed his hand in the dust, spit in his palm, and used the film of thin mud to smudge over the evidence of the valve's having been touched.

Then he put the roof back on the little dog-house, knocked the pins back into position, stood erect, and surveyed his work with satisfaction. If Irina's father, old Dekanosov, was right, the people of the Atomnii Gorod should have plenty on their minds by summertime. The Atomic City would be busy trying to survive instead of thinking up weapons to drop on a lot of poor harmless Aleuts and Irishmen, not to mention Americans in general.

Time was getting mighty short. What should he do with the tools?

"The model Socialist worker," said Dugan to himself in Russian, "always takes good care of his tools. He realizes that the Supreme Genius, Stalin, expects the monkey wrenches to be kept out of the pigsty and the electric drills to be removed from the latrine."

He climbed back down to the entrance of Number Eighteen. He felt like a bosomy matriarch with the papers inside the shirt, the groceries between shirt and jacket, the pistol in jacket pocket, and the tools in his arms on front of all the rest. But he put the tools back in the locker where they belonged.

He stood in the doorway, wondering where to go next. He was tempted to follow Number Eighteen tunnel as far as it went. Perhaps he could come out on the other side of the mountain — or perhaps he could raise a little Cain. But, more likely, he would run into a control point and be sent back to his Verwendungskammer, 'Utilization Chamber'. The name was a deterrent. He came out of the tunnel and started climbing up the slope.

A voice hailed him from below, "Who goes there? Stop, or I'll shoot!"

And Dugan heard the sound, more expressive than any Esperanto, of a rifle bolt being shot back into position.