Countdown

PROLOGUE

Night or day-it did not matter three hundred feet beneath the desert.

All was in darkness. A man dressed in Israeli battle fatigues crawled slowly through an air duct a few feet at a time. He moved cautiously lest he make a noise or stumble upon one of the many down shafts that plunged a hundred feet deeper into the bedrock. He was sweating profusely even though the air streaming past the back of his head was cool, almost cold. To be caught here, of all places, would mean a certain and probably unpleasant death. The man who’d been known as Benjamin Rothstein to his superiors for the past eighteen months wiped his brow with the back of his hand and continued. Fifty feet farther he began to finally see the first diffuse glimmerings of light, dull and red; flashing, he realized as he crawled closer to its source. He stopped when he could make out the square shape of the source, and he held his breath to listen. The only sounds, however, were the gentle rushing of the airconditioning and the low-pitched rumble of some machinery. After a few moments he continued, coming at length to a louvered opening in the air duct. It was three in the morning. No one would be here. Nevertheless he hesitated at the louvers for a full ten minutes, listening for anything, a stray scrap of conversation, a footfall, a clink of metal against metal, the vault door opening or closing. But there was nothing. Rothstein, whose real name was Vladimir Ivanovich Tsarev, Vladi to his friends at the Frunze Naval Academy, took a small penlight from his pocket and flashed it once on the legend marked above the louvered opening: I-A-7. He managed a tight smile. He was actually here at the main vault. Ten incoming air vents kept the cavern cool, the air fresh. It was called negative laminar airflow. Air was pumped into the room and any air that escaped could do so only through a complex system of scrubbers, washers, and detectors. It was akin to the air system in a medical operating theater, only in reverse.

In an operating room no germs could be allowed to enter. Here nothing could be allowed to escape. The irony was not lost on Tsarev. From a small tool kit he selected a specially designed screwdriver, and working slowly, he carefully and silently backed out the eight screws holding the louvered panel in place. He was sweating even harder by the time he was finished, and his heart hammered in his chest. His mouth was so dry he found that it was almost impossible to swallow. Again he stopped for a long time to listen, but there were no sounds, no alarms, only the flashing red light within the vault. “Your job will be difficult and certainly very dangerous, Vladi, do you understand this completely”

Baranov had told him what seemed like a thousand years ago. Yes, Comrade General” he replied.

“We have given you the knowledge and the training, and we will provide you with an ironclad background, but the rest will be up to you”

Baranov smiled, and at that moment Tsarev knew that he loved this man as he had loved his own father. He would do anything for him. “I will make you proud, Comrade General”

“Yes” Baranov had said, rising from behind his desk at the Lubyanka Center. “You will make all of the Rodina proud” Baranov was neither old nor young, he was ageless-a legend and an institution in the KGB.

Tsarev, whom he called his little boy with the Jewish eyes, on the other hand, was very young and eager; like a little puppy at times, anxious and ready to please. Getting to Israel had been no problem, nor had enlisting in the Army been difficult. But getting this job had not been easy. The Israeli Military Intelligence security background investigation was thorough and had taken nearly a year to complete. But he was here. Baranov had provided him with a wonderful background.

“Ironclad” as he had promised. Three hundred feet above, his guard post was deserted. He had figured he had three hours maximum to find the correct air shaft, descend, enter the vault, take his photographs, and then return to duty. Nearly two hours of that time had already elapsed.

“Move, Vladi” he told himself. There were no other alternatives now.

With great care he shoved the louvered panel out into the vault, nearly dropping it in the process, then crawled through the rectangular opening, dropping nearly eight feet onto the bare concrete floor. Laying the louvered panel aside, he glanced up at the opening he’d just come through. Not an impossible distance to reach, he decided. Then he turned around. The vault was long and narrow; perhaps two hundred feet by thirty, with a cast concrete ceiling only ten feet above the floor. The space was more filled than he’d been led to believe it would be. The simple fact of where he was and what he was seeing took his breath away; at first with awe and then a slowly mounting fear and even anger. The flashing red light over the main vault door, through which a narrow-gauge set of railroad tracks ran, was irritating. Why was it flashing? What did it mean? The tracks ran the entire length of the vault. Along the walls were massively constructed steel racks on which gray metal cylinders, three feet in diameter and five feet long, were stacked. Even in the dim flashing light Tsarev could see there had to be at least two hundred of them. They’d never guessed. Four or five, if any; perhaps a dozen. No more. But hundreds? The information was staggering. He cautiously stepped across the tracks and stared toward the massive door, the red light flashing implacably, almost hypnotically. Something that somehow seemed out of place lay in a heap on the floor in front of the door. Tsarev took a tentative step forward, then stopped when he realized what was lying there. It was a man in white coveralls, face down on the concrete floor, his right arm outstretched as if he’d been trying to reach for something. Had there been an accident? Had the technician been trying to summon help? Again Tsarev’s eyes rose to the flashing light. It was an alarm. There had been an accident here. A blind panic rose up inside his chest, and he backed up a step. “Many things can go wrong, my dear little Vladi”

Baranov had said. “Yes, Comrade General” This time they were walking on a cold, desolate plain outside of the city of Kiev. Chernobyl was only a few miles to the north. Tsarev’s training had been completed and the director of the KGB had come down to speak with him personally. It was a great honor, but Tsarev was frightened. “What is of supreme importance is that you find out this one little thing for us, and get the information back to me. If you get photographs that would be splendid.

If, on the other hand, you can only get a serial number, just one, that would be wonderful. Or, if all else fails, if you merely get to the place, see it with your own eyes, confirm its existence and its contents and get that information back to me, you will not have failed. Do you understand this”

“What if it is not there, Comrade General” Tsarev had asked. It had taken him the better part of an hour to summon up the courage to ask that one question. Baranov shook his head and laughed. “It’s there, my boy, oh, it’s there” Tsarev had not asked the next logical question: Then why send me to find it? Now he wished he had. Now he wished he had asked a lot of questions. Something had gone wrong, the alarm had been raised and soon someone would be coming here to investigate. There was no time for photographs … in any event he understood with a sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach that photographs would be worthless.

Nor was there time even for a single serial number. He backed up another step when he spotted the technician’s cart of tools and test equipment three bays down from the vault door. One of the cylinders was open, exposing its insides. Something had fallen out, smashing on the floor.

It looked to him like mercury, or perhaps a small puddle of thick silver paint. His eyes swung wildly around the cavern. He’d come this far for Baranov, he wasn’t going to simply lay himself down and die like the technician. It was even possible, he thought, that whatever had killed the man would only do so within a few feet. The man had been next to the spill. He had probably dropped it himself. Tsarev turned and hurried back to the opening in the vault wall. With fumbling fingers he hurriedly reinserted the eight screws back into the louvered panel and then tossed it up through the opening. He was slightly sick at his stomach, the implications of which he didn’t want to think too hard and too long about. Not now.

He had to get out of this place. Security would be tight above because of this alarm. If he was found missing from his post there would be questions for which he would have no good answers. It took him three tries before he was able to leap high enough on the wall to grasp the opening and pull himself back up into the duct, slightly cutting the ring finger of his right hand in the process. But he was too frightened, too intent on what he was going to have to do to realize that he had left a smudge of blood on the concrete wall just below the duct opening, and again inside the air duct itself and on the back of the louvered panel. He managed to pull the panel back into place and, holding it with one hand, used his special tool with the other to refasten the screws.

When he was finally finished he allowed himself just a moment to catch his breath. The nausea was steadily increasing in his gut., Nerves, Vladihe mumbled to himself” Nothing more You’re scared shitless, that’s all” He turned himself around in the narrow air duct and started back the way he had come, moving as swiftly, yet as noiselessly as he possibly could. Now he was feeling not only the sickness, and a sense of dread, but he was feeling claustrophobic. He had been underground too long. He had to get out. Fuck your mother, but he didn’t like this. The main airconditioning duct ran roughly east and west, the secondary lines branching off it. At three points the intake shaft ran straight up to a secured room on the surface from where fresh air was pulled in. It was the second of these shafts that was fitted with metal rungs down which Tsarev had come. His duty post was fifty feet away at the end of the intake building. Reaching the first shaft he nearly fell in his haste, and he was so weak with fear that it took him several minutes to calm himself enough to continue to the second shaft and start up.

Above he could see light, and now he could hear the sounds of sirens. He had to stop often in his climb. The distance up was equivalent to a thirty-story building, and he was afraid of heights. His fingers were numb and greasy with sweat on the ladder rungs. The arches of his feet ached. Near the top he thought he heard someone calling his name, but he wasn’t sure and it was not repeated. If they had come to his post and found it deserted they would be looking for him. What would he say?

Two figures dressed in thick white environment suits, big hoods over their heads, oxygen bottles strapped to their backs, stepped off the transport elevator and through the first door of the laminar lock. When the outer door was closed, they cycled the air pressure, which took a half a minute. When the pressure was equalized they opened the inner lock and stepped out into the main loading and washdown antechamber. The door to the main vault was fifty feet down the broad, low-ceilinged corridor, a red alarm light flashing above it. This part of the chamber was clean. They hurried down the corridor where the one in the lead put down the piece of electronic equipment he’d been carrying and opened a metal panel beside the massive steel and lead door. He flipped a switch and above the door a television screen came to life with a wavering, imperfect picture. Both men could see the downed technician and beyond him the accident that had caused the alarm. Because of the absolute secrecy of this place there were no monitor leads to the top side.

Nothing that could be discovered by a snoopy referee from the International Regulatory Commission. Security was tight, but their response time to accidents such as these was of necessity very slow.

“Poor bastard” Lev Potok said. “Dead” the other figure, Abraham Liebowitz, asked, his voice coming over the intercom units built into their suits. Potok was manipulating the camera controls to scan the entire vault. “Looks like it”

“It shouldn’t have happened that fast. He should have had time to get out. The levels don’t seem that high in there”

“High enough” Potok said. “Be my guess that he inhaled the fumes.

Probably burned out his lungs” Potok continued the scan. “Anything else”

“Doesn’t look like it. I’ll do a spot wash and we’ll get him out of there. You’d better call for some help” Liebowitz turned and went back through the laminar chamber, and telephoned from the elevator while Potok cycled the vault door. It took half a minute for the four-foot-thick door to ponderously swing open, and he stepped inside.

The technician lay on his face, his right arm outstretched. He’d gotten this far, and with the last of his strength had pressed the alarm button, and then his fingers must have brushed the vault light control, because the chamber was in darkness except for the flashing light. Potok flipped on the main overhead lights and then bent down over the technician and carefully turned the man over on his back. His name tag read ASHER. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and his tongue was swollen and black and filled his entire mouth. Potok had been correct in his assessment of what had happened here. Asher had made a mistake and had paid with his life for it, though it still wasn’t clear to Potok what the man had been doing down here in the first place. From a locker beside the main door he took out a containment kit and gingerly approached the spill. He sprayed a foam over the entire spill area, then laid three layers of lead film over that. It would do until the cleanup crew arrived. Potok went back to Asher’s body. He looked down at the man. He’d seen plenty of battle casualties in his forty-one years. This one looked no better or worse than many. It was war, he told himself grimly. What had Asher been doing down here?

Potok was ostensibly an Emergency Management Team leader. But he also held the rank of major in Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service.

He was a suspicious man by nature, and very good at his job of seeing anomalies, glitches in the fabric of human endeavor, the little out-of-place details that escaped most observers. He turned after a moment and walked along the tracks between the storage racks. There was no evidence that anything else had been tampered with. Asher was here, had begun what might turn out to be a routine service check, and had made his fatal mistake. But it had not been a routine check. Not at three o’clock in the morning. And not alone. Potok took out a powerful flashlight from his suit pocket and switched it on. As he walked slowly along the tracks he shined the light over the racks, and the units they contained, as well as the floor and walls beyond. Nothing. Everything except the spill site was clean. At the end of the long chamber he started back, shining his light on the opposite racks and wall. He stopped halfway, his light flashing on one of the intake air ducts. A moment later the four suited figures of the cleanup team appeared at the vault door. Liebowitz, who also worked for Mossad, was right behind them. Potok motioned for him. Liebowitz said something to the cleanup technicians, and hurried down the tracks. Potok switched off his suit intercom and Liebowitz did the same. Leaning close so that their hoods were touching, they could talk to each other without anyone overhearing their conversation. “What’s the word topside” Potok asked. “No one knew he was down here other than security where he signed in”

“No one questioned him”

“He’s one of the senior techs on the maintenance crew”

“But no maintenance was scheduled”

“No” Liebowitz glanced back at Asher’s body. “Whatever he was doing, he was on his own. Sabotage”

“If that was the case he was damned sloppy about it” Potok said thoughtfully. “And he got what was coming to him” Liebowitz said — dad harshly. His mother, father, and two sisters had been killed on the West Bank four years ago. “I want you to get back up top and find out about this one. What he was doing here, and why he was allowed to wander around on his own in the middle of the night “But don’t make waves”

Liebowitz said. It was one of Potok’s favorite sayings. “Make waves”

Potok said. They separated and switched on their suit intercoms.

Liebowitz nodded but said nothing. He started back toward the vault door. Potok turned and shined his light on the racks, and again the beam flashed across the louvered air duct. His mouth went suddenly dry, and his heart skipped a beat. “Liebowitz” he shouted, but before the other man could reply, Potok raced between the racks to the wall just below the vent. He shined his flashlight on it. Blood. God in heaven, it was blood. Shining his light down the wall he could see scuff marks where someone had evidently jumped for the opening and levered himself up by the toes of his boots. He could even see where the unknown intruder had laid the louvered panel in the dust against the wall. Liebowitz was behind him. “What is it” This time Potok didn’t bother turning off his suit intercom. There was no time now for fine details. “Asher had help”

“‘“at” Potok shined the light on the scuff marks and on the blood beneath the louvered panel. “Someone has been here. And they’ve gotten out through the incoming air system”

“God …”

“Seal the facility!

Do it now”

“Where the hell have you been” Sergeant Joshua Gurion shouted as Tsarev came out of the darkness around one of the air vents. The alarms had been turned off. The sergeant seemed more irritated than angry or suspicious.

“Checking the air vents, Sergeant” Tsarev said. “The alarm.

“Well, you weren’t supposed to leave your post”

“Yes, sir”

Sergeant Gurion looked beyond Tsarev to the shadows. “See anything”

“No, sir. Everything looks fine” This time the sergeant looked critically at him. “You sure as hell don’t, Rothstein. What’s the matter with you”

“I think I’m a little sick” Tsarev said, and it wasn’t a lie. He felt terrible. He could feel the sweat on his brow and his uniform was stained dark with it.

“There’s nothing to be worried about” Sergeant Gurion said not unkindly. For some reason he had taken a liking to Tsarev from the beginning. “I know what you’re thinking”

“It’s that, but I still don’t feel good, Sergeant” Tsarev said. The man was a fool, but at this moment he was a ticket out of here.

“All right, get yourself over to sick bay. I’ll arrange for your replacement”

“Yes, sir”

Sergeant Gurion patted him on the arm. “You’ll be okay. “What was it, Sergeant? The alarm”

“Nothing” the sergeant said. “And get your hand looked at, you’ve cut it on something” Tsarev looked at his hand and the dried blood. “Yes, sir, he mumbled.

Outside, Tsarev got in his jeep and crossed the huge facility that was bathed in strong lights night and day. Instead of heading over to the barracks area, however, he drove directly to one of the back gates where he turned in his security badge and left the compound.

The night was extremely dark. Tsarev kept looking in his rearview mirror at the receding lights of the plant. His foot on the gas pedal was shaking, at times so uncontrollably that he had difficulty maintaining a constant speed. He was very sick to his stomach, and two miles from the facility he threw up down the front of his fatigue blouse.

He stopped the jeep and got out where he was sick again at the side of the road. When he was finished he looked back toward the facility. It sounded to him as if he was hearing another siren. But then the sound faded. Climbing weakly back behind the wheel he forced himself to drive toward the town of En Gedi eight miles away. When he didn’t show up at sick bay they would come looking for him. “He was behind the air vents” the sergeant would say. Twice more Tsarev was sick, but he did not bother to stop until he passed an Esso gas station a mile outside of the town. The station was closed at this hour of the morning, but there would almost certainly be a telephone inside. He brought the jeep to a stop, made a U-turn on the narrow highway, and drove back to the station. Taking his Uzi submachine gun he stumbled across the driveway past the pumps and without hesitation shot out the lock in the front door with a quick burst. Inside, he dragged himself across the office where he found the telephone. He picked it up, got a dial tone, and called his contact number in Jerusalem. It was answered on the first ring. “It is there. Hundreds of them. It is there” he said. “Have you photographs” a man’s voice asked calmly. “No time”

“A serial number”

“No! Haven’t you heard me” Tsarev cried. “It’s there. Hundreds of them.

More than we ever suspected”

“Yes, and now listen to me An army truck screeched to a halt outside, and immediately a dozen soldiers sprang out of the back. Tsarev crashed down the telephone and rushed to the door. He never felt the shots that killed him.