Revelation

31 Instability

Petrosian smiled sadly. 'The diaries were useless, you see. They had no information which could have helped Stalin to develop the Super. But I told my treacherous friend Rosenblum otherwise and he accepted them in exchange for a new identity for me. They were my passport to freedom. Thank you for these copies. They will be wonderful reading for me.'

Romella asked, 'Why did you suppress your discovery? It could have made you rich.'

'And conspicuous. Anyway, rich to what purpose? We are happy. We are comfortable. We have everything we need.'

Findhorn chipped in. 'It could have brought you scientific honours.'

Petrosian almost laughed. 'Ah! So I am talking to a scientist! Einstein once told me he wished he'd been a woodcutter. I came to understand what he meant. We have never been happier than when Lev Petrosian died in that air crash, and Leonard Peterson the antiquarian bookseller married Lisa Rosen the tutor of German. The key to our happiness has lain in our anonymity.' He looked at them, suddenly wary. 'Which brings me to the question of why you are here.'

Romella tried to say it kindly, but the words were harsh. 'We may have to take away that key.'

Lisa came in with a large coffee percolator. She had a slight stoop. She placed it on the tray and said, 'Have you seen the table mats, dear?'

Petrosian said, 'Lisa, I wonder if you would leave us for a while?'

She looked at him, suddenly alert, and then at the visitors. 'What is wrong?'

'Nothing,' said Petrosian.

'Then why are you looking like that?'

'It's nothing to worry about, Mrs Peterson,' Romella lied. Lisa left, trailing scepticism and worry.

'I think I understand. Your purpose is blackmail.' Petrosian's accent was acquiring a Germanic tinge. 'You wish to extort the secret of the process from me in exchange for your silence.'

Findhorn poured coffee into delicate white cups. 'The secret is already in someone else's hands. Milk?'

'No! That is terrible! But how can that be?'

There was no avoiding it. Findhorn said, 'The diaries led some people to your brother Anastas.'

'Anastas? He wasn't harmed?'

'No,' Findhorn lied. 'I saw him briefly myself.'

Petrosian's face showed relief. 'And how is he?'

'He was well when I left him. Still working, I think. He has a little Skoda and he smokes a pipe. We shared a very good Armenian cognac. Unfortunately his house was robbed, and documents taken.'

Petrosian seemed to be talking half to himself. 'My vanity has created this problem. It was such a wonderful discovery, but I should have strangled it at birth. First I tried to patent my discovery. Only when they turned it down did I realize I was up against huge commercial interests. I even began to feel that my life was at risk.'

Petrosian's mind was momentarily elsewhere. Then he continued, 'Then I realized that the process had uncertainties, you see, it might just possibly be dangerous. I therefore decided to hide it against the day when it would be examined by a community more knowledgeable and enlightened than that of the nineteen fifties.'

'So you sent it to your brother through the Geghard trading route?' Romella asked, pouring milk for herself.

Petrosian showed surprise. He sipped at his coffee, and added a spoonful of brown sugar crystals. 'I am amazed at what you have found out.'

'We also know you sent letters to your brother through Kitty Cronin. But we don't know how.'

'Ah, Kitty.' His mind seemed to wander. 'Is she still alive?'

'And well,' said Romella. 'She married a businessman called Morgenstern. They were divorced after fifteen years. There were two children. She moved to some place in the Colorado Rockies and opened a shop selling mountain climbing equipment.'

A smile briefly softened the tension in Petrosian's face. 'She loved mountains.'

'She retired ten years ago and now she's living with her daughter in Miami.'

'I am glad life went well for her. Kitty's sister-in-law worked in the Turkish Embassy in Washington. My letters went there. They were delivered uncensored to an address in Igdir, a little town in Turkey. From there it was easy. My father was a shepherd, and Anastas continued in that style. In the Gegham mountains we knew every track between Lake Sevan and the Turkish border. The Geghard bazaar existed long before the war. It was a clandestine trading route. We used it to bring in cheese, coffee and other good things from Turkey, and barter them at Garni and Geghard. So far as I know the war merely enhanced the flow. To have been caught… well, they shot children too.'

Findhorn said, 'We're here because we want to know why you suppressed your discovery. It wasn't just for personal reasons.'

Romella held out the plate of cream biscuits to the old man, but he shook his head. 'I am not sure how much to tell you.'

'Perhaps I can help,' said Findhorn. 'I suspect that the process is unstable. If you can persuade me that it is, I'll try to have it stopped.'

'Perhaps you will. Or perhaps you have failed to recover the secret and wish to trick a simple old man into giving you it.'

'You must consider that possibility,' Findhorn said. 'After all, we're total strangers.'

Petrosian stood up and walked over to the big window. 'I was almost unmasked once. It happened in Oxford, not long after the war. I saw a man in the Causeway giving me a very strange look. It was some seconds before I recognized Rudolf Peierls. I had to keep walking towards him. But of course I was dead by then, and I simply passed him without giving the slightest sign of recognition. To this day I am not sure whether he recognized me.'

'Did anything come of it?'

'Yes. I launched my antiquarian book career here in Lincoln rather than Oxford.'

'Regrets?'

'None. I never kept up with the scientific literature, at least not at research level. But my career as a seller of old books has put me in contact with some of the finest minds who ever existed. My best friends speak to me from many countries and many centuries.' He turned back from the window and sat down. 'You can thank them for the decision I have made. You see, without them, I would not have the insight into the human soul which I believe I have. I choose to trust you, and hope that my friends are not letting me down. I will tell you about the process.'

Findhorn gave Romella a look. She said, 'I'll give Mrs Peterson a hand. Technical stuff gives me a headache.'

Romella took their hired Rover towards the Al. They drove into a pleasant little market town called Retford, looking for signs for the dual carriageway, and promptly got lost in a maze of one-way streets.

'Open my handbag,' she said.

Findhorn retrieved the large black bag from the back seat. It held a jumble of what Findhorn assumed was the usual women's stuff, including a small bottle of the Diorissima perfume which was driving him mad; and two folded sheets of paper.

'Look at the papers. Dad's been using some heavy pressure. He fired them through this morning and he's dying with curiosity.'

There were two documents. The first was rubber-stamped 'CIA Restricted Release':

In the absence of sensible comment, Findhorn said, 'Blimey!' He turned to the second sheet. It was marked 'Official Dispatch' and was heavily deleted.

At last they were through the town and heading west. Findhorn looked out at the flat agricultural land. Ahead of them, a small aircraft was dropping slowly towards some airfield hidden by trees. 'So Lev and Lisa have been in hiding for fifty years, and there was no need.'

'We can't tell them that.' Romella was slowing for a tight corner.

'Agreed. We leave them to hide in peace. I wonder about the blanked-out stuff.'

'Don't push your luck, Fred. I was lucky to get even that.'

A few miles ahead of them, streams of lorries were marking out the line of the Al. Romella was looking thoughtful. 'You've reached your decision on the Petrosian secret.'

'It needs a stake driven through its heart.'

'What? Why?'

'It's too dangerous. It could work like a dream or it could evaporate the planet.'

'What are the odds?'

'A hundred to one it would be okay. Maybe even a thousand to one.'

'One chance in a hundred of oblivion versus a near certainty of ending up richer than Bill Gates. I might take a chance on it, Fred.'

'I might give it a try too. At an individual level it could be a gamble worth taking. But not if you're risking the whole of humanity. There are people out there who don't give a toss for anyone but themselves.'

'And Albrecht is probably one of them,' she said. Ahead, a tractor was trailing a machine with long, swaying metal prongs. She slowed, edged cautiously past. 'Duty obliges us to hand this over to the authorities.'

'We have a higher duty, Ms Grigoryan. To the greater good.'

'That was pure Rosenblum. You have an anti-authoritarian streak, Fred. But who the hell are we to make a decision like that? We have to send it upstairs.'

'There's nothing I'd love more. Unfortunately my conscience is right here in the car with me, not upstairs. Someone out there would take that one per cent chance.'

She shook her head in disagreement.

They were now on a long, straight stretch of road. 'I guess the Romans were here,' Findhorn said, to break the tense silence.

The junction with the Al was about a mile ahead. Romella was frowning. 'The deal is that we find Petrosian's secret.'

'So let's stick to that.'

'But, Fred, we don't even know where the document is.'

'It's probably in Albrecht's hands by now. My guess is he's poring over it in some hideaway, about to summon his engineers. We have to reach him before they do because the moment they've gone over it, it's out. He'll start on a patent application. I reckon we have less than forty-eight hours.'

'But you now know the principle of the thing. Can't you beat him to a patent — assuming in your infinite wisdom you decide the risk is worth taking?'

'No chance. The mathematical details would take weeks to work through before you even started on the engineering aspects.'

'Have you thought this through, Fred? Say we find Albrecht. What do we do about him? By now he knows the secret.'

Findhorn, anticipating Romella's next words, had the sensation of a trapdoor opening in his stomach. She was slowing down as they approached the junction.

'Are you up to murder, Fred? Would you kill for the greater good?'

Findhorn was biting his thumbnail. 'Matsumo asked me the same question.'

'Fred, a man in his business acquires enemies. He probably hides from Mossad, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Mafia and the Salvation Army. He's an elusive man. How can we possibly discover where he is?' 'The Celestial Truth might know. The information might be in their Swiss headquarters.'

The Rover had stopped at the junction. The Al was a solid mass of traffic, streaming north and south like anti-parallel lava flows. It took a second for the implication of Findhorn's remark to sink in; when it did, Romella turned to him open-mouthed. 'Are you serious? Break into the Temple?'

'It'll have to be tomorrow. We're out of time.' 'You're raving, foaming-at-the-mouth insane.' 'Decision time, Romella. South to Whitehall, or north to Dougie's?'

There was a momentary gap in the flow of southbound traffic. In the north lane, lorries were effectively blocking the carriageway and leaving a stretch of empty road in front of them. 'Oh, bloody hell,' Romella said, swinging the Rover smartly across the road and into the northbound carriageway.

Findhorn said, 'I put it down to my charm.'