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  Summit

  A gripping thriller of psychic espionage

  and political intrigue

  by

  Richard Bowker

  Published by ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-303-8

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint lyrics from "Because" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, copyright © 1969 NORTHERN SONGS LTD. All rights for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico controlled and administered by SBK BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. Under License from ATV MUSIC (MACLEN). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

  Copyright © 1989, 2012 by Richard Bowker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Author's website: www.richardbowker.com

  Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Thank You.

  For Joe and Stan

  Because the world is round

  It turns me on.

  —Lennon and McCartney

  ~

  The Raindrop Prelude

  Doctor Coyne felt wonderful. He deserved to; he had done something remarkable, and soon everyone was going to know about it. Right now, though, he had the special pleasure that comes from secret knowledge, and it was as satisfying as all the accolades that would surely come his way.

  He was sitting on the laboratory bench, thinking about his accomplishment. Before very long, his feelings seemed to overflow, and everything became part of his happiness. This bench, for example. What a wonderful bench! The white Formica of the countertop. Wasn't Formica a wonderful invention! He got up and walked over to the window. A spring rain was soaking the Virginia countryside. Life was renewing itself, and he was part of it, part of this wonderful universe.

  He focused on the raindrops hitting the windowpane, streaking the glass and merging with other raindrops and dissolving into smaller droplets. So many of them, each a world in itself. He had never really looked at raindrops before. But he was going to from now on. Nothing was more important, because everything was equally important, and equally wonderful.

  Doctor MacLean came in then, and asked him a question about the experiment. She was a brilliant neurobiologist, and a good friend besides. He decided that he didn't want to talk about the experiment; he wanted to tell her about the raindrops. She would understand, if anyone would. They talked for a while, and then she left. He went back to staring at the raindrops. When she returned, she had a few more people with her. They asked questions about the experiment, and about the raindrops, and he tried to answer them.

  And after a while they took him by the arm and led him out of the laboratory. That was all right with Doctor Coyne. He was like a blind man who had suddenly been given his sight. There was beauty everywhere, and he longed to see all of it.

  On the way out, he smiled at Doctor MacLean. She didn't smile back.

  * * *

  Roderick Williams had a new boss, and he wasn't sure how to approach him with this. George, I have some good news and I have some bad news. No, he didn't think George Loud had much of a sense of humor. Sir, I regret to inform you that we may have lost one of our best—Even worse. No sense making it sound too gloomy. Williams sighed. If only the guy was one of us.

  Things went in cycles at the Central Intelligence Agency. The previous director of Central Intelligence had been a career operative who let the good old boys do what they wanted in order to save America from its wily and godless enemies. That meant the new DCI had to be an administrator, brought in to control the rogue elephants who were trampling on basic American rights. And that in turn meant that Roderick Williams, deputy director of Intelligence and one of the good old boys, had a lot of explaining to do.

  "Mr. Loud will see you now."

  Williams ran a hand through his shock of white hair and stood up. He was damned if he was going to be frightened of the guy. Still, he knew his career was on the line, and it wouldn't do to make a mistake. He strode into the DCI's office.

  "Rod, how good to see you," Loud whispered, reaching across his huge desk to shake Williams's hand. Loud's grip was limp. Williams hated being called Rod, and he hated the way Loud whispered. It was an affectation, he was sure. Probably had to do with the guy's name—reverse psychology or something. It was stupid.

  "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, George."

  "Don't mention it. What can I do for you?"

  Williams sat down across from Loud. If the cycles had gone a little faster, he could have been DCI now. If he could outlast Loud, maybe he still would be. Of course, he might not make it through this meeting. He took a deep breath and began. "George, we have a problem here—but also, the way I look at it, we have an opportunity. See, we've been running some experiments...."

  It took a while, and it was not pleasant. Loud was short and bald, and he looked and sounded like a meek little bureaucrat, but he certainly had a way of making his feelings known. "Get your records together, Rod," he said finally. "I'm taking this to the president."

  That was exactly what Williams didn't want to hear. "George, if I might say so, I think that would be a bit precipitous."

  "Precipitate."

  "What?"

  "Precipitate. The word you want is precipitate, not precipitous."

  "Oh. Thanks." Asshole. "What I mean is, couldn't we try to keep this in-house for a while longer? There's still a chance Coyne will snap out of it, and then we've got a whole new ball game."

  "And if he doesn't, we get accused of a cover-up."

  "No one's covering anything up. We're just trying to find out all the facts before bothering President Winn. He'll crucify you if you go to him without enough information. You know that."

  Loud glared at him. "Why don't we have all the facts now?"

  "Because this is cutting-edge science, George, and our best scientist has become, er, incapacitated. Just give me a week, okay?"

  Loud tapped a pencil on his desk. "A week," he said finally. "No more."

  "Thanks, George. You won't regret it."

  Loud looked as if he was regretting it already. Williams left his office in a hurry.

  Could have been worse, he thought. But he was still in big trouble. Coyne wasn't being particularly cooperative, and Coyne's wife was worse, and the other scientists didn't seem to be getting anywhere in figuring the thing out. What a mess.

  Then he thought of Lawrence Hill's Soviet operation, and his mood brightened. It was tricky, but if anyone could pull it off, Hill was the man. He hurried back to his office and left a message to have Hill call him. They had to get going on Operation Cadenza. It was just the thing to bail him out.

  When he was off the phon
e, he stared out his window at the Virginia countryside for a few moments, and then went looking for a dictionary.

  He wasn't at all sure Loud was right about that word.

  Part 1

  Les Adieux

  ~

  It is impossible to vanquish an enemy without first learning to hate him with all the powers of your soul.

  —N. S. Khrushchev

  Chapter 1

  Dieter Schmidt was glad to be going home. He despised Russia and he despised Russians, and three years was long enough.

  There was not a season here that did not make him miss Germany. It was spring now, and Russia was turning to mud. The people were starting to go outside hatless and coatless, and he was forced to see more of their doughy white skin, their thick, shapeless bodies, their ill-fitting suits and faded dresses. In the parks, he knew, the more adventurous of the women would be sunbathing in their underwear, a custom that almost made him sick with revulsion. Who could find these women attractive, with their steel teeth and their cheaply dyed hair and their square, sullen faces that looked middle-aged at thirty? Who could find this gray city attractive, with its absurdly outsized monuments and endless, dreary high-rise apartment buildings? Who would want to live through the fierce cold and the fierce heat, under the endless, impudent stares of people who wanted only to destroy your nation?

  He hurried past an orange-vested babushka sweeping the sidewalk and thought of home, of bright blond frauleins and neon signs and restaurants that really had everything listed on the menu—of being able to write and speak without worrying about the enemy....

  Not exactly, of course. He would still be in the fight. But he would be home, fighting an enemy for whom he had a little more understanding and sympathy. It could only be better.

  Reasonably sure that no one was following him, he turned off Gorky Street toward the address that had been given him. He wasn't home yet, unfortunately, and there was still business left here in Moscow.

  * * *

  "He's on his way," Yuri announced. He sat in a corner of the room, wearing headphones and smoking a Belomorkanal.

  Colonel Rylev nodded and turned to Professor Trofimov. "Ready?" he asked.

  "Of course, of course," Trofimov replied, wiping his hands on his white lab coat.

  They both turned to look at the woman.

  * * *

  She lies alone in darkness, waiting. Waiting to dream. Her mind is empty now except for one thing: terror.

  Dreams can kill. And worse.

  And the dream is about to begin.

  * * *

  Pavel Fedorchuk was waiting for the knock on the door. He was a small man, with jet black hair and eyes that were in constant motion. He was wearing a crisp new pair of Wrangler jeans and a sweatshirt that said Property of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary Swim Team. A Duran Duran album was playing on his stereo. He was smoking a Marlboro; the ashtray on the table in front of him was overflowing..There was a half-empty bottle of vodka and a loaf of black bread next to the ashtray.

  When the knock came, he promptly stubbed out the cigarette and went to open the door. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bullet wound received in an ambush outside Kabul. "Coming," he muttered.

  Dieter Schmidt was in the corridor, looking unhappy. He walked inside without a word, and Fedorchuk quickly closed the door behind him.

  Schmidt looked around. The apartment was in darkness, except for one bare light over the table where Fedorchuk had been sitting. "We shouldn't meet," Schmidt said in heavily accented Russian. "This is very dangerous."

  "Don't worry," Fedorchuk replied. "This is the last place anyone would expect you. Want some vodka?"

  Schmidt shook his head, not attempting to hide his distaste as he saw the half-empty bottle. Fedorchuk shrugged and sat down at the table. Schmidt sat opposite him. Duran Duran howled in the background. "I don't understand why you came to us instead of the Americans or the British," Schmidt said.

  "Why should it matter?" Fedorchuk asked, lighting up another Marlboro. "The glory will be yours instead of theirs."

  "If this is on the level. If we decide to take you."

  "Well, that's what we're here to talk about, right?"

  "Of course. Let us begin, then."

  "Yes. Let's begin."

  * * *

  She lay strapped to a cot inside a large Plexiglas pyramid. Halved table-tennis balls were taped to her eyes, and headphones covered her ears. Sensors were attached to various other parts of her body; the wires ran to a console outside the pyramid. A white sheet was draped over her legs. She didn't move. She looked like a mutant insect, an electronic corpse.

  The people outside the pyramid heard Duran Duran scratchily through a speaker Yuri had turned on. "I despise that music," Professor Trofimov muttered, and he turned away from the woman. Rylev glanced at him, then shrugged, and he too turned away.

  Doctor Olga Chukova stood apart from them, in front of the console. Her eyes stayed on the console's dials and digital readouts. She could not bear to look across the room at the woman about to dream.

  * * *

  "Let us begin, then."

  "Yes. Let's begin."

  How does the dream start? She never tried to figure it out. Her mind is ready, and the machine is ready, and it starts. Why worry about it further? Out of the darkness the familiar scene appears. She can barely hear the distant voices through her earphones, but they don't matter very much. What matters is the building in front of her.

  It is too dark to see anything clearly, but the building appears to be made of some kind of white brick. Its door is open—a mouth waiting to swallow her. Above the door a light blinks in the darkness—red, red, red—like a bloodshot eye trying to see her more clearly. She has to enter this building.

  She moves forward, her legs unsteady beneath her. She walks down a couple of steps, holding on to a black iron railing, and then she is in the open doorway. She takes a couple of breaths to control her terror, and she goes inside.

  There is enough light to show that she is in a large, empty entrance hall. She has tried in the past to examine this hall—to see whose portrait hangs on the far wall, to read the papers on the bulletin board to the left, but she has never succeeded. All that is clear is a large grandfather clock, which stands like a sentinel in the middle of the marble floor, its hands always pointing to ten past nine.

  A failure of imagination, perhaps, or perhaps that is simply the way this world is. She feels as if she is inside a photograph that is slightly out of focus at the edges, and no amount of squinting will make certain things come clear. At any rate, she does not even try this time; instead she walks slowly past the clock and up the steep staircase.

  The second floor is her goal. It is an endless corridor, an endless gauntlet she must run, an endless nightmare to which she must now return. She closes her eyes for a moment, then starts down the corridor. She knows every door she passes and the secret that lies behind it; every secret is part of the nightmare. The doors are closed. She keeps walking until she reaches one that is open.

  The distant voices babble on. She doesn't want to go inside this room, but she has no choice. The room becomes brighter as she enters—as if it has been waiting just for her, as if her presence makes it come alive. The room is empty except for a four-poster bed. And on the bed is what she fears most in this world.

  A baby, smiling up at her as if it has finally found its mother.

  * * *

  Nothing bad yet. Pulse rate slightly elevated, EEC normal, body temperature okay. But Doctor Chukova knew what was coming, and she prayed that her patient would be all right.

  "It's about time it started," Colonel Rylev murmured.

  In the Plexiglas pyramid, the woman started to sweat.

  * * *

  "It's a lot of things," Fedorchuk was saying, "but mostly it's a sense of failure. How many Soviet citizens are there in my line of work? Half a million? More? Nobody really knows. But the sheer immensity of the security o
rgans is a measure of the failure. What do we spend our time doing, after all? Stealing technology from the Americans that our system is incapable of developing itself. Enforcing a loyalty in our own people that the Party cannot instill any other way. Where will it end? Logically, when we all work for the organs, all spying on each other and on the West, nobody doing anything real. That is a very depressing thought."

  "Aren't things improving under Secretary Grigoriev?" Dieter Schmidt asked.

  "Bah." Fedorchuk swallowed some vodka and immediately bit off a hunk of black bread. "Window dressing," he said when he had swallowed the bread. "And he isn't going to last long, believe me. The organs don't like to have their jobs threatened. He will find out soon enough who really has power in the Soviet Union."

  "What you want to do will be dangerous, of course," Schmidt said.

  "Everything I've ever done has been dangerous. Now it's time to do something dangerous for myself."

  Schmidt nodded, but still didn't seem convinced. Fedorchuk went to turn over the record. Awful music. But one must drown out those bugs, mustn't one? He smiled. It was time.

  * * *

  She has to give the baby a name. She doesn't know why, but it doesn't work otherwise. The enemy must have a name.

  "Hello, Dieter," she whispers.

  The baby smiles and reaches out a chubby hand to her. It is fat-cheeked and happy, as usual, with blue eyes and fuzzy brown hair. Helplessly, she feels maternal urges swelling in her. She longs to pick the baby up and press it to her breast, to sing it a lullaby, to pinch its cheeks and make it laugh.

  But she will do none of these things.

  She thinks about Dieter Schmidt. She knows a great deal about him.

  Dieter Schmidt is head of the Moscow station of West German intelligence. He will soon return home, where he will be in charge of intelligence operations against East Germany. He is forty-four years old, married, with two children. He likes to cheat on his wife, but he can't in the Soviet Union, where every good-looking woman he meets could be (and probably is) a KGB swallow. He is slightly overweight but muscular. He has a florid complexion and thin brown hair, which he combs over a bald spot. He often cuts himself shaving. He is smarter than he looks.