do it again?"
Thinking about Katya and the handgun, Sergey picked up the stylus pen and again applied his signature to the yellow square of the digital pad. This time he heard Elovach grunt with satisfaction.
"I have it, Colonel. Thank you."
"Use authorization number," Sergey paused as he consulted his pocket notebook, "number 0935 on the pass," as each high-level pass required using a unique number randomly chosen from a secret list that only Sergey kept.
"I’m on it, Colonel," answered Elovach.
"Let me know when its ready, and I will activate the elevator up to my floor," said Sergey.
Elovach stood, deferring to his departing superior.
Sergey realized he was still carrying the small metal case.
"I almost forgot, one more thing, Elovach. Instead of coming in to work tomorrow, I want you to go to Zhigansk for me. Andrei Brusov will be driving the bus down about ten o'clock in the morning. There will be a few people going along for medical appointments and such."
"I think I can manage that, Colonel," replied Elovach, pleased at the opportunity of the trip.
"I need somebody trustworthy to deliver this case to the post office building in town," said Sergey, showing the case to Elovach.
Elovach had wondered why the Colonel was carrying an olive drab metal case that he knew carried classified computer disks. He was familiar with the case with the two special tumbler locks and a four-barrel combination lock that guarded access to the case. A special pronged key, similar to a dinner fork, had four round tines, each a different calibrated length. When inserted onto the lock, each tine pushed a corresponding tumbler inward a critical distance. If all of the tumblers lined up, the lock opened; if even one was off by less than a half millimeter, the lock froze and could not be tried again, a person had only one try at setting the combination. A wrong setting activated an internal electromagnetic field that wiped clean the data on any of the computer disks in the case. Forced opening of the case, virtually impossible, also activated the erasing electromagnetism.
"I want to add some information tonight, so I will hand over the case to you at the bus stop tomorrow morning. When you get to Zhigansk, get Andrei to drop you off at the post office building. Go to room 203 and ask for Sergeant Ivanekov. He will take the case from you. Go back at four o'clock. He will give you an envelope addressed to me. I will collect the envelope from you the day after tomorrow. All right?"
"Of course, Colonel” said Elovach, noting down the room number, “What was the sargeant’s name again?”
“Ivanekov.”
“Got it, not to worry. I will handle everything in my usual way,"
I am counting on it, thought Sergey, to himself. Sergeant Ivanekov was actually a cover name for the intelligence agent in Zhigansk who posed as a liaison officer for the military.
"I have arranged for Vladimir Borisov to be your replacement here for the day tomorrow. He can change that telemetry receiver that you have been complaining about while he is here."
Sergey had two reasons for sending Elovach on his errand: one was to get him out of the plant for the day; the other was to test him. If Elovach attempted to open the case, he would be exposed. If he tried to inspect the contents of the letter, he would find only a voucher for refunding Sergey's travel expenses to Seytchan. Again, because of the special adhesive used to seal the envelope, Elovach would be exposed.
Elovach was glad of the assignment; partly to ingratiate himself to Sergey, and partly because the visit to Zhigansk and four free hours would give him a chance to catch up on some pressing personal matters. Elovach found these superiors to be almost naïve, which made his life both easier and not so. Since he was a wary man, he mistrusted others, but he also didn’t know how to read a man who did not have his own cunning nature. Are they really open books to read at face value or did they have another sense that he underestimated?
The intercom on the console buzzed and Elovach turned to answer it. Sergey took the opportunity to leave. He had nothing more to say to Elovach.
Chapter 7
The elevator and the stairwell were both fitted with computer controlled security devices, and they were the only means of access. He swiped his special passcard to operate the elevator and then tapped the four-digit personal identification code into a keypad to stop the elevator at the 4th floor as he would have needed to open a stairwell door at any of the floors in the tower.
As Sergey stepped out of the elevator, he again caught a pungent whiff of the smell that permeated the rug and furniture in his office. He now recognized it as the smell that he had noticed in Tarasov’s car, the same smellprint.
Sergey's office took up only a small part of the top floor. He loved the privacy of his office on the top of the tower with the restricted access and the extensive surveillance facilities provided.
The rest of the fourth floor was one large open space, filled with old office equipment and furniture, rows of dark green filing cabinets, drawing tables, and plan holders; all left over from the busy operation that existed while the reactors were being built and the uranium was being mined. Now, it was just a dark and dusty storage room.
The security of the fourth floor included a second restricted stairwell that served as an emergency escape route, which may be necessary, he thought grimly. It could be entered through any door on any floor, but anyone entering the stairwell by these doors could only exit freely at the foyer; they could not enter another floor without punching their own code into a door-side keypad reader.
“Paranoia is an agent’s best friend, Sergey. Walk with him - talk with him,” his trainer had insisted.
Sergey checked his overcoat on the coat hanger and pulled the vodka from its pocket, and poured himself a full shot glass. He took a plate of zakusky, the Russian hors d'oeuvres he particularly loved, from the small refrigerator in the corner and settled himself behind his desk. Russians consumed a lot of vodka but propriety called for the eating of food with the vodka.
“Eat a little snack, man, don’t you be a bad man, drink vodka with zakusky, zakusky, zakusky…” he bellowed in his rich baritone.
He upended the vodka, then sampled a piece of pickled herring and sighed with satisfaction. He scanned the meters, dials, lights, and television screens in the console at the left end of his large, old alder desk that monitored the most important functions in the plant, humming happily enough. The console served both as his personal monitoring station and as an emergency backup to the big one in the Security Control Centre.
Satisfied that everything was in normal operating range, he switched through several camera views until he found Katya. She was taking radiation measurements in one of the equipment storage rooms.
His viewing was interrupted by the soft buzz tone of his encrypting telephone that was hooked via a transponder directly to a one of the geo-stationary satellites covering Russia. He could connect to any similarly encrypted telephone protected from eavesdropping anywhere in the country.
Sergey punched in a password and answered the call. It was General Samocherny in Moscow.
"News, Sergey."
"I can speak freely, General; go ahead."
"You recall that in June when seven hundred delegates, representing four major interest groups convened in the Kremlin for a Constitutional Conference? There had been nothing but opposition, confrontation, and hostility between