was sufficiently open for him to drive in. He parked in a high-ceilinged concrete room that was big enough to accommodate a double tandem truck and trailer. Leaving his car, he hurried back to the door, squinting against the blast of Arctic air blowing in from the outside. He swiped his card across a card reader and the big steel door rolled shut.
As he left the interlock port, one of the locks seemed to stick. That would have to be fixed. He noted it in his pocket planner.
All of the secure doors in the plant, the access portals into restricted areas, were equipped with the newer proximity card readers that scanned encoded plastic cards and instantly read the data stored there. Each person's card included vital statistics: name, security classification, height, weight, colour of hair, colour of eyes, clearance number and so on. With Russian thoroughness, sexual orientation was surprisingly not included. A digital file containing their image was also encoded on the card. The card reader transmitted the scanned information to the Security Control Centre on the third floor where a dedicated computer compared the incoming data with its internally stored data. If they matched, the computer commanded the electric latch at the door to operate, allowing entry. Shortly after a preset interval, the computer commanded the door latch to lock again. Any unusual condition, like an invalid card or a door propped open, immediately raised an alarm, requiring a security officer to investigate and restore normal status.
“All day long I’d bidi bidi bum…(hum, hum)”
The computer, mounted in a steel equipment cabinet, was big and it was reliable. It functioned flawlessly day after day and night after night. It was an old computer, filled with printed circuit cards full of transistors; old technology, but very dependable.
The style of technology went back a long way.
He had just been reading a “slim volume” on the old days of the rocket age. Magda teased him about his “slim volumes” and his “fat tomes”, reading one or the other according to his moods. This one was a slim-volume novel with the dippy title “Love in a Lab”, but it was well researched about back in the days when Werner Von Braun was developing German rockets that could reach England. There were twenty Soviet undercover agents working side-by-side with Von Braun's elite scientists. They were there, undetected, for years while they secretly photographed every page of documentation and every mechanical prototype. The photographs, reduced to tiny micro-dots, were smuggled out to Soviet laboratories.
At the end of the WW2, the Americans, with typical overkill, rushed into Peenemunde and hauled away trainloads of papers, machinery, rocket fuel, rocket casings, and even the lathes and presses used to turn out the parts. They scurried out with everything, even Von Braun himself, before the Soviet troops arrived on the scene. Meanwhile, the Soviets had already been working on their own rocket science starting with the spy material smuggled out earlier.
As a result of independent research, not constrained by German development problems, the Soviet Union beat the Americans in every early space achievement; the first man-made object sent into orbit around the earth, the first dog in space, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first space walk, and many others. The computers used by the Germans to track and control their rockets were models for computers developed in the Soviet Union's space program. The computer in the corner, controlling access and movement throughout the Seytchan nuclear plant, was patterned after a Peenemunde computer.
Early on, the use of American technology was considered for the Soviet space program. Undercover agents in America, including some who held management positions in prestigious computer companies, had transmitted all the secrets necessary to replicate the American equipment. But the Soviets thought the American technology to be too intricate and too susceptible to failure; more appropriate to flash and glitter than to solid performance. Instead, Soviet technology followed what they found to be the superior German and French technologies.
Chapter 4
Sergey entered the large foyer. The interior was warm, heated by radiators lining the walls of the large room. Steam generators which extracted excess heat from the nuclear reactors provided hot water for the radiators.
“Ahhhh, that’s more like it,” and he took off his top coat.
The sounds of the plant were a combination of rumbles, whirs, and distant whining gears, making a white noise a little too loud to be a sleep inducer. The place smelled flat - of old concrete and unused metal.
The area was brightly lit because there was no shortage of electrical power in the plant and because the former plant director had overstocked with light bulbs. At the time, he had no way of knowing that his overstocking mistake would pay dividends when the closing of factories created a shortage of them.
High up on the feature wall was a big medallion with an embossed hammer and sickle. It would have been removed after the collapse of the Soviet Union except the officers liked the work as a work of art. The massive wooden podium, formerly used to exhort the workers to achieve higher production, also remained but stood empty and unused.
Sergey could hear voices coming from the reception/ lunchroom at the front of the building.
“Women are from Planet Crybaby,” a male voice asserted loudly.
“And men are from Planet Stupid,” came the female reply., as the outside door closed.
The reception door opened and there was Kushi, the receptionist/secretary frowning before she looked up. Besides the night crew, he hadn’t expected anyone to be working in the front.
Sergey waved and called across the large foyer, “Hello, Kushi.”
The frown disappeared and Kushi smiled broadly at the Colonel, not alarmed to see him. “Hi, Colonel.”
“You are working late!”
“I took time off yesterday to take my mother to the dentist, so I am making up the time I took off.”
“Very good. But I think you can probably call it a day. I don’t think people will get upset if they don’t get their electricity bills on time.”
Now that the town was no longer a company town, the townspeople were charged for the power they used – not much, but enough to pay for the billing.
Kushi laughed honestly. Sergey loved the sound of an honest laugh. Kushi was a slightly chubby young woman of the indigenous Evenki people with a beautiful tight-skinned high cheekboned face that would never age. Her joyous nature lived up to her name that meant ‘living happily’. Some people simply personify their names.
“You don’t need to tell me twice, Colonel,” she said, the silver tube on her bracelet clattering lightly as she went to the coat rack and pulled her coat off the hanger.
“Is Katya in her office? I saw the light on up there.”
“Probably,” she said, not helpfully.
“I saw you two talking.”
“She was asking me about my bracelet,” and she jingled the tube on her wrist. “I tried to explain to her about Buddhism and prayer wheels. She couldn’t understand, ‘How can spinning wheels convey anything to anyone anywhere, she said?
“I tried to explain that they symbolize prayers, almost a shorthand for a prayer, sort of a spiritual technology. She just didn’t get it. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected her to understand. It takes many years of study and practice.”
“She’s obviously a skeptic,” Sergey offered.
“More to the point, she’s Ukrainian, you know,” and she laughed.
Sergey couldn’t help it, his eyebrows shot up – this criticism from a young woman in Siberia, the outback of the outback. Does every tribe and nation in the world have to be superior to another? It was so easy to put down the