"Then let's go."
There was little trouble getting through the guards and rounding up the people who had the right combinations and keys to the secret computer files. Remo merely had to wake them up and tell them they were needed. He did this by holding them out of their apartment windows by their ankles. They were, of course, all vice-presidents of the bank.
"Listen," Remo said. "You and I have a problem. You don't want to see the street coming up at you and I don't want to spend the night waiting outside your main storage vault. Can we come to some mutual understanding?"
"Yes," agreed all five vice-presidents, they could. Negotiation was always preferable to confrontation. The one who did not wish to negotiate lived on the ground floor. But when it was explained to him that he could be worked into the concrete, facefirst, with the same amount of force as in a twenty-story fall, he too decided to join the management team that was going to open the main vault's computer section.
All five appeared in their underwear at 5:10 A.M. at the main vault, telling the guard to open up.
"Is something wrong?" asked the guard.
"No," said Remo. "We're having a pajama party."
sChapter Six
Western intelligence sources had determined there were five major missile units inside the Soviet Union, whose sights were aimed at the United States. This was because the Central Intelligence Agency had more faith in Russian technological competence than did the Kremlin.
The Kremlin actually had twenty main missile units, and three dozen secondary launch units. They had this many because, unlike peace activists, the Kremlin planners did not imagine their missiles landing dead center in whatever city some peace activist was talking in.
The Kremlin knew that war was a system of vagaries and things that go wrong. They knew it was the remnants of armies that won wars, not the armies a nation began the war with. Communism had given them a system far in advance of the West: through Communism, they already knew nothing worked; the West was still finding it out.
In their twenty main missile batteries were the most massive nuclear warheads available, each capable of destroying half of America. Enough nuclear firepower was aimed at the United States to irradiate America 279 times.
What the Kremlin hoped for was a good hit or two and then keep firing.
The Kremlin did not have people marching in the street telling the leaders to get rid of their arms. They did, however, have people marching in the streets. They marched in rows, carrying banners. The banners told Russia's leaders to build peace through strength. The banners were usually shown in parades, being carried right in front of the mobile nuclear missiles, and right after them.
No one was foolish enough to protest a Soviet missile, no matter where it was located. The missile protests began on the other side of the Berlin Wall and when Russia could move that wall westward-- perhaps to France-- then all the protests about missiles in West Germany would stop. They would stop because the protesters would realize that being next door to a missile or having one in your backyard was better than being shot, hanged, or jailed.
The onetime protestors of Western missiles would then become part of the truly peaceful peace movement of the Soviet bloc. They would line up peacefully where told, march peacefully where told, stop marching peacefully when told, and then go peacefully home when told, usually to get blind drunk and urinate in the living room.
This was the typical march of the typical Russian peace activist. Sometimes, American ministers and peace activists were along the route of march and waved at them. One peace activist kept bothering the marchers, saying he wanted to "get to know the real Russian, to understand my Russian brother."
But he made a small mistake. The real Russian he was to get to know hadn't shown up on time and another real Russian he was to get to know had to be found quickly, and barely had time to memorize all his answers at KGB headquarters, where these real Russians were trained and then turned loose to let themselves be hugged by American ministers who would then return home to write newspaper columns on the Real Russia, insinuating that news reports of Russian life were misleading.
It was one of the better jobs in the Soviet Union, being a "real Russian" for American clergymen or, for the equally predecided, the average British journalist. Although the British journalists were even easier: they didn't need "real Russians" to give them the Real Russian story. They had already learned that back in Britain from their Marxist professors. For the British, a Real Russian didn't even have to avoid urinating on the living-room floor. For when a British journalist was practicing realism, nothing could bring him out of his trance. Not even soggy feet.
Average Russians, the men in the street, were never allowed near a missile battery. Not only did the Russians not have to face protests about where they located missile bases, if they did not like the town a battery was to serve in, they removed it. The town, that is.
Each missile battery had its own food supplies for a half year, stores, schools, and hospital. Each battery was like a little city, commanded by a full field marshal.
Each field marshal had the highest perks available to any Communist in Russia. Each field marshal lived like a little capitalist and there was no way to reach one with any material goods because he lived like an an upper-middle-class American.
Only the lowest-ranking privates ate Russian food or used Russian goods and then only as a strict punishment. It was the only punishment available because they could not be sent to Siberia, since they already were in Siberia. Discipline therefore was very good at those bases, they being the last bastion in the world where an American car or machine was thought of as superior.
They even had American video games.
And that was how Abner Buell decided he could infiltrate the Russian missile command and have them ready to start World War III when he decided he was bored enough and it was time to end the world.
Marshal Ivan Michenko considered himself a ladies' man and a superior chess player. He considered life a game and his rise to field marshal in the Soviet Missile Command a game won. There were few challenges left until he played Zork Avenger and quickly became the best player on the base, even when his subordinates were really trying, even when he had a quart of vodka in his belly and a woman on his lap.
Michenko got a monthly score sheet, available to the highest-ranking Russians, so that they could compare their scores in Zork Avenger, Eat-Man, and Missile Attack against other players.
Marshal Michenko's were always the second highest scores in the world. He was second in Zork Avenger, second in Eat-Man, and when it came to Missile Attack, he was, to his shock and shame, second in that also. He was second in all three games to a player known simply as AB.
Michenko was sure that AB either cheated or did not exist, that an impossibly high score had been set up in these games so that a Russian could not win. He let the KGB know about his suspicions. He let others know that a Russian field marshal had lost at Missile Attack.
"Comrade Michenko, what are you getting at?" he was asked by the KGB officer with whom he was sharing his worries.
"The great danger in this world is to appear weak. Second best in Missile Attack, although admittedly it is but a game, is still just second best. And to whom? An American."
"It is just a game, comrade field marshal."
"I know that and you know that. But who knows what some fools will say?"
"Who cares what fools say?" the KGB officer said.
"If that be the case, then you eliminate the value of the opinion of ninety-nine percent of the world," Michenko said.
Within a day, Field Marshal Michenko got the information he wanted. AB did indeed exist but no one could track him down. However, AB had a standing offer of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could defeat him at Missile Attack. He had almost as many offers as there were dollars, but AB accepted none, saying they were unworthy of his time.
Michenko issued a challenge but got no response. There the matter lay for months, until one day he was notified that AB would play him.
AB sent a special joystick, one designed for head-to-head combat, to an address in Switzerland. The KGB picked it up.
The first game was conducted by satellite and beamed to a station in Zurich. Michenko, through brilliant conservation of his atomizing power, and concentration of his beam modes, won a magnificent struggle. Barely. AB won the second game as if he had been playing a child. And then came the third game and soon Michenko was down by 220,000 points, his time and firepower diminished, and he could do only one thing. He harnessed the most powerful brain energy in Russia. He used his American computers that guided his Russian missiles. He locked them into the game and he won.
He did not know that across the world, an American who fit the initials AB, Abner Buell, had just given himself five thousand points.
They played seven more games, sometimes beaming challenges to each other, sometimes asking personal questions. During one questioning period, about the taste of good cognac, a fire order came to Michenko from Moscow. World War III was on.
Michenko looked at the orders and his stomach felt as if it were dissolving through his rectum. There were no countermands, only his American opponent AB signaling another friendly question.
Michenko made one last check. He telephoned Moscow. The phone did not answer. Moscow, he thought, must be destroyed.
He messaged regrets to his American counterpart and said, "Good-bye."
He could not know that Abner Buell was frantically trying to call off the Russian attack. Buell had used the games to work his way into Michenko's computers and had given them the firing order. He only wanted the missile command to take the preliminary steps before being called off by Moscow.
But now he found the Russian equipment was no longer picking up his command signals.
There was only Michenko's terse good-bye.
Abner Buell had miscalculated. The world was going to be destroyed-- and ahead of schedule too.
"There it goes," said Abner.