"I guess," said Remo. "Do you want me to kill some more?"
"No. You have done enough of that. You may even be able to destroy our government. But you alone cannot conquer Russia. You can kill but you cannot rule."
"I don't want this dump. Nothing works right here."
"You did not perform that demonstration around our capital because we don't have something that works." Remo glanced at the bodyguard. He was an old man, but there was a way he carried his body around the big pistol in his belt that showed he had used that weapon. It was obviously not an ornament.
"You want to win an argument or do you want your gizzard on the floor?" asked Remo. He waved some of the signed statements in front of Lemyatin. The old man flipped through them, amused at who had buckled and who had not.
"I do believe your people would believe that you might be a superior weapon to that fluorocarbon beam that lets in the deadly rays of the sun. Which means you may be telling the truth."
"You must know what America is like. Who would want your place when we have ours?"
"Son, I have seen the workings of the minds of counts and commissars, so do not bring something so absurd to my table as the dish that governments act rationally. You have earned a degree of my trust."
"Then put down your missiles," said Remo.
"There is a problem with that. You are going to have to think now. We created those missiles because we were sure at that time that America was responsible for the device and that it was a weapon. Further tests conducted in your country, young man, appeared to confirm our original estimate. We had to create a missile you could not damage. Not to say that such a device could put out our missiles. But it would place them in a category of unreliability we could not accept. Are you following me?"
"We showed we could knock out all your missiles so you had to build new ones."
Zemyatin controlled an acknowledging nod. It did not shock him that the man looked so average. The most dangerous things in the world were the commonplace. The bodies around Moscow were proof enough. He did not have to see muscles.
"These new missiles have two orders that can be delivered. Go and no-go. That is exactly why your intelligence agency correctly called them 'raw buttons.' "
"So tell them no-go."
"Without burdening you with details, the deployment system across a nation larger than yours was necessarily cumbersome. We do not have some electronic command that maneuvers the missiles in series of calculated changeable firings. If we say 'no-go' it would take weeks to get everyone organized again, to get the orders out again. In effect, in this missile age they would have to be put down forever."
"I am not against that," said Remo.
"We have a designated firing time, soon to be upon us. If you kill me there is no way to put down those missiles. If you torture me, you will get a wrong command that will tell them not to listen to the right command if it should come next."
Remo noticed the electronics against the wall, the dishes yet to be cleared from the table, and the old bathrobe this man confidently wore while discussing the gravest matters of state. This was the one, he was sure, he was to look for. The one who made the deals.
"In brief, young American, it is either war or no war, the rawest of raw buttons. To tell them to stand down means virtually abolishing the system. And for that, I must have more proof than your showing off. I am sorry."
"So it is war."
"Not necessarily, " said Zemyatin. "We have time. I will not tell you how much. But we do have time."
"If there is a war, you are not going to survive it. And tell your friend over there not to bother with that blunderbuss he has stuck in his pants."
"Another death, American?"
"I don't keep score anymore," said Rerno. "If those missiles go, I will spend a lifetime in this mess you call a country evening things out. I want you to know that no chairman or commissar or king will live one night. I will make your country into desert, a body without a head, a dung heap among nations. I don't want conquest. To win Russia is to win nothing."
"For you. But for me, it is everything."
The bodyguard whom Remo knew wanted a chance with the gun suddenly turned to the electronics. Remo caught only vague words of the language, but he knew that something horrible had happened.
"American," said Zemyatin, "I now believe your government has been telling the truth about that weapon. Unfortunately."
Remo waited to hear what the Russian leader meant by 'unfortunately'."
"Your government may be stupid, but it is not completely so. The beam has been directed toward your northern pole with the largest arc yet, on a continuous scan parameter."
"Wonderful," said Remo. What was he talking about?
"In brief, the ozone shield is being punctured continuously above the polar ice cap."
Remo eyed the Russian suspiciously. So what? he thought.
"Terrible," he said.
"Yes," said Zemyatin. "Unless that machine is stopped, the entire polar ice cap will be turned to water. So large is the polar ice cap that the oceans will rise many, many feet. Low-lying areas of the earth will be flooded, and that means most of Europe and America. Civilization as we know it will be doomed."
"That machine can really get you so many ways," said Remo. "What is the source?"
"Your America. The beam has been on long enough now for us to get a fix on it. Your northeast corridor."
"Good. If you can get a fix on it, we must know exactly. Anything in that electronic junk on the wall that can get an American phone number?"
"Yes," said Zemyatin. And Remo gave Smith's secret number to the Russians for dialing.
While the bodyguard was dialing, Zemyatin asked, "Are you part of the CIA?"
"No. Internal, mostly."
"Secret police?"
"Not really. We don't want to control anything. We just want to keep the country from going under."
"We all say that," said Zemyatin.
"But we mean it," said Remo.
"Of course," said the Great One of the Russian Revolution.
Smith's voice came over the transatlantic line surprisingly clearly.
"This line is being eavesdropped on, Remo," Smith said. There were gadgets in his office, Remo knew, that could tell that, but he had never heard Smith say that before.
"I would be surprised if it weren't, Smitty. This is a KGB line."
"Doesn't matter. We have located the beam. You will not believe what it is doing!"