"If you'd like to come to our visitors' center, Dr. Sears will answer your questions now," Jiminez announced.
While the group filed out, Sears gave instructions to Yakamoto to check another misaligned nozzle before the next test. Grateful for the opportunity to keep busy, Yakamoto hurried downstairs. The American scientist left the room, as well, making a detour down to the Vaporizer deck.
"We better skip out on the spiel, Chiun," Remo whispered. "It's getting late and I want to get a decent night's sleep before I check out those sunk scows tomorrow."
He slipped out the door with the crowd.
Chiun gave a single backward glance at the Vaporizer.
The next tour group had donned the special boots and was now coming out onto the deck. Near the open gate, Dr. Sears was in whispered conversation with a janitor. The man wore coveralls and leaned against a push broom.
Out on the deck, a beautiful woman with long black hair pulled up in a bun mingled with the rest of the new group. Every now and then, her long fingers brushed the broach that was pinned to her sensible white blouse.
She was subtle, for a white woman. Her mannerisms were not broad enough to give her away. Chiun alone knew the woman was taking pictures with a miniature camera.
Aiming her broach at the gate, the woman snapped a photo of Mike Sears and the janitor.
The old Korean quickly lost interest. Turning from the window, he followed the others out the door of the Vaporizer control room.
Chapter 11
In the bowels of the Institute building in Moscow, Anna Chutesov sat behind her tidy desk.
The head of Russia's secret Institute was bathed in the glow of her desktop monitor. The only sound over the soft hum of her computer was the regular click of her mouse.
Through careful eyes she studied the photographs e-mailed to her by Petrovina Bulganin.
Most of the pictures were of little interest to Anna. They depicted, from different angles, shots of the Vaporizer unit. The Institute wasn't interested in the technology. She would forward those photos to the proper scientific directorate.
Anna doubted anything could be learned from them. A photograph of an automobile didn't tell one what was under the hood. Still, she had usurped the investigation of the Vaporizer from the SVR in order to get her agent into Mayana. The time Agent Dvah wasted on the pictures was necessary.
Originally reconnoitering the device was going to be the SVR's responsibility. But at a security meeting with the president and other high-ranking officials at the Kremlin three days before, Anna had argued that the assignment required subtlety-a trait sorely lacking among most of the KGB throwbacks who filled the ranks of the SVR.
"Give this job to the SVR and they will kill, drug and blackmail everyone in Mayana," Anna had said. "And they will still find a way to come back empty-handed."
"This is outrageous," Pavel Zatsyrko, the head of the SVR, spluttered to the president of the Russian Federation. "This woman is a menace and her agency is a joke. The SVR has handled far more serious tasks. And, I might add, so has the KGB, which she is so quick to dismiss."
The president-a former KGB man himself-turned his watery eyes to the head of the Institute. "Why are you even interested in this, Anna Chutesov?" he asked, suspicion on his bland face.
Anna shrugged. "My field agents need experience," she replied simply.
"My agents have experience," Zatsyrka interjected.
"Yes," Anna said. "But why trust a tank when you have a scalpel?"
A few of the other men laughed. Even the president cleared his throat, covering a smirk behind a small hand.
Pavel Zatsyrko was outraged. Even more so when the president handed the assignment over to the Institute.
Anna could not have cared less about the victory. The truth was, she wasn't interested in the Vaporizer. But with the delegations of each nation to Mayana being limited, thanks to the Globe Summit, she couldn't very well say she wanted to assign one of her agents there based on suspicion alone.
Once Petrovina was done at the Vaporizer, she could begin her true assignment.
The thought troubled Anna Chutesov.
Out of necessity, Anna had been forced to entrust her Agent Dvah to a team of SVR men who had been assigned to Mayana. Anna was reluctant to recruit assistance from the SVR, but she had no other choice. She had won a victory with the president for one agent, but she would not be permitted to pull the entire SVR group and replace it with spies from her Institute.
Pavel Zatsyrko wasn't alone in his opinion of Anna and her agency. Already more than a few men higher up in Russia's intelligence services were griping about Anna Chutesov's all-female group. Typical. The same fools didn't open their big mouths to complain when the men were in control and running Russia into the ground for more than seventy years.
The same old story. Men circling the wagons, protecting themselves and their delicate egos.
Thinking bitter thoughts of the opposite sex, she clicked a slender finger on her mouse. The images went by lazily, one after another.
Petrovina had grouped the photographs by category. The pictures proceeded from the Vaporizer grounds, to the unit itself, then on to some of the personnel.
Anna recognized Mike Sears from the television. Her fledgling agency still relied on the SVR for much of its information. They had little data on the American scientist.
There were a few other people. Technicians and officials from the Mayanan government. As she clicked through them, one photograph caught her eye.
It was of a man somewhere in his early fifties. Dressed as a janitor, he stood near the open Vaporizer door.
The man was talking to Dr. Sears. He held a push broom listlessly. He didn't seem pleased.
The man didn't look Mayanan. While many in the South American country had soft, white British features, a disproportionate number of these were still among the upper classes. The social pecking order almost required that a janitor in Mayana be of local peasant stock.
She enlarged the picture.
The man seemed too refined to be a janitor. For one thing his hands looked too clean. The same for his clothes. The knees of his coveralls weren't worn or baggy in the least. And he held his broom in a way that made it look like an offense that he was even asked to carry it.
Odd that he would wear such an expression while talking to the head of the Vaporizer project.... Turning on her printer, Anna made physical copies of all the photos of the Vaporizer and the grounds around it. She slipped the two stacks of pictures into envelopes and addressed them to the proper government departments. The photos of the personnel she put in another envelope.
When she was finished, she pressed her intercom. "Yes, Director Chutesov," a female voice replied.
"I have some photographs that I want the SVR to go through for us. Tell them it is top priority."
"Right away, Director Chutesov."
Anna turned her attention back to her computer. She pulled up the picture of the janitor once more. Something didn't seem right.
Blue eyes suspicious, she reached for her mouse. After a few clicks the printer next to her chair whirred to life once more. When it was done, Anna took the color photograph in slender fingers.
For a long moment she studied the picture of the Mayanan janitor. There was definitely something not right about the man. She would have to tell Agent Dvah to check on him once she was finished with her assignment.
Anna finally set the photo to one side of her desk. Putting the janitor from her mind, the head of Russia's secret Institute returned to work.
Chapter 12