Tom Purdom - Reduction in Arms (v1.0) by Unknown Author

Author:Unknown Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

XI

The girl’s voice reached Weinberg through a haze of shock and despair. There were three other men in the room—Ed Chen, Dr. Shaturian, and a former FBI agent named Bob Rykoff—and they were all staring at their intercoms as if they were watching the world topple over the edge of a canyon.

A babble of exclamations from the people in the other sleeping rooms nearly drowned out Nancy’s voice. Dr. Shaturian dropped onto his bed as if somebody had suddenly disconnected the nerves that controlled his leg muscles.

“We didn’t even finish one goddamned year,” Chen said.

Weinberg picked up his gun and started toward the door. Rykoff stepped out of his way and he squatted beside it and threw it open.

The hall itself was deserted. A couple of voices were yelling in Russian in the lobby. There was a faint haze between the end of the hall and the part of the big chandelier in the lobby that he could see from the door.

“The last man just ran through the door,” Nancy said. “I think I counted seven of them. I think the driver’s sitting in the back seat watching me over a machine gun.”

Weinberg raised his intercom. Chen and Rykoff stepped up to the door and he glanced back at them and hesitated on the edge of commitment. He had always known that the urge to curl up in a comer and let the world go to hell would be just as strong as it really was.

“This is Weinberg. I don’t know who these sons of bitches are, but anybody who wants to help me stop them can step out in the hall. We weren’t sent here to fight battles with the Russians, but they’ll wreck the treaty if they get their hands on any information upstairs and get out of here with it—and it looks as if there’s a good chance we can stop them if we hit them while they’re heading back to their car. It won’t make the situation any worse than it already is and it may be the only way we can keep it from turning into something that can’t be salvaged.”

Rykoff nodded and stepped out of the room. Chen paused in the doorway.

“Let’s go,” Rykoff said. “This is no time to worry about our goddamned skins.”

Two doors opened on opposite sides of the hall. The other girl in the group stepped into the hall with her shoulder holster in her hand. A young ACDA inspector blinked behind his glasses and stepped out of the other room with two other volunteers behind him—another ACDA inspector and Harry Dolittle, the CIA observer who had arrived with Krevarsky.

Ed Chen shook his head and fell in beside Rykoff. A tall, sardonic inspector leaned against a bed in Dolittle’s room and stared at them as if he thought they were all lunatics.

Weinberg pointed down the hall at the side exit. The little counter in his brain was ticking off points again. “This is strictly voluntary,” he said. “Nobody’s ordering you to do it and nobody’ll ever criticize you if you drop out right now.

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