"This component, here," he said, gesturing at the set of drawings, "simply baffles us. We're of the opinion that your agents are known to the Soviet government and have been handed a set of phony plans."
"What's it supposed to do?" Lenny asked.
"We don't know what it's supposed to do," the scientist said, "but it's doubtful that it would actually do anything." He selected one of the photocopies. "See that thing? The one shaped like the letter Q with an offset tail? According to the specifications, it is supposed to be painted emerald green, but there's no indication of what it is."
Lenny Poe reached out, picked up the photocopy and looked at it. It was—or had been—an exact copy of the drawing that was used by Dr. Sonya Malekrinova. But, whereas the original drawing has been labeled entirely in Cyrillic characters, these labels were now in English.
The drawings made no sense to Lenny at all. They hadn't when he'd made them. His brother was a scientist, but Lenny understood none of it.
"Who translated the Russian into English?" he asked.
"A Mr. Berensky. He's one of our best experts on the subject. I assure you the translations are accurate, Dr. Davenport said.
"But if you don't know what that thing is," the colonel objected, "how can you say the device won't work? Maybe it would if that Q-shaped thing was—"
"I know what you mean," Davenport interrupted. "But that's not the only part of the machine that doesn't make any sense."