"Don't you see? Alex. Just happens to call you this morning as you were on your way here to see me. Don't flatter yourself. That call was about me. Which means he knows I've got . . ." Her hand quavered as she dropped the lighter back into her purse. "There's already been one murder—"
"Hey, slow down. Take it easy. Novosty's never scared me, even when he's tried. Just—"
"It's not him I'm worried about. Michael, if even a TDirectorate sleaze like Alex knows, then who else . . ." The darkened room fell silent.
"You'd better tell me all of it. Everything." Again he paused, thinking he heard a sound from somewhere in the dark. But it was impossible. Nobody could have followed them here.
"All right." She let the words tumble out, finally. "Yes, we intercept all the Soviet satellite photos. Just the way you thought." She exhaled, then rose and paced the room a moment, its walls now ghostly in the candlelight. "Well, lately for some strange reason their Soyuz series always seems to have a temporary malfunction whenever they pass over one certain spot on the globe. Almost as though somebody were turning off their KFA-1000 high-resolution cameras. I kept noticing it, but nobody else in PHOTOINT thought it was anything but a coincidence. Still, it got me wondering. What if somebody over there is pulling a number on the KGB, or the GRU? Keeping them from seeing something. So I had some of our own photos of that grid sent over, from the new KH-12."
"Where was it?"
"Well, it wasn't necessarily where you'd think. It was the Japanese island of Hokkaido. And the high-resolution grid missing was just the northern tip."
"So?"
"I went back and checked a series of KH-12 recon photos, taken over the last two years. There's something new there now, Michael. Just this last year or so. It's been partly camouflaged, but I think it's a new runway. Or launch facility. Or something. And the radar maps show some funny surface irregularities. At least I think they do. Nobody else at NSA . . ." She looked away. "But put it together. Maybe that's part of the treaty somehow, their secret protocol. Some joint—"
"A launch facility? Eva, that's impossible. The Japanese space program is all down on Tanegeshima Island, south of Tokyo. The island of Hokkaido is way up north. There's nothing up there but Holsteins and hay fields."