Blood Covenent, page 3
David’s test was simplicity itself. Enter the current date and the numeric equivalent for the word TEST. The numeric equivalent was converted to hexadecimal. David’s program interpreted 54 45 53 54 hexadecimal as the initial arming sequence for the bomb. The date entered with the code was stored not in the volatile DRAM, but in the SRAM. David stored the date forever and commenced a second program spawned from inside the first. A simple countdown timer checked the two-digit year for the moment when 99 changed to 00.
This subterfuge was buried inside the encryption routine used to examine the keypad for an arming code. David’s twenty-one year countdown timer could only be overridden by a one-hundred-eighty-minute detonation sequence.
David knew there would be a mandatory peer review session regarding the design. Competition bred pride, and racism spawned blindness. Part of the peer review included an examination of the Assembler program. None of them had the slightest idea what the commands like BRNCH, JMP, JNZ or XOR might accomplish. However, no one was willing to admit theJew had entered a realm beyond their own comprehension. A few asked probing questions, but they were physicists, metallurgists, and chemists—not programmers.
In the code submitted for review, the arming sequence could never be activated because David inserted NOP commands—no operation. In the master PROM he submitted for final assembly, the NOP commands were replaced with JMP commands. The JMP command caused the program to branch toSAMSON’S initial arming sequence and start his doomsday countdown timer.
David ensured the SRAM never lost power with a redundant system of lithium batteries and capacitors. The same mechanism, powerful enough to ignite the mercury detonator for the plastic explosive trigger, ensured a positive charge was maintained to the SRAM—thus never losing the vital time counter.
He kept both programs running using the basic interrupts available from the 8080’s architecture. During the next decade, the same technique would be used for a variety of programs with the generic designation of terminate and stay resident. David made sure his bootstrap routine checked for the presence of the count down timer in memory. He had no illusions regarding the durability of a new technology. He safeguarded his revenge.SAMSON would do its work some two decades hence.
When the year finally did flip from 99 to 00, David’s smaller system began a random detonation sequence. There was no satisfaction in causing all one hundred weapons to detonate simultaneously. He programmed the sequence to work on a random basis from 1 second to 32,767 seconds.
SAMSON’Sbrainwas mounted in a static-free and shockproof housing. There was still a problem to overcome. Someone might figure out his deception. The steel case was effectively tamper-proof. A special alloy was used and only the hardest diamond drills were capable of penetrating the centimeter-thick case.
He installed a photoelectric cell at the mouth of the case entrance. This is where the entire bomb assembly was slid into place on a locking rail system. David used the fault tolerance argument to his advantage. He wired the photoelectric cell to power system, and the power system could not activate until the bomb assembly was successfully locked in place.
David used the photoelectric cell as an indicator for the bomb assemblers. David’s TEST sequence also activated a process control interlock. Once the initial arming sequence completed, any break in the beam started the random detonation sequence. The very act of final assembly was David’s war shot. He had created a weapon that would explode. The KGB ordered one hundred twenty-five weapons. An additional seven were created as part of the test and acceptance phase. The weapon system remained outside normal military procurement channels and beyond the scope of any arms control agreement.
David never explained the significance of the passwords to arm and disarm the weapon during deployment. Nor did he stress the importance that deployment should take place within the next twenty years. He left the evidence of his crime before their eyes, but they understood nothing. He builtSAMSON to strike at the temple of his jailers just as Samson the judge in death destroyed the Philistine temple of Dagon.
They did not even know the story. They were neither Jew nor Believer. Their eyes clouded over as they tried to follow the skeleton of David’s program.
David did make two erroneous assumptions regarding his scheme to punish his jailers. First, he assumed the Soviet Empire was an immutable object in history. In the summer of 1978, the Russian Bear faced a war-weary and ineptly led American Eagle. Over two hundred Warsaw Pact divisions faced a scant ninety NATO divisions across West Germany’s Fulda Gap. America had lost the war in Vietnam, and her capitalist economy was teetering on the edge of hyperinflation. The oil shock following the 1973 October War and daunting power wielded by OPEC continued to lead the West towards paralysis.
Second, he believed any nuclear weapon delivered to the KGB or the Strategic Rocket Forces would be maintained under the rigid controls he had learned to live under. The iron grip of the Soviet Police State maintained slave labor camps and armed borders designed to keep people in, and a palpable fear alive. Freedom was a foreign concept. The idea that the Red Army would become embroiled in war with Afghan tribesman, and these tribesmen could hold the mighty Soviet Bear at bay with ancient Enfield and Mauser rifles produced at the turn of the century was unfathomable.
While David remembered and even obsessed on the story of Samson, he forgot another aspect of his boyhood lessons. Lessons taught illegally to him by his father. Nations and rulers serve at the pleasure of YAHWEH. History is not a random event left to the devices of feeble men, but a divine plan already proscribed by the Master Designer. In his increasing madness, David forgot about the sanctity of life and the primacy of holiness. Revenge and the need to strike back clouded his judgment and consumed his soul.
He closed the lid on the suitcase bomb. He snapped the locks shut and stroked the top of the case. He never spoke aloud in his lab. The walls had ears. His thoughts were his own. Had the Soviet Union been a little more concerned about the emotional and psychological stability of its people and little less demanding about its weapons,SAMSON might never have left Arzamas-16.
No one discovered the deadly arming sequence buried in David’s code, nor did they realize they were transporting nuclear weapons to secret KGB locations with an already-lit fuse. A new class of weapons had been built not covered by any Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty. A new nuclear weapon system existing outside the normal military controls, and it remained effectively hidden from the many arms negotiating sessions between the superpowers.
CHAPTER 3
Arzamas-16, USSR
April 19, 1979
The car bumped over the rutted winter road. There was some evidence that a snowplow had brushed the snow away during the winter. A spring thaw, some rain, and then the hard freeze during the night left the gravel road a frozen mud river.
Rachel Denisov looked out the window at the still snow-laden pines and leafless trees of the surrounding forest. It was a desolate place populated by wolves, deer, rabbits, and bears. Hawks and owls were beginning to return after a long winter searching the ground for their next meal. It spoke not so much of the very absence of man as it did of the boundless wilderness encompassed by the Soviet Union’s borders.
She clutched her purse to her breast and gripped the door handle as the car heaved over another ridge and slammed harshly back to earth. Obviously, the KGB did not worry about broken axles or punctured tires. Her driver—a Major Yevgeny Yarovitsin—drove like the devil himself. When he was not smoking Western cigarettes, he played Western music and roared down the road at impossible speeds.
Yevgeny had appeared at her apartment door two days ago. He stood straight with his blue uniform, the Torakev pistol in its holster, and smug eyes. The heavy wool uniform kept the chill of the apartment house from his bones as he stated, “Rachel Denisov?”
She nodded cautiously. No one needed a visit from the KGB, especially an officer, in the middle of the morning. “Your brother, David, wishes to see you,” he announced.
“David?” It had been over five years since she had heard from him and much longer since she had seen him. She had come to believe her brother no longer existed.
“You have another?” he demanded.
“No, no,” she shook her head. “But it has been so long.” She paused. “Is he well?”
Yevgeny nodded. “He is quite well and doing great work for the Motherland.”
Her brow furrowed. David hated the Soviets—ever since he was a small child and learned from their father the tragedy of Russian history—pogroms during the Czars and communists. Stalin was the worst. Hitler’s defeat did nothing more than shift the monstrous lies regarding Soviet Jewry from the Nazi propagandists to the Communist ones.
For their father, Joseph,Babi Yar stood like a marker in history blinking: “How could it happen?”Their father demanded how anyone could sit by and watch it happen. He shouted at the windows. The answer was always the same.They were only Jews . September 29, 1941 was one of the dates neither Rachel nor David would ever forget.
* * * *
Ten days after the Nazi army occupied Kiev, Jews were driven from their homes. Neighbors kept their doors closed and windows shuttered, ignoring the fear and fervently hoping—some even praying—that the jackbooted demons would pass by their homes. The vaunted Waffen SS drove their prey to a ravine in the Kurenyovka section of Kiev. There all modesty and decency ended.
Everyone was stripped of clothes and possessions. Pensioners, pregnant mothers, little babies, young boys, virgin girls—Joseph could make his children smell the fear and see the anxiety. And why not? They had huddled on a rooftop above the town for three terrible days. David was almost four and remembered the screams. Rachel, only a ten-month-old baby at the time, knew only from the retelling.
The Germans created a gauntlet from a holding area to the ravine. The gauntlet consisted of baton wielding soldiers. Goaded by bayonets, the captured Jews ran through the gauntlet. The lucky ones died. The rest emerged with arms broken and scalps bleeding. Mothers sought to shield their babies. Joseph painted the horror of that day so his progeny would never forget. No one was brave enough to take a hunting rifle and shoot a German, becausethey were only Jews.
Those who made it through the rows of soldiers came to the edge of the ravine and arrived atBabi Yar . Those still alive were forced to throw their dead into the pit. Their heart-wrenching cries could be heard throughout Kiev—a cry that reached all the way to heaven. It was the day Joseph started doubting God cared. Not consciously at first, but eventually he asked himself, how could a loving God love the Germans?
The survivors were machine gunned and pushed into the pit.So what did the Russians do? His eyes would blaze in the dim light. His telling of the tale would stretch past sundown. The light from Kerosene lanterns allowed him to read from the Torah and explain the darkness they lived in.
The Russians showed no reverence for the site after the Germans were driven from the Motherland. Every time Joseph said “Motherland,” he would spit between his feet. The Russians filled in the ravine, much the way garbage is moved in landfills and apartments are built over the graves of thousands of Jews.
Stalin was worse than Hitler. No one would stop Stalin. The British and the Americans were tired of war, and they had started another one in a far off land called Korea. Joseph explained the Russian was not to be trusted.
* * * *
Rachel echoed, “Work for the Motherland?” The image of Joseph spitting popped into her mind.
Yevgeny nodded vigorously. “Yes, great work. He’s one of the best, your brother. You should be proud.” He paused and looked over her shoulder into the apartment. It was better than any Jew deserved, but an easy trade when you had someone of David’s capabilities building weapons. “You should understand your home is here because of your brother’s contribution.” His eyes narrowed and his smile dissolved into a wintry grimace. “Without him, you’d be like all the otherYids looking for some place to sleep.”
A slap across the face could not have startled Rachel more. Yes, this was one of theGoyim their father talked about.Babi Yar had forever changed Joseph. He lived a life of boiling hate that continued to simmer in his waning years. Anti-Semitism was no more palatable under Soviet Communism than it had been under German Fascism. “Of course,” she managed to reply.
She pulled back from the door and walked back into her apartment. Yevgeny followed her as if attached by a string.
“I’ll need to notify my husband and arrange for the children.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered Yevgeny distractedly. He pulled a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros, never asking if she minded—they were only Jews. He walked around glancing at the cheap art and books on the shelves. There were many titles.
Rachel turned away and wandered into her room. The unspoken truth now spoken, their security was tied to David’s good behavior. David was seventeen when the state recognized a genius of untold potential in their midst. The state boards were administered to every Soviet child whether they were Russian, Cossack, Muslim, Believer or Jew, and singled out David. His IQ was somewhere above 210. His ability to infer relationships where none seemed to exist gave them an intuitive mind that might come around only once in a century.
The Soviet intelligentsia gobbled him whole. Within five years, David completed two doctoral programs. He chose a branch of physics barely understood and expanded his knowledge. His dissertations became official state secrets. His life vanished and Joseph and Rachel’s lives began to improve.
Permission to live in housing usually banned to religious minorities, privileges to shop at Western commissaries, and sufficient funds to purchase moderate items were awarded. Jobs previously closed to Joseph and educational opportunities unheard of for a Jewish girl suddenly materialized.Did the state think lightening would strike twice?
David’s happiness relied on the perceived welfare of his parents and sister. The KGB understood this, and so a Faustian bargain was struck—David’s soul in exchange for his family’s welfare.
One day David simply vanished. His flat cleared out. His mail returned to sender. His telephone disconnected. He ceased to exist in the normal Soviet system. Yet, the privileges remained and improved. Health care reserved for the elite class was now open to his family, Western style clothing and music permitted,and an absolute prohibition on any travel outside the Soviet Union . The other side of the bargain included them as well—hostages. The arrangements for her children and husband completed. A small bag suitable for a couple of days and she followed the KGB Major to his car.
Rachel Denisov stared out the window as the car bounded over the rutted road, and wondered, “Where am I?”
Yevgeny explained, “This place has no name. It’s not even on the map. It would be better if you did not ask such questions.”
“Yes, but, Comrade Major, how can such a place exist? A place with no name—no being.”
The wintry grimace appeared again, “Easily. I can make anyone disappear in this country—forever. Your brother happened to disappear to a place where we keep people alive,” he boasted. “There are places where people only die.”
The unspoken Gulag—the series of remote, wilderness camps where convicts (and it did not take much to become a convict) were sent. Thieves and murderers ruled those camps, and benefited from the best conditions. Religious minorities and political dissidents vanished in the Gulag. Stories of men surviving on boiled tree bark and potato peel soup, or women selling their bodies for thread-bare blankets became the whispered gossip late at night. It seemed all too plausible, but who would admit such happenings?
They arrived at the gate leading into Arzamas-16. Rachel examined the gray timbered guard towers, the concertina wire, the three-meter high fence, and the dogs. Blocking their path was an armored fighting vehicle and its ominous twin turrets trained on their vehicle. Her eye followed the fence into the melting snows and morning mists. It seemed to blend into the wilderness, but she knew better.
An extraordinary effort to keep people in and others out, she thought. “This is where David lives?”
Yevgeny grunted, “Yes.”
She looked anew at the weathered timbers. These had been built a long time ago. It did not take much imagination to understand the purpose of the cleared area, nor the fact that no one walked though the denuded landscape leading up to the fence. Mine fields still littered large stretches of Western Russia. Neither the Nazis nor the Communists knew where they all were. Those who might have remembered died in the Great War. It seemed everyone died then.
“Is he a prisoner?” She asked innocently.
Yarovitsin handed his pass to the guard and rolled the window back up. A cold breeze was whipping across the snowfields. Mid April or not, winter still gripped the land for one last angry Arctic blast. “Prisoner?” He smiled, as much as a monster can smile. “No, these are protections.”
“Protections?” she prodded. The Guard tower seemed to have gun emplacements pointing both inwards and outwards.
“The Americans. They have assassins who would like nothing better than to kill men who are devoting their lives to the Motherland.” The lies seemed to slide off his tongue and slither past his lips without a hitch.
She shook her head, still pondering the lie, and asked further: “But why would the Americans or anybody want to hurt my brother? He’s a small man.”
“Your brother is a genius. There isn’t anyone here that can keep up with him. That makes him a target.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding.
Yevgeny retrieved his pass and waited for the AFV to back off the road. He headed into Arzamas-16 towards Building 70. The snow-laden trees fell away revealing a small city. Soviet militiamen were everywhere. The sense of constant surveillance landed heavily on her mind.
Eventually they stopped before Building 70. “David’s building. This is where he works, sometime sleeps.”
