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Grunner?”
    “Yes. And you?”
    “Jake Burnes. Colonel, NATO Intelligence.”
    “What has taken you so long, Colonel?”
    “Had to set things up, then wait for the weather,” Jake said succinctly. “Where to?”
    “There, beside those green doors. We have been waiting almost a month. Hans, Dr. Hechter, he almost gave up hope. Things have been increasingly difficult in the laboratories. The rumors have been constant. Again yesterday we heard that they were taking us to a new facility. One somewhere in Kazakhstan, I think they said.” The scientist pointed and said, “Stop here.”
    At first glance Jake understood why wartime bombing of the facility had been so ineffectual. The great metal doors did not open into buildings at all, but rather into cliffs that protruded from a steep-sided hill like buttresses from a great sand and rock vessel. The only exposed points were the outbuildings, several of which were blackened hulks. The concrete launching strip was also pocked with hastily repaired holes. Jake eased up to the set of crumbling concrete stairs, cut the motor, and let the scientist slide out.
    “Bring help,” Jake said laconically, scouting the area.
    The scientist paused. “What?”
    “The tools weigh a lot,” Jake said. “Get help. Like maybe the other scientist.”
    “Oh. Yes. Of course.”
    “And the money,” Jake reminded him. “And calm down.”
    The scientist gave him a dazed look from behind his spectacles, then disappeared inside. Jake walked around to the back, let down the tailgate, started heaving out the four bulkiest sacks from his cargo.
    In moving the sacks, he noticed the well-hidden lever which opened the first of the hidden bays. It was recessed into the side of the hold and looked like nothing more than an extension of one of the canvas top guide-poles. Only if it was twisted in a certain way and then pushed out rather than back would it pop open. The door itself was hidden beneath layers of oil and grime and burlap. As Jake eased the first of the heavy sacks to the earth, he found himself thinking of what lay inside the bay, and of the conversation he had with Harry Grisholm after learning what he would be carrying.
    ———
    “Bibles,” Jake had repeated. The more he had thought of it, the less he had liked it. “Helmsley threw it out like he was offering the good little doggie a bone.”
    “It was a mistake,” Harry affirmed. Harry was the only other professed Christian among the staff, another reason Jake enjoyed working with him so much. “But then again, he is not used to working with a believer. I’m sure it leaves him feeling uncomfortable. Suddenly he’s faced with something that doesn’t fit comfortably into his perspective.”
    Jake eased back and grinned. “How am I supposed to stay mad when you’re agreeing with me like that?”
    “The fact that you and I must learn to work with such people does not mean that I necessarily care for the man and his ways,” Harry replied.
    “I hated the way he used my faith,” Jake went on, but without animosity. “Like it was just another point to stick in my file and bring out whenever it suited him.”
    “Listen to me, Jake.” Harry sat up as far as his diminutive stature would allow. “You are being confronted with one of the basic problems of intelligence work. It attracts people whose dispositions make them enjoy manipulating both people and information. In some cases, I am not sure that they actually see so great a difference between the two. This is not new, Jake. I am sure that when Moses sent the young men to spy out the tribes inhabiting the Promised Land, there were some who saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime—not to do God’s work, but to possess this knowledge and parlay it into personal power and status.”
    Jake took a seat across from Harry’s chair. His friend’s stunted legs barely reached the floor. “How do you stand it, Harry?”
    “First of all, because I happen to believe in what I