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back before he dropped into a chair. "You've got a line on the skinheads who killed Grau?" |
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"We know who they were. Was it necessary to kill them?" Kellner asked abruptly. |
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"That's it? Yes. No further explanation?" |
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"They knew where we were, they had lots of firepower, they were ready to use it on Anna and me after they killed Grau, and they had us in their sights. I was lucky enough to get the drop on them, otherwise you'd be at my funeral about now." |
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"All right, I accept your premise. Now, tell me about the Russian. Is he real? The Company man I talked to thought he might be a ploy to distract us. Was he lucid? What did he tell you?" |
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Morgan said, "The whole storyexcept for the ending, that is. No man would undergo what he's gone through just for their precious maskirovka. He's an underwater specialist, sometimes for civilian projects, most of the time in the military. He headed the team that deployed the goddamned thing. He calls it the Device, with a capital letter. He spent three hours describing it and how the Device might be defused. I've passed the sketches on to the Canadians. Orgonev designed and built it. He called it Soyuz." |
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"The December 7 date for detonation is a nice touch," Morgan said. "It shows great sensitivity to American history." |
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"The Russians are a sentimental people," Kellner said. |
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"During the deployment, Karmann says, two Russian navy divers were killed by mines they set in the water around it. The mines must still be active. He says the whole project was strictly clandestine, poorly planned, done on a shoestring. The warhead leaked plutonium oxide aboard the Pravda. Two-thirds of the crew were already sick when the captain scuttled the ship. The Device is cobbled together from bits of ICBM warheads and rated at eighty to a hundred megatons, They |
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