If you thought the Cold War was over, think again➱ M.E.D.U.S.A A Techno Thriller by Janet & Chris Morris Book Sale with Guest Post and giveaway
If you thought the Cold War was over, think again.
M.E.D.U.S.A
by Janet & Chris Morris
Genre: Action, Suspense, Techno Thriller
Pushing
the Envelope
In
West Berlin, Amy Brecker, an American intelligence officer, takes a
chance on a walk-in informant who says that the Soviets are going to
simulate an "accident" that will cripple America's
space-based defense program.
From
a Soviet silo on the Sea of Japan, a single missile rises. A hotline
communique from Moscow insists that a mistake has been made; the
Soviets are doing everything in their power to abort the "test"
flight.
Deep
inside Cheyenne Mountain at the Aerospace Defense Command Center, all
eyes watch its trajectory: a collision course with America's manned
space lab.
If
the U.S. chooses to intercept and destroy the Russian missile, the
attempt must not end in failure . . . the future of America's entire
space-based defense hangs in the balance. Only one U.S.
anti-satellite weapon can foil the opening gambit of what might be a
Soviet First Strike -- and only Amy Brecker and her "hot stick"
pilot have enough of the Right Stuff to use.
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From her
office in the new American Embassy building in West Berlin, Amy Brecker could
see the top of the Wall, its electrified barbed wire glinting against the
squirrel-gray winter sky, tiny black shapes in a guard tower moving restlessly
back and forth before their window as she did before hers.
It was
Christmas Eve, and Brecker was working late. The embassy corridors were almost
deserted, a skeleton staff of the disgruntled and the depressed holding the
fort upstairs while below, in the ground-floor reception room, the last of the
senior diplomats buttoned up their coats and dashed for their Mercedes; only
the lonely were working tonight.
Brecker had
volunteered. Better a desk full of paperwork than a cocktail party full of
Brits, Berliners, and Frenchmen with eyes only for each other and fake
hail-fellow-well-met for everyone else. The international situation was tense;
NATO was shaky; everyone in the diplomatic community was walking on eggs
because America wasn’t: In both hemispheres, American troops were “paving the
way for democracy” with blood and bullets, matching the Soviets intervention
for intervention, preemptive strike for preemptive strike.
This
particular Christmas, there were fifty-three wars in progress around the globe.
But that wasn’t why Amy Brecker had chosen to work rather than party. Five
years in the West Berlin embassy as a second secretary had inured her to
crises; as CIA’s deputy station chief in West Berlin, she faced potential world
devastation every morning with her cornflakes.
So if this
particular quick and dirty twilight made the Berlin Wall seem like a memorial
to her own fragmented life, it had more to do with personal problems than with
professional ones: Amy Brecker had broken up with her live-in lover the night
before.
They’d had
other fights, and nothing had come of them. But during this one, while Jeremy
Pratt, the embassy’s cultural attachĆ©, was busy calling her a “horny bitch” and
letting her know in no uncertain terms that no wife of a career diplomat of
Jeremy’s potential could have a second career as “some damn spook,” she’d
realized he was right.
So Jeremy was
at her place, clearing out five years’ worth of accumulated “mutuality of
interest,” and Amy was working the graveyard shift, burying what she could of
her emotions.
They’d found
out they were in each other’s way; it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It probably would
have happened sooner, if sane heterosexual males hadn’t been at such a premium
in Amy’s age group and if she weren’t so unwilling to let the relationship fail
that she’d made endless compromises and told countless lies.
She pressed
her nose to the chill windowpane, fogging the glass, then stood back, her image
reflected there like a ghost. Jeremy didn’t really want to marry a longhair,
anyway. Amy had to be able to connect with the rebels and the peace groups—the
Granolas, the Greens, the Sovietmolded marchers and moaners who camped outside
Ramstein and smoked dope in dingy cafƩs, so she came to work in the fatigues
and Nagasaki sweatshirts of radical chic.
At thirty-seven, she was getting a little old for it, but she still
got results. And she liked herself the way she was. She tried to imagine the
small, athletic figure before her in the window transformed: in a chiffon
blouse and a Dior suit, teetering on toothpick heels, her shapely legs encased
in silk, her wicked grin brightening a pale, freckled face.
“Hell with
it,” she told her reflection, and settled down behind her gray desk, where she
punched viciously at her computer keyboard. She’d cried last night, the first
time she’d cried in years. She was still feeling drained, vulnerable, and
rebellious. She needed to prove to herself that a man, or lack of one, couldn’t
really turn her life upside down.
Maybe that
was why, when the night desk buzzed and told her there was an “Ivan here who
wants to see somebody who can grant him asylum,” she said, “Great. Send him
up.”
The Russian,
when he arrived with a marine in full dress who said, “Ms. Secretary, Mr.
Azimov,” and let Amy know he’d be right outside if she needed him, was a
walking clichƩ.
Azimov—obviously
not his real name—was Slavic, overweight, sweating into his dirty, gray-white
collar. His overcoat was heavy leather, badly cut, and speckled with melting
snow. He held his hat in one hand, a stained manila envelope in the other, and
watched her out of round, dark eyes glittering with apprehension.
“Won’t you
sit down, Mr.—uh—Azimov?” Amy indicated the chair before her desk.
The burly
Russian sat, sighing like a punctured tire. Even with the desk between them,
Amy could smell an acrid body odor, like copper filings and an old cigar, that
let her know the Russian was very nervous about being here.
But then,
defections were never routine for the defector.
“What can I
do for you, Mr. Azimov?”
The Russian
chewed his lip, then said in perfect, unaccented English, “I’d like to go to
America, please.”
He sounded
like a Russian “commentator,” the sort who did satellite interviews with the
Western press, but she’d never seen him before. She’d expected some low-level
mission worker, or at best a poet or a nerve-gas project worker—someone who was
fleeing ComBloc for the standard reasons. But Russians who spoke English this
well were highly paid and not lacking in creature comforts. She couldn’t hook
him with offers of his own apartment and freedom of speech.
She stared at
him for half a minute, realizing that he’d won the first round, that she was
nonplussed, and that she’d better get the ball back into her court. She said,
“The next nonstop flight leaves in . . .”—she looked at her watch, her knee
pressing the RECORD button on the underside of her desktop—“three hours and
fourteen minutes, Mr. Azimov, so we’d better get started. I’ll need a good
reason to put you on that plane. Tell me who you are, why you want asylum, and
what you’ve got that would interest the U.S. Defectors are a dime a dozen this
year, and expensive to support.”
The Russian
wriggled one scant eyebrow. “Very good, Ms. Brecker.” He sat forward, shrugged
off his coat, pulled a Cuban cigar from a chalk-striped suit pocket, and lit it
when she nodded her permission. Then he sat back, puffed ruminatively like a
man at a poker game, all signs of his former trepidation gone, and cleared his
throat. “Do you know, Ms. Brecker, what the PKO is?”
“No,” she
lied. “Tell me.” Her pulse was beating hard now; from a simple defection, this
was turning into a major acquisition—if the Soviet was from the PKO.
Azimov
frowned with his whole body: His forehead crinkled; his nose drew down; his
mouth, around its cigar, formed a slobbery arc; his shoulders hunched and his
arms and legs crossed. “I’d hoped to find someone among you better informed.
PKO is a division of the Soviet defense forces, which we call PVO-Strany. PKO
stands for ProvitoKozmicheskay Oberona—anticosmic defense. PKO is dedicated to
literally ‘destroying the enemy’s cosmic means of fighting.’”
Amy took a
deep breath, visions of promotion and awards ceremonies dancing in her head. “I
know,” she admitted.
Anger flashed
across the Slav’s face, then subsided.
In that
moment, Amy had realized that this man was unaccustomed to being polite. He was
an order giver, not taker. PKO was run by the military; intimately connected
with GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. For all she knew, she could
be sitting across from a master spy. She said, “Go on, Mr. Azimov. Time is of
the essence.” She tapped her Cross pen on her notepad.
Azimov leaned
forward and tossed the manila envelope onto her desk. “Read this, then.”
Smart—he
didn’t want to go on record; couldn’t afford to be taped giving specifics, in
case no accommodation could be made. She countered: “Tell me what it says—my
Cyrillic’s nearly nonexistent.”
She could
almost hear him wishing she were a man. But playing the dizzy broad might be
advantageous—if it didn’t scare him away altogether.
When he
didn’t respond, she added: “Someone might have seen you come in here; we’ve got
to expedite this and get you on that plane.” She took a form from her
drawer—not the right one for a defection request: a CIA blue-bordered priority
request for transport.
“If you
insist, Ms. Brecker. In that envelope is my dossier—I am a project control
officer for the SS-thirty intermediate-range missile system. With it is a copy
of an operations plan to ‘accidentally’ cripple your Strategic Defense
Initiative program.” He stood up. “As for my person, it is not in danger
presently—unless it is in danger from you, No one saw me come in here; no one
will notice my leaving. And I know Americans—you will have to consult with some
man who is your superior before you make a decision on my case. So . . .”—he
smiled nastily, a baring of teeth that showed steel fillings and brown
enamel—“I’ll leave now, and come back another time.”
The big Slav,
standing, shrugged into his overcoat and headed for the door.
“Wait a
minute—Mr. Azimov?” She’d blown it; the man wouldn’t put his fate in her hands.
She didn’t really blame him—she hadn’t taken this thing seriously enough. Now
it was too late . . .
“Da?”
He turned, a glint of triumph in his eyes.
“How do I
know you’ll be back? How do I know this report is genuine? Or that you
are?”
“You don’t,”
he rumbled. “But someone better informed will be able to make those
determinations.”
“What is it
you’d like? How can I persuade you not to leave?”
“Put a
geranium in your window when you have permission to spirit me from this country
to yours and your superior is ready to talk the turkey with me—money, freedoms,
this sort of thing. Until then, my dear . . .”—he reached out, took her hand,
lifted it to his lips and kissed it—“have a Merry Christmas.”
Dropping her
hand, he opened the door and strode out. The marine waiting outside looked in
at her quizzically. Amy shook her head. “See him out, if you would, soldier.”
She was
staring out her window again, the Azimov report still spread out on her desk
and her fingernails between her teeth, when ten minutes later someone knocked
on her door. It was the marine again, this time with his white hat in one hand
and his young face equally white. “Ma’am? Sorry to bust in like this, but . .
.”
“Go ahead,
soldier.” In the distance she could hear the burping wail of an ambulance; out
the rear window of the embassy building, the Wall glittered, coldly lit and
defiant in its intransigence, a symbol of all that was wrong with the modern
world, her job, life in general, and Soviets in particular.
“Well, ma’am
. . . that guy, the one who was just here? He got as far as the front gate and
then . . .”
“Yes? Then
what?”
“We were
wondering if he was one of our guys—you know, an agent or something . . . if we
screwed up.”
“How’s that?
You didn’t detain him?”
“No, ma’am.
He cleared the checkpoint, started across the street to his car, and some fool
who thought this was the autobahn creamed him. That’s who the ambulance is
for.”
“He’s alive?”
“Heck, no,
ma’am. This gray Mercedes hit him so hard he went right up in the air and
landed behind it—broke his back, we think. Whatever it broke, he was dead when
he hit the ground.”
“Shit.”
The marine
flushed up into his crew cut. “Yes ma’am. So . . . did we screw up?”
“No, soldier,
you didn’t. But you can bet I did.”
What
is something unique/quirky about you?
Together we breed Morgan horses. We
consult with Morgan breeders to help them choose crosses to their stock to
achieve a desired result.
We are also musicians; Janet plays bass
guitar, Chris sings and plays guitar. We have an album on MCA records. Look for
Christopher Crosby Morris on Soundcloud or N1M.com
Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something
about yourself and how you became an author?
Janet wrote her
first novel, High Couch of Silistra in 1975; a friend sent
it to an agent who chose to represent her; she had already written the second
book in the Silistra Quartet and her agent told her not to disclose that
until they finalized the contract for the first one. When the publisher learned
of the others, Bantam Books bought the succeeding three. When the fourth book
was published, the series already had four million copies in print. Suddenly Janet
was a novelist specializing in environmental, gender, historical and political
subjects. In the process, Chris started as her editor and ultimately a
co-writer. Since then, she and Chris have co-authored many books.
Who
is your hero and why?
Heraclitus
of Ephesus, a pre-socratic philosopher, whose Cosmic Fragments
foreshadow our knowledge of reality and how to perceive it. Among his precepts
is the statement that change alone is unchanging. We’ve worked Heraclitus’
fragments in here and there throughout our books.
Which
of your novels can you imagine being made into a movie?
All of them.
We write cinematically, our books are vivid adventures we undertake without
knowing the destination. I, the
Sun, The Sacred Band, and Outpassage are
particularly suited to film. The Threshold Series is a feast of
opportunities for today’s special effects creators.
What
inspired you, to write M.E.D.U.S.A.?
M.E.D.U.S.A.
— If you lived
in the last half of the 20th century, you remember the Cold War
between the Soviet Union and the U.S. In
many ways, it continues today, with superpowers using client states as proxies for
their own economic and political ends. The big difference today is how
dependent world powers are on space-based assets to spread their doctrines for
good or ill. The loss of a single communications satellite can spell disaster
for governments, their militaries and mega corps. Earthbound enterprises of all
sorts are critically invested in low earth orbit (LEO) capabilities. Where M.E.D.U.S.A.
overlaps with current reality is in the need to deploy military force quickly to
counter threats to their space-borne resources. Our super-plane, M.E.D.U.S.A.
is just as feverishly sought today to protect fragile technology in orbit as it
was then, and it’s important for current generations to connect with where and why
space defenses all began.
Who
designed your book covers?
Most of our
covers, including M.E.D.U.S.A., are realized by Roy Mauritsen, a
gifted graphic artist.
Advice
to writers?
As for
advice to writers, here is all we know: write the story you want to read. Start
at the beginning, go to the end, and stop. Seriously. From start to finish you
must inhabit the construct in a manner that makes the reader choose to continue;
if we as writers can’t feel what it’s like being there, our readers can’t
either. Close your eyes, look at your feet where they are standing on the
story’s ground; tell us what you see. Tell us what you hear. Ask at the end of
each paragraph ‘what happens next?’. If you lose touch with it wait until
you’re back inside it. Tell the story that comes to you, and from you, to us.
Best selling author Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris or others. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of non-fiction, as well as papers and articles on nonlethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.
Christopher Crosby Morris (born 1946) is an American author of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a lyricist, musical composer, and singer-songwriter. He is married to author Janet Morris. He is a defense policy and strategy analyst and a principal in M2 Technologies, Inc. He writes primarily as Chris Morris, but occasionally uses pseudonyms.
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The blurb sounds intriguing. Thanks for sharing.
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