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Boris thanked the man and left. He took the drawings immediately to his room, hid them, and went back to his post at the control center. Thus began his first day back, which ended an all too short vacation.
Since there was never much work to be done at the launch control center, he had ample time to think about what Alexei had said.
In one respect the idea of creating an accidental launch seemed too insane to consider, but Alexei's arguments also seemed valid. The new targeting method did guarantee that no one would be hurt by a false launch. He had seen it in action. It was evidently so safe that the commissar didn't even bother to get out of bed to witness it. This strange assurance somehow reshaped this insane concept into a sensible goal. An incident of this magnitude would certainly focus world's attention onto the fragile nature of the so-called nuclear peace.
"But what if things were to go wrong?" he kept asking himself, over and over. "What if he missed one crucial point, one minute aspect that perhaps he had no knowledge off?"
He sat for hours by himself, looking aimlessly through the large safety glass window onto the missile fields. In the distance, at the bottom of a gentle slope, many dome-shaped objects dotted the landscape. They seemed innocent, while in reality a single one could trigger the end of the world. On the other hand, it also could, with his help, trigger the end of the world's coldest cold war. Except, had he or anyone the right to force this change, to force an issue that no one had been able to deal with for decades upon decades? Shouldn't he let the Bureau do its own dirty work? Or had these people already done as much of it as they could, and now needed his help for the final step. Damn! Why did he have to become a tool to serve their scheme? Was this the reason why he had been offered this lucrative job at the base?
If Alexei was correct in one aspect, the odds that a person might succeed in ending the arms race with this plan were greatly in his favor. "Without this, this...." He could not even think the word. All he knew for certain, was that Tania would never forgive him if a single person were killed in the process, regardless of the possibility that scores of millions might be spared the agony of going through a real war.
As time went on, many more arguments came to mind, both for and against staging the accident. If only he could ask someone for advise. But whom could he trust? He certainly couldn't talk to Alexei anymore. Once before he had tried to ask Alexei about a secret subject. Alexei simply quoted what his wife had once told him: "If you have a secret to keep, never let me know. Tell me nothing that can't be printed in the papers."
God, if only Alexei had regarded this advice back in Kiev. But he hadn't. Could it be that Alexei had actually acted under orders, then?
Boris felt increasingly that he had been set up for this job, framed by the government! There was no question that he could do what they required, and in a way that nobody would find out. It must have been easy for them to recruit him, knowing as they must have known that he was the only person at the base with practical experience in driving a bulldozer. Was this the chance that any patriot would be eagerly waiting for, a chance to come to the aid of his country, to provide a service for his people that only he can provide? And undoubtedly, this chance was as real as Alexei's involvement with the man from the Bureau and the plans he had in his room.
The hours at the control center had always seemed long, but never as painfully long as on this first day back. And even after an entire shift of thinking and puzzling, his struggles had yielded no answers. His confusion remained like the landscape he had stared at all day long, through the window of the control center.
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