by Thomas Craig
Eventually, he climbed back into the cockpit. He huddled into himself in his seat. On the tactical screen, the fireflies moved with darting, seemingly purposeful activity. As he reached for the headset, his hand quivered. Then he jammed the earphones against his head. The transmissions flew back and forth; response, acknowledgment, report, description, response, order, position, reference, report—nothing here, cleared this area now… nothing here. Nothing, nothing, nothing. They hadn't found Kedrov, they had no idea where he was. Gant's hands had clenched into fists in his lap-He realized he had been sustained for the last hours, since Garcia's
Mil had been destroyed, by the single, simple idea that Kedrov was not the problem. Getting to him was the task, the mission, not finding him.
Nothing, nothing, nothing… Where in hell was he?
He felt the first tremor of panic. Unease was sliding toward anxiety like an unbalanced cargo inside him. He looked at his watch. Two-thirty. They'd be looking for him, on both sides of the Afghan border. Which escape route could he use, back that way or west toward Turkey? The thought of escape made his mouth dry. The priority route was Afghanistan, but that was before they'd stumbled across the mission and shot down the transport helicopter. They'd killed Garcia and his crew, and by now they'd long known he had escaped, leaving Mac's body behind. They'd be waiting for him. It had to be Turkey.
Where was Kedrov?
Two thirty-one. Twenty minutes since his arrival. Time was operating like a thermometer, recording an inexorable rise in his temperature, and his tension. Twenty minutes already gone. He had perhaps no more than five hours of darkness left — and a thousand miles meant a minimum of five hours' flying time. In another minute, slow daylight would begin to encroach on the other end of his journey, exposing his last moments in Soviet airspace. How long could he afford to wait for Kedrov?
He could not ask the question clearly. His head spun with a storm of anticipations and shied from any answer. How long? Where was Kedrov? Two thirty-two.
He remembered Adamov, presumably conscious by now, tied to the jump seat in the main cabin. And now, with a narrow, cold certainty, he knew why the GRU captain was still alive. Not because his body might have been found, not because there might be a search for him…
… because he might need the uniform. The papers. Even the man.
When he tried to get out. He might have enough fuel, he might not. Superstitiously, he was afraid to risk another gas station. He might need a uniform, ID, information. So Adamov was alive.
He was growing numb with cold or something else. He blew on his hands, shuffled his feet. He turned in his seat, staring westward. No longer toward the marshes and Kedrov. He looked at the instruments. Still no glow of light from the transponder. Kedrov's set was not responding to the signal, he couldn't be at the agreed rendezvous.
He was hunched into himself, his hands like frozen claws in his lap, his head bowed, chin on his chest. On the unregarded tactical screen, the defenses of Baikonur sparkled like cold stars — radar, missile launchers, gun emplacements, listening posts. Gant felt nothing but emptiness around him.
Where was Kedrov?
Where?
"What's he doing?" Priabin whispered.
"He's just woken up — he fell asleep," Katya added, as if surprised by Kedrov's behavior. "Curled up like a frightened child, head under the blankets — look." She tapped the TV monitor. A cable snaked away from it across the frozen stretch of marsh, along the rotting jetty to the borescope that had been inserted into a narrow gap in the houseboat's planking.
Priabin studied the image. A low-light television camera with a needlelike probe was attached to the hull of the boat. One of Du-din's team had approached Kedrov's hideout and checked that the camera and its borescope could be installed without Kedrov being aware of the fact. More than an hour before. Now the black-and-white image of the houseboat's single interior room could be observed from a quarter of a mile away.
Priabin rubbed his gloved hands to warm them — perhaps almost to express a kind of gloating pleasure. On the screen, in the center of the circular image, Kedrov stirred on his narrow bunk and looked at his watch. Priabin involuntarily did the same. Almost three o'clock. The effect of the time on Kedrov was alarming. He sat bolt upright on the bunk, stiffly flinging aside the blankets that had covered him. His face showed he was clearly appalled, as if he had not quite awakened from a nightmare. Priabin winced as he exhaled, so real and close was the man's fear. Kedrov was a terrified man. Had he sensed the camera, the men surrounding his hiding place?
A helicopter passed distantly. GRU patrols. There were more of them than Priabin expected. Looking for him, the man on the TV screen? Extra security because of the launch? Priabin was sensitive to the pace of events. He could still lose this race.
Rodin. He must get back to Rodin, soon. The boy was dangerously isolated and afraid. The ticket for the morning flight was waiting at the Aeroflot desk. Kedrov had to be taken now, and hidden elsewhere. Katya must look after him — once he'd mollified Rodin.
Kedrov stood up. His frame had enlarged as he moved across the narrow room toward the hidden needlelike lens. His face was white, distorted by the fish-eye vision of the tiny lens. He was leaning heavily on the table in the middle of the room, staring down at the — what was it? Priabin leaned closer to the screen. Yes — a transistor radio, unremarkable in every way. Kedrov was staring at it with the same mesmerized attention a rabbit would give to a snake. His whole frame could be seen quivering, as if an earthquake had struck the boat. What was wrong with him?
Kedrov tore off the back of the radio, exposing its circuit boards and wiring. Touched it, studied it as if it contained his whole future, looked at his watch, studied the radio, looked at his watch…
Katya, beside Priabin and Dudin, was puzzled but silent.
"Colonel—" Dudin began.
"Not now, Dudin," Priabin snapped. His breath was smokily whipped away by the wind crying across the marshes. The canvas windbreak erected around the screen rattled as loudly as the frozen reeds and sedge. He concentrated on Kedrov's puzzling behavior.
Watch, radio — something glowed in the center of the radio's innards, though Priabin had not seen Kedrov switch on the set. Had he missed it?
"Did he switch it on?" he whispered.
"What?"
"Did you see him switch on the radio?" He raised his voice as another helicopter passed overhead, closer than the previous one. There were no lights around him, no radios or walkie-talkies being used — and not just so as not to alarm Kedrov. Priabin could not risk attracting GRU attention to their stakeout.
Katya shook her head. "No, I didn't," she confirmed.
"Pity we haven't got a mike rigged up. Why has he taken the back off the set?"
Kedrov shook the set as if he, too, wondered whether it was forking. Evidently, there was no sound from it. One of its batteries flew from the case, then another detached itself. Kedrov appeared Momentarily alarmed, then grinned. He replaced the radio on the ^ble. He seemed calmer, though his face was etched with creases of anxiety. He looked at his watch again, then the radio, then his watch…
… radio. The windbreak rattled. Priabin hunched forward on the small, folding chair placed in front of the screen. The noises of the stiff spikes of sedge were ghostly. The helicopter's drone diminished in the distance. Radio…
A point at the center of the radio's exposed circuitry still glowed. Without batteries? Kedrov had retreated and sat down once more, his eyes still on the table and the radio. His shadow no longer fell across the transistor set. Where was the power coming from, without its batteries? It should not be working.
But it was. It wasn't an ordinary radio.
Priabin's hand gripped Katya's arm. She winced with pain, exhaled. He shook her arm excitedly.
"It's not a radio," he whispered fiercely.
"Sir?"
"It can't be. It's working without batteries. There's no lead — it's a dummy set. What the hell is it? It must have
some other power source, something that doesn't look like an ordinary battery." He was murmuring quickly, to himself as much as to Katya; chasing ideas that ran ahead of him. "What's going on, Katya? What?" It's working, but not as a radio, he thought. Why? For what reason? "It's still working," he said aloud, "but not as a radio set. It can't receive without its batteries."
And then he knew.
Transmission. It was some kind of transmitter, the glowing light only to inform Kedrov it was operating. The signal was inaudible. Dear God!
"It" — he had to clear his throat—"he — he's signaling to someone."
Dear God, Kedrov expected to be rescued. He was waiting to be rescued!
"How?" was all Katya could say. Dudin had overheard and was crouching beside them now.
"I don't know."
"Colonel, let's move in now," Dudin offered.
"Not yet. Let me think." Rescue, rescue… someone was coming for Kedrov — at least, Kedrov believed it. But who, and how? Should they make sure of Kedrov now? Or — but how the hell could anyone get this deep into Baikonur? The idea was impossible.
"Sir?"
"Colonel?"
"No, no, just let me think." Priabin stood up. The wind leaped on him over the top of the canvas. The navigation lights of a helicopter glowed, moving against the background of stars. He could just make out its engine noise above the wind. How?
Everything, his imagination tempted. Everything — there for the taking… just wait. Kedrov has run out of time, he's terrified he's too late already. It must be soon. A half hour, an hour at most— sooner than that. Just wait.
Rodin was forgotten.
"Someone's coming for Kedrov," he said, looking down at his companions, whose faces lifted from the screen and were palely lit by its monochrome glow. Between their features, Kedrov stared out unseeingly, desperately hoping he was on the point of rescue. "We're going to have him, or them, too," Priabin added, his voice eager.
Serov stood opposite the window of Valery Rodin's flat. The empty room around him was the very one used by Priabin's KGB surveillance team until only a couple of hours earlier. He was alone. Overcoated, hands clasped behind his back, standing. Near his toe, scratched into the floorboards, were the marks left by a tripod. He had seen them in the light of his flashlight. Otherwise, there was little trace, beyond remaining scents and the feeling of recent occupation, of the surveillance team.
Priabin. It rested on the answer to the question, was Priabin dangerous? What did he already know? Serov had consulted the file on the KGB's head of industrial security at Baikonur. The man's history was intriguing — the dead woman, the Firefox fiasco, his survival of an incident that should have ended his career, perhaps even his life. Priabin was a survivor. But there was something about the roan… he was difficult to comprehend, to thoroughly know. He was a mystery to Serov and therefore dangerous.
Something might have to be done about him, and soon. Just as decisive a something as the act soon to unfold at the uncurtained Window opposite.
"Door's open," a voice whispered in the shadows of the room, disembodied — unnerving except that Serov knew it came from the small transceiver clipped to his overcoat.
"Go ahead," he murmured in reply. The room seemed charged with the static from the open channel. He raised to his eyes a small Pair of binoculars, suitable for low-light conditions. And studied Rodin's form stretched on the bed.
The team was in the flat. Breathing, quick and tense, filled the room. Lock picker, two heavies, and a doctor to administer the overdose of drugs — whichever drug Serov decided upon in the next few minutes. They were in the hallway. Rodin lay on the bed, robe in disarray, deeply unconscious; drink and hashish. He was a drugged, incompetent, dangerous mess—
— rubbish to be thrown out. Serov listened to the team's combined breathing, felt his muscles tighten and contract with their tension. For himself, he was prepared to assume the calm of the detached observer, certain of the outcome of the drama he was witnessing.
The door opened behind him, startling him. He turned angrily. A young radio operator, carrying his set, apologized awkwardly.
"You said, sir—" he began.
The older sergeant, accompanying him, merely snapped: "The communications unit you requested, comrade Colonel." i "Yes, very well, get it installed and working — over that side of the room."
He turned away abruptly, in time to see the door of Rodin's bedroom opening. He stared. The team was in black civilian trousers and sweaters; ski masks. He felt excited by the menace they so thoroughly portrayed on the screen of the window. Two, three of them, and the doctor.
Rodin sitting up, startled awake, one of the team moving to him, another to the curtains at the window, dragging them closed—
— sharp disappointment, Rodin's distant, tinny voice protesting, breathing from one of the team as if engaged in strenuous exercise, the heartbeat of another, all filled the room. Serov's frustration at being cut off from the unfolding drama was as audible to him as the sounds from the transceiver, and the noises of the two men behind him.
"OK, sir," the Sergeant murmured.
"Not now!" Serov stormed, hand moving as if to clutch at his heart. Then he added more softly: "In a moment, Sergeant."
"Sir." The sergeant clumped away.
He uncovered the transceiver on his breast like a treasured pet-Breathing, Rodin's repeated, frightened questions, the laughter of one of the team — Grigori, possibly. The comms set at the back of the room crackled and hummed, awaiting his attention. Serov stared at the closed curtains, as if anticipating some vivid shadow play to be thrown upon them by the lights of Rodin's bedroom.
He could trust the team, just as he could trust the two mebehind him. There was no risk in using them to dispose of a general's son. They were his creatures.
General Rodin would be an implacable enemy, should he ever discover the truth of his son's death. However, there was no danger of that. But a sacrificial goat might divert any suspicion from himself. He recalled the generals cold, stiff features looking down at him. The glittering eyes had seen Serov's capacity to destroy his queer son. When he heard of Valery's death, Serov might be the first person he would think of in connection with the event. Might indeed.
Suicide, then. Serov rubbed his chin. There was the smell of cigarette smoke in the room now, the scrape of matches as the sergeant and the radio operator lit acrid Russian tobacco. Serov wrinkled his nose fastidiously. Watched the curtains opposite, then looked at his watch. Three-ten in the morning. Rodin hadn't been gagged — no bruising must appear around his mouth.
"Why, why, why?" came repeatedly from the transceiver, not "who? who are you, what do you want?"
Serov could not resist saying, "You know why."
"Who?" Rodin blurted. Someone laughed once more — yes, Grigori, whose stereotyping even included the slightly manic giggle; it was surprising how often members of his special teams fulfilled their cinematic stereotypes. Then: "Serov? Is that you, Serov? For Christ's sake, where are you? What do you want, man?" It was both question and bribe.
"Yes — I'm across the street, Rodin. Where your friend Priabin had his men installed." The sergeant cut off a guffaw of laughter in the shadows behind him. "You remember your friend Priabin? What you spoke about together?"
"You've been watching me?" Rodin's voice was terrified, certain of its future.
"Everyone's been watching you, dear boy."
"For God's sake! I told him nothing!" Rodin bellowed; but the small noise from the transceiver was contained, even swallowed, by room. "My father — he can't want you to do this, he can't—"
"He doesn't even know."
"Then you can't do it!" Hysterical relief, the voice at the point of breaking. "You need his order—"
"Security is my concern."
"I told him nothing!"
I don't believe you." Serov stared at his gloved hands, flexing the fingers, spreading them in front of him. He smoothed the gloves as he had seen
the general do only hours earlier, on the steps of the officers' mess. Businesslike, fastidious rather than sinister.
"I told him nothing!"
"Now you're protecting him, too," Serov observed calmly. "Security is my responsibility. It's security I'm interested in here. I'm ensuring things remain — secure." He listened for a moment to Rodin's ragged breathing, then he said: "Very well — do it." And above Rodin's scream of protest and terror, he added loudly: "Make it suicide. Suicide!"
He stared at the curtains. A delicate blow to the head or neck, or a gripped nerve to render Rodin unconscious, silence the noise he was making.
"Don't bruise him," he snapped, as if he could see the struggle taking place on the bed rather than simply overhearing it.
A narrow tube down the throat, and whiskey or cognac — the choice was unimportant — and then the Valium or whatever tranquilizer or sleeping pill the doctor discovered in Rodin's bathroom cabinet or bedroom drawer. No overdose of heroin or cocaine, but a signposted suicide; sleeping pills washed down with drink. The boy would be unable to avoid swallowing the mixture. The tube would leave nothing but a little rawness at the back of his throat, unlikely to interest the coroner. Murder would not be a possibility.
The initial spluttering, the exerted breathing of the team, the murmured instructions, went on for some time, but slowly, inevitably subsided. There was a cadence about it, a diminuendo, which Serov quite liked; and a decency in the violence taking place offstage, as it were — behind closed curtains. Something domestic and suburban and inescapably ordinary. So fitting. So belying. Rodin's father would believe in the suicide, and if he wondered why, then-'
Serov turned abruptly from the window. The room could be redressed with KGB surveillance paraphernalia, easily. Now he had given himself the option of incriminating Priabin, should it prove necessary. Over the transceiver he could hear calm breathing noises, movement, whispers, routines; as if they were arranging the body for viewing — which, in a sense, they were. Yes, it might be best to implicate Priabin, arrest him — tonight? Certainly today. He postponed decision. If he didn't use the suicide to involve Priabin, then it would simply bring the pain of guilt to the general. And that was satisfactory, too.
