by Craig Thomas
The young KGB Colonel, whose shoulder boards and uniform seemed remarkably new, had hurried aboard the Antonov An-26 short-haul transport aircraft with the eagerness of someone meeting a dear relative. Gant watched him clatter up the lowered beaver-tail ramp into the fuselage, his eyes seeking along the row of tip-up seats. Gant was seated on one of them, hands manacled in front of him, a guard on either side, the remaining GRU men positioned on the opposite side of the fuselage.
The young colonel stood in front of the American, hands on his hips, appraising him frankly but without malice. There might have been something akin to admiration in his gaze. Then, almost smiling, he turned to the officer in charge of the guard detachment.
'OK, he's ours now,' he said.
As if he had been overheard, KGB men in civilian clothes clambered up the ramp into the aircraft's belly. The cold of the day outside followed them, striking through Gant's check woollen jacket and waterproof trousers. He shook his head, trying to fully wake himself. It had been surprisingly easy to sleep in the noisy main compartment, surrounded by guards. Now he was hungry. The journey was almost over - bath, food at the end of it. He knew why his mind had narrowed and was working at this fiction.
'Major Gant, would you accompany us, please,' the young colonel requested. The four civilian-clothed KGB men stood behind him.
Gant stood up, stamping the cramp out of his calves and thighs. The dog-bite in his calf ached. The GRU men were already at their ease. Cigarette smoke was pungent in the cold air. The colonel reached out a steadying hand, but Gant motioned it angrily away. The officer nodded almost respectfully.
Gant moved towards the ramp and the tarmac outside, a KGB man close on either side. Their arms touched him as they moved, and he could smell staleness and smoke on one of the suits, mustiness on an overcoat. The men's faces were pinched and whitened with the cold. Gant shivered as the sleet blew into his face.
The officer was suddenly beside him, one of his guards having dropped back a step.
'I'm Colonel Dmitri Priabin,' he explained, the rank still a strange, pleasant taste on his tongue. 'I found you,' he added, gesturing the American towards a rank of black limousines drawn up on the tarmac. Gant's attention wandered over the military airfield. Familiar, except for the aircraft types and their markings.
'Yeah?' he murmured. 'Found?'
Priabin's hand was on the door-handle of the second and largest limousine, a Zil. He nodded. The grin was boyish, the eyes alert, clever, studious. 'Almost in time,' he explained. 'You were on our computer files, of course. But - it was an accident, even then. A minute too late, no more than that!' He laughed.
'What happened to your boss?' Gant asked suddenly. Priabin's face frowned, then cleared.
'Colonel Kontarsky is - in disgrace, I'm afraid.' His head had turned from side to side, as if checking that his new shoulder boards remained in place. 'However, will you please get in the car.'
'Where are we going?'
Priabin grinned reprovingly. 'Come, come, Major-you know that as well as I. Please…?' He opened the door and gestured for Gant to get in. The American clambered into the Zil. The other rear door opened and a KGB man - the one whose overcoat smelt of mothballs and disuse - slid in next to him. Priabin got into the front passenger seat. The KGB man who was scented with harsh tobacco followed Gant into the car. He was pressed between them. No guns had been drawn. Priabin turned to watch the American as the driver accelerated towards the perimeter fence of the airbase. Passes were shown at the guardroom, and then they were turning onto the main road, towards Moscow.
Why hadn't he used his overcoat? Gant wondered irrelevantly, the smell of mothballs and mustiness overpowering now.
'Where did you discover that overcoat, Oleg?' Priabin asked good-humouredly, wrinkling his nose. 'It can't have been used for years.' Gant grinned crookedly.
'My son took mine before I was up,' Oleg grumbled. 'You know what kids are like, sir. What's yours is theirs - what's theirs is their own.' He tossed his head in mock disgust.
The midday traffic was light on the Volgograd road as they passed through farmland and forest; deceptive countryside, flat and passive like his home state. Only the black car in front and the two black cars behind forced his real context and status upon him. Industrial smoke belched beyond woodland ahead of them, from chimneys scrawled against the grey sky. The sleet slithered on the windsceen as the wipers flicked at it.
'I might make you walk the rest of the way,' Priabin said to Oleg, smiling. 'Get rid of that smell, at any rate.' He turned his attention to Gant. 'A pity about the aircraft,' he murmured conversationally.
'Sure,' Gant replied. 'A real crying shame.' He converted himself in his own mind to a laconic, simple, truculent figure; as if flexing the first muscles he would use in a contest yet to come. 'It caught fire,' Gant added.
'Mm. You ejected, then?'
'What else, man? I saw it go.' He nodded vigorously. In his mind, from the vantage point of his ejector seat, he saw his Phantom explode in Vietnam. That had been the moment before the quick, breathtaking rush through the trees, the catching jolt as the 'chute caught and held him, the arrival of the party, of armed Gooks…
He continued nodding. Priabin rubbed his top lip with his forefinger. 'Yes,' he remarked. 'You have certainly seen aircraft destroyed - blow up…?' His hands made the expansive gesture of a mushrooming cloud. Gant contented himself with a final, decisive nod. 'What a pity - all that money wasted,' Priabin said soothingly. 'I hope they believe you,' he added quickly.
Gant's eyes narrowed, but his features remained passive. Outside the car, a suburban town in the Moscow oblast offered low factory units, chimneys, then wet-black streets and hurrying figures. Scarved or fur-hatted women, a preponderance of black, unfashionable winter overcoats, short fur-lined boots and galoshes. Old-fashioned, poor. Again, the familiar…
They halted at traffic-lights. He felt the two bodies on either side come to greater alertness. He relaxed, slumping back against the seat. The Zil moved off as the lights changed. Hoardings stared down, alcohol and cheese and chocolate rivalling the flags and the Party portraits for his attention. The town straggled away behind them in the sleet, and an airliner dropped out of the cloudbase towards the Bykovo airport on their right. There was little that was unfamiliar, except the city ahead crowding on its hills like a vast gathering of people waiting for important news. Four days before, when he had entered it from the northrwest, from Cheremetievo, he hadn't noticed the hills. Now, the city might have been Italian; a holiday destination that had strayed to some wet, cold northern latitude.
He gave up trying to assimilate the city, change its nature. For him, it was now no larger than Dzerzhinsky Street and the Lubyanka prison behind the dignified facade of KGB headquarters. They passed beneath a railway bridge. Sparks flashed against the sullen sky from apassing train's overhead cage. He was holding on, but only just, only just -
Just keeping out the future. It was beginning to ooze through a hairline crack in the dam he had built with inadequate materials, but he was holding on…
Priabin scrutinised him carefully, keenly, as they drove along the wide Volgogradski Prospekt towards the inner ring orchard, the Garden Ring. He saw the onion domes of a church and a building near it that was large enough, alien enough to Gant, to have been a monastery. He was startled by the outline of a distant bridge over the Moskva as a gap between buildings revealed it to him. Beyond the monastery, against the sky and almost obscured by the sleet, he saw the Krasnoknlinski Bridge. He remembered its lights blurring with sudden tears as Vassily jerked his head back and held him while Pavel beat Fenton's face into an unrecognisable blood-covered dough.
He saw that his hands were shaking when he followed Priabin's keen gaze downwards, towards his lap. He clenched, them, ground his teeth, and looked up.
'Yeah,' he said suddenly.
Priabin had evidently seen the bridge, for he said; 'Well-remembered scenes, mm, Major?' Then he shrugged, and added
. 'It was clever - ruthless, but clever. I'm afraid it doesn't make you the most popular visitor to Moscow.'
Taganskaia Square. They crossed it quickly, using the central lane marked with its broad yellow lines which was free of all but official traffic at any time. Ahead of the cars, Gant saw ugly concrete blocks towering above yellow-stuccoed buildings and monuments and columned arches.
Priabin turned to follow his gaze. A huge hotel block drifted past the Zil's windows. People hurried beneath, dwarfed, hunched into overcoats. There were very few umbrellas. Apart from the buildings, that was the most alien thing he had seen. Most of the people wore hats, or scarves, but there were almost no umbrellas. It was an alien place.
Priabin turned back to Gant. Ahead, through the smeared passage of the wipers, the city seemed to hurry like a crowd towards the centre. The streets narrowed, appeared to squeeze closer. The distance from Red Square to the KGB's headquarters was perhaps no more than two minutes' drive.
'Welcome to Moscow, Major Gant,' Priabin said, grinning.
The dam broke. Gant was no longer able to fend off, keep back, the future. It broke over him. His hands would not keep still on his lap, however hard he watched them, however much he willed them to stop.
'It's remarkably astute of the Finns, in my opinion,' Aubrey observed to Buckholz as they stood at the plot table. Yellow, red and green tape was stretched between pins. The futuristic model of the Firefox remained where he had placed it, squatting on the lake. It ought to be under the table, he observed to himself irreverently. 'Everyone has their price, especially governments, and the Finns have been very clever at deciding upon theirs - but then, Hanni Vitsula is a clever man.'
'Sure,' Buckholz grumbled.
'They don't want Russians in Finland, collecting and taking back their most secret warplane - think of the bad publicity that would give this new Finnish government… and they certainly wouldn't want to destroy it themselves, and have to own up to the Russians - too much diplomatic flak for anyone's liking there. So, what do they do? Give us the job of cleaning their stables for them, and making us pay an exorbitant price for the privilege of so doing! One really has to admire them.'
'Does one?' Buckholz asked reluctantly, sarcastically.
'I think so, Charles - oh, don't be such a spoilsport. In the end I don't suppose it will come down to us giving them very much more than we do already. You know that as well as I do. What is it that is really upsetting you? The fact that your President, at the eager prompting of the Chiefs of Staff, the entire Pentagon, the NSA and your own Director, have ordered us to rescue the airframe if we humanly can?'
Aubrey's complacent smile irritated the American, made him unreasonable; even disposed to violence. Washington had given him explicit orders, outlined a specific course of action; pressured London into agreement, into the supply of men and facilities and materials. Buckholz was angry with Aubrey for anticipating, in his insatiable desire for success, the way in which the President's Crisis Management Committee would resolve the matter. An all-night meeting, a morning of computer-discussed scenarios, and the White House had agreed with Aubrey. The attempt must be made, and the Finns made to allow it.
Charles Buckholz felt he now appeared stupid, narrow, defeatist. Aubrey had forced such a view of himself upon him, and he therefore disliked Aubrey intensely at that moment. He disliked Pyott, too, he thought, as the soldier, now attired in a dark suit rather than his uniform, entered the Ops. Room, a sheaf of papers in one hand. To Buckholz's extreme irritation, he proceeded to wave them like a flag above his head as he came to wards them.
'Well?' Aubrey asked eagerly. Pyott, on reaching them, seemed disconcerted by Buckholz's sullen expression and glinting eyes. 'Oh, don't mind Charles,' Aubrey remarked airily. 'He's sulking because the President ignored his Jeremiad this morning!' Then he turned to Pyott again. 'Is that Abingdon's shopping list?'
'Yes, it is.'
'Good. And how were JIC and the Chiefs of Staff, not to mention Andrew Gresham, our revered leader?'
'Sullen,' Pyott observed maliciously, looking at Buckholz with amusement. 'At least, Gresham and the Cabinet Defence Committee are writhing at the pressure the President is putting on them - but wilting, of course. JIC is fence-sitting, and the Chiefs of Staff are promising the moon in the way of assistance!'
Aubrey grinned broadly, almost snatching the sheaf of papers from the taller Pyott. Pyott handed them to him, and brushed at his moustache; a preening gesture, Buckholz thought.
'Kids,' he remarked. 'You're like kids.'
'Charles,' Pyott soothed. 'Let's not get into that again.'
'It's not a game - not even your old imperial Great Game, Giles,' the American said heavily, leaning on clenched knuckles on the plot table; a heavy, reluctant figure, someone to be taken seriously. 'Kenneth's idea of Christmas, this is,' he continued. 'And maybe yours.' He looked at each of them in turn, intently, then he added: 'The President never mentioned Gant, though-uh? Not a goddamned word!' Buckholz threw his hands up in the air, continuing with great vehemence: 'What did he do, uh? Stand in front of the green-tinted window in the Oval Office, put his hand on his heart and tell the Chiefs of Staff and the gathered multitudes that Mitchell Gant was a true American and he'd never talk to the damned Russkies!' Pyott dropped his glance. His eyes seemed to cast about on the plot table for something he had mislaid. Aubrey, too, seemed abashed. 'You haven't got a chance - not the ghost of a chance - because they've got him and they're going to make him talk. Today, tomorrow, or maybe if you're lucky the poor dumb bastard will hold out until the day after tomorrow - but eventually, he's going to tell them go look in the lake, comrades. That's where it is. And if he holds out that long, you might just have gotten it out of the lake before they arrive - they won't even have to fish for it!'
Buckholz glared at them, then turned on his heel and walked noisily across the Ops. Room towards the door. He slammed it behind him.
Aubrey stared at the plot table and the coloured tapes marking supply routes and aircraft types and journey times and dropping zones. The sheaf of papers he held tightly in his right hand quivered at the lower edge of eyesight. He could hear his own breathing, nasal but barely under control. Finland appeared so accessible on the plot table. Coloured tape stretched out towards it from the UK, from Norway. The black model of the Firefox sat stolidly on the pinprick of the lake. The quivering sheets in his hand were the foundation, the scenario.
And yet Buckholz was right.
The telephone startled him. He looked at Pyott almost wildly. The soldier crossed the room to the foldaway table on which the secure telephone rested.
'Yes?' he asked, then immediately held out the receiver to Aubrey. It seemed slippery as soon as he touched it. 'Shelley.'
'Yes, Peter?' he asked anxiously. 'Yes… yes… I see-they're certain, yes, yes, I appreciate they are… very well. Yes, the surveillance must be of the best, they may not keep him there… yes, Peter. Thank you.' He put down the telephone heavily. Pyott, in response to Aubrey's bewildered glance, furiously rubbed at his moustache with a crooked right forefinger. 'He's arrived,' Aubrey announced in a voice that might, in less serious circumstances, have sounded comically gloomy. 'Almost an hour ago, he was driven into Moscow Centre.' He glanced up at the large clock on the Ops. Room wall. It was as if he could hear it ticking in the empty silence of the underground room. 'Damn it!' he cried, thumping the foldaway table with his fist. 'Damn and blast it, it's already begun.'
They had taken him directly to Andropov's office. The cobbled courtyard behind the main building had seemed desolate and ice-cold, gleaming with melted sleet. He had glimpsed the old buildings of the Lubyanka as they hurried him from the car. The office of the KGB Chairman seemed like some kind of bribe. Warm, opulently furnished with embroidered sofas and oriental carpets, panelled walls, tall windows looking down on Dzerzhinsky Square and Marx Prospekt. He was given a drink - bourbon, which he disliked but which they might have assumed was to his taste. It burned his ch
est and stomach, but the sensation, after the chilling cold of the cobbled courtyard, was comforting.
Andropov watched him from behind his large, intricately-carved French desk, hands steepled, face not unkindly. Merely curious. A tall, uniformed man stood at his side, outlined against the artificial whiteness provided by the net curtains. His eyes gleamed even in half-shadow. Gant sat on a delicate antique chair covered with embroidered silk, cradling his drink, while Priabin stood behind him. There was no one else in the room, but the illusion of innocence that the smallness of the company at first provided, soon dissipated. Instead, the status and size of the office, the heavy silence, the furnishings, the intensity of the air force general's gaze and the patent and insatiable curiosity on Andropov's face began to unnerve him.
Vladimirov, standing beside Andropov, was aware of a slow-growing cramp in his left calf. The sense of stiffness reminded him of how motionless he had remained since Gant entered the room; a stillness of body that belied the state of his emotions and thoughts. After a night's sleep and breakfast with his wife and the reading of a treasured letter from their only son regarding his promotion to deputy director of the power station in Sverdlovsk, he realised that he hated Gant. It was some kind of delayed stress reaction, he concluded. He had suspected it in the staff car as he was being driven to the Centre from his apartment. Suspected it even as he recalled his son's childhood, his poor academic record at school, the fudging that had got him into a technical university, his dislike of the armed forces and his choice of a career in electricity. In Andropov's office, drinking coffee, engaging in the halting small-talk that was all the Chairman could command, he had begun to be more certain. When they had brought in the American - weary, disorientated, fearful - he had known with certainty that he hated him. No admiration, no ex-flyer's fellow-feeling, no objectivity at all…
Gant had almost ruined him, almost made him fail; almost outwitted him. He had destroyed the other prototype and lost the one he had stolen. He would be made to pay.
