Winter Hawk

7: Bid the Players Make Haste

Gant ran through the moving-map display, projected on the main tactical screen, surveying their entire crossing of Afghanistan, a thin, silver snail trail across the fleeting sequence of maps. Peshawar to Kabul, but keeping well to the east of the capital and its radars and air force units, and flying through the foothills of the Hindu Kush, which formed a bony radar and infrared shield. Laghman Province, then Nuristan and Takhar and Kunduz provinces, before reaching the thick purple line that represented the Soviet border.

Their course stayed as much in the mountains as possible, as far east of the main areas of military activity as satellite surveillance and CIA secret reports from the mujahideen fighters could place them. Gant canceled the run-through. The main tactical screen went blank. He was flying visually. No infrared or radar emissions to be picked up. He updated the map display once more, reinstating the current section, matching it to the landscape around him, which undulated now like some great living thing. It was not a mountain range with valleys and hollows and peaks and knifelike passes, but a great coiling snake, and as dangerous.

The flanks of the mountains gleamed with snow in the bright moon. Garcia's MiL, in his mirrors, was silvered by the light and appeared mottled like a cow because of its camouflage. Mac's helmet, in the gunner's cockpit below him, was like a silver dome. Lights from Mac's screens and displays winked and shone beyond the gunner's shoulders.

Gant glanced at the fuel gauges. They would not have to set down to refuel until they were far inside Soviet territory, maybe not for two or three hundred miles. The return flight had a critically small margin of fuel. Once they abandoned the second MiL, they would have just enough, just enough, to fly the same route home — while they waited, alerted and watching for them, all along the thousand miles of desert and mountain.

He dismissed the thought. It interfered with this phase of the mission, to remain undetected in Afghan airspace.

They were seventy miles northeast of Kabul, skirting the mountains that contained the fertile Panjshir Valley. Ahead of them, another hundred and fifty miles to the Soviet border. An hours flying at their present speed and without deviating from their plotted course, which was already in the onboard computer.

Aircraft activity was heavy, but it was related to a known new push against rebel tribesmen. No one was looking for them, not yet. But it meant that a lot of aircraft and helicopters were in the air— his cover, but also his peril. One visual sighting, or straying onto any one of thirty or forty radar screens, and he would be called to identify himself. He wanted to use his radar instead of relying on eyesight, but it would be like making ripples on a pond, attracting hunting fish. The last time he had briefly employed the radar — counting the seconds it was operating with a mounting breathlessness — he had spotted a high-flying reconnaissance aircraft, slow-moving enough to be an Ilyushin 11–18, moving westward well to the north of them. The flick, too, of a low, fast fighter moving away. They remained undetected. He had switched off the radar gratefully, sweating with relief.

Now his own radar, and those of Soviet aircraft, were virtually useless in the mountains. The ELINT systems on the lumbering reconnaissance aircraft were incapable of picking them out from the ground scatter of hills, valleys, snow, rock, rushing water. You're safe, he told himself once more, but the thought struck hollow.

He banked the Mil around the sheer face of a cliff, tilting the rotors away from it. Garcia duplicated his maneuver, then he, too, leveled his helicopter. Far below, water gleamed in a thin crack. Snow mottled a high peak and lay more thickly in a mountain pass. A black-and-white landscape. At any moment, an aircraft or helicopter could appear, startling him, calling on him for his IDs. That danger remained and did not seem to lessen. Minute by minute, it stretched undiminishing into the hours ahead.

He dodged and slunk through the high mountains, the noise of his rotors booming back from rock faces, hollowing down long, narrow valleys.

There were over two hundred assault helicopters stationed in Afghanistan, by Langley's expert reckoning. Two extra could easily be overlooked, especially if their pilots wanted it that way.

On the moving-map display, he could pick out the main Soviet air base at Parwan, the most northerly on their route before they crossed the border. Radar would tell him what kind and degree of activity there was around it, but he resisted the clamoring temptation. He flew into an opening where the mountains seemed to part to west and north, and exposed him like curtains being drawn back on a huge, open stage of dark air. He sensed, as well as saw, the moonlight flowing over the MiL, saw its shadow flit and tremble across the valley below. The empty, open sky stretched away on every side—

— hide-and-seek. His eyes quartered the night. Hide-and-seek. He increased his airspeed to one seventy, and waited, relieved when the noise of the rotors hammered back at him from rock faces as the mountains closed in once more. Cover; the safety of rock.

A stream of Russian, blurting in his headset, alarmed him like the sudden cry of discovery. The radio had been tuned to the principal Soviet TAC (secure tactical communications) channel as soon as they crossed the Pakistan border. It had been mostly silent until now. The codes Frontal Aviation Army units in Afghanistan used had been broken by Langley; the radio set itself had been reconstructed by DARPA specialists. The voices had been little more than distant, vague whispers.

Until now.

Something was close, perhaps too close.

He turned up the set's volume as the signal frequency locked. It was a… helicopter pilot, talking to the AWACS Ilyushin. A quick-fire, sudden, excited burst. What was it? What—? Unidentified radar trace, which had disappeared from the Ilyushin's long-range radar screens… your sector, he heard, chilled.

He had been picked up by the patrolling early-warning aircraft, either he or Garcia; it didn't matter which. He listened, knowing that the alerted helicopter would now climb, try to look down, find him again. The interference of the mountains would be like a washing shoal of fish crossing the enemy radar screens. It would obscure any clear blip he might make. At least, he had to hope that would be the case.

Where was it? There was no heading, no positional reference. Where? The Russian continued on the HF set, itself made intermittent by the surrounding mountains. Where? South—southeast, he heard, and then the distance. Looking at the moving-map display, he knew the Mil was close enough to be dangerous. He must have erupted onto one of the Ilyushin's screens in a clear gap of air where no helicopter flight was logged or expected. He had been visible for long enough to be pinpointed, but there was no identifying IFF number alongside the blip to explain who he was. To the Uyushin, he was — unofficial. If the Ilyushin really started looking…

He wished himself alone, without Garcia trailing behind him and already wound tight as a watch spring. He could not spare the effort, if it really came to hide-and-seek, to watch out for Garcia and his crew when all his energies were needed to stay alive. It was a simple, brute fact.

More voices in the headset; two more call signs and positions. A routine patrol instructed to alter course, to overfly the sector in which two unidentified contacts—there was a boyish excitement in the pilots' responses. No one could imagine what kind of unidentified aircraft would be this deep into Afghan airspace; it was probably a false alarm, someone with a damaged radio T u/s IFF transponder, but it would be good practice to seek and find, a game, good fun.

"Major?"

"Shut up, Garcia," Gant snapped into the transceiver near his head. "Stay close to me."

He dipped the MiL's blunt nose. Mac raised his hand in the gunner's cockpit. The helicopter's shadow rushed over gleaming snow, down into the cleft of a dark valley. He hugged the ground clutter like a hedgehog rolling itself in disguising leaves, and pulled the airspeed back to just above one hundred mph. Nap-of-the-earth flying, a feature of all the textbooks. No instruments, no systems; eyesight and reflexes. He felt the exhilarating danger of his plunge. The altimeter unwound with stunning quickness. Garcia, behind him, seemed to fall more slowly than he.

Come on, come on, Garcia—

He leveled the helicopter. Rotor noise boomed back from the pressed-close cliffs on either side. He skimrtied down the long funnel of a deep valley cleft, his eyes and hands aware of each other, his shoulders tense as if the residence of all his reflexes and experience. Stars gleamed at the end of the funnel where the land dropped away. They were cutting across the mountains at the eastern end of the Panjshir and moving northeast. Off-course, for the moment. Garcia's Mil bobbed in his mirrors like a cork afloat on a rocky sea.

Radio — nothing down here. He had dived into deep water, escaping almost like a submarine by going deep. It was lightless down there, and he had no idea of the whereabouts of the dangerous fish that were hunting him. Safety was a two-edged sword.

Stars, snowfields, a sense of flatness—are they above? — a scattering of small lights away to the east of him. The hard stars overhead betrayed no gaps or shadows that might have been the fuselage of a searching aircraft.

Radio — nothing. On the moving map, he pinpointed his position as one hundred miles northeast of Kabul, fifty miles from the air base at Parwan. Radio?

Radio.

Russian again. A mobile listening post, for Christ's sake. Here, here, close, too damn close.

Langley had logged into the onboard computer and the course coordinates every major radar installation, every airfield, every helicopter unit of the Frontal Aviation Army serving with the Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces iii Afghanistan; every air assault brigade that might have helicopters at its disposal or be flying routine transport missions, every AWACS aircraft and the regular pattern of surveillance flights they undertook — the satellite diagnosis of their course and its dangers was full, brilliant, almost complete—

— except the mobile radar and listening vehicles. Untrackable, too many to count, scattered over the mountains and valleys. Most of them were deployed farther south or west than this.

He had to stall, use the cover story. Invite more danger by averting an immediate threat. He replied immediately, even before his voice had fully unfrozen from shock.

Call signs, IDs, radio routine, cover story. It was all there, flashing in his mind like scattered, bright lights. Give them everything. It will all be so familiar maybe they won't even bother to check. He knew they would. Someone would. The mission's luck was running that way; was at the point where he had to begin to think in terms of luck. Kabul contained enough of a full army GHQ organization to nm down, and disprove, his cover story in a matter of — in less time than it would take to reach the Soviet border. LCSFA GHQ was inside the Soviet Union, at the headquarters of the Turkestan Military District — but Kabul was good enough and big enough to blow his cover without reference north to GHQ. An unlogged, private flight he might call himself, but…

In his mirrors, Garcia s Mil skimmed over the tiny group of dim lights, over the huddle formed by a bulky, high-sided truck and its screen of a tumbled stone wall, pale in the moonlight. Nothing more than a truck! The skeletons of antennae and dish aerials threw shadows on the white wall. Gant's passive sensors picked up radar emissions. He heard the radio.

"… please identify immediately. We do not have you logged. Over."

Almost polite. His MiL, the Hind-D, skimmed on like a flung stone.

… attached to 105th Guards Airborne Division," his cover story flowed on, "Kabul. Transfer of top-classification documentation from Army HQ, Kabul to Central Asia Military District HQ, Alma-Ata. That's all you're allowed to know, Mobile Unit 476. Over." Despite his tension, he grinned. The last elegance of the bluff, not letting everything spill out with the haste of denial of a child caught with the jam still on his face.

Gant's eyes scanned the black, star-pricked sky. Scanned his engine instruments and flying displays out of habit, wishing he could use other sensors and radar but knowing he must now preserve his cover story. On such a mission he would be flying visually. Even on the mission he would eventually admit to.

They were out there, like sharks waiting to smell blood or feel movement through the water, and the mobile listening post could guide them to him the moment he failed to satisfy it. He could outrun none of the aircraft. He couldn't even outrun another Hind.

Peaks loomed ahead. Cover. He scanned the sky, the gaps between the mountains to the west of him, then the northwest — there! He swallowed. Red and blue dots that were not stars, but tiny navigation lights winking on two fuselages catching the moonlight.

Cockpit lights, fuselage lights, the silver of metal. Less than two miles away.

"Major—"

"I see them," he snapped into the transceiver. "Leave it to me, Garcia. Out."

Speed of the lights and the flash of metal against the background stars—? MiL's. Gunships, like his own. Drawing his gaze away from them, he quartered the sky — no fighters, nothing but the two helicopters. Two against two — come on, come on, swallow the story!

There was no alarm, not yet, no request to the helicopter patrol to investigate.

He eased his speed to one twenty, one twenty-five, checking in his mirrors to see that Garcia was scuttling to keep up with him. Yes.

The mountains of the Kwaja Muhammed range neared, promising obscurity, loss of detection. But they knew he was here, now. Unless they accepted his story and allowed him to continue unmolested and uninvestigated, they would want to find him again. Everyone would want to find him. On how many screens was he pinpointed by now? The two MiLs had him, the AWACS Ilyushin would have seen him. How many fighters? They had to believe his story.

The aircraft, including the Ilyushin, would all be from Parwan; thus his cover story had his flight originating in Kabul. The capital's squadrons of MiGs, Sukhois, and MiLs operated mainly to the south and west of Kabul, those at Parwan against the rebels in the Panjshir. They would accept his story; should accept it. He felt the tension tighten in the wrist and hand that held the stick. Sweat prickled his forehead, spreading like some oily measurement of time as the seconds passed. The ether roared emptily in his ears like the noise of his own blood.

"Helicopter 2704, please confirm your point of departure. Over."

Digging. Not deeply, but digging. Garcia's image in his mirrors was like a wasp on his windshield, something dangerously distracting. The 24A dogged him faithfully, but he was responsible for it. The lights of the two MiLs to port seemed to have neared; the two gunships flashed more brightly in the moonlight.

The mountains crowded ahead like an encouraged illusion. He flicked his Hind-D to one side, jumping a ridge of rock like a flea. He lost sight of the two approaching helicopters. He drove into a narrow, high pass where snow gleamed and his own shadow pursued him across its whiteness. Perfect for a visual sighting, a difficult place in which to maneuver.

He did not climb or alter course. His first — only — priority was to answer the mobile unit, to answer the single voice before other voices took up the questioning, began to bully for answers.

"Origin of flight, Frontal Aviation central airfield, Kabul. Over."

"Thank you, 2704. Please hold this frequency."

"Mobile Unit 476—I am under orders to maintain strict radio silence. Can we get this over with? Over."

"I'm sorry, 2704. We have no record of your flight plan logged with Parwan. We have to check with Kabul. Over."

Gant believed he could see the rigidity of tension in Macs hunched shoulders just below him in the forward cockpit. The narrow pass opened out ahead. He squeezed the Hind over and around a naked outcrop, bobbed over a huge flying buttress of rock, then dropped into a wide valley. He glanced at the moving map. Assured himself of his position, his course.

Checking with Kabul—

He hesitated, then gambled; felt an exhilarated fear. Give them everything.

"Unit 476—ease up, will you?" The mountains were beginning to break up the signal on the HF radio. But he had to satisfy the unit before he lost contact with it, had to dissipate any idea of pursuit.

He climbed. He bobbed out of cover like a startled bird, hanging in the clear dark sky with the mountains below him. Garcia followed like a cork rising to the surface of the thin air to starboard. Gant slowed his airspeed to less than one hundred, as if someone idling in a conversation, not quite walking away from a companion. Bluff. Whoever was watching would have him pinpointed now. For the moment, he had thrown away all secrecy. They mustn't check with Kabul

He wondered whether to employ his own radar, to know how many there were out there, and exactly where; then decided against it. If the cover story didn't work, then would be the time to know the odds. The Soviet border was now less than a hundred miles to the northwest of his position at its nearest point.

Now, he told himself.

"Mobile Unit 476—whoever else is out there — I repeat, go easy." He scanned the sky. Yes, distant winking stars and the mirrorlike fuselages of the two MiLs. Not hurrying to close the gap of dark air between themselves and him, not yet. Now. "I — look, it's not documentation. We're empty at the moment. Got that? Empty. Understand? Over."

Sweat dampened his shirt beneath his arms. His free hand, having released the collective pitch lever, quivered with tension. Not too much, he hadn't said too much, not yet. Let the revised cover story drip like water onto a stone.

"Helicopter 2704—please explain. Over." It was still the voice of the operator from the mobile unit, at the prompting of his officer, who couldn't be more than a lieutenant at most. The MiLs were hanging back, waiting.

"I — it's a private flight. I'll be in trouble with very senior people if you check with Kabul. I'm — not supposed to be here. Be discreet, huh? Over." He grinned quiveringly.

The Hind-D was swimming slowly through the thin air, operating close to its service ceiling. Perhaps still a mile away, he could see the two Russian helicopters, their shadows moving beneath them across rock and snow; across the peaks and the high glaciers and ice fields. The world seemed shrunken. He could almost believe himself to be in a jet. The Hindu Kush climbed away to the southeast as far as eyesight could reach. A huge army of mountain peaks marching on China through Kashmir. High above him, against the star-filled blackness, he saw the silhouette of something swift — MiG or Sukhoi — crossing his course at perhaps forty thousand feet. He was swimming slowly forward and the hunting fish had caught his scent, his movement.

Come on, figure it out, you bastard. Don't be dumb, his thoughts insisted, their urgency mounting. He willed realization on them. Reach out and grab the answer that's in front of your face. Come on, come on…

A minute of silence.

'Two seven zero four—" He was startled by an unfamiliar voice. "Are you on a shopping expedition? Over."

One of the two approaching gunships was now less than five hundred yards away, well within rocket or cannon range. It waggled its stubby little wings. A pleased, waddling dog recognizing another dog. He moved his own column, flicking the Mil slightly from side to side.

"You said it, Lieutenant, I didn't," he replied with evident relief. That would fit the cover story; it didn't matter if they thought he was scared. "Glad someone understands, at last. Thanks. Over."

The closest of the two Russian helicopters passed across his nose, slightly above him. The pilot and the gunner, who would have been listening, Tx)th waved. The gunner raised one fist, his other hand at the elbow of his bent arm, signifying sex. Gant raised his thumb in acknowledgment.

They understood now; he was explained. It was one of the smuggling runs for senior officers. Runs that were frowned upon, then ignored, even encouraged, but were always carried on under a cloak of fictitious secrecy. He might have been on his way to collect sex videos from army HQ, pop records, drink by the case, cigars from Cuba, women — oh, yes, most importantly women. Flown in for parties or changed whenever the local girls, the mistresses, or the last imported batch of whores — top-class, indubitably clean, and expert — became tired or overfamiliar. The gunner in the Russian Mil probably imagined he had six or more girls aboard and was on his way to Alma-Ata to make an exchange. He grinned.

The second of the two Russian helicopters slid nearer, as if to contradict hope. Gant swallowed. The pilot of the second one waved, too, then both of them dropped away toward the mountains. He heard the patrol leader inform the mobile, unit, the AWACS aircraft, and the MiG that had passed overhead of the purpose of his mission. Fantastic detail flew and gossiped over the air. Coarse laughter, envy.

It was working. They were satisfied.

"Christ, Major, you did it — they're going!"

"Can it, Garcia," he snapped back, hearing the relieved chatter of Garcia and his crew over the transceiver; sensing Mac's relief; his own, too.

"Sorry to have troubled you, 2704," he heard the original voice murmur, amusement in the operator's tones. "Good hunting. Over and out."

"OK," Gant said into the transceiver. "Let's ride with the luck while we can. Forty minutes' flying time to the border. But don't count on a free ride all the way."

"What's wrong?" Garcia asked warily.

"Maybe those pilots have flown sex missions before — they swallowed it. It only needs some suspicious little Party shit on the AWACS aircraft to call Kabul — just to make sure — and we're blown wide open. So look sharp."

"Uh-huh."

He watched the two Russian MiLs diminishing below and to port. Heading west, back to Parwan. Even if not at once, or in half an hour, someone was eventually going to suspect — know. Long before he got to Baikonur and back out again, someone would have checked, and they'd be waiting. Looking and waiting. He ground his teeth audibly, then lunged the Mil toward the mountains that stretched away toward the river Oxus where the border lay.

The wind raced almost horizontally across the frozen marshes. Filip Kedrov teetered against its force as he crossed the long, dipping plank of wood from the rotting mooring to the hulk of the houseboat. Thankfully, shivering, he stepped onto the deck of the boat, rubbing his gloved hands together with the cold and genuine relief. He bent his head into the wind as it sliced down the flank of the houseboat, blowing sleet into and through the gaps in the decks planking and the panels of the main cabin.

He shut the door behind him and wedged it with a thick sliver of wood. Then leaned a decrepit old chair against it, too. The door rattled on its hinges with the force of the wind. He flicked on his torch, spraying its feeble light around him until he located the steps. He clattered down them, afraid each time one creaked, afraid of falling, of breaking his neck. The houseboat groaned and sighed and seemed to be made of rotting cardboard. The wind howled.

It was small and low and no one had used it for years. Kedrov could not imagine who might ever have done so. Perhaps some officer's sexual hideaway, perhaps it had belonged to someone before the army came — one of the entrepreneurs the old town used to boast? It did not matter. It suited him. Long, low, bargelike. Just holding together enough to keep most of the weather out. He saw in the pool of yellow light from his flashlight that the blankets on his bed were damp; sleet had been blown through cracks in the peeling woodwork and soaked them. His breath smoked in the light and dark of the room. He washed the flashlight over the main cabin. He was alone.

He unslung his haversack, laying his flashlight alongside it on a cheap wooden table in the center of the boat's one main cabin. The windows were wet, blank squares of darkness. Swiftly, he drew the thin curtains and pinned them together at each of the windows on either side of the cabin; it was a practiced, almost effortless task. His breathing sounded loudly, above the muted noise of the wind. At each window, his breath formed a targetlike circle of fogged glass. When he had finished, he returned to the table, then lit an oil lamp that sat in its center. It smoked and glowed and smelled in the narrow, confined cabin. He coughed.

He needed coffee, some of the canned food he had stored there a week ago, and a check on the transponder, which was his lifeline to the rescue. Don't think about it, he warned himself. Don't start all that again.

But he knew the thought would return. He had rushed upward, as if on a child's swing of hope, after his escape from the silo complex; he would swing down again, just as certainly.

He drew the transponder from the haversack. It looked like a transistor radio. Cheap, Russian-made, unreliable — thereby attracting even less attention than a Japanese portable would have done. Its cheap look depressed him; as if it foretold the malfunctioning of the thing, indicated that the Americans held him in no great esteem, had spent no money or effort on his rescue — stop it! Oh, stop it.

He was an explorer in a strange new country. All the nervousness, the exhilarating fear and tension of the past weeks of his spying paled into insignificance now, beside these — terrors that leaped out at him. This was territory he had not visited before, and its landscape enclosed him, wore him down.

Tonight was the earliest they could possibly come — but tonight was Tuesday. If they intended rescuing him, if they meant to come, it would be tonight. Had to be, otherwise they would be too late. He understood their schedule, by instinct rather than information. They expected to be able to use the photographs — those he had had to abandon in the paint cans in the garage — on television, in the newspapers, to expose what was intended at Baikonur; to prevent the launch. They had to get him to the West before Thursday; they knew that, so tonight was the earliest and the latest they could come…

… and would not come — oh, stop it, stop it please!

The cheap cabinet of the transponder made it impossible to envisage the complicated microcircuitry inside. If he used it, even then, he would not know whether it worked — a light was supposed to come on, but what would that mean? — and he would hear nothing. It was simply a homing device, sending out a carrier wave that only his rescuers could receive — science fiction! His own expertise, his own technical background availed him nothing. He simply stared at a toy he was certain would not work. It had been given to him just to keep him quiet, keep him working.

He tried to sigh, but the noise became a sob in his throat. His mouth was filled with saliva, which he found difficult to swallow. He was shaking. He distracted himself by looking at the lamp, trimming it, then at the walls and fixtures of the boat. He had repaired some of the worst gaps in the planking and paneling, he had hidden food here, the lamp, beer. He shuddered as he remembered the closeness of his brush with the GRU, hugging his hands beneath his armpits. Hour after hour in the freezing cold, all day and most of the evening, until he had worked his way on foot to this last safe house. He was intensely weary—

— which was why he was so uptight, so frightened. The explanation paled, overcome by the noise of the wind, the groans of old, rotting wood. Ice, the soupy slush around the hull, grumbled beneath his feet. Sleet puffed like thin cigarette smoke through gaps in the wooden walls of the cabin.

He slumped onto the bunk, all his anticipation and returning warmth seeming to evaporate. It was impossible to sustain the fiction of rescue here, with the occasional cries of a night bird and the disturbed honking and barking of wildfowl in the darkness outside. The Americans would not come.

Please let it be tonight, please let it be, he kept repeating. Please.

He was worn almost transparent with fear. His doubt had increased, gnawed its way to full growth. He had nothing left, no reserves with which to fight it.

Please let it be tonight, please.

He huddled into himself on the bunk, the transistor radio unnoticed in his lap. Knees drawn up, cradling it. Presently, he began to sob with self-pity.

It was eight-thirty in the evening. He cried, oblivious of the passage of time.

Katya Grechkova took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Looked at her watch. Eight-forty. She yawned, tiredness and satisfaction mingled in the stretching of her arms and back. She stood up, lit a cigarette, and walked to the other side of her small office— the office she had shared with Viktor Zhikin. Her head was aching, but its dull throbbing failed to blunt the edge of her pleasure.

She stood near the window, looking back at her desk, at the pool of white light from the desk lamp felling on papers, then stared at its shadows thrown on the Venetian blind. Then back to the desk, posing the scene as if for a forensic photograph; exactly capturing the source of her satisfaction. She puffed on the cigarette with a conscious hint of melodrama. Zhikin had always — not unkindly — teased and joked about her fastidious, intense manner of working, the degree of her absorption in any task at hand. As if she were hiding from life in her work, he had once said — her own life, perhaps? Then he had broken off at once, seeing the naked, pained look she could not keep from her face.

She puffed quickly at the cigarette. The room was smoky, the ashtray littered with stubs. She did not want to think about all that, not now. Work was no longer a solace or an escape — and Zhikin would never have understood that she was escaping from an insight into herself, not from her husband's character or their failed marriage. Captain Yuri Grechkov was someone she had suddenly seen through, and in that moment of discovery, contempt had entered and occupied the place of all other emotions. He had failed to attend his mother's funeral; simply not bothered to apply for leave from army maneuvers. Katya had gone, wearing a black armband on her uniform sleeve. And she hadn't even liked his mother. He'd known she was dying and hadn't returned from wherever he was, hadn't come even after she telephoned to say it wont be long, can you come at once?

Not even for the sake of avoiding the guilt to come would he break off from his silly army games somewhere in East Germany. It wasn't much, but the revelation was, for her, like a collision with an express train. She seemed to understand him, see his shallowness and indifference, and despised him for his fadings.

Her view of him now was more fixed than a photograph; an oil painting, framed and hung. She would never see him in any other pose. What she avoided, what Zhikin would never have understood, was her inability to forgive or make allowances. She had sentenced him, finding him guilty, and there was no appeal.

So, after the weeks of quarrels and silences and shadowy, separate living, she'd left Alma-Ata and gotten herself posted to Baikonur. Got a flat, a few sticks of furniture from central stores, some prints to replace photographs, which he was fond of taking, developing, and framing — mostly of her — and began a new and partial existence on her own. It had taken a long time to accommodate the new knowledge she had of herself. To have made such demands, to have had such standards for him, to have such ideals. He'd shattered her image of him. She had thought herself quite, quite evil for a long time, in a little-girl, final way. She could not live with him, could not bear to have him touch her.

But all that had faded.

Cold satisfactions, those to be gained from being successful in her work, being adept at it, had sustained her. Those, and the belittlement of Yuri — the minute catalogue of his faults and weaknesses — had pardoned her self-knowledge. Her work was her independence; it made her eager, active, clever, a more flattering mirror than her marriage had ever been. Now the satisfaction was intense, almost unmarred by memory or insight.

She believed she had discovered where Kedrov the spy was hiding.

She returned to her desk. The dog's tail thumped against her legs as he joined her from his corner of the room. She patted his head, stroked his neck, felt the wet muzzle and nose against her palm. Looked at the map she had been working from.

Her forefinger and index finger, still clamping the remainder of the English cigarette, stroked a slow, diminishing circle around a small area of the salt marshes. The dog wandered away from her other hand. Yuri would not let her have a dog, didn't want the trouble and the loose hairs in their bright, well-furnished apartment in Alma-Ata.

She shook her head and replaced her glasses, which glinted in the lamplight as she raised them from the desk. She bent forward, as if to check something. Yes, just there.

Katya knew the marshes. She'd hiked there often enough to have been able to make her clever guesses. With ease, she could recollect sites on the map in three dimensions. Trees, islets, swampier areas, ornithological blinds, hunting lodges — a few of them from before the Revolution, now used by senior officers who imitated the pleasures of an older aristocracy — old, ruined boats and huts, even villages long abandoned, game wardens' cabins.

Kedrov's books and maps lay on the floor. Now beneath the dog, who was looking up at her, eyes wide, tongue lolling pinkly. His eyes were moist with the illusion of devotion. Using the maps and notes, she had narrowed and narrowed her search, until—

— this place. She tapped it on the map. There was a rudimentary sketch in one of his notebooks, a chart warning himself of deep water in one place, of the existence of a blind in another. A blind that had once been a houseboat. Almost in ruins now.

So, she felt she had him. Other references, other places in his notes and on his maps were possible, but she had put the old boat at the top of her list. Tomorrow. Impatience surged even as she reaffirmed the need to wait until daylight, the need to report to Priabin.

She looked at the dog. If she were careful, very careful… She'd drawn a gun, she could use it. She had waders, a flashlight, a dog from some hunting breed that couldn't have forgotten everything its ancestors had once known, a car, a map.

She grinned, tense with excitement. Shivering with nerves.

Tonight, tonight, tonight…

She cleared her throat. "Come on, Misha!" she called out. The dog lumbered to its feet, wagging its broadsword of a tail in delight

The Hind-D's shadow glanced like a blow off the long, hanging beard of a frozen waterfall that pointed like a gesture to flat snow-fields, a clump of stone huts, tethered camels and ponies in the moonlight. A shuffling figure glanced upward out of the folds of a cloak and a long, old rifle swung ready for use. The figure was, in an instant, miniaturized in the mirrors. A white plain broken by a frozen river stretched before the helicopter and its shadow, which raced across the snow, the Mil moving above it like a dark insect.

Gant skimmed the ground at no more than thirty feet. His whereabouts were secret once more. He had picked up no information over the Tac channel to indicate anyone still remained interested in him. He was, for the moment, safe.

Garcia's helicopter was tight behind him, zigzagging, skimming, flicking and dancing through the terrain. Garcia had become infected by the exhilaration of danger; now he was alert, confident, flying on instinct and even passion. Yet he nagged at Gant's awareness; a liability, someone to have to be careful for, someone whose mistakes could be fatal.

On the moving-map display, the dot that represented his position was well to the north of the Panjshir Valley and the air base at Parwan. He was little more than fifty miles from the Soviet border. Ahead, directly north, lay the main highway from Faizabad to Mazar-i-Sharif, running east to west like the huge river valley of the Oxus, which lay beyond it and which marked the border itself. It was flatter land there, less easy to hide in, more populated; roads, railway lines, villages, irrigation canals, air bases and military camps. The golden road to Samarkand.

He glanced at his watch, at the map once more, then around him. Mountains were retreating in the mirrors, the land opening out ahead. Patches of brown rock jutted through the snow, naked outcrops — and a tented encampment was suddenly beneath and alongside them; still lumps that were camels, the flicker of a cooking fire. Dark tents bulging like the backs of huge creatures trying to bury themselves in the snow and sand. The river gleamed. The country had altered. He wanted to use the radar, now that it would begin to be effective, out of the mountains, but he dare not allow any electronic emission to be picked up and pinpointed. Not now, not this close. He was seven hundred and fifty miles from Baikonur. It was almost nine in the evening. He had to make it before daylight — get back out before daylight. He crushed all thought of the hours of the return flight, skulking through Afghanistan in broad daylight. He had perhaps nine hours in which to be on his way back — well on his way. Haste, haste, his thoughts cried, and his hand twitched on the stick, his eyes glanced at the throttle levers over his head.

Russian from the HF radio, startling in his headset.

Positional report, one MiG, he guessed. It was about twenty miles away from him. The AWACS Ilyushin would be there somewhere, too, and the helicopters. There had been no alarm raised, he reminded himself. No one is interested in you. They think they have you pigeonholed. No one is interested. He withdrew his hand from the main panel where his fingers had twitched near the switches that would activate the radar. No.

The huge, sandy desert of the river valley was beginning to spread out before him now, beyond a line of low hills. He could now be seen by look-down radar; the ground clutter was less effective in concealing him in these lowlands. The moonlight gleamed on the fuselage.

If the MiG was alerted, if the Ilyushin picked him up again, would it dismiss him? Would its crew simply chuckle, remember his cover story, make lewd jokes, and go back to their routines?

More Russian from the radio. The helicopters. Less than ten miles away, less, as they reported in. Why? He'd heard nothing, only routine messages and few of those; but he'd been hiding in the mountains, and the radio had squirted with static for whole seconds at a time. He'd lost contact with them on numerous occasions, so how could he know what they'd said to each other?

He must stop.

He studied the terrain. As yet, there was no need to refuel. He felt urgency prick at his skin, invest his stomach. The land was bare and inhospitable. Should he hide somewhere in it? Until he could assess the situation, without giving them the opportunity to fix his position and course, should he?

The Hind flipped over a ridge, and the land rose once more as he approached the line of snow-capped hills. The Oxus and the border lay just beyond those hills, at the end of the valley of the Kokcha River, which would be empty of water until the spring thaw in the mountains to the south of him. He dabbed at buttons, and the computer bled into the moving map the disposition of watchtowers, camps, radar installations, listening posts, patrols. The border sprang to life, gleamed on the map's colors and contours.

In the dry river valley of the Kokcha, then. Somewhere. Shunting the two MiLs beneath some overhang, some tuck in the terrain, to wait until the situation could be assessed, analyzed. They were too close and not accidentally close, he believed. They were still interested, though for the moment they could not find him.

He gained altitude because there was no defile that he could see. He was climbing to cross the hills but climbing into radar sight, too. His shadow chased him across the sheets of snow and the bare ridges of rock.

Tension prickled his hairline, made his shoulders ache. He shifted to greater comfort in his seat, feeling the harness cut into his body. The silvering moonlight pried over the cockpit. He increased speed to one seventy, one seventy-five, and Garcia and their two shadows raced across the bare hills with him. He felt exposed, naked. The MiG and the MiLs might not pick him up, but the Ilyushin was capable of spotting him, and he was increasing the chances of that by the speed of his flight. Slow down—

He eased off the power, dropping the MiL's speed to little more than half. Garcia almost overshot him to port before he readjusted his own speed. The hills slipped beneath. The MiG, out there somewhere, preyed on Gant's nerves. It was less than twenty miles away, only a minute away, allowing for a change of course and a cautious approach. Cat and mouse — he sensed the cat, the heat from its fur, its breath…

Then it came. Without introduction, without call sign, he heard his position, as if he himself were reciting it from the moving map in front of him. The AWACS Ilyushin had retained its interest in him. Unlike the professional pilots of the MiG and the helicopters who had buzzed him and retired laughing and gesturing, the AWACS aircraft, because of its sensitive role, would carry a GRU officer or a GLAVPUR political officer — the aircraft's real rather than titular commander.

His position, heading, speed were repeated and acknowledged by the MiG.

"It's blown wide open," Gant said over the transceiver with a grim calm that surprised him. His hands, unlike his voice, quivered. "Let's hide — first I want to take a look."

He switched on the radar. Wiped the moving map from the tactical screen. Which greened. Immediately, on the northwest edge of the screen, the AWACS aircraft appeared. The two MiLs were to the south of him, and westward. They were more than five minutes away. They could be outrun. The border ahead remained unalerted, for the moment. Nothing was in the air to prevent his crossing. He counted the passing seconds, as if making a call that was being traced through the telephone exchange. How long before his emissions removed all doubt about his position and heading? He was electronically waving at them. The MiG, the MiG…

He summoned the head-up display. Along the cockpit sill, figures stuttered. Course, speed, altitude, distance. Twenty-five miles away, speed four hundred, altitude dropping quickly. Time to convergence, one minute forty seconds. He snapped off the radar, and the image of the MiG moving purposefully toward the center of the screen remained as a retinal afterimage.

He flipped over the back of a hill; Garcia s helicopter flea-jumped behind him. The long, riverless valley stretched ahead, a mile wide and sloping down to the border and the Oxus. It was wide enough for the MiG to be able to maneuver within it. Gant cursed his luck, his eyes scanning the valley walls, its dry riverbed. Rocks, overhangs, outcrops, ledges. As soon as he had disappeared from the radar screen of the MiG, it would have increased speed. The AWACS Ilyushin would be guiding it. It would be unlikely to have lost its fix on them. The convergence was — inevitable.

He reinstated the moving map, searching it frantically for a narrower side valley, something to draw tightly around the two helicopters and prevent the MiG from turning or maneuvering. Nothing. He plowed on, the border no more than thirty miles away now.

"Garcia — find somewhere we can put down — and fast," he snapped into the transceiver. "Split up — take the eastern wall of the valley. Til fly the western wall — make two targets….." He hesitated after the word had been spoken, but the situation could no longer be disguised. "Do it, he added.

"Gant — he knows where we are, right?*'

"He knows."

"OK, let's play hide-and-seek."

Garcia was edgy, but brightly nervous; confidence fizzed out rather than dripped or leaked. He wasn't believing in the situation. It was still a game, training. Gant didn't know if his mood would change the moment the MiG appeared.

Garcia's Hind drifted out of the mirrors and across the wide valley; beginning to lose shape and identity against the colored rock, snowdrifts, bare outcrops. The camouflage concealed it almost perfectly. Gant squinted to make it out. Garcia, like himself, had dropped his speed dramatically, further losing himself against the background. Good. Gant watched the valley wall to port, a gray-white curtain. Waited.

Like a shark, sudden and fast, the MiG — a Flogger air-combat fighter — flashed above the valley, its belly lit to ghostliness by the moon. It vanished almost at once to the east. A new star climbed and turned in the black sky a second or two later.

"Anything, Garcia?"

"Only for sitting ducks."

Gant watched the distance in front of him. The star dropped toward the valley, winking palely. Gant felt a strange envy, which became anxiety in a moment. He sensed the MiG pilot s superiority, his eager, unworried confidence. The Hind was no match for the Flogger. It entered the valley perhaps five or six miles ahead of them. The two MiL's behind them would now be working with the MiG, via the commands and sightings of the AWACS aircraft, and hurrying to overtake them. He estimated they would enter the valley in no more than three minutes. At maximum speed, just over two minutes from the position they held when he had briefly used the radar. Then he and Garcia would be in a box, with the lid screwed down.

The MiG-23 howled up the valley toward them. Another sighting pass, he thought. One more look, one attempt to communicate after that. Too late to hide now; the bluff had to be continued, and it had to work.

"Arm all the firing circuits, just in case," he said almost casually over the transceiver. Garcia would hear him; so would Mac—

— whose helmet turned. Mac looked up at him, then raised his thumb. Wide eyes, white teeth in a pale blob of face. That was all Mac was.

The MiG was level with them for an instant. A glimpse of dark cockpit, as if the aircraft were pilotless. Then it roared away, into an immediate climb and turn. On its infrared screen two spots would glow hotter than the surrounding icy rocks. Two spots, one each side of the valley. The pilot would be pleased, would retain his confidence, even though he knew the Hinds were armed and were more maneuverable in the box of the valley. He had fixed the targets, and he had assistance. Gant turned his head. Once more, a new star climbed and winked in the night.

"All weapons systems to my control," he announced, then added: "Garcia — do nothing till you hear from me, OK?"

Over the transceiver, Garcia's voice was tightened by tension; yet almost elated, too. It was still only training, only practice. They'd never done it for real. They did not know what real was. Could not understand it. Gant understood it too well. But real hadn't killed him yet.

"Gant, what the hell is there to do?"

Beneath the elation, Garcia was peeling open. Soon, the proximity of the rocks, the speed and armament of the MiG — AA missiles, a gun pack, look-down, shoot-down radar — all would begin to weigh more heavily. Gant was unnerved now, but even Garcia probably thought it was excitement, not fear. But Garcia's confidence was being stripped away.

"Forget it, Garcia. Set down as soon as you can, where you can. On your own. Just don't get in my way." Because that was the only message he had for Garcia, the only one that possessed value: Don't kill me along with yourself.

The new star was felling back toward the valley once more. Gant ignored the distant speck of Garcia's Mil and its wavering shadow. The radio tuned to the Soviet Tac channel blurted in his ear. The star fell with frightening swiftness. Gant experienced it with Garcia's taut nerves, sensed him and his copilot, Lane, craning to follow its course. He was suddenly aware of how much fuel the other Hind was carrying. They were riding in a giant gas tank. Now Garcia and the others would have begun to smell the fuel by a trick of fear on their senses. Its volume and proximity would be scraping at nerve and will.

The Flogger dropped back perhaps as much as three miles behind them, its pilot's voice in his headset broken by the terrain and the slow bend in the valley that made it invisible for the moment. He sensed confidence and suspicion through the static.

"Unidentified helicopters — you are in restricted airspace without permission. Please identify yourselves. Over."

The MiG appeared in Gant's mirrors, rounding the bend and rapidly overtaking them. Gant glanced across at Garcia. He was maintaining speed and heading, hugging the rock face, the MiL's shadow breaking up and reforming like dark water.

Gant replied at once, knowing that the cover story had been checked and found wanting. Someone in the AWACS aircraft. Just routine, but just in case.

The pilot of the MiG pounced upon the fiction.

"Unidentified helicopter — try again. Kunduz requests your positive ID for Parwan. Kabul central army aviation field has no record of your flight. Please explain your purpose and authorization. Over."

The MiG, moving at low speed, gradually enlarged in the mirrors. The pilot was cruising along the valley at their altitude. Herding them while he waited for their answers.

"My mission has the highest security clearance from Kabul Army HQ," Gant persisted, knowing he would not be believed. Anders was talking in his head now, and the noise angered him. It reminded him of the priorities of the mission, of the price of failure, when all that interested him was the span of a single minute and his own survival. "Why the hell are you taking so much interest, comrade? Over," he added. And then waited. Anders nagged again. Garcia's Hind remained steady. He could hear, where his right ear was free of the headset, the man's ragged breathing from the transceiver.

The MiG was level with them.

"Kabul won't vouch for you, comrade — no one at central airfield even remembers two Mil-24s taking off tonight. Please identify. Over." A brash, amused, contemptuous irony in the pilot's voice; it reassured — but why?

What was in the MiG pilot's mind? It was something to do with the degree of suspicion, or the kind of suspicion… what? What did he think?

The MiG, unable to match their speed without stalling, had slowly moved ahead of them. Then it lifted sharply, just in case, aware of the armament of both helicopters. It rolled, flashing like a shark in the moonlight, then turned tightly to drop back into the valley behind them; leveling off, pursuing once more.

Deserters or unsanctioned black marketers — one or the other, maybe both — that's what he thought! Illegality, not penetration. Profit, not espionage. Gant studied his mirrors. Moonlight glinted on the MiG's sleekness, and on two more distant spots. The Soviet helicopters. There would be others gathering now — or maybe not? The degree of confidence, even of amusement in the pilot's voice? There might be no general alert, not at the moment.

What to do with the Flogger?

His mind was cold; body hot, but alert rather than jumpy. He had passed through nerves to tension. He replied to the pilot, easing the right amount of nervousness into his voice. Almost pleading.

"Look, comrade, you check with the top brass at Kabul. And I mean the top brass — and apologize from me for dragging them into it. Over."

"Sorry, comrade, you'll have to do better than that. Kabul doesn't know you. Parwan wants to know why you were using the roundabout route, and Kunduz wants you to divert. Climb immediately to four thousand meters and take up a heading directly for Kunduz military air base. Confirm when you have a revised ETA. And remember, I'll be watching you. Over."

The MiG was level with him once more. Between him and Garcia. Gant's mind was suddenly cold with doubt. The sleek air-combat fighter was only a couple of hundred yards to starboard. The pilot would be wary, but he evidently didn't expect trouble from them. Deserters or black marketers, people to be despised, even discounted.

He could see the outline of a flying helmet in the MiG's cockpit, and the AA missiles beneath the wings — and the gun and the laser range finder beneath the forward fuselage.

"I copy. Acknowledge diversion to Kunduz air base and climb to four thousand. ETA sixteen minutes."

"You will be accompanied by the two helicopters astern of you. Take up close formation with them on rendezvous. Do you copy? Over."

"I copy."

Gant glanced at the moving map. The MiG was lifting away once more, burning fuel prodigally in its maneuvers. Its mission range? Would it have to return to Parwan or Kunduz to refuel in another minute or so? If so, another MiG or a Sukhoi would already be on its way to take up station. He watched it, willing it to return rather than depart. Images flashed in his head, but seemed like reflections from distorting mirrors. The Soviet border was less than ten miles away. Kunduz was fifty miles to the southwest.

"Shit," he breathed. It was impossible to shake the MiG, and if it needed to refuel, it wouldn't abandon them until a replacement arrived. The two Russian MiLs were clearly visible in his mirrors.

He heard the incoming surf of Garcia's breathing; faster, more ^gged. Shit.

He clenched the control column more tightly, altered the collective pitch lever, climbing out of the valley into the dark sky. His head was turned, to watch Garcia follow him.

Mac said: "Skipper, shouldn't you call Langley—?"

'The hell I will!" he snapped back. He was listening to the tenor of Garcia's breathing as if with a stethoscope.

Break.

Garcia's voice yelped in his headset, and the tanker helicopter lifted sharply, nose up, out of the valley. The falling star of the MiG dropped more quickly, as if alerted. It banked fiercely around behind them, leveling off. When the pilot spoke, his voice was tightened by G forces.

"Maintain your former heading — climb to four thousand meters and wait for your escort. Repeat, climb to four thousand on your former heading. Do you copy? Over."

Garcia flipped out of sight. Gant climbed more rapidly until he could look down on the scene. He saw the two pursuing MiLs also climb and begin to divert. Saw the MiG-23 racing from behind and below. Had he picked up Garcia after his turn?

"Garcia — for Christ's sake get back here!" Gant yelled into the transceiver. Ether replied, and hoarse but more relieved breathing. Excited murmurs he could not make out. The MiG swept up toward Gant, past him, and locked onto the tail of Garcia's MiL. Garcia had increased his speed to perhaps one fifty; not nearly enough. The MiG pilot was flashy, but good. Good enough. Gant felt his stomach lurch. Mac's voice protested.

"Return to your former heading and maintain. Abandon your present heading. Reduce your speed. Wait for your escort. Do you copy? Over."

The two aircraft raced away from Gant, diminishing in size. Garcia was already another half mile away from Gant in the split seconds that had passed since he broke — cover, formation, and nerve. The MiG coursed behind him. The two MiLs were hurrying, panicked into movement, toward the point of disobedience. They could smell blood. Ahead of Garcia were hills that might hide him. He might have taken the decision based on surprise and the nearness of that covering terrain. No. He had panicked himself into risk, into confidence.

And was wrong.

Gant increased his own speed, rushing across the mile-wide valley, his head moving from side to side like that of an animal at bay, seeking cover. He knew what would happen, with a sick certainty, and he was already on the other side of the experience, considering only his own survival and escape.

"Skipper—" Mac protested.

"No," he replied without emotion.

All three Soviet aircraft were distracted by Garcia, forgetting him for the moment.

Where?

A solid wall of snow-streaked rock on either side of the valley. No avenue of escape, no narrow cleft that would keep out the MiG. Its pilot's voice pursued Garcia; commanded, ordered, threatened—

— threat. Only a matter of seconds now.

"Garcia — for Christ's sake slow down!" Gant yelled, knowing it would be useless, but somehow satisfying Mac, and some small part of himself.

In a moment, all their screens would be blind. He had time—

— hung in the air in the middle of the valley, watching the helicopters and the MiG and the tiny speck that was Garcia's Hind. Could not help but watch.

He scanned blank cliffs.

"Find somewhere, for Christ's sake," he murmured to Mac.

Threat. Challenge.

He could hardly think ahead now. There was only survival. He had been caught, and he had to survive this situation in any way he could. Look, look—

Final warning.

A spurt of flame, from an igniting rocket motor, no bigger than that of a flaring match. An AA-8 missile, infrared homing, had been launched by the Flogger. Even though Gant anticipated it, was sure it would happen, he felt stunned.

1 am authorized to open fire if you do not obey my instructions, lingered in Gant's head. You are in restricted airspace. 1 will open fire unless you—

One of the few Russian phrases Garcia had ever bothered to learn hung on the ether and in his mind for a moment — the moment of the missile's spurting, glowing flight. Go fuck yourself. Garcia's voice was high-pitched.

Look, look for an escape, don't be distracted, look.

The Mil spun in the hover in the deserted, blank valley. There was no hiding place. Gant had to watch Garcia's Hind as the AA fissile hurried after it like a burning arrow. It hunted just for a moment for a warm, electrically alive object above cold, unmoving rock. Then it struck.

The whole sky seemed to become orange and white at the moment of impact. Burning fuel washed like a waterfall the few hundred feet toward the flank of a hill. Garcia groaned through the transceiver and began a scream he did not complete or even understand. The Hind, shattered, spilling burning fuel, tumbled against the hillside, split further, opened, and crumpled. Gant had snatched up the night glasses from their pocket in the cockpit door. The scene was enlarged, clear, horrific. Rotors flew like separate metal sycamore leaves, great half-molten pieces of fuselage bounced and tumbled. Fuel ran like lava down the hillside.

His fuel, his fuel—

He could think of nothing else, having ignored the fact until the moment of the explosion. Not Garcia's death, not the deaths of Lane and Kooper, not even his own immediate danger. He thought of nothing except the fact that his reserve of fuel had burned up. Now he could not reach Baikonur, despite his own auxiliary tank. He could never get back.

Even as he heard Mac whisper "Oh, sweet Jesus Christ" in the transceiver, he knew that the MiG pilot had aborted Winter Hawk. He was surrounded, unable to escape, there was no point in even trying to evade capture.

He hovered, stunned.

8: Oasis

A hole in the cliff.

Gant flicked switches, knowing that it did not matter now, knowing that he was below the shield-edge of the valley walls, knowing that their screens would be blinded by the nova of the explosion and burning of Garcia s Mil — knowing that unless he explored, analyzed, found a hole in the rocks in the next few moments, it was finished anyway. He felt relief as the helicopter s main panel and principal screens sprang to life, stuttering to green and red, lights and LEDs winking, systems coming on-line.

The infrared display glowed like a sunrise. The green of the radar screen was still awash with flying metal and fuel and confused images; Garcia's helicopter continued to explode on his screens.

Hole in the rocks.

Blackness amid moon-washed cliff. Less than half a mile away, the readouts proclaimed. Was it a retinal image from staring into the explosion?

He dropped the Hind like a huge stone toward the floor of the valley; as familiar as if lowering into Nevada or New Mexico, because it represented safety — at least, for the next few minutes. His attention was mesmerized by the sense of the two Soviet MiLs and the Flogger grouping like dogs around a quarry already torn.

He saw and sensed Mac in the gunner s cockpit, but he hardly impinged. He was saving himself and the machine. Nothing mattered beside the reality of the gaping black hole that now grew larger. Not a retinal image, then… a cave, a cavern, a cleft. Safety.

Qualification. Dead end. He was running like a sheep into a pen.

Imperative. Get out of sight.

The entrance to the cavern had to be big enough.

He could see crumbled sections of rock face, openings, the gouge of the river bed waiting for the spring. Boulders littered the floor.

He edged the Hind toward the eastern wall of the valley. He glanced continually in his mirrors, quartered the sky through the cockpit Plexiglas. Nothing, yet.

The imperative overcame the qualification. He needed time to think, to plan, to revise, a time when he wasn't flying. He turned the helicopter slowly nose on to the cavern and shunted the machine gently toward it.

"Horizontal clearance — nineteen meters… vertical, six meters thirty, skipper," Mac's voice murmured from the transceiver. The mouth of the cave was wide enough, tall enough, though it was close.

"OK, Mac."

He whirled the Hind on its axis like a matador's cape, scanning the clifftop above him, the valley around them, the empty sky, pinpricked with stars, lighter where the wash of moonlight spread from the full, pale disk. No shadows, no silhouettes, nothing. He poised the helicopter opposite the mouth of the cavern.

"IR lamp on," he announced, tugging the infrared goggles over his helmet and adjusting them. A gray world, the light from the lamp splashing like dull paint into the blackness. The sense of the cavern's size impinged upon him; the place, opened out behind the entrance, retreated in every direction beyond the reach of the lamp.

He shunted the Hind forward, its undercarriage hanging just above littered boulders. Most of all, he was aware of the rotors whirling above his head. The dimensions of the cavern's mouth were as clear in his mind as if he were reading them on white paper. Mac's voice murmured the changing clearances on the right or left. The main panel glowed; he scanned it continuously with the rapidity and repetition of a child avoiding cracks in the pavement to fend off bad luck.

Ice glittered. The cavern mouth loomed as if about to swallow them.

Now.

He suppressed a shiver. The rotor tips caught the infrared lighting thrown back from dark, cold walls. The rotors formed a dish, not touching the walls of rock. Not touching. Mac was inside the cavern, then so was he. Rotor noise boomed in the enclosing, retreating dark. The pale, ghostly light from the IR lamp made the interior open up into dusky, shadowy heights like the nave of an ill-lit cathedral. The goggles revealed hanging ice, drifted snow, rock, undulations like those of the seabed, and a roof stretching upward beyond the light. His breath eased out, controlled. Mac exhaled noisily. "Cold in here," was his only comment.

Gant turned the Hind slowly in the hover. He flicked off the IR lamp and pulled off his goggles. The mouth of the cavern was pale with moonlight.

"Mac?"

"I can't hear anything, skipper. I'll go take a look."

Gant lowered the undercarriage until it bounced and the Hind settled. He switched off the two Isotov engines, and the rotors grumbled down to stillness. Silence seemed audible after the last echoing noises died away. He opened the cockpit door. Icy cold assailed him like a bully. Mac opened the hinged canopy of the gunner's cockpit and dropped to the floor. Gant removed his helmet. The cavern was huge around him. He felt the darkness as if it were moving. He jumped from the door, a lamp flicking on in his hand. Mac's lamp wobbled its light toward the mouth of the cavern. Gant waved the powerful, inadequate beam around him as if to locate a dangerous animal. A dry gouge in the floor stretched away toward the back of the cavern; the course of the former river or tributary that had excavated this hole in the rocks. He saw the lamp's beam glance off a waterfall of ice. There were no stars or moonlight above him, only at the entrance.

His head still rang with the noise of the rotors, as if he had been flying the Hind for days without pause. He had in fact been in the air for two and a half hours. He leaned for a moment against the fuselage, his hand and arm remaining numb from his fierce grip on the control column.

"Mac? OK?" he whispered into the transceiver he had detached from its fitting in the cockpit.

"Skipper," Mac's hoarse whisper replied; it seemed loud in the silence. "I can hear the MiG — turning, I guess. Coming this way, for sure. Jesus, I'm cold." His tone was expressive. He hardly needed to add: "What the hell got into Garcia?" for Gant to understand the force of his reaction. Gant, having flicked off the lamp, focused his night vision, and could pick out Mac's body at the entrance, hunched as if in illness.

"OK, Mac, OK," he replied, realizing there was a shiver of reaction in his own voice. "OK."

He heard the approaching noise of the MiG wash into the darkness.

"She's coming," Mac announced, his teeth chattering. "Skipper — shit, did you see it?"

«v»»

I saw.

The Flogger howled down the valley, its engine noise booming against the cliffs and into the cavern. Almost at once, the noise began to retreat. It was maybe five or six minutes since Gant had picked up the MiG. It had already flown perhaps as much as three hundred miles of its combat radius. In another five minutes, it would be forced to return to Kunduz to refuel, but a replacement would be in the air before then and on-station when the Flogger turned for home. They would still be trapped in the cavern; but he couldn't regret his decision, not even in the moment when the darkness was beaten like a gong by the noise of the MiG's engine. He could never have outrun the fighter, never have avoided its missiles — Garcia hadn't been able to.

"He just broke up," Gant murmured into the transceiver.

"Where does that leave us?" Mac almost wailed from the entrance. "Skipper — this situation is shit!"

"Maybe. What about the gunships?"

"I can hear one, maybe both — no, just one."

"I'm coming to take a look."

After he had walked a few paces, he looked back at the Hind. There was the faintest glow from the main instrument panel in the cockpit, but the bulk of the helicopter was in total darkness. It would not be seen from outside except, maybe, by means of an infrared lamp. The mouth of the cavern was a pale expression of surprise. Stars glinted. Mac's bulk, to one side of the entrance, was pressed back against the rock. He was holding the bulky Noctron night viewer to his face. Its range was more than five hundred meters, maybe better than that with bright moonlight. Gant could hear the approaching MiL.

'The second one's moved off to the south," Mac whispered as Gant reached him. 'This guy's gonna get swallowed by this cave mouth if he don't slow down." He ducked farther into the shadow.

Gant looked around. A lamp might just reach the Hind — just.

"Here, let me take a look."

"Sure." Mac handed him the night viewer. His voice seemed fierce now, angry. He appeared able to suppress his realization about the loss of their reserve fuel, hide it inside his rage at Garcias death. The thought of the fuel made Gant shiver; the darkness spread around him like the inhospitable country in which he was stranded.

He leaned gently out of the shadow.

The gunship hovered in the valley, moonlight splashing on its camouflage paint. It was a twin of the helicopter behind them, a 24D. No troops, then, just the crew — no, if it didn't have an auxiliary tank aboard it could still be holding up to eight soldiers. He watched it. The main door remained closed. Its blunt head turned toward them. The Isotov engine intakes were like insect eyes above the squat, gleaming cockpit. Its noise masked the engine of the coursing MiG, away out of sight.

Only minutes, Gant thought. Because of the rock that surrounded them, he could no longer monitor the Soviet Tac channel. If only they would give him a gap, a sliver of time between the departure of the Flogger and the arrival of its replacement. He could not even listen to the Mil talking to its base. If only they sent more helicopters, not more fighters; fighters were virtually useless for the kind of work the Soviets needed to do in the search for him. They had to, he decided. It was too obvious a tactic to ignore. Helicopters — this gunship and the Flogger had, doubtless, already requested backup. Excitedly reporting the one kill, the temporary loss of the second target — yes, they'd send out more gunships.

Auxiliary tanks? The Flogger had been carrying one under its belly, but no wingtip tanks. It had been flying a lo-lo-lo mission, with no high-altitude work. Its combat range would have been severely reduced. It should be leaving.

He saw the MiG, winking like an intruding star, high above the valley. Then it banked to the southwest and was gone almost at once.

And now, perhaps only now, calling for more helicopters — there would have been a delay time induced by success, by the frightening exhilaration of a real kill, maybe the pilot's first, before he reacted by the book and decided on reinforcements.

"Fifteen minutes maximum, if every guess of mine is right," he murmured, almost to himself. Yes, fifteen at the outside.

The gunship faced them, hovering thirty feet above the rocky floor of the valley. Alone. Four hundred yards away from where they stood. There were too many guesses, too many factors he had placed on his side, not on theirs. But he could do nothing else; defeat was banging behind him like a door being closed.

"You think they'll send choppers/' Mac divined.

"Wouldn't you?"

"Sure."

"They got troops aboard, Mac?"

"I sure as hell hope not."

The night was icy through the thinness of his flying overalls. A deeper chill of isolation and abandonment was spreading through him. He had to keep that off, stop it from numbing him.

"Cabin door," Gant snapped.

"What do we do?"

They watched. Mac seemed to want the night viewer, but Gant kept the viewfinder against his face. He refined the focus of the single 135mm lens. The face of the Russian crew chief appeared, his head leaning out of the cabin door. Gant saw the sloping pencil mark of the rifle he was holding against his body. He switched his attention back to the shadowy cockpit. Gunner in front, pilot behind him. Immobile, almost idle in their lack of movement. He switched back to the cabin door. The crew chief lowered himself slowly down a trailing rope—

— followed by one, two—two flat-helmeted soldiers. The Mil remained at its easy-to-maneuver height. The three men became lumbering shadows in the dust raised by the downdraft, then they emerged, moving away to the left of the cavern, spreading out, all of diem armed with Kalashnikovs, heading toward another, smaller cave.

Gant looked at his watch. Had the three armed men left the Mil because assistance was only seconds away? Were they being too eager or did they know for sure help was almost with them? It couldn't be more than fourteen minutes before other gunships arrived; it could be less than one.

"Go get the guns, Mac," he whispered.

"What—?"

"The Apaches are here, Mac — go get the guns."

Mac hurried off into the darkness. Gant heard him misplace his footing and curse softly, cutting the words off as he remembered the proximity of the three Russians. Gant watched the space opening up between the three men and the MiL. He studied the cockpit. Infrared trace, seeking engine heat. They'd be bound to be using that; laser range finder, too. If he so much as stepped into the mouth of the cavern now, out into the open, they would see him. Just a shadow to eyesight, but a wavering, warm shape on infrared.

The MiLs would be in the air by now, heading toward the position of the gunship that blocked their escape route. He shuddered. Escape route? To where?

Hold on, dammit, hold on, he told himself, clenching his teeth together to prevent them from chattering uncontrollably. Halfway between here and Baikonur he would run out of fuel, over the desert. He would exactly repeat the situation he was now in. They were cut off to the south, west, and maybe the east. Only the north would be open — maybe. To the east, the Hindu Kush rose above the service ceiling of the Hind. He could not cross the mountains, and anyway, only China lay beyond them. To the north lay the border. He could cross that. To run out of fuel somewhere between the Oxus and Baikonur…

Hold on!

Both hands gripped the night viewer. The impossibilities chimed like harsh, untuned bells.

The three armed men had moved out of sight into gullies or the shadows of boulders. Effectively, they were now cut off from the MiL, which, seen through the Noctron, became less than a threat, more of a target. It was the only way in which Gant could overcome the shuddering chill induced by the hours stretching ahead of him. An immediate, violent solution. Target.

Mac was hurrying back, but already the handguns and the two Kalashnikovs were as outmoded as arrows. Garcias helicopter exploded once more in his mind. Now that he had removed the night viewer from his eye, he could see a thin trail of dark smoke crossing the full moon like an old scar. The explosion repeated itself, a series of star bursts from some huge firework display, and he saw the Mil directly in front of him vanish into an identical orange fireball. There was no other way; he could not simply wait for defeat to arrive, he had to strive to outrun it.

Minutes — even one or two minutes — of confusion might be enough for him to be swallowed by the landscape; cross the border and drain into the desert like water. Mil for MiL; this Russian pilot and crew for Garcia and the others. An eye for an eye — and a Way out.

"I know what the gooks felt like, now that I'm staring into that face," Mac observed through clenched teeth.

Vietnam trembled like a thick cover of leaves about to be parted.

Gant snapped: "Shut up, Mac. I don't need it." Mac grunted, handing one of the rifles to Gant, who simply stared at the target.

Gant's awareness narrowed. He breathed steadily but quickly. The noise of the MiL's rotors insisted. The three men on foot had not reappeared.

"There's a way out," he murmured. "Kill the target."

"What then, skipper?" Mac replied, lifting to his eye the Noctron that Gant had returned to him. The rifle was folded in the crook of his right arm. "What do we do when we've burned her?"

"Cross the border."

"And run out of fuel, skipper?" Mac's voice was outraged. "I never took you for a gung-ho bastard with a need to get killed. Why now?"

Gant glanced at Mac. 'There's nothing else — unless you want to surrender?" His voice snapped like a thin whip because of his own desperation.

"No, but—"

"We might as well surrender, Mac. If they'll allow it. Maybe they just want to fry us, too, like Garcia?" Mac's breathing was rapid and frightened. "You want to wait for an order or are you volunteering?"

"OK, skipper," Mac replied after a long silence; reluctant and almost surly.

"Let's go — and let's see how good you really are, Mac."

They stumbled into the darkness of the cavern, not daring to use their lamps. The Plexiglas, given the faintest gleam by the instrument panel, loomed mistily out of the blackness. Mac, after missing his footing once, clambered into the gunner's cockpit. Gant closed his door softly. The noise of the MiL, washing through the entrance where the moonlight made a pale carpet, was still audible until he put on his helmet and stowed the transceiver in its fitting. His hands were clammy, shaking, and his body was alert with nerves.

Target, he reminded himself.

Lights flickered on in orderly rows in Mac's cockpit.

"Mac?"

"Sure."

"After you launch the missile, make for the entrance. I don't want anyone outside — one Kalashnikov could bring this baby down."

"Got you."

His palms dried. He flicked the low-light TV picture to the main tactical screen. Ghostly. The Mil was a dervish whirling in a small dust storm. The edges of the cavern's mouth were like dark curtains revealing a tiny stage. On that stage, he could see the gunship.

And a warm body registering…

Posed in front of the MiL, merely a shadow on the TV image, but a shimmering glow on the superimposed infrared display. One of the soldiers! It unnerved him. Flesh, not just„a machine. For a moment, he could not disregard the information of the infrared. His hand sweated. Then his mind restored the imperatives of ruthlessness.

He said: "It doesn't exist. Concentrate on the gunship, Mac."

"Skipper."

The quality of the flickering, warm image changed as it entered the cavern. It shone out more brightly. And was clearer, more recognizably human.

Get out of the way…

As if aware that it was silhouetting itself against the pale entrance, the warm shimmer moved to one side, into what it thought was invisibility in the darkness.

"Mac?"

"Ready, skipper."

In a moment, if it moved any closer, it would see the reflection of panel lights on the Plexiglas of the two cockpits. Gant held his breath.

Through the mouth of the cavern. A straight line. The Mil continued to hover in its own little storm of dust. It was neither lifting nor falling, but soon it would climb out of their sight because the dust was beginning to rise around the cockpit, reducing visibility.

The warm image continued to swim toward them on the infrared. The Mil turned in the air like a sycamore leaf, the lights were in rows of readiness along Mac's panel.

"When ready," he whispered at last.

The Mil began to lift. Mac's breathing quickened as he watched the warm body moving toward the center of the screen.

Launch.

He heard the ignition even as he heard the horn sound in his helmet, signaling that Mac's range finder and IR had locked on to the target. He could almost hear the switches and the buttons and [he circuits. The cavern dazzled with rocket flame; exhaust smoke "illowed. He saw, garishly lit, ice tendrils hanging high above them, the huge roof of the cavern—

— and the man, in uniform, lit by fire and stunned into immobility. The AA missile tore free of the Hind's stubby port winglet, rocking the helicopter. Its flame lanced toward the entrance, and something too illuminated to see clearly fell away from it. Even through the Plexiglas there was a thin, high-pitched cry. Smoke rolled in the dying glare as what was now a small lance of flame vanished through the entrance. Distantly, he heard the noises of Mac's departure from the gunner's cockpit, and saw his dim shadow move away.

Gant stabbed buttons — ignition of another kind. His stomach churned. The rotors above his head began to turn slowly. Something was still screaming. Mac was running toward it, his lamp wobbling like a weakly held white stick alongside him. The rotors accelerated, their noise booming in the cavern.

On the main tactical screen, displaying the low-light TV image, the little bright tail of flame drove toward the bulk of the Russian helicopter. Microseconds passed.

The MiL, rotors turning, eyelike air intakes staring into the cavern, swallowed the missile. Light spread on the screen and spilled into the cavern so that he could see Mac bending over the scorched soldier. On the screen, the Mil opened almost like a mouth about to scream, staggered in the air, split, flew to pieces. Metal bounced into the cavern like pebbles. In the glaring light, Mac was pressed against the wall, his face averted. The place was alien, as if the rocks themselves were burning. He moved his shocked hands slowly, with extreme effort. In his mind, substitution whirled. He must contact Kunduz, inform them that the runaway had been destroyed like its companion—intruder destroyed, mission accomplished—slacken the pace of the pursuit, buy time. Then on their radars he would be Russian, he was explainable. It might gain him as much as minutes.

Above his head, the rotors were dishing, bathed in lurid orange light. The Hind strained against the restraint of the brakes. His hands gripped the column and the collective pitch lever. On the main screen there was a glow from outside, but the low-light television picture revealed nothing solid, no object out there.

A shadow appeared in the entrance, outlined by the fire behind it. It startled Mac — dim exclamations reached Gant through the helmet and the Plexiglas — and flame spat before the shadow ducked to one side and vanished from the entrance. Then Mac was waving him urgently forward.

The Hind struggled; Gant released the brakes. It rolled forward down a shallow slope, hopped over the gouge of the dry watercourse, and eased toward the mouth of the cavern. The glow from what remained of the Russian helicopter increased, making a bright lance of the airspeed sensor boom. Flame and smoke roiled about him, as if he were thrusting the whole machine into some furnace. Mac ducked his way to the side of the helicopter. Gant heard him slide open the main cabin door. There were — how many soldiers out there somewhere? Gant heard Mac's boots thudding on the metal floor behind him. The door was left open.

His breathing was stertorous, but his body still felt calm, even cold. The Hind eased more swiftly toward the exit from the cavern.

The Russian Mil was rubble, its fire already diminishing. He lifted the Hind over it, rising softly through the pall of smoke into the moonlit night. He flicked on the radio and prepared his signal. A moment of illusory calm—

— so that he hardly heard the gunfire, even though he saw the squat figure of a man on the ground. Saw flame, only vaguely heard the shots cry and bang on the fuselage. Kalashnikov on automatic. Moonlight splashed on the cockpit. Someone cried out from the transceiver… cried out?

Mac fell as Gant held the Hind in the hover. It was almost as if he had jumped, his shape seeming right for an attack upon the Russian, who was lying spread-eagled. Dust rose slowly around Mac from the impact of his body. Mac's own Kalashnikov buried itself upright near his body, like a marker.

"Mac!" he heard himself shouting, over and over. "Mac! Mac!"

Mac had killed the one surviving Russian, the only one who could contradict the lies he intended. But the Russian had killed Mac.

Gant's hand had turned off the Soviet channel almost as soon as he had begun yelling. It would be just another cry in the night as the intruders died. He had not given himself away. The moon silvered the Plexiglas. Survival became a panic in him, obscuring everything else; even Mac's death. For which he was responsible — he should have been more aware, should have taken the Hind up quicker.

Panic obscured his recriminations; obscured everything. Survive.

He opened the Tac channel, and immediately his voice was an acted enthusiasm, a cry of delight mingled with shock.

"Got the bastard!" he yelled in his mother's Russian over the Tac channel. "Got the deserting bastard!"

"You lucky bastard, Ilya!" he heard immediately, as if his pretended excitement was infectious. "You lucky sod!" Then: "What's your position, man?"

Without hesitation, Gant supplied the coordinates. Mac's shrunken form lay still on the valley floor, near the Russian soldier. There was nothing on his body to betray the mission or his origins; not for hours yet would they learn he came from nowhere, had no record. The pretense made Cant tired. His desire to flee, to survive through speed, had to be restrained at a cost.

The Russian pilot replied: "With you in four minutes. Lucky sod!"

"Roger. Out."

He flicked off the radio. Felt nausea rise to the back of his throat. Made himself not look down again, except to inspect the rubbish that was all that was left of the MiL. Even there, if he were lucky, there would not be enough to betray him. Only the dog tags, and even they might have been damaged enough to be unreadable except under laboratory conditions. At least — at the very least — he had four minutes.

He summoned the moving map to the main screen and bled in the disposition of radar defenses, watchtowers, camps and barracks, villages and farms and towns, the listening posts and the missile units. In the vast valley of the Oxus and the mountains that rose beyond it, inside the Soviet Union, the defenses were mainly long-range — especially since 1979. Crossing in a low-flying helicopter would be easy.

Fuel.

He glanced at the gauges. He had perhaps as much as four hundred miles of flying at his most economical cruising speed before his auxiliary tank dried up. It would leave him three hundred miles short of Baikonur. Three hundred miles short — somewhere in the deserts of Soviet Central Asia; Uzbekistan. He felt cold, his body slipping into a mild paralysis. He could not go back. He would never make it to Peshawar, all the way south back across Afghan airspace, not once they identified even one of the bodies below or some part of the ruined airframe. He was utterly trapped by the situation.

Panic surged in him. Go now, go before Kunduz begins demanding a full report — expecting one.

He felt his body flood with anger.

Mac.

No, it wasn't because of Mac; it was because he was trapped. It was like the Firefox, its fuel running out, before he reached the ice floe and the submarine that was Mother One. But there was no submarine out there in Uzbekistan, there was no fuel out there… run, run.

Mac.

Survive.

His hands moved almost automatically, and the Hind's nose whisked up. Still low and within the radar shield of the valley, he increased speed. Bowed to the pressure of the panic to survive. In six minutes, he could be across the border, inside the Soviet Union. His mind shut out the hours ahead, thought only of the next few minutes. He wasn't defeated, he hadn't lost — not yet. And he would survive.

One hundred, one twenty, one twenty-five — the Hind skimmed along the wide, dry valley, raising, as it passed, a small trail of dust no bigger than that of a single horseman. Going forward represented the prospect of opportunity. And there was something in the back of his head, something—

He could not focus, not yet, but it allowed him to expand his vision of the minutes ahead.

Nine-fourteen, local time.

Even the thought that he would never reach Baikonur could not halt or slow his northward momentum. To go back was to return to the certainty of death now rather than capture — he had killed three of theirs, five including the pilot and the gunner he had incinerated. All of them friends, acquaintances, comrades of other people.

The north promised more than that. Most of all — time; time in which circumstances might change, or might be altered to his wish; time which might focus the vague something at the back of his mind.

He looked at the gauges. Maybe as much as four hundred twenty miles before his fuel ran out.

Not enough.

President Calvin's hand swept in an angry gesture toward the screens against the wall of the Oval Office. Winter sunlight through the tinted windows paled and made more insubstantial the television images. Though the director of the CIA still found them as easy to recognize as if they were personal memories or hopes.

"Why the hell are we paying them to even bother to learn how to do that?" Calvin shouted. His voice seemed to contain as much anguish as anger, as his finger pointed accusingly at an image of the shuttle Atlantis. The transmission from the orbiter was from the camera's viewpoint along the spine of the shuttle, revealing the bulk of the Spacelab in the cargo hold, and beyond it two tire men with backpacks floating like huge white bees around the satellite they were repairing. The remote manipulator arm hung at the edge of the screen like a weak, broken limb. The earth appeared to be almost entirely ocean; virtually cloudless. The vast Pacific, impossibly blue. It was as if it unnerved Calvin for a moment, for he remained silent. Then he burst out again: "Answer me — you, Bill, or you, Dick — why should the country pay out the billions of dollars to teach those guys how to repair spy satellites?" He glared at his two companions. Filtered sunlight glanced across his shock of gray hair and his stubborn profile, gilding his features. He raised his hands, then slapped them against his thighs. "Those guys up there would be better employed learning how to repair Russian automobiles! A skill they could come to need. That up there is just about as advanced as a tow truck and nowhere near as useful anymore."

On companion screens, beside the image of the Atlantis, Baikonur. Russian broadcasts to the rest of the world, demonstrating their peaceful mission in space… just like that of the American shuttle, a forerunner of future cooperative ventures, the Soviet Raketoplan shuttle will be launched on Thursday, to coincide with the signing of the treaty, the two shuttle craft will rendezvous in orbit in a symbolic gesture of peace, on Friday… The subtitled commentary seemed to mock the men in the room, enrage Calvin further. On other screens, images from around a frightened world. Frightening, frightened, beginning-to-be-relieved… hope is alive in the world again… Calvin shook his head in shame and frustration. He had said that only a few weeks before, in his State of the Union message to Congress.

He studied one screen after another like a list of indictments against him. Barbed wire being rolled back on one screen, the symbolic demolition of concrete emplacements on another. Fences, silos, missiles on others, being moved, opened, shut forever, torn down. A montage of withdrawal as potent as a magnified sigh of relief. On yet another screen, an English-language documentary on the city of Geneva and the location of the signing session, the Palais des Nations. A wide-angle view showed the snowbound city, the gunmetal-colored expanse of Lac Leman, the tiny, distant, frozen tail feathers of the Geneva Fountain.

Calvin turned away from the screens. His desk was littered with dozens of newspapers. Some of them had slipped and lay scattered on the apple-green carpet with its scroll and seal. Headlines glared and lay abandoned, like the decorations for a Christmas past. Celebration, optimism, unqualified approval and praise. Calvin began to imagine that he had surrounded himself with the newspapers and the screens in order to torment himself. Mirrors to reflect his scars.

Failure inhabited the Oval Office, though his desk and the floor were strewn with success. He knew his anger was only a bluff, a device to hold failure at arm's length. Dick Gunther knew the game was up; so did the CIA director. Their faces told him that quite clearly. Gant, that last fond hope, that last desperate stake, had disappeared. He had run into the desert sand like a trickle of water.

Calvin raised his glance as he heard the director clear his throat.

"I'm sorry, Mr. President," he heard the director say. It was no more than a repetition of the first words he had uttered on entering the room little more than ten minutes earlier. Even before he had explained, he had begun to apologize. As soon as Calvin looked at him, the director looked down.

"OK, Bill," Gunther soothed. "That's the end of it. There's nothing any of us can do now."

"Nothing? Nothing, Dick?" Calvin stormed. "They're going to put a laser battle station into low earth orbit the day after tomorrow and you say there's nothing we can do? Find something, dammitl That battle station will be capable of taking out spy satellites, ICBMs, even Atlantis and the other shuttles. That's the hole we have to get out of."

Gunther shook his head. He was perched on the corner of the desk. Calvin saw the gleam of calculation in his eyes; but he was only weighing the presidential mood, looking for soothing, meaningless words.

Calvin looked back at the row of screens. The blue earth shifted, as if knocked from its orbit, as the camera shot changed to a closeup of the two astronauts at their repairs to the surveillance satellite. A KH-11 type, which watched the borders of Israel. Its maneuvering rocket was failing to respond to transmitted instructions. And Space-lab. Weeks of experiments to find purer pharmaceuticals, high-strength alloys, high-purity crystals for electronic components. Not an aggressive element aboard the Atlantis.

Gant was missing, presumed dead. The long-range AWACS aircraft above the Pakistan border had lost touch with the helicopters. Gant had vanished into a whirlpool of Soviet aerial and radio activity. They must have discovered, exposed, and now finished him. It was that news the director had brought with him. It was noon in Washington, the end of Tuesday morning. On Thursday Calvin would have to sign in Geneva — or earn the world's embittered, enraged scorn. Something no President could afford.

The telephone rang. Calvin's hand jumped, then he reached out to take the reply to the call he had made on hearing the news of Gant's loss. He concentrated on keeping his extended hand steady. Gunther handed him the receiver.

At least one explosion, the director had announced. A lot of radio traffic, radar emissions, all the trappings of a search-and-kill mission.

The Soviets had indeed had a quarry. Gant.

Calvin snapped on the amplifier and placed the receiver in its cradle. The others, too, could listen to this. He spoke to the U.S. chief negotiator in Geneva.

"Yes, Frank. Yes, we all feel that, Frank. I want to know what's happening at your end." Giordello's sympathy and the appalled, lost tone in his voice irritated Calvin.

"But, Mr. President, in view of—

"Listen to me, Frank, what is my timetable in Geneva?" He did not look at either Gunther or the director.

There was a short silence, then Giordello began reciting the litany of protocol and procedure and procession. Midday, Thursday. The bald fact emerged and grew, looming in the Oval Office like a shadow. Clouds had removed the pale gleam of sunlight. The presidential seal on the carpet was dulled, and the images on the screen blazed out. A fool's errand, a fool's journey on which he must set out before midnight, so that he could sign away America before the weekend.

He sighed. And he could no longer keep the pain and distress from his features as he listened to Giordello's voice. He was beaten and he knew it.

Katya remembered her father, almost like childhood prayers. It is my litany because I am afraid, she told herself. Nothing more than that. She remembered the factory workers face in the local party newspaper, on a huge billboard that gazed across the cobbled square of the town. Her fathers eyes had been apologetic, asking almost Why am I here, what have I done to deserve this? As if he Were a criminal, photographically displayed to a shocked public.

In the darkness, the icebound marsh possessed a sheen from the moon. Frozen sedge scraped against her waders. She moved forward gently, her slow pace seeming to lend an extra cold to the frozen night. A thin wind cried across the marsh. Some bird honked in the dark. Ahead of her, she could discern a thin vertical line of dim light. And another, horizontal line that joined it. Like heated, magnetized iron filings, glimpses of light shone through gaps in the rotting planking of the houseboat.

This is my litany, she recited once more. The first new Moskvitch, for which they had waited another three years after her father's output at the boot factory qualified him for one — output and Party loyalty, of course. An example to his fellow workers. What am I doing here? Her father's bemused, even fearful features looking out from the billboard had rendered him less than a hero; once and for all.

Bare, utilitarian, unreliable; blue. The Moskvitch. Hard to start from the autumn to late spring. Impossible to use from November to March. Its wipers stolen two days after it was delivered. The spare tire a week later. Her father's pride and joy. What have 1 done to deserve this? Why me? As always, overwhelmed by the generosity of the Party.

She glanced at her watch, the memories not interfering with her alertness. Eleven. The leaking light from the houseboat drew her on. Sedge scraped and snapped and brittlely rustled, rattled too by the dog, who panted and shivered alongside her. The boat was less than fifty yards away now. Again, a bird honked. The dog growled, and she soothed it to quiet. She descended the knoll of reeds she had climbed, one of the many tiny islets dotting the marshes. To the east, the sky had a pale, chilly glow; the thousand arc lights around the cosmodrome and the occupied launch pad. There were farther, dimmer gleams from the science city, from villages, from watch-towers and silos. Yet here, above the thin mourning of the wind, she could hear the mutter of nocturnal animals disturbing the sleep of Waterfowl.

Katya shuddered in her coat, her face chilled inside its upturned for collar, her beret seeming to do little to keep the aching cold from her head.

On her way to school, she had passed her father's bemused glance from the billboard every day for a month. School friends sometimes mocked, or were silent out of envy or contempt. He was, and remained, only a factory worker and had no right up there alongside teachers, scientists, engineers, officials of the ministries. The cold wind of March had rattled the portraits, making their heads turn this way and that, ever vigilant. Her father had seemed cold and uncomfortable up there, as if he, too, knew his place. Memory invaded her, radiating warmth, calm.

She slapped her arms across her chest, pausing so that one foot could test the ice, then moved her weight onto it, followed by the other foot. The dog slithered, then regained his balance. His great tail banged against her waders. She must get even closer, to make sure — though she knew that Kedrov was in there… Kedrov the spy.

She glanced the flashlight's beam across the thick ice. Moved gingerly. As if to demonstrate its safety, the dog skittered ahead of her. Nothing to fear.

The ice seemed to strike coldly through the soles of the waders, through both pairs of thick socks. The iron-filing pattern of the leaking light beckoned her. She stepped more confidently toward the houseboat, its outline low and huddled against the faint-glowing night. Ice groaned, but quietly, as if disturbed in its sleep. The wind insinuated and moaned, her noises were indecipherable. Kedrov would not be alerted.

She reached the mooring and wiped the flashlight beam over its rotting wood above her head, over the plank crossing from jetty to deck. The boat's movements in the wind and the water had reduced the ice around the hull to a soupy, treacherous slush that groaned and slopped. How deep was it? Could she wade in it?

The wooden jetty would be noisier, but in the wind, with the noises of the boat's rotten wood…? Gingerly, she reached out and touched each step of the jetty. Then she climbed, moving slowly, very slowly. Creaks, the night glasses banging once before she pressed them against her breasts. Her breathing was ragged in a sudden hush of wind. Then, once more, the wind struck through her gloves and clothing, urging her on. The dog's big feet scampered beside her, increasing their noise. His breathing was louder than hers. She knelt at the top of the steps, halfway along the jetty, the boat directly ahead of her, and shushed the dog, made him lie down. Then she straightened. The dog's tail slid back and forth in the beam of the flashlight, but he did not attempt to rise.

"Good boy," she murmured. His tail increased its speed. Then she began creeping toward the houseboat. Her gun was in her gloved hand, her gloves almost too thick for her forefinger to fit into the trigger guard of the Makarov. The pattern of light from the gaps in the boat's planking was clearer, more inviting.

This is my litany because I am afraid, her mind whispered. The memories were random now, flying like sparks.

A plank creaked. The past vanished. She shifted her weight gently and released the wood; it groaned with relief. The dog still lay where she had left him. She moved forward on tiptoe. She was no more than a dozen yards from the boat. Some of the gaps in the planking were wide enough for her to discern a shadow moving inside. Her heart banged.

When she reached the boat, her heart slowed. She knelt down on the jetty to bring her eyes level with a wide, jagged crack of light where the shadow had moved, then settled. She squinted into the crack, half poised like a runner on blocks. Her waders squeaked against one another. Her gun rested on the rotting wood, clutched unregarded in her left hand.

Kedrov.

Her heart began to thump once more. He was holding a mug. Beyond his shoulder, a haversack. A transistor radio lay on the small, bare section of table she could see.

She had found him!

Self-satisfaction warmed her like scalding coffee. She seemed to touch his features with her intent, squinting look. Nose, mouth, profile, thinning hair. The features matched those of the photograph clearly in her mind.

She was very aware of her quick, light breathing and of the gun in her gloved hand.

And of Priabin.

She sighed, but the warmth of pleasure remained; pride was like a blanket into which she snuggled. She checked once more — radio, mug, Kedrov, radio, coffee mug, Kedrov—

— then straightened up, feeling light-headed with success. She tiptoed back toward the dog. Her body urged her to hurry the first yards of the mile or so back to the car and the radio mike.

Kedrov—

She ruffled the dog's fur and laughed softly, luxuriously, at her own success.

The bare, scoured landscape flowed slowly beneath the belly of the Hind. Gant was vividly aware of the fragility of the machine that enclosed him, that kept out the freezing night temperature and the cut and noise of the wind; aware of its power to kill him. Perhaps within minutes now. Just like his father's life-support machine: tubes, a tent, a mask covering the resented face. The doctor, his sister, her husband the trucker, all approaching the moment in different ways. He in his uniform, cap beneath his arm, body stiffly at attention. He'd decided for all of them and switched off the life support. The opaqueness of the tent pitched over his father's shrunken form had slowly cleared. A small, old body without the capacity to evoke feeling of any kind had gradually been revealed.

He squeezed the thought from his mind. Now, over this bleak, cold desert, this machine was keeping him alive — and it would switch itself off and kill him when the last drops of fuel drained from the reserve tank. Like the MiG-31 over the North Sea, the Hind would make an attempt on his life.

Icy perspiration. The dunes slid beneath the Hind's black shadow. Sand flew off their crests at the helicopter's passage. Distance to Baikonur, a little less than four hundred miles; location, Soviet Central Asia, following the course of the river Oxus toward the Aral Sea. Below him, the emptiness of the Kara Kum; the huge, decayed, toothless jaws of the valley carved by the Oxus opened on either side of him. Dunes and the diamond-sparkling sky stretched away in every direction. Far to the north, too far to concern him, thin cloud hung like the gray smoke from a cigarette.

However precisely and carefully he described the landscape to himself — with whatever assumed detachment — he knew he was unraveling like wool in a cat's claws. Panic had approached, and he was conscious of forcing a mental door shut against its increasing pressure. Soon — perhaps even before the fuel ran out — he would not be able to control it.

The Mil had drifted closer to the single main road running parallel with the river, between it and the railway line. Occasional headlights, and once the smoke and blaring light of a locomotive glanced across his vision. On the moving-map display, the desert appeared to stretch infinitely away beyond the river, road, and railway tracks. He had deluded himself, pretending that a solution lurked unformed at the back of his mind. He had run because there was nothing else he could do. He had, he admitted, run in the wrong direction. Mac's shape spread on the ground came back to him vividly, as did the sense of having abandoned the body.

Lumped, broken country stretched away to the north. To the south lay a plateau of ugly gray rock and sand. The Hind, with Gant imprisoned within it, hugged the ground on the last of its fuel. He had disappeared successfully into the landscape after crossing the border. His whereabouts were unknown. They would remain that way.

Fuel gauges on Empty. All of them. Wool in a cat's eager claws; unraveling…

The road was less than a mile away now. Unconsciously, he was drifting toward it, as if it were a solution. It wasn't. Straggling closer than the road was the gleam of the river.

Think, think.

His mind was empty, except for the seeping of panic, and the urge to survive, like the noise of a rat scrabbling at the cage; frantic and desperate. His arms quivered with the effort of holding the Hind's course and height. Its shadow drifted over the broad, straggling, gray river. Was there something at the edge of his mind? He couldn't think, he was too hot, his mind too jumpy and unfocused. He needed to be clearheaded. The Hind glided now, as if grace were to be its last skill. The water seemed shallow and muddy, more like a creek than the force that had formed the landscape around him. The dim glow from some encampment stained the night farther to the south, beyond the road and railway. His whole body leaped in anticipation, even as he dismissed it. They would have no fuel, and they would kill him for his clothes before they stripped the helicopter naked. Ignore it, ignore—

The campfire glowed like a promise. Deliberately, he slowed the helicopter to a crawling speed above its shadow. His arms ached with tension, and fear. His brow and the back of his overalls were Wet with perspiration. Not here, not in this lost place, he heard his thoughts repeating. Another mile, another ten, fifty… please.

He was at the hover, sand drifting off the side of a nearby dune, hanging like some vague curtain. The Hind was in a hollow, surrounded by low dunes. Not in this place — keep going, keep going, not in this God-forsaken place.

His resolve snapped in his head like an old dry stick. His body quivered. He could hear his teeth chattering. He could not clear his head.

The undercarriage bumped, then settled. He released the controls. Dust whirled around the cockpit. He switched off the engines, and the rotors whined down through the scale and slowed with a sense of finality. He cursed the weakness that had made him land even as he opened the pilot s door and jumped to the ground, coughing immediately because of the sand and dust.

He groaned aloud. As soon as he had walked away from the settling dust, he breathed deeply, again and again. He looked behind him. The Hind was already cold and lifeless, and the suggestion of its immobility was like a great, icy wave breaking against him. He was shivering, though he hardly noticed the small, biting wind. His hands clenched and unclenched in futility.

His father returned, then. Machines — his fathers only use to people, and only then when he was sober. The memory was a supreme mockery now. His father could repair any machine: irons, refrigerators, lawnmowers, sprinklers, cars — anything you wanted fixed *. until he had been beaten by a machine in the end, when Gant had switched off the life support. His father seemed to be watching him now — not gloating for once, just detached and judging.

Painfully, slowly, he climbed the shivering, rattling sand of the dune. Immediately, the glow of the campfire — no! The flash of a vehicle's headlights miles away along the road. No suffused glow of a town or village or barracks. He rubbed his hands through his hair, the presence of the silent helicopter pressing against the back of his head like a migraine.

Machine, machine… His father watched. Think, t-h-i-n-k… think…

He stared at the empty road. Heard the thin wind and shivered in it. Heard the oily sliding of the river and the silence of the helicopter. Empty country, empty road. He was breathing rapidly and deeply, despite the ache of the icy air in his lungs. The beginnings of a terminal attack. Empty road, empty… something, something, Christ! Empty road — its very emptiness was the clue, the answer, empty — stretching away like, like—

Roads home. Roads at home. Slow rise and fell of seemingly endless roads, empty most of the day.

A gravel road in Iowa, and — an old biplane sagging down out of an empty morning sky onto the road and taxiing toward — the gas station. An airplane — his Saturday job, to serve at the gas station where hardly anyone called, and where he spent his time reading magazines about air aces and dogfights. The biplane might have jumped from the pages of one of the magazines — that first airplane, the first one he'd ever sat in. It had just rolled slowly up to the gas pumps, and the pilot had looked down, grinned, and said, Get the windshield, check the tires.

And filled the airplane s tank from the pump.

Gant whirled around and stared in utter shock at the Hind resting in the hollow. Turned back to the empty road. Looked again at the helicopter, his panic becoming urgent again, but eager now, not final.

There had been something in his memory, he hadn't merely panicked — a single-engined, prop-driven biplane, flown by an ex-air force pilot disgruntled with postwar America. An itinerant crop sprayer, taxiing with complete arrogance on a road in Iowa to fill his fuel tank at a gas station.

Gant ran stumblingly down the dune, sand flying and slithering. Urgency possessed him, as if the engines of the Hind were still running and he were using fuel by his very movements. He clambered into the cockpit and flicked on the moving-map display. He summoned the largest-scale maps, hearing his breathing hoarse and loud in the confined space, hearing the humming excitement in his ears, his heart pounding. He searched the map feverishly for signs of human habitation. Road, railway, river, all heading toward the Aral Sea — along the road, follow the road…

North, east, and west the land opened up, becoming ever more empty. Damn the emptiness of this place.

Desert shading into green on the maps as he ran them again. Temperate. Soil, not desert sand. Trees, crops — people. Northwest, where the river turned like an enormous python up toward the Aral Sea, its vast, eroded valley like a huge skin it had already shed. Green — people…

Engine-start.

The Hind jumped like a flea into the night, out of the hollow. The cockpit was solidly around him, no longer a fragile eggshell. He saw the road, the river, as if for the first time.

Along that road. Main road. Gas.

He tried to grin. The gauges had registered Empty for miles already. How much?

He did grin. The machine wasn't going to beat him. He would survive.

"We're gonna make it — I promise, Mac." And then he remembered that the gunner s cockpit was empty and Mac was dead and already hundreds of miles behind him. His voice Med.

In its greed, which now reflected his own, the Hind hurried through the empty landscape. As he flicked over the crest of a dune, the river gleamed to starboard, and the road was a pale trail to port.

Suddenly, he began to fear once more that the machine would win.

Hie urgent bleeping of the radio woke Priabin. Ridiculous, he realized in the moment of waking; he'd fallen asleep in his car while it was parked outside his office building. The lights, he saw fuzzily, were still on in his office. He scrabbled at the dashboard, reaching for the radio mike, half expecting the dog to bang its paws on the back of his seat and lick his ear and neck. But the dog was with Katya. He clenched the mike, flicked the switch, and said:

"Priabin. Yes?"

Her voice was breathy, excited. Priabin was sharply disappointed. He wanted the call to be about Rodin, but knew that Katya must be calling about Kedrov.

"— found him!" the woman almost shouted. "I've found Kedrov in the marshes. Colonel, he's here!"

He glanced up at the lights in his office. Security pressed down on him like a constricting weight; survival, too.

"Katya — hang on, I'm in the parking lot. Wait until I can listen on the office scrambler—"

"Sir!" Her frustration amounted to outrage.

"Katya," he snapped in reply. 'The car isn't secure." Kedrov, Rodin, the GRU, the military, Viktor dead — anything to do with Kedrov was important, might be dangerous. "Just give me a minute, Katya, then we can use the secure channel."

"Yes," Katya replied automatically.

Priabin dropped the mike and flung open the door of the car. Now Rodin was distanced in importance. Katya had found Kedrov. Hie pieces of the broken ornament that was his future were miraculously coming back together. He hurried across the frosty concrete. The wind flung itself into his face. He ran up the steps and thrust open the twin glass doors into the building, surprising the foyer guard, who instantly relaxed and saluted as he recognized Priabin.

He fumed at the doors of the elevator until they opened. Fumed as it ground its slow way upward. Ran along the thinly carpeted corridor, and unlocked his door.

Locked it once more behind him.

"Katya?" he said breathlessly into the radio, switching on the scrambler unit as he did so. "Katya — tell me everything."

Kedrov — Viktor… they were linked, too. Like Viktor was bound to Rodin and Lightning. It was all of a piece; his future was restored. Dear God, the girl had done well.

He flicked on the desk lamp. In its pool of light, he saw the map of the salt marshes. As he dragged a notepad and pencil toward him, she said: "I knew he'd be here."

"Well done, well done, you clever girl," he replied lightly. It was infectious. The drowsiness induced by lack of sleep and the car's heater had — well, simply vanished. He felt reinvigorated. He was denied access to Rodin, but now he had Kedrov, who knew something about Lightning. He had the answer in the palm of his hand.

Katya's story spilled out excitedly. He listened, enthralled; asked her to repeat details merely in order to savor them; scribbled on his pad, marked the position of the houseboat on the map that lay like an untidy tablecloth across his desk. When she had finished, he said, chuckling:

"Well done — oh, sweet girl, well done." He heard her moment of hesitation almost as if she audibly demurred from his praise, sensing patronage. Then he heard her laughing, and added, more soberly: "Do nothing — no, don't argue, don't do anything. This is too important — no, it's too dangerous, too. You wait there. I'll call Du-din at once. I'll come out with him and his men, and we'll all take him together — no, no bullshit, no heroics. We'll make certain we take him."

His free hand was clenching and unclenching near the pencil and the notepad. He was racked with impatience like a child.

"Yes, sir," Katya replied, reconciled to good, sensible precautions. "But please hurry."

"Look, don't worry. Just sit in your car and play that Paul Simon tape I know you bought last week from one of the back-street dealers in town, and we'll be right with you. All right?"

"Yes, Colonel," she replied in a sobered, careful voice.

"You know Paul Simon's not only an American, but also a Jew— and very subversive," Priabin added. He joined her laughter, then said: "Well done, Katya, really well done. Hang on — we'll be right With you."

He switched off the radio. He would make certain that Katya s part in this was recognized by the committees, just as he would use the capture of Kedrov as his return ticket to Moscow Center. He had begun to dial Dudin's number, but his hand, as if understanding his mood, had replaced the receiver. He found himself staring at the dark square of the window as if at some screen upon which long-anticipated images would shortly be projected. It was only gradually that the haze of light from the distant launch complex made itself apparent against the glass. He rubbed his chin, then watched his fingers drumming with growing impatience on his desk. But the moment was good, and he deliberately held on to it for as long as he could. His fingers were pale in the lamp's pool of white light. Slowly, almost luxuriously, he made those impatient fingers reach toward the dial — Dudin, and the capture of Kedrov.

The telephone began to ring.

Katya s danger was the first reaction that began to surge in him, until he realized it was not the same telephone. It was the one he had been going to use to call Tyuratam's KGB chief.

His mood vanished. He grabbed the receiver and almost shouted into it: "Priabin. Yes?"

"Sir?" It was Mikhail.

"Mikhail — look, I'm busy, urgently busy. Clear the line, will you? I'll take any report later on."

"Sir, this is important," Mikhail announced heavily. Priabin could clearly hear restrained anger in his breathing.

"Oh, very well, Mikhail," he sighed. "What is it?"

"Two things, sir. We've been trying to get hold of you—"

"Yes, yes," he snapped. "What two things?"

His body twitched with impatience. Katya was out there in the icy night, close to Kedrov. In an hour they could have him. He closed his free hand into a tight fist, clutching his image of Kedrov.

"His father rang him almost an hour ago — to confirm the poof's leaving first thing in the morning. The early flight out."

"Why?"

"When the old man was here, sir, he — he beat his son up. Screaming. Knocked him about. We couldn't hear, but we saw a lot of it. Old Rodin was shouting his head off. Now we know what he was saying. It's tomorrow."

"Damn," Priabin said softly, but the news was strangely without impact; a small pity for the son, an abstract dislike of the father and his behavior. But the disappointment, the sense of being cheated that Mikhail implied he should feel, were both absent. "That's it, then," he added with a sigh.

"Sir — the other piece of news." Mikhail's exasperation was insubordinate.

"What?"

"He — he's asked to talk to you, sir — the poof, not the father."

"Asked?"

"He must have checked, found the phone was bugged. Little creep just picked up the receiver and spoke to us. Demanded to speak to you — said he had something to tell you."

"Something to tell?" Priabin began. It was as if a drug injected minutes before only now began its stimulating effect. His mind seemed to become urgently intent. He leaned forward in his chair, his hand scrabbled for his pencil; Kedrov and Katya and the marshes retreated. He was tempted and greedy. "What exactly did he say?"

Mikhail's tone changed, became enthusiastically relieved. "Said he had to talk to you, sir. You want to hear the tape of what he said?"

"No, just tell me."

"He said he had something important to tell you, something you'd be interested to hear. He said he had to talk to you tonight because, as we no doubt knew already, he was leaving for Moscow on the morning flight. Real wise guy."

Lightning—had to be—Lightning.

He could have it all. He felt dry-mouthed with anticipation

"When was this?"

"Fifty-two minutes ago, sir."

"He hasn't rung back?"

"He's been packing. Quite calm, by the look of it. No drugs, just one brandy. He seems to be waiting for you, sir — as if he's sure you'll come."

Priabin shook his head. If he was that certain, then it was Lightning.

"I'll come. Straightaway."

"One other thing, sir. He says he won't let you in. You'll have to talk to him from here — stand where he can see you. Talk over the phone."

"Why?"

"Who knows, sir?"

Priabin was puzzled, but that was unimportant. Dudin could go to Katya's assistance with a team. They could watch until he could get there himself. First he had to hear what Rodin had to say. Katya's maps and notes lay on the desk, scattered like archaeological evidence of some lost civilization. He could hardly think of Kedrov now; Rodin was the prize. Rodin had had Viktor killed, and Rodin wanted to talk to him about Lightning—and he would know so much more than Kedrov. Anticipation raced in his mind, clear and quick as glimpses into a certain future.

"No one's with him?"

"He's alone, sir. No one's rung, either. He hasn't called anyone else. He's just waiting, sir."

"The waiting's over," Priabin announced excitedly. "Ill be there as soon as I can. Is he up or down?"

"Neither. Suspended, sir."

"Good. I'm on my way."

He dialed Dudin's number immediately. He would make sure Katya was safe and didn't go in single-handed — as she just might if no one turned up soon — and ensure, too, that Kedrov couldn't slip away. His heart bumped and his forehead felt hot. His cheeks burned as if with embarrassment.

"I promised, Viktor," he murmured as he waited for the telephone in Dudin's office to be picked up. "I promised."

Midnight.

Gant touched the rudder pedal with his left foot to maintain his heading, eased the column, maintained his height with the collective pitch lever in his left hand, and listened to the fluctuating, reluctant rpm of the two Isotov engines. He was aware of each of his tiny movements, most aware of the engine noise as the Hind moved at thirty feet above—

— that. On the main road between Urgench and Tashauz. Closed, apparently deserted. Lifeless. A gas station, windows boarded, weeds moving in the downdraft all over the pavement. He had seen nothing else except a few parked trucks, lights extinguished and drivers presumably asleep in their cabs, a couple of cars streaming white light along the ribbon of the road. The lights of Urgench were the palest smear in the mirrors.

He was beginning not to believe. He was beginning to sweat again, to panic. The gas station should have been open. Its remains were there, sliding into ruin; it was shown on the moving map, but who in hell would have thought to update the positions or financial viability of gas stations?

It was closed. Thirty feet below the Hind's belly, with boarded windows. It had been deserted years before. Gas pumps, hoses bent hand-on-hip, a corrugated plastic roof that was dirt-covered, clumped with mosses, a wooden garage with drunkenly leaning doors, the single-story wooden house that was lightless, where—

— lights flicked grubbily on behind a thin curtain! His heart lurched with relief. Not lightless, not abandoned. Immediately, he dropped the Hind carefully toward the courtyard. The engine noise was fragile, uncertain, like the beat of an ancient, weakened heart. He felt the wheels touch, the helicopter bounce as if pleased; then he throttled back to ground-idle.

The low house — shack, no more — needed painting. It had looked so dilapidated he thought it must have been empty. Its door opened. A man in a thick coat and dark, baggy trousers stood in the light of Gant's main lamp, hand shielding his eyes. Gant adjusted the lamp so that it shone directly on the man — garage manager or whoever he was, it didn't matter; there was fuel beneath this weed-strewn, dusty concrete.

Stay smart, he told himself. Stay smart. Tension coursed through him, indistinguishable from relief.

Hie man walked into the light, waving at the beam as if fending off insects or repeated blows.

Gant moved the throttle levers to flight idle, and the rotors growled reluctantly into a dish. He eased the column forward and gently raised the lever until the helicopter shunted forward, waddling and uncertain in its progress. He watched the edge of the shining rotor dish as the Hind moved toward the corrugated roof.

He watched the pumps intently, watched the roof's hp, watched the rotor dish, whirling—

— satisfied he was as close as possible, he lowered the lever, eased back the column, applied the brakes. The helicopter sank, bounced, stopped. He altered the throttles — noise boomed around the cockpit from the roof and the pumps — and stop-cocked the engines and applied the rotor brake.

Check the tires, get the windshield… He grinned. The Hind was drawn up like a huge, grotesque car. Dust settled on the cockpit and shimmered downward around him. He could do nothing for the foment except stare at the gauges, then glance at the gas pumps, premium Grade, they announced in Cyrillic and some other script did not recognize. He could use gas instead of paraffin or aviation fuel without short-term damage to the engines. He had to.

The garage manager — in Soviet Central Asia he might even be the owner — ducked beneath the drooping, stationary rotor blades with inordinate care and suspicion. They rested more than ten feet above his head.

As he approached the cockpit, Gant swung his door open and called out, beginning to control the situation, damp down suspicion: "Gauges must be out — ran out of fuel. Sorry, comrade, to disturb your well-earned rest or whatever else you were doing back there." He was grinning broadly, but his features adopted command, the expectation of quick and questionless assistance. "Your stuff will have to do until I get home. Fill her up."

The engine noise had died out of his head now. Around him, the night seemed to spread outward like a black pool stained with moonlight. He sensed distances, and isolation beneath his relief. The man looking up into his features was an Uzbek with a narrow, dark, unshaven face. His eyes glinted reflections of the cockpit lights. Tiny rows of green, red, amber, blue from the still-alive panels made his pupils those of an automaton.

"Who pays me?" the man asked, seemingly unaware of the cold or the wind. His accent coated the Russian words thickly like a rough varnish. His thin, hook-nosed face stared impassively up at Gant, as if it were indeed a car that had drawn alongside the pumps. He was simply waiting to see money.

Gant glanced at his watch. Midnight plus five. Three hundred and forty miles to Baikonur. Two hours, maximum, with full tanks and a full auxiliary tank. He could still make it — just — if Kedrov was waiting for him; ingress and egress before daylight. Hopes, estimates, tension tumbled together in his mind and invaded his frame, even as he maintained his disarming, superior, expecting-to-be-accommodated smile toward the surly Uzbek. He gripped the door handle with his right hand, his thigh with his left, and calmed himself.

"You'll get paid — what's your worry, comrade?" He leaned over the Uzbek, his rank and uniform overalls evident. So, too, the holster on his hip containing the Makarov pistol. "I'll write you a recipe, OK? You'll manage to read it?" he added with a small sneer. The Uzbek was unimpressed, more reluctant than before. Evidently, he owned the garage. It would be his loss. Gant snapped: "The army pays, comrade."

Then he jumped down from the cockpit, landing close to the man, and was immediately taller than the Uzbek, who understood the change in their relationship. He flinched. Gant was still smiling, but his hand was lightly on the holster now. The flap was unopened as yet, just as his lips were unopened in the smile.

The night chilled through the thin flying overalls after the hothouse of the cockpit. His sweat dried like forming ice. The moon-sheened darkness oppressed, unrelieved except where headlights rose and fell over a dip of the road, perhaps a half mile away; a vehicle heading for the garage. He looked up, picking out the distant navigation lights of a slow-moving aircraft. A commercial flight out of Tashkent, he guessed. He shivered, desiring movement, assertion; the headlights flicking into view once more at the periphery of his sight. Bouncing nearer like a ball.

He bent over the Hinds flank as if it were that of a car and flicked open the fuel cap.

"There you are, comrade. Fill her up. Then fill the auxiliary tank in the main cabin." One hand still on the holster flap, the other on his hip in challenge. "Your hose won't reach from the pump," he observed with continuing casualness. "Find an extension hose and a funnel — get on with it, comrade."

The Uzbek seemed to subside slowly into his coat, shrinking. Then he shrugged and turned to the nearest pump, dragging the hose from its rest. He unlooped a length of hose from a hook on the side of the booth, and picked up a tin funnel from the shelf inside. The door banged in the wind. The Uzbek cursed softly as he thrust the nozzle of the hose into the extension, then dragged it toward the Hind. The headlights of the approaching vehicle bounced against the cockpit. The funnel clattered into the fuel tank; the man returned to the nozzle of the pump and squeezed its lever. Fuel flowed after the click. Gant felt as if he had drunk cold, fresh water. Oasis. The fuel's transfer was sweet. The headlights were flat beams now, colliding with the wood and metal of the garage. Ice sparkled on the corrugated roof above him and on the weedy pavement. Stiff grass rattled in the wind.

Gant remembered needlelike outcrops rising over the hills through which the Hind had flitted. Minarets and mosques sparkling with ice in the hard moonlight. Perhaps Bukhara, perhaps some other town. His flight over Soviet Central Asia had been like Ashing down some narrowing tunnel: hills, stretches of sand that seemed red even by moonlight, dry rivers, oases, encampments where camels lumped together like full sacks on the ground, as still the tents near them. Fires dying down, scuttling and alarmed figures moving. Herds of goats, trading caravans. Still irrigation water and reservoirs. It was as if the oncoming headlights illuminated the past hours. They were now clear, confined by the emerging dark shape around them that had become a truck. The Uzbek looked up from the nozzle of the pump without real interest. Gant's hands tensed, bunched into fists, and his face twisted to the beginnings of some cry of protest. Army?

Civilian.

He sighed audibly with relief. The hours of avoiding radar, other aircraft and helicopters, towns and villages had worn at him like waves at an old cliff. He stood more erect, as if to deny his weariness. The truck drew onto the pavement. The Uzbek made a noise in his throat that might have signaled recognition. The truck pulled to a halt. Gant heard the hand brake scratching on.

The young man who got down almost at once from the passenger side of the canvas-hooded truck was wearing an army uniform. Gant's heart banged in his chest. He was grinning as he stared, hands on his hips, at the Hind drawn up at the pumps.

Uniform? How—?

The canvas covering the back of the truck rattled in the icy breeze. The driver, who wore a sleeveless sheepskin jacket and a cloth cap, got down from the cab. Only the passenger was in uniform.

And was approaching.

Russian, not Uzbek. White skin in the moonlight, white teeth, a white hand raised in greeting. A captain, but young. A yawn, one hand stretching away a cramp. The driver hung back, as if out of respect. The young man grinned again. Gant felt his attention mesmerized by the uniform, the shoulder flashes.

At seven yards, Gant saw that the captain was GRU, military intelligence—

— and went toward the younger man, disarming him with a smile, an extended hand.

The captain took his hand, shook it. Despite the icy wind, the GRU mans hand was still warm from the heated cab. His features registered a slight shock at the coldness of Gant's grip. There was a sharp smell of vegetables — cabbages? — in the air; presumably the truck's cargo.

Why was a GRU captain stepping out of that vehicle?

Cabbages, onions, the earthiness of potatoes. Gant's sense of smell was heightened by nerves. The name of the firm on the truck was in Uzbek, not Cyrillic. He wrenched his mind away from the irrelevant. The captain's scrutiny was inexperienced, but nevertheless there. No hint of suspicion, but questions were forming in his eyes — a military helicopter, there?

Gant's own rank matched that of the captain, but the younger man would assume the precedence of GRU over Aviation Army rank. Gant's attention concentrated, narrowing every perspective, on the shoulder flashes, the arm badges — the tiny, untwinkling jewels of the man's significance.

"You're a long way from home, comrade," he announced heartily.

"— words out of my mouth," the captain replied. Laughed. Finally released Gant's grip. "A bloody helicopter at a filling station? You must be the squadron joker!"

"Ran out of fuel," Gant complained.

"Long way from home. Not as far as you, man. I'm just hitching a ride to Bukhara, then on to Samarkand." His accent was Moscow, perhaps Ukrainian — Kiev? European Russia. The master race. Gant's own accent — his mother's accent — was distinctive. "You're Georgian, by your accent?" the young captain added.

"Yes," Gant replied. "From Surami — you know it, the thermal resort." His shoulders shrugged.

"Away from the Black Sea?" Gant merely nodded. "Don't know it," the captain continued. "One-horse town, is it?"

"Just about." His voice was easier, lighter. He spun the web of conversation, rank, and comradeship. Then the captain asked:

"Afghanistan, if I'm not mistaken?" His eyes were sharper as he studied Gant. They were alert, as if studying some mental list of explanations. The night and the distances leaped at Gant, reminding him that the Hind was misplaced by hundreds of miles, was suspicious here.

He was suddenly aware of his own cover story. Where was he going? From where? Alma-Ata, army headquarters, was eight hunted miles to the east. His cover was now outdated, an obvious fake.

Beneath their conversation, their camaraderie and humor, the fear continued to flow like a river. Gant shivered. The wind seemed to be strengthening. Yet the two Uzbeks seemed oblivious to it; they were smoking near the pumps. Gant heard his teeth chattering and the captain grin.

"Adamov," the captain announced.

What is my name? His identity lay in his breast pocket, with his papers.

What is my name?

He had forgotten his cover name.

The captain s eyes glazed with suspicion.

9: Heart of the Matter

"Let's find ourselves some coffee. This Uzbek moron can fill the helicopter on his own. My driver can keep him company."

Gant realized that the captain's words, as he gestured toward the low wooden bungalow, were meant to extend the moment of suspicion. Just how long would this pilot take to introduce himself, explain himself? The moment was a rubber band being stretched to breaking.

"What in hell are you doing getting down from a cabbage truck, comrade?" Gant exclaimed, forcing laughter. "A captain in the GRU — not quite the right sort of transport, huh?" His hands came out, palms up. Friend, harmless, they suggested, while his voice asked who are you, man?

The captain was disconcerted, but it might have been no more than his resentment of the familiarity of Gant's tone. It was the captain who should patronize, if either of them did.

"Just finished a job up-country," he replied, his hand still patting at Gant's shoulder and turning him toward the wooden building, where a grubby light filtered through thin, unlined curtains. The wind moaned, rattling the corrugated plastic above his head, making drooping rotor blades of the Hind quiver. There was a sense of Mutual cursing in the conversation between the truck driver and the parage owner; racial suspicion and hatred. "Some of these fucking Muslims are giving trouble — don't want to fight their Islamic brothers in Afghanistan. You know what they're like. Pigs." He spat obviously and loudly, turning toward the two Uzbeks as he did so. The wind carried the gobbet of spitde and splashed it against the side of the gas pump, near the bending garage owner's head, which did not ^rn or look up. The truck driver's eyes flickered, but the expression died as easily as a match flame in the wind. "Pigs," the GRU captain repeated, evidently convinced of the manifest truth of his generalization. "We shot a few — a number of the conspirators and mutineers were tried and executed according to military law," he corrected himself solemnly. His eyes were smiling and flinty with satisfaction. Then he belched, and Gant smelled the drink on his breath for the first time. "All done by the book, according to the book, for the book." Captain Adamov grinned. "Bang!" He strutted a few steps, hand curled at the end of his outstretched arm. His trigger finger squeezed perhaps half a dozen times as he paused behind remembered necks, watched remembered corpses.

Gant, controlling the shiver that the mime had induced, watched Adamov as he returned to his side, nudging him. 'The rest of them have been shipped off now," he remarked. "A few more GRU and GLAVPUR people among their officers, of course."

"Where—" Gant cleared his throat, glancing at the dial of the gas pump still spinning as his tanks filled. After the underbelly tanks, the auxiliary tank in the cabin. It would be minutes yet. "Where was this, comrade?" The driver and the garage owner were gabbing rapidly in Uzbek, their words still carrying the strong accent of hatred.

Pig, pig, Russian pig…

The words became a remembered litany in his head. He had heard them often, through the thin, cracked-plaster wall as he lay next to his sisters cot. Only understanding years later what it must have been that his mother was refusing his drunken, demanding father. He shook his head. Adamov seemed confused.

"Where was this little problem?" Gant asked.

"Oh, barracks outside Khiva. Low-grade conscripts. They had some of their officers tied up — full of hashish and threats, the whole lot of them." He grinned. "Making demands — you know them. Cut the balls off one poor sod and shoved them down his throat." He sighed theatrically. "Not a lot of resistance, once we'd explained the position to them and the hashish wore off"

"How come you're here now? Must have been a big operation?' Gant shrugged as convincingly as the cold would allow.

"What do you mean?" Adamov protested, as if he suspected the presence of another policeman.

Gant understood. Adamov had been due some leave, had perhaps wangled or forged the papers granting him a few days off in

Samarkand before he reported back to headquarters. His presence there was a weakness, but the man was still dangerous.

Degree of cover, training prompted him. Imagine you're standing there naked, reddening with embarrassment until you can put on some clothes. What can you add to your cover? Remember background, experience, training, anecdote, expertise, rank. Convince them you are who you say you are.

Afghanistan — you're just back from there, Gant instructed himself, and find that Adamov is fighting the good fight right here— Uzbek pigs.

"OK, coffee it is," Gant said. "Borzov, by the way," he added, remembering his cover name easily now. Adamov nodded, relaxed by the identity he felt was emerging.

"Good, good." Adamovs hand came back to Gant's shoulder. They moved together toward the low house, bending slightly into the increasing wind. Which nagged at Gant's awareness. His mind estimated the wind speed, considered takeoff, flying.

Twelve-twenty, he saw, glancing surreptitiously at his watch. Time wasting. Cover story.

"Cleared your desk early, mm?" he asked with assumed heartiness.

Adamov glanced at him with renewed suspicion, then relaxed.

"Just so, man. Cleared my desk early." He pointed an index finger, then curled it shut in a squeezing gesture. Hero of the slaughter. He laughed. "I like it. Cleared my desk early." His laughter was snatched away by the wind after it had buffeted Gant.

Adamov had enjoyed the killing — perhaps he had even been given his early leave for services rendered? Gant shivered. Adamov said abruptly: "I recognize the unit badges on the MiL, the IDs. Alma-Atas your home base, then?" He hardly paused before he added: "Then you must know old Georgi Karpov? He must have keen posted to Kabul the same time as you were — same flight, or squadron, or whatever you call it in the FAAs. How is he, old Georgi, mm?"

Adamov had paused on the step up to the wooden porch of the bungalow. Dust flew around them. The captain's eyes were bright, as bright as the full moon. Only one thought took precedence in Want's mind.

Who was Georgi Karpov?

The laser battle station, ostensibly the first component of Linchpin, in reality the very heart of Lightning, had been transferred to the main assembly building still in its component parts. The main mirror, the laser tube, the power source — each provided General Lieutenant Pyotr Rodin with a hard, diamondlike satisfaction. Each component was as evocative as memories of the ranks he had held, the promotions he had received during his years of service.

That very evening, shaving for a second time in order to appear at his most groomed here and now, he had watched his worried face in the mirror and wondered how people viewed his only son. Did they see, as vividly as he did, the weak chin, the full, loose lips, the pale, delicate skin? Did they see his wife, as he did?

No, of course not, he had reasoned; reasoned again now. They could not because they had never seen his wife. Not out here, not in Baikonur. Very few of the high command had met that quiet, mousy woman who hardly left fingerprints, never mind made an impression on anyone's memory.

And who had ruined his only son.

Dismiss—

Staring at the components of the laser weapon, he watched his son's image whirl away into the darkness in his head.

The following night the laser weapon would be lowered into the gaping cargo bay of the shuttle craft, the doors would close on it, the shuttle craft would be drawn out of the building on its short journey to join the booster stages at the launch site. There was nothing else. His son did not concern him — did not deserve his attention at this time.

Even the presence of Serov could not dim the moment, tarnish the hard glint of his pleasure. The GRU commandant was to his right, while to his left an army technician stood beside a television set mounted on a wheeled trolley. Its power lead trailed away through the small knot of aides and scientific staff and out of sight. On the television's screen, the earth glowed blue and white and green, hanging in the blackness of space. Africa lay green and brown beneath his glance.

Then the picture switched to another camera's view. The hold of the American shuttle craft, Atlantis. The picture seemed almost in black and white. In the center, two astronauts in pressure suits were working on a satellite they had rescued. They were attached to the hold by twining, snakelike cords. Rodin's fingers plucked at his lower lip. His gaze was intent, as if he were deciphering some complex puzzle. It was, however, anticipatory pleasure he experienced, not doubt or confusion.

In less than thirty-six hours' time, the Soviet shuttle would be launched into low earth orbit. Nothing could go wrong here, not with their schedule. Nothing must go wrong…

The express hoist at the launch pad needed repair. It would be used to place the shuttle craft atop the G-type booster, and now it had developed a hydraulic failure. It must be repaired. At once.

"Thirty-five hours, comrades," Rodin announced to their immediate attention. He disliked the word "comrades" — a Party word, not a military one; "gentlemen" would have fitted more easily. His eyes scanned them like some surveillance camera as his head turned once more to take in the details of the shuttle, which lay open like a gutted fish, beached on its massive transporter. The railway lines ran the length of the huge building and out into the arc-lit night. "Thirty-five hours." Power flowed like adrenaline. "The hoist is to be repaired before this craft moves from here. You have assured me it will be done."

White-coated civilians nodded, murmured again. Military aides confirmed with nodding heads, with shoulder boards and uniforms and medal ribbons. Rodin was satisfied, even though his gloved fingertips prickled with impatience. He nodded by way of reply "Good."

He turned to Serov. His son whirled back out of the darkness in his head. Why did he feel any necessity to explain to Serov? Why, why was he afraid of the man?

Because Serov had the kind of mind, stark and untroubled in its ruthless clarity, that might reach toward the final cleanness of an accident to Valery similar to that prescribed for his actor friend— and Rodin could not contemplate that thought. Guilt sprang unfamiliarly, and he hated the weakness and fear it aroused in him. He Would carry out his plan and get the boy away from Baikonur, away from Serov, back to Moscow and the academy — where he could begin to call upon favors and discretion. The boy could even stay with his mother.

He cleared his throat and said to Serov in a hard, quiet tone: Stavka requires assurances, Serov, concerning your missing technician. They've been in touch with me and specifically mentioned the Matter of security. You understand?"

Serov's face darkened at Rodin's challenging tone, but he merely said: "In two hours, comrade General, I shall be able to brief you on every aspect of security surrounding the — project. My people are updating everything at this moment."

"Good." Rodin smiled slightly at Serov's tight-lipped acquiescence.

Then the colonel hit back softly, sharply.

"We shall expect no further embarrassments from your son, comrade General. I approve your scheme to remove him to Moscow in a few hours' time."

"You approve?"

Serov continued as if Rodin had not spoken. 'The KGB are keeping the boy under discreet surveillance, but they have made no move — and they're not likely to."

"You people seem to have acted wisely, after all," Rodin replied, unable to eradicate a slight quiver from his words.

"Thank you, comrade General," Serov replied with evident irony.

Rodin turned his glance away from the GRU commandant, once more to the Raketoplan shuttle and the laser weapon's components. Light gleamed from the great shield of the main mirror. His body seemed filled with reposeful confidence. He saw the mirror, the tube, the shuttle, as extensions of his own authority, as if they were as vital to him, as much a part of him, as his limbs.

The others might, even now, change their minds. They could scrap Lightning even after it was launched. The shuttle's launch had to be on schedule, it must appear technically perfect, and it must coincide with the signing of that filthy, weak treaty in Geneva. Then they'd show their real power to the dodderers in the Kremlin. What was it Peter the Great had said, at the launching of a man-of-war in St. Petersburg? It is now our turn. You may happen even in our lifetime to put other civilized nations to the blush, and to carry the glory of the Russian name to the highest pitch. Yes, that was it. Petr Alekseevich, Peter the Great. With that treaty on the point of ratification, it was not easy to believe in sentiments as broad and certain as that — except for Lightning. Now he was poised on the edge of the great chasm of the next day and a half. After that, the defense minister, Stavka and their supporters in the Politburo, would have all the leverage they required to treble, even quadruple the budget for orbital weapon development. They would have the leverage to do anything, and he would have given it to them.

Lightning was their private tearing up of the treaty. After it, they could move forward, become the power both real and hidden. lightning promised a reincarnation of the army's waning power. No self-satisfaction could do justice to that thought. It was the arm twisted up behind the Politburo's back until it broke like a dry, old stick.

Images of violence and power coursed through Rodin like rough, heady wine.

"Let me come over," Priabin whispered, staring out of the window down toward the window of Valery Rodin's flat. Even without the aid of the glasses, he could see the livid bruising on the young mans face. "Let's talk face to face — this is ridiculous."

"I've locked and bolted the door."

Hashish and drink. He'd started again perhaps half an hour before Priabin had arrived. Rodin had come to the window at once, as soon as Priabin lifted the receiver. Through the glasses, his face had looked like that of a whipped and frightened animal. Alone in the dark, he had been suddenly, unstably grateful for the contact of Priabin's voice and his shadowy image in the window opposite. He had even raised one hand in what may have been a wave of recognition.

But he wouldn't open the door, wouldn't allow Priabin into the flat. It seemed as if Rodin had tricked him into coming; there were no revelations, no confidences, just this idle chatter, this need for company on the young man's part. A salve for the bruises his father's hands had inflicted.

The boy was desperate. Quietly, certainly desperate. But still unbroken. And Priabin could not operate with surgical precision down a telephone line on a figure glimpsed only at a distance. Frustration made him jumpy. Mikhail and Anatoly had retreated into a tense silence away behind him in the room's shadows. Katya was out the marshes and Dudin was on his way to join her. Kedrov the spy was in the bag. This boy was wasting his time.

"You're wasting my time," Priabin snapped. Mikhail murmured something he did not catch. "You hear me, Rodin?" he persisted.

"Am I?" Rodin replied breathily, with contempt.

"Why did you call me? What did you want?"

Priabin studied Rodin's figure. A joint between his fingers, a balloon of cognac in his hand. His body swaying slightly. There was music on in the room, Priabin could hear it mutedly. It seemed familiar and evocative, but he could not catch either tune or words.

"To talk."

"Last time we spoke you had nothing to say. What's changed- sweetheart?" There was a qualm of sympathy in his chest and stomach, but he ignored it, even though he could clearly see Rodin flinch at the insulting word. It was like a slap, turning his head quickly to one side. His body stopped swaying. He even raised his hand to his bruises. Priabin sensed instinct guiding him, but it was all but obscured by his frustrated anger. "What is it you want? You want to lodge a complaint against your assailant — is that it? Well? Who did it to you, then? Who was it?"

"You know who did it — your bastards were even watching! Don't be smart!" Rodin suddenly yelled into the telephone. It was a child's playground yell, half pain, half threat; self-pity, too. Priabin saw him swig violently at his glass, then wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He puffed nervously at the crumpled cigarette. Priabin felt himself close to the young man, as if suspended on some window cleaner's hoist just outside the window where Rodin stood in his silk robe.

"Let's talk about Lightning, then, shall we?"

He could see fear ingrained like dirt on Rodin's face. As livid as the bruises. Rodin shook his head.

"No. Let's talk about Sacha." His narrow neck seemed stretched. Priabin bent for a moment to the glasses — damn it, he was attempting to break a man long-distance. It was all but impossible; he had to get into the room with Rodin.

"Why him?" he snapped back quickly, unsure as to whether or not professional instinct guided his response. 'The queer's dead after all."

"You sound just like my father!"

The two men in the room with him stirred at the tinny scream that even they could hear. Priabin winced with pain, knowing he had made an error.

"So, I'm just like your old man," he responded, his voice mocking. Anna dragged at his sleeve like an importunate child. He had not even noticed her memory entering the room. He felt hot, and guilty. Shaking his head — still bent to the glasses on their tripod, the receiver against his cheek — he continued brutally: "We've been through that, Rodin. You and your father. What's your father doing right now? What is he doing now?"

Have to watch his face, watch his face… Anna, leave me alone, he whispered into the darkness at the back of his mind. Not now, not now. She was there, of course, to tell him not to break Rodin, to understand him; to remind him of how alone Valery Rodin was, how desperate. Not now, Anna, not now.

Rodin's mouth was agape; then it closed to a cunning expression as if biting on something edible. Anna, Viktor… Viktor supplied his urgency, his unfeeling grip on the boy across the street. He couldn't let go, couldn't let Viktor down. It was why he was here— Anna and Viktor.

Revenge for Viktor was achievable. He could never avenge Anna's death upon the American pilot, Gant. Viktor would have to do.

"Just remember, Valery," he whispered into the receiver, "I'm more dangerous than you. I have a dead second-in-command on my conscience, not just a not very good actor who was your lover."

And he knew he had been right, that it was instinct guiding him, when Rodin screamed back: "He could have been a great actor!"

"Because he flattered you?" The riposte was automatic, pure technique. At once, his next line was there, as if in a script. "Because he made you feel good in bed? My God, he must have been good if he could do that for you." The contempt was acted, yet absolute. In his head, Anna stared reprovingly. And he saw her face the moment after she died, when he held her body. He winced, almost protested aloud, then controlled his reactions, and listened.

Rodin seemed to have drawn calm from the silence. He said in a quiet voice: "Just like my father."

"If I'm like your father, Valery, then what did you want from me?" Priabin's voice was softer, almost soothing. Anna's face retreated.

He glanced at his watch. Twelve-thirty. He stamped almost viciously on his impatience. He had to stay with Rodin. The boy wanted to talk, must be made to talk usefully, to the point.

"Just to talk," Rodin murmured. The hashish had calmed him thoroughly. His voice was slow, easy, detached.

"Why did you want me to come, Valery? Why now? Why at the moment when you're being sent away?"

"Because I knew you would come," Rodin replied dreamily. He even raised his balloon and swallowed in a mock toast what remained of his cognac. Priabin straightened from the glasses. The hoy s eyes were unfocused, wide-pupiled from the drug and from staring into the night. "I knew you'd come," Rodin repeated.

Time was diminishing quickly now. The boy wasn't frightened any longer. He had to be slapped into wakefulness; Priabin had only his voice and his experience to do it. Anna, go away.

"What did Daddy say, Valery?" he probed, his voice insinuating like a needle. "Why did he beat you up? Just for being queer? Or was he giving you a taste of what's in store for you?" Priabin sensed the others in the room leaning forward, attentive and appreciative. Anna's dead face flashed like a warning. Go away!

"What?" Rodin breathed, shaken.

"Has he abandoned you, Valery? Told you he'll never drag you out of the shit, ever again? Is that what he was telling you with his fists — you're on your own now?" Rodin's quickening breathing, like some indistinct climax, accompanied his words, raced ahead of them. "It was, wasn't it? You'll be at the mercy of everyone at the Academy — they don't like sodomites there, do they? He's going to cure you, Valery, isn't that it? He thinks enough beatings and you'll settle down with a nice young wife, eh? Eh?" Priabin laughed mockingly.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up." Rodin was collapsing in his pain and distress and fear for the future. Future? At the Frunze Academy, without his father's protection, he had no future. He'd be the butt of jokes and casual violence from fellow students and instructors alike. "Shut up, shut up, damn you!" Like the scream of someone being beaten into confession in a distant room. Priabin shuddered.

Rodin's voice had degenerated from words to sobbing; self-pity controlled and enveloped him. Priabin let the noise continue until it faded into a breathy, swallowing quiet. Rodin had walked away from the lighted square of his window and sat heavily on the edge of his bed. Next door, the subdued lighting of the living room showed the place like something in a brochure, for sale or rent; already abandoned.

Eventually, Rodin said in a tiny, empty voice: "You're right, policeman, you're right. He's finished with me. Daddy's finished with his naughty little boy." Priabin bent to the glasses. Rodin sat unmoving, head in his hands. The remainder of the joint was burning a hole in the thick pile of the gray carpet. He might have been posing as a model for some bronze statue meant to symbolize defeat.

"Then talk to me," Priabin replied after a moment. No, he corrected himself. Not softly softly — not yet. "I haven't got time to waste, Valery." Commonsense approach, brisk and shallow. A man with a lot on his plate, things to do. "Do you hear me? Unless you have something for me, I'll have to abandon this interview. Be on my way-"

Silence, stretching so much that Priabin winced against its breaking. Then: "No. Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"I want to talk to you. I have something to tell you." He would not look up, like a child pleading in its misery, cowering in a corner. Afraid to look at the adults in the room. "I — you can come over. I'll unlock the door."

"I don't have much time to waste," Priabin said with difficulty, the pretense of indifference now almost impossible.

"I won't waste your time," Rodin replied, looking up and out into the night. "I know what you want to know. You come over. Who knows? I might even tell you."

The step onto the wooden porch felt greasy, treacherous beneath Gant's boot. Adamov's eyes, although peering into the dusty wind, nonetheless gleamed. Before Gant glanced away from the man's face, he noted the tightness of expectancy around Adamov's jaw, the slightly flared nostrils. Gant looked at the helicopter as if seeking some quick, complete escape. He felt dangerously inadequate, his feet on the step, the lee of the dwelling offering little protection from the wind. The two Uzbeks remained near the Hind, as if detailed to guard it. Gant felt himself without resources. He could not simply run, simply kill—

He unclenched his hands, looked directly into Adamov's face, and sneered.

"Georgi who? Who's he, comrade, when he's in the house?" He felt his chest tightening as he held his breath. Adamov's features narrowed, as if only now responding to the cold wind. His eyes squinted. Then he rubbed them, clearing flying dust.

"Georgi Karpov? You know him, surely?" he laughed.

Gant shook his head, watching Adamov's hand, the holster at his hip, the hand, the holster, the hand… which came unclosed slowly, purposefully, then passed the holster, moving up to the peak of his cap. His shoulders shrugged.

"I've never heard of him, comrade Captain — and neither have Gant said slowly, evenly. Then, more quickly, he added: What''s the matter with you, policeman?"

The hand left the cap, hitting Gant's shoulder like a statement of arrest. Then Adamov laughed.

"I thought he was posted to Alma-Ata. Haven't heard from him for a couple of years, though. Could have moved on." He shivered. "Come on, man, let's get out of this bloody wind." Then he added as easily as taking his next breath: "Bloody country."

Gant glanced quickly toward the Hind, then said: "Sure." He allowed himself to be pushed ahead of Adamov, the skin crawling hotly on his back almost immediately, despite the chill of his body. The wind knifed along the porch, the dust curled like brown waves across the concrete.

"You can give me a lift, maybe?" Adamov said behind him as his hand gripped the handle of the door. Then he slipped on a loose board and giggled.

Gant seized on the advantage, gripping it fiercely. Adamov was half crocked with drink. When he turned, Adamov was holding a leather-bound silver flask in his hand, waving it encouragingly.

"Something to go in the coffee — kill the bugs!" He grinned. "Had to start on the flask. Rum." He sniffed it. "Not bad, either. Couldn't drink the vodka — got no smell. Wouldn't have drowned in the stink of that Uzbek pig." He gestured toward the truck and its driver. "Come on, get the bloody door open — I'm freezing."

Gant stepped into the narrow, shallow passage behind the door. Wooden floor and walls; uncarpeted, undecorated.

"How the hell can I give you a lift?" he asked.

"Why not?" Adamov replied, then bellowed: "Come out, come out, whoever you are!"

His fist banged against the thin wooden wall, which groaned as if in protest.

A door ahead of them opened. A woman in black. Muslim dress. Face hidden below the gleaming eyes. A wisp of graying hair. Olive skin. She stood aside, without reluctance and without welcome, simply attempting not to exist. Gant strode past her as Adamov would have expected Captain Borzov of the Frontal Aviation Army to do. Lift, passenger, his mind repeated endlessly, creating waves of heat. He could not, must not kill Adamov.

Too dangerous. People might know where he was, might be expecting him. The Uzbeks knew he was here. Yet there seemed no other solution. Time was elongating, being wasted. There was no other solution…

And soon…

Adamov bellowed something in Uzbek at the woman, as if spiting out something that made him gag. They were evident crudities, an oath, a command.

'Told her to make some coffee and be quick about it," he explained.

The woman backed away, black robe sweeping the floor of the low room. Single rug, log fire — no, cakes of something that might have been dried dung — a bare table and chairs, one battered armchair near the fire. It was like a weekend cabin, suggesting no one lived there on any permanent basis. The woman closed the door of what must have been the kitchen behind her. Adamov slumped heavily into the armchair, which puffed dust and creaked with age.

"God," he murmured. Inspected the flask, and adjusted his holster so that it no longer dug into his hip in the narrow chair. Offered the rum. "Not while on duty?" he asked ironically. "Bad for your night vision, uh?"

Oil stains on the arms of the old chair, on the bare, scrubbed wood of the table. Gants eyes cast about as if trying to avoid the question. He did not want to drink, should not, but knew that he had to. He had to do more than keep Adamov tipsy, he had to make him drunk. Malleable. He smelled the coffee from beyond the closed door; the smells of cooking, spicy and strange, remained in the dead air of the room. There were loose threads, bare patches, in the one old rug on the floor.

"Drink?" Adamov asked again.

"Sure, why not?" Gant replied, taking the proffered flask and tilting it to his lips, sipping at the apparent generous swallow through clenched teeth. He wiped his hps and handed back the flask, coughing and shaking his head ruefully at the quantity he had Pretended to consume.

You can't kill him, there's no easy way, you can't get rid of the body — so watch him. The killing of a half-drunk man slumped in an Armchair would be easy. Almost any part of him could be broken before he could even move. The situation in which Gant found himself, the watch on his wrist, the Hind outside, beyond where the ^nd rattled the window, all made him jumpy with the tension of Anting to kill and not daring to.

He crossed to the window and tugged back the thin curtain. He hatched the garage owner straighten, check the reading, then say something to the truck driver. He removed the extension and the funnel, then clipped the nozzle of the hose to the pump. Finished. Full tanks. It was difficult not to sigh with relief.

The woman returned and put down two tin mugs. The liquid in them was thick and black. She glanced at neither man. Gant realized she was not pretending she didn't exist; it was they who did not exist for her; simply scraps of something blown in by the wind. Adamov cursed her for not handing him his coffee by the fire. She continued to stare at the floorboards as she turned back toward her kitchen. Adamov grimaced at her bodily odor, or perhaps merely at her existence. He rose unsteadily from his chair and lurched toward the table.

The Uzbek who owned the garage was coming toward the house, slouching against the wall of the wind. Adamov joined Gant. The two of them were framed in the square of window.

Rum breath, a hand on his shoulder, a grin near his face, eyes unfocused. The familiar voice.

"Come on, comrade, you can spare the time to give me a lift to Samarkand — nice brothels in Samarkand, good clubs. For the tourists. Clean girls, dirty nights!" He roared with laughter, slapping Gant across the shoulder blades four, five, six, seven times.

"Anyway," he continued, leaning heavily against Gant, slopping a few drops of the thick black coffee down the front of Gant's flight overalls. "I reckon you can't refuse me, can you? Can't refuse me, mm? More than your future's worth for HQ to get to know you were all the way up here. What you up to, comrade? What's your game?"

His stubby, thick forefinger, the trigger finger, was prodding against Gant's breastbone, six, seven, eight, nine times, to emphasize the force of his suspicions… twelve, thirteen, fourteen…

Gant caught and twisted the wrist to which the prodding finger was attached. Adamov yelled in pain.

"Don't do that, comrade," Gant hissed. "And don't even ask. He released Adamov's wrist. Immediately, the hand made as if to strike, then dropped to the man's side, obeying the gleam in Gant s eyes.

"All right," Adamov snapped. "Fuck your business, anyway.' 'He turned away—

— out of the window's well-lit frame, which showed him and Gant like objects in a camera lens to the two Uzbeks. The garage owner was near the window, turning to the steps of the porch. Adamov was pouring more rum into his coffee, his face twisted against the pain in his wrist.

"OK, a lift is what you want — you can have it," Gant announced, his voice full of mock comradeship and loud enough to be heard—

— movement, quick and sudden, his hand coming down across the back of Adamov's neck, rabbit-punching him even as he turned. Coffee flew at the chair and fireplace, sizzled on the burning dung, splashed on the dirty floorboards. Adamov's eyes glazed at Gant hugged the body against him.

The garage owner entered the room sullenly, staring. Adamov leaned against Gant, his unconscious breathing loud and drunken. Gant glared at the Uzbek. He hefted Adamov's weight against his side and growled: "He's drunk. Understand? You speak Russian, pig?" He winced inwardly at the obligatory insult. The Uzbek nodded, rubbing his unshaven chin. Then shrugged.

"Pay me," he announced in a thick, almost indecipherable accent. And held out his hand to underline his demand.

"The army pays," Gant replied. The man was in the doorway. Adamov's weight bore against him. He wanted to flee.

The Hind was outside with full tanks. Reaction to the blow he had struck at Adamov coursed in him. Two minutes before windup, all systems on-line, takeoff. The empty, clean sky was two and a half minutes away from him.

He flung Adamov into the narrow chair, which squeaked on the bare boards but did not overturn. The GRU captain lay like an abandoned ventriloquist's dummy. The Uzbek's eyes narrowed, and his hands twitched about his belt as if he were searching for a weapon he had mislaid.

Gant reached into the zippered pocket on the breast of his flight overalls. The Uzbek flinched. Perspiration hovered along Gant's hairline. He pulled out a notepad, a pencil held against it with a rubber band. He removed the band and flipped open the pad.

"Come here," he snapped, and moved to the table. He began writing. Each sheet of the pad was headed with the insignia of the Frontal Aviation Army and the details of his regiment. He made out a receipt, snapping only once at the Uzbek to check the amount of gasoline he had supplied. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to the Uzbek. "There — an official receipt. Any complaints?" His hand rested lightly on his hip, just above the holster.

The garage owner shook his head, reluctantly. He folded the recept with an air of resignation and slipped it into the pocket of his haggy trousers. Then he wiped his hands on his coat, as if they had become contaminated.

"Good," Gant remarked. "I'm taking this one. Tell your pal, the driver." He plucked Adamov's frame from the chair with ease and moved with him to the door. "Open it." The Uzbek scuttled to do so. Action revived Gant. He lugged the unconscious captain into the corridor, the man's boot toes dragging like fingernails down glass. The Uzbek pressed back against the wall as Gant flung open the outer door and leaned into the wind, clutching Adamov like a shield.

Steps — yes. He counted them, careful of his balance. Dirt, and no noise from Adamov's boots until they reached the concrete and the toes of his boots began to scrape once again. "Fucking passengers!" Gant yelled to the wind, for the driver's benefit. "Bastard's drunk as a skunk and passed out!" The driver, leaning out of his cab, smoking, tossed his head and grinned, as much at Gant's struggle with Adamov as with relief that the GRU man had found other company.

Gant turned to the driver. "You shouldn't have let the officer drink so much," he barked. The driver was indifferent.

Gant leaned the unconscious Adamov against the fuselage of the Hind and slammed back the door of the main cabin. Then he bundled the body aboard. He glanced at his watch. Twelve thirty-five. He climbed into the main cabin, squeezing close to the auxiliary tank, which occupied most of it, and dragged Adamov to one of the fold-down seats troops used when being transported. He fumbled the straps — excitement now outstripped him, making him clumsy in his furious haste — and strapped Adamov into the seat. He reached for some webbing and used it to bind the captain's hands. Finally, he gagged Adamov with — Mac's scarf, lying on the floor. He removed Adamov's pistol from its holster, dismissed Mac's memory, and turned away. He jumped down and slammed the cabin door shut. If Adamov woke, it wouldn't matter. He was no longer a problem. Dumb, secure, and unarmed.

He climbed into the cockpit. Shivered. The driver watched him from his cab, the garage owner from the porch. He touched at the controls, the panel, other instruments, then began.

His hands reached, gripped or touched, flicked or depressed, bringing the Mil to life. The auxiliary power unit he had left on. He pressed the start button of the first of the Isotov engines, moved the throttle lever above his head from Stop to the ground-idle position. The engine began to wind up from a hum to a grumbling murmur. He pressed the second start button, moved the second throttle lever. The turboshaft hurried in pursuit of the noises from its companion. Slowly, the rotors began to turn, drooping at first, then gradually smoothing into a disk. Gleaming in the wind and moonlight, the Hind began to buck, as if restrained by a trap.

The woman was standing on the porch behind her husband, night pressing around their shadows. Gant reached up and moved the throttles to flight-idle, released the rotor brake, engaged the clutch. His eyes scanned the instruments as they came on-line, especially the fuel gauges; and the temperature, and pressure and output power, he reminded himself. This is gasoline, not kerosene. For the length of his journey, the ordinary automobile gasoline would do no harm to the engines, but its performance had to be watched— closely.

He flicked on the moving map. The rotors flurried dust around the cockpit, and the scene was dimming. Two minutes. The Hind rolled forward as he released the brakes, away from the canopy over the pumps. The place was suddenly very small, a needle in the haystack of the landscape around him. But he had found it, and that was all that mattered. Relief was now far too late and unimportant.

He glanced to either side, then over his head. Clear. He was well clear of the corrugated roof and the power fines. The Hind continued to waddle, ready to lift. He eased the column laterally, in the direction of the wind.

He raised the collective pitch lever, applied rudder to remain headed into the wind, and felt the Hinds undercarriage lift from the ground and the wind buffet the helicopter. Then he increased his airspeed and entered a climb of more than two thousand feet per minute, rushing up like an elevator on the side of some tall building. The ground diminished beneath him, bathed in moonlight. Gant checked the moving map, his distance and course. Two hours' fly-tog. He moved the column to starboard, and the helicopter banked. He eased back on the stick. On the moving map, he watched the white dot that was the Hind resume its original course. Baikonur lay almost due north. He glanced at his watch once more. Twelve-forty. He was late; darkness already seemed to be slipping away like water to a drain. The moon was old and lower in the sky. His head spun with the flickering, separate illuminations of times and distances. He had just enough time — just enough — to get out again, with Kedrov, before daylight. His pulse slowed and his temperature seemed fall back toward comfort. Just enough time.

Be there, you bastard — be there!

Priabin wanted to bruise Rodin's face just as the boy's father had done. Urgency should be obeyed, not put aside like a book being loaned between friends. Kedrov was out there in the marshes, for the taking. Valery Rodin, having admitted him, seemed only to want to prolong the conversation. He was greedy for company.

"Let's talk about Lightning, shall we?" he snapped at Rodin. Technique, often a steel rope, frayed and parted; as likely now to injure him as Rodin. He knew he could blunder in this situation, go astray and cause Rodin to clam up. Then he would have nothing.

He swallowed the whiskey Rodin had poured for him and attempted to calm himself. The room incensed him as much as it had done on his visit earlier that evening. The molding and frieze and the smell of hashish and cognac; the scent of his own expensive Scotch whiskey. Priabin felt the anger mount. This boy must not be allowed to waste his time.

"Let's talk about Lightning," he repeated. His tone was threatening.

Rodin's head snapped up. His eyes were wakeful, clearing from their drugged, drunken glassiness. Then the young man shrugged. Priabin sighed inwardly and controlled his own anger as Rodin continued talking as though Priabin were some kind of confessor figure, not a KGB colonel. Rodin was not afraid of Priabin, or of his rank or organization. Priabin was, in Rodin's eyes, the only visitor who was not dangerous. Ludicrous—

Priabin felt the battery and the tiny microphone against his ribs. It was recording the maudlin details of Rodin's past; nothing of importance.

"I'm to train for the Sukhoputnyye Voyska, the Ground Forces, would you believe — specifically, the Tank Troops. I am to become a career soldier, hence the Academy." His lips pouted with anger, helplessness. "A career officer," he barked thinly, the noise of a beaten animal protesting.

"But why?" Priabin asked.

"To make a proper man of me, of course." He sneered. "I'm to follow in his footsteps." His voice was a venomous hiss. "And it gets me out of the way very neatly," he added.

"Why?" Priabin asked, too eagerly.

Rodin winked at him slowly, exaggeratedly. "We'll come to that, all in good time."

"I meant, why now? Why change branches of the service? Why are you in the GRU if your old man wants you to be a tank officer?"

Rodin swallowed cognac. He was very drunk, but somehow in command of the situation. Priabin could not bully effectively; and could not leave, despite images of Katya and Kedrov, Dudin and his men going to the girl's assistance. He had to know, had to open the oyster that was Valery Rodin. However long it took.

"Most of his closest pals in Stavka are in the intelligence directorate. It just worked out that way. And he could really trust those pals to keep an eye on me — keep me under control?" He giggled, but the noise was cynical, contemptuous. "And in this God-forsaken place, he can keep a personal eye on me. He can surround me with watchers."

"And now you think he's had enough?" Technique. Patience coming like a memory of training, calming Priabin's anxiety.

"Right. That's right. He's bloody had enough." Rodin tossed his head. His eyes glazed once more. He stared down into his lap as he sat on the beanbag like a Buddha; a thin, blond idol. "I told you, didn't I, that all I wanted was to paint?" He looked up, and Priabin nodded as if interested. "I've told everyone," Rodin added ironically. "But you, I didn't fill in all the details. My mother plucked up the courage to put the idea to him, when he was home on leave. She made sure he had the best food the housekeeper could cook and she could buy — French wine, good cognac, a cigar. He was expansive, know what I mean?" Again, Priabin stifled his impatience and nodded. "When Mother put it to him, he just looked straight at me, sardonically, and nodded like a judge. He even smiled, but that was cold, too." Rodin waved his free hand, shooing away the oppressive dements of the memory. "He went to the experts, to academicians, touting some of my watercolors, my sketchbooks, and canvases like a Penniless student, and showed all of them. It took him a week altogether. Then he came back, with a typed report, summarizing everything they'd said. Top copy for me, carbon for Mother. He made us sit there, in front of him, on dining chairs, and read the report."

"And — they said you were no good?" Priabin said softly into the silence. The words echoed like the splashing of pebbles in a deep Weil. He saw Rodin once more without barriers, and could not avoid Pity for him.

Rodin nodded furiously. "Yes, yes, that's what they said. They confirmed all his suspicions, answered all his prayers. I'd never make it as an artist. He had me in an army training school inside a month. Mother never raised the subject, ever again. All the theater visits stopped, the allowance was strictly controlled, no parties, and above all, no friends of a certain kind — I'm quoting him. I couldn't be unsuccessful, not as his son. So he put me in the army, where if your father's a general you can't possibly fail." Rodin wiped his pale hps, rubbed a hand through his fair hair.

"I'm sorry," Priabin said eventually. Rodin swallowed cognac by way of reply.

Priabin glanced at his watch. One in the morning. Kedrov was out there—

— Lightning was here!

He twitched with indecision and impatience. How vulnerable was Rodin? Would he break soon?

Rodin said cynically: "I have it all to look forward to, don't I? Once he abandons me, I'm lost." He swallowed fearfully. "God, I'm lost."

"Why does he want to do that to his own son?"

"What?"

"Why does he want you to suffer? You won't have a prayer in the Frunze, once they realize your old man isn't protecting you anymore." He winced, anticipating Anna's sudden return to his thoughts. 'They'll make a punching bag out of a queer without connections. They're all shits in the Frunze, you know that. He knows that. Why? Why do it to you?"

"Because I laiow, and I told!" Rodin shouted at him. His eyes were wild, large and moist like those of a hunted deer or rabbit.

"Why did he have Sacha killed?"

"Because Sacha's the one I told. Don't you understand? If you know, you don't talk, not to anyone."

"Nothing's that important. Nothing could make him punish you like this, surely?" Priabin soothed and pressed. He was leaning slightly forward in his armchair, his eyes watching Rodin intently. It was a huge effort to let technique take its course. "Tell me, what's that important?"

He got up and crossed to the beanbag. Rodin seemed to cower into it as Priabin leaned over him.

'Tell me," he murmured. Had Rodin broken? Was he snapping like a stick now? He placed his hand on Rodin's shoulder, and the shoulder shuddered into his grip.

"You really want to know? Something so dangerous?" Rodin asked with a strange, wild cunning. "Really? Aren't you afraid?"

"Tell me about it."

Rodin put his bare feet on the carpet. Priabin stood aside as the young man crossed the room in his creased robe, to the racks of LPs, cassettes, and videotapes. He looked back once at Priabin, then began pulling tape boxes from the shelving. Priabin's body was taut with anticipation. Anna was still absent, Kedrov was much farther than ten miles away, one in the morning was an early hour.

Rodin was breaking open like a watermelon dropped from a tall building.

Rodin brandished a videotape box, neatly labeled, in his hand. His face was shining, eyes gleaming. "You want to know? You really want to know why? Look."

Vanity, secret knowledge, cleverness all conspired to rescue Rodin from his self-pity and isolation at that moment. They all delivered him to Priabin. Perhaps it was an act of revenge against his father. For the murder of Sacha, perhaps? Whatever it was, Rodin seemed compelled to speak. Soon he would know.

Rodin pressed the video cassette into the recorder beneath the television set. He flicked on the set, then began to run the recording on the tape. Priabin did not understand, but his tension was extreme, excitement was making his head spin.

The first images emerged. He was sharply, deeply disappointed. He did not understand. A swirling whirlpool slowly cleared into an image of the earth seen from space. Rodin stood beside the television like an eager, insistent teacher, watching him, one hand resting on the set. Then the Americans' latest space shuttle floated into view, gradually filling the screen. It floated like a white bird above tresses of cloud that partly masked a vivid, utterly beautiful blue expanse. The Pacific Ocean. He still did not understand. This was nothing, a cheat. These pictures had been on television, worldwide, for the past week or more. There was nothing here for him.

It was a test, he told himself. But he was failing the examination miserably. He glanced at Rodin's face.

The shuttle drifted, hanging like some great albatross over the ocean.

"What is it?" he asked eventually, almost mesmerized by the images on the screen, angry with himself; afraid that there was nothing to know — that was his deepest worry: that Rodin knew nothing.

"That's Lightning, you bloody stupid policeman," Rodin mocked. "Can't you even hazard a guess?"

"Find him, Serov — find him tonight."

Gennadi Serov's features indicated nothing more than the recognition of General Lieutenant Rodin's seniority and the order he had issued. There was no evident response, however momentary, to the insulting ten minutes of cross-questioning, the almost manic reawakened concern with the escaped Kedrov. He was no more than a computer technician, he just might know a little about Lightning.

Yet Rodin had kept him standing in this icy wind, which blew into his face so that he had to squint into it, while he pummeled him with questions. The general seemed impervious to the temperature as they stood together at the top of the short flight of steps outside the principal senior officers' mess. Rodin's breath smelled of cognac. When they encountered each other — Serov coming to report on overall security, as ordered — Rodin had not asked him inside. He had been made to report just there, like an errand boy.

"Yes, comrade General Lieutenant," Serov replied in a neutral tone. "Everything possible will be done." Of course, Rodin and the others were paranoid about the security surrounding Lightning, were unnerved by the idea of Kedrov running around loose; and the job of tidying up had been delegated to him. Serov seethed beneath his adopted calm.

"I don't think that Kedrov represents a danger to our — enterprise," he added deferentially. Your son does, he thought, but not Kedrov.

'That isn't for you to decide, Serov," Rodin snapped back, tugging his gloves smooth on his hands, as if before a mirror. "You maintain he isn't a danger. Anyone who knows and who can't be relied upon, accounted for, trusted, is a danger. Shut him up before the KGB find him."

"I don't think they have any idea—"

"I don't want to hear that they have. But they're looking for him. You find him first. Tonight."

"Yes, comrade General." And your son — isn't he a danger? his anger added silently. You don't realize how much of a danger. Shall 1 do something about him, too? There was a fierce, dark satisfaction in the mocking defiance of his thoughts. The superiority of secret power; not as grandiose as that which Rodin enjoyed, but — ah, welcome in the icy wind and in the humiliating position he found himself, one step down from the general's tall, forbidding figure.

"Good, good," Rodin murmured. "We are too close to the time, our time." He sighed. The portentousness of the words were ridiculous to Serov; it was the old man's way, making a mission, some kind of holy war, out of whatever he was doing. Then his words became precise once more. "Use extra helicopter patrols, put more men on the task."

"Yes, General."

Rodin leaned over him. His face appeared to have aged quickly. It was narrow and pale from the wind, but it seemed drained and weary, too. Serov enjoyed the old man's moment of weakness. The light above the door of the mess hollowed Rodin's cheeks and created large stains beneath his eyes.

"Listen to me, Serov," he commanded, and his gloved hand gripped Serov's arm roughly, squeezing. "My son" — Serov controlled a sudden intake of breath; it was as if the old man had read his mind—"my son is to return to Moscow today. He will there enroll at the Frunze Academy. Today. You understand me?" The hand shook his arm. It was a gesture of strength, yet it seemed at the same moment like a plea. "He will travel under surveillance, of course. He will talk to no one." He broke off for a moment, as if the tone he was using were some strange flavor on his tongue that must be carefully tested. Then he blurted out: "He is not to be harmed, Serov." His hand dropped Serov's arm.

Serov saluted formally, crisply.

"Comrade General, there was never any danger—"

"Good. I believe you, but the boy — will be better placed in Moscow." Then the moment of weakness, of something approaching ordinary humanity, passed from Rodin as quickly as the wind plucked away his smoky breath. "Meanwhile, concentrate on this man Kedrov," he added sharply.

"General, I assure you that everything—"

Rodin merely turned his back on Serov and walked through the door of the mess. Serov's face clenched, into rage. His mind was filled with images of Valery Rodin rather than the general. Something had to be done about the boy. Priabin was back there, talking to him; he had had him under surveillance since the actor was killed. Priabin was no fool.

Serov descended the steps. He rubbed his numb cheeks to life as he walked to his car. Valery Rodin certainly knew about Lightning. What were he and Priabin talking about? Rodin had not left his flat, there had been no opportunity to place bugs. Priabin had the advantage there, but if Priabin learned of Lightning, what would he do?

His driver opened the door of the Zil, but Serov remained deep in thought, one hand resting on the roof of the car, the coldness of the metal seeping through his glove. His other hand rubbed his chin repeatedly, as if to conjure something from it.

What would Priabin do? Talk to Moscow Center? Yes, he would. He'd enough brains to grasp the enormity of the whole thing, and realize he couldn't handle it without the Center s help — without the backing of Nikitin and his gang in the Politburo, come to think of it. So Priabin might try to call, or radio, even fly out.

Serov was appalled. Priabin could have everything out of that weak, queer little bitch if he were any good at all. And that, that must be prevented — at any cost.

"Get them on the radio," he snapped.

"Who, sir?" the driver asked, bemused, startled by the sudden emergence of the colonel from his abstraction.

'That damned team watching the general's son — who else, you idiot?" he roared. "And quickly!"

"What does it mean?" Priabin asked slowly, hesitantly. "I — don't understand what you mean by it."

Rodin's young, vulnerable face was angry. He was important, his secret was important — but only if Priabin understood. Knowing his father's most profound secret—Lightning—had helped fill some of the hollows he had found in himself since they rendered him incommunicado. He wanted to boast again now, as he must have done to Sacha and to others.

"What does it mean?" Rodin mocked him in a squeaking, schoolgirl's voice. His hand banged the television set in frustration, but the American shuttle craft remained unaffected by the blow. It continued to float above the peaceful blue ocean. "It means that Linchpin is only the weapon—Lightning is the code name for the use of the weapon. That's why I'm to be punished for the rest of my life, Priabin, and why they killed Sacha — because I let the cat out of the bag. The beautiful, expensive, marvelous American space shuttle Atlantis is nothing more than a target!" Rodin's mouth was wet with excitement, his body was hunched over the set. 'They are going to use the laser weapon to destroy the American shuttle in orbit — a test of its efficiency, that's their joke." He wiped at his forehead and leaned more heavily on the television, as if his words had caused him acute physical exertion. "Now you understand what's at stake. Why Papa can't love his little boy anymore? Do you understand?"

Priabin stared at the floating, silent shuttle.

"They can't," was all he could find to say in a weak, breathy whisper. He had no idea of the length of the silence that had preceded his words.

Valery Rodin laughed.

"Don't be a moron, Priabin," he mocked. "Of course they can do it. It will be explained as an unfortunate, tragic accident. The Americans will never suspect how it was done — or even if they suspect, they could never prove it. The shuttle will disintegrate, become dust."

"But why?" Priabin's hands floundered in front of him, as if a great, drowning wave had broken over him. His thoughts seemed loose, like unsecured ballast or a freed cargo. The shuttle floated serenely; invulnerable.

Vulnerable, he realized now. So very vulnerable.

"Why — why again?" Rodin taunted. "You're being very slow tonight, Priabin, or are you always that thick?" He left the television, as if no longer needing its support, and slumped with what might have been confidence into the beanbag. He lit a cigarette, and Priabin could see his hands were shaking. Then he said: "To show the old dodderers in the Kremlin — and the ones who are only old in their ideas — to show them once and for all who is in charge of things. Who really gives the orders — who knows. Who cares. They're going to do it. The why of it only a policeman would want to know." He shrugged. "Maybe they want to make sure things go on just as before when that treaty is signed." He was talking quietly now, intelligently, as if revealing another part of himself, one that would further win Priabin's admiration. He did seem calm, in control of himself — unlike Priabin, whose head beat with the knowledge, with its terrors and implications. Rodin continued: "Nothing will change, will it? Whatever the old women in Moscow want to do about agriculture, schools, medical research, consumer goods, cars for every family, food for every family — it just won't happen. The army will have the icing on the cake, just as always. They'll have the laser weapon, they'll have shown they can use it. The project will never be scrapped or signed away. The greedy men of the Politburo will want a slice of that cake."

He studied Priabin's wild expression, seemed to find it satisfactory, then plucked a grain of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. Unfiltered American cigarettes, not hashish, Priabin noticed. His eyes catalogued the furnishings of the room, his mind unable to cope with Rodin's words. Terrible, terrible… but his thoughts could get no further. Green carpet, the frieze of shepherdesses and their rustic swains, vases, a couple of pieces of jade, the hi-fi, the racks upon racks of LPs and cassettes — even one of the new compact disc players. Terrible, terrible…

"They'll agree to all the money they need for research, they'll build them all the laser weapons they want — just like the American President would do, no doubt, if his army had Linchpin. Killing the shuttle will give them backbone. It will be the starch in the Politburo collars. No one will ever limit or abandon the laser weapon project if its power is demonstrated, will they? All they have to do is kill that." His fingers, and the smoking cigarette, pointed at the screen like a gun. "Bang. See?" he added in a quieter voice. "See now?"

Priabin shook his head. "Why?" was all he could utter.

Rodin's mouth made a simpering gesture of sympathy. Then he grinned. The boy had found a small, precious superiority and was clinging to it. Priabin could not cope with Rodin's information, his opinions.

"Why?" Priabin asked again, finding technique held out like an assisting hand. The boy had to go on talking now, had to be used, had to—

Priabin remembered the microphone, imagined Mikhail and Anatoly in the darkened room across the street, imagined their shock, their sense of possessing dangerous knowledge. It was all on tape, but it would make no sense without Rodin. He had to use the boy as his proof. However he did it — and he had no solution at the moment — he needed Rodin, in person, in Moscow.

Technique stilled the swirling of his own fears and imaginings. So, when he asked why yet again, he tried to sound uncomprehending, dim.

Rodin grinned comfortably.

"What is it ever about, policeman? Power." He raised his hands to acknowledge the room, the fiat, the benefits that extended beyond the windows, beyond Baikonur. "This — this is privilege, bought by power. The power to divert contracts, twist the arms of suppliers, find out and blackmail the local Party officials and the local black market — but you already know all about that. Even you can tap in to that much of the system. But it isn't power, is it? It's just playing at things. My father never plays. He likes real power, not the gimmick of privilege. You know people who like privilege— beavering away in every city of the Union, finding the lever, assessing the fulcrum, tipping the scales in their own favor. But that's just kid stuff."

Priabin clung to the analysis, to the cool mind that supplied it, the almost bored tone of Rodin's voice. He clung to it because he dared not think of the other thing. Now that he had been informed, he knew he must act — and could not even begin to contemplate action.

"And that's what the general wants — real power?"

Rodin shook his head.

"It's what the army already has. Its a question of preserving the power they have. For them, the issue's simple — the laser weapon is not an offensive system, it's to protect the army. Don't you see that?" He shook his head once more in reproof of dullness. "Papa," he announced with deep, bitter irony, "Papa told me a lot. He had to have an audience. My mother is in Moscow, and he would not have told her in any case. I served as his audience. It's all about moving the wheel when you put your shoulder to it, not being defeated by the wheel's size and weight. Moving events." He stubbed out his cigarette, murmuring, like a taunt or even a temptation: Haven't you ever wanted to be sure you could do that, if it came to it — control and change events?"

Priabin's features had come to reflect stupidity, incredulity. His mind swirled like the clouds interposed between the planet and the image of the shuttle on the screen. He realized Lightning would work. Yet he clung to the concretelike set of his facial muscles, drawing Rodin out, making him the superior, making him want to go on talking. Even now, as he spilled the whole of the story, he was implying that he was still his father's confidant, that they were really close. His father could relax only in his company.

"No," he admitted as an answer to Rodin's challenging question; it was like an admission of abnormality.

"Then you haven't been on the mountaintop." Rodin giggled. They all feel like that, always."

"And they killed Sacha, just like that."

Rodin's head jerked back as if avoiding a blow. His thin face became enveloped in shadow. What might have been an involuntary tear gleamed. Rodin snapped, wiping at his eye, "Let's have some music on. I'm bored with all this talk."

Priabin watched him cross to the hi-fi. There was no urgency in the KGB colonel; as if his knowledge restrained him in the armchair to which he had returned. He felt empty, as if at the end of a passion, or some great defeat of his most cherished hopes. Tired.

"I wonder what you like, policeman?" Rodin murmured to himself. His long fingers flicked along a shelf of LPs. "Ah — what about this? About your era, I would have thought."

He stood up, unsheathed the record, placed it on the turntable. A few moments later, the words struck against Priabin's thoughts as if Rodin had seen into some secret part of him and was using an interrogation technique of his own. Softening Priabin up.

Anna. The song was Dylan, of course. The American CBS album, no cheap copy. Not political Dylan, which Anna had always preferred, but the Dylan Priabin himself would always choose — had always chosen.

He was intent on the words, his face paled by the shocks of memory, and the likeness of his own history to the present. Anna and that damn wheelchair that had become part of the weapons systems of the Firefox. A wheelchair for the totally disabled, governed by brain impulses, corrupted into a thought-guided weapons system; its inventor, Baranovich, corrupted, too. He shook his head, hating the clarity of the past. Rodin studied him, his own face abstracted, filled with memories.

… if 1 could only hear her heart a-softly pounding…

He glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. Time was racing ahead of him. Kedrov in the marshes, Rodin here, the weight of what he had been told. It seemed impossible to act, to lift that weight. A growing dread seemed to have invaded his frame, making him weak.

… and if only she was lying to me…

The song pained.

"But we need this treaty," he heard himself saying, sensing that he wished to avoid the song and prolong the talk. Talk meant inaction.

Rodin shrugged. "They don't. Puts them out of a job, drops them from the top of the First Division, wouldn't you say?" tie returned his attention to the music.

… I'd lie in my bed once again…

… yes, and only if my own true love was waiting…

"You do understand, Priabin?" Rodin asked him after a time. The song had almost reached its conclusion, its final statement of joss. Anna—

"What?"

"All this, man." Rodin's arm gestured toward the soundless pictures on the television. Then he got up, crossed the room, and switched off the record. He stood, hands on hips, as if in challenge. "You do understand?" he repeated.

The shuttle floated. Priabin concentrated upon it. It was over South America. Cloud draped the planet like a bridal veil. The image was unbelievably beautiful He could not make himself care what happened to the shuttle, or to its crew, not for a long time. When he finally spoke, he saw that Rodin had sat down once more and was halfway through another cigarette. He did not look at his watch but simply said:

"They can t do it. They can t be allowed to. We can t afford it. He shuddered, felt cold. The nasal, almost whining song was gone, and Anna, too, had faded below the level of consciousness; as if she could safely leave him to his own devices. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the frozen shepherdesses, at the floating shuttle Atlantis. "No one can afford this project, you know that," he said. "The Union's bankrupt. Are they so mad that they can't see that? Why else would we be signing the bloody treaty?"

"I'm not arguing with you."

"We all need the rest, dammit! The whole of the economy's fucked. People are fed up with having nothing in the shops and no money to spend anyway — it's as simple as that in the end. The army can't be allowed to screw them again."

"Oh?" Rodin replied archly. "They can't, can't they?"

"We have to stop it," Priabin blurted out. His thoughts buffeted him like a wind. Maybe he could send a coded message, but they Wouldn't necessarily believe him — and to whom would he send the Message, the bloody Chairman himself? They'd ask the defense Minister to confirm or deny, always supposing they didn't dismiss it out of hand as the ravings of a lunatic. And then he'd be screwed like Sacha and Viktor. God, what could he do?

He studied Rodin.

Relief surged through him. Rodin was being flown to Moscow today. All he had to do was book a ticket on the same flight. Once *hey were in Moscow, he could begin to do something, talk to people, persuade them, with Rodin as his prize piece of evidence, proof—

"Not me," Rodin replied, his face dark with suspicion and self-concern; no longer confident.

"You must."

"And put my head in the gas oven? Piss off, policeman."

"You have to help me."

"What? You must be joking."

"It's your only way out—" He left the sentence evocatively unfinished. His features wore an implacable look.

"Joke over, Priabin." Rodin got to his feet and flicked off the television with a sharp, punching movement. Then he turned to Priabin. "Forget it, brother. Forget I ever told you — or you and I will end up where Sacha is now."

"I can't — not now. It mustn't happen."

"It will happen. Nothing's more certain. It's early on Wednesday morning; tomorrow isn't such a long time. Go home and go to bed and get up on Friday." He moved closer, appeared threatening though slight and dressed only in a robe. "Nothing. Say nothing, Priabin. For your own sake."

"No. We both know now, and we have to do something about it"

"You're crazy. You want to die? Like Sacha — they killed him like that." He clicked his fingers. "I'm staying alive. Whatever my father has in mind for me, I'm staying around for it."

"You can't."

"Just watch me."

"You have to help me."

"You can't beat them."

"Listen to me — just listen." He had grabbed Rodin's slim arms, holding them fiercely. "You're on your way to Moscow. You just have to do what is already arranged for you. I'll get a seat on the plane — we can both be in Moscow in time to stop this thing." Rodin was shaking his head, but in a shamed sort of way, eyes cast down at the carpet. "It's an act of war. And if the Americans ever suspect we had anything to do with the loss of their shuttle, there'll be a holocaust! Do you want that?" Kedrov's told them we have the weapon, he thought. They'll know we destroyed their shuttle.

"You're talking rubbish."

"No. No, I'm not. It's your only hope of safety, and it's the only thing we can do. Your Papa and his pals are mad. They have to be stopped." He was shaking Rodin's arms roughly. Then he released them. Rodin began to rub them at once, walking away toward the window. The tape would have to be erased or taken with him to Moscow — yes, taken to Moscow. Just in case.

Mikhail and Anatoly must be told to clean up thoroughly, and keep their heads down.

Katya and Kedrov in the marshes; Dudin was involved now. Kedrov should be kept under wraps until he got back from Moscow. Would he be safe out there? Anyway, he'd have to arrange all that tonight — in what remained of the night. One-thirty. He'd have to hurry. The plane ticket wouldn't be any problem, and he could be incommunicado as far as any callers at his office were concerned. He could do it.

"Well?" he asked Rodin's narrow back.

"No."

He made as if to move toward the young man, but then remained standing near his armchair.

"You have to," he said.

"They'll kill me."

"Not if we win."

"And the rest of my life — and yours?"

"You'll be protected. For God's sake, we have to do it."

Would Rodin help him?

Ticket. Get on the flight, even if he won't agree. You can have him arrested in Moscow and taken to the Center. You'll have the tape to open him up with — a prerecorded corkscrew. Get the ticket, get on the plane, get Kedrov stowed safely.

One-thirty, thirty-two. Come on, get moving. Heat and energy seemed to mount in him. He steadied himself against the chair, and felt his strength return. Then he said:

"Think about it. It's your only hope — our only hope."

"My father will have me killed if I ever do anything to harm him. You realize that, don't you?"

Rodin would not turn to look into the room but continued to stare out into the windy night. Priabin could clearly hear the wind howling at the building's comers, crying down the narrow street.

"He won't be able to harm you — not anymore."

"So you say."

Priabin was possessed by impatience; technique was deserting him. If he stayed he would say the wrong things, close the oyster again and alienate Rodin. He had other things to do, arrangements make.

Leave him, then? He did not want to… felt he could not risk… but he had arrangements that must be made. Leave.

"Look, I'm leaving now."

Rodin turned. "Who are you going to tell?" he shouted, his face white, the cords in his neck standing proud.

"No one. No one — not here. You think I'm mad? It's my life, too. No, I have things that need doing."

"You're going to be on that plane?"

"Yes."

"Damn you, then!" Rodin screamed.

"You told me knowing I was a policeman. You told me because you were afraid of it," Priabin soothed. "Think about it. I can save your life."

'The hell you can. Get out, damn you — get out!"

Rodin's fists were formed into claws and raised in front of his chest. He looked dangerous, and unbalanced. As if he might fling himself in an attack upon Priabin, or throw himself from the window.

"Think about it," Priabin shouted back. "Lock the door, don't answer the telephone, and think about it."

Priabin turned away, picked up his overcoat in the hall, opened the door, and let himself out of the flat. He sighed with fear and weakness, leaning back against the door for a moment, head raised. He was sweating profusely.

Rodin, he knew, should not be left alone. But he couldn't involve Anatoly and Mikhail. If they were suspected, they were dead. They had the tape, and they must keep their heads down until the storm had blown over. Kedrov he had to hide somewhere, in Katya's custody… Dudin had to be bought off with some cock-and-bull story about security… he had to get a seat on that morning flight. His head spun.

He crossed to the staircase and began to run down the first flight. Every moment he was away from Rodin would be filled with anxiety. Hurry, then, be as little time as you can. Hurry.

My God, he thought as he reached the lobby of the building. My God, they're going to start the next war!

10: Collision Course

There was still no glow from the tiny light on the receiver. Kedrov had not activated the transponder hidden in the cheap radio. It was not receiving Gant's signal and sending its precoded reply, which only his receiver was able to pick up. Gant knew where Kedrov should be — less than twenty miles away. Either he wasn't there, or—

Gant dismissed the thought as it bullied against his resolve. Kedrov had to be there. Alive.

The white dot that represented the Hind remained motionless on the moving-map display, hovering to the northwest of the marshes, outside the farthest security perimeter of the Baikonur complex; just outside. Fifty miles behind him, the shore of the Aral Sea; twenty miles ahead, the salt marshes. The Hind shivered like a restrained and impatient horse as he held the machine twenty feet above the distressed, dull surface of a man-made lake. Trees quivered or leaned in the wind, encircling the lake like a stockade s wooden wall. The helicopter was hidden from sight by the trees, yet Gant could not bring himself to land and switch off the engines and await Kedrov's response to his signal.

Beyond the trees, the desert was etched with the fine engraved lines of irrigation channels. In a later season, crops would grow there. In summer, people would swim in this artificial lake. He remembered the satellite pictures of the area used in his briefings. He had been able to pick out the heads and reclining torsos of swimmers and sunbathers in the vastly magnified, grainy monochrome Pictures. Now, in winter, the tiny resort was closed; cabanas, the cafe, the boathouses all deserted and lightless. They'd made certain the place was unoccupied in winter before suggesting it as a target point for his arrival.

His hands, feet, whole body it seemed, made the constant tiny movements and adjustments that kept the Hind steady above the lake. He glanced at his watch. Time of arrival, two-ten, Wednesday morning. He had perhaps five hours' darkness left—

— and there was no transponder response. Kedrov wasn't there, twenty miles east of him in the marshes. Waggling into the sky perhaps a couple of miles to starboard, he saw the headlights of a vehicle as it bounced over the undulations of the main road from Aral'sk. He had crossed the road only three minutes earlier, on course for the pleasure lake. To reach it and hover there, near the strange pagoda that had been erected in the middle of the lake, hanging like a zeppelin near its mooring tower.

He had flown most of his route over the Aral Sea itself, low and fast. Fishing boats, the lights of an occasional village on the straggling shoreline. The shallow sea was virtually empty of commercial traffic, as was its shore of habitation. It was little more than a vast, moonlit puddle across which he dashed, disturbing the calm, icy water with his passage. The barren, flat landscape was relieved only by the mounds and peaks of frozen waves reaching out from the shore.

And now hurry had drained away; destination had been achieved, but purpose had been foiled. There was no light on his receiver to show the reception of his signal. And he was a thousand miles from the nearest friendly border.

They had selected the northwest of the Baikonur complex as his point of ingress because it was the boundary closest to the salt marshes and the least protected by radar patrols. The surveillance defenses of Baikonur seemed to straggle away into the desert just like the vegetation; or perhaps they considered that the Aral Sea supplied some natural obstacle to intrusion.

Gant studied the tactical screen, which was alight with flitting dots whose pattern of movement he had already discerned. Helicopter patrols. An outer circle of them, around the perimeter of the complex — expected and easy to avoid, or to use as a cover for his own movement. They would not come as far as this deserted place. Others moved with what seemed a greater urgency, crisscrossing the map on which they were superimposed. CIA intelligence had indicated that there was no more than a single flight of Mil-24 gunships based at Baikonur. These were extra, unexpected patrols.

Purpose: to discover Kedrov, the missing agent-in-place. Minutes before, as he was still skimming the Aral Sea, the first radio transmissions he had picked up on the HF set had worried him. Was he expected? Were they waiting for him, too? Now he did not think so. And the urgency of the dots on his screen was belied by the routine responses and acknowledgments over the headset. They were looking because they had discovered Kedrov was missing, not because they knew he had a rendezvous with a helicopter.

Their search had included the marshes. Was including it now. Dormitory towns, villages, isolated settlements, farms, factories, radar installations — everywhere. The search was being coordinated, and involved foot patrols, cars, and helicopters. Needle in a haystack. Gant had little worry they would find Kedrov. They might, however, find him.

Gently, he lowered the Hind, the decision taken before he became clearly aware of it. The helicopter skimmed the artificial lake, raising its water into tiny waves; then Gant shunted it beneath the young fir trees, watching the rotors intently. Branches waved and lashed above the cockpit. The undercarriage bounced on sand, and he closed the throttles. The rotors wound down into silence, out of which the wind's noise leaped, banging against the Plexiglas. The trees above his head continued to sway and lean. He sighed, eased his frame in the restraint of his straps, and watched the tactical screen. Fireflies.

The stream of orders and reports filled his hearing, but he did not remove his headset or helmet. Not here, not here, not here… couple of kids, looks like we might have found a black-market drop here… not here, no, nothing here, nothing nothing… The reports poured into his mind. They hadn't located Kedrov, and they evidently had no idea where he might be. It was a blanket search that was turning into the boredom of routine.

Gant watched the perimeter patrols. They were calling in, too, hut maintained their conventional role. Because of the proximity of the launch, the security system of Baikonur was operating. It was its own justification. The closest helicopter to the bathing area was five miles away. It would pass perhaps three miles to the east of him as it swung onto the southward leg of its patrol. The next helicopter should pass perhaps twenty minutes later. On the ground, only listening posts and mobile units interested him. Those he could bleed onto the display at any time from the satellite's model of security Patrols. Tonight, however, there were more of them.

He had to thread a path between them, avoiding every thing-aural and visual detection most of all. Keeping low—

— changing IDs. He opened the cockpit door, and the wind buffeted him. He gritted his teeth and squinted against the flying sand that pattered on his overalls, slapped his cheeks. He removed a shallow box from the rear of the cockpit, releasing the straps that held it. He climbed down onto the sand, cursing his luck with the wind. Against the sky, he saw distant towers and gantries and radio masts, and their proximity unnerved him. Distances extended without limit and took on the complexion of something animate and hostile. He sensed the silence of the machine by which he knelt, remembered Mac; then, muttering inarticulately, he opened the box to search for what he required.

Strips of adhesive plastic, too flimsy, but he couldn't use the spray cans and the stencils, not in this wind. Beneath his hands lay the means of changing the Hind's identity to that of a GRU or KGB patrol. The insignia, the numerals, the ID flashes were all accurate—

— useless. He stood up, closing the box savagely, then thrust it back into the cockpit. His fist banged against the fuselage. He ground his teeth. There was no transmission from Kedrov. He could avoid visual sighting, in this darkness with the moon aging and dimming, and could avoid the listening posts and the car patrols — or be mistaken for one of their own — if only he could go now, move at once, just the twenty miles to the marshes…

Distantly, he heard the helicopter patrol away to the east, as predicted and expected. He banged the fuselage again with his fist. Where in hell was Kedrov? Where was the signal? Away behind his hunched back, the miles unrolled toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. A thousand of them. To the west, beyond the Aral Sea and the Caspian, Turkey lay a thousand miles away. He shivered.

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.

He turned to the window, briefly. Still curtained. They'd draw them back before they left, switching off the room lights. Someone would see the body from this block of flats when daylight came. Yes, all very satisfactory, neat.

"All done here, sir," the transceiver said over his heart.

"Very well. Stage-dressing completed?"

"Almost."

"Hurry it along — but miss nothing. Well dofie. Out." He turned to the sergeant and the radio operator, who came swiftly to attention; impressed, perhaps even abashed, by what had occurred across the street. "Very well. Put me in touch with headquarters — Captain Perchik."

"Sir." Call sign, fine-tuning; then he heard Perchik's voice. He took the proffered microphone, snapped down its Transmit button, and said: "Give me a full report, Perchik. Quickly. One of your one-minute digests I enjoy so much for their brevity."

"A good night, sir?" Perchik asked, his voice responding to the eager lightness of that of his superior; a momentary camaraderie. Perchik knew what he had been doing.

"A good night. Now hurry. I want this Kedrov. What have you got as the chef's recommendation on the menu?"

"Chef's recommendation, sir — stay away from the social contacts, the sexual contacts are a bit off tonight, we haven't any of the close-friend hiding places — it's off…" Serov smiled, even chuckled. Perchik was clever as a cat at obsequiousness. "But the chef does recommend recent pastimes and hobbies as something you should try."

"And?"

"Going through the man's whole behavior pattern, his every move, for the last month, we've come up with a bicycle repair shop — really black-market — in Tyuratam, but Kedrov isn't there, and the KGB hauled in the owner of the shop two days ago."

"So he's offered no leads or they'd have Kedrov by now. What else?" There was a clipped, military manner about Serov now, something lighter and less intent than the observer of Rodin's murder. This efficient portrait was another part he enjoyed playing.

"Bird-watching — the feathered kind, sir," Perchik added without creating any sense of wasting time. "Out in the salt marshes. Where we go duck shooting, in season."

"I know, Perchik. Disgusting sport, if you can call it that. Bird-etching, mm? He's applied for permits from the KGB? Or from us?"

"KGB handle that sort of minor stuff, sir."

"Many times?"

"We've counted almost a dozen, sir. Those marshes are full of rotting hulks, old hides, hunting cabins, you name it."

"That will do for a start. Priority air search of the area of the marshes." He looked at his watch, holding up his wrist so that the dial caught the light of the street lamp. Three twenty-five. "Order that at once. It's a long shot, but he must be somewhere — why not there? He must know the area. Get it done, Perchik."

"Sir."

"Out."

Serov dropped the microphone into the Sergeant's waiting hand and walked to the window. The curtains had been drawn back once more, but the room was in darkness. Light crept in from the street like an orange fog. It touched Rodin's stretched-out legs, his disordered robe. One arm hung over the side of the bed — yes, he could make that out with the glasses; the other lay folded on his chest. A sweet, dreamless sleep, a nice touch of fiction. Sooner or later, someone would wonder why the boy didn't move. He'd be found eventually; maybe even his father might call.

A pleasant anticipation…

"Outside, sir," the transceiver announced.

"Good," he said at once. "I'll join you."

Serov turned away from the window without hesitation, as if he had seen the movie that window screen had to offer, many times before; the rerunning of a popular success, without suspense because the ending is known.

"Tidy up, Sergeant," he snapped as he opened the door. "This set may have to be re-dressed today or tomorrow."

"Sir."

Serov closed the door behind him.

Gant looked up from the insistent, unnerving image of his curled, stiff hands. His watch, showing three-twenty, had ceased to evoke further anxieties. It merely recorded the passage of wasted time. He now had almost an hour of first light to negotiate in Soviet airspace. Even at the MiL's maximum speed, that might be as much as two hundred miles of flying before he reached either the Pakistan or Turkish border. The situation had become hopeless; he had slid wearily into acknowledgment of that, his fears deadened by familiarity.

He stared across the harshly lit main cabin. The primitive heating failed to resist the chill of the night outside, which was intensified by the banging of the wind against the fuselage and the creaking of the rotors. Opposite him, trussed into the jump seat, was the cause of his sullen, muddy depression. Adamov. Soon he would have to kill the man — after gaining as much information as the man could supply. Throttle or suffocate him, so that the uniform remained unmarked. Adamov's uniform would-fit, just. His collar size determined the fact that he would have to be murdered.

Helicopters droned distantly to the south and east, but the Hind remained undiscovered. It seemed no longer like something parked near the picnic area, but rather a dumped vehicle, long abandoned and left to rust. And still he could not kill Adamov and leave this place.

The man's eyes seemed to ask, again and again, who are you? He did not seem to be afraid, or to anticipate a violent demise. His eyes were vivid with curiosity and anger. Had they not been, he would have been easier to kill. There was a hollow in Gant's chest and stomach that was watery, queasy with danger and the dread of violence still to be inflicted. The watch measured the slow, reluctant steps he was making toward hurting Adamov. Soon; it would have to be soon.

The incident at the gas station, the flight across the Aral Sea, the waiting here, all seemed to have finally drained him. He seemed to have nothing left. He had lost control of the mission. He could not even bring himself to return to the cockpit, to look for the signal light on the transponder. He knew the light would be dead. Kedrov would not be making the rendezvous.

Then go!

The lethargy was huge and frightening, like a great weight of water above him. He'd let go. Already beaten.

Gant was weary of Adamov's dumb yet too vivid presence and the intermittent drumming of his boot heels on the cabin's metal floor. He stood up awkwardly and quickly, like a drunk getting to his feet. His head whirled emptily. Adamov flinched, even attempted to cower, securely pinioned as he was. Gant ignored the momentary fear. Avoided it, rather. He dragged open the cabin door and leaned hatefully into the freezing wind, which did not even begin to clear his head. He jumped down.

Bitter cold immediately, chilling through him, so that he believed that he must have been warm in the cabin. He, tugged the fleece-lined flying jacket closer around him, with a sudden loathing of the huddled figure he made. The wind seemed to cry from a great distance, thin and fitful though it was. He felt each of the thousand miles to safety, each of the twenty to where Kedrov had not arrived, and the great emptiness around him.

Kedrov slowly faded in his mind, and the reluctance he had felt at hurting Adamov also lessened. Soon he would be able to go through with it, make him talk, use the uniform. He rubbed cold hands hard against numb cheeks, leaning his back against the fuselage. He sighed with deep, tired, empty anger. The sighs became an expression of failure and isolation. He should have turned back when he'd filled the tanks; should never have believed he could make it.

He shivered continually with cold. To warm himself, he began to walk, patrolling the margin of the man-made lake, beginning to think of his own safety. He could abandon the helicopter inside Baikonur, steal a car or truck, make it out that way… he could take the Hind as far as its fuel allowed and then find a vehicle… he could fly to the nearest American consulate or embassy or diplomatic mission and walk in and ask them to get him home — just as soon as he disposed of Adamov, put on his identity and his uniform. And that would be soon now, soon.

The startling calls of ducks, other wildfowl. The dull, fretted lapping of the water, the stiff, dry rattling of sedge and reeds, the thin, searching cry of the wind. He walked on, deliberately oblivious to the passage of time. Occasionally, the drone of distant, hunting helicopters sounded above the wind, but he sensed no threat. He was safe until he chose to move.

A startled goose flung itself into the wind from the reeds at his feet. Gant threw up his hands to protect his face and stumbled backward as if pushed. He almost fell. Involuntarily, he cried out in a stranger's high-pitched voice, a near scream of shock and terror. The wild goose skittered across the ruffled metal of the lake s gleam, then gained height and grace and curved behind the pagoda, carried by wind and fright and wings. He stood, idiotlike, staring open-mouthed at its passage and the widening circles of its flight.

Then he turned and ran, shaken out of every feeling except panic, back toward the Hind. He felt as if his limbs had been untied, his mind cleared. Get out, get out, get out, his thoughts insisted.

He blundered against the helicopter, dragged open the cockpit door, and heaved himself into his seat, newly afraid. No! No light from the transponder. He had been terrified that he would find the light illuminated, Kedrov's summons peremptory and unignorable. The APU was still on, the main panel glowed with other lights. Two minutes warm-up, two minutes to takeoff. Even as he completed the preflight checks and decisions, his eyes continued to stare at the transponder and its unlit signal. Not yet, not yet. He's dead, dammit, forget Kedrov, he isn't there. In two minutes he would be airborne, and he knew where he was going, knew it for certain. Kedrov's contact was from the diplomatic mission in Tashkent. He had easily enough fuel to get him there. He would walk in to the mission and ask for the Company's man — easy. They weren't looking for him, not yet, they wouldn't have the place guarded, blocked off. He had the time.

Engine-start. He switched on Baikonur's Tac channel. Throttles open. The rotors moved with an initial reluctance, then began turning more swiftly. He would not need to kill Adamov — at least not until later. He began to listen to the reports from the patrols, a feverish excitement mounting in him, all thought of Kedrov and the mission banished.

He released the brake. On the tactical screen, the fireflies were more numerous, more concentrated, but nowhere near him, nor between him and the Aral Sea. He would have to loop well to the south before taking up a heading for Tashkent. As long as they had no idea he was there, they would not close the mission in Tashkent against him—

— glanced up through the Plexiglas, searching the night for the bird that had startled him. It must have settled or flown off. Like a talisman, he couldn't risk harming it.

Twenty feet, thirty, forty… fireflies, the search that must have found Kedrov hours before and was now just waiting for him to show fifty feet. Gant swung the Hind around on its axis, pointing it westward. Fifty miles to the Aral Sea.

Then he saw the light on the transponder. And groaned. A steady light — now! Kedrov had switched on. The fireflies of the search were concentrated in the area where he should be.

No, the bastard was dead, no…

The Hind was moving westward, increasing speed, the trees distressed by its passage, the lake shrinking in his mirrors. Seventy miles an hour, eighty, the airspeed indicator hovering around one hundred. He was out, safe.

Over the Tac channel, he could hear cars involved in the search, troop units being moved by helicopter and truck, MiLs congregating — just where Kedrov should be. They were searching the marshes now. Someone had ordered it, it wasn't an accident. Reports and positions flew.

He was five miles from the lake. Then he heard the name Kedrov. The poor bastard was alive, free, and they were looking for him. Six miles away, seven now. He was almost thirty miles from Kedrov and leaving him behind fast.

The Hind slowed. He cursed the light on the transponder and he cursed Kedrov. Raged at the swarming helicopters that filled the tactical screen. Damn it, damn you, you stupid son of a bitch — why now, damn you? The Hind took up, as if of its own volition, a new heading. To pinpoint Kedrov in the marshes, he would have to fly a north-south patrol until he obtained a triangular fix on the source of the response.

He listened to the tangle of orders and responses, he watched the tactical screen as closely as he might some poisonous creature about to strike.

The area of the agreed rendezvous was being patrolled at that moment. If Kedrov was exactly where he should be, and not somewhere else, then he was right in the middle of the search. He exploded the scale of the moving map until it showed only the islet that was the agreed rendezvous. There were still two helicopters registering even on that tiny pocket of earth and frozen water. One of them was dropping troops into the marshes.

He had to try to get Kedrov out as soon as he pinpointed his position.

Not there, not right there — please…

"Everyone's ready?" Priabin asked breathlessly. Dudin nodded, clearing his throat.

"As instructed, Colonel," he confirmed. The windbreak rattled like a high flag at his back. Katya stamped her feet for warmth, arms clutched around her, hands beneath her armpits. Her face was pale.

"Well concealed? This could be a helicopter, someone could come on foot—"

"I was clear about that," Dudin remarked with evident offense. His own impatience seemed not to exist, his excitement dim and contained by careful routine.

"Good man, good man." Priabin looked up from the screen-Kedrov was sitting or pacing in the cabin of the houseboat, his tension like a silent scream. Above Priabin and the others, a GRU helicopter passed slowly across the night, its navigation lights winking. They had intensified their search of the marshes. Somehow, they'd made the same kind of deduction Katya had made, probably from the same evidence. Kedrov was here somewhere.

Priabin felt success about to be snatched from him; Serov's GRU people, with their vaster resources of men and machines, might have pinpointed the agent-in-place and be simply waiting for a signal to close in — just as his men were waiting for a signal.

Go in now, then. Claim the bloody prize. Get your hands on Kedrov before they do — wait for the collector to arrive. If he comes, another part of his thoughts answered more pessimistically. If he bothers, seeing the opposition in the area… go in now! Serov's people might well get their hands on whoever was coming to Kedrov's aid — and GRU troops would be there soon, he'd heard enough of their radio chatter to know how thoroughly they were searching— so get your hands on Kedrov.

"OK, OK," he murmured, teeth chattering, gloved hands rubbing furiously together as if to ignite a fire. "We're set. Make no moves, Dudin. Just let whoever the rescuers are come on — close in behind them."

"Colonel."

"Katya, you found him, you can come in with me. Dudin, when you spot them, only then contact me by transceiver."

"Colonel. You think they'll come in force, then?"

"I don't know." He glanced down at the screen. Kedrov had begun pacing once more — good. Creaking planks and the noise of his footsteps would cover their approach. "Once I report we're in, and have Kedrov, get your men to remove the borescope and the cable. I don't want whoever's coming to spot them."

"Shall I get the dog from the car, sir?" Katya asked.

"No. Kedrov doesn't appear to be armed. I think he's pretty much beaten already. Let's go in now."

He turned as if to issue another order to Dudin, or to check Previous instructions, then waved his hand apologetically; even grinned. He stepped out of the windbreak, out of the shadow of the clump of bushes and stunted trees, down the slope onto the ice. ^reading warily. The wind hurled itself against him so that he staggered. The ice creaked unnervingly. As Katya caught up with him, be looked at his watch. Three twenty-four. He walked, leaning slightly backward, square-footed like a fatter man, feeling his overcoat plucked and whirled like a cape around his legs. Katya hurried at his side, gun already drawn, body hunched forward. The ice betrayed their passage, as if muttering to Kedrov.

The jetty, then. Priabin climbed the rotting steps carefully, easing his weight onto each one, then to the one above. He kept his hand away from the rail. Eventually, he crouched at the top of the steps, and Katya, moving with much less noise, joined him. Her breathing was rapid, excited.

A helicopter passed above them, perhaps no more than a couple of hundred feet. Still scouting. The moon was old and low in the sky; they were just two shadows amid shadows. But Kedrov must be getting panicky at the insistent overflights. Priabin wanted to hurry, scuttle on all fours like a dog along the jetty, bang open the cabin door, gun in hand, make certain of his quarry.

"Come on," he whispered. "Follow me."

The helicopter's noise diminished toward the south. Priabin, bending low, hurried forward, caution no longer expedient or even desired. It was not a stalking game now, but a kill — Kedrov was his now.

He scurried beside the limp snake of the borescope cable, still carrying the images of the houseboat's interior. He was thirty yards, twenty-five—

— stopped. Because of Rodin.

He was playing for ridiculously high stakes. Kedrov, his would-be rescuers… Rodin and Lightning. Katya reached him, leaned into his body for shelter, looked up at him urgently.

"What is it?"

"What?" It was all too risky, too dangerous. He had been blinded by the dazzle of complete success. He had wanted it all. "I" — he shook his head—"nothing. Come on," he urged. The wind was at his back, blowing him toward the rotting houseboat like a scrap of paper. If he were quick, sudden—

He had whole minutes yet and a great desire to see shock subside into fear and defeat on Kedrov's face before he returned to Rodin.

"Come on."

He was running without caution. Clattering along the jetty, his noises masked by the wind and the protests of the old boat. He jumped onto the deck, drawing the Makarov pistol from his holster. His open overcoat flew aside. He raised his right boot at the doors, two steps down from the deck, and kicked savagely at them, as if already cheated and circumvented by events. The doors flew open, crying and splintering. He stumbled down the steps. The wind caused Kedrov's shadow to flicker and enlarge, then shrink, as the oil lamp's flame wavered and smoked.

"Kedrov, you're done!" Priabin shouted, almost laughing, pleasure welling up in him.

Kedrov was stunned, then further startled to see Katya's small frame emerge from behind Priabin's coat, her.gun, too, trained on him. His mouth plopped open and shut, open and shut, like that of a goldfish. Priabin clasped Katya's shoulder, and said:

"You can arrest him, Katya — you found him."

She moved carefully toward the bunk. Kedrov's shadow, their own shadows, danced and mingled and loomed at one another all around the room. A beer can rolled to Priabin's feet. He kicked it with the kind of pleasure he might have felt kicking back a boy's football in a park. Katya motioned to Kedrov to extend his hands. She handcuffed him. The man's mouth continued to open and close He could find nothing to say. Katya stood back, her narrow face flushed with excitement, her gun steady.

Priabin moved to the table. Tapped the transistor radio with the barrel of his pistol.

"Works without its batteries, I see," he murmured knowingly. Further shock was impossible on the stretched, blanched mask of Kedrov's face. He spoke, however.

"How—?" Like an actor forgetting his lines, he dried after the single word.

"We know someone's coming," Priabin said, offering no explanation of his knowledge, not even referring to the borescope. "We'll all just sit and wait for him, shall we?" His voice was still musical with success. Katya, too, was smiling.

"When's he due to arrive? Soon, I should think, the way you keep looking at the door. Soon? Good — excellent."

Priabin looked at his watch. Three twenty-eight. He'd give it until four. Then the worries returned. Rodin — I should have told Mikhail to watch Rodin, stay with him.

Would he somehow be made to pay for this success? He felt himself almost superstitious, needing signs and portents. The ticket to Moscow on the morning flight was waiting at the Aeroflot desk. He'd simply checked the Aeroflot computer from the KGB offices; the airline, thank God, was still KGB rather than army, even out here. Mikhail had the tape of his conversation with Rodin. Yes, that was safe. The little incantations of his successes that night calmed his breathing, cooled his body. He looked at Kedrovs face, crumbling like waxy, old cheese; the portrait was almost complete. Kedrov's rescuers next, then Rodin… the thought of Rodin was like the hollow tooth to which the tongue inevitably returns. He winced. But if he had not left the boy, he would have just continued to refuse, even threatened Priabin with his father, denied everything. He had had to be left alone with his growing fears. Through them, Priabin might come to help.

His anxiety would not go away. To allay it, he snapped at Kedrov: "What do you know about Lightning, my friend?"

As if he had been practicing his response to just that question, Kedrov flung back at him: "Nothing. Nothing at all. What are you talking about?"

"You know something, Kedrov — you know," Priabin murmured. "It's in your eyes." Priabin felt calm once more, albeit temporarily, he suspected. The cabin seemed less shadowy and cramped. Katya and Kedrov and he formed a still, restful painting as they waited.

Until four o'clock.

Then Rodin would have to become his absolute priority.

His speed was no more than ninety miles per hour. The Hind wove its way along the channels and roads and railway tracks of a derelict silo complex. Canallike gouges in the flat land. The complex had been abandoned in the early seventies, when all passages and missile railways had been tunneled underground. Satellite photography had shown this place unchanged for more than fifteen years. Dust flew up behind the helicopter. Kedrov's transponder was less than five minutes away now.

He jerked the Hind aside violently, avoiding a fallen power cable that had suddenly draped itself in front of the cockpit as if hanging from the dark sky. The helicopter rolled, then he righted it.

He studied the map display. He was working to the largest scale now, and the details were more sketchy, adapted from countless satellite pictures. The thin, dark trail of a shallow stream, barely running on the surface at all, lay ahead of the white dot that represented the helicopter. He lifted out of a gully. In his mirrors, skeletal gantries and towers leaned or remained upright without purpose. Beyond them, the bathing place was lost to sight. On the map, fireflies moved now that he was in open sky. Russian crackled and flew in his headset.

His conflicting emotions had receded, lost in routines, in flying the helicopter. There was an abiding sense of moving closer to the center of a web, of deliberately putting his foot on a branch-covered pit. Otherwise, the fear had diminished, the sense of panic that had made him turn west and begin to run was under control. He was wound tight as a spring, but there was an unreality about the danger and an excitement that welled in him. He believed he could get to Kedrov, believed he could get him out — despite the odds against him. He had recovered his ego. There was a cold, machinelike exhilaration about his attempt that swept even self-preservation aside, for the moment. But the whole thing was narrowing like a blind alley. It was going to be close, very close.

He noticed sedge waving and bowing like corn beneath the Hind's belly as he was approaching the salt marshes. The troop transport, a heavy Mil-8 Hip, had collected the GRU search party and was moving on a course almost parallel to his own. If he glanced to port, he could just make out the distant white legs of twin searchlights walking across the landscape, shining down from the Mil-8's belly. Collision course between himself and as many as two dozen armed GRU soldiers. He dropped over a low bank into the winding course of the stream, which led into the heart of the salt marshes. Ice gleamed like fragments of a broken mirror.

He lost sight of the two walking legs of light and of the forest of abandoned gantries behind him. Airspeed, eighty-five. Time — he glanced at the clock on the main panel — three forty-two. He looked up as the Hind's shadow skimmed a stretch of frozen water. No navigation lights, only the cold stars. He was sweating freely now. Distance to target, four miles. A clump of dwarf bushes leaned from the bank of the stream. Icy sedge stood out from both banks like the spikes of an insect-devouring plant, ready to close over the helicopter.

Call signs, reports, instructions rang in his ears. Though he knew they were not aware of his presence, not yet.

KGB helicopter, routine flight, would be his story. By the time they checked him out — despite the absence of a flight number on their radars, which would make them curious — he would have completed ingress, be on his way out again… be there Kedrov, be there, you bastard.

The padding of his helmet above his eyebrows was damp, and rubbed as he moved his head from side to side. He was too hot in the leather jacket.

As the marshes spread out more flatly, he glanced to port. Yes, the lights walked on in the distance. The Mil-8 was now slightly ahead of him, or so it seemed. Stunted trees in a clump. The Hind rose—

— flicked aside. Violently, as the rotors of another helicopter caught the moonlight, and cockpit lights enlarged in his vision. He swung to one side of the Mil-2 and slightly higher. Altitude, six hundred feet, rising like a bobbing cork onto every radar screen monitoring the area.

Russian bursting from the headset, a stream of oaths and curses and a challenge that was without suspicion; just simple fear and relief flooding the ether.

"Calm down, comrade," he heard himself saying through clenched teeth. The other Mil was turning in his mirrors, to face after him. Reeds and frozen water flowed beneath the Hind. "No damage done," he continued to soothe. "KGB flight Alpha-Three, what more do you want? Fucking around the sky like a swarm of flicking locusts." He listened then.

"… purpose of flight?"

"None of your fucking business. We have choppers, too, comrade." He flew on, watching the Mil recede in his mirrors, watching its blind face turn slowly away as if to resume its inspection of a plotted route. He heard its pilot or copilot reporting the near-collision, reporting his cover story. He was logged in. Now the questions would begin. He dropped down to fifty feet, disappearing from radar.

Islets, stretches of reed-filled ice, stunted trees. The marshes. Navigation lights to port and starboard, but patrolling, not converging. The Mil-8 s searchlights a dull glow away to port, but closer now. Collision course. He felt weak but forced himself to study the map display, to draw his gaze away from the clock on the panel, to ignore the fireflies superimposed on the sketchy landscape.

Something flicked at the edge of eyesight as disturbed water birds rose in the night. The white dot on the map converged on the islet curled like a sleeping cat and the other that was kidney-shaped — the agreed rendezvous!

He adjusted the contrast to improve the low-light TV picture on the main screen. Gray shapes glowed unreally. He bobbed over a rise — airspeed seventy — drew the Hind s shadow like a black cape across a stretch of ice, glanced to starboard… yes?

Then rose onto radar screens once more, but he had to be sure — a hundred, two hundred feet, then the shape of the islet revealed itself. Catlike — kidney-dish islet lying across a stretch of frozen water from it, the skeletal shadow of a rotting jetty.

He dropped the Hind, as if determined to break through the gleaming ice. Navigation lights around him were lost in the background of stars. The wind seemed no longer to hurl itself against the helicopter. The agreed rendezvous. He was there; target. The white dot that represented the Hind was as still as the Bethlehem star.

He flicked away, keeping low, making the reeds bend into the wind with his passage. Stunted trees in the foreground, jutting out of the land's slight undulations. He slowed his speed, judging distances, watching the screens, the radar altimeter, port and starboard of him, the ground… where were the lights from the Mil-8? He could not see them. He put the helicopter into the hover. Dropped the undercarriage onto a slight incline, bounced the Hind, rolled it forward, wheels hardly in contact with the frozen ground, until the dwarf firs seemed to surround it. Switched off the engines.

Silence.

The wind, then—

— and nothing else. Reeds grew as high as the miniature trees, as if springing up that moment around the helicopter. He felt like a gazelle in veldt grass; there were lions out there he could not see. Still, cooling, the Hind could be overlooked from above. The world consisted of only two dimensions. The reeds were almost as tall as the fuselage. Good enough.

He opened the cockpit door. He did not concern himself with Adamov, who was securely tied and gagged. He drew a sketch map from his flight overalls, checked the compass display on his watch, oriented himself. Islets to the southeast of him. He could see the clump of trees standing up like frightened hair from the knoll's scalp. Half a mile.

Searchlights—

— leaping onto the ice in front of him, cutting off his glimpse of both knoll and trees. As the belly of the Mil-8 lumbered into view, he pressed against the fuselage of the Hind.

Two hundred yards away, the transport helicopter moved across his sight, walking on its searchlight legs, something like an umbilical cord dragging from its belly and tossed by the wind — a ladder, a rope ladder. He heard a dog bark, more than one dog, and glanced Wildly around him, the noise of the rotors beating in his head. The noise had come from within the MiL. The dogs were still aboard, but the cabin door was wide now; light spilled from it outlining a human form. Dogs, men, guns.

The transport moved away, oblivious of him. He saw a bulky shadow starting to descend the rope ladder a quarter of a mile away. They were beginning to drop men and dogs in their prescribed places. They were looking for Kedrov — go.

He could not move, not for a long moment, not until the Mil-8 had moved farther off and its noises were less insistent. Then compass, sketch, night glasses, visual sighting of the knoll and islet where the jetty was, then—

He clambered down the slight incline, onto the first stretch of ice, sedge and reeds scraping like steel against his legs. His hand on the pistol—

— Kalashnikov. He turned, scrambled back up the slope, breathing already harsh, and opened the cabin door. Adamov's white face resented him. He climbed in, took down one of the rifles from its clips, checked its magazine, its weight in his hands, looking only once at Adamov, forcing himself to wink, tossing his head to emphasize a gesture he did not feel. He shut the cabin door behind him. Jogged more easily, familiarly, down the incline onto the ice. Continued to jog, leaning into the wind, head down, rifle clutched across his chest. Half a mile. Three-fifty.

Be there

Gennadi Serovs imagination prickled with points of information just as the night sky, seen through the window of the speeding car, seemed alive with the cold, separate lights of stars. There was a comfort in the analogy, just as there was exhilaration about the details of the report rendered by the team leader and the doctor. They were now seated in silence in the rear of the car, Serov preferring to ride next to his driver. He felt light-headed — yes, that was apt— with the risk he had taken and was still running. It had been a dangerous, even a challenging, move to have young Rodin killed, but therein lay its greatest satisfaction. When the body was discovered, the general would be deeply wounded. And if he became suspicious, asked for causes, occasions, reasons, Serov would plant evidence of KGB surveillance in the empty flat across the street from Rodin's apartment. After all, they had been there.

Routine reports, issuing from the radio, washed over him like the sensation of a warm bath. The helicopter search, the cars, and the troops on foot had not yet located Kedrov. They would do so; and if they did not, General Lieutenant Pyotr Rodin would have enough to distract him when the body of his son was discovered.

Apparently, Valery Rodin had subsided quite easily, even strangely. Given up, as if his heart or will had surrendered. The tranquilizers had been administered via the tube. It had all been over in a few minutes; they had left Rodin so deeply unconscious he would never recover.

The car coursed through the traffic-less streets of Leninsk-Kuznetskiy, the science city of Baikonur, heading southeast from Tyuratam toward GRU headquarters, a complex of white buildings close to the Cosmonaut Hotel. Out of Baikonur itself, there was something commercial about it, business rather than army or science. Serov enjoyed the separation of the GRU from army headquarters — detachment implied independence. To the north of them, the complex was bathed in light from a hundred sources, the sky softened by its glow. To the south, over the darkened city, the stars burned. The car was passing an ornamental fountain at the entrance to a leisure park. The wind had shaped the spray into a peacock's tail before the temperature had frozen it, despite the antifreeze they mixed with the water.

Radio reports, radio noise. He sighed. Kedrov was unimportant, only the general's anxiety made him otherwise. A dozen helicopters, a hundred men or more, all looking for this one pathetic little shit. Even out as far as the marshes. Perchik might have a good idea there, might not…

He closed his eyes. Details of the reports sparkled like jewels in the darkness behind his lids.

Snapped open. He sat upright. His driver was looking at him expecting to receive a change of orders.

"What?" he asked.

His driver handed him the radio mike. Serov depressed the Transmit button and demanded: "Repeat that last information, Unit?" He turned to his driver, clicking his fingers impatiently.

Unit Air-7," he added when given the designation. The driver steered the car to the curb, and they slowed to a halt. The hand brake rasped on. "Unit Air-7, what was your report?" Serov barked.

This is Serov, understand? Your report."

His fingers drummed on the dashboard. Through the window, listing a little with his sudden tension, he could see a war memorial doming at the end of the wide thoroughfare. They were no more than two minutes from the office. Yet the driver had been correct to stop until this matter was dealt with — had he misheard?

… helicopter we can't account for, just sitting under some trees. Engines stopped, no sign of the pilot," the report continued. When the pilot of Air-7 had finished, Serov was silent for a few moments. Why had it awakened him? It was strange, but not sinister or threatening. In the silence, the pilot added: "A gunship, sir. And it's not a member of our zveno. Stranger."

"What markings is it carrying?" he asked. "Can you see?" He forgot to add "Over," but the pilot of Air-7 seemed to divine that he had finished; or was, perhaps, simply frightened into efficiency. An unidentified gunship? From outside Baikonur? picked up the engine heat on IR," the pilot explained, his voice distant and unreal, but somehow enlarging the significance of the abandoned Mil-24."… see it now on low-light TV… army, sir, not ours or KGB. Joyrider, comrade Colonel?"

"Don't be stupid." It was possible, however, in a place like Baikonur — studentlike stunts and stupid acts of indiscipline; boredom. Most of the GRU's work had to do with things like that. But in a gunship? Nevertheless, he added: "If you can't see his white arse going up and down in the reeds, then it may not be a joyride. Get down there and check it out — now, sonny."

He threw the radio mike toward his driver and rubbed his chin. Intuition was pressing at the back of his thoughts, attempting to bully its way in. Why? How much significance should he attach to this?

"Very well, Vassily, drive on." He banged the dashboard as if to startle a horse into motion. The driver started the engine, put the car into gear, and pulled away. The war memorial, sword uplifted in threat rather than reconciliation or sorrow, loomed closer. It was a huge shadow against the lights of the square behind it. Should he order the Mil surrounded, as intuition seemed to demand? No, wait.

The car rounded the dark memorial, crossed the square. The empty ether hissed from the radio. What was it? Why did he still feel it important?

"Sir — Colonel, sir." A different voice, perhaps the copilot.

"What?" This time he remembered. "Over."

"Sir, an officer — one our ours, GRU, tied up in the cabin. Sir, he's claiming he was kidnapped."

Serov wanted to laugh, especially as the car skidded rounding a corner as Vassily's surprise transmitted itself to the steering.

"What kind of joke—?" Instinct pressed: he added urgently: "Get his story. Better still, get him to the radio. And get help to stake out that helicopter. Do it now! Get that idiot, whoever he is, to the microphone."

Vassily whistled through his teeth. Serov could feel the mystified excitement of the two in the back prickle the hair on his neck. What in hell was going on? His fingers drummed on the dashboard with an increased urgency as the car drew into the courtyard, then beneath the archway of GRU headquarters. Serov did not even spare a glance toward the hotel or the windows of General Rodin's suite. The square was nakedly empty, as was the inner courtyard of the building.

"Where is that idiot?" Serov bellowed into the mike.

The trunk of the dwarf fir seemed to collide with his back, so violently did he lean against it to conceal himself. A helicopter's shadowy belly slid above the ice between him and the rotting jetty. He forced himself to observe it through the night glasses. The fleecy lining of his jacket, near the collar, was icily damp from his exerted breathing. It numbed his cheek as he leaned back, lowering the tiny pair of binoculars. The helicopter passed northward. He tried to listen, but nothing other than the retreating Mil and the cry of the wind came to him. The landscape might just be deserted.

Gant clutched the Kalashnikov against his chest, made himself study the open space of ice across which his path lay. Empty, gleaming palely as if lit from far below its surface. Deserted. He raised the glasses once more. Starlight and moonlight were intensified. He scanned the stretch of frozen water. Carefully, repeatedly.

He saw nothing, but could not trust the evidence of his eyes. There could be men out there, hidden and waiting or simply approaching in a search pattern laid down for them. He would not know. He understood his limitations. This was not his element; here he was ordinary, dangerous to himself. He looked at his watch. Three fifty-eight. His approach had been careful and slow, but it had been textbook, not instinctual. What had he missed? He studied the jetty and the houseboat through the glasses. Thin bars of light stood out, indicating a source of light inside the boat. It had to be Kedrov. This was the agreed rendezvous. He scanned the ice again, then the sedge and the reed beds, then the clumps and tufts of trees and low bushes. They were impenetrable, could hide an army. He shivered, hating the thought of the Hind half a mile behind him. It seemed like a home he had abandoned.

He moved slowly through the reeds and out onto the ice. Time urged him, and he moved quickly across the frozen marsh toward the jetty, until he pressed against groaning wood, into the shadows cast by the jetty. He listened. Heard the wind. Saw distant navigation lights. No dogs… listen for the dogs. The Mil-8 had dropped men and dogs at their appointed places in the pattern of the search. Could he hear dogs? He held his breath, listening into the wind. Distant rotor noise, nothing more.

He climbed the steps, crouching at the top, sensing the skin on his back and buttocks and neck become vulnerable. He felt colder, as if naked. The rifle seemed unreal, held in numb hands that gripped like claws. The boat was only yards away. He could see the bars and strips of light clearly. He scanned the open ground once more with the glasses. Nothing. Then he ran in an awkward crouch, the wood of the jetty announcing each quick footfall, the wind seeming encouraged to unbalance him by the cramped and difficult posture he adopted. He stepped carefully onto the boat's deck. Eased along the side of the cabin, bent down.

Gant looked through cracked wood, saw nothing, then through a gap where two thin curtains did not quite meet. Saw him.

Kedrov. Had to be. A radio, back open, exposing the source of the signal, lay on the table in front of him. The man was down, that was obvious. Head hanging, face in shadow, staring; hands still, but weakly clenched in a child's grip. Not believing someone would come for him. Gant felt relief, felt the urgency of the minutes that had passed since he left the MiL; felt the possibility of success. Rose and eased himself farther along the narrow deck until he reached the doors. Touched their wood, felt the grain and the peeling paint because his hand was suddenly warmer. They creaked as he pushed them open.

He stepped into the narrow, shadowy room. Was startled as he heard a helicopter's rotors close, saw Kedrov's face lift to his, was warned, but not quickly enough, because there was a prod of something metallic, hard, in his back. A hand reached for the barrel of the rifle and held it tightly before he could begin to turn. And a woman, gun held stiff-armed ahead of her, emerged from the shadows at the far end of the cabin. He felt a moment of rage that he might have used, but shock drained it away. The woman was afraid, surprised, pleased. Kedrov was appalled. Gant realized the face should have warned him, wearing defeat like a badge. He let the rifle go, and it was snatched away somewhere behind him. A helicopter seemed to be in the hover outside. He heard the first dog cry distantly but eagerly. He shivered.

The place seemed to rush in on him. Winter Hawk was finished; blown. Just as he was.

"American?" a voice asked behind him. The metallic rod jabbed in his back. It would be foolish to move, it said. Your hands would not be quick enough. "Well?" The man spoke English with competence as he said: "We have been waiting for you — all of us, but perhaps for different reasons. Turn to face me, please — very slowly."

Outside, the helicopter had landed, the engines were running down. Human orders were being shouted. The woman seemed surprised at the activity. Gant's hands relaxed. He turned.

KGB. Colonel's shoulder boards on his overcoat. Gant's own age.

Familiar.

The colonel's face dissolved as if under a great pressure, then it reformed into a wild, unstable mask. The eyes burned, and Gant recognized—

— Priabin. The woman, Anna, who had died at the border… last image of her body cradled by, by this man, beside the car they had been using to escape… this man, Priabin. Her lover.

"Gant," he said. Then again: "Gant." The tone of the voice suggested he had already killed him. Priabin sighed. The hatred was there, but the features were composed around the eyes, strangely at peace. There was even a smile—

— as the Makarov pistol was raised between them after Priabin had stepped back two paces. As it was leveled at Gant's face. Priabin was smiling, his features were calm and satisfied. He seemed to have traveled quickly through shock as if it were an unimportant way station; passed through hate, too. Passed almost beyond the shot he intended firing.

"Gant." He sighed once more. His finger squeezed the trigger of the pistol.