Winter Hawk

11: A Fortress Deep and Mighty

Katya could not understand. Her mind whirled with speculations and anticipation, but she could make no sense of the fact that the two men recognized each other. Impossibly, they knew each other — from some occasion in the past?

And then the name surfaced. It was fixed in place by the banging of the houseboat's doors as she watched the tip of her own pistol move upward and begin to cancel Priabin's strange, fulfilled pleasure. Gant. That American — the one who had stolen the — the one who had caused the death of… impossible—

The wind howled, entering the narrow, low cabin. The planks and boards of the boat creaked and groaned like an audience. The room seemed to quiver, reflecting the tension between the two men. She sensed that Priabin was as quick and ready to die as he was to kill the American, whose gaunt, weary face stared at Priabin's pistol. She felt her throat tickle with the smoke blown from the flickering oil lamp; shadows enlarged and seemed to struggle with each other on the planking above her. The pistol wobbled, but had its target. The American's stomach, chest, then forehead.

The doors banged once more, startling her from her trance. Priabin was posed with his arm stretched out, his pistol aimed at the American's head. He leaned into the contemplated shot, his finger closing on the trigger.

The American spy… their prisoner.

"No!" she screamed, her voice thinner and higher than the wind.

Priabin's hand shook. The American turned his face to her, as if only now acknowledging her presence. Her eyes concentrated on Priabin as he, too, turned to her.

"No! No! No!" she shouted as loudly as she could. Her words rang and echoed, unrecognizable as her own, in the low, narrow cabin. Her own pistol was raised, her body was crouched; she was half ready to scream, half to shoot, and she knew her face was distorted with a sense of panic. "No!"

And Priabin turned fully…

… the American was still…

… their eyes on something other than herself. They were both looking at Kedrov, huddled on the bunk, hands wrapped across his chest, knees up to his chin. Their — object in the room, both of them.

"No!"

Had the American been on the point of action? Yes, he was now letting his hands return to his thighs, letting his face sag out of its tight folds of expectation. His pale eyes gleamed at her, cold and baffled. She thrust her gun three, four inches farther forward. A sigh emerged from his whole frame. Priabin's face, alerted by her cry, was thin and sour with the knowledge of being cheated.

"Please," she breathed, feeling a wave of tiredness lap at her, not knowing what to do next.

Radio — crackling voice, commanding and urgent.

Walkie-talkie, lying on the scarred, stained wood of the table, bursting into chatter.

Faces moved and shifted expression and purpose. The shadows beat about her head like birds' wings, growing and diminishing as the flame of the lamp was driven by the wind. She shook her head, kept her pistol moving between them. Kedrov's features formed the only still point of the scene as he cowered on the bunk, unable to take advantage, defeated long ago by a forgotten war with himself. Shadows, the doors banging, walkie-talkie.

"No," she said once more. Both men were still, the voice from the walkie-talkie invaded. The American's face finally subsided into the narrow, bitter fury of capture.

"Answer that," Priabin snapped, his pistol reasserting itself, less menacingly, toward the American. Gant—that American, she reminded herself. Priabin added: "It's Serov's voice."

Her hand moved toward the table, she touched the walkie-talkie with her fingertips. It snapped orders at her.

She glanced back at Priabin, afraid.

"Colonel, you were going to—" she blurted.

"Kill him? Easily," Priabin announced in a strange, quiet voice that seemed filled with disappointment. "Don't worry," he said.

Katya paused, then turned away and picked up the walkie-talkie. It was over. Like a nightmare. She had awakened Priabin from it. She shivered, sensing reaction begin. That American — the one who had caused Priabin's mistress to die. Priabin's lover.

"Colonel?" she asked. "What shall I say?"

"He is our prisoner. You will do nothing," Serov's voice insisted amid the crackle of the ether and the noise of* the wind outside. 'This is a GRU matter, not KGB."

Shadows flickered, the thin trail of smoke from the distressed flame of the lamp rolled and split. Kedrov's hands gently covered his head, as if Serov's words rained down like blows. His body quivered. It seemed he had exhausted himself with waiting.

Dogs barked. The American flinched. He was no longer dangerous. Slowly, foggily, he wiped the sleeve of his flying jacket across his forehead, then his eyes. Almost gently, Priabin took the walkie-talkie from her hand. His gray eyes were vague and troubled. They made her feel cold.

"This is Priabin," he snapped, pressing the Transmit button. He kept glancing at the American, then at Kedrov, as if trying to identify them.

She subsided into holding her pistol routinely on Gant; her shiver becoming more pronounced.

Gant stared at Kedrov and felt he was looking into a mirror. The agent's defeat was total, had happened even before he arrived, Gant shivered. Vietnam. The water-filled pit was coming back, crawling around the edge of the barrier his mind had learned to erect against it… the pit, the bamboo stretched like a grid over it, just close enough to touch with his fingertips… the icy water, the howling of other people already dying, the murmur of voices in the chilly darkness, the glint of fires… the water, the water… He began shivering uncontrollably.

The dog's warm body bullied him aside. He heard someone cry out in Russian as he fell against the planking and turned his head to see the open jaws, the pink tongue, the long white teeth of the huge dog. He saw the uniformed man's rifle slung across his chest, heard the dog growling, eager to tear; saw light glinting from its choke chain, and the soldier's grimace of effort to control the animal.

Dmitri Priabin backed away from the dog with as much calm as he could muster, the walkie-talkie in his hand, about to address the inpatient, angry Serov. The dog strained on its leash toward Gant.

"Quiet that damn thing!" he roared, keeping his thumb down on the Transmit button. "Get it out of here, damn you!"

Another GRU man, another dog, almost tumbling down the steps into the cabin. Serov's hard laughter. He waved his hand at them.

"Get out!"

Priabin remembered Rodin, the airline ticket, the flight to Moscow, and saw them all retreating. He was enmeshed in this situation, and when he looked at Gant, watchful and defeated with his arm across his body as if expecting an assault from one or both of the dogs, his rage surged in him again. Anna's face was omnipresent in the room's shadows. He still wanted to kill Gant. Oh, yes, how much he wanted to kill the American who had caused…

The dogs' noises quietened. Their handlers were rebuked by Priabin's uniform and rank; nothing else. The shoulder boards held them on more fragile leashes than the dogs' choke chains. Pink tongues lolled, teeth glinted, saliva specked the planks of the floor.

"Everything's under control here, Serov," he snapped. "And the American is my prisoner." He grinned shakily, but only so long as he looked at Katya, standing hunched next to him, her gun ready for the dogs. When Priabin's gaze fell on Gant, his expression twisted. He shook his head. "Where are you, Serov?"

There was a silence, ether and breathing coming from the walkie-talkie. Then, "Do nothing, Priabin. I'm taking command here."

"Naturally." Priabin forced himself to drawl in an easy, confident manner. "We're waiting. Out."

"Get those damn dogs out of here, both of you," he snapped. "Your boss is on his way." He grinned again, waspishly. "He doesn't like dogs."

The dogs were dragged out, protesting and reluctant. The wind's noise replaced theirs. There was the occasional sound of a whistle outside.

"You're not—?" Katya began.

Priabin had raised his gun once more toward Gant.

"What?" He looked at his hand, at the Makarov. "Dammit, no! he yelled, protesting against his inability to act more than to reassure the woman that he would not do so. His voice and look evidently frightened her. "All right, all right," he soothed. "Serov can have him alive — much good that will do you, Gant."

Gant made no reply, simply shook his head.

Serov came through the banging doors theatrically, urgently. He seemed surprised by the expression on Priabin's face; pleased at the obvious sense of capture the scene displayed. Two armed guards remained in the doorway until Serov placed one of them at Gant's side. Serov pushed the table to one side and stood in the center of the cabin.

"Kedrov, the missing technician," he announced rather than asked, pointing with the glove he had removed. His cheeks were reddened by the night's temperature.

"Kedrov," Priabin agreed formally. "Lieutenant Grechkova here is responsible for his capture."

Serov looked at Katya briefly, nodded as to someone who had brought him a routine report, then turned his gaze from her to Kedrov, then to Gant. Priabin saw that Serov's face was mobile with anticipation.

"How did you—?" Priabin could not help asking.

"We found his helicopter," Serov murmured, pointing at Gant. "A cavalier approach — not really clever." He seemed pleased with Gant's silence, with the drawn expression on his features. "Mm— who is he, Priabin?"

"He's — American."

"Of course. You've established nothing more?"

"I know who my prisoner is, if that's what you mean," Priabin replied. "I know all about him."

Serov turned on him, his eyes dark and angry. He was perhaps two or three inches shorter than Priabin, but broader. His face was set in hard, angular lines and blunt planes. His expression warned. Priabin sensed his own weariness, and a new caution at the back of his mind. Rodin, Lightning—this man knew everything about Lightning and must not so much as suspect that Priabin knew. His thoughts rushed in his head like vertigo. He kept his face expressionless, except for the slightest indication of self-satisfaction, as Serov snapped;

"Then who is he, Priabin — who is he?"

Serov turned away to look at the prisoner, and Priabin said softly: "His name's Mitchell Gant — formerly Major Gant, United States Air Force. Doesn't the name ring a bell, Serov? Not one small bell?"

Serov turned, stung by the insolence of Priabin's voice, his face sharp with anger, his removed glove raised as if to slap at the speaker. Then shock caused his mouth to open soundlessly. Priabin smiled.

"You know him, then?"

"That one?" He whirled around once more. "Him? Hes that American?"

"He is, Serov — oh, yes, he is. They sent him for Kedrov, obviously. They need Kedrov before the treaty is signed."

Serov turned to face Priabin. "How long have you known about him?" he demanded. His voice accused like his eyes.

"It was" — careful! — "accidental," Priabin explained. The heat and tension in the cabin of the houseboat affected him. He sensed Serov's disbelief. "We were looking for drugs. That's how we stumbled across Kedrov."

"Just like that? An American spy you just stumbled across? How much do they know?"

"I'm — not sure. Enough, certainly, to send Gant to collect him."

Serov considered his next words for some moments, then said: "We must get them back. We must know everything the Americans know. You — you're to be congratulated, Priabin — and you, Lieutenant. Both of you. Yes — congratulated. You've saved — the secrecy. The Americans evidently have nothing, otherwise they wouldn't want this bundle of rubbish in the corner. Yes." He turned to Gant and his guard. "Get him outside. Shoot to wound if he doesn't go quietly — quickly, man. You — take this spy with the American. Get moving."

Priabin studied Gant's face. Complete failure was clearly branded on it. All.anger and fear had died. Priabin attempted to feel satisfaction that Gant, though living, was a prisoner with only a brief and violent future before him. The satisfaction would not come.

Rodin. Valery Rodin. Lightning. That was what he had to do now. He had to accompany Serov, make his report, try to leave as quickly as possible. This complicated matters. Damn Serov's stumbling across Gant now. He had to make that Moscow flight in the morning. His head whirled with anxieties. Serov was dangerous, though distracted for the moment by his two prisoners. The weight, the enormity of Lightning, lurched against Priabin's frame as physically as an assault. He had to be calm, and careful, and get to Rodin as soon as he could.

He followed Serov and Katya out of the cabin, ducking his head as he went through the doors. The wind hurled itself at him. The dogs accompanied the prisoners, growling and yapping. Tail-less

Dobermans. Gant and Kedrov were surrounded by armed GRU troops as they were ushered along the rotting jetty. A Mil-8 transport helicopter stood on the ice fifty yards away. Gant had lost, Kedrov had lost.

He had to win. Had to.

Could not, not now—

Priabin gagged, feeling his throat hot with nausea. He pressed his gloved hand over his mouth, tried to swallow; felt his stomach surge again and again with shock, and growing, virulent fear for himself. The lock picks dangled from his other hand, ignored. He tasted sickness, and saliva, then swallowed and tried to calm his body, his sense of his own danger.

When there had been no answer to the bell, to his knocking, he had anticipated something bad, but not this.

Rodin's skin was cold, white-blue. The empty pill bottle lay betrayingly beside the rumpled bed. Priabin did not believe its statement — it was too obvious. So they knew.

He backed away from the bed, withdrew unsteadily from the bedroom, flicking off the lights and turning in one movement, ready to fly the scene. The living room was gray with the morning's first slow, leaking light. The furniture assumed vague contours, a half life. He went to the window from which he had watched Rodin. Scanned the block of flats, the curtained windows, the stained concrete; a light here and there, most of the flats still in darkness. It was six in the morning. Two hours before the Moscow flight left. He had come to collect Rodin and found him dead.

No bruising, but the throat was slightly raw. He knew what had been done and by whom. Serov, Serov, who had seemed willing to credit the KGB with the capture of Gant and Kedrov, seemed careless to detain him, even ordered him home for a well-earned sleep… a bluff heartiness… false, just an act. Katya he'd kept behind like a schoolgirl while she wrote out her report on Kedrov. Himself he'd allowed—

— to come and witness what had been done. Rodin killed easily, quickly, faked to look like suicide.

He was alone with the secret of Lightning. Gant was insignificant, Anna's memory was not apparent anywhere in the cavern of his thoughts. It was only himself, his life — or death — he admitted slowly. He was his only concern. Serov held him in his hand, he already knew everything.

Then get out. Get that flight to Moscow. Get out — now.

Proof?

They would have to listen.

Five after six. Call the airport, check that the flight isn't delayed, then get out. Trap. The thought loomed. Serov's people could already be outside, already on the stairs. He looked out of the window. No, nothing yet. Call the airport.

He picked up the receiver with a gloved hand. After touching Rodin's cold face, his stiff jaw, his neck where there was no pulse, he had replaced his gloves… then the gagging nausea had risen to his throat, minutes after he had entered the apartment.

He was sweating inside his overcoat. The central heating had come on, the flat was warming up. The curtains in the bedroom were open, people would see Rodin lying there and disapprove. Eventually, someone would report his not having moved for hours or days. Draw the curtains across — no, leave everything just as it was, you were never here.

"The Moscow flight," he blurted as soon as the woman at the check-in desk identified herself. Aeroflot. "Is it scheduled to leave at the usual—?"

"No flights will be leaving today."

"Listen," he snapped, knowing the circumstance even before it was explained. "This is Colonel Priabin, KGB. I have a seat reserved on the Moscow flight. What time does it leave?"

"I–I'm sorry, comrade Colonel. All flights have been canceled."

"What?" He looked at his watch. Six-fifteen. Dawn sliding across the carpet like a slow gray tide lapping near his boots. The room constrained him. Already? Already? It shouldn't happen yet.

"The usual emergency, sir. Just been brought forward twenty-four hours. Routine, comrade Colonel. I'm sorry if you—"

"I have the most urgent meeting in Moscow today!" he bellowed.

Frosty tone, then. "I'm sorry, comrade Colonel. We have our orders here."

"Yes, yes. Let me speak to someone in authority, he began to say in his mind, but the order slipped away. It was pointless. "I understand," he said. "Code Green has been initiated a day early. I understand. Thank you." He put down the receiver thoughtfully, his hand moving in a slower, simpler world than his thoughts.

He had to get out. Code Green, the usual security measures surrounding any launch at Baikonur. The whole of the complex became isolated from the rest of the country; no flights in or out, no trains, no radio or telephone contact. But this was twenty-four hours early- This was Serov.

Effectively, he was already bottled up inside the Baikonur complex, cut off from Moscow. There was no other reason than lightning for imposing normal launch security a whole day early; there could be no other reason. He tried to think, to consider rationally, but the effort of it made him more fearful. His body seemed to fill with it; mercury mounting in a thermometer.

He found himself at the bedroom door. His hand flicked on the lights. Soft pink warmth from the bedside lamp shades, Rodin's face still and aristocratic in profile, his limbs easy on the rumpled bed. There was no proof — that had been eradicated.

… remember. It was difficult. He concentrated on the corpse. Remember what? Kedrov and Gant were a huge, blank wall between himself and the recent past. What was there, on the other side, when he had talked to — to this here, on the bed, when it had still lived? What?

… proof, proof, proof…

The tape! He had been wired for sound, it was all on tape! Mikhail had the tape, he had intended taking it to Moscow, they could identify Rodin's voice, surely? It was some kind of proof, it would force them to begin to act.

Mikhail. Priabin glanced at his watch. He'd be at home now, keeping his head down as ordered. Tape—

— flight canceled. No trains, no radio, no telephone. Roads— perhaps the roads. He had only to get as far as the nearest KGB office outside the complex, in — in Aral'sk, two hours, a little more, by car. Six-eighteen, hurry.

The fear would not go away, not even diminish amid the exhibition of imminent action. He left the bedroom door ajar as he had found it, switching off the lights. Rodin's body retreated into shadow, but the corpse was not so distant now, not so removed — he W the boy's voice on tape, he still had Lightning. He hurried into the hallway, carefully opening the front door. The corridor outside w*s empty.

He took the stairs quickly, but not in panic. He did not wish to be remembered, timed, and logged by the janitor, who might be working for Serov.

Outside, the leaking daylight was bleak, and a wind flew into his face. Hurry.

Gennadi Serov regretted leaving Kedrov and the American, even for this journey, this call. They had become the center of the game; the essence of success. Proof that the Americans had no proof, that the whole business was still secure, intact. And Kedrov, with his hanging, victims face, pleased Serov and tempted him. He would gut Kedrov the technician, the spy, like a fish; fillet him with drugs or violence — the method did not matter, only the execution of the thing.

He stepped out of his staff car. The wind tugged a few isolated clouds across the lightening sky. The block of flats appeared shabby, crouched at the side of the highway. Behind him, the road narrowed across the flat country toward the distant gantries and launch towers and radio masts scribbled on the horizon. Smoke hung over Tyuratam to the southeast, other factory complexes smeared the sky with fumes as separate and identifiable as fingerprints left on glass. He studied the flats. A car started up and pulled away from the garages at the rear. It headed west along the highway, its exhaust signaling in the chilly morning air. It passed the low restaurant, the shops, the other blocks of flats.

One of the members of Priabin's surveillance team, who had watched the little bitch Rodin, lived in this block. Serov rubbed his hands together, as if in anticipation of a welcome. He walked rapidly away from the car, motioning his driver and his team in the second car to remain where they were. He waved the walkie-talkie at them to signify his confidence. He pushed open the glass doors of the block, entered its carpeted lobby. Thin nylon carpet, but carpet. Security people, some technicians, factory managers lived there. They qualified for lobby carpet, for two bedrooms each in some cases, and for proximity to a beriozhka shop, where they could buy "luxuries," and a restaurant. And cars — quite a number of them parked in front of the flats, more in the garages behind. There was also a janitor, who indicated Serov's presence by tactfully ignoring it, having identified the uniform and the rank.

The elevator door opened. Graffiti on the walls like a challenge to him, harmless though it was. Some driveling, misspelled protestation of love, another of sex; some comment on a soccer team, 00 the army. He ascended to the third floor.

A woman in the corridor, coming out of the door he wanted, saying good-bye to her friend. A drab, frightened, worn woman, & if recently bereaved, two children with lost faces, the small boy still eating a slice of toast. Jam on his cheek. He let the woman and her children pass, studied the door the woman opened, read the name of the occupants — Zhikin — smiled.

He realized the other woman was watching him. Hardly alarmed, more curious. He touched the peak of his cap with the glove he held in his hand.

"Your husband — Officer Mikhail Shubin — is. he at home?" he asked with brisk authority.

"Comrade Colonel, I—" the woman began. His tone had not been intended to disarm, and it had not done so. Her eyes were alert, shadowed with the expectation of concern.

"You must know," Serov insisted. "My name is Serov. GRU commandant here," he added carelessly. "I wish to speak with your husband."

He had already moved close to her. He could smell bedclothes still, and cooking. Cigarette smoke, too. He was allowed to all but pass her before she squeezed against him and they walked almost comically down the linoleumed corridor toward the flat's kitchen, close together, as if he held her in the crook of one arm. Serov was amused as she seemed to wish to scamper ahead, warn—

— Shubin, it had to be him, was sitting tousle-haired at the foldaway table erected against one wall of the cramped kitchen. Coffee steamed in front of him, the stove steamed with something boiling — eggs perhaps? Serov recorded the details with the eye of a painter. Cracked and discolored linoleum on the floor, a child seated on Shubin's lap, rolling a small toy car across the morning's copy of Pravda open on the tablecloth. Cloth — clean, too, and not oilcloth or newspaper. Precisely, Serov noted the fine gradations that would have told him, had he not already known, the rank, income, privileges of the man at the table. Condensation from the boiling water covered the window. The woman moved to the saucepan — yes, Serov could hear eggs bumping softly against its metal — and turned down the gas.

"Mikhail," she began in a remonstrative tone, then continued, Colonel Serov."

Shubin placed the child on the table. One of his large hands held the toy car, the other rubbed his head. His eyes, however, were furtive and quick. Serov felt pleasure rise as tangibly as the steam in the kitchen.

"Comrade Colonel," Mikhail acknowledged, nodding his head almost in what might have been a bow. "What can I—?"

Serov held up his hand, sitting immediately at the table. Shubin collected his child in his arms, and he, too, sat down. The eggs stopped tapping against each other and the sides of the saucepan. The woman tended them with concentration; placed slices of bread on the grill pan, slid it noisily under the gas, which she lit with a plop—

— which made Shubin's hand jump. Serov thought of Viktor Zhikin's widow two doors away, and her children, and considered the eventual, inevitable absence of this man from this scene.

"Shubin, I won't beat about the bush, I'll come straight to the point," he announced, clearing his throat, laying his gloves on the table, near the now ignored toy car.

"Coffee, Colonel?" the woman asked from her position at the stove.

"Thank you. Black."

Shubin lit a cigarette. Puffed at it nervously. Serov felt Priabin must have confided in the man, or there was a record of what was said — and there'd been a warning, too. The strain of appearing calm was creasing Mikhail's face into hard, tight lines. He smoothed his hair again where the boy's hands had disturbed it; as if waiting for an interview. He needed to feel tidy. Serov glanced very obviously at the man's felt slippers, at the bottoms of his pajama trousers, at the robe. All weaknesses, disadvantages. Serov all but sighed aloud, anticipating the ease with which he would obtain what he wanted.

A kettle boiled, further clouding the window. The woman brought his coffee, in a cup, unpatterned but china, not in a mug like her husband was using.

"Sugar?"

He raised one hand to refuse. Shubin swallowed coffee quickly. Then Serov said: "You and one of your fellow officers maintained surveillance on a certain apartment in the old town until the early hours of this morning — that is correct?"

Shubin swallowed. He had a prominent Adam's apple, which bobbed as he swallowed his renewed fear. He attempted to shake his head. The little boy had picked up his toy, and one of Serov's gloves. Serov reached out and held the child's hand; removed the glove and squeezed the hand as he held it. The child uttered a cry, perhaps of surprise. He dropped the toy in his father's lap. It fell onto the floor. Shubin held the child wonderingly, staring at him as if at some unexpected piece of information. Then his wife snatched the boy up and soothed him. Kissing the squeezed hand.

"Answer, why don't you?" Serov prompted, sipping his coffee. The woman retreated to the window with the child; they became less important than silhouettes, except that the woman would hear and understand every word. Her presence made the filleting process easier, in this case. It was always easier to break subjects of interrogation when you could hint at futures that might darken. "Well?"

"I — comrade Colonel, you should speak to Colonel Priabin, my commanding officer."

Serov s hand banged the table. Coffee splashed, and the cloth and the newspaper were stained. At the instant he began to shout, Serov heard Shubin's feet moving the discarded toy on the linoleum.

"Your commanding officer may possibly turn out to be a traitor! I am talking to you, Shubin — do you understand me? To you!"

The boy wailed in the ensuing silence. Serov heard the woman calming him, and raised his hand to warn her as she tried to take the child from the kitchen. Shubin's face was ashen.

"I, sir, I—

"You were following orders, Shubin. I realize that. Now, you simply follow my orders. What happened between them?"

"I don't know, sir. Really I don't."

"A tape, man. Don't tell me comrade Colonel Priabin talked to Lieutenant Rodin without being wired? Are you that sloppy in the KGB out here?" Serov shook his head in mock reproof. "Of course not. Now, what did they say to each other?"

Again, the woman tried to leave the kitchen, the boy in her arms. Serov raised his hand once more; and saw Shubin shake his head vigorously, warning her to remain where she was.

"Well?" Serov whispered, sipping the last of the coffee, careful that the sleeve of his overcoat did not touch the wet tablecloth.

"My family, sir—"

"Quite."

"If I—"

"Not if, when. And when is now. At once. You have no alternative. Oh, get on with it, Shubin."

"Sir, there was a tape."

"Yes?"

"We — I mean, we weren't monitoring….." Shubin seemed to retreat from Serov's enquiring, exploratory gaze. It was true, Serov decided. The man had a tape, but hadn't listened in, knew little or nothing. Not that it mattered. He would be destroyed, along with Priabin and the others, as soon as Lightning was under way. Perhaps he could even be allowed to live. His knowledge would be irrelevant, once Lightning had happened. Priabin, of course, would have to go. "We know nothing, comrade Colonel Serov."

"Why was Lieutenant Rodin placed under surveillance? No, sit down, you can get me the tape in a moment. It is here, I take it?" Shubin nodded. Serov stretched his feet under the table; encountered the toy car and placed his foot on it. He gently applied pressure, and felt the cheap tin begin to give under his heel. 'Tell me," he encouraged. Shubin picked up his disregarded cigarette and puffed at it. "I want to know what's been going on here, for the past couple of weeks. A general's son under surveillance? A GRU officer under surveillance by the KGB? Very irregular. Yes — out with it, then. Everything."

Everything offended him deeply, with a separate, sharp shock for each recognition of his son's — sybaritic life-style. Quickly, as if for the purposes of healing, anger erupted and grew to replace the constriction in his throat that he understood to be grief. Yet this, this—

— these garments, behind the louvered doors of the built-in closets. Garish colors, silk, narrow leather trousers, the shirts more like women's blouses, the shoes, even the slippers that hinted at decadence, the bathrobes and the dressing gowns — each item offended him even as he continued his helpless inventory of his son's wardrobe. He felt anger becoming nausea. He kept his back to the room, to the bed. This was no man's wardrobe, no soldier's wardrobe, and he could not escape that judgment, that condemnation, not even when his vision dimmed. He sniffed loudly. The insistent cliches did not seem irrelevant or superannuated by his discovery. He clung to them, even as his hands, veins standing proud, gripped the edges of the louvered doors.

He uttered a strangled growl that he did not himself understand, and slammed the doors together so that they almost keeled from their runners. He could not look into that — mirror into his son's private life any longer. He turned to the bed. He had thrown a bedspread over Valery's limbs, but could not bear to cover his face-But the anger coursed, even now, even as he looked at the body-His son — his son. To live and die like this—

On the dressing table — no, on the carpet now — some of the bot-ties broken, the stench of the perfumes heady in the dry, silent room — the aftershaves, the colognes, even the makeup. General Lieutenant Rodin gagged at the image, at the smears of eye shadow and lipstick that his angry, violent bootsteps had produced on the carpet. As if he had wanted to grind each item out of sight, crush the images each evoked.

He turned his head from his son's cold features, almost regretting that he had shut the sliding doors of the closet; needing visual stimuli to sustain the anger he knew had arisen to conceal feelings he wished not to recognize. He strode from the bedroom without looking over his shoulder and entered the bathroom. Flung open the wall cabinets. Creams, makeup, powders, and — the drugs. The silver spoon on its thin silver chain like — like a medal, for heaven's sake! Worn like a medal.

He snatched up a handful of small packets. White powder. He ripped and tugged at the plastic of the packets, covering, his hands with the powder like an untidy cook flinging flour; ran the tap, washed his hands, washed the drugs away.

Fear had driven him here. Fear for — for Valery, yes, but fear of Serov. Fear on behalf of Valery — only to find, to find…

He grunted like a very old man, asthmatically. His head hung on his chest, as if he were on the point of vomiting. His arms were shaking as he leaned on his knuckles over the washbasin. He felt hatred surging in his body, shaking it like a fever. Hatred of Valery, of these creams and powders and colors and drugs that filled his thoughts; the perfumes that seeped from the bedroom and were released from these cabinets. He had not been able to sleep, but it was not the launch that had filled his restless mind, not even Lightning; his son, instead. Robbing him of needed sleep, robbing him of all anticipation of success. And now, now he had seen into his son's — soul. He'd opened cabinets, drawers, closets, and seen his son's private world mock him.

Why had Valery done it? Why? What fear had it been, what ache or despair? The concealed fluorescent lighting hummed softly. He could not look at his face in the mirror; lit from above, it would have been too naked, too old. Why? What had he been afraid of?

Love? He sobbed aloud, as if at sacrilege. The idea appalled him, hut he could not resist it; it was as if someone were whispering Insistently in his ear. Love? He groaned, staring at the water still Winning into the basin. The mirror was steaming up. He inhaled the heat as if trying to cure himself of a cold. Love? Impossible — for that actor? For him, for that kind of love?

There v/as no sense of self-blame, no tint of self-condemnation in his thoughts. The KGB colonel, Serov, that pathetic little homosexual actor — as if different in persuasion from Valery — all of them had played their parts in this, in what Valery had done to himself. All of them.

Eventually, his body calmed, the bathroom filled with steam from the wasted hot water; he left the bathroom and entered the living room. He picked up the telephone.

An ambulance. Without explanation. The boy's mother would have to be told. It would break her heart, the heart secreted from him, spent extravagantly like a windfall inheritance on her son— yes, it would break her heart. But, that was duty, and easy. He would inform her as soon as…

He dialed, staring out of the wide living room window at the cold sunlight seeping down the stained concrete of the building opposite.

Dmitri Priabin shivered, as if in a fevers spasm, and clutched his arms, wrapping them around him. He leaned his weight against the side of the car. He could not stop shaking. Couldn't.

She was watching him from a window of the flat. Wouldn't let him in, pretended that Mikhail wasn't there, had gone out, didn't know when he'd be back. Then, reality breaking through the hesitant lies, she'd cried out from behind the thin front door—go away, get away from us, leave us alone, for God's sake leave us alone, can't you?

Apart from the crying child, Priabin had sensed Mikhail close behind the door. The woman's sobbing became muffled as if she were crying into someone's chest. He had banged on the door, even though he had already accepted her plea. The banging had brought Viktor's wife — widow — to her door, along the corridor. She had looked at him with what he could only perceive as accusation. She had not spoken, simply stared, then retreated behind her door, where there was a muffled hushing of curious children.

… go away, we can't help you, go away, sir…

He had not even challenged the words, simply accepted the fear with which they were uttered.

… has the tape, sir, please go away…

He had nothing. The cold sunlight glanced from the car's chrome. He could not stop shaking. Only Serov could have frightened Mikhail and his wife that much. They hadn't even used his name, as if in fear of its invocatory powers. Don't name the Devil and he won't come. But it had to be Serov, who now had the tape and knew the whole game, knew that Priabin knew about Lightning.

And Dmitri Priabin knew, with absolute certainty, that Serov had had Valery Rodin put to death like a farm animal taken to an abattoir. He had always known it, of course; this was the confirmation. Serov would have Mikhail removed, just like Viktor, and he would remove — yes, his head nodding violently in agreement with the sharp, brutally clear picture in his mind, yes, Serov would have him killed too.

His fear narrowed. Serov was his enemy; it was Serov he had to evade — and frustrate. He had already attempted to radio, and to use the telephone, both without success. Code Green was fully operational, and Baikonur was severed from the rest of the Soviet Union. He could contact neither Moscow Center nor the nearest KGB offices in the town of Aral'sk, less than a hundred miles to the northwest. He could only—

— go there, go to Aral'sk; break out of the security net spread over Baikonur, and use the high-speed transmission equipment, even the telephone link, from Aral'sk to the Center. Without proof, without a shred of tangible evidence? Go, go now, he tried to tell himself; and heard a part of him reply, just a moment, in another minute, not just yet.

Get in the car.

In another moment, when I feel stronger… get in the car, they may be watching Mikhail's place, waiting for you to collect the tape.

The thought had not occurred to him, not even dimly, until then. He tried to make himself not stare wildly around at parked cars, at windows. Got into the Volga, gripped the wheel with both hands to still them in their renewed tremor. Saw the windshield fog with the heat of his tension. Looked through its cloudiness, looked through the rear window, checked the side windows after switching on the engine and shifting into first gear, so that he appeared only to be checking for traffic before pulling out; checked again, then once more.

Saw…

Checked carefully. Two shadows in a small, anonymous car, fawn-color, a Polish-built Fiat or something like it. A car easily ignored. Exhaust puffed like hasty breathing from its rear. Just then, it had not had its engine running. They had known he would come, they had waited.

One chance now, he realized, his knuckles white from his grip on the wheel, his stomach churning again. One chance to get out— bluff… or maybe there weren't roadblocks and barriers yet. Maybe…

He accelerated, but not too violently, pulling away from the flats and out onto the almost deserted highway that ran between the river and the railway line west and then northwest. At its end, beyond Aral'sk and Orenburg and Kuibyshev and Ryazan was Moscow — fifteen hundred miles away. His heart, still beating wildly, seemed to lurch in his body. He swallowed dryly and tried to concentrate on Aral'sk. He need only reach Aral'sk… you don't have to go farther, just as far as Aral'sk…

Where would the checkpoints be? Telegraph wires scalloped between poles accompanied him, paralleling the empty railway track. Below him, to his left, now that the buildings were set down like randomly scattered lumps and blocks, he could see the frozen river in its shallow valley; gray and imprisoned.

Where would they stop him? Because stop him they would. The fawn car followed with an almost leisurely certainty. Priabin's mind, though his eyes darted and flitted across the topography, was without its own familiar landscape. His position was unique in his adult experience; it was that of — of a criminal. The hunted. His thoughts were shapeless and gloomy. He did not know what to do in this situation. He simply had no experience of being anything other than a man of rank and authority. He'd worn his officialdom like clothes, like his own skin, for years. And now it was gone, stripped away like old paint from wood. What did he do now, for God's sake?

The highway ahead of him narrowed to a point at the vague, uncertain horizon, almost invisible because of the flatness of the country. He passed a restaurant where he had once eaten with Viktor and his wife, a garage, a dirty, weed-filled place, the grass stiffly upright and icebound, where the building plots had never received their designated houses or factories; then there was openness that was oppressive, stretched ahead, surrounded him. Nothing but—

— Novokazalinsk, he told himself suddenly, with an audible grunt. That's where Code Green's maximum-security perimeter was always set to the west, on this highway. Dear God, why hadn't he even been able to remember that until now? It was as if his mind were frozen solid, like the river down there. Ducks waddled across the ice, but otherwise his surroundings were lifeless. A hut amid scattered trees, smoke straggling from an iron chimney; beyond the railway track, the marsh country was beginning, clumps and islets of trees, tall grass and sedge. The fawn car was still in his mirror. Above the road, the pale sky was empty; so featureless it might have been rushing away behind him, and always fleeing ahead of him, making him appear unmoving… no, some geese provided a false horizon, straggled across the sky like a hurried autograph as they flew toward the marshes. If only he could fly!

He kept his speed to fifty, even though his nerves jangled and bullied him to flee. He had to pretend, had to go on with the illusion that he was in no hurry, that this was routine. He had to — for the sake of hope, and his nerves.

A helicopter enlarged beyond the geese, moving along the highway, perhaps two hundred feet above it. Routine patrol. The geese diminished in the distance to his right, still indecipherable. Passing over abandoned launch towers, power cables, the tiny tilted cups of radar dishes. Far to the north, beyond the geese, the sticklike antennae and gantries of the principal military launch complex suggested a horizon. Ahead of him, there was nothing. He looked at his odometer. He'd done five miles — Christ, only five? — and there were another forty-five to Novokazalinsk.

He felt worn. The black helicopter had become gray-bellied, green-mottled, somehow less sinister as it floated above him and passed eastward toward Tyuratam. Yet there was no relief in its lack of special interest in him. Glancing at the map that he had half opened on the passenger seat had been a mistake. There were roads everywhere around Leninsk-Kuznetskiy and Tyuratam and the other towns and villages. But where he was heading — in fact toward the perimeter in any direction — roads narrowed, straggled, disappeared, merged. They needed perhaps no more than a dozen barriers to seal off the whole of the vast Baikonur complex from the rest of the Soviet Union; just so long as they stopped the trains and the planes, as they had done.

Plane, light aircraft. He felt sick as he remembered. During a Code Green the previous year, a light aircraft had strayed into maximum-security airspace and been shot down without challenge or apology or warning. Baikonur was a place of logic, of inescapable necessity. Things were not weighed, simply laid down in orders and regulations and systems. One huge steel box whose lid could be slammed shut at a moment's notice. Had been.

Fifty-five. Priabin eased his foot on the accelerator. The Volga's heater seemed more inefficient than usual; he was chilly, even within his overcoat. His forehead was cold with drying perspiration. The fawn car could be seen in the mirror. The helicopter had disappeared. He glanced at the car's clock. Nine-seven teen — three hours since he had been in Valery Rodin's bedroom, since he had found the boy's body, three wasted hours. Telephone, radio, trying to contact the Center — he'd known almost at once he wouldn't get through, but he'd gone on trying, arguing, hoping.

Just to find himself on this road, tailed by the GRU, knowing that the security of Code Green had bottled him up. He would get only as far as Novokazalinsk and no farther. It was like a brick wall with which he was destined to collide.

He thought of the main hangar and the shuttle craft and the laser battle station as pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle on the point of completion, missing only the last few segments of the pattern that was Lightning in all its enormity. He ground his teeth. He could do nothing, nothing.

Fifty-eight. He slowed the car without thinking. Nine-nineteen. Ten miles from the flats now, perhaps forty more to go. Why bother? Forty more.

He hardly thought about Gant. Strangely, the American was reduced to insignificance now. Serov had Gant. Gant was as good as dead. Perhaps he hadn't ever wanted revenge, then? No, he had, just never expected the opportunity — and now, now he had himself to think of.

False horizon, very close. Against the narrowing road, a group of black silhouettes against the pale sky. The cars were carelessly disposed across the road, there were converging lines of red and white cones, even a barrier. One truck, men in yellow overblouses laying the cones out, military cars — four of those — and the coffee stand parked at the side of the highway, a shabby gray caravan with a side window and a ledge. Men near that, too. Men in the road, cones, barrier, truck, cars, overcoats, uniforms, guns…

Brick wall. Collision. His body felt jolted, shocked by something as real as physical impact. Not Novokazalinsk, then. Here. They were waiting just for him, Serov's GRU people.

The fawn car slowed, maintaining its distance behind him. One of the officers ahead was waving his arms to emphasize the paraphernalia and authority of the temporary arrangements on the highway. Priabin knew his journey was over. He stopped the Volga, fifteen hundred miles away from Moscow Center.

12: Solitary Confinement

Kedrov's form, strapped into the chair, seemed tense and resentful, struggling to defy the questions that buzzed and murmured around his head. Veins stood out on his arms and the backs of his hands where they gripped the padded arms of the black chair. Veins on his temples, too. Fierce concentration, the effort of denial, furrowed his brow. He was as taut as an overwound spring and yet utterly helpless. The contradiction amused Serov, satisfied him in a way he did not analyze; never analyzed. Only Kedrov's lips and tongue seemed involuntary agents. The willpower being suggested by his whole frame was absent from his mouth. He could not help himself answering the questions of the interrogation team.

Of course, the pupils of Kedrov's eyes were unnaturally open, considering he was facing the window. His eyes were too bright, with a stare that reminded Serov of utter disbelief—how can this be happening? — as it always did during such drug-assisted interrogations—why am I talking? I don't want to talk. Such involuntariness, such childlike, babyish inability and weakness was always — what? Satisfying to watch? Yes. He possessed Kedrov and the American, he had robbed them of everything, even will. In Kedrov's case, he controlled the man's mind.

Serov rubbed his chin. It was smooth from a recent shave. The landscape of his thoughts was open, rolling, sunny; he could see a great distance from the promontory of his successes that night. Rodin, Kedrov, the American pilot, whose story he had learned from that clown Adamov, discovered tied up in the Hind's main cabin. The pieces had fallen like lucky cards. Serov was confident, even eager. Priabin, too, would soon come entirely within his orbit. Then it would be finished with.

There was a trace of excitement in him, like a strange liquor moving through his stomach. But it was a sober sensation. When there was time, the American would be gutted, emptied of everything he knew — and he would know a great deal — while Priabin would disappear. Kedrov, of course, would meet the fate of a spy and traitor once he had confessed.

"… long have you been spying for the Americans, Kedrov?"

"What did you tell them?"

"How much do they know?"

"… send your signals?"

"Orlov…?"

Serov watched Kedrov's face attempt control around the mouth that no longer belonged to him. His voice stuttered like a cold engine, then the spy began to helplessly condemn himself, spilling his answers like water from a leaky bucket.

"… bicycle shop… don't understand? American equip-quip-ment…"

One of his people, standing behind the straining Kedrov, shrugged with the ease of the interrogation. Serov nodded slightly, condescending to share the man's amusement. Sunlight fell coldly on the sweating, straining man in the chair, his whole body thrust forward against the restraint of the straps.

"… every, every week — don't, can't — remember…told them, told them — no, told, no! — told them when, when… arrived from Semipal, pal, pala — tin… sk….." The sweat was soaking his shirt, running on his face as if he had just plunged his head under a pump. … know — know no… nothing, everything….."

"Tell us what they know, in every detail."

"Do they know dates, times?"

And so it would go on. Not long now. Serov looked at his watch. Nine-forty. Kedrov was like a tooth where all the enamel and even the soft inner had been drilled through; they were down to the nerve. He'd told them almost everything, it was all on tape.

"Lightning?" he snapped, impatience disturbing him, spoiling his sense of satisfaction. "Kedrov, what do you know about Lightning? What have you told the KGB about Lightning?"

Kedrov did not even look in his direction, but continued to stare as if he could see nothing ahead of him. But he spoke almost immediately, answering Serov.

"… noth — not asked, nothing, told him — don't know noth— know, know. Heard — in the shithouse… heard, heard, told noth, nothing….." His voice babbled on, his will a tiny, shrunken ball kicked around between the questioners. He could not help himself.

Priabin knew from Rodin, then, only from Rodin. Another tiny jigsaw puzzle piece that fitted satisfactorily. He rubbed his chin once more, after indicating that he had no further questions. Besides, it was becoming too routine, he was losing interest.

Nine-fifty. He looked up — not really looking at Kedrov anymore or even listening to the questions and answers, but half sunk in a vague reverie — and one of his lieutenants beckoned to him. He mouthed urgency, even as his eyes surveyed the room, and his nose wrinkled at its scents and odors.

Serov indicated that the interrogation should continue, and moved to the door.

"What is it?" he snapped, closing the door on Kedrov's babble.

"Comrade General Rodin — he's here!" For a moment, Serov could not understand the cause of the lieutenant's concern, even surprise. Then he remembered.

"Calm down. You know nothing. If you can't keep your face straight, stay out of his sight. Understand?" Rubbish — he always had rubbish to deal with. This one, part of the team that had removed Rodin, and worried as soon as the little shit's father shows up. For Jesus' sake! "Where is the general?"

"In your office, sir."

"Very well — oh, go and get yourself a cup of coffee, man. And stop filling your trousers. It's over and done with. Go on."

Serov waved him away and turned to the stairs. One flight up, why wait for the elevator? He composed his features to a mask of enthusiasm and success as he climbed the stairs. A window showed him the square, and the Cosmonaut Hotel on its other side. Traffic, normality, sunlight, cobbles, and statuary. When he entered his office, he must appear to greet Rodin with the news of Kedrov's successful interrogation. Rodin's news would — must — be like a douche of cold water thrown over that enthusiasm. Yes.

He mounted the half-flight of steps, leaving the view of the square. A patrolling helicopter had buzzed above it like a fat bee. He paused for a moment outside his office door, then went in. His male secretary nodded toward the inner office. Serov entered the room, his face bright.

"General, Kedrov is spilling everything he knows," he began, crossing the thick carpet. Rodin was standing near the window, looking out across the square. "The Americans obviously know, but they have no proof, none at—" He paused, measuring his reaction as carefully as some dangerous chemical, then said: "General, what is the matter? You — don't look well. Please—" He indicated a chair. Rodin's face was ashen, as if he, too, had newly adopted a mask, one of pain and grief. He'd seen his son's body. "What is it, General? What is it?"

Rodin held his wrist tightly, perhaps for more than mere support.

"Valery," was all he said.

"Your son, General. Yes, what is the matter?"

"My son is dead."

Rodin would not let go of Serov's arm, thus he could not move that dramatic half-step away from the old man. His features were in closeup; Rodin was inspecting them searchingly. Yet there was something blank about his eyes, like those of the drugged Kedrov.

"Dead? I don't understand."

Rodin's eyes studied him as carefully as the fingers of a blind person identifying braille. Serov produced shock, concern, sympathy. Then Rodin let go of his wrist and turned back to the window.

"Suicide," he whispered. Serov's frame relaxed. He was surprised at his own tension.

"Suicide? How can you—

"I saw him!" Rodin wailed. "I found him, earlier." He turned back to Serov. "Who? Why?" Careful, careful, Serov thought, this is the moment. "What made him do it? Who is responsible?" There had been nothing, no trace of honest expression for Rodin to witness. He turned away once more. Sunlight haloed his form. "Was it you, Serov?" "I?"

"Hounding that actor, getting rid of him? Or that KGB colonel? Who was it?"

"Your son was being questioned, perhaps pressured—"

"This man Priabin." Rodin growled. "What does he want? Why is he — was he interested in Valery? This — drugs business?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps something else."

Rodin turned quickly. "Lightning? I can't believe—"

"Who knows what he suspects, General?"

"Then find out."

"Arrest him?"

"If necessary. If he, if he…" His voice cracked and he turned to the window. There was no color, not even anger, in his features. "Find out, Serov. Find out if he was responsible."

"Of course, General."

"I want — my son will be flown back to Moscow, and he will receive a full military funeral. Is that understood? You will make the necessary arrangements. There will be no breath of any — irregularities. He died — in the course of duty. Duty. Do you understand?"

"Completely, General."

"I want to know, Serov, whether that man was responsible for my son's suicide."

"You will, General."

There was silence, then, for a long time. Serov quietly moved to his desk. Rodin continued to stare out of the window. There was a new kind of frailty about the slope of his shoulders, about the way in which his head seemed cocked to one side. Serov glanced through the reports on his desk.

Afghanistan? He read the sheet quickly. That's how… he couldn't have made it. They'd shot down his tanker helicopter, evidently, which fitted with Adamov's ridiculous story of filling the tanks of the Hind at a gas station near the Amu Darya. Serov smiled. The American had come on, hadn't given up. How desperate the Americans must be for proof, how desperate.

He looked up. Rodin was staring at him.

"Now," he said. "I want to see this American—the American." His voice was younger now, his face reaffirmed in habitual lines and planes.

"Of course."

"What condition is he in?"

'Tired and beaten. Defeated, General, not assaulted."

"Psychological assessment?"

"Tough. He will take — time."

"And he was entirely alone?"

'Their last, desperate throw of the dice, General. I'm certain of it. They know, but they are impotent without proof. That's why they had to have Kedrov instead of just leaving him to stew."

"Your search for other Americans has not been abandoned?"

"No, it's continuing. But I'm sure—

"Very well." Rodin sighed, but choked off the sound, as if it threatened to remind him of unrelated things. "Then Lightning is safe. But this man, this KGB colonel — he might talk?"

"To whom, General? Code Green is initiated. He's cut off — inside the fortress, so to speak. He can't communicate with anyone outside. "

"Arrest him anyway," Rodin snapped. "Arrest Priabin at once."

President John Calvin paused at the top of the passenger steps of Air Force One and waved once more to the television cameras and the rows and clumps of dazzling flashbulbs. He quashed all sense of the masquerade that had assailed him during the drive from the White House to Andrews AFB. Even as he had prepared himself for this interrogation — this challenge — by camera, he had been as unfamiliar with his role as an actor bereft of his script. But adrenaline was flowing now, he could play the part expected of him. He could smile, and wave, and brush at his gray hair as it was lifted and distressed by the breeze. His pale cheeks would be the result of the chill, nothing more. His tired eyes would, on TV and in the newspapers, seem concerned, filled with the gravity of the occasion rather than its awful emptiness.

He waved, suitably serious. The sharp tip of his raincoat collar tapped stingingly against his cheek as the wind blew it. As if trying to wake him from the dreamlike role-playing. Flashbulbs burst out afresh, and he wanted to shout that they had enough pictures to last a lifetime and… He smiled at the cameras. The First Lady was already aboard. Remsburg, the secretary of state, was aboard, Dick Gunther, too; his advisers, his press secretary. Everyone — the whole pack of liars and actors.

He had made his speech without a stumble or uncalculated pause; but it had wearied him. My fellow Americans, on Thursday, we shall make history… Mockery. Calvin nodded toward the bottom of the passenger steps, at Miles Coltrane, his vice-president, who grinned and suddenly raised his hands, clasped together, in a signal of triumph, like a champion boxer might have given. Like shaking dice, Calvin thought. Miles, you re maybe a better actor than I am. Then Coltrane saluted him and backed away as the ground crew approached the ladder. Calvin looked out over the cameras toward the roped-back crowd, already being shunted farther from the runway. A sea of featureless blobs — black and brown and white faces… My fellow Americans, I leave you to engage upon the greatest betrayal of my country any American citizen has ever contemplated or achieved… He waved once more and stepped back off the passenger steps, ducking his tall frame to pass into the interior of Air Force One.

Uniforms, civilian clothes, salutes, and acknowledgments. His wife's pale, relieved features. He patted her shoulder, then passed her seat, toward Remsburg and Gunther.

He understood their expressions, as clearly as if they were miming for his benefit.

"Nothing — nothing at all?" he snapped, waving his hand at the huge map table in the center of the aircraft's main section. He did not even look down at its surface. Both men seemed surprised at the persistence of optimism.

"It's twelve hours now, Mr. President," Gunther began. The CIA director had joined them like a man uncertain of his reception. His face was drawn, his eyelids heavy with lack of sleep. Calvin looked at him with the distaste he suspected he might show toward a mirror at that moment.

"Twelve hours. And you know nothing more than you did then? What the hell is happening over there?"

The operators and technicians manning the command center studiously avoided the small group around the map table. Senior officers hovered, as if out of their natural element. Calvin saw his wife, Danielle, watching him as if for signs of exertion or illness. Rings flashed on the pale, long fingers of the hand that rested on the seat. The aircraft's captain hovered, too, another frivolous uniform.

"There's been no signal — no nothing, sir," the director offered. Remsburg's heavy jowls quivered as he shook his head in solemn negation. Gunther merely shrugged.

"Then I don't have anything?"

"You could try to challenge Nikitin when you meet before the signing — bargain with the guy," Gunther murmured. "Stall for time — pretend we know what's happening. Maybe even go on TV and call his bluff?"

"They'd fry me, Dick, and you damn well know that." Calvin looked over their heads, then snapped at the captain: "For Christ's sake, let's get this show on the road, Colonel." The aircraft's captain flinched, then saluted. Calvin shuddered. Already, they would be beginning to despise him. He couldn't stall for time, not even that. No one, no one in the whole damn world would stand for it. "OK, OK — let's take our seats."

As he sat down next to Danielle and patted her hand — which reached for his but which he would not take and hold — he glanced through the window. The crowd was at an anonymous distance now, hardly distinguishable in the flashing darkness, yet he felt their pressure on him just as surely as if they had surged against the fuselage. He looked into his wife's face. It was drawn, the fine lines around her eyes and mouth were emphasized. He wanted to flee into a contemplation only of her.

Without proof, he could not delay. Without proof…

The engine note changed, and he felt the restraint of the brakes. He swallowed, as if fearing air sickness or an accident during takeoff. Danielle grabbed his hand. He felt the impression of one of her rings; it had turned on her narrow finger and dug into his flesh.

He looked out of the window. Coltrane could still be picked out. He'd been called Uncle Tom by some militant blacks when he agreed to become part of the Calvin ticket. What would they call him now, a party to this deal? He turned back to his wife and attempted to grin. The Inauguration Ball came back suddenly, ambushing him with triumph. Her smile, her pleasure for him that night, amid the whirl of people and the endless handshaking and backslapping and the glittering chandeliers and the brisk waiters and the deals beginning to be struck and the lobbyists to meet. But the success of it, the winning! Now its fragmented scenes merely made him dizzy—

— like his Inauguration speech, recollected in its most strident and hollow fragments, which now made him want to retch. A time of hope… I pledge this administration to work unceasingly, with every nerve and sinew, in the cause of peace… a planet fouled and desecrated with nuclear weapons… a time of opportunity… on the edge of the abyss we might also be at the border of a Promised Land… our children… a time of hope, time of…

He shook his head savagely, as if to countermand the aircraft's first movements. He must meet Nikitin tomorrow — he glanced at his watch—today, Wednesday. It was twelve-ten on Wednesday morning. Today. In Geneva. Twenty-four hours before the signing ceremony, and he could not stall or bluff or call Nikitin to show his cards, because if he did, the Russian president would act up his outrage and go directly on TV to challenge him to explain to a desperate world why he wouldn't sign the treaty the billions of inhabitants of the planet were waiting for…

… all day, on TV screens around the world, they'd have seen the wire being cut and rolled away, that obscenity of a Berlin Wall being dismantled, the bombers going into mothballs and the aircraft carriers in dry dock; the missiles being loaded aboard flatcars and being taken home under joint military supervision. Calvin remembered his own particular desire to see the sleek, black-backed dolphinlike submarines coming home, rendezvousing off the East Coast, from Maine to Florida, emerging like a forgotten and terrible army from beneath the sea. So many of them — the Trident force, the deterrent — rising out of distressed white water…

… intended as a final symbol and gesture of peace. Every U.S. submarine on the surface, identifiable and heading home.

Twelve noon. Twenty-four hours before the shuttle was to be launched — no, twenty-eight, Priabin corrected himself feverishly, with inordinate self-criticism for his error. It was to coincide with the signing in Geneva, and Baikonur was — it was twenty-nine hours! Baikonur was four hours ahead of Geneva; the launch was to take place tomorrow afternoon. He rubbed his hand through his already disheveled hair, in reaction to the strange, distracting panic of his concern over time. Time, after all, was irrelevant.

Katya, he saw, was watching his every movement; like a faithful dog or an animal ready to spring, he did not know. The dog itself was oblivious, untidily heaped near the radiator. Katya had returned him — when? Half an hour ago — before she was aware of Lightning. A time of innocence.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "Sorry I told you. I shouldn't have. I've endangered you."

Katya shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she murmured; evidently it did. She did blame him for imparting his secret to her. Sunlight fell across his desk, across her pale hands as she twisted them together on the edge of the desk; across her denims where she had crossed her legs at the knee; across the carpet to the toes of his boots as he stood staring into the blank square of the window, fuzzy in his vision. "It doesn't matter now."

He moved to her and gripped her shoulder. She flinched. "It does matter," he muttered through clenched teeth. "That's the bloody trouble — it does matter, more than anything else."

She looked up at him almost wildly. "Then what the hell are you going to do about it, Colonel?" He released her shoulder, as if he had received an electric shock from her, and she turned more fully to face him. "Dudin's got a cold, so he says, the radio room is sealed and guarded, you can't make anything but a local call by telephone, the roads are guarded — I can't do anything, what are you going to do?"

Having crossed the office, he turned to face her. The dog appeared curious, even alarmed by their raised voices. Its tail banged against the radiator like a soft drumbeat.

"I'm sorry I told you. It — it just spilled out, as if it were too heavy for me to carry. Christ, Katya, I don't want you involved." Again, he rubbed his hair and began pacing the floor. "I just don't know what to do. There's nothing to do."

At the roadblock, they had politely, firmly turned him around and pointed him once more in the direction of Baikonur and his own office. GRU troops, supervised by an experienced captain — not that it mattered. The guns were in evidence, the implacability of their obedience to orders like the sharp smell of wood smoke permeating the scene. Even the helicopter had reappeared and accompanied him most of the way back to town. It had been simple. Almost an anticlimax. Turn around, please, Colonel, there's a good boy.

And he had done so. And sat there, scribbling on a pad like a psychiatrist recording nightmares — schemes and plans that were impossible to put into practice — or pacing the carpet or drinking coffee or smoking. The air of the office was blue with cigarette smoke, thick like that of a crowded bar. And all to no avail. There was no solution. He could not get out of the Baikonur area, could not get to Aral'sk or contact Moscow. And Serov, who knew how much he knew, would make his move soon.

He crossed to the window. Any of the cars down there, any of the many he didn't recognize, could have his office under surveillance. Serov needn't hurry, he wasn't going anywhere. He flung aside the corner of curtain he had moved, groaning aloud, then turned and saw the surprise mingled with contempt on Katya's face.

"What the devil do you expect me to do?" he challenged guiltily. "What can I do, dammit?" His fist banged the desk in muffled, limp emphasis. What was the point of taking it out on the woman? He shouldn't even have told her, used her as a sympathetic ear for this, of all things. He could have sentenced her to the same fate as himself, if Serov ever suspected that she… "Sorry," he murmured, waving his hand indecisively. "Sorry." He walked quickly away from her. "Dear Christ in Heaven, I almost wish Gant had got away with it." He turned to face her. "And you understand what that thought is costing me."

"Can't we do anything?" Her hands might have been held up in sign of surrender.

"What?" he shouted. "Me, not us — can't I do anything? It's not your problem, you keep your head down."

"But I know."

'Then forget." He rubbed his head and began once more to pace the room, motioning the old dog back to its position near the radiator. After a few moments, when Katya thought he would never stop and that her head would burst, he turned to her, then to the map on the wall. Posed himself in front of it, hand cupping his chin, head slightly on one side; a furious effort of concentration, or no more than an actor's posture, she could not tell.

"What are you looking for?" she asked finally, hearing her fingernails drumming on the desk and unaware for how long the noise had been going on. He did not answer, and she stood up and moved across the room, to stand beside him.

"Aral'sk is a hundred miles away," he murmured, as if thinking aloud. "There's a little more than a day left — say, half a day if I'm to use the night to hide in."

"How?" she asked.

"I'll have to walk it" He turned to her. "I can't just sit around and wait for what's bound to happen." His eyes were wide, looking beyond her.

"You can't walk it, not in a night, not in twenty-four hours."

"Then I'll drive as far as I can, to the security perimeter."

"Which way?"

His hand indicated the map. "The way poor bloody Kedrov went — out to the deserted silos, then across country here." His fingers stroked circles rather than a course of escape, yet his voice appeared convinced by his scheme. "Back through the marshes might be best."

"That's less than half the distance. It can't be done."

"I can't wait here," he snapped. "I don't want to end up like that poor creep Rodin! Pills stuffed down my throat or felling out of a high window. Serov knows I know — don't you understand, Katya?" He had gripped her upper arms, and they hurt with the pressure of his fingers. He was shaking her like a disobedient child with whom he had lost patience. "I'm frightened out of my skin, Katya, and 1 know I have to do something. I'm afraid for myself, I'm afraid for you, even for Kedrov. I'm afraid for the whole bloody world if these madmen have their way." He was utterly unaware of the pain he was causing her, the degree to which she was being shaken. "The whole bloody world — the poor, tired, sick-to-death bloody world!

"Dmitri!" she shouted at him, and his eyes focused, saw her, felt her arms, and released her, shaking his head as if to clear it.

She rubbed her arms gingerly, regained her balance.

"I'm sorry."

"Its all right." She forced herself to stop rubbing her arms. "You won't make it," she asserted. "It's too far."

"Then I'll have to steal or commandeer a car or a truck or a fucking tractor once I'm outside the perimeter."

She walked away from him, considering his desperation and his scheme. She was afraid for him.

"I'll need food, walking boots, my gun. You'll look after the dog?" She nodded absently. She realized he had to make the attempt, some attempt, but she could only visualize failure; and his death. Lightning, or whatever he called it, was still unreal to her; less real than the enmity of Serov. Her horizons were narrower than his; her practicality did not allow her madcap schemes or desperate remedies, but enclosed her in a narrow steel box of facts that could not be breached. She could not think, especially while he talked.

"…a backpack, a good map, this way, across the marshes— they'll be empty now… making what? Five, six miles an hour. If I drive out as far as here…"

A truck pulled into the parking lot below the window. A military truck.

"… what's the time at this point? Say eight, eight-thirty, outside the perimeter. I need to know more about the terrain up there, the security…"

Soldiers, GRU troopers, descended from the canvas-flapped back of the truck, whose exhaust plumed grayly in the icy air. Six soldiers and an officer.

"Dmitri—"

"… fanning… that would take me farther west if I wanted to find a car — maybe this road here."

"Sir—'*

The soldiers moved toward the building, looking up at the windows, spreading out to cover the exits. The officer strode to the main doors. Katya turned.

"… one farm, yes? Yes, another there. What's the distance?"

"Colonel!" she shouted.

He looked around at her, plainly startled. "What is it?"

"It's too late — they're here."

"What?" Priabin's voice suggested complete surprise. She looked at him. His face registered a slow coming to terms with what she had said. Then the color drained from it, and the realization gave him a stunned expression. He moved jerkily to her side at the window, in time to see the officer and two of the armed soldiers enter the main doors. Priabin whirled around, as if itemizing his office furniture, his possessions — a man about to be robbed. He ran his hands stiffly down his cheeks.

"What do we—?"

"Get out, Katya — get out of here! You're not involved. Just go back to your office — look as if you've been working there all the time — go on."

He had grabbed her by the arm and was pushing her roughly across the room.

"What about you?"

He shook his head. "Depends what they want. Look, whatever happens, you know nothing."

"But if you're arrested, taken away, what do I—?"

"Nothing. There's nothing you can do. Just keep your head down." Misha stood up and shook himself, tongue lolling. 'Take the dog with you," Priabin added. "Quickly. Come on, Misha, quick, boy!" He opened his door, pushing Katya and the dog into the outer office, snapping at his secretary: "Lieutenant Grechkova hasn't been here — I've been alone all morning. Understand?"

His secretary, red mouth still wide, merely nodded.

"I have to—" Katya began.

"Nothing. Understand me, Katya — nothing. Now go."

Priabin closed the outer door behind them, and felt the perspiration stand out on his forehead. His secretary, the widow of a KGB officer, appeared concerned.

"We're in for a visit — GRU. They may want to talk to me. I might have to go with them — just a routine panic!" He grinned shakily at her. Soothed her by patting the air in front of him with his hands. "Nothing to worry about. Just remember, no one's been here, I haven't even spoken to you. I'll explain when it's all blown over." He had walked to his own door, paused, holding it open, looking back at her. She was nodding her understanding; her eyes were bright with anxieties, her hands fluttered above her typewriter, as if he were dictating to her. "OK, Marfa, just play dumb. It's me they want to talk to. When they get here, show them straight in." He nodded, smiled palely, and closed the door behind him.

He looked at the map on the wall with a deep, sharp regret. He sat down at his desk, lit a cigarette quickly, puffed at it hungrily* then slowed his exhalation, trying to find a pose of relaxation, so that he would seem surprised. Fear, regret, a looming sense of disaster regarding Lightning. He felt the jangling of his nervous system in his chest and arms. Try to relax.

Secretary's face, then the GRU officer's features and bulk behind her, beside her, in the room ahead of her. He assumed surprise, molding the shock he could not prevent. Two soldiers were in the room immediately behind their officer. His secretary mumbled an apology, but he waved to her to calm herself even as he addressed the GRU major. A major — arrest, then.

"What is it, Major? What prevents you from waiting to be announced?" he asked with studied lightness; a sting in the tone, too, because that helped dissipate his fear.

"Colonel Priabin?" the major asked stolidly; aware of his authority, confident, but tied to a defined script. A minion.

"Naturally. What is it you want, Major? I'm rather busy, as you can see." He lazily waved a hand over his desk, then drew on his cigarette. Puffed smoke at the ceiling. "Do you need those two men just to speak to me?"

"Colonel Priabin, I must ask you to accompany me to GRU headquarters." Priabin was on the point of interrupting him, but the major ignored his hand, his poised lips. "Colonel Serov wishes to interview you."

"Oh. Concerning what?"

"I am not able to divulge that, Colonel," the major announced stiffly, staring past Priabin's shoulder; but there was no sense of awe, of being daunted. Just the indifference of a machine. "Should you decline to accompany—

"It's an arrest, Major — I understand!" Priabin shouted, standing up quickly, surprising the two armed soldiers, whose guns moved, then stilled, in their hands. He sensed the confidence with which he had begun ebb from his face. "An arrest," he repeated firmly. "Ludicrous."

This minion was not his enemy, and he had tired of the fencing match. It did no good, it merely wasted breath and energy. He Would need all his wits, all his cunning and strength for his meeting with Serov, who was his enemy. If he were to save his life—

He could not complete the thought. Instead, Rodin's somehow decadently splayed limbs spread on the rumpled bedclothes filled his imagination. The same fete, the same fate, he heard the soft drumbeat announce, pulsing in his temple. He plucked his cap from the coat stand, glancing at the map on the wall as he did so. It seemed such a huge place, suddenly; so many miles, so many hectares in which he might have hidden…

"Let's go, Major," he growled. "Well? I don't have all day. Let's go."

They were already engaged in the process of breaking him down. It was natural to them, and inevitable. There might be beatings, there might not; humiliations, drugs, starvation, half drowning — it might take weeks or hours. They would choose. He could either endure for as long as he could or crumble like an old, honeycombed wall. It would not matter, just as it did not matter to that poor bastard Kedrov he'd failed to rescue. At the end of the breaking, there would be the disposal of what remained. Very little; husks of corn or empty peanut shells littering the floor.

Gant watched his clenched hands shivering. His wrists rested on his thighs, his hands faced each other like armored and frightened crabs, weighing each other. The shiver was not simply muscular. It was fear; the admission of fear is not of assistance, he remembered — some psychologist, some expert; keep fear at arms' length or you may not be able to control it — it might end up controlling you… forget perspective…

… if you don't have a future, don't think about it…

What was that crap? Why was it here now, like laughter in the dark? He was cold, he was hungry — par for the course — and the walls of the cell had started to contract in his imagination. He was waiting for the first interrogation, the first pain, or the first enema of the mind, of the personality, that the drugs would bring. That was almost more difficult to bear — never mind to resist — than the beatings and the starving and the electrodes. The sense of being utterly without will. Gant shivered more violently. He knew he had begun to think too much. He had enlivened his imagination instead of drugging and sedating it with numbers or distractions of other kinds. Worst of all, he'd admitted to himself that there was no way out; no way back.

Because he was Gant, they would gut him like a catfish. Catfish? Catfish. He squeezed his memory like an orange, but nothing flowed. He could not get back to his youth, to the Valium of the past. They would want everything he knew. He would be in no condition — no condition — to be returned by the time they had finished with him.

He was cold. The shiver was in his arms now, in his body, too-Cold—

— door. He could not stifle his gasp of relief — fear seeped in whole seconds later — as the cell door opened. He had not even seen the preliminary eye at the peephole. The pit in Vietnam, in the Cong village, which had been approaching him again, retreated in his mind. He looked up with an almost pathetic eagerness.

Smell of spicy food. One of them had a rifle and kept his distance, the other moved closer with the food. Thin stuff, he saw, slopping in the mess tin; then it splashed on his flight overalls, down the sleeve of his leather jacket, soaked the thighs and crotch of his trousers. He snarled and almost rose.

The rifle moved, drawing a bead on him, the first round clicking into the chamber of the AK-74. Gant dropped back against the icily cold wall, hands pressed against his thighs, his body posed as if ready to absorb a blow. The corridor outside taunted him with its inaccessibility. The guard close to him was grinning, the armed one anticipated pleasure. Gant, involuntarily, flinched. The nearer guard unzipped his trousers, chuckled, then began to urinate on Gant's one gray blanket. Gant sat immobile, staring down at the food stains on his flight overalls. The guard whistled, as if using some public convenience. The urine spread in a pool. Both guards watched Gant greedily.

The guard finished.

"Should have drunk more beer," he called over his shoulder, zipping his trousers.

"You can't piss worth a kopeck anyway."

Gant felt the shiver in his body and attempted to quell it. The casualness of the humiliation was worse than a beating. A clear statement: You are ceasing to exist.

"You want a turn?"

"Piss on him, you mean? Who cares? There'll be plenty of time."

Gant stared at the rectangle of tiled corridor he could see through the open door. They had left the door open to undermine him further. The fact that he understood what they were doing did not help. The urine stank, but he did not move. He heard a squeaking noise in the corridor, a voice murmuring. Boots.

The surgical cart stopped directly opposite the door of the cell. He recognized Kedrov's profile, saw the blank, wild eyes staring at the ceiling, saw the furiously working mouth — and heard the insane, disconnected, drugged babble of sound coming from him. He Was still deeply drugged. Here he is, they were saying. Your role model; your future. Gant hunched further into himself; wanted to fold his arms across his heaving stomach, wanted to concentrate on something, anything other than the darkness that loomed in his mind. Two attendants in white coats peered into the cell. Kedrov babbled, screamed, denied, confessed, complied, rejected.

They had overdone it. Kedrov might be lost for good in his own head, amid that ceaseless, whirling jumble that filled his mind. He should be sedated now, quiet; spent. Instead, he raved like a lunatic. They'd most probably done it deliberately, just to make an impact on him.

Gant growled, but the noise seemed to whimper in the cell. Kedrov raved. The guards watched and weighed, the attendants looked around the cell like prospective house buyers. Gant's lips were wet. He continued to growl but could not make the noise assertive or defiant.

Kedrov's voice vanished. The cell was darker. The urine's stink predominated. They were gone. Gant groaned softly, cradling his chest and stomach with his arms, head forward.

And slowly but insistently, the stench of the guard's urine became transmuted into the smell of stagnant, muddy water. The bamboo cage was opened, he was thrust into the pit, the bamboo grill was closed over his head. The walls were wet, the water reached his chest. The strange, small Eastern faces looked down at him, then left him alone; utterly alone.

After a while, when he covered his face with his quivering hands, his father's face seemed to look down through the slatted bamboo, and be satisfied. Gant knew he would die. Once he had been emptied of everything he knew, every tiny chip of information.

Standing on the metal catwalk outside the long glass windows, it was as if he were able, at last, to look down not only on the main assembly building and its contents, but on recent events. That appalled and appalling silence at the other end of the telephone connection with Moscow, the silence that had gone on and on until he thought his head would be crushed by it. It had been as if his wife had died, too, at the moment he gave her the news concerning their son.

The silence had had the effect of allowing a slow, betraying light to leak into his mind, illuminating dark corners he did not wish to inspect; his failings, his treatment of Valery, his lack of affection for his wife. Eventually, he had tried to soothe her, gain some response. The line went on humming, and he could not make out her reply. Possibly, she was no longer even in the same room as the telephone — somewhere else in the flat, staring at photographs, at

Valery's room, at—? Rodin could not guess and was reluctant to pursue his questions. He had, after a further time, put down the receiver. And yes, he had wanted to tell her it was suicide, and his suspicions as to Valery's motives, but could not… not quite.

He tried to clear his thoughts, use the scene below him to erase his memories. Uniforms, white coats, the Raketoplan shuttle, the laser weapon now assembled and undergoing its final scrutiny… uniforms, uniforms… army, army. The repetitions, the sights that filled his eyes and thoughts, began to cleanse his mind. He could begin to think of Valery as — as a soldier. The detritus of his recent life was being cleaned from him, like pigeon droppings from the statue of someone honored and eminent. Yes, a cleaned statue… yes, he could begin to think along those lines now. His breathing became easier, his chest seemed to expand, as if he were exercising his lungs in front of a window on a cool, fresh morning. His head felt cleared, sharply attentive.

He looked around him and beckoned a senior technical officer, who hurried to his side.

The overcoated colonel had clattered along the echoing catwalk only moments earlier. His heavy features were still sharp and blanched by the outside temperature. Despite his anxiety, Rodin smiled at the man; greeting someone who shared his secrets, his outlook, his background, as if smiling at the portrait of an ancestor, or a son.

"Well, Suslov — Yuri — well? The express hoist at the pad — you have news? Well, man, well?" It was as if his eager, breathy questions were releasing something more than anxiety.

Suslov was nodding, regaining his breath, unable to prevent a smile of relief and satisfaction from spreading.

"Yes, yes — sir, its working again. Fully operational."

The small group of technical officers attendant on Rodin moved to surround Suslov, congratulating him. Rodin turned away, hands gripping the rail in front of him, staring down at the shuttle, back opened like some crustacean with its shell surgically removed. The laser battle station had come together now. Lasing gas tanks ready to be filled, the mirror complete, the long, lancelike nozzle positioned. The nuclear generator, which was to be activated only when the shuttle reached its orbit just before the launch of the battle station, was housed in the main section of the weapon's oil drum of a fuselage. Rodin itemized the battle station like a clerk; each constituent, seen as if with an X-ray machine, adding to the satisfaction he received from Suslov's report.

"Fully operational," he murmured. Suslov was at his side, gloved hands on the rail, eyes looking down. The kingdom—

"Yes, General," he affirmed, his voice sounding abstracted; as if he were on some high place and looking across the border to a homeland long missed. "Were back on schedule."

Rodin turned to him. "We must obey the Politburo's timetable," he instructed, as if passing on information he disliked. "We must launch when the treaty is signed. For the television transmission. Twelve in Geneva — the crew will reach orbit at that time. The opening of the cargo bay will coincide — so Nikitin and the other old women have ordered." He smiled at Suslov, easily, mockingly. "Don't worry, Yuri, careless talk will not cost lives, not here, at least." He turned back to the group that hovered behind them on the catwalk. Glanced through the glass into the assembly building offices and control room. Television sets, including on some of their screens the American shuttle in its orbit, the launch pad, with the booster stages upright in their gantry, the mission control room of Baikonur.

The battle station would be detached from the cargo bay of the Soviet shuttle and its boosters fired to place it in its thousand mile-high orbit. Then its infrared sensors would align the mirror and the nozzle, the laser radar would scan the target, the fire control system would trigger the main beam, and… and the American shuttle would vaporize; a tragic accident. A perfect, undetectable crime. What debris there was would remain in low earth orbit or burn up in the atmosphere as it fell earthward, toward the Amazon forest or the remote Sahara. It was irrelevant; there would be nothing left.

"Pictures," Rodin announced. He snapped his fingers, as if the word had struck him with the force of an original idea. "I want a photographic record, from this moment, Yuri." He turned to his hovering staff. "Organize it. There will be Politburo and Stavka members who will not understand without pictures." His voice was light, his mood almost jolly. "The older ones, the tank people, the infantry commanders." His staff smiled conspiratorially. "Yes — and others will want to savor what we have witnessed." He looked down once more. "Especially the moment we first move the shuttle — but everything else, too. Loading the weapon, the cargo bay, the crew boarding, out at the gantry — everything." Excited by his own orders, he glanced at his watch. "It is now one-thirty. The shuttle begins its journey to the launch pad in ten hours' time. Back on schedule, as you so rightly say. Gentlemen, lunch." He clapped his hands together, as if at the sudden thought of food. They parted for him, a closely knit group of satisfactions; smiles, confidence — just what he wished to see… Valery. A soldier, like these men, he forcibly instructed himself. Already uniformed, lying in an open coffin in the morgue. Waiting to be flown home, as if fallen in a war.

Lunch.

He opened the door of the control room. Television images erased the presence of his son, as did the anger they evoked. Pictures from Germany: Strategic Rocket Forces officers and men, supervising the loading of SS-20s onto trains — trains! — to bring them home.

It will stop, he promised, whether to the men he saw on the screen or those around him, or even himself, he was not certain. But it was like the taking of an oath. It will stop. The trains will halt and be turned around. The army will not be broken by the politicians.

"Lunch!" he made himself announce again with hearty pleasure. "Later, there'll be little time for eating."

"Yes, yes," he snapped impatiently, his eyes glowering at Marshal Zaitsev, the defense minister. "This is not the time or the place to press these matters, comrade Marshal," Nikitin's voice warned. His hand waved around him to indicate the private departure lounge, the gathered small groups of uniformed or overcoated men — the press and the cameras and the photographers herded into one far corner. "What I have agreed to approve the Politburo will approve."

"But, comrade President, the revised budget is no more than a fraction of what is required."

"Zaitsev — drop this matter. There are — other factors. Do you expect us to divert rivers, make deserts bloom, feed our people with lasers? You will have enough money for research, then for development, when we are convinced you require it!" His hand made a firmer gesture, dismissive of protest. He deliberately turned his gaze from Zaitsev and looked out of the huge windows of the lounge and across the snowbound tarmac of Domodedovo Airport. A snow-clearing plow plumed a thick, darkened fountain of snow in an arc. His aircraft waited below the windows. To the north, hardly discernible in the heavy midday cloud and threat of further snow, the hills and towers and domes of Moscow were insubstantial. Crowds had gathered, or been gathered; black-coated, head-scarved or hatted, they waited in the icy temperature for the departure of this flight — perhaps for this flight above all? Nikitin was — no, not moved by the sense of occasion, but affected, certainly affected by it. And by his own sense of himself as a historical figure, he observed with a semblance of humor. He would bring back hope, he supposed. The Americans would look at things in that light — perhaps much of the world. For himself, it was a question of necessity; historical inevitability.

Well, whatever he called it, it was necessary. Zaitsev, of course, would protect the army — the bloody army — to his last breath, realist though he often appeared. So he'd offered the army something of a reprieve. This laser weapon business would distract them from the cuts in the budget, the other reductions, the diversion of funds to agriculture, consumer production. They could play with their new toy, make it bigger and better, while people ate and watched television. Yes, it was a good bargain to strike with Stavka and their allies in the Politburo; and it was the dagger in the sock, the gun up the sleeve as far as the Americans were concerned. It couldn't, it really could not, be better…

… except when Zaitsev and his cronies started to be greedy again — and now, of all times.

"It's time to go," Nikitin announced to the window, to the gray, lowering scene beyond it. He turned to Zaitsev. "Yes, yes," he soothed with almost clumsy humor in his voice. "Don't sulk, comrade Marshal. I'm right — you'll see. And I won't emasculate the army, either." He slapped the defense minister's shoulder with hearty violence, then stared across the room at the waiting press cameras, the television crews. "Come, stand beside me, for the photographs." Then: "Come, come!" he bellowed to negotiators, generals, Politburo members, waving them to him. "Time to have our pictures taken, for posterity." He laughed in a great roar. Then he looked at Zaitsev. "And remember to smile, comrade Marshal. This is a wedding, not a funeral."

The press contingent, garnered and selected from the foreign press corps in Moscow, moved forward. The pick of the crop, Nikitin observed, recognizing faces he had seen across tables in the past weeks as he gave his carefully prepared and monitored interviews. As cameras rose to eyes or bobbed on shoulders, he barked with mock severity at the defense minister, "Smile!"

13: The Key to the Prison

Serov smoked as if he were the one undergoing interrogation. Priabin was not certain how much of a pretense it was, like the pacing up and down, the staring from the window, the lengthy silences. Or perhaps Serov's adrenaline surged in situations like this one, as he worked toward the revelation of their true identities, prisoner and jailer. Priabin kept his hands still in his lap, his features calm; Dmitri Priabin, colonel in the KGB, with a wave of Serov's magic wand becomes—

— nothing; lost; irrecoverable.

Serov made another display of lighting a cigarette. His square, blunt face bullied by its very lines and angles. His eyes glared. Priabin saw a change in Serov's mood. They had been there for more than an hour. Priabin had been uncooperative.

"I'm just about pissed off with you, Priabin," Serov announced heavily, leaning forward. The leather of his chair creaked, his face was angled so that the sun behind it shadowed and strengthened his expression. Anger, frustration, the losing of patience. Priabin concentrated upon his own role; innocent suspect, man of authority.

"What is it, Serov?" he all but sneered. "I've told you I don't know how many times already, I don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I saw Rodin, no, I did not harass him, yes, I'm sorry he's dead, yes, it was about drugs." He threw his hands in the air. "What the hell else do you expect me to say?" He leaned forward, hardly pausing, summoning a pretense of anger on his own part. "And while we're at it, when do I get the credit for catching our friend Gant — and Kedrov?" His index finger tapped the edge of Serov's desk peremptorily. Then he leaned back, acting a mood of self-righteous superiority, and lit a cigarette of his own…

… careful not to draw in the smoke too greedily. It was his first cigarette since leaving his own office. Careful…

Serov's face was full of anger, his eyes were brimming with contempt.

"You stupid little prick," he murmured, and it sounded like a threat rather than an insult.

"Have you finished with your questions, Serov? I'm busy in my own little way, just as you are. Can I go?"

"No you can't go!" Serov bellowed.

Priabin made as if to stand. "I don't see the point of any—"

"Sit down!" Serov screamed. Priabin could not prevent his whole frame from flinching from the voice's assault. "Sit down, you pretentious little turd, and I'll tell you just what's going to happen from this moment on."

Priabin made a huge effort to shrug with a modicum of nonchalance. Serov was physically intimidating. Their fencing was at an end. The man's real interrogation technique was simple and brutal; old-fashioned and direct — the inspiration of fear. Priabin sat down slowly, smoothing the creases in his trousers, crossing his legs. He flicked ash into the china ashtray on the desk and looked up at Serov.

"For heaven's sake, get on with it, Serov. What's troubling you — a clash of authority? Territorial imperatives?"

Serov remained standing. "There's no clash of authority. You don't have any authority, except by my say-so."

"I see. Then what the devil is the matter with you? Not sleeping well? Is that it?"

Serov sat down with a sigh. He waved his hands over open files strewn on the desk. Brushed ash from one sheet. "Let me tell you what's happened to one of-your prisoners, shall I?" He smiled without humor. Priabin braced himself. Serov cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, Kedrov couldn't take it. He's told us everything." He drew on his cigarette and coughed. "I don't know what scrambled state his brains will be in when he comes out of it. Still—" He shrugged. "We found out how long he'd been working for the Americans, what he told them — everything — even what he overheard concerning Lightning."

"What's that?"

"Too pat, Priabin, too pat. I know you and Rodin talked about it — I've got the tape, sonny. From your friend Mikhail. I know.'

"Bully for you, Serov." He could not eradicate the quaver from his voice, and Serov bellowed with hard laughter, his hand slapping the desk violently.

"Shall I tell you why we've been fencing for an hour or more?"

"Probably because you enjoy it." Priabin carefully stubbed out his cigarette.

Serov nodded. "That, too," he admitted. "When I've got time for it. But in this case, I wanted to know how far you'd go to hide the feet that you knew as much as you did. Quite a long way, apparently." He plucked at his full lower lip, extending it into a deformity. Then he said: "Now I know for certain you'll try as hard as you can to spread the news — don't I?"

"Sorry?"

"You want to tell someone, don't you? About the naughty secret you've discovered? Moscow Center, the Politburo — Lenin's stuffed and mounted corpse for all I know. It's why you were at the roadblock, why you tried to use the radio. You should have come in here and told me everything, tried to convince me you were on our side, believed in our point of view. I wonder why you didn't."

Priabin cleared his throat. Why hadn't he? "It didn't occur to me," he replied quietly.

Serov laughed, like a dog barking. Banged the desk with his palm once more. "You're all the same, you Party pretty boys," he mocked. "Give you a nice new uniform and you can't help believing you're immortal, can you? You came in here unable to conceive that anything nasty could possibly happen to you. Deep down, you couldn't believe. That uniform's as much good to you as a cardboard gun, sonny." His palm banged again and again, punctuating his words. "You'll get years for this. You might never be seen again— like Wallenberg — oh, heard of him, have you? It happens to colonels in the KGB, too, not just to intellectuals and scribblers like Solzhenitsyn. You, too, can disappear, is our motto!" His laughter made him cough; it did not weaken the fear he had created in Priabin. "It's up to you," Serov continued, "which way we proceed from this point. You want the drugs? You want Rodin to believe that his son was harassed to death by your interrogations? Or do you want to — tell me?"

The silence was immediate. Priabin's body itched and stung with uncontrollable nerves. He stared at Serov, but sensed the paleness of his face, the weak, small movements of his lips. His mouth was dry. Serov meant to have him finished with. The brute fact of his situation was unavoidable. How could he have lied to the man? He could never have persuaded him of his harmlessness. Perspiration prickled on his brow. His collar chafed. No, he could not have taken him in, not for a moment. But Serov was right, too. Whatever his fear when he was brought here, he had not believed, not with every part of himself, that this would be the outcome. The damned uniform, the authority — they'd deceived him, lulled him.

"Tell you what, exactly?" he asked, his voice almost casual.

Serov glowered, but his eyes sparkled, as if his enjoyment had achieved a new level of satisfaction.

"Oh, I couldn't trust you, could I? Not for a minute," he said. "Even afterward, when all this had been resolved, you'd still be trying to cause trouble. No, I think I'd better wash my hands of you now." He chuckled. Shook his head as if in reproof of a friend's poor joke. He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his creaking swivel chair. "You're too much of a survivor for me, Priabin. I don't like you — never have, come to that." His voice was almost meditative. "How you bloody well survived that cockup over the MiG-31, I'll never know. Let your dead girlfriend take all the crap, I don't doubt." He did not look at Priabin's face; Dmitri felt himself flush. "Even got this cushy posting out of the deal — talk about falling in the manure and coming up smelling of flowers. You should have kept your head down, nose clean — walked away from trouble, sat out your tour." He sat upright, looking keenly at Priabin, leaning his arms on his desk. "You see, that's the trouble with you — you don't know when to leave well enough alone. Do you, eh?"

"Can I get up?" Priabin asked after a while.

Serov shrugged dismissively. "Why not? I think we're about finished, don't you? You are, at least."

Priabin stood, almost to attention, testing the strength in his body before moving. He walked to the window, standing beside Serov, looking out. Serov turned to watch him, heavily amused. There was nothing Priabin could do.

"Going to throw yourself out?" Serov asked confidently. "Could do worse, old man." He saw Priabin's body shiver. "Could do a lot worse. We've got our Serbsky Institutes, and our Gulag, too. I don't think we'll be hearing from you again — if you get that far." He did not raise his voice. His tone was that of a judge passing sentence. Priabin thrust his shaking hands into his pockets, staring blindly into the afternoon outside. Gantries, cables, pylons, masts, radar dishes, low buildings — away beyond the square and its cobbles. An endless vista of — army authority.

He turned to Serov, as if to speak, then returned his gaze to the world outside the room. The square. The heavy military statuary, the modern Cosmonaut Hotel, the cars and the people. He saw nothing except his brief and violent future. Fear, real fear, quivered through him. Serov was indeed going to kill him.

"There's no way out for you," Serov was murmuring. "No way out."

His words were like a quiet but demented refrain. Priabin's mind caught them up, set them spinning together with his thoughts of Anna, Gant, Rodin, and now Kedrov. No way out, no way, no way out.

He wanted to press his hands to his ears, as if the words were still being spoken and he could shut them out. But Serov was silent, standing back like a painter to observe the effect of his last brush strokes. No way out, no way out…

… Anna, Gant, Rodin, Kedrov, Anna, Gant…

No way out.

There must be some way…

… some way.

There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief.

God, why Dylan now? The song ran in his head together with Serov's taunt. No way, some way, no way out, some way out, no way out of here, some way out of here… It was like contemplating the onset of madness, his mind was so helpless in its desperate attempts to avoid the idea. No way, some way… — thief, thief, thief!

Gant!

He whirled around. Serov was smiling. Priabin's hand slapped against his empty holster. Serov laughed, raising his arms in a mocking gesture of surrender. His whole face was violent with laughter. Priabin had no scheme, no inkling, no—

Thief!

He snatched up the heavy, long letter opener from Serov's desk and before the man could move had thrust it against his neck, pricking the skin just above the collar, near the jugular. He grabbed the pistol from Serov's holster and stepped away quickly as Serov's boots lashed out to try to cripple him. Priabin moved around the desk holding the pistol on his opponent, fighting to close his mind against the emptiness that suddenly loomed after his desperate movements.

Serov dabbed his neck with a handkerchief, swiveled in his chair. His eyes shone, and his features were flinty with contempt.

All Priabin could hear was the beating of his heart and their mutually ragged, tense breathing. He sat gingerly on his chair, both hands holding Serov's pistol, gripping it tightly, almost inexpertly, to still the quiver his hands were transmitting to the barrel of the gun. He steadied its aim on Serov's body with a huge effort. Gantries, pylons, power cables, radar dishes stretched away behind Serov, to the indistinct, distant horizon, which offered no sense of escape. Army territory out there, all of it, for mile after mile.

"You bloody fool. That has got you precisely nowhere. There's no way out. Don't you realize that? No way — you're as good as dead."

The office she had shared with Zhikin was pressing in on her. His desk stood near the window, its surface slatted and barred with shadow and pale gold like an animal's hide as the afternoon seeped through the Venetian blinds. His death was in the room with her, as was her awareness of his murderers' identities. A prologue to Priabin's tragedy. She tried to rid her consciousness of the desk by reducing it to veneer, leather, papers, a swivel chair. But it was in those freer moments that her husband's image proved most strong. Uniformed, smiling sardonically, he seemed to stand at her side like a pedagogue. He was there to represent the army. The memory of him, her knowledge of him, convinced her more than anything else of the truth of Priabin's wild allegations and fears. Her husband would have been breathless with excitement and ambition at something as fantastic as Lightning. His image seemed to voice a thousand words of contempt for politicians, for the civilian population — for anyone not in the army.

Priabin was convinced that they were enacting their most dangerous fantasy, and she could not help but believe him.

She got up from her desk, her hands twisted together. She remained well away from the blinds-striped desk that threatened near the window, and began pacing the room, not for the first or even the tenth time. The dog watched her, his tail flapping idly, aware of her tension, aware that he was ignored.

"Why did you have to tell me?" she almost wailed. Her conscious thoughts were filled with blame for Priabin. What was she doing, trying to justify the fact that she wanted to help? Or disguising her fears for Priabin's safety? "Leave me alone!" she shouted. The dog looked up. She growled at him not to move. It was even his dog! Its eyes became hurt, even wounded. "Oh, God." Her mind was like a boiling mud pool; bubbles of escaping ideas and imaginings and emotion kept breaking the surface. Her hands knotted into fists as if she was about to beat the air about her head. She had never felt so — so trapped.

Priabin had enlisted her, that's what he had done. He had known she would help him if she could, had relied on the fact. She should be keeping out of sight, but instead she was frantic with concern for his safety, even in the midst of her self-concern. It couldn't possibly come to a war, it just couldn't.

He believed it. She could not refute it, just as she could not wave her husband from her mind. You don't understand—he always prefaced his remarks with some such phrase. You don't begin to understand.

Katya's rage expended itself on the image of her husband. She held her head in her clenched hands as in a vise, to squeeze Yuri out of her imagination. She wanted to escape him and she wanted to rid herself of loyalty, affection, duty, terror, even self-preservation and leave her mind clean and empty. She growled in her anger. The dog's tail signaled the animal's anthropomorphic sympathy. After all, what could she do — what could she possibly do? It was already too late to help Priabin. Serov had him, and she could not get out of Baikonur, just as he had been unable to do.

She sat down quickly behind her desk and lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. The hiss of gas from the cheap lighter was audible, and somehow frightening for an instant before the flame spurted. Her head was tight almost to bursting. Her hands would not stop shaking; it was the same earth tremor that Priabin must have experienced when Rodin first told him about Lightning. Must be.

What could she possibly do?

She drew at the cigarette as at oxygen, as the boiling mud pool seemed to threaten to choke her. One hand clutched the other while her whole body trembled at the thought of what she must attempt. She tapped ash feverishly into the full ashtray. She was unable to move from her chair, hunched slightly forward in it. Yuri had vanished, gone to his habitual place at the far back of her mind; but he was like an accident that leaves shock behind. She felt, perhaps for the first time in her life, real terror. Quaking terror—

Telephone. Her arrest? Priabin's implicating her? Serov?

She snatched up the receiver. "Grechkova," she cried in a high voice, holding the receiver with both hands against her cheek as if expecting news of a death.

"Katya — is that you? What's—?" His voice was strained. But it was him! How?

"Colonel."

"Yes. Are you alone, Katya?"

"Yes, why? How are you able—?"

"Listen." His desperation was clear. Had he told them about her? "Listen to me, Katya. No, don't say anything." She thought she caught the noise of soft laughter, further from the mouthpiece into which he was speaking.

"What is it?" she pleaded.

"I need your help. I have to have your help, Katya. Now." He paused, but she could say nothing. Eventually, he said: "Katya — are you still there?" Again she heard the distant noise. Who was it, laughing like that? Then she knew — Serov was there.

Trap, trick, deceit—

"Yes," she answered. "I'm here." She felt very cold, yet still. Serov's image ushered the chill. He would be listening on an extension, enjoying every word, watching his prisoner reel in his accomplice; prove that she knew about Lightning.

"Listen, Katya — you're the only one who can help me," he cried excitedly, fearfully. "You've got to."

"I can't help you, Colonel," she announced with a dull, empty calm.

"You must!" he almost wailed. Again, the indistinct sound of Serov's laughter. "You're my only hope, Katya."

"I can't help you, Colonel," she repeated. "I know nothing, I can do nothing."

The noise was louder. She shivered at the sound of Serov's voice, though she could not make out the words.

"Katya — please!"

"I can't," she began. Then she heard Serov's roar of triumphant laughter, heard him yelling.

"… scared shitless… knew it would happen, should have asked me… rats deserting…" Laughter again, almost choking off the triumph. She lost the words and clung to the tone in which Serov went on.

Deceit?

He hadn't, hadn't… Serov was laughing at him, at her Mure to help him. It wasn't a trick.

"Colonel, Colonel — what is it? What do you want?" Then, more carefully: "What can I do to help?"

The silence crackled like a bad connection between them. She could hear his breathing, filled with phlegm and tension as he attempted to calm himself. She no longer heard the laughter from further in the room. What had he done, managed to do?

"Thanks," he said eventually.

"Can you talk?" she asked, becoming the eager partner.

"What? Oh, yes. Serov's here, of course. I have his pistol."

"What?"

'True." There was almost a chuckle in his voice. "He's a bit annoyed about it, as you'd expect… I'm wasting time. I can't get out of here without your help. Will you—"

"Yes. I promise. Whatever."

"I want our surveillance helicopter ready for takeoff. As soon as possible. Go there yourself and check it out. Don't take any bullshit, just get them to do the full preflight check, fuel up, everything — my orders."

"Yes, yes."

"And then bring a uniform here, to Serov's office. Don't worry, Serov will tell them to let you in — won't you?" he added with a kind of malevolent amusement, talking into the room, to be answered by silence. "He will, anyway. Now, do you understand all that?"

"I don't understand why—"

"Dammit, you don't have to understand why, woman — just do it!" he bellowed. Then, almost immediately, he soothed: "No, no, I'm sorry, Katya. But please do as I ask. The helicopter first. It has to be ready to fly immediately, tell them. Then the uniform. Got it?"

Strangely, through the thicket of questions that confronted her, one emerged; the silliest, least vital — or so it seemed to her.

"What — what size should the uniform—"

"Size?" he yelled as if at a dim and truculent pupil. "The American pilot's size, of course!"

"What a brilliant scheme," Serov observed. He scratched the side of his broad nose with a fingertip, his body leaning back in his chair, which creaked as he shifted his weight in a pose of lei-sureliness. Priabin returned to his own chair, the pistol held in both hands with the same suggestion of inner conflict and desperate urgency. Serov's face mocked him. "Brilliant." He sighed. Then he leaned forward in his chair. Sunlight fell across one side of his face, removing any trace of expression. Specks of dust whirled as his hands waved dismissively. "You aren't going to make it, Priabin. That I can confidently predict. You're falling apart too quickly, too much. You aren't going to make it."

"Shut up, Serov. Pick up the telephone."

Serov waved his hands across his desk, as if quickly wiping crumbs from a tablecloth. "Not yet — perhaps not at all," he murmured. "Listen to me, schoolteacher's son."

"You think I'm soft because my father wasn't a horny-handed son of the soil like yours? If you even know who he is."

Serov's eyes glinted, but he roared with laughter. "You're just a little boy in a grown-up world. Little Mitya, his mummy's pretty, darling son. You won't make it. Still, I'll make sure you merit a disused mine shaft as your final resting place — I promise you that. Somewhere quite quiet, and lonely."

"Pick up the telephone!" Priabin yelled.

Serov shook his head. "I've told you no — not yet, anyway. It's two-thirty already, Priabin. Time is on my side. You can't walk out of here without me — they'd stop you, or check with me at the very least before they let you pass. So you can do nothing to me, not even make me pick up the telephone. Is that clear, Priabin? You ceased to exist the moment you entered this room."

Priabin stood up, snatching up the receiver. "Get the American brought up here — now."

Again, Serov shook his head. "Impatient boy." He sighed, enjoying his situation. Even with the pistol in his hand, Priabin appeared impotent; Serov possessed that degree of power that rendered bullets harmless. Priabin's body jumped and twitched with possibilities, as if its muscles responded to the rapidity of his thoughts. "Sit down, Priabin. You look foolish."

Priabin replaced the receiver, sat down obediently. He placed the pistol harmlessly across his lap.

"What have you got?" Serov asked. "One girl who may or may not be in love with you — not much to rely on, love, in this situation, I'd say — getting your helicopter ready. Where will it take you? I'd say Aral'sk, wouldn't you?" He grinned as Priabin felt his face redden with confession. "I thought so. Where you were making for by road. But you need a pilot, and you need a witness. All right, 111 pick up the receiver for you, but to make a call of my own — no, you can listen on the extension. Ill show you you haven't a chance."

He dialed swiftly. Priabin felt the situation beyond his grasp, beyond recovery. Something in him had surrendered to the room's trap; to the central heating, the sunlight dazzling through the window, to Serov's authority. It hadn't been a scheme, something rationally developed, just a madcap insight, a momentary instinct of survival.

Serov nodded at him to pick up the extension. He did so and could hardly feel the plastic in his grip.

"Ah — Ponomarov? Good. What's the condition of the patient now — no, the spy. Yes, that's right, I want a report."

Priabin listened fearfully.

'"Twenty-four hours before he comes around, at least that long. We consider he will be able to be questioned again by Friday, but gently, Colonel, without the use of more drugs. Really, some of your people… mind might have been irreparably…"

Eventually, Serov snapped: "Thank you, Ponomarov. I don't have time for morality. Just keep him safe. Is he under guard?"

"Your people are here, yes."

"Good. Thank you, Ponomarov." He slapped the receiver onto its cradle and grinned, spreading his hands as if in innocence. "There, that's your witness for you. To have him brought here would be peculiar enough to arouse suspicion, to collect him from the infirmary, suicide. That's your one witness taken care of. See how it shakes you, Priabin? See how much of a blow that is? You're felling apart."

"Send for the American. Do it!"

Serov rubbed his chin, then his nose, then plucked his lower hp, elongating the silence until it drummed against Priabin's ears. He ran his hands over his cropped hair, even pulled at his earlobes. A whole language of relaxation, confidence, contempt. Priabin raised the pistol and carefully aimed it at Serov's broad, creased forehead, above the gleaming eyes. Serov's smile remained.

"Send for Gant," Priabin said quietly, aware of the inadequacy of his voice, its lack of command. "Do it now — because, as you might now begin to guess, you have turned over the stone and found the scorpion under it."

"Poetry?"

"Even the son of a peasant should be able to get my meaning." Priabin attempted to sound relaxed. Using contempt steadied his hand, his bluff. "You know what I mean. You've made my situation hopeless — where does that leave you?" He smiled shakily, but its effect on Serov was minutely visible. The mans eyes narrowed in calculation. "I'm not going to let you live so that you can kick seven kinds of shit out of me for making a fool of you here, am I? Without you supervising what happens to me, I might even qualify for a neat, military execution at Rodin's orders — mightn't I?"

"Don't be stupid," Serov began. Priabin's hand waved him to silence, and he stopped in midsentence. Another signal of uncertainty.

'Think about it. I shoot you in — oh, in a struggle for the gun, then I phone Rodin and get him to come over. Surrender myself to military discipline. I could ensure your death and something slightly more civilized for myself than if I give you back your gun. Mm? What about it?"

"Rodin's already beginning to think you harassed his son to suicide."

'Then I'll tell him the truth — I saw you kill him. Your people. Do you think he'll expect proof? I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't have an awful suspicion already that something like that—" He broke off. "It doesn't matter. You now know that you won't come out of it smelling of roses."

Serov's face was vivid with hate and bafflement. His hands moved more quickly over his face and head now; without pretense. There was no fear, because he knew how to keep himself alive and unharmed. But he could be defeated.

"You — little shit," he snarled.

Priabin's fears and possibilities bubbled inside him again, now that the iciness he had required had been exhausted. Katya, Gant—

— having to use Gant. Gant! He would kill Gant when he'd used him. He had to kill him. He looked quickly as his watch. Two-forty. It would be dark in a couple of hours — Wednesday. Twenty-four hours before—

"Pick up the telephone," he ordered. "Have Gant sent up here for — interrogation by you. Do it, Serov. You know now I could easily use this gun on you. Pick up the telephone."

Vividly, he heard the strange, chirruping voices of Charley in the darkness. The water up to his chest was icy, his body already numb and maggot-white from immersion. Occasionally, a narrow-eyed, child-size face would peer down at him; occasionally, a flashlight beam glanced over him. Chuckles. Charley laughing, talking in the distance; the noises of women and the cleaning of weapons.

They did not feed him, nor did he receive any water. Eventually, he cupped in his hands some of the filthy, stagnant liquid in which he stood, his stomach heaving at the idea and the reality; he had urinated, evacuated his bowels in that same water. After the first night, the Vietcong villagers paid him not the least attention. For them, he had ceased to exist; had begun to cease to exist even for himself, as if the soupy, filthy water were dissolving him. The occasional distant noise of aircraft tormented him.

Gant sat in his cell in GRU headquarters, arms folded tightly into his chest, body hunched in a sickly posture. He was breathing shallowly and quickly, as if staving off nausea or memory. Vietnam had strengthened its hold on his imagination. He had escaped then — been rescued, rather — but here it was different. No one would come; he was trapped just as certainly and for as long — if they didn't kill him — as Ciarkville and Iowa had held him.

Church, flag, the flat, uninterrupted land, school; his father. They all seemed to him now like pieces of a complex plot to bring him to this last place — to his disappearance. Gant understood the creeping, strengthening hopelessness welling up in him, but he was too weary to fend it off; he could only disguise it by memories of other imprisonments, earlier escapes. He had escaped Iowa, even Vietnam; but not Baikonur, because he had never escaped flying. Not from that first aircraft, billowing the road's dust around, heading for the gas station. A crop duster who'd flown in the war. Church, flag, flying; all a trap.

At some moments, he looked quite rationally at his watch— they'd left him that — and smelled the dried urine on the gray blanket he had flung into the corner; he could even smell the spiced gruel that had stained his overalls and hands. The afternoon was halfway to darkness, almost three o'clock, local time. The last time zone.

It had been like a fever, that first flight. Each loop and spin and dive and climb — the engine popping only a little more loudly than his mother's sewing machine — was a rise in temperature, the fever taking firm hold of him. Ciarkville as he looked down on it was Nothing; dotted buildings, a few narrow streets, scattered farms, the corn everywhere, the gently rolling landscape that from the air seemed endlessly flat»… his father shrank to insignificance. He knew, with a fierce delight, that he had broken out, escaped; loop, turn, dive, climb, spin, upside down, roll; free movements. The fever had never left him.

Almost three o'clock. His mind returned to Vietnam, toward the third dawn and the terrible numbness throughout his body, the collapse of will and the awful loneliness amid the bustle of the village; his past was better than his future. In memory, he was close to being rescued—

— door, startling as it was meant to do by being flung open. He looked up, frightened. Now, it began.

"Get up!" an officer barked at him, posed with his hands on his hips in the doorway. One armed guard behind him was as much as Gant could see. "Get up!" the officer almost screamed. Yes, now it would begin, the drugs or the beating.

He rose slowly, shakily, to his feet, unable to ignore the weakness that seemed to have drained everything from his frame, even the blood.

Loop, roll, turn, dive, climb.

"Quickly — this way!" the officer bellowed. Everything he said was shouted, had exactly the same volume and tone. The guard outside, carrying his rifle across his chest, stepped back to allow Gant into the corridor, keeping a precise distance between them. "Upstairs, you! To the elevator — quickly, the elevator!" It was the voice of a machine. The officer had drawn his pistol. Gant moved at a shamble that he could not improve or disguise; like the numbness that had made him stumble and fall when they had hoisted him out of the pit. Marines, the rattle of gunfire, the noise of helicopter rotors… loop, turn, dive, roll, climb, spin.

The officer's gun was thrust into his back. The guard's rifle had its stock folded. An AKMS, something in him identified. The guard was jammed into the corner of the elevator behind him, next to the officer. Gant faced the elevator's closed doors. He took no notice of the numbers illuminating and flicking off as they ascended. Then the doors opened on to,a carpeted corridor. He was pushed along it. The guard was allowed to swing the barrel of the rifle against him in encouragement, but he hardly felt the blows; numbness was something he required now. He encouraged it.

"Halt!" the officer cried like a parody of authority. He knocked at the door at the end of the corridor, listened, opened it. "In here—* wait!"

There was no one, no secretary, in the outer office. The officer seemed surprised, but knocked at the inner door. Gant heard a voice he might have recognized had he not been sinking into himself, then the officer opened the door.

'The prisoner, Colonel, as you ordered!" he snapped out robotically. Then he turned to wave Gant forward. The guard buffeted him almost casually in the back with the AKMS. Gant stumbled toward the voice that announced:

"Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all. Return to your duties."

"Should your outer office be manned—?" the officer began.

"Its not your concern, Lieutenant. That will be all."

Gant had passed the officer, shuffling into the office where he saw Serov outlined against the light from the window. He was still squinting after the darkness of the cell. The light hurt his eyes as much as the blue sky had done over the Vietcong village. There was a second officer in the room, he noticed as the door was closed behind him.

Closed. Change of atmosphere, of tension; excitement here, even rage. But not directed at him, he sensed, like an animal exploring some outbuilding at night. Alert, led on by hopeful scents, aware of danger, confused by contradictory sensations. What was it about this room, these two? Who was—?

"Gant."

Priabin, he realized — and the KGB colonel had a pistol drawn. Priabin, who wanted to kill him. He stared at the man, unable to move or speak, as if exactly repeating their previous encounter.

"Thank God," he heard then. Serov? No, Priabin.

Serov slumped noisily into his chair, hands raised. His voice betrayed nervousness, suppressed or burned-out rage.

"So you've got your pilot. What now? It's three already. I've been shut up alone with you for a long time. We've refused two urgent calls, and other, more routine ones must be piling up at the switchboard." He sighed theatrically, lowering his hands slowly onto the desk, fingers spread. Gant was baffled; kept turning his gaze to Priabin, to Serov, to Priabin. Serov added, with greater mockery, "I even sent my secretary on a pointless errand, but he will be back soon. Anyone could walk in here, at any moment. What are you going to do?" He was all but gloating, even though he appeared to he Priabin's prisoner, Gant realized with slow, painful thought.

Where's your girlfriend, mm? It's not happening quickly enough, Priabin."

"Serov, be quiet — you're boring me," Priabin replied, moving toward Gant. His nose wrinkled at the food stains, at the dirt on

Gant's hands; his eyes were concerned at the features he studied, at the defeat and weariness Gant knew his own eyes proclaimed. He shook his head, not knowing what he intended by the gesture. "Are you OK?" Priabin asked in heavily accented English.

"Maybe," Gant replied in Russian. Priabin nodded at the word, as if remembering Gant more clearly. "What gives here?" he added, gesturing at Serov, who watched them both.

"You are now my prisoner once more," Priabin replied.

An exchange of prisons? The room's atmosphere was wrong, there was something else here — as if Serov were the prisoner, though he couldn't be.

He watched the emotions of Priabin's face; hate, yes, but purpose, too — fear, desperation, the wild excitement of overcoming something. What had happened in this room?

"You said pilot," Gant observed, turning to Serov. "Why are you handing me over to this guy? He wants to kill me."

"We all want to kill you, my dear fellow, in our own good time and our own way, but Colonel Priabin" — he lit and drew on a cigarette; blue smoke rolled above his head—"Colonel Priabin has a use for you before he kills you. And make no mistake, he still wants to do that. You are able to see that quite clearly for yourself, I imagine?"

Gant had turned back to Priabin. Yes, he still wanted it. Gant felt his body coming back to life, prickling with cramps and heightened nerves. There was a prison here, but he was no longer sure on which side of the bars he stood. He slowly, innocuously flexed his hands, shifted his feet.

"So?" he asked Priabin.

"Not if you help me, Gant — not then."

"No, I don't believe you," Gant replied. He might even want to mean it, but the woman's death would make him do it in the end.

"I'm your only way out, Gant," Priabin snapped, with an anger that seemed to have been suppressed for a long time. "You'll do as I say."

"What?"

"Fly me out of here — with the good Colonel here, of course, for company. Wonderful conversationalist."

"Why? Why do you need me?"

'Tell him, Priabin, why don't you?" Serov scoffed quietly.

Priabin's face expressed urgency. He glanced at his watch, as he had done repeatedly, ever since Gant had been brought there.

"All right. I can't get out because of the security surrounding the launch — yes, the laser weapon. Your people were right to be worried. They've done it — we've done it. We have one, and it will be loaded aboard the shuttle tonight. I have to get out of Baikonur, to another KGB office a hundred miles away — do you see?"

Gant shook his head. "Who's stopping you?"

"I am," Serov announced quite calmly.

"Why?"

"Because I have to try to stop the launch, that's why!" Priabin yelled, looking once more at his watch. One minute past three. The sunlight was pale now, sliding down the far wall of the room like splashed paint. "Don't you understand?"

"Of course he doesn't, Priabin. You could hardly expect him to, now could you?"

Priabin seemed at a loss; then his face brightened. "Lightning— of course, you don't know. Our precious army here intends to use the weapon!"

"How?" Gant asked after a long silence.

"Against your shuttle craft now in orbit. Atlantis will be vaporized on Friday — unless you get me out of here. I have to talk to Moscow. Is that enough explanation for you?"

Gant felt his jaw slacken, his mouth open. Confirmation lay exposed in Serov's smile, his glittering, watchful eyes. Wakeman, the shuttle commander, and the others, just — gone.

"I don't have time for your shock and recovery, Gant," Priabin snapped. "You'll obey my orders and fly our surveillance helicopter from here to Aral'sk, as secretly as the way you got in. Understand?"

Gant nodded. The man was giving him the pilot's seat in a Mil — a hand reaching down, two, three, four hands, into the vile water, and pulling at his numb hands and arms until they lifted him from the pit and he lay weak and exhausted and crying on the earth beside it. Fires burned all around, rotor noise howling about him, rifles on automatic… This Russian was going to give him control of a Mil helicopter, help him escape. He fought to prevent his relief appearing in his eyes, around his mouth. Clenched his hands behind his back.

"He's already thinking furiously how to turn all this to his advantage, Priabin," Serov remarked.

"That makes two of you," Priabin shot back, looking again at his watch. Three after three. "We'll make it, Serov — won't that annoy you."

ideas whirled in Gant's head. The laser weapon itself, the weapon being used, the shuttle and Wakeman, whom he knew, the treaty, distances, the promise of the MiL. Priabin must be used, for his safety; Priabin had to succeed. An aftershock ran through him like an icy chill. Using the battle station — Wakeman, Atlantis, the Soviet shuttle, that night, orbit, the treaty, the army, the distance to the nearest border…

… climb, turn, loop, roll, spin, dive… the key to the prison was in his hand, that was his most immediate and recurrent image. Escape.

There was a knock on the door. Priabin, startled, turned the aim of his pistol toward the noise. Serov sat immediately more upright, as if about to spring.

"Watch him," Priabin demanded.

Gant moved toward the desk, hearing a voice from beyond the door. A woman's voice.

"Colonel?" Then: "Dmitri?"

Priabin hurried to open the door, almost pulled Katya into the room, slammed the door behind her. In her arms was a uniform. Serov's breath hissed between his clenched teeth. Gant caught the letter opener Priabin threw in his direction. The Russian was elated by the woman's arrival. Her wide eyes were taking in the room, its tensions and reliefs, its promised dangers for her, for all of them except perhaps Serov. Her hand touched Priabin's arm proprietarially, concerned. He seemed to be unaware of the contact as he turned to Gant.

"Get into this KGB uniform, Gant. It should be about your size — quickly." He turned to the woman. "Katya — the helicopter?"

She nodded. "They grumbled a lot, said you couldn't get permission to take off, they didn't want to be shot down. But it's ready for your arrival. I told them it was urgent, you'd come with the right papers."

"Good girl. I'll have the right authority, all right — him." He pointed at Serov with the pistol; he was euphoric, almost drunk with the jigsaw puzzle he had successfully put together. Gant distrusted his mood. "What's happening outside this room?" he asked, still animated. "Did you have trouble getting in?"

"Back stairs — poor security from the clodhoppers. I didn't see a soul. We could use—"

"Front stairs — the elevator for us down to his car in the basement garage. A nice little party on urgent business. Come on, Gant. Hurry, man."

"What about the guy I came for — don't we need him?"

"He's heavily sedated. Too hard to move him. They'll just have to take my word for it, won't they?" His face seemed struck by light. "No, they bloody well won't, will they, Serov?" Priabin crossed to Serov's desk, tugged open a drawer, rummaged in it, tried a lower drawer, rummaged, then held up three cassette tapes. '"The ones we used — even neatly labeled by Mikhail." His gaiety was dangerous, consuming all caution; in his own mind, he had already won the game. He threw the cassettes to Katya. "Look after these with your life," he quipped. "Gant, are you ready?"

"Yes." He stood to attention in the corporal's uniform to be inspected. Priabin studied him for a moment, then nodded.

"You'll do. OK, let's go. Serov, you'll walk beside me in our little party, with Gant and Katya behind us. Both armed. One false step — but you know how the dialogue goes. Don't worry about Gant, Katya, he has a vested interest in helping us. We're giving him a chance to go on living. Just in case, take the pistol from him as soon as we reach the helicopter. OK?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"I think this farce has run for long enough, don't you?" Serov drawled, smiling.

"Get up," Priabin snapped at him.

Gant saw no movement of Serov's hand, only him rising from his chair. Then an alarm howled outside the window, answered by the baying of other alarms in the retreating distance of the corridors beyond Serov's office; all over GRU headquarters. Priabin was stunned by the noise. Gant thrust Serov aside and felt for the alarm button that had to be in one of the desk drawers Priabin had opened; found it, but was unable to stop the noise.

Serov shut the drawer on Gant's left hand. He yelled in pain and struck Serov across the temple with the gun Priabin had handed him.

"No!" Priabin wailed. His look of triumph had vanished.

Gant winced at the pain in his hand and continued to fumble clumsily around the drawer's interior. His mind was filled with the prospect of broken skin, broken bones, the uselessness of the hand … it touched another button. Silence.

Then he examined his hand, cuddling it, testing it. Broken skin.

The fingers bent slowly, in turn. No broken bones. Just bruising. The silence in the room, in the whole building, thudded against his ears like noise. His hand would have to be good enough to fly the MiL. Serov was satisfyingly slumped in his chair, blood seeping down his cheek from the cut on his temple.

"No," Priabin breathed. This time it was a plea.

Furniture of the room. A hurried impression as Gant's eyes roved like a quick, unfocused camera. Serving tray, glasses, chairs, wastebasket, papers, papers!

Cigarette smoke, lighter.

"Help me," he yelled at Priabin.

"What?" came the dazed reply.

Gant flicked the desk lighter, crumpled paper into the waste-basket. Katya, eyes concentrated and squinting, watched him, then snatched vodka bottles from the tray. Handed one to Priabin, unscrewed the tight cork from her bottle, twisting and tugging at it with almost comic desperation. Priabin, understanding, tugged the cork of the other bottle with his teeth.

"Drinking bastard — spilled the stuff, lit a cigarette, we sounded the alarm, but put out….."He did not concern himself with other explanation. They doused the wastebasket, then the surface of the desk. Gant flicked the lighter. Priabin soaked the front of Serov's uniform. The man's eyes cringed at the sight of the stain and the flickering lighter flame.

"Now!" Gant shouted, almost throwing the hghter at the vodka. Flames licked over the desk, dribbled to the carpet, flared in the wastebasket. "Get him on his feet."

He bundled Serov's frame out of his chair. "Move it," he bellowed. "Use the extinguisher, for Christ's sake."

Katya snatched it from the wall, inverted it, banged it on the arm of a chair, and foam sprayed wildly. Gant glared at Priabin.

"Help me get this guy to the door." Priabin was watching the foam as if mesmerized. "Damn you, Priabin, move your ass."

He threw Priabin the pistol and bundled the half-conscious Serov across the room. The man seemed unwilling to protest or resist. Gant watched the door, then opened it.

Two guards spilling into the outer office, rifles awry, curiosity as much as threat in their expressions, their eyes already glimpsing the flames and smoke beyond their colonel and the uniformed man who held him. Gant's hand ached. His was a KGB uniform, so was Priabin's and the woman's — three of them and the semi-conscious Serov.

"Drunk!" he yelled. "Started a fucking fire in his own office— cigarette!" The men were nodding. Gant turned. The woman had doused the flames. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils. "All right, get out of our way, the colonel needs medical attention. Quick, move it."

They began to back away from Gant and the muttering bundle in his arms, from Priabin as he pressed behind Gant, from the woman completing the group. Moved out of the outer doorway into the corridor. Gant thrust Serov forward, his feet dragging. Smoke seeped after them, stinking and choking.

The lieutenant was in the corridor beyond them, emerging from the staircase, running—

— saw the group they made, his retreating men, his slumped superior officer. Suspected. He'd questioned Serov about the manning of the outer office; he'd come expecting something to be wrong, but not a fire.

"Wait!" he shouted, still running. "What's going on here? Wait! What is the matter with—?" He stopped, mouth opening at the sight of Priabin's face — that of a prisoner — and Priabin's gun, impossible in an arrested man's hand. Recognitions flickered. He raised his gun.

"Do it and this bastard's a dead man!" Gant yelled at him. The two guards were slowly beginning to understand. Gant saw the narrowness of the corridor, the elevator doors at the end of it, the lieutenant and the two guards. It was never going to work.

He coughed in the rolling smoke and pushed Serov toward them like a shield. Priabin thrust the muzzle of his pistol against Serov's forehead. Gant felt the man in his arms become rigid with his sense of danger.

"We mean it!" Priabin shouted. "Get back, get out of our way."

Gant moved Serov like some overlarge toy being handled by a child. His feet dragged, but otherwise the GRU colonel did not resist his bundled passage down the first yards of the corridor. Gant felt the vulnerability of his own frame behind that of Serov. Priabin's shoulder rubbed against his as they moved together, Priabin still pressing the gun against Serov's head. Come on, come on, move.

The two guards retreated into the lieutenant, and together they shuffled backward reluctantly, staring at Serov's head and the gun. Gant was sweating furiously; he felt his volition draining away. To counter the threat, he offered Serovs form like a challenging flag at the three retreating men. It seemed to hurry them.

He knew they'd be in the underground garage, they'd be everywhere in the building; no one had done anything but cut off the alarm. It hadn't been canceled by an all-clear. Serov's boots dragged like brakes on the carpet.

He glanced at Priabin's face. It contained a desperation as clear as his own.

"We mean it, we'll kill him!" Priabin shouted at the guards and the lieutenant, waving the pistol, then replacing it so hard against the man's temple that Serov groaned. "Come on, get back!"

"Get away from those doors!" Gant bellowed hoarsely, his arms aching with Serov's weight, his own unwashed scent rank in his nostrils, his heart pumping wildly. "Move it!"

"Drop the rifles — your pistol, Lieutenant."

To Gant, the elevator suddenly seemed nothing more than a steel box into which they were stepping voluntarily; incarcerating themselves.

Priabin had summoned it. The rifles lay like sticks of black wood on the carpet. The three GRU men were beside the elevator doors. The lieutenant was looking down an empty staircase, hoping for assistance. Katya trained her pistol on them.

Gant slumped against the wall, Serov's weight hugged to him. Priabin stood opposite the doors of the elevator, pistol held out toward the frozen trio near the stairs. A moment of suspension, as if they all floated with some deep, slow current undersea. Then the click, the opening of the doors with a sigh.

Gant's head turned wildly.

Empty…

Empty!

Luck, incredible luck, which meant they would be down there. Priabin kicked the rifles and the pistol into the elevator, then helped Gant throw Serov after them. The colonel had begun to move, desperately but too slowly, trying to writhe out of Gant's relieved grasp. Gant flung himself against him, and they clashed dully onto the far wall of the elevator. Gant locked his arm across Serov's throat, snarling. Serov's body slumped into defeat once more.

Katya backed into the elevator, her gun still held level at the three men outside. Priabin covered her; then he pressed the basement button and held it down. Gant heard banging, already fading, on the outer doors. His own smell was suddenly more apparent in the confined, slowly moving box. His breathing and that of the others was magnified. Sweat ran into his eyes. Priabin's face was mobile with conflicting anticipations, eyes flickering again and again to the floor indicator above the doors. The lights winked on winked off, but the elevator did not stop.

Don't let it stop, don't let it, don't—

'They'll be waiting," Gant warned. Priabin nodded.

Gant gripped Serov's body more strongly, keeping one arm across the man's throat, feeling the bobbing Adam's apple against his sleeve; hearing the gurgling swallows of Serov's breathing, as if the man were drowning. Priabin placed the pistol muzzle almost ceremoniously against the blood-seeping temple.

Ground floor. The elevator did not stop. He felt the luck of it in another surge of adrenaline, but it seemed thin and ineffectual.

The elevator jerked to a stop, the doors opened. The icy temperature of the basement garage struck into the compartment, jolting Gant. He shivered. In his arms, Serov growled. Priabin jerked his head up. Serov's eyes were narrow with hatred.

"Gant?"

"I go first, sure—*

The basement was silent, apparently empty.

"Dmitri what if—?" Katya began.

"Don't think," Gant growled at her. "It has to work." He adjusted Serov's weight so that he could push him ahead. "Rifle," he added, nodding at the floor of the elevator. Their noises seemed lost in the echoing cold and concrete reaches of the basement. Gant listened. He could hear no footsteps, no running men.

Rasp of metal on metal. Glimpse of a rifle trained, resting on the hood of a car ten yards from him. Other men, perhaps five or six. Two officers, too. Men with uniforms undone but already dragooned into order and purpose.

He crushed Serov's body against him like a shield, feeling his own vulnerability; aware of every vital organ beneath the thin, stretched envelope of skin.

The noise of the first shot seemed swallowed by the low-roofed cavern of the basement, echoing harmlessly into the distance. The bullet chipped concrete flakes and dust from the wall near Gant's cheek. Dust filled his eyes, he felt his cheek sting.

"Stop firing, stop firing!" an officer bellowed through a loudspeaker, his voice distorted and booming. "You idiot, you'll kill the colonel," he added unnecessarily. Then he said, directing the open mouth of the loudspeaker toward Gant: "Stay where you are. Drop your weapons — you're outnumbered. You can't get out of here."

Gant coughed as he attempted to reply.

"There's no time to talk!" he heard Priabin shout. "We have nothing to lose — get out of our way. Don't attempt to stop us or Serov will be killed. You'll answer for that death, Captain. Think about it."

He stood alongside Gant, now thrusting the barrel of an AKMS rifle against Serov's head.

"Dmitri, the keys are in this car," Gant heard Katya call out.

"Start moving toward the car," Priabin whispered fiercely. Gant nodded, dragging Serov so violently off-balance that his legs stuck out in front of him and he became a drunk being towed rather than a shield. His heels scraped on the concrete floor. Oil stains, the smell of gasoline as Katya started the engine of the car Gant had not dared turn to see. The captain and his men made as if to move forward, their poses tense, threatening danger through reckless, instinctive action. "Serov's head will disappear if I squeeze this trigger," Priabin roared. "Stay where you are. Don't move a step."

Serov's bulk shifted against Gant, the dragging legs attempted to push the body upright. Serov cried out:

"Let them go! Don't interfere!"

Gant felt the body of the car against his back, felt the open rear door scrape against his sleeve, jab into his upper arm.

"Get in, get in," he said urgently, dragging Serov backward with him onto the seat. Serov struggled out of Gant's hold, but Priabin pushed him across the seat with the rifle and almost tumbled into the car. Gant felt exhausted beneath their combined weight. Priabin slammed the door, and the car immediately jerked forward, engine racing, tires squealing on the concrete.

The soldiers moved aside, losing their purpose and pattern as the car rushed at them. The captain jerked away from the hood at the last moment.

"Keep down," Priabin urged. Katya's form was bent over the steering wheel. "It's three kilometers, no more."

The car bucked onto the bottom of the exit ramp. Roared up into fading daylight, bouncing and skewing onto the cobbles of the square, beneath the archway and toward the dark statue surmounting the war memorial. The whole car smelled of gasoline; the engine howled. The traffic was light, Katya weaved through it out of the square onto a broad dual highway. Serov's eyes gleamed in his face. in contrast with the delicate, infirm manner in which his fingertips touched at the drying blood and the bruise on his temple.

Priabin's face was excited, elated. He laughed, the rifle held across his stomach and jabbed against Serov's ribs. He studied his prisoner with a wild satisfaction. Then looked at Gant, his features clouding. He shook his head as if to rid it of memory.

"You'll—?"

Gant was cradling his hand. It was already lividly bruised. He flexed his fingers in demonstration.

"I can fly," was all he said in reply. Then he turned to look back through the rear window.

"Two cars and a truck," Katya said through clenched teeth.

"We're immortal as long as we have this bastard with us," Priabin replied. "Katya — turn on the radio. Let's find out what they're up to."

After the click of the switch, orders and counterorders, ideas and schemes and warnings flew like escaped birds in the car, adding to the strain of tension between its four occupants. They guessed the KGB helicopter at one point, others discounted it, they queried the use of roadblocks, voices demanded action, authority leaped and changed and was questioned and recognized. They agreed on the priority of Serov's life; agreed, too, that the helicopter was a possibility. Behind them, Gant saw the cars and the truck maintaining but not decreasing the gap between them and their quarry. In the distance, away above and beyond office blocks, the first helicopter could be discerned against a pale sky gradually being stained dark.

The modern buildings thinned, leaving gaps of sky and flatness between them, until the town opened out into low buildings, fenced perimeters, the sense of a military place. Katya turned the car off the highway onto an approach road. The first car followed, only hundreds of yards behind. Gant heard the orders, transmitted ahead, that the car was not to be stopped, the barrier was to be raised. High wire, parked aircraft. The pole of the guardhouse barrier lifted like an arm beckoning. Armed soldiers stood back, almost at attention as if for a visiting dignitary. The car swept past them, slid as it turned violently, then straightened again. Hangars, repair shops, control tower, vehicles, and aircraft.

An army truck was parked outside the hangar for which the Woman was heading, soldiers already emerged from it but loosely grouped as if given a break from some training exercise. An officer with a walkie-talkie. The cars and the truck surging closer behind them as the car slowed. White feces peering to check on them, on Serov.

Katya drove the car into the hangar, then slowed to a halt. A cramped, low building, gaps of sky visible through holes in the corrugated roof. A single helicopter, a Mil-2, unarmed and designed for aerial surveillance. Small, light, vulnerable, its top speed seventy miles an hour slower than a Mil-24 gunship. Gant felt his hands quiver with disappointment.

He opened the car door, entering the tension of the hangar, his awareness narrowing to a matter of seconds ahead.

"Can you?"

"Yes, damn you," he yelled back at Priabin. "Get that bastard in the cabin — watch them."

They were all on the side of the car away from the entrance to the hangar, shielded by its bulk from the soldiers outlined against the poor daylight; they still had a loose-limbed, uncertain air about them.

"It won't be long," Gant murmured, reluctant to move from the shelter afforded by the car, "before someone gives them an order they can't question: 'Kill them all.'" More troops in the doorway as they climbed out of the truck that had pursued them. A droning of rotors, closing. There was no evidence of any ground crew, no KGB uniforms. The helicopter required two minutes to bring its instruments and systems on-line. If they'd fueled up, if no one had had the foresight to disconnect, damage—

He had to know, yet he could not force his body into motion. Serov seemed to sense his indecision, but could take no satisfaction from it. What Gant had said had struck him forcibly. He might, at any moment, become a victim himself, as much a target as his captors.

"Got to go," Gant said softly, as if to himself. "In the cabin. I need another two minutes. You have to watch and listen for me, understand?"

Priabin nodded. "Two minutes." He was pale. Katya was shivering with cold, perhaps with reaction now that she was no longer driving.

Facing the entrance, they moved slowly away from the car, toward the fuselage of the silent Mil-2. Its metal was cold against Gant's backward-stretched hand. He fumbled for the handle to the hinged door of the main cabin, his legs against the undercarriage wheel.

"Get in."

Then he moved quickly, forgetting them, aware only of his own unarmed vulnerability. He slid back the pilot's door and clambered in — knowing his back was turned to a dozen or more Kalashnikovs for two, three seconds — then he slid the door savagely shut; as if it rendered him immune.

Polish-made, at Swidnik, under exclusive license. A cramped single cockpit, instrumentation and systems — familiar enough. A sophisticated helicopter. Two minutes. Electrics, hydraulics — on, on, on, on—

He glanced to his left, toward the hangar doors. If they blocked them—? Trucks could be used, they had two trucks out there. The instrument panel glowed, the hydraulic systems sighed as the pressure increased to operating level. They'd be bound to think of it.

Nonretractable tricycle undercarriage — height of the aircraft perhaps thirteen feet, height of a truck maybe ten, twelve feet, height of the doors no more than twenty-eight, thirty feet… just—

— unless they closed the doors… closed the doors!

Ignition.

He could not avoid watching the doors. They would think of it, had to — just as soon as the rotors began to turn, proved he was a pilot, could fly the machine. Had to.

Ignition of the second Isotov turboshaft. Throttles. The tail rotor had begun to turn, and above his head the three-bladed main rotor moved heavily, slowly, as if through a great pressure of deep water. Then quicker.

Soldiers became purposeful, hurrying. No trucks, just the sliding shut of the heavy doors. Unarmed helicopter. The rotors whirled, became a dish, roared. The Mil bucked against its brakes. Holding his breath, Gant gripped the control column with his left hand, closing it gently. It ached, was stiff, but would suffice. Satisfied, he moved the throttles above his head, nudged the column, touched at the pitch lever. Released the brakes. The Mil bobbed above the concrete floor of the hangar. The doors began to slide ponderously toward each other, like hands closing on a butterfly. He looked up through the Plexiglas at the disk of the rotors and was intensely aware of their fragility.

"Gant! They're closing the doors!" he heard in his headset. Prion's voice, rising in panic.

The gap of fading daylight narrowed measurably. The air beyond the doors was as unknown and dangerous as the lightless cave into which he had shuffled the Hind. The rotor diameter of the Mil-2 was close to fifty feet, fifty—

He thrust the column forward with a burning hand and raised the pitch lever. The helicopter leaped toward the daylight like a startled animal.

The wheels skimmed the concrete, the gap of daylight narrowed, the doors shuddered closer together, grabbing at his anticipated path. His awareness was totally concentrated on the doors, on his measurement of the shrinking air. Priabin's voice was a wordless, continuous cry of protest and warning, which he ignored.

Slowly moving soldiers, slowly gesticulating officers, the now hardly altering gap of darkening air, the blur of things to either side of him—

— so that he hardly heard the noise of shots in his headset, the shocked cry of protest, the banging of the cabin's hinged door — all of them loud, but hardly impinging, hardly real.

Not even Priabin's terrible, sobbing cry was real.

As he corrected the Mil with the gentlest touch, he saw in his mirror a figure rolling on the hangar floor, but could not identify him. The rotors, the gap, fifty feet, fifty, fifty, fifty, fifty… the scene was frozen now, the Mil its only moving part. The corrugated ribbing of the doors, their heavy bolts, the patches of rust, the rotors, the rotors, fifty feet, fifty, fifty—

— left hand, right, left, right, fifty — his breath suspended, everything about his body tensed and still in anticipation of the first wild lurch and the tearing noise of a rotor blade — fifty, fifty, fifty—

Air.

Fading daylight, level flight for a moment, and the rushing blur beside him cold and empty. The doors in the mirror—

He banked the Mil savagely, then climbed as rapidly as he could as they began shooting. His body was bathed in sweat as it returned from shock. His hand began to burn with pain. His mind, no longer icy with judgments, knew they could not escape, not in this small, unarmed helicopter. He was merely alive, but not safe.

He heard—

"That bastard's shot her — shot her."

14: Last Ditch

Time itself was limited to the next two minutes. A clock had begun to register in his head, second after second. He could see no further than the two minutes' advantage he had over any organized helicopter pursuit. Eight seconds had already passed. He was becoming accustomed to the lightness, the individuality of this MiL, a type he had never flown before.

He eased the column forward, ignoring the wail of protest and horror that gathered in the tiny cockpit. Yet he could not isolate Priabin and the moans that must be the woman by switching off his headset. The ground beneath him diminished in the last of the daylight. He flicked on the radar, studying it at once, his mind closed to the sounds in his ears.

At six hundred feet — where they can see you, he told himself angrily — he slowed the climb until the Mil entered the hover; then, using the controls with new deftness and certainty, he made a 360-degree turn Eyes flickering from the radar to the scene darkening outside the Plexiglas, to the radar, to—

— the blip of a patrolling gunship already changing course, summoned back toward him. There was nothing else in the air as yet He lowered the pitch lever, and the Mil began to drop back toward the ground. He heard in his ears Priabin's plaintive cry.

"Gant — you must land the helicopter. I can't staunch the bleeding." Then something about stomachy huge loss of blood, looks pale, barely conscious — pain. "You must land, we must get Katya to a hospital."

"Serov got away!" Gant growled in accusation. He had intended a question, but it became an accusation "You let him get away — we have nothing."

"Shut up."

"Listen to me. There's no way out of here, Priabin. This airplane has no weapons. It can't outfly a crow, damn you!"

The Mil moved steadily away from the airfield, crossing boundary lights strung below like a warning. Gant flicked on the moving-map display, which glowed to life on the photo-reconnaissance main screen. The section of map surprised him with its detail. Getting lost would be easier with this much information.

For how long? For what purpose? Pessimism insisted, elbowing hope aside. Priabin still protested and demanded in his ears — almost inside his head now. He continued to head the Mil south, toward the old town, the Moscow road, the shelter of the river. Anywhere he could find ground clutter to confuse their radars, low cover, even a place of concealment. Because he had no alternative. It was simply a matter of time; thirty-eight seconds of the two minutes' freedom had passed. In the gunships, APUs were already warming up, rotors waited to turn, hands were poised near throttle levers, final flight checks were made, orders poured into headsets. He dismissed the crowding thoughts and switched off his radar. The solitary patrolling gunship was not in pursuit; it was waiting for new orders, for the pack. The tiny Mil drifted no more than forty feet above scrubby, frozen fields, scattered wooden buildings.

Gant studied the helicopter's main instrument panel. A PR adaptation, familiar enough; cameras, low-light TV, infrared, neither defensive nor offensive systems, just recording instruments. The moving map slid with him, repeatedly throwing up details that suggested safety, soon dismissed and ignored. Tyuratam's lights glowed against the darkness to port and to the southeast. In his mirrors, the Baikonur complex was a haze of white light.

They had nothing now, only Priabin's wild story. What they needed — what they had had with Serov as their prisoner — was proof, corroboration. This—Lightning… Gant shied away from the thought. They intended it; they would achieve it. Their mad wild card on the table, changing the basis of the game, declaring the eventual winner. Lightning. He could not think of it rationally, thus refused to think of it at all, except to understand that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Survival dictated other priorities. He watched the moving map record his increasing distance from the hangar and the airfield-Sixty-two seconds of the two minutes had vanished, slipped from him. He felt weary, hungry, still numb in parts of his body and mind from the shock of escape. Hope had drained him of adrenaline.

"Gant? Gant, are you there?" he heard.

"Yes," he snapped.

"She's unconscious. I, I think she's dying. For God's sake, turn back and land. I'll show you the hospital complex — turn back before it's too late." Priabin's voice was strange, as if a.recording of a long-past crisis. Gant remembered the Finnish border, the woman's body cradled in Priabin's arms beside the car. The woman in there, evidently dying, was Anna, not the junior KGB officer with whom he worked — maybe even slept.

"No," he said carefully, firmly.

"Yes, damn you!" Priabin almost screamed in his head.

Gant flicked on the radar. Nothing ahead of him. Against the town's haze, he could see power lines, radio masts. He threaded a course dictated by the details of the map, designed specifically to assist low-altitude, even night, flying. He flicked off the set again.

"No. She's dying — you said it. You can't save her — or yourself, that way. She's on your conscience, Priabin," he added without pity in his voice. "You messed up back there. She got shot. It happens." Better to finish it quickly, encourage the rage, burn it off like gas from a well. He needed Priabin's brain, not his feverish, guilty imagination.

And Priabin raged; cursing, blaming, pleading. The Mil drifted south slowly, hidden by folds and dips, masked by ground clutter. Gant poised his hand over the radio, waiting to tune to the principal military frequency. He would need to know when they began the hunt, how they began it. Priabin's anger slid into incoherence, into harsh breathing, sobs, then a soothing murmuring to the unconscious woman.

Gant exhaled carefully, deeply. The haze of the town was closer, the road and railway and river no more than a few miles ahead. Lights from a scattering of homes, headlights on a minor road to the west of him, bouncing and imitating searchlights; the image made him shiver with anticipation. Yet, with only the haze ahead and in his mirrors, the scattered lights, the last strip of orange-gold mark-the always indistinct desert horizon to the west, the murmuring voice of Priabin — it was all unreal; deadening, like a sedative. The ZiL was comfortable now, like a familiar car. He flicked on the radio, tuning it.

A roar of voices after the swish of static. Like a great anger. Command, commands, commanding — eventually a voice emerged, and it did not seem to be that of Serov, even distorted by rage and distance. An older voice. Snapping out orders, giving advice, directions. The hunt was on.

Literally. Airborne, the first two gunships, heading south at close to maximum speed. They wouldn't care if at first they overran him. Kill on sight, destroy on contact, end, finish, make certain, no survivors, destroy on contact… the litany unnerved him. He returned the set to its neutral, safe swish of ether. He would not be able to evade them. Fuel gauges registering full; he'd get no more than — what, one fifty, carrying only two other people in the main cabin? One fifty. The western shore of the Aral Sea? Not even that far. He groaned.

Priabin's voice was silent. Just an occasional movement, the scraping of a boot on metal, the whispers of a shivering body in his ears. A small, weak, unconscious groan. He listened instead to the retuned radio.

Positions, speed, altitude, pattern, all immediately supplied, as if they were reporting to him. Once the pattern was established, they might go to another channel or into code, but it was all too diffuse as yet for the controller to resign the authority and success of the search to his units. He wouldn't be able to see most of them on radar because they were keeping low now, rushing through the early night, eager and assured. Positions, visual scan, IR traces, ground clutter—

"Priabin."

"What?" A man startled from sleep or reverie. His voice was dull with misery.

"We — we need proof! Proof they can't mistake or misunderstand. Real proof — not like those tapes. Real." The idea was still formless. "Right. Like — pictures." He clenched on the thought, grinding his teeth, forcing its birth. "TV, infrared — cameras, right? Transmission, video recording — range?"

"What?"

"What's the range of this damn transmitter?" he bellowed.

"I–I'm not sure. A hundred miles, fifty — I don't know."

"Then you'd better hope."

"Why?"

"You use it, to transmit PR pictures direct?"

"Sometimes."

He lifted the Mil over power cables. The road was ahead, cars moving along it, lights rising and falling, spraying out into the dark countryside. Scattered houses, the early moon, stars. The darkness appeared unsafe.

Nothing in his mirrors. The two minutes had come and gone. Two minutes thirty seconds. At high speed, they wouldn't be more than a minute behind. Maybe a minute and- a half. Then use the time!

"Aral'sk — the nearest KGB office… receive the pictures?" He was incoherent in his struggle to shape the idea. "Uuuhn," he groaned, as if the notion resisted and he were grappling with it. "Damn it."

"I don't know."

"Talk to them!" he yelled. "You talk to them. Is there a radio back there?"

"Yes — what pictures? Gant, what—?"

"Maybe some….." His voice was soft now, his breathing stertorous but relieved. IR, TV — low-light TV, transmitter, recorder, cameras of different kinds in the main cabin, Priabin would have to describe them — Christ, Priabin was going to have to use them!

His voice gabbled. The idea was loose, slippery. He held on to it only by bellowing the fragments.

He had slowed the Mil almost to a hover, twenty feet above a darkened and dilapidated wooden building. Barn or warehouse. Its bulk — he dropped alongside it, but kept his undercarriage perhaps six feet above the ground — disguised his radar image. Lights streamed along the road. Headlight beams washed over sand, over the ditch alongside the road, caught the gleam of icy railway track, all as if seeing him rather than simply moving across his sight. His head rang and whirled, his voice was breathy, threatening to crack.

No more than a minute now, the clock in his head insisted.

"Assembly building… shuttle vehicle — laser weapon aboard?" He did not pause for a reply. "Pictures — pictures! From the doors … roof — shuttle and weapon, all we need… transmit to KGB receiver — proof, other people know, Moscow — everyone… otherwise we don't survive, this could keep us alive… once their secret's blown, we might be safe — assembly building…"

His voice failed.

"Gant? Gant?"

"What?"

"It's madness — you realize that? I can't do it."

"Forget her!" he roared back. "Forget the woman — she's dead, Priabin. Were all dead unless we get some leverage — now. Understand me? I can't get us out of here, I'm not Captain Marvel. Can Aral'sk KGB pick up a transmission?"

Priabin was silent for a moment, before he said, "I'll ask them." Then, as if uttering a betrayal, he repeated vehemently: "I'll ask them!"

"Do it now," Gant said with a sigh he could not prevent. He almost added something more sympathetic about the dying girl, but refrained. Priabin's conscience, his grief, was inconvenient, possibly dangerous.

Gant held the Mil in the hover, seven or eight feet from the ground. Beyond the road, the river caught the first pale moonlight like a winding slug trail. He felt a breeze elbowing against the fuselage, heard Priabin's breathing, his movements in his ears. Let his own body subside.

Not the doors; the booster stages had been moved to the launch pad, the doors would not be open. The roof, then. Skylights.

Holding the Mil occupied his instincts and his limbs. His mind cooled. TV camera and even infrared… Priabin would have to get out of the MiL, use an IR lens on a still camera, unless—

"You got a portable TV or film camera back there?"

"Um — yes, I think so." Priabin searched. Gant heard the man pause, then sniff audibly. "Yes. Videotape recording, not TV."

"OK, use that. I'll take TV—"

"Can you operate the equipment?"

"Pray I can."

He had been assessing the control panel. Lights, camera, action — yes.

"Gant." Priabin protested.

"Not now."

He summoned the sections of moving map he would require. The main assembly building that now housed the shuttle craft and the laser weapon was more than twelve miles to the northeast. He assessed the distance, the obstacles, with a strange detachment. A ring of silos, an intricate web of roads and railway branch lines, test facilities, factories, support areas — danger symbols, restricted areas strung like the constituents of a minefield. His hands were aching and his legs cramped from holding the helicopter still in the now-turbulent breeze. He looked up, seeing navigation lights amid the stars. Nothing yet.

"Is the girl secured?" he asked, as if of a piece of cargo.

"I—"

"You want to save her pain, Priabin, make sure she can't move," he instructed through clenched teeth.

"Gant!"

"Just do it. You talk to Aral'sk yet?"

"They're standing by for a transmission. It's all right, I explained that our office's receiver was out of commission. They don't know— yet — what it is they're going to see."

"When they get the pictures, tell them to transmit them direct to Moscow — they can do that?"

"They'll have to use a relay to Guryev or on to Astrakhan, even Baku… to the nearest satellite facility."

"Warn them to be ready on that. There isn't going to be much time. OK?" He attempted to trust Priabin; but images of the dead woman on the border road defeated him. Priabin would work with him — possibly. Priabin had his own life to save — possibly. But the dead woman and the dying woman — what had they done to him? "OK?" he insisted. "You ready?"

"No," Priabin replied immediately. "But we're on the same side, Gant. For the moment, and by the strangest accident — but we are. I have to stop them, too, there's nothing standing in my way," he added as if he divined the source of Gant's doubt. His breathing was harsh, contradicting his statement. Gant let it go.

"OK. Talk to Aral'sk, then get ready to use that video camera."

Begin.

The Mil rose gently from the shelter of the wooden barn. The wind cuffed the fuselage as it moved out of the shadows, into the betraying moonlight. Bright moon, strong wind. Gant loathed the night.

He scanned the sky, his gaze sliding from the starry darkness toward the wash of the moonlight. Nothing. No lights, no insect silhouettes. The wind struck the fuselage. He glanced down at the moving-map display. Twenty feet above the ground, the Mil began to move northeast, away from the Moscow road, toward the main assembly building of the Baikonur complex.

"I should not have had to come here, Serov. I should not have had to come."

Serov's broken arm was held in a sling made from someone's Uniform belt. His face was ashen with pain, his whole bulky form somehow diminished by his injury. To Rodin, he appeared — for once — subordinate. Rodin's voice echoed in the empty hangar. GRU officers and men had retired to a respectful, even nervous distance, anticipating some kind of detonation. Rodin slapped one removed glove in his palm, as if weighing a selected target. Serov had become the object of his rage, but more than that; the general felt a desire, almost a need, to vent some deep, anguished wrath on the man who stood in front of him. There were pools of light-rain-bowed gasoline around them where the stolen KGB helicopter had stood.

"I — comrade General, I am sorry that—"

"Be quiet, Serov. Be quiet before you say something that further displays your incompetence." Rodin's glove slapped into his palm like an anticipation. His staff, too, stood away from the two of them; near the open doors of the hangar — through which the American had flown the Mil and escaped! It hardly bore consideration, it made his body overheat, his collar seem tight. It evoked intense contempt, even hatred, for this, this creature in front of him.

Rodin cleared his throat of angry phlegm. "They will be found, Serov, within the hour. At liberty, they are an element of the most critical importance. This American, Gant — you seem to have underestimated him just as you did the KGB officer. You let them take you." The anger was back, and he did little to suppress it. His hand moved, without restraint, slapping the glove hard across Serov's face. "You—" he snarled.

Rodin knew. Some deep instinct convinced him that Serov was involved in Valery's death. He could not analyze or even continue the idea. His wife was broken, and he could feel pity for her; just as he could feel his hatred of Serov. He knew that Serov, too, understood. His eyes gave that away.

"I will make it my duty to inform Stavka of this day's business, Serov," he promised. Had Serov killed his son? Impossible. But he had had something to do with it; had he hounded the boy? Showing him his future, in a cracked and distorting mirror? Had he destroyed Valery? "They will be recaptured," he proceeded, as if some rehearsed and uninvolved part of him continued with the business of security, and Lightning. 'The measures taken must not fail. It is being put back into your hands. You'll come with us to mission control and run the search from there. Understand? You will succeed."

"Comrade General, my arm—"

Rodin waved a dismissive glove, airily. 'There is not time to have that set and plastered. You will come now. You have control of four gunships and another eight helicopters, as well as GRU and army units. You will use them to find these runaways. Come/'

Rodin turned away from the ashen, carefully neutral features. His stride did not falter. Inside himself, he felt a dark tide moving his heart and stomach. Now, now he could blame others, entirely, for Valery's death. Others would pay. Valery Avould be — avenged. The record put straight.

He reached the tight, expectant knot of staff officers. He waved them ahead of him out into the evening and the icy wind. He looked up at the stars. Somewhere out there, one small helicopter posed a danger. Critical — but it was difficult to believe that the American could evade the hunt for more than an hour or two. Before midnight, before the shuttle and the laser weapon began their journey to the launch pad, he and Priabin would again be in custody — or dead. He felt the wind snatch at his breath. It flew away like smoke. He bent his head to climb into the staff car's rear seat.

Dangerous, but not mortal. He looked out of his window. Serov was cradling his broken arm as he came out of the hangar. A gunship droned overhead. More distantly, lights flashed from other MiLs. Searchlights flooded down from the bellies of two other insect shapes in the distance.

"Mission control," he snapped. "Quickly." Then, as he made to settle back into his seat, his glance turned once more to Serov, waiting in the cold for his own car. He tapped his driver on the shoulder as he heard the gears bite and the engine note strengthen. "Wait," he said, and wound down his window. "Serov," he called. "Come here."

Serov walked the few yards in evident discomfort. He leaned slowly, like an old man, to the open window.

"Comrade General?"

"Where will they make for, Serov? What will they attempt?"

"Telephone — radio?" Serov replied dully. "Priabin will want to talk to Moscow Center."

"Exactly. Where, then?"

"Aral'sk is the closest office with the necessary comm—"

"Then do something about Aral'sk I don't care what it is — close the office, commandeer the equipment, destroy the place if you have to — just make it impossible for them to use Aral'sk KGB. Understand?"

"Yes, comrade General, at once."

"Driver — you can go."

The lamp set beneath the MiLs belly was on. The black-and-white television picture, four inches square and set above the control panel, showed the uneven ground over which the Mil passed with grainy inexactitude. Gant flicked off the camera. The surveillance equipment was effective in searching for moving figures and vehicles — it would have to be good enough from the roof of the main assembly building. Distance to target, seven miles. Ground speed, less than forty miles an hour.

Ten minutes now. Occasionally, in his headset, their voices barked and called. Areas clear, coordination with ground troops, consultations with the command post. Serov's voice was back, strangely weak and old, but decisive with what Gant sensed was desperation. The other voice had disappeared. They were concentrating the search to the south of him, to the west, too. Looking for a fleeing animal. He was within the net, but they were still casting it and not pulling it tight. He huddled close to the terrain, slipped beneath power cables, nosing like a dog rather than flying— but he had reached the curving rampart of silos, tracking radars and the power grid at the perimeter of the military launch complex to the north of Tyuratam.

Noises in his ears. Nothing, clear… sweep of area completed— and always Serovs angry dissatisfaction whipping them on. Silos like craters surrounded him, passed below his sight and the cockpit coaming. Priabin had been silent for a long time. Occasionally, he heard the woman coughing or moaning. He deliberately dissociated the noises from any human experience. They were only the distant night sounds he had heard in Vietnam; monkeys calling or men burning. Eventually they merged and lost identity.

The network of power cables straddled the road he was following. He slid gently beneath them, crossed another road, two parallel railway lines. The craters of the silos slipped behind him; radar dishes stared like blind eyes, ahead and around the MiL.

With the lamp on, at his speed and lack of height, they were no longer looking for him; he belonged with them, as familiar as a uniform or a waving hand. The wind, however, waited to ambush him. Rocked and jolted the MiL, rendered it egglike and fragile.

Six miles, five and a half. Lights along the flank of a low building, presumably a factory. He lifted a little and passed over it, splashing the light like a declaration of intent over the roof and the shadows that clung about the eaves. Dropped the Mil behind the building, moved on northeast. A truck stationary on a minor road, the glimpse of searchlights playing amid fuel storage tanks. A soldier looked up, his face white in the light for an instant, his eyes blind, his hand—

— waving.

Gant exhaled noisily.

"Priabin?" he said softly. "Priabin? Is the girl… how is she?" Asking after her, assuming sympathy, was like touching wood, or crossing his fingers.

"Unconscious again." Priabin's voice was dragged by pity and sadness. "Gant—"

"Don't say it," he warned.

"But, afterward—" Something continued to protest within Priabin, like a qualm of conscience he could not be rid of.

"Afterward, we hide until the cavalry comes for us," Gant confirmed. "Serov would kill us — you — as soon as he could. I might be valuable. You wouldn't be. You took him — he'll kill you even if everything's blown up in his face. Understand?"

"Yes, yes, dammit, Gant, I understand," Priabin breathed, as if not wishing to be overheard.

Four miles now—

A haze of lights, like a stadium's glow after dark. The assembly buildings for Soyuz, G-type boosters, satellite final assembly, Salyut construction and training, shuttle craft assembly… laser battle station assembly… target. Three and a half miles and five minutes away. Gant felt himself tense.

A net of moonlit roads, the trails of purposeful snails. Cars and trucks moving, swaying and bouncing their lights. The navigation lights, the downward-thrust searchlight of one of the hunting gunships away to the north, another walking white limb of light to the southwest. He felt the tension constrict like drying bandages Wound much too tightly. It was a moment of drowning extended for minute after minute, mile after mile; holding his breath for longer and longer.

The haze of lights was nearer, and individual stars of light had begun to appear. A row of streetlights along a road, clusters of lights over loading bays and railway tracks. Two miles, a little over three minutes—

— dogs barking. Area clear, directions and orders, new headings, call signs. He had begun to understand their movements, recognize and determine the position of each helicopter that reported. They had reached the point of farthest travel and were turning to trawl back in; they were on the point of pulling the net tight around him.

A mile and a half.

There was no escape afterward. Merely hiding, if they survived.

"Aral'sk," he said gruffly through his nerves. "They still standing by?"

"Yes."

It had suddenly seemed important to ask, as if Aral'sk hung by a slender thread, another spider dangling as dangerously as the Mil he was flying. His helmet chafed where sweat had sprung on his forehead and neck, then dried, then appeared again; tidemarks of his successive fears.

"OK, you understand what you have to do?"

"Yes." A boy's small voice, reluctant but obedient.

"The battle station — don't finesse, Priabin. Just use the zoom to close in on it, and hold the shot. Let them see the shuttle, then what's in the hold."

"We won't need—"

"Damn you, just do as you're told. You don't know shit about the ten seconds that follow what you're asked to do. You don't know anything. We need all the ammunition we can lay our hands on." Stop it. Wasted energy, he told himself. "You're the backup," he continued in a calmer, more official tone. "Just get the shots, OK?"

"OK." Silence, then the sliding back of the cabin's main window on the port side, directly behind him. The main observation window. Priabin must be leaning out, watching the assembly complex slide closer like a great fungus of light. Then he heard Priabin say: "Gant?" His voice seemed to hold a threat, but was without excitement.

"What?"

"I've just remembered how much I want to kill you."

Gant's wrists jumped with reaction, his body shivered.

"I don't need it, Priabin. Not here and now. Just do the job."

Then he attended to the call signs trickling through the ether. Headings, ground speeds, reports, requests. Headings… They were moving back, closing on mission control, he presumed, from where the hunt was being coordinated. A point only two miles or so behind him. He was the fly in the center of the web. The closest helicopter, by his guess, was little more than five minutes from him, coming in from the northwest.

Haifa mile. Less than a minute. He could see the main assembly building quite distinctly, ahead of him. Scattered trucks, the locomotives that would tow the shuttle out to the pad, soldiers gathered like ants around their parked vehicles. It all seemed enlarged, as if viewed through a telescope of exposed nerves. One quarter of a mile. He flicked off the lamp in the Mil s belly because now it drew attention, conspicuous in so much light. He banked the small helicopter lazily and hung tilted sideways in the hard-lit evening, approaching the vast building that rose like a line of cliffs. He ascended gradually, innocently, into the air until he could see beyond its vast corrugated roof to where Baikonur vanished into the dark.

He glanced at soldiers staring up at him disinterestedly; a glimpse of the yellow locomotives, the grouped trucks, a sense of the renewed wind as it banged at the fuselage. Then as he leveled, he could see only the huge, sloping roof beneath and around him. Target. He drifted the Mil slowly, very slowly, along the gully that ran between the two sloping cliff faces of corrugated sheets. Looking for the skylight he needed.

The channel between the two slopes of corrugated iron seemed endless, so slowly was the Mil moving forward. Noise beat back like blinding sunlight from the roof, deafening him, making it almost impossible to hear Priabin's shouts in the headset. His eyes scanned the length of the roof on either side, studied the mirrors, looked ahead, again and again. As if he expected the helicopters to jump into sight like giant fleas.

Tension beat like quick, successive waves of a storm; his ears throbbed. Too slow, too slow—

Yet he spoke calmly to Priabin, enunciating clearly; the volume a yell, the tone one of encouragement. "You can see it?" Twelve, he counted. Twelve of the skylights on either side already passed. How many? "Where will it be? Remember it."

Priabin was counting, too, as he leaned out of the cabin window. But he had to lean back inside each time he spoke and shout above the rotor noise, holding his microphone against his lips.

"Shuttle — moved to middle — building… laser weapon — cargo hold. Middle, middle of the building — eighteen, eighteen windows. "

Gant strained to hear, and to believe. It had to be like an X ray, and as accurate. He had to be above the right skylight, he had to be able to see the shuttle and its cargo hold on the tiny TV screen in front of him. To point the camera lenses downward, hold steady, let the videotape soak up the images below like litmus paper — all the while juggling the Mil in the wind that howled down the channel between the two slopes of iron.

"OK, OK," he replied. "One eight, eighteen."

Fourteen, fifteen — close now. The clock ticked in his head as precisely as ever. The closest gunship was less than three minutes away.

He couldn't use the IR sensors on board. Too much icy metal directly around and beneath, too vast a space within. It had to be guesswork, relying on what Priabin had already described of his last visit to the assembly building — rubbernecking like a tourist — and his estimation of the present position of the shuttle and its by-now adjacent or even loaded cargo. He had to be able to see. seventeen, the helicopter seemed to hang like a model in a wind tunnel; undulating, disturbed, but not flying. Seventeen… eighteen — eighteen.

He held the Mil-2 at an angle that was difficult to maintain, its whole fuselage tilted away from the roof's slope. The skylight was blacked out, as he had expected.

"Eighteen!" he yelled.

"Eighteen!" Priabin cried back at him, his voice almost lost in the noise and the wind.

"Are you ready?" Gant estimated the skylight was directly beneath one of the wheels of the tricycle undercarriage. Priabin had to check.

"Yes!"

" Camera?"

"Check!"

* Go!"

He strained his hearing but caught no sense of Priabin's boots clatter onto the corrugated iron when he dropped. Then he saw a bent, hunched, almost reclining figure just ahead of the MiL's nose; waving. Overcoat flying, boots losing purchase, camera straining at its straps, face white with fear and tension. He was frantically directing the nose of the helicopter away. Gant shunted delicately in the wind, with a vast expense of energy and adrenaline. He waited, arms and shoulders crying out, until Priabin stopped waving; raised his thumbs. He was so close Gant would have seen the gesture clearly without the aid of the lamps splash of light, which he'd switched on once more. Now—

He dropped the MiL's starboard wheel. He heard the noise, felt the damage, the restraint of the skylight's remains as he tugged the undercarriage clear and righted the helicopter; returning it to its abseiling posture against the slope of the roof..

TV screen. Priabin was waving wildly like an excited child. TV screen. He studied the viewfinder's image. The crater of twisted metal, broken wood, splinters of glass, shards of wooden blackout.

Focus.

There—

— what he had come for. There.

He caught his breath. On the tiny television screen the view-finder's black-and-white image wobbled, blurred, and then re-focused. The maw of the shuttle's cargo bay gaped, the long-nosed metal anteater of the laser weapon hung over it, suspended from a crane. Caught in the act.

Gant could see Priabin at the farther edge of the skylight he had broken with the undercarriage, his hands waving and pointing, the video camera clutched against his chest — then operating. The light from the MiL's lamp splashed into the skylight. Wait, wait—

He switched on the videotape, holding the image firmly, with vast effort, his muscles aching with the strain of holding the Mil against the buffeting wind. The tape began running; evidence, proof — he'd done it, he had it all.

Then the alarm, even as he cautioned himself once more. Wait—

— the first shooting, from inside the assembly building. Andike figures staring, running, posed to attack or panic. Glass still showering down, shards of wood and buckled metal rattling and bouncing on the flanks of the shuttle, smaller than its target, Atlantis. Gant's thoughts raced, uncontrolled. Hie alarm would be reaching the closing gunships: shock, response, orders, further concerted response. pull speed, heading certain — kill, kill, kill… now the closest Mil Was half a minute away from the corrugated roof. The knifelike channel was like a cul-de-sac, trapping him. The videotape slid softly, J^th aching slowness, gathering the images that were required. Bullets struck the belly of the MiL, whining away, their high noise audible in the roar of the rotors. In their panic they risked the Mil "eing damaged and crashing through the roof, onto the shuttle.

Priabin had drawn back, stunned by noise and the bullets. Gant yelled into his microphone.

"Get back inside. That's enough — enough!"

Priabin looked toward the cockpit with the sudden movement of a startled deer. His headphones and their lead had been forgotten; Gant's voice had boomed in his head. He raised his arms in acknowledgment and scuttled back beneath the MiL's shadow. Television screen. The helicopter bucked in the wind's violence and the videotape recorded the corrugations of the roof for six seconds until he juggled the image of the shuttle and the laser weapon back onto the screen. Soldiers, too, and gesticulating ants. He could not prevent the surge of success catching at his breathing again, making his whole frame weak.

A flea jumped; a giant flea — up over the lip of the roof and down the slope toward him; seconds to weigh, decide, obey the voice that was crying in Gant's headset — kill them, kill them.

It happened in the slowest of motion. He glanced at the scene through the skylight, the frozen arm of die crane, the dangling ant-eater of the battle station, the shuttle's gaping maw — and the movement of the gunship seemed just as frozen and recorded. Sense of the tilted MiL, the noise of the cabin door banging shut, the movements of his hands like those of an old man — then his Mil jumping away as if to continue some rapid abseil. The gunship bore down and over him, and he sensed the machine he flew falling backward, then dodging like a small, agile opponent as the cannon beneath the gunship's nose opened fire. Tracer rounds hurt Gant's eyes by their proximity.

"Gant!" Priabin yelled, then cut off his voice, realizing his helplessness.

The Mil-2 rose up the opposite corrugated cliff, as if backing away from the belly of the gunship. He hopped the helicopter over the peak of the roof, flinging it like a stone away from the assembly building and up into the darkness. The gunship turned like an angry adult toward a disobedient child, the cannon still firing in short, awful bursts of tracer.

He turned on the radar. There was no point, no purpose in concealment; he needed to see them, even as his peripheral vision glimpsed winking navigation lights less than a quarter of a mile off to starboard.

Never this close, never this close before. Obsolete fighter aircraft tactics and maneuvers gleamed like false lights in his mind. Useless to him.

'Transmission!" he yelled. "Do they acknowledge in Aral'sk?"

"Yes — yes!" Priabin shouted in his ears after a silence that was filled with the noise of the Mil and the woman's moaning. 'They want to know what it is." Priabin seemed almost amused, a feverish excitement making his voice high and boyish.-

'Tell them to retransmit." Gant yelled, his eyes flicking from the scene beyond the Plexiglas to the radar screen. Three of them now, including the gunship still firing its gleaming bursts of tracer, unstitching the darkness. Gant was caught in a wash of light for a moment as he drove downward and beneath a great sagging loop of cable. Unnerve, unnerve, he told himself, his hands twitchy with anticipation, his body bathed in sweat. 'Tell them to retransmit now." It was as if he projected his own immediate fear as far as the Aral'sk KGB office. "Now!"

In his mirrors, the heavy Hind-D, like the one he had flown into Baikonur, hopped over the power fines and came on. Gant estimated distances. The rocket pod beneath one of the Hind's stubby wings bloomed orange. Voices yelled and countered in his headset.

He was half a mile from the main assembly building, heading east. He banked savagely, the whole area of his mirrors seeming to be blinded by the orange glow from the Hind's port wing. Capable of penetrating eight inches of armor, thirty-two rockets to each pod, four pods on this gunship. One hundred and twenty-eight chances to kill. The first burst passed alongside his flank as the helicopter lay on its side in the air for an instant. Range, twelve hundred meters— he was almost out of range. The smaller Mil could, just, out-maneuver the Hinds at low speed. He flung the helicopter toward a long, low warehouse. Shut up, he yelled silently as the woman cried out in pain and terror in the cabin behind him. The Hind possessed Poor low-speed handling qualities. But there were four of them now, the second closest perhaps less than a mile away, the others converging as orders were screamed and reiterated over the radio, ^ant hurled and twisted the Mil through the low canyons of the warehouse complex.

M… lost them," he heard in his headset.

' What?" he shouted back. The engines of the helicopter whined and screamed as he turned violently. He felt the whole airframe judder. The MiL's shadow loomed like a hunchback on the wall of a building, light spilled from an open door. The mouth of a furnace glowed. Industrial support unit. He was still heading east, his undercarriage skimming the concrete, his twists and turns as tight and violent as he could make them. The woman must be in agony at the assault of G-forces.

"Lost them. Gone dead," Priabin shouted. The mirrors were clear for an instant, as if he were alone.

"Dead?"

"Just cut off — middle of conversation. About to transmit on to Baku, for the satellite."

"Forget them. They won't be able to help."

"— happened?" was all he heard in reply.

"They're dead — you said it yourself."

The single videotape was all the evidence that existed. A Hind turned into view at the far end of a long corridor formed by the walls of two buildings. Smoke, sparks flaring from beside the cockpit, another welding job or a small electrical furnace — sparks, flash from the eager Hind astern. Rockets.

He jumped the Mil-2 into the air like a startled cat. It jerked rather than flowed upward, and the rockets passed like a firework shower beneath the helicopter's belly. Explosion as they diverged, one striking the wall of the building, penetrating the corrugated iron, another exploding on impact. The remaining rockets raced on, their flame suddenly dying out.

He rolled the helicopter in a banked turn over the roof of the building and slipped into the darkness beyond it. He increased speed.

The four gunships were controlled, but they had lost formation, purpose had become almost hysterical. They would leave gaps, blind spots; Serov insisted on retaining command of the helicopters. It was a weakness, it had to be exploited. Serov was relying on radar, visual sightings, positional reports all reaching him in a constant stream, but there were whole seconds that passed between information, decision, response. Chinks, tiny gaps of time — he had to slip through one of them.

The Hind was back in his mirrors, lumbering until it reached open darkness and then bearing down with frightening speed. If he had only been armed, he could have taken it easily. Outmaneuvered it, gotten behind it or above or beneath and ripped it open with rocket and cannon fire.

The Hind seemed to have discovered patience. It was now merely stalking him. Gant increased his airspeed, and the pilot in the Hind matched it but made no move to overtake him. Gant rose to a couple of hundred feet, as if declaring a surrender. He was visible now. He saw the other gunships on his radar, all close, too close, and dropped the Mil savagely down in the steepest descent possible. Somehow, now that they had reassumed a pattern and a definite purpose, he had to rid himself of one of them. Create a gap of time and air through which to escape.

"… she's dead!" he heard Priabin cry out. It did not matter. Priabin's grief or lack of hope did not matter, just as the woman's death was irrelevant; no more than the distant announcement of an aircraft's departure. His sole interest lay in his own survival.

He could not shake off the Hind astern of him. A stream of positional fixes flowed from the copilot-gunner back to Serov, pinning him down, like a moth to a card. Darkness was unusable, hugging the ground was no longer an advantage. They had him, they were closing at almost maximum speed.

Radar dishes, gantries, pylons, radio masts. He was approaching the vast power and tracking network to the east of the main control and assembly area and south of the principal launch facility. Scattered lights, a network of roads strung with pale globes, lights shining from huts, from portacabins and even caravans. A strange suburb of Baikonur. It was a minefield designed to assault helicopter rotors, but it was cover, too. It was too precious to be damaged in a wild attack. They would be cautious, almost as if unarmed. They wouldn't be able to use—

As if sensing Gant's intent, the Hind trailing him launched from one of its underwing rocket pods. A flare, then the quick leap of the unguided rockets toward him, enlarging in his mirrors, rushing out the night.

He jerked at column and pitch lever.

Too close, too close.

The amphitheater of tiered seats and rows of screens and monitors that was Baikonur's mission control was only an audience to what was happening down on the room's vast floor, fifty yards or more away from the nearest spectator behind his telemetry screen and console. A strange, vivid frenzy of voices, movement, panic, imminent success, like a dramatic, surprising play. Military personnel mingled on the stage, at the center of which here was a huge, upright map rising from a wheeled dolly. Cables snaked away from the map across the concrete floor. A small jumble of screens and consoles had accreted like mussels on a rock around the map. VDUs and terminals, radio and radar screens were like fragments broken from the orderly rows of equipment of the security section of mission control.

Voices called and bellowed, squeaked or rang metallically. The air was filled with sharp ozone. And tension and excitement and the sense of imminent death. Rodin looked up at the maps surface as a new area of Baikonur was displayed, keyed in from the console that controlled the fiber-optic projection. At once, a single red light jerked across the map and settled. An operator pointed a long rod toward the red light, his face intent upon the information flooding into his earphones. He acknowledged, and wiped the pointer like a wand across the grid-referenced projection. The red light remained where it was, but a snail trail of light drawn by the pointer showed its heading, speed, its changed position on the map. Amid the telemetry and tracking complex. Two other operators traced in the paths of the two closest gunships with similar snail trails, one blue, one green. Gant's track was red, like his light.

Serov stood beside Rodin, his headset awry on his right ear so that he could hear the general. His arm was clutched in a makeshift sling, his face was drawn and dusty gray in color. Rodin had once more assumed control of the hunt, superseding Serov, using the facilities of the main control room rather than the security room that was Serovs headquarters.

"This American is good — dangerously good," Rodin murmured, looking down at Serov.

"We have him, comrade General," Serov asserted without the energy to perform any but a subordinate role. Weak hatred swilled in him like something slowly draining from a leaking water cask, but he simply could not assert any strength. His arm hurt vilely. "He s moving very slowly."

"We can't achieve a kill, not while he's in there,' was Rodin s clipped, scornful reply. "We can't risk any damage before tomorrow. Obviously," he added with an extra sting of contempt. He rubbed his chin while voices and acknowledgments flew about them. "Move two mobile patrols out to the area. Their rifle fire should drive him out — up and out. Then he's naked." Rodin pronounced the word with a curious, even salacious relish.

Hie operators wiped their trails of light across the map. Their earlier markings were visibly decaying. Gant and the two gunships were treading slowly, like men in a minefield, through the tracking and power grid network. The remaining two Hinds, the other members of the gunship helicopter flight, stayed outside the network, awaiting orders and a clear field of fire. The American could not remain there indefinitely. As long as they tracked him closely, carefully, they would have him. More gunships would have helped, but Baikonur had had no need of them. Security at Baikonur had been, until now, an internal matter, and had been effective. Should he call up units from air bases to the west and northeast? MiGs would be unusable here; more gunships? Flying time? Too long. He would destroy the American with what he already had in the air and on the ground.

The colored trails glowed and diminished in brightness on the screen. A slow, balletic dance, like the streamers used in a Cossack wedding dance, whirling, curling, twisting in the air… He was clever, the American.

Serov attended to a voice in his headset, nodding occasionally, his face grayly satisfied within the pain it registered. Then he announced to Rodin:

"Aral'sk KGB office is out of commission. Permanently. No doubt the work of terrorists," he added with a flash of his former vivid competence.

"What did our people discover?"

"A recording of the transmission we monitored from the surveillance camera on the MiL."

"It had not—"

"No. No onward transmission. The recording was destroyed. There is no shred of evidence, outside Baikonur itself."

Rodin nodded, his cheeks flushing slightly at the ease of success. His hand closed into a fist, squeezing air or an image in his mind.

"Good. Then it is contained."

Something on the screen struck his attention, then riveted it, as if the trails of light were whirling hypnotically. He became fascinated, absorbed; and there was an edge of excitement, too. Gants MiL had increased speed, weaving and dodging like a cornered rat; the two gunships lumbered more slowly, picking their way through or over the obstacles in their paths.

The voice of the Hind's pilot was breathless and excited. Rodin Pressed the headset close against his head with both hands, as if to keep the words secret. He smelled the ozone from the electrical equipment festooning the floor, growing around him like a small, rank garden, felt his heart pause, his breath fade.

"He had to lift over the cables — a moment… there's a patch of empty ground beyond… bring him down there?" the voice yelled. "He's lifting now — a hundred feet up, a clear shot—"

"No!" Rodin shouted into his microphone. "Wait. He must be over clear ground."

"… turning now, high-G turn… he's over the open area, now — waiting…? He's banking and turning as tight as he can, spinning like a top — why? Clear shot, General — clear!"

"Make absolutely certain," Rodin said. "Damage must be avoided at all costs. Kill only the American — not our project." Then he waited. He stared at the map, listened to the voice, his hands gripped on the earphones of his headset like claws. His chest ached with tension.

"… climbing, twisting to get away, I'm following him. Yes — no, almost, yes… climbing and turning, descending again now, climbing again, turning, turning, tight high-G turn again, yes, gone….." The pilot was waiting to use one of the missiles slung beneath the wings, radio-guided. At that range, it could not miss, but the pilot was waiting for the optimum moment while Gant squirmed and wriggled like a fish on a hook.

Rodin sighed loudly.

"… tighter turn, in a descent… now he's climbing again, we've got him now — tight turn, follow, then—" There was the noise of a thud. It was quite distinct, as distinct as the alarm in the pilot's voice, which became a cry that was all but a scream of terror. Then his voice disappeared, there was a grinding, rending assault upon the metal of the gunship, then the hissing ether.

"What happened?" Rodin roared.

"… crash," he heard dimly a few moments later. The pilot of the second, observing gunship had begun to report, his voice distant with shock.

"High-G maneuvers — like the early days in Afghanistan," he murmured. "The American made him follow a high-G turn the Mil-24 just can't make, the rotor struck the tail boom — seen it happen before in the mountains — he forgot it. He cut off his own arse, shredded the rotors, comrade General."

"Is, is—?"

"Burst into flames when it crashed, comrade General. The American fined them, sir!" It was an outraged wail.

Rodin tugged off his headset and threw it aside. He raged at Serov, as if in pain: "Kill the American! I don't care how, just do it now! Understand? Do it now!"

Flames spurted and died quickly fifty feet below and a hundred yards away. The gunship was incinerated, out of the game. His body was wracked with the pitch of tension the maneuvers had effected.

Now, carefully… Their low-light TVs and thermal imaging and infrared were all blind; flaring into indistinctness because of the fire on the crashed gunship. That had been a bonus. He could not have planned the lurch of the stricken Hind into a radio mast, then a radar dish, its tail broken but still flailing like that of a maddened insect, its rotors churning the icy ground — its fuel tanks erupting into a volcano.

Quick, then. He had drawn in the other three, they had converged like an audience acquired by a juggler, wondering what sleight of hand was in progress. He had twisted and turned and lifted and dropped the agile little Mil more and more puzzlingly, more and more hypnotically. And always over that bare, dark space of sloping ground where the Hind would think it safe to kill. Until it had begun to attempt to match his movements, to get behind or above or alongside for long enough to ensure a kill. Following him, turning tighter and tighter. He'd seen it happen on guerrilla film smuggled out of Afghanistan by the CIA. Finally, the pressure on the rotors from the created G-forces was sufficient to slap the rotor tip down onto the tail boom like a knife of dramatic sharpness slicing through flesh. A stagger in the air, a maddened, dervish whirling, then the crash and the explosion…

… seconds ago already. He edged the Mil-2 through and beyond a sprouting clump of subsidiary radar dishes. Firelight flickered and washed over them, threw his shadow.

Tracer roared and flashed past the cockpit, the fuselage of the Mil jumped and bucked, struck by cannon fire. He lowered the helicopter even closer to the slightly undulating ground, his airspeed minimal, his body twitching and shifting in his seat as if he were trying to maneuver only his physical form through the jungle of cables and pylons and dishes that confronted him. He attempted to steady the MiL, tense against a renewed burst of firing. Changed course once, again, again, as he waited for the damage to the Mil to become apparent, even deadly. Instinct compelled him to dodge ^d evade even as his mind explored his body, the cockpit, his sense of the main cabin. Something was wrong with the MiL; his shadow had been spotted, one of the gunships had loosed off cannon rounds more in desperation than certainty, but something was wrong with the Mil — the sensation of tight bonds becoming looser, the sense of a car's brakes becoming spongy, its steering soft, unresponsive. He could feel it in his hands, in — in his feet!

The rudders were slow in responding, the helicopter had acquired a determination, growing every second, to drift to port. He touched at the rudders with his feet. The Mil was drunk, hard to keep on its heading or to maneuver.

He emerged from the tracking network's forest almost at once. The passive radar warning had been improved on this helicopter; none of the gunships behind him had radar locked on. For the moment they'd lost him, just as he had hoped.

The Mil yawed, almost zigzagging as he struggled to bring it back onto its heading, southeast toward the road and the river that marked the boundary of Baikonur. Darkness, space, lack of habitation, he'd seen it on the moving map and decided to lose himself and the pursuit there, then—

But the lack of plan no longer mattered. He wrestled with the increasingly drunken helicopter, his injured hand on fire, the veins standing out on his wrists, his muscles in arms and now legs aching like overstretched—

No radar pickup anywhere. They were still blind. Tyuratam glowed away to starboard, but darkness pressed on him. Undulating ground, gritty sand flying in the downwash of the rotors. Stars overhead — he could see them now. He groaned aloud as it took whole seconds to swing the blunt nose of the helicopter back to face the heading he demanded of it. Southeast. He was flying much too slowly, much too drunkenly. If the remaining three gunships in the Baikonur zveno acted in concert, if Rodin directed them coldly rather than in rage, they'd find him before he got ten more miles.

Radio noise… silence, apart from the hiss of ether escaping like a gas. They'd switched to a secure frequency. He had lost them, just as they had lost him. The radio silence intensified in his head, as he struggled to maintain his heading against another lurch of the Mil to starboard. The lights of Tyuratam stayed directly ahead for whole seconds before they slid back to starboard.

"We can't get another ten miles in this machine," he finally announced. "It's shot, Priabin. Understand? It's over. Finished."

15: The Limits of the Cage

It seemed the icy wind blew the fleeting sunlight like frozen scraps across the tarmac of Geneva's Cointrin Airport toward the rostrum and the band and the guard of honor and the dignitaries and Air Force One. It glanced from the airport buildings in splinters of brightness that hurt Calvin's tired, stinging eyes. The cards on which his address was printed in large, black handwriting appeared about to be plucked away by the wind. His hands were already almost numb with cold.

The anthem completed, he heard the silence that seemed to stretch away on every side until the wind filled it. He glanced down once more at his speech, then his eyes roamed almost without focus or purpose across the scene; an undirected camera. Cameras—

He alerted himself, adjusting his features, to the battery of long-lensed cameras and the bobbing, shoulder-resting TV and film cameras. The scene closed in as the clouds once more masked the sun and the surrounding mountains seemed to retreat; even the snow on their flanks appeared gray.

He began speaking. Below and to one side, Remsburg, the secretary of state, Danielle, and Giordello, the chief negotiator, were arranged like figures in a tableau. In front of him, the guard of honor, the military band, the cameras; the rest of the world. He coaxed depth, vigor, honesty into his voice, adding the ingredients like a careful but dishonest chef, while fragments of his situation spun like slow coins in his memory and imagination. The slowing down of the U.S. laser program, Talon Gold, and the other projects, because of cost and by his orders… the frantic race they would now be in to recover the lost years… his country's inability to match the Soviets for at least five years, so DARPA claimed… the contumely that would haunt him to the end of his life and beyond once the existence of the Soviet weapon became known, as it must… the terrible, helpless clarity with which he saw the whole awful race to destruction beginning once more. During the last strains of the anthem, his heart had been beating sullenly under his hand as he saluted.

"… to the people of the whole world, I say this: We are here to make an end of the beginning. This is a time of hope — as an illustrious predecessor of mine once said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. I ask all of you to remember that. Fear is an old coat we can, thankfully and by the blessing of God, throw away." The wind seemed to catch the emphasis in those words and fling it away, so that he hardly caught the sound of his own voice. Nervously, he glanced down at his wife, who smiled. Remsburg was watching him keenly, Giordello's dark features displayed only rigid formality as he stared ahead. Then Danielle, sensing that his thoughts were wavering, urged him on with the address with a quick, decisive nod of her head.

The Soviet army at Baikonur had gone to their Code Green customary security status a day early, but there was nothing in that; they wouldn't launch earlier than scheduled because they were safe, in no hurry, no sweat… Gant was lost.

"All of you have seen the nuclear arsenals of our two nations being declared, withdrawn, dismantled. This is no game, no quick popularity stunt. We mean business!" At the hustings, at a rally, that would have brought an explosion of shouting and applause. Here, in the wind and the briefly returned sunlight, only a ripple of diplomatic applause.

"You have heard, many times over the past weeks and months, of the importance of this place and this time. I can only repeat that to you now, and to echo the words of the great writer, Charles Dickens — we must begin the world. Let us begin the world together. Thank you and God bless you."

A moment's pause, then he raised his right hand and waved. A drowning man, he saw himself to be. A man of destiny, so his features proclaimed and the occasion suggested. He stepped down from the rostrum into the company of the Swiss president and the members of the Federal Council, the members of his own party, the Soviet ambassador and his retinue. A shoal of black Mercedes sedans drew slowly toward them like the constituents of a funeral pr cession. He shook hands with warm automatism, smiled, and offered a suitable gravitas to everyone who looked in his direction.

On the hoods of the cars, stiff and rattling little flags. The flag of his country, the hammer and sickle, the United Nations blue, the Swiss white cross and the flag of the city of Geneva, the eagle and the key. The same symbols cracked and writhed outside the main terminal building. The eagle and the key — the American eagle and the key to the prison. He could not avoid the idea.

John Calvin climbed into the rear of the appointed Mercedes and felt himself slump like an invalid into the soft upholstery. Danielle clutched his hand as if to comfort and congratulate in a single gesture. He gripped her hand, patting it up and down on his thigh, as if measuring solemnly the passage of some short, remaining peripd of time.

The plantation of firs surprised him, coming out of the evening darkness with the sudden leap of something animate and mobile. He lifted the MiL, restrained its swing to port, and leaped the trees as if they were part of a racecourse. Then slowed the helicopter even further, so that it hung lazily above the ground. The nose yawed to port, the rudder pedals were spongy and unresponsive. Whatever the damage sustained, it was intermittent, but each time it returned it was like the nearing crisis of a fever, shaking the helicopter more violently, making its control all but impossible. His hands and feet and body and awareness all knew that the Mil-2 was becoming un-flyable. Ten miles or ten minutes — no more. There were no additional factors in the equation. The Mil was finished. — lurch, yaw, the trembling sense of fragility as the whole airframe shuddered with his effort to reestablish control. The tail rotor bit. swinging the tail back into alignment. Sweat dampened his forehead and armpits. He looked down at the small plantation of firs, curved like a windbreak. Moonlight revealed light, bare soil stretching away southward, a cluster of small, warm lights beyond. Farming country, reclaimed desert. Irrigation channels and ditches scarred the flatness. Dikes and canals.

The passive radar receiver was silent. They'd lost him. Maybe they considered him still inside Baikonur, couldn't yet believe he'd slipped through the net. The radio was silent, too. He could not find the Tac channel they had switched to, hadn't the freedom of his right hand to reach forward to do so. He had to grip the controls fiercely every moment, despite the throbbing ache in his bruised hand, fighting the sensation of lack of control, of the emptiness that lay under his feet. They'd find him soon — a car or cart on a road, a former's ear, a soldier, a disturbance of ducks or cattle… something would give him away.

He held the Mil in the hover, in a small space of relief when the rudder pedals responded. What to do? He felt empty at any thought of abandoning the MiL, however fragile and damaged, yet he knew he would find no secure cover that would enable him to examine the aircraft and possibly repair it. He would become the honey pot as soon as he put down for any length of time.

To abandon the MiL… on foot? Find a car, any vehicle, drive — the thousand miles to Turkey or Pakistan? Or just to — the nearest surviving KGB office. And what happened to him, then? After the success, when Priabin turned around with the look from the houseboat on his face? Gant shivered; the airframe was obedient, like a grazing horse around and beneath him.

What should he do?

He turned the Mil gingerly, like a child balancing on one leg and turning through a complete circle… gently, gently. The wind had lessened, as if satisfied the damage provided a sufficient complication of the situation, but he was still wary of it. He held his breath as the nose swung slowly like the lens of a surveillance camera, remote and obedient. He was through eighty, ninety degrees, the tail stabilized, the Mil steady on the spot and at a constant height — fifty or sixty feet. One hundred and ten degrees—

— buffet of wind, then, as if displeased at his skill. The tail swung, the nose yawed violently. Rudder pedals more necessary because he had passed the downwind position of the turn and the rate of turn had speeded up. The extra force of the wind demanded more rudder — too much, too quickly. The Mil turned on its side like someone about to die, and as he righted the machine the thin, rippling darkness of the fir plantation was instantly closer. The Mil was shivering throughout its fuselage. The nose was swinging out of control, the helicopter was becoming a wild sycamore leaf at the mercy of the windy air — north, west, south, east… the helicopter began to turn like a dancer in some mad balletic spin, foster and fester… north, west, south, east, north, west… it would fell in * moment, undirected and on open ground near the firs. Terrified a* the thought of fire, he stopcocked the engines and then pushed the main electrics switch to Off. All he had left was rotor inertia between himself and the trees — he had to control the crash. He drove the Mil downward the last few feet, felt the undercarriage touch, then dig and skid and snap… saw the rotors eating at the trees like flailing saws, saw the tail as he looked over his shoulder lurch against young firs and gouge and snap them — then crack open. Rotors grinding with a sick and hideous noise, then one snapped, and the Mil lurched into a slide, a fall, a stillness.

Still.

He heard silence ascend through the scale and become as real as noise. It had taken only moments. He had thought nothing, imagined nothing, simply waited for the crash to be over. He had known it would not kill or injure him; it had just been the end of the MiL.

Then he breathed, raggedly and loud and often. And heard Priabin in his headset. Shaky-voiced, almost afraid to do anything but whisper.

"Gant? Gant — are you all right?"

Gant stared through the Plexiglas, through fir branches and smeared resin. A small gap of starlight and moon-sheened sky. No huge tear in the fabric of the plantation; good. The Mil was tilted, but there was no surviving tail to thrust out of the trees.

"OK," he murmured absently before the minutes ahead invaded his thoughts. "OK. You?"

"OK, I think."

There was a quiet horror in his voice, from the other side of shock, on behalf of the dead woman. Now Priabin would blame him more than ever. Become dangerous. That was the future, and he dismissed it, sliding back the door of the cockpit. He heard a thin branch snap, felt the chill of the evening invest the cockpit. Released his straps, climbed awkwardly up and out, dropped to the ground. Branches cracked under his feet. He smelled seeping fuel on the cold air.

He looked up — cover? Almost. He had driven into the firs sideways on, at a downward angle. Some of the trees had bent and slipped back like dark curtains while others had snapped or leaned drunkenly. Night — all night, perhaps. Unless they came very close, they'd see little until daylight.

Hie main cabin was intact. The tail boom had snapped off behind the aerial lead-in, a third of the way along its length. It stood like a ruined statue less than thirty yards away, masked by trees.

The door of the cabin swung open. He turned quickly to face cabin, then took off his helmet and threw it aside. Immediately he listened to the night, his ears still ringing from the headset's confinement. First, the disturbed cries of birds, then the sighing of the wind in the firs. Nothing else. Baikonur's single gunship zveno had lost his scent.

Priabin's face was a white, pleading mask in the cabin door. Gant realized that Priabin's shock would delay him. He felt a resistance mounting within him, but he accepted Priabin's priorities for a few moments longer. He did not want to look at the woman, as if he had contributed to her—

He had, he admitted.

Clambering up and into the Mil-2's dark main cabin, he heard his own breathing, heard Priabin's, too. The woman became reduced in importance. He did not enjoy his renewed sense of his own priorities, but accepted the necessity of disregarding her death.

Priabin had covered her body. She was, Gant made himself believe, no more than a heap of coats on the cabin floor. He stood very still for some moments, staring at the fuselage. Guilt lessened, faded. A heap of coats.

Slowly he realized Priabin was murmuring her name, over and over. The sound contained grief, guilt, affection. He could not tell Priabin it was time they departed.

Maps, torch, the gun, flares, even the radio? At least, if he couldn't remove one of the sets, he had to listen. He had wasted time here, he thought ashamedly, yet he was convinced he was right. The woman was dead; he had to survive. He had to know where they were, what they were doing. He jumped down to the litter of fir needles and broken branches on the plantation floor. He listened again. They were still safe. He looked at his watch, holding its dial close to his face. Six-fifteen.

He clambered back into the cockpit. Snatched out the folded, heavily creased maps from the pocket beside his seat. Found the flashlight, snapped the rifle out of its clips behind his head, high up on the cockpit bulkhead. Cradled these things like precious possessions. He needed to use the radio. Reserve battery power only — if the aerials had not snapped off, if the set had not been damaged. He checked the code cards in the slot beside the set. The helicopters regular KGB pilot had scribbled the military channel frequencies below his own codes… Wednesday. He hesitated, then switched on. Voices leaped into the cockpit's silence.

Almost at once, he realized their error. Some unidentified aircraft? No, vehicle moving on the north-south road beyond Dzhusaly. As much as fourteen or fifteen miles away to the northeast. What was it? Patrol tried to stop a truck, no camouflage or insignia — broke through the barrier, patrol vehicle damaged, unable to pursue… All helicopter units to proceed immediately…

Black marketers, drunken soldiers, thieves, it didn't matter which. Time had opened like a carelessly left window, and they could climb through it like burglars. They had to take advantage of it.

Gant continued to listen. Different crises signaled like lamps in a storm. The three remaining gunships of the Baikonur zveno had already acknowledged, and detailed their changes of course to rendezvous to the northeast, where the truck had broken through the barrier. They each reported no contacts in their current sectors. Serov — he recognized his voice easily — was too eager, too ready to believe; deceived by his need to recover the situation. Rodin, the general, was riding on his back. Gant savored Serov's error. He listened to the man divert a troop-carrying Mil-8, a couple of road patrols in light vehicles. He heard him direct units to erect roadblocks, order UAZ light-vehicle patrols to cordon off areas. He listened for a moment longer, then turned off the radio.

As he climbed down from the cockpit, he carefully cradled the rifle, torch, maps, bars of chocolate. He paused for a moment, then climbed reluctandy into the MiL's main cabin.

Even the exercise of power in desperation was a source of satisfaction, Rodin realized. His voice raged with insistence, unreasonableness, even threat, his features were highly colored, but none of them dared sustain their objections in the face of his determination; his power.

"The launch will take place in nine and a half hours from now," he repeated like the closing of a door on some argument in a distant room. "Not tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen, but before dawn. The weapon will be placed in its orbit one hour later. It will be used as soon as possible thereafter. Do you understand me clearly? You all have your tasks." He had not paused for an answer to his question out plunged on. "Your responsibilities. See that you carry them out. ^ is now" — he glanced at his watch—"six-thirty. Launch time is set at four a.m. tomorrow. Very well. Dismissed, gentlemen, dismissed."

They moved away from him, their boots echoing on the catwalk ^here he had gathered them. He did not concern himself with their *ac*s, the expressions they might now allow themselves. He had issued his orders. It was simply a matter of telescoping the launch schedule from twenty-four hours to nine and a half. The task could be accomplished—

— must be. The American was still loose, and his sense of Serov s ability to stop him had diminished. His sense of other and larger failures had increased. He felt the distance to Moscow as tangibly as the black thread of a telephone cable, and Stavka at the other end of the connection. He would have to tell them, but not yet. His goal was clear. He must achieve the object of Lightning before there was any possibility that the American could reach a friendly border— reach anyone at all. Priabin might have persuaded him that it was best to try for a KGB office within the flight radius of the stolen helicopter.

Their — their freedom maddened him like a goad. He was diminished by their being at large, hampered and confined by it. While they were at liberty, he had only the illusion of action the illusion of choice. They had evidence for the old men of the Politburo, including Nikitin the social reformer, the open hand of our society as Pravda called him again and again. Rodin's hands whitened in their intense grip on the guardrail of the catwalk. He was blind to the scene below, as if undergoing some strange fit or blackout. Nikitin and the others would raise their hands in horror and back away— disown the army and the laser weapon and the research and development program and continue with their emasculation of Russia's defenses. They would not stop until they had butchered the army, just as the pig Stalin had done — for other reasons — in the thirties. Hie motive did not matter; the country would be weak, ineffectual, unable to defend itself. The open hand of our society. baubles, television sets, cars, packaged food, was what Nikitin offered them, and, and they seemed to want it.

Rodin shook his head. His vision cleared. The weapon was directly beneath him, loaded and locked into the shuttle craft's cargo bay. In minutes, the cargo doors would be closed, the signal would be given, and the shuttle would begin its journey on the transporter. It should take thirteen hours for the transporter to reach the launch gantry, twelve at best, and another three hours to hoist it atop the booster stages. He had ordered the whole operation to be completed in seven hours maximum. Beyond that, fueling would take another two hours, and final checks a further half hour. Then— launch. Nine and a half hours. Impossible, they claimed. Do it, he had insisted.

Power, emanating from the scene below, the renewed urgency he saw and sensed, the speed of movement, the first noises of the closing of the cargo doors of the gleaming shuttle. Power—

The logic of what he intended was inescapable, yet it seemed elusive. It was his responsibility. He had to demonstrate the weapons capabilities, like a crude sideshow trick to capture to attention of peasants. Otherwise, the Politburo would retreat, renounce—

He nodded his head. The transporter s locomotives roared and howled below. Still-life for a long moment, everyone watching. Then, with a tremor like anticipatory nerves, the shuttle moved inches, then a foot, then more… A cheer, echoing in the vast spaces. He looked up rather than down, at the splinters of wood and the crazed metal that hung from the shadows of the roof. The American had broken in like a vandal, stealing evidence. The glimpse of the broken skylight, the vague future it sketched, confirmed his decision. Serov had to recapture them. Meanwhile, he would put the weapon into orbit — then think, consider the consequences of his decision. The shuttle was moving slowly, inexorably now toward the gaping main doors. He smelled diesel, ozone, metal, heard the cry of mechanical effort.

If the American lived, if Priabin proved—? Russia would be vilified, the situation thrown back in their faces — and the army, he, would be responsible. He would have caused — what? War? No, not with the Americans, not war. What, then? He shook his head, not knowing, knowing only that if he did nothing, if Lightning were to be foiled and defeated, there would be nothing — a weak army, a weak Russia. Surely they would understand, as he did. He nodded his head this time. The locomotives were halfway through the doors into the night. Stavka would agree with him, and, in time, so would Nikitin and the others.

Bleakly, he qualified his optimism. Even if they didn't understand, he was not prepared to leave his country and his service defenseless, as the Americans seemed ready to do. He could find a calming sense of purpose in that.

"I want to know which way out they plan to take — now!"

Drugs — no. Beatings — no. Electrodes — no. Sensory deprivation — too long, and no. He wanted to employ the instruments of his craft. With Priabin, he had underestimated, miscalculated. Not taken the man seriously because he looked little more than a boy and had messed up badly in the past. Here, with Kedrov, it was different. He wanted to use the skills…

But it was a matter of power, the power of his presence, his will. Like recovering a lost faculty. He knew that this was part of a program of recuperation, like a special diet for an invalid, and however much Serov wished to ignore insight, he could not avoid that debilitating image of himself. Priabin had held a knife at his throat and he could all but feel its vile trickle now as his throat constricted with remembered fear and present hate. His broken arm throbbed, but he could easily have clenched his fist and beaten it time and again into Kedrov's face, lying there on the pillows and looking helplessly up at him. He had to gut Kedrov by will and presence alone, without the other aids.

Kedrov's eyes blinked a number of times. Serov could see his soft, exposed throat swallowing, again and again. Antiseptic and the other disliked hospital smells filled the small, narrow room in which Kedrov had been restored to something like his former self; drained of the drugs, his mind put back together.

Eventually, Kedrov said in a hoarse whisper, his throat evidently sore from tubes: "I don't know. I don't know anything." He shook his head slowly from side to side like an uneasy sleeper to emphasize his denial.

"You must know," Serov snapped, then controlling his voice. "The American was coming for you. You must know the route."

"I — don't." Kedrov sighed. Fear trembled on the point of overcoming lassitude, but failed. His eyes appeared weary arid damp, his skin almost translucent.

Serov felt an itch of anxiety that he had to prevent from becoming a shudder. The truck that had crashed through the roadblock had been a false alarm — drunks. They'd crashed into a ditch; he'd see they got years for what they'd done. Afghanistan was too good for them. His hand clenched behind his back, his nails biting into his palm. When he heard they were drunks, he had felt deeply unnerved, almost too weak to stand upright. He hadn't yet reported to Rodin — Kedrov and the idea that he knew the answer had come like a desperate last gleam of daylight. And the man didn't know!

Must know…

"You must," he murmured in a voice he would normally have disclaimed as his own. "You know, Kedrov, you know."

Again, Kedrov shook his head slowly, sleepily, like a child not wanting to hear any more of a story, wishing to sleep. Christ, had he had himself driven like a madman from mission control just for this? It was ten minutes since they'd found the drunks, since the gunship zveno and the other patrols had been scattered once more to resume the search; ten minutes wasted. He wanted to shake, beat, terrorize, but knew he needed the self-respect that only Kedrov's breaking at the sound of his voice would give him. And Kedrov hardly heard, hardly cared that he was in the room with him.

Priabin and the American had made a fool of him. He knew the story of his humiliation had become common gossip, common property in GRU headquarters. People sniggered behind his back; out of earshot. Serov wanted to beat—

"I don't," Kedrov confirmed.

"Who was your American contact? How did he get in and out?"

"Train… car? I don't know. He brought the transmitter to Orlov's, then we never saw him again." Kedrov was willing to talk freely now, without drugs or fists. It confirmed that he was telling the truth when he claimed to know nothing. Of course he knew nothing.

"What about the others?" Serov cried. "How were you recruited in the first place? Not by the old man, surely?" He felt the edge of the bed press against his thighs. He stared down into Kedrov's open, amiably uninvolved features. The man might have been smoking hashish, or lying back smugly after coitus.

"No. Years ago I was recruited in Moscow when I visited my sister. I wanted money — oh, a lot of money, I offered" — he smiled, then continued—"I offered my wares, the Americans wanted to buy the laser weapon was a real bonus." As soon as he paused, his eyes began to leak tears, which ran into his ears, then wet the pillow at either side of his head. He appeared to pay no attention to them and continued to murmur his story. "It was my way out, to America. I would have money, a flat overlooking Central Park, a new identity, Women, good clothes, anything I wanted." There was no emphasis, no timbre in his voice. "I would have had everything I ever dreamed about." His eyes were still leaking, and he seemed to be faring at something through his tears. "I didn't know who was coming, how they would come, which way we would leave. I only knew they had to come for the photographs and everything I could tell them… I think it was all a last-minute thing, too hurried to work Properly." His tears neither increased nor diminished, his voice simply stopped. He did not look at Serov.

Serov looked down at Kedrov's features, then turned quickly away. Their blankness, their introspective tears, their unawareness of him, their pale resignation, all defeated him. For Kedrov, he hardly existed.

He slammed the door of the small room behind him. The GRU guard snapped to attention, his rifle vertical, barrel in front of his face. Serov hardly looked at him as he growled:

'There's some rubbish that needs clearing out of that room. See that its done tomorrow morning — dispose of it."

He walked down the corridor toward the elevator that would take him down to his car in the basement garage — where Priabin and the American… He stared at the carpet beneath his feet, acknowledging no one. Gant and Priabin had — had undermined him. They had made his future a simple matter of a single success or failure. The knowledge burned inside him like a poison, spreading through every organ, every artery. It increased the sapping pain of his broken arm. He had to have them; had to.

Gant glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes. He knew the searchers would have discovered their mistake by now. The search would have spread out again; soon they'd be combing this sector. Their chance to escape had gone. And he still could not persuade Priabin to move, or persuade himself to abandon the Russian. Nor did he understand his indecision; it was a huge, creeping lethargy.

Priabin sat opposite him in the darkness, on the other side of Katya Grechkova's body. He had covered her pale face at last with one of the uniform parkas hanging in the cabin. Gant was slumped on a fold-down seat, Priabin sat loose-limbed on the metal floor.

"I've had it, Gant. I've resigned from the human race as of now."

"For Christ's sake, Priabin, I need you," he repeated for the tenth or twelfth time. "You have to help me get this tape out of here." He could dimly see, with the aid of filtered moonlight, that Priabin was shaking his head. A mask of wisdom seemed palely gilded on his features.

"No. I don't have to help you. There's no point anyway." Then his voice became bitter, accusing. "Why do people have to keep dying around you, Gant?"

"You'll die if you stay here. Listen, Priabin, get this tape to a KGB office, send the pictures to Moscow. That's all you have to do, man."

Priabin stirred his legs, as if he might get up, but he did not rise-Shook his head once more. "I can't, Gant. I feel too tired to make the effort." He sighed, but Gant heard a choked-off moaning sound behind the attempt at listlessness. Sixteen minutes. Outside, the plantation and the air above it were dark, silent. But it was only a matter of time. "Serov killed her like an animal — to stay alive. Isn't that your remedy, staying alive? Well, I'm not joining in, Gant, we can't beat them. People are too disposable around here. I feel cold and empty, and my skin feels too thin. Do you-understand? I'm not going with you."

"Christ, I need you."

Did he? Something like a faint and momentary spark seemed to glow in his thoughts. Did he?

"You don't, Gant. You don't need anyone."

"Were you and she—?"

"I was fond of her, Gant, that's all. Now she's dead." He paused, and then said: "I used to be good, Gant. Like a hawk in the hover above a landscape, waiting for something interesting to move. I was good at what I did. But I stopped caring very much when they killed Anna, and I'm finished with it now that they've killed Katya. I don't believe we can stop it, and I don't even want to try."

'They'll kill you, for sure."

"Perhaps. They've killed everyone else, including that poor queer — or perhaps I did that." His voice became quieter. "Yes, I think I did that. But it was just another moment in my skating routine. Skating across the thin ice and never falling in. Oh, Gant, why don't you get on with it?" he suddenly snapped, dismissing an irritating visitor. "Get on with staying alive. Who knows? You might even make it." He laughed, short and soft.

"Get moving, Priabin, you can't stay here."

"Gant, just go, will you? I'm tired of it. I've been through idealism, optimism, daring, excitement, all those things, in the last few hours. It doesn't amount to anything. I can't beat them. Neither can you." His voice was stronger now, with the determination of clear insight. He waved his hands. "I didn't expect this, you know. I assumed we'd go on — until they caught up with us or even until we made it to some safe place, but, there it is. I'm finished. I don't believe anyone but the Americans could stop it now. Even if Nikitin ^new, I don't think he'd stop it. Perhaps he wouldn't even have the Power."

Gant stood up. The spark at the back of his mind had lit some find of fire, which glowed dimly. His body felt ready to move, ^hen to hell with you, Priabin," he growled. He quickly slung the rifle across his shoulder, slipped the flashlight into one pocket of the parka, the emergency rations into another, the maps, the first aid kit, the spare clips for the Kalashnikov — and the cassette of videotape, then the smaller cassette from the camera Priabin had used — all as if putting on armor. His body felt chilly, but alert. "To hell with you," he repeated, though he might have been expressing some good wish or merely a farewell.

"Stay well, Gant," Priabin murmured. "Godspeed."

Gant stood in the doorway for a moment, then said: "You wanted to kill me."

"Not now. I can't do any more of that. It's become too real here. I think that's it. It was something of a game until I stumbled across Lightning. It's too real."

"Stay alive, Priabin….." Gant's voice faded, and he said nothing more. Dropped to the ground and was gone. He was instantly absent, distant. Priabin could hear nothing of his progress.

He stared obsessively at the heap of coats that covered Katya's body, but he saw the snowbound road, the border crossing, and the dead, pale face he crushed against his uniform. Anna. He'd caused her death, caused Katya's death, too, by involving her. Caused Valery Rodin's murder because he had made him talk about Lightning.

His stomach felt queasy with guilt. Gant would not have understood, hadn't understood a word of the little he had said. The night was cold and silent. He looked at his watch. It might be hours yet before they found him. He patted his pockets, looking for his cigarettes.

Found the cassettes Serov had obtained from Mikhail and which he had given to Katya. Gant had forgotten them. He should have taken them; didn't matter. Gant wasn't going anywhere, either — not in the long term. His attempt was only an illusion of freedom.

Again, he stared at the heap of overcoats and parkas. Katya was under there. His queasiness affected his head, made him dizzy even though he was sitting. He drew up his legs, pressing his knees against his stomach gently but firmly. His throat was sweet with nausea. He was robbed of all volition, purpose, optimism. The carefully dressed imitation he had become was exposed as a fake. He was, suddenly and completely, riddled with guilt, like a cancer. The only vague surprise lay in the knowledge that it was Katya's death— someone he was merely fond of — rather than anything else that had so completely robbed him of his illusions. He was overcome by an accumulation of guilt, he told himself with a kind of desperate detachment, like the gradual, inexorable pressure inside a volcano.

He found his cigarettes and lit one quickly, clumsily. And choked on the acrid smoke, coughing violently and bringing tears to his eyes. He wiped them viciously. Then inhaled gently, coughed, exhaled and leaned back against the cold metal of the cabin fuselage. Queasy and weak. But, he thought, as long as* he remained still and did not move either physically or psychologically, staying with the wrecked Mil and his own decision, he could contain the nausea. What was it he had said to Gant in accusation? People die around you. It wasn't true. It was around himself that they died. It was he who was guilty. Now he had to be found, taken back. He had to give himself up. Meanwhile, until they came, he could imitate calm, just so long as he remained still and quiet like this.

The UAZ light vehicle was parked almost innocently, posed and silhouetted against the haze of lights from Tyuratam to the west. Its two uniformed occupants were engaging in a desultory search along the raised embankment that carried the dirt track across that stretch of the irrigated landscape. Their lamps swung and passed and waved like hands accompanying a rambling, purposeless conversation.

Gant crouched in a ditch, his eyes level with its rim, his body pressed against its slope, fifty yards from the Russian vehicles silhouette. The noise of the approaching UAZ had growled suddenly out of the darkness, taking him by surprise as he jogged along the track, himself a clear silhouette in that deserted place. He had dropped into a ditch, panting, shaking with shock, gripping the packed dirt with gloved fingers and shifting toes that sprinkled tiny pebbles and earth onto the ice at the bottom of the ditch.

It was almost eight. The temperature was well below freezing. He was perhaps six miles from the plantation where he had abandoned the MiL—

— and Priabin. He refused to acknowledge the sketchy but insistent insights, the understanding he had of Priabin. It would weaken his own resolve. Shock had drained him already, and he could spare no more of his flagging energy. He watched the vehicle, watched the lamps wobbling over sand, dirt, ice, and waited. His hooked Angers were numb with the cold, their grip feeble. Voices called, lamps turned to each other as if for company or reconciliation, then began to wobble back along the raised track. Calls, casual obscenities, exclamations against superior officers and the chill of the night. Gant felt the hem of his parka rustled and fingered by the bitter wind that kept the sky clean.

Once, one of the remaining three gunships had passed low overhead, but had not caught him in the glare of its downward-probing searchlight. It had droned away toward the southeast. He had jogged, crept, dodged, weaved his six miles — the first six of the thousand — in good time, but this forced halt was fetal to confidence; movement was its own justification.

He bit his hp, not simply to prevent his teeth from chattering. His body pressed against the chill ground, his feet shuffled in tiny movements to retain a foothold. Ten or twelve feet below him, the ice was cloudy with the pale moonlight. He had passed a couple of low dwellings — a cart beside a barn at one of them, a parked tractor at another. He could not even find a car.

U-A-Z. The three letters appeared separately, distinctly in his mind. Two men. For the first time, he felt the rifle between his stomach and the side of the ditch. UAZ. An army vehicle, an army radio. He wouldn't be out of touch, he'd know where they were. He listened to their voices — they were drinking something. They were fifty yards away. If he climbed out of the ditch, he would have to cross fifty yards of moonlit open ground — or be certain of killing them at this distance with a rifle not fitted with a nightsight. U-A-Z. It tempted like luxury. He ground his teeth in indecision. Eased the rifle from beneath his body, hanging on with one hand, his feet scrabbling audibly to keep him where he was. Then wriggled upward until his elbows held him on the rim of the ditch. The rifle was in his hands. He heard the crackling chatter of a radio. Darkness faded as the moon emerged from behind a cloud. The UAZ, the intervening ground — the fire zone — was silvered, the men more solid, tinged with color and dimension. He picked out paintwork, camouflage patching, the stretched folds of the canvas hood, the gleam of glass and metal. One of the two was partially masked by it, but clearly visible, the other was silhouetted against the haze from Tyuratam and glisteningly illuminated by the moon. Two good targets. He could even see the thin stream of urine glittering in the moonlight as the man farthest from the vehicle relieved himself. Slowly, carefully, Gant took aim with the Kalashnikov, the pressure on his elbows making his forearms quiver.

Should he? Wouldn't it be like waving a flag, pointing to himself, calling out to them? But it was a vehicle, it was movement. Fifty miles an hour, sixty, seventy, the main highway, the camouflage of driving an army vehicle, and he was in uniform already, spoke Russian. He felt his temperature rise, felt the tremor still in his forearms, noticed that the man had finished relieving himself, heard the other's coarse comment on his performance… heard the radio crackle again, a tinny, angry little voice flying like an insect across the fifty yards that separated him from the UA&. His finger closed on—

They were in the cab almost immediately. The engine fired noisily in the silence. A face looking out, a white, momentary spot, then the UAZ moved, and he could have squeezed the trigger and damaged the vehicle as well as killing the men, but did not, cursing silently. The UAZ roared noisily away, raising a slight flurry of icy dirt as it trundled along the embankment. He had waited too long. The radio had summoned them peremptorily elsewhere, they had moved with the speed of guilty dawdlers and were gone. Awkwardly, he scrabbled out of the ditch, sliding over its lip on his stomach.

He stood upright. The UAZ was already out of sight, hidden by the height of the embankment. Not even the glow of its taillights. He cocked his head, listening, despite the intensity of his disappointment. There was a silence in the air except for the whistling of the wind. The gunships and the troop-carrying Mil-8s were elsewhere. This empty farmland to the south of the river was still, being beyond the security perimeter, the periphery of their hunt. Perhaps that very embankment represented the outer ring, the edge…?

Wearily, he climbed the slope, his body hunched into the parka, the Kalashnikov clutched across his chest. He hoisted his heavy body onto the track and straightened. Two dim red eyes in the distance, obscured by dust. The UAZ was gone, and he felt he had been abandoned. Turning through a full circle, he scanned the empty sky, the empty country, flat and featureless; lightless, too.

He bent on one knee and took the small flashlight from a pocket of the parka. Unfolded one of the much-creased maps, flicked the beam across the map's surface, then drew its light back more slowly. Dotted buildings, scattered like specks of dirt. He found the embankment, found the direction he sought — west, after the UAZ— found the closest speck to the embankment — no, two, three, six specks. The name of a collective. A car? His breath seemed to come shallowly at even the thought of a car. This — none of it — could be rationally pursued. A thousand miles lay out there in the darkness.

He turned to the northwest, where light ran along the whole of the horizon like a false dawn. Where, he knew, Rodin the general would be not just hunting him, but making damn sure that Lightning went ahead. Precisely because he was still running around loose they'd want to make sure he didn't screw up the party. The timetable would be moved up — what difference could they make to the launch schedule? Halve it — no, down to two thirds, with God's good grace, two thirds. He had until dawn, until the early morning light. A thousand miles…

He stood up groggily, swaying in the wind as it buffeted him. He held the rifle like a comforter. The collective was maybe two miles west, a dotted collection of buildings in the middle of nowhere. Farm headquarters, barns, and maybe a car or a truck.

He forced his legs into motion, forced his frame into a quick jog, despite the huge inertia of disappointment and futility that weighed on him. A car or truck would mean quicker movement away, would be a means of staying alive that he did not possess while on foot. It wouldn't take him a thousand miles, maybe not a hundred, but it was better than this, better, better, better. His heavily pounding boots drummed and reiterated the word, as did his pounding ears. He would stay alive, stay free for twice as long, three times as long as on foot… better, better…

His elbow seemed to pain him more in Rodin's presence, like an old wound reacting to imminent changes in the weather. He did not cradle it with his good hand, however, not before Rodin's gray, almost fanatic stare. There was a madness about the damn old man, he decided, even though he felt, along with the others in the room, that Rodin was right to pursue Lightning with all possible speed.

Eight-fifty, Wednesday evening. Digital clocks and calendars littered the walls like urgent graffiti, adding to the tensions and pressures of that vast, humming room. Serov smelled the ozone of a hundred screens and keyboards and fiber-optic maps. Banks of mission controllers retreated like an audience into the shadows behind and almost above the lights. On the huge upright map nearest to him and Rodin, the American shuttle Atlantis weaved the slow pan1 of a weary fly; a poisoned fly about to die. Serov's vitriol was sluggish without the antifreeze of his best health. The elbow drained him like a disease rather than a fracture. It was an effort to hold h*s features clear of pain, even during those short periods when Rodin* turning occasionally from his senior officers and technical staff looked directly at him. His courtiers were sycophantic and filled with enthusiasm, fired with the old man's purpose. Serov knew that if they lost this one chance — bows and arrows and menial tasks, cleaning shithouses like Afghanistan, training the fucking Cubans and Palestinians and Shiites in half a dozen countries. It was as plain as the nose on Rodin's face — the army's last chance to keep its grip on the Politburo's collective balls.

Rehearsing the old war cries kept the pain at a tolerable level.

"Where is he now, Serov?" Rodin hissed at him, his head snapping around to fix his gray gaze on the shorter man. "Where is your American and his little KGB friend? You haven't come to tell me you've caught them, by any chance?" Almost languid, almost joking. Almost.

Serov shook his head, his features grave. "Not yet, comrade General," he said with regretful confidence. "It is, of course, only a matter of time."

"It had better be." And yet Rodin was detached from the fate of Gant and that stupid little prick Priabin. The screens that curved in a crescent to their left showed the shuttle moving toward the distant launch pad, showed the waiting booster, showed the crew in their quarters, intruding on their sleep like spy cameras. The murmurs, if one concentrated, were a chorus of instructions, orders, reports, checks. Atlantis moved on the screen, the weaving line that traced its course slipping across Africa. "It will be," Rodin murmured, and turned back to one of his people, launching into an immediate discussion on the shaving of minutes from the boarding and preflight checks by the crew. Serov waited to be dismissed.

He gazed at the screens, the huge map, other maps, a chart of the pattern of radar and telemetry stations across the Soviet Union that would follow the shuttle in orbit, the banks of controllers at their screens and keyboards, rendered identical by the shadows and ty their each wearing a headset and microphone. Cigarette smoke rolled and billowed amid the suspended lights. He looked up toward tinted windows of the GRU's security room. Squinting, he real-*fed that one of his people was waving urgently to him. The immediate leap of tension and the beat of his heart enforced his fear of the Edition of his nerves. Could it—?

He nodded to the unseeing Rodin, who was insisting that another ten minutes be trimmed from the hand-over ingress routines, the crew boarded. Then Serov hurried across the cable-lit-red floor toward the door. Along the cold, concrete corridor. He clattered up an iron spiral staircase, careful not to knock his broken arm in his haste. He could clutch it now, protect it. He hurried down the narrow corridor to a single door. He thrust it open, entering the security room, surprising its half-dozen occupants. Ozone again, VDUs, radios, fiber-optic maps. The hunt for Gant was once more their business, returned to their charge by Rodin.

"Is—?" he began.

The lieutenant was nodding. "Yes, Colonel, they've found it, on the ground, too — here." His finger dabbed at a screen that displayed a map — where? South of the river? Yes.

"Thank Christ!" he could not help but exclaiming. Then: "Are Jiey still with the machine?"

"Priabin, the KGB colonel, sir — he's there."

"But Gant is not?"

The man shook his head. Serov did not even bother to recall his name; no requirement to be congratulated or commended officially. He was just the bearer of a report. Yet a small, secret pleasure welled from his stomach to his chest. He felt the knife tickle at his collar again, the pain in his elbow surged through him as he remembered — then cleared as he anticipated. Priabin would pay, he'd beat the little shit to a pulp, with one hand tied behind… He grimaced. With his one good fist then.

"What does Priabin have to say?"

"Do you want to talk to—?'

"Just give me the gist of it, man!" he roared.

"Sorry, Colonel." The man lowered his eyes and rushed on. "He said he was waiting for — our people to turn up. Sir, that's exactly what he said. The woman you wounded is dead, sir. The Mil suffered damage during its encounter with the zveno, just as they suspected — rudder controls inoperable, the report says. The American was forced to crash-land, about two and a half hours ago. Gant has a videotape of the — assembly building with him, a rifle, food. He's on foot. Priabin has no idea where he's gone, and says he couldn't less."

Serov realized how muddy, how defeated his thoughts had been-The impact of what he heard struck him only after the lieutenant had finished his summary. Then he hit his head as if to jolt his mi*1 to activity.

"Then he's on foot."

"Yes, sir.".

"Thank Christ for that. You realize what it means? He's as good as in the bag. He can't possibly get anywhere on foot. My God, we've won, we've stopped it. Tell them, the gunships, the ground patrols, everyone — two hours to find the American. Two hours."

He turned away, walking across the room toward the windows. Immediately, he located Rodin. Right, you old bastard, he thought carefully, precisely. I'm no longer here on sufferance. I have a right.

Quenching a sneer of triumph, he turned* quickly toward the door. He'd tell Rodin now.

Resolve and will had turned against him, robbing him of strength as they, too, ebbed. His imagination was using energy at a suicidal rate. His legs had become leaden, hard to move, and his head felt light. The sense that it was hopeless, that he could go on for only a little longer, waited at the door of his conscious mind, pushing it slowly open.

Moonlight, gleaming on snaking ice, sheened on the early frost glittering across the stretches of sand and dirt. Clouds moved across die sky like great dark shoulders heaving at something that resisted their solid force. The rifle banged against his ribs as he jogged with repeated, sapping blows. The others — the dead woman and the KGB man he hardly knew who had wanted so much to kill him, even Serov and the pursuit — were increasingly behind him, distant and unreal. His head was becoming fuzzy with exertion and defeat. There was nothing in front of the next few heavy thumps of his boots, nothing behind other than the slow distance he had come.

How many miles? Three, four since the last glimpse of the map? He gritted his teeth, hearing his breath roar in his ears, his blood pound. Nothing had come near him, no other vehicle, no helicopter. They had no idea where he was.

They'd find him before daylight, for sure.

The certainty grew that he was merely expending energy to no Purpose. His body ran with sweat, the rifle banged, even the videotape cassette weighed heavy in one pocket of the parka. The ground beneath his boots seemed to shift, become uncertain and ^dy. Trees filtered the moonlight darkly, as if hoarding it.

Trees.

He staggered to a halt, his head reeling like a drunks, his body Quivering. He looked around him wildly, as if he had been ordered to halt. He dropped to one knee, flicking on the flashlight, waggling j*16 maps creased folds beneath its thin beam. The map shivered in ^ hand, but not from the wind, which distressed his hair and was chilly on his damp neck and throat. His eyes traced the way he had come — flatness, flatness, a small plantation, yes, he remembered it, a narrow, clattering bridge across a main irrigation channel, two other planklike crossings, yes — this small fir plantation? His mind jogged back along the track. He did not remember, and shook his head in puzzlement and fear. Like a driver on a long straight highway, startled to realize that the last miles were a blank in his memory. At any moment, they might have surprised and taken him; at any moment. He shivered. The wind was increasingly cold, his body small and vulnerable. The track was a pale, moonlit strip running between the two dark, high banks of trees. Stars glinted coldly. Warmer light insinuated between the narrow boles of the farthest trees of the plantations — warmer light, represented a danger now to his exhausted mind, not a destination. He stood up slowly, like an old, arthritic man.

Breathed deeply to calm himself, but felt only colder because he was not moving. Gripped the rifle with gloved hands, but thought it to be little more than a harmless stick he had gathered somewhere. He looked up, his gaze swinging across the strip of sky he could see. It was empty, but the fact brought no reassurance.

A cloud hid the moon.

Startling him. He studied his watch, holding the dial close to his eye. It was already eight-fifty in the evening. Again he shivered in reaction at his inability to account for the past half an hour. How long since the UAZ had driven away?

The landscape refused to become less than alien, however much it resembled Nevada in its sandy barrenness. He had struggled to make it familiar, but it had resisted him, remaining a place a thousand miles inside hostile borders, a place where he had no resources and no future.

He doubled over with stomach cramps, thrusting the rifle against his abdomen to resist the pain. It was psychological or it was hunger, it was not fear, it was not isolation, it was not fear — he repeated the formula of words, breathing stertorously, groaning softly. He would not kneel, would not rest against a tree, but stood in an invalid crouch as if retching silently, the gun hurting his stomach and pelvis. Eventually, the griping waves of pain receded and he was able to stand erect gingerly. His mouth was wet, his hands shaking* his body cold with drying sweat. He did feel more awake; shaken or startled into wakefulness. He squinted, studying the pale but warmer lights sparkling between the boles of the separate firs. had to be the farm buildings of the collective. He listened, but heard only the wind, the stir of the young trees, the tiny noise of gritty dust against his parka and across the boots he wore — he looked down as if surprised to find himself still wearing the KGB uniform the dead woman had brought. His mind pursued the recent past, concluding that Priabin was no danger because he had no idea in which direction Gant had gone. Even when they found the wreck of the MiL, the wreck of Priabin, they would learn nothing except that he was on foot.

He moved cautiously, with new alertness, keeping in the shadows of the trees, just off the dirt track, painted once more by the returning moon. The trees gradually opened like dark curtains— buildings, low and functional, with an abandoned air despite the lights that shone from them. Two, three, five, half a dozen, scattered like the counters of some abandoned game. Seven buildings, all one-storied, some large, the largest of all in darkness. The quiet noise of a radio creeping toward him. No other human sound, nothing moving. There were numerous windows aglow, many of them in the same building. Barns, tractor and cultivator stores, grain silos most distant of all, other huts that had all the frontier appearance of bunkhouses from an American past. He could not see a single vehicle as he crouched in the shadows of the outlying firs. As his eyes registered more and more of the scene, he saw the dim glow from even more windows, curtained. The gusts of chill wind brought the murmur of voices, the rattle of utensils, the noises from other radios and television sets. The place took on life and peril.

He stood up, leaned against a fir, studied terrain, distances, the shapes and angles of the buildings. Listened intently, then began running, crouching low, rifle across his chest, safety catch off. His shadow, a deformed and dwarfish thing, scuttled beside him like a mocking effigy. Then he sprinted, his whole body tensed against the first cry of curiosity that would become alarm and challenge, the UAZ had undoubtedly preceded him, warned them to keep a lookout.

His back and shoulders banged concussively against the wooden Planking of the barn. The eaves threw down darkness like a cloak, "is breathing was loud, too loud, and he stifled it as well as he Pould, dragging in slow, hard breaths through his teeth. He pressed cheek against the rough, cold planking, but there seemed no ^nd from inside the building. Ten yards from him, an ugly lean-to or storeroom. The huts with lighted windows were farther away than the shed. They formed an incomplete, untidy crescent, as if a builder had begun a town and failed to complete even a single street of it. A bankrupt, isolated place. Beyond the huts, the desert country undulated just perceptibly, raised banks and ditches and canals crisscrossing it; firs growing in clumps. He edged along the wall, pressing back into shadow, face averted.

He reached a blacked-out window; tried it, but it would not move. Continued. Halfway along the side wall, another window. He raised his arms, rifle now slung across his back by its strap, and pushed. The window frame cried out, as if to alarm the workers in their huts. Gant paused, his cheek distorted against the wood. He stifled his breath and listened more intently. Rough shouting that was louder — greetings, he recognized, a casual obscenity, then the banging shut of a door. He continued to hold his breath after that for a long time, fearing the noise of a dog or another door opening, a quizzical human voice registering alarm as it discovered his shadow crouched against the wall.

Eventually, he straightened in a continuing silence filled only by the loutish wind lurching against the collective's buildings. He gently, slowly so slowly raised the creaking, protesting window. He felt through the opening, his fingers touching some sacking material that blacked out the glass. He smelled gasoline like a heady, reviving drink. Vehicles. Oil, too, on the icy air before the wind snatched the scents away. He raised himself level with the sill, then levered his body across it, resting on his stomach as if stranded through exhaustion. He tore at the sacking, then let it fall. The darkness of the barn seemed impenetrable. None of the barn's windows let in the moon. Blinded or boarded? It did not matter. He grasped the flashlight and heaved his arm out in front of him, flicking on the thin beam. He played it waterily over the ground immediately below and in front of him.

Cans, empty tins, rubbish, bundled rags, a pitchfork, a workbench, concrete flooring. An inspection pit gaped like a grave. Vehicles. Oil stains. He flicked the beam of the flashlight farther into the room like a lifeline desperately flung. The beam wavered and darted like a small, feeble animal. He heard disturbed chickens somewhere outside. Someone coming? His body was weak, shivering. The chickens quieted, disturbed only momentarily. He grunted with relief.

A tractor's huge, ridged tire and red side — plowshare, the super' structure of a combine… no good. A covered truck — an open" backed pickup… yes. He held the beam steady, then played it like a voyeur's gaze slowly, caressingly, over the small gray truck. He inhaled the scent of gasoline. A pickup — flick of the flashlight, a crazy, wobbling search until… gasoline cans. Vehicle, fuel.

Gant was aware of his body straddled like a side of meat across the window's sill. He raised himself on his arms, began to swing one leg up to the sill, heard his boot scrape on the flaky wood. Wind snapped along the side of the barn. The dog's bark was on it, as if the animal itself were already rushing toward him. A human growl, questioning the dog or ordering it—

— frozen. Hands, elbows, wrists locked like a tumbler supporting the huge weight of the rest of his troupe. The quiver through his arms like a nearing earthquake. The dog again — where? Where? Wildly, he swung his head from side to side. Away to his left, back toward the half circle of huts and other buildings… the human voice was there, too. A door opened, someone yelled, the dog barked, an answer came on the wind: sodding patrol, fuck the cold, bollocks to you, Sergei, coffee? Why not? Heel, heel, damn you, heel… don't make a fuss of the bloody thing — supposed to be a guard dog — up yours, too…

He unfroze and dropped to the ground, still listening intently to the voice coming on the wind. He cowered in the shadows as he heard the conversation of the two men and the low, continual growling of the dog. His head was reeling with the sense of the truck in the barn behind him. He knew the dog would come, the man would probably be armed — even if only with a voice to cry out or give the dog the order to attack. Knew he must go, must.

Dog distressing the chickens, growling with movement, the man thanking Sergei, exchanging friendly obscenities, calling the dog, which therefore could not be leashed—this way, damn you—the voice coming closer, the man's whistling becoming louder. Go, get out now! Growling of the dog. Gant stared down at his boots. He had already left his scent, he must get as far away as possible before the dog picked it up.

He staggered out of the shadows of the barn and ran hunched across moonlight that lay like a pale carpet. His blood rushed in his ^S so that he could hear nothing else. He dared not pause to try to Pick up the first noises of the pursuit, as if the distance behind him threatened like a jagged crack in thin ice pursuing him as he ran. He Cached the darkness of the trees but even so did not pause, his thoughts filled with the dog and its freedom, its strength and speed. Panic filled him. He could not stop running.

Trees, the narrow track, moonlight, cloud, moonlight again, a long, slow rise in the track, then a steeper dip, then the false horizon of more trees, their shadow—

He staggered, the breath knocked out of him. He leaned heavily against a tree and looked around him. A thin belt of trees beside the straight track. A windbreak for more buildings, another collective? Dogs?

He knelt down, squinting into the darkness. He could see no lights. Rising to his feet, he began to jog cautiously, as if testing either his body or his resolve; or both. Evidently, the dog s discovery of his scent had been dismissed, the opened window investigated and considered an accident. Or perhaps the man who had exchanged ribaldries with Sergei had no interest in anything beyond the limits of his reluctant patrol. Whatever, there was no pursuit. They might have called the army; probably not. It did not matter. For the moment, he was still safe. Reassured, he jogged on.

The building had a lean-to on one side of it. It was barnlike but lower than the collectives barn. It was lightless and silent. Locked, too, he saw in the moonlight. Cautiously, avoiding any delay, he crept toward it. A row of smeared windows. Open, flat landscape beyond, itself deserted. What was the place? There was only the single building. It might be an implement shed, some kind of store — a vehicle? Unlikely. Not this far from the collective. He moved on, regarding only his own footsteps and their exact, soft placement.

He rested in the shadow of the lean-to. His boot had kicked a tin hidden by the longer grass around the building. An oilcan; empty-He heard, then saw, a length of corrugated iron sheeting tremble in the wind. It was rusty and hung away from the lean-to. His listened, then got down on his stomach and crawled through the gap* Smelled, tasted rust. Smelled — smelled gasoline… no. Kerosene? Oil, too. Rubber, dust, concrete. His eyes became accustomed to the faint light through the dirt on the windows. Cans on shelves, tools, oil drums, fat-tired wheels — a vehicle! He grabbed the flashlight firmly, tugging it from his pocket. Ran the watery beam over the room. Found a door. A machine shop, a garage — another garage? He moved quickly toward the door, turned the handle. opened it. Flung the beam of the flashlight like a challenge into the darkness. Dared not breathe. Dusty, kerosene-smelling silence.

Oil drums, tool cart — his throat was tight, he could not swallow — a metal blade? Wires gleamed like spiders threads. The moonlight from small windows in the eaves was faint, he had to wait until his night vision adjusted to it. Meanwhile, he flicked the beam from spot to spot. Another knifelike blade, hanging in darkness. Wires, the dull flank of some machine.

Propeller blades. The fuselage of an aircraft. It was, it was— Christ in Heaven, it was almost that aircraft! He saw vividly the dust rising in a cloud from the road, saw his younger self looking up from his book, rising in astonishment from the slouch he had adopted outside the gas station's small office — that aircraft! An old biplane, prop-driven, just like the crop duster that was the first, the very first he had flown.

His mouth was dry with excitement, even as in the same moment his eyes were wet with disappointment. He had identified the pieces of the airplane's jigsaw puzzle, and seen its engine lying beside the fuselage on the concrete floor, the biplane's panels and flaps littered around it like the debris of a wreck. It was an airplane, but he could not use it.

He dropped weakly to his knees, his head bowed. His growl of refusal became more like sobbing. It wouldn't fly, he could never make it fly.

16: Consider the Phoenix

The Botanical Gardens lay blankly white with snow, the panes of glass in its iron-framed hothouses were steamed and dreary like the windows of passing buses. The glass through which he looked was also misting, along the whole length of the gallery. The lake lay beyond the gardens, and beyond that the last of the daylight caught the tips of the Mont Blanc range. The snow-flanked mountains marched into the distance, into other countries. Defense Minister Zaitsev considered them, rubbing his chin with his left hand, cupping his elbow with his right. It was an almost philosophical pose, he realized, but appropriate to the television solemnities taking place in the gallery of Geneva's Palais des Nations.

Then he turned his back on the view. He had been outside the Soviet Union many times, but to the West only perhaps on three or four occasions. He always seemed to look at such places through thick glass.

He gave his attention to the Soviet foreign minister, Vladimir Shiskin, who stood beside him. He had not been as successful as Zaitsev in appearing engrossed by the view. His square, sallow features — Zaitsev had to lower his eyes to the man's face, Shiskin was a short man — were alert like those of a cornered animal. While he appeared to stare across Lake Geneva, Zaitsev's thoughts had not, for a moment, left the subject that had raised itself between them-Shiskin, of course, had had to be briefed. As the most prominent pro-army member of the Politburo, apart from himself, it had been necessary to tell him — unfortunately necessary — of the compressed launch schedule for the laser weapon. It would be Shiskin who would prepare, then mollify, Nikitin.

"You're satisfied, then?" Shiskin repeated. "This is not a move of desperation?"

"No, it is not a desperate move." Zaitsev smiled sardonically. "Is that your question, Vladimir Yurievich, or does it originate with another of our little group? Were you told to ask it?"

"It is — a general feeling, my friend. A general feeling." Shiskin seemed to acquire stature from his fiction of. consensus. Zaitsev glanced at the television monitor to his left. Farther along the gallery, Nikitin and the American President were reassuring the world; basking in their separate lies. Behind them, the town's miniature image retreated into the evening darkness. The fingertip mountains were purpled, indistinct. Zaitsev glanced through the windows again, then back to the screen. Somehow, the shrunken image of Geneva and its landscapes satisfied him more.

"Very well," he said. "And are you sure of our party?" He watched Shiskin's eyes. They were doubtful, as was the group they reflected. Afraid, naturally. But not deserters, not yet.

"Confident."

"Then assure them Rodin knows exactly what he is doing — and that what he is doing has the full approval of Stavka."

Rodin was — what? Panicking? Possibly, but that was an easy thing to do, at the eleventh hour. On the brink of Lightning. And destroying the American shuttle as soon as possible would bind their group on the Politburo more closely to Stavka and the army. Nevertheless, Zaitsev wished he had spoken personally to Rodin. What exactly was happening at Baikonur? Was anything amiss?

He rubbed his chin once more, his contemplative gaze directed at the television monitor, from which the voices of Nikitin — speaking in English in honor of the occasion — and Calvin issued like those of distant children, crouched in separate corners of the room, speaking to each other through tin cans connected by string.

"Consider the phoenix," he murmured. "What?"

"The phoenix. The army mustn't be allowed to burn to ashes just in order to be reborn — must it, Vladimir Yurievich?"

I don't see—"

"Don't you? We are here, you and I and the others, precisely because the old men were removed. Policies have changed. Nikitin Reamed of a twenty-first-century army, high technology to the fore-"^nt — before he decided to give the people toys to play with. He's reneging on solemn promises made to the army — for the sake of gadgets in the shops. Computer games instead of thinking missiles." Zaitsev smiled at his own grandiloquence. "He wants the phoenix to burn itself to death and not rise from its own ashes. We have to prevent that. If we do not, history will judge us." His tone was calculated, but he found himself impressed by his sentiments. Perhaps it was the proximity of the monitor and the events it foretold, perhaps the distant mountains, perhaps the American entourage or even all the marble from all over the world that decorated this place… anyway, Shiskin was nodding docilely, attempting stature once more.

"I agree, my friend. We all agree." Shiskin sighed.

"Good, good." Calvin was speaking from the monitor. Zaitsev looked along the gallery. In reality, it was too confined for the televised press conference, but the backdrop of the city, lake, and mountains was considered too delicious to be omitted. The worlds press representatives were crushed together on a steeply raked dais and seated on narrow chairs; like an audience at an intimate little theater club. The larger settings of the Salle des Pas Perdus and the great Assembly Room were reserved for the climax of the drama the following day. Farce? No, Zaitsev could not quite call it that. The treaty was still dangerous — not quite a farce. All the elements of one, but no one in the theater was laughing yet. He nodded slowly to himself, and realized he was nodding in time to Calvin's portentous phrases as if they were soft, commanding taps upon a military drum.

"Good, good," he repeated, as if approving Calvin's sentiments. Then he chuckled, a sudden and unnerving noise. "We won't fail, he announced. The certainty of the words seemed, even to him, clouded with fervor. "We can't afford to," he added. "And failure is impossible." Yes, he had achieved the right confidence of tone. He slapped his broad hand on Shiskin's shoulder. "Cheer up, Vladimir Yurievich, cheer up. We're almost at the winning post."

He glanced from the screen beside them to the misting glass of the huge window. Garish lights from the city, encroaching darkness masking the lake. The mountains glimmering like weary ghosts of themselves. He shivered. He found Geneva an alien place, as if he had no right to be there.

Zaitsev removed his hand from Shiskin's shoulder, sensing that its pressure was no longer reassuring; maybe even threatening.

The press gallery broke into applause. The conference was at an end. The purpled, garishly lit darkness outside the windows seemed to rush headlong against the glass.

Foggily, he saw that it was ten o'clock. He did not understand why the hands of the old-fashioned clock on the wall should impinge quite so vividly, but they did. For a moment they obtruded more than the pain of the blows, more than the fear» of Serov's unbridled rage.

Priabin fell heavily again. Serov's boot struck him in the side, sinking into his ribs. The pain slowly, irresistibly penetrated his dulled, disoriented awareness. No one else touched him. Just Serov. No one asked him questions, not even Serov. There was just the beating. I owe you pain, he'd announced with the voice and manner of a bank clerk; except that his eyes were fierce and greedy. At first, his people had held Priabin, but with the second flurry of blows— he could only use his right hand — and the second bout of kicks while he lay huddled in a fetal position on the floor, Serov's men served only to drag him each time to his feet, then let him go so that Serov could bull against and into him.

No questions, nothing but the beating. He was quite vividly aware he was becoming drunk with pain. He saw Gant drop out of sight from the MiL's main cabin, over and over again like an unending loop of film. Mostly, however, he saw Anna's dead face, Rodin's limbs splayed on his bed, Katya's form disguised by the heap of coats he had thrown over her. Gradually, these recurring images explained the beating. He had deserved it—

— and however horrible, he allowed no part of him to oppose or struggle. It was unimportant that it was Serov administering the blows.

Kick in the head, his hands had not covered it quickly enough — a red mist, his agonized coughing and groaning much too loud his ears, inside his head, huge noises. His body could no longer tense in expectation, he felt his ribs grinding together. Flashes of Pain bloomed, died, spread again, were replaced by others; an artillery bombardment. His hands moved in a slow, lost way down to his groin, clutching at that more fiery area of pain. Red mist—

— slowly, frighteningly slowly, clearing to a wet, gray fog, and [he noises in his ears becoming those in the room rather than in his body.

He tried to look for the clock but could not locate it. Red second hand strutting, couldn't find it. He heard himself groaning, but almost as close to him he could hear heavy, labored breathing…, boots. He flinched.

The fog cleared enough for him to see through a gauzy spider s web just in front of his eyes. He feared for his sight. Boots, Serov's boots, bloodstained; blood on the bent trouser knee, Serovs hands clasped together, already showing the blue of bruising, caused by uniform buttons, by Priabin's teeth, which ached and seemed loose… like his whole head as he moved it fractionally to look up into Serov's face. Serov leaned forward, staring intently at him, his mouth wet and hanging open as he dragged in air; hands. Not clasped — the spider's web clearing a little more, thank God — but the bruised one holding the other gently, almost kindly; that one was white, unmarked. Priabin made a precise inventory of Serov's hands. It seemed like a test he must pass. Short fingernails, colored not with dirt but blood — the difference between the two hands?

Serov must have, must have, must have — broken his arm or wrist or something when he jumped — yes, yes! The memory from a few minutes before struck him with the force of some epochal discovery of science or philosophy, thrilling him. He remembered seeing Serov's left arm in a sling when they brought him into this room.

"Colonel, sir?" someone murmured. He hardly caught the words. The pain seemed to have been increased like the volume of a radio just at the moment he fully remembered about Serov's arm and his vision finally cleared. His body shrieked with pain. He grunted, dribbling blood. It tasted of salt. He moved his thick tongue around his teeth; loose? He prodded each tooth with his tongue, escaping the pain that cried and rushed through the rest of him, by narrowing his awareness. Left side, upper, lower… right side, lower, upper… front, the incisors, one by one. Priabin became absorbed in the examination of his teeth.

Until dragged to his feet. Every part of him protested against the movement. They held him in front of Serov, and his body winced and hunched into itself at the suggestion of further pain.

"Sit him on a chair!" Serov's voice seemed to roar. His bruised hand waved toward Priabin, who tried to duck. Serov laughed.

Priabin felt his body dumped onto a chair, the chair prevented from tipping backward by someone's hand. The angles and edges o* the chair created fresh areas of suffering. His consciousness slowly returned to his slumped body. He looked up. Serov, clearly 111 focus, was watching him, his bruised hand cradling his other elbow gently.

The clock. The second hand. Ten-ten. Where was he?

He looked slowly, cautiously around him. Three GRU uniforms, anonymously filled — no, one of the faces belonged to the lieutenant who had brought him back. And Serov. Screens, too. A computer console and a large-scale map projection. A glass wall to the room, tinted and almost opaque. The dull glow of numerous lights coming through it. Rows of what might have been spectators dimly to be perceived. Mission control?

"Where's he gone, Priabin?" he heard Serov ask, and was irritated by the intrusion. His body seemed to be gradually swallowing his bruises and the rushes of pain in a general ache. He held his ribs. Pain, but no tearing sensation when he breathed. Not broken, then.

"Who?" he replied automatically. His voice was thick. He gingerly took out a handkerchief and spat into it. Like consumption; bright blood in the saliva. "Who?" he repeated.

"You know who." Serov's voice seemed tired, as if the real purpose of their encounter was already accomplished. "The American. Where is he?"

Priabin carefully shook his head. Pain lurched like a solid mass from temple to temple.

"No idea."

"Why didn't you go, too?"

"No idea." Priabin dabbed his swollen lips with the handkerchief and then inspected the daubs of blood. Wiped his bruised, numb chin. "Stupid, wasn't it?"

Serov sat forward on his chair, growling like an animal. "What's the matter with you, Priabin? Where are you, for Christ's sake?"

Priabin shrugged, wincing against the pain the tiny gesture evoked. "Nowhere," he murmured. Almost anesthetized. Strange, his whole body seemed to be going warmly numb* as if he were falling luxuriously asleep in a soft bed. "Nowhere…"

Move him over to the console," Serov snapped, rising from his chair. It tipped over onto its side. "Let him look at the map. It ^ght j0g his memory. Come on, Priabin, do some of our work for ^ Tell us where you think he is. While you still can."

As Priabin was lifted and shunted across the room still seated, he Saw on one of the screens a glowing image of the launch pad. The erector cage starkly lit, the flank of the giant G-type booster stages splashed white and coldly blue. It didn't matter where Gant was, after all. It didn't matter a bit.

The flashlight beam sufficed for his narrowed consciousness. He made no search for the main switch, no move to use the shrouded inspection lamps whose cables curled like dead black snakes across the littered, dusty concrete floor of the hangar. Touching upon, sliding across, illuminating only parts and sections of angles, surfaces, planes, the light was enough. He was afraid of greater light, not because the windows were open to the sky and his presence would be betrayed, but because he feared to see the whole expanse of the place at once. Some kind of hope proffered itself always just out of range of the flashlight's beam.

Gant moved slowly, cautiously around the airframe. His inspection had taken him perhaps fifteen minutes, a period of deliberate delay. The flashlight had picked out the little peaks of hopelessness as it settled on the skeletal airframe, the dismembered engine, the discarded flaps. Yet he had remained with the Polish-built Antonov biplane, fearing to move farther back into the darkness, back toward—

— metal blades, leading edges of wings, struts, flaps, the flank of a second fuselage. He was deeply afraid of inspecting the second biplane. It might prove even more skeletal and useless than this first one. So he waited for the tide of defeat to ebb. He knew it would. It was just a matter of time. His father snickered cruelly at the back of his mind, and Charley's voices rushed in the darkness like the scurrying of rats. As long as he encountered no new and greater blow, his sense of survival would reemerge.

Gant flicked the flashlight's beam at his watch. Ten-thirty. He poised himself, breathing quickly and deeply to calm himself. Flicked the beam out in front of him, washing it weakly over the propeller blades, then engine cowling; engine cowling—the words reverberated like the echoes of thunder among mountains. He saw, with a great sigh of relief, the oily gleam of exposed valve gear— fuselage, tail plane almost out of reach of the beam; then the concrete floor, sweeping the flashlight back and forth, back and forth, looking frantically for signs of dismantling, disemboweling.

Clear, clear!

Moonlight.

The darkness had held for almost half an hour, and he had been grateful for that. Now that the clouds had released the moon once more and faint, sheening light grew in a row of pale squares along one side of the building, he was as startled as if the main light switch had been thrown. The second Antonov An-2 was ghostly in the moonlight, unreal. He moved toward it with a reluctant lurch.

Stopped. Turned back, searching along the fuselage of the first airframe. Pulled the shrouded inspection lamp, and its trailing lead with him, heading back toward the second Antonov. The noise of the shroud as he slid it across the lamp tinkled in the chill, dead air. He switched off his flashlight, its beam beginning to fail now, and turned on the lamp. Its diffused glow glided along the Antonov s side.

Engine. Fourteen hundred horsepower, turboprop. Entire, intact. He moved along the fuselage. Ducked down, thrusting the lamp in front of him, then stared into the main cabin. It was the agricultural variant, just like the other biplane. Two crop-dusting airplanes wintering in this hangar, undergoing their major servicing before the spring. The metal of the chemical tank gleamed in the darkness of the cabin. He moved on.

The open inspection panel and the gap of darkness behind it made him shiver, as if newly aware of the cold. It had been too good to be true, too good. The battery was missing. His fist banged the tail of the Antonov, hard. A hollow, booming noise, as if the whole airframe was empty.

"Shit," he breathed, "shit, shit." Over and over; its ordinariness recovered him, as if the expletive could only be applied to what was remediable. Find the battery, it has to be here, refit the battery after you find it. But that was sufficiently far into the future to open the perspective of his awareness, and he clamped down on the idea. His fathers snickering ceased in his head; it was the scurry of a rat somewhere in the hangar.

Tour of inspection. He turned, gathering and coiling the lamp's lead as he followed it back to the first airframe. His step was careful hut quick. He sensed himself moving across experiences rather than within them.

He passed the engineless biplane and moved toward the door through which he had first entered from the lean-to. He passed the diffused light over what was evidently a workbench. Spiders web. A white powder that was not dust covered everything except the sur-of the bench. DDT? Residue of some dry chemical they'd been Using to dust. A copper tank rested on trestles, its filler lid opened.

He passed it, paying out the coiled lead. He was hungry. He felt in the parka's pockets until he found a bar of chocolate from the emergency rations. Unwrapped it with clumsy fingers, broke off a large piece, and filled his mouth as completely as a child might have done. He chewed awkwardly. The sweetness assailed his teeth as he reached the door to the lean-to.

He realized it formed a suite of offices; if they could be called offices. He checked the first one, the off-duty room. Dirty cups. He moved to the table, rubbing with a gloved finger at the rings left by coffee mugs, dabbing at the grains of spilled sugar. He picked up the sugar bag with a snatching movement, shining the lamp into its crumpled, open neck, and softly squeezed the base of the bag. The sugar moved and altered like a tiny landslide. It hadn't been here for weeks, not even days. The coffee stains erased easily. He heard his own harsh breathing. They were servicing the two Antonovs now, each day, each daylight.

His gaze swung along the fine of moonlit windows, then down to the face of his watch. Ten-forty. Daylight would be—? Seven-thirty, but they might not come until… The future intruded and he angrily shut it out. Where did they sleep? Not here, they would have heard him by now, there would be heaters working — at the collective? The lamp revealed the ancient stove in the corner and a pile of chopped logs near it. Easy chairs, stuffing and springs gaping, grease drums, a calendar on one wall. He turned and left the room, obeying a new urgency that was not panic, rather familiarity. This was the kind of place he knew.

The next room was perhaps three times the size of the off-duty room. An opened crate contained a new nine-cylinder engine. Why hadn't they installed it already? A lathe, crated propellers, an air compressor.

The third room was locked. A faded, stenciled notice claimed it was the Radio Room. He did not bother to force the lock. The fourth room was unlocked; the door opened with a creak. Something scuttled away in the moonlit shadows. Shelves in the lamplight; manuals, sheaves of documents, ring binders, box folders. A battered desk, an in tray visible; even its companion, the out tray. He flicked the light across the papers they contained. There were other questions wearing like blown sand at his apparent calm. It wasn't just the battery, it was whether the second Antonov was airworthy, whether it would take him… stop it!

The lamp opened his perspective rather than kept it closed and narrow. The papers — their headings, their insignia and crests, their information — threatened his present stability. He did not want to remain in what he realized was the chief engineer s office, but the search for the Antonov's missing battery was futile unless these documents answered the questions that he could no longer avoid. He passed the lamp over a row of clipboards hanging from a series of nails and screws. One of the more official-looking letters in the out tray had authorized an air test and was dated six days previously. No, no… the third clipboard revealed two freshly made out cards, one labeled "Compass Correction," the other "Airspeed Correction." They were both initialed twice and dated two days earlier. The box file on the desk revealed a sheaf of papers and their unseparated carbons. The sheets itemized every aspect of the Antonov, its faults and their repair. It had to be the second Antonov, let it be the second.

His hand flicked feverishly through the papers on the desk. He was a burglar become a vandal, no longer caring to preserve any sense that he had not been there. Yes—? No, no, no, no — yes! Reference numbers tallying — he found the reference number of the Antonov without its engine. The repairs and the air test both referred to the other airframe, the one that was intact.

He slammed the box file shut and tucked it beneath his arm as he left the office. The place was once more familiar, even when the moonlight disappeared and the lamp was the place s only light. He crossed the hangar with confidence. He felt the dust of the DDT or whatever it was on his fingertips, noticed it on the toes of his boots in the swinging light of the lamp.

As he reached the second Antonov, the moonlight returned. He Hurried now, as if the pale window squares revealed some inkling of daylight. Ten forty-five. There were small fabric flags attached to various components, each one accompanied by a card that was rubber-stamped and detailed the repair effected. Except for the battery compartment. Only the flag bearing the Cyrillic legend attention. Kneeling, he flicked through the sheaf of forms and reports in the box file. Found—

battery time expired and u/s. It was dated the previous ^V—? He flicked the lamp's glow toward the undercarriage. New but they bore evidence of at least one takeoff and landing. The test must have been done — then they'd used the battery from like other Antonov, the one that needed a new engine.

Where was it then? He saw his quickened breathing as puffs of distress in the lamplight. Where was it? The lamp remained on the undercarriage. Mud, a few blades of grass — where was the battery? He hugged the box file like a life jacket. It had been air-tested; then the battery had been removed. Why? Was it faulty? Christ, don't let it be faulty. He stood up slowly, weighing his strength as much as his mood. Then he moved to the far side of the hangar, paying out the coiled lead of the lamp once more. He stepped over the bonding wire that grounded the airframe, feeding the lamp underneath it, then continued. He moved along the far wall until he found a door labeled Battery Room. He swallowed noisily, even though his mouth seemed dry.

The door was unlocked. He played the lamplight over the bench, over the charger, which hummed and seemed to stare at him with a single red eye. He moved closer, afraid to study the dials along the charger's top. There were two batteries, both connected. One of them was brand-new, the other was used, but it wasn't covered with the fine white powder that coated everything that had been left lying in the hangar for any length of time. He touched it, inspected his finger, to make sure.

Looked.

The new battery had only just been put on charge. The quivering needle on the dial was still way up. The second, the second— the needle was a little over halfway to its stop. The second battery was half charged.

Not enough. It would be hours, whole hours yet, before the battery was able to start the Antonov. Three, four hours perhaps, too long, far too long…

He saw that the lamplight seemed to be trembling, as if on the point of collapse; quivering like ice about to crack open. He could not stop his hand from shaking.

Telescope. Rodin's features, his questions and even the concerns that dimly lay behind them, all seemed as if viewed from the wrong end of a telescope; made tiny and out of focus and unimportant. Where is the American? What information does he possess? What does he intend to do, where is he hiding now? Where is he heading? The questions were all so predictable. What have you told him Lightning—what does he know? As if it mattered.

As he looked at Rodin's face, Priabin felt his own bruised tures, his swollen lips, the dried blood, the puffy dough his skin become. The clock with its strutting red second hand showed eleven-fifty. It was almost two hours since Serov had beaten him. It was the tiredness, the detachment that surprised Priabin. He could not give a damn for any of it anymore. Not even for this old mans hesitant, uncomfortable probing with regard to the death of his son. What — was his — mood when you spoke to him? You must be responsible — you frightened him. What did he tell you, how did he seem to you? Not one atom of it mattered to Priabin. He looked down at the loosely cupped hands resting in his lap. There were things he could grasp, hold on to, if he could make the effort to reach out to them; important things. Serov's interrogation whirled in his head like sparks from a windblown fire. There had been no more violence, only questions and a mounting impatience. Eventually, while he sat on in front of the computerized, shifting map, without answers, Rodin had arrived.

What did you learn? he'd asked when he saw Priabin's face. This wasn't interrogation, this was gratuitous, Serov had answered mockingly. Comrade General, the American would not have told him.

Get out, Serov, leave him with me, get your people out of here— get out!

The questions had dripped slowly, hesitantly onto Priabin's mind, which, like a sloping roof bearing rainwater, could not hold them. They ran away somewhere, out of his consciousness. After some time had passed, he realized most of them related to Valery Rodin.

The screens in the room reflected Rodin's state of mind quite clearly. The launch pad, the slow, ponderous approach of the Raketoplan on its transporter, the waiting erector cage, the glare of lights. Now that the erector cage was around the shuttle craft, they were about to use the express hoist to raise the spacecraft atop the booster stages. Rodin was preoccupied, obsessively so, his son's death forgotten now.

Priabin heard Rodin's breathing, magnified by the silence in the room. He sensed the man's sheen of success; yet there was some °oscure sense of unrest, even unease. He shook his head and loaned at the lurching pain. Rodin looked around quickly, his features registering distaste as he saw Priabin's damaged face. Self-conciously, Priabin touched his jaw, his swollen, awkward lips, before he spoke.

"All going according to plan, then?" he sneered. The words were ^distinct, pathetic.

Rodin's eyes gleamed. He cupped his sharp chin in one hand. The other waved dismissively at the room, at the screens; at Priabin. Yet there still seemed that unease.

"Quite so, Colonel — quite so," his voice remarked coolly. Perhaps Priabin was mistaken. This was the hour of the mans success. Yet…? His questions regarding his son had been asked as if at the behest of someone else, like a favor. Valery's mother?

Priabin did not wish the questions to intrude. He wanted only to be detached, indifferent. It was all over anyway, young Rodin, Katya, Anna — even Gant, wherever he was — all over. So stop being a policeman, he told himself. The questions insisted.

"You re mad," he goaded. His aching face reminded him of physical punishment as Rodin's eyes glared. But he continued: "It will all come out, comrade General. Even in our deaf-and-dumb society, it'll come out. Fifty years' worth of priceless propaganda you'll have handed the Yankees on a plate, General." His attempt at laughter became a racking cough that doubled him over on his chair. When he looked up again through wet eyes, he saw the disdain on Rodin's face.

"Your body has the strength of your opinions," the general observed quietly, again turning to the television screen, which absorbed his attention.

In a glare of arc lights, the vast trelliswork of the erector cage was lifting the shuttle as delicately as a toy from the flatcars on which it had rested. It was being tilted through ninety degrees so that it would point skyward before the cranes raised it atop the boosters. Somehow, to Priabin, it was strangely primitive; a poor, out-of-date copy of the high technology of the American shuttle and its vast external fuel tank and the two solid rocket boosters; gleaming and sleek and filled with power on a sunny Florida morning. He'd seen countless launches of the American shuttle. The Raketoplan, smaller and riding on top of a huge missile, seemed like some vulgar, dubious imitation. Nevertheless, he watched, as fascinated as Rodin himself appeared to be. The shuttle swung through forty degrees like the elevation of some enormous gun from an old war.

New war.

Priabin swallowed dryly.

"He killed your son," he murmured. Rodin appeared half disturbed from his concentration, then he whirled to face Priabin, his features ashen. Rodin's hatred made Priabin blanch, but he swallowed once more, then added: "Serov killed your son, or had him killed. You know, though, don't you? At least you—"

"Be silent!" Rodin stormed, his cheeks white, his hps faintly blue. He made as if to move toward Priabin, but then forced himself to remain still. Then he shouted: "You do not understand, Colonel, you simply do not begin to understand!"

"But you know, or suspect?" he insisted.

"And why should you care, Colonel?" The shuttle s nose pointed at perhaps sixty degrees into the glare of the lights and the night beyond them. "To save your own miserable life? To place me like a barrier between yourself and Serov?" He snorted with contempt. "Serov intends to have you shot."

"With respect, that's obvious, General."

"And you would like to take the mad dog down with you?" Then Rodin added in a quieter voice: "The woman was your mistress, I suppose?"

Priabin shook his head, ignoring the surge of heavy pain between his temples. "No. I just liked her," he said tiredly.

"Then — what do you hope to gain by your accusations against Serov?"

The shuttle's nose was traveling through seventy degrees to the horizontal, locked in its cage. Priabin sensed the vast hydraulic forces, the sheer size and mass and effort of the silent, diminished scene. The express hoist would move the Raketoplan up the side of the launch gantry like an outside elevator rising past the floors of some ultra-modern hotel. Then the craft would be settled on the booster stages. His stomach felt hollow as he realized that they would launch in perhaps as little as four hours. It was twelve. Midnight. He felt the need to make his words count, have effect, though he had little sense of objective. Did he just want to needle Rodin?

"I don't give a shit about Serov," he said, shrugging with studied casualness.

"Then what? Assuming I believe your indifference to Serov."

"Just the truth." Again, Rodin snorted in derision. His attention returned to the screen.

Surprised at himself, Priabin wondered why and how he had become reinvolved. Why did he want Gant to escape, make it to somewhere? Where? A KGB office? Ludicrous. It didn't matter, the future was too vague to consider, his mind too weary. But if Rodin acted against Serov, then the hunt for Gant would lose its edge— might lose its edge, he corrected himself. Serov was the slave driver. If someone else took command, it might just leave a door ajar through which Gant could slip.

He doubted it all. Its slender contact with reality, with that happening inexorably on the screen, mocked him. Yet he persisted simply because he was no longer totally absorbed with guilt and self-pity. He did not wish it to leave him, he still desired the embrace of guilt. He still wanted to go on paying, even after the beating, but guilt had lost its strength. Katya, Valery Rodin, Viktor, Anna — all of them were slipping back into the dark. The immediate insisted on its presence.

"Just the truth," he repeated, afraid he had lost Rodin, who was staring at the screen. The shuttle craft did not appear to be tilting any farther skyward. A delay?

"What?" Rodin murmured absently; irritated.

"He had your son killed!" Priabin shouted. "What are you going to do about it?"

"What did you—?" Rodin turned, his features enraged.

"He killed your son like he killed your son's friend, the actor. Do you want me to spell it out? K-i-l-l-e-d, killed. He's a mad dog, you said it. Rabid. Your son let slip your precious secret. Your son was going to Moscow, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Never mind. I was going with him. He'd agreed to talk. Serov knew that, or suspected it, and got rid of him. Like tipping rubbish down a disposal chute. Just got rid of him and made it look like suicide. Now will you do something about it?"

Rodin was still, but his body seemed to sway minutely.

Adopt revenge as the motive, Priabin told himself coldly. Just get rid of Serov, you can't control anything more than that. Get rid of Serov.

The door opened. Serov entered, his features impassive. Rodin turned toward him, with the clockwork movement of an automaton. Had Serov heard? The man's face betrayed nothing but urgency, his own security concerns.

"Comrade General," he said deferentially, "we must have these operating consoles, the computer map. The search is being hampered while we are excluded from this room, comrade General."

The silence thudded in Priabin's ears. Rodin stared at Serov without moving. Then he turned his face toward Priabin. His eyes were bleak gray pebbles, his lips compressed into a straight, expressionless line. Priabin saw the turmoil for an instant, reflected in a tic at the corner of Rodin's mouth. Then it seemed his will was able to still that involuntary reaction, because it ceased almost as soon as it appeared.

Eventually, he looked at Serov and said: "Very well. Find him— find that American."

"We will, General, we will."

"Be certain you do, Serov." Rodin turned suddenly to Priabin and snapped: "Colonel Priabin, come with me now."

"But, General—

"Be silent, Serov. The colonel is now my prisoner."

Gant waved the shrouded lamp over his wrist. Midnight. Then, once more, he dipped the lamp into the blackness of the chemical tank in the Antonov's cabin. Dry, clean, no residual scent of the crop-dusting chemicals they had used the previous season. He nodded vigorously. It would work, just so long as he could fuel up the airplane. It would work, he reiterated to convince himself. The chemical tank had about a three hundred-gallon capacity; greater than the Antonov's upper-wing fuel tanks. He assessed the aircraft's range at perhaps as much as five hundred miles. With the chemical tank filled with aviation fuel, he would more than double that range.

Eleven hundred miles. Pakistan or Turkey. Across the border. His chest was tight with excitement as he once more recited the figures. His body felt warmed by self-satisfaction.

The wing tanks were full. All he required was to find the fuel store. It must be outside the hangar. He hadn't seen it on his approach. It had to be behind the hangar, out in the dark where the dirt runway undoubtedly was. His imagination reached out, and faltered. He couldn't get the airplane out of the hangar unless he started up the engine. That noise might bring—

— and he wouldn't have time to fuel up the chemical tank if he aroused interest.

He stood up in a crouch and climbed out of the cabin, the lead for the lamp dropping noisily onto the concrete as he jumped down. He couldn't check the flaps because they operated electrically. He'd checked everything that worked by cable, mechanically — the rudder, the ailerons, the flying controls. Checked the oil levels, the maps in the cockpit. Sat in the pilot's seat, sensing the separate, familiar life of the Antonov; sensing, too, its resemblance to that nrst crop duster. Familiarity had been a small victory. He had jettisoned as much from the cabin as he could — most of the cabin lining, stowed equipment, the noise-reducing plywood of the fuselage walls. He had checked each of the repair cards. The Antonov would fly, but only for five hundred miles until he found extra fuel. Half the way home.

… like repairing a bicycle, kid.

The memory made him grin involuntarily. He'd said that twenty-five years ago as he let Gant help him service the crop duster, after their first flight together. Gant had checked the pressure in the Antonov's tires and remembered the words. Like repairing a bicycle, kid.

He switched off the lamp, and crossed the now-familiar hangar in pale moonlight. He opened the judas door and stepped through it. He shivered in the icy cold, came more awake. He hunched into the folds of the parka, its hood dragged over his head, and rounded the side of the hangar. The wind howled in pursuit. He ran.

The battery needed perhaps two, three more hours to be fully charged. He could not cut it finer, dare not. If he drained the battery trying to start the engine, he was lost. Fuel was the necessity.

Wire, a small compound, tarpaulin. He sucked in air greedily, his teeth set in what might have been a grin. He rattled the lock. He needed something to cut the chain or snap the lock — have to go back. He bent down and studied the anonymous, heaped shape that was the outline of the tarpaulin. It was loosely fixed, great gusts of wind rippling it like the back of an aggressive animal. Flaps of it flew and cracked. He waited, the tension coming back into his frame. turbine fuel… He held his breath and waited for the wind to reveal the drum once more, reveal the stenciled Cyrillic lettering stamped on it. Eventually, turbine fuel appeared. By the size of the tarpaulin, there had to be in the region of thirty drums beneath its cover. He rose and looked at the wire fence. Pointless to climb, he had to open the gates. Smash the lock. The thought of the small violence satisfied him.

He had found the fuel he needed. If he employed the pump on the chemical tank to feed the fuel via a hose to the wing tanks, the whole jury-rig would work; it would work. He turned away from the rattling tarpaulin toward the hangar. Twelve-ten. By four, then, with luck…

He listened intently, saliva filling his mouth. He wasn't mis* taken. He knew the wind was carrying the noise of an approaching engine. He cocked his head to one side. Small vehicle by the noise-Coming closer. He ran scuttling toward the side of the hangar. As the moon slid behind a great billow of cloud, he saw headlights bouncing crazily as the vehicle followed the undulating dirt track from the collective. Light splashed on the firs, on the hangar. He crouched in the shadows.

The engine noise died. He heard the brake cranking on. Heard voices, two of them, even one man's luxurious yawn, the others comment on the chill of the night. One of the men rattled the doors of the hangar, the others voice disappeared into a muffled distance — Christ, as if he were going to walk right around the hangar! The rifle was in the hangar — Gant grabbed at his pockets frantically. Found the Makarov pistol he'd snatched up in the MiL's cabin, eased a round into the chamber, holding his breath at the magnified noise of the action. Christ—

… aircraft in here?" he heard.

"So those lazy bastards said. Why the hell didn't they tell us that in the first place?"

"Got the keys?" The walking man had returned to his companion. The barrel of the Makarov was icy against Gant's cheek. He pressed farther into the shadows, his gaze intent upon the corner of the hangar.

"Let's have a look-see, then."

The small, metallic noises of unlocking the padlock on the main doors, the creak of wood, the grunt of a man straining against the wind with the great sailplane of one of the doors.

"Fucking little door was open all the time!" one of them exclaimed.

Gant heard the large door slam back into place, shuddering as it did so, banging again and again in the wind. He strained to listen, ear against the wall, but only muffled exclamations reached him from inside the hangar. If they found — if they guessed—

Light sprang from the window above his head, making him flinch. Wildly, he looked around. An empty oil drum lying on its side in the straggling grass. He stepped out of the shadows, pocketing the gun. Dragged the drum, which whispered hollowly as he touched it, directly under the window. Climbed onto it, taking the gun once more from his pocket, slipping off the safety catch. He looked down into the hangar.

And flinched back instantly as one of the uniformed men turned his direction. Waited, not breathing, then raised his head cautiously. They were looking at the Antonov. One of them was pointing at the litter of material he had removed from the cabin. Tossing his head in amused puzzlement, tapping one finger to his forehead. Two GRU uniforms, perhaps even the two he had failed to kill earlier on the embankment. Returning in the long swing of their patrol to the collective, learning this time of the hangar, its two aircraft— reassured they wouldn't fly?

He watched one of the two, a corporal, move toward the door, then through it. The remaining soldier had lit a cigarette, taken a flask from the pocket of his parka. He swigged violently, wiped his chin, licked the back of his hand. Gant stepped down from the oil drum, crept cautiously along the side of the hangar. Returning moonlight searched him out. The wind slapped his parka's skirts against the building's wall, and he grabbed the garment closer around him. Paused at the corner.

Listened.

… say neither of them's capable of flying… bits missing, sir. I don't know what bits, sir. Sorry, sir….." The man's words were interrupted or accompanied by a tinny squeak from the UAZ's radio. The corporal was standing by the vehicle, leaning against the door, microphone in his hand, the other hand scratching his cheek. "That's what he said, sir, the collective's engineer. Neither of them can fly. What, sir? OK, until further orders, yes, sir. Over and out." He threw the microphone into the cab of the UAZ. Gant darted back into the shadows of the hangar. His whole chest and stomach seemed empty as he heard the corporal call out: "Ivan. Officer says we're to stay here until further orders. Have a break, he says, but stay sharp. Suits me."

Until further orders.

Gant was trapped, separated from the Antonov, unless he killed both of them. And if he did that, he'd raise the alarm for certain. As soon as they failed to call in — every hour, half hour, every fifteen minutes? — the gunships would come looking for him, certain of his whereabouts. He couldn't kill them. He couldn't do anything.

"We are at T minus three hours, final countdown continues."

Wild cheering, as if the words had released tensions in a great wave that rushed through mission control. Priabin felt battered by its strength. On screen after screen, in front of him and to each side, the shuttle stood atop its massive booster stages. The last of the liquid oxygen fumed away from the flanks of the vast machine, the skeletal gantry threw its shadows down the checkerboard pattern on the missile's side. The cheering went on, deafening and exaggerated. Even the guard at his side had a wide grin on his face, as he puffed at his cigarette. Priabin ignored the cigarette the guard had given him. On the huge fiber-optic map twenty feet away, the undulating course of the American shuttle Atlantis across the planet looked like the measurement of a regular sine wave.

Rodin's voice was amplified and mechanical over the PA, but still betrayed the man's excitement as it reached every part of the room.

"Gentlemen, we are on schedule," he announced. A renewed ripple of applause as he stated the self-evident, luxuriating in it. Priabin could see the general, behind glass like a zoo exhibit, looking out at his kingdom. "We shall be commencing the transfer of the liquid hydrogen to the booster stages in approximately two minutes' time. The Raketoplans crew will be boarding the craft within the next five minutes. Thank you, gentlemen. Keep up the good work." More applause, sounding now like a frantic desire to maintain an already overheated emotional atmosphere. Dying away reluctantly.

On one screen, the vehicle carrying the three members of the shuttle's crew drew up at the base of the launch gantry. Priabin watched as the men, already suited and helmeted, and carrying their life-support packs like white suitcases, lumbered toward the elevator to take them the hundred or more meters to the shuttle. From the television monitor, there was faint cheering from the ground personnel. Priabin looked at his guard, then drew heavily on his cigarette. His face and body's aches had subsided into a general discomfort. Rodin had even had a nurse to dab his cuts and bruises, inspect the darkened flesh over ribs and buttocks, and pronounce upon the degree of injury Serov had inflicted. One damaged rib, otherwise no more than heavy bruising and abrasions. There was sticking plaster on his forehead, but the stinging of the antiseptics and the adrenaline solution to stem the blood flowing from his cleaned cuts had faded.

Rodin had talked to him; wary of him, massively resentful at some moments, indifferent at others. But though he had Priabin guarded, he did not have him removed to a cell. Nor handed back to Serov. As if he wanted Priabin to see him succeed, witness every foment of Lightning. And yet it seemed that Rodin himself was Ptagued by something other than the launch. His son, Priabin suspected. He did not wish to hear about him, he was able for long foments to ignore his son's death, but the thought seemed to keep burning to him.

Priabin turned to look across the room toward Serov's windows.

The security monitoring unit of mission control was raised above the main floor. A row of tinted windows. He could see nothing more than occasional shadows passing back and forth behind the glass. He had not prevented Serov from continuing the search for Gant. Rodin had ignored — or suppressed — what he had said concerning the GRU colonel's murder of his son. Perhaps the idea cast doubt on too many of Rodin's unthinking beliefs?

He turned back. Rodin had left his glass booth and was walking toward him and his guard, who snapped to attention. Priabin was immediately attentive. Rodin's walk was stiff, paradelike, as if he were too aware that others were watching him. Yet he barely acknowledged the smiles and salutes that hemmed him like a corridor. He marched directly toward Priabin, halting in front of him.

He paused only to wave the guard aside. "Come," he ordered. There appeared little strength in his voice. Priabin walked at his side.

They mounted the steps between the amphitheatrical ranks of consoles and their operators. Instructions, repeated acknowledgments, orders, measurements hummed around them. It was difficult to catch what Rodin was saying in a quiet, unfamiliar voice. Priabin strained to hear.

"… a priority message — came two hours ago… didn't regard it as important, only just read it — wife….." The telemetry, the countdown, the shuttle's status, the voice of the mission commander as he boarded the craft, rising and falling like waves. Priabin could not believe what he heard; more, could not believe the voice in which the information was relayed to him. The launch became unimportant."… hospital, suffering from an overdose — my wife?" The tone of querulous inquiry was hard to accept as real."… took sleeping pills — rushed her to hospital… critical, they say…

Priabin halted beside Rodin at the top of the steps. Cigarette smoke hung heavily there, despite the air-conditioning. The noises of the room were murmurous, oppressive, as was its temperature. Incredible. Rodin seemed out of his depth. Stunned and incapable. Priabin glanced quickly toward the tinted windows of the security room. Now, now he could finish Serov, with Rodin in his present state of numbed shock. Now.

Something started him into wakefulness. Drugged as he seemed, he knew immediately he must make no noise. He rubbed his face roughly, cleared his eyes into focus. Pale light from the low moon illuminated the doors of the hangar and the UAZ still parked in front of them. And the opening of the small door and the form of one of the GRU men coming through it; eating and stretching luxuriously.

The bleep of the radio's signal had summoned the man and awakened Gant. A tinny voice succeeded the signal, which had itself sounded impatient. The voice was sharp and near on the icy air. The wind appeared to have dropped, as clouds galleoned slowly across the stars.

He listened. The tractor's rusty red body and huge rear wheels masked him even more effectively than the shadows of the pines beneath which he sat, wrapped in the folds of the parka, hood over his head and face. He had eaten the chocolate and crackers from the emergency rations, kept the stale taste of inactivity and impending defeat from his mouth with the water bottle. Ordinary, ludicrous things. He had done them because there was nothing else; he could not kill them and give the alarm, he could not reach the Antonov, he could not fit the battery, he could not fill the chemical tank with fuel, he could not tow it to the fuel dump by using the tractor— which others had used, its towbar indicated. The pieces of the puzzle lay about him and he knew its solution; but was powerless to act.

As he listened, he looked at his watch. Just before two in the morning. The guards called in or were called every thirty minutes. Routine. No one seemed to want to move them on. He had taken up his position beside the tractor because from it he could watch the road to the collective, the sky to the north from which direction the gunships would come, and the hangar and the UAZ. Only the battery was charging; that was the only progression.

The guard was almost forty yards away, yet he caught nearly every word spoken.

"…as the grave, sir. Sure. Oh, yes, we've patrolled regularly." They hadn't left the comparative warmth of the hangar except to call in or to answer a call. Once, one of them had come through the small door, urinated briefly against the hangar wall, presumably because he couldn't locate the toilet inside, and hurried back in out of the cold. They had kept the lights switched off, as he had heard them ordered to do. Flashlight beams had flickered in there from time to time. "Matter of fact, that's why I was a bit late, sir — just finished my patrol… nothing doing, sir — picked the wrong… Yes, sir, of course, sir." Gant felt himself drawn into the one-sided conversation, as into warm sleep. He rubbed his arms, waking himself. "Me, sir? Back on patrol, leave the private here, sir — yes, sir.w The corporal actually stood to attention for a moment before he flung the microphone back into the vehicle with a muttered curse. He opened the judas door and bellowed: "You jammy bastard, get out here! Come on, move it!"

"Corp—" Gant heard from inside.

"Don't corp me, you lucky sod. I'm to go back on routine patrol, son, while you take time out here smoking fags and guzzling vodka."

"Sorry, corp—"

"You will be, son, you will be," the corporal murmured, leaning over the other soldier. "Right, I'll be back in an hour. I'll leave the walkie-talkie with you. Make sure you keep in touch. And make sure you do the patrols, my son — understand?"

"Yes, corp."

"Jammy bastard."

Gant watched as the corporal climbed into the UAZ and started the engine. It roared in the silence, then the vehicle moved off quickly, churning up dust, squealing along the track toward the collective, its headlights bucking and bouncing like a runaway horse. Its engine noise faded. The private raised two fingers vigorously, twice, then turned back to the judas door. He paused, then ducked his head and reentered the hangar, closing the door behind him.

Gant's hands jumped and twitched with tension-becoming-excitement. He climbed awkwardly to his feet, stamping them at once to rid his legs of cramp and cold. He wasn't tired now. He had no further time to waste. Two o'clock. His hand banged the tractor's huge rear tire like the shoulder of an old friend.

Crouching, he moved swiftly across the forty yards of open ground to the side of the hangar, the Makarov ready in his right hand in case.

The judas door did not open. He paused, breathing deeply, then hurried once more, around the building's circumference, toward the lean-to, approaching it from the rear of the hangar. His boots brushed through straggling, icy grass. He found the loose panel 01 corrugated sheeting, knelt, then wriggled into the hangar. Moonlight gave him enough light to see by. He moved carefully P3^ empty drums, cans, boxes, the fat tires, flicking on the flashlight only to locate the handle of the door. Touched it, breathed softly* remembered whether or not the door had squeaked when he had first opened it — no — opened the door. The pale darkness of the hangar rustled. Smell of kerosene, dust, oil, sausage. He waited the crack he had opened, sensing rather than seeing the details of the hangar. Moonlight on the nearer Antonov.

Where? Where was the guard? Impatience surged through him. Close. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. Something scuffled, a boot heel rather than a rat. Close.

He slipped through the gap in the door. Paused, head turning slowly from left to right, right to left… breathing? Could he hear that much, that clearly? His shoulder quivered as if anticipating a hand felling heavily on it. He saw the door to the off-duty room was open. A poor light filtered from it like a leak of yellowish water. Rustling? The turning of pages. A grunt of what might have been satisfaction. The shuffling of feet. There was no time, no space for the complications of hitting the guard, tying him, being aware of him through the hour or so that still lay ahead. He had to kill him.

Gant studied the floor between himself and the open door. The light — of a flashlight? — seemed a little stronger, yet hardly spilled beyond the dark rectangle of the door. The man could be sitting on one of the battered easy chairs, or standing at the table. He would have no more than moments in which to locate, aim, kill. It was six steps to the open door.

Noise of gurgling, like a distant tap. The man was drinking something. There was nothing between himself and the door. He moved on tiptoe, pausing between each step. Sigh or grunt, magnified. Rustling of pages, a muttered oath regarding the light, the scraping of chair legs, table, then…

He was in the doorway, the Makarov level with his hip. A pool of flashlight beam, some glossy pages open on the stained table; the bulk of the soldier already half-risen. He did not distract himself ^h a glance at the mans face, but simply fired twice.

The body began falling in slow motion, but the sense of having ^ed snapped Gant's time sense back to normality. The body slid Ward the table, moving it in a painful scrape on the floor, then toppled backward, half over one of the ragged chairs. To lie moonless.

Gant waited, the noise of the two shots separating then blurring f^they echoed in his ears. Over. He felt nothing. The man had no more than a voice, a dark form. His face was hanging over chair s arm, out of sight, and Gant had never seen his features. He moved forward into the room, his hand touching the magazine— a naked girl — then the flashlight located the walkie-talkie. A moment of fear because he was alone with the machine and felt its contact with the UAZ, with Baikonur.

He left the room quickly, shutting the door behind him, and crossed the hangar to the Battery Room. Flicked the beam of the flashlight, fading noticeably, at the dials. Almost, almost — certainly charged enough by the time he… Thoughts tumbled. He regimented them like a hand of cards.

Engineer's office. He crossed the concrete floor, collecting the lamp and its coiled lead on his way. Quickly, quickly… his hand dabbed along a wooden board littered with keys hanging from hooks, tractor, one was labeled. He snatched off the keys, then the ignition keys for the Antonov. Then returned to the storeroom, wiping the glaze of the lamp around its dusty, littered space until he found a crowbar. Keys, means of opening the fuel compound; two down.

Waved the lamp again, crouched on his haunches, scuttled like a crab in that position, poking the light into dark corners. Webs, the hardly noticed scurry of a rat he never saw, dirt on his fingertips, spilled paint long dried — a length of rubber hose. Triumphantly, he tugged it out from behind stacked, empty boxes and drums that had once held the chemicals used in crop dusting. Hardly pausing, he returned to the hangar, climbing into the second Antonov as if returning to a familiar location. As he squeezed into the cockpit, he felt his frame too big for the interior of the aircraft; as if it could hardly contain his energy. In the light of the lamp, he inspected the panel that operated the pump for the chemical tank. Stuck-on labels. power On-Off; pump On-Off. Just the two switches and a light to register they were operating. Primitive. Familiar. He returned to the cabin, bending to inspect the spray outlet. No spray bars had been fitted to the underside of the fuselage. The outlet pipe ran into the floor of the plane.

He jumped down. And it ran through it. Yes, he could fit the hose easily, when he needed to refuel from the chemical tank to the wing tanks. He could fill the tank from the input on its top surface, using the hose still in his hand. He threw it into the interior of the Antonov.

Wobble pump. Or whatever they used to fill the tank with chemicals — where?

Two-fifteen. No pump. He began patrolling the walls of the hangar for a second time, flashing and slipping the light carefully over every surface, every shadowy gap. No pump. Two twenty-five.

He was aware of the walkie-talkie in his pocket, its link with the UAZ and with Baikonur — with Serov; aware too, of the videotape, the cassette from the camera Priabin had used; aware most of all of time. He glanced at each minute that passed on the face of his watch.

He stood in the middle of the hangar, having completed his second unsuccessful patrol. Do something else. Two-thirty. He had done nothing, nothing so far — just a length of hose and the death of a man — do something else. Shuffle the cards, do something else!

He crossed to the doors. He still could not get up the nerve to switch on the hangar's main lights. He left the lamp, at the limit of its lead — caught on something? He could not delay to check. Reached the doors. Still unlocked, left that way by the corporal, found the handle, began to wind at it, listening to the magnified creaking of the two doors as they slid apart on their protesting metal rails. Moonlight crept forward like an inquisitive, wary animal. He opened them to their full extent.

He stood looking out at the shadowy form of the tractor parked beneath the firs. The refueling pump could be at the dump, locked in with the tarpaulin-covered drums. It didn't matter. Now he had to move the aircraft.

He ran across the moonlit space. Little or no wind. His cheeks were numbed by his speed through the icy air. He climbed into the tractor's cab, hunting with his fingers for the ignition like a blind man. Held his breath, switched on. The engine coughed, died. A second time, then a third. The noise of the engine turning over but refusing to fire was a violent, alarming sound in the silence. He could not help glancing repeatedly over his shoulder, in the direction of the collective's huddled buildings almost a mile away.

The engine caught, still reluctant, then roared as he overaccelerated. He slipped off the brake, heard the engine settle, then dragged the wheel over, turning the tractor out of the shadow of the trees toward the hangar. His head turned rapidly from side to side. Nothing.

He drove the tractor into the darkness inside the hangar. The ^o aircraft assumed identity slowly as his vision adjusted to the lack light. He tugged on the tractor's brake and jumped down. The silence after he switched off its engine was solid, pressing on his eardrums like a shock wave. He inspected the towbar with his torch, it had been used to tow the Antonovs in and out of the hangar.

Snatching up the lamp once more, he inspected the second Antonov's undercarriage. Two towing lugs. Good.

He climbed back into the tractor cab and started the engine— first time, he breathed out hugely. Very slowly, carefully, he turned the tractor — familiar again, like the airplane; a machine that belonged to his past. Then he backed it up to the Antonov's nose, juggling with the reluctant steering wheel until he heard the towbar clunk against the undercarriage strut. Stopped. Jumped out, checked the towbar's alignment with the towing lugs.

Two thirty-eight. He felt relief rob him of all strength for a moment and make his head spin with dizziness, then he raised the towbar and dropped it over the towing lugs, locking the two machines into a single unit.

Immediately he looked up at the gap of moonlight through the wide-open doors. Looked then at the wingspan of the Antonov, the four dull leading edges of the wings. He remembered the doors of the KGB hangar closing against the MiL's desperate race toward the air.

He stood for a moment, trying to retain the sense of his tasks as a hand of cards. Hose, rifle, keys, fuel outside — pump? — tractor… two-forty. Battery — he would have to manhandle the large battery onto the tractor and transport it to the Antonov after he had fueled up the tank in the cabin. It was charged, or almost charged — it would start the airplane. But could he lift the battery onto the tractor, then once more into the airplane? It came down to brute strength.

And the adrenaline of panic… leave it for the moment — leave it! He climbed with great effort into the cab of the tractor, wiping the smear of his exertions and fears from the inside of the windshield with his gloved hand, then with the sleeve of the parka. Turned to look back at the Antonov—

— jumped down and undipped the bonding wire from the undercarriage, throwing its crocodile clip and length of wire away from him like a reckless gesture of success.

He paused, then started the tractor once more, creeping the lumbering vehicle slowly toward the open doors. The image of the KGB hangar's similarly open doors kept flashing like a strobe light on the retinas of his eyes, making his body jump and tremble with anticipated disaster: just the tip of one wing, just the merest collision, just, just… the doors of that other hangar kept grinding closer together.

He gripped the wheel fiercely, yet his touch on its movements was delicate as he held the tractor to the center of the gap. Five yards, four… the tractor passed through the doors, they were alongside then behind him. Already, the propeller blades were glinting with moonlight in the tractor's side mirror.

He glanced back quickly, then relied upon the mirror to his right, watching the Antonov's starboard wings, watching the longer upper wing of the biplane, watching, watching… he wasn't breathing, his head was light with concentration… watching…

Through.

He grunted aloud. The Antonov rolled gently out into the open. He immediately turned the tractor's wheels, heading the aircraft through a wide semicircle toward the fuel dump at the back of the hangar.

Sweat bathed his forehead, freezing to an ache almost at once The noise of the tractor dinned at his eardrums.

Two forty-five.

The moon was old, low, sliding toward morning near the horizon. Daylight, a thousand miles.

"Gentlemen, another countdown adjustment — it is now T minus fifty minutes and counting."

Cheering, diffuse and roaring like a distant sea from beyond the tinted glass.

"Turn that bloody thing off," Serov barked. "For Christ's sake, you're like a bunch of fucking kids." Someone moved to switch off the only television screen relaying the scene in mission control, then to the PA speaker on one wall. Serov drew angrily on his cigarette. The ashtray on the table was filled with crushed and twisted butts. A dozen or more cardboard filters. "Let Grandpa Rodin get on with his game. You've got your work cut out right here."

The security room was hazy with smoke, stale-smelling and crowded, though there were no more than half a dozen in the search coordination team. The cheering died away beyond the tinted glass. They were all tired, all frustrated, all edgy, none more so than he. Childish rage brought no rewards, but seemed necessary. He waved a hand.

"All right, all right — back to work, back to work." Like a hen fossing. It wasn't their fault — but it would be his fault if they didn't locate and bring in the American pilot. He looked at his watch.

Three-ten. Dear Christ, three in the morning. Gant had been out of his hands since before four-almost twelve hours.

Had Priabin still been his prisoner — well, who could have said, he admitted with a grin, whether he would still have been alive— though why Rodin kept him hanging around him like a court buffoon, God alone knew the answer.

Was there any danger there? He'd asked himself that question fifty, a hundred times, mostly with confident indifference. But he realized Rodin could no longer believe Priabin had driven his son to suicide. Had he still done so, he wouldn't have been able to bear the sight of him, would have had him locked up, even shot.

Serov patted his pocket. The tapes from Mikhail. Should he give them to Rodin, or not? They'd convince, almost by themselves, that the pressure of Priabin's interrogation had snapped Valery Rodin's reason, driven him to a desperate act of suicide — wouldn't they? Perhaps they should be used?

He wandered to the line of tinted windows. Almost at once, he located Rodin surrounded by his staff, in front of the huge telemetry map that showed the snaking orbit of the American shuttle. Pointing, waving his arms — completely mad. Serov felt detached from the whole vast room down there. Where was Priabin? Had Rodin gotten rid of him at last?

No, there he was, still guarded. Playing — dear Jesus, playing cards with his guard and two white-coated technicians, away in one corner. Cards! The scene was surreal. What was he doing? Why was he still there? *

He would not admit that Priabin worried or unnerved him.

He turned abruptly from the windows and the thought. The radio reports, the replies of his team, filled the stale air of the room with their own urgency. Priabin's image nagged at his thoughts for a moment or two, then Gant replaced him. He had to have the American. That would be the basis of any standoff, would be the yardstick. Even the lifeline, he admitted with great reluctance.

And yet all these reports and acknowledgments are empty, negative.

The team had their backs to him like chastened pupils. Bent over radios, VDUs, maps. The large screen standing vertically on its stand in one corner was no more technological or revelatory than an empty blackboard in a classroom. Its colors and markings faded, flowed like dyes running in woolen garments, the kind of cheap rubbish they sold in many stores, the colors reformed in a new pattern-

The map was computer-controlled, constantly updated from its accompanying console. Fifty different images of nothing had been its contribution thus far.

Serov strode over to it, confronting it, a new cigarette between his lips on which he drew loudly, repeatedly. Baikonurs southwestern quadrant occupied the fiber-optic screen. Marks and dots and squiggles crawled and moved on its surface like small flies on a pale wall. He studied the map, replacing its images with as many of the locations as he could recall. The river, bending away toward the bottom of the map, the old town straggling out into the desert, and the country reclaimed and cultivated through irrigation. The bottom half of the projection was a grid pattern like the aerial view of some American or new Siberian city. Collectives, clumps of trees, the tracks and roads that wound through the canal and dike system, individual cottages and huts; barns, stores, sheds, hen coops, garages. Every building was represented. And yet he wanted to lash out at the map with his good hand — the fist that had so damaged Priabin's pretty face — and reduce the map to a jigsaw puzzle of colored shards on the floor.

Every man at his disposal, army, GRU, and even police — he had excluded Priabin's KGB and confined some of them pending further inquiries, as he had instructed sardonically — every mobile or air unit was represented on the map. A separate color or shade of a color indicated the areas they had searched. Like a dye introduced to the body and shown up by X ray; areas clear of disease. These blotches merged at many points. Soon the whole map would be a single smear of color declaring that the American had escaped.

He refused to believe it. The unit designations wobbled and disappeared, then reappeared as positional reports were updated. The map did everything, it was supremely sophisticated, advanced. And utterly useless.

"What else can we do?" he exploded. He saw their shoulders twitch, heads snap up. One or two of them turned at once to look at him; others were more cautious. Yet it was not anger so much as frustration he expressed. "Tell me, boys, tell me. What the hell are we missing?"

They had all turned now, except the map operator, feeding in Vst another stream of positional information. Clear here, clear, nothing, nothing — and yet he's in there somewhere.

"Well?" he asked again, attempting bluffness. "What are we hissing?"

"Sir — nothing." It was the lieutenant who had brought him the news about the Mil — and brought him Priabin.

"Nothing?" he replied acidly, barely controlling another outburst of temper. "Nothing?"

"Sir, we've never done anything as thoroughly as this." He had accepted the role of spokesman, reluctantly, of course. "We've covered everything. He hasn't got a vehicle — we've traced everything on wheels out there. He can't have got back into Leninsk or Tyuratam on foot." The lieutenant's face was screwed up like that of a child seeking an answer; a genuine attempt to help the teacher. But his shoulders shrugged at the same time.

"All right. I'm not criticizing," Serov began. Then he bellowed: "Shit — for Christ's sake! All this equipment, all the routines, the systems — how much are they worth now? Two fucking kopecks is about the mark, wouldn't you say?" He turned his back on them and strode across the room toward the tinted windows. Saw Priabin immediately. Still playing cards. The man was laughing at him!

He turned back to the men in the room, his face enraged. Gant was on foot, he had to be, or holed up somewhere. On the collectives, they were turning out their bedrooms, their cupboards, their privies for any sign of him. Everything had been or was being searched. It was ridiculous, unbelievable that they could find no trace of him.

"Ask them," he said hoarsely, waving a hand in front of him. It was an admission of bafflement, of weakness, but he had to make it. Then he'd settle Priabin. But first… "Ask them — every officer out there. I want ideas. Call every one of them in turn and ask for their ideas."

"Sir, that could take—"

"I don't care how long it takes!" Serov stormed. "They're the people on the spot. Ask them. Well, get on with it — get started!

He was hot, sweating profusely with his efforts at the wobble pump. He paused only to wipe his sleeve across his brow or to glance at the watch on his wrist. Nothing else interested him; he was unconcerned with the cold, empty landscape around him-He was oblivious to the walkie-talkie thrust into his breast pocket-He had almost filled the chemical tank in the Antonov's cabin with kerosene. It was three-thirty in the morning.

He worked furiously at the pump, bobbing over it like some frantic lifeguard over the body of a rescued swimmer, attempting empty him of water. Watch, brow, pump — his horizons. In his haste, he had knocked over a drum of kerosene. Its sweet smell made his head spin. The odor was all around him like an invisible cloud.

Three thirty-two. He checked the gauge. He had transferred two hundred and ninety gallons to the chemical tank. Empty drums lay on their sides around him like litter. Spilled kerosene stained the ground. The loosened tarpaulin crackled and snapped behind him in the occasional gusts of wind. Helicopters had passed in the distance, always to the north. No vehicles had come down the track toward the hangar or the fuel compound.

He cradled his back in his hands for a long time, while his breathing returned to normal. Eventually, he crossed to the tractor. His strength seemed to ebb at the thought of the battery and its weight. You can lift it, you can… He glanced at the Antonov. Close now, close.

He touched the ignition key of the tractor. Noise blurted from the walkie-talkie against his breast, stunning him. He whirled around in his seat as if someone were behind him. The noise slowly resolved into a human voice. Into a demand for an acknowledgment from the dead GRU private.

He did not dare answer.

His eyes frantically studied the night sky, examining individual stars, expecting them to shift, move, resolve themselves into navigation lights. They did not.

"Acknowledge."

They knew the man's name, his rank, his number. They wanted to speak to him, question him.

He did not dare reply.

But if he didn't, they'd come.

17: Fires in the Night

He did not dare acknowledge.

Gant turned the ignition key, and the tractors engine roared. The noise clamored, drowning the small, insistent voice from the walkie-talkie. He put the tractor into gear, turning the wheel with a strength that surprised him; comforted him, too. The battery's bulk seemed to have increased. It dominated his thoughts. He accelerated along the side of the hangar, his eyes constantly checking the sky above and around him. Only stars, only the fading moonlight—

The voice was apparent again. While it repeated its summons over and over, it lost its threat. He turned into the hangar. The huge rear tires crushed something that cracked audibly, the wingtip of the stripped Antonov brushed against the top of the cab. He felt a tug at the tractor, heard a tearing noise. The door of the Battery Room was visible ahead of him as he turned on the tractor's headlights. Splashing light no longer mattered. He halted the tractor and stepped down.

As he entered the confined space of the room and the engine noise diminished, he realized that there was no sound from the walkie-talkie. He held it to his ear for a moment — no, nothing. He almost wanted to shake it like some clockwork toy that refused to work, but thrust it back into his breast pocket. He looked at his watch. Three thirty-eight. It had begun; suspicion, realization, counteractivity.

Breathing deeply, he checked the dials on the charger. The battery was almost fully charged. He undipped the leads, tested the bulk of the battery, felt for the carrying handle; it hardly slid more than a few inches as he heaved at it. He groaned aloud. Stood back-

The bench on which the battery rested was a few feet from the floor. He would damage the battery for certain if he dropped it.

Come on, come on, he raged at himself. Try.

He turned to the tractor, headlight eyes staring at him, making him blink and squint. Come on!

He moved behind the bench, pushing at the battery. It slid reluctantly to the edge, almost teetering there? in danger of falling. He checked, then moved alongside the battery. He was sweating feverishly. He gripped the carrying handle in both hands and tugged. The battery slid off the bench onto the floor with a hideous concussive noise. He shone the flashlight but could find no damage. Back bent, he dragged the battery by its handle out of the Battery Room, across the dusty concrete to the tractor. His breathing was like a punctuated groaning.

This was the last thing, the last task. He gripped his arms around the battery, heaving and straining at it. He staggered with the weight, lurching against the side of the tractor, thrusting the battery like a ram against the cab, against, in, into the cab… gasped for breath, back aching, arms numb. He looked at the battery resting innocently on the floor of the cab, near the pedals.

Almost at once, a sense of his peril returned, and all but doubled him up with stomach cramps. He forced himself up into the cab. Accelerated slowly, the cramps passing. He drove out of the hangar, almost afraid to look up. Then making himself quarter the sky. Stars, moon, darkness. Nothing moved. Nothing on the track, either. He rounded the hangar, heading toward the clearly visible aircraft. Drew up next to it.

Three forty-three.

He slid the tractor inch by inch alongside the open battery compartment in the Antonovs tail. His hands were light on the wheel, his foot gentle on the pedal. He watched over his shoulder. Closer, closer. He could not attend to the night sky now; his horizon had become the edge of the cab, the distance to the open flap.

Yes!

He switched off the engine and jumped down. Silence gradually seeped into his hearing. Silence, still. Only minutes now.

He would have to heft it into the compartment before rigging it. Stow and rig — how long? It won't matter shit if you don't get it into the compartment. He positioned himself, feet slightly apart, arms at each side of the battery, then he bent and strained, as if about to hurl the battery into the open flap. Paused, tried to raise his body, move his arms as they cracked with the strain. Lifted the battery, staggered in a turn, expelling his breath in a huge shout.

The battery banged into the compartment. He lurched forward with the effort and with the frantic desire to stop it from falling backward toward him. If it did, then he would never be able to hold it, would fall with it.

His imagination was feverish with anticipation, so that his hands felt as if the battery were beginning to topple. He thrust at it frantically, struggling it farther into the compartment, finally feeling it tilt into the shallow tray in which it was normally secured. Heaved it again without any sensation in his hands that its bulk had been squared as he intended, then he dimly felt it drop firmly into the tray and remain still. He kept his hands on the battery to calm them as sweat broke out all over his body, as if produced not by his effort but by the trembling weakness afterward. Christ!

He wiped his mouth with the back of one quivering hand. Three forty-five.

Where were they now? Suspicion or realization? Even counteractivity? Somewhere between realization and action, he decided. Close—

T minus fourteen minutes.

The countdown clock in the security room had been readjusted once more as Rodin shaved further minutes from the launch procedures. Serov glanced up at it. It seemed to bear little relationship to the activities of the room and its occupants; as if the tinted windows comprising the wall between himself and the rest of mission control had become completely opaque. The scenes on the television screens were unaccompanied by noise or words. Launch pad, the strange steam of vaporizing fuel, the garish lights, the images from the flight deck of the shuttle; all somehow less real than the fiber-optic map and the radio connection with one corporal driver.

"Why not?" he repeated. "Why can't you raise him?" He addressed the words to the ceiling. If the man failed to pick up his words, they would be repeated by the radio operator. He wished to remain detached.

But why did the countdown clock intrude at the very edge of his peripheral vision? It had nothing to do with the American. He could not ignore it. Thirteen minutes thirty. It was three-forty in the morning, his eyes were gritty with tiredness, his body stale and beginning to acquire an odor within its uniform. Yet his brain refused to be weary; it leaped and jumped with electricity.

He turned his back completely on the countdown clock.

"Well?" he demanded.

… no idea, comrade Colonel," he caught by way of reply.

"And there were two aircraft in that hangar?"

"Yes, comrade—"

He interrupted: "You were certain they were unusable?"

"The chief engineer explained—"

"What did he say — exactly?" Three forty-one. Time seemed to be accelerating. His mind obeyed the diminishing time, not with anxiety or fear but with a sense of keeping pace, even overtaking. His body itched for action. "Exactly."

All the checks, all the calls they had made, and only one failure to respond — this one a GRU private guarding two aircraft.

"One of them was stripped right down. We could see that for ourselves."

"And the second one?" His tone was at one level of intensity, the volume of his words raised but constant; as if addressing a large crowd.

"… battery on charge ready to—" he caught, but his mind had plucked up his attention. He was ahead of the explanation outrunning the passing moments.

'Then it is only the battery!" he bellowed at the ceiling, his head spinning, the windows now completely black and opaque. "If the battery were replaced in the aircraft it could fly!"

"Comrade Colonel, I don't—"

"Idiot!" he yelled. There was a triumph in his voice, large and unarticulated. But even as he shouted the single word, he felt that foilure had gripped his throat, constricting it. He could already, he could — dear God, the American had an aircraft! The windows no longer seemed opaque. The whole of mission control's huge extent rushed against the glass, clearly visible. He could at once pick out Rodin on the far side of the room, behind a glass panel similar to the one that divided him from the main room. Opponent. "Idiot!" he choked. "And now we can't raise your companion. Do you think by any remote chance he might be dead?" He waved his hand. "Cut that clown off. Get me the collective's chief engineer — whoever knows about that plane. Hurry."

He paused on some mental outcrop. He glanced at the upright toap, its violent colors shifting and blending and then standing out starkly like lights at evening. What should he—? What decision? A wrong move and—

What, what, what?

Serov dimly felt his nails digging into his palm. He was aware of mission control, aware of the countdown clock, which now seemed to have raced ahead of him. What should he do?

Voice of the radio operator calling the collective. No one would be attending to the radio at this time in the morning. Mistake—

"Cancel that call," he yelled, surprising them and himself. Their faces turned to him, expectant, even demanding.

American… aircraft that needed only a battery… three forty-three in the morning… the temperature of the room, his mind a vast darkness lit with fires… his collar tight, faces looking in his direction, looking for direction.

Noise from the radio, another radio, a gunship calling in — map, colors flowing, then solid for a moment, white like a star. Gunship—

"Order — order," he repeated more clearly, growling his throat free, "that gunship to pick me up — now. Order the nearest gunship to pick me up. Order the others to rendezvous at, at the collectives hangar. Immediately." He sounded breathless, young and somehow absurd. But they obeyed. "Ask how long rendezvous will take, how long it will take to pick me up here." His hands waved like those of a conductor, drawing sense from the chaos in his own head. "At the collective, wait until I get there. Hurry."

He grabbed up his overcoat and cap, even his gloves, from the chair against the windows where he had left them a long time before. Saw Priabin, who was at that moment looking up at him. From his hand of cards.

Serov almost raised his hand, almost clenched his fist at the KGB colonel, to threaten, to crush all in a single gesture. But did not. Priabin. His time was close. The American first.

"Hurry."

Three forty-four. Ten minutes to launch time.

Ten minutes to launch time. Dimly, Priabin could make out Serov's bulk, his saturnine features beyond the tinted glass. Three forty-four on half the clocks in the room, ten minutes to launch on the other half. And the countdown ringing mechanically through the whole vast area. Cards in his hand — ridiculous, crazy. Serov's image more real at the glass for a moment than anything else. Then the man disappeared. Something of the urgency with which his shadow vanished communicated itself to Priabin, and his voice faltered in his bid. Bridge. Himself, surprisingly the guard — patronizing thought — and two computer technicians whose tasks were completed. At a loose end, like many others; catered for by a rest area in one corner of the huge room, marked off only by a ring of chairs. Cards, tobacco — no drink, naturally — the atmosphere of some company's staff club. Ludicrous.

Serov's sudden urgency worried Priabin.

"What was that, Colonel?" the guard asked almost affably. His tone suggesting Priabin wasn't a prisoner. "What did you bid?"

"Two clubs," he replied automatically. Serov's purpose — himself or Gant? It had to be one or the other. Immediately, his bruises ached again, his face a mask of dull pain. "Two clubs," he repeated like a spell.

"No bid," one of the technicians murmured, tapping ash from his cigarette, after pausing for a moment to regard the magnified voice of the countdown.

"Nine minutes thirty and counting."

The room murmured, called, moved around them like a tropical forest, its noises and activities lush and dense. Unreal. If he turned his head even slightly Priabin could see, through the glass panels of the command booth, Rodin and his senior staff grouped like visiting dignitaries. He felt anesthetized. The room worked on him like a strange new drug, inducing a pleased, satisfied tiredness. The guilt had left him; even the heap of coats under which he had buried Katya was no longer clear in his imagination. Anna and Valery Rodin had retreated to an even greater distance. There was only the room and the lunacy of playing bridge with his captors while the countdown rushed toward launch time.

"T minus nine minutes and counting."

Serov emerged from the door below the tinted glass windows of the security room. Hurrying, urgent, almost possessed. And yet he spared a glance for Priabin. And a quick, greedy smile. Priabin's head cleared. It could only be Gant.

Serov strode toward one of the control room's doors, pursued by two of his team. Overcoat over his arm, cap in hand, hurrying as if tate for an appointment. Priabin turned to where Rodin stood amid his staff officers. He hadn't noticed Serov's departure.

Serov had found Gant, at least knew where he could lay his hands on him. And seemed assured of doing so. The grin of success. Priabin was shaken out of his lassitude. Rodin — Rodin had simply walked away from him at the top of the steps, after his confidences regarding his wife. Simply walked away and had addressed no word to him since then. Obsessed with the countdown, the launch.

And now Serov, too, was preoccupied. Rodin would launch and Serov would capture Gant. Lightning would happen.

Gant released the brake. It seemed a massive effort. The Antonov struggled forward, unleashed and awkward, then bumped and rolled across the sand and straggling grass toward the flattened, undulating runway. The wind was light, less than five knots, and blowing at an angle across the runway. No problem.

He increased the engine power. The Antonov bucked over the uneven ground. Its power was feeble, yet it was enough for him. The din of the engine banged like hammers in the cockpit and echoed down the narrowing fuselage behind him. The large-scale local maps lay open on the copilot's seat, an adjustable light dimly glowing on their contours. Beneath them, a school atlas. He had found it thrust into a door pocket, and could not imagine why it was there or what it had ever been used for. On a cramped, ridiculous scale, desert stretched away for hundreds of miles in every direction. Gant did not concern himself with it.

He bent forward, craning his head in order to quarter the dark sky. Stars still in their vast orbits, no firefly movements among them. Luck was holding, had to hold.

He watched the needle on the torque meter as the wheels of the undercarriage jolted the aircraft onto the edge of the runway. Tyuratam and Baikonur were like a false dawn along the starboard horizon. He turned the aircraft, paddling the rudders, his two hands gripping the old-fashioned, primitive column. Old-fashioned but familiar.

He sensed the fat tires sitting on the runway, sensed the engine revs reach his requirement, sensed the slipstream buffet the rudder; sensed the flaps, all and every detail of the old Antonov. He was ready. Airborne, he would quickly become lost in the vastness surrounding the Baikonur complex. His luck was holding. He increased the power to the engines, sensed the light breeze, watched the starlit sky and its few weary, lumbering clouds, released the brakes, wanted to cry out as the airplane skipped forward on its tires.

He switched on the radio. Before, he had to remain silent and unknowing so that he might effect his escape, but now it did not matter, he needed to hear where they were. — moving lights, even before he began tuning the radio. They had come. He saw the billows of the nearing navigation lights as the gunship dropped out of the darkness toward him. Ahead of him!

The radio blurted. He had gone on tuning it automatically, with dull and cold fingers. Challenge. Bellowing in the noisy cockpit.

He felt the confidence of only seconds before retreat like a shock wave through his body; chest, stomach, legs—. — then the shock wave of the gunship's downdraft was the one sensation that was real as the Antonov shivered throughout its length. The two-handed column quivered in his hands. He sensed then saw the gunship's shadow settle over him like a cloak, darkening the stars. The radio yelled orders at him. The situation had been snatched from him just as the whirlwind around him threatened to snatch away the control column. The Antonov wobbled, swerved, as fragile as a child's bicycle out of control.

Serov's voice.

"You will stop the aircraft, Major Gant. You will come to a complete halt."

Stars winking to the west, ahead. The runway rose gently to a close and false horizon; like a springboard that could fling him into the air. Dust whirled around the cockpit, stiff uprooted blades of grass rattled on the Plexiglas, tiny stones and grit showered and bounced like hail. His vision was rapidly becoming obscured. Air intake. Dust clogging it, stones damaging it, wrecking the engine, the propeller. The gunship sat above him like a squat black beetle with a gray underbelly. He watched it, keeping the Antonov's heading along the runway but cutting its speed to a crawl. It was no longer an airplane, only a toy.

The gunship moved slightly farther ahead of him and lowered as if on a thread. It was blocking his path. The undercarriage was down. The wheels alone could do enough damage. Serov would undoubtedly crash the machine into him if that were the only way to Prevent his taking off. And in the downdraft, he could not rely on the Antonov's stability and lift. He could not take off.

"You will stop the aircraft and switch off the engine. You will leave the aircraft—"

Gant could see his face and form at the main cabin door. Micro-Phone and loudspeaker. Imperatives.

The engine coughed with an almost human noise on the surrounding dust. The Antonov was barely moving forward. Serov Wanted him alive, wanted that triumph.

He could see the hangar, the low moon stained brown by the dust, the feeble stars, the fading runway ahead of him, the fuel store.

The cockpit shrank around him, its elements encroaching. Other voices answered and bayed with Serov's over the open channel. Call signs, acknowledgments, eagerness, and confidence. They had crept up on him in the darkness. The cockpit impinged, each element like a sharp needle. The maps, the ridiculous school atlas opened to a vast area of the Soviet Union, each instrument — radio, gyrocompass, altimeter — useless. Temperature, fuel, revs… fire extinguisher, flare pistol, Mayday, Mayday…

"You will halt the aircraft and leave it with your hands in the air.

Call signs, acknowledgments, eager anticipation in every voice. All coming at maximum speed, location confirmed. Icy panic. He had two minutes before the next gunship, less than that before the first ground patrol in a UAZ or a truck arrived. General alert — all units to converge. Imperatives.

Two minutes. One gunship was sufficient, blocking his vision as its gray belly loomed out of the dust cloud. Stones rattled on the Plexiglas, the engine coughed. — leave the aircraft."

Mayday—

The gunship was no more than fifteen feet off the ground, ready to anticipate and counter any move he made. Hanging in the night, blocking the runway. Fifteen feet up, no more.

The idea came slowly, as if he were squeezing juice from an old, dry lemon. Mayday—

Hangar, fuel store, the litter of empty drums, the, the—full drums—Mayday, Mayday!

He maneuvered the aircraft slowly, innocently, off the runway. The gunship slid alongside and slightly ahead, wary but confident and alert. Serov was poised in the cabin doorway, braced against the frame, microphone in one hand, the other holding the loudspeaker, waving imperiously.

The MiL's pilot was assured, expert. Serov assumed that surrender lay in getting the Antonov off the runway. Gant felt the biplane bounce and roll, then he slid back the cockpit window. Dust swirled in. Ground speed less than ten miles an hour; crawling to a halt. Serov was waving him on now, the loudspeaker gesturing hi!*1 toward the hangar.

"You will now halt the aircraft."

Call signs, acknowledgments, airspeeds, distances. Just above a minute and a half. It had to be now.

Mayday.

He reached carefully for the emergency flare pistol and cocked it. Headlights in the distance bounced through dark trees. The gunship hovered close to the fuel store, fifteen feet above… a second more, two seconds, above, above — now!

He fired the flare pistol into the dense mass of fuel drums. Vapor from the fuel he had spilled and from half-used drums glowed like a frosty haze before it ignited. The tarpaulin flared like old straw. Then a moment in which the whole fuel store glowed. Before—

Orange flame. Gant choked on the smoke and the dust in the cockpit. His eyes watered. A huge roar of orange. Serov was clearly visible for a moment, burning. Then he fell into the bonfire Gant had created. The gunship lurched, then toppled, slowly at first, flame inside the cockpit as well as surrounding it.

Gant watched in his mirror as he turned the Antonov, opening the throttles to hurry the machine away from the fire. The Mil sagged onto the bonfire like a weary bird onto a nest. Phoenix. Serov wouldn't rise from the ashes.

He saw then only a rectangle of orange light stippled with flashes of greater heat. There was no detail in the mirror. The wheels of the Antonov bounced onto the runway. He turned the aircraft to head west, and the first rise of the undulating runway rushed toward him. The raging fire to port of him was no more than the burning of stubble. Orange, white plumes, rolling smoke, the gunship dissolving, breaking open. Nothing left alive.

He looked at his ground speed. Forty-five. The rise was like a mouth opening to swallow him. Fifty miles an hour. The wingtips glowed with reflected orange light, the whirling propeller was made visible by the glare, so that it became a mirror. The interior of the cockpit and his hands on the column were daubed by splashes of the same livid color. A false dawn. He lifted the Antonov into the air; his body seemed to return, but it felt light, buoyant. The aircraft climbed fragilely but steadily. Sixty, seventy mph, a hundred… time was opening and spreading now like a great ripple, becoming safer with each second that passed. A couple of hundred feet up.

Gant leveled the aircraft below radar height. Invisible. In a moment, he would bank to the southwest, after everyone on the ground who might have seen him could swear he headed directly west. Pale desert stretched away on every side. The feeble dark clumps of firs were like the remnants of a buried fortress wall. There was nothing out there, nobody. Double back, he thought, show them where you are just once more — or fly southeast?

The fire below remained in his mirror as it dulled on the wing-tips and inside the cockpit.

A pillar of fire ascended to starboard, to the north. It was as if some gigantic mirror caught the light from the bonfire of the gunship. The column of flame rose hundreds of feet into the night and went on climbing. Its cloudy base spread, roiled and then faded. The pillar of smoke and flame continued to rise. He knew what it was.

It surged thousands of feet, whole miles, into the sky. He knew.

Lift-off. Launch commit. Lift-off.

He was alive, but he had already lost. They'd launched the shut-tie, and the laser weapon was aboard. Lightning. They'd begun it.

A fireworks display. But the analogy diminished the event. The huge map with its winking lights representing radar stations and the wiggling course of the American shuttle seemed shrunken. Instead, Priabin's gaze and that of everyone in the control room had become fixed on the large-screen projection against a distant wall. The column of smoke, lit from within, the falling aside of the skeletal structure of the launch gantry, the boiling fumes, the huge, enveloping, frightening roar of fire were all somehow slowed, so that he could sense the great forces, the huge weight to be thrown into the sky. The needle of the vast missile, the fragile toy of the Raketoplan perched on it as if impaled by the great steel spear. He found it hard to breathe, and then only shallowly. The whole room seemed not to be breathing.

There was only the magnified voice of the countdown. Booster ignition… we have a launch commit… shuttle craft Kutuzov has cleared the tower…

Cheering beginning like the slow opening of one great mouth. The sound elongated like the slow-moving film he could see on the screen. His chest felt tight.

… principal stage engines look good… T plus four seconds…

A jolt to the image on the screen as the rocket motors of the principal stage of the booster passed out of the camera's field, to be replaced by the image from a more distant camera. The pillar of cloud was glowing from the fire within it as it rose above the launch pad, climbing into the night; extinguishing darkness. Little else could be seen. The cameras peered into the dark, but the weather-cock-like shuttle riding on top of the hundred meter-high needle was invisible. The cameras swung upward, as if raised by the cheering and self-congratulatory voices in mission control. Atlantis' orbit writhed like a long white worm on the principal map, which winked now with new lights; telemetry stations tracking the launch.

The noise of success went on and on. T plus fifty seconds. Mach 1. One minute and twenty seconds to first stage separation… Kutuzov, you're still looking good. Strange that the very jargon of the launch was so American, so much an imitation of what happened in Florida and Texas. Kedrov, he thought, Kedrov with his foolish dreams of America would have been wounded by the ironies of mission control's single voice.

Thinking of Kedrov and realizing that the man was probably dead already, Priabin glanced up at the row of tinted windows behind which lay the security room. And what Serov had left behind of his team.

Gesticulating hands and arms. Signals of anger, surprise. A uniformed officer was standing close to the windows, and Priabin could see him quite clearly. The noises of mission control were becoming more routine, less excited, as if they, too, were intrigued by the scene in the security room. Two men facing each other now, shouting silently; like a domestic quarrel behind glass.

… altitude fifteen miles and looking good, Kutuzov. On the big projection screen, the pillar of cloud was thin and without the power to impress, the orange flame at its tip hardly visible. T plus two minutes, first-stage separation… Control, this is Kutuzov—ready for first-stage separation…first-stage burnout, we have first stage burnout. Priabin glanced again at the tinted windows. They were still arguing, hands being rubbed almost desperately through untidy hair. The projection screen showed the tiny flick of light and smoke as the giant first stage of the booster fell away and the second stage motors ignited. Ignition of second stage successful… Roger, Kutuzov, we can see that. You are negative return, Kutuzov… Roger, mission control, we are negative return…

They could no longer return to Baikonur, they were too high and too far into the flight. Priabin turned away from the screen and ignored the voices because there was no possibility of doing anything… but that — argument? Why were they shocked and panicking up there in the security room? Gant?

They moved away from the windows. The officer had been staring in Rodin's direction for some seconds before turning away. What was it?

He turned to his guard, lounging in his chair, idly watching the projection screen and the fiber-optic map. Winking telemetry, the worm of the American shuttle's plotted orbit, the new red stripe that revealed the course of the Kutuzov.

"I want to go up to the security room," he announced.

The guard shrugged, and seemed to study Priabin's bruised and swollen features. "OK," he said. "I'll have to come, Colonel." Priabin nodded and turned toward the tinted windows. What was it? They were frightened. He could tell that almost as easily as if he had been in the room. A peculiar sensation plucked at his chest as he climbed the concrete steps. The corridor was chill and unfinished. It had been little more than a gray blur when he followed Rodin along it, having been rescued from Serov's malevolence. Had something happened to—? Pray God it has, he replied to his own silent question. The guard's boots pursued with leisurely clicks and echoes. He opened the door of the security room.

A high voice strained and shouting from the radio. A still panicked reception of the words."… still burning. No, there's no bloody hope of anyone being alive in that mess! Burned to a crisp, the whole bloody crew! What would you expect, you prick?"

"Calm down!" the lieutenant cried back at the microphone that abused him. Sweat was a gray sheen on his pale forehead, his narrow, dark features were lopsided with indecision and imagined pain; someone else's agony. What had—?

"What the hell's going on?" Priabin asked the nearest member of Serov's team, a corporal with radio operator's flashes on his sleeve. He shook him excitedly. "What is it?"

The corporal ran thick fingers over cropped fair hair. His eyes were blank with shock. "American bastard got the colonel," was the one thing Priabin heard with clarity.

A fierce, even shameful delight spread through him. He grasped the fact, the implications immediately. And was glad. Serov was dead. Gant had killed Serov?

"How? How, man, how?" He was shaking the corporal by the upper arms. The lieutenant's eyes were narrow with suspicion.

From a wall speaker, the voice of mission control continued; seemingly incongruous now.

… second-stage separation complete — looking goody Kutuzov. Altitude, eighty miles, speed eighteen thousand kilometers per hour…

The distances and speeds were hard to grasp, the dialogue flip and stagy — Serov was dead! He felt his body shiver with relief.

The lieutenant snapped: "Your American friend blew up a fuel dump — incinerated the colonels helicopter. That's how." There was awe, and shock, but the respect implied by the use of Serov's rank seemed imposed only by death.

"And Gant — the American?" Priabin returned.

"Gone. Taken off. Certainly not destroyed."

The lieutenant's hand waved toward the room's fiber-optic map and the console operator beside it who was feeding in the search coordinates. He alone seemed unaffected by the incineration of the gunship.

On the map, the elements of the search buzzed like frantic fireflies, small lights maddened by an insecticide. Gunships, other aerial units, ground units. Small lights, but giant, awkward, lumbering attempts to form a net. Gant, he knew, was already gone. The rat in the corner did not panic — it bit the weakest ankle, then fled as it was hunted with increasing desperation. That was Gant. His survival was his only priority.

They'd lost him anyway. That was already obvious. So Priabin began to consider the video cassettes that Gant had with him and Gant's eventual destination. Turkey or Pakistan. With an aircraft, Gant would attempt to make a complete escape. All one thousand miles of it.

The lieutenant was in contact with Rodin. For an instant, Priabin began to reach out a restraining hand. The lieutenant's eyes were instantly alarmed, and he barked at the guard lounging near the door:

"This man is your prisoner — guard him." He glared at Priabin Shock had been replaced by activity, and by a common identity of service with Serov. Priabin was KGB, Priabin had been with the American. The corporal slouched beside Priabin, his rifle barrel nudging at his arm as if to mock rather than arrest.

"Sir," the guard murmured with undisguised insolence.

Priabin heard Rodin's voice. The lieutenant's face was satisfyingly pale. It had taken him whole minutes to interrupt Rodin's unalloyed triumph. Eventually, he lowered the telephone and muttered: "He's coming up."

… third-stage separation…

Roger, Kutuzov—still looking good…

The reduced image of the main control room's map showed the red path of the launch moving across the world; on course, undeviating. The shock of Serov's death retreated from Priabin, and he became aware that it was too late, that Gant had too far to go — even if he made it.

Kutuzov, this is Baikonur control. Go for OMS-one burn…

Roger, Baikonur. Going for OMS-one…

The shuttle was on the point of employing its own engines, not those of the G-type booster. In another forty minutes or less it would be established in orbit and preparing to launch the laser weapon from its cargo bay. Gant was a thousand miles and hours too late.

Rodin flung open the door. There were others behind him, perhaps four or five staff officers of senior rank, but they were like extras accompanying a star performer. His face was pinched with rage, his eyes pale and gleaming. He hardly noticed Priabin as he crossed to the lieutenant.

"What is this? What has happened?"

"Comrade General, sir, the American—"

"You told me that!" he shouted back. "Where is the American now?"

The lieutenant shook his head falteringly. "He's — he's disappeared, comrade."

Rodin turned to the staff officers who now crowded the room. "1 knew this would happen — didn't I warn you? Didn't I warn him? There were no dissenters. Nor was there anything of Priabin's own strange satisfaction in Rodin's reaction. It was purely a military and security matter. For the moment, his son had never existed or come into contact with Serov. Priabin glanced at the wall clock. Almost ten minutes into the launch. Perhaps six minutes since the moment he had first noticed the panic behind the tinted glass. Rodin clenched his fists in impotent fury.

"We're in the middle of nowhere," Priabin said. Rodin's head jerked up, as if he had received a blow. Only slowly did he recognize the speaker, and even more slowly did suspicion and dislike clear from his features.

"And he knows it," Rodin replied finally, as he slapped one clenched hand into its companion palm. The looks were puzzled, as if Rodin and himself were two people employing a secret language. "And he damn well knows it," Rodin repeated, and the breathy words might have contained admiration. Then he snapped at the map's operator: "Enlarge the map area — full extent. No, again— again. Smallest scale."

The operator typed frantically at his keyboard. The map, like a rectangle of stained glass upright on a trestle, changed in a series of eye-hurting jolts. Each time, the area covered by the map enlarged. It was the effect of a camera rushing away from a place, a jerky, interrupted view such as the cosmonauts aboard the shuttle might have had, if they ever looked down and back. Finally, when the operator looked up, the blue smear of the Caspian's eastern coastline soiled the left-hand edge of the map, yellow desert filled the bottom half, the Aral Sea was little more than a large puddle, and mountains began to rise in the southeastern corner. Millions of square miles; hundreds of thousands, at the least.

Rodin studied the map, then turned on Priabin.

"You think he's won?" he said. It was hardly a question.

"No," Priabin admitted. "I think he's lost."

As if to confirm some pessimistic hospital diagnosis, the voice of the shuttle commander was suddenly loud in the room.

"Baikonur Control, this is Kutuzov. We have OMS cutoff." The voice warmed Rodin's chill features.

"I think you're right," he said, and turned back to the map. "He could still be anywhere in that nowhere," he added in a murmur.

"Flying low and on an erratic course," Priabin replied. Again, they seemed the only two insomniacs in a room of sleepers; the only two who understood each other and the situation. "There's no one out there to see or hear him — hardly a soul, anyway. He's gone." He sensed the pleasure in his voice, but did not regret it. And Serov Was dead.

"You think so?" Rodin asked.

The general had turned to him now, not as to some trusted adviser but rather to an opponent who had somehow earned his reject. And who would be beaten and eliminated, Priabin realized. There was a cold and malevolent glitter in the old man's eyes. Valery and Serov were both dead. His son was off his conscience.

Priabin, nevertheless, nodded in a studiedly casual way.

"I think so," he repeated, moving closer to Rodin. He pointed at the map. "It will be dark for another three hours and more. Hes amid ground clutter as far as radars concerned, this whole area is uninhabited for the most part. He's the best pilot they have — we know that only too well. He's gone, General. He's gone, all right."

Rodin paused, then his fingers clicked and he snapped out: "Fuel! He exploded the fuel store, you said. How much fuel did he take on board — any? Well, do you know?"

Voices leaking from the radio, as depressing as continuous rain against summer windows. Not here, gone to earth, no trace, not here, gone…

Their content never varied. Gant had, to all intents and purposes, disappeared. Almost, Priabin thought with an irony that he savored, as if the aircraft he flew were invisible.

"Sir — I have an answer," the lieutenant announced breathlessly.

"Well?"

"Most of the store was destroyed. Some empty drums were away from the fire — the aircraft would have been fueled up, anyway, comrade General, sir. So what—?"

"What has he done? I don't know, lieutenant, but I am willing to stake that he has more than enough fuel for his journey. Wouldn't you, Priabin?"

Rodin nodded. "Oh, yes, this American is trying to make it all the way home."

"Which means," Priabin realized, blurting out the words as if they were a cry of pleasure, "you have to stop, cancel Lightning until you catch him."

"I shall cancel nothing."

"Unless you catch him it doesn't matter if it takes him a month to get home. He has the proof."

"Then he must be found."

"You have to stop it."

"No!" Rodin thundered. 'The American has to be found!"

"You won't be able to do that, General."

Rodin studied Priabin with a malevolence that distorted his features. He rubbed his chin feverishly. His eyes gleamed.

"You think not? That's some old agricultural variant of an Antonov he's flying — a crop-spraying aircraft. Wherever he is headed, south or west — and however deviously — he can't travel fast enough-He's racing daylight, and he can't win." He turned his back to study the enlarged area shown on the map. His left hand waved vaguely yet repeatedly, as if he were conjuring something from the computer image. In the center of the display, the maddened insects of the search continued to buzz and jerk and twist in their separate courses. Rodin continued speaking, addressing no one other than Priabin. "I calculate he will have to run for a full hour in daylight, whichever route he takes." He turned back to Priabin. "Which means we shall set a trap for our friend. Using every aircraft and helicopter we can lay our hands on. West and south — slam the doors in his face. Mm?" His confidence had become amused. "Well, Colonel?"

After a long silence, Priabin said: "I see. You'll be waiting for him. However—"

"However nothing. We'll find him — and kill him. Meanwhile, there's work to do." He glanced at the men in the room as if for the first time. "Lieutenant — you will continue the search within the Baikonur perimeter. His aircraft may have been damaged in the— explosion." There was only the merest hesitation in his voice. "Responsibility for coordinating the larger search will pass to me."

"Sir," the lieutenant snapped out.

Rodin turned to his staff officers, who became animated, full of small, impatient movements.

"Gentlemen, we have a laser weapon to place in orbit. Shall we go?" Heartiness answered by smiles and the bright eyes of younger men than they were. Rodin was blithe. He had no doubt that Gant would be caught, Priabin thought, no doubt at all.

I'm in no doubt, either, he was forced to confess. Gant would be running for Turkey, he wouldn't risk Afghanistan again, the way he had come in. He was going west. Where the forces that could be mounted against him were massive, the entire Caucasus and Transcaucasus military districts. They were frontline, not like Central Asian district. Aircraft, missiles, helicopters. And Gant would be running the gauntlet to the border for a whole hour of daylight. The desperation of their need to destroy him would ensure their success. By the time it was daylight, Rodin would have destroyed the American shuttle. From the moment that happened, the whole country couldn't afford Gant's survival.

Rodin waved his hand; dismissing everything with the gesture except Lightning and Gant.

"You will accompany us, Colonel," he snapped, leaving the room.

The hidden light over the bathroom mirror gave his features an unhealthy, exaggerated pallor. He inspected his face minutely, reminding himself to use the eyedrops to clear the red streaks from the whites of his eyes. He tossed his head without amusement. Nikitin and his entourage were waiting until they saw the whites of his eyes. They were in no hurry to open fire. He rubbed his chin. Get rid of the stubble, the shadow, too. If he slept — take the pills— the dark stains beneath his eyes might fade enough. If not, then makeup would do it.

At the banquet given by the president of the Swiss Republic for the visiting dignitaries, he had waltzed with his host's plump wife, her white, smooth arm resting lightly on his shoulder, heavily manacled with diamonds. Their glancing lights had become almost hypnotic. While they danced, he automatically moving and responding to the woman's platitudes, he had recalled the Inauguration Ball and the first dance with Danielle as First Lady. The roars of applause and inebriated and triumphant voices had drowned the quieter whispers and imperatives of the lobbyists and place-seekers and time-servers. Later, Joni Mitchell had sung; people had talked of another Camelot. Ridiculous, but possible to believe then, that first night.

Invitation to the dance; of folly. He had tripped as lightly as Dorothy down a yellow brick road of his own devising. It was in reality a Soviet illusion, dazzling him like the diamonds on the wrist of the Swiss President's wife. The prize had been peace and a place in history. He had made a greedy snatch at both of them; and lost both.

He shook his head. No, you haven't lost your place in history, he instructed himself. Just switched roles, hero-into-villain. You'll be remembered, boy, and how…

The sun had come up, clear and cold, that morning after the Inauguration Ball. On the White House lawn, heavy, clean snow. The Washington Monument like an inverted icicle, the Lincoln Memorial, distant, clean and massive against the pale sky. He'd breathed deeply, and he could hear, as if in his blood, Martin Luther King's speech from the steps of the memorial and the vast murmur of the crowds. Portentously, he had murmured, clutching his arms across his chest because of the cold, I have a dream, too.

… not anymore you don't, he told the now-haggard image in the mirror that was tiredly cleaning its teeth. Not anymore.

The satellites and the shuttles were obsolete. As from tonight, with the launch of the Soviet Raketoplan. The U.S. was ten years behind, however much money Congress and the administration approved once the truth came out. From tonight, while he had waltzed with a platitudinous, plump Swiss wife with too many diamonds on her throat and wrist, they could do anything they wanted — shoot down satellites, shoot down Atlantis or any of the shuttles, anything they wanted. He couldn't call their bluff. He had no proof, there was no proof.

Dick Gunther had whispered in his ear, during the fish course, that the Soviets had confirmed the launch from Baikonur. A historic occasion… a glimpse of the future—was there an irony in that statement? Nikitin had joked about the rendezvous in orbit with Atlantis. Exchanging comic books and chocolate bars, was that what he had said? Yes, adding while we make the real exchange here, my friend.

He spat toothpaste and saliva into the wash basin, swilled out his mouth. Strangely, there was still that stale taste.

The scent of the turbine fuel was heady and sweet on the chilly, dark desert air. The smell hung about the Antonov because the late night was windless and empty. The faint hissing of the fuel in the hose and the whirring of the pump could not be heard above the Antonov's feathering engine. The wing quivered beneath his feet. He had to keep the engine idling to operate the pump driving the fuel from the chemical tank into the tanks in the wings. He had squatted on his haunches on the wing, the light of the flashlight dimly illuminating the pages of the school atlas open on his knees. The yellow-brown of desert stretched around the position of his index finger. He was two and a half hours from Baikonur and four hundred miles to the southwest of the complex — there, still more than a hundred miles east of the Caspian Sea. He fixed the point in his mind where he would cross the coast, then traced his route toward the oil wells marked southeast of Baku. Their flares in what remained of the night would give him a visual fix as he passed to the south of them, just above the water.

He closed the atlas with a snap, listening to the noise of the engine. Everything was familiar, gave confidence. The noises of an airplane, the empty night. He stood up and stretched.

Stretched away tiredness and cramps. The five hundred and more miles ahead of him, the four hours' flying, distanced him from Past and future. They would not find him, not while it remained dark and the land was empty; and he had no need, not yet, to consider the dawn and the trap waiting to be sprung at first light. It was easy to understand what Rodin would decide, and easy, for the moment, to ignore it. It was like a time-out called by both teams. He'd seen the distant navigation lights of aircraft against the stars. Heard voices on the radio, picked up glimpses of them on radar. But it had all been unreal, not dangerous.

He looked up at the night. The moon had gone. Five in the morning, local time. His westward flight extended the night, as if he carried darkness with him like a cloak, which would disappear a hundred miles short, almost an hour before he reached the Turkish border. As soon as they saw him — and he knew they would — he would scream Mayday on the broadest wave band; scream the whole story.

Gant shook his head.

He had begun to believe in his survival. He did not want to envisage daylight. He rubbed his eyes. Navigating by compass and the stars — and the school atlas — tired him, the noise of the Antonov was a constant assault, but those things did not matter. They were elements of surviving, and familiar. He could cope. Distance from Baikonur was like a constant, measured flow of adrenaline.

In every direction, emptiness undulatingly stretched away from him. The uninhabited northern part of the Kara Kum Desert. Somewhere, a rock split, the noise like gunfire, startling him. The shock had no reverberation. He was calm. The whole ballgame now, that was what he wanted. The videotape cassette delivered; the means of winning. It meant he had to survive, cross the frontier. It was him now, against everyone and everything, and the idea did not unnerve him. Not yet.

The wing tanks should be almost full by now.

"One half-orbit distance achieved, Kutuzov "

"Roger, control. Forty-five minutes since satellite release. Countdown to PAM ignition at — fifteen seconds and mark. Over."

"Roger, Kutuzov. Fifteen seconds and counting."

Rodin was smiling. It was as if there were two smiles on his lips at the same moment. The small one at the fiction of referring to the laser weapon as a satellite — in the event of transmission interception and decoding — and the larger satisfaction of the countdown, like that of a cat with cream on its whiskers. Ten seconds were all that remained until the payload assist modules small solid-propellant motors automatically fired to lift the laser battle station toward its thousand-mile-high orbit over the Pole.

Kutuzov was in a two-hundred-mile-high orbit, circling the earth every ninety minutes. Its cargo doors had opened an hour and a half before, the shuttle had maneuvered into position, the laser weapon on its motors had been set spinning in the hold, then unlocked to drift away from the shuttle. Now, half an orbit later, its motors were about to fire. Five seconds.

Priabin stood at the back of the narrow command room like a newspaper reporter allowed to observe events without playing any part in them.

Everything had gone smoothly, there had been no hitches. Rodin was winning his race with Gant and with his own country. To watch him was like being told that one's calm, elderly neighbor was a dangerous madman, then becoming alert for signs of disorder, irrationality, even violence. But there was nothing. The general was blithe, tense at moments, jocular, expansive, silent in turn. There were no signs of madness, simply the sense that this room and the vast control room below its windows were his entire world. Institution. They were all mad here. And unstoppable. He knew that with only too great a certainty. He was there because it amused Rodin to have him witness his own helplessness. Watching history unfold, mm, Priabin? he had snapped at him at one moment, when the cargo doors of the shuttle opened and the camera displayed the action on a dozen screens at once. A rare privilege, he had added, for a mere policeman. Laughter in the crowded, orderly room.

They had no thought of consequences, only of authority. The demonstration of their power. Outside this institution of theirs, with its intoxicating illusion of omnipotence, there existed only the Politburo. No other world, no populations, no enemy country, no other superpower. They were engaged in a struggle with their political masters — soon their servants? Priabin nodded in gloomy confirmation. If they didn't cause a war, they'd win what they wanted. The institution would control everything.

The madhouse. The efficient, normal-seeming, clubby madhouse.

Ignition of the PAM's motors. Priabin winced and waited for the voice of the shuttle's commander to confirm motor ignition. He could clearly envisage the laser weapon flashing up into the darker darkness, away from the earth. Rodin was as remote as Kutuzov and the now moving Lightning weapon.

T plus ten seconds.

"Baikonur, this is Kutuzov."

"Go ahead, Kutuzov

The voices were uttering feed lines to arouse the pleasure of this room's inhabitants. He glanced at a screen beside him.

Before the shuttle commander could reply, he heard someone say in a surprised, even pained voice: "Comrade General, we're not getting a confirm signal from the PAM."

Then the Kutuzov voice: "Baikonur, PAM ignition nonfunctional. Repeat, we do not have PAM burn."

Rodin's cry broke in the room, startling men who, a moment earlier, had been somnolent with anticipated pleasure.

"What has happened? Answer me. What's wrong, Kutuzov— what has gone wrong?" It shook Priabin to attention. On the screen beside him, the fiber-optic map showed the twin wiggles, red and white, of the two shuttles' orbits, separated by half the world. On a second screen, the open cargo doors of the Kutuzov and the empty cargo bay.

No ignition, then—

No ignition!

"Baikonur, this is Kutuzov. We're showing a nonignition on the PAM's motors."

"Backup!" Rodin cried.

"Backup systems show nonignition, sir."

"Manual emergency trigger!"

"No response from the PAM motors, sir."

There was a tight, stifling silence in the room, the only chatter from machines, the humming and clicking of electrics.

"Sir, telemetry reports tracking the — satellite." The officer remembered the fiction. "It hasn't left orbit, sir. It's not moving."

Priabin glanced toward a clock on the wall. Six forty-five. Recognition of time made him think of Gant. Two and a half hours or more since he had taken off, incinerating Serov and a gunship crew to enable him to do so. Perhaps he was halfway, or less, to Turkey. Time, time… delay.

"Not moving?" It was a challenge rather than a question.

"Telemetry confirms the weapon is stationary in its original orbit."

"Where it cannot be targeted and fired!" Rodin stormed.

Time…

Had the solid-fuel motors on the weapon fired, there would have been a maximum of two hours before the battle station reached its final altitude and been ready to fire at the American shuttle. Time-" how much time now? A systems failure in the ignition of the PAM had elongated time like elastic, stretching it in—

Gant's favor?

No, Gant would be stopped at the border. Daylight would be the brick wall with which he would collide and die.

Priabin found himself staring across the room at Rodin, who was glaring in his direction; as if he were the jinx who had caused this ill-luck. But the time was unusable. He was Rodin's prisoner, he reminded himself, now aware of the lounging guard — a new one, the other having been relieved an hour before.

Rodin was huddled with his senior officers. Voices debated, urged, and rejected. Radio channels crackled, the voices of mission control and the shuttle waited. Priabin edged toward the windows. Looking down, he saw the huge map; colors flared, lights winked and moved. The combined forces of two military districts were being mobilized, marshaled into the shape of a trap. A team hand-picked by Rodin controlled, by proxy, hundreds of aircraft and helicopters, thousands of men. He turned away from the depressing vision it formed. He realized that all the delay to the firing of the laser weapon would do would be to prevent Rodin from destroying the Atlantis before Gant died. Nothing had changed.

And Rodin seemed to realize it, too. His face was still angry, and filled with cold authority. But his eyes and mouth were calm. His hands unclenched. A temporary setback; revert to original timetable. Gant, then the shuttle.

"Kutuzov, this is Rodin," Priabin heard him say. "I want a linkup with the — satellite during your present orbit of the earth, and an EVA to inspect and repair the system's failure. Acknowledge.

A man floating in space, repairing the malfunctioning motors. A matter of hours, no more. Rodin's features gleamed with satisfaction when the shuttle commander acknowledged. He put down the microphone and slapped his hands together loudly, like a noise to frighten children engaged in a party game in the dark.

"Gentlemen, we have work to do," he cried. "As tight a schedule ^ possible — and no more delays." He glanced again in Priabin's direction, then beckoned him. "Come, Colonel, you can give us your expert opinion on the preparations we're making for Major Gant "

18: Acts of Desperation

A Sukhoi fighter, too eager, flashed across the nose of the Antonov, the sun glistening on its silver fuselage. Then it was gone. Gant craned to follow its path, and saw it winking like a signal lamp as it banked then began to climb out of the sand brown of the country below into the pale morning sky.

And others…

Full daylight. Eight o'clock, and they had found him. The radio could not be retuned to their Tac channels, and the radar was too rudimentary to show more than a smudged impression of the hostile landscape ahead. After crossing the Caspian and the flat marshes and plain to the west of it, he had sneaked through the mountains like a thief, for hours it seemed. Sliding around and over and through, hugging the contours of the country as the night faded into gray, then blue. Temperature mounting, the past hours becoming no more than a mocking illusion of safety and cleverness, tension holding him like a straitjacket. Now morning and the aircraft.

He flung the lumbering, though small, Antonov severely to port, shocked at the leap of a mountain into the center of the cockpit windshield. He wrenched on the steering handles of the column, throwing the crop sprayer away from the mountain's snow-streaked flank. At once, he was straining to relocate the Sukhoi, the Fencer variable-geometry fighter. He had glimpsed the pilot's helmet and the aircraft's eagerness. He ignored the other occupant of the cockpit, the weapons officer. It was the pilot's skill that would kill him-

As the fighter flipped into a looping turn and came back toward him, he saw the flare of a missile igniting. He pulled up the Antonov's nose as if reining in a wild horse. Sky swung crazily across the windshield, the tail of the aircraft seemed as if tearing free of thick mud; then the thin, steamlike trail from the missile passed away beneath him. The peaks of the mountains around him gleamed with sunlight. The Sukhoi rushed below him and flicked belly outward around an outcrop of brown, snow-marked rock. And was a mile away before it began to turn.

The primitive radar, which only scanned forward, showed him no signs of other aircraft. But he knew that they were only minutes away at best. Aircraft and gunships. Slower and more maneuverable than the Sukhoi.

The border was less than fifty, less than forty miles away now. He had come nearly nine hundred miles in darkness and safety at zero feet and with mounting excitement. And now it was over. He dipped into the uneasy safety of the mountains once more.

The Sukhoi turned lazily and looked for him again. A silver signal at the far end of a tunnellike valley, rushing closer Enlarging in his mirror. Hopeless—

Hie retinal image of the detonating missile was like a distant omen. The Fencer grew like a rushing silver fish in his mirror, attacking along the valley. It was time, the moment for Mayday — and even as he thought it, it was already too late. Cannon fire from the fighter flashed alongside and past the cockpit, shook and flung dust and snow from the nearest hill flank. Then the Antonov rocked in the shock wave of the Fencer's passage. Two tinted face masks were turned in his direction — it was as if he could see boyish grins behind them — and then the aircraft lifted sharply up and away to begin its turn. The Antonov, as if in surrender, entered a gap of clear air above mountain pasture the hill slopes falling sharply away on every side. Snow-covered grassland, dotted huts, a thin trail of smoke climbing into the morning air. The detail emphasized the lumbering, frail slowness of the crop sprayer. Gant swallowed and wiped the perspiration from the edge of the old leather flying helmet. The Fencer began falling like a meteorite toward him.

Weapon load — he'd glimpsed the underwing pylons on the starboard side, which included medium-range air-to-air missiles and the AA-8 snapshoot missiles designed especially for dogfights. And a multibarrel gun beneath the belly. As the Fencer had turned, he had seen the port wing and the bulk of two 57mm rocket launchers.

It swooped down behind him. The radar screen began filling with shapes. Six, seven—

Mayday.

The Fencer loomed—

Underwing flame. He had to climb, to broadcast his Mayday cry, his code ID, Winter—

The Antonov rocked, bucked, tried to free itself of his grip on the column. His wrists bulged with muscle and vein. Smoke, he smelled smoke — but the Antonov turned as he wished as the Fencer flashed over him with a cold shadow.

Gant knew the Fencers armaments, the speed, climb rate, turning circle, time-to-return to an attack — and the old Antonov was a weaponless biplane, a survivor from an age before modern dogfights.

The Sukhoi was now swinging down behind him in the mirror, where smoke was streaming from the aft section of his plane. He felt chilled as he identified the location of the fire, and the rudder and the column felt weak and distant under his hands and feet.

The fighter sped past and above and swung into a scissors maneuver. The pilot's reinforcements would be closing. Gant was supposed to follow — he was already heaving the column into a break that would confirm he was obeying the pattern of the maneuver—

Smoke. Controls OK, but limited life.

It was like a crazy, clever movie, past versus present or future. The Fencers patience was wearing thin as he curved back to complete the second figure of the scissors maneuver. He overshot because it was much slower than in training, but the boy in the Sukhoi had already begun to adjust.

As the smoke crept in, Gant knew his cockpit time was running out. The main cabin would be filled with smoke now, the airplane was becoming leaden and dull, and the mountainsides ahead of him offered a shelter he could not reach. Smoke trailed out from the tail-plane like a signal, answered by thin trails of smoke from hut chimneys on the ground. The thirty-seven miles to the border were impossible.

The Fencer came down like a saber.

There is a stalemate in the scissors…

… so said the manual. The boy in the Sukhoi understood the maneuver. His forward airspeed had been reduced, he was crawling through the air. The winner will be the fighter with the slowest}of' ward velocity…

The Antonov was the slower in any race, but it was unarmed-" — and hit.

He was in clean air.

Ground. Still distant.

Instruments?

He would have to climb, and pulled back the column without expectation. The nose of the old biplane nuzzled into the sky. Only the Mayday signal was left to Gant, however much he resented the fact. The radio signal had to reach across the Turkish border like the scattering from a hand sowing grain. There was only that — and survival.

But not in the air. The fire, he knew, would be creeping along the fuselage from the tail section toward the main cabin. None of the controls seemed to have been damaged, the biplane could still be maneuvered, and the Sukhoi, even with its wings and air brakes hilly extended, was still not able to make the requisitely tough turns to break the stalemate of the scissors.

The Fencer was not an opponent, merely a factor. When the others arrived, they would build an aerial box from which he could not escape. It could be no more than a minute now before that process began… climb!

Mayday.

As the biplane's sluggish nose lifted, the Sukhoi flashed around and beneath, surprised by his disobedience. Then he climbed. The sun behind them reddened the star the fighter made as it rose. The boy pilot would come head-on now, firing everything, because on his screens the others were rushing in like sharks. He wanted the kill.

Villages, huts, settlements below — a long, wide valley, lush beneath snow. From the school atlas on the copilot's seat, this was the target for the signal. Smoke billowed, hardly dispersing in the airflow. The snapshoot missile had ignited without damaging. The plane was being eaten by the fire, but everything still worked.

Here he had to.

Sukhoi, finally swinging up and around to kill.

Altitude just, just enough.

Mayday. Heat in the cockpit, smoke everywhere, billowing and acrid.

"Mayday, Mayday — this is Winter Hawk. I repeat, this is Winter Hawk." Behind his tinted face mask, the young pilot of the Fencer should let his smile grow at the panic of the distress call and the unfamiliar code name. "This is Winter Hawk." In control rooms, cockpits, radio posts, they'd hear it and be satisfied. The American pilot hadn't made it, he'd lost. He was crying for help. He gave his position, over and over, he repeated the code name, the Mayday, then his position again. And because the hunt knew what he had, he ended: "Winter Hawk successful, repeat successful. Mission accomplished/' When he had repeated the final sentence of his message, he flicked off the radio and coughed in the acrid atmosphere. The radio had become irrelevant. The cockpit was hot, stifling. And now the burning…

Vietnam. Pulling at the hood of the ejector seat, the cockpit Plexiglas banging away from above him, the seat exploding out of the Phantom, rotating like a ball so that he saw sky, jungle, sky, the Phantom pursuing its course, streaming dark, oily smoke. Sky, jungle — the seat drifting away from him, then the neck wrench and physical blow of the chute opening above him… then the airplane exploding into bright fragments wrapped in billowing orange. Then dropping toward—

Here he had no ejector seat, only the parachutes stowed in the burning main cabin. He heard the Antonov's automatic fire alarm for the first time, as if it had only begun that moment. He switched to autopilot, and sensed the cockpit alienate him; finish with his services. He unbuckled his seat belt and stood up, dragging off the tight old leather flying helmet, throwing it aside. Bending low he gripped the hot door handle and opened the cabin door. Smoke was opaque, choking. He clutched his handkerchief over his nose and mouth. His last glimpse through the cockpit windshield had shown him new stars winking as they approached and the mountains beginning to loom ahead of the course he had set.

He fumbled in the cabin like a blinded animal. Caught up the kit bag that contained the cassettes of film and videotape. Rifle next, snatched from its mount on the fuselage. Orange fire glowing at the end of the cabin. Smoke everywhere. Now the burning of systems, ailerons, struts, linkages, control mechanisms. At any moment, the Antonov would be unable to respond to the autopilot and begin to fall out of the morning.

Glasses, rifle, spare ammunition clips, cassettes… chute, chute — his mind raced toward being out of control. Emergency pack, compass… the linkages were buckling, beginning to distort-He felt the Antonov lurch tiredly, then resume its illusion of calm passage.

He heaved the chute from its locker and awkwardly, hunched and coughing, wrestled his arms into the harness. Then touched the ripcord. He eased around the chemical tank and reached the door — flung it open. Smoke was torn and hurled around him. The wind cried. The fire leaped nearer. The biplane lurched again, then seemed to decline into a lazy, certain fall, banking over the valley toward the nearest hillside. Brown and snow-streaked. The slipstream tore at Gant's clothing, flapping the parka like stiff folds of tarpaulin. He gripped the edges of the door frame with white hands. Looked down, then quartered the sky as the Antonov's dying fall moved his vision like a lazy camera.

The Sukhoi Fencer was coming head-on now, and he could hear the boom of its engines echoing off the hills. The boy would hang a curtain of shells and rockets just ahead of the biplane, into which the old Antonov would lumber like a weary tiger into a pit. As he squinted into the slipstream, his eyes watering, Gant saw the Sukhoi growing in size, until the ripple of little ignitions beneath its wings indicated the hanging of the curtain. The Fencer was nose up, then it pulled steeply away and banked, slipping behind a creased mountain flank. Two new silver fuselages winked in the sun.

Gant poised himself. The Antonov's fall was almost graceful, delicate. He glanced at the tail plane, then at the fire behind him. He thrust out from the cabin door into the slipstream, feeling it leap on him, buffet and move his body even as he fell away from the Antonov. Altitude, five hundred and fifty feet, no more. It was low to jump — just all right? The mountains loomed — all round him, it seemed — and the biplane curved eerily toward it. He swiveled his gaze but could not see the Fencer.

Impact. Not with the mountainside but with the curtain of shells and rockets. The Antonov disintegrated. Skeletal remains were illuminated like black matchsticks within the ball of orange fire, which became smoke. Debris drifted down—

— like himself.

Ripcord.

Jerk as if someone were wrestling with him and trying to break his back. He looked up. The chute opened slowly, like a demonstration.

Where was the Fencer? how near the closest of the others? how long to fall…?

The snow filled the valley, now wide enough to be a plain. The ^ind drifted him toward the huge mountain. His hands tugged, altering his course minutely. Perhaps two hundred feet up now, no more. Where was the Fencer? How close was the nearest gunship?

The Fencer pilot had not seen him jump. Perhaps the others were too far off to reach him. One hundred fifty feet. He felt himself hanging in the wind like a target in a fairground booth.

The lower slopes of the mountain gave him his best chance. The pall of smoke from the biplane hung above him, as the debris raced him toward the snow. He was too close to the mountainside to reach the flat terrain covered with soft snow. The wind drifted him, and he fought against it, tacking like a sailor with a hundred tiny adjustments to avoid being thrown against the rock face. He was unaware of his own breathing, his mind was at a great distance. Hands only, his weight, the force of the wind, the brown, snow-streaked rocks, the trees below.

And the sky, the silver fuselages taking on distinct shape and proximity. And the first gunship no bigger than a beetle as yet. Mayday. There had been no other way. He could not have survived in the sky.

He jerked on the chute's cords, feeling his body swing away from hard rock, then he seemed to plummet into a narrow crevasse. Feet struck, cold and shock registering together. He rolled, covered at once in snow, his nostrils and mouth filled with it, choking him. It buried him, cutting out all light and air. He could just make out the noise of firing and registered the thud of cannon fire or rocket attack through the rock beneath and around him. Darkness. Suffocation.

Time passed somnolently on the giant screen portraying the repairs to the laser weapon's payload assist module. The sensation of such lumbering slowness scratched at Priabin's nerves. It was as if time itself imprisoned him, not the bored and chewing guard who lounged opposite him. He wanted to scream away the tension thai gripped his chest and made it difficult to breathe. Ten o'clock in the morning. Already half an hour of daylight on the Turkish border. The idea brought a fresh choking sensation. There was nothing he could do, however much he wanted to.

The repair work had been in progress for more than three hours. On the screen, the bloated form of one of the cosmonauts hung m the blackness alongside the laser weapon. The faulty payload assist module had been detached and returned to the Raketoplan's cargo bay in order to affect the necessary repairs. Now, as he watched, a second cosmonaut — only the shuttle's pilot had remained aboard Kutuzov—hovered into view, propelling slowly ahead of him module's bulk. It was one third of the battle station's size and circular, except where its single rocket motor narrowed into a funnel.

The cosmonauts, even wearing their backpacks, seemed dwarfed by the two machines they now had to reunite. It was perhaps a matter of less than two hours, then a further two hours, and—

Rodin — where was Rodin? He looked up toward the windows of the command room. Figures behind glass. Yes, there he was, arms moving in emphasis, the mad conductor of this mad orchestral score. Unable to settle or remain still. Moving between Lightning and Gant. Shaped by the progress of the repairs, which had gone well, and the hunt for the invisible Gant.

On the screen, the payload assist module was nudged toward the laser weapon, approaching it with the caution of a servant bearing bad news. The two cosmonauts, using their backpacks and yet still moving with almost stonelike slowness, closed on one another, handling the inertia of the PAM, slowing it, directing its bulk beneath the waiting battle station. Time was elephantine, yet it hurried, making him want to shriek. This was all the time there was. Four hours — and when they had passed, the world would have changed.

He rubbed his hand through his hair. Then drank cold coffee. The guard, on the other side of the foldaway table on which breakfast had been served — with a sense of mockery clearly emanating from Rodin, who must have organized the meal — belched softly, then picked his back teeth with a used matchstick. Priabin had eaten as if on holiday — or like the proverbial condemned man, he corrected himself.

On the giant screen, the two cosmonauts danced with heavy, slow movements around the PAM, maneuvering it into position. Their dialogue and the replies and instructions of mission control were no more than a background noise, like Muzak.

The hours of Gant's continuing escape had been like a mounting fever, maddening Rodin. His figure had vanished from the windows of the command section. Priabin, itching with a renewed assault of tension, watched the door below the line of windows. As if waiting for an actor to enter, stage right. Hearing a babble of sound that could not submerge itself into the dialogue with Kutuzov, he turned his head.

At the map table, someone was looking up toward the door into the main room, other officers were bending closer to the table. The excitement was unignorable. They'd found him, he'd been sighted…

Rodin strode across the room toward the table. Priabin stood up. The guard seemed indifferent to his movement. Rodin's voice was peremptory with inquiry, but bearing an undercurrent of congratulation in it, too. His staff officers crowded around, peering, gesticulating. There was no doubt about it. The dialogue with the shuttle and the images on the giant screen were peripheral, almost subliminal. The center of the room was the map table.

Priabin felt physically sick with utter weariness. He tasted the fat in which his breakfast had been cooked; the coffee seemed lodged at the back of his throat. He tasted too many cigarettes. He understood why he had watched the passage of slow time only on the screen and not looked at any of the numerous clocks in mission control. Subconsciously, he had known the exact moment dawn had broken over the border and seeped through the Caucasus mountains. And every minute since then had wound him like a watch spring, tighter and tighter. His hand gripped the edge of the rickety table. He felt dizzy. Words leaked like the chants of a distant but approaching mob… hit… confirmed hit, on fire…"

"Head-on… can't get away." Voices from headphones, tinny and stridently unreal, from remote microphones, repeated and emphasized by the group around the table. Hands tracing shapes and courses, heads bent to peer at the culmination."… is it, sir?"

"… there."

"… contact lost. Gunship has visual…"

"What of—?"

"Here, just here."

"… destroyed…"

Priabin was less than halfway across the room to the table. Peripherally, he saw the two cosmonauts like great white grubs on the screen. The battle station and its PAM seemed one single object now. And that was it, all of it. Then he heard:

"Fireball — completely destroyed."

Cheering, congratulation — nausea returning, on which he gagged. Looking up after a moment, he saw Rodin staring in his direction. The general's smile was one of cold, certain satisfaction. His right hand, slightly extended, was closed in a firm grip.

"… chute opening — there's a parachute opening, comrade General."

Rodin seemed to falter, as if ill or dizzy.

Priabin felt his limbs unfreeze. He hurried to the table. A staff officer moved as if to interpose his body between the general and some attack. Rodin glared into Priabin's eyes like a hard, explosive light.

"What—" Priabin began.

"… devil's luck," he heard Rodin exclaim in a pinched, cheated voice before the old man turned to the map table. His knuckles whitened on the table edge.

… gunship may get there," someone said breathlessly. The atmosphere around the table was choking and airless. "Two more aircraft closing quickly." The tone was that of someone repeating an unviable alternative to a set of facts. "Down — he's down."

"Kill him," Rodin managed to say. "Kill him."

"The gunship's going in — tricky, they've spotted him, the chute's dropping over him, marking the spot. Rocket and cannon, sir — they're using everything…"

Rodin lurched rather than walked away from the table. His hand waved the others away from him. The subliminal noises of the dialogue with the shuttle impinged on Priabin's hearing. It was as if he had lowered the volume of voices around the map, not wishing to hear.

"… can't see anything now…

"He can't survive that, surely?"

"Let the gunship take care of it. How many more in the immediate area — what? Let them wait until the snow's cleared—"

Someone had taken command for the moment. Priabin heard no more, squeezing the voices from his head like water from a sponge. Rodin was beside him, his eyes filled with apprehensions and blame.

"You," he said.

Rodin seemed to have aged. When a lieutenant appeared beside him and saluted, it was some moments before his presence seemed to register.

"What—"

"Sir, Stavka, sir." He held out a message form, hastily scribbled upon. "Coded signal. They're awaiting—" Rodin waved the man away, snatching at the flimsy sheet and tearing it. The lieutenant subsided to attention some yards away. The noise at the map table had subsided, too, into a concentrated murmur. Time had dragged free of the images on the screen and raced now. Moments only before Gant was obliterated like the old aircraft in which he had escaped.

Not quite escaped.

Rodin waved the message form beneath Priabin s nose.

"Decision postponed," he said. "Decision postponed." That's

Stavka's position." He turned, glanced at the table, then faced Priabin once more. "One man, and they're afraid of him. I shall acknowledge." He smiled, very faintly and with evident cunning. "I shall inform Stavka that no proof exists, that the American has no proof."

"You can't—"

"I will. At once."

Priabin's frame quivered. He felt a chill of fear. It was as he had suspected. Rodin was beyond logic. As if in explanation, Rodin added:

"My wife died an hour ago. She never recovered consciousness."

It was like a bulletin rather than an expression of loss. The indifferent voice of printed lines in a column of newspaper deaths. All restraint had gone. His face displayed no signs of grief, and little shock. The man had been hollowed out like a rotten tooth. There was nothing left inside him. Only the uniform and what he believed was his duty were left.

Mad. Dangerously, frighteningly mad. To himself, Rodin was sane and certain.

Priabin whirled around to the table behind them.

"The gunships spotted him," someone called out. "Where's the closest backup aircraft?"

"It's twenty miles to the border — fifteen at least."

"Not in a million years — no chance."

Priabin turned away. Rodin was smiling, almost sympathetically. Yes, his emptiness was justified. They'd kill Gant, recover the cassettes, and no one would ever know. No one. Gant was a dead man.

"OK, Dick — what can we do?"

Shock, hope, deep anxiety all fought against the clinging of the Valium he had taken in order to assure himself of sleep. He struggled to a more erect position against the padded headboard of the bed. Gunther was still leaning over him like a doctor.

"What can we do?" he repeated, looking at his hands. They quivered to the register of a distant earthquake. The signal from Gant had shocked with its sudden glimpse of the impossible, and he felt he had not caught his breath since then.

Gunther's briefing continued to assail him, like the effect of successive waves against an old, crumbling seawall. He wanted to give in to hope, and was terrified of its illusory beauty. Gant, alive—

"We can't go in, Mr. President," Gunther offered, as if replying to some wild suggestion already voiced. "That's not possible. Their activity in the air, and now on the ground, is — well, sir, it's frantic."

"Then they'll—?"

Danielle had slipped out of bed as soon as Gunther's knock had awakened her. Calvin smelled coffee, heard the plopping of the percolator. She moved against subdued lighting like an illusion. He rubbed the puttylike contours of his face with both hands.

"Sir, I don't know. We don't know whether he has Cactus Plant with him, we only know that he transmitted the Mayday signal, he used his code ID, and he said mission accomplished. Their response confirms he has something, some proof, but we can't even begin to guess what it is. His aircraft was shot down, whatever it was, but he has to be alive."

"You're certain?"

"They're not looking for a body, not with those forces. Sure, they're putting out a smokescreen — searching for a crashed transport airplane is the story — but they're using spetsnaz codes and channels and paratroops — just to look for bodies?" Gunther raised his hands. "There are Desantnye Vojska units [parachute troops] in the area — they've just been parachuted in and there are more on the way. Sir, he's alive and in big trouble. He must have the proof we need!"

"And they're terrified he's going to get it out — to us," Calvin murmured. Then he looked up into Gunther's shadowed face. "But how in hell can we?" He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat and surrender, but slapped them impatiently back on the bedclothes. "Hell, what can we do?"

"John," he heard Danielle say, her voice strangely pained. He looked up. Her dark hair clouded around her small face. "He's alive. It doesn't matter….." Her voice trailed away into the empty shadows of the room. He nodded, as if she had been his spokesperson and voiced exactly what he had intended to say.

Gunther stepped back as Calvin swung his legs out of bed, stood up, and put on his robe. One of his jokes. Donald Duck across the shoulders of the toweling material. And a NASA shuttle badge sewn on the breast pocket. But as if he had donned a uniform, his movements became at once crisper, more alert. He rubbed his hair to tidiness.

"You'll come down?" Gunther began.

"Yes. At once." He thrust his feet into his slippers, and held Danielle's wrists briefly as she handed him coffee. The presidential seal minutely painted on the white china. He nodded reassuringly at his wife. Her face seemed a mirror of his own. Hope fading, the anxiety mounting. "Yes, I'll come down to the code room. What monitoring do they have down there?"

"Full links with the Pentagon, the NSA, Langley."

"Good. What have we—?"

"There's a KH-11 satellite over the Caucasus. Full daylight and little cloud cover. Good transmission situation. Washington can see quite a lot of the activity. Gunships, fighters, troop transports. And now troops on the ground in numbers."

"Terrain?"

"Mountainous, all the way to the border. Difficult for him."

"And for them."

"How far inside is he?"

"Between ten and fifteen miles, their best estimate."

"That little?"

"That little. Maybe that's as bad as a hundred, even a thousand. They have crack troops swarming all over the place."

"Dick, don't say that. The man got out of Baikonur in an airplane — now how the hell did he do that? He could—"

But Gunther was shaking his head. "They can't afford to let him."

"He has to stay alive. He has to make it — for Christ's sake, we can't lift a finger to help the guy!"

"Not unless you want to start the next war."

Calvin nodded absently. "I realize that, Dick," he murmured. "At least" — he looked up, grinning suddenly before his face reassumed its solemn expression—"part of me does. OK, we can't go after Gant. But we can have people on the border, right on the border, and we can be watching from the air. What do we have up?"

"AWACS is watching the whole thing."

"Good. Then I have to talk to the Turkish president right away."

"We anticipated that, Mr. President."

"Right, then let's be clear what we're talking about here. We have to enlist the aid of one of our NATO allies… wait. Would they cross into…?"

Gunther looked gloomy. "They want him awful bad," was all he said.

Calvin rubbed his hair.

"Then I have to prepare one of our allies for a possible Soviet troop incursion into their territory — if Gant makes it that far. God knows what I tell the Turkish president." He was pacing the room urgently, as if attempting to walk off the last lingerings of the Valium; or of fear. "Ten miles — maybe as little as that?" Gunther nodded. Calvin turned slowly, looking at the room as if it were some kind of command center reflecting the powers of his office. And shook his head. "All we can do is make sure we're there to meet him, if he gets out. And he has the proof we need." The tone was singular, not plural. He felt a thrill of enraged frustration that deepened almost at once into fear. He was racked by hope and terror. The proof I need, the proof, he heard again and again in his head. The proof I need.

"Mr. President?" Gunther began.

"Yes, yes, I'm coming. Give me just a moment to dress."

Tree line.

The tree line was what had saved him, he admitted once more. Temporarily saved him; just as it temporarily concealed him.

His back was against a rock, he was sitting hunched on pine needles. The snow was patchy beneath the trees, much of the forest floor tinder-dry. He held the small glasses he had taken from the Antonov to his eyes, and watched them moving below, around, opposite. All of them…

… all of them spetsnaz, experts.

The morning was icy cold and clean. Sound was restricted to the occasional crackle of a distant radio or transceiver carried on the sharp air, and the throb of troop helicopters and gunships winding through the mountains or floating above the wide plain of Ararat. Beyond the troops and the machines hanging in the air and the occasional fattening stripe of a vapor trail, he could see Turkey in the distance, where the landscape seemed cardboard and flat through the glasses. The twin peaks that dominated the plain to the west were those of Mt. Ararat, in Armenia — Turkish Armenia. Gant knew that from the pages of the school atlas. And knew little more than that.

Far below, the main road paralleled the border. To the northeast, a haze of industry hung where the city of Yerevan must be. Snow, brown flanks, foothills, the wide plain, and the river Araks, followed in swift, blurred succession as he swung the glasses down. He was in the niche of border between three countries.

Spetsnaz…

He involuntarily looked at his watch. The sleeve of the parka crackled with dried, half-frozen snow melt as he tugged it back from his wrist. Nine-fifteen. Just over an hour since he had bailed out. And they had attempted to obliterate him with rocket fire from the first of the gunships to reach him. Had he been able to control the chute as well as he would have chosen — he would have struck the snow of the plain dead. In pieces; burning rags of clothing and flesh hanging loosely from the cords of the chute. He shivered, and was chilled through.

The shallow crevasse had saved his life. Trees had beckoned below, and he'd struggled feverishly down the precipitous slope, coughing and spitting out melted snow, banging against rocks, tripping often. Then he'd reached the first stunted trees, rolling over and over beneath them until a slim bole winded him and fetched him up half lying, half sitting, breath heaving. It had taken them three quarters of an hour to land the spetsnaz troops or parachute them in. In that time, he had worked his way farther down the mountain, beneath the thickening, stronger trees. To wait, and recover. Now he must move again.

He raised the glasses. A slow vapor trail streaked the sky to the west, across the border in Turkey. As if it were some kind of signal that they had received his Mayday call.

A gunship slid up the side of the mountain, dragging its shadow like a cloak across the snow. Irrelevant. They couldn't find him, not beneath the tree cover. The spetsnaz could—

— and would.

They worked, like most special forces, in four-man units. Or, as now, in multiples of four. And in touch with each other. They could napalm the mountainside from gunships or MiGs, but he knew they wouldn't. They had to be sure, positively sure, he had died. They wanted the cassettes that were the evidence, and they wanted the body. Perhaps most of all that. They wanted the body, to be certain.

It was time to move. To survive. The nearest troops that he could see were perhaps four or five hundred yards away, below and to his left, trudging up a snow-hidden track, backs bent, guns clearly visible. A four-man unit.

Far below and across the plain, a train appeared as if sliding wormlike out of the undulating earth, smoke billowing up into the air. Railway, road, river; border. Open country. Gant rose onto one knee.

They were toiling alertly up the slope where the trees opened out to reveal a winding track. Rifles slung across their chests — new AK-74s, not like the old Kalashnikov he held in his hands — packs, camouflage overalls; other weapons — a Dragunov snipers rifle carried by the sergeant, and slung at one trooper's side, an RPG-7 rocket launcher. If they found only the remaining bits of him, it would be enough.

Four hundred yards.

Everything had become simple, even stark. They wanted him dead, and the proof recovered. He was the only fly in their ointment. He wanted to survive. Even the proof and their concern over it were unimportant. There was only their need to kill him and his desire for survival. Which made the sighting through the foresight's cylinder and the open, U-shaped notch of the rearsight easy, almost like squinting into a small telescope. And made the metal of the unfolded stock as comfortable as that of a favorite hunting rifle. Single shot.

Once, twice, three times.

Surprise, although half expected, although their nerves were alert. Heads up for an instant before the inertia of training and experience threw their bodies aside from the track toward rocks or tree boles. Enough surprise for one of the camouflaged bodies to fall awkwardly and roll over, and for a second to have to lunge limpingly toward cover. The fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds missed. He quite clearly saw snow plucked up by each of the bullets.

Then he moved, farther back into the trees and to his right, body bent and weaving below and around stinging branches. Ten seconds, eleven, twelve—

They were good. Behind him, trees shuddered and split and became engulfed in fire as the projectile from the RPG-7 struck and detonated with a roar. He felt the shock wave slap at his back. One dead, a second out of the hunt, the hornet's nest stirred with the long stick of violence. He rushed on, thin branches whipping at him, the rifle swinging rhythmically back and forth across his chest, the pack containing the film and video cassettes banging softly, familiarly on his lower back. He was running north.

Above the noise of his breathing, he heard one of the gunships drive in toward the trees behind him. Noise, then light flashing on the snow lying on the branches over his head. Fierce orange light like a winter sunrise. They'd used the RPG-7's hit as a marker and demolished the immediate area around it. He stopped, and had to lean against a tree to control the shaking of his body. He turned, reluctantly.

A fire seared and glowed like the mouth of a furnace perhaps three or four hundred yards away. He felt the shock wave ebbing through the forest and through his body. His heart continued to pound. The glow began to subside but, higher up, the branches were on fire. Resinous, smoky scent, licking flame. A marker, a signal — here he is, come and get him.

Beneath the trees he was safe — no, just safer. He concentrated, remembering the scene through the glasses like a map now glanced at. He had to go down, eventually. They'd know that. And they had maps. They'd know the tracks, all the routes down; the possible, the dangerous, the impossible. The light was dying on the glinting snow above his head. The gunships rotors beat farther off now, a painter standing back from a completed canvas. The spetsnaz troops would be moving again, up toward the outcrop he had occupied and where the fire still burned.

He turned away, his breathing under control, his heart quieter. The adrenaline surged. Ducking low, he once more began running, his feet crackling like flames across dead pine needles.

Priabin hit the guard clumsily. His arms flailed again and again once the first blow had been struck because the guard still had hold of the rifle — it could not be tugged from his grasp — and the barrel kept straining toward Priabin's stomach. The guard's body banged against the metal of the double doors behind him. His face registered pain, but had moved out of shock into malevolence, fear for his life.

Again, again — face, chest, arms, most of the blows doing little damage. His knuckles numbly hurting, blood on them.

The guard slumped down the doors into an awkward sitting position, loosening his grip on the rifle and moaning softly just once. After that, the only sound was Priabin's harsh breathing, snatched between the sucking of his bruised and skinned knuckles. He was bent almost double with the effort he had undergone.

He glanced to either end of the alleyway between the main assembly building and a low shed with a corrugated roof and breeze-way still plain beneath stained whitewash. If there was anyone, if they had heard the banging against the door—?

… just caught short — have to go here, OK? The guard had followed him, amused. He had had to force a conversation with the man, through nerves and the mounting fear of the proximity of the guard and his rifle… where did you say they were keeping that poor bastard? Kedrov the spy yes that's him… He had foolishly repeated every word the guard had uttered, as if to memorize a complicated sequence of instructions. A thin stream of urine. The biting cold of the midday air because he wasn't wearing an overcoat or cap or gloves. He finished urinating. Knew he could simply go back inside and wait for the inevitable — the unavoidable. He had turned to the guard, zipping his trousers, smiling awkwardly. Rifle, guard nodding, his bulk larger than Priabin's.

The EVA was over, the crew was back aboard Kutuzov. The shut-de had used its small clusters of rockets to move away from the laser weapon. Firing of the rocket of the PAM was thirty minutes away. The countdown was at two hours.

He had lashed out at the guard's chin and missed, grazing the reacting man's ear. Moved, hit again and again, wrestled with the gun…

Two hours. At the end of that time the laser battle station would have achieved its thousand mile-high orbit above the pole and would have been aligned on its target, Atlantis. Rodin would commence the firing sequence and the American shuttle would be vaporized. It would disappear. And, and… unthinkable.

He had not intended action. He was deeply frightened now that he had done so. The guard seemed to be snoring in his unconsciousness, his face chilly with cold, his hands slackly on the rifle. Priabin snatched at it, unhooking its strap from around the man's neck. The guard's head flopped horridly, as if he were dead. Priabin flinched away from him. He had not intended — but the tension had mounted in him because of his inactivity.

The scheme was patchy. It involved Kedrov, it involved stopping the firing of the weapon. He could do nothing else, stop nothing except the firing sequence. Kedrov had to know how it could be done. If he did not, then—

Priabin looked down at the guard. Irrevocable. He was committed now. He shivered with reaction, gripping the rifle tightly, squeezing its warmed metal. Glanced to either end of the alley in a panicky, sweaty haste. His body felt hot now. He had to rid himself of the guard, put him, tie him — where?

He rolled the guard away from the double doors with his foot. If seemed a huge effort. He needed a vehicle to get to GRU headquarters, he needed a means of entering that place, he needed, he deeded—

— to get the guard out of sight, don't think ahead, just do this, do this — come on, come on, break! He twisted the folding stock of the AKMS in the chain and padlock. Sweat sheened his forehead, his muscles had no strength, the flimsy chain seemed insuperable… and parted slowly, with a slight creak like the opening of a window.

He pushed the doors open. Darkness. The light seemed to spill in slowly. It illuminated boxes, shelves, cans — of paint. He wanted to laugh. A paint store. And the doors had been seriously in need of painting.

He dragged the guard into the darkness, found the man's handkerchief and gagged him with it, tying his own around the man's mouth to keep the wad in place. The rifle was banging on his back as he worked, and seemed omnipresent. But he could not use it, not on an unconscious man. Mistake, mistake.

Everything you've done so far is a mistake, he told himself. You can't do it, anyway, so shut up about it.

The man's belt and webbing. Hands and feet together behind him, a reversed fetal position. He tightened the straps viciously, perhaps because he couldn't kill him.

He stood in the air for a moment, breathing laboredly. Hands on his hips. Then he picked up the chain and rethreaded it through the door handles. Hid the broken link as well as he could, left the lock dangling as if still effective. Glanced along the alleyway once more. Still no one. He looked a last time at the door. The chain appeared sound. He began running along the alleyway, his memory of this place playing in his mind like a very old film; stained, patchy, flickering. But there—

He forced himself to remember. Main assembly building, attendant stores, workshops, other facilities, parking lots. Parking lots. Military and civilian. He needed something like a UAZ jeep, something that would not be suspicious, not out of place, still free to move around the high-security area. Parking lot—

— left now, then right. He moved incautiously, like a rat seeking reward through its familiar maze, down the alleyways between the crowding complex of buildings. He saw no one.

Until he reached the open space of the parking lot. Civilian and military vehicles parked within regimented white lines. The lot was almost full. Two men were lounging against a wall, smoking, white lab coats beneath their open topcoats. Fur hats. They were fifty yards away, and uninterested. All they could see was a uniform; a capless officer with a rifle. Baikonur was full of officers. A military driver stepped out of a UAZ, other men were leaning out of a canvas-hooded truck. As his breathing calmed, he began to see how many people there were. He began to stroll. He was not out of place here… you are not, you are not out of place, you are not.

The truck drove off, smoke pluming from the exhaust. The driver of the UAZ was carrying a metal box, sealed and locked. Priabin passed him with only a single line of parked cars between them. The guard hardly glanced in his direction after saluting casually. He had not even noticed the KGB flashes.

He reached the UAZ and turned. The soldier with the metal box entered the building where the two technicians were lounging against the wall. Priabin glanced into the vehicle. The key was in the ignition. A lucky rabbit's foot dangled from it. Thank God.

He watched the technicians, but could not wait. They wouldn't know, would they? They wouldn't know which vehicle it was.

He climbed in, placing the rifle on the passenger seat. His hands gripped the wheel. They had begun shaking. He looked up at the pale midday sky. Cloudless above a cold desert. It was as if the keys had been left here, as if the guard had been unaware — on purpose. Rope with which to hang himself; a trap. Luck, he kept telling himself, luck. They're not watching you… luck.

He turned the key. The engine caught, and he revved it as if shouting defiantly at someone. He turned the wheel and headed for the road, bumped over the low curb, then was heading south toward Tyuratam.

Fifteen minutes, ten perhaps.

He had watched the firing of the shuttle's small auxiliary maneuvering rockets, the sliding away of the laser weapon — or so it seemed from the camera's view aboard Kutuzov—until it was a pinprick less bright than some of the stars. He had listened to the voices from the shuttle, the voice of mission control. He had listened to the revised countdown, he had listened to Rodin's public-address voice as he bestowed congratulations to every part of the vast room. He had looked, he had listened—

— until the lid had blown off his rage and frustration and guilt at doing nothing. He had to do something, he had to try to stop Rodin — who was capable of anything. There was no one else to stop him. Gant was as good as dead — he had to do something—

— and the trigger was knowing that Gant was still alive like's running into a box…toe have him all but pinpointed… only the *U>o casualties so far… ten minutes and hes ours.

Priabin glanced wildly at his watch. Since he'd heard that report from the Armenian border with Turkey, fifteen minutes had passed. He knew Gant was alive and was just as certain he would soon be dead — odds of as much as fifty to one, all his opponents spetsnaz troops, no way out — and he had to do something, as if it were his turn to act.

Buildings encroaching, the darkness of the huge war memorial ahead of him. The cobbles of the square shaking the UAZ's suspension. GRU headquarters. He turned down the ramp into the underground garage from which he and Gant — and Katya — had escaped the previous day — evening — it had all happened in that little time. Now, he was walking back in — driving! Here I am!

How the hell could he avoid being recognized? It was crazy.

Slowly, carefully, he parked the UAZ. Gasoline was nauseating, the damp chill of the place reached into him at once. He glanced at the rifle on the passenger seat. Folding stock, length of weapon when the stock was folded almost twenty-seven inches. Just over two feet. He hadn't an overcoat under which to conceal it.

A greatcoat walked toward him, unsuspecting, merely observing routine. Corporal's stripes, a man smaller than Priabin. A GRU greatcoat. The corporal slapped his gloved hands together for warmth. Again, a fleeting sense of a trap — enough rope, as if they wanted him there. Then the duty corporal was at his side, hands coming together slower than before, as if to catch a moth, because he had seen the rifle on the seat in the moment before Priabin raised the barrel toward him. Priabin altered the aim so that the barrel pointed into the corporal's face. Shock, and recognition of the KGB uniform, perhaps even of the colonel inside it. He might have been one of them in the garage yesterday, when they had Serov as a shield, he and the American. The man's face printed out recognition and memory like a computer screen.

"Yes," Priabin said, nodding. "Take off your coat — no, wait. Step back." He removed the ignition key and got out of the vehicle. "Keep your hands down." He motioned with the gun. "Let's go back into your warm little booth, shall we, corporal?"

Sullenly, the soldier turned away and began walking. Footsteps echoed. Priabin's overlapped in the damp silence. He watched the elevator doors as they passed them, then watched the floor indicator. No one.

Greatcoat.

The soldier opened the door of his glass-sided sentry booth and hesitated, as if waiting—

— to be struck. Priabin hit him across the back of the head with the AKMS. Coffee spilled from a mug, against which the corporal lurched. Papers and a clipboard came off his desk shelf and fell around him. The whole booth seemed to list with the weight of his collapse.

Which was below the level of the glass, out of sight. Priabin kicked the man's legs away from the door, then bent to tug and heave at the body — should have gotten him to remove… doesn't matter, get on with it — until he had pulled the corporal out of his coat.

The sleeves were too short. He pulled off the man's gloves, then scrabbled in a comer for the fur hat with its small red star. Stood up and buttoned the coat. It wasn't too tight, just short in the sleeves and the length. He looked down. Distinguishing stripe on his trousers, just visible. He had to risk it. He tugged on the gloves and slung the rifle over his shoulder. Adjusted the fur hat. Studied the guard. Quick, if you're still in there by the time he recovers, you'll be too late anyway.

He grabbed up the keys and locked the glass booth. It rocked as he tested the door with a furious jerk. Glancing back from the elevator, it was unsuspicious; unless anyone officiously wanted to know the sentry's whereabouts.

The doors grumbled open. The elevator was empty. What was it the guard had said? Kedrov was in one of the hospital rooms. To him, it had been a joke, like a salacious insult. Second floor, toward the rear of the building. He pressed for the second floor. The doors closed. The image of the trap again. He heard his own breathing magnified. Stamped with nerves, his arms clutching across his chest and stomach as if he were being assaulted. There was getting out again, taking Kedrov even, then what to do? He hadn't any idea, not really, if he was brutally honest, he would not be able to stop it, he wasn't technical, not in the least.

The doors sighed open at the second floor.

19: High Frontiers

The trees were opening out. If they caught him on exposed rock, the gunships would no longer be frustrated by the tree cover and would drive in. It would be over in moments. One of them was close over his head, hanging noisily, its din alone an effective aid to terror. They were drawing the trap close like the neck of a bag. Tight.

He'd tried, with increasing desperation, to maintain his altitude above the foothills and the plain. They wanted to drive him either down to the open ground, or up beyond the tree line. And yet, even though he'd succeeded, the spetsnaz troops behind and around him appeared content. He was still ten miles or more from the border, however much distance he'd traveled. He was still inside their country, moving only parallel to the border, northeast toward the haze that hung above Yerevan.

They didn't mind. He had remained in the trees, high and concealed, but they were sure of him. They couldn't pinpoint him, but they'd have thermal imagers by now. He was warmer than the cold sap of trees. They'd have caught glimpses of him. The transport MiLs had done too accurate a job of landing reinforcements for them not to be aware at least of his general direction and position.

The slopes were steepening now, there were few tracks. The snow was thicker as the trees thinned. They had driven him higher, and the country was changing, too. Ravines and narrow canyons, black knife edges of rock, frozen streams and waterfalls. Trees clung precariously to the landscape; as he did.

His back pressed to rock, Gant moved in a cloud of his own breath along a narrow ledge screened by a few thin trees from the pale sky. The camouflage of a gunship slid past less than a hundred feet away. He felt the downdraft tugging at his parka, tugging at his balance. The machine moved on, blind to his presence, simply waiting. He paused. Sweat dampened his forehead, and his armpits were chilly with it. Slowly, he moved on.

They were ahead of him. He'd seen some of the transports, sensed others. Troops had been lowered from ropes or landed in small clearings above and below, and ahead of him. Behind him, others had followed his trail of snapped twigs and branches, trodden litter on the forest floor, disturbed snow on the fir boles. Signs of his passage cried out for their attention.

He reached the end of the ledge. The crack of the ravine glinted with ice and a frozen stream at its bottom. He looked up, then around. Nothing. The noise of the MiLs had receded. Eye of the storm. Silence. He waited, but distinguished no noises that indicated stealth or the springing of the trap. The ravine dizzied him as he looked down into it. He would have to jump the ravine now that the ledge had petered out. Push himself outward, away from the rock at his back, as if to fly, hands grabbing the opposite side of the ravine, holding on—

He swallowed. A radio crackled momentarily, until stilled by a harsh whisper. His body shook with reaction. The trees concealed them now. The morning air magnified, made sounds louder and closer, but how close? He strained to hear other noises, boot on rock, the rustle of pine litter, the click of a round of ammunition levered into the chamber. He heard nothing, except the now-back-ground throbbing of gunship rotors. The rock arched above him like a shell. The ravine was below him. The trees were thin — too thin— above and to his left, the way he had come. They would see him easily.

He rubbed one hand over his face, which seemed unformed, loosely put together. His mouth was wet with saliva. He listened once more, looking down into the ravine and fighting the dizziness. The mouse-scrape of boots through the pine needles rotting on the ground. Eventually, he heard at least one man moving. Then a second, perhaps a minute later, and realized the neck of the bag, the trap itself — was there, precisely there.

They'd designed it that way. His sense of his immediate surroundings had enlarged, he'd noticed the way the slope fell sheer away beyond the ravine and an outcrop of bare rock. He could glimpse the plain far below through the last of the poor trees. If he reached the outcrop by jumping across the ravine, he could not go down nor continue north because the ground rose steeply and there were no trees. Below him, only the ravine, where he would lie until they abseiled or climbed down to reach the cassettes in the kit bag slung across his body.

He pressed back against the rock. They wanted to drive him upward, on to bare rock, to flounder through the snow until they surrounded him.

He stared down again. The tiny frozen stream glinted like a snail track down there. The ravine was perhaps fifty feet deep — no, it fell away down a slope that twisted out of sight. In summer the stream would rush down it toward the foothills and the plain. Crazily, he wondered whether he could follow the course of the stream, out of sight of the hunt. Could he even get down there? If he fell, he would break bones. Be finished. He listened above and stared be low, estimating the width of the ravine, its roughnesses, the steepness of the frozen stream's descent. He shivered. It was dark in the ravine, as narrow as a straitjacket.

He heard more small noises above him. They were closing in on the ledge, knowing he was not to the south or the north, knowing he could go no other way. The gunships seemed to have been called off.

He lowered himself slowly, carefully, until he sat on the ledge, his feet dangling into the ravine. He breathed deeply twice, three times, then gingerly turned his body so that he was hanging, weight on his forearms and wrists, into the crack in the rock. He glanced to right and left. Empty. They hadn't linked up yet and weren't using the radios, to avoid giving their positions away. When they met, they'd cast about urgently to locate him.

He, too, was making noises now, the scrabbling of his boots for toeholds. His toes were numb with damp cold and moved inside the KGB uniform boots sullenly, reluctant to assist him. His eyes came level with the ledge, then he lowered himself farther into the ravine. Bile was sour at the back of his throat as fear surged. Fingerholds, boots scraping, his arms aching because he had to move so slowly in order not to give himself away with noise. Fingerholds, toeholds. He eased his body into a half-crouch, seeking new fingerholds. The rock was smooth, but cracked and pitted like scored metal. And icy cold. Down—

Caterpillar. Straightening, then arching, then straightening-Each tiny sound was a failure and an alarm. He descended the side of the ravine as it narrowed and darkened. Was it wide enough? His body seemed to ask the question with a flood of panicky heat.

Twenty feet down, thirty perhaps now. Caterpillar. His arms and legs were aching, his fingers stiff and clawlike. Icy cold. The rifle, slipping around on its strap from his back, rattled against the rock. He paused. Looked up.

They'd linked up from north and south. *He heard the crackling of a radio and the urgency of muffled words. They were very close, and alarmed that he had disappeared. Caterpillar. His back protested, his legs were quivering with weakness and effort, his arms were shrill with pain. Forty feet.

The ravine echoed his breathing, every tiny noise of his descent. It was a funnel for sound. They'd hear, any moment they'd hear.

His grip slackened, he scrabbled for it, felt his boots distantly attempt a foothold, then his body, suddenly seeming much heavier, slid the last feet. He buckled into a fetal position, onto the surface of the frozen stream, hands scraped raw, his cheek bruised and bleeding. Inertia moved him downward almost at once as he rolled onto his back. Like an amusement park slide, the stream moved him.

The face above him looked down, fifty feet away. Gant slid helplessly, as the shout of alarm reached him and a second face appeared. At once, the noise of a rifle and the cry of bullets from the surface of the rock. With a huge effort, he rolled into the shadow of a small outcrop. And sat hunched until someone ordered the firing to stop.

Silence again, then.

Ropes.

Unslung from packs, dropped like writhing snakes into the ravine, curled on the ice perhaps fifty yards away. The noise of boots on the ledge, then seeking for a foothold on the wall of the ravine. A lamp flickering over the coiled ropes, over the ice so that it glimmered, and over the outcrop beneath which he huddled. The bulk of the first man to descend. He could shoot the climber — and be shot himself. He immediately abandoned the idea. And stretched his limbs carefully, checking their mobility, their lack of pain. His hands were beginning to warm, held beneath his armpits. His feet were still cold and numb.

He had to move, now. Out of sight as the stream bent in its channel. The ice was like glass, without footing. He climbed to his feet, his back using the rock behind him to keep his body upright.

His feet careful of the ice, testing its smoothness, his eyes studying the downward course of the stream, the angle of descent.

The sense of his mistake, his fatal error, assailed him, while his body went on making its independent attempt to survive. He had walked into an even more certain trap than the one they had set. The climber was halfway down the ravine's side, abseiling like a careful spider, face turned repeatedly in his direction, rifle across his chest ready to respond to any action of his.

He looked up at the other faces, then at the protecting outcrop and at the lamp swinging back and forth along the dark channel. And then fired—

— and ran, stumbling and bent double, scraping his side along the rock, his feet constantly slipping, the gunfire hideously loud behind him and cutting across the cry of surprised pain from the fallen climber, who lay still, he saw as he half turned from a collision with the ravine wall. He reached the curve of the stream and tumbled onto the ice, skittering down its slope like a flung stone. Slowing gently.

He rose onto all fours, panting like a wearied dog. He had killed another of them. They'd want him. They could move quickly above him, once away from the ledge, along the outcrop. He estimated it was now seventy feet to the lip of the ravine. He was a more difficult target, they'd be reluctant to descend from any other place than the ledge, now out of his sight. For the moment, they'd hesitate.

He heard his name called, booming through some kind of loudspeaker. Above the noise of returned rotors. Magnified and wailing down the ravine like a wind.

Using the Kalashnikov as a crutch, he got to his feet. There would be two more on the ice by now, abseiling down from the ledge. He moved with infinite caution, one foot shuffled in front of the other, sliding step by step down the slope, using the ravine wall as a brake on his progress, dragging his shoulder against the rock. Looking back every second or third step, waiting for them to appear; counting his breaths, his heartbeats, passing seconds, distance— anything to prevent the paralysis induced by desperation from overtaking his legs and feet. He could hear radios, rotors, the clatter of equipment.

Single shots. Whining off the rock. Chips of it struck his face and hands. He returned their fire even though he could not see them. A lamp flicked its beam out toward him. He fired again. They returned fire more heavily. Still single shots. His name boomed through the loudspeaker, sapping his will

Darkness. The belly of a gunship hung over the ravine like the stomach of a huge, bloated spider. A face peering down from the main cabin. A scattering of seed, even as he fired upward and the face and hand were withdrawn. Seed falling stonily, rattling into the ravine. He stumbled as he ran, hearing single shots behind him, hearing the hideous, magnified rattling of the grenades. He fell, rolled and skidded, bullets passing over his head, slid on, head tucked into his arms, body fetal, feet in the air because he did not want any braking effect from his boots, rifle tucked into his belly, kit bag containing the cassettes following him down the headlong slope of frozen water. Explosions, cracks rushing after him jaggedly — he could see them as the flame of the grenades faded on his retinas. He was still being carried forward and downward by inertia and the slope, but the cracks raced more swiftly, seeming to overtake him, until they petered out.

Banging against an outcrop, aching in a new place, he looked up. The MiL's belly was fat and dark above him again, and the face was looking down cautiously. He raised the old AK-47 and fired a short burst. The face became surprised, then marked, then unassembled as the rounds destroyed it. The body fell away from the helicopter to hang grotesquely by its safety harness, just on the lip of the ravine.

Moments. He had bought a few precious moments.

He could not accept the information of his eyes. A blank, black wall of rock fifty or sixty feet from him. Even with the hollow circles of fuzzy light still in the center of his vision, he was certain, though he could not accept it. It had to be an illusion, not a dead end.

He forced himself to listen. The gunship had moved away with a roaring noise. His ears seemed deafened. The body was gone. The cracks in the ice had not reached within twenty yards of him. His two pursuers were being more cautious now.

The glimmer of the frozen stream simply became black rock. It turned to neither side. It just ended.

He crawled toward it, the hollow rings of light on his retinas vanishing. To confirm the dead end. There was no possibility of self-deception now. It was there, black and a hundred feet high, a solid wall of rock.

He groaned as he paddled down the slope on his stomach. Dead end.

His head turned to look up. The Mil had not returned, the pursuers were still out of sight. They had all the time they needed. The surface of the ice seemed to cloud like a mirror with his exertions, his hands were numb. In the strange quiet he could hear his own efforts — heart, lungs, boots scrabbling, hands sliding, weapon scratching at the frozen stream like an ineffectual icepick. All he became aware of was himself. His head was empty. There was no Vietnam, no father, no past, nothing…

The frozen stream disappeared, dropping like old lava into a hole it had carved in the rocks during slow millennia. Flung out from the lip of the hole, it was like a silver, jutting beard. Gant stared unrealizing over the lip of what might have been a dark cauldron where nothing boiled. Heart, lungs, the other noises stilled. The whack of rotors seeping back in. And before that noise loudened, he heard a radio's crackling and orders snapping muzzily down the funnel of the ravine. He was outside himself once more.

A dark hole in the floor of the ravine. The river dodging beneath some too-hard outcrop, the cliff face he had thought was a dead end. Dropping into — what?

Flash of a lamp like a splash of water somewhere on the ravine wall behind him. Radios, the urgency of the hunt overriding stealth. The rotors banging down like a yell into the cleft, echoing deeper into the ground through the hole into which he stared.

Gap.

Rough, contoured, ragged rock. Handholds, footholds. He glanced behind him as he turned around, then backed with the utmost, panicky care into the hole. Just as he had done into the ravine itself. Toes, hands, rifle rattling against the frozen water, the noise of dripping echoing in the blackness below him… around him as his head came below the lip of the hole and he moved sideways where his feet sensed, then discovered, a narrow ledge. He scrabbled his left hand in the kit bag, clutching the flashlight after touching the cassettes of videotape and film. He flicked on the flashlight and looked down into undefined, uncertain depth. Icicles— stalactites — but nothing growing up from the floor of what the light suggested was a cave, even a cavern. He could not see the floor, but wiped the flashlight's beam over the immediate rocks, and their contours were stark and easy to traverse. Having put the flashlight back into the bag, he slowly began to move to his right.

A sense of burial alive and of safety, conflicting and battling in his chest. He hung there for long moments, wrestling with and overcoming the claustrophobia. Eventually, he felt his heartbeat becoming calmer.

His hands became more confident. His feet shuffled and tested as he moved away from the hole in what was now the roof of the cavern; moved away, too, from the glimmering sheet of silver that trailed away into the blackness.

He caught the sounds of hammering, less real than the dripping of the water around and below him. Hammering—?

A lamp flashed down the frozen length of the stream, and some thing hissed as it fell in the darkness away to his left. The lamp had dazzled him. Then he heard the noises of a body lowering itself into the cavern. He had heard a piton being hammered in, a rope uncoiled and dropped.

His hands seemed frozen to the rock, his feet rooted. His own breathing became audible once more.

The guard, who had been sleeping on a chair opposite Kedrov's bed when Priabin had entered the room, stared at them, his eyes, above the torn sheet used to gag him, filled with sullen dislike. His hands were tied behind his back, then to his feet. Kedrov seemed unable to ignore the man, or to accept Priabin's desperation as genuine.

Twelve twenty-six. Priabin had been in that room for eight minutes. There was a corporal in the garage who might recover at any moment, a doctor might walk in, Kedrov's guard was tied up the dialogue continued in his head, snapping back and forth across the widening chasm of his nerves. But he couldn't force Kedrov to leave, the man had only to open his mouth to alarm the whole of GRU headquarters. He had walked into the tiger's cage to rescue— a piece of meat that did not have the consciousness to want to be saved.

Leave him, then.

"Look, come with me now, trust me," Priabin pleaded once more.

Kedrov looked dazed by the remark, as if by tragic domestic news. Priabin guessed there was less than two hours before final target acquisition by the laser battle station on the helpless American shuttle — and this, this dummy won't move, won't wake up! "Trust me," he repeated, but his harsh tone alarmed Kedrov, who flinched into the corner of the room. He was standing like some mental defective, cowering even though he was standing upright, hands flat against the walls.

"No." Kedrov sighed plaintively. He was in some sort of suspension here, a place out of time. He felt safe. Even the armed guard had become familiar. Priabin had roughly rearranged his tiny world and frightened him with its new, uglier image.

"For Jesus Christ's sake, man, I'm here to save your life," Priabin hissed, his voice dropping violently in volume after the first two words as he remembered the corridor outside, the danger of the building around this room. His hands went forward in a plea. "Look, you have to come, you have to help me — you have to save your own life, don't you?" He shifted on the chair, his impatience heating his body, his back aware of the door behind him against which the chair and his weight were placed.

Kedrov seemed puzzled, as at some advanced mathematical concept. How much damage had Serov's drugs done to him? Would he be of any help anyway? Jesus — twelve twenty-seven.

The guard's removed uniform, even his boots, lay on the bed like a spread corpse. It would be easy for them to get out if only Kedrov would put on the uniform — put it on, you stupid bugger, for God's sake!

He couldn't explain his plan to Kedrov, not in front of the guard, who would eventually be found… knock him out, place the unconscious form under the bedclothes, it might be hours before… but Kedrov remained intractable.

He stood up, wary of leaving the door, jammed the chair beneath the door handle. Kedrov stood in his corner, for all the world as if he had wet his trousers, his face helpless, bruised by the mystery and danger brought into the room by Priabin. Priabin moved toward him, hands held out in front of him, palms outward.

"Listen," he said confidingly. "Listen. Serov's dead, you know that, but that isn't the end of it, Filip — yes, I was after you, too, I admit that — but you know about Lightning." Kedrov shook his head violently. "Yes, you do — I have to do something about that, and you have to help me. You have to help me, Filip. Only you can."

He was standing only a yard from the man now. Thin, pale hair awry, his face wizened and aged by the past few days, body pressed into the corner of the room. Priabin took him by the shoulders. Kedrov flinched.

He leaned his head toward Kedrov and whispered. "There has to be a transmitter, doesn't there?" he asked, sensing a great reluctance in himself. Kedrov seemed puzzled only by the fact that he was whispering. He could not risk the guard hearing, but he had to know. "A secret transmitter to put Lightning into operation. The general can't just press a button in front of everyone in mission control, now can he?" All the while, he was gently shaking Kedrov's shoulders, as if waking — Anna, he thought for a moment, then concentrated on the familiar, gentle tone of voice he felt required to use. "Some of them know, but not all. It's a secret, after all, so he can't press the button in full view of everyone, can he? People like you who aren't army — see what I mean?" Did it sound feasible now, put into words? Or did it sound ludicrous? Perhaps they all did know. No, his guard didn't seem to, the technicians with whom he had played bridge had always referred to Linchpin, and to the objective as being the placing of the weapon in orbit — oh, yes, they were going to test the weapon, sometime, on a dead satellite, maybe; they hadn't known anything more than that. It would be senior telemetry people, senior staff officers, the crew of the shuttle, Serov, and his second-in-command.

"See what I mean?" he persisted. Twelve twenty-nine. Shake his shoulders, gently, come on, Sleeping Beauty, wake up. Priabin felt sweat gather around his throat, beneath his arms. "They would have to have a secret transmitter, even a small control room, in order to align the weapon, acquire the target, and fire the laser beam — don't you see, Filip?" Come on, come on, you fucking cretin, understand — say yes, oh, Christ, please say yes. "See?" he managed to murmur sweetly, stepping back.

Kedrov nodded. His face had been screwed up in concentration. Suddenly, his brow unfurrowed, he looked younger. And he nodded eagerly like an idiot understanding a simple instruction. Thank God! Then he seemed to see Priabin's uniform and become frightened again. Priabin forced himself to smile, and leaned forward, taking his shoulders again, feeling their flinch, then relaxation.

"They'd have to be able to tap into the central control system, use its information for aligning and testing the weapon, and then fire it secretly — or they've got a duplicate of the entire weapon control system, down to tracking radars…?" He could not keep the doubt from his voice. He wasn't telling, after all, he was asking^ Kedrov ought to know if he was on the right track. "Wouldn't they?"

Again, Kedrov nodded slowly, his face brightening. Christ, am I right or not?

"Look, Filip, help me with this and I'll help you get to the West.

God help me, I'll get you to the West. Understand?" He was shaking the man too vigorously now, but could not prevent himself. The room stifled him. It was going down the drain, he was running out of time, and he had no idea what to look for, where to look, or whether his idea was even feasible. Come on, for Christ's sake, come on. "Help me?" he pleaded, no longer whispering. "Help me!"

Hot, tense silence, as if the room were in the tropics, a storm gathering beyond the blinds. He released Kedrov's shoulders. The silence went on, pressing on Priabin. The guard's presence was vivid.

Eventually, Kedrov spoke. Normally, it seemed.

"To the West? To America? All the way to America?" Priabin nodded, stifling the noise and expression of his relief. Trying not to shiver with gratitude. "How will you do it?" The cunning of a simpleton. Kedrov was detached, half awake. Seemed drugged.

"Of course I'll do it. If we can do this, I can use my authority to get us out by car, train, even airplane, if you want. You'll be coming to Moscow with me. From there, it will be easy. Don't you see how grateful the Americans will be? They'll make you a millionaire!" He slapped Kedrov's upper arms in a pretense of delight. Come on, come on… twelve thirty-two. Fourteen minutes in the room, and they hadn't come with lunch for Kedrov and the guard, they could be here at any moment — calm down. Oh, Christ, Kedrov, you fell for the line about America once, do it again.

"A millionaire?"

"If you save their shuttle, yes."

"And you could—?"

"I can."

Strained silence. Priabin listened behind him, to the corridor beyond the door. Nothing. Come on…

"All right, all right, Colonel — I'll come." He had looked at the guard just before he spoke. It must have been the contemptuous hatred in his eyes. Kedrov had shuddered. The guard had pulled down the last remnants of the illusory world of this safe room. "Yes, yes," he continued. "We must hurry."

"Put on this uniform — quickly, Filip." Priabin said, moving at once to the door, the rifle now in his hands, snatched up from the top of a low table. "Put on the uniform and let's get out of here.'

He moved slowly toward the light. It had been coming up through the crack, through other crevices in the rock. Its source was in this cave. He listened through the blood drumming in his ears. Ropes hissed as they uncoiled, radios crackled; all noise was magnified. He looked behind him, but the darkness was still intact back there. He kept to the wall of the ca e, stepping with infinite stealth and care, to avoid being outlined by the light, which now seemed to be slipping toward him from beyond a bend. His breath was visible now, as well as being audible to him.

A shadowy curtain. Just twenty or thirty yards from him — what? The light was diffuse, almost greenish. Puzzling. As he reached it, he removed his glove and touched the wall of dull, solid light. Ice!

It was the stream issuing from above him, masking this opening. A frozen waterfall.

Bullets plucked and stung at the ice near him. He jerked his hand back and turned. The flashes from invisible muzzles were forty or fifty yards behind him He crouched back against the rock, his head turned toward the ice—

— where a shadow dangled and shifted beyond the waterfall, and something banged against the ice as if knocking at a door. He switched the^ Kalashnikov to automatic. Light was leaking more strongly around the edges of the waterfall as if it were no more than a curtain hurriedly drawn across this gap to the outside world. He aimed, then squeezed the trigger, flinching against the thought of ricochets.

The waterfall starred and crazed like a windshield in a highspeed accident. The steel-cored bullets penetrated the ice just where the shadow dangled. At once it became a different outline, somehow heavier and inanimate. Fire increased behind him in response to his own shooting, bullets winging away or lodging in the shattered waterfall. He edged onto the ledge at the side of the ice, its scarred, green surface only inches from his face. Pressing his back against comforting rock, he inched along the ledge, into—

— sunlight hurting his eyes, almost blinding him. Into a plucking wind, rattling the parka and seeking to dislodge him. The shadow he had seen through the waterfall was as diffuse as before, as he tried to focus his wet eyes. The shadow took on substance. Hanging from a nylon rope. Foot and handholds kept the body upright, almost alert. The camouflage jacket was torn by bullets and was wet with melting ice chips and blood.

There was more firing behind him. He looked up. The rope came down from a clifftop perhaps fifty feet above him. It might only be a ledge or outcrop, or the slope of the mountainside. He had been descending steadily. The mountain may have sloped like a roof, following that descent. The rope trailed away down into a canyon. A river rushed past the point where the frozen stream ended. There was a single railway line, and a railway tunnel. Between the track and the river was a broad, four-lane highway. The canyon wound downward toward the plain of Ararat, toward, toward—

A railway junction. The one he had seen through the glasses. The river below met the Araks there. It was the road junction too. A military highway, for certain, wide enough for tank transporters and the heaviest army vehicles. It was the border. Perhaps two or three miles away. Say two…

Safety. He glanced up. Where was the rest of this spetsnaz trooper's unit? What of those behind him? There must be at least three of them still alive, hurrying now toward the waterfall and the cave mouth, knowing he had made an exit that they could still prevent from becoming an escape.

It was automatic, almost. A reflex. He used the folding stock of the Kalashnikov like a hook, catching the rope that dangled freely beneath the body. Pulling it toward him. Touching it with his gloved fingers. The sunlight seemed paler now, his eyes could cope. He gripped the rope. Glanced down, then at the waterfall's close edge. Then tugged on the rope. The body twitched, but the rope was firm. He held it in both hands, after slinging the rifle across his back, and jumped.

His feet came back with a hollow boom against the waterfall like a signal to those inside. He was now the shadow, the easy target.

He abseiled. Hands burning, legs ricocheting like falling sticks off the rocks, off the frozen water, off ledges and outcrops. He bounced, dreading the weakness of his ankles, the proximity of the rock, anticipating injury, and the quick, certain fall that would follow. He paused, straining to recover his breath, his hands waking to a shriek of pain and heat. He looked down. Forty feet below him, the end of the rope twisted and wriggled like an injured snake.

He dropped down farther, gathering momentum once more. The gleam of polished track, the rock enlarging and blurring close to his face, the thud and ache of his feet and legs — the end of the rope-He slithered to a sitting position. It was another hundred feet to the railway line and the highway, but it did not matter, the slope was shallower now.

It was only a moment before ropes whistled and rattled down beside him. The noise of distant rotors picked up, quickening and nearing. He glanced at the sky above the canyon. A dot, beating up the twists of the river toward him. Frantically he weaved through the jagged outcrops, jumping, sliding, dodging. Shots had to be ignored until he was hit… he wasn't hit, not hit, not yet, not hit…

He slithered the last yards, now perhaps a hundred feet away from the fall of the stream. The railway track and the road ran due south, down toward the enlarging gunship driving up the canyon. Its noise had begun to echo from the cliffs. He reached the railway. Bullets struck near him. The tunnel was a hundred, two hundred yards away—

One fifty, he decided, already running. He adjusted his step to the gaps between the ties, more and more assuredly landing on those that fell between each stride. Concentrating his attention on his leading leg, counting, marking off, selecting the next tie. The river was below and to his right; he heard the gunships noise. He dismissed the shots, those he heard… not hit, not yet, not hit…

The tunnel, wobbling in his vision as he glanced up, was closer. The gunship, barely recognizable through his fear and effort, was much closer, moving at a terrifying speed that made his legs seem leaden, his body exhausted. He was slowing down, almost still, out of energy. The gunship came on, the tunnel hardly neared, the ties were blurred, gray concrete lines drawn like trip wires across his path He felt light-headed, off-balance; the tunnel was receding now, indefinite, illusory.

The gunship swung away to his right, but he could not follow it, he had to concentrate on the blurred ties. The rotor noise and engine note changed. It was transforming itself into a stable firing platform.

The mouth of the railway tunnel, carved through the rock of the canyon, was illuminated in a glare. Rocket fire. Rock groaned and split in the midst of the noise of the explosion. Dust surrounded him as the shock wave knocked him off his feet, against the side of the tunnel.

"Then you don't know!" It was a childish wail of disappointment from Priabin. He banged his fist against the thin wall and the noise seemed to echo in the empty place. Kedrov flinched and backed slightly across the room. There was a bare wooden table between them. "You don't know!"

Priabin's fist banged against the wall once more. The greasy, faded wallpaper showed two smeared marks. The kitchen still smelled of stale cooking, though the place had been empty for days. He could sense the fear that remained. He had had to kick the padlocked door open. The UAZ was parked in the cobbled lane behind the yard. Priabin had been unable to think of anywhere else to hide except the kitchen behind Orlov s shop.

Sugar was smeared on the table; rings from cups and bottles. His breath clouded in the cold. Kedrov's white, apprehensive face enraged Priabin. He looked at his watch. One-eighteen. At most, he had no more than fifty minutes.

"Where?" he pleaded with Kedrov. "Just give me some idea where to look." Kedrov's pasty skin seemed anxious to please, his mouth and eyes mobile with the search for some answer. But he could only shrug, then grin wanly. "Oh, for God's sake, sit down," Priabin bellowed at the technician, who then shuffled a chair from the table and perched himself upon it like some prim, maidenly visitor uncertain of the moral uprightness of the household.

Priabin sat down heavily opposite Kedrov. His head whirled with futility, with a sense of irrevocable steps taken to no purpose. He seemed to have used up whatever energy he normally possessed. He placed his hands on the table, as if clasping some invisible cup or mug. He looked tiredly at Kedrov.

"Listen, Filip, we have to think. There has to be something." Kedrov screwed up his features helpfully, but said nothing. Priabin sighed. One forefinger began shunting the hard, sticky grains of spilled sugar across the table, as if he were moving chess pieces. A lethargy of defeat held him in his chair. He struggled to continue what he knew he must say. "It has to be secret, doesn't it?" Kedrov nodded, his head wagging with as much significance as a puppy's tail. He was abstracted in dreams of America and wealth, which worked on him like the aftereffects of the drugs they had administered. "They would have to hide their secret control center, wouldn't they — however big or small, whatever it contained?" Again, Kedrov nodded. But his eyes seemed clearer, as if he had more fully awakened.

"Yes, they would."

Priabin continued: "Then let's think along those lines once more, mm?" His voice was filled with a false bonhomie. "They have to have a transmitter, and it has to be one they don't have to account for, doesn't it? I mean, Rodin can't just use the main control room if he intends firing the weapon, can he?"

"No."

"Then there you are. An underground site, separate — well away from the control complex… and the transmitter would have to be hidden, too. So, that's underground until the moment it's needed— wouldn't it be?" Kedrov's hand was tapping the table, his interest aroused just as Priabin felt the energy of his questions drain away and his leaden body drag at his thoughts. He was angry, too — angry with Gant. Why did the bastard have to die? "So — where is it?" he growled. He had asked these questions, all of them, so many times.

"They… /' Kedrov began, but seemed abashed by Priabin's sullen glare.

"Go on."

"They'd need… well, Colonel, I think they'd need something like a missile silo….." Again, his voice faltered. Priabin's waving hands encouraged him. "That would be the easiest way to get the transmitter up and down when they needed it. It would come up out of the silo just at the right moment, then disappear as soon a> they'd — finished?" He shrugged again, a gesture that irritated Priabin unreasonably.

He applauded ironically, his face sneering.

"Christ, you're a bloody genius, Filip — you really are. Do you know how many silos there are around here? Do you? Hundreds— probably thousands!" His despairing hands slapped down hard on the table. "Christ!"

"It's all I can think of," Kedrov muttered placatingly after a while. Priabin glanced at his watch. One-thirty. They'd already been in Orlov's kitchen for half an hour. He pushed at stubborn grains of sugar that had adhered to the table. His face was distorted with concentration on the task. They'd discussed, argued, refined, dismissed, reiterated — all for nothing. Of course it had to be a silo, but there really were hundreds of the bloody things! The discussion had gone round and round. "It would have to be one of the abandoned sites, wouldn't it — like the one I hid in?"

"What?" Priabin snapped, as he arranged the grains of sugar into a neat little heap. He did not look up.

They'd be looking for them by now. The corporal, whose body was still slumped on the floor of his booth when they came out of the elevator, would have recovered by now and raised the alarm. The bedclothes would have been pulled back on Kedrov's bed to reveal the guard It was less than forty minutes before target acquisition was completed and the weapon fired. The American shuttle would disintegrate. An act of war would have been committed. The whole bloody treaty and everything else would be down the toilet, and people like Rodin would be in charge, finally and for good. Priabin realized he was shaking his head. It didn't bear thinking about — the army, the fucking army in charge of everything. Oh shit.

"It would have to be an abandoned site, and probably a remote one — out near the edge of the security area — they would have to have had work done, a lot of work, and they wouldn't have wanted anyone to see what they were up to." Kedrov's voice had an air of discovery about it, an excitement. Priabin looked up at him, glowering, and Kedrov faltered. "Wouldn't it?" he asked plaintively.

Priabin sighed. He noticed that his left foot was tapping restlessly The lethargy seemed to have evaporated, leaving him tired but fidgety and unsettled. He studied the technician's too-young, half-matured features. No sign of the aftereffects of the drugs now

"Go on," he said heavily. "I'm listening."

Kedrov waved his hands over the table like a magician, to em phasize the quickening babble of his words.

"There are lots of abandoned sites, I agree, but there would be signs of recent work — silo repairs, heavy vehicles, fresh tunneling, that sort of thing." He reminded Priabin of a faulty streetlamp, flickering, glowing red, but never quite blooming into full light. Priabin willed him to be precise. "They'd need all kinds of people to help — scientists, technicians, computer people — a whole team to set it up."

"A bloody pity you weren't one of them," Priabin snapped at Kedrov, making him shy backward in his chair. "Think, man— think." Anger fueled his curiosity. His fist banged the table in repeated soft blows of emphasis. "Didn't you hear anything? Wasn't there gossip, rumor, while they were building whatever they built? Listen, Kedrov — you're talking about a million dollars here — your million dollars. The Americans would be fucking overjoyed to give you that kind of money if you save their precious shuttle. A home overlooking Central Park, a big car, a pile of money — now bloody work for it!"

'There's so much secrecy in this country — especially in this place—"

"Don't give me politics."

"You're the policeman. Why can't you answer the question for yourself?" Kedrov's face had reddened, become more animated. He resented Priabin's bullying. "The stuff they would need — where did they get it? How did they cover up what they — diverted?"

"All right, all right," Priabin said. "Who worked on it?"

"I don't—"

"Yes you do." He brushed his hands across the table, as if to remove the evidence of wasted time, the grains of sugar. Patterns vanished. "People going on — on unexpected leave, or being transferred all of a sudden, without warning." He looked up from the table. "There must have been some strange comings and goings?"

Kedrov screwed his features into concentration. Priabin tried to think Diversion of resources? The army couldn't simply requisition what it wanted, not for Lightning. It would have to — appropriate what it required. Rodin would have to falsify the records, sign bogus requisitions, even pinch the stuff from storeroom shelves.

"What — sort of thing do you mean?" Kedrov asked eventually, his face blank of inspiration. Priabin felt anger rise unreasonably into his throat.

"There must have been people you knew who worked on the project!" he shouted, angry in a new and momentary sense, because Kedrov flinched away from him like a frightened child. He shouted more loudly, desperately: "For Christ's sake, you stupid bugger! People working on Linchpin had to be working on Lightning at the same time! There aren't enough clever sods in the whole bloody country to have two different teams at work — especially not in the army. So think of someone you know who went missing, or went on a long and unexpected leave — holiday that wasn't due, a sudden illness you knew nothing about, caught the pox when he was a queer or AIDS when he lived like a monk — think, you silly little sod, we're running out of time."

He stood up, exasperation and a premonition of utter failure making his body intolerably hot and uncontrollable. He walked away from Kedrov, not wishing to see the child's pretense to helpfulness on the tortured face. He ought to be sucking a pencil, just to add the final touch! Kedrov's silence seemed to extend into minutes to press like a heavy weight of cloth around Priabin s head until the pressure of the situation threatened a further explosion of temper, of utter rage.

He heard Kedrov saying: "I suppose there's old Grisha Budin. He wasn't really an alcoholic — it never interfered with his work. Just a piss artist like the rest of us."

Priabin wanted to squeeze the throat that was uttering such incredible rubbish. Instead, he turned with a mannequin's slowness and poise, and said almost sweetly: "What did you say?"

Kedrov looked hopefully up at him, glad as a dog that he seemed no longer angry.

"Grisha Budin — computer programmer… my friend."

"What about him?" The effort to control his anger seemed impossible to maintain. His bland, blank, stupid face.

"So?" he said.

"I was just saying — he was transferred to secret duties for a whole two months before they sent him away."

"In Baikonur?"

"They said not, he said yes, when he came back. Nudge and wink, that was all. He didn't really say anything except that he'd been working right next door. That's the way he put it — right next door."

"Does it help us? When was it?"

"Three months ago. I can recall other people now, people I didn't know — going on holiday, just like you said, or being transferred without warning. Computer people, telemetry experts, that sort of person."

Priabin slapped the table with his open palm.

"There was fiddling," he admitted, nodding his head. "I remember now. Viktor and Katya" — he paused for a moment, then continued in a hoarser voice, which he kept having to clear—"were in charge of the investigation. Central Electronic Stores was the major target. Stuff disappearing at an alarming rate over a period of six or eight months. The bloody army wasn't very helpful, even though they were blaming civilians. We found some of the pilfered stuff for sale on the black market, but there was bigger stuff that vanished without trace. We weren't getting anywhere, so I ordered it dropped." He rubbed his face with his hands. "It's all circumstantial and too vague." He sighed. "It could mean something or nothing— and it still goes nowhere near telling us where."

Priabin reached into the overcoat and drew out the large-scale map of Baikonur he had removed from the UAZ. It cracked an^ rustled as he unfolded it. His finger dabbed at the map. "There, there, even there. There are abandoned silos everywhere."

Kedrov turned the map so that he could study it more easily. One of them is too distant — we couldn't get there. Two others are too exposed, too close to new roads. That one's the most isolated in terms of what else is in the vicinity." His finger tapped at the map. 'They were abandoned in the early sixties. A^ small group of silos, I think."

"Come on, then," Priabin snapped, suddenly getting to his feet, tucking the map untidily under his arm like a newspaper. "We've got thirty minutes!"

20: Tunnels

He was propped against the wall of the tunnel like an abandoned doll, legs splayed and numb, head drumming with the blow of the shock wave. The downdraft whirled up dust and brick rubble, which stung his face and filled his nose and eyes. Nausea welled in his throat. He clutched the rifle tightly in his hands.

Then the ugly nose of the gunship drifted into view, dropping like a spider into the arching gap of daylight that was just clearing of dust. Gun, rockets, missiles slung beneath its stubby wings.

It can't see you it can't, can't…

He struggled to convince himself, his body running the tape loop over and over, prompting an effort at survival. He struggled to his feet, his weight resting heavily against the icy, wet stonework. The nose of the Mil intruded like that of a hungry cat into a mouse hole. Snuffling and eager, violence assured.

The walls of the tunnel were splashed with bright, crude light. Rails gleamed. Gant cringed back farther into the shadows of a narrow archway that was too cramped to conceal him more than momentarily; but for now the light washed just in front of him.

If only his legs would regain some kind of mobility, if only his head would clear, if only the noise would stop dinning off the walls. He kept his gaze away from the dust-hazed light.

The Mil rumbled a few feet closer, as close as it dared. There's only a single track, he heard some distant part of his mind confirm, the rotor span is sixty feet, it can't come in after you. It would wait, just so long as he didn't move, until troops had abseiled down from the waterfall or came up in trucks along the military highway. Or until it dropped its own troops, if it had any aboard. It was only a moment's pause.

Its ugly snout continued to swivel and sniff at the tunnel's mouth. Dust and debris seemed as if lifted and flung by a hurricane. The light of the lamp was foggy. Water splashed on his face and hands in large, uprooted droplets. The force of the downdraft thrust at him like a hand.

He was perhaps fifteen yards from the entrance. He glanced to his left, down the length of the tunnel. He was «two miles from the border. He could see no blob or even prick of light — the tunnel must curve in its passage under the mountains as it followed the course of the river. He must run.

The MiL's cabin door was open. The wheels of the helicopter were no more than feet above the rails. Shapes dropped quickly. Gant felt the gravel under his feet shivering as at the first tremors of an earthquake. Three of them, and more coming behind, down the cliffs or up the road. Then, above the din, a voice bellowed through the distortion of a loudspeaker.

"You can't escape, Major — we know what you have. There's no way you can get out of here."

The first of the men had entered the tunnel, and was clearly silhouetted. He restrained the curl of his finger on the rifle's trigger. He fumbled instead for the kit bag, tugging open its drawn-tight neck, and pulled something out. It was the right shape, what he wanted. The first soldier moved cautiously closer, the MiL's nose snuffled with what seemed an increased appetite. Flashlights flicked on, weak fireworks beside the glare of the lamp.

Lamp, infrared, low-light TV—

He raised the flare pistol from the kit bag and fired, turning his head away, clenching his eyelids shut. The cartridge struck the opposite wall of the tunnel, exploding against the brickwork, hissing like a cauldron before it glared brighter than the lamp. Smoke made him cough, the light was white beyond his eyelids, even though he had crooked his arm across his eyes. The noise of the rotors was distanced by the adrenaline that surged through his body.

Run, run—

He stumbled, still not daring to open his eyes, his left hand guiding him by scraping along the tunnel, so that the rope burns began to pain him once more. Fear for his ankles, his footing, grew in his mind as he stumbled on. The glare was still evident, even through his eyelids. The loudspeaker bellowed. He felt lightheaded. He was becoming careless of his footing. He opened his eyes into slits. Light, still lurid on the wall, hurt the backs of his eyes.

Wild shooting behind him. He heard no ricochets. He paused. Watched his shadow dying on the rock. Far ahead of him, he could see a tiny speck of daylight. The tunnel was clear and the exit was at least half a mile away. The light from the flare was dying now. Within seconds, their retinas and infrared would recover. He breathed in deeply and thrust the flare pistol back into the kit bag. The Mil was out of sight around the bend of the tunnel. His heart was large and painful in his chest as he ran on. He could hear his own footsteps echoing off the walls, as if pursuing him. The noise of the rotors had almost gone now.

The patch of daylight, recognizable now as the mouth of the tunnel, darkened. Was filled by something. Cutting off his escape.

"Yes, comrade General, all systems are functioning properly."

"When can we cut the links with central control?"

"In ten minutes, comrade General, target acquisition will be completed and we'll be locked on here."

"Ten minutes… and how long before—?"

Two minutes after the platform is raised to the surface, the transmitter will be aligned and locked on."

"Twelve minutes. Good. You have my order to proceed with Lightning—to its conclusion."

"Very good, comrade General Rodin. Countdown at — eleven minutes, fifty seconds — mark and counting."

"In the tunnel? How can they be sure?"

"Mr. President, we're monitoring their radio traffic. It's being screamed all over their Tac channel."

"How many troops do they have on the ground — close to him?"

"Maybe as many as a dozen spetsnaz units in the immediate area — a lot more in reserve. A dozen or so gunships, and there are whole convoys of troop trucks on the main highway."

"Then he has to have something decisive."

"That's our thinking, Mr. President."

"Then we have to get him out."

"I don't think we can."

"Listen to me. The Turkish government has pushed army units right up to the border. They have air cover, all we asked for. The price we're having to pay doesn't matter. The Turks have been co operative. Now we have to do more than they're doing."

"Mr. President, we can't afford an incident, not now, not today."

"Dick, all of you — we can't afford not to have an incident!"

"What do you want, Mr. President?"

"Small, fast, light helicopters. How many do we have in the area — us, not the Turks?"

"I'd have to check that, Mr. — v

"Then do it!"

"Mr. President — John, have you thought of—?"

"Consequences, Dick? Yes, I've thought of very little else. I can assure you on that. But understand me, Dick — Gant is alone. We thought we'd lost him when he went underground. He's still alive, and their efforts to make sure he doesn't stay that way means he has something that could help us get out from under. I can't afford to lose that."

"He's in the tunnel — they're stopping the trains. They 11 go in after him even if they haven't already done so. Sir, what can helicopters do for him?"

"I don't know. Christ Almighty, Dick, I'm supposed to be the President of the United States. That ought to count for something— it obliges me to try!"

"They'll shoot anything down that's carrying the stars and stripes — maybe anything with a red cross on it, for all I know. They're down to the wire on this, just as we are, sir. John, think about it, please."

"The guy's a mile and a half from the border, Dick. What's to think about?"

"The next war?"

"Starting from this? If we don't have what Gant has, then we'll lose the next war!"

"What chance do they have of finding him?"

"How the hell would I know, Dick?"

"You'll be killing anyone you send into that — that hornet's nest over there."

"Dick, I know that. I don't need reminding."

"What about the Turks?"

"Who's to know? They'll back up anyone coming back across. While they're protesting about what we're doing, Gant will either be back here — or he won't."

"Mr. President, sir—"

"What is it?"

"We have two small Hughes Defender helicopters, observing along that stretch of the border. They could be in the area of that tunnel in — two minutes, maximum. So Fm guaranteed. From the time you give a direct order for them to cross, Mr. President."

"John—"

"Thank you. Look, Dick, the Turks are already screaming at the Soviets here in Geneva and in Moscow about the provocative troop movements' on the Armenian border. If the Defenders can find him, it might work."

"John, think about this, please."

"The time for thinking is over. General — give them the order to go in. Give them anything they need, but get them in!"

Tyuratam was little more than a smudge to the southeast. Priabin looked back along the narrow, potholed road. It was empty, like the clean and dangerous sky. He slung the rifle across his back, shifting it to comfort, then wrenched the toolbox out of the UAZ with an angry yet purposeless strength. It had taken them twenty minutes to get here, to this God-forsaken place. What would he need? What would he do?

"Come on," he growled, and began climbing the long, gentle slope in front of them.

The wind strengthened, sighing across empty country. There had been the frozen, rutted tracks of heavy trucks after they had turned off the highway. Did they mean anything? Kedrov scuttled beside him like a dog being taken for a walk, grating on Priabin's raw nerves. There was no hint of optimism in his hurried stride.

They reached the crest of the slope. The sticks and trellises of the main telemetry complex were only slightly closer than the haze of the old town. He glanced around him wildly. The country was not utterly flat, but undulated gently, pockmarked with dips and hillocks. It looked like some piece of ground that had been heavily shelled. No-man's-land.

"New wire," Kedrov murmured, his hand touching the bright barbed wire at which they had halted. A warning notice, two more farther off. Death to all intruders, or something of the kind. They put notices like that outside every officers' pisshouse. There were no guards, no dogs, nothing.

"Christ!" he cried out. "Look at it. There's nothing here except the old silos."

"New wire," Kedrov persisted.

"That's what we came out here to find?"

"No — signs of recent work," Kedrov snapped back at his cynicism.

Priabin scanned the landscape in front of him. Heavy tires, rubble heaped and scattered, but nothing, nothing real. He bent down and scrabbled in the toolbox. Found the heavy-duty pliers, checked their edges.

"Watch out," Priabin ordered. "I'm not climbing through this mess. Let's see if these will cut—" He grunted with effort, struggling and twisting the wire, attempting to cut through it. Even in the icy wind, sweat prickled on his forehead and was damp inside his shirt. The wire would not cut. Furiously, he kicked at one of the wooden posts holding the wire taut. Then kicked again and again. It struggled out of the grip of the frozen earth and leaned drunkenly, dragging the four strands of wire toward the ground.

He stepped across the sagging wire.

"Come on — and bring the toolbox." Which is no bloody use whatsoever, he told himself.

The earth and the icy puddles cracked and ripped as they hurried across the empty landscape.

"What should we look for?" he demanded.

"Signs of repair — lack of rust…" Kedrov's voice faded into uncertainty.

More ruts from heavy tires, even the tracks of a bulldozer. A hundred yards and more from the new wire, they reached a silo shaft's steel doors, which were pitted and rusting. Priabin stood on them, stamping a din from the metal, as he gazed around him. He could distinguish as many as forty — well, thirty — of these silo entrances scattered over the ground and looking like giant antipersonnel mines. They rose only a few feet above the surface, while the shafts beneath them descended hundreds of feet into the earth.

"Don't waste time. We'll split up — check as many as you can. Oh, Christ, all right, I'll take the toolbox." He bared his teeth. "Get moving."

There was a moment of pathetic doubt on Kedrov's face, and the afterdrug vacancy returned; then he turned to scan the landscape, picking out the closest silos

"I'll shout," he offered, "and wave if I find anything." It was as if he had patted Priabin's forearm to comfort him. He seemed to draw on some reserve of optimism, and smiled encouragingly.

Priabin scuttled toward another shaft, turning only once to see Kedrov blown like a brown rag across the landscape. The second and third sets of silo doors were dirt-encrusted, with stiff blades of grass appearing to spring from the metal. He hurried on.

Four now, all of them unused for years. Six, and still nothing but pitted doors and the mouths of air ducts with rusty wire gratings across them, but tire tracks and caterpillar-track indentations going everywhere and nowhere. He transferred the toolbox once more from his left hand to his right. He seemed to be staggering along now, buffeted by the icy wind. If he so much as thought for a moment about his task, it would be like colliding with a solid wall.

The wind shouted, faintly.

Groggily, he looked up. A brown scarecrow was waving its outstretched arms.

Kedrov. Waving and shouting like a drowning swimmer.

He ran toward Kedrov, who seemed to be dancing with excitement, Pieces of abandoned metal glinted in the sun. Not rusty, then — even half-bricks, oil stains, too, scraps of electrical cable.

"What?" he gasped at Kedrov, dropping the toolbox, bent double to catch his breath. "What is it?"

"These doors have been replaced — look!"

The metal doors of the shaft, shut tight, gleamed like a polished mirror. Rodin was down there somewhere, he knew it!

"Thank God," he breathed. "How do we get down there? What do we do?"

"The closest air shaft's over there, about sixty yards away. We climb down the tunnel, find the doors to the silo shaft—"

"And?"

"Get into the shaft through the service doors. Stop the thing coming up — cut the wires." It was the exasperation of a technician toward the technically illiterate. Kedrov seemed to have found his daydream of America once more. Priabin nodded.

"You'll have to help."

"I can't go down there."

"I don't care if you didn't like it last time. You're coming with me."

Priabin knelt down and pressed his cheek to the icy metal of the closed doors. He heard, faint but distinct, the humming of machinery or electronics. Ana a rumbling noise, as it a train were passing through the earth a long way down. It was down there! He got to his feet.

"Good, down the air shaft, then. Come on."

They ran to the air shaft's rusty grating. The jack handle from the toolbox levered the mesh away from the mouth of the narrow shaft. A flight of rungs set in the concrete disappeared into the darkness — no, there was a faint glow of light from the bottom. He turned and began to climb backward into the shaft, his feet feeling for the nearest rungs. He gestured at Kedrov to hand him the toolbox.

"Come on!" he yelled. His voice echoed betrayingly down the shaft.

Kedrov was not looking at him. His head was turned toward the silo. Then his face snapped back, mouth open, eyes wide.

"The doors are opening!"

"What?"

"The doors — they're opening. It must be coming up."

Priabin scrambled out of the shaft like a demented old man. He even crawled a few paces before getting to his feet, eyes staring wildly toward the silo. A hole in the ground now, no gleam of metal. He wanted to scream away the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He was too late, he could do nothing. Rodin had won. The thought obsessed him. There was no room for any speck of rationality in his head.

Rodin.

He was down there, hundreds of feet below him, just there. He banged the jack handle on the frozen ground, feeling the shock pass through his wrist and arm and reach his shoulder. Rodin was down there, laughing while he started the next fucking war.

"Look." Kedrov was shaking his arm, and pointing. Priabin whirled on him, the jack handle raised. "Look!"

It was coming out of the silo like some nightmarish plant, its growing cycle speeded up by a time-lapse camera. Dish aerial, transmitters, the platform on the metal stalk of an old missile hoist. Twenty feet into the air. It grew further and began to move. The dish aerial seemed to turn in their direction like a single, silver eye, then tilted toward the pale afternoon.

"Christ, oh, Christ," Priabin heard himself muttering.

Kedrov was separate from his desperation. Detached and blown like a brown leaf across the sixty yards to the silo.

"Wait — wait!" Priabin bellowed.

And was running, stumbling like an exhausted athlete. The jack handle like a heavy baton in his hand. Ahead of him, he could see the bottom of Kedrov's stolen overcoat flying in the wind, his arms waving as if he were swimming against the air's current. The plant had grown taller, thicker-stemmed. Its silver eye winked in the sun, watching the sky, swiveling. The spars and sticks of the other aerials and transmitters seemed to move, too.

He was out of breath, dragging in lungfals of air as if at some great altitude. His chest was tight and aching.

Kedrov was standing at the base of the platform, looking up. Smooth, sheer metal for thirty feet, impossible to climb. Hopeless. Metal gleamed and shone, mocking him. The platform hummed with electricity and purpose. The winking eye of the dish aerial halted in its movements. Stared directly at some invisible target.

"It's locked on!" Kedrov shouted in his ear. "Locked on!"

The cables, bunched into a rope, traveled back into the silo shaft, down hundreds of feet to Rodin's finger on the button. The signal was about to be transmitted.

He swung the jack handle at the cables, disturbing them and leaving no mark on the heavy nylon sheathing that protected the wiring. He felt his left hand forced open. He released his grip on whatever he was holding. Kedrov knelt by the bunched cables, straining with the heavy pliers. Groaning as he did so, veins standing out on his forehead, sweat sheening it. The wind sang through the transmitters and aerials in an unearthly, crowing noise.

Priabin knelt down, too, and took the cables in both hands. Heaved at them.

Kedrov wrenched rather than cut. His hands were white with effort. It was no use — if it was, Kedrov would electrocute himself as soon as the metal touched the wires inside.

Priabin heaved again at the reluctant cables. What did he think he was doing anyway? He gazed upward and then wildly around him.

Frenzied, he wrenched the Kalashnikov from his shoulders and pointed it at the cables, as if about to fire into them. His head whirled madly. The weapon was useless to him. He raised it as if to throw it aside. He'd never even learned to fire it accurately, years before during basic training. Cleaning, loading, aiming, even bayonet practice — the thing was useless, useless!

Then he remembered. Yes! He knelt down, his hands fumbling to detach the bayonet in its scabbard from above the magazine. "Get away!" he yelled at Kedrov, whose shadow interfered with the light. He struggled with the bayonet then threw the gun away from him and held up the tool he had constructed.

… with the bayonet and the insulated scabbard, an effective wire cutter is made…

The instructor. They'd laughed in the junior officers' mess afterward—who wants a wire cutter, we're not trying to escape, are we?

He attacked the sheathing of the cables, hacking, sawing, shearing at it. Strips of nylon, cord within, bare copper gleaming — one, two, three, four. He worked like a madman, mutilating the cables. His hands were torn and bloody from frayed wiring and the sharpness of the nylon.

Eventually he finished.

The interlocked bayonet-and-scabbard tool rattled and clunked as it slid down the silo shaft. Priabin lay on his back, chest heaving, staring at the sky. Kedrov was no more than a shadow in his peripheral vision. His body was a single, feverish ache. Nothing mattered now, nothing.

Rodin. Rodin…

He let the name fade in his mind, like a figure retreating down a long, empty corridor.

The sky was clean.

Except for Kedrov's shadow.

"I don't know if we were in time," Kedrov said, his voice hardly audible above the noise of the wind through the aerials. "They may have transmitted the firing command — we wouldn't know."

When the words had taken effect on Priabin's consciousness, he groaned, rolling on to his side as if to hide under nonexistent bedclothes.

Rodin, Rodin.

Train.

Almost at once, he could smell the smoke. The tunnel thrust the locomotive's bellow of steam and damp smoke along its length toward him. The rail beneath his left boot quivered, then thudded rhythmically. His heart thudded like the rail, but with relief; almost threatening to overwhelm him. He could only lean back against the wet brickwork and watch. The locomotive and its burden roared down the tunnel toward him.

His parka became sodden almost at once from the running water washing down the wall. The smoke made his eyes water, his throat constrict. And yet he knew he had to move, however terrifying this huge rush of metal. The train blocked the entrance to the tunnel, preventing any gunship from making its descent to cut off his escape.

There was a halo of light dimly marking the train's outline, a tiny gap of air between its bulk and the walls. Sparks, the billowing of wet smoke and steam, the glow of the boiler's fire. He turned his cheek to the rough brickwork, and wetness soaked into his taut skin. Already the realization seeped in — they would be working their way along the same wall, thinking they, too, could use the train's passage. He had to move now.

He began to slide-run along the curve of the wall. His shoulder scraped against the bricks and the jutting rock, his feet unbalanced and his whole body leaning like a drunk into the wall, away from the track. The train enlarged, yelling and threatening. Seeming too big for the tunnel. The dim halo of light had disappeared. He checked in midstride.

The breath he snatched at was foul with smoke, making him cough. His ears were filled with the din of the locomotive. Sparks jumped and spat like fireworks only a hundred yards away as the train rushed toward him.

Somehow, he made himself run on, toward the thing that filled the darkness with noise and fire. The beam of its lamp, polishing the track but eluding him. His shoulder pressed against the wall. The pressure and inertia of the train quivered in the brick, the gravel under his feet seemed like quicksand.

And then it was passing him, and moving with a totally unexpected slowness, laboring up the canyon's long incline. One man in the locomotive's cab was bent to the raging fire, the other stood as still as a statue commemorating a long-ago war. Then the first of the freight cars was level with him, and some animal or other lowed like a fog warning. Other beasts joined its cry. Cattle cars. Helpless animals, in transit to an abattoir.

His cheek was still warm from the blaze of the fire. He had to pause to beat at sparks that had flown onto his legs from the flanged wheels of the cars. Then moved on in his unbalanced fashion, down the length of the long, slow train, which creaked and thudded and clanked; and lowed.

Smoke roiled about him so that he could hardly breathe. He was terrified by the sight of cattle snouts jutting through slats into the tunnels madness. He heard hooves banging against the floors and sides of cars as they lurched past.

The train was incredibly long. Its noise seemed as if it would never stop. He felt he would never rid himself of the lowing of the cattle. He had to be in the open before the end of the train entered the tunnel. The trucks moved by so slowly. He couldn't be running that slowly. Then he saw the light increasing.

The second locomotive, at the rear of the train, pushing it up the long incline toward Yerevan's slaughterhouses, was at the maw of the tunnel and was then swallowed. The driver's face, looking down at him, was white and shocked, and the glow of the fire was dimmed by the early-afternoon light. The track ahead of him was clear.

He saw the bridge, and heard the throb of rotors, and the scream overhead of the first MiG or Sukhoi fighter. He felt shrunken, a tiny figure on a narrow thread of track that ran from tunnel to bridge. He stared wildly around and above him, looking for the gunship, waiting for its attack; hearing, despite the noise of its approach, the sound of trucks moving on the highway below him. He felt pinioned by noise. Then he saw the gunship beating down toward him, rotors tilted, snub nose head-on to him. He would never — even if he could move — make the bridge before it opened fire. The passage of the train still rumbled in the ground beneath his feet. He raised the Kalashnikov in a futile gesture as the helicopter enlarged, its black tinted glass and snub nose sweeping over his head, the downdraft plucking at him as if to cuff him aside.

There was black glass everywhere as it turned to face him, swinging violently into the hover, so that he could see the gun and the missile pod. It hung in the air, its skis only feet above the railway track — between him and the bridge. Olive-drab paint.

He knew quite certainly that he would die there, framed in the tunnel entrance. They could be no more than thirty yards or so away now. He was trapped between the spetsnaz troops behind him and the gunship, which stared at him with its huge, black glass eyes. He shivered. The rifle pointed foolishly, like a child's stick. He seemed to have stopped breathing. The only sound he could hear was the noise of the small, light gunship.

Familiar?

Military. Olive drab. Insect eyes.

Familiar?

The helicopter stared at him, no more than twenty yards away. The helicopter — the, the — Hughes Defender stared at him. and a* the same unnerving moment that he identified the aircraft he saw an arm waving him forward from the port insect eye — the eye was a door that had swung open. The helicopter was American!

Relief… disbelief. The conflicting feelings seemed to shake him like a storm. It had to be an illusion, it couldn't be a Hughes, a Hughes couldn't be here—

— even as he began running toward it, obeying the still waving arm.

The Defender lifted slightly, delicately adjusting itself in the air, then settled on to its skis. Then all he saw was the arm, waving once more. But he had glimpsed the white star on the helicopter's flank and the legend u.s. army. The pilot had shown them to him like a guarantee. Ten yards away, five. The gesticulating arm came closer, closer, closer…

He staggered against the fuselage. Bullets clanged against the metal. He looked down with what might have been surprise. His left thigh was burning with pain and stained with something dark and wet, which spread even as he watched it. His whole frame began to quiver. Fuzzily, he could see two soldiers at the tunnel entrance, one of them kneeling, taking better aim, the other standing as stiffly as a member of a firing squad.

He groaned with pain. Something pulled at his shoulder, then a hand grabbed his arm, wrenching him off his feet. The rotors idled noisily above his head, the two soldiers were still and patient and certain, his leg shrieked as he was dragged into the cockpit of the helicopter and it twisted under him. The whole of his thigh seemed black with blood as he looked drunkenly down, slumped in the copilot's seat. His face leaned against the pilot's uniform. The flying overalls bore the name Pruitt. Then he was pushed away from Pruitt, to loll in his seat as the rotors picked up speed and volume. Bullets careened off the metal of the fuselage.

"Fasten your seat belt, Major," Pruitt snapped, his hand pointing forcibly at Gant's lap. Instinctively, Gant moved to obey, and his leg cried out again. "You all right?"

The Hughes was twenty feet or so up in the air, hardly moving. Gant groaned, then shouted:

"For fuck's sake — go!"

He tightened the seat belt automatically, then fumbled with his belt. The small helicopter flicked into the air like a spun coin, dizzyingly, making his leg protest with a flash of red behind his clenched eyelids. He felt sick. He forced himself to open his eyes, as if in response to the noise of bullets against the Defenders fuselage. Pale flickers of flame down on the track. A bullet flew off the cockpits Plexiglas, scarring it. The Hughes yawed wildly before Pruitt corrected its course. Gant felt the aircraft drop like a loosened boulder, down the canyon wall.

With a feebly waving hand, he pointed urgently toward—

— the military highway and its tunnel. Brdad tunnel. Even as he saw the first of the Mil gunships, its stubby wings overloaded with rockets and missiles, dive in pursuit of them. There was a second one, farther off. Gant tightened his belt into a tourniquet around the top of his thigh, grinding his teeth against the increased pain. Each maneuver of the Hughes seemed to wrench at the damaged sinews and muscles and act like a pump on the blood he was trying to staunch.

Pruitt drove the Defender downward. Rotor span twenty-seven feet — only twenty-seven, Gant told himself, the words taking the pattern of his grinding teeth and accompanying their noise inside his head. He slumped back in the copilot's seat. Pruitt abruptly leveled the helicopter before the mouth of the road tunnel, so that Gant yelled aloud. Then the tunnel swallowed the tiny aircraft.

"Shit!" he heard Pruitt distantly exclaim, his head filled with pain as if it were noise, the lights set in the tunnel's roof seeming to hurt his eyes, as if they, too, were connected with his wound. He had clamped his hand over his thigh. His finger and thumb had felt the entry and exit wounds of the bullet's passage. He was bleeding more slowly.

The tunnel was wide enough to take a Mil-24, not just the smaller Hughes, but they'd have to be more careful. The second gunship could hop to the other end of the tunnel, but the Hughes was armed with missiles and a Chain gun, and they'd have to be careful, too.

He was hardly conscious, because now the tunnel lights seemed hypnotic, extending into a blur. The pain in his thigh steadily mounted through his whole frame and seemed to throb in rhythm with the passage of the lights. Pruitt's wild elation was no more than a distant sighing.

The tunnel ended like a bright mouth opening.

The Plain of Ararat. Daylight and gunships. They were as unreal, as unimportant to Gant as smears on the Plexiglas. He vaguely glimpsed a border crossing, poles and booths and vehicles straggling across the highway. Then it was gone He could not be certain he had seen it, was increasingly unaware of the dimensions of the cockpit around him, the presence of the pilot. Then Pruitt jerked the helicopter up and away.

Something exploded astern of them against the canyon wall. Gant did not turn his head to look back. He felt an increase in the Defender's speed, and sensed the ground farther away below. The plain spread out ahead of them, as gray-white and unfeatured as an unrolled bale of cloth. His head felt heavy, and yet without substance.

Turkey. He knew that.

More gunships.

Hughes helicopters, and a Bell Hueycobra. Their shapes familiar, comforting. Jets higher and farther away. Turkey. The border was already invisible behind the last slopes of the foothills as the Defender skimmed the snowbound plain. The whiteness, he could see now, was smeared by the passage of a steam train and trellised by cleared roads and highways. The twin peaks of Mt. Ararat gleamed in the distance.

A second Hughes Defender slid up close to port. Its pilot raised a thumb. An unarmed Turkish air force Jetranger rose like a cork to the surface of water and took up station behind them. It was a target for any missile that might be launched across the border. The Hueycobra bobbed to starboard as they closed ranks around Pruitt, around Gant. He was protected, safe. His leg burned with a fresh agony. There was something he had to do besides sleep, besides surrender to the pain — something…

His hands groped toward the instrument panel. Pruitt, understanding his feeble efforts, thrust the copilot's headset into his hands and opened the Tac channel. As if lifting a great weight, Gant slowly slid the headset on. Voices blurted in his ears, showering the ether with congratulation.

"Come on, Major!" he heard Pruitt urge, but the pilot's voice was very faint.

The pain threatened afresh. He began talking quickly, afraid it might finally overwhelm him. They had to be told; they had to know. The cockpit was as vague and unfeatured as the pale sky and the carpet of snow. The instruments were blurred, his sense of Pruitt beside him diminished.

"… Winter Hawk" he felt himself repeating, over and over. His own exclamations of pain were more real. He heard himself grinding his teeth as a noise inside his head, as if bones were being moved in his skull."… I have the proof, yes… definite proof….." It did not matter who was listening, how far up that staircase in his mind he had climbed in less than a minute. Some general, a CIA deputy director — who cared? He remembered something else, then, with a huge, sickening effort, and said: "They have the weapon, it's — already in orbit… intend to use it, against the shuttle—Atlantis…."It was so difficult to remember the shuttle's name. A cleared road lay below him, Pruitt was following its gray line through the snow. Someone asked him a question — one of the voices that babbled at him and kept him from sleep, allowing the pain to enlarge. He merely repeated: "… the target is the shuttle, yes — I saw the launch, the weapon is in orbit at this — moment…." Then, finally: "Man, I don't give shit what you do, just do it!"

Fuzzily, as he leaned forward to cut off the channel, he saw a helicopter bearing a gigantic red cross drift like a dirigible across their course. He sighed, and surrendered to the pain and to his weariness. His head burned as intensely as his leg. It's all right now, he assured his wound. All right. He'd survived. His message and what they did about it did not matter anymore. He'd survived.