Gant leaned the unconscious Adamov against the fuselage of the Hind and slammed back the door of the main cabin. Then he bundled the body aboard. He glanced at his watch. Twelve thirty-five. He climbed into the main cabin, squeezing close to the auxiliary tank, which occupied most of it, and dragged Adamov to one of the fold-down seats troops used when being transported. He fumbled the straps—excitement now outstripped him, making him clumsy in his furious haste—and strapped Adamov into the seat. He reached for some webbing and used it to bind the captain's hands. Finally, he gagged Adamov with—Mac's scarf, lying on the floor. He removed Adamov's pistol from its holster, dismissed Mac's memory, and turned away. He jumped down and slammed the cabin door shut. If Adamov woke, it wouldn't matter. He was no longer a problem. Dumb, secure, and unarmed.
He climbed into the cockpit. Shivered. The driver watched him from his cab, the garage owner from the porch. He touched at the controls, the panel, other instruments, then began.
His hands reached, gripped or touched, flicked or depressed, bringing the MiL to life. The auxiliary power unit he had left on. He pressed the start button of the first of the Isotov engines, moved the throttle lever above his head from Stop to the ground-idle position. The engine began to wind up from a hum to a grumbling
murmur.
He pressed the second start button, moved the second
throttle lever.
The turboshaft hurried in pursuit
of
the noises from its com
panion.
Slowly, the rotors began to turn, drooping at first, then
gradually
smoothing into a disk. Gleaming in the wind and moonlight, the Hind began to buck, as if restrained by a trap.
The woman was standing on the porch behind her husband, night pressing around their shadows. Gant reached up and moved the throttles to flight-idle, released the rotor bj-ake, engaged the clutch. His eyes scanned the instruments as they came on-line, especially the fuel gauges; and the temperature, and pressure and output power, he reminded himself. This is gasoline, not kerosene. For the length of his journey, the ordinary automobile gasoline would do no harm to the engines, but its performance had to be watched— closely.
He flicked on the moving map. The rotors flurried dust around the cockpit, and the scene was dimming. Two minutes. The Hind rolled forward as he released the brakes, away from the canopy over the pumps. The place was suddenly very small, a needle in the haystack of the landscape around him. But he had found it, and that was all that mattered. Relief was now far too late and unimportant.
He glanced to either side, then over his head. Clear. He was well clear of the corrugated roof and the power fines. The Hind continued to waddle, ready to lift. He eased the column laterally, in the direction of the wind.
He raised the collective pitch lever, applied rudder to remain headed into the wind, and felt the Hinds undercarriage lift from the ground and the wind buffet the helicopter. Then he increased his airspeed and entered a climb of more than two thousand feet per minute, rushing up like an elevator on the side of some tall building. The ground diminished beneath him, bathed in moonlight. Gant checked the moving map, his distance and course. Two hours' fly-tog. He moved the column to starboard, and the helicopter banked. He eased back on the stick. On the moving map, he watched the white dot that was the Hind resume its original course. Baikonur lay almost due north. He glanced at his watch once more. Twelve-forty. He was late; darkness already seemed to be slipping away like water toto a drain. The moon was old and lower in the sky. His head spun
w
ith the flickering, separate illuminations of times and distances. He had just enough time—just enough—to get out again, with Ked-*>v, before daylight. His pulse slowed and his temperature seemed fall back toward comfort. Just enough time.
Be there, you bastard—be there!
* * *
Priabin wanted to bruise Rodin's face just as the boy's father had done. Urgency should be obeyed, not put aside like a book being loaned between friends. Kedrov was out there in the marshes, for the taking. Valery Rodin, having admitted him, seemed only to want to prolong the conversation. He was greedy for company.
"Let's talk about
Lightning,
shall we?" he snapped at Rodin. Technique, often a steel rope, frayed and parted; as likely now to injure him as Rodin. He knew he could blunder in this situation, go astray and cause Rodin to clam up. Then he would have nothing.
He swallowed the whiskey Rodin had poured for him and attempted to calm himself. The room incensed him as much as it had done on his visit earlier that evening. The molding and frieze and the smell of hashish and cognac; the scent of his own expensive Scotch whiskey. Priabin felt the anger mount. This boy must not be allowed to waste his time.
"Let's talk about
Lightning
," he repeated. His tone was threatening.
Rodin's head snapped up. His eyes were wakeful, clearing from their drugged, drunken glassiness. Then the young man shrugged. Priabin sighed inwardly and controlled his own anger as Rodin continued talking as though Priabin were some kind of confessor figure, not a KGB colonel. Rodin was not afraid of Priabin, or of his rank or organization. Priabin was, in Rodin's eyes, the only visitor who was
not
dangerous. Ludicrous—
Priabin felt the battery and the tiny microphone against his ribs. It was recording the maudlin details of Rodin's past; nothing of importance.
"I'm to train for the Sukhoputnyye Voyska, the Ground Forces, would you believe—specifically, the Tank Troops. I am to become a career soldier, hence the Academy." His lips pouted with anger, helplessness. "A career officer," he barked thinly, the noise of a beaten animal protesting.
"But why?" Priabin asked.
"To make a proper man of me, of course." He sneered. "I'm to follow in his footsteps." His voice was a venomous hiss. "And it gets me out of the way very neatly," he added.
"Why?" Priabin asked, too eagerly.
Rodin winked at him slowly, exaggeratedly. "We'll come to that, all in good time."
"I meant, why now? Why change branches of the service? Why are you in the GRU if your old man wants you to be a tank officer?"
Rodin swallowed cognac. He was very drunk, but somehow in
command
of the situation. Priabin could not bully effectively; and
could
not leave, despite images of Katya and Kedrov, Dudin and his men going to the girl's assistance. He had to know, had to open the oyster that was Valery Rodin. However long it took.
"Most of his closest pals in Stavka are in the intelligence directorate. It just worked out that way. And he could really trust those pals to keep an eye on me—keep me under control?" He giggled, but the noise was cynical, contemptuous. "And in this God-forsaken place, he can keep a personal eye on me. He can surround me with watchers."
"And now you think he's had enough?" Technique. Patience coming like a memory of training, calming Priabin's anxiety.
"Right. That's right. He's bloody had enough." Rodin tossed his head. His eyes glazed once more. He stared down into his lap as he sat on the beanbag like a Buddha; a thin, blond idol. "I told you, didn't I, that all I wanted was to paint?" He looked up, and Priabin nodded as if interested. "I've told everyone," Rodin added ironically. "But you, I didn't fill in all the details. My mother plucked up the courage to put the idea to him, when he was home on leave. She made sure he had the best food the housekeeper could cook and she could buy—French wine, good cognac, a cigar. He was expansive, know what I mean?" Again, Priabin stifled his impatience and nodded. "When Mother put it to him, he just looked straight at me, sardonically, and nodded like a judge. He even smiled, but that was cold, too." Rodin waved his free hand, shooing away the oppressive dements of the memory. "He went to the experts, to academicians, touting some of my watercolors, my sketchbooks, and canvases like a Penniless student, and showed all of them. It took him a week altogether. Then he came back, with a typed report, summarizing everything they'd said. Top copy for me, carbon for Mother. He made us sit there, in front of him, on dining chairs, and read the
r
eport."
"And—they said you were no good?" Priabin said softly into the silence. The words echoed like the splashing of pebbles in a deep Weil. He saw Rodin once more without barriers, and could not avoid
Pity for
him.
Rodin nodded furiously. "Yes, yes, that's what they said. They confirmed all his suspicions, answered all his prayers.
I'd never
make it as an artist. He had me in an army training school inside a month. Mother never raised the subject, ever again. All the theater visits stopped, the allowance was strictly controlled, no parties,
and
above all, no friends of a certain kind—I'm quoting him. I couldn't be unsuccessful, not as his son. So he put me in the army, where if your father's a general you can't possibly fail." Rodin wiped his pale hps, rubbed a hand through his fair hair.
"I'm sorry," Priabin said eventually. Rodin swallowed cognac by way of reply.
Priabin glanced at his watch. One in the morning. Kedrov was out there—
—Lightning
was here!
He twitched with indecision and impatience. How vulnerable was Rodin? Would he break soon?
Rodin said cynically: "I have it all to look forward to, don't I? Once he abandons me, I'm lost." He swallowed fearfully. "God, I'm lost."
"Why does he want to do that to his own son?"
"What?"
"Why does he want you to suffer? You won't have a prayer in the Frunze, once they realize your old man isn't protecting you anymore." He winced, anticipating Anna's sudden return to his thoughts. 'They'll make a punching bag out of a queer without connections. They're all shits in the Frunze, you know that. He knows that. Why? Why do it to you?"
"Because I laiow, and I told!" Rodin shouted at him. His eyes were wild, large and moist like those of a hunted deer or rabbit.
"Why did he have Sacha killed?"
"Because Sacha's the one I told. Don't you understand? If you know, you don't talk, not to anyone."
"Nothing's that important. Nothing could make him punish you like this, surely?" Priabin soothed and pressed. He was leaning slightly forward in his armchair, his eyes watching Rodin intently. It was a huge effort to let technique take its course. "Tell me,
what
's that important?"
He got up and crossed to the beanbag. Rodin seemed to cower into it as Priabin leaned over him.
'Tell me," he murmured. Had Rodin broken? Was he snapping like a stick now? He placed his hand on Rodin's shoulder, and the shoulder shuddered into his grip.
"You really want to know? Something so dangerous?" Rodin asked with a strange, wild cunning. "Really? Aren't you afraid?"
"Tell me about it."
Rodin put his bare feet on the carpet. Priabin stood aside as the young man crossed the room in his creased robe, to the racks of LPs, cassettes, and videotapes. He looked back once at Priabin, then began pulling tape boxes from the shelving. Priabin's body was taut with anticipation. Anna was still absent, Kedrov was much farther than ten miles away, one in the morning was an early hour.
Rodin was breaking open like a watermelon dropped from a tall building.
Rodin brandished a videotape box, neatly labeled, in his hand. His face was shining, eyes gleaming. "You want to know? You really want to know why? Look."
Vanity, secret knowledge, cleverness all conspired to rescue Rodin from his self-pity and isolation at that moment. They all delivered him to Priabin. Perhaps it was an act of revenge against his father. For the murder of Sacha, perhaps? Whatever it was, Rodin seemed compelled to speak. Soon he would know.
Rodin pressed the video cassette into the recorder beneath the television set. He flicked on the set, then began to run the recording on the tape. Priabin did not understand, but his tension was extreme, excitement was making his head spin.
The first images emerged. He was sharply, deeply disappointed. He did not understand. A swirling whirlpool slowly cleared into an image of the earth seen from space. Rodin stood beside the television like an eager, insistent teacher, watching him, one hand resting on the set. Then the Americans' latest space shuttle floated into view, gradually filling the screen. It floated like a white bird above tresses of cloud that partly masked a vivid, utterly beautiful blue expanse. The Pacific Ocean. He still did not understand. This was nothing, a cheat. These pictures had been on television, worldwide, for the past week or more. There was nothing here for him.
It was a test, he told himself. But he was failing the examination miserably. He glanced at Rodin's face.
The shuttle drifted, hanging like some great albatross over the ocean.
"What is it?" he asked eventually, almost mesmerized by the images on the screen, angry with himself; afraid that there was nothing to know—that was his deepest worry: that Rodin knew nothing.
"That's
Lightning
, you bloody stupid policeman," Rodin mocked. "Can't you even hazard a guess?"
"Find him, Serov—find him tonight."