Firefox Down (19 page)

'So?' Gant said in a surly tone. The general's lips twitched. 'Wreckage? I told you that.'

'Strangely, though, our reconnaissance photographs - which have been examined by experts - indicate no signs of wreckage from the MiG-31. How would you account for that, Major?'

Think, think -

'Uh - it's got to be around there somewhere…' In control of his features, he straightened and looked at Vladimirov. 'I hit the button, the airplane was on fire, I parted company from the seat, I saw the airplane explode - how far away it was by that time, I don't know.'

'And you landed - ?'

'Less than a mile from the MiG-25's wreckage, I guess…'

'So you consider that a radius of-oh, what, ten miles? A radius of ten miles around the point would contain the wreckage of the MiG-31 ?'

'Can't be more than that. It was a couple of seconds, maybe ten - speed was down, and I saw the explosion…' He nodded, inwardly envisaging that moment of suspension as the burning Phantom raced away from him and he turned over and over before parting company with the ejector seat - then the Phantom had exploded, a bright orange ball of flame… Yes, that was it. Hold onto that. With luck, the reconnaissance photographs were of too narrow a strip. Time, time -

'I see,' Vladimirov murmured, fingering his top lip, making little hollow plopping sounds as he tapped it against his teeth. Then he bent to Andropov's intercom, and snapped, 'Bring in the exhibit, please.'

One of Andropov's bodyguards from the outer office dragged something that looked like a rucksack into the room, then left as Andropov's wave dismissed them. Gant stared at Andropov, who was smiling. Then he looked into Vladimirov's face. The general's mouth was working, is if he were chewing at something indigestible and cold. Finally, Gant looked back towards the pack. Priabin bent to pick it up. His smile was almost radiant. He brought it to the desk and dropped.it at Gant's feet.

'Your parachute, I imagine?' Andropov remarked.

'No-!'

'There are not too many of these lying casually unused in the snow of Finnish Lapland. In fact, I should be surprised if there were
any
others. A pity. I believed your story - except that I knew about this, of course.'

Gant leaned on the desk. 'That's not my 'chute, man! The airplane blew up just after I ejected. I buried my 'chute near the landing point. Where did you find this?'

'Exactly where you had buried it. Not far, in fact, from the village where you borrowed those clothes - which smell of Lapp, I must observe. Dung, grease and sweat…'

'
It's not my 'chute
!' Gant shouted.

'It is, Gant,' Vladimirov snapped. 'You landed that aircraft somewhere - where was it? Where
is
it?'

'No-'

Andropov pressed the buzzer on his intercom. Immediately, two of his personal bodyguards, torsos large and muscled beneath their suits, stepped into the room. Gant watched them, tensing himself, counting the last futile seconds. Now he knew why he had been counting. It was a record of the time before
this
began, before the pain.

His fists clenched. Priabin's hand was at his holster. The two large men moved swiftly, lightly towards him, almost as if they floated over the carpet. They were close - he tensed -

Stomach, jaw, back, head, legs, side…

As he fell, they punched then kicked. Perhaps a dozen blows were struck before he lay stretched on the floor, each a separate, new, agonising pain. It was an assault. Frighteningly fast, terrifyingly damaging. He felt paralysed, unable to move, hardly able to breathe and groan.

Then he was dragged to his feet. His breath disappeared again. He was doubled over in their grasp. Their holds on his forearms and elbows were separate, distinct, new pains. Head hanging, He looked up at Andropov's smiling face. A white handkerchief was held over his mouth and nose, as if they intended suffocating him. But it was loose. It was simply to prevent blood falling on the carpet, the desk.

'He does know, Vladimirov?' he heard the Chairman of the KGB ask quietly.

Vladimirov seemed disappointed that the beating had stopped. 'Oh, yes, he knows,' he replied. 'He knows precisely. He's the only one who does.'

'Very well - this must be done quickly - ' Gant felt his stomach heave, his body struggle inside the chain-mail of the spreading, burning pain. Andropov pressed his intercom, and snapped, 'Tell the Unit to prepare for an important arrival.' Then he looked at Gant. There was distaste, probably at the blood staining the white handkerchief. He nodded dismissively. 'Take him to the Unit. Tell them to prepare him for interrogation - within the hour!'

Gant was swung around, dragged towards the door. As he passed the young colonel, Priabin was smiling a sad, wise, confident smile. You'll tell, the smile and the eyes announced. Bad luck, but you'll tell…

'Kenneth, it's impossible! Forty-eight hours is a strict, complete,
total
impossibility. Please take my word for it.' Pyott shook his head sadly.

'But, if we leave tonight…?' Aubrey persisted.

Again, Pyott shook his head. 'I'm afraid no.
We
could be in position by tomorrow. But, the Sikorsky would not be there and half our supplies would not be there. That would leave us less than twenty-four hours to lift the airframe and get it over the border!'

'Giles, don't be stubborn - '

'You are the one who is being stubborn, Kenneth, for Heaven's sake - ! I lose all patience with you. The discussion is
closed
. It cannot be done in the time available. We must decline the Finnish offer.'

'It's there-intact. The prize is still there - '

'Unfortunately,' Pyott replied with freezing irony, 'we have been scratched from the race.'

'Damn you, Giles!' Aubrey breathed, looking around at Curtin and then Buckholz for support. The argument had been in progress for almost an hour. The had skirted the plot table, paced beside it, leaned upon it, as if it were the dock, the judge's seat, the gallery of a court. And ended where they had begun, the Americans siding with Pyott and Aubrey more and more exasperated.

'I'm sorry you feel like that, Kenneth, but - damn your insufferable self-esteem, your pride.
That's
what is at the root of the matter -
your
success or failure…' Aubrey's face was white with rage, with admission. Pyott dropped his gaze and murmured an apology.

Buckholz looked at his watch. Curtin coughed, shuffled his feet, glancing at the plot table where symbols and counters, even torn slips of paper with folded bases to make them stand like cardboard soldiers, indicated their state of readiness. Outside, on the tarmac, the Hercules transport stood awaiting them. It was being loaded with supplies flown in from specialist RAF and army units. Aubrey had been up to see it once; he was gloating when he descended again to the soured atmosphere of the Ops. Room.

Buckholz and Curtin waited. Pyott glanced at the plot table. Nothing more than a box of child's toys, stirring memories but of no use to the adult.

Aubrey hurried to the telephone the moment it began to ring. He snatched up the receiver.

'Yes?' he demanded breathlessly. 'Peter - what is it? What - you're certain of it… followed the car, saw it drive in… no, there can't be any doubt-yes, Peter, thank you.' He put down the receiver with great and pointless deliberation. There was, he knew, nothing to consider or think about - nothing to delay his agreement with Pyott that the operation was impossible… more impossible now than stealing the aircraft had ever been. He studied each of them in turn.

'Well?' Pyott demanded.

'Well? Well?' Aubrey snapped. 'Gant has been transferred to the KGB Unit out on the Mira Prospekt - ' He waited for their reaction. He could see that they sensed his depression, but the name meant little or nothing to them. 'It is a unit operated for the KGB by the Serbsky Institute. They are going to interrogate Gant under drugs, gentlemen - I'm afraid we do not have forty-eight hours, after all… we probably do not have twenty-four, perhaps not even twelve…' He sighed, then added: 'Gant will not be able to help himself. He will tell them
everything.
'

'This is most strange,
That she whom even now was your best object
… should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle
So many folds of favour.
Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it; or your fore-vouched affection
Fall into taint.'
- King Lear

The dream required the presence of his father. His father had to be made to walk along the Mira Prospekt and be seen from the vantage point of a passing black car. If he could make his father walk in a northerly direction, if he could slow down the moving car to a kerbside crawl, if, if if…

It was important to remejnber the Mira Prospekt. Important, too, to remember the room in the moments before the needle, the pause, the unconsciousness. White, clinical, smelling faintly of antiseptic, rubber, ether, furnished with an operating table and hard chairs. Most important to remember the faces…

Vlad - i - mir - ov -

The Soviet general looked like his father now, but Gant remembered who he was. White coats - doctors… Guards, a nurse, others he did not know. He tried to see his father's face, but was forced to allow the shirt-sleeved, shambling figure to wear Vladimirov's features. However, he made him move and glance from side to side like his father. The imaginary car slowed, sliding along the kerb, and Gant peered at the passing faces as they kept pace with his father's intoxicated, shiftless, shameful progress. Nurse, doctor with the needle, other doctor, guard, man in suit - who was he? - Andropov, Priabin - no, no - !

Pavel, Baranovich, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Fenton - his face like red-dyed dough - other faces… Gant concentrated. He could see, ahead of them and farther along the Mira Prospekt, against the snow-laden clouds, the huge cosmonaut's monument of a rocket atop its narrowing trail of golden fire. His father was an insect-figure moving towards it, then the car turned off the road, moving at a snail's pace behind the shambling, despicable gait he knew so well. His father was heading through tall iron gate towards the front entrance of a large house hidden from the busy road by tall, thick, dark hedges.

It looked like the house of a dream, but it was real. He recollected the steps, the door opening - nurse's uniform, guard's uniforms-and two flights of marble staircase. His father had disappeared into one of the ground floor rooms, he thought. It did not matter. Each time he retraced his journey, his father reappeared to hold the memories together.

It was important to remember the journey. To remember the black limousine, the pressure of the two bodyguards' frames on either side of him; to remember the Mira Prospekt and to remember the house, the steps, the door, the marble staircase, the columns and doorways and ornamental urns and pots, the old furniture, the white room and its smells, the doctors, guards, Vladimirov. Vital to remember the hard chair, the straps about his wrists and ankles, the needle… held up, spurt of colourless fluid, hovering, moving closer, skin pinched up, needle inserted…

In his dream, he was sweating profusely with the effort of memory - but he had done it! He had remembered it all while the dream still contained him…

Remembered everything, everything that informed him that he was under interrogation, that he was drugged and prepared - probably sodium pentothal followed by benzadrine, or some other two drugs in harness. He was only dreaming now while they waited for the first drug to take effect, he was certain of it… then the stimulant would jolt him into wakefulness, dreamy and slow or hyperactive he did not know, but when it happened the questions would begin -

And he had to remember everything
! He knew where he was, he knew why he was there. He knew they would ask him questions about - about…?

Gant panicked in his dream, felt himself chilled and burned by his fear. He could not remember
why he
was there!

Don't, he told himself, don't…
I have to
… don't, secret, don't…

He had remembered everything - he had remembered enough.

Pinprick - ?

His skin crawled. Pinprick? He was instantly wary…

Something else - quickly, something else, quickly… just before the needle, as he looked down at the needle, as his skin was pinched into a little hillock and the needle went in, something else…?

Watch, watch,
watch -

They hadn't taken off his watch, he had been staring at it as his eyes snapped shut and he was suddenly in darkness. He had told himself to remember the time, to look when he awoke again. Time -

It was getting light. Murmur of voices that was more than the dream-traffic on the Mira Prospekt. People constructing sentences, discussing, arguing… waiting for him to awaken.

Light - his head was lifted, eyelid plucked at, a blurred form moved away, and a fuzzy light was revealed which did not seem to hurt his eyes.

Pinprick again. A few moments, and he was able to see more clearly. Doctors, nurses, uniforms. White room. It's starting, he told himself with great difficulty. He seemed to be trapped in a heavy, translucent oil, his thoughts moving with extreme difficulty. It wasn't like a dream - he had swum easily through the dream, raced with it. Now, his body - he was aware of it quite clearly - was laden, his eyes focused slowly and he could almost feel them moving in his head as he transferred his gaze from face to face. He saw a doctor nod, slowed-down like a failing movie-reel.

He remembered the watch. Focused with exaggerated slowness. Read the time. It did not seem meaningful. Thirty minutes had passed. It did not seem to matter. Father on the street outside, a long gallery on the second floor lined by tall ornamental urns. It did not matter. None of it mattered. He was trapped in his body which was trapped in the translucent oil. He watched the faces around his chair, as dull and unmoving as a fish on the watery side of an aquarium's tank. He stared out at the human faces, unthinking.