Firefox Down (23 page)

'He's dying, Kenneth…' He turned back to Gant. 'Tell us the airplane was destroyed.'

Deaf - would he hear? Gant reached up - huge effort, sweat bathed his body, but he grabbed the general's uniform and pulled him nearer so that he could hear. He placed his lips near the general's ear, near the earpiece…

'Not burned… not burned…' Something seemed to hurry him, quicken inside him like an increase in adrenalin. He began to babble incoherently, desperately trying to make himself understood. 'Not burned… drowning… drowning - on fire, but water, water… not burned… landed, not burned…water…'

The general's earpiece fell from his ear. Gant lay back in abject apology. His body twitched with adrenalin, or something. He felt
too
alive, a collection of jangling nerve-ends. He scrabbled for the earpiece. The general shouted at him, jerked away, but Gant held the earpiece. A long wire snake unreeled in his hand, seemingly alive. There was nothing at the other end of the wire, no box in the general's breast-pocket, like his father had. The wire trailed away out of sight.

Someone shouted, almost a snarl. He did not understand the language. Truth bubbled in his throat as self-pity had done. He gritted his teeth, held the words back, making them into a growl…

He did not know why he was stopping himself from speaking. The adrenalin demanded it. His body twitched and jumped with it. If he could tell, say everything, then he could relax. He must tell - must tell…

He sat up, jerkily, quickly, mechanically. Sat up in bed. Not bad for a dying man…

Not dying - tell - explain - in the lake…

'Not -explain!' he said through his teeth, looking around him. 'Listen!' he cried.

He saw two figures in one corner of the room. And flowers. And other faces. Nurse, doctor, general, man in suit -

Two generals...Blue and brown...

They stared at each other, the two generals.

'Listen to me!' Gant screamed. He had to tell them now - he had to. He would burst, explode, If he didn't get the words out. He had to tell them.' Listen!'

He moved, tried to pull his legs out of the bed but they would not move and he felt himself tumble forward. The floor rushed up at him, blue and white tiles. He dived at it, striking it with all the force of the energy surging through him.

Vladimirov rushed forward, shaking off the interrogator's restraining arm garbed in the USAF uniform, and knelt by the unconscious American. Blood seeped from Gant's forehead where it had struck the tiles. Vladimirov, in his frustrated rage, smeared it over Gant's face and neck like some horrific tribal badge of manhood. Then he turned to look at the interrogator in his American uniform.

'You had him!' he raged. 'You had him in the palm of your hand!'

The doctor lifted Gant's body back onto the bed. Then the nurse wiped the smeared blood from his face and dabbed antiseptic on the spreading, livid bruise. Vladimirov stood up and moved away from the bed. Gant was breathing stertorously, his chest heaving up and down as the last effects of the stimulant surged through his body. Uselessly -

'It is a matter of time,' the interrogator said, checking the earpiece the doctor had removed from Gant's hands. He had used it to listen to the comments of his aide, seated in another room in front of a bank of monitors where hidden cameras focused on eye-movements, muscular reaction, a hundred other tiny factors. He shook his head ruefully. 'A pity - but next time for certain - '

Vladimirov grabbed him by the upper arms. 'I
want
that information - I want it tonight!'

'He has to be allowed to rest now. We have to clear his system before we try again.'

'I want that information!'

'You'll have it - before morning,' the interrogator snapped, shaking off Vladimirov's fierce grip. 'Before morning!'

The Hercules transport, bathed in hard white light, sat like a stranded whale at the end of the runway. Beyond it, the lights of Lincoln created a dull, furnace-like glow on the underside of the low clouds. As he stood with Pyott near the RAF Land-Rover which would ferry him to the transport aircraft, Aubrey was impatient. The breeze lifted Pyott's grey hair and dishevelled it. It gave a wild, almost prophetic emphasis to the gloomy expression on his features.

Buckholz and Curtin were already on board. The Hercules waited only for Aubrey. The small, routine Ops. Room was behind him. He had left it, and the larger underground room beneath it, with a sense of freedom, of advantages gained, of wilfully having got his own way.

Now, Pyott held him - like the Ancient Mariner, Aubrey thoaght irreverently, and then said, 'Well, Giles, I wasn't on my way to a wedding, but you've nevertheless detained me. What is it you want to say?' His smile was an attempt to jostle Pyott into a more acquiescent mood. The soldier smoothed down his wind-blown hair and returned the smile.

'I want your assurance, Kenneth - ' he began.

'Oh, don't be so solemn!' Aubrey chided.

'Kenneth-damn it, you're impossible! I want your assurance, your
solemn word
that if the Skyhook does not arrive before the deadline expires - you will destroy the airframe completely.'

'Oh, Giles -'

'Don't "Oh, Giles" me, Kenneth. The airframe must not be left intact for anyone else to retrieve. You must salvage the most important systems and then destroy the rest. Now, do I have your word on it?' He paused, then added, 'It's too serious for anything less than your word. I know it isn't in your orders - you've persuaded everyone that your precious Skyhook
will
arrive - but, you must make certain the Firefox is not recovered by the Soviet Union. That is imperative.'

Aubrey patted Pyott's arm, just at the elbow. 'I promise, Giles, that the Firefox will not fall into the wrong hands. Don't worry - you'll give yourself ulcers.'

'
You
will give me ulcers, Kenneth.'

Aubrey looked across the tarmac. His gamble was beginning: He knew that Pyott was right, that his entire fortune was staked on breaks in the weather and a single helicopter already in difficulties and behind schedule. And, for himself, he was on the point of laying do wn his cards.

Gant, he thought suddenly, and shivered. He pulled the collar of his overcoat around his neck and ears, but felt no warmer.

'Good luck,' Pyottsaid, holding out his hand.

'What? Oh, yes - ' Aubrey returned the handshake. There was no trace of excitement left in his body; nothing now but cold and fear and nerves.'

His head hurt. It was heavy and seemed grossly enlarged, a huge melonlike thing. He could not lift it from the pillows. Faint lights washed across the ceiling, but he could not hear the noise of passing traffic. When he breathed in, there was the smell of ether. Hospital. The word filled him with a vague dread. His body seemed jumpily alert, filled with an undefined tension.

Hospital. Ether-smell. He found the thread once more. Street, hedges, steps, door, hall, marble staircase, gallery with ornamental urns, white room, white room -

He stifled a groan. This was not the same room, not the same bed. He had been moved. After… after his interrogation under drugs…

Gant understood. He raised his heavy arm. The watch was still there. In the darkness, the hands glowed. A little before ten. He let his arm drop, tired of supporting its weight. He was aware of other bodies; aware of muttered or snorting breaths. People were sleeping in the room. He pushed with his hands against the mattress, easing his heavy body half-upright against the bed-head. Slowly, sweating with the effort and stifling his heavy breathing, he turned his head from side to side. A night-light over one of the beds helped him to see the contours and outlines of the small ward in which he had been placed. It was a brief glance. He slid down the bed again when he saw the male nurse sitting near the double doors. The man was dimly lit by a small angle-poise lamp, and silhouetted against the light entering through small, opaque panes in the doors. He appeared to be reading a book. When he lay flat again he wondered if he had warned the nurse he was conscious, and listened for the scrape of his chair. Eventually satisfied, he closed his eyes and pictured the room.

There were six beds, three of them occupied by sleeping - drugged? - figures. One's head was heavily bandaged, the second was identifiably male, the third, on the far side of the room and away from the weak light, was in deep shadow. The windows of the ward were barred. In a wash of headlights from outside, he had seen the vertical lines of the bars and the wire-reinforced glass beyond them. The male nurse near the only exit from the ward was muscular, probably armed.

Gant listened, but the nurse did not move. So intently was he listening that he heard a page of the book being turned. Then he relaxed, and immediately the small victory of knowing and mapping his surroundings dissipated. He was trapped in the room; parked there until he was again required for interrogation. He knew he had been interrogated twice; he knew they were only waiting until his body had recovered sufficiently to be drugged once more; he knew that at the next interrogation he would tell them what they wanted to know.

He remembered the USAF general in his uniform, he remembered Aubrey's voice. He remembered the scrambled and confused mess his thoughts and awareness had become. He understood the furious, undeniable desire to tell the truth that had come over him, and which they would induce in him again…

Burns?

He touched himself carefully. He was wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. His legs did not hurt when he touched them, nor did his arms or face. There was a lump on his temple, but he remembered the tiles rushing up at him. They had saved him from telling.

But he had believed he was dying -

That was the real measure of their power over him, of his inability to continue resisting.

The sweat was cold on his body. His hands lay beside his thighs, reminding him he no longer possessed even trousers. Nothing but a sweatshirt - no shirt, no jacket, no shoes. He was helpless. Like the figures in the other beds, who were probably criminals or even dissidents, he had ceased to exist. Isolation swamped him.

He struggled to escape it by following the thread back into his interrogation. His removal to this silent ward might mean he had told them everything, that they had finished with him while they checked the truth of his story - had he told them?

Slowly, cautiously, he sifted through the wreckage - father, aircraft carrier, burns, Aubrey, the lake, drowning, burning, ejecting… the tiles, the tiles…

He had been sitting up, screaming for them to listen to him. What had he said? He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating. What had he said?

He could not stifle the audible sigh of relief when he was certain. Nothing. He had not told them. They did not know.

He listened as the nurse's chair scraped on the linoleum. He heard the footsteps approach. The light over his bed flicked on. Gant controlled his eyelids, his lips. The seconds passed. He tried to breathe normally. The light went out, the footsteps retreated, the chair scraped once more. The nurse grunted as he sat down. Gant heard the book being picked up, re-opened, pages being shuffled.

He was sweating freely once more. It had taken a vast effort of control and made him realise how weak he was. The nurse would have been capable of plucking him upright with one hand and dragging him from the bed without effort. He could never overpower him.

And there was no weapon. His itchy, sweating hands, tense yet without strength, did not constitute a weapon. And there was nothing else. He could never take the nurse's gun away from him, even if he wore one.

He heard the chiming of a clock somewhere, a small, silvery, unreal sound. Ten. He must have been asleep for hours. In all probability they would be coming soon. They were pressed for time. There was an almost frantic sense of urgency about their pursuit of what he knew. There was no reason for it - no one else knew of his whereabouts or the location of the airplane, but they could not seem to stop until it was over.

So they would come, and he would be helpless. Weaponless and helpless.

Mitchell Gant lay in the dark waiting for the doctors and interrogators. The bandaged head of one of the other patients loomed in his thoughts. A mummy, almost. Something, like himself, long dead and forgotten.

He felt himself once more on the point of losing the struggle against his sense of isolation.

Aubrey felt the nose of the Hercules C-130K dip towards the carpet of gleaming cloud he could see through the round porthole in the fuselage. It still lay far below them, stippled and endless. The moon was brilliant, the stars as hard as diamonds. It was difficult to believe that from that black, light-punctured clearness would come weather conditions even worse than they had anticipated when the aircraft took off from Scampton.

He removed the headset, his conversation with Waterford at Kirkenes at an end. As he stared through the porthole, the clouds seemed to drift slowly up to meet them. They were still flying along the Norwegian coast, inside the Arctic Circle. The pilot was taking the Hercules down as low as he could, to deceive the long-range Russian radars, before turning to an easterly heading which would take them towards Kirkenes. To all intents and purposes, the Hercules would have dropped out of radar contact west of Bardufoss and be assumed to be a routine transport flight to the Norwegian NATO base.

Aubrey fretted, even though he attempted to allay his mood by losing himself in the mesmeric effect of the clouds. It might have been a white desert landscape with wind-shaped rocks rising from its surface. The self-hypnosis held momentarily, then dissipated. Aubrey transferred his gaze to the whale-ribbed, bare, hard-lit interior of the transport aircraft.

It was almost done, they were almost there. He was for the moment in suspension, unable to do more. It was always the most frustrating, dragging part of an intelligence operation - the flight, the drive, the train journey, whatever it was… just before the border was crossed, the building entered, the target sighted. Useless tension, pointless adrenalin. He did not
control
the thing at that moment -