Snow Wolf (48 page)

"A mistake. I don't know what I was
thinking of. And I never said my wife was from Leningrad."

"Mistake, my ass."

Stanski shifted his stance, ready to
move, but he was standing well back, too far to get closer to the colonel.

Zinov fingered his pistol. "I really
wouldn't try anything. I'm an excellent shot." He aimed the pistol at Stanski.
"Now, you're going to tell me just who you really are or I pull this
trigger.

Lukin sat in the freezing dome of the MIL
as his eyes swept the ribbon of highway that snaked below the helicopter.

They had taken off in darkness from the
Tondy barracks an hour before, flying at barely fifty meters above the main
Leningrad road. Acres of endless birch forest ran either side, coated white,
the lights of villages and street lamps burning in the winter grayness that
stretched ahead.

The helicopter pilot turned to Lukin and
shouted above the noise. "We can't go much farther, Major. There's a bank
of snow cloud moving in from the west. Flying in both darkness and bad weather
is not permitted by regulations."

Lukin had had difficulty convincing the
pilot's commander to allow the helicopter to fly in darkness, until he produced
the letter from Beria, and the man had given in grudgingly, warning Lukin of
the dangers of flying in poor light. The MIL wasn't equipped for it and the
pilot would have to stay close to the ground.

Now Lukin shook his head. "Forget
regulations. You turn back when I tell you. You have enough fuel?"

"For another two hundred kilometers,
but-"

"Then keep flying. Shout if you spot
anything."

The pilot started to protest, but then he
saw the grim look on Lukin's face and returned to his controls.

Lukin looked down at the map on his knee.
He had a small reading light in his hand and he flicked it over the map while
he continued to glance down at the highway. There was a column of tanks moving
south, their lumbering gray shapes like giant metal snails in the twilight.

The news had come back from Leningrad ten
minutes after Kaman had made the call. There was no Captain Oleg Petrovsky with
the ]4th and definitely no winter maneuvers in Novgorod. Lukin's instinct had
been right. But damn, he should have followed it at the checkpoint.

The inn where Zinov had stayed had been
visited by the KGB, but the place was locked and the owner nowhere to be found.
The men had broken in but a quick search of the premises had produced nothing.
There was only one other name on the inn's register, a captain named Bukarin.
Lukin would just have to wait and see if either the captain or the innkeeper
showed up.

By his own calculations, the Emka had to
be somewhere close up ahead. Even traveling at eighty kilometers an hour, the
maximum distance the car could have traveled was two hundred kilometers.
Allowing for traffic, more likely a hundred and fifty. That put them about five
minutes ahead.

Lukin considered that the colonel driving
the Ernka could have taken a minor road, but that was unlikely. No roadworks
blocked the main highway, and the minor roads were clogged with military
traffic. The pilot had already swooped low on several Emkas, come alongside
them in the darkness, disbelief on the faces of the passengers as the
helicopter hovered alongside to get a closer look at the occupants. But so far,
no sign of the colonel's car. Lukin still couldn't figure if the KGB man had
been an innocent dupe, or whether he was part of it.

He looked down at the highway again.
Empty. They had passed the last column of tanks minutes ago. He shouted to the
pilot. "You have a searchlight under the fuselage?"

The man looked back and nodded.

Lukin said, "If there's nothing in
the next ten minutes, we go back and check the minor roads, those that lead
into the forest. The car could have pulled in somewhere."

The pilot looked worried, pointed up
ahead at a bruised looking sky, and shook his head. "There's going to be
snow soon. Besides, there are high-voltage cables off the main highway. In this
poor light we could clip one. It's too dangerous."

"Do as I tell you," Lukin
commanded.

The pilot shook his head firmly.
"No, Major, I'm in charge of this aircraft. I must insist, it's too
dangerous. And if we get snow it could be treacherous. We turn back-" The
pilot turned away and tilted the control stick, and the MIL started to bank
tight, heading back the way they had come.

Lukin removed the pistol from his
holster, cocked it, and put it to the man's head.

The Pilot glanced over at him,
open-mouthed.

"Are you fucking crazy?"

"Maybe, but you'll be dead if you
don't do as I say, Switch on that search beam, Lieutenant, or I'll take your
damned ear off!"

"Colonel, you're making a
mistake."

Zinov stood there, his weapon pointed at
Stanski. "Talk. Before I'm tempted to shoot."

"I have nothing to say. Except I'm
going to report this. Your behavior is uncalled for."

There was a brief look of uncertainty on
Zinov's face and then he said, "You're trying my patience."

"Might I make a suggestion? We drive
down to the nearest Militia barracks. You phone my commanding officer. He'll
verify my identity."

Zinov smiled. "And meantime, you
both try and make a run for it. I'm not an idiot. And it's me who's going to
get the dit for capturing you, not that jumped-up fool of a major back in
Tallinn. So tell me who you are."

"Captain Oleg Petrovsky, 14th
Armored Division."

Zinov stepped closer and angrily leveled
the gun at Stanski. "Don't fuck with me."

Anna said, "Colonel, I think you
ought to know the truth."

Stanski went to speak, but Anna
interrupted. "No. I have to tell him."

She looked at Zinov steadily. "We're
not married to each other. My husband is an army officer in Leningrad. This man
is who he says he is. But we went to Tallinn to be alone together."

Zinov grinned. "Lovers? Nice try,
but you'll have to do better than that."

"In my bag you'll find a photograph
of my husband and me."

Zinov hesitated, suddenly unsure.
"Get it for me. Just remember not to try anything or your friend here
loses his head."

Anna moved to the car and found the
handbag on the back seat.

Zinov stepped closer to her and said,
"Toss it here."

Anna threw over the bag and as it landed
Zinov bent to pick it up.

She crossed the distance quickly and as
Zinov reacted and raised the gun in panic her hand chopped down hard on his
neck. He screamed in pain and Stanski was already moving, racing across the
ground between them, but he wasn't fast enough.

Zinov fired off a shot and it clipped
Stanski's tunic, just as his foot came up and kicked the gun from the colonel's
hand and his fist smashed into his jaw. Zinov fell back into the snow, blood
streaming from his mouth.

As Stanski grabbed the weapon, Zinov
looked up pleadingly, real fear in his eyes. "Please don't kill me.
Please, I'll tell no one. Please-"

Stanski shot him between the eyes.

Anna put a hand over her mouth in horror
and Stanski said, "Get back to the car."

She didn't move as she stared down at the
colonel's body. There was blood pumping from his wound. For several seconds she
stood there, stricken, until Stanski touched her arm.

"Get away from me!"

As she pushed him away, Stanski grabbed
her arm angrily and pulled her face up to his. "Listen to me. You're in
shock. You think I like this?

This is war, Anna. This is life or-
death. He would have killed us both. And just remember he was KGB, the same
people who put you in the Gulag. The same people who took your child. Remember
that."

His words suddenly jolted her back.

"You'd better help me bury the body.
See if there's anything in the car we can dig with. Quickly. I don't want to be
here all day."

She watched as he turned over the body
and began searching through the pockets. Suddenly she looked up at the sky as
she heard a faint chopping sound, but then it faded and was gone.

"WHAT's wrong?" There were
beads of sweat on Stanski's face and he was staring at her urgently.

"Nothing. I thought I heard
something . and then she started toward the car.

It took them five minutes to bury the
body in a shallow grave in the snow, digging with their hands and using a tire
iron from the car. When they finished they were soaking wet and their clothes
were covered in blood.

Stanski said, "You'd better change.
I'll get the suitcases."

She started to strip and Stanski fetched
the suitcases from the trunk and undressed himself. He put on the corduroy suit
and cap and when Anna had finished dressing he took one last look around the
area and said, "Give me your clothes."

She handed them over and Stanski crossed
to some bushes and scrabbled in the snow with his bare hands until he had dug a
hole deep enough to bury their clothes. He then covered the hole with soil and
snow again until the earth looked as if it had not been disturbed.

"Let's go."

When they reached the car, Stanski looked
at her face. It was pale and drawn and he could see real fear in her eyes.

"Anna, what I did was necessary, you
know that."

"Yes, I know." She shivered.

"What's the matter? Cold?"

"And frightened."

"We can be in Leningrad in less than
two hours. With luck, "Anna ... no one's going to know Zinov's missing for
some time."

His hand touched her face, then he
removed his jacket and pressed it gently around her shoulders. Anna protested.
"You'll freeze."

"Take it."

She looked up at him. "Alex ..
"What?"

She started to say something, then seemed
to change her mind and shook her head. "Nothing."

She turned to look back at their footprints
in the snow. "What about those?"

"There's more snow on the way, by
the look of it. They'll be covered up quickly enough. Come on, let's go. The
quicker we're away from here the better."

He stowed the suitcases in the trunk and
they climbed into the car. He turned on the headlights and lit up the track
through the woods that led back to the highway.

There was a sudden dull chopping noise
that filled the air, high above them, and they saw a powerful beam of light
sweep through the forest behind, the sound growing louder until it became a
deafening thunder.

Suddenly a helicopter reared above the
trees, the light from its dazzling beam caught them in mid-stride.

A shot rang out and the passenger window
shattered.

Anna let out a cry as the bullet zinged
past her.

"Hold on!" a roar and the
Stanski frantically started the Emka. It gave wheels spun wildly before they
gripped in the snow, then it shot forward down the, forest track.

Lukin rubbed his eyes and peered down.

They were over forest now, skimming acres
of dense birch trees. The searchlight was on, its silver finger probing the
foliage below them, swinging left and right as the pilot controlled the yaw of
the aircraft. Every now and then the man looked over at Lukin nervously. Lukin
still held the gun in his hand. If they dropped too low they might clip the
trees or the electric power lines running close to the highway.

They had been sweeping along the road for
almost@ ten minutes, crisscrossing to the woods on either side, but had seen
nothing. Lukin swore in frustration.

There was sweat on the pilot's brow as he
looked over and said nervously, "Major, if we don't turn around now, we're
going to be in big trouble. We won't have enough fuel to get back to Tallinn
and the weather's going to be against us ..."

Lukin peered out through the dome. The
man was right. There was a dirty-looking bank of snow clouds moving toward them
from the west. "Keep flying."

"Major ... I must protest!"

"I'll take responsibility for the
aircraft. Do as I say!"

The pilot gritted his teeth and turned
back to the controls. There was a growing edge of desperation in the man's
voice. It happened then. The searchlight passed over a narrow road in the
forest and Lukin suddenly picked out the tire tracks of a car.

"Over there!" He pointed and
the pilot saw the marks. Up ahead Lukin glimpsed a small rise in the forest and
beyond it what looked like the outline of a frozen lake.

"Go lower!"

"Major, if we get too close to those
tree tops ... "Do it, man!"

The pilot shook his head in exasperation
but obeyed the order, the searchlight picking out the twin snail-like tracks
cutting along the woodland road. They led up through a rise to the frozen take.
As they came sweeping over the lake shore, suddenly Lukin saw the black Emka
and his heart skipped. He saw the two figures fleetingly as they climbed into
the car. He screamed at the pilot, "Hold it here! Hold it!"