Winter Hawk (83 page)

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 litde 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.
⁴
0ne 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.