Firefox

by Craig Thomas

  ‘How?’

  ‘Check on every file of every person we know to be connected with the American or European aerospace programmes, or who ever has been connected…’

  Tortyev’s face seemed to illuminate from within. ‘They sent a young, fit man - with brains. Why not an astronaut? One of our own cosmonauts would know what to look for, know how to analyse information received from someone like this Baranovich, wouldn’t he?’

  Priabin was silent for a moment. ‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’ he said, wanting to be convinced. ‘Well - is it, though? Think of it. You’re looking for a man in his thirties, fit, intelligent, elusive … you thought he was an agent, at first. He has to possess some of the qualities of a commando, and of a scientist. The NASA astronauts are the mostly highly-trained people in the world. Why not?’

  Priabin seemed still reluctant. ‘Mm. I wonder?’

  ‘You don’t have too much time in which to wonder. Dmitri,’ Tortyev reminded him.

  ‘I know! Let me think … I wonder how many files there are relating to astronauts and to air force pilots and the like?’

  ‘Hundreds - perhaps thousands. Why?’

  ‘In that case, because our service collects anything and everything and, like the careful housewife, never throws anything away, we have to have an order of preference. We’ll have to look at the computer-index.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Tortyev, seemingly glad of action. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Besides which - this place is beginning to smell of Jews - and death,’ Tortyev added.

  ‘Very well, then - I’ll ring for a car.’

  ‘Don’t bother - at this time in the morning, it’ll be quicker to walk.’

  It was four-forty when the two men left the room together.

  Gant had moved a chair into the shower-cubicle and arranged a fold of the shower-curtain to shield him from the spray. The cubicle was full of steam. He was in no doubt that Pavel was dead by now, or in some local KGB cellar, having his name and mission beaten out of him. It troubled Gant to know for certain that Pavel would take a lot of punishment before he would tell, if he ever told. Again, he was forced to feel responsible.

  More than Pavel, however, who might well have died neatly and quickly in a gunfight of some kind, he was troubled by Baranovich and the others. He had never encountered dumb, accepting courage such as that before, and it puzzled him.

  Gant had removed his uniform, and was sitting in the cubicle in his shorts. The GRU uniform, now an encumbrance, had gone into the same locker as Voskov. He had had to hold the body with one hand, to stop it toppling outwards, while he flung the creased bundle that had been Captain Chekhov into the corner of the locker. He had not looked into Voskov’s face and thankfully he had locked the body out of sight once more. Then he had turned on the shower. The steam, though it made his breathing unpleasant, kept him warm. He sat astride the chair, his arms folded across the back, chin resting on his arms, letting the constant stream of the hot water lull him, closing his eyes. He could not sleep, and knew he must not, but he tried to reduce the activity of his thoughts by the semblance of sleep.

  At first he didn’t hear the voice from the room beyond, from the restroom. The second call alerted him and he sprang to his feet, unconsciously being careful not to scrape the chair on the floor of the shower.

  ‘Yes?’ he called.

  ‘Security check. Colonel - important.’

  It had to be the KGB - it had to be Kontarsky’s last fling, his final attempt to trace the agent he must suspect was already inside Bilyarsk.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Your identification.’

  Gant panicked. He had left Voskov’s papers in his pockets, bundling the body quickly and thankfully into the locker. Now they wanted to see his papers - if they didn’t see them, then they would want to see him… He wondered how he might bluff his way out. The nervous reaction had jolted him awake, and his pulse was hammering in his head, and he found it hard to catch his breath. Though he only half-suspected it, this latest, unexpected jolt was drawing vastly on his reserves of control. Clearly, above the levels of the blood’s panic, he thought that Voskov would be a pampered individual, one likely to take unkindly to such an intrusion.

  Loudly, irritatedly, he called out: ‘I am having a shower, whoever you are. What do you mean by disturbing me with your stupid questions?’ To him, his voice sounded, in the steam-filled curtained hole, to be weak, highpitched, unconvincing. He heard a cough, deferential, abashed, from the man in the restroom. He peered through the steam and the shower-curtain.

  There was a shadow, against the light from the door into the bathroom. It was two or three steps across the space of tiles between himself and that shadow.

  ‘Sorry, Colonel, but…’

  ‘This is your idea, of course - soldier? It is not Colonel Kontarsky’s direct order that the restroom should be searched, and myself questioned?’ He felt his voice gaining power, arrogance. He could play the part of Voskov - it was a part close to his own professional arrogance, expressing his own contempt.

  ‘I - orders, sir?’ he heard, and knew that the man was lying.

  Gant hesitated, until he thought the moment was almost past and he was too late, then he barked: ‘Get out, before you find yourself reported!’

  He waited. No doubt the man could see his shadow, as the shower-curtain wafted against his skin, drawn in by the heat. He wondered whether the man would dare cross that space of cold tiles, just to be sure. He had left the gun, Chekhov’s regulation Makarov automatic, in the pocket of Voskov’s bathrobe, hanging behind the bathroom door. He cursed himself for that lapse, and wondered, at the same moment whether he could kill the man with his hands before a shot was fired.

  The moment passed. Again, Gant had the sense of something massive, a whole world in orbit, turning over, leaving him spent, tired, drained.

  ‘Sorry, sir - of course. But - be careful, sir. The Colonel issued us with instructions to kill - the man’s dangerous. Good luck with the flight, sir,’ he added ingratiatingly. Gant felt his blood pumping like a migraine in his temples.

  He hardly heard the bathroom door close behind the man who had been only a voice, and a shadow against the light. When he realised that the patch of light which had outlined the KGB man was no longer there, he stepped from behind the shower-curtain, and fumbled in the pocket of Voskov’s bathrobe. He clutched the gun in both hands, then pressed the cold metal of the barrel against his temple. Then he held his left hand in front of his face. He saw the tremor, faint, but increasing. His face registered the fear, as if he were looking at something outside himself, something inevitable that he could not prevent. He sagged, dripping wet, onto the seat of the lavatory, head hanging, gun held limply between his knees.

  Gant was terrified. He knew he was about to have the dream again, that the last minutes had drained him of his last reserves of bravado, self-deception, nerve. He was a limp rag, an empty vessel into which the dream would pour. He could not stop it now.

  He felt his muscles tightening behind his knees, in his calves. He knew he had to get dry, get into Voskov’s pressuresuit while he could still move, before the paralysis that inevitably accompanied the images trapped him where he sat. He tried to get up, but his legs were a long, long way from his brain, and were rubbery and weak. He sagged back onto the seat. He punched at his thighs, as if punishing them for a rebellion - he struck himself across the thigh with the barrel of the gun, but he felt little. The hysterical paralysis had returned, taken over…

  He was trapped, he knew. He could only hope that the dream, and the fit, would pass in time.

  Re could smell burning in his nostrils, and the noise of the shower crackled like wood on a fire. He could smell burning flesh…

  There was a kind of grotesque, mocking courtesy about the way in which Baranovich, Kreshin, and Semelovsky were served with their coffee and sandwiches at the side of the aircraft itself. While the
technicians, including the still-grimiing, obsequious, ironical Grosch, left the hangar for the restaurant in the adjoining security building, the three suspected men were ordered to remain by the junior KGB officer in command of hangar security. Guards stood with apparent indifference ten yards from them.

  Baranovich, as he sipped the hot, sweet liquid, was grateful that the KGB. as yet, seemed to have little idea of what to do with them. It would seem, he thought, that they had taken the easiest path, making sure that a number of eyes were upon them, at every moment. Baranovich smiled at Kreshin, whose lip trembled as he attempted to imitate the gesture.

  Baranovich said: ‘I know, Ilya, that it looks very much like a firing-squad, with the three of us with our backs to the plane, and the guards with their rifles at the ready.’ Kreshin nodded, and swallowed, still trying to smile. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Baranovich added softly.

  ‘I - can’t help it, Pyotr,’ Kreshin replied.

  Baranovich nodded. ‘I gave up being afraid many years ago - but then, it was when the flesh no longer seemed to call so very strongly to me.’ He placed his hand on Kreshin’s shoulder as the young man stood next to him. He felt Kreshin’s frame trembling beneath his strong grip. Kreshin looked up at him, wanting to face the truth, and wanting to be told comfortable lies. Baranovich shook his head sadly. ‘You love her very much then?’

  ‘Yes…’ Kreshin’s eyes were bright with moisture, and his tongue licked at his lower lip.

  ‘I - am sorry for that,’ Baranovich murmured. ‘That will make it very hard for you.’

  Kreshin seemed to come to a decision. Baranovich’s hand was still on his shoulder, and the older man could feel the muscular effort the man was making, to control the tremor.

  ‘If - you, you can do this - then, so can I…’ he said.

  ‘Good. Drink your coffee now, and warm yourself. That guard over there thinks you are afraid. Don’t give him the satisfaction.’ Unable to complete the heroic fiction, he added: ‘Even if such ideas are nonsense, to an intelligent man…’

  ‘What do we do?’ snapped Semelovsky, as if eager to complete the whole process, including his own demise. ‘We have little time left. Kreshin and I have slowed the work on the tail-assembly as much as possible - but it is nearly complete.’

  Baranovich nodded. ‘I understand. Grosch, my bete noir, my devil - he, too, will become suspicious if we do not finish within half-an-hour, or a little more.’ He sipped at his coffee, and then took a bite from a hefty ham sandwich that had been brought down to him. ‘Of course, you realise that our friends over there are indicating in no uncertain manner that - the game is up?’ He looked at Semelovsky.

  ‘Of course - we knew that. The weapons trials would be our deadline.’

  ‘And - you don’t mind?’

  ‘Do you?’ Semelovsky asked pointedly.

  Baranovich looked at the muttering guards for a moment - at each of the four faces turned to him. He wanted to answer in the affirmative, to explain that life becomes harder to throw away, the older one gets, not easier. That it is the young who make glad sacrifices, for good causes or for bad. He wanted to explain that the old are tenacious of life, on any terms. Instead, feeling a heaviness of responsibility, and of guilt, he gave the answer he knew they both needed, and wished to hear.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Semelovsky nodded. ‘There you are, then,’ he said.

  Baranovich swallowed the bile of guilt at the back of his throat. He, it was, who had led them here, to this place, and who would lead them, in time, to the cellars, and the questions, and the pain.

  Baranovich was ruthless, with others, as with himself. He shrugged the guilt away and decided that he would, at least, grant them a quick death.

  ‘It has to be the fire we talked about - over there. No, don’t look about like that… by the second prototype. One of us has to be over there for some reason at the time we decide the operation will start. What do you think - what time shall we decide?’

  ‘Six-thirty is the latest possible!’ Semelovsky snapped in his habitual fussy, irritated manner. ‘I guessed it would come to that,’ he added.

  ‘It is the only sensible place,’ Baranovich said.

  ‘Right in the area around the second prototype. As I said, it may damage the second plane, which will be to our American friend’s advantage. Certainly, it will mean that this aircraft…’ he tapped his hand on the cool metal of the fuselage at his side. ‘This one will be ordered out of the hangar. If Gant appears at the right moment and climbs into the pilot’s couch, no one will ask to see his papers, or his face.’ He studied their reactions, saw the inevitability of death looking out from their eyes.

  Semelovsky nodded, his features softening. He said: ‘I, for one, have no great relish at the thought of Colonel Kontarsky taking out on my skin the anger and frustration of his ruined career.’

  ‘You understand what I’m saying, Dya - also?’ Baranovich asked.

  The young man was silent for some moments, then he said: ‘Yes, Pyotr Vassilyeivich - I understand.’

  ‘Good. You have your gun?’ Kreshin nodded.

  ‘Good. That means that you. Maxim Ilyich, will have to start the fire. Besides,’ he added, smiling, ‘you look the least dangerous.’

  ‘Mm. Very well. At - six-ten, I shall excuse myself, and make for the toilets. If a guard accompanies me, so much the worse for him!’ The little, balding man seemed ridiculous as he puffed out his narrow chest, and squared his stooping shoulders. Yet Baranovich knew that Semelovsky was capable of killing, if necessary. In some ways, he was the most desperate of the three of them, the newly-converted zeal never having seemed to cool. He was a crusader.

  ‘Only if necessary are you to kill the guard,’ Baranovich warned. ‘We don’t want you hurt.’

  ‘Not before I start the fire - eh?’ Semelovsky’s eyes twinkled. Baranovich could sense the challenge that the little man felt, the same kind of bravado, though Baranovich did not know it, that he had revealed at the gate when Gant was in the boot of his car.

  ‘No not before.’ Baranovich relaxed into the partial honesty of the moment. ‘When you come out from the toilet you will find the necessary materials stacked against the wall of the hangar, behind Prototype Two - some drums of fuel.’

  ‘I don’t need to be told how to start a fire, Pyotr Vassilyeivich,’ Semelovsky said, bridling.

  ‘I agree. Just make it big, and bright.’

  ‘It will be done.’

  ‘At six-twelve,’ Baranovich said. ‘Then you and I, llya will have to cover the path to the second aircraft until the blaze is sufficient to distract all the security guards - all of them. Understand?’

  ‘Yes We-are part of the distraction?’

  Baranovich nodded. He looked beneath the fuselage of the aircraft as he heard the sound of returning voices in the echoing hangar. ‘Time to get back to work,’ he said. He looked at his watch. ‘Start counting the seconds now,’ he said. ‘It is five-twenty-three now. Synchronise your watches when you can do it without being observed.’

  He looked back at his two companions. Suddenly his eyes felt misty. ‘Good luck, my friends,’ he said, and turned to the pilot’s ladder and began to ascend.

  Kreshin watched his back for a moment, and then he followed Semelovsky towards the tail of the Firefox. He glanced once in the direction of the guards, now being relieved and reporting back to their officer. Concentrate your hate on them, he told himself.

  Hate them, and what they represent, and what they do. Hate them…

  Kontarsky looked at his watch. The time was seven minutes past six. He had just received a directive from the Centre that the Tupolev TO-144 airliner carrying the First Secretary, the Chairman of the KGB, and the Marshal of the Soviet Air Force had left Moscow, and was expected to land at Bilyarsk at six-thirty. Kontarsky had been profoundly shaken by the news. The plane was not scheduled to arrive until after nine. He could do little but wonder why the First Secretary should be precipitate in hi
s arrival. He suspected that it was some kind of pressure put upon him, a calculated insult. The Tower had been put on stand-by, to land the aircraft. There was nothing else he could do, except what he was engaged in at the moment, futile recriminations, coupled with the more practical step of once more contacting Priabin and, through him, receiving a progress report on the foreign agent who had penetrated Bilyarsk, and who was still at large.

  A team of men sat at rickety tables in the bare duty-room in the security building, each analysing the reports of the teams who had combed the project area thoroughly. The final search had just been completed. Like the others, it had drawn a blank.

  Below them, in a smaller room, with white walls and powerful lights, Dherkov and his wife were being questioned. Each had been made to watch the other’s suffering - and neither of them had told him what he wished to know. He was unable to admit the possibility that they knew nothing of importance. There had been too many frustrations, too many blind alleys. To him, and to the interrogators, they were merely stubborn.

  The doctor had used drugs. He had ruined the man’s mind almost immediately, sending him into deep unconsciousness from which he had emerged incoherent. The woman, despite the massive jolt to her resistance that such damage to her husband must have been, still refused to betray the whereabouts of the agent, or his identity. Kontarsky had ordered the doctor to use the pentathol again, on her, but the doctor had been unwilling. Kontarsky had raged at him, but he suspected that the dosages were too small.

  Kontarsky’s fingers drummed on the desk as he waited for his connection to his office at the Centre. Priabin could not be found, for the moment. Kontarsky’s call was being transferred to the computerroom. As he waited, his eyes roved the team of men bent at their tables, in shirt-sleeves for the most part, intent, driven. No face turned up to him with an answer, with a possible line of enquiry. Kontarsky felt the bitter, selfish anger of a man who sees a fortune turn to ashes in his hands. He had felt, throughout the night, that he had only to reach out and he would grasp the answer. Each answer, each source of knowledge, had crumbled between his fingers. He felt trapped.