by Thomas Craig
Serov wanted to laugh, especially as the car skidded rounding a corner as Vassily's surprise transmitted itself to the steering.
"What kind of joke—?" Instinct pressed: he added urgently: "Get his story. Better still, get him to the radio. And get help to stake out that helicopter. Do it now! Get that idiot, whoever he is, to the microphone."
Vassily whistled through his teeth. Serov could feel the mystified excitement of the two in the back prickle the hair on his neck. What in hell was going on? His fingers drummed on the dashboard with an increased urgency as the car drew into the courtyard, then beneath the archway of GRU headquarters. Serov did not even spare a glance toward the hotel or the windows of General Rodin's suite. The square was nakedly empty, as was the inner courtyard of the building.
"Where is that idiot?" Serov bellowed into the mike.
The trunk of the dwarf fir seemed to collide with his back, so violently did he lean against it to conceal himself. A helicopter's shadowy belly slid above the ice between him and the rotting jetty. He forced himself to observe it through the night glasses. The fleecy lining of his jacket, near the collar, was icily damp from his exerted breathing. It numbed his cheek as he leaned back, lowering the tiny pair of binoculars. The helicopter passed northward. He tried to listen, but nothing other than the retreating Mil and the cry of the wind came to him. The landscape might just be deserted.
Gant clutched the Kalashnikov against his chest, made himself study the open space of ice across which his path lay. Empty, gleaming palely as if lit from far below its surface. Deserted. He raised the glasses once more. Starlight and moonlight were intensified. He scanned the stretch of frozen water. Carefully, repeatedly.
He saw nothing, but could not trust the evidence of his eyes. There could be men out there, hidden and waiting or simply approaching in a search pattern laid down for them. He would not know. He understood his limitations. This was not his element; here he was ordinary, dangerous to himself. He looked at his watch. Three fifty-eight. His approach had been careful and slow, but it had been textbook, not instinctual. What had he missed? He studied the jetty and the houseboat through the glasses. Thin bars of light stood out, indicating a source of light inside the boat. It had to be Kedrov. This was the agreed rendezvous. He scanned the ice again, then the sedge and the reed beds, then the clumps and tufts of trees and low bushes. They were impenetrable, could hide an army. He shivered, hating the thought of the Hind half a mile behind him. It seemed like a home he had abandoned.
He moved slowly through the reeds and out onto the ice. Time urged him, and he moved quickly across the frozen marsh toward the jetty, until he pressed against groaning wood, into the shadows cast by the jetty. He listened. Heard the wind. Saw distant navigation lights. No dogs… listen for the dogs. The Mil-8 had dropped men and dogs at their appointed places in the pattern of the search. Could he hear dogs? He held his breath, listening into the wind. Distant rotor noise, nothing more.
He climbed the steps, crouching at the top, sensing the skin on his back and buttocks and neck become vulnerable. He felt colder, as if naked. The rifle seemed unreal, held in numb hands that gripped like claws. The boat was only yards away. He could see the bars and strips of light clearly. He scanned the open ground once more with the glasses. Nothing. Then he ran in an awkward crouch, the wood of the jetty announcing each quick footfall, the wind seeming encouraged to unbalance him by the cramped and difficult posture he adopted. He stepped carefully onto the boat's deck. Eased along the side of the cabin, bent down.
Gant looked through cracked wood, saw nothing, then through a gap where two thin curtains did not quite meet. Saw him.
Kedrov. Had to be. A radio, back open, exposing the source of the signal, lay on the table in front of him. The man was down, that was obvious. Head hanging, face in shadow, staring; hands still, but weakly clenched in a child's grip. Not believing someone would come for him. Gant felt relief, felt the urgency of the minutes that had passed since he left the MiL; felt the possibility of success. Rose and eased himself farther along the narrow deck until he reached the doors. Touched their wood, felt the grain and the peeling paint because his hand was suddenly warmer. They creaked as he pushed them open.
He stepped into the narrow, shadowy room. Was startled as he heard a helicopter's rotors close, saw Kedrov's face lift to his, was warned, but not quickly enough, because there was a prod of something metallic, hard, in his back. A hand reached for the barrel of the rifle and held it tightly before he could begin to turn. And a woman, gun held stiff-armed ahead of her, emerged from the shadows at the far end of the cabin. He felt a moment of rage that he might have used, but shock drained it away. The woman was afraid, surprised, pleased. Kedrov was appalled. Gant realized the face should have warned him, wearing defeat like a badge. He let the rifle go, and it was snatched away somewhere behind him. A helicopter seemed to be in the hover outside. He heard the first dog cry distantly but eagerly. He shivered.
The place seemed to rush in on him. Winter Hawk was finished; blown. Just as he was.
"American?" a voice asked behind him. The metallic rod jabbed in his back. It would be foolish to move, it said. Your hands would not be quick enough. "Well?" The man spoke English with competence as he said: "We have been waiting for you — all of us, but perhaps for different reasons. Turn to face me, please — very slowly."
Outside, the helicopter had landed, the engines were running down. Human orders were being shouted. The woman seemed surprised at the activity. Gant's hands relaxed. He turned.
KGB. Colonel's shoulder boards on his overcoat. Gant's own age.
Familiar.
The colonel's face dissolved as if under a great pressure, then it reformed into a wild, unstable mask. The eyes burned, and Gant recognized—
— Priabin. The woman, Anna, who had died at the border… last image of her body cradled by, by this man, beside the car they had been using to escape… this man, Priabin. Her lover.
"Gant," he said. Then again: "Gant." The tone of the voice suggested he had already killed him. Priabin sighed. The hatred was there, but the features were composed around the eyes, strangely at peace. There was even a smile—
— as the Makarov pistol was raised between them after Priabin had stepped back two paces. As it was leveled at Gant's face. Priabin was smiling, his features were calm and satisfied. He seemed to have traveled quickly through shock as if it were an unimportant way station; passed through hate, too. Passed almost beyond the shot he intended firing.
"Gant." He sighed once more. His finger squeezed the trigger of the pistol.
THREE
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
You and I, we've been through that,
And this is not our fate;
So, let us not talk falsely now
— The hour is getting late.
— Bob Dylan "All Along the Watchtower"
11: A Fortress Deep and Mighty
Katya could not understand. Her mind whirled with speculations and anticipation, but she could make no sense of the fact that the two men recognized each other. Impossibly, they knew each other — from some occasion in the past?
And then the name surfaced. It was fixed in place by the banging of the houseboat's doors as she watched the tip of her own pistol move upward and begin to cancel Priabin's strange, fulfilled pleasure. Gant. That American — the one who had stolen the — the one who had caused the death of… impossible—
The wind howled, entering the narrow, low cabin. The planks and boards of the boat creaked and groaned like an audience. The room seemed to quiver, reflecting the tension between the two men. She sensed that Priabin was as quick and ready to die as he was to kill the American, whose gaunt, weary face stared at Priabin's pistol. She felt her throat tickle with the smoke blown from the flickering oil lamp; shadows enlarged and seemed to struggle with each other on the planking above her. The pistol wobbled, but had its target. The American's stomach, chest, then forehead.
The doors banged once more, startling her from her trance. Priabin was posed with his arm stretched out, his pistol aimed at the American's head. He leaned into the contemplated shot, his finger closing on the trigger.
The American spy… their prisoner.
"No!" she screamed, her voice thinner and higher than the wind.
Priabin's hand shook. The American turned his face to her, as if only now acknowledging her presence. Her eyes concentrated on Priabin as he, too, turned to her.
"No! No! No!" she shouted as loudly as she could. Her words rang and echoed, unrecognizable as her own, in the low, narrow cabin. Her own pistol was raised, her body was crouched; she was half ready to scream, half to shoot, and she knew her face was distorted with a sense of panic. "No!"
And Priabin turned fully…
… the American was still…
… their eyes on something other than herself. They were both looking at Kedrov, huddled on the bunk, hands wrapped across his chest, knees up to his chin. Their — object in the room, both of them.
"No!"
Had the American been on the point of action? Yes, he was now letting his hands return to his thighs, letting his face sag out of its tight folds of expectation. His pale eyes gleamed at her, cold and baffled. She thrust her gun three, four inches farther forward. A sigh emerged from his whole frame. Priabin's face, alerted by her cry, was thin and sour with the knowledge of being cheated.
"Please," she breathed, feeling a wave of tiredness lap at her, not knowing what to do next.
Radio — crackling voice, commanding and urgent.
Walkie-talkie, lying on the scarred, stained wood of the table, bursting into chatter.
Faces moved and shifted expression and purpose. The shadows beat about her head like birds' wings, growing and diminishing as the flame of the lamp was driven by the wind. She shook her head, kept her pistol moving between them. Kedrov's features formed the only still point of the scene as he cowered on the bunk, unable to take advantage, defeated long ago by a forgotten war with himself. Shadows, the doors banging, walkie-talkie.
"No," she said once more. Both men were still, the voice from the walkie-talkie invaded. The American's face finally subsided into the narrow, bitter fury of capture.
"Answer that," Priabin snapped, his pistol reasserting itself, less menacingly, toward the American. Gant—that American, she reminded herself. Priabin added: "It's Serov's voice."
Her hand moved toward the table, she touched the walkie-talkie with her fingertips. It snapped orders at her.
She glanced back at Priabin, afraid.
"Colonel, you were going to—" she blurted.
"Kill him? Easily," Priabin announced in a strange, quiet voice that seemed filled with disappointment. "Don't worry," he said.
Katya paused, then turned away and picked up the walkie-talkie. It was over. Like a nightmare. She had awakened Priabin from it. She shivered, sensing reaction begin. That American — the one who had caused Priabin's mistress to die. Priabin's lover.
"Colonel?" she asked. "What shall I say?"
"He is our prisoner. You will do nothing," Serov's voice insisted amid the crackle of the ether and the noise of* the wind outside. 'This is a GRU matter, not KGB."
Shadows flickered, the thin trail of smoke from the distressed flame of the lamp rolled and split. Kedrov's hands gently covered his head, as if Serov's words rained down like blows. His body quivered. It seemed he had exhausted himself with waiting.
Dogs barked. The American flinched. He was no longer dangerous. Slowly, foggily, he wiped the sleeve of his flying jacket across his forehead, then his eyes. Almost gently, Priabin took the walkie-talkie from her hand. His gray eyes were vague and troubled. They made her feel cold.
"This is Priabin," he snapped, pressing the Transmit button. He kept glancing at the American, then at Kedrov, as if trying to identify them.
She subsided into holding her pistol routinely on Gant; her shiver becoming more pronounced.
Gant stared at Kedrov and felt he was looking into a mirror. The agent's defeat was total, had happened even before he arrived, Gant shivered. Vietnam. The water-filled pit was coming back, crawling around the edge of the barrier his mind had learned to erect against it… the pit, the bamboo stretched like a grid over it, just close enough to touch with his fingertips… the icy water, the howling of other people already dying, the murmur of voices in the chilly darkness, the glint of fires… the water, the water… He began shivering uncontrollably.
The dog's warm body bullied him aside. He heard someone cry out in Russian as he fell against the planking and turned his head to see the open jaws, the pink tongue, the long white teeth of the huge dog. He saw the uniformed man's rifle slung across his chest, heard the dog growling, eager to tear; saw light glinting from its choke chain, and the soldier's grimace of effort to control the animal.
Dmitri Priabin backed away from the dog with as much calm as he could muster, the walkie-talkie in his hand, about to address the inpatient, angry Serov. The dog strained on its leash toward Gant.
"Quiet that damn thing!" he roared, keeping his thumb down on the Transmit button. "Get it out of here, damn you!"
Another GRU man, another dog, almost tumbling down the steps into the cabin. Serov's hard laughter. He waved his hand at them.
"Get out!"
Priabin remembered Rodin, the airline ticket, the flight to Moscow, and saw them all retreating. He was enmeshed in this situation, and when he looked at Gant, watchful and defeated with his arm across his body as if expecting an assault from one or both of the dogs, his rage surged in him again. Anna's face was omnipresent in the room's shadows. He still wanted to kill Gant. Oh, yes, how much he wanted to kill the American who had caused…
The dogs' noises quietened. Their handlers were rebuked by Priabin's uniform and rank; nothing else. The shoulder boards held them on more fragile leashes than the dogs' choke chains. Pink tongues lolled, teeth glinted, saliva specked the planks of the floor.
"Everything's under control here, Serov," he snapped. "And the American is my prisoner." He grinned shakily, but only so long as he looked at Katya, standing hunched next to him, her gun ready for the dogs. When Priabin's gaze fell on Gant, his expression twisted. He shook his head. "Where are you, Serov?"
There was a silence, ether and breathing coming from the walkie-talkie. Then, "Do nothing, Priabin. I'm taking command here."
"Naturally." Priabin forced himself to drawl in an easy, confident manner. "We're waiting. Out."
"Get those damn dogs out of here, both of you," he snapped. "Your boss is on his way." He grinned again, waspishly. "He doesn't like dogs."
The dogs were dragged out, protesting and reluctant. The wind's noise replaced theirs. There was the occasional sound of a whistle outside.
"You're not—?" Katya began.
Priabin had raised his gun once more toward Gant.
"What?" He looked at his hand, at the Makarov. "Dammit, no! he yelled, protesting against his inability to act more than to reassure the woman that he would not do so. His voice and look evidently frightened her. "All right, all right," he soothed. "Serov can have him alive — much good that will do you, Gant."
Gant made no reply, simply shook his head.
Serov came through the banging doors theatrically, urgently. He seemed surprised by the expression on Priabin's face; pleased at the obvious sense of capture the scene displayed. Two armed guards remained in the doorway until Serov placed one of them at Gant's side. Serov pushed the table to one side and stood in the center of the cabin.
"Kedrov, the missing technician," he announced rather than asked, pointing with the glove he had removed. His cheeks were reddened by the night's temperature.
"Kedrov," Priabin agreed formally. "Lieutenant Grechkova here is responsible for his capture."
Serov looked at Katya briefly, nodded as to someone who had brought him a routine report, then turned his gaze from her to Kedrov, then to Gant. Priabin saw th
at Serov's face was mobile with anticipation.
"How did you—?" Priabin could not help asking.
"We found his helicopter," Serov murmured, pointing at Gant. "A cavalier approach — not really clever." He seemed pleased with Gant's silence, with the drawn expression on his features. "Mm— who is he, Priabin?"
"He's — American."
"Of course. You've established nothing more?"
"I know who my prisoner is, if that's what you mean," Priabin replied. "I know all about him."
Serov turned on him, his eyes dark and angry. He was perhaps two or three inches shorter than Priabin, but broader. His face was set in hard, angular lines and blunt planes. His expression warned. Priabin sensed his own weariness, and a new caution at the back of his mind. Rodin, Lightning—this man knew everything about Lightning and must not so much as suspect that Priabin knew. His thoughts rushed in his head like vertigo. He kept his face expressionless, except for the slightest indication of self-satisfaction, as Serov snapped;
"Then who is he, Priabin — who is he?"
Serov turned away to look at the prisoner, and Priabin said softly: "His name's Mitchell Gant — formerly Major Gant, United States Air Force. Doesn't the name ring a bell, Serov? Not one small bell?"
Serov turned, stung by the insolence of Priabin's voice, his face sharp with anger, his removed glove raised as if to slap at the speaker. Then shock caused his mouth to open soundlessly. Priabin smiled.
"You know him, then?"
"That one?" He whirled around once more. "Him? Hes that American?"
"He is, Serov — oh, yes, he is. They sent him for Kedrov, obviously. They need Kedrov before the treaty is signed."
Serov turned to face Priabin. "How long have you known about him?" he demanded. His voice accused like his eyes.
"It was" — careful! — "accidental," Priabin explained. The heat and tension in the cabin of the houseboat affected him. He sensed Serov's disbelief. "We were looking for drugs. That's how we stumbled across Kedrov."