The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  • • •

  Men in dark coveralls slid the hangar doors completely open and hitched a tractor to the nosewheel gear of the aircraft inside. Major Yuri Brazhnikov watched through field glasses as the tractor slowly hauled the plane out fully into view. He lowered the glasses and stared over the top of them, not knowing what to make of it. The aircraft was a regular Soviet Ilyushin commercial jet, painted in Syrian Arab Airlines colors.

  “What the hell is one of their planes doing here?” Leo Dorkiev breathed, lying beside him.

  Brazhnikov shook his head. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s a cover. That could be how they’re going to get the missiles out. But it seems a needlessly elaborate way of doing it.”

  “Then we’re too late. That baby’s ready to go. Look, there’s already a flight crew in the cockpit.”

  Brazhnikov snapped a series of photographs while the tractor hauled the plane clear of the doors and was decoupled, and Dorkiev made notes of its markings and registration code, SY4362F.

  If this was the missiles or the missile parts being shipped out, then as Dorkiev had said, they were too late, Brazhnikov thought bitterly. The strike force that had been assembled to fly in and snatch them was still sitting at alert in the VDV base in Armenia. All he could really do was get back to the post farther along the ridge where they had left Maitsky and Gorvorin with the radio, and get an update on the situation off to Chelenko in Damascus. Just as he was thinking this, the engines of the Ilyushin roared into life, and the aircraft began moving forward under its own power, lining itself up with the center of the runway.

  “That’s it,” Dorkiev muttered. “It’s away already. They’re not wasting any time.”

  The sound of the engines rose, and the plane began moving slowly, then gathering speed toward them, lifting off just as it came opposite the point where they were concealed. Its undercarriage retracted, and it banked to port in a turning climb toward the west. There was something very unusual about this, Brazhnikov thought to himself as he watched it disappear over the skyline. If the Palestinians were supposed to be on the Soviet side, why were they cooperating in stealing Soviet missiles for the West? Dorkiev noticed the puzzled look on his face. “What is it?” he asked.

  The aircraft’s taking off had provided the perfect diversion for Ehud and Jacob to move. Before Brazhnikov could reply, a voice from somewhere nearby called out in Russian, “Freeze! You are covered by machine guns and surrounded.” The voice was low but sufficient to carry.

  Dorkiev looked wide-eyed to Brazhnikov, who had rolled back to look over his shoulder. Whoever was talking was out of sight. But from an outcrop of rock overlooking them from behind, a figure in a soft cap and khaki smock was training a gun on them and allowing itself to be seen deliberately. There could have been a dozen more, easily, hidden up there. The voice nearer them called, “Raise your hands very slowly, away from your weapons.” They were caught cold. Trying anything sudden would be out of the question. “We will fire on the count of three,” the voice warned. Brazhnikov gave Dorkiev a quick nod. They raised their hands and sat up. “Don’t turn around. Keep looking forward. Now, you to the left, with one hand only, throw your gun well clear and to the back of you… Now your pistol… You on the right, do the same… The pistol… Now remain as you are and don’t move.”

  There was a movement close by, then the sound of somebody slithering down over the rocks, followed by a couple of footsteps immediately behind him. A hand frisked Brazhnikov expertly, found his knife and removed it, then did the same to Dorkiev. “Okay, you can turn.”

  Brazhnikov sat up and turned around to find himself looking at an Israeli paratrooper. The Israeli had picked up both their rifles and backed off a few feet to cover them with the Uzi he was holding in his other hand. Another Israeli was covering them from a mound slightly farther back. The first nodded toward Dorkiev. “Stay low and out of sight from below. You see where he is up there? Okay, we go that way. Move.” When Dorkiev had moved up to become the charge of the second Israeli, the first one nodded at Brazhnikov. “Now you. I’ll be right behind.”

  The Israelis shepherded them up to the outcrop where the one that Brazhnikov had seen first was stationed. Then, still making use of cover, they moved away around the tip of the spur, toward the valley where the Palestinian camp was. To his surprise and chagrin, Brazhnikov realized that there were only the three Israelis. There had never been any machine guns.

  They crossed the plain beyond the end of the spur, keeping to the gullies to stay out of sight from the camp and following a course that curved round and to the north, well clear of its vicinity. When it became apparent that the Russians were not going to try anything foolish, the Israelis relaxed a little and the tension eased.

  “Where are we going?” Brazhnikov asked the swarthy, blue-eyed one who seemed to be in charge.

  “You’ll see. We just want you to talk to someone.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten away with it so easily if we’d known there were only the three of you.”

  “Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it, because we’ve got the guns and you haven’t.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Aboard Syrian Arab Airlines Flight 28, a half hour out from Damascus, bound for Cuba, the man in the Iraqi Air Force uniform reached down into the duty-free-purchase bag by his feet. He drew out a flat package wrapped in plain white paper and transferred it to his jacket pocket. Then he closed the bag again, picked it up from the floor, and turned to the woman in the seat next to him, who was dozing. “Excuse me. Could I get out, please?” She opened her eyes and stood up to let him pass. He smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He went forward and passed the row where the two girls were sitting who had laughed as they passed through the airport security check. The one who had handed the tin of dates to the attendant was sitting with a blanket wrapped around her knees. Underneath the blanket, she had broken the seal of the tin, lifted out the shallow tray of dates, and passed one of the two 9mm automatics that had been hidden below it to her companion, retaining the other for herself.

  The man in the Iraqi uniform went into the first-class compartment and handed the duty-free-purchase bag to the white-haired man in the navy blazer, sitting with the well-dressed woman. “I might as well give this to you now,” he said.

  “Yes, thank you. Did you find the ones I wanted?…”

  While they continued a casual conversation, the author in the tan cord jacket, who had been seated in the smoking section, went into one of the lavatories at the rear of the aircraft and locked the door. Above the sink was a small closet where additional stocks of paper towels were stored. He opened the door and placed beneath the towels two of the three automatics that had been concealed inside the computer disk-drive case. Then he waited for a few minutes, rinsed his face and combed his hair, and returned to his seat. A few minutes later, one of the two swarthy men in jeans used the same lavatory and retrieved the guns, concealing one inside his jacket and folding the other in a magazine. When he came out, his companion had also left his seat, and the magazine changed hands in a second when they met midway along the aircraft at one of the cross-aisles. Farther forward, the two girls were also out of their seats, one visiting a forward toilet, the other rummaging in an overhead bin. Thus, when the man in the Iraqi Air Force uniform finally left the couple in first class, there were six armed people on their feet at strategic points along the aircraft, and two more immediately aft of the flight deck.

  The takeover went so smoothly and quickly that the silverhaired man in the blazer was inside the cockpit with his pistol leveled before most of the passengers even realized what was happening. He waved the radio engineer away from his panel and settled himself into the seat, while his female companion covered from the door. There were some screams and one or two shouts of indignation back in the passenger cabin, but nobody tried to be a hero. As what was happening dawned
on the rest of the passengers, the other hijackers ordered the cabin crew to sit down and began moving the men into the window seats and the women and children to the seats by the aisles.

  The man in the navy blazer smiled amiably as he tuned to a frequency in the local band and drew the hand mike across. “I’m pleased that you’re behaving sensibly,” he said to the flight-deck crew. “There really isn’t any need for unpleasantness.” He spoke into the microphone. “Caliph calling Trojan. Trojan do you read?”

  A voice answered at once from the panel speaker. “Trojan, roger.”

  “Advise squawk, over.”

  “Our squawk is alpha-four-six-five, repeat, four-six-five.”

  It sounded clear enough to be very near at hand, the captain was thinking—maybe it was the Jordanian training flight that traffic control had just warned him to keep an eye out for because it was getting too close.

  The man in the navy blazer leaned forward to read the transponder code that traffic control had assigned to the Syrian plane. “Squawk here is alpha two-two-six,” he said into the microphone. “Repeat, two-two-six. Changing setting now. ” He reached forward and changed the number to the other aircraft’s.

  “Setting clocks to count of ten. Synchronize on zero,” the voice said over the speaker.

  “Roger.”

  “Starting count at ten, nine…”

  “And don’t try changing it,” the man in the blazer warned the captain. Quietly changing the setting to send back the wrong identification code was the standard way of indicating that a plane had been hijacked.

  “… two, one, zero.”

  The man in the blazer pressed a button on the transponder. The two aircraft had now switched identities. Upon interrogation, each would return to traffic-control radars the transponder identification code that had been assigned to the other.

  “Trojan set, over.”

  “What are your flight directions, Trojan?”

  “Heading nine-zero, descend to flight level one-zero-zero.”

  “Roger, over.”

  “Proceed as directed, Caliph. Over and out.”

  The man in the blazer gestured toward the navigation panel with his gun. “Now, set your nav VHF1 to one-two-eight decimal six, and nav VHF2 to five-zero-five decimal nine,” he told the captain. “Turn onto a heading of zero-nine-zero and reduce height to flight level one-zero-zero.”

  “Where are we going?” the captain asked resignedly.

  “Oh, not that far really. I hope you didn’t have any swimming planned for this evening. You won’t be seeing Cuba today, I’m afraid.”

  Commercial jets have no rear view at all. As the Ilyushin banked and came around onto an easterly heading, the captain was surprised to see that the other aircraft had been close behind them. But far from being a Jordanian Air Force trainer, it was another Ilyushin of the same type, and also with Syrian Arab Airline markings. As the SAL flight turned away, the other aircraft continued on the northwesterly course that would take it over Turkey and the Balkans, across central Europe, and out over the North Atlantic.

  On a radar screen in the sector air traffic control center at Nicosia, the two sets of flashing dots and associated flight-data flags that had merged together over the sea to the north of Cyprus separated again, the Syrian commercial flight continuing on course, and the Jordanian military plane turning toward the east. A few seconds later the flashing alert for an imminent conflict situation ceased. The controller who had been following the encounter breathed easily again and turned his attention to other tasks. Very probably, neither of the pilots would file an air-miss report. They never did. Too much trouble. But it would be everybody else’s fault, as usual, when one of them did blow it one day.

  • • •

  Mel stood at the bottom of the shallow hollow that had been designated point Purple, staring at the cave beneath the fallen slab where the packs and equipment were stacked, trying to make sense of the situation. Dave was a few paces behind, equally bemused, and Ehud nearby keeping silent, letting them think. Haim and Moshe were standing watch on the rocky lip of the hollow, while Zvi and Jacob kept an eye on the two Russians, who were sitting with their backs to a rock. Mel’s first attempt to elicit any information from them, using Ehud as interpreter, had met with total noncooperation.

  Something was tugging at the fringes of his awareness, screaming to be recognized, but he couldn’t pin it down. There was something that didn’t fit, something so obvious and fundamental that nobody had thought to question it. He tried to analyze his own structure of beliefs about what he thought was true and separate it into its assumptions and deductions. The deductions, he was fairly happy about. He had gone through them a thousand times, both in his own mind and with others, and he could find no flaw. The problem had something to do with the assumptions. He found himself thinking that this could turn out to be the most important case he had ever handled.

  He forced his thinking processes back to their basics and went through the chain again. Why didn’t Ehud’s account of how they had found the two Russians make sense? Because the Russians had been operating covertly. Why was that strange? Because this was PALP country, and the Soviets ran PALP. Why should they be clandestinely spying on their own operation?

  Okay, he thought to himself, back up a step further. How did they know it was a Soviet operation? Because Brett had been tricked by Oberwald into working for them, and then kidnapped by them when he tried to get out. And the Soviets had killed Eva, thinking she was Stephanie, to protect what they’d thought she knew. Very well, then, how did they know that Oberwald was in with the Soviets? Well, it was obvious…

  A professional reflex pulled him up sharply, right there—as soon as he found himself about to dismiss something out of hand because it was too obvious. How did they know that Oberwald was involved in a Soviet espionage ring?

  It was simple: Who else would want to know about U.S. strategic space defense secrets? No! he told himself. A simple process of elimination like that didn’t work. The logic was the same as claiming that a four-legged animal had to be a horse because you didn’t know of any other kind. At that point he became aware of a rising feeling of discomfort that all of their thinking had been erring in precisely this way all along. Because previously they hadn’t known of any other animal that was hostile to the Western way of life. And now there was another one that he knew of. When he examined the remaining evidence in that light, it turned out to be very flimsy. In fact there really wasn’t any. Everything that they had taken as proof had been nothing more than their own preconceptions all along.

  Stephanie had said that mail had arrived for Brett from the Western Peace Initiative, known to be a subsidiary of a KGB-managed propaganda front. But that had been after Brett disappeared—when he couldn’t have disputed it. Anyone could have sent it. Not good enough to stand in court.

  The FBI had come looking for Brett, Gilman had said. Didn’t that say that Brett had been mixed up in something that threatened national security? Not necessarily. Again, anyone could have fed false leads to the FBI—especially someone with Oberwald’s contacts. And once more, that had begun after Stephanie was supposed to be dead, and unable to refute any allegations of Brett’s activities.

  But PALP was run by the Soviets. Yes, PALP was. But that didn’t make them the people who controlled this place. Dave Fenner had said that this camp was run by PALP. But that had been on the basis of information gathered through Mossad, and from American sources. Well, they could have been victims of deliberately planted misinformation too, just like the FBI.

  Which brought them back to the only positive evidence available—the behavior of the Russian soldiers themselves. And they had been acting as if they had no more business there than the Israelis had.

  In short, there wasn’t one single hard fact to show that the people manipulating Brett had had anything to do with the Soviets at all. There was much, however, that was consistent with the idea of somebody wanting to make it look like the So
viets!… Such as choosing a Soviet client state to locate this base in, complete with a population of Palestinians as cover…

  A lot more things made sense, too, in that context. Of course Brett would have been brought here and not to somewhere more convenient in the Soviet Union—if the Soviets had nothing to do with it. And no wonder Pierrot hadn’t been able to find out very much in the camp itself. The whole place was just camouflage for… for what? It could only be the airstrip.

  All the pieces fitted. Mel couldn’t yet make out the design that they formed, but at least now it was free of contradictions. He was on the right track. But he would never get any further until he knew what the Soviets knew about that airstrip that he didn’t. They each had half the key.

  Meanwhile, Major Yuri Brazhnikov, sitting on the ground with Dorkiev under the watchful gaze of two Israelis with Uzis, was still wondering how he had stopped his shock from showing when they arrived here and he saw who it was they were being brought back to talk to. After weeks of seeing his photograph in the reports he’d studied in Moscow, and later in Damascus, he had recognized the American immediately. No wonder the agents in the U.S. had lost him without trace a week ago. Shears was here, in Syria!

  Mel sighed, realizing that this wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere. He came back to the others and drew Dave and Ehud to one side. “Look, I’m going to say something that probably sounds like heresy and violates everything about the way you’ve been trained to think. But these guys obviously know something that we don’t, and I think it’s crucial. I’ve also got a hunch that they don’t know a lot that we do. Nothing’s going to add up unless we put it all together, and somebody has to make a start.”