Firefox Down

by Craig Thomas

  Gant was swung around, dragged towards the door. As he passed the young colonel, Priabin was smiling a sad, wise, confident smile. You'll tell, the smile and the eyes announced. Bad luck, but you'll tell…

  'Kenneth, it's impossible! Forty-eight hours is a strict, complete, total impossibility. Please take my word for it.' Pyott shook his head sadly.

  'But, if we leave tonight…?' Aubrey persisted.

  Again, Pyott shook his head. 'I'm afraid no. We could be in position by tomorrow. But, the Sikorsky would not be there and half our supplies would not be there. That would leave us less than twenty-four hours to lift the airframe and get it over the border!'

  'Giles, don't be stubborn - '

  'You are the one who is being stubborn, Kenneth, for Heaven's sake - ! I lose all patience with you. The discussion is closed. It cannot be done in the time available. We must decline the Finnish offer.'

  'It's there-intact. The prize is still there - '

  'Unfortunately,' Pyott replied with freezing irony, 'we have been scratched from the race.'

  'Damn you, Giles!' Aubrey breathed, looking around at Curtin and then Buckholz for support. The argument had been in progress for almost an hour. The had skirted the plot table, paced beside it, leaned upon it, as if it were the dock, the judge's seat, the gallery of a court. And ended where they had begun, the Americans siding with Pyott and Aubrey more and more exasperated.

  'I'm sorry you feel like that, Kenneth, but - damn your insufferable self-esteem, your pride. That's what is at the root of the matter - your success or failure…' Aubrey's face was white with rage, with admission. Pyott dropped his gaze and murmured an apology.

  Buckholz looked at his watch. Curtin coughed, shuffled his feet, glancing at the plot table where symbols and counters, even torn slips of paper with folded bases to make them stand like cardboard soldiers, indicated their state of readiness. Outside, on the tarmac, the Hercules transport stood awaiting them. It was being loaded with supplies flown in from specialist RAF and army units. Aubrey had been up to see it once; he was gloating when he descended again to the soured atmosphere of the Ops. Room.

  Buckholz and Curtin waited. Pyott glanced at the plot table. Nothing more than a box of child's toys, stirring memories but of no use to the adult.

  Aubrey hurried to the telephone the moment it began to ring. He snatched up the receiver.

  'Yes?' he demanded breathlessly. 'Peter - what is it? What - you're certain of it… followed the car, saw it drive in… no, there can't be any doubt-yes, Peter, thank you.' He put down the receiver with great and pointless deliberation. There was, he knew, nothing to consider or think about - nothing to delay his agreement with Pyott that the operation was impossible… more impossible now than stealing the aircraft had ever been. He studied each of them in turn.

  'Well?' Pyott demanded.

  'Well? Well?' Aubrey snapped. 'Gant has been transferred to the KGB Unit out on the Mira Prospekt - ' He waited for their reaction. He could see that they sensed his depression, but the name meant little or nothing to them. 'It is a unit operated for the KGB by the Serbsky Institute. They are going to interrogate Gant under drugs, gentlemen - I'm afraid we do not have forty-eight hours, after all… we probably do not have twenty-four, perhaps not even twelve…' He sighed, then added: 'Gant will not be able to help himself. He will tell them everything.'

  PART TWO

  THE AGENT

  'This is most strange,

  That she whom even now was your best object

  … should in this trice of time

  Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle

  So many folds of favour.

  Sure her offence

  Must be of such unnatural degree

  That monsters it; or your fore-vouched affection

  Fall into taint.'

  - King Lear

  SIX:

  Echoes In A Tunnel

  The dream required the presence of his father. His father had to be made to walk along the Mira Prospekt and be seen from the vantage point of a passing black car. If he could make his father walk in a northerly direction, if he could slow down the moving car to a kerbside crawl, if, if if…

  It was important to remejnber the Mira Prospekt. Important, too, to remember the room in the moments before the needle, the pause, the unconsciousness. White, clinical, smelling faintly of antiseptic, rubber, ether, furnished with an operating table and hard chairs. Most important to remember the faces…

  Vlad - i - mir - ov -

  The Soviet general looked like his father now, but Gant remembered who he was. White coats - doctors… Guards, a nurse, others he did not know. He tried to see his father's face, but was forced to allow the shirt-sleeved, shambling figure to wear Vladimirov's features. However, he made him move and glance from side to side like his father. The imaginary car slowed, sliding along the kerb, and Gant peered at the passing faces as they kept pace with his father's intoxicated, shiftless, shameful progress. Nurse, doctor with the needle, other doctor, guard, man in suit - who was he? - Andropov, Priabin - no, no - !

  Pavel, Baranovich, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Fenton - his face like red-dyed dough - other faces… Gant concentrated. He could see, ahead of them and farther along the Mira Prospekt, against the snow-laden clouds, the huge cosmonaut's monument of a rocket atop its narrowing trail of golden fire. His father was an insect-figure moving towards it, then the car turned off the road, moving at a snail's pace behind the shambling, despicable gait he knew so well. His father was heading through tall iron gate towards the front entrance of a large house hidden from the busy road by tall, thick, dark hedges.

  It looked like the house of a dream, but it was real. He recollected the steps, the door opening - nurse's uniform, guard's uniforms-and two flights of marble staircase. His father had disappeared into one of the ground floor rooms, he thought. It did not matter. Each time he retraced his journey, his father reappeared to hold the memories together.

  It was important to remember the journey. To remember the black limousine, the pressure of the two bodyguards' frames on either side of him; to remember the Mira Prospekt and to remember the house, the steps, the door, the marble staircase, the columns and doorways and ornamental urns and pots, the old furniture, the white room and its smells, the doctors, guards, Vladimirov. Vital to remember the hard chair, the straps about his wrists and ankles, the needle… held up, spurt of colourless fluid, hovering, moving closer, skin pinched up, needle inserted…

  In his dream, he was sweating profusely with the effort of memory - but he had done it! He had remembered it all while the dream still contained him…

  Remembered everything, everything that informed him that he was under interrogation, that he was drugged and prepared - probably sodium pentothal followed by benzadrine, or some other two drugs in harness. He was only dreaming now while they waited for the first drug to take effect, he was certain of it… then the stimulant would jolt him into wakefulness, dreamy and slow or hyperactive he did not know, but when it happened the questions would begin -

  And he had to remember everything! He knew where he was, he knew why he was there. He knew they would ask him questions about - about…?

  Gant panicked in his dream, felt himself chilled and burned by his fear. He could not remember why he was there!

  Don't, he told himself, don't… I have to … don't, secret, don't…

  He had remembered everything - he had remembered enough.

  Pinprick - ?

  His skin crawled. Pinprick? He was instantly wary…

  Something else - quickly, something else, quickly… just before the needle, as he looked down at the needle, as his skin was pinched into a little hillock and the needle went in, something else…?

  Watch, watch, watch -

  They hadn't taken off his watch, he had been staring at it as his eyes snapped shut and he was suddenly in darkness. He had told himself to remember the time, to look when he awoke again. Time -

  It was getting li
ght. Murmur of voices that was more than the dream-traffic on the Mira Prospekt. People constructing sentences, discussing, arguing… waiting for him to awaken.

  Light - his head was lifted, eyelid plucked at, a blurred form moved away, and a fuzzy light was revealed which did not seem to hurt his eyes.

  Pinprick again. A few moments, and he was able to see more clearly. Doctors, nurses, uniforms. White room. It's starting, he told himself with great difficulty. He seemed to be trapped in a heavy, translucent oil, his thoughts moving with extreme difficulty. It wasn't like a dream - he had swum easily through the dream, raced with it. Now, his body - he was aware of it quite clearly - was laden, his eyes focused slowly and he could almost feel them moving in his head as he transferred his gaze from face to face. He saw a doctor nod, slowed-down like a failing movie-reel.

  He remembered the watch. Focused with exaggerated slowness. Read the time. It did not seem meaningful. Thirty minutes had passed. It did not seem to matter. Father on the street outside, a long gallery on the second floor lined by tall ornamental urns. It did not matter. None of it mattered. He was trapped in his body which was trapped in the translucent oil. He watched the faces around his chair, as dull and unmoving as a fish on the watery side of an aquarium's tank. He stared out at the human faces, unthinking.

  Vladimirov watched Gant carefully. The doctor assured him that the man was prepared. He could be interrogated immediately. He was now capable of suggestion. Vladimirov savoured the helplessness of the American strapped in the chair which was itself bolted to the floor of the clinical room. More than the bruising on the face, the swollen lip he had himself inflicted even before the bodyguards had operated upon the American, he enjoyed the man's present helplessness. It satisfied his craving for superiority, his desire for the restoration of his self-esteem. This - thing - in the chair, drugged and animal-like, could never have succeeded against him. Now, indeed, the thing in the chair was about to tell them everything it knew -

  Where he had hidden the MiG-31. After that-his life preserved only for the length of time required to locate the aircraft-he would be disposed of together with the other rubbish that accumulated in such a place; in a Forensic Psychiatry Unit of the KGB.

  He turned to the plainclothed KGB officer who had been assigned by Andropov. He and his two fellow-officers were experts in interrogation by the use of drugs. Most of their work was performed at this Unit on the Mira Prospekt. The man probably had a research degree in psychiatric medicine or clinical psychology.

  Vladimirov suppressed the contempt he felt for the tall, angular, harmless-seeming man next to him. The man is only doing what you wish of him. He smiled and turned to the tape deck that rested on a metal-legged table behind them. Wires trailed across the floor to speakers arranged on either side of Gant.

  'These haven't been edited-I have only the flimsiest acquaintance with them, Comrade General - ' the interrogator complained.

  'But you approve their use?' Vladimirov asked firmly. 'Comrade Colonel Doctor,' he added to emphasise the politeness and formality of their circumstances.

  The interrogator nodded. 'To begin with, yes,' he replied. 'But the man outside may be of more use. This form of induced regression often has no more than a limited application. We must use it to warm him up, perhaps, make him familiar with the area we want to investigate - but sooner or later, he must be more fully regressed, as himself, not someone else.' The interrogator smiled. 'He must be debriefed, and believe me he is being debriefed.' When Vladimirov did not return his pale-lipped smile, he rubbed a long-fingered hand through sparse sandy hair, and added, 'We will retrieve what you have lost in his head, Comrade General. Don't worry about it.' It was a stiff, formal insult; an assertion of authority, too. Vladimirov nodded thoughtfully by way of reply. The interrogator glanced at Gant, then nodded to one of his senior assistants, who switched on the tape deck. He watched the leader tape move between the reels, then said to Vladimirov, 'He speaks Russian sufficiently well to understand this?'

  Vladimirov glanced at Gant, as if to assure himself that the American was not eavesdropping, then nodded. 'He does.'

  'Very well, then. Let us see what occurs.'

  Gant heard the static, the mechanised voices, the clicks and bleeps of communication; recognising them, knowing them as well as he knew his own past. UHF communication between a pilot and his ground control. The sound seemed all around him, enveloping him as if he were wearing a headset, as if he were the pilot. He listened, his eyeballs moving slowly, rustily; unfocused. He absorbed the conversation, his awareness pricked and heated and engaged by the brief exchanges. His hands hung heavily at the ends of his wrists, and his body seemed a great way below him. His attention seemed like a little peak rising above dense jungle foliage which nothing could penetrate. He listened. The words enveloped him. He was back in the cockpit of the Firefox.

  'I've got him!… vapour-trail, climbing through sixty thousand… must get into the tail-cone to avoid his infra-red:' Whose infra-red - ? 'I'll have to slot in quickly behind him… climbing past me now… contrail still visible… seventy-thousand now, climbing up past me… come on, come on - please confirm orders…'

  'Kill,' Gant heard.

  'Two missiles launched… he's seen them, the American's seen them, come on— he's got the nose-up, he's into a climb, rolling to the right… missed… Bilyarsk control, I'm reporting both missiles failed to make contact…'

  Gant listened. It was him, and yet he remembered what was being described… his violent, evasive action… it was strange, inexplicable. It was in Russian, it was a MiG-31, yet not him. There was a pressure, almost too strong to resist, which suggested he was the pilot, the speaker… yet somehow he knew it was the test pilot he had killed, flying the second prototype Firefox. It enfolded him after that moment of lucidity. He was back in the cockpit.

  'Missed him again…! Wait, he's going into a spin, he's got himself caught in a spin . . he's losing altitude, going down fast, falling like a leaf… I'm diving, right on his tail…' Gant heard his own breathing accelerate, become more violent, as if the white room - dimly seen - were hot and airless. His blood pumped wildly, he could hear his heart racing. He sweated. 'I'm right on his tail - he can't pull out of the spin - he's going to fall straight into the sea, he can't do anything about it- !' Gant groaned, hearing the noise at a great distance. 'Thirty thousand feet now, he's falling like a stone-he's dumped the undercarriage… wait… the nose-down's getting steeper, twenty thousand feet now… he's levelling out, he's got her back under control… I'm right on his tail…' Gant was groaning now, stirring his hands and legs against the straps, moving his head slowly, heavily back and forth like a wounded animal. He might have been protesting, repeating No, no, no over and over, but he could not be sure of that. He knew the end of the story, the climax. He knew what was going to happen to him as he followed the American down and levelled out behind him, the cold Arctic Ocean below them - he knew.

  'Careful, careful… I'm on his tail… careful… he's doing nothing, he's given up… nothing - he's beaten and he knows it… I've got - ' Gant was minutely, vividly alive to the change of tone, the terror that replaced excitement. He knew what would happen… he could see the other Firefox ahead of him, knew what the American was going to do, knew he hadn't given up… 'Oh, God - !'

  Gant, too, screamed out the words, then his head lolled forward as if he had lost consciousness. The tape ran on, hissing with static. Tretsov was dead. Vladimirov was watching Gant with a look almost of awe on his face. He shuddered at the identification of the American with the dead Tretsov. The manner in which the American had played Tretsov's role, acted as if he, too, were suddenly going to kill, then die - uncanny. Unnerving. Gant was nobody now, or anybody they cared to suggest. Perhaps he could believe himself anyone at all, anywhere they said?

  'Mm,' the interrogator said beside him. 'Perhaps not quite the effect you wished for… but, from his file, I suggest the effect is not without merit.'

  'Ho
w?'

  'He has his own nightmares - his delayed stress syndrome. I think he will be sufficiently easy to convince that it was his own nightmare he experienced…' He smiled. 'When I heard your tape, I projected we might make such an impression on him.' One of his assistants nodded obsequiously as the interrogator glanced at him. 'Illness,' he continued, 'shock. We can work on this now. Very well - bring him round again, to the same level of awareness, no lower… and bring in our mimic.' He looked at Vladimirov. 'I hope the voice is good enough. We have tapes of the Englishman, of course - innocuous material, mostly gathered at long range in outdoor situations. The imitation seems to me sufficient.' He smiled again, studying the unconscious Gant and the white-coated doctor bending over him, pointing the needle down towards Gant's bared arm. 'He'll probably accept the man whatever he sounds like…'

  The light, the resolving faces and the familiar voice all came to Gant in the same moment. White room… He was sitting up-why had he expected to be lying down? Yes, nurse's uniform, he was in hospital… nightmare? He listened to the voice; familiar - changed, somehow foreign-tinted, but familiar. He listened to Kenneth Aubrey as he spoke slowly and soothingly. His eyes concentrated on the only two figures he could see, a nurse and a doctor. They stood directly in front of him… Aubrey must be behind him as he murmured gently, confidentially in his ear. Nurse, doctor - where was he? What had happened to him? His body felt dull, heavy, but without pain. What had happened?

  The voice explained.

  'You're recuperating very quickly, very fully, Mitchell,' Aubrey said soothingly. 'We're very pleased with you… but time presses us. You're the only one who can help us… time is pressing, you must try to remember-'