of making the most of this elaborate subterfuge to smuggle him into Bilyarsk. Let me make the call — then you can resort to the physical stuff!'
Tortyev hesitated for a moment, shrugged in his turn, and Priabin picked up the receiver.
The searchlight picked him up early, with fifty yards still to go, fixed on him, and he walked into the tunnel of its white, blinding light. He tried to appear casual, yet irritated, and shaded his eyes studiously. Each footstep threatened to become reluctant, to stutter to a halt, his frame and motive power running down, like a machine dying. He forced his legs to work. The cramp was coming back to his stomach. He knew the sweat was standing out on his forehead, and his hands were shaking. Gant was suddenly threatened. It was as if his ego had been stripped and he knew he could not carry it through. This was worse than the flying — this was the struggle of the stranded fish. 'Identify yourself,' the voice said and he realised, with a shock, that he was close to the gate. A guard was pointing a rifle in his direction. 'Identify yourself.'
His voice sounded old and weak, winding up hoarsely like an ancient clock to strike. 'Identify yourself —
The guard reacted. It was what he expected from a GRU officer, even though he did not know the face, and he replied as expected.
'Identity, please — sir.'
Gant fished in his papers and passed them across, the yellow ID card on the top. The guard took it, and inspected it. Gant knew he had to light a cigarette now, to calm himself, to occupy the hands that threatened to betray him. He reached as casually as he could into the hip-pocket of his jacket, and pulled out the cigarette case. He lit the cigarette and inhaled, almost choking on the raw smoke. He exhaled thankfully, stifling a cough. He began to inspect the arrangements at the gate.
There were six guards, frozen into unreal postures in the harsh light that bathed the wire and the open space before it. The red-and-white barrier remained firmly lowered, and two uniformed KGB guards stood woodenly behind it, rifles casually pointed in his direction. There was a guard-hut at either side of the barrier, giving it the appearance of a customs-post, and in the doorway of each another soldier was visible. The sixth man stood behind the guard inspecting his papers. Gant checked the piping and the tabs on each of the uniforms. Each guard was KGB, not part of the GRU Security Support Group to which he was supposed to belong. That, at least, would explain his unfamiliar face. 'Why were you outside the wire — sir?'
There was a silence, and then Gant said: 'You have your orders, soldier — I have mine. You
The soldier was silent for a moment, then he said: 'Yes, sir — we've been alerted.'
'Good. Then I suggest you get a dog out here, and look at that clump of trees regularly during the next few hours.'
Gant watched the soldier's eyes. His whole consciousness focused on them. Slowly, infinitely slowly, he watched the moment turn over, like a world orbiting. It retreated. The soldier snapped to attention, and nodded.
'Yes, sir. Good idea, sir.'
Gant touched his cap ironically, still smiling. The barrier swung up at a signal from the guard, and Gant saw one of the figures in a hut-doorway turn inside, presumably to inform the guards at the second gate that the officer had been cleared for entry. Nodding, he stepped forward, feeling the sudden weakness of his legs, as if they were somewhere far away from the rest of his body.
The rotors of a chopper buzzed suddenly loud, as if his hearing had become suddenly acute. He looked up, forcing himself to act casually; then he had reached the gate, which remained closed against him. He saw the guard, gun at the ready, then saw a second guard emerge from the guard-hut, and signal that the gate could be safely opened. Gant drew his ID card from his pocket, dropped his cigarette in the dirt and ground his heel on it. He appeared irritated at the delay, standing with his hands on his hips, his lips pursed. He saw, comfortingly, that the guard was beginning to fall back into his routine pattern of behaviour. He had been confronted with a uniform, superior in rank to his own, and he had accepted it.
The gate opened, not the huge double gate but a small personnel door set into the gates. Gant, nodding irritatedly, stepped through, and it clattered shut behind him. He didn't bother to study the guards, but headed down the track which skirted the runway, towards the hangar. It was all he could do to prevent the surge of adrenalin through his system from driving his body at a run. Probably, the guards at the gate had already forgotten him. Yet, their eyes bored into his back. His shirt was sticky with sweat across the small of his back. His heart pumped loudly in his ears, drumming him into activity, into a run…
He stepped across the runway, turning off the road. He glanced swiftly along its length, then gazed ahead of him. The hangar was nearer now. He followed the taxi-way that led to it from the runway proper.
A chopper buzzed overhead, the downdraught plucking his cap and jacket, flapping his trousers. He held onto his cap, and looked up. He saw a face at the open door of the chopper and he waved, the abrupt wave of an officer with every right to be where he was. The chopper pulled round in a tight circle, and the face grinned at him, a hand waved, and the chopper pulled away. Settling his cap firmly on his head, Gant walked on.
It was less than a hundred yards now, he estimated. He could see the guards stationed at the hangar doors, see the spillage of warm light on the concrete, hear the sounds of echoed metal dimly. The hangar door, as the taxi-way curved and straightened, opened before him, and he felt a quickening of his pulse, the surge of adrenalin in his system — but not as before, not because fear was gripping his stomach, crawling up his spine. This was an elation, an excitement. He could not pause, to stare open-mouthed into the hangar, but he possessed all the sudden wonder and response of the child at an exhibition. Gant was a single-minded individual. There was no real complexity to his character. The only thing he had been able to do supremely well, ever, was to fly airplanes. Now, in the hangar spilling its raw, warm, light, echoing with voices and noise, he glimpsed the Firefox. Its elongated nose was tilted up and towards him, and he saw the attendant, insect figures busy about the gleaming silver fuselage. Two huge intakes glared blackly at him, and there was the fleeting impression of wings edge-on… Then he had turned aside. His momentary pause would not have been out of character for a man new to the project and who had flown in the previous night.
There was activity of a different kind at the door of the KGB building, the security headquarters attached to the hangar. It was, Gant reflected, with an unusual poetry, a symbol — wherever Soviet achievements went, the KGB was sure to go, linked by an umbilical cord. As he approached, guards on the door snapped to attention, and for a moment he wondered whether he had not attracted this respect — then the door opened, held by a guard from inside, and he was face to face with KGB Colonel Mihail Kontarsky, head of security for the Mikoyan Project. He snapped to attention, fingers at his peak, as he confronted the short, slim, busy-looking man, and noticed the edge of worry in the eyes, the nervous movement they possessed.
Kontarsky stared at Gant. 'Yes, Captain?' he snapped nervously.
Gant realised his mistake. He had made it appear that he wished to report to Kontarsky. Behind Kontarsky was Tsernik, looking at him in puzzlement. He was a strange face, and Gant knew that to Tsernik he should not have been a strange face. Tsernik would have met him, had he really arrived with the GRU detachment the previous day, or would have seen his file and photograph.
The moment hit him in the stomach, bunching it, twisting it in its grip. He was less than a hundred yards from his objective, the airplane, and he had walked straight into the arms of the security chief.
'Sir — I have, without your permission, ordered a dog for the guards on the security entrance… to search the belt of trees, thoroughly,' Gant said, his voice level, controlled by a supreme effort. His mind screaming at him to break and run.
Kontarsky seemed to take a moment to realise what was being said to him, as if he were concentrating on something else, then he nodded.
'Good thinking, Captain — my thanks.' Kontarsky touched the peak of his cap with his glove and passed on. Gant dropped his hand, then raised it again to salute as Tsernik passed him. With a sweeping relief, Gant realised that his report had been accepted by the second-in-command. He merely nodded, no longer looking puzzled, and passed on behind Gant.
As they moved away, he heard Kontarsky say: 'Now is the time to pick up Dherkov — now that the others are safely inside. You agree, Tsernik?'
