PART TWO
The Flight
Six
COUNTER MEASURES
By the time Kontarsky came aboard the First Secretary's Tupolev Tu-144, the moment after the giant supersonic airliner had rolled to a halt on the runway at Bilyarsk, dashing up the mobile passenger-gangway in which he had ridden from the hangar, the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party had already been told of the theft of the Mig-31 over the flight-deck UHF. As he was ushered into the military command section of the aircraft, aft of the passenger accommodation, the equivalent of the war command office on board the U.S. President's aircraft, he was confronted by what was, in fact, a council of war. The room was already filled with heavy cigar smoke.
Kontarsky saluted rigidly, and kept his eyes straight ahead. Only the back of a radio-operator's head at the far end of the cigar-shaped room filled his vision. Yet he knew that the eyes of the room's principal occupants were on him. An awareness that seemed to seep through the skin like damp told him where each of those powerful men sat. He knew that each was regarding him intently. He understood the details of the expression on each face. Directly in front of him, round the command table, circular in shape and fitted with projection equipment which would throw onto the table a relief map of any part of the Soviet Union, any part of the world, sat the First Secretary himself; on his right sat Kutuzov, Marshal of the Soviet Air Force, a world war ace, and a hardline Communist of the Stalinist school; to the left of the Soviet First Secretary sat Andropov, Chairman of the KGB and his ultimate superior. It was that trinity which so frightened him, which made the moments since he had stepped through the guarded door into this sanctum seem like minutes, hours… endless.
It was the First Secretary who spoke. Kontarsky, still rigidly to attention, and not requested to be at ease or to sit, saw from the corner of his eye the restraining hand of the First Secretary fall on the sleeve of Andropov's suit, and he caught the glint of an overhead strip-light reflected from the gold-rimmed spectacles worn by the Chairman of the KGB.
'Colonel Kontarsky — you will explain what has happened,' the First Secretary said, his voice soft, authoritative. He seemed unhurried. There was no other sound in the room except the steady hiss from a radio. It was nearly three minutes since Gant had taken off in the Mig, yet nothing seemed to have been done.
Now that he had failed, Kontarsky was almost hysterically eager to encourage and exhort the efforts to reclaim — or destroy, he presumed — the stolen aircraft.
He swallowed. 'An American…'he began, and coughed. He kept his eyes looking directly ahead, at the scrubbed neck of the radio-operator. 'An American pilot called Gant is responsible for the theft of the Mig-31, sir.'
'On the contrary, Colonel, it is you who are responsible,' the First Secretary replied, in a voice bereft of menace, bereft of humanity. 'Proceed.'
'He infiltrated the compound here with the aid of various dissident Jews, who are now all dead.'
'Mm. But not before they told you what you wished to know, I presume?'
Kontarsky looked down into the broad, lined face. It was a strong face. He had always thought so. The eyes were like chips of grey stone.
'We — learned nothing…' he managed to say.
There was a silence. He noticed that the radio-operator was sitting more upright in his chair, as if tense. When his eyes returned to the circular table, he could see the First Secretary's strong, veined hand tapping at the sleeve of the Chairman's dark, sober business suit, as if restraining him.
'You — do not know what the destination of the Mig-31 will be?' he heard the First Secretary ask.
'You know nothing?' Kutuzov interposed, shocked. Kontarsky saw the First Secretary glance swiftly at the ageing Marshal who was in full uniform, the sombre blue tinselled with insignia and overlapping decorations. The old pilot fell silent.
'No.' Kontarsky said, and his voice was small and flat, as if the room were deadened, without reverberation.
'Very well,' the First Secretary intoned after a moment of heavy, oppressive silence. At that moment, Kontarsky saw his ruin. For the First Secretary, and for the others, military personnel and KGB, gathered round the circular table, he had ceased to exist. 'You will place yourself under close guard, Colonel.' Kontarsky's lip trembled, and he looked once into the First Secretary's eyes. It was like looking in a mirror that refused to reflect his physical presence. 'You are dismissed.'
When Kontarsky had left the room, the door closing behind him softly, the First Secretary glanced in the direction of the Marshal. He nodded, once, and then turned his head to look at Andropov. He said:
'There is no time now for recriminations. That will come later. It appears obvious to me that this is a CIA venture, a desperate attempt to cancel the huge advantage in air superiority that the aircraft would have given to the Soviet Union. We know nothing else than the man's name, and his official file. It would tell us nothing of use. As each moment passes now, the Mig-31 moves further and further away from us, towards… where, Mihail Ilyich?'
The Marshal of the Soviet Air Force glanced over his shoulder at the back of an operator at a small console.
'Give us the 'Wolfpack' map of the U.S.S.R., quickly!' he said.
The operator punched buttons in instant obedience and, as the men seated at the table withdrew their hands, and packets of cigarettes and cigar-cases, the surface of the table registered a projection-map of the Soviet Union, clustered with tiny dots of varying colours. There before them on the screen of the table lay the diagram of the immense outer defences of the Soviet Union. The First Secretary leaned forward across the table, and tapped at the map.
'Bilyarsk,' he said. His ringer traced a circle round the area he had indicated. 'Now, in which direction has he gone?'
'We do not know, First Secretary,' Kutuzov said, his voice gruff. He had had an operation for cancer of the throat two years earlier, and it had left his voice a tired, dry whisper.
He looked across the table, across the glowing projection of the map, at Vladimirov, the tall, lean-faced officer with grey hair and watery blue eyes who sat opposite him. The ruthlessness, the confidence, of that face helped him to regain a little of his calm, after the blow of the theft of the Mig. He had been winded, temporarily paralysed, by what had happened. It had been even more of a body blow than Belenko's defection in a Foxbat four years before. He could still see, in his mind, the bright, swift glint of the fuselage as the aircraft had pulled away from the Tupolev, climbing swiftly. A glimpse, that had been all he had.
Over the UHF, then, had come the information that an unauthorised aircraft had taken off from the single main runway below them in the strengthening light. He had known, with a sudden, sick realisation, what aircraft it had been; before confirmation had flowed in, even as they touched down and the big plane had skipped once and then settled on the runway. Someone, an American, had stolen the greatest aircraft the Soviet Union had ever produced —
'What do you think, Vladimirov?' he said.
The tall, lean-faced man glanced down at the map, then looked up, addressing his remarks to the First Secretary. General Med Vladimirov, commandant of the tactical strike arm of the Soviet Air Force, the 'Wolfpack', as it was designated, was worried. He, too, understood the problem — how to trace an untraceable aircraft — but he did not intend to allow the First Secretary to see his doubts. Then, as lethargy seemed to have left him, he spoke.
'I suggest a staggered sector scramble, First Secretary,' he said directly, 'in two areas. We must put up as many planes as we can, along our southern and northern borders.'
'Why there?'
