Firefox

'ETA six minutes… still no radio contact, sir.' Gant heard Fleischer's voice coming squeakly from the settling storm, saw the thin figure of Seerbacker outlined once more as the hoses passed away down the floe towards the plane. He wiped the snow from his stubbled face with the back of a mitten.

Seerbacker remained silent for a long time, his back to Gant as he watched Peck's party clearing the runway. To him, they appeared to be moving slowly, far too slowly. Unable to bear the tension or the silence any longer, he turned to Gant, and said:

'Are they going to make it?'

Gant nodded. 'A minute to spare,' he said.

'Can you get out of here in that time?'

'So far away, you wouldn't believe!' Gant said, with a grim smile.

'You better be right, mister — you just better be!'

* * *

'The contact is confirmed, First Secretary!' Vladimirov said, his hand slamming down on the map-table, so that the lights joggled and blurred for a moment.

The man in front of him seemed unmoved, perhaps still even contemptuous of the military man's urgency Vladimirov knew that he was risking everything now, that there was no time for the niceties of career, and politics. He had known that it was an American submarine, and he had known its purpose. The silence had told on him. He was white and strained, and there was sweat on his forehead. He sensed that, alone in the room, only the old man, Kutuzov, supported him. Even he was silent.

'Vladimirov, calm yourself!' the First Secretary growled.

'Calm — calm myself?' Vladimirov's voice was high-pitched, out of control. He had committed himself now, he knew. Yet he could not stand by, even though he had schooled himself to do so, tried to quell the pendular motion of self-interest and duty that had plagued him throughout the morning. He had been unable to eat lunch, there had been such tightness in his stomach, such a knot of fear. Perhaps, he sensed, it was that he was afraid, the appalling knowledge that he was a coward, that had driven him to do his duty.

'Yes — calm yourself!'

'How can I be calm — when your stupidity — stupidity, is losing that aircraft to the Americans? You have read the file — you know what this man Gant is. He could land that aircraft on an ice-floe, and take off again. Listen to me — before it's too late!'

Like a frozen hare, Vladimirov watched the emotions chase each other across the face of the First Secretary. The initial hot rage at the insult was controlled in an instant, becoming once more the cold contempt of habit; a sense of sadistic pleasure seemed present to Vladimirov — lastly, he saw the emotion for which he searched — doubt.

Vladimirov pressed on, knowing that, even as he ruined himself, that the First Secretary was afraid to ignore him any longer. The Soviet leader was unable to hold Vladimirov's gaze, and turned to look over his shoulder at Andropov. The Chairman's face was inscrutable.

'You must act, First Secretary — it is too late for politics.'

The big man seemed as if poised to spring at the O.C. 'Wolfpack', then he summoned a smile to his face, lightness to his voice: 'Very well, Vladimirov, very well, if it means that much to you…' The voice hardened. 'If you are so ready to — spoil things by your behaviour — I can do no more than humour you.' He waved his hand in a generous gesture. 'What is it you require?'

'The immediate recall of the second Mig from the North Cape rendezvous.'

Vladimirov felt his voice tighten in his throat. His energy drained away. Now there was nothing left but fear, the sense of lost honours, of power thrown away. His victory was a bitter, icy moment in time. The First Secretary nodded, once. It did not matter about the remainder of the massive forces mis-directed to the Cape. Not now. Only the second Mig-31 and Tretsov could affect the outcome this late. And, as if in recompense for his career sacrifice, he wanted Gant dead now, wanted Tretsov to finish him.

As he crossed to the console to issue orders to Tretsov, he glanced in the direction of Kutuzov. He thought for a moment, that he saw a kindly, even admiring, wisdom in the rheumy eyes, coupled with a profound compassion. Then he received the impression that the old man was detached, unaware of what was going on. He felt very alone, unable to decide which impression was the truth.

He snapped out his orders — possibly the last orders he would issue as O.C. 'Wolfpack', he reflected grimly — in a calm, level voice, aware of the eyes behind him, watching him. The room was still with tension.

As Tretsov acknowledged, and the second Mig altered course for the ice-floe using its top speed of over four thousand miles an hour, Vladimirov grasped at this last chance that Tretsov would kill Gant.

* * *

'They're calling, sir — want identification immediately sir,' Fleischer's voice creaked out of the handset still clipped to Seerbacker's top pocket.

'The hell they do. You know the routine, it's written down. Do it.'

'The Russian wants to speak to you sir.'

'Tell him I'll be along — I'm engaged in goddam experiments at the other end of the floe! Tell him I'll be along.'

'Sir. ETA three minutes and fourteen seconds.'

The conversation had gone on somewhere outside Gant, at a great distance. He and Seerbacker, waiting now by the aircraft, watching the snail-like approach of the men and the hoses, were miles apart in reality. Gant knew, almost to the second, how much time was left, and how much time they needed. They had precisely one minute to spare.

Seerbacker was visibly on edge. The voice of Fleischer acted on his lanky form like a twitch of the puppeteer's strings, pulling him taut He could not, as the Russian closed on the Pequod, any longer believe that the crude hut, the bogus charts, and the thermometers and the masts, would save him. Gant, however, was like a passenger whose train has arrived, calmly collecting the luggage of his thoughts prior to departure. He was no longer what Seerbacker had privately, thought him, a man without a past on his way to no discernible future. He was in transit, and the figures on the landscape of mist and ice had little or nothing to do with him.

'Hell — they'll never make it!' Seerbacker snapped, unable to bear the tension.

'They will,' Gant said calmly, his voice so level, almost a whisper, that Seerbacker looked at him curiously.

'Man, but you're cool…'

Gant smiled. 'Somebody once told me I was dead — the flying corpse they called me in Vietnam,' Gant said.

'You minded?'

'No.' Gant replied, shaking his head slightly. 'Most of the guys who used the name were dead before they pulled us out… missiles, AA guns, enemy planes.'

'Yes,' Seerbacker said softly. 'Hell of a war… '

Peck, sweating, pale, angry and weary, came towards them. There remained only a hundred yards of runway left to clear. He said, towering over Gant: 'We won't make it, mister — if you don't get that bird out of here before the Reds arrive, we're all for the Lubyanka!'

Gant shook his head. 'You have a minute in hand, Chief,' he said. Peck stared at him, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes reflecting baffled incomprehension which changed slowly to conviction.

'If you say so,' he muttered and turned away, back towards the hoses, exhorting his men blasphemously.

'You sure impress the hell out the Chief,' Seerbacker said with a thin smile. 'I just hope you don't have to do it to the Russians.'

'ETA two minutes and thirty seconds,' Fleischer said. 'He keeps asking for you, sir. He wants convincing — I don't think I've done a very good job.'

'To hell with that, Dick. Keep stalling him — does he look like surfacing? Has he asked any awkward questions?'

'No, sir. He seems just naturally suspicious — not as if he's looking for anything special.'