he added, gesturing the American towards a rank of black limousines drawn up on the tarmac. Gant's attention wandered over the military airfield. Familiar, except for the aircraft types and their markings.
'Yeah?' he murmured. 'Found?'
Priabin's hand was on the door-handle of the second and largest limousine, a Zil. He nodded. The grin was boyish, the eyes alert, clever, studious. 'Almost in time,' he explained. 'You were on our computer files, of course. But — it was an accident, even then. A
'What happened to your boss?' Gant asked suddenly. Priabin's face frowned, then cleared.
'Colonel Kontarsky is — in disgrace, I'm afraid.' His head had turned from side to side, as if checking that his new shoulder boards remained in place. 'However, will you please get in the car.'
'Where are we going?'
Priabin grinned reprovingly. 'Come, come, Major-you know that as well as I. Please…?' He opened the door and gestured for Gant to get in. The American clambered into the Zil. The other rear door opened and a KGB man — the one whose overcoat smelt of mothballs and disuse — slid in next to him. Priabin got into the front passenger seat. The KGB man who was scented with harsh tobacco followed Gant into the car. He was pressed between them. No guns had been drawn. Priabin turned to watch the American as the driver accelerated towards the perimeter fence of the airbase. Passes were shown at the guardroom, and then they were turning onto the main road, towards Moscow.
Why hadn't he used his overcoat? Gant wondered irrelevantly, the smell of mothballs and mustiness overpowering now.
'Where did you discover that overcoat, Oleg?' Priabin asked good-humouredly, wrinkling his nose. 'It can't have been used for years.' Gant grinned crookedly.
'My son took mine before I was up,' Oleg grumbled. 'You know what kids are like, sir. What's yours is theirs — what's theirs is their own.' He tossed his head in mock disgust.
The midday traffic was light on the Volgograd road as they passed through farmland and forest; deceptive countryside, flat and passive like his home state. Only the black car in front and the two black cars behind forced his real context and status upon him. Industrial smoke belched beyond woodland ahead of them, from chimneys scrawled against the grey sky. The sleet slithered on the windsceen as the wipers flicked at it.
'I might make you walk the rest of the way,' Priabin said to Oleg, smiling. 'Get rid of that smell, at any rate.' He turned his attention to Gant. 'A pity about the aircraft,' he murmured conversationally.
'Sure,' Gant replied. 'A real crying shame.' He converted himself in his own mind to a laconic, simple, truculent figure; as if flexing the first muscles he would use in a contest yet to come. 'It caught fire,' Gant added.
'Mm. You ejected, then?'
'What else, man? I saw it go.' He nodded vigorously. In his mind, from the vantage point of his ejector seat, he saw his Phantom explode in Vietnam. That had been the moment before the quick, breathtaking rush through the trees, the catching jolt as the 'chute caught and held him, the arrival of the party, of armed Gooks…
He continued nodding. Priabin rubbed his top lip with his forefinger. 'Yes,' he remarked. 'You have certainly seen aircraft destroyed — blow up…?' His hands made the expansive gesture of a mushrooming cloud. Gant contented himself with a final, decisive nod. 'What a pity — all that money wasted,' Priabin said soothingly. 'I hope they believe you,' he added quickly.
Gant's eyes narrowed, but his features remained passive. Outside the car, a suburban town in the Moscow
They halted at traffic-lights. He felt the two bodies on either side come to greater alertness. He relaxed, slumping back against the seat. The Zil moved off as the lights changed. Hoardings stared down, alcohol and cheese and chocolate rivalling the flags and the Party portraits for his attention. The town straggled away behind them in the sleet, and an airliner dropped out of the cloudbase towards the Bykovo airport on their right. There was little that was unfamiliar, except the city ahead crowding on its hills like a vast gathering of people waiting for important news. Four days before, when he had entered it from the northrwest, from Cheremetievo, he hadn't noticed the hills. Now, the city might have been Italian; a holiday destination that had strayed to some wet, cold northern latitude.
He gave up trying to assimilate the city, change its nature. For him, it was now no larger than Dzerzhinsky Street and the Lubyanka prison behind the dignified facade of KGB headquarters. They passed beneath a railway bridge. Sparks flashed against the sullen sky from apassing train's overhead cage. He was holding on, but only just, only just -
Just keeping out the future. It was beginning to ooze through a hairline crack in the dam he had built with inadequate materials, but he was holding on…
Priabin scrutinised him carefully, keenly, as they drove along the wide Volgogradski Prospekt towards the inner ring orchard, the Garden Ring. He saw the onion domes of a church and a building near it that was large enough, alien enough to Gant, to have been a monastery. He was startled by the outline of a distant bridge over the Moskva as a gap between buildings revealed it to him. Beyond the monastery, against the sky and almost obscured by the sleet, he saw the Krasnoknlinski Bridge. He remembered its lights blurring with sudden tears as Vassily jerked his head back and held him while Pavel beat Fenton's face into an unrecognisable blood-covered dough.
He saw that his hands were shaking when he followed Priabin's keen gaze downwards, towards his lap. He clenched, them, ground his teeth, and looked up.
'Yeah,' he said suddenly.
Priabin had evidently seen the bridge, for he said; 'Well-remembered scenes, mm, Major?' Then he shrugged, and added. 'It was clever — ruthless, but clever. I'm afraid it doesn't make you the most popular visitor to Moscow.'
Taganskaia Square. They crossed it quickly, using the central lane marked with its broad yellow lines which was free of all but official traffic at any time. Ahead of the cars, Gant saw ugly concrete blocks towering above yellow-stuccoed buildings and monuments and columned arches.
Priabin turned to follow his gaze. A huge hotel block drifted past the Zil's windows. People hurried beneath, dwarfed, hunched into overcoats. There were very few umbrellas. Apart from the buildings, that was the most alien thing he had seen. Most of the people wore hats, or scarves, but there were almost no umbrellas. It
Priabin turned back to Gant. Ahead, through the smeared passage of the wipers, the city seemed to hurry like a crowd towards the centre. The streets narrowed, appeared to squeeze closer. The distance from Red Square to the KGB's headquarters was perhaps no more than two minutes' drive.
'Welcome to Moscow, Major Gant,' Priabin said, grinning.
The dam broke. Gant was no longer able to fend off, keep back, the future. It broke over him. His hands would not keep still on his lap, however hard he watched them, however much he willed them to stop.
'It's remarkably astute of the Finns, in my opinion,' Aubrey observed to Buckholz as they stood at the plot table. Yellow, red and green tape was stretched between pins. The futuristic model of the Firefox remained where he had placed it, squatting on the lake. It ought to be
'Sure,' Buckholz grumbled.
'They don't want Russians in Finland, collecting and taking back their most secret warplane — think of the bad publicity that would give this new Finnish government… and they certainly wouldn't want to destroy it themselves, and have to own up to the Russians — too much diplomatic flak for anyone's liking there. So, what do they do? Give us the job of cleaning their stables for them, and making us pay an exorbitant price for the privilege of so doing! One really has to admire them.'
'Does one?' Buckholz asked reluctantly, sarcastically.
'I think so, Charles — oh, don't be such a spoilsport. In the end I don't suppose it will come down to us giving them very much more than we do already. You know that as well as I do. What is it that is really upsetting
