you? The fact that your President, at the eager prompting of the Chiefs of Staff, the entire Pentagon, the NSA and your own Director, have ordered us to rescue the airframe if we humanly can?'
Aubrey's complacent smile irritated the American, made him unreasonable; even disposed to violence. Washington had given him explicit orders, outlined a specific course of action; pressured London into agreement, into the supply of men and facilities and materials. Buckholz was angry with Aubrey for anticipating, in his insatiable desire for success, the way in which the President's Crisis Management Committee would resolve the matter. An all-night meeting, a morning of computer-discussed scenarios, and the White House had agreed with Aubrey. The attempt must be made, and the Finns made to allow it.
Charles Buckholz felt he now appeared stupid, narrow, defeatist. Aubrey had forced such a view of himself upon him, and he therefore disliked Aubrey intensely at that moment. He disliked Pyott, too, he thought, as the soldier, now attired in a dark suit rather than his uniform, entered the Ops. Room, a sheaf of papers in one hand. To Buckholz's extreme irritation, he proceeded to wave them like a flag above his head as he came to wards them.
'Well?' Aubrey asked eagerly. Pyott, on reaching them, seemed disconcerted by Buckholz's sullen expression and glinting eyes. 'Oh, don't mind Charles,' Aubrey remarked airily. 'He's sulking because the President ignored his Jeremiad this morning!' Then he turned to Pyott again. 'Is that Abingdon's shopping list?'
'Yes, it is.'
'Good. And how were JIC and the Chiefs of Staff, not to mention Andrew Gresham, our revered leader?'
'Sullen,' Pyott observed maliciously, looking at Buckholz with amusement. 'At least, Gresham and the Cabinet Defence Committee are writhing at the pressure the President is putting on them — but wilting, of course. JIC is fence-sitting, and the Chiefs of Staff are promising the moon in the way of assistance!'
Aubrey grinned broadly, almost snatching the sheaf of papers from the taller Pyott. Pyott handed them to him, and brushed at his moustache; a preening gesture, Buckholz thought.
'Kids,' he remarked. 'You're like kids.'
'Charles,' Pyott soothed. 'Let's not get into that again.'
'It's not a game — not even your old imperial Great Game, Giles,' the American said heavily, leaning on clenched knuckles on the plot table; a heavy, reluctant figure, someone to be taken seriously. 'Kenneth's idea of Christmas, this is,' he continued. 'And maybe yours.' He looked at each of them in turn, intently, then he added: 'The President never mentioned Gant, though-uh? Not a goddamned word!' Buckholz threw his hands up in the air, continuing with great vehemence: 'What did he do, uh? Stand in front of the green-tinted window in the Oval Office, put his hand on his heart and tell the Chiefs of Staff and the gathered multitudes that Mitchell Gant was a true American and he'd never talk to the damned Russkies!' Pyott dropped his glance. His eyes seemed to cast about on the plot table for something he had mislaid. Aubrey, too, seemed abashed. 'You haven't got a chance — not the ghost of a chance — because they've got him and they're going to make him talk. Today, tomorrow, or maybe if you're lucky the poor dumb bastard will hold out until the day after tomorrow — but eventually, he's going to tell them go look in the lake, comrades. That's where it is. And if he holds out that long, you might just have gotten it out of the lake before they arrive — they won't even have to fish for it!'
Buckholz glared at them, then turned on his heel and walked noisily across the Ops. Room towards the door. He slammed it behind him.
Aubrey stared at the plot table and the coloured tapes marking supply routes and aircraft types and journey times and dropping zones. The sheaf of papers he held tightly in his right hand quivered at the lower edge of eyesight. He could hear his own breathing, nasal but barely under control. Finland appeared so accessible on the plot table. Coloured tape stretched out towards it from the UK, from Norway. The black model of the Firefox sat stolidly on the pinprick of the lake. The quivering sheets in his hand were the foundation, the scenario.
And yet Buckholz was right.
The telephone startled him. He looked at Pyott almost wildly. The soldier crossed the room to the foldaway table on which the secure telephone rested.
'Yes?' he asked, then immediately held out the receiver to Aubrey. It seemed slippery as soon as he touched it. 'Shelley.'
'Yes, Peter?' he asked anxiously. 'Yes… yes… I see-they're certain, yes, yes, I appreciate they are… very well. Yes, the surveillance must be of the best, they may not keep him there… yes, Peter. Thank you.' He put down the telephone heavily. Pyott, in response to Aubrey's bewildered glance, furiously rubbed at his moustache with a crooked right forefinger. 'He's arrived,' Aubrey announced in a voice that might, in less serious circumstances, have sounded comically gloomy. 'Almost an hour ago, he was driven into Moscow Centre.' He glanced up at the large clock on the Ops. Room wall. It was as if he could hear it ticking in the empty silence of the underground room. 'Damn it!' he cried, thumping the foldaway table with his fist. 'Damn and blast it, it's already
They had taken him directly to Andropov's office. The cobbled courtyard behind the main building had seemed desolate and ice-cold, gleaming with melted sleet. He had glimpsed the old buildings of the Lubyanka as they hurried him from the car. The office of the KGB Chairman seemed like some kind of bribe. Warm, opulently furnished with embroidered sofas and oriental carpets, panelled walls, tall windows looking down on Dzerzhinsky Square and Marx Prospekt. He was given a drink — bourbon, which he disliked but which they might have assumed was to his taste. It burned his chest and stomach, but the sensation, after the chilling cold of the cobbled courtyard, was comforting.
Andropov watched him from behind his large, intricately-carved French desk, hands steepled, face not unkindly. Merely curious. A tall, uniformed man stood at his side, outlined against the artificial whiteness provided by the net curtains. His eyes gleamed even in half-shadow. Gant sat on a delicate antique chair covered with embroidered silk, cradling his drink, while Priabin stood behind him. There was no one else in the room, but the illusion of innocence that the smallness of the company at first provided, soon dissipated. Instead, the status and size of the office, the heavy silence, the furnishings, the intensity of the air force general's gaze and the patent and insatiable curiosity on Andropov's face began to unnerve him.
Vladimirov, standing beside Andropov, was aware of a slow-growing cramp in his left calf. The sense of stiffness reminded him of how motionless he had remained since Gant entered the room; a stillness of body that belied the state of his emotions and thoughts. After a night's sleep and breakfast with his wife and the reading of a treasured letter from their only son regarding his promotion to deputy director of the power station in Sverdlovsk, he realised that he hated Gant. It was some kind of delayed stress reaction, he concluded. He had suspected it in the staff car as he was being driven to the Centre from his apartment. Suspected it even as he recalled his son's childhood, his poor academic record at school, the fudging that had got him into a technical university, his dislike of the armed forces and his choice of a career in electricity. In Andropov's office, drinking coffee, engaging in the halting small-talk that was all the Chairman could command, he had begun to be more certain. When they had brought in the American — weary, disorientated, fearful — he had known with certainty that he hated him. No admiration, no ex-flyer's fellow-feeling, no
Gant had almost ruined him, almost made him fail; almost outwitted him. He had destroyed the other prototype and lost the one he had stolen. He would be made to pay.
Eventually, Andropov cleared his throat with a small, polite sound, smoothed his silk tie, and said, 'Major Gant — Major Mitchell Gant…' He smiled thinly. 'We have — asked you to come here today to tell us what you have done with the prototype MiG-31 which you removed from the secret complex at Bilyarsk early yesterday morning — what have you to say?' The tone was an attempt at silkiness, at a kind of indirect, ironic humour. Priabin sensed that Andropov was unused to the tone, had had little use for it in the past.
'It blew up — I told him,' Gant replied sullenly, gesturing over his shoulder at Priabin. Andropov's gaze flickered to the young colonel's face, then back to Gant.
'I see. You, of course, ejected?' Gant nodded. 'Where, precisely? Would you describe the incident for us? General Vladimirov is most interested to know what became of the aircraft — aren't you, General?'
'Yes,' Vladimirov replied in a choked voice. The American's sullen, insulting voice, his pretence to stupidity, further angered him. Even now, he was preparing to play a game with them.
Gant sniffed. 'Could I have another drink?' he asked, holding out his glass.
'Of course. Colonel — ?'
Priabin brought the bottle, half-filled the crystal tumbler, returned the bottle to the dark, inlaid cabinet
