common identity of service with Serov. Priabin was KGB, Priabin had been with the American. The corporal slouched beside Priabin, his rifle barrel nudging at his arm as if to mock rather than arrest.
'Sir,' the guard murmured with undisguised insolence.
Priabin heard Rodin's voice. The lieutenant's face was satisfyingly pale. It had taken him whole minutes to interrupt Rodin's unalloyed triumph. Eventually, he lowered the telephone and muttered: 'He's coming up.'
The reduced image of the main control room's map showed the red path of the launch moving across the world; on course, undeviating. The shock of Serov's death retreated from Priabin, and he became aware that it was too late, that Gant had too far to go — even if he made it.
Kutuzov,
The shuttle was on the point of employing its own engines, not those of the G-type booster. In another forty minutes or less it would be established in orbit and preparing to launch the laser weapon from its cargo bay. Gant was a thousand miles and hours too late.
Rodin flung open the door. There were others behind him, perhaps four or five staff officers of senior rank, but they were like extras accompanying a star performer. His face was pinched with rage, his eyes pale and gleaming. He hardly noticed Priabin as he crossed to the lieutenant.
'What is this? What has happened?'
'Comrade General, sir, the American—'
'You told me that!' he shouted back. 'Where is the American now?'
The lieutenant shook his head falteringly. 'He's — he's disappeared, comrade.'
Rodin turned to the staff officers who now crowded the room. '1 knew this would happen — didn't I warn you? Didn't I warn him? There were no dissenters. Nor was there anything of Priabin's own strange satisfaction in Rodin's reaction. It was purely a military and security matter. For the moment, his son had never existed or come into contact with Serov. Priabin glanced at the wall clock. Almost ten minutes into the launch. Perhaps six minutes since the moment he had first noticed the panic behind the tinted glass. Rodin clenched his fists in impotent fury.
'We're in the middle of nowhere,' Priabin said. Rodin's head jerked up, as if he had received a blow. Only slowly did he recognize the speaker, and even more slowly did suspicion and dislike clear from his features.
'And he knows it,' Rodin replied finally, as he slapped one clenched hand into its companion palm. The looks were puzzled, as if Rodin and himself were two people employing a secret language. 'And he damn well knows it,' Rodin repeated, and the breathy words might have contained admiration. Then he snapped at the map's operator: 'Enlarge the map area — full extent. No, again— again. Smallest scale.'
The operator typed frantically at his keyboard. The map, like a rectangle of stained glass upright on a trestle, changed in a series of eye-hurting jolts. Each time, the area covered by the map enlarged. It was the effect of a camera rushing away from a place, a jerky, interrupted view such as the cosmonauts aboard the shuttle might have had, if they ever looked down and back. Finally, when the operator looked up, the blue smear of the Caspian's eastern coastline soiled the left-hand edge of the map, yellow desert filled the bottom half, the Aral Sea was little more than a large puddle, and mountains began to rise in the southeastern corner. Millions of square miles; hundreds of thousands, at the least.
Rodin studied the map, then turned on Priabin.
'You think he's won?' he said. It was hardly a question.
'No,' Priabin admitted. 'I think he's lost.'
As if to confirm some pessimistic hospital diagnosis, the voice of the shuttle commander was suddenly loud in the room.
'Baikonur Control, this is
'I think you're right,' he said, and turned back to the map. 'He could still be anywhere in that nowhere,' he added in a murmur.
'Flying low and on an erratic course,' Priabin replied. Again, they seemed the only two insomniacs in a room of sleepers; the only two who understood each other and the situation. 'There's no one out there to see or hear him — hardly a soul, anyway. He's gone.' He sensed the pleasure in his voice, but did not regret it. And Serov Was dead.
'You think so?' Rodin asked.
The general had turned to him now, not as to some trusted adviser but rather to an opponent who had somehow earned his reject. And who would be beaten and eliminated, Priabin realized. There was a cold and malevolent glitter in the old man's eyes. Valery and Serov were both dead. His son was off his conscience.
Priabin, nevertheless, nodded in a studiedly casual way.
'I think so,' he repeated, moving closer to Rodin. He pointed at the map. 'It will be dark for another three hours and more. Hes amid ground clutter as far as radars concerned, this whole area is uninhabited for the most part. He's the best pilot they have — we know that only too well. He's gone, General. He's gone, all right.'
Rodin paused, then his fingers clicked and he snapped out: 'Fuel! He exploded the fuel store, you said. How much fuel did he take on board — any? Well, do you know?'
Voices leaking from the radio, as depressing as continuous rain against summer windows.
Their content never varied. Gant had, to all intents and purposes, disappeared. Almost, Priabin thought with an irony that he savored, as if the aircraft he flew were invisible.
'Sir — I have an answer,' the lieutenant announced breathlessly.
'Well?'
'Most of the store was destroyed. Some empty drums were away from the fire — the aircraft would have been fueled up, anyway, comrade General, sir. So what—?'
'What has he done? I don't know, lieutenant, but I am willing to stake that he has more than enough fuel for his journey. Wouldn't you, Priabin?'
Rodin nodded. 'Oh, yes, this American is trying to make it all the way home.'
'Which means,' Priabin realized, blurting out the words as if they were a cry of pleasure, 'you have to stop, cancel
'I shall cancel nothing.'
'Unless you catch him it doesn't matter if it takes him a month to get home. He has the proof.'
'Then he must be found.'
'You have to stop it.'
'No!' Rodin thundered. 'The American has to be found!'
'You won't be able to do that, General.'
Rodin studied Priabin with a malevolence that distorted his features. He rubbed his chin feverishly. His eyes gleamed.
'You think not? That's some old agricultural variant of an Antonov he's flying — a crop-spraying aircraft. Wherever he is headed, south or west — and however deviously — he can't travel fast enough-He's racing daylight, and he can't win.' He turned his back to study the enlarged area shown on the map. His left hand waved vaguely yet repeatedly, as if he were conjuring something from the computer image. In the center of the display, the maddened insects of the search continued to buzz and jerk and twist in their separate courses. Rodin continued speaking, addressing no one other than Priabin. 'I calculate he will have to run for a full hour in daylight, whichever route he takes.' He turned back to Priabin. 'Which means we shall set a trap for our friend. Using every aircraft and helicopter we can lay our hands on. West and south — slam the doors in his face. Mm?' His confidence had become amused. 'Well, Colonel?'
After a long silence, Priabin said: 'I see. You'll be waiting for him. However—'
'However nothing. We'll find him — and kill him. Meanwhile, there's work to do.' He glanced at the men in the room as if for the first time. 'Lieutenant — you will continue the search within the Baikonur perimeter. His aircraft may have been damaged in the— explosion.' There was only the merest hesitation in his voice. 'Responsibility for coordinating the larger search will pass to me.'
