3: Gathering Storm
'— gone, sir. He must have vanished some time during the night, over the roof. We—'
'You were there!' Priabin shouted into the cars radio microphone. 'You stupid buggers were on the spot all night!'
'Sir, we had all the exits covered,' the voice began once more, its note of apology more calculating and less shocked.
In the Zil's front passenger seat, Viktor Zhikin sighed angrily and banged the dashboard with his gloved fist. His murmur was an echo of Priabin's sentiments.
'Find him!' Priabin barked, his voice unnerved. The silence around him in the car was thunderous. The driver had turned off the music from the black-market cassette.
'Sir?' Zhikin asked as Priabin threw him the microphone.
'Don't let's allow Orlov to go the same way, shall we?'
Zhikin snapped into the mike: 'All units — move in at once. Now.' Acknowledgments crackled in the car
'Come on,' Priabin snapped. 'Orlov will know where his little friend is.' I hope so, he added to himself. I hope so.
He opened the rear door and climbed out. The temperature assailed him, biting through his heavy overcoat, his boots. The black car was clothed with heavy frost.
Dear Christ, he thought, the idea striking him cleanly, they've lost Kedrov. Anger welled up at once, almost choking him. He had to find him; his whole career, his return to Moscow, depended on it. If it was discovered he let an American spy escape, he would be well and truly finished. Panic coursed through him like the effects of a drink. He almost lost his footing on the icy pavement. It glinted dully in the red, early light.
He steadied himself against the car, hardly squinting as he looked into the heavy, swollen ball of the sun that had just heaved itself above the flat horizon. Like a heavier-than-air balloon. Its dull red disk was bisected and trellised with launch gantries, the skeletons of radio masts, and radar dishes.
Zhikin crossed the narrow, cobbled street just ahead of him. It was veined with gray ice. The blinds of Orlov's shop were closed. Paint peeled from the wooden door. The shop's sign was weathered almost to illegibility. A word-of-mouth clientele, Priabin reminded himself humorlessly. Cassettes, expensive stereo items from the West, even the more usual currency of denim. Orlov supplied to the young and to the scientific and technical communities; the army had its own semiofficial pipeline, which flowed with more regularity, bringing the prized and scarce consumer luxuries. For the army it was a perk, not a crime.
Anger swelled once again in Priabin's throat. He banged on the door with his gloved fist, quickly, repeatedly. He realized Zhikin was watching him disapprovingly, head to one side. He went on banging, yelled Orlov's name in the quiet morning of the narrow, old street. Zhikin put his finger to the bell at the side of the door. What if, what if —? Priabin's mind drummed, as if to accompany the beat of his fist.
'Orlov!' he yelled. 'Orlov, open this bloody door!' Voice becoming higher.
A helicopter drummed and grumbled overhead. He looked up. A vapor trail crossed the sun. Across the street, he heard the driver's radio. What if Orlov had gone underground along with Kedrov, slipped away in the night? If the army found out about Kedrov — they must, now that the man had disappeared from his work — he'd be bloody ruined.
'Orlov. Orlov, you old bastard, open up!'
He had to get Kedrov back at once. Then he might win the game that had suddenly turned deadly.
Zhikin's hand was firm on his arm.
'OK, sir?' he asked, his face concerned and cautioning.
'What?'
'You need — to calm down. Orlov will be no help if you…'He did not need to finish the sentence. Priabin glared, then swallowed and nodded.
'OK, Viktor, OK. Usual style, old techniques — sure.' Come on, come on—
He craned toward the door and heard the slow shuffle of something — slippered feet or an old dog's noises — coming through the shop. A bolt slid back. A sigh escaped Priabin's lips, a smoky signal of relief. Zhikin's face settled into satisfied lines.
Another bolt, then a security lock. A gnarled hand slid up the blind. Orlov's face appeared, blinking at them like a threatened mole, its tunnel blocked behind it. Orlov wore thick glasses, was thin and elderly, but cunning — already counting them, assessing their mood. His head was bald, liver-spotted like the back of the hand still holding the raised blind. A shrunken but loose stomach sagged like a phantom pregnancy under a stretched gray cardigan.
He opened the door slowly. Priabin wanted to drive through it, rush into the shop bellowing Kedrov's name. But he knew the spy would not be there.
'Yes?' Orlov asked, his voice cautiously deferential, testing their mood like an antenna. His tongue licked his gray lips and his eyes blinked again. 'Yes, comrade Colonel? I'm not open—'
'You are to us,' Zhikin replied wearily, holding up the red ID card in its plastic folder.
'Yes, of course,' Orlov replied. 'Please come in, comrades. How can I help you?' Priabin, enraged by the man's calculated replies, realized he had been forewarned. He had been practicing his part all night.
Careful, careful… Viktor's right — Priabin could almost smell Kedrov upstairs, above the shop. He must have come; was he still here? What message had he sent? Steady, steady… Orlov's setting the pace just now.
They entered the shop. Bare floorboards, dust; the smells of lubricating oil, heavier greases, welding gas, paint. A litter of parts, a couple of complete bicycles; a new, bright-green man's bike in the shop's bay window that bulged into the narrow street outside. It was ready to be exposed to envying eyes as soon as the blinds and the security meshes were removed when the shop opened. Orlov seemed unwilling to invite them farther into the shop's secret reaches.
Priabin's excitement was evident in his voice. 'Where is he?' he blurted. Zhikin's face disapproved.
Orlov stood behind the counter of the shop, as if to serve them. On its surface, yesterday's paper was covered with oil and a bicycle chain. Then he was startled by the noise of locks being smashed at the rear of the building. His head turned wildly. Priabin nodded to Zhikin.
'Search everywhere,' he whispered insistently.
Zhikin seemed to weigh his mood and find it acceptable, and nodded. 'I don't think he's here,' he commented, then passed behind the shop counter into the rear of the building. Orlov had begun to whine.
'I — what do you want? I let you in, there was no need to break the door…..' His voice trailed off as Priabin approached the counter, more like an intruder than a customer. He touched the day-old local Tyuratam paper — its reports seeming to indicate a separation of existence between Baikonur and the old town — shunting its edges parallel with those of the counter. The bicycle chain slithered like an almost dormant snake. Priabin looked up from the newspaper into Orlov's gray features.
A little money on the side, that's all it was. He'd call it providing a service, probably. Always reasonably safe, since the KGB bought their new stereo headphones or styluses or pop tapes here, too. Got their Jap hi-fi repaired by Orlov. Priabin himself had done so on one occasion, after the officially approved electrical shop in the town had buggered his cassette player. Orlov was safe—
— until he wanted to start playing in the first division, with the big boys. Being the transmitter man for Kedrov.
Priabin soothed himself narcotically into the familiar role of interrogator. Softly, softly.
'Where's Kedrov?' he asked almost gently.
'Who?'
'One of your best customers by the number of times he's been here.'
Orlov was distracted by feet thudding overhead, by the destructive noises coming from behind the shop. The ripping of wood, tumbling of contents, the smashing of china, the heavy whispering of moved rugs and carpets; the groans of furniture being manhandled across bare boards.
'I don't understand. You want to know about a customer?'
