Winter Hawk

was air and running water. But he'd brought supplies of his own, enough to last. The tiny bottled-gas stove and heater, he'd brought that, too. Vodka and beer — some things he'd stored on previous visits against the necessity, the fear, of having to use this place to hide out. Some last refuge — it possessed an old-fashioned appearance, even while it still had a sense of science fiction about it.

He unslung his small haversack and dropped it on the nearest bunk. The place struck him afresh, almost as if men still sat or lay on the bunks and there was a murmur of conversation in the room. The drift of cigarette smoke, the smell of coffee, as they waited to loose their missiles or waited having done so. He rubbed his arms, then rubbed his hands together to warm them. Cold — it was just the cold. He unbuttoned his overcoat and walked up and down the corridorlike room. There was no need, at the moment, to go into the cramped kitchen, check the water purifier or the stove. He had done all that on previous visits, there was no need.

A magazine lay beneath one bunk. He glimpsed old black-and-white photographs; he thought he recognized the face of Kennedy, once American President, peeping from the shadows. He was part of the geological record of the place.

He opened the haversack, then the greaseproof package he removed from it. Bit into the thick sandwich and its sausage filling. It seemed hard to digest, the bread unyielding at the back of his throat. The empty room seemed to murmur with voices again. In a moment, he must go and turn off the corridor lights, just in case. This was a horrid place.

Soon, soon they would know he had disappeared. By now, even. The KGB would question Orlov, the army would be told he had not reported for work, that his flat was empty. The hunt for him would begin. They'd panic — the army would want him, too, because of what he had overheard about Lightning. They'd think it was why he'd panicked — God, it was mad! Those telemetry officers could have killed him on the spot; by now they'd have found out who he was, reported the incident…

… changing the course of history, demonstrating who's really in charge to the Kremlin dodderers… they'd been half-pissed, loud, stupid — having a pee and not realizing he was in one of the cubicles. God, he'd have had to get away from them, even without the KGB following him!

He opened a bottle of beer. It was gassy, mostly foam, as he tilted the neck of the bottle to his lips. But it made the bread easier to swallow, softening it from the half-masticated stone it had become against the roof of his mouth.

Lightning. He giggled with returning confidence, with a growing sense of safety. Nothing to laugh about. He bit off another mouthful of sandwich, swigged more beer. Going down easier; he was beginning to enjoy the food.

He was safe, he told himself. The Americans would come. While the army looked for him and the KGB ran around in ever-decreasing circles, he was safe here. He sighed, a windy little noise in the long, narrow room. The Americans would be here in — oh, what, two days, three? He could hang on that long.

Couldn't he?

He shivered again. The bread stuck in his throat.

'Now, Orlov, where is he?'

Priabin's gloves tapped the kitchen table, slapping into patternless grains the little comet's tail of spilled sugar he had created near the opened packet. Some grains had adhered to the fingers of his gloves, some to the circuit boards and tape reels that lay on the table like accusations. The technical boys had found it after little more than an hour — it wasn't yet ten o'clock — despite the grumbling reluctance of their search, having been summoned directly from their beds into the winter morning of the old town. Orlov had, indeed, disassembled the transmitter into its component parts. The dish aerial they had found under a pile of old, rusting bicycle parts in the backyard of the shop, the high-speed tape reels in a box of tape-recorder spares; the frequency-agile encoder inside a degutted amplifier case; other pieces in speaker enclosures, inside the hollow frames of bicycles. There was enough on the table — never mind elsewhere in the shop — to represent, undeniably, a satellite-using, American-made transmitter and receiver of coded signals.

For the messages of spies; agents-in-place.

'Where is he?' Priabin repeated.

Orlov shook his head, his face hidden in his gnarled hands. He had crumbled rather than broken; each piece and component of the transmitter had been another wave battering at a worn cliff, eroding it Orlov had slid quietly and quickly into total defeat.

'I don't know. He didn't tell me. He called from a phone booth last night — that's all I know.' He muttered into his dirty-nailed fingers. Priabin sipped his second cup of coffee and slid his legs out from the table, stretching.

'Don't know or won't say?' he inquired. Zhikin stood, arms folded, at the kitchen door. The others were taking a break at a small, grubby workers' cafe down the street from the shop; another poor, dirty fragment of this run-down district of Tyuratam. Priabin recited, perhaps for the dozenth time, the litany of threats. 'Sons, daughters, grandchildren, aunts, nieces, nephews… schools, party, prison, unemployment, hospital — it could all happen.' He sighed, as if the subject bored him. Zhikin nodded approvingly at his tone.

Orlov sobbed, almost retching in fear.

'I don't know!' he wailed. 'He instructed me to send a final message, that's all I know. That's all.'

Priabin snapped: 'What did this message contain?'

'I — can't remember—'

'Remember!'

Orlov twitched in his chair. Its legs scraped on the kitchen tiles. His face was white. Priabin nodded at him to speak.

'He — he said he was being followed, that he would go into hiding, until — until they came for him—'

'Came for him?' Zhikin asked in frank disbelief.

Orlov continued to look at Priabin, afraid of the sudden excitement on the KGB colonels features.

'They intend to come for him?' Priabin asked.

'He thought so,' Orlov replied.

'How do they intend to — rescue him?' he asked, half mocking.

Orlov shook his head. He shivered continuously now, despite the kitchens damp warmth. The fire in the grate had been banked up by Priabin. It smoked.

'He never said. He believed it, though.' His tone implied that neither Orlov nor the colonel would have believed such a blatant lie.

'What else was in this message? You sent all the messages, I suppose?'

Again, Orlov shook his head. 'Usually, Filip did so himself. To be secure, he said. Last night, he had to tell me the procedure before I could send the message. It took some time before I understood clearly what to do. He had to repeat the codes many times before I understood.'

'The message?'

'He asked them to hurry — something, he said, called Lightning, of the utmost —'

'Lightning Priabin asked eagerly. 'He said Lightning?'

'Yes.'

'What did he mean?'

'He didn't say.'

It was true, Priabin realized with intense, almost childlike disappointment. Kedrov knew. He knew about Lightning.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. He said: 'Then I have to have him. I believe you, Orlov. You must tell me where he is. You must tell me what the Americans know.'

'I can't!' Orlov protested. 'I would if I knew, I swear to you. He didn't tell me.' He blamed Kedrov now — it was all Kedrov's fault, dropping him in the shit up to his eyebrows. Orlov would have told him anything he wished to know at that moment — but he knew so little.

'Do you know where he might be?'

Orlov shook his head, moaning softly to himself, his face once more hidden in his hands. Old, feeble, weak hands. Priabin despised himself for an instant.