Leave him, then? He did not want to… felt he could not risk… but he had arrangements that must be made. Leave.
'Look, I'm leaving now.'
Rodin turned. 'Who are you going to tell?' he shouted, his face white, the cords in his neck standing proud.
'No one. No one — not here. You think I'm mad? It's my life, too. No, I have things that need doing.'
'You're going to be on that plane?'
'Yes.'
'Damn you, then!' Rodin screamed.
'You told me knowing I was a policeman. You told me because you were afraid of it,' Priabin soothed. 'Think about it. I can save your life.'
'The hell you can. Get out, damn you — get out!'
Rodin's fists were formed into claws and raised in front of his chest. He looked dangerous, and unbalanced. As if he might fling himself in an attack upon Priabin, or throw himself from the window.
'Think about it,' Priabin shouted back. 'Lock the door, don't answer the telephone, and think about it.'
Priabin turned away, picked up his overcoat in the hall, opened the door, and let himself out of the flat. He sighed with fear and weakness, leaning back against the door for a moment, head raised. He was sweating profusely.
Rodin, he knew, should not be left alone. But he couldn't involve Anatoly and Mikhail. If they were suspected, they were dead. They had the tape, and they must keep their heads down until the storm had blown over. Kedrov he had to hide somewhere, in Katya's custody… Dudin had to be bought off with some cock-and-bull story about security… he had to get a seat on that morning flight. His head spun.
He crossed to the staircase and began to run down the first flight. Every moment he was away from Rodin would be filled with anxiety. Hurry, then, be as little time as you can. Hurry.
My God, he thought as he reached the lobby of the building. My God, they're going to start the next war!
10: Collision Course
There was still no glow from the tiny light on the receiver. Kedrov had not activated the transponder hidden in the cheap radio. It was not receiving Gant's signal and sending its precoded reply, which only his receiver was able to pick up. Gant knew where Kedrov should be — less than twenty miles away. Either he wasn't there, or—
Gant dismissed the thought as it bullied against his resolve. Kedrov had to be there. Alive.
The white dot that represented the Hind remained motionless on the moving-map display, hovering to the northwest of the marshes, outside the farthest security perimeter of the Baikonur complex; just outside. Fifty miles behind him, the shore of the Aral Sea; twenty miles ahead, the salt marshes. The Hind shivered like a restrained and impatient horse as he held the machine twenty feet above the distressed, dull surface of a man-made lake. Trees quivered or leaned in the wind, encircling the lake like a stockade s wooden wall. The helicopter was hidden from sight by the trees, yet Gant could not bring himself to land and switch off the engines and await Kedrov's response to his signal.
Beyond the trees, the desert was etched with the fine engraved lines of irrigation channels. In a later season, crops would grow there. In summer, people would swim in this artificial lake. He remembered the satellite pictures of the area used in his briefings. He had been able to pick out the heads and reclining torsos of swimmers and sunbathers in the vastly magnified, grainy monochrome Pictures. Now, in winter, the tiny resort was closed; cabanas, the cafe, the boathouses all deserted and lightless. They'd made certain the place was unoccupied in winter before suggesting it as a target point for his arrival.
His hands, feet, whole body it seemed, made the constant tiny movements and adjustments that kept the Hind steady above the lake. He glanced at his watch. Time of arrival, two-ten, Wednesday morning. He had perhaps five hours' darkness left—
— and there was no transponder response. Kedrov wasn't there, twenty miles east of him in the marshes. Waggling into the sky perhaps a couple of miles to starboard, he saw the headlights of a vehicle as it bounced over the undulations of the main road from Aral'sk. He had crossed the road only three minutes earlier, on course for the pleasure lake. To reach it and hover there, near the strange pagoda that had been erected in the middle of the lake, hanging like a zeppelin near its mooring tower.
He had flown most of his route over the Aral Sea itself, low and fast. Fishing boats, the lights of an occasional village on the straggling shoreline. The shallow sea was virtually empty of commercial traffic, as was its shore of habitation. It was little more than a vast, moonlit puddle across which he dashed, disturbing the calm, icy water with his passage. The barren, flat landscape was relieved only by the mounds and peaks of frozen waves reaching out from the shore.
And now hurry had drained away; destination had been achieved, but purpose had been foiled. There was no light on his receiver to show the reception of his signal. And he was a thousand miles from the nearest friendly border.
They had selected the northwest of the Baikonur complex as his point of ingress because it was the boundary closest to the salt marshes and the least protected by radar patrols. The surveillance defenses of Baikonur seemed to straggle away into the desert just like the vegetation; or perhaps they considered that the Aral Sea supplied some natural obstacle to intrusion.
Gant studied the tactical screen, which was alight with flitting dots whose pattern of movement he had already discerned. Helicopter patrols. An outer circle of them, around the perimeter of the complex — expected and easy to avoid, or to use as a cover for his own movement. They would not come as far as this deserted place. Others moved with what seemed a greater urgency, crisscrossing the map on which they were superimposed. CIA intelligence had indicated that there was no more than a single flight of Mil-24 gunships based at Baikonur. These were extra, unexpected patrols.
Purpose: to discover Kedrov, the missing agent-in-place. Minutes before, as he was still skimming the Aral Sea, the first radio transmissions he had picked up on the HF set had worried him. Was he expected? Were they waiting for him, too? Now he did not think so. And the urgency of the dots on his screen was belied by the routine responses and acknowledgments over the headset. They were looking because they had discovered Kedrov was missing, not because they knew he had a rendezvous with a helicopter.
Their search had included the marshes. Was including it now. Dormitory towns, villages, isolated settlements, farms, factories, radar installations — everywhere. The search was being coordinated, and involved foot patrols, cars, and helicopters. Needle in a haystack. Gant had little worry they would find Kedrov. They might, however, find
Gently, he lowered the Hind, the decision taken before he became clearly aware of it. The helicopter skimmed the artificial lake, raising its water into tiny waves; then Gant shunted it beneath the young fir trees, watching the rotors intently. Branches waved and lashed above the cockpit. The undercarriage bounced on sand, and he closed the throttles. The rotors wound down into silence, out of which the wind's noise leaped, banging against the Plexiglas. The trees above his head continued to sway and lean. He sighed, eased his frame in the restraint of his straps, and watched the tactical screen. Fireflies.
The stream of orders and reports filled his hearing, but he did not remove his headset or helmet.
Gant watched the perimeter patrols. They were calling in, too, hut maintained their conventional role. Because of the proximity of the launch, the security system of Baikonur was operating. It was its own justification. The closest helicopter to the bathing area was five miles away. It would pass perhaps three miles to the east of him as it swung onto the southward leg of its patrol. The next helicopter should pass perhaps twenty minutes later.
