of the building opposite.
Dmitri Priabin shivered, as if in a fevers spasm, and clutched his arms, wrapping them around him. He leaned his weight against the side of the car. He could not stop shaking. Couldn't.
She was watching him from a window of the flat. Wouldn't let him in, pretended that Mikhail wasn't there, had gone out, didn't know when he'd be back. Then, reality breaking through the hesitant lies, she'd cried out from behind the thin front door—
Apart from the crying child, Priabin had sensed Mikhail close behind the door. The woman's sobbing became muffled as if she were crying into someone's chest. He had banged on the door, even though he had already accepted her plea. The banging had brought Viktor's wife — widow — to her door, along the corridor. She had looked at him with what he could only perceive as accusation. She had not spoken, simply stared, then retreated behind her door, where there was a muffled hushing of curious children.
… go
He had not even challenged the words, simply accepted the fear with which they were uttered.
He had nothing. The cold sunlight glanced from the car's chrome. He could not stop shaking. Only Serov could have frightened Mikhail and his wife that much. They hadn't even used his name, as if in fear of its invocatory powers. Don't name the Devil and he won't come. But it had to be Serov, who now had the tape and knew the whole game, knew that Priabin knew about
And Dmitri Priabin knew, with absolute certainty, that Serov had had Valery Rodin put to death like a farm animal taken to an abattoir. He had always known it, of course; this was the confirmation. Serov would have Mikhail removed, just like Viktor, and he would remove — yes, his head nodding violently in agreement with the sharp, brutally clear picture in his mind, yes, Serov would have him killed too.
His fear narrowed. Serov was his enemy; it was Serov he had to evade — and frustrate. He had already attempted to radio, and to use the telephone, both without success. Code Green was fully operational, and Baikonur was severed from the rest of the Soviet Union. He could contact neither Moscow Center nor the nearest KGB offices in the town of Aral'sk, less than a hundred miles to the northwest. He could only—
— go there, go to Aral'sk; break out of the security net spread over Baikonur, and use the high-speed transmission equipment, even the telephone link, from Aral'sk to the Center. Without proof, without a shred of tangible evidence? Go, go now, he tried to tell himself; and heard a part of him reply, just a moment, in another minute, not just yet.
Get in the car.
In another moment, when I feel stronger… get in the car, they may be watching Mikhail's place, waiting for you to collect the tape.
The thought had not occurred to him, not even dimly, until then. He tried to make himself not stare wildly around at parked cars, at windows. Got into the Volga, gripped the wheel with both hands to still them in their renewed tremor. Saw the windshield fog with the heat of his tension. Looked through its cloudiness, looked through the rear window, checked the side windows after switching on the engine and shifting into first gear, so that he appeared only to be checking for traffic before pulling out; checked again, then once more.
Saw…
Checked carefully. Two shadows in a small, anonymous car, fawn-color, a Polish-built Fiat or something like it. A car easily ignored. Exhaust puffed like hasty breathing from its rear. Just then, it had not had its engine running. They had known he would come, they had waited.
One chance now, he realized, his knuckles white from his grip on the wheel, his stomach churning again. One chance to get out— bluff… or maybe there weren't roadblocks and barriers yet. Maybe…
He accelerated, but not too violently, pulling away from the flats and out onto the almost deserted highway that ran between the river and the railway line west and then northwest. At its end, beyond Aral'sk and Orenburg and Kuibyshev and Ryazan was Moscow — fifteen hundred miles away. His heart, still beating wildly, seemed to lurch in his body. He swallowed dryly and tried to concentrate on Aral'sk. He need only reach Aral'sk… you don't have to go farther, just as far as Aral'sk…
Where would the checkpoints be? Telegraph wires scalloped between poles accompanied him, paralleling the empty railway track. Below him, to his left, now that the buildings were set down like randomly scattered lumps and blocks, he could see the frozen river in its shallow valley; gray and imprisoned.
Where would they stop him? Because stop him they would. The fawn car followed with an almost leisurely certainty. Priabin's mind, though his eyes darted and flitted across the topography, was without its own familiar landscape. His position was unique in his adult experience; it was that of — of a criminal. The hunted. His thoughts were shapeless and gloomy. He did not know what to do in this situation. He simply had no experience of being anything other than a man of rank and authority. He'd worn his officialdom like clothes, like his own skin, for years. And now it was gone, stripped away like old paint from wood. What did he do now, for God's sake?
The highway ahead of him narrowed to a point at the vague, uncertain horizon, almost invisible because of the flatness of the country. He passed a restaurant where he had once eaten with Viktor and his wife, a garage, a dirty, weed-filled place, the grass stiffly upright and icebound, where the building plots had never received their designated houses or factories; then there was openness that was oppressive, stretched ahead, surrounded him. Nothing but—
— Novokazalinsk, he told himself suddenly, with an audible grunt. That's where Code Green's maximum- security perimeter was always set to the west, on this highway. Dear God, why hadn't he even been able to remember that until now? It was as if his mind were frozen solid, like the river down there. Ducks waddled across the ice, but otherwise his surroundings were lifeless. A hut amid scattered trees, smoke straggling from an iron chimney; beyond the railway track, the marsh country was beginning, clumps and islets of trees, tall grass and sedge. The fawn car was still in his mirror. Above the road, the pale sky was empty; so featureless it might have been rushing away behind him, and always fleeing ahead of him, making him appear unmoving… no, some geese provided a false horizon, straggled across the sky like a hurried autograph as they flew toward the marshes. If only he could fly!
He kept his speed to fifty, even though his nerves jangled and bullied him to flee. He had to pretend, had to go on with the illusion that he was in no hurry, that this was routine. He had to — for the sake of hope, and his nerves.
A helicopter enlarged beyond the geese, moving along the highway, perhaps two hundred feet above it. Routine patrol. The geese diminished in the distance to his right, still indecipherable. Passing over abandoned launch towers, power cables, the tiny tilted cups of radar dishes. Far to the north, beyond the geese, the sticklike antennae and gantries of the principal military launch complex suggested a horizon. Ahead of him, there was nothing. He looked at his odometer. He'd done five miles — Christ, only five? — and there were another forty-five to Novokazalinsk.
He felt worn. The black helicopter had become gray-bellied, green-mottled, somehow less sinister as it floated above him and passed eastward toward Tyuratam. Yet there was no relief in its lack of special interest in him. Glancing at the map that he had half opened on the passenger seat had been a mistake. There were roads everywhere around Leninsk-Kuznetskiy and Tyuratam and the other towns and villages. But where he was heading — in fact toward the perimeter in any direction — roads narrowed, straggled, disappeared, merged. They needed perhaps no more than a dozen barriers to seal off the whole of the vast Baikonur complex from the rest of the Soviet Union; just so long as they stopped the trains and the planes, as they had done.
Plane, light aircraft. He felt sick as he remembered. During a Code Green the previous year, a light aircraft had strayed into maximum-security airspace and been shot down without challenge or apology or warning. Baikonur was a place of logic, of inescapable necessity. Things were not weighed, simply laid down in orders and regulations and systems. One huge steel box whose lid could be slammed shut at a moment's notice. Had been.
Fifty-five. Priabin eased his foot on the accelerator. The Volga's heater seemed more inefficient than usual; he was chilly, even within his overcoat. His forehead was cold with drying perspiration. The fawn car could be seen in the mirror. The helicopter had disappeared. He glanced at the car's clock. Nine-seven teen — three hours since he had been in Valery Rodin's bedroom, since he had found the boy's body, three wasted hours. Telephone, radio, trying to contact the Center — he'd known almost at once he wouldn't get through, but he'd gone on trying, arguing, hoping.
