Worst of all, General Overton’s reprimand was fully justified.
She could not and would not shift the blame on McKenna. It was she who let her knees get watery and let her resolve melt when McKenna touched her or kissed her.
It was my weakness.
And others knew about it.
She felt entirely humiliated.
Pearson was busily composing new resolutions about the rest of her professional and social life when her office intercom sounded.
“Colonel Pearson?”
She pressed the keypad. “Yes, Donna.”
“Colonel Pearson, there is a Top Secret message coming in for you. It’s a long one.”
Donna Amber was being very formal, and Pearson could understand why. She wondered what Polly Tang had said to Amber and Macklin.
“Thank you, Donna. Please send it over on my data channel one.”
She selected the middle screen and called up the message which was directed to, “G-2, USSC-1.” It was a response to her query of MOSQUITO in Phnom Penh.
The CIA agent had been busy. He had identified a half-dozen Russians among an estimated thirty living in a compound of twenty-two residences in the northern part of the city. There was a listing of fourteen companies, businesses, shops, and restaurants in which the Russians appeared to have a proprietary interest.
Of the six people identified, none was using the name with which he was born. Sergei Pavel, who had been followed to the compound, was going by the name of Treml. And — there it was! — Anatoly Shelepin was using the name of Konstantin Paramanov.
The Russian émigré now named Paramanov was, in fact, well known in Phnom Penh as a benefactor. He appeared to be quite wealthy, and he had endowed a hospital for children as well as given freely to an orphanage, to an arts center, and to museums. MOSQUITO suspected he had also given freely to various levels of bureaucrats.
In response to her specific questions, the agent replied that, yes, the Russians had appeared in Phnom Penh shortly after the coup attempt in the Soviet Union, and no, the Russians did not appear to be involved in local politics. They stayed primarily to themselves or engaged in their various businesses. Paramanov/Shelepin travelled infrequently and apparently owned an old twin-engined aircraft.
While reading through the message, Pearson almost forgot about herself. And consciously, to keep her attention directed outward, she decided she needed action. Not the kind of action Lynn Haggar thrived on, but definitive motion in her own line of intelligence-gathering.
She needed to know more about Anatoly Shelepin and his friends.
And for that, she needed Overton’s permission to leave the station. Which made her think about her transgression once again.
God, I feel like a teenager, asking to go to the movies after being grounded.
Aleksander Maslov had slept deeply for a solid eight hours, far more than was normal for him, and he was alert when he awakened.
Crawling naked out of his narrow bunk, he turned on the single overhead light, then moved to the tiny sink and gave himself a sponge bath before shaving. He dressed in a flight suit, grabbed a flashlight, and stepped to the ground outside his trailer.
The ground was moist and mushy under his feet. Crickets and unknown insects created a symphonic buzz in the jungle. Mosquitoes swarmed toward him immediately, only mildly put off by the repellent he had rubbed over his neck, arms, and hands. He could not see the sky through the jungle canopy, but it felt to him as if rain were imminent.
In the dark, he could not see the other side of the runway either, but to the north, there was a whitish haze peeking through the trees. Switching on the flashlight, he used it to avoid the tangled vines and weeds creeping along the ground, rounded the trailer to the runway and walked along it, headed toward the muted light.
The revetment hacked out of the jungle was covered by a green and gray camouflage net peppered with live foliage and suspended seven meters above the Earth. Below it, the MakoShark was bathed in hazy light from four worklamps. Six mechanics were working on the craft.
Boris Nikitin was already there, standing on a short scaffold next to the juncture of the fuselage and the left wing, supervising the last stages of preparation. He looked down when he heard Maslov’s footsteps on the steel mat used as a foundation.
“Good evening, Colonel. Did you sleep well?”
“Quite well, Boris. Have you eaten?”
“I waited for you.”
“Good. We will gorge ourselves shortly. Are the radios working?”
“The transmissions are excellent, at least at short range. We will know for certain when we achieve orbit. Sergeant Kasartskin is a genius.”
The man kneeling on the: wing, with his head and shoulders stuck into the compartment behind the cockpit, scooted backward and sat up.
“I am told that you are a genius, Sergeant,” Maslov called up to him.
“I must be, Comrade Colonel, to have achieved the modifications with the tools we have available.”
“Explain the alterations to me, please.”
Kasartskin rolled backwards to sit on the wing and wiped his hands with a rag. “There are five communications radios in this aircraft, selected on the keypad as Tac One through Tac Five. The first four are tunable to various frequencies, and the last is permanently set to two-four-three-point-zero, the emergency channel. The first, called tactical one, is utilized for normal military and general aviation communications. The second through fourth would be used for communications with headquarters or other craft in the squadron or wing.”
All of which Maslov had guessed.
“The first four radios have scrambling circuits which may be switched on. I left the first radio alone, removed two, three, and four, and reworked the integrated circuit boards so that the scramblers are all the same, but not the same as they were before.”
“These three radios will only work with each other?” Maslov asked.
“That is correct, Colonel. They are discrete from any other that the Americans, or anyone, has available. And they will also use the Molniya I satellite channels we are pirating from the Commonwealth network. We will now have communications with you, wherever you might be.”
“That is wonderful, Sergeant,” Maslov said, though he really did not mean it. He preferred being left alone when he was flying.
“I have reinstalled the number two radio in the craft, so that you will have Tac One, Tac Two, and Tac Five on the keypad. The other two radios will be installed here and at our other necessary contact point.”
“Very well, Sergeant Kasartskin. You will be finished soon?”
“Within the hour, Comrade Colonel”
Nikitin climbed down from the scaffolding, and the two of them walked together beneath the MakoShark. The four curved payload bay doors were lowered, and Maslov could see that the aft bay now contained an elongated pallet of equipment, with a large spherical tank painted white and labeled, “OXYGEN/NITROGEN, COMPRESSED,” and a clear-plastic-wrapped electronics console dominating the pallet.
In the forward bay, on a wooden floor, the mechanics had rigged two uncomfortable-appearing seats and restraining harnesses. Two space suits (part of a shipment of six stolen from the space program at Baikonur Cosmodrome) rested on the seats as the technicians modified the life-support and communications connections between the suits and the interior receptacles of the American craft. They did not yet have the materials and tools to fabricate one of the passenger modules normally used in the Mako and MakoShark, and so they were adapting what they had.
Two Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) backpacks, with self-contained batteries, air tanks, and propulsion systems rested on the steel mat at his feet, ready to be lifted into place in the bay.