'I'm behind him… I'm on his tail… careful, careful… he's doing nothing, he's given up…' It was the excitement of a boy regaling his parents with the highlights of a school football match in which he had scored the final, winning goal. 'Nothing… he's beaten and he knows it…' Caution, caution, Vladimirov's thoughts repeated. He had silently yelled the thought the instant he heard the tone of delight in the young test-pilot's voice. The boy thought he had a kill, had already counted Gant a dead man, had begun to see the hero's reception… caution. Even had he shouted the word into the microphone, it would have been too late. Tretsov would have been dead before he heard him. Caution… 'I've got- '
That had been the end of it. A crackle of static and then silence. Total and continuing, leaking from the receiver as palpably as sound. Tretsov had not known Gant, had not understood him and the American had fooled him. He had triggered the tail decoy, in all probability, and one of Tretsov's huge air intakes had greedily swallowed the incandescent ball. 'I've got — ' the tape repeated. Not quite the end. Only the moment when. Vladimirov had known it was the end. He'd sensed the change of tone before the last words. 'Oh God' the tape shrieked, making Vladimirov wince once more, hunch into himself. The static scratched like the painful noise of fingernails drawn slowly down a pane of glass, and then the silence began leaking into the hot command centre once more. Oh God — !
'Switch it off- switch it off!' Vladimirov snapped in a high, strained voice. 'Damn, do you want to revel in it? The boy's dead.'
The First Secretary turned slowly to face Vladimirov. His large, square face seemed pinched into narrowness. His wide nostrils were white with anger, his eyes heavily lidded.
'A communications failure,' he announced. Even Andropov beyond him seemed surprised and perplexed.
'No,' Vladimirov announced tiredly, shaking his head. 'The boy is dead. The second Firefox no longer exists.'
'How do you know that?' Vladimirov could sense the large hands clenching tightly behind the First Secretary's back.
'Because I know the American. Tretsov was… too eager. Gant probably killed him by using the tail decoy.'
'What?'
'Tretsov's aircraft ate a ball of fire and exploded! Couldn't you hear the horror in his voice? There was nothing he could do about it!'
A moment of silence. Andropov's features, especially the pale eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, advised caution, even apology. But Vladimirov experienced the courage of outrage and failure. His own — future was not something he could rationally contemplate or protect.
Then, in a calm, steely voice, the First Secretary said, 'And you, General Vladimirov? What can you do about it?'
Behind the Russian leader, the shoulders of a young radio operator were stiff with tension. The back of the man's neck and his ears were red. In the distance Vladimirov heard the helicopter bearing the arrested Kontarsky lift into the midday sky and drone away from Bilyarsk. Vladimirov was aware of the awesome, complete power he had held until a few moments before, and which had disappeared with the second Firefox, and then he moved swiftly to the dull surface of the map-table, his hands sweeping the ashtray, the matches, the batch of signals onto the floor. Cigarette butts spilled near the First Secretary's shining black shoes, and the ashtray rolled beneath the chair of an encoding console operator, who flinched.
'Give me North Cape and Norway — quickly!' he snapped. The operator of the map-table's computer terminal was galvanised into frantic typing at his keyboard. The dull grey faded, the blue Of the sea, the green and brown of a country — Norway — glowed, flickered, then resolved into sharpness. The operator typed in the dispositions of aircraft and ships and submarines without instruction. The First Secretary and the Chairman of the KGB both remained aloof from the map.
Vladimirov noted the positions of the missile cruiser Riga, the Red Banner Northern Fleet hunter-killer submarines, the 'Wolf-pack' squadrons aloft. They remained concentrated in the area west of North Cape.
Where? he asked himself. Where now? He's refuelled… all he needs is friendly airspace.
The long backbone of Norway stretched from top to bottom of the map, a twisted spine of mountains. Like the Urals, Vladimirov thought. He used the Urals to mask his exit — would he use the mountains again? Perhaps -
'Any reports?' he snapped. He could not be blind again, rush at this. 'Any visual sightings, infra red — ?'
'No, sir- '
'Nothing, Comrade General — '
'No-'
The chorus was infinitely depressing. However, as he glanced up, it seemed to satisfy Andropov in particular. The KGB's failure to protect the prototype Firefox was well in the past; forgotten, avoidable now. Vladimirov had volunteered himself as the ultimate scapegoat.
'Very well.' Kutuzov's watery old eyes had warned him. Expressed something akin to pity, too, and admiration for his recklessness. But he could not prevent himself. This contest was as real and immediate as if he were flying a third Firefox himself against the American. He would not surrender. He was challenged by perhaps the best pilot he had ever encountered to fulfil his reputation as the Soviet Air Force's greatest and most innovative strategist. Gant had declared the terms of the encounter, and Vladimirov had accepted them.
He was on the point of suggesting incursions into Norwegian airspace. His voice hesitated just as his hand hovered above the spine of Norway glowing beneath the surface of the map-table. And perhaps the hesitation saved him — at least, prolonged his authority.
'Something, sir…' one of the operators murmured, turning in his chair, one hand clutching the earpiece of his headset. His face wore a bright sheen of delight. Vladimirov sensed that the game had begun again. 'Yes, sir — visual contact — visual contact.' It was the eager, breathless announcement of a miracle. The operator nodded as he listened to the report they could not hear. His right hand scribbled furiously on a pad.
'Cabin speaker!' Vladimirov snapped. The operator flicked a switch. Words poured from the loudspeaker overhead, a brilliant excited bird-chatter. The First Secretary's eyes flicked towards the speaker. Heads lifted slowly, like a choir about to sing. Vladimirov suppressed a grin of almost savage pleasure.
There was surprise, too, of course. And gratitude. He had hesitated for a moment, and the moment had proven fateful. He would have said Norway — even now the country lay under his gaze and his hands like a betrayal — and it would have been an error. Gant was over Finland; neutral innocent Finland. At one hundred and thirty thousand feet — why? And he'd been picked up visually and trailed by two MiG-25 Foxbats, at high altitude themselves. Now he had climbed almost to his maximum ceiling. Why was he at such an extreme altitude? Contact time a matter of seconds… orders required… Vladimirov blessed the young map operator who had typed in new instructions. The twisted spine of Norway disappeared. The land mass fattened, blurred, then resolved. Finland, Swedish Lapland and northern Norway occupied the area of the map-table. Orders? What — ?
His eyes met the steady, expectant, even amused gaze of the First Secretary. Everyone in the room understood the narrowness of his escape from an irredeemable blunder. Andropov was smiling thinly, in mocking appreciation.