'Then, while we do not have the pilot, we must return to our search for the aircraft,' Chairman Andropov announced. At his side, Vladimirov did not demur, even though he understood that this was little more than another deflection of blame in his direction. A similar move to his surprise appointment as security co-ordinator of the hunt for the American.
Strangely, he did not resent his assigned role as scapegoat. Rather, it increased his sense that he was the only man — the only one of all of them — capable of recovering the MiG-31. Even when the First Secretary nodded his agreement with Andropov and looked immediately towards him, Vladimirov felt no resentment arid little anxiety. He was prepared, even equable, as he awaited an outburst from the Soviet leader.
It came almost at once, beginning on a low, histrionically calm note.
'Gant must be found,' he announced from behind his desk. The Kremlin office had once been used by Stalin. It was not the great anteroom where all visitors were cowed and fearful long before they ever reached the huge desk behind which Stalin had sat, but nevertheless it was a large, high-ceilinged room with a tall marble fireplace and massive, dark furniture. It daunted visitors, and it expressed the Soviet leader's ideas of his own personality and authority. This First Secretary had moved to another floor of the Arsenal building, and the windows of his office and the luxurious apartment beyond it stared across a triangle of grass and trees towards the Senate and the rooms once occupied by V.I. Lenin.
'Yes, First Secretary,' Vladimirov replied.
'And so must the aircraft — Gant is only the key to the aircraft. You agree, General Vladimirov?'
'Of course, First Secretary. Of course — ' He bit down upon the rising irony in his tone. He rubbed his hands on the carved arms of the huge chair in which he sat before the mahogany desk with its lion's feet.
'Then where is the aircraft? Where is it now?' The First Secretary got up, pushing back his chair noisily on the parquet flooring. He strode to the window, hands clasped behind his back. He looked out at the failing light, the white trees and grass, the windows of Lenin's office. 'Where is the aircraft?' he repeated without turning.
Vladimirov did not need to glance at Andropov to realise the satisfaction that would show on his features. To think, that man, the secret policeman, might become the successor to the grey-haired buffoon at the window. Vladimirov, unable to suppress his contempt, was pleased that neither of them could see his face. But, just to think of it…' Andropov was already, a member, perhaps the most powerful member, of the inner cabal of the Politburo. He was rumoured to be about to resign as Chairman of the KGB, to become head of the General Secretariat of the Party, thereby broadening his power base. Andropov might one day sit behind that very desk…
Andropov would have the Lenin offices opened up again, Vladimirov thought bitterly. They would become offices once more, rather than a museum — his offices.
'I — have people working on that. We have selected a number of landing-sites, First Secretary; places where the American could have landed the MiG-31.' The words were automatic.
'These I should like to see,' the First Secretary said, turning slowly and over-dramatically to face into the room once more. 'And — the American told you nothing under the most intense interrogation?'
Vladimirov gambled. There was something there, in those tapes — he was certain of it.
'I'd like you to listen to it — and Chairman Andropov, of course — to the tapes our people made. I'm sure we're missing something there.'
He heard the First Secretary sigh with satisfaction. All the man wanted, ever wanted, was his authority recognised. He wanted the scent of subordination strong in every room he entered. It was easy…
Careful, Vladimirov warned himself. He stood up slowly as the First Secretary passed him. The two bureaucrats in grey suits preceded him to the door. Their coat-tails were creased with sitting. He had managed a few hours' sleep late the previous night, a shower and a change of uniform. He followed the two men through the outer offices where the Soviet leader waved secretaries back to their desks. Two bodyguards fell in behind Vladimirov — a prisoner's escort, he thought for an instant, then smiled inwardly.
They used the lift to the ground floor. It was only a single floor's descent, but the lift was modern, air-conditioned and emitted quiet piped music. Guards saluted with uptilted rifles as they passed across the marble floor towards the main doors. The two bodyguards hurried a little way ahead, then issued umbrellas from a rack beside the doors. Vladimirov took an umbrella, but disdained the galoshes the two guards were now fitting over the shoes of the First Secretary and the Chairman. The image of the guards kneeling before the two men was too striking not to be savoured.
They cautiously stepped out into the darkening evening, descending the swept, damp marble steps of the Arsenal like very old men. Birch trees and snow-covered lawns were dyed pale orange by the lights. Vladimirov walked alongside his companions. The Kremlin was a place he did not often visit, and he tilted back his umbrella to gain a clearer view of the palaces and cathedrals within the walls, thereby displaying what the other two might sniggeringly have called his provincialism, his gaucheness.
The place was a monument to absolutism. Even the cathedrals repelled rather than invited. There was little sense of quiet expressed by their facades, nothing of sanctuary. The red towers, topped by their neon Party stars, ringed the buildings; penned them. They were heading towards the largest of the new buildings, the Palace of Congress, which, together with the Senate, contained most of the government offices within the Kremlin complex. To Vladimirov, it looked like a glass and concrete weed growing up modernistically amid the planted, massive, tropical flowers of the older buildings.
The wind splashed sleet against his shaven cheeks, chilling his skin. Yet he continued to stare, to appraise, until they reached the main doorway of the Palace of Congress. They passed the guards on duty and entered the main foyer of the glass building. Heavy chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Vladimirov followed the First Secretary and Andropov across the tiled floor — a huge modern mosaic depicting the inevitable triumph of Socialism — towards the reinforced steel doors of a special lift. They descended six floors before the lift sighed to a stop. Guards faced them as they entered a corridor of whitewashed concrete. Steel doors, like the watertight doors of a submarine, confronted them. The bodyguards inserted plastic identity tags into the locks, and the doors opened.
Vladimirov inhaled deeply as he once more prepared to enter what bright, cynical young army officers who had served there called the Führerbunker, beyond what was little more than an airlock, where more identity tags were inserted into computerised locks, examined, and returned, a second steel door opened onto a vast underground room. They stepped into a command centre which mirrored not only that in the Tupolev but also those deep beneath the Moscow Garrison's HQ and his own air force headquarters south-east of the city. He followed the others across the room, then mounted a metal ladder onto a gantry which overlooked the command centre. A long glassed-in gallery formed the control room of the underground complex.
All this, Vladimirov thought, the means of obliterating most of the earth, is being used for no more than a skirmish, a small fuss on the border. The insight increased his sense of well-being. Officers saluted, operators sat more erect and alert as they entered. Vladimirov immediately directed the Soviet leader's attention to the fibre-optic map against one wall; a smaller version of the huge perspex screen erected on the main floor of the underground centre. It was edge-lit, computer-fed like the map-table aboard the Tupolev, and at that moment it displayed Finnish Lapland. There were patches of light on the screen, dotted like growths of luminous fungus across Lapland.