'Only if necessary are you to kill the guard,' Baranovich warned. 'We don't want you hurt.'
'Not before I start the fire — eh?' Semelovsky's eyes twinkled. Baranovich could sense the challenge that the little man felt, the same kind of bravado, though Baranovich did not know it, that he had revealed at the gate when Gant was in the boot of his car.
'No, not before.' Baranovich relaxed into the partial honesty of the moment. 'When you come out from the toilet, you will find the necessary materials stacked against the wall of the hangar, behind Prototype Two — some drums of fuel.'
'I don't need to be told how to start a fire, Pyotr Vassilyeivich,' Semelovsky said, bridling.
'I agree. Just make it big, and bright.'
'It will be done.'
'At six-twelve,' Baranovich said. 'Then you and I, Ilya, will have to cover the path to the second aircraft until the blaze is sufficient to distract all the security guards — all of them. Understand?'
'Yes. We — are part of the distraction?'
Baranovich nodded. He looked beneath the fuselage of the aircraft as he heard the sound of returning voices in the echoing hangar. 'Time to get back to work,' he said. He looked at his watch. 'Start counting the seconds now,' he said. 'It is five-twenty-three now. Synchronise your watches when you can do it without being observed.'
He looked back at his two companions. Suddenly his eyes felt misty. 'Good luck, my friends,' he said, and turned to the pilot's ladder and began to ascend. Kreshin watched his back for a moment, and then he followed Semelovsky towards the tail of the Firefox. He glanced once in the direction of the guards, now being relieved and reporting back to their officer.
Concentrate your hate on them, he told himself. Hate them, and what they represent, and what they do. Hate them…
Kontarsky looked at his watch. The time was seven minutes past six. He had just received a directive from the Centre that the Tupolev TU-144 airliner carrying the First Secretary, the Chairman of the KGB, and the Marshal of the Soviet Air Force had left Moscow, and was expected to land at Bilyarsk at six-thirty. Kontarsky had been profoundly shaken by the news. The plane was not scheduled to arrive until after nine. He could do little but wonder why the First Secretary should be precipitate in his arrival. He suspected that it was some kind of pressure put upon him, a calculated insult. The Tower had been put on stand-by, to land the aircraft. There was nothing else he could do, except what he was engaged in at the moment, futile recriminations, coupled with the more practical step of once more contacting Priabin and, through him, receiving a progress report on the foreign agent who had penetrated Bilyarsk, and who was still at large.
A team of men sat at rickety tables in the bare duty-room in the security building, each analysing the reports of the teams who had combed the project area thoroughly. The final search had just been completed. Like the others, it had drawn a blank.
Below them, in a smaller roorn, with white walls and powerful lights, Dherkov and his wife were being questioned. Each had been made to watch the other's suffering — and neither of them had told him what he wished to know. He was unable to admit the possibility that they knew nothing of importance. There had been too many frustrations, too many blind alleys. To him, and to the interrogators, they were merely stubborn.
The doctor had used drugs. He had ruined the man's mind almost immediately, sending him into deep unconsciousness from which he had emerged incoherent. The woman, despite the massive jolt to her resistance that such damage to her husband must have been, still refused to betray the whereabouts of the agent, or his identity. Kontarsky had ordered the doctor to use the pentathol again, on her, but the doctor had been unwilling. Kontarsky had raged at him, but he suspected that the dosages were too small.
Kontarsky's fingers drummed on the desk as he waited for his connection to his office at the Centre. Priabin could not be found, for the moment. Kontarsky's call was being transferred to the computer-room. As he waited, his eyes roved the team of men bent at their tables, in shirt-sleeves for the most part, intent, driven. No face turned up to him with an answer, with a possible line of enquiry. Kontarsky felt the bitter, selfish anger of a man who sees a fortune turn to ashes in his hands. He had felt, throughout the night, that he had only to reach out and he would grasp the answer. Each answer, each source of knowledge, had crumbled between his fingers. He felt trapped.
Priabin was out of breath when he answered his superior's call. Kontarsky heard his voice clearly, though there was some quality of distance about it that might have been elation. His own stomach jumped at the proximity of a solution.
'Colonel — we've got him. He's been identified!' he heard Priabin say, 'Colonel, are you there?'
'Quickly, Priabin — tell me?' One or two of the nearest heads looked up, at the sound of Kontarsky's choked, quiet whisper. They sensed that the breakthrough had come.
'He's a pilot… Mitchell Gant, an American…'
'American?' Kontarsky repeated mechanically.
'Yes. A member of their Mig squadron, the one they built to train their pilots in combat with Russian machines, the Apache group, they call it, designated by the Red Air Force and ourselves as the Mirror-squadron.'
'Go on, Priabin. Why him?'
'Obviously, sir, he knows our aircraft as well as anyone. He'd be a good choice for sabotage, or for analysis of information. Perhaps he intends a — close inspection of the Mig-31?' There was a silence at the other end of the line. The truth, huge and appalling, struck both men at the same moment. In the silence, Kontarsky's voice dropped like a feeble stone.
'He — he can't be here for that…?'
'No, sir, surely not. They couldn't hope to get away with it!'
Kontarsky's voice trembled, as he said: 'Thank you, Dmitri — thank you. Well done.' The receiver clanged clumsily into its rest as he replaced it Kontarsky looked out over the team for a few moments, then he picked up the receiver again. He dialled the number of the guard-post at the hangar, and drummed his fingers as he waited.
'Tsernik — is that you? Arrest Baranovich and the others — now!'
'You've had news, sir?'
'Yes — dammit, yes! I want to know from them where this agent is — at once. And let no one near that aircraft — no one, understand?'
'Sir.' Tsernik replaced his receiver. Kontarsky looked around the room again, at the men at their futile paperwork. Then he looked at his watch. Eleven minutes past six. 'Some of you — all of you!' he shouted. 'Get down to that hanger now — no, half of you there, the rest search this building — quickly!'
The room moved before him, as men gathered their coats, checked their weapons.
One voice, distant, said: 'Who are we looking for, sir?'
'A pilot — dammit, a pilot!' Kontarsky's voice was high, piercing, almost hysterical.
Baranovich watched the slight figure of Semelovsky as he emerged from the lavatory at the end of the hangar. The little man stepped away from the door and began crossing the hangar, unconcernedly it appeared at that distance: Baranovich waited. A guard had followed Semelovsky to the lavatory. Baranovich wondered whether he would emerge.
Semelovsky reached the shadow of the PP Two, and the guard had still not appeared. Baranovich smiled, a smile of fierce success. Semelovsky, probably with a spanner or wrench, had killed the guard. He loosened the white coat which he wore on top of his overalls, not against the temperature, but to conceal the automatic thrust into the waistband of his trousers. Then he nodded, without looking in Kreshin's direction. He knew he would be watching for his signal.