Tretsov had been visibly nervous of the weight being thrust upon his shoulders. For a senior test pilot in the Red Air Force, he was young, in his early thirties, and he looked younger than that. Vladimirov had felt for him as the whole crushing weight of the First Secretary's personality acted upon him, and the silent presence of Andropov struck coldly. Yet he was good, his record was a fine one, Vladimirov was forced to admit. Whether, in the unlikely event of his being able to locate Gant, he was good enough to destroy the American, was another matter. Vladimirov was almost sorry for Tretsov that he was to be put to the test. He was technically the junior test pilot on the Bilyarsk project, and had flown fewer hours than his senior, Voskov — but Voskov was dead, killed by Gant. The KGB had found his body in the locker. Rather grotesquely, it had fallen comically out of the locker like a mummy from a sarcophagus.
The atmosphere in the War Command Centre after the departure of the chastened, grim-mouthed Tretsov was, for the First Secretary, more congenial. The exercise of power, and the gratifying obedience tinged with fear that had shown itself in the pilot's eyes, soothed him, reinforced his sense of the overwhelming odds ranged against Gant, the American who had dared… The First Secretary felt his anger rising again, and fought to calm himself. The second Mig-31, cleansed of the foam sprayed on it following the attempted sabotage, and armed to the teeth with AA missiles and cannon-shells, sat at the end of the main runway, waiting for the final clearance from the Tower. In moments, it would pass close to the First Secretary's Tupolev. The Soviet leader positioned himself at one of the small portholes let into the room to observe the take-off.
For Vladimir, the situation was neither so simple, nor so gratifying. For flie Commandant of 'Wolfpack', the period of the conversation of the First Secretary with the almost silent Tretsov had been a period of anxiety. The First Secretary appeared to wish to ignore the minutes ticking away, the time approaching of Gant's expected interception with the course of the missile cruiser and her two subs. The Soviet leader listened, perhaps, to other voices, in other rooms. But Vladimirov knew that the cruiser had to stop, Gant, that it was the last chance; last, because he still didn't know how Gant expected to refuel, but knew that he must. He churned the possibilities in his mind, in an attempt of his own to ignore the clock with its red second-hand sliding round the face.
Carrier… carrier-sub… polar-pack… aircraft… ditch, to be collected by sub?
None of them made any sense. It was almost impossible for a sub to hide itself in the Barents Sea and he had nothing but a wild theory that the Americans could have produced a carrier-sub, especially since the Mig was not adapted for a carrier-landing of any kind. No, it had to be an aircraft. And there wasn't one. Unpalatable though it was, it was the truth. There was no unidentified aircraft in the area, nor likely to be at the time one would be required by Gant.
He considered the possibility of Gant ditching the Mig at sea, hoping for collection by a submarine. The plane would be submerged, and could then be towed behind the submarine back to wherever the CIA had arranged. It was fantastic, but it might be made to work. The plane would be damaged by sea water, but the Americans would learn sufficient from it to remove the Mig-31 completely as a threat to air superiority.
Yet there was no submarine in the area either, and no surface vessel capable of reaching Gant's last position for hours.
Which meant it had to be the polar-pack. Gant must be hoping to use the last of his fuel in as steep a climb as he could muster, and to glide the remainder of the way. It was a desperate idea, but no more desperate than sending one man in the first place to take on the KGB, in order to get out of Moscow and arrive at Bilyarsk. And Gant had done that at the bidding of his masters — why not this? The theory was that an aircraft like the Mig could gain perhaps as much as two miles in a glide for every thousand feet it climbed. Gant could climb high enough, if he had the fuel, to glide to the edge of the permanent pack.
He was on the point of requesting the puzzle be fed to the computer for analysis when he heard the voice of the code-operator. The computer-conceived code in which the message had been transmitted from the Riga had been broken down and it was this that the operator read from his print-out.
'Sir,' he said. 'Message from the Riga …' It was as if the operator were unwilling to proceed with it, feeling the attention of the room drawn to him in an instant.
'What is it?' Vladimirov snapped.
'Contact made with unidentified aircraft. Missiles fired, infra-red type, from cruiser in two groups of two, and from submarine escort in one group of two…'
'Well?'
'The aircraft appeared to be carrying some kind of drone tail-unit which detached and ignited.' There was a pause, then: 'The Mig-31, sir, wasn't destroyed as far as they can tell. It was already over all radar horizons before the contact time of the missiles, but the captain is not prepared to verify positive contact.' The code-operator looked directly at Vladirnirov. 'He would like clarification of the type and capability of the aircraft that he attempted to destroy, sir.'
Vladimirov's head spun round, so that his eyes stared into the grey, slatey surfaces of those of the Soviet leader. The words of challenge and contempt which were rising to his lips died in his mind. He said nothing. The face that confronted him was implacable, and all the righteous indignation that O.C. 'Wolfpack' felt was squashed, buried. He could not throw his career away, not so lightly as that, in heaping his recriminations upon the First Secretary. Instead, he snapped at the code-operator.
'Secrecy must be maintained. Thank him for the job he — attempted to do, and order him to stand by for further instructions.'
'Sir!'
The keys of the encoding-console clicked almost at once. The disguised mimicry of the First Secretary's maxim concerning security was the furthest Vladirnirov felt he could allow himself to go. The recognition made him ashamed. Then he dismissed the feeling.
'What do you intend to do now, Vladimirov?' the First Secretary asked him, his mouth a straight line, his eyes completely without expression. In that face, in that moment, Vladimirov saw the truth of power in the Soviet Union, saw the heart of the cadres and coteries that were contained within the Kremlin. Because the First Secretary was able to put the blame for failure upon others, then the failure itself was no longer important. If Vladimirov were dismissed, disgraced for the loss of Mig-31, that would be all that would matter. This man before him cared nothing for the realities of the situation, only for the personal politics of his own survival.
Vladimirov was sickened, rather than frightened. With selflessness in extremity taught as one of the virtues of the military caste to which his family had belonged for generations, he gave no thought to his own survival or success. Yet the Mig-31 must not be lost to the Americans,' thrown away.
'I–I shall order all available units into the area of the Riga, First Secretary,' he managed to say in a level voice, from which he carefully excluded any trace of anger, or bitterness.