Smith wasn’t quite sure of the differentiation. “Are you sure?”
“Quite. The bomber wasn’t configured for an emergency landing when it hit the ice. Remember when I asked about the propeller and fuel mixture controls in the cockpit? They had been left at their cruise settings. Also, I asked about the flap lever. The wing flaps hadn’t been lowered, as would have been done for any kind of a deliberate landing.”
Valentina rapped the top of the magazine housing with her knuckles. “Finally they didn’t eject the gun turret ammunition magazines. In a B-29 Superfortress or a TU-4 Bull, that would be a standard procedure in a ditching or emergency landing scenario.”
“Then what the hell did happen?”
“As I said, a freak crash, a total accident,” she continued. “According to the maps of Wednesday Island, this glacier has a gradual descending gradient toward the north. The bomber must have come in from the North. They also must have been coming in at night, flying low and on instruments because they never knew the island was here. They came in between the peaks, and the terrain rose up underneath the aircraft. Before the pilots realized what was happening they struck the ground, or rather the ice. They must have been traveling at full cruising speed, way too fast for a conventional landing, but as fate would have it, the glacier’s surface at that time must have been comparatively smooth, without any ledges or crevasses to trip the aircraft. So they hit flat and skidded cleanly.
“There have been similar crashes in the Arctic and Antarctic,” she continued in her whisper, “when aircrews have lost situational awareness in whiteout conditions. To put a bottom line on this, this aircraft was not in an emergency state when it went down. They weren’t lost, and they weren’t landing. They were in a controlled cruise configuration, bound for somewhere else.”
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t they have seen the island on their charts?” Smith asked.
“You have to remember that in 1953 detailed navigational information on this part of the world was all but nonexistent. The closest thing to an accurate chart was an American military secret. Wednesday Island is also something of a freak. It’s one of the highest points within the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago. At that time, whoever plotted this plane’s course had no idea that a bloody great mountain would be parked out here in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.”
“It’s not all that much of a mountain,” Smith mused. “We’re only about twenty-five hundred feet above sea level here. Wouldn’t that be a pretty low cruising altitude for a pressurized aircraft like this one?”
“Very much so,” she agreed. “In fact, a TU-4 or B-29 would only follow such a low flight profile for one reason: if its crew were worried about being picked up by long-range radar.”
Jon forced himself to play devil’s advocate. “Wouldn’t they have seen the island on their own navigational radar?”
“Only if they were using it. What if they were maintaining full EMCON, full emission control, with all of their radio and radar transmitters deliberately shut down to avoid detection?”
If such was conceivable, it seemed to grow colder. “So what do you think, Professor?” Smith asked.
“I don’t know what to think, Colonel,” she replied. “Or rather, I don’t know what I want to think. One thing I am certain of. Tomorrow morning we have got to find the crew of this plane. It might be more important in the greater scheme of things than the anthrax.”
“Do you think this might have something to do with this Russian alternate agenda?”
He saw her nod. “In all probability. I suspect when we find the survival camp, we’ll know.”
“I suspect we’ll know about Major Smyslov by then as well,” Smith replied grimly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Smyslov watched Smith disappear into the tail. All evening he had been waiting for the opportunity to act, for a moment when the others were involved or distracted. This might be the best, if not his only chance.
He headed for the crawlway tunnel leading forward, snaking down its length as rapidly and as quietly as he could. He knew exactly what he was to look for and exactly where it should be. He also had the set of fifty-year-old keys in his pocket.
Earlier in the day, when he had been in the cockpit with Smith and Metrace, he hadn’t dared to search. He couldn’t risk drawing possible attention to the Misha 124’s official documentation until he could ascertain its status.
Bellying into the forward compartment, he removed a pocket flash from his parka. Clenching it between his teeth, he sank down on one knee beside the navigator’s station and sent the narrow beam stabbing across the map safe below the table. Drawing the key ring, he fumbled with the safe’s lock.
This had been a Soviet Air Force bomber, and in the old Soviet Union, maps had been state secrets, denied to all but authorized personnel.
After a moment’s resistance the tumblers of the lock turned for the first time in half a century. Smyslov swung open the small, heavy door.
Nothing! The safe was empty. The navigational charts and the targeting templates that were to have been issued to the radar operator were gone.
Wasting no time, he closed and relocked the safe. The bomber’s logbook and the aircraft commander’s orders would be next. Moving forward to the left-hand pilot’s seat, Smyslov thrust the second key into the lock of the pilot’s safe located beneath it. Opening it, the Russian groped in the small, flat compartment. Again nothing!
That left the political officer’s safe. The most critical of the three. He squeezed in between the pilots’ stations to the bombardier’s position in the very nose of the aircraft. Here the glass of the unstepped greenhouse had been caved in by the crash, and snow had drifted in and had refrozen. The bombsight itself was gone-it hadn’t been needed for this mission-and the rest of the station was buried in caked semi-ice. Drawing his belt knife, Smyslov hacked his way down to the deck-mounted safe.
Damnation! The lock mechanism had been frozen solid. Swearing under his breath, the Russian tore off his gloves. Pulled his lighter from his pocket, he played the little jet of butane flame over the keyhole area. Burning his fingers, he muffled another curse and tried the key again. The stubborn lock yielded grudgingly.
Empty. The targeting photographs and maps. The tasking orders. The political officer’s log and contingency instructions and the crew’s postmission action plan-all were gone.
Smyslov resecured the safe door, repacking and smoothing the snow over it, trying to erase the signs of his tampering. Standing, he drew his gloves on again, his thoughts racing. It was all gone. All the mission documentation. That was how it was supposed to be. The Misha 124’s political officer had been ordered to destroy every last scrap of evidence concerning the bomber’s mission and the March Fifth Event.
But the political officer had also been ordered to destroy the aircraft and its payload. The thermite incendiary charges in the bomb bay were proof that he had been in the process of doing so when he had been interrupted. But what about the documents? Had he been prevented from destroying them as well?
And what of the men? Tomorrow Smith would go looking for the bomber’s crew. What would be left for him to find?
Smyslov tugged down the zip of his parka and restowed the pen flash. He also removed the cigarette lighter from his shirt pocket. Not the little plastic butane he had purchased at the airport shop in Anchorage, but the other one, the stainless steel Ronson-style reservoir lighter he had brought with him from Russia. Balancing it in his palm, his mind raced through his rapidly shrinking number of options.
He could comfort himself with the thought that much of the decision making had been taken out of his hands. If the Russian Spetznaz troopers had killed the science station’s personnel, fate must run its inevitable course. The coming confrontation between the United States and Russia would not be his responsibility.