There was no time to think but I'd have to. Schrenk would have covered his risks and the only way to be quite sure the Zil would blow would be to time the charge. And he would have timed it for five or ten minutes after six o'clock, when the Soviet chief of state would be on board. Time check: 6.o8.
The sweat broke out on me and I had the urge to slide the limousine into the kerb and get out and run for my life but I couldn't do that because I wasn't certain of the facts and if I abandoned the Zil and it didn't blow, it would remain an appalling danger on the open streets of the city.
I would have to blow it myself.
Calling D-Donald… D-Donald… The Zil could explode by timer at any minute. Keep your distance.
My scalp was shrinking and my palms were wet on the wheel. I'd have to blow it myself and that meant crashing it and I was trying to remember where I'd passed the construction site on the way from the ring road.
D-Donald acknowledging.
C–Charlie calling all stations. Keep your distance from the Zil.
I'd passed the big construction site not far from the boulevard ring, after turning on to Obucha ulica and heading west. I made for there now.
The night was full of sirens wailing as other police patrols began focusing on the area. I saw two cars going fast across the inner boulevard ring and a third in a controlled slide coming from the south and turning in my direction. It was past me before the driver recognized the image of the Zil behind my headlights and the note of the siren died away behind me.
Two cars now in my mirror: D-Donald and a smaller Moskvich, possibly Schrenk. He would have been looking out for the Zil and once he'd seen it he'd track it by cutting through some of the minor streets and my scalp contracted again because he'd come out of Lubyanka half crazed and if he realized I'd taken over this thing from Morosov he might use his radio beam to detonate in a final access of rage.
I crossed the outer boulevard ring at close on seventy kph and saw a group of cranes poking into the night sky over to the north. I was going too fast for the intersection but the surface had sand on it and I brought the speed down and swung left at the next side road and straightened up with lights moving into the mirror again and the sirens loudening. The patrols hadn't got an accurate fix on me yet but it'd be a matter of minutes now before they found me and closed in.
Red lights and I ran them and cut it close and had to lock over to avoid a patrol car storming through on the green but the front wheels of the limousine went into a skid and the offside wing clouted the patrol car and sent it spinning full circle across the intersection with its headlights sweeping the buildings and flashing once across my eyes before I got the Zil straight and saw the construction site coming up through the haze of snow.
Lights came into the mirror again and stayed there, closing on me. I tilted the glass to cut the dazzle.
Who is behind me? Who is behind me?
It wasn't a police car: the sirens were still some way off.
Who is behind me?
The lights continued to flood the interior of the Zil.
All stations, Croder's voice came. Who is following the Zil?
There was no answer.
Then it could only be Schrenk.
He had picked up the Zil near his planned rendezvous point and lost it and come up on it again and now he was sitting there. Either he was aware that I'd taken over the wheel or he was wondering why Morosov had gone off course away from the Kremlin. I think if he'd thought Morosov was still at the wheel he would have started using his horns by now, signalling the Zil to stop. He wasn't doing that. He wasn't even flashing his lights.
A-Able calling… I think Schrenk is behind me now. I'm at Obucha going north from the outer boulevard ring and trying to reach the construction site. I'm going to crash the Zil in an attempt to detonate the charge. Keep your distance. Keep your distance.
The lights were still behind me.
Calling C–Charlie… There's a car on the tail of the Zil and it must be Schrenk. Watch out for him.
I couldn't increase speed on this surface and the building site was too close now for me to use the side streets in the hope of shaking him off. He was sitting there watching the big shape of the Zil, his gnome's head on one side and his thin body twisted against the seat, his eyes narrowed in the backwash of the headlight. What was in his mind?
Old times…
Sitting there watching me take the dream out of his hands, the grandiose dream of making a statement in the name of the oppressed and in the name of the man they'd taken inside Lubyanka and half destroyed. This is what you have done to me. Now I'll show you what I can do to you.
He was watching me now with one hand on the wheel and the other on the radio detonator. Old times… Old times…
What else could he be thinking? There was nothing left for him to do now but turn his rage on me. And nothing I could do to stop him.
Time check: 6.10.
If Schrenk had timed the charge he wouldn't have left it later than 6.io because the American Embassy was a ten-minute run from the Kremlin so this was zero and he didn't even have to squeeze his transmitter: all he had to do was wait. When the Zil blew, he would go too: he was well within range and he knew that. But this would be the way he'd choose.
Nothing I could do.
The black cranes grew against the snow haze and the headlights swept across the rubble this side of the excavation crater as I put the Zil at the truck ramp and gunned up again with the wooden safety rail dead ahead. I waited until the speed rose as the rear wheels got a grip on the rough terrain and then I hit the shift into neutral and pushed the door wide open and dropped and rolled and sensed the weight of the huge car sliding past me towards the crater as I went on rolling with a blaze of pain burning in the left shoulder and the snow flying up before I hit rubble and crashed to a stop and got up and began running.
I heard the Zil going through the rail and breaking it up as it reached the crater's edge and tilted over, and for an instant I swung round and saw its headlights filling the hollow as the dark figure of a man began moving across the wasteland from the car that had come in alongside.
Perhaps he thought he could get to the Zil and disarm it in time, because he'd worked hard on this and he didn't want to see it all come to nothing; or perhaps, like a small boy who couldn't keep away from fire, he'd come here to watch the tiger. I don't know, nor will I ever know. He was still moving towards the crater at a hobbling run when the night broke into thunder and in the blinding shock of light I saw him silhouetted for a moment against the fiery curtain of snow, his small shape flung upwards by the blast like a scarecrow in the wind.
I turned and threw myself down and felt the shuddering of the ground under me as the air roared past in a heated wave, tearing at my coat and bringing a hail of debris whining through the night. The steel shrapnel was now moving outwards from the crater, crackling across the facade of the buildings opposite and smashing windows.
Then headlights swung in from the street and a car neared me, its wheels bouncing across the rubble. I got on to my feet and a door came open, and I heard Bracken calling to me to get in.
The End