"Yes, Sergeant?"
"The computer…" Vasily began. In a flash the GRU major was out of his seat, thrusting the man out of the way and diving headlong through the door into the cargo compartment.
"It’s gone," the sergeant’s voice echoed after him.
Kuznetsov didn’t need Vasily to tell him that. The webbing that had bound the computer tightly in place was a tangled limp mass on the floor. The wooden pallets were exactly as they had been, but the crates were gone.
"Yo momma!"
Like a wild beast Kuznetsov spun and sprang for the cockpit door. His sergeant pressed against the bulkhead to let him pass as he squeezed into the cockpit. Before the pilot could turn to him he grabbed the man’s shoulder and tried to twist him around in his seat.
"The cargo door," he demanded. "When did it open?"
"It didn’t open," the pilot, Volkov, protested. "There’s an indicator…"
"The devil take your fucking indicator," the GRU man roared. "When did that door open?"
"It didn’t! We would have felt it in the controls. Comrade Major, I swear to you on my mother’s grave that door did not open."
"Don’t lie to me! That door opened. Now when?" He took a deep breath, pulled his pistol from its holster and pressed it against Volkov’s head, just in front of his earphones. "If you do not tell me the truth immediately I will blow your brains all over this cabin."
The co-pilot and flight engineer had their eyes studiously glued to their instrument panels. The pilot looked at the pistol out of the corner of his eye and Kuznetsov jammed the gun against his head even harder.
"Major," Captain Volkov said with quiet dignity, "you may arrest me. You may shoot me here and now. But that door did not open. It could not have."
"Very well," Kuznetsov said softly, so softly he was almost inaudible over the roar of the engines. "Very well, the door did not open." He took the gun from the pilot’s head. "Then would you please tell me where is the fucking cargo?" His voice dropped again to a near whisper. "That is all I want to know."
Volkov blanched and started out of the pilot’s seat. Kuznetsov moved to block him and then thought better of it. He nodded curtly. "Sergeant, accompany him."
As the two scrambled aft Kuznetsov stared moodily at the cloudscape below him. They were somewhere over Estonia, he knew, and the Estonians were notorious through the USSR as the biggest thieves of state property in all the republics. The Georgians were bigger black marketers and the Azerbijaniis were more violent, but over the years the Estonians had stolen everything from a freight train to an entire fleet of fishing trawlers. "Well, this time those damned Estonians have gone too far," he muttered to himself.
"Sir?" asked the co-pilot. Then he withered under the GRU man’s glare.
"Sir, should I radio Leningrad and declare an emergency?"
"No, you idiot! The last thing we need is to have Leningrad Center shouting questions at us."
Although the questions would come soon enough, he realized. Chill fear clutched at his stomach as he thought what those questions would be like.
Just then the intercom squawked. "Major," Vasily’s voice came over the loudspeaker. "Major, I think you’d better come down here and take a look at this."
Kuznetsov looked down at the co-pilot and flight engineer and decided he was not going to leave them alone in the cockpit to do God-knows-what.
"Come with me," he commanded. The co-pilot opened his mouth to protest and Kuznetsov touched his holster. "Now," he ordered, "immediately." Wordlessly the men slid out of their seats and preceded the major down to the cargo deck.
Volkov and Vasily were squatting over the heap of webbing where the computer had been, staring intently at one of the pallets. As Kuznetsov made his way back to them, bracing with one hand against the side of the plane, he saw there was a small pile of something shiny and metallic in among the straps and buckles.
"When we looked closely we found this," Vasily shouted to make himself heard over the din of the engines. He handed Kuznetsov an object off the stack, an object that glinted like summer sunlight even in the gloom of the aircraft deck.
Kuznetsov had never seen gold before, but no one had to tell him this was gold.
"But where did it come from?" Volkov asked, bewildered.
"That is a very good question," Kuznetsov said, kneeling down to study the pile of gold bars. They were surprisingly tiny, each one fitting neatly in the palm of his hand and weighing about two kilograms. There were no identifying marks of the kind usually found on bar gold, not even assayer’s marks.
"How much do you suppose it is worth?" asked the co-pilot.
"If I had to guess, I would say perhaps ten million American dollars. That was the value of our cargo."
"What was our cargo, anyway?" the pilot asked.
The GRU man glared at him. "That is none of your concern."
Volkov did not flinch. "If my career is to be ruined I would at least like to know what over."
Kuznetsov considered and then nodded. "Very well. It was an American supercomputer. The latest model of supercomputer and one that took us nearly two years to acquire."
The pilot’s mouth dropped as he realized the enormity of the loss. "Boishemoi!" he breathed.
The GRU man nodded curtly. "Just so."
"What I don’t understand," the co-pilot said, "is why go to the trouble of leaving the gold after stealing the computer?"
"That too is a very good question," Kuznetsov said sourly as he braced himself against the plane’s gentle bank to the right. "Does anyone have any more good questions?"
"Just one," Vasily said hesitantly as the craft began to bank more steeply. "Who is flying the plane?"
Volkov and Semelov gaped at each other and both dashed for the cockpit.
"Well," Wiz said at last for want of anything better to say, "there it is."
Sitting under the lights on the concrete floor were two dozen boxes full of computer and supporting equipment, all cocooned in foam and cardboard, wrapped around with clear plastic and bound with metal straps.
Moira followed the programmers’ admiring looks and tried to be enthusiastic, but it all looked so ordinary. The way Wiz and the others had been talking she expected a nimbus of power around the boxes, or lightning bolts or something.
None of the programmers noticed her disappointment. They were too busy swarming over the pile, touching cabinets and opening boxes.
"I hope the installation instructions are complete," Danny said dubiously. "I’ve never installed anything bigger than a 386 PC."
"Voila!" Wiz stood up from a newly opened box waving a black oblong. "A complete installation course on video tape. Just sit ourselves down with some popcorn and get educated."