"Wiz."
"Yeah, Jerry?"
"Where are we going to get a VCR?"
"Lift one out of a store the same way we lifted the computer," Danny said.
Wiz frowned. "I dunno. That would be stealing."
"Wiz."
"Yeah, Jerry?"
Jerry gestured at the $10 million pile of crates. "What do you call this?"
"Well," Major Ivan Kuznetsov said, hefting the bar of gold absently, "what do we do now?"
The occupants of the cockpit looked at one another and no one said anything. By now it was painfully obvious they would all share the same fate.
"Think, comrades," Kuznetsov urged. "Think as if your lives depended on it." As they well may, he didn’t have to add. "What could have possibly happened to that computer?"
"It was fine when we loaded it aboard," Vasily said. "I checked and rechecked it myself."
"And I also," Semelov put in. "The webbing was secure and there was nothing unusual about it."
The pilot and the major nodded. They had also checked the cargo and the mountings before takeoff and Kuznetsov and Vasily had been on the cargo deck for takeoff.
"And there was nothing out of the ordinary when you left to go to the latrine?" Kuznetsov asked Vasily.
"Not the least little thing."
Kuznetsov said nothing. Technically both he and the sergeant were supposed to have been on the cargo deck at all times. But rank has privileges and he had chosen to ride up front where it was warmer and quieter. Abstractedly he realized that would be seen as dereliction of duty by his interrogators, but he did not think it would matter much. He turned to the pilot.
"And you are sure the cargo doors did not open in flight?"
"Major, I swear to you on my mother’s grave that none of the aircraft doors opened after we left the ground," Volkov said. "For that matter the load did not even shift. We would have felt the alteration in the center of gravity."
Kuznetsov looked at him with contempt. "So one moment it was there and the next it vanished like winter fog?"
Volkov shrugged and spread his hands helplessly.
"It was there when I left and gone when I returned, not two minutes later," Vasily said.
"Where does that leave us?" asked the co-pilot.
"As traitors to the Motherland," Kuznetsov snapped. He furrowed his brow and grimly, desperately, tried to think.
"What are our options?" Volkov asked.
"We should call Leningrad Center and report this immediately," Vasily said when no one else spoke up. "It will go harder on us the longer we delay."
Kuznetsov shook his head. "Report what, Sergeant? That our cargo seems to be missing and we have acquired a pile of gold instead? Perhaps we had better consider the situation first."
Besides, Kuznetsov thought, it can’t go any harder on us than it will already.
"At least we have the gold," Semelov pointed out.
Kuznetsov snorted. "Leningrad Center isn’t expecting gold. It is expecting a computer. May I remind you, comrades, computers such as this you cannot buy at a hard currency store?"
"I don’t suppose there is any chance they will believe us?" Volkov asked tentatively.
Kuznetsov snorted again. "Would you? Besides, it makes no difference. The computer was in our care. We lost it. We are responsible."
Volkov licked his lips. "What do you think they will do to us?"
For a moment there was only the roar and vibration of the engines. "I doubt they will shoot us," he said at last. "Not when we give them the gold. But we will undoubtedly be interrogated-rigorously." He paused, remembering the courses he had had on interrogation techniques. Then he tried to shove those images out of his mind.
"They will doubtless conclude we sold the computer for gold. Nothing we could say or do will convince them otherwise. Then they will want to know who we sold it to. Eventually we will tell them."
"But we haven’t sold the computer!" Volkov protested.
Kuznetsov grinned mirthlessly. "My friend, you do not appreciate scientific socialist interrogation. By the time they get done with us we will have confessed anyway-over and over again. Eventually we will come up with a confession they will choose to believe."
"And then?"
"Then we will spend the rest of our lives at hard labor in a prison camp. I understand that under Perestroika conditions in even the severe regimen camps have improved greatly. Now the average prisoner lives as long as seven years."
No one said anything.
"I have a wife…" the co-pilot began.
"She is disgraced," Kuznetsov cut him off. "She will doubtless be arrested and interrogated as well, probably sentenced to prison." He thought of his own Yelena and tried not to.
"Comrade Major…" Vasily began.
"Yes?"
"Sir, I…" He stopped, licked his lips and took a deep breath. Then the words came with a rush. "Sir, they do not imprison the families of defectors do they?"
All five men froze, not even breathing. Then their eyes darted around to the faces of the others, seeking some sign of their thoughts. Finally the other four looked straight at Kuznetsov.
"No," the GRU man said slowly. "They are disgraced and interrogated, but not rigorously. They are not imprisoned."
"And," Volkov added eagerly, "if we landed someplace in the West, they would assume the Americans had reclaimed their computer and were lying about it not being aboard."
Kuznetsov said nothing at all.
"There are even," Volkov went on carefully, "places in, say, Sweden, where you can land an aircraft like this and not be discovered for, oh, long enough to hide something in the woods before anyone arrived."
Kuznetsov hefted the gold bar thoughtfully.
"Comrades," he said finally, "I understand Sweden is lovely at this time of the year."
Volkov looked at Kuznetsov, Vasily looked at Semelov and the co-pilot looked at his charts. Then they all looked at the bar of gold in Kuznetsov’s hand.
Without another word, Volkov reached up and flipped off the radar transponder. Then he pushed the wheel hard forward and shoved on the rudder pedal, sending the plane diving for the deck and, as soon as they were below radar, turning north toward Sweden.
Twenty-two: INSTALLATION
"Hey Moira," Jerry called. "Can you come in here and help me for a minute?"