Stoner walked steadily up the beach, cursing himself for a fool but not knowing what else he could have done.
He saw Jeff Thompson sitting on the sand, his back against the bole of a sturdy, slanting palm tree. Jeff scrambled to his feet as Stoner approached.
“How do you like our tropical paradise?” Jeff asked, by way of greeting.
“I was just thinking,” Stoner replied, burying his thoughts of Jo, “how many times I dreamed of coming to an island like this, when I was a kid.”
“Well, here we are.”
“Yeah. We sure are.” Stoner took a deep breath of salt air. “Your family decide to come with you?”
“No,” Thompson said. “Gloria doesn’t want to pull the kids out of school. I agree with that. So I’m on my own for a couple of months.”
“Maybe we’ll be back home before June.”
“Fat chance.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“The Russian plane’s due in this afternoon.”
“How many are they sending?”
“About twenty, from what I hear. Where are they going to put everybody?”
“Dorms. Houses. Trailers. We’ve got room for them, I think, unless they all want to stick together, by themselves.”
“And there’s another couple of planeloads due in tomorrow,” Thompson added. “One from NATO and one from the UN that’s supposed to represent Third World scientists.”
Scuffing at the sand under his shoes, Stoner grumbled, “This place isn’t a research station—it’s a damned political circus. Next thing you know they’ll be bringing in the Queen of England and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”
“Only on Sundays…”
“ATTENTION. ATTENTION,” blared the island-spanning network of public address loudspeakers. Thompson and Stoner looked up at the horn set on the bole of the palm tree.
“THE RUSSIAN DELEGATION IS NOW ESTIMATED TO ARRIVE AT SIXTEEN-THIRTY HOURS. ORIENTATION BRIEFING FOR THE RUSSIAN DELEGATION HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED HOURS, AFTER THE EVENING MEAL.”
The metallic, booming voice stopped as suddenly as it had started, making Stoner feel momentarily as if a hole had been left in the air around him. Then the breeze gusted and a gull screamed and the nearby palms sighed. The island went back to normal.
“They’re late,” Thompson said.
“They must be flying a Russian plane,” Stoner muttered, “with a dependable Soviet crew.”
Markov studied the island intently as the plane circled at altitude.
Maria was sitting on the aisle seat beside him, her hands clutching the armrests with white-knuckled anxiety. The flight had been far from restful. First, they had to circle a huge springtime storm over the Urals. Then they made an extra fueling stop near Lake Baykal—where they were coolly informed that one of the engines was malfunctioning and would have to be repaired or replaced.
That did little to build one’s confidence for the long flight across the Pacific Ocean. Nor did the fact that they were kept locked inside the plane for six hours, with nothing to look at but the sight of Mongol mechanics peering puzzledly into the innards of the engine nacelle.
But now at last they were circling over the tiny sliver of an island, with its black gouge of an airstrip, the way a dog circles his sleeping mat before finally settling down for a snooze.
Markov paid scant attention to the glorious cloudscape that was turning the western horizon into a molten palette of reds and oranges. He studied the island.
There wasn’t much to see. A cluster of buildings at one end. The airstrip. More buildings on the other side of the airstrip. A single road. Some radio telescope antennas.
The other islands scattered along the oval-shaped coral reef seemed empty, abandoned. White beaches and lush green foliage. All of them tiny, barely a few city blocks long, Markov judged. The main island was bigger, but had been almost totally denuded of trees to make room for the buildings and the airstrip.
He reached down under the seat for his satchel.
“What are you doing?” Maria groused.
“Looking for the binoculars.”
“What do you expect to see? Dancing girls in grass skirts?”
Markov sighed. He had given up that particular fantasy when the KGB briefing officer had informed them that the Americans had turned Kwajalein into a military base more than twenty years earlier.
“No, of course not,” he muttered.
“Those antennas”—his wife pointed, her other hand still clutching the seat arm in a death grip—“were once radars, to observe the re-entry of test missiles fired from California.”
“Yes, so they told us.”
“They have been adapted to observe the alien spaceship,” she said.
“Umm,” muttered Markov as he put the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus.
There was no sign of natives at all. No one gathered at the airstrip to welcome them. No dark-hued girls with garlands of flowers to drape around their necks and kiss them on both cheeks. Nothing down there but efficient machines and businesslike Americans and that peculiarly American artifact—house trailers.
He pictured Sonya Vlasov’s face in his mind’s eye and wondered what she was doing now, in Kharkov, in a tractor factory. How she would have loved to come here! Markov realized. There must be something I can do to help her, some way I can get Maria to remove the blot she’s placed on her record.
He glanced back at his wife as the plane lurched into its final approach. The landing gear went down, filling the cabin with a rushing, roaring sound that startled the old man drowsing across the aisle from them into a wide-eyed, frightened awakening.
She says that she will not let me out of her sight for a moment, Markov thought. Very well. I will be the perfect husband. I will charm her as she’s never been charmed before.
But the look on Maria’s face did nothing to encourage him. She was staring straight ahead, stolidly refusing to show fear as the plane shuddered and slewed through the gusting cross winds on its approach to the airstrip. Waves rushed by outside the window.
Markov remembered those furious few moments back in their apartment, the triumphant look on Maria’s face when she announced Sonya’s fall from favor, her loss of her student’s status, her transfer to a factory.
And he remembered the stark hatred he felt in his own heart. It won’t be easy to woo her, he told himself. But it must be done; that girl shouldn’t suffer on my account.
A blur of palm fronds startled Markov and then the plane’s wheels screeched on the cement runway, bounced sickeningly, hit again and rolled the length of the airstrip. The engines roared with thrust reversers out and all flaps extended full.
As the plane slowed and trundled off the runway, heading toward the single building of the airport’s terminal, the color began to come back to Maria’s cheeks.
Turning to Markov, she whispered, “You remember the American who wrote to you, Stoner?”
He nodded.
“You must find him and befriend him. He trusts you.”
“And I am to betray his trust. Is that it?”
Maria scowled at him, her old self again. “You are to do what is necessary, whatever that may be.”
Markov sighed and knew he would do what she told him to. That’s a surer way of wooing her than plying her with kisses, he realized.
Yukon Territory
George Umaniak stowed his rifle under the blankets in the back of the skimobile. Even though he had not even seen a caribou, the white policemen would give him a hassle if they discovered he had been out with a hunting gun.
The wind was picking up, coming down in a cold moaning sigh from the frozen mountains. The sky was dark again, and the wind spoke of ghosts and the dance of the dead. George pulled up the hood of his parka, shivering.