— frozen. Hands, elbows, wrists locked like a tumbler supporting the huge weight of the rest of his troupe. The quiver through his arms like a nearing earthquake. The dog again — where? Where? Wildly, he swung his head from side to side. Away to his left, back toward the half circle of huts and other buildings… the human voice was there, too. A door opened, someone yelled, the dog barked, an answer came on the wind: sodding patrol, fuck the cold, bollocks to you, Sergei, coffee? Why not? Heel, heel, damn you, heel… don't make a fuss of the bloody thing — supposed to be a guard dog — up yours, too…
He unfroze and dropped to the ground, still listening intently to the voice coming on the wind. He cowered in the shadows as he heard the conversation of the two men and the low, continual growling of the dog. His head was reeling with the sense of the truck in the barn behind him. He knew the dog would come, the man would probably be armed — even if only with a voice to cry out or give the dog the order to attack. Knew he must go, must.
Dog distressing the chickens, growling with movement, the man thanking Sergei, exchanging friendly obscenities, calling the dog, which therefore could not be leashed—this way, damn you—the voice coming closer, the man's whistling becoming louder. Go, get out now! Growling of the dog. Gant stared down at his boots. He had already left his scent, he must get as far away as possible before the dog picked it up.
He staggered out of the shadows of the barn and ran hunched across moonlight that lay like a pale carpet. His blood rushed in his ^S so that he could hear nothing else. He dared not pause to try to Pick up the first noises of the pursuit, as if the distance behind him threatened like a jagged crack in thin ice pursuing him as he ran. He Cached the darkness of the trees but even so did not pause, his thoughts filled with the dog and its freedom, its strength and speed. Panic filled him. He could not stop running.
Trees, the narrow track, moonlight, cloud, moonlight again, a long, slow rise in the track, then a steeper dip, then the false horizon of more trees, their shadow—
He staggered, the breath knocked out of him. He leaned heavily against a tree and looked around him. A thin belt of trees beside the straight track. A windbreak for more buildings, another collective? Dogs?
He knelt down, squinting into the darkness. He could see no lights. Rising to his feet, he began to jog cautiously, as if testing either his body or his resolve; or both. Evidently, the dog s discovery of his scent had been dismissed, the opened window investigated and considered an accident. Or perhaps the man who had exchanged ribaldries with Sergei had no interest in anything beyond the limits of his reluctant patrol. Whatever, there was no pursuit. They might have called the army; probably not. It did not matter. For the moment, he was still safe. Reassured, he jogged on.
The building had a lean-to on one side of it. It was barnlike but lower than the collectives barn. It was lightless and silent. Locked, too, he saw in the moonlight. Cautiously, avoiding any delay, he crept toward it. A row of smeared windows. Open, flat landscape beyond, itself deserted. What was the place? There was only the single building. It might be an implement shed, some kind of store — a vehicle? Unlikely. Not this far from the collective. He moved on, regarding only his own footsteps and their exact, soft placement.
He rested in the shadow of the lean-to. His boot had kicked a tin hidden by the longer grass around the building. An oilcan; empty-He heard, then saw, a length of corrugated iron sheeting tremble in the wind. It was rusty and hung away from the lean-to. His listened, then got down on his stomach and crawled through the gap* Smelled, tasted rust. Smelled — smelled gasoline… no. Kerosene? Oil, too. Rubber, dust, concrete. His eyes became accustomed to the faint light through the dirt on the windows. Cans on shelves, tools, oil drums, fat-tired wheels — a vehicle! He grabbed the flashlight firmly, tugging it from his pocket. Ran the watery beam over the room. Found a door. A machine shop, a garage — another garage? He moved quickly toward the door, turned the handle. opened it. Flung the beam of the flashlight like a challenge into the darkness. Dared not breathe. Dusty, kerosene-smelling silence.
Oil drums, tool cart — his throat was tight, he could not swallow — a metal blade? Wires gleamed like spiders threads. The moonlight from small windows in the eaves was faint, he had to wait until his night vision adjusted to it. Meanwhile, he flicked the beam from spot to spot. Another knifelike blade, hanging in darkness. Wires, the dull flank of some machine.
Propeller blades. The fuselage of an aircraft. It was, it was— Christ in Heaven, it was almost that aircraft! He saw vividly the dust rising in a cloud from the road, saw his younger self looking up from his book, rising in astonishment from the slouch he had adopted outside the gas station's small office — that aircraft! An old biplane, prop-driven, just like the crop duster that was the first, the very first he had flown.
His mouth was dry with excitement, even as in the same moment his eyes were wet with disappointment. He had identified the pieces of the airplane's jigsaw puzzle, and seen its engine lying beside the fuselage on the concrete floor, the biplane's panels and flaps littered around it like the debris of a wreck. It was an airplane, but he could not use it.
He dropped weakly to his knees, his head bowed. His growl of refusal became more like sobbing. It wouldn't fly, he could never make it fly.
16: Consider the Phoenix
The Botanical Gardens lay blankly white with snow, the panes of glass in its iron-framed hothouses were steamed and dreary like the windows of passing buses. The glass through which he looked was also misting, along the whole length of the gallery. The lake lay beyond the gardens, and beyond that the last of the daylight caught the tips of the Mont Blanc range. The snow-flanked mountains marched into the distance, into other countries. Defense Minister Zaitsev considered them, rubbing his chin with his left hand, cupping his elbow with his right. It was an almost philosophical pose, he realized, but appropriate to the television solemnities taking place in the gallery of Geneva's Palais des Nations.
Then he turned his back on the view. He had been outside the Soviet Union many times, but to the West only perhaps on three or four occasions. He always seemed to look at such places through thick glass.
He gave his attention to the Soviet foreign minister, Vladimir Shiskin, who stood beside him. He had not been as successful as Zaitsev in appearing engrossed by the view. His square, sallow features — Zaitsev had to lower his eyes to the man's face, Shiskin was a short man — were alert like those of a cornered animal. While he appeared to stare across Lake Geneva, Zaitsev's thoughts had not, for a moment, left the subject that had raised itself between them-Shiskin, of course, had had to be briefed. As the most prominent pro-army member of the Politburo, apart from himself, it had been necessary to tell him — unfortunately necessary — of the compressed launch schedule for the laser weapon. It would be Shiskin who would prepare, then mollify, Nikitin.
"You're satisfied, then?" Shiskin repeated. "This is not a move of desperation?"
"No, it is not a desperate move." Zaitsev smiled sardonically. "Is that your question, Vladimir Yurievich, or does it originate with another of our little group? Were you told to ask it?"
"It is — a general feeling, my friend. A general feeling." Shiskin seemed to acquire stature from his fiction of. consensus. Zaitsev glanced at the television monitor to his left. Farther along the gallery, Nikitin and the American President were reassuring the world; basking in their separate lies. Behind them, the town's miniature image retreated into the evening darkness. The fingertip mountains were purpled, indistinct. Zaitsev glanced through the windows again, then back to the screen. Somehow, the shrunken image of Geneva and its landscapes satisfied him more.