Had Priabin still been his prisoner — well, who could have said, he admitted with a grin, whether he would still have been alive— though why Rodin kept him hanging around him like a court buffoon, God alone knew the answer.
Was there any danger there? He'd asked himself that question fifty, a hundred times, mostly with confident indifference. But he realized Rodin could no longer believe Priabin had driven his son to suicide. Had he still done so, he wouldn't have been able to bear the sight of him, would have had him locked up, even shot.
Serov patted his pocket. The tapes from Mikhail. Should he give them to Rodin, or not? They'd convince, almost by themselves, that the pressure of Priabin's interrogation had snapped Valery Rodin's reason, driven him to a desperate act of suicide — wouldn't they? Perhaps they should be used?
He wandered to the line of tinted windows. Almost at once, he located Rodin surrounded by his staff, in front of the huge telemetry map that showed the snaking orbit of the American shuttle. Pointing, waving his arms — completely mad. Serov felt detached from the whole vast room down there. Where was Priabin? Had Rodin gotten rid of him at last?
No, there he was, still guarded. Playing — dear Jesus, playing cards with his guard and two white-coated technicians, away in one corner. Cards! The scene was surreal. What was he doing? Why was he still there? *
He would not admit that Priabin worried or unnerved him.
He turned abruptly from the windows and the thought. The radio reports, the replies of his team, filled the stale air of the room with their own urgency. Priabin's image nagged at his thoughts for a moment or two, then Gant replaced him. He had to have the American. That would be the basis of any standoff, would be the yardstick. Even the lifeline, he admitted with great reluctance.
And yet all these reports and acknowledgments are empty, negative.
The team had their backs to him like chastened pupils. Bent over radios, VDUs, maps. The large screen standing vertically on its stand in one corner was no more technological or revelatory than an empty blackboard in a classroom. Its colors and markings faded, flowed like dyes running in woolen garments, the kind of cheap rubbish they sold in many stores, the colors reformed in a new pattern-
The map was computer-controlled, constantly updated from its accompanying console. Fifty different images of nothing had been its contribution thus far.
Serov strode over to it, confronting it, a new cigarette between his lips on which he drew loudly, repeatedly. Baikonurs southwestern quadrant occupied the fiber-optic screen. Marks and dots and squiggles crawled and moved on its surface like small flies on a pale wall. He studied the map, replacing its images with as many of the locations as he could recall. The river, bending away toward the bottom of the map, the old town straggling out into the desert, and the country reclaimed and cultivated through irrigation. The bottom half of the projection was a grid pattern like the aerial view of some American or new Siberian city. Collectives, clumps of trees, the tracks and roads that wound through the canal and dike system, individual cottages and huts; barns, stores, sheds, hen coops, garages. Every building was represented. And yet he wanted to lash out at the map with his good hand — the fist that had so damaged Priabin's pretty face — and reduce the map to a jigsaw puzzle of colored shards on the floor.
Every man at his disposal, army, GRU, and even police — he had excluded Priabin's KGB and confined some of them pending further inquiries, as he had instructed sardonically — every mobile or air unit was represented on the map. A separate color or shade of a color indicated the areas they had searched. Like a dye introduced to the body and shown up by X ray; areas clear of disease. These blotches merged at many points. Soon the whole map would be a single smear of color declaring that the American had escaped.
He refused to believe it. The unit designations wobbled and disappeared, then reappeared as positional reports were updated. The map did everything, it was supremely sophisticated, advanced. And utterly useless.
"What else can we do?" he exploded. He saw their shoulders twitch, heads snap up. One or two of them turned at once to look at him; others were more cautious. Yet it was not anger so much as frustration he expressed. "Tell me, boys, tell me. What the hell are we missing?"
They had all turned now, except the map operator, feeding in Vst another stream of positional information. Clear here, clear, nothing, nothing — and yet he's in there somewhere.
"Well?" he asked again, attempting bluffness. "What are we hissing?"
"Sir — nothing." It was the lieutenant who had brought him the news about the Mil — and brought him Priabin.
"Nothing?" he replied acidly, barely controlling another outburst of temper. "Nothing?"
"Sir, we've never done anything as thoroughly as this." He had accepted the role of spokesman, reluctantly, of course. "We've covered everything. He hasn't got a vehicle — we've traced everything on wheels out there. He can't have got back into Leninsk or Tyuratam on foot." The lieutenant's face was screwed up like that of a child seeking an answer; a genuine attempt to help the teacher. But his shoulders shrugged at the same time.
"All right. I'm not criticizing," Serov began. Then he bellowed: "Shit — for Christ's sake! All this equipment, all the routines, the systems — how much are they worth now? Two fucking kopecks is about the mark, wouldn't you say?" He turned his back on them and strode across the room toward the tinted windows. Saw Priabin immediately. Still playing cards. The man was laughing at him!
He turned back to the men in the room, his face enraged. Gant was on foot, he had to be, or holed up somewhere. On the collectives, they were turning out their bedrooms, their cupboards, their privies for any sign of him. Everything had been or was being searched. It was ridiculous, unbelievable that they could find no trace of him.
"Ask them," he said hoarsely, waving a hand in front of him. It was an admission of bafflement, of weakness, but he had to make it. Then he'd settle Priabin. But first… "Ask them — every officer out there. I want ideas. Call every one of them in turn and ask for their ideas."
"Sir, that could take—"
"I don't care how long it takes!" Serov stormed. "They're the people on the spot. Ask them. Well, get on with it — get started!
He was hot, sweating profusely with his efforts at the wobble pump. He paused only to wipe his sleeve across his brow or to glance at the watch on his wrist. Nothing else interested him; he was unconcerned with the cold, empty landscape around him-He was oblivious to the walkie-talkie thrust into his breast pocket-He had almost filled the chemical tank in the Antonov's cabin with kerosene. It was three-thirty in the morning.
He worked furiously at the pump, bobbing over it like some frantic lifeguard over the body of a rescued swimmer, attempting empty him of water. Watch, brow, pump — his horizons. In his haste, he had knocked over a drum of kerosene. Its sweet smell made his head spin. The odor was all around him like an invisible cloud.
Three thirty-two. He checked the gauge. He had transferred two hundred and ninety gallons to the chemical tank. Empty drums lay on their sides around him like litter. Spilled kerosene stained the ground. The loosened tarpaulin crackled and snapped behind him in the occasional gusts of wind. Helicopters had passed in the distance, always to the north. No vehicles had come down the track toward the hangar or the fuel compound.
He cradled his back in his hands for a long time, while his breathing returned to normal. Eventually, he crossed to the tractor. His strength seemed to ebb at the thought of the battery and its weight. You can lift it, you can… He glanced at the Antonov. Close now, close.