Rodin waved the message form beneath Priabin s nose.
"Decision postponed," he said. "Decision postponed." That's
Stavka's position." He turned, glanced at the table, then faced Priabin once more. "One man, and they're afraid of him. I shall acknowledge." He smiled, very faintly and with evident cunning. "I shall inform Stavka that no proof exists, that the American has no proof."
"You can't—"
"I will. At once."
Priabin's frame quivered. He felt a chill of fear. It was as he had suspected. Rodin was beyond logic. As if in explanation, Rodin added:
"My wife died an hour ago. She never recovered consciousness."
It was like a bulletin rather than an expression of loss. The indifferent voice of printed lines in a column of newspaper deaths. All restraint had gone. His face displayed no signs of grief, and little shock. The man had been hollowed out like a rotten tooth. There was nothing left inside him. Only the uniform and what he believed was his duty were left.
Mad. Dangerously, frighteningly mad. To himself, Rodin was sane and certain.
Priabin whirled around to the table behind them.
"The gunships spotted him," someone called out. "Where's the closest backup aircraft?"
"It's twenty miles to the border — fifteen at least."
"Not in a million years — no chance."
Priabin turned away. Rodin was smiling, almost sympathetically. Yes, his emptiness was justified. They'd kill Gant, recover the cassettes, and no one would ever know. No one. Gant was a dead man.
"OK, Dick — what can we do?"
Shock, hope, deep anxiety all fought against the clinging of the Valium he had taken in order to assure himself of sleep. He struggled to a more erect position against the padded headboard of the bed. Gunther was still leaning over him like a doctor.
"What can we do?" he repeated, looking at his hands. They quivered to the register of a distant earthquake. The signal from Gant had shocked with its sudden glimpse of the impossible, and he felt he had not caught his breath since then.
Gunther's briefing continued to assail him, like the effect of successive waves against an old, crumbling seawall. He wanted to give in to hope, and was terrified of its illusory beauty. Gant, alive—
"We can't go in, Mr. President," Gunther offered, as if replying to some wild suggestion already voiced. "That's not possible. Their activity in the air, and now on the ground, is — well, sir, it's frantic."
"Then they'll—?"
Danielle had slipped out of bed as soon as Gunther's knock had awakened her. Calvin smelled coffee, heard the plopping of the percolator. She moved against subdued lighting like an illusion. He rubbed the puttylike contours of his face with both hands.
"Sir, I don't know. We don't know whether he has Cactus Plant with him, we only know that he transmitted the Mayday signal, he used his code ID, and he said mission accomplished. Their response confirms he has something, some proof, but we can't even begin to guess what it is. His aircraft was shot down, whatever it was, but he has to be alive."
"You're certain?"
"They're not looking for a body, not with those forces. Sure, they're putting out a smokescreen — searching for a crashed transport airplane is the story — but they're using spetsnaz codes and channels and paratroops — just to look for bodies?" Gunther raised his hands. "There are Desantnye Vojska units [parachute troops] in the area — they've just been parachuted in and there are more on the way. Sir, he's alive and in big trouble. He must have the proof we need!"
"And they're terrified he's going to get it out — to us," Calvin murmured. Then he looked up into Gunther's shadowed face. "But how in hell can we?" He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat and surrender, but slapped them impatiently back on the bedclothes. "Hell, what can we do?"
"John," he heard Danielle say, her voice strangely pained. He looked up. Her dark hair clouded around her small face. "He's alive. It doesn't matter….." Her voice trailed away into the empty shadows of the room. He nodded, as if she had been his spokesperson and voiced exactly what he had intended to say.
Gunther stepped back as Calvin swung his legs out of bed, stood up, and put on his robe. One of his jokes. Donald Duck across the shoulders of the toweling material. And a NASA shuttle badge sewn on the breast pocket. But as if he had donned a uniform, his movements became at once crisper, more alert. He rubbed his hair to tidiness.
"You'll come down?" Gunther began.
"Yes. At once." He thrust his feet into his slippers, and held Danielle's wrists briefly as she handed him coffee. The presidential seal minutely painted on the white china. He nodded reassuringly at his wife. Her face seemed a mirror of his own. Hope fading, the anxiety mounting. "Yes, I'll come down to the code room. What monitoring do they have down there?"
"Full links with the Pentagon, the NSA, Langley."
"Good. What have we—?"
"There's a KH-11 satellite over the Caucasus. Full daylight and little cloud cover. Good transmission situation. Washington can see quite a lot of the activity. Gunships, fighters, troop transports. And now troops on the ground in numbers."
"Terrain?"
"Mountainous, all the way to the border. Difficult for him."
"And for them."
"How far inside is he?"
"Between ten and fifteen miles, their best estimate."
"That little?"
"That little. Maybe that's as bad as a hundred, even a thousand. They have crack troops swarming all over the place."
"Dick, don't say that. The man got out of Baikonur in an airplane — now how the hell did he do that? He could—"
But Gunther was shaking his head. "They can't afford to let him."
"He has to stay alive. He has to make it — for Christ's sake, we can't lift a finger to help the guy!"
"Not unless you want to start the next war."
Calvin nodded absently. "I realize that, Dick," he murmured. "At least" — he looked up, grinning suddenly before his face reassumed its solemn expression—"part of me does. OK, we can't go after Gant. But we can have people on the border, right on the border, and we can be watching from the air. What do we have up?"
"AWACS is watching the whole thing."
"Good. Then I have to talk to the Turkish president right away."
"We anticipated that, Mr. President."
"Right, then let's be clear what we're talking about here. We have to enlist the aid of one of our NATO allies… wait. Would they cross into…?"
Gunther looked gloomy. "They want him awful bad," was all he said.
Calvin rubbed his hair.
"Then I have to prepare one of our allies for a possible Soviet troop incursion into their territory — if Gant makes it that far. God knows what I tell the Turkish president." He was pacing the room urgently, as if attempting to walk off the last lingerings of the Valium; or of fear. "Ten miles — maybe as little as that?" Gunther nodded. Calvin turned slowly, looking at the room as if it were some kind of command center reflecting the powers of his office. And shook his head. "All we can do is make sure we're there to meet him, if he gets out. And he has the proof we need." The tone was singular, not plural. He felt a thrill of enraged frustration that deepened almost at once into fear. He was racked by hope and terror. The proof I need, the proof, he heard again and again in his head. The proof I need.
"Mr. President?" Gunther began.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming. Give me just a moment to dress."
Tree line.
The tree line was what had saved him, he admitted once more. Temporarily saved him; just as it temporarily concealed him.
His back was against a rock, he was sitting hunched on pine needles. The snow was patchy beneath the trees, much of the forest floor tinder-dry. He held the small glasses he had taken from the Antonov to his eyes, and watched them moving below, around, opposite. All of them…