Roads home. Roads at home. Slow rise and fell of seemingly endless roads, empty most of the day.
A gravel road in Iowa, and — an old biplane sagging down out of an empty morning sky onto the road and taxiing toward — the gas station. An airplane — his Saturday job, to serve at the gas station where hardly anyone called, and where he spent his time reading magazines about air aces and dogfights. The biplane might have jumped from the pages of one of the magazines — that first airplane, the first one he'd ever sat in. It had just rolled slowly up to the gas pumps, and the pilot had looked down, grinned, and said, Get the windshield, check the tires.
And filled the airplane s tank from the pump.
Gant whirled around and stared in utter shock at the Hind resting in the hollow. Turned back to the empty road. Looked again at the helicopter, his panic becoming urgent again, but eager now, not final.
There had been something in his memory, he hadn't merely panicked — a single-engined, prop-driven biplane, flown by an ex-air force pilot disgruntled with postwar America. An itinerant crop sprayer, taxiing with complete arrogance on a road in Iowa to fill his fuel tank at a gas station.
Gant ran stumblingly down the dune, sand flying and slithering. Urgency possessed him, as if the engines of the Hind were still running and he were using fuel by his very movements. He clambered into the cockpit and flicked on the moving-map display. He summoned the largest-scale maps, hearing his breathing hoarse and loud in the confined space, hearing the humming excitement in his ears, his heart pounding. He searched the map feverishly for signs of human habitation. Road, railway, river, all heading toward the Aral Sea — along the road, follow the road…
North, east, and west the land opened up, becoming ever more empty. Damn the emptiness of this place.
Desert shading into green on the maps as he ran them again. Temperate. Soil, not desert sand. Trees, crops — people. Northwest, where the river turned like an enormous python up toward the Aral Sea, its vast, eroded valley like a huge skin it had already shed. Green — people…
Engine-start.
The Hind jumped like a flea into the night, out of the hollow. The cockpit was solidly around him, no longer a fragile eggshell. He saw the road, the river, as if for the first time.
Along that road. Main road. Gas.
He tried to grin. The gauges had registered Empty for miles already. How much?
He did grin. The machine wasn't going to beat him. He would survive.
"We're gonna make it — I promise, Mac." And then he remembered that the gunner s cockpit was empty and Mac was dead and already hundreds of miles behind him. His voice Med.
In its greed, which now reflected his own, the Hind hurried through the empty landscape. As he flicked over the crest of a dune, the river gleamed to starboard, and the road was a pale trail to port.
Suddenly, he began to fear once more that the machine would win.
Hie urgent bleeping of the radio woke Priabin. Ridiculous, he realized in the moment of waking; he'd fallen asleep in his car while it was parked outside his office building. The lights, he saw fuzzily, were still on in his office. He scrabbled at the dashboard, reaching for the radio mike, half expecting the dog to bang its paws on the back of his seat and lick his ear and neck. But the dog was with Katya. He clenched the mike, flicked the switch, and said:
"Priabin. Yes?"
Her voice was breathy, excited. Priabin was sharply disappointed. He wanted the call to be about Rodin, but knew that Katya must be calling about Kedrov.
"— found him!" the woman almost shouted. "I've found Kedrov in the marshes. Colonel, he's here!"
He glanced up at the lights in his office. Security pressed down on him like a constricting weight; survival, too.
"Katya — hang on, I'm in the parking lot. Wait until I can listen on the office scrambler—"
"Sir!" Her frustration amounted to outrage.
"Katya," he snapped in reply. 'The car isn't secure." Kedrov, Rodin, the GRU, the military, Viktor dead — anything to do with Kedrov was important, might be dangerous. "Just give me a minute, Katya, then we can use the secure channel."
"Yes," Katya replied automatically.
Priabin dropped the mike and flung open the door of the car. Now Rodin was distanced in importance. Katya had found Kedrov. Hie pieces of the broken ornament that was his future were miraculously coming back together. He hurried across the frosty concrete. The wind flung itself into his face. He ran up the steps and thrust open the twin glass doors into the building, surprising the foyer guard, who instantly relaxed and saluted as he recognized Priabin.
He fumed at the doors of the elevator until they opened. Fumed as it ground its slow way upward. Ran along the thinly carpeted corridor, and unlocked his door.
Locked it once more behind him.
"Katya?" he said breathlessly into the radio, switching on the scrambler unit as he did so. "Katya — tell me everything."
Kedrov — Viktor… they were linked, too. Like Viktor was bound to Rodin and Lightning. It was all of a piece; his future was restored. Dear God, the girl had done well.
He flicked on the desk lamp. In its pool of light, he saw the map of the salt marshes. As he dragged a notepad and pencil toward him, she said: "I knew he'd be here."
"Well done, well done, you clever girl," he replied lightly. It was infectious. The drowsiness induced by lack of sleep and the car's heater had — well, simply vanished. He felt reinvigorated. He was denied access to Rodin, but now he had Kedrov, who knew something about Lightning. He had the answer in the palm of his hand.
Katya's story spilled out excitedly. He listened, enthralled; asked her to repeat details merely in order to savor them; scribbled on his pad, marked the position of the houseboat on the map that lay like an untidy tablecloth across his desk. When she had finished, he said, chuckling:
"Well done — oh, sweet girl, well done." He heard her moment of hesitation almost as if she audibly demurred from his praise, sensing patronage. Then he heard her laughing, and added, more soberly: "Do nothing — no, don't argue, don't do anything. This is too important — no, it's too dangerous, too. You wait there. I'll call Du-din at once. I'll come out with him and his men, and we'll all take him together — no, no bullshit, no heroics. We'll make certain we take him."
His free hand was clenching and unclenching near the pencil and the notepad. He was racked with impatience like a child.
"Yes, sir," Katya replied, reconciled to good, sensible precautions. "But please hurry."
"Look, don't worry. Just sit in your car and play that Paul Simon tape I know you bought last week from one of the back-street dealers in town, and we'll be right with you. All right?"
"Yes, Colonel," she replied in a sobered, careful voice.
"You know Paul Simon's not only an American, but also a Jew— and very subversive," Priabin added. He joined her laughter, then said: "Well done, Katya, really well done. Hang on — we'll be right With you."
He switched off the radio. He would make certain that Katya s part in this was recognized by the committees, just as he would use the capture of Kedrov as his return ticket to Moscow Center. He had begun to dial Dudin's number, but his hand, as if understanding his mood, had replaced the receiver. He found himself staring at the dark square of the window as if at some screen upon which long-anticipated images would shortly be projected. It was only gradually that the haze of light from the distant launch complex made itself apparent against the glass. He rubbed his chin, then watched his fingers drumming with growing impatience on his desk. But the moment was good, and he deliberately held on to it for as long as he could. His fingers were pale in the lamp's pool of white light. Slowly, almost luxuriously, he made those impatient fingers reach toward the dial — Dudin, and the capture of Kedrov.