Where was Kedrov?
Where?
"What's he doing?" Priabin whispered.
"He's just woken up — he fell asleep," Katya added, as if surprised by Kedrov's behavior. "Curled up like a frightened child, head under the blankets — look." She tapped the TV monitor. A cable snaked away from it across the frozen stretch of marsh, along the rotting jetty to the borescope that had been inserted into a narrow gap in the houseboat's planking.
Priabin studied the image. A low-light television camera with a needlelike probe was attached to the hull of the boat. One of Du-din's team had approached Kedrov's hideout and checked that the camera and its borescope could be installed without Kedrov being aware of the fact. More than an hour before. Now the black-and-white image of the houseboat's single interior room could be observed from a quarter of a mile away.
Priabin rubbed his gloved hands to warm them — perhaps almost to express a kind of gloating pleasure. On the screen, in the center of the circular image, Kedrov stirred on his narrow bunk and looked at his watch. Priabin involuntarily did the same. Almost three o'clock. The effect of the time on Kedrov was alarming. He sat bolt upright on the bunk, stiffly flinging aside the blankets that had covered him. His face showed he was clearly appalled, as if he had not quite awakened from a nightmare. Priabin winced as he exhaled, so real and close was the man's fear. Kedrov was a terrified man. Had he sensed the camera, the men surrounding his hiding place?
A helicopter passed distantly. GRU patrols. There were more of them than Priabin expected. Looking for him, the man on the TV screen? Extra security because of the launch? Priabin was sensitive to the pace of events. He could still lose this race.
Rodin. He must get back to Rodin, soon. The boy was dangerously isolated and afraid. The ticket for the morning flight was waiting at the Aeroflot desk. Kedrov had to be taken now, and hidden elsewhere. Katya must look after him — once he'd mollified Rodin.
Kedrov stood up. His frame had enlarged as he moved across the narrow room toward the hidden needlelike lens. His face was white, distorted by the fish-eye vision of the tiny lens. He was leaning heavily on the table in the middle of the room, staring down at the — what was it? Priabin leaned closer to the screen. Yes — a transistor radio, unremarkable in every way. Kedrov was staring at it with the same mesmerized attention a rabbit would give to a snake. His whole frame could be seen quivering, as if an earthquake had struck the boat. What was wrong with him?
Kedrov tore off the back of the radio, exposing its circuit boards and wiring. Touched it, studied it as if it contained his whole future, looked at his watch, studied the radio, looked at his watch…
Katya, beside Priabin and Dudin, was puzzled but silent.
"Colonel—" Dudin began.
"Not now, Dudin," Priabin snapped. His breath was smokily whipped away by the wind crying across the marshes. The canvas windbreak erected around the screen rattled as loudly as the frozen reeds and sedge. He concentrated on Kedrov's puzzling behavior.
Watch, radio — something glowed in the center of the radio's innards, though Priabin had not seen Kedrov switch on the set. Had he missed it?
"Did he switch it on?" he whispered.
"What?"
"Did you see him switch on the radio?" He raised his voice as another helicopter passed overhead, closer than the previous one. There were no lights around him, no radios or walkie-talkies being used — and not just so as not to alarm Kedrov. Priabin could not risk attracting GRU attention to their stakeout.
Katya shook her head. "No, I didn't," she confirmed.
"Pity we haven't got a mike rigged up. Why has he taken the back off the set?"
Kedrov shook the set as if he, too, wondered whether it was forking. Evidently, there was no sound from it. One of its batteries flew from the case, then another detached itself. Kedrov appeared Momentarily alarmed, then grinned. He replaced the radio on the ^ble. He seemed calmer, though his face was etched with creases of anxiety. He looked at his watch again, then the radio, then his watch…
… radio. The windbreak rattled. Priabin hunched forward on the small, folding chair placed in front of the screen. The noises of the stiff spikes of sedge were ghostly. The helicopter's drone diminished in the distance. Radio…
A point at the center of the radio's exposed circuitry still glowed. Without batteries? Kedrov had retreated and sat down once more, his eyes still on the table and the radio. His shadow no longer fell across the transistor set. Where was the power coming from, without its batteries? It should not be working.
But it was. It wasn't an ordinary radio.
Priabin's hand gripped Katya's arm. She winced with pain, exhaled. He shook her arm excitedly.
"It's not a radio," he whispered fiercely.
"Sir?"
"It can't be. It's working without batteries. There's no lead — it's a dummy set. What the hell is it? It must have some other power source, something that doesn't look like an ordinary battery." He was murmuring quickly, to himself as much as to Katya; chasing ideas that ran ahead of him. "What's going on, Katya? What?" It's working, but not as a radio, he thought. Why? For what reason? "It's still working," he said aloud, "but not as a radio set. It can't receive without its batteries."
And then he knew.
Transmission. It was some kind of transmitter, the glowing light only to inform Kedrov it was operating. The signal was inaudible. Dear God!
"It" — he had to clear his throat—"he — he's signaling to someone."
Dear God, Kedrov expected to be rescued. He was waiting to be rescued!
"How?" was all Katya could say. Dudin had overheard and was crouching beside them now.
"I don't know."
"Colonel, let's move in now," Dudin offered.
"Not yet. Let me think." Rescue, rescue… someone was coming for Kedrov — at least, Kedrov believed it. But who, and how? Should they make sure of Kedrov now? Or — but how the hell could anyone get this deep into Baikonur? The idea was impossible.
"Sir?"
"Colonel?"
"No, no, just let me think." Priabin stood up. The wind leaped on him over the top of the canvas. The navigation lights of a helicopter glowed, moving against the background of stars. He could just make out its engine noise above the wind. How?
Everything, his imagination tempted. Everything — there for the taking… just wait. Kedrov has run out of time, he's terrified he's too late already. It must be soon. A half hour, an hour at most— sooner than that. Just wait.
Rodin was forgotten.
"Someone's coming for Kedrov," he said, looking down at his companions, whose faces lifted from the screen and were palely lit by its monochrome glow. Between their features, Kedrov stared out unseeingly, desperately hoping he was on the point of rescue. "We're going to have him, or them, too," Priabin added, his voice eager.
Serov stood opposite the window of Valery Rodin's flat. The empty room around him was the very one used by Priabin's KGB surveillance team until only a couple of hours earlier. He was alone. Overcoated, hands clasped behind his back, standing. Near his toe, scratched into the floorboards, were the marks left by a tripod. He had seen them in the light of his flashlight. Otherwise, there was little trace, beyond remaining scents and the feeling of recent occupation, of the surveillance team.
Priabin. It rested on the answer to the question, was Priabin dangerous? What did he already know? Serov had consulted the file on the KGB's head of industrial security at Baikonur. The man's history was intriguing — the dead woman, the Firefox fiasco, his survival of an incident that should have ended his career, perhaps even his life. Priabin was a survivor. But there was something about the roan… he was difficult to comprehend, to thoroughly know. He was a mystery to Serov and therefore dangerous.