He noticed sedge waving and bowing like corn beneath the Hind's belly as he was approaching the salt marshes. The troop transport, a heavy Mil-8 Hip, had collected the GRU search party and was moving on a course almost parallel to his own. If he glanced to port, he could just make out the distant white legs of twin searchlights walking across the landscape, shining down from the Mil-8's belly. Collision course between himself and as many as two dozen armed GRU soldiers. He dropped over a low bank into the winding course of the stream, which led into the heart of the salt marshes. Ice gleamed like fragments of a broken mirror.
He lost sight of the two walking legs of light and of the forest of abandoned gantries behind him. Airspeed, eighty-five. Time — he glanced at the clock on the main panel — three forty-two. He looked up as the Hind's shadow skimmed a stretch of frozen water. No navigation lights, only the cold stars. He was sweating freely now. Distance to target, four miles. A clump of dwarf bushes leaned from the bank of the stream. Icy sedge stood out from both banks like the spikes of an insect-devouring plant, ready to close over the helicopter.
Call signs, reports, instructions rang in his ears. Though he knew they were not aware of his presence, not yet.
KGB helicopter, routine flight, would be his story. By the time they checked him out — despite the absence of a flight number on their radars, which would make them curious — he would have completed ingress, be on his way out again… be there Kedrov, be there, you bastard.
The padding of his helmet above his eyebrows was damp, and rubbed as he moved his head from side to side. He was too hot in the leather jacket.
As the marshes spread out more flatly, he glanced to port. Yes, the lights walked on in the distance. The Mil-8 was now slightly ahead of him, or so it seemed. Stunted trees in a clump. The Hind rose—
— flicked aside. Violently, as the rotors of another helicopter caught the moonlight, and cockpit lights enlarged in his vision. He swung to one side of the Mil-2 and slightly higher. Altitude, six hundred feet, rising like a bobbing cork onto every radar screen monitoring the area.
Russian bursting from the headset, a stream of oaths and curses and a challenge that was without suspicion; just simple fear and relief flooding the ether.
"Calm down, comrade," he heard himself saying through clenched teeth. The other Mil was turning in his mirrors, to face after him. Reeds and frozen water flowed beneath the Hind. "No damage done," he continued to soothe. "KGB flight Alpha-Three, what more do you want? Fucking around the sky like a swarm of flicking locusts." He listened then.
"… purpose of flight?"
"None of your fucking business. We have choppers, too, comrade." He flew on, watching the Mil recede in his mirrors, watching its blind face turn slowly away as if to resume its inspection of a plotted route. He heard its pilot or copilot reporting the near-collision, reporting his cover story. He was logged in. Now the questions would begin. He dropped down to fifty feet, disappearing from radar.
Islets, stretches of reed-filled ice, stunted trees. The marshes. Navigation lights to port and starboard, but patrolling, not converging. The Mil-8 s searchlights a dull glow away to port, but closer now. Collision course. He felt weak but forced himself to study the map display, to draw his gaze away from the clock on the panel, to ignore the fireflies superimposed on the sketchy landscape.
Something flicked at the edge of eyesight as disturbed water birds rose in the night. The white dot on the map converged on the islet curled like a sleeping cat and the other that was kidney-shaped — the agreed rendezvous!
He adjusted the contrast to improve the low-light TV picture on the main screen. Gray shapes glowed unreally. He bobbed over a rise — airspeed seventy — drew the Hind s shadow like a black cape across a stretch of ice, glanced to starboard… yes?
Then rose onto radar screens once more, but he had to be sure — a hundred, two hundred feet, then the shape of the islet revealed itself. Catlike — kidney-dish islet lying across a stretch of frozen water from it, the skeletal shadow of a rotting jetty.
He dropped the Hind, as if determined to break through the gleaming ice. Navigation lights around him were lost in the background of stars. The wind seemed no longer to hurl itself against the helicopter. The agreed rendezvous. He was there; target. The white dot that represented the Hind was as still as the Bethlehem star.
He flicked away, keeping low, making the reeds bend into the wind with his passage. Stunted trees in the foreground, jutting out of the land's slight undulations. He slowed his speed, judging distances, watching the screens, the radar altimeter, port and starboard of him, the ground… where were the lights from the Mil-8? He could not see them. He put the helicopter into the hover. Dropped the undercarriage onto a slight incline, bounced the Hind, rolled it forward, wheels hardly in contact with the frozen ground, until the dwarf firs seemed to surround it. Switched off the engines.
Silence.
The wind, then—
— and nothing else. Reeds grew as high as the miniature trees, as if springing up that moment around the helicopter. He felt like a gazelle in veldt grass; there were lions out there he could not see. Still, cooling, the Hind could be overlooked from above. The world consisted of only two dimensions. The reeds were almost as tall as the fuselage. Good enough.
He opened the cockpit door. He did not concern himself with Adamov, who was securely tied and gagged. He drew a sketch map from his flight overalls, checked the compass display on his watch, oriented himself. Islets to the southeast of him. He could see the clump of trees standing up like frightened hair from the knoll's scalp. Half a mile.
Searchlights—
— leaping onto the ice in front of him, cutting off his glimpse of both knoll and trees. As the belly of the Mil-8 lumbered into view, he pressed against the fuselage of the Hind.
Two hundred yards away, the transport helicopter moved across his sight, walking on its searchlight legs, something like an umbilical cord dragging from its belly and tossed by the wind — a ladder, a rope ladder. He heard a dog bark, more than one dog, and glanced Wildly around him, the noise of the rotors beating in his head. The noise had come from within the MiL. The dogs were still aboard, but the cabin door was wide now; light spilled from it outlining a human form. Dogs, men, guns.
The transport moved away, oblivious of him. He saw a bulky shadow starting to descend the rope ladder a quarter of a mile away. They were beginning to drop men and dogs in their prescribed places. They were looking for Kedrov — go.
He could not move, not for a long moment, not until the Mil-8 had moved farther off and its noises were less insistent. Then compass, sketch, night glasses, visual sighting of the knoll and islet where the jetty was, then—
He clambered down the slight incline, onto the first stretch of ice, sedge and reeds scraping like steel against his legs. His hand on the pistol—
— Kalashnikov. He turned, scrambled back up the slope, breathing already harsh, and opened the cabin door. Adamov's white face resented him. He climbed in, took down one of the rifles from its clips, checked its magazine, its weight in his hands, looking only once at Adamov, forcing himself to wink, tossing his head to emphasize a gesture he did not feel. He shut the cabin door behind him. Jogged more easily, familiarly, down the incline onto the ice. Continued to jog, leaning into the wind, head down, rifle clutched across his chest. Half a mile. Three-fifty.
Be there
Gennadi Serovs imagination prickled with points of information just as the night sky, seen through the window of the speeding car, seemed alive with the cold, separate lights of stars. There was a comfort in the analogy, just as there was exhilaration about the details of the report rendered by the team leader and the doctor. They were now seated in silence in the rear of the car, Serov preferring to ride next to his driver. He felt light-headed — yes, that was apt— with the risk he had taken and was still running. It had been a dangerous, even a challenging, move to have young Rodin killed, but therein lay its greatest satisfaction. When the body was discovered, the general would be deeply wounded. And if he became suspicious, asked for causes, occasions, reasons, Serov would plant evidence of KGB surveillance in the empty flat across the street from Rodin's apartment. After all, they had been there.