Routine reports, issuing from the radio, washed over him like the sensation of a warm bath. The helicopter search, the cars, and the troops on foot had not yet located Kedrov. They would do so; and if they did not, General Lieutenant Pyotr Rodin would have enough to distract him when the body of his son was discovered.
Apparently, Valery Rodin had subsided quite easily, even strangely. Given up, as if his heart or will had surrendered. The tranquilizers had been administered via the tube. It had all been over in a few minutes; they had left Rodin so deeply unconscious he would never recover.
The car coursed through the traffic-less streets of Leninsk-Kuznetskiy, the science city of Baikonur, heading southeast from Tyuratam toward GRU headquarters, a complex of white buildings close to the Cosmonaut Hotel. Out of Baikonur itself, there was something commercial about it, business rather than army or science. Serov enjoyed the separation of the GRU from army headquarters — detachment implied independence. To the north of them, the complex was bathed in light from a hundred sources, the sky softened by its glow. To the south, over the darkened city, the stars burned. The car was passing an ornamental fountain at the entrance to a leisure park. The wind had shaped the spray into a peacock's tail before the temperature had frozen it, despite the antifreeze they mixed with the water.
Radio reports, radio noise. He sighed. Kedrov was unimportant, only the general's anxiety made him otherwise. A dozen helicopters, a hundred men or more, all looking for this one pathetic little shit. Even out as far as the marshes. Perchik might have a good idea there, might not…
He closed his eyes. Details of the reports sparkled like jewels in the darkness behind his lids.
Snapped open. He sat upright. His driver was looking at him expecting to receive a change of orders.
"What?" he asked.
His driver handed him the radio mike. Serov depressed the Transmit button and demanded: "Repeat that last information, Unit?" He turned to his driver, clicking his fingers impatiently.
Unit Air-7," he added when given the designation. The driver steered the car to the curb, and they slowed to a halt. The hand brake rasped on. "Unit Air-7, what was your report?" Serov barked.
This is Serov, understand? Your report."
His fingers drummed on the dashboard. Through the window, listing a little with his sudden tension, he could see a war memorial doming at the end of the wide thoroughfare. They were no more than two minutes from the office. Yet the driver had been correct to stop until this matter was dealt with — had he misheard?
… helicopter we can't account for, just sitting under some trees. Engines stopped, no sign of the pilot," the report continued. When the pilot of Air-7 had finished, Serov was silent for a few moments. Why had it awakened him? It was strange, but not sinister or threatening. In the silence, the pilot added: "A gunship, sir. And it's not a member of our zveno. Stranger."
"What markings is it carrying?" he asked. "Can you see?" He forgot to add "Over," but the pilot of Air-7 seemed to divine that he had finished; or was, perhaps, simply frightened into efficiency. An unidentified gunship? From outside Baikonur? picked up the engine heat on IR," the pilot explained, his voice distant and unreal, but somehow enlarging the significance of the abandoned Mil-24."… see it now on low-light TV… army, sir, not ours or KGB. Joyrider, comrade Colonel?"
"Don't be stupid." It was possible, however, in a place like Baikonur — studentlike stunts and stupid acts of indiscipline; boredom. Most of the GRU's work had to do with things like that. But in a gunship? Nevertheless, he added: "If you can't see his white arse going up and down in the reeds, then it may not be a joyride. Get down there and check it out — now, sonny."
He threw the radio mike toward his driver and rubbed his chin. Intuition was pressing at the back of his thoughts, attempting to bully its way in. Why? How much significance should he attach to this?
"Very well, Vassily, drive on." He banged the dashboard as if to startle a horse into motion. The driver started the engine, put the car into gear, and pulled away. The war memorial, sword uplifted in threat rather than reconciliation or sorrow, loomed closer. It was a huge shadow against the lights of the square behind it. Should he order the Mil surrounded, as intuition seemed to demand? No, wait.
The car rounded the dark memorial, crossed the square. The empty ether hissed from the radio. What was it? Why did he still feel it important?
"Sir — Colonel, sir." A different voice, perhaps the copilot.
"What?" This time he remembered. "Over."
"Sir, an officer — one our ours, GRU, tied up in the cabin. Sir, he's claiming he was kidnapped."
Serov wanted to laugh, especially as the car skidded rounding a corner as Vassily's surprise transmitted itself to the steering.
"What kind of joke—?" Instinct pressed: he added urgently: "Get his story. Better still, get him to the radio. And get help to stake out that helicopter. Do it now! Get that idiot, whoever he is, to the microphone."
Vassily whistled through his teeth. Serov could feel the mystified excitement of the two in the back prickle the hair on his neck. What in hell was going on? His fingers drummed on the dashboard with an increased urgency as the car drew into the courtyard, then beneath the archway of GRU headquarters. Serov did not even spare a glance toward the hotel or the windows of General Rodin's suite. The square was nakedly empty, as was the inner courtyard of the building.
"Where is that idiot?" Serov bellowed into the mike.
The trunk of the dwarf fir seemed to collide with his back, so violently did he lean against it to conceal himself. A helicopter's shadowy belly slid above the ice between him and the rotting jetty. He forced himself to observe it through the night glasses. The fleecy lining of his jacket, near the collar, was icily damp from his exerted breathing. It numbed his cheek as he leaned back, lowering the tiny pair of binoculars. The helicopter passed northward. He tried to listen, but nothing other than the retreating Mil and the cry of the wind came to him. The landscape might just be deserted.
Gant clutched the Kalashnikov against his chest, made himself study the open space of ice across which his path lay. Empty, gleaming palely as if lit from far below its surface. Deserted. He raised the glasses once more. Starlight and moonlight were intensified. He scanned the stretch of frozen water. Carefully, repeatedly.
He saw nothing, but could not trust the evidence of his eyes. There could be men out there, hidden and waiting or simply approaching in a search pattern laid down for them. He would not know. He understood his limitations. This was not his element; here he was ordinary, dangerous to himself. He looked at his watch. Three fifty-eight. His approach had been careful and slow, but it had been textbook, not instinctual. What had he missed? He studied the jetty and the houseboat through the glasses. Thin bars of light stood out, indicating a source of light inside the boat. It had to be Kedrov. This was the agreed rendezvous. He scanned the ice again, then the sedge and the reed beds, then the clumps and tufts of trees and low bushes. They were impenetrable, could hide an army. He shivered, hating the thought of the Hind half a mile behind him. It seemed like a home he had abandoned.