He moved slowly through the reeds and out onto the ice. Time urged him, and he moved quickly across the frozen marsh toward the jetty, until he pressed against groaning wood, into the shadows cast by the jetty. He listened. Heard the wind. Saw distant navigation lights. No dogs… listen for the dogs. The Mil-8 had dropped men and dogs at their appointed places in the pattern of the search. Could he hear dogs? He held his breath, listening into the wind. Distant rotor noise, nothing more.
He climbed the steps, crouching at the top, sensing the skin on his back and buttocks and neck become vulnerable. He felt colder, as if naked. The rifle seemed unreal, held in numb hands that gripped like claws. The boat was only yards away. He could see the bars and strips of light clearly. He scanned the open ground once more with the glasses. Nothing. Then he ran in an awkward crouch, the wood of the jetty announcing each quick footfall, the wind seeming encouraged to unbalance him by the cramped and difficult posture he adopted. He stepped carefully onto the boat's deck. Eased along the side of the cabin, bent down.
Gant looked through cracked wood, saw nothing, then through a gap where two thin curtains did not quite meet. Saw him.
Kedrov. Had to be. A radio, back open, exposing the source of the signal, lay on the table in front of him. The man was down, that was obvious. Head hanging, face in shadow, staring; hands still, but weakly clenched in a child's grip. Not believing someone would come for him. Gant felt relief, felt the urgency of the minutes that had passed since he left the MiL; felt the possibility of success. Rose and eased himself farther along the narrow deck until he reached the doors. Touched their wood, felt the grain and the peeling paint because his hand was suddenly warmer. They creaked as he pushed them open.
He stepped into the narrow, shadowy room. Was startled as he heard a helicopter's rotors close, saw Kedrov's face lift to his, was warned, but not quickly enough, because there was a prod of something metallic, hard, in his back. A hand reached for the barrel of the rifle and held it tightly before he could begin to turn. And a woman, gun held stiff-armed ahead of her, emerged from the shadows at the far end of the cabin. He felt a moment of rage that he might have used, but shock drained it away. The woman was afraid, surprised, pleased. Kedrov was appalled. Gant realized the face should have warned him, wearing defeat like a badge. He let the rifle go, and it was snatched away somewhere behind him. A helicopter seemed to be in the hover outside. He heard the first dog cry distantly but eagerly. He shivered.
The place seemed to rush in on him. Winter Hawk was finished; blown. Just as he was.
"American?" a voice asked behind him. The metallic rod jabbed in his back. It would be foolish to move, it said. Your hands would not be quick enough. "Well?" The man spoke English with competence as he said: "We have been waiting for you — all of us, but perhaps for different reasons. Turn to face me, please — very slowly."
Outside, the helicopter had landed, the engines were running down. Human orders were being shouted. The woman seemed surprised at the activity. Gant's hands relaxed. He turned.
KGB. Colonel's shoulder boards on his overcoat. Gant's own age.
Familiar.
The colonel's face dissolved as if under a great pressure, then it reformed into a wild, unstable mask. The eyes burned, and Gant recognized—
— Priabin. The woman, Anna, who had died at the border… last image of her body cradled by, by this man, beside the car they had been using to escape… this man, Priabin. Her lover.
"Gant," he said. Then again: "Gant." The tone of the voice suggested he had already killed him. Priabin sighed. The hatred was there, but the features were composed around the eyes, strangely at peace. There was even a smile—
— as the Makarov pistol was raised between them after Priabin had stepped back two paces. As it was leveled at Gant's face. Priabin was smiling, his features were calm and satisfied. He seemed to have traveled quickly through shock as if it were an unimportant way station; passed through hate, too. Passed almost beyond the shot he intended firing.
"Gant." He sighed once more. His finger squeezed the trigger of the pistol.
THREE
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
You and I, we've been through that,
And this is not our fate;
So, let us not talk falsely now
— The hour is getting late.
11: A Fortress Deep and Mighty
Katya could not understand. Her mind whirled with speculations and anticipation, but she could make no sense of the fact that the two men recognized each other. Impossibly, they knew each other — from some occasion in the past?
And then the name surfaced. It was fixed in place by the banging of the houseboat's doors as she watched the tip of her own pistol move upward and begin to cancel Priabin's strange, fulfilled pleasure. Gant. That American — the one who had stolen the — the one who had caused the death of… impossible—
The wind howled, entering the narrow, low cabin. The planks and boards of the boat creaked and groaned like an audience. The room seemed to quiver, reflecting the tension between the two men. She sensed that Priabin was as quick and ready to die as he was to kill the American, whose gaunt, weary face stared at Priabin's pistol. She felt her throat tickle with the smoke blown from the flickering oil lamp; shadows enlarged and seemed to struggle with each other on the planking above her. The pistol wobbled, but had its target. The American's stomach, chest, then forehead.
The doors banged once more, startling her from her trance. Priabin was posed with his arm stretched out, his pistol aimed at the American's head. He leaned into the contemplated shot, his finger closing on the trigger.
The American spy… their prisoner.
"No!" she screamed, her voice thinner and higher than the wind.
Priabin's hand shook. The American turned his face to her, as if only now acknowledging her presence. Her eyes concentrated on Priabin as he, too, turned to her.
"No! No! No!" she shouted as loudly as she could. Her words rang and echoed, unrecognizable as her own, in the low, narrow cabin. Her own pistol was raised, her body was crouched; she was half ready to scream, half to shoot, and she knew her face was distorted with a sense of panic. "No!"
And Priabin turned fully…
… the American was still…
… their eyes on something other than herself. They were both looking at Kedrov, huddled on the bunk, hands wrapped across his chest, knees up to his chin. Their — object in the room, both of them.
"No!"
Had the American been on the point of action? Yes, he was now letting his hands return to his thighs, letting his face sag out of its tight folds of expectation. His pale eyes gleamed at her, cold and baffled. She thrust her gun three, four inches farther forward. A sigh emerged from his whole frame. Priabin's face, alerted by her cry, was thin and sour with the knowledge of being cheated.
"Please," she breathed, feeling a wave of tiredness lap at her, not knowing what to do next.
Radio — crackling voice, commanding and urgent.
Walkie-talkie, lying on the scarred, stained wood of the table, bursting into chatter.
Faces moved and shifted expression and purpose. The shadows beat about her head like birds' wings, growing and diminishing as the flame of the lamp was driven by the wind. She shook her head, kept her pistol moving between them. Kedrov's features formed the only still point of the scene as he cowered on the bunk, unable to take advantage, defeated long ago by a forgotten war with himself. Shadows, the doors banging, walkie-talkie.