Mazurka (55 page)

“You're a persistent man, Pagan,” he said.

“Sometimes.”

“What good will it do you to know where Andres has gone?”

“I don't know yet,” Pagan said. He picked up the telephone again. “I'll have the answer to your question as soon as I've called the police in Oslo.”

Mikhail Kiss stepped closer to the desk. “And they'll stop him?”

“They'll hold him,” Pagan replied.

Kiss, alarmed, put his hand over the telephone, firmly pressing the cradle down. “No,” he said. “I can't allow you to do this.”

Pagan looked into the big man's bruised face and what he saw there was desperation. “You can't stop me, Kiss.”

Kiss, who was strong, tried to yank the telephone from the wall. Pagan caught him by the wrist. For a moment neither man made an impression on the other, neither man budged because there was an equivalence of strength, a balance. It might have remained this way for many minutes except for the fact that Kristina Vaska got up from her chair and struck Kiss on the elbow with her gun – a quick blow, delivered sharply and with admirable economy, which made the big man shudder and loosen his grip. He sunk into a chair, clutching the bone at the place where he'd been struck. Then he immediately rose again and reached out for Pagan, but Kristina Vaska pointed her gun directly at him and shook her head from side to side.

Kiss saw the determination in her face and stood very still. His blood-stained hands hung at his side. He was beset by a sense of futility, of having built the last twenty years of his life on an edifice that was quivering under him now, shaken by the Englishman, by the young woman with the gun, by the ghost of Norbert Vaska.

Pagan drew the telephone towards him. He dialled the number for the international operator.

“Say thanks or something,” Krishna Vaska said. “I just helped you out.”

“Thanks or something,” Pagan replied.

“Smartass.”

Olso, Norway

Andres Kiss was met at the airport in Oslo by a dark blue Volvo, whose driver barely glanced at him.

“You'll find a suit in the back seat,” the driver said. “When we're out of the city I'll stop in some quiet place and you can put it on.”

Andres Kiss placed his hands flat on his knees. He settled back in his seat, hearing the driver talk about the recent heatwave that had afflicted Oslo, but he wasn't really listening. He had other things on his mind.

“You'll have a clear afternoon for flying,” the driver said.

Andres nodded absently. “Good,” was all he said, and his voice was strong and confident. It was a fine thing to go out to and meet your destiny untroubled by any hint of fear.

20

Mossheim, Norway

Andres Kiss thought the plane looked beautiful on the ramp. He approached the craft with the awe of a man who is as close to perfection as he is ever going to get in his lifetime. There was a magnificent austerity about the F-16 B, its vicious potential concealed in smooth, aerodynamic lines. If you narrowed your eyes and looked at the plane sideways, you might think it a sharp-beaked hawk. Andres, who wore a fire-retardant Nomex suit, a G-suit, and a survival vest, strolled round the aircraft, almost hesitant to go up the ladder and into the cockpit, as if he wanted to prolong the joy of anticipation.

He sniffed the sweet morning air into his lungs. It had been three years, three long years, since he'd been in this place. Three years since he'd flown an F-16 on missions in the Baltic, when his squadron, based at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, had been deployed by NATO to participate in routine tactical manoeuvres.

The man who had picked him up in Oslo stood with the shadow of a wing falling across his face. He appeared very anxious to Kiss, in a hurry to get the bird off the ground. Andres, on the other hand, felt no such urgency. He'd climb into the plane, and he'd put on the helmet, attach the harness, and go through all the necessary steps before takeoff, all those logical little moves you made prior to flight. Andres adored the checklist, the jargon, the sense of belonging to an elite group of men who knew how these birds worked. When he spoke the secret language of flyers, he felt eloquent. It was as if he were a member of a select freemasonry, privy to all kinds of arcane information.

“Here,” and the man handed Andres a set of charts.

Andres Kiss took them, studied them briefly. The flight plan, but he knew it already. Besides, it wasn't a directive he intended to follow. Not all the way. Only up to the point where he would digress radically from it.

“Let's move,” the man said.

Andres was still unhurried. He stared across the runway, seeing other planes sitting motionless here and there on the base, each casting elongated shadows. He saw the barbed-wire fence beyond the hangars, and the security checkpoint, through which he and his companion had passed without any difficulty. It was a good feeling, Andres reflected, to know that Iverson's promises had all been kept, that his part in the scheme was working perfectly.

He followed the other man around the plane, wondering how much his companion knew, if he was part of the whole tapestry or simply somebody following an order that had come down from Iverson in the United States, an unquestionable command that, although irregular, he had to execute.

They moved together to the forward fuselage on the lefthand side of the plane, checking the canopy, the external jettison handles, the Side Winder missile on the leftwing tip. They went next to the nose wheel, and circled to the righthand side of the craft and the outboard station on the wing that housed the second Side Winder. Andres Kiss looked automatically for leaks, for any kind of fluids that might have dripped from the craft, but he saw none. Then the fusing of the Mark 82 bombs was checked on the underside of the plane. After that it was time to go to the cockpit. Andres felt the first little shiver of the day, a slight tremor of anticipation.

He climbed the ladder and squeezed himself inside the cockpit. He stared at the instrument panel, the radar display panel, the vertical velocity indicator, the airspeed mach indicator, the autopilot switch. On the left console was the G-suit hose connection, the fuel master switch, the throttle. On the right was the oxygen and communications hook-up, the oxygen regulator panel, the stick. Andres stared at the dials with an expression of intensity. There were so many of them, each dedicated to the perfect functions of the craft, each related to the other in a sequence of irrefutable logic, and he knew them all, and they made him feel comfortable.

The other man, who had given Andres no name but who was obviously employed at this base in the capacity of crew chief, reached inside the cockpit and attached the fittings that linked Andres to the ejection system. Then, still working in silence, he plugged Andres into the oxygen system and handed him his helmet, which Andres put on.

Cockpit check. Andres studied all the switches to make sure they were in the off position.
Verify fuel master on guard down. Engine feed knob normal. External power unit switch normal. Fuel control in primary position. Throttle off. Brakes locked. Landing gear handle down. Master armament switch off. Air source knob normal
. Andres went through this procedure, realising that what had been missing from his life was this sense of well-defined purpose – and now here he was following all the old rules rigorously.

The other man climbed down the ladder from the cockpit. He didn't give Andres the customary thumbs up OK sign, as if he wanted no further part in the whole affair. Andres looked down at him, still smiling. He turned the main power switch to battery. The batteries discharged, the invertor output was good. Everything was fine.

Andres spoke to clearance delivery in the control tower. “Mossheim Clearance. Louisiana Alpha 07, IFR Round Robin, clearance on request.”

There was a brief pause before Andres heard the response. “Louisiana Alpha 07 Mossheim Clearance, clearance on request. Forty-five past the hour. Stand by this frequency.”

“Louisiana Alpha 07, roger.” Andres placed the jet fuel switch to Start 1. He checked the back-up fuel control caution light, which registered OFF. Then he stared at the RPM gauge. Throttle advance to idle. The hydraulic oil pressure lights went off, and RPM stabilised at normal ground idle. Functioning, Andres thought. Everything in position. The sweet integrity of the plane.

The voice in the tower said, “07 you are cleared by the Mossheim One departure direct to the Stockholm 140 at 50 climb and maintain flight level 250, squawk 2545, departure control frequency will be 345.5.”

Andres repeated this and the voice in the tower said, “Read back correct. Contact ground for taxi.”

Andres contacted ground control and was told to taxi to runway 03. He felt the rumble of the craft vibrate through him as he looked from the cockpit and gave the wheels out signal. The man on the ramp alongside the craft hurriedly removed the chocks and Andres increased the throttle slightly and released the parking brake. He taxied to the arming area, conscious of the muted power of the plane, the way its ferocity was held momentarily in check. In the arming area he let his hands hang from the cockpit as the ordnance crew chief attached a variety of electrical leads to the bombs, the missiles and the 20-millimetre cannon, which made the weaponry operational. The ordnance chief gave the thumbs-up sign, indicating proper configuration.

Andres thought,
Let's go. Let's just fucking go
.

He taxied to the edge of runway 03, where he initiated the automatic on-board test system, which checked fifty-seven separate functions of the craft. It was all beautiful. He checked the flaps. Normal. Trim centre, both ailerons, horizontal trim and rudder. Fuel control in the primary position. Speed brakes closed, canopy closed. He checked the harness, the attachment of the G-suit to the console. Verified that external fuel tanks were feeding the main tanks. Ejection safety lever, oil pressure, warning and caution lights.

“Mossheim Tower, Louisiana Alpha 07 takeoff one with clearance.”

“Louisiana Alpha 07, Mossheim Tower, taxi into position and hold runway 03 right.”

The moment, Andres thought. The final check. “Roger. Posit and hold.” He verified engine oil-pressure and saw that the generator lights were out. Ready to go.

“Louisiana Alpha 07, Mossheim Tower cleared for takeoff, runway 03 right contact departure.”

Andres accelerated the engine through 80% and released the brakes. The aircraft accelerated to one hundred and fifty knots and he eased back on the side stick to establish an 8 to 12 degree takeoff attitude. At approximately one hundred and fifty-six knots, the plane was airborne. It was a rush, a great surge of adrenaline. Andres felt his stomach tighten and his heart leap. He was home at last.

He said, “Mossheim Departure, Louisiana Alpha 07 airborne, passing 7,000 feet for flight level 250.”

The message came back, “Roger 07, Mossheim Departure, right turn now direct to Stockholm. Maintain flight level 250.” The F-16 was climbing at a speed of 10,000 feet a minute. Andres Kiss, in complete control of the craft and himself – if indeed there was any distinction between the two at this moment – looked down on a diminishing landscape turning yellow in the early afternoon sun. So far as anyone on the ground was concerned, this flight was just another exercise carried out by an American fighter plane attached to NATO. Routine, simple – drop a few bombs and fire the cannons at targets on the uninhabited little Baltic island that was used for target practice, then return to base. That's what all the paperwork would say.

Andres, climbing still, soaring, knew otherwise. This exercise was in no way routine. When he reached Russian territorial waters, when he arrived at the place where he could go no further without violating Soviet airspace, he wasn't going to turn back. Nor had he any intention of squandering his weapons on some uninhabited little island. No way.

Glen Cove, Long Island

The speech of the police inspector in Oslo had a curious kind of formality to it, as if he'd learned the English language from teachers in tuxedos. He apologised profusely, perhaps with more politeness than the situation warranted, saying that Andres Kiss had been picked up at the airport by a man in a Volvo, prior to the arrival of the Oslo police, and taken elsewhere. And, according to a reliable female eyewitness taken by Kiss's striking good looks and thinking him a rock star, the car that had picked Kiss up was registered to a certain Flight Sergeant at Mossheim Air Base, which was a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation base – and, perhaps Mr Pagan would understand, the Oslo police had no real desire to enter the base unless Norwegian security was ‘indisputably' at stake. There were, ah yes, ah-hum,
political
considerations involved as well, and surely Mr Pagan would also understand that much too. Frank Pagan thanked the inspector and hung up.

He went inside Andres Kiss's bedroom and looked at the world atlas. He found a map of Norway and Sweden, discovered Mossheim about twenty miles from Oslo, close to the Swedish border – and two hundred miles from the Swedish border was the Baltic Sea.

He closed the atlas, thinking it was no distance at all from Norway to the Baltic, and from there to the coast of the Soviet Union. In the kind of plane Andres Kiss was presumably accustomed to flying it was a distance that could be covered in thirty minutes. Another thirty minutes across the Baltic, and you were practically in Leningrad. If you chose to enter the Baltic through Latvia, then it was only a matter of about an hour's flying time until you reached Moscow from Riga.

Pagan went back to the office. Mikhail Kiss was looking out of the window, his back to the room. Below, in the early light of day, the roses had begun to assume their colours again, bold, almost defiant in the dawn.

“Are you going to tell me?” Pagan asked. “Or am I going to have to guess?”

Mikhail Kiss turned. It was hard to see him in the softly-lit room because the sun hadn't yet penetrated it. “What do you think, Pagan?”