Winter Hawk (23 page)

Katya shook her head. "He's not stupid. He wouldn't use two hideouts that were exactly the same."

"So—where and what?"

"Hide—hideout," she replied mysteriously. Her pale cheeks were slightly flushed; self-congratulation and excitement. She was clever, intuitive, thorough. This was one of her little leaps in the dark. He smiled, encouraging her to explain.

"Well, it's flimsy, but—"

"Come on, Katya, forget the false modesty. You don't believe that for a moment."

"Bird-watching. Something he took up about a month or so ago, that's all. His latest hobby. Soon after he started using the transmitter to talk to the Americans, as far as we can tell."

"Yes? Go on." Priabin felt an unfocused excitement. It sounded like nonsense, but. . .

"He'd never shown an interest before that. There are maybe a dozen or more applications in his name for passes into prohibited areas."

"To assist his spying?"

She shook her head vigorously. "Not in the marshes, it wouldn't. Mostly that's where he wanted to go. The reason he gave was ornithology. Time and again—ornithology."

"Well? You searched his flat. Did you find his books, notes, and sketches?"

"Yes."

"Well?" He had caught her excitement like an infection. Rodin receded in his mind. His gesturing hands hurried her theory, her guesses.

She tugged her halo of tightly curled red hair back with her long fingers. "A couple of very ordinary books. I checked them out."

"He's a beginner, it's a new hobby."

"I realize that. The binoculars could have been a lot better. His notes are all right—but they don't improve. He's an enthusiast in everything he takes up—spends money on his hi-fi, on cinema history books. Here, he hasn't. But he went out a lot. I don't think he was learning anything."

"Sketches?"

"A few attempts."

"A cover, then?"

Katya shook her head. "Not quite—but not a real hobby. Not important enough to him to justify so many trips to the marshes."

"Then?"

"Then that's where I think he might be—sir," she added care-folly, looking away from his praising smile. He grabbed her by the upper arms and stood her up. He was laughing.

"Get on with it—and tell no one, understand?"

"You mean—?"

"I mean you could be right. Or you might be wrong. Find out."

"Yes. Now?"

He nodded. "Now. Take the dog with you, too—you know how he likes your company. Misha, come on, boy."

The dog, which had returned to the rug in front of the television, shook itself upright, its great tail banging from side to side. Katya grinned at it.

"Come on," she murmured coaxingly. "Thank you, sir."

"Find something, that's all I ask. And go carefully." His own impatient excitement possessed him once more. Tyuratam, the flat of a privileged young officer, a drugged man sprawled on silk sheets—he couldn't wait much longer. He'd talk to Rodin today, hit him hard, get at the truth.

Things were moving. The inertia of events swept him up. He ushered Katya from the office, his hand firmly on her shoulder. The dog waddled ahead of them down the corridor.

"Take a gun," he warned softly. "Just in case."

The sea shimmered in the afternoon sun. It was slightly cooler in the shade of the palms. Netting covered the two MiLs, reducing them to shapeless lumps without purpose or identity. They were parked, like automobiles, as close to the tree line as it was possible to land them. The tide had begun to retreat; its depth, as he knew because he had swum out there, would have been enough to submerge the helicopter on the sandbar. The flotsam of his impact had been drawn slowly, garlandlike, out to sea. The pelicans were diving for fish or floating like toys on the glaring water. The dead and maimed ones had been taken away by the retreating tide.

Gant wiped perspiration from his forehead. Mac lay near him, smoking, propped on one elbow like a vacationer reading a paperback. His posture suggested rest, but the nervous tension induced by waiting—four hours of it now—seemed electric in the heavy air. Kooper and Lane dozed or chatted desultorily, disguising the passage of time. Garcia was in the cockpit of Gant's MiL, taking his turn on radio watch; waiting for the signal that must arrive, and soon.

The Galaxy had made it to Karachi. To be precise, it had put down with the last dregs of its usable fuel at the military airfield west of the city, and only by declaring an in-flight emergency. Anders' voice, almost unrecognizable as it emerged from the decoding process of the quick reaction terminal attached to the satellite transceiver, had told them—wait, just wait.

Four hours of waiting. Reassurances had come through the communications system Gant would use over Afghanistan and inside Soviet airspace, but no decision; no permission. The mission was still like flotsam on this beach, its clock running away, racing ahead of them. He had to be in Peshawar by the evening, with a thousand miles of enemy airspace to cross to Baikonur. Six hours' flying, minimum. And he had to reach Baikonur that night.

Pakistani air force jets had made two passes overhead three hours earlier. Swept down at them, and passed seaward, into the haze, glinting like midday stars. Establishing the fact of a covert mission stranded inside their territorial border. Gant and Anders hoped the mounting nervousness would lead the government in Islamabad, however outraged, to agree to Anders' request in order to move on the unwelcome visitors, camped like gypsies on the beach.

No sign of people. The coastal strip was virtually uninhabited; barren, infertile, the palms simply a margin between sea and desert. A ship passing along the horizon and making a thin smudge of smoke hang there long after its silhouette had disappeared beyond the nearest headland. Otherwise, nothing. Gant looked at his watch once more; it was a nervous tic.

Three. It would take them almost two hours to reach Karachi, and the Galaxy would take another two hours to reach Peshawar. Seven at night before they crossed into Afghanistan . . . and they had to wait, just wait, while time ran out.

Despite his tinted pilot's glasses, he squinted at the sea and the heat haze. His eyes felt tired, strained, and his body somnolent; as if he were within the context of a restless night's sleep, half waking, always shifting position. The sense of unfairness remained with him; they had done enough to earn Islamabad's wink and nod, enough to get out of here.

"Major," Garcia called. "Anders."

Gant hurried to his feet, as if startled by danger. Mac looked up, Lane broke off the sentence he had begun. He strode toward the MiLs, lifting the netting and ducking beneath it. Garcia's face was strained with expectation. He handed the lightweight headset to Gant, who snatched it, tugging it on.

"Anders?"

"Gant." The strangeness of the remote, toneless voice was unsettling as it emerged from the decoding process. Similarly, Gant's voice would be somehow dehumanized aboard the Galaxy as Anders listened. "Gant—it's OK. Mission continues."

"Thank God," Gant murmured. Garcia crossed himself with a fervent detachment. "Can we leave now?"

"Immediately. To rendezvous at"—he gave the map reference, then repeated it—"with Pakistani helicopter units offshore. They'll bring you in—in disguise, sort of. Wolves in sheep's clothing. Fly an offshore routing to avoid visual sighting before the rendezvous point—you got that?"

"I copy." Garcia was holding the relevant map, folded in deep creases, in front of Gant. He saw the rendezvous point clearly. Ten miles offshore. They'd go in like a flock of low-flying birds, two MiLs submerging their identities within the flight of Pakistani air force helicopters. Anders had done well.

"OK. Good luck."

"How high was the price?"

"You wouldn't believe it, Gant. The President is not pleased. Your debt is climbing."

"The hell with that. I'll report when we're airborne. See you, Anders." He threw the headset into Garcia's arms. Grinned. Felt his body shaking with relief. "OK, Garcia, let's get moving. Close formation, you fly to port of me and a little behind. Constant visual surveillance, and fifty feet off the water. OK?"

"OK, Major."

He had already turned away from Garcia, lifted the netting, and was shouting at Mac, Kooper, and Lane, all on their feet, like customers waiting for some store
_v
to open.

"Let's move it. We're back on the ice!"

Priabin had never before experienced, in quite such a satisfying manner, the charm of unsuspected surveillance. Powerful glasses on
^a
tripod, their twin black snouts hardly jutting through the slight gap in the net curtains; the camera's long, long lens beside them. The pleasant ache in his back after stooping for a long time to the viewfinders, the numbness in his buttocks after perching on a hard chair for some time. The aches of a gardener satisfied with his day's work, or a man who has harvested successfully. The beer and sandwiches in the darkened room and the surprising camaraderie among unseen watchers.

It was just after dark now. He straightened up once more, sighing, his hands cradling his back. The glasses were now night-vision binoculars that rendered the world in shades of gray, adding to that inevitable sense of the unreality; the person under surveillance being an object, not a human being.

There was special film in the camera. Each of the surveillance instruments had its own pleasure to give. The tape recorder linked to the phone tap, voice-activated. Rigged to record even their own telephone reports. The laser eavesdropper, which collected the vibrations of a windowpane as it quivered in sympathy with a human voice, had developed a fault and stood, as if it had transgressed, in one corner of the bare, carpetless room. Priabin shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was easy to let time slow down. He possessed Rodin like this.

Power, that's what it was, in the end. He'd spent what? More than three hours just watching, doing nothing. He made himself move. The other two men in the room, Mikhail and Anatoly, stirred like large, impatient cats. The room smelled of waiting, dust, pungent garlic sausage, and beer. And heady, cheap tobacco.

"OK, he's as ready as he'll ever be. I'm going over," he announced.

"You'll want to be wired, then, sir," Mikhail observed, moving to one of the suitcases lying on the other side of the room. His companion, Anatoly, dragged a chair to the tripod and at once sat down, adjusting the focus of the night glasses, humming tunelessly.

"No. Not this time."

"Sir?"

Anatoly had stopped humming.

"Just take it from me—it could prove safer. He won't tell, I won't, and you won't—whatever I learn. But I don't want any record around of my conversation with the lieutenant the military might get their hands on."

"OK, sir, if that's how you want to play."

"Mikhail, believe me. Something big is going on. I can feel it in my water. He knows about it, the fairy prince over the way. He'll tell me, if I can persuade him. Now, where does that leave us?"

"We've got the message, sir. What we don't hear, we can't let slip," Anatoly murmured without turning around. "We'll play dumb."

"Good. Right, I'll be on my way."

"Shouldn't one of us—?"

"You think he's dangerous?"

"Little princess could be desperate, sir. Could come to the same in the end."

"He's up to his eyeballs in coke. I think I can handle him." He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "All right," he added, "if you see me struggling on the bed with him, don't assume I've fallen for his boyish charm—get over there on the double."

Mikhail laughed, an explosive noise in the darkness.

"OK, sir."

Priabin sensed their alertness, all the tiredness of routine and familiarity erased. He picked up his overcoat and pulled it around his shoulders. Straightened his jacket and tie. First impressions—

His boots sounded heavy on the floorboards. He closed the door behind him, walked down the short hallway, and opened the flat's front door. The corridor was empty. As he waited for the elevator, he felt the place's chill, received its smells of cooking and electricity, heard its murmurs. A number of television and radio sets, laughter. It was a squat, modern block of flats spilling from the science city's boundary and encroaching on the most northerly street of the old town; it loomed over the grander, older house—some czarist businessman's idea of a town mansion—where the apartments were allocated to military, top scientific personnel, mistresses. The flats were bought and sold, exchanged for large favors, promotions, used as bribes.

The concierge watched him leave the foyer. He pushed through the revolving doors into the icy chill of the evening. The temperature had plummeted. He stood for a moment looking up at Rodin's windows, two of them lit. He saw again the young man lying on his silk sheets, as if he still watched him through the binoculars; or hurrying to the lavatory to be sick, drinking but unable to eat. Afraid. Posed with his sunken head in his hands on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet and desperate for the telephone to ring. He was ready to talk.

Priabin sighed with satisfaction as he poised himself on the edge of the pavement. Then he crossed the quiet, narrow street, hunching his overcoat up around his neck. The wind seemed to pass through his clothing with casual, biting ease.