‘It hasn’t worked — Major.’ Turgenev was smiling. ‘You’re stuck. Dead stop.’ His eyes, as he spoke, were studying Lock with an intense, hot anger; and growing satisfaction. He seemed unconcerned by their numbers, his own situation.
‘Your friend Bakunin can get us another pilot,’ Vorontsyev replied. ‘In exchange for you.’ He sensed his words like soft hands pushing at a great door he could not hope to open.
Turgenev shook his head.
‘I don’t think so. Besides, this time the hijackers have to negotiate with the hostage, isn’t that so?’ Casually, he removed his gloves and, wrapping his coat around him as neatly as a woman might have done, he sat in the one empty seat in the forward cabin.
‘Lubin, Dmitri — check the other cabin — close the passenger door,’ Vorontsyev said mechanically, gesturing with the useless pistol.
Dmitri glanced almost angrily at him, then abandoned the silent, pale-featured Lock and passed through the curtain behind Lubin. They heard the noise of the door being closed and locked.
Marfa pocketed her gun and moved towards Lock, who hunched away from her on the arm of the seat. It was obvious to Vorontsyev that she was making a great effort to keep her features inexpressive as she saw Lock’s wound. The American growled once like a dog suspicious of further harm, then allowed her lo unbutton his shirt, inspect the wound. Vorontsyev, in the strained, heightened silence of the cabin, distinctly heard the small, ugly noises of the bloodsoaked shirt against Lock’s skin.
He turned to Turgenev, who seemed distracted by memory or reflection. Marfa moved quickly to the lockeTS, opening and slamming them shut, until she found the first-aid box. She glowered at one of the scientists until he abandoned his seal as nervously as a sheep, then helped Lock into it. The man’s face was grey with pain. Vorontsyev turned away, unwilling to witness the extent of the wound, to acknowledge that Lock was, effectively, Turgenev’s prisoner — the man needed an emergency operation, transfusions … might even be dying. He ground his teeth in impotent rage.
Then, surprisingly, Turgenev moved to stand beside Marfa, as if to supervise her attentions to Lock.
As Dmitri re-entered the forward cabin, Vorontsyev said: ‘Get these two back with the others — they can sit on each other’s laps if they have to. Lubin can keep an eye on them.’
‘I’ll start finding out who and what they are.’ It was as if Dmitri, like himself, had stumbled upon a piece of defensive play-acting, the role of a clerk or customs official which would keep reality at bay, at least for some moments.
Vorontsyev picked up a briefcase which had slipped to the floor from the Iranian’s seat. The dead man sat hunched like an abandoned doll against the bulkhead. Vorontsyev tossed the briefcase to Dmitri. ‘It’ll be in here. Terms and conditions of employment, previous experience, the lot-‘ He tried to smile, knowing it was at best a sickly, defeated expression. Dmitri merely nodded, tapped the two passengers on the shoulder and herded them through the curtain to the four-seat rear passenger cabin.
Marfa had completed her bandaging of Lock’s arm and chest.
Turgenev, hypocritically, shook his head. ‘Hospital, very soon or not at all. Maybe not at all, anyway.’ Maria’s quivering lower lip confirmed the callous, detached diagnosis. Perhaps Lock was dying anyway, but delay would kill him for certain …
… as surrender would Hill them, his people who had followed him into this prison. He could not bargain anything for Lock’s life, for the only counter he had was Turgenev himself. The scientists, whoever they were and however eminent and valuable, were mere goods. Turgenev and Bakunin would be indifferent to their survival. There was only Turgenev, the hostage and the negotiator.
He turned at a voice from beyond the flight deck door, startled.
Saw Lock’s ashen face, and snapped at the still distraught stewardess, who seemed obsessively afraid at the imminent opening of the door:
‘Give him some brandy — hurry up, girl!’
The young woman scuttled to obey her orders. He opened the door of the flight deck to the smell of blood, even in the cold air, and Bakunin’s voice, tinnily irrelevant, from the radio.
Turgenev had followed him, and the man flinched at a defensive jab of the pistol in his direction. Turgenev again mockingly held up his hands, then fiddled with the radio, handing a headset to Vorontsyev, who motioned him into stillness against the door.
Half-turned in the small, awkward space, leaning over the pilot’s head with its drying leak of blood, he growled:
‘Yes, Bakunin, what do you want?’ It was as if he had been interrupted from important work.
‘Vorontsyev, what the hell do you think you can achieve by this?’ Bakunin barked. ‘You’re not going anywhereV
Vorontsyev saw the flash of Turgenev’s confident grin, and the black, flylike dot of a helicopter through the windows. It was closing slowly, traversing a surveillance rather than attack course.
‘Listen to me, Bakunin. Prince Turgenev — ‘ Turgenev snorted with suppressed amusement. ‘— the local tsar, is here with us.
He thinks he can bargain his way out of here, but he can’t do it unless we go, too. OK?’
After a pause, Bakunin said: ‘Then why haven’t you taken off? You don’t really need my permission, do you?’
The helicopter minced back and forth across the windows.
The clouds seemed lower, a darker grey. The airfield stretched away around the isolated Learjet, a slow, hesitant fog seeming to cling just above the blank snow. The runway gleamed blackly ahead of the aircraft like a taunt.
Turgenev leaned beside Vorontsyev.
‘Bakunin,’ he said, ‘it’s me. I’m all right. But there is an evident shortage of pilots aboard the plane at the moment,’ Bakunin chuckled. ‘You understand? Our friend here doesn’t seem to know what to do-‘ Vorontsyev listened, without making any effort to interrupt Turgenev. ‘- but that makes him doubly dangerous. We’ll be in touch.’ He switched off the radio.
Immediately, Vorontsyev flicked the radio back on. ‘Bakunin, unless you want to see the money tree cut off at the roots, arrange a pilot for us!’
Turgenev shrugged, then announced imperiously: ‘Now you’ve told him what he should have been allowed to realise in that slow, saurian brain for himself. We are all helpless out here ‘
Vorontsyev pushed Turgenev through the door into the passenger cabin, the pistol prodding the back of the man’s cashmere overcoat. ‘Why should that be?’
‘What choice does he have? If this aircraft takes off, if any of you managed to get away, he is ruined. Do you think he has houses round the world and their accompanying bank accounts?’ Turgenev laughed. ‘He probably keeps it under the mattress, everything I’ve ever paid him!’ He paused, then added: ‘Something of a problem, mm?’ Turgenev seated himself once more, his smile fixed. Vorontsyev inspected Lock’s sick, hanging face, then Marfa’s distress.
A snowflake, large as a jellyfish it seemed, appeared on one of the porthole windows of the cabin. Then a second and a third.
Vorontsyev closed his’eyes in anguish. When he opened them, the stewardess had retreated from the forward cabin. Dmitri was standing between the two cabins, revealed like an actor by the drawn-back curtain. Maria was attempting to read a file. He glanced at the digital clock on the bulkhead. It had been less than ten minutes since they had boarded the plane.
Ridiculous …
He bent over Lock’s seat and the American’s eyes fluttered open. Vorontsyev was appalled at the violence of his decline.
He touched the American’s hand.
‘Christ, this hurts, and it’s strange …’ Lock muttered, blood at once dribbling from his lips so that he snatched his hand away from Vorontsyev and wiped the side of his mouth with a bloodsoaked handkerchief. There was almost nothing left of Lock, apart from the hot, burning eyes, reddened and blinking in and out of focus. Lock wanted nothing, nothing but to kill Turgenev. There was no gun near his hand, Vorontsyev realised with relief, then immediately wondered whether Lock still had the gun somewhere. He hoped not. He patted the hand that had returned to his and stood up. His arm and ribs seemed a long way from him, their jolts and naggings of pain undemanding.