‘They’re top people,’ Marfa whispered, leaning towards him and offering the file. ‘Two from Semipalatinsk, one from that newish place south of Moscow — two top-grade technicians.’ She swallowed. ‘They’re bomb builders, Alexei.’ She was strangely animated. ‘They could have made a real difference.’ She was flicking the files like cards in an illusion. He saw two heads crowned by military caps. He turned to Turgenev.
‘Nothing but the best,’ Turgenev said. He withdrew a cigar case and lighter from his pocket. ‘The sign’s not on, is it?’ he mocked, and puffed at the Cuban cigar contentedly, a paradigm of the capitalist.
The windows behind his blond head were streaked with melted snow running like tadpoles. The telephone embedded in the arm of Turgenev’s seat blurted in alarm. Turgenev gestured at it, and Vorontsyev nodded.
‘Yes? Ah, Bakunin —’ He smiled at Vorontsyev, as if in apology for the unwelcome interruption of their conversation. ‘No, I don’t think that’s necessary. I think the situation’s realities are sinking in—’ He broke off, attracted by the violent, blood foamed coughing from the seat across the narrow aisle. He turned to face Lock, who was holding the Makarov pistol quiveringly towards Turgenev. ‘Just a moment’
Ugly swallowing noises, the soughing of Lock’s breaths, and their uncertainty.
‘Pete — ‘ He paused, but managed to still the threatened coughing fit. ‘Tell the guy I’m dying, uh? Tell him I’m the wild card, unre — liable…’ He paused again, for a longer time. His eyes glared briefly in Vorontsyev’s direction. Tell him there isn’t a lot of time. If I — think I’m going to — black out … you’re coming with me. OK?’
He fell back against the seat, exhausted. Turgenev moved to a more upright position, as if to spring, his eyes enlarged with adrenalin like those of a cat. He glared at Vorontsyev -
who grinned. Turgenev appeared momentarily unnerved.
It was out of the question that Lock should be allowed to kill Turgenev, their only letter of credit, their passport … Yet, Lock’s last desperation frightened the man.
Vorontsyev had to use it.
‘I’ll get back to you, Bakunin … What? No, nothing’s wrong!’
Lock was wearing a beard of blood, but his mouth was smiling with a luxurious, impervious satisfaction. The Makarov was rested heavily, almost numbly, along the arm of his seat, pointed unwaveringly at Turgenev.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ Turgenev snapped.
‘Do we get a pilot?’
‘I only have to wait — what? Fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour, and the only man in the room who poses the slightest threat will be dead!’ He was leaning towards Vorontsyev, whispering savagely. ‘What is there to concern me?’
The, Pete,’ Lock announced faintly, with a detached, fey amusement. The. Get the guys a pilot. They won’t stop me killing you — but you know that, uh?’
Vorontsyev maintained his stony expression for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
Snow flew past the windows behind Turgenev. The fuselage quivered infinitesimally in the increased wind. The slight tremor seemed to transfer itself to Turgenev’s frame.
‘His lungs are filling up with blood, like a swimming pool,’
Turgenev hissed. ‘I don’t have to wait long.’
‘But he worries you — he’s nothing to lose.’
‘You won’t let him kill me, Vorontsyev. You don’t want to die.’ Turgenev’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He was leaning forward intently, but seemed distracted by Lock, who wiped the latest blood from his chin, uhen waved Marfa’s solicitations aside.
And Lock was studying the conversation as closely as if lip reading. Vorontsyev was increasingly aware of his detached, Olympian manner. ‘We both know that,’ Turgenev continued, his priorities buzzing insectlike in the tense, cramped space of the cabin. Vorontsyev was worried by Lock’s control of the situation. ‘So, we wait. Bakunin won’t give you a pilot … you can only deal through me.’ Turgenev leaned back, but his confident assurance was something being rehearsed in a large mirror.
Turgenev wondered if he could buy them off … then the thought made him smile. He need only string them along until Lock coughed his way into oblivion. Even Bakunin, out there behind the swiftly returned blizzard, was too greedy ever to contemplate a solution that involved harming Turgenev.
There was only Lock …
… and the evident fact that Vorontsyev and his people seemed subservient to Lock’s priority. They were becoming no more than observers of the scene.
Yes … It was that that was unsettling, the creeping foreboding that they might act too late. They may hesitate just long enough for Lock to kill him before their sense of their own survival awoke …
Bakunin glanced around him at the detritus of the control tower, its litter of operators and managers, his second in command, the GRU troops. The tinted windows of the tower were blind with driving snow. The idiot who stood beside him, taller, slimmer, younger, had suggested storming the aircraft. Special troops, he had replied, then added an assertion that We can handle the situation. The captain had accepted his decision, probably without a moment’s reflection on his own small accumulation of bribes, kickbacks, payments for looking the other way, even the occasional squalid, unimportant murder.
But Bakunin had reflected. Special troops would be under outside command. Other people would have to have the situation explained — the American, the town police, Turgenev, all of it would have to be justified. It was too dangerous to himself to involve a specialist anti-hijacking unit.
And his own troops couldn’t cope with it, couldn’t pull it off…
… even though — and the thought returned like a wasp he could not rid himself of on a hot afternoon — no one could be allowed to come off that plane alive, with the sole exception of Turgenev.
Finality. Vorontsyev, the stupid, lazy, time-serving policeman who’d got something akin to religion over Turgenev … and especially the American, whoever and whatever he was or had been. Acting or hoping to act as a nemesis. The incident had to be wiped from the tarmac and from reality, just as Panshin had been despatched, falling into the snow, a bullet through his forehead. For safety’s sake.
‘What do you estimate visibility to be?’ he asked his second in command.
‘Around twenty to twentyfive metres, sir.’ Georgian accent.
He distrusted Georgians, but the man was efficient after the manner of his own dim certitudes.
‘Very well. Have the aircraft surrounded by armed troops in a forty-metre perimeter. Anyone trying to come or go — have them stopped.’ He glared at the younger man. ‘You understand me, Josef? These people must be neutralised. A closed incident is what we must achieve — together with the safety of Turgenev, of course.’
‘Will you try to negotiate them out?’
The storm made the windows fiercely blank, writhing outside the octagonal enclosure of the tower like fanned smoke from a conflagration. He shook his head.
‘Turgenev is making his own arrangements, Josef. I do not intend to jeopardise — ‘ He shrugged.’- the man makes the rules here. If he feels in any real danger, he will begin negotiations.’