‘The pilots?’ the captain asked, looking much like a bemused boy as he spoke. ‘He — just, well, he killed them? Himself?’
‘That’s it, Josef. Admirably decisive, mm?’ He laughed. ‘They haven’t any idea of the kind of man they’re playing with. None whatsoever!’
‘Should we — you, call him again?’
Bakunin thought for a moment, then said: ‘In ten minutes.
If he wants something, or is in the unlikely position of having to ask for help, he’ll call us. The others don’t want to talk to us — he’s in charge. He never let them gain control of the situation.’
He disliked the admiration in his voice. ‘The weather has this place in a vice for the next twelve hours, minimum. Now, get that plane encircled, just in case they try to run for it.’
The captain saluted and turned away. Bakunin moved towards the blind windows and their rushing snow. The whole tower quivered in the wind’s force.
Brilliantly ruthless, killing the pilots.
What would he do? Buy them off? Just sit and wait? Expect to be rescued?
Offer them an alternative victim, a smaller scandal?
His suspicion was spreading and inflating like a wasp sting
It began with the blinking, the effort to keep the small cabin in focus. His eye movements.were becoming more exaggerated, more frequent. Before that, there had been a kind of exhilaration in the pain, a fierce clarity of sensation and thought. Or perhaps that had come from his understanding that he was dying, and deteriorating very quickly. Now, the cabin swam in and out of clarity, as if it were sometimes there around him and at other times outside the streaming, blind windows.
The girl, Marfa, was an unwelcome nurse. Rather than seeming solicitous, she loomed now as a reminder. Memento mori. Vorontsyev’s pain was another signal of his decline which he resented, having been so detached only minutes earlier. He had been above and outside it all, controlling them.
He coughed, a gout of blood fell onto his lap and he disregarded it, fighting for breath. Gradually hearing the appalling, liquid noises in his chest. The girl had propped him up with pillows from one of the lockers. He was bleeding into one of them, his head resting on another. She had wrapped a blanket around him because he was feeling colder. It would be difficult to talk, but he must — to Vorontsyev first, and then and only then to Turgenev.
Lock pointed with the pistol, unnerving Turgenev, alarming the Russian policeman. He essayed a smile, shook his head. He gestured Turgenev out of the cabin with fierce little shakes of the gun. Vorontsyev nodded and Dmitri took Turgenev into the rear cabin. The scientists in there were irrelevant, he had seen that very clearly; the files would be sufficient for their purposes.
But not important, not like the obligation to ensure the survival of these people who had placed him in a position to kill Turgenev … and who, if he didn’t get rid of them now, would prevent him from achieving that last goal.
Vorontsyev sat in the nearest seat, leaning forward. Marfa gave Lock a drink of tepid water, which he managed to swallow, fighting off the dangerous tickling it caused in his throat.
He had to be made to understand … but Lock was afraid of squandering his remaining strength and consciousness. He blinked. It required shorthand, they had to attend very closely, understand him at once ‘Go,’ he announced, then pointed at the files on one of the seats. ‘All — you need, there.’ There was a bout of coughing after that huge effort, yet he hated more the girl’s sympathetic, anguished breathing beside his face and wished he had the redundant energy to push her away.
Vorontsyev shook his head. Lock nodded vehemently.
‘All — you. Use — use the car …’ His breathing unnerved him, the long wet inhalations and exhalations like a tide, drowning him as he sat helpless.
Again, Vorontsyev shook his head. Then he said:
‘If we leave, it’s with you. Hospital’
Lock shook his head.
‘No — good.’
‘Then we’d need to “take Turgenev, bargain our way out.’
‘No.’ Once more, the room was starkly clear to him. Dmitri stood behind his seat, the girl crouched beside him, Vorontsyev looked as lugubrious as any deathbed mourner. The pain seemed like light rather than heat. He saw their situation with the identical, fierce clarity that had been his wound’s first gift. ‘Mexican — standoff,’ he announced. ‘Only chance — go now.’
Vorontsyev’s scheme had trapped them all. Turgenev was fated to survive. They’d get no pilot, there’d be no storming of the plane. Eventually, they would try, as Vorontsyev evidently planned, to exchange Turgenev for their freedom. Turgenev would have them eliminated as soon as he had been released.
They all knew that. He had the power, the influence, the weight of numbers. They’d never be allowed to survive.
‘You — want to break him. The files,’ he said. ‘Storm will hide you — don’t wait.’
Vorontsyev’s eyes admitted the bleak truth. The storm was the only thing on their side. Once it blew itself out, they’d be as exposed as tumours on an X-ray plate, to be surgically extinguished.
They couldn’t take him — and he wouldn’t surrender Turgenev to them.
Vorontsyev knew that Lock was offering them their lives — or some slight chance of their lives — in exchange for the murder of Turgenev. He maintained an expressionless look. Lock would ensure they had their best chance of escape by forcing himself lo remain conscious. He would wait until the very last flicker of consciousness, the final moment of his own life, before he shot Turgenev. Then, on the edge of the dark, he would execute his enemy.
He glanced towards the files. If they got out, managed to make it to Moscow or some other city, maybe someone would listen; maybe the authorities would act. Regard Turgenev’s empire like rot in an old building — treat it; kill it … It seemed a romantic notion.
Lock smiled at him. It was obvious the American knew he had made his decision.
‘See?’ he said- ‘You have to — uh?’
Then he began an appalling fit of coughing, his whole frame heaving, blood staining his lips and chin and the front of his shirt. Eventually, he subsided further into the seat as Marfa, no longer resented, cleaned his face and inspected his wound with nimble, afraid fingers. Vorontsyev realised that Lock would be dead in minutes. He got up and went to the window.
Beside the plane, the Mercedes was a white lump, something covered with a heavy sheet. He strained to see beyond the violence of the storm, but the scene was featureless, empty. They might already have the plane surrounded — they certainly would do before the blizzard subsided. He could feel the tension, the claustrophobia of the cabin.
Then he turned to Lock.
‘Yes,’ he said, picking up the files. ‘Everything we need is in here.’ He looked at Marfa and Dmitri.
‘What about the others? The cabin crew, the six — ?’ Dmitri began.
‘They’ll be more interested in escape than anything else. Just like us,’ he added with a bitter smile. ‘Tell Lubin to bring Turgenev back in here, then talk to the steward. Tell him they’re all being released. As soon as we’ve left, they can leave.’ Dmitri nodded and retreated to the aft cabin.
Turgenev was alertly suspicious as he re-entered, aware that some decision had been reached; concerned, but still confident, pleased at the evident decline of Lock.
‘Hi, Pete,’ Lock greeted him, his supineness suggesting relaxation rather than exhaustion.
His tone startled Turgenev.
‘Well?’ he sneered. ‘What idiotic solution have you agreed on?’
The — deal,’ Lock announced, ‘you for them … They — go, we … stay-‘ He swallowed noisily.
Turgenev turned on Vorontsyev. ‘You’ll never get off the airfield!’ he snapped. ‘Not even under cover of this weather.’