''What you are attempting is risky," Lo Chi Lyn assessed. "His condition is unstable."
Tang Ro Ji ignored the old man's concerns and began adjusting the tanks inside the aluminum cylinder. The thin copper shields that normally line a transportation pall had been removed to allow the installation of the lifesupport systems. As he arranged each of them, he extended the wires to the small monitor concealed at the head of the cylinder. Since Lo's nurse would be accompanying the body, she had been carefully instructed how to adjust each component of the monitoring system. One adjusted the morphine dosage, the second controlled the three compressed-air tanks, and the third administered the sedative. All three controls had been cleverly concealed behind a panel inscribed with the supposedly deceased's official crest and documents.
"Americans," Tang Ro Ji sneered. "They even require paperwork of the dead." Then he laughed.
Lo, still cautious, went over the configuration of the control panel with the young woman once again. Then he repeated the procedure a second time. The woman smiled and repeated the sequence exactly as he had detailed it.
When everything had finally been arranged to Tang Ro Ji's satisfaction, he stepped back and motioned for Lo to reconnect the tubes to the needles. Lo took out his stethoscope, checked Schubatis's heart and pulse, and as a final precaution, put an additional strip of tape over the areas where the needles had been inserted in the Russian's arm.
"He is completely immobile?" Deng Zhen asked.
"He could not scratch his nose if he wanted to," Tang said with a laugh.
"Any movement at all could be fatal," Lo said.
Tang Ro Ji again checked the time. "Now we wait. We will close the cylinder at precisely 2200 and activate the life-support systems."
Finally the young woman spoke. "What will happen if the Russian dies?" she asked.
Tang Ro Ji sat down at a nearby table and lit a cigarette. "He won't," he said. For the first time, Lo noticed a lack of conviction in the young militant's voice.
Chapter Four
The American Ambassador, Frank Wilson, was a tall man with thick gray hair and eyes that resembled steel marbles. He had a precise military walk and referred to himself as a bornagain Christian. As he stepped from his dark blue Volvo sedan, he instructed young Posmanovich to remain with the car.
Inside the Vilnius, he looked for Andrakov, the headwaiter, and waited until one of the servers summoned the Lithuanian. When Andrakov emerged from the back room, still tucking in his shirt, he saw Wilson, arched his eyebrows, and inclined his head toward the stairway.
Wilson uttered one word: "Korsun."
"Second floor, second door on the right," Andrakov confirmed.
"Tell my driver to go around behind the building," Wilson ordered. "The fewer people that know I'm here, the better."
The second-floor hallway was not well lighted. Wilson tried to ignore the large rat scurrying through the duct where the fascia plate was missing. It was appropriate, he thought to himself.
He knocked twice before he entered.
Korsun, who reminded Wilson of 1940s movie star Sidney Greenstreet, because of his bulk and sinister laugh, was seated at a small table in the middle of the room. There was a wispy layer of cigarette smoke hovering like a cirrus cloud over his head. Korsun had procured a bottle of vodka, an off brand that he had no doubt purchased from a small black-market distiller in a little second-floor shop not far from the Hotel Russia on Ulitsa Rzina. Wilson didn't drink, but his Russian guests did, and he used the shop himself to obtain vodka.
Always a taciturn man, Korsun greeted him with his fat, rheumy eyes, then looked at his watch. "What took you so long?" he growled.
"What the hell is going on?" Wilson snapped.
Korsun ignored the question and motioned for the American Ambassador to have a seat. When he did speak, Korsun's voice was little more than a wheezy whisper. Wilson had heard that the fat man had once been diagnosed as having cancer of the larnyx. If that was the case, Korsun, with his constant parade of cigarettes, made no concession to his affliction.
"What kind of game is Kusinien playing?"
Korsun shrugged. "As you well know, Secretary Kusinien is President Aprihinen's personal confidant and strategist. And I would think you know equally well that Georgi Kusinien does not consult me on matters of state."
"All right, let me put it another way. What the hell is going on with Schubatis?" Wilson demanded.
Korsun pushed himself away from the table, stood up, and waddled to the window. He pulled back the drape and stared out at the stillsparse early-morning traffic. "How long have we been doing business, Comrade?"
"Three years," Wilson answered. "What the hell does that have to do with it?"
"And how do you regard me?"
"You're a mercenary bastard."
Korsun authored one of his infrequent laughs. "Then what makes you think that if I knew something about Milo Schubatis, I would not make that information available to you?"
Wilson leaned forward with his hands on the table. He disliked looking at the back of his obese informant. Not being able to see the man's face put Wilson at a disadvantage. Mikolai Korsun, for all his value as a conduit to Kusinien, and thus Aprihinen, was the kind of man that, if Wilson had the choice, he would have preferred not to do business with at all.
"Are you aware," Korsun asked in his unpleasant voice, "that twenty-one days ago, an Aviation Major Arege Borisov piloting the prototype of the top-secret Su-39-Covert disappeared on a high-altitude test flight?"
Wilson nodded. "I saw nothing of it in your papers or on your telecasts. I learned of it through my own government. Why? Was it a defection? Where?"
Korsun laughed again and turned to look at him. "You saw nothing of it on television because the state still controls fifty-one percent of the only network that covers all of the former union. News is still monitored. As to where? Where indeed? Where else but the very nation that a few short years ago we were referring to as the capitalist warmongers."
Wilson shook his head. "If your man, Major Borisov, had flown into American territory, it would have been on the front page of every damn newspaper in the country, and you know it. Besides, how do you know Borisov didn't deep-six that Sukhoi, involuntarily or otherwise? There's a helluva lot of water out there."
Korsun walked back to the table with his arms folded behind him. The gesture only accentuated his bulk. He was still smiling. "Major Borisov did not deep-six it, as you suggest, Comrade Ambassador. On the contrary, when he disappeared, he was acting on orders from a very high-ranking Russian official."
"How high?"
"The highest."
"Aprihinen?"
Korsun did not answer. He went back to the window, where he was silhouetted by a thin orange streak on the horizon. The splash of color betrayed daybreak through the dark, lowhanging clouds. "I have always said that I prefer dawn to sunset," he said, changing the subject. "Dawn is a promise. Sunset is a verdict."
"Dammit. Was it Aprihinen?"
"Have we progressed from philosophy to business?" Korsun asked.
"Has my government ever been anything but generous?"
Korsun continued to look out the window. The American Ambassador had told him what he wanted to hear. He began slowly.
"What I am about to tell you is known to very few. Following the death of our beloved President Zhelannov four years ago, and the subsequent election of Moshe Aprihinen to the Presidency of the Confederation, Air General Cosmo Ansovich instructed Milo Schubatis to continue work on what could be termed a strategic equivalent to your much-ballyhooed F- 117. When General Ansovich saw how successful your design was in the Gulf War, Ansovich instructed Schubatis to redouble his efforts. As a result, just eighteen short months ago, the first test flights were conducted."