“Those, ah, other implements,” Suslov said, the barrel of his pen raised. “Will they include two-way communication links?”
“The equipment would be too heavy,” Karel Vins replied, “but I will carry a flashlight adaptable as a burst transmitter. What I need from you is a schedule of uplink windows.”
Suslov nodded and stood up. He would have no difficulty providing a schedule listing the times, or “windows,” when atmosphere-grazing Soviet satellites would be staring down at Western Mexico. And certainly Suslov was not about to comment on the fact that the vawlk could choose to transmit progress reports during this operation, but not to receive instructions. If Colonel Maksimov trusted him with millions in cash, surely Vins was on an inside track to the top. And one did not question the loyalty of such a man in his own presence.
FIFTEEN
“Corbett? Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Corbett, certain that his denial was pointless but trying it for luck. He frowned at his video display, pretending that it held most of his attention as he continued to try access codes. He wore a tiny earpiece in his left ear with a microphone boom and a slender cable that snaked across to a radio unit on the console. A similar unit protruded from the console on the girl’s side. From time to time, he punched a different channel.
“Kyle Corbett,” said the girl, enunciating the “r” in a way her down-east accent normally did not. “I remember the alliteration, Corbett. If you don’t know your own name we’re really in trouble. Oh, you’re a lot older nowGod, you must be a fossil, I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time, but I remember you. Two helpings of eggs Benedict, heavy on the sauce; I resented you for that. Wouldn’t shoot off a bottle rocket for me, but you showed me how to do it. Did you know I got grounded for a week for setting a handful of those things off by myself after you left?”
He chewed his upper lip to stop the corner of his mouth from lifting as he recalled that carefree weekend. She’d been a tomboyish little fart, curious about everything. “Served you right. Whoever said a little learning is a dangerous thing was talking about kids,” he said, glancing back at the video. “Damn,” he whispered, clearing the keyboard again.
“You cut the phone wires to my apartment, Corbett,” she said matter-of-factly.
“To the whole house. Sue me.” He was now punching in new codes and booting the computer rapidly.
“The waiting line to sue you must stretch over the horizon by now,” she said, and paused. “The See’s candy, my nicknameyou don’t forget much, do you?”
“Not where double-crossing is concerned. You’re proof of that.”
“But you don’t really want me hurt.”
Her voice held its cadence, but something was missing in its timbre: the aggressiveness, he decided. She wasn’t entirely certain, bluffing her way. He called it. “You’re not a little kid anymore,” he said, giving her the kind of look that earned him breathing room in a cantina.
She took her time responding, thinking it over, in a way that reminded him of Dar Weston. “Oh, I think you could kill somebody, Corbett. But you’re the only person Uncle Dar ever brought to Lyme. And he’s a great judge of character. He would never have chosen a friend who could kill an innocent hostage.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” Corbett said, scanning the skies and fighting off a yawn. “Try this one: if it came to a choice between his country and his family, which one would he choose?”
No hesitation this time. “Country first, family second,” she said. “That’s been a sore point between him and my dad.”
Corbett’s glance was sudden, only long enough to assess that open, freckled face. She seemed to be holding nothing back, taking her world as her elders had described it. “Tell you what, Petra: hope and pray that you’re wrong. The only reason you’re here is that the feds just might not try to knock this thing down if Dar Weston’s niece is in it.” He tried to bite off a yawn but failed, checking his wristwatch, then selecting a map from the sheaf that fanned from a cloth pocket near his left thigh. “It was just your bad luck that Weston doesn’t have a daughter of his own.” He could see her face without a direct glance. It reflected no sudden concern or suspicion.
“Nothing lucky about it,” she said, surprising him as she grasped an edge of the nav chart to help unfold it. “He couldn’t do justice to kids and his career.”
“He told you that?”
“He’s said it to my mother often enough. I hear them, sometimes. Ithat’s none of your business,” she ended brusquely.
Now he was studying the terrain, matching its features to the chart. As if to himself he said, “It was my business, once upon a time.”
That’s a hoot,” she said.
“When he’s half a world away from his family, Petra, even a man like Dar might need to talk to somebody. I knew everything about you long before I met you. And if Dar really thinks he’d sacrifice you to get this airplane back in pieces, I’m betting I know him better than he knows himself. Stuff like that is easy to say when your back’s not against the wall.”
“Paper empiricism,” she nodded sagely.
“Say what?”
“That’s why psychology isn’t a real science,” she recited briskly, as if removed somehow to a classroom in Providence. “A lot of researchers ask people what they’d do if, and take the paper answers as gospel. Paper empiricism; but Uncle Dar has always put his country first. That’s as close to a sure thing as you could hope for.”
He pointed toward the western horizon, where a contrail was slowly dissipating high in the stratosphere. Parallel to it, farther to the south, a steely glint no larger than a pinpoint steadily drew a hard white line across a turquoise background. They were obviously on a heading that would cross beneath it, but several minutes and many miles ahead. “There’s your lab hardware, Petra,” he said. They just may be setting up a graph and hoping we’re a point on it. Not likely those guys will see us, and they damned sure can’t pick us up on ordinary radar or IR sensors. But if they do spot us, we’ll sure find out which of us is right about Dar. Assuming the decision isn’t out of his hands, which it may well be.”
“Intervening variables,” Petra said, still following the progress of the turbojet across the heavens.
Corbett, exasperated, burst out, “Jesus Christ! Are you taking this seriously, kid? Your own life’s on the line; those jets up there could slice and dice us with an easy pass like a machete through a dandelion; and here you sit, lecturing me on scientific method. Jesus,” he said again, trying to regain his concentration on the chart.
The girl held her palms up, eyebrows elevated. “What the hell d’you want me to do, get out and push? I’m trying to keep from thinking about what happens if I’m right, and they catch us up here. There’s nothing I can do to save my own life, you old fossil! I would if I could.”
“Quit shouting in this fishbowl,” he commanded, all the more irritated because the girl was perfectly right. Better to have her chattering like a cageful of magpies about anything, hell, Paris fashions or rock music, than out of her mind with fear. And why hadn’t he thought of that himself? A night without sleep was one reason.
There’d been a time when he could party all night and then strap into an aircraft at dawn and, with a few minutes on 100 percent oxygen to blow out the cobwebs, do a morning of precision aerobatics without an instant of brain-fade. But on Black Stealth One, they’d never accepted the weight penalty of an OBOG, an onboard oxygen generator, so he could not even fly the hellbug at its own design ceiling. She’s right, I’m a fossil right out of a fucking museum, he admitted silently, and I’m not operating at a hundred percent. “One thing you can do is hold the chart steady, kid. Your fossil pilot needs to figure out where to park this thing for some fossil fuel.”