The small screen in front of Major Kuznetsov became a seething snowfield, like a television set when the main tube blows out. The digital display showing him he was closing with his victim and when to fire his rockets was still fifteen seconds short of firing time. Slowly it began to unwind, telling him he had lost his target somewhere up there in the freezing stratosphere.
Thirty seconds later the two hunters keeled onto their wing tips and dropped away down the sky to their Arctic base.
Of the five airports that surround Moscow, one of them, Vnukovo II, is never seen by foreigners. It is reserved for the Party elite and their fleet of jets maintained at peak readiness by the Air Force. It was here, at five A.M. local time, that Colonel O’Sullivan put the Blackbird onto Russian soil.
When the cooling jet reached the parking bay, it was surrounded by a group of officers wrapped in thick coats and fur hats, for early April is still bitter in Moscow before dawn. The Arizonan lifted the cockpit canopy on its hydraulic struts and gazed at the surrounding crowd with horror.
“Rooshians,” he breathed. “Messing all over my bird.” He unbuckled and stood up. “Hey, get your mother-loving hands off this machine, ya hear?”
Adam Munro left the desolate colonel trying to prevent the Russian Air Force from finding the flush caps leading to the refueling valves, and was whisked away in a black limousine, accompanied by two bodyguards from the Kremlin staff. In the car he was allowed to peel off his g-suit and dress again in his trousers and jacket, both of which had spent the journey rolled up between his knees and looked as if they had just been machine-washed.
Forty-five minutes later the Zil, preceded by the two motorcycle outriders who had cleared the roads into Moscow, shot through the Borovitsky Gate into the Kremlin, skirted the Great Palace, and headed for the side door to the Arsenal Building. At two minutes to six, Adam Munro was shown into the private apartment of the leader of the USSR, to find an old man in a dressing gown, nursing a cup of warm milk. He was waved to an upright chair. The door closed behind him.
“So you are Adam Munro,” said Maxim Rudin. “Now, what is this proposal from President Matthews?”
Munro sat in the straight-backed chair and looked across the desk at Maxim Rudin. He had seen him several times at state functions, but never this close. The old man looked weary and strained.
There was no interpreter present, Rudin spoke no English. In the hours while he had been in the air, Munro realized, Rudin had checked his name and knew perfectly well he was a diplomat from the British Embassy who spoke Russian.
“The proposal, Mr. Secretary-General,” Munro began in fluent Russian, “is a possible way whereby the terrorists on the supertanker Freya can be persuaded to leave that ship without having secured what they came for.”
“Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Munro. There is to be no more talk of the liberation of Mishkin and Lazareff.”
“Indeed not, sir. In fact, I had hoped we might talk of Yuri Ivanenko.”
Rudin stared back at him, face impassive. Slowly he lifted his glass of milk and took a sip.
“You see, sir, one of those two has let something slip already,” said Munro. He was forced, to strengthen his argument, to let Rudin know that he, too, was aware of what had happened to Ivanenko. But he could not indicate he had learned it from someone inside the Kremlin hierarchy, just in case Valentina was still free.
“Fortunately,” he went on, “it was to one of our people, and the matter has been taken care of.”
“Your people?” mused Rudin. “Ah, yes, I think I know who your people are. How many others know?”
“The Director General of my organization, the British Prime Minister, President Matthews, and three of his senior advisers. No one who knows has the slightest intention of revealing this for public consumption. Not the slightest.”
; Rudin seemed to ruminate for a while.
“Can the same be said for Mishkin and Lazareff?” he asked.
“That is the problem,” said Munro. “That has always been the problem since the terrorists—who are Ukrainian émigrés, by the way—stepped onto the Freya.”
“I told William Matthews, the only way out of this is to destroy the Freya. It would cost a handful of lives, but save a lot of trouble.”
“It would have saved a lot of trouble if the airliner in which those two young killers escaped had been shot down,” rejoined Munro.
Rudin looked at him keenly from under beetle eyebrows.
“That was a mistake,” he said flatly.
“Like the mistake tonight in which two MIG-twenty-fives almost shot down the plane in which I was flying?”
The old Russian’s head jerked up.
“I did not know,” he said. For the first time, Munro believed him.
“I put it to you, sir, that destroying the Freya would not work. That is, it would not solve the problem. Three days ago Mishkin and Lazareff were two insignificant escapees and hijackers, serving fifteen years in jail. Now they are already celebrities. But it is assumed their freedom is being sought for its own sake. We know different.