Winter Hawk (3 page)

Anders looked down into the clearing hollow. Bodies were being dragged, arrayed; dealt with casually or tenderly depending on their identity. The two MiLs faced each other like stags about to spar during the annual rut. Two intact Russian MiL helicopters. He sighed deeply, still feeling inordinately weak, almost helpless.

Winter Hawk
had begun. They had the means to begin it.

ONE

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy . —Bob Dylan> "Masters of War"

1: Distant Thunder

A
moment of respite
, within the storm of tension that he was experiencing, during which he remembered those faded, black-and-white snapshots his parents had always kept. It must be because of the camera near his hand and the sequence of photographs he was trying to obtain. They had kept their pictures in a used, threadbare brown envelope. They comprised a sequence, a story, even: of the building of the block of flats in which they had been allocated accommodation soon after their marriage. They must have gone every day, certainly a few times each week, and taken pictures of the slowly rising skeleton, of the piles of bricks, of the dumper trucks and concrete mixers—everything.

The moment of respite was already beginning to pass. His hand jumped on the clipboard, which rested on the rail of the walkway. His parents had, as he was doing, watched something grow, keeping a record of it. His record was not of a block of workers' flats, but of a weapon.

Below Filip Kedrov lay the laser battle station's components, close to final assembly. The main tube for the laser beam and the large mirror rested like a lance and shield, inert upon two vast benches in the assembly complex's main workshop. Robot arms and lifting gear hung motionless above them; still as items on a building site at the weekend. He knew he must pause for only a moment, there must be no suspicion, no sense of lingering; but he could almost savor the extremities of tension because this was the last time, ^e final day. His spying was almost over.

The past confused and excited him, flying into his thoughts even ^ he tried to concentrate on the disguised camera and the shots he
^w
as trying to assess. His mother's face when young, hopeful; somehow seeming to reprove herself for the audacity of choosing to be photographed, or cautioning herself against all the hopes represented by the building being constructed behind her. Kedrov felt he must complete his photographic record, just as his father had done when posing his mother next to a silent concrete mixer and in fronl of the newly hardened front streps of the completed flats. In thai picture, his mother had been frowning at the sun over her husband'! shoulder and smiling cautiously with even, white teeth. What that! final picture in the record had meant to his father, so this last roll ofl microfilm meant to Filip. In the nature of a triumph, a completion-!

The segments of the laser weapon's main mirror, composed of glass coated with vaporized silicone bound by a graphite fiber reinforcement, were all but fitted to the framework. Each segment wasi capable of being adjusted by the orbiting battle station's computer,^ using actuators. They enabled the slight distortions caused by the laser beam's heating of the mirror to be smoothed out—necessary if the beam was to be focused and directed accurately at its targets. They'd had trouble with some of the actuators during final testing, but now the mirror worked satisfactorily. He'd told the Americans that a week ago; just as tonight he must tell them that the launch date had been fixed.

Breath small, tight in his chest as he thought of that. Overhearing that piece of gossip, of all pieces of gossip in the whole of Baikonur! The good luck, the momentousness of it, made him gasp, even hours later. His nerves jumped and bubbled like an overheating saucepan on the stove, but somehow they did not boil over; completion kept them in check, the idea of finishing, of getting out, of reaching . . .

America.

His breath was again tight as he recognized the little time left, the proximity of safety, of success, of dreams made real.

He had passed everything to the Americans, just as they had asked. All that was left were the rolls of film he had taken, which would travel with him—three weeks of films, a record begun as soon as they got the disguised camera to him. Now he had to hold on to them until they came for him.

And tonight, tonight he would tell them they must come. He had the proof, they would know the launch date, they would
need
him.

Yes, they would. Satisfaction hugged him like a warm coat—a fur jacket, a sheepskin jacket, because it was never as cold in a centrally

heated
country like America. Or a cashmere topcoat, cashmere
sweaters
. . . slacks and loafers . . .

Because they would reward him—for this, there was no price too high. Perhaps he remembered that block of flats now, with such piercingly clear recollection, because of the life he could envisage for himself, just a few days ahead? He did not know. All he knew was that dreams made him calmer, suppressed the extremes of tension and fear and danger he had anticipated, driving to work that morning. Half an hour just to start the ancient, unreliable car! Knowing all the time that the last day of his spying had begun.

His eyes cleared. He moved a little along the clattering metal gantry. Below him, in the rest of the huge workshop, the miniature spacecraft of the laser battle station s outer casing lay open, appearing cracked like the shell of some sea creature already extracted. Beside it, the huge tanks that would contain the lasing gases waited to be fitted and filled. Nearer, the long, still-innocent tube of the laser with its cylindrical nozzle, and finally the mirror, which would be mounted at the nose end of the miniature spacecraft.

Four days. In exactly four days, on Thursday, the battle station would, fully assembled, be aboard the space shuttle, which would carry it into orbit. Within two months, eleven more laser weapons would be placed in orbit around the earth. That was not his concern; he had only to signal the Americans that evening, from Orlovs shop, that the launch's exact timing had been fixed, and they would come and collect him. He had been told how, and when . . .
give us the date, Filip
—or Cactus Plant, as they persisted in labeling him—
give us the date and bring us convincing photographic proof the weapon exists—and you can come out, come to the West.

A reach-and-recover mission, they said. A helicopter would come for him, a Russian helicopter. Time and place of his rendezvous was already arranged with them. Before the laser weapon arrived in Baikonur from the scientific research unit of Semi-palatinsk, a thousand miles away, he had spied for the money, barely generous though they were with him. He had been an American agent at Baikonur for almost three years.

Now he knew he was the most important spy the Americans had anywhere in the world. Filip Kedrov understood, with blinding clarity, that his importance could not be overestimated. He had alerted the CIA to the existence of a laser weapon, and the intention to place it in orbit, little more than four weeks before, when the pieces

of the weapon had arrived from Semipalatinsk by special train. He had heard rumors of its nature and purpose, then overheard scientific gossip, then confirmed it by some casual questions—and told the Americans, who had panicked. Their treaty with the Soviet Union was imperiled, was being flouted, danger, danger,
danger.

Kedrov cared little. They wanted everything, but they would pay.
No, not money. . . . What, then? . . . The West, when I get you the proof you must have. . . . Very well, we agree.

As soon as he signaled, that same evening, they would come for him. He suppressed a sudden yawn of tension or excitement. The next day, the day after, two days' time, they would be here and he would be on his way to the West, he and his priceless rolls of tiny film. They would have to hurry. They needed the films before Thursday.

The clipboard was trembling beneath his hand, as if registering the shock of a very distant earthquake. His left hand, meanwhile, in the pocket of his white coat, touched around, weighed, smoothed the remote control unit, which looked no more suspicious than a bulky felt-tip pen. The camera it operated—the tiny, tiny camera with motor drive—was contained in the large, bright-green, silly paper clamp that held a sheaf of computer printouts and graphs to the plastic of the clipboard. The clamp was shaped like a frog, a fat green frog with orange spots. Many of the scientific and technical staff of the cosmodrome at Baikonur used such things—joke clamps, highly colored clipboards, stickers that poked fun, irreverent badges, huge felt pens like the one Walesa used to insult the authorities when he signed Solidarity's agreement with them. It was all part of the thumbed nose to the army, which ran Baikonur—the two raised fingers. In a small and allowed way, of course. A teenage subculture, just like the Western pop tapes, the
samizdats
of satiric novels, the weekend promiscuity, the heavy drinking.

Filip s green frog was as expected and normal as his fornications and his singing-drunk weekends. It had been his own idea, based on a toy he had seen in Detsky Mir on his last Moscow leave. He'd bought one for his sister's little girl. Of course, hers did not possess a lens in its right eye or a silent motor drive, or tiny cassettes of film in its belly and a separate remote-control unit.

His thumb once more squeezed the cap of the thick pen in his pocket. He strained to hear, as he always did, but there was indeed no noise whatsoever from the motor as it moved the film on inside

the frog. He had practiced with it, tested it time and again in complete, breath-held silence, waiting for some tiny, betraying noise. But never a whisper—thank God.

Already this Sunday morning he had filmed, again with this abiding sense of completion, the cracked seasheil of the battle station's outer casing and the tanks for the lasing gases. And the computer. Now he was above the last telltale image, the mirror shield and the lancelike long nozzle. Shown on television—which was obviously what the Americans planned—to the rest of the world, that little cluster of pieces could not fail to represent themselves for what they were. They were not the bits of a telescope or a weather satellite; they were the components of an orbiting laser battle station, the first of twelve. Enlargements of the tiny strips of film would tell, reveal, inform, accuse, shock, horrify—

—and make Filip Kedrov the most famous face on television and a hero and a very rich American citizen.

Someone glanced up at the catwalk and saw him. Filip's hand twitched on the clipboard and he stopped pressing the remote control. Smile, smile, you silly bugger, he instructed himself.

He smiled. The detached, confident, almost-finished-almost-rich part of his mind, controlling what he did and felt, rescued him from his own assault of nerves. He pressed the frogs humped back, and it croaked. The technician below him laughed and waved. Someone else looked up, grinning. The guards would look up only if he stayed too long. He pressed the remote control. Fifteen, sixteen . . . twenty-one, twenty-two, moving the clipboard slightly after each shot to draw the frog's gaze across the expanse of the workbenches, from mirror's edge to laser's tail. He moved his hand through a practiced, measured, even arc; moving the frog's bulging eye, moving— —twenty-four, -six, -eight ... go, go now— He picked up the clipboard and held it against his chest. Finished, this part of the story, this part of the building work. He remembered once more his father's snapshots, Mother posed by the concrete mixer, her thin cotton dress swollen with Filip's imminent arrival. Now it was as if he had a record of his new life, the one he had built for himself in America, on those tiny strips of film stored safely in his garage, in the cans of paint. Everything the Americans had demanded, desired, wanted. They could refuse him nothing now. Now they would have to come.

Success flushed through him, a wave that excited yet somehow lulled and calmed him. The detached part of his mind remembered to press the frog so that it croaked its farewell. His shoes clicked along the gantry above the workshop. The clipboard was now under his arm, and his other hand was out of his pocket, away from the remote control. Success, a sense of triumph as quick and shallow as the feeling after winning a race at school or scoring in a soccer match, continued to rush through him like a scalding drink.

He glanced down at the frog, at the ID clipped to his pocket, just above the round yellow badge that instructed everyone to smile. He had every right to be in the main assembly workshop, of course—and that, too, added to the sense of exhilaration, the beauty and self-satisfaction of the completed task. He had been made responsible for the transfer of the lasing gases to their tanks. He had even helped to write the computer program for the operation.

And his luck had not simply been there, and held; it had improved once they had gotten the camera to him, once he had begun his task. Even the military and their security had hardly impeded him, once he'd gotten into his stride, so to speak.

He was unwary and unworried about his dreamlike state of euphoria. His job was finished, and well finished. Behind Mother, they were completing the plumbing and the wiring for the new flat. Would they let him live in Manhattan? He grinned. The number of times his parents had made him and his sister look at that series of boring, slowly changing snapshots! His shoes clattered down the ladder at the end of the catwalk. He would be able to get into the old town, Tyuratam, and get his last signal off, that evening. Before he did so, he had to store the film cassette with its companions, wrapping it in polyethylene and sinking it out of sight inside an old can of paint.