Joe turned back to the instrument panel.
Behind him, Kurt slammed the cargo door shut. With that secured, he moved up to the cockpit and dropped into the empty chair beside Joe.
“Thanks for the lift,” he said. “That was some incredible flying.”
“I aim to please,” Joe said. “Unless you’re the bad guys, in which case I aim to irritate to the maximum of my ability.”
Kurt laughed. “Port out, starboard home,” he said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“So, you did hear me,” Joe said. “I wondered if it was just a lucky guess.”
Kurt removed the tiny speaker and rubbed his aching ear. “I heard you loud and clear.”
Joe put them on a heading back toward theLyra, keeping them low for a few miles and then climbing to a higher altitude when he figured they were well clear of any weapon the Chinese might have on board.
With the course laid in, he glanced Kurt’s way. He could see the exhaustion on his face. A rare sight indeed. He figured the main debriefing would have to wait, but a quick question wouldn’t hurt. “No airplane?”
“Nope,” Kurt said, his voice a combination of weariness, satisfaction, and puzzlement. “As they say, nothing but net.”
“So, the Chinese don’t have it. The Russians don’t have it. And theLyrahasn’t found it yet. Where does that leave us?”
“Damned if I know,” Kurt said. “It’s like the plane vanished off the face of the earth.”
Chapter 16
Fifteen hundred miles from the search area in the Barents Sea, a man in a heavy overcoat and boots walked along a snow-covered sidewalk in the heart of Moscow. There was no sign of hurry in his step, in fact he used a pearl-handled cane to balance a visible but manageable limp.
The snow fell around him in large soft flakes. Perhaps two inches would accumulate. In Moscow that was nothing. The cars and buses raced along the streets, grinding the slush into the gutters, and the trains ran without delay. Even the pedestrians seemed unaffected. Half of them hadn’t bothered to wear gloves or even button their coats all the way to the top.
The limping man felt differently about the temperature. He was used to humidity and warmer climates. The chill made his leg ache and dried his skin painfully where burn marks had accumulated. But he’d be warm soon enough.
He was on his way to a meeting that would take place in the labyrinth-like system of underground tunnels that made up Moscow’s Metro system. The temperatures down there hovered at a near-constant seventy-five degrees.
He crossed a busy street, continued on past storefront windows filled with merchandise and holiday sale signs and past the impossibly long, concrete facade of an unadorned and unmarked government building. He was late, but then his counterparts knew he was late. He was being watched every step of the way.
He came to a stairwell that descended from the sidewalk. The Metro signage was covered with placards indicating that the station was closed for repairs. The signs were collecting some snow and the caution tape across the stairs was sagging and frayed.
The limping man ducked under the tape, stepped down the stairway, and arrived at a temporary metal barricade that blocked his path. A gate in the barricade was secured by a heavy chain and a formidable padlock.
From his pocket, the man produced a key that had been sent to him. Inserting it into the slot, he jiggled it back and forth, trying to get the tumblers to fall. It was easier said than done. The key was new, but the lock was old. The well-worn tumblers weren’t initially accepting what was obviously a recently made duplicate.
On the third try it popped open, allowing the man to slide the chain noisily through the bars, open the gate, and step through. He closed the gate behind him, arranged the chain to look secure, but consciously chose not to close the padlock. It would have felt like locking oneself in a jail cell, something he had no intention of doing.
As he entered the labyrinth of tunnels, the air grew warmer and soon smelled of electrical sparks and oils. He followed the direction he’d been given precisely. Left, right, straight for a hundred feet, and then left again and down another flight of steps.
Like any maze it was easy to navigate when one knew where theywere going, but impossible to decipher if a wrong turn or two were made. As he followed the given directions, it occurred to him that a maze was only a maze to the those walking inside it. They could see only the walls and branching tunnels, never really understanding the full picture, or even grasping how vast and complicated the network might be. But to those looking down from above, the entire scene was obvious. The satisfaction came from watching others struggle to figure out what the builder alone could see.
If the limping man had set things up correctly, then the nations of the world were now stepping into a labyrinth of his creation. America from one side, the Chinese from the other. If this meeting went as planned, he would ensnare the third great power in his trap, and from there he could sit back and watch history unfold.
He reached the end of a tunnel, emerging into a dark, abandoned station. A lone subway car waited on the tracks ahead of him, doors propped open, warm light emanating from inside.
He walked to it and stepped aboard. Two men waited for him. One in a suit and tie, the other in a military uniform. The suited man had a hard, narrow face and wore rimless glasses. The military man appeared to be the more jovial of the two, with a heavy build, a jowly face, and gray stubble for hair. He wore a pistol on a leather belt.
The two men stood up as he walked their way. He offered a greeting in Russian and then switched to English. “Gentlemen,” he said. “It’s good to see you after all this time.”
The narrow-faced man offered only a slight nod, gazing at him suspiciously over the rimless glasses. The military man, a general by rank, stepped forward, studying him. Cold eyes took in the pearl-handled cane and the burn marks that crept up the side of the limping man’s neck, mostly hidden at this point by the collar of his coat.
“I must say it is surprising to see you, Comrade Ahab,” the general said. “I was told you’d been killed. Drowned like your namesake. But you seem to have survived with only scars to prove your pain.”
