Day of Wrath

Serov swallowed hard, hating what he was about to do. Betraying the official trust by dealing with the ex-Stasi agent and his employer had been difficult enough. Betraying one’s own comrades was harder still.

But then the faces of his wife and children rose in his mind, reminding him of the price of failure. He set his misgivings aside. “There is a potential weak link.”

“Grushtin,” Reichardt guessed.

“Yes,” Serov confirmed. “Nikolai is a talented mechanic and artificer, but I’m afraid he is not a good liar.”

“Unfortunate,” Reichardt said simply. “So where is the gifted Captain Grushtin now? On the base?”

Serov shook his head unconsciously. “No. I sent him on leave once he finished his work on the project. As a reward, you understand.”’ “Where is he then?” the German demanded.

Reichardt repeated.

“Where exactly?” him.

Reichardt did not even bother to hide the sudden wolfish hunger in his voice.

“Excellent, Feodor Mikhailovich. It appears that Captain Nikolai Grushtin may yet perform another service for us, after all.”

“Moscow.”

“Moscow,” Serov told.

MAY 31

_{Maintenance Hangar, Secondary Runway, Kandalaksha}

Helen Gray leaned close to Peter Thorn’s ear and whispered, “Jesus Christ! If this is an example of Colonel General Serov’s full cooperation, I’d sure hate to see him stonewalling.”

Peter nodded grimly.

The Russian base commander had set aside an empty, unused hangar for their use. As a place to conduct confidential interviews it left much to be desired. With the doors open, the noise from the Kandalaksha flight line was deafening. With the doors closed, the unheated hangar’s thick concrete walls trapped both the nighttime cold and the lingering reek of spilled fuel, oil, and grease. Crude drawings and coarse jokes left spray-painted on the walls by long-discharged Russian conscripts added to the general air of disrepair.

Nor were the other aspects of Serov’s “cooperation” much better.

At the Russian general’s insistence, one of his top aides, a lean, hatchet-faced colonel named Petrov, sat in on every interview — perched across the table in full view of every hapless enlisted man they questioned. Tough-looking sentries wearing body armor and toting AK-74 assault rifles were also posted at the hangar entrance.

Serov had explained these steps as a necessary precaution, given the presence of nuclear weapons at Kandalaksha. “We take security very seriously here, Miss Gray,” he had said, and then, with a sidelong glance at Peter Thorn’s U.S. Army uniform, “although it is clear that others in the Ministry of Defense do not share my concerns.”

Bull, Helen thought. She’d bet cold, hard cash that the Russian general’s precautions were intended to intimidate potential witnesses — not to protect nukes that were stored in bombproof bunkers miles away.

If she was right, the worst of it was that Serov’s plan was working.

So far all of the ground crewmen they’d interviewed had insisted that nothing out of the ordinary occurred while the O.S.I.A inspection team’s An-32 was being readied for takeoff. She didn’t believe them. Nobody liked being questioned by the police, but there were too many hesitations, too many nervous glances at Serov’s aide, too many dry mouths, and too many sweaty brows for her to buy their stories.

No. Something had gone badly wrong out there on the Kandalaksha flight line. But they still didn’t know whether to pin the blame on sloppy procedures or deliberate sabotage.

Frustrated, Helen turned her attention back to the aircraft mechanic Alexei Koniev was questioning. She couldn’t follow the rapid-fire flow of Russian, but she could read body language plainly. The mechanic, a private, had flat, Asiatic features that marked him out as a native of Russia’s Far East. A nervous tic near the corner of one eye told her he was frightened.

Koniev snapped out a question, listened briefly to the private’s hesitant, uncertain reply, and then waved him away in disgust.

“No dice?” Helen asked.

“Nothing,” Koniev snorted. He nodded toward the mechanic, already hurrying out of the hangar. “According to that one, the sky was blue.

The birds were singing. The flowers were in bloom.

And he and his comrades did everything humanly possible to make sure that plane was ready to fly.”

Peter Thorn leaned over. “Who’s next?”

Koniev glanced down at the unit roster open on the table in front of him. “A Lieutenant Vladimir Chernavin.” He frowned.

“Perhaps the lieutenant will demonstrate his fitness to be a member of the officer class by telling us something resembling the truth.”

Helen shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.”