Shadow Flight

"Ah, yes," Kranz responded, looking at his hotel phone number. "I wish to place a call to Moscow. The number is two-four-onefour-four-three-zero." Kranz glanced again at his watch, hoping that his Kremlin contact had not left his quarters.

The phone rang three times, then a fourth, before it was answered. "Lieutenant General Voronoteev."

"I have a person-to-person call for Pyotr Syrokomskiy," Kranz said, then waited for RAINDANCE to respond to the code name.

"You have the wrong number," Yuliy Lavrent'yevich Voronoteev, deputy commander of Rear Services, Troops of Air Defense, replied in heavily accented English.

Kranz hesitated two seconds, allowing Voronoteev time to prepare to write seven numbers. "This is not six-five-four-one-five… ah, eight-two?" Kranz asked, giving Voronoteev his five-digit phone number in reverse, then adding his room number in reverse.

"Nyet," Voronoteev answered bluntly, abruptly banging down the phone.

Kranz hung up and looked again at the cable. He knew that Voronoteev would call him back as soon as the Soviet officer could reach a public phone. Kranz got up and walked to his window, feeling uncomfortable with his espionage role. He gazed at the Vienna State Opera House a few moments, then scanned the cable again.

Chapter Eight

MOSCOW

Lieutenant General Yuliy L. Voronoteev folded the slip of paper containing the numbers, placed it in his shirt pocket, and slipped on his uniform jacket. He brushed back his short-cropped salt and pepper hair, picked up his cap and carefully placed it on his head, then walked out of his seventh-story Kalinin Avenue apartment. After carefully locking the door, he strolled the length of the freshly painted hallway.

The slender, sixty-one-year-old former fighter pilot rode the elevator down to the parking deck, then stepped outside into the brisk morning air. Voronoteev inhaled deeply, glanced across the hazy skyline of Moscow, and walked toward his chauffeur-driven sedan.

Voronoteev's driver, standing beside the Voyska PVO (Troops of Air Defense) Moskvich 412, saluted smartly as he opened the door. "Zdrastvuytye, comrade general."

"Good morning, Sergeant Ogorkhov," Voronoteev replied, returning the greeting and salute as he entered the gleaming automobile. "We will make a brief stop at the government department store before going to the Kremlin."

"Da, comrade general," the young driver replied, closing the door carefully.

Yuliy Voronoteev sat quietly, wrestling with his deeply implanted, mixed emotions of loyalty and hostility toward the Rodina — the Motherland. Each time he committed treason, regardless of the magnitude of the offense, Voronoteev justified his act by dredging up his contempt for Soviet ineptness and brutality. After committing treason, the Air Defense officer habitually spent two or three days locked in his Kalinin apartment, drinking Stolichnaya around the clock. After a protracted period of inebriation, he had always managed to purge his disdain for the unnecessary injustices he had endured.

Voronoteev stared out of the Moskvich 412's side window at the overcast sky, lost in the memories of his wife, while Sergeant Ogorkhov negotiated the turn from Kalinin Prospekt onto Manezhnaya Street. The general glanced at troitskiye vorota — Trinity Gate — that led to the Palace of Congresses inside the Kremlin compound.

Returning to his thoughts, he remembered the day that his beloved wife had died under the scalpel of an incompetent butcher. Although that had been thirty-four years ago, the events were as clear in his mind as if the tragedy had happened yesterday.

Larissa Innova Voronoteev, eight months pregnant, had suffered severe complications while her starshiy leytenant husband had been undergoing flight training three hundred kilometers away. Three days past her twenty-fourth birthday, she had died from a massive hemorrhage when the surgeon bungled the cesarean section. The female infant, deprived of oxygen for more than eight minutes, had died the following afternoon.

Voronoteev recalled vividly the utter helplessness he had felt when his squadron commander had met him at the steps to his MiG21F. The young fighter pilot's shock and deep sense of loss had turned to rage when the lieutenant colonel explained that Larissa had died two and a half days earlier.

"The stupid bastards," Voronoteev said quietly, unaware that he had spoken. His mind was consumed by the contempt he felt for the doctor and the administrators who had taken almost sixty hours to relay the message of his wife's tragic death.

"Excuse me, comrade general?"

Voronoteev looked up at the face reflected in the rearview mirror. "What, sergeant?"

"I thought the general had asked a question," the driver said, slowing for traffic.

"No," Voronoteev replied in a pleasant voice, "just thinking out loud again."

"Yes, sir."