Mark Blair - Stroika

‘No, just some coke,’ she replied, shaking her head.

Konstantin got up, walked round the desk, grabbed her by the hair and banged the side of her face down hard on the desk. Doubled over and clearly in pain, she squinted up at him sideways.

‘All I took was the coke,’ she whimpered.

He lifted her head up from the table and this time banged her face down on the table. Blood gushed from her broken nose. He gave her her due; she did not give in easily. She was moaning now. Her legs gave in and collapsed. Konstantin dragged her by the hair to the coffee table, flicked on the cigar lighter and moved it close to her hair.

‘No, no, stop!’ she stammered. ‘All right, yes, I took the ID card. That bitch , she deserves it, with her airs and graces.’ Konstantin moved the flame closer and wondered if her hair would just singe or go up in a whoosh with all the product she had in it. ‘I posted it to the police with her name on a note – that’s all, nothing else. I didn’t mention you or anything.’

So they hadn’t got anything concrete yet , Konstantin thought, it would all be circumstantial. Maybe they could place Antyuhin at the Muzey the night before he disappeared but then so what… what else?

‘Dimitri, find Agnessa Raskolnikova Agapova. She works at Technopromexport. Keep her out of sight; send her on holiday… anything, while I sort this out. And you,’ he said to Adriana, ‘you are going to write a confession, fiction of course, that a punter gave you the ID and that in a fit of jealous rage you tried to incriminate Viktoriya Nikolaevna. Igor is then going to take you down to Suvorovskiy and you are going to hand it in personally to the police and take the consequences. Do I make myself clear?’

She nodded.

‘And clean yourself up, you’re a mess.’ Konstantin let go of her hair and pulled her to her feet.

Bazhukov waited until Igor had led Adriana out of the room.

Konstantin looked up at him, wondering why he was still hanging around.

‘There was a message from the general, boss. He said to make sure you got it, he was in a hurry.’

‘What did he say?’

‘ Stroika… just Stroika… he said you’d understand.’

MOSCOW

Yuri boarded the military transport by the cargo ramp and made his way up to the cockpit. Four faces looked up at him as he entered.

‘General,’ said the captain. He introduced himself as Captain Yevgeny Derevenko. ‘We’ll be pushing off in fifteen minutes, now that you are on board. There’s a seat up here in the cockpit, if you’d prefer.’

Yuri nodded and buckled himself in in the seat behind the co-pilot. Opening his attaché case, he pulled out his brief for the weapon’s test scheduled for that afternoon in Archangel – a new anti-aircraft shoulder missile – and sat there staring at it, struggling to concentrate. Misha had assured him Viktoriya would soon be released and that Konstantin had it all in hand, but the fact was that she hadn’t been, not yet. His first instinct, when Misha had told him, was to hop on a plane to Leningrad, but Misha had convinced him against it and persuaded him he would be more use to her in Moscow with his contacts there if there was no progress. He had reassured himself he could be back in Moscow that evening if necessary but still a big part of him felt he was deserting her.

‘Coffee, General?’ The engineer handed him a welcome shot of caffeine. He looked at his watch: seven thirty.

Ten minutes later they were airborne. Yuri marked familiar landmarks as they cleared Moscow on a perfect October morning. There was nothing he could do now. He would ring Misha when he landed at Archangel and decide whether to return that afternoon.

Yuri looked around the crew, each intent on some task or other. Hardly anyone spoke. He wondered if they would be more talkative if he weren’t riding up front but was grateful for the quiet after everything that had been going on. He picked up his brief again, ready to read, when a loud thud reverberated down the fuselage. The aircraft shuddered like a fatally wounded bird.

‘We’ve lost all fuel pressure on the port engine,’ said the co-pilot, reading off the control panel. The aircraft lurched to the left. Derevenko threw his coffee into the bin, reached forward and switched off the autopilot.

Warning lights flashed red. An alarm sounded. Yuri leaned forward and looked back at the high octane fuel that trailed the aircraft.

‘Pyotr,’ said the captain to the flight engineer, ‘cut the fuel supply to the port engine.’

Derevenko took a firm hold of the stick to correct the yaw. The aircraft steadied momentarily.

‘Send out a Mayday, Anatoly,’ the captain said calmly. ‘Let’s do a position check.’

The navigator checked the computer navigation system and a foldout map indicating surrounding airfields.

‘The nearest airport is Cherepovets, 100 kilometres to the south-east’ said the navigator, reading out the bearing. He handed the map to the captain.

‘Anatoly, give them our position and airspeed.’

‘We don’t want to bring her in over the city,’ he said, studying the map. ‘We need to swing in over the mountains to the north.’

‘We can jettison fuel here,’ said the navigator. He indicated a position twenty kilometres south of Cherepovets.

Anatoly switched to Mayday frequency.

‘Air traffic control Cherepovets, this is Flight 236, we have an emergency… do you read?’

There was a pause and then the reply: ‘We read you, Flight 236. We have you on radar.’

Yuri looked over Derevenko’s shoulder at the map; a mountain still stood between them and the runway… if they made it that far. It was hardly the easiest approach, even on full power. Yuri guessed their chances at less than even.

Derevenko tacked the aircraft through a slow turn eastwards. The co-pilot looked rattled but busy, checking instruments and gauges. The flight engineer and navigator had their heads down concentrating on the flight displays and mapping systems.

‘We just follow the book, all of us. It’s not going to be easy but we can bring her in. Is there any coffee left in the thermos, Anatoly?’ asked the captain, trying to bring some normalcy to the situation.

Anatoly reached for the thermos and poured his friend a cup of hot strong coffee, his hand shaking.

‘General?’

Yuri held out his cup for a top-up.

Cloud had settled in over the mountains ahead. If there was any error they would have little or no time to adjust their inbound course. With only one engine and no fuel they would have insufficient lift or time to circle the airport a second time and the descent from the mountain to the forest canopy in front of the runway would be almost vertical.

The minutes ticked by painfully slowly.

‘We’ll only have one chance at this, boys,’ said Derevenko.

‘This is air traffic, Flight 236 adjust your bearing five degrees to south. This will put you into the wind when you approach the mountain.’

‘Roger that, control tower. That will help’ said Derevenko, turning around to face Yuri. ‘It will give us some natural lift.’

The mountain loomed on the radar. It would not be long now, just minutes. The captain banked the plane using the rudder to counteract the effect of the dead engine and began a one hundred and fifty knot turn before tipping the yoke forward to begin their descent.

The aircraft yawed as the plane picked up speed and the flight engineer started to dump fuel. The captain stared alternately at the radar and out the cockpit window. They were descending rapidly now through thick cloud. Air traffic had told them this would break at about five thousand feet, which was no great height above the mountain top. Eight thousand feet… seven thousand feet… Yuri watched the LED clock their descent. Derevenko had already switched the warning systems to silent. Every one would be flashing or buzzing right now.