“Not necessarily, Bob,” Rodgers pointed out. “No one knows what’s going on in the Kremlin.”
Hood unmuted the phone. “What do you propose, General Orlov?”
“I cannot confiscate the cargo,” Orlov said. “I haven’t the personnel.”
“You’re a general with a command,” Hood said.
“I’ve had to have an ally here scan my own line and office for bugs,” he said. “I am Leonidas at Thermopylae., betrayed by Ephialtes. I am holding a very dangerous pass here.”
Rodgers smiled. “I liked that one,” he said under his breath.
Orlov said, “But though I can’t get to the cargo, it mustn’t be delivered. And you mustn’t attack the train.”
“General,” Hood said, “that isn’t a proposal. It’s a Gordian knot.”
“I’m sorry?” Orlov said.
“A puzzle, one that’s very difficult to solve. How can we satisfy those criteria?”
“With a peaceful meeting in Siberia,” Orlov said, “between your troops and mine.”
Rodgers swept a finger across his throat. Reluctantly, Hood killed the speaker again.
“Be careful, Paul,” Rodgers said. “You can’t leave Striker out there defenseless.”
Herbert added, “Especially with Orlov’s son in charge of the train. The General’s looking to protect his boy’s butt. The Russians could gun Striker down, armed or not, and the U.N. would tell them they had every right. ”
Hood hushed them with his hand and got back on the phone. “What do you suggest, General Orlov?”
“I will order the officer in charge of the train to have the guards stand down and allow your team to approach.”
“Your son is in charge of the train,” said Hood.
“Yes,” Orlov replied. “My son. But that changes nothing. This is a matter of international importance.”
“Why don’t you just order the train to turn back?” Hood asked.
“Because I would lose the cargo to the people who sent it,” Orlov said. “They would simply find another way to transport it.”
“I understand,” said Hood. He thought for a moment. “General, what you propose would put my people at grave risk. You’re asking them to approach the train in the open, in full view of your troops.”
“Yes,” said Orlov. “That’s precisely what I’m asking
“Don’t do it,” Rodgers whispered.
“What would you want our people to do when they reached the train?” Hood asked.
“Take as much of the cargo as they can carry out of the country. Hold it as evidence that what is going on is not the work of the legal government of Russia, but of a corrupt and powerful few,” Orlov replied.
“Minister Dogin?” Hood asked.
“I’m not at liberty to remark,” Orlov said.
“Why not?”
Orlov said, “I may not win this, and I have a wife.”
Hood looked at Rodgers, whose resistance to Orlov showed no sign of softening. He wasn’t sure he blamed Rodgers. Orlov was asking a lot and offering only his word in return.
“How long will it take to communicate with the train?” Hood asked, aware that the extraction of Striker could not be delayed.
“Four or five minutes,” Orlov said.
Hood looked at the countdown clock on the wall. The Russian train was due to reach the Striker position in approximately seven minutes.
“You won’t have any longer than that,” Hood said. “Machinery is in motion-”
“I understand,” said Orlov. “Please leave this line open and I will return to you as soon as possible.”
“I will,” Hood said, then hit mute.
Rodgers said, “Paul, whatever Striker was planning will already have been done, whether it’s ripping up the track or planning to ambush the engine. Depending on the disposition of the TAC-Sat, we may not even be able to stop them.”
“I know,” said Hood, “but Charlie Squires is smart. If the Russians stop the train and come out with a white flag, he’ll listen. Especially if we tell them what to say to him.”
Herbert said bitterly, “I’m glad you’re willing to trust those vodka chuggers. I’m not. Lenin plotted against Kerensky, Stalin against Trotsky, Yeltsin against Gorbachev, Dogin against Zhanin. Cripes, Orlov is plotting against Dogin! They stab their own in the back, these guys. Think of what they’ll do to us.”
Lowell Coffey said, “Given the alternative of armed confrontation-”
“And Orlov’s heroic nature,” Liz said, “which seems very important to him.”
“Right,” Coffey agreed. “Given all that, the risk seems reasonable.”
“Reasonable because it’s not your two potatoes on the line,” Herbert said. “Heroic reputations can be manufactured, as Ann will attest,’ and I’d rather have an armed confrontation than a massacre.”
Rodgers nodded. “As Lord Macaulay put it back in 1831, ‘Moderation in war is imbecility.’
“Death in war is worse,” Liz said.
“Let’s see what Orlov delivers,” Hood said. Though as he watched the small green numbers of the clock flick by, he knew that whatever it was he would only have seconds to make a decision that would affect lives and nations-all of it based on what his gut told him about a man’s face on a computer screen.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, 10:45 P.M., Khabarovsk
When Orlov raised the train, Corporal Fodor informed him that Nikita had gone to the engine to watch the track ahead. The Corporal said it would take a few minutes to bring him back.
“I don’t have a few minutes,” Orlov said. “Tell him to stop the train where it is and come to the phone.”
“Yes, General,” the Corporal said.
Fodor hurried to the front of the gently rocking car, lifted the receiver of the intercom, and pushed the buzzer on the box beneath it. After nearly a minute, Nikita picked up.
“What is it?” Nikita asked.
“Sir,” said Fodor, “the General is on the line. He’s said that we’re to stop the train where we are and he’d like to speak with you.”
“It’s noisy up here,” said Nikita. “Repeat?”
Fodor shouted, “The General has ordered us to stop the train at once and- ”
The Corporal bit off the rest of the sentence as he heard a cry from the engine, through the door and not over the intercom; a moment later he was flung forward as the wheels screeched, the couplings groaned, and the car was jolted hard against the coal tender. Fodor dropped the receiver as he jumped back to help steady the satellite dish, which one of the soldiers had been heads-up enough to hold, but the receiver itself was knocked on its side and one of the coaxial cables was ripped from the back of the dish. At least the bottomheavy lantern hadn’t fallen over, and when the train came to a rest and the soldiers and civilians helped each other to their feet amid the spilled boxes, Fodor was able to check the equipment. Though the connector had been torn off and was still attached to the dish, the cable itself was all right. He pulled off his gloves and began trying to repair it at once.
Because the large boiler sat in front of the cab, the engine’s only windows were on the sides. Nikita had been looking out one of them when he saw the fallen tree through the thick, failing flakes. He had shouted to the engineer to stop, but when the poor young man didn’t act fast enough Nikita threw the brake for him.
‘The three men in the cab were flung roughly to the floor, and when the train stopped Nikita heard shouting from above and from the rear cars. He got to his feet quickly, his right hip numb where he’d landed on it, took a flashlight from the hook on the wall, and ran to the window. He searched the snow with the wide beam. One man had been thrown from the top of the first car, but he was already climbing from a snowbank.
“Are you all right?” Nikita yelled.
“I think so, sir.” The young soldier stood unsteadily. “Do you need us up front?”
“No!” Nikita bark-ed. “Get back on lookout.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied, saluting sloppily with a snow-covered glove as a pair of hands was extended to pull him back to the top of the car.
Nikita told the two men in the cab to keep a careful watch at the windows, then he climbed to the top of the coal tender. The winds had stopped and the snow fell straight down. It was disturbingly quiet, like the cottony silence after a car crash, and the sound of his boots on the coal was crisp and brittle. He scuttled across, kicking up snow and coal dust, then dropped nimbly to the coupling of the first car. Wheezing from the cold, he used the flashlight to find the doorknob.
“Take six men out to the track,” he hawked at the burly Sergeant Versky as he entered. “A tree has fallen across it and I want it cleared now. Have three men stand guard while the other three move
“At once, sir,” said Versky.
“Watch out for possible sniper positions,” Nikita added. “They may have night-vision capability.”