leaving the gold after stealing the computer?”
“That too is a very good question,” Kuznetsov said sourly as he braced
himself against the plane’s gentle bank to the right. “Does anyone have
any more good questions?”
“Just one,” Vasily said hesitantly as the craft began to bank more
steeply. “Who is flying the plane?”
Volkov and Semelov gaped at each other and both dashed for the cockpit.
“Well,” Wiz said at last for want of anything better to say, “there it
is.”
Sitting under the lights on the concrete floor were two dozen boxes full
of computer and supporting equipment, all cocooned in foam and cardboard,
wrapped around with clear plastic and bound with metal straps.
Moira followed the programmers’ admiring looks and tried to be
enthusiastic, but it all looked so ordinary. The way Wiz and the others
had been talking she expected a nimbus of power around the boxes, or
lightning bolts or something.
None of the programmers noticed her disappointment. They were too busy
swarming over the pile, touching cabinets and opening boxes.
“I hope the installation instructions are complete,” Danny said dubiously.
“I’ve never installed anything bigger than a 386 PC.”
“Voila!” Wiz stood up from a newly opened box waving a black oblong. “A
complete installation course on video tape. Just sit ourselves down with
some popcorn and get educated.”
“Wiz.”
“Yeah, Jerry?”
“Where are we going to get a VCR?”
“Lift one out of a store the same way we lifted the computer,” Danny said.
Wiz frowned. “I dunno. That would be stealing.”
“Wiz.”
“Yeah, Jerry?”
Jerry gestured at the $10 million pile of crates. “What do you call this?”
“Well,” Major Ivan Kuznetsov said, hefting the bar of gold absently, “what
do we do now?”
The occupants of the cockpit looked at one another and no one said
anything. By now it was painfully obvious they would all share the same
fate.
“Think, comrades,” Kuznetsov urged. “Think as if your lives depended on
it.” As they well may, he didn’t have to add. “What could have possibly
happened to that computer?”
“It was fine when we loaded it aboard,” Vasily said. “I checked and
rechecked it myself.”
“And I also,” Semelov put in. “The webbing was secure and there was
nothing unusual about it.”
The pilot and the major nodded. They had also checked the cargo and the
mountings before takeoff and Kuznetsov and Vasily had been on the cargo
deck for takeoff.
“And there was nothing out of the ordinary when you left to go to the
latrine?” Kuznetsov asked Vasily.
“Not the least little thing.”
Kuznetsov said nothing. Technically both he and the sergeant were supposed
to have been on the cargo deck at all times. But rank has privileges and
he had chosen to ride up front where it was warmer and quieter.
Abstractedly he realized that would be seen as dereliction of duty by his
interrogators, but he did not think it would matter much. He turned to the
pilot.
“And you are sure the cargo doors did not open in flight?”
“Major, I swear to you on my mother’s grave that none of the aircraft
doors opened after we left the ground,” Volkov said. “For that matter the
load did not even shift. We would have felt the alteration in the center
of gravity.”
Kuznetsov looked at him with contempt. “So one moment it was there and the
next it vanished like winter fog?”
Volkov shrugged and spread his hands helplessly.
“It was there when I left and gone when I returned, not two minutes
later,” Vasily said.
“Where does that leave us?” asked the co-pilot.
“As traitors to the Motherland,” Kuznetsov snapped. He furrowed his brow
and grimly, desperately, tried to think.
“What are our options?” Volkov asked.
“We should call Leningrad Center and report this immediately,” Vasily said
when no one else spoke up. “It will go harder on us the longer we delay.”
Kuznetsov shook his head. “Report what, Sergeant? That our cargo seems to
be missing and we have acquired a pile of gold instead? Perhaps we had
better consider the situation first.”
Besides, Kuznetsov thought, it can’t go any harder on us than it will