Deep Cover

Ensign Sakhalov broke the lock when he heard the pistol report and wheeled into the First Secretary’s office with his machine pistol off safety.

He found the Second Secretary sitting in a chair drawing a plump hand across his face. First Secretary Rykov lay by the desk with his head in a puddle of his own blood. The pistol was in the Second Secretary’s hand. Ensign Sakhalov stared at the scene and then said, “Why do you pretend you shot him, Comrade Secretary? There is blood on the pistol but none on your hand. You took the pistol from him after he killed himself.”

The Second Secretary said, “Tell no one.”

“But you will be charged with murder.”

“Yes,” the Second Secretary said. “He was betrayed by his subordinate, you see. Murdered by his most trusted aide.”

“You wish that?” Sakhalov’s jaw dropped open.

Andrei Bizenkev’s eyes were wide, white circles showing around them. “I wish that, yes. You will oblige me, Sakhalov?”

“As always, Comrade Secretary, I will oblige you.”

Forrester discovered he had been holding his breath: it escaped his lungs in a gust and he looked at his watch again. His eyes burned, his knees felt rickety.

Belsky was getting out of his car and putting his hands on top of his head. No expression on his bland salesman’s face. “I don’t suppose you will permit me to signal an acknowledgment to my superiors.”

Spode said, “Nuts. Let them sweat.”

Forrester covered his eyes with his palms to shut out the light. Sobs of breath racked through him. When he dropped his hands he said to Belsky in an unsteady voice, “Get in your car. Drive to your airplane. Get your people on board and get them out of this country.”

There was a momentary break in Belsky’s expression. “You’re releasing me?”

“I want all of you out of this country.”

Spode said, “We’ll be watching you board the plane. We’ll be keeping count.”

Forrester and Spode had no way of knowing how many of them there were; but Belsky didn’t have to know that.

Belsky said, “Then you don’t plan to disclose what’s happened?”

“We probably can’t stop it from getting out,” Forrester said. “There’ll be people in the missile complex who know a signal came.”

“All dead,” Belsky said.

Spode’s teeth clicked.

Belsky spoke woodenly. “By now they’re dead. My people had instructions to seal off the exits, get themselves out and gas the rest.”

Spode’s revolver lifted into sight. “You—”

“If it matters,” Belsky said, “they didn’t know the gas they were releasing was lethal. I told them it would render the Air Force people unconscious long enough for us to escape. Of course it was better to leave no one alive to reveal what happened here; you see that.”

Spode parked in the long shadow of a heavy mesquite clump and they watched the Oldsmobile thread the narrow service gate in the back fence; someone had broken the padlock chain and left the gate open for Belsky and now Belsky rolled across the head of this little-used runway toward the plane. The tower and terminal were two miles away; out at this end there was nothing but sun-buckled pavement and weeds. The Starlifter squatted near the fence and Forrester saw a stream of passengers descending from two Air Force buses drawn up beside the wing. They were going up the ramp in a fast disorderly flow. A figure detached itself and walked out to meet Belsky’s car—Douglass leaned on the car window to talk, then shook his head and walked back to the boarding stairs and followed the last passengers into the plane. Belsky opened the trunk lid of the Oldsmobile and lifted out two cylinders that looked like aqualung tanks. He carried them up into the plane with him.

Forrester heard the ragged intake of Ro

Spode knew what was in the canisters Belsky had carried aboard. Belsky’s orders were obvious: Moscow didn’t want the Illegals alive.

Spode glanced at Forrester’s wide back before he turned in the seat and spoke softly to Ro

Her eyes shifted toward him. “What?”

“You can get him off the hook, Ro

Forrester was still watching the darkening sky that had swallowed the jet. Spode opened the rear door and reached in to take Ro

“I don’t—”

“On the run.” He said it gently but his face was hard.

Forrester was begi

He took an involuntary step, and felt Spode’s grip on his arm. The tail lights disappeared at the bend and Spode’s grip locked tight, arguing with him. “You’ve got to let her go.”

The fever hit him then: a chill and a hot flush that prickled his skin, a dizziness, bright red flickers before his eyes, a trembling weakness against which he had to lock the muscles of stomach and arms. When the spasm passed he felt faint and very cold. His head was very heavy when he turned to lay his baffled stare on Top Spode.

A jetliner was taking off from a far runway with a ripping racket of power. Spode said, “They’ll find those dead men in the silos. Better get to a phone.” His face was a graven mask that gave away nothing of his feelings. “You’ve got to call the President.”

Ro

Back to what?

They walked toward the cars abandoned by the end of the runway. He didn’t speak until they had reached the Oldsmobile. Belsky had left the walkie-talkie on the seat and the key in the ignition. Forrester pulled the door shut and Spode started the car and aimed it toward the lights of the terminal where the telephones were. A small plane came in low overhead, landing, sliding through the airport lights.

Finally he said in a sighing gust of breath, “All right, Top.”

Washington, April 9 (UPI). Pentagon spokesmen said the Air Force still has found no explanation for the crash of the cargo plane seen to plummet into the Gulf of Mexico Sunday night. It was disclosed today that the C-141 Starlifter jet was on a training flight from an Arizona base, but the Air Force has declined to make public a list of crew or passengers, pending notification of next-of-kin.

The crash was witnessed by the crew of U.S. Coast Guard cutter Perseus about 2 A.M. Monday in waters 100 miles west of Key West. Crewmen reported that the plane appeared to be in a spin for no clear reason; there were no flames evident before it crashed into the sea.

The plane had taken off on a flight from Davis Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Ariz. Perso

Washington, April 10 (AP). The President a