Free The Chinese Agenda by Joe Poyer Page A

Leycock growled. 'As soon as your boss gets his signals right, I'm going to wipe your feet with your silly face.'
    The lieutenant pursed his lips at Leycock. He may not
    have understood the English, but the meaning was clear enough. He nodded and four soldiers came forward and, at gunpoint, they were herded back out into the icy cold of the Siberian morning and then marched toward a ramshackle building standing well back from the apron. What little paint had once coated the wood had long since peeled away under the onslaught of winter cold and summer sun. The walls were almost the same gray as the bare concrete apron. They were marched up to the door and the lieutenant hurried up the steps to push it open. It resisted, and, suddenly angry at being made to look foolish, he bent and slammed it open with his shoulder. The door thudded back against the wall and the guards motioned for them to enter. One by one they climbed the rickety steps.
    The interior of the building was almost as cold as the exterior. A guard hurried to the stove, a battered old potbellied affair almost completely red with rust, standing in the center of the room, and shoved in several sticks of wood, crumpled some sheets of newspaper and doused it all with kerosene. He stepped back and tossed a match into the stove and the fire lit with a loud, soft pop.
    The two-story building was constructed in the clapboard style that Gillon had seen used on World War II-vintage military bases the world over. Interior walls were screened off by thin panels of fiberboard ending several inches short of the ceiling. The floor was tiled with crumbling rubber squares whose edges had curled through years of winter cold and summer heat. Gillon stumbled on one and received another jab with a rifle for his clumsiness. They reached the stairs at the far end of the barracks and were motioned up to the second floor. Puzzled, Gillon followed the others up the steps. As far as he could see, the building was completely unoccupied and had been so for years. There was no reason to take them up to the second floor, until he remembered the pipes radiating from the stove. Two went to the ceiling and since hot air rises, presumably the second floor would warm faster. Very strange, he thought to himself. Why should they care whether we are cold or not?
    At the top of the stairs, one of the guards pulled open the door of the first room in line and motioned Leycock inside. He hesitated a moment, then shrugged and grinned. I guess we really don't have much choice, do we?' He stepped inside and the door was closed and they watched as the guard attacked a padlock and snapped it shut. The guards shoved them on down the corridor to the next room, where Stowe was detached and the process repeated. Jones was next and the last room, at the end of the corridor, was for Gillon. As he stepped inside, he saw a soldier dragging a chair to the head of the stairs. Obviously, they were going to be watched very carefully. The door was pushed shut behind him. It stuck in the jamb and Gillon heard a muffled curse and a heavy boot kicked it shut. A padlock snapped into the hasp and footsteps walked down the corridor. The soldier paused at the head of the stairs and spoke with the guard, then clattered down to the first floor and a door slammed. In the sudden silence that followed Gillon shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced about the room. It looked like it was going to he a long day.
    Shivering, he walked over and pressed his hand to the register set into the wall at floor level. He felt only the barest stirrings of hot air and stooped down to examine it more closely. The register was almost closed and when he poked at it with a finger, it resisted and he concluded that it was rusted shut. Extracting the thin-bladed throwing knife from his hoot top, he considered it thoughtfully, the Russian guard, the layout of the airfield and his chances of reaching the aircraft after dark. He concluded that they were