Free The Chinese Agenda by Joe Poyer Page B

pretty good, but that the chances of flying the Jetstar out of the Soviet Union were next to nil. With over four hundred miles to go to reach the Afghan border, the nearest . . . if China was excepted . . . they would be after him in minutes. And the Jetstar, fast as it was, did not have the turn of speed necessary to outrace a Mach 2 fighter-interceptor. He shrugged and used the point of the knife to push open the register, then slipped it back into the boot top and stood up.
    It was strange, he thought, that the Russians had not bothered to search them. Gillon did not believe for one minute that the Russian officer did not know why they were in the Soviet Union. Soviet Air Force lieutenant generals were not sent to NATO briefings in Rome for curiosity's sake. And then to allow things to be screwed up at some backwater military base was more than he could believe possible.
    Gillon wandered over to the lone, dirty window. He shook a cigarette out of the halfempty pack and lit it, staring thoughtfully at the airfield below. There were very many things • about their treatment that puzzled him besides the fact that they had not been searched. For instance, the Jetstar. Right now he could see the Russian lieutenant strolling across the apron. The pilot saw him too and a moment later appeared in the hatch, hesitated, then climbed down and walked to meet him, hands waving in expressive gestures. The two met, and started back to the aircraft, deep in conversation. Gillon grunted; either the pilot spoke Russian or the lieutenant spoke better English than he had acknowledged. How interesting.
    At the foot of the ladder, they were joined by the co-pilot and radio operator. The pilot waved at the barracks, the lieutenant shrugged. The pilot ticked off points on his fingers, the lieutenant shrugged. The copilot yelled, the lieutenant shrugged. The lieutenant spoke for some minutes, shrugged again and started back to the administration building. The co-pilot gestured obscenely while the pilot glanced towards the barracks, then shrugged himself. Empathetically, Gillon shrugged with him and grinned at his own reaction. All very strange. Apparently the Russians were making no move to lock up the flight crew. A few minutes later, a ground support truck drove up and the co-pilot superintended the coupling of the nose gear to the trailer hitch. The truck then drove away, towing the aircraft with it and Gillon watched as it was pulled around to the far side of the hangar and parked. The truck uncoupled and disappeared and the flight crew apparently remained inside the aircraft. After a
    few minutes in which nothing else happened, Gillon lost interest. The TU-144 had completed loading by now, had left the terminal and was now waiting at the far end of the runway. A green light winked in the distant control tower and snow boiled off the runway behind the tail as the roar of the engines, running up for takeoff, reached him. The aircraft rolled ahead, gathered speed down the runway, lifted smoothly and disappeared into the morning sky in a northwesterly direction. The slow rumble of the aircraft's engines faded. The snowplow had finished its task and disappeared. Nothing else moved on the field. The winter stillness of bright sun and burnished cold closed down.
    Gillon turned away from the window to survey the drab, bare room with distaste. A steelframe bed covered with a thin blanket and thinner mattress stood against one wall. Other than the bed, there was not another stick of furniture in the room. It was, though, he rioted with some gratitude, beginning to warm up as the fire in the stove on the floor below gained ground on the entire winter's cold.
    He walked to the door and knocked loudly, then listened, hearing nothing but the noise of the guard shifting in his chair at the far end of the hall. He knocked again. First a groan, then footsteps started down the hall, pausing at each door. Gillon knocked again and the footsteps hurried to his