The Arctic Event - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,80

where it should be. He also had the set of fifty-year-old keys in his pocket.

Earlier in the day, when he had been in the cockpit with Smith and Metrace, he hadn't dared to search. He couldn't risk drawing possible attention to the Misha 124's official documentation until he could ascertain its status.

Bellying into the forward compartment, he removed a pocket flash from his parka. Clenching it between his teeth, he sank down on one knee beside the navigator's station and sent the narrow beam stabbing across the map safe below the table. Drawing the key ring, he fumbled with the safe's lock.

This had been a Soviet Air Force bomber, and in the old Soviet Union, maps had been state secrets, denied to all but authorized personnel.

After a moment's resistance the tumblers of the lock turned for the first time in half a century. Smyslov swung open the small, heavy door.

Nothing! The safe was empty. The navigational charts and the targeting templates that were to have been issued to the radar operator were gone.

Wasting no time, he closed and relocked the safe. The bomber's logbook and the aircraft commander's orders would be next. Moving forward to the left-hand pilot's seat, Smyslov thrust the second key into the lock of the pilot's safe located beneath it. Opening it, the Russian groped in the small, flat compartment. Again nothing!

That left the political officer's safe. The most critical of the three. He squeezed in between the pilots' stations to the bombardier's position in the very nose of the aircraft. Here the glass of the unstepped greenhouse had been caved in by the crash, and snow had drifted in and had refrozen. The bombsight itself was gone-it hadn't been needed for this mission-and the rest of the station was buried in caked semi-ice. Drawing his belt knife, Smyslov hacked his way down to the deck-mounted safe.

Damnation! The lock mechanism had been frozen solid. Swearing under his breath, the Russian tore off his gloves. Pulled his lighter from his pocket, he played the little jet of butane flame over the keyhole area. Burning his fingers, he muffled another curse and tried the key again. The stubborn lock yielded grudgingly.

Empty. The targeting photographs and maps. The tasking orders. The political officer's log and contingency instructions and the crew's postmission action plan-all were gone.

Smyslov resecured the safe door, repacking and smoothing the snow over it, trying to erase the signs of his tampering. Standing, he drew his gloves on again, his thoughts racing. It was all gone. All the mission documentation. That was how it was supposed to be. The Misha 124's political officer had been ordered to destroy every last scrap of evidence concerning the bomber's mission and the March Fifth Event.

But the political officer had also been ordered to destroy the aircraft and its payload. The thermite incendiary charges in the bomb bay were proof that he had been in the process of doing so when he had been interrupted. But what about the documents? Had he been prevented from destroying them as well?

And what of the men? Tomorrow Smith would go looking for the bomber's crew. What would be left for him to find?

Smyslov tugged down the zip of his parka and restowed the pen flash. He also removed the cigarette lighter from his shirt pocket. Not the little plastic butane he had purchased at the airport shop in Anchorage, but the other one, the stainless steel Ronson-style reservoir lighter he had brought with him from Russia. Balancing it in his palm, his mind raced through his rapidly shrinking number of options.

He could comfort himself with the thought that much of the decision making had been taken out of his hands. If the Russian Spetznaz troopers had killed the science station's personnel, fate must run its inevitable course. The coming confrontation between the United States and Russia would not be his responsibility.

He need only concern himself with betrayal on a far more personal level. Today he had saved the life of a friend in this strange cold metal room. Tomorrow he might have to kill that friend as an enemy. And the disclaimer that it wasn't his fault rang hollow.

"Hey, Major, you okay up there?" Smith's voice rang up the crawl tube from the aft compartment.

"Yes, Colonel," Smyslov replied, his fingers tightening around the little silver box. "I only...dropped my cigarette lighter."

Several hundred feet up the face of East Peak, on a ledge that overlooked both the glacier and the Misha crash site, the wide

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