Clad in anorak, khaki slacks, and climbing boots, Major Gregori Smyslov stood outside the lobby entrance of the Arctic Inn, his flight bag at his feet and his thoughts paralleling those of Jon Smith.

He had been briefed to expect an army doctor, a historian, and a civilian helicopter pilot. But who would they truly be? Already Smyslov had the sense they would be something more. The way Smith had set up the contact and pickup, the crisp identifiers he had given-they had the flavor of an experienced field operative.

Impatiently he lit a Camel filter with a disposable butane lighter, not of a mood to enjoy the superior American tobacco. Soon his performance would begin.

Already Smyslov didn’t like the feel of this job. It had the stink of desperation about it, a stench all too common in Russian governmental circles in these days. Someone somewhere in the Moscow bureaucracy was not thinking, just reacting.

He took a hard drag on the cigarette. It wasn’t his place to decide such things.

The white automobile he had been told to expect turned off the street and rolled to a halt under the hotel canopy, its license number and passengers matching the given description. Smyslov flipped the cigarette to the ground, crushing it deliberately with his boot heel. Presently he would know, or at least he would have an idea, where the Americans stood and what they suspected.

Collecting his bag, Smyslov strode out to the car.

Within five minutes Smyslov indeed knew, and any hope that the Americans might be naively accepting the Russian line on the Misha 124 crash was irrevocably gone. As he was flying a false flag, so was everyone else.

The two women might look like American fashion models, but they most certainly were something else. The taciturn, wary blonde driving the car, theoretically the “helicopter pilot,” was maintaining a spy’s situational awareness, as was the more openly relaxed and vivacious brunette “history professor.” As she lounged in the backseat beside him, overtly chatting about the Alaskan climate, her vision scanned in a regular pattern, checking the paralleling traffic and skipping from one rearview mirror to the other, watching for potential tails.

Smyslov judged them as CIA or as members of one of the associate intelligence agencies that made up what the Americans called “the Club.”

He wondered if the striking attractiveness of the two female agents was a mere coincidence or if one or both of them might include seductive interrogation as part of their arsenal.

That could prove disconcerting.

As for the team leader, he might be an Army surgeon but he was also American Spetsnaz, probably attached to their defense intelligence agency. The feeling of alert, focused confidence radiating from him was unmistakable, as was the bulk of the military-caliber automatic riding under his jacket. The least they could have done was to give the poor fellow a decent cover name. Jon Smith indeed!

And if he had caught their scent, they most certainly had his. When Smith had reached back over the seat to shake Smyslov’s hand, there had been a glint of humor deep in his penetrating dark blue eyes, a shared, cynical joke of “Shhh, we’ll play the game for as long as you will.”

Madness!

Smyslov jerked his attention away from his thoughts. “What did you say, Colonel?”

“I was just asking if your people had come up with anything new on the circumstances of the crash,” Smith said amiably, looking back over the seat once more. “Do you have any better idea of what brought her down in our territory?”

Smyslov shook his head, aware of the three pairs of eyes regarding him, two sets directly and one in the rearview mirror. “No. We have reexamined our records and we have interviewed certain personnel who were serving in Siberia at the time of the Misha 124 training flight. Communications failed sometime between two routine position reports, and no distress call was heard. There was some evidence of environmental radio interference over the Pole. We believe this is the explanation.”

“What was the last solid fix you had on her? The plane’s position, that is?”

So it began. “I don’t have the exact latitude and longitude to mind, Colonel; I’ll have to check my documentation, but they were somewhere north of Ostrova Anzhu.”

“We’ve been wondering what she was doing so far over on our side of the Pole on a training exercise.” The woman professor, (Metrace, was it?) smoothly took over the flow of the questioning. “From what we know about the B-29-TU-4 family of aircraft, a crash on Wednesday Island would have put your bomber almost beyond her point of no return for your Siberian bases.”

Smyslov gritted his teeth for a moment and parroted the answer he had been programmed to give. “The training flight was never intended to come close to the North American coastline at any point. We theorize that the plane’s onboard gyrocompasses tumbled. Given the difficulties of aerial navigation near the Pole, the crew must have accidentally flown a reciprocal course toward Canada instead of back to Siberia.”

“That’s funny,” the woman behind the wheel murmured almost to herself as she deftly maneuvered around a lumbering SUV.

“What is, Randi?” Smith said almost casually.

“It’s still dark over the Pole in March, and the B-29 was a high-altitude aircraft. It should have been flying well above any cloud cover. Even if they did lose their gyros, I wonder why the navigator wasn’t able to shoot a star sight and get his bearings.”

Smyslov felt the sweat start to prickle under his anorak. Now he knew what it felt like to be a mouse under the claws of a pack of exceptionally playful and sadistic cats. “I don’t know, Miss Russell. Possibly we will learn more at the crash site.”

“I’m sure we will, Major,” Smith said with a pleasant smile.

This…was…madness!

Chapter Thirteen

Merrill Field, Anchorage

Even into the twenty-first century, Alaska was essentially still a wilderness with a minimal road and rail net. Flight stitched the mammoth state together, and Merrill Field and its sister seaplane facility at Lake Hood were two of the largest civil aviation facilities in the world, central nodes in this culture of the bush pilot.

Scores of hangars lined the field taxiways, and hundreds of light planes occupied acres of parking apron. The drone of engines was a constant, and the traffic pattern was perpetually filled with incoming and departing aircraft.

As Smith and his team drew up in front of the office of Pole Star Aero-leasing, they found that a sleek Day-Glo orange helicopter had already been wheeled out of an adjacent hangar. Mounted on a set of pressed-foam arctic pontoons, it stood spotted and ready for takeoff.

“Okay, Randi,” Smith said. “There’s your piece of the action. What do you think?”

“It’ll do,” she replied, openly pleased. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger, the stretched 206L Long Ranger variant with twin turbines. It’s about as stone reliable as a helicopter can get. According to the documentation, it should be fully IFR capable and weatherized for polar operations.”

“Then I may assume it’s acceptable in all aspects, Ms. Russell?”

She shot a look at him along with a half-smile. “Nominally, Colonel Smith. I’ll let you know for certain when I’ve finished my walk-around.”

Smyslov stared out of his window at the Ranger with that peculiar pilot’s fixation, and it occurred to Smith that the Russian Air Force officer was indeed a Russian Air Force officer.

“Do you have any helicopter time, Major?” he asked.

“Some,” he replied, looking around with a grin, “in Kamovs and Swidniks, but none in a little beauty like that one.”

“Then, Randi, you’ve got a copilot. Put him to work.”

Randi gave him the briefest of hesitant glances. Smith replied with a single millimeter’s nod. All of the brothers were valiant, and all of the sisters virtuous…until proven otherwise. Beyond that, the blond-haired Russian would be riding in that helicopter along with the rest of them, and Smyslov didn’t strike Smith as being overtly suicidal.