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your request-was monitoring Gant's advised flight path…'
    'Yes, yes,' Aubrey snapped impatiently. 'What of it?'
    'Only minutes ago there was nothing in the area except a Russian AWACS plane on the Soviet side of the border with Finland.'
    'And - ?'
    'Now there are two Foxbat interceptors in that airspace - and a great deal of coded signal traffic, and -' Bradnum shrugged. His mirroring of Aubrey's smile had been unwarranted, a moment away from the truth. 'Eastoe in the Nimrod claims they were climbing very fast, very positively…'
    'On an interception course?'
    'They're close enough to spit at the Firefox, Eastoe said.'
    'Why weren't we told this?' Buckholz demanded heavily.
    'It happened only minutes ago.'
    'And in those minutes?'
    'Eastoe's reported a great deal of manoeuvring…'
    Aubrey turned away, facing south across the still-wet runways. Beyond the hangars and other buildings, beyond the flagpole and the perimeter fence, a sudden gleam of sunlight displayed the distant towers of Lincoln Cathedral on its perch of limestone. Then the towers were dulled as the watery sun disappeared behind a swiftly-moving cloud. He turned back to Bradnum.
    The noise of an RAF Vulcan taking off seemed a mocking, unnecessary intrusion into the tense silence.
    'I know Eastoe - what's his best guess?' Aubrey asked quietly. 'He would have one and he would have offered it, asked or no.'
    Bradnum nodded. 'They've been in the tightest formation and descending very slowly for two minutes or more. He thinks the Firefox is there, too. It's too deliberate to be for no reason.'
    Aubrey snapped his fingers in an inadequate expression of anger and urgency.
    'We must talk to Eastoe,' he said, addressing Buckholz. 'At once. From your Ops. Room, Group Captain. Lead on, if you please.'
    At the edge of eyesight, another shaft of sunlight warmly lit the distant cathedral towers. Aubrey shivered with the cold of the wind.
     
    'What now? What now?' the First Secretary demanded. The Tupolev Tu-144 was cruising at fifty thousand feet, almost a hundred miles of the journey from Bilyarsk to Moscow already accomplished.
    Vladimirov leaned heavily on the other side of the map-table, his eyes focused upon the dark-haired wrists that protruded from beneath the Russian leader's shirt cuffs. Grey hairs, too…
    The report from the surviving Foxbat confirmed that visual contact with the Firefox had been lost. Gant was hidden somewhere in the twelve or thirteen thousand feet of the cloud layer. On low power, an infra-red trace would be difficult to establish, almost impossible to pinpoint and attack. Because attack would be the next order. Vladimirov knew that. For him the game was up. Deluded by the apparent passivity of the American and the success of his two Foxbat pilots, Vladimirov had fatally delayed the order to the border squadrons on the Kola Peninsula to scramble. Now, he was once more blind, the Firefox's anti-radar concealing the American. Neither the surviving Foxbat nor the AWACS Tupolev 'Moss' could detect his presence.
    Vladimirov's own future remained difficult to envisage. His pride was hurt. He had lost to the American once again, and he could not forgive himself. The anger of others failed to interest him.
    Eventually, he looked up at the Russian leader. The man's face was dark with habitual anger, habitual power. Threat. The image of the bully. Yet the stupid man had no ideas of his own - had no
conception
.
    The scatter of luminous blips representing the scrambled interceptors, mainly MiG-25s and swing-wing MiG-27 Floggers, moved across the bright map towards the border with Finland. Other dots scurried south-eastwards from the west of North Cape, their contact time still six minutes away. Although no more than a futile gesture, the AWACS Tupolev had changed course to patrol the hundred miles or so of border which contained the point at which Gant would have crossed -
had crossed
, he reminded himself-into Russia. The single remaining Foxbat's