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Page 360
equipment in the cargo bay of a Canadian C-130. The air was cold and she could hear hail battering the thin metal of the airplane's fuselage. The crew had overwhelmed her with attention, dressing her in arctic gear, plying her with hot drink and tasteless food.
The other passengers, a motley troop of reporters and television technicians, including five other Russians, all men, had separated into cliques by race and by nationality. Marina recognized only a few faces among the Americans, familiar to her through Washington newscasts, but by and large it seemed that the first-line network people had not volunteered in great numbers for this assignment. I shouldn't wonder, Marina thought angrily. I should have been on my way to Moscow by now, only hours before the warhead was to detonate, to Moscow and safety. But the meaning of the order from Kondratiev had been inescapable: Do whatever you must do, anything. But liquidate the traitor Arkady Karmann.
The failure at Bethesda rankled. No one at the hospital had questioned her credentials as Vincent Kellner's assistant, Camilla Varig. It wasn't all her fault, she thought self-righteously. Kellner's Marine colonel had been a step ahead, and he had taken Karmann out of the hospital before she could act. Too bad she hadn't been able to meet this Colonel Morgan, persuade him that his interests lay on the other side. What a double agent he would have made, she thought.
As for her present situation, posing as a media person was nothing new to Marina. She had used the same cover several times, and had never been compromised. Nevertheless, she was relieved that she recognized none of the other Russian journalists. Once aboard the Canadian Air Command Hercules, she had maintained her distance from the newspeople by flirting with members of the crew, asking silly female questions to account for her presence among them. The five Russian reporters regarded her with suspicion and perhaps talked about her among themselves. But being Russians, they said nothing to any of the Canadian authorities on the plane.

 
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