"Yes, we assumed you would be, since you insisted on shutting down the navigational computers," Ikeda continued, his voice like the icy wind whistling across the island. "We find your next action particularly troubling. At that time we still had you on tracking radar, and we observed that as soon as the transponder was turned off, you altered your heading one hundred forty degrees . . . south, over the Japan Sea. Then you performed some unscheduled maneuver, perhaps a snap-roll, and immediately began a rapid descent. At that moment we lost you on the radar. With no radio contact, we feared it was a flame-out, that you'd crashed the vehicle. But then, at exactly 0242 hours you reappeared on the Katsura radar, ascending at thirty- eight thousand feet. At that time radio contact also was resumed." Ikeda paused, trying to maintain his composure. "What explanation do you have for this occurrence, and for what appeared to be an explicit radar-evasion maneuver?"
"I don't know anything about the radar. I just wanted to check out handling characteristics under different conditions. It was only a minor add-on to the scheduled maneuvers, which is why I didn't—"
"Which is why you didn't include it in your flight report." Ikeda's dark eyes bored into him. "Is that what you expect us to assume?"
The Soviet team was exchanging nervous glances. They all knew Yuri Androv was sometimes what the Americans called a cowboy, but this unauthorized hot-dogging sounded very irresponsible. None of them had heard about it until now.
"An oversight. There was so much—"
"Major Androv," Ikeda interrupted him, "you are on official leave from the Soviet Air Force. No one in this room has the military rank to discipline you. But I would like you to know that we view this infraction as a very grave circumstance."
"You're right. It was stupid." Time to knuckle under, he thought. "Let me formally apologize to the project management, here and now. It was a grave lapse of judgment on my part."
"Yuri Andreevich, I must say I'm astonished," the elder Androv finally spoke up. "I had no idea you would ever take it into your head to do something like this, to violate a formal test sequence."
He smiled weakly. "I just . . . well, I always like to try and expand the envelope a little, see what a new bird's got in her."
And, he told himself, I did. Just now. I found out two things. First, I can evade the bastards' tracking stations by switching off the transponder, then going "on the deck." I can defeat their network and disappear. I needed to find out if it could be done and now I have. Great! Ikeda's other little slip merely confirms what I'd begun to suspect. This fucking plane is designed to—