The first thing he'd focused on was something called the North Quadrant, whose Russian designation was Komendant. It looked to be the command center, with a red-colored area labeled in both Japanese and Russian. Next to that were a lot of little rooms, probably living quarters or barracks. Kanji ideograms identified those, so that section was probably where the Japanese staffers bivouacked.
That command section, he'd realized, was where he and Eva had been. They'd been quartered in a part of Tanzan Mino's private suites, the belly of the beast.
It got even more interesting. The other three quadrants were where the real work was going on. On the right side of the screen was East Quadrant, whose label was Komputer/ Kommunekatseon, which meant it contained the computers and communications set-up. Flight Control. And the South Quadrant, the Assamblaya, consisted of a lot of large open bays, probably where the two prototypes had been assembled. Those bays connected directly to a massive sector labeled Angar, the hangar. But the bays also had separate access to the runway, probably for delivery of prefabricated sections from somewhere else.
The West Quadrant appeared to house test facilities; the one label he could read was Laboratoraya. Probably materials labs, next to a configuration that could have been a large wind tunnel. Made sense. That quadrant also had more small rooms with Russian labels. He'd studied the screen a second longer and . . .
Bingo. He'd realized he was being moved into the Soviet sector, probably the barracks and laboratory area.
This had to be the least used location in the facility now, he told himself. All the wind tunnel testing of sections and the materials research was probably wrapped up, meaning this area was history. Yesterday's news. So the CEO had shunted him to this obscure lock-up in the West Quadrant, the Soviet section. What better spot to discreetly dispose of somebody for a while?
Time to brush up your Russian.
Problem was—he grimaced at the realization—there wasn't a heck of a lot left to brush. He'd had a year at Yale, just enough to let him struggle along with a dictionary and squeak around some standard language requirement. That was it. He'd never given it a second thought afterward. Instead he'd gone on to his real love—ancient Greek. Then later, in CIA days, the action had been Asia. At one time he'd ended up doing some consulting for Langley's Far Eastern INTEL desk, helping coordinate American and Japanese fieldwork.
He could swing the Japanese, but the Russian . . .
Tanzan Mino probably knew that, yet another reason why he'd decided on this transfer. There'd be fewer people here to communicate with. Smart.