Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Fourteen

There was one bowl and one spoon. Viktor thanked Bikov each time the spoon was passed to him. He took it and crouched, his weight forward, his head lowered, dipped the spoon into the thin stock and fished for meat or potato or a scrap of cabbage leaf, then lifted it to his mouth. His hand shook from the weakness of exhaustion and hunger, and much of the soup spilled from the spoon before reaching his lips. After he had taken what he could, a single dip for the boiled water, the pieces of meat, potato, cabbage, and had sucked it clean, he solemnly passed the spoon back to Bikov, and each time he was thanked with a quiet courtesy. The spoon went backwards and forwards between them and the bowl gradually emptied. His mind now was too confused to realize the game played with him. They were together, they shared, they bonded. The candle threw low light over them, still bold but dimming. He thought, as his mind addled, that it was kind of Bikov to share a single bowl of stew and a single spoon with him. He felt a growing gratitude to the man on the far side of the candle.

Viktor knew of the gulag camps, and of the zeks who had inhabited them. They were written about in the modern Russia. There were huts of thin wooden planks deep in the forests rooted in permafrost, surrounded by wire and guards, where the denounced enemies of the old regime had been sent to rot and to die. They would have eaten, shivering, the same bowl of stew that he now shared with Bikov. He had refused Bikov's sweater, and wished he had accepted it. The cold cut into him. Where he had been at school, at a base near Novosibirsk, before the family had moved to the experimental station at Totskoye, there had been an old woman who cleaned the classrooms, the pupils' lavatories and the canteen where they ate. She had had dead eyes and a death pallor below and around them, and it was whispered that she had been in the camps as a young woman, had survived, and the pupils had been frightened to speak to her. What he remembered of her was her savage criticism of any pupil who left food on a plate when she came to lift it off the table. Only when he had read of the conditions in the gulag had he understood. The water and the scraps rumbled in his stomach, seemed to make his hunger worse, and his head rocked with tiredness.

When there was only tasteless water left, Viktor thought of the plates of meat, potato and cabbage served in the senior officers' mess, piled high, and the beer brought by stewards. It seemed to Viktor that Bikov looked away and into the darkness. He slipped the spoon, a fast but clumsy movement, back into the bowl and dredged it again. He craved to eat, then sleep, and to be warm. The spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl.

'Go on, Viktor, you finish it.'

He crumpled. He did not think he had been seen when he broke the rules of sharing. The voice was kindness. Bikov had made a sacrifice for him, had gone without because his, Viktor's, need was greater. The woman who had cleaned in the school and had taken the plates with food left on them from the table of the pupils' canteen would not have shared: she would have scratched the eyes from any woman in the gulag who had eaten more than her share.

'It's all right, Viktor, it's for you.'

He dropped the spoon on to the concrete floor. He trembled as he reached, with both hands, for the bowl and lifted it. He tilted it. Lukewarm water ran into his mouth and he felt the remaining meat fibres, the potato pulp and the wafer pieces of cabbage stick between his teeth. He cursed that some of the water dribbled from his mouth and was lost. He licked the bowl. His tongue wiped it, caressed it, cleaned it. He licked it until the bottom of the bowl was bare and the only taste in his mouth was that of the plastic. He knew he had cheapened himself and a wave of regret splashed him.

'Thank you — I am sorry, but…thank you.'

'For nothing, Viktor. We are friends.'

There had been other friends, but too long ago. Because of those friends, forgotten, he had run on the beach and had made the chalk marks on the wrecked fishing-boat, and he had seen the friends' answer — and a friend had been in the zoo park, had brushed him, and he had followed the friend, had seen the open door of the waiting car. They were gone. And Mowbray, who had hugged him, was gone…and Alice who had loved him. He thanked his friend and was humbled because he had cheated him.

'I should not have done that, taken your food. I am ashamed.'

'No cause for shame, Viktor. You are tired and cold and hungry most of all you are tired and want to sleep. Soon, Viktor, you will sleep…'

The candle's flame glistened a reflection on the wax pool.

'A little more, Viktor, and then you sleep.'

The stock pressured on his shoulder as he fired the last bullets of the last belt.

The last bullet was a skimming red dot, tracer, that left the barrel at a velocity of 850 metres a second. He saw it go, his eyes clung to its trajectory. It was on target then seemed to dip late in its flight of two and one-third seconds, and its bright red flame, alive in the rain mist, ducked below the illuminated target. Perhaps the shudder of firing had dug the tripod legs deeper into the mud, perhaps his arm had flicked against the distance dial on the sight mounted over the breech. Perhaps his soul was not locked to the concentration required to fire the heavy machine-gun at the maximum of its effective range.

The rain fell on him.

He wiped his forehead. Away in front of him the light was shining up at the target. Without his sight to magnify it, the target was little larger than the red dot that had dropped short. He had missed food back at the base, he would get nothing hot. If he was lucky he might successfully plead in the cookhouse for a loaf end, and an apple if he was luckier. He must be back by midnight because that night 8 Platoon, 3rd company — from midnight — was duty platoon. He stood, stretched, then heaved a tarpaulin over the weapon. Igor Vasiliev was young and he was stubborn. Captain Archenko had said to him that if he wanted to achieve excellence he must always be dedicated. Vasiliev did not accept that he was stubborn, but the thought of dedication gave him warmth. He could not comprehend the arrest of Captain Archenko, would not have believed it if he had not seen it, but he remembered what he had been told.

Dedication meant that he should walk 2000 metres in the driving rain, to examine the target butts. He should find the pattern of his failed shooting. It was an obligation to him.

He started out on the long trudge along the track beside the range. He had to know the pattern of his failure.

Into a little scooped hole, Ham dropped the four clingfilm-wrapped bundles of faeces, then scraped earth and pine needles over them.

Billy checked his watch, watched the circling second hand, then peered at each of them to satisfy himself that their faces and hands were well enough smeared with camouflage cream. He felt each buckle in their webbing to satisfy himself that they were wrapped and would not scrape together.

The kit that they would come back for was piled by Lofty at the entrance to the basher, to be collected on the way to the beach.

Wickso's hand, as it had a half-dozen times before, felt against the chest pockets of his tunic as if he needed to reassure himself again that the morphine syringes and the additional field dressings were in place.

They moved out…and, thank Christ, the machine-gun had stopped firing.

Lofty made the sign, and they armed their weapons. The sounds of metal on metal seemed to fill the tree canopy above them.

They slipped, ghosts, between the trees. Lofty led. He was the one with the greatest confidence. None of them, back in the days with the Squadron, would have hesitated about going forward in darkness, but that was too long ago. Billy could have done it, but Lofty had pushed himself forward. Lofty didn't need an image-intensifier, preferred to let his eyes acclimatize to the wet murk of the early night, and he went first. Billy was close behind, then Ham, and Wickso was back marker. Lofty had Billy's plastic shreds to guide him. He weighed each footfall as he walked, and he felt with his outstretched hand ahead of him for snags when he crawled. He took them close to the skull in the helmet that Billy had found, and through the network of old trenches and around two bunkers. It was where men had died half a century before, but that did not faze Lofty. He was the right man to lead.

For Lofty, it was like moving between the stones at Tyne Cot cemetery. When he came to each plastic piece, left by Billy at fifty metre intervals, he stopped and crouched and the team halted behind him, and he listened. He heard nothing beyond the pattering drip of the rain down through the pine branches.

He led the team towards the rendezvous.

Ahead, the trees thinned.

It was not the 'scope sight, not the tripod legs. He could blame no one but himself. The well-used white canvas of the target, three metres high, had former hits covered with white-painted adhesive tape. He had found new holes in the outer area of the target, beyond the largest of the concentric circles, and a few inside the outer ring, and precious few within the inner circles close to the black bull. At least half of the shots he had fired had missed the target completely. In the brick-reinforced area where the spotters waited during the firing, Vasiliev switched off the lights that had lit the target. Obstinacy had brought him there, and was rewarded with the confirmation that his shooting had been pathetic, that of a recruit without talent. He slipped on the mud, regained his balance, then staggered towards the track and the start of the long walk back to where he had left the machine-gun. He hoped to get a ride back on a patrol vehicle to the ferry for the canal crossing.

They had closed up. Between them and the track was the last line of trees and then a few metres of waist-high scrub — where birches had been cut back and their roots had sprouted. Lofty had a good view of the track and could identify the stone, forty paces away, that was the kilometre marker.

Billy murmured, 'He's not here.'

Wickso whispered, 'It's early.'

Billy muttered, 'It's only two minutes early — and he's not here, shit.'

They had done the last fifty metres to the edge of the trees on their stomachs, going forward in the crawl. Lofty stood. He worked his body against a pine's trunk and made no outline. They'd rely on him, on the quality of his eyesight, he'd always been the best of them in darkness, and on the quality of his hearing. He was looking down the track, away towards the dull glow of distant lights that threw a faint orange sheen on the clouds where Ferret would come from. All the weapons were cocked, had been since they left the basher, and both Lofty's hands were on the grenade launcher. He'd been tailed the last time, Ferret had. Billy had the job to watch right, Ham to the left, and Wickso took responsibility for behind them and the escape route. Lofty's firing finger lay on the trigger guard. He heard the movement, to the right. He felt Billy stiffen, muscles tightening. Lofty heard the slithering of feet in mud. He should have been coming quietly, but the feet weren't careful.

Lofty saw him.

Behind Lofty, Ham stifled a sneeze.

He was out to the right, moving at snail's pace towards the track. The shape was blurred, the arms and legs indistinct. Lofty strained to see him better. His heart pounded. Deep down in his guts, Lofty had not believed that Ferret would come…and he was there, and reached the track.

Again, behind Lofty, Ham gulped on his sneeze. Lofty slipped his hand from the launcher's trigger guard, reached back and found Ham's head, then his ear, then his cheek, and clamped the hand over Ham's mouth. Maybe the sound from Ham had not reached Ferret, maybe Ferret only sensed their presence. The shape, the figure — Ferret — paused in the centre of the track. He seemed to stand, irresolute, alone, and Lofty watched him, struggled to see him better. His hand slid from Ham's mouth and down to his tunic collar. Lofty held the collar tight in his fist and eased Ham up beside him. He could not see Ferret's face, only the black figure of the man in the middle of the track. The man seemed to turn, to study the trees ahead of him and the track behind him, the path along which he had come. Then he swung his whole body to face the sea and the beach. If he had thought he was followed Ferret would have crouched down or would have come into the trees, or would have found a ditch to lie in or an old trench, but he stood in the centre of the track.

Alongside Lofty, Billy's mouth was against Ham's ear. They passed Lofty. Neither was as skilled as Lofty at moving in forest or across scrubland. A branch snapped, a scrub sprig whipped back. They were bent low as they halved the distance to the track.

Frozen, unable to will himself to move, Vasiliev heard a deer, a fox or a badger — some creature — coming close to him…not a patrol. When he was on patrol in the peninsula's forest they smoked and talked. The call came, and he sucked at air in astonishment.

In Russian, a strange distorted accent, 'Viktor, this way. Quickly, Viktor. Come to us.'

He should have run, did not. Fear, now, bled the strength from him. His legs were locked.

'Viktor, it's us, from Alice. Get to us. We cover your back. Come…'

Lofty heard the hissed whisper command Ham gave. Ferret was beside the marker, on the track, on schedule. He did not move. Too frightened to run, poor bastard. Lofty had the weapon up to his shoulder and his finger was back on the trigger guard. Wickso panted beside him.

Billy moved. Ham followed him. Billy exploded in a sprint through the scrub and Ham followed him.

They reached Ferret. Lofty watched. They had him. The turn and the run back across the scrub and into the trees. No shouts, no instructions, no commands — only movement, speed. Disregard for noise, pace counted. When they came to him, Lofty peeled away from the tree-trunk that had sheltered him and led the charge. He sensed that Ferret had seized up, would have been the shock and the relief — and they dragged him like he was handicapped and useless. It was reckless chaos, and without Lofty leading them they would have charged into trees, fallen into the trenches, tripped on the old bunker roofs. It was the best moment in his life that Lofty could think of, the most fulfilment. Better than when he had been awarded the green beret at Lympstone and better than when he had passed the swimmer-canoeist course for entry into the Squadron, the best moment. They ran. Once Billy and Lofty, with Ferret between them, fell into a trench, but they were the living, not the dead who had gone to unknown graves there. They had the route out, the sunken dinghy. Lofty went past the basher, took the animal's path away from the fallen pine roots. Wickso would bring the kit from the basher — the inflatable bags, and the wetsuits.

The trees broke open in front of Lofty. The rain doused him and the wind carrying it caught at his tunic. He dropped down in the loose sand of the dunes. A way out, across the popple of the waves, were the red and green blinking lights of the Princess Rose. Lofty pulled from his pocket the beacon box that would guide the swimmer, Billy, to the dinghy, down on the seabed. He had the pencil torch in his hand.

A voice, shrill and terrified, babbled in Russian — it was a kid's voice.

'The bloody torch, Lofty, give it me,' Billy snapped.

It was ripped from his hand. The beam shone into the face, lit it. Ham swore.

The light pierced his eyes and Vasiliev wet himself. They were above him. The light bounced back from his face and he saw the black cream across their faces, on their hands, and the weapons.

The beam showed half of a kid's face, half of the terror in his staring eyes, the gape of his mouth, and they heard the stuttering breathing. Billy gazed up at the cloud ceiling and the rain racked down on him. Ham beat his fists in frustration into the sand. Noisily, Wickso lugged the gear after him, then dropped it, saw the face the torch half lit, and swore. 'Who the fuck is that?'

Lofty said quietly, 'Murphy's law — when something can cock up, it will…'

'Bloody helpful, Lofty. Stuff it, for fuck's sake,' Billy clattered.

I was observing the obvious, I—'

Wickso said, 'What we going to do, Billy?' Lofty said, 'Your job to think, Billy, always was.'

Billy said, 'I am fucking thinking, so quieten down.'

Lofty and Ham held the kid. Wickso crouched close to them and watched the trees with his back to the sea, the distant light of the Princess Rose, and they left Billy to his thinking as they always had. Lofty and Ham held him, but Lofty knew it was unnecessary. The kid was supine, terrified, and maybe he could see the bright lights of their eyes set in the black of the camouflage cream. The kid was going nowhere.

Billy said, breathing in fast bursts, 'He could be there, Viktor could be…could have been five minutes late, or ten, but we'd bugged out…have to go back, have to see if he's there. Got me?' The voice dropped. 'And there's the sunshine boy, wrong place at the wrong time. Witness. Eyewitness. Saw us, heard us, so we're not deniable. Can't leave him. Anyone got a better idea? Anyone else want to do some thinking? Yes, or no?'

Did he know? Lofty thought the kid knew. The eyes gazed up at them, popped and stared and pleaded. They were trained to kill, but the training was old. They had been taken back into civilian life of a sort, and the training had gone cold. Lofty thought it would be the same for all of them. His hands loosed the kid's battledress, and Ham's, and Wickso eased back in the darkness as if he wanted no part of it. But Billy wasn't challenged, never had been, not by any of them: his was the word of law. Billy had drowned the boy in the lough, and he had led them in the silence that confronted the Crime Squad detectives. Lofty knew there would be no volunteers, not for a killing in cold blood. Billy held out his hand for the torch and Lofty gave it to him. Billy took the torch and he shone it in turn — fast, raking movements — into each of their faces. Lofty twisted his head away from the beam, and Ham, and Wickso turned his back on it. When the beam moved away, they saw Billy's hand reach for four strands of dune grass and he snapped them off, broke one strand so it was half the length of the other three. He put the hand behind his back, where he couldn't see it himself, where he could shuffle the strands. His hand came back, hovered over his lap, and he shone the torch on the four strands of equal length.

'Short strand does it — you first, Wickso,' Billy said, and there was a tremor in his voice. Lofty hadn't heard it before.

Wickso's hand shook as he pulled the grass from Billy's fist, then Ham took his. Lofty's choice of two. Lofty, with Billy, had held the man down under the lough water and it had screwed his life. He walked and talked with ghosts as retribution. Lofty took a strand. The torch shone on to Billy's fist and he opened it: his strand was long. The torch wavered on and Wickso's hand opened — long. To Ham— short. Lofty let his strand drop.

'Just do it, Ham,' Billy said.

'No problem.'

Lofty knew he should have argued, should have kicked against it. He pushed himself up. Billy switched off the torch beam.

'Do it, Ham, so he doesn't get found.'

'No problem.'

'We'll give him an hour, an hour for Viktor, then it's abort. Be ready for us.'

'No problem.' The monotone answer.

Billy headed off the dunes, for the trees. Wickso was close to him, and Lofty had to scurry to catch them. At the trees, Lofty turned and looked back. He fancied, couldn't be certain, that there was a flash of a knife's blade and Ham stood high over where the kid lay. In the trees, Wickso stopped, threw up, then hurried on to catch Billy. They went faster than the first time, made more noise, didn't care. Lofty, clumsy, fell into a trench, a shallow zigzag in the forest floor. The ghosts closed around him, and the trees of the forest seemed to press against him and to crush him.

Locke was cruel and meant to be. 'They haven't called, and they should have. As soon as there's a hand on his collar, they'd have called. It's late. He's not bloody coming. I know it.'

He sat at the table, earphones on his head. She was by the kitchen's inner door. He was cruel because he wanted to wipe the composure off her. 'They wouldn't wait till they were on the beach, or till they were launched. They'll be hanging on and hoping. He's not coming. The whole bloody thing was a waste of time.'

She gazed back at him and gave him nothing. He wanted her to weep or turn away. 'Forget it, Alice. Forget him…he's not coming.'

He thought her steady gaze, unwavering, belittled him.

The second time.

'Very good, Viktor, a session of outstanding value and I want you to know that in London our experts are ready and waiting to receive this latest material, and they all have a huge admiration of what you do for us. Time you were gone, Viktor — and time, Alice, that you were in bed. If Mowbray had smirked she hadn't seen it. And he'd yawned, like he had the first time, to signal their dismissal.

They'd gone down the corridor running. Key into the door. No hesitations, no shyness. She'd said it out loud, told him that since the first time she'd gone on the pill, never before in her life been on the pill, and long enough since the last Gdansk trip to have given the pill's cycle time. Not a minute wasted. Clothes stripped off, his and hers, thrown down, shoes kicked away. The rooms either side would have heard their little cries.

Each day, at her desk in the Service's section of the embassy in Warsaw, and each night at the little apartment the embassy rented for her, she'd pleaded for the day's and night's hours to hurry by. Him on her, then her on him, and fingers finding the secret places of each other. She thought then, and now, that the best thing she did was to make him lose the tension in his shoulders, arms and fingers, and in his mind, as if she lifted off him the burden of it. But hours went too quickly. Rolling away from her, coming out of her, slipping off the bed, dressing with fumbled hands because he gazed so wistfully at her as she lay on the bed, the door closing after him. Alice twisting on to her stomach and burying her face in the soft pillow and feeling the sweat of him on her and the wetness of him in her…and loving him.

They were on the beach, and the rain came off the sea and drenched them.

It was the turn of Jerry the Pole to fish. He thought it was with reluctance that the Russian, Chelbia, gave up the line. The fisherman, Roman, baited the hooks and cast the line out for him because he did not have that skill, then gave him the line to hold. The rain came from behind and soaked the shoulders of his coat and his trousers below its hem, and the sand caked his shoes. The bucket beside his feet was now half-filled with fish caught and dragged in by the Russian, Chelbia…Roman had said that night, and driving rain, was always a good time to fish because the sand on the sea's floor was churned and food was thrown up for the cod, mackerel and plaice.

Jerry felt the sharp tug and whipped back his wrist. He chortled like a child at the weight on the line. 'I used to fish here when I was a small boy, but for fun. In the war I fished here for food, till we left. In my life this is the only beach I have fished from, but never at night.' He was pulling in the line and the slack tangled against his legs. 'Did you fish as a boy, Boris?'

The voice was quiet against the wind's song and the waves on the sand and the rain's beat. 'Only as a boy. I don't have the time to fish now. I used to fish with my uncle. He was a good fisherman. We went to the Kaliningrad canal, and what we caught was eaten — even the heads and bones went to make soup. I loved to fish.'

Jerry the Pole knew that the man, Boris Chelbia, was mafiya, and could not imagine why he was there on the Mierzeja Wislana. The body of him and the stature of him was mafiya. It reeked from his stance, his voice and his authority. The mafiya from Russia were not interested in properties in Wannsee, or the exclusive renovated villas across the Glienicker bridge that faced on to the Potsdam road. They bought the more expensive apartments, newly built, in the heart of the city. They had made their Berlin ghetto off Unter den Linden and in the new luxury towers sprouting across the old no-man's-land of the Wall — Mowbray's hunting-ground, where Jerry the Pole had been king, long ago.

Not often, but sometimes, once a month and not more, Jerry the Pole made himself a plastic box full of sandwiches and, with a flask of coffee, took the S-bahn to the hunting-ground and his kingdom. He would sit on a bench in sunshine or in snow and the new apartments, new offices and new hotels would disappear from his eyes and be replaced by the grey concrete of the Wall, the guards in the watchtowers, the dogs and the guns; and he would feel the pride of involvement and achievement. When he was ready to leave the bench on Wilhelmstrasse or Leipzigerstrasse or Friedrichstrasse, and the memories of the Wall had gone from his mind, he would see the new homes of the Russian mafiya, and he would watch them strut from their new Mercedes cars and he would envy their new clothes, their new confidence. The city was theirs: they knew it, and Jerry the Pole knew it. They did prostitution, and people trafficking, they smuggled cigarettes and cars, they were untouchable. When he took the S-bahn train home, and when he bought a newspaper, he could read of the murderous feuds for territory. They could be envied often but rarely crossed. The newspapers carried photographs of those who crossed them, and the blood in the gutters. And he had never seen one of them carrying a fishing rod.

But he was not in Berlin. The fish was at his feet, and Roman knelt, ripped the hook from it and threw it casually into the darkness, into the bucket. He was on the Mierzeja Wislana, on a spit, two kilometres from the Russian border. Boris, the mafiya man, had been given ten successive casts by the fisherman. Jerry the Pole had had one cast. Roman took the line from Jerry's hand and gave it to the Russian, then skewered a shrimp on to the hook. The boldness came from his annoyance.

'So, Boris Chelbia, why do you wish to meet me?'

'I had a reason when I came — but I believe, at this moment, another reason makes it more valuable that we met. Do I talk in a riddle? Sufficient for you, I do import and export, into and out of Kaliningrad.' By now the Russian could throw his own cast. 'Now I am fishing…that is my business, my only business…I like fishing.'

The Russian turned and shouted into the wind and the rain. They were lit. A car's headlights blazed a cone down on to the beach and it caught them, threw their shadows across the sand and into the surf. Jerry the Pole thought it strange, amazing, incomprehensible, that he — the 'bottle-washer' of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, with no pension — should be out and exposed on a foul night fishing by hand-line with a local and a principal of the mafiya from Kaliningrad. He could see the lights of the buoys, tossing and winking, that marked the map line between Poland's and Russia's territorial waters. He did not know the plan that Mr Rupert Mowbray had made, had not been trusted with it. He had no pension, no income, he survived on the frugal handouts of the German government. Soon, when the developers came with the architects, he would be turfed on to the street from his room across the Glienicker bridge. He sidled close to the Russian. Fuck the Princess Rose, whose lights rolled far out in the sea to the east, and fuck Mr Rupert Mowbray, who did not trust him, and double-fuck Mr Locke, who would not speak up for him in London about his pension.

'I am not, of course, a smuggler, but what an interesting place we are at. No fences and no Customs…to a smuggler it would be a place of great interest.'

The marker stone was a dull blur beside the track.

'Five minutes more,' Billy whispered.

Lofty heard Wickso's murmur: 'Five minutes only, then out.'

'You OK, Lofty?'

'Five minutes, then we quit. He's not coming. I'm OK.'

For near to an hour it had been unspoken. Nothing moved on the track. Lofty didn't need night-vision goggles to tell him that nothing, nobody, was coming. Four times Billy had called, used the owl's screech, and had won no response from the rain and the thickening mist. Billy's call had reverberated into the darkness and its shrill note had bounced back from the cloud ceiling, then dissipated into the mist — and nothing, nobody, came.

They sagged again into silence. Maybe they all thought — Billy, Wickso and Lofty — of the kid left behind with Ham. The short strand had gone to the right hand, Ham's, no problem. Ham would do it with a knife, or would throttle him, or would take him down into the water and drown him. Ham didn't do mercy.

Billy said he'd try one last time. The cry of the owl beat against the rain, the cloud and the mist, and was answered.

The cry came back, like a cock answered a hen. They were all taut, and Lofty stifled his breath. The answer came again, a low-pitched shriek — but behind them.

They were twisting in the scrub. The track in front of them was empty. They faced into the trees.

The shriek came again, and Billy called back.

Ham reached them. Crawling, free, behind Ham was the kid.

Lofty gaped.

Ham said, 'Don't fucking interrupt me, guys, just listen. I was going to do him, slit his bloody throat. He couldn't scream, his voice was just a little whimper. He'd pissed himself and shit himself. I tell you, don't get upwind of him, not if you haven't a peg on your nose. We'd used the name, hadn't we — Viktor? I had, Billy had. The kid heard it and he began babbling. This is the gist: he knows Viktor, says he is Viktor's friend. Viktor has been arrested. What's most important, I think, the car that took him didn't shift towards the main gate and out, but away past the senior officers' mess, and that's the natural route. He's very exact — Viktor was taken to the FSB's place…so, it's the heavy mob. The kid told me this and he was blubbering. He didn't act it. I'd put my life on it, I mean it. Viktor Archenko is banged up with the spooks. That's where we are, guys. He even drew me a map — I believe every word he told me.'

'Where does that leave us?' Wickso hissed.

'Up the creek, no pole,' Billy said.

'Time to get on the radio,' Ham murmured.

It hurt Lofty bad. Maybe of all of them redemption mattered most to him. Billy would make the call on the radio, and would talk failure. The relay was Locke, and Alice. Alice would know that they had been too late, too slow — no one's fault — and that they had lost their man. The message would go to Mowbray on the ship. Mowbray would call London, and London would rubber-stamp the obvious. Abort, out, quit. Back at Tyne Cot by the end of the week. Sweeping leaves, tidying the beds, cutting grass, scrubbing the lichen off the stones, making the place fit for the families of the veterans on Remembrance Day, and the chance of exorcizing the guilt for ever gone.

Lofty heard Billy ask, 'And what do we do with him?'

Ham answered, 'Turn him loose — he won't cough on us, I'm certain of it.'

'No harm in it.'

Wickso chipped in, 'Why did he draw the map?'

Ham said, 'So we could go and get him.'

Lofty had never heard, before, Ham speak like that, so serious, so lacking in cut and crap and sarcasm. 'So we could go and get Viktor out.'

'Tell him to fuck off,' Billy said.

Ham bent and whispered, Russian, in the kid's ear. He was gone. Another of Lofty's ghosts, the kid went up to the track, never looked back at them, never waved, and then the cloud caught him, and the rain and the mist. Twenty paces down the track and they'd lost sight of him. Billy was fiddling with the radio strapped to his chest, and Ham helped him. Wickso passed Lofty a stick of gum.

'Thanks. We were too late.' Hope died.

Rupert Mowbray took the signal relayed to him by Locke. It was staccato, brief and without soul, and it wounded: 'Havoc 1 to Havoc 2. Ferret No Show. Delta 1 reports confused, Ferret arrested and held by FSB on base. Confirm Delta team should abort soonest. Out.'

A prize had slipped from his fingers. He sat at the table in the master's cabin and the radio slid as the Princess Rose bucked.

He responded. His voice quavered as he spoke into the microphone. 'The boys on the ground, do they think there's anything they can do? Out?'

A brittle laugh answered him. 'Havoc 1 to Havoc 2. Are we ignoring standard radio procedures? I'll pass your query to Delta 1. Straw-clutching, aren't you? Nothing can be done. I say again, we should abort soonest. Out.'

He slumped.

Lofty crouched to hear Billy, and felt a sense of joy.

'What you have to remember, guys, is that Who Dares Wins, the Hereford Gun Club, and By Strength and by Guile, the Poole regatta people, found all this was too dangerous. They copped out. Mowbray said, when we still had the chance to walk away, "He is one of the bravest men I have been privileged to know, and I — and you — are going to save that man's life." Is my life fucked up? Yes…I put paint on bits of paper, and I live where people can't find me. That's a life that's fucked. How's your life, Ham?'

'I've not a pressing appointment, not one that can't wait.'

'You fucked, Wickso, or are you in good shape?'

'Reckon that if I'm not back tomorrow they'll have to close A&E, 'cause they can't do without me. But they'll have to, till the weekend.'

'Lofty, we're all fucked up — you the same?'

'We have a hard time the week before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month…as long as I'm back by then.'

All brittle answers, Lofty's and theirs. Bullshit answers.

A little quiet whisper from Billy, 'It's everyone or it's no one. It's the team or it doesn't happen. Has to be you, Ham, because you've the language and do communications. Lofty — because we'll need the bloody launcher and you're the best man on it. And you, Wickso — and I'm not dwelling on it — the medic. Me, I lead…if I could slim it down, can't, I would. We use the big three Ss — Speed, Surprise and a Shitload of luck. We have a wing, the map, a prayer, and not much else.'

Lofty reached out his hand in the darkness and caught Billy's fist, then Ham's gripped theirs, and Wickso's clamped them.

London's evening light threw smeared ripples on the river below them.

'You misunderstand me — what I have instructed is a reconnaissance, a probe. That's all.'

The voice boomed from twin speakers behind the wide desk, at each end of the window. The voice, scrambled and distorted, spoke to them with God's own tenor. It had a resonance of calm. Bertie Ponsford prowled between the speakers, his feet silent on the pile carpet, and Peter Giles was sprawled across the room's easy chair, picking at invisible dirt under his fingernails. The Director General sat on his desk. His shoes dangled a little above the carpet and he whacked a rhythm, his heels against the desk's broad legs. Each in their own way, the DG, Giles and Ponsford, understood their affliction: they were second-guess men, and the action they could either sanction or countermand was far away. None of them could summon up a clear picture, only a vague image, of the coaster — the Princess Rose—heaving on her anchor chain out on the Baltic on a wild night. They depended on his counsel, and the beggar would know it.

'What I'm saying, the Delta team will push forward and examine the situation on the ground. They will move with great caution. I have been very specific about that. No risks are to be taken. Nothing will be done that compromises them. I am almost certain that there is nothing they can do for Ferret, but I would be ashamed if I was not absolutely certain that he is beyond our reach…'

The coffee was untouched, the biscuits uneaten. They listened, and the voice dominated them. To each of them, he seemed to stand with legs apart in the centre of the carpet, and the metallic tang of his tone carried an authority that was owned by none of them. In the old culture of the Service, men on the ground ruled and their initiative was backed by their seniors, but these were new times. They wriggled while he spoke through the speakers. 'I thank you for your anecdote from Grozny. An interrogator is called back to Moscow on a matter of urgency. It fits the mould. He will now be at the base at Baltiysk, a better bet than any you'll make on the Gold Cup. He will have had Ferret with him from early this afternoon, but I venture to suggest — from my considerable experience — that he will wish to keep Ferret with him, in situ, during his preliminary questioning. Myself, I'd not want to ship Ferret out until I had been through his quarters, his office, his telephone calls' list, his contacts, before he's off to the Lubyanka. We have a few more hours, probably until dawn, a little window is open. All that I suggest is a reconnaissance, an evaluation — then a speedy intervention or, more probably, an orderly withdrawal. I believe, I would emphasize it most strongly, that Ferret's loyalty to us demands we do what we can for him. We're up for it, but that's not what counts. It's in your hands, gentlemen.'

The DG held down the microphone's button beside his hip. 'Thank you, Rupert, and as eloquent as I would have expected. Can you wait a moment, please, while we discuss?' His finger came off the button. In the atmospheric crackle through the speakers were the merged rattle of a glass, the sharp yap of a small dog, an oath and a thud, then: 'Get out, you little bugger.' He threw another switch and the speakers died. The DG's feet beat harder on the desk's legs, the habit that had become addictive in the days after nine-eleven. It was a signal to Ponsford and Giles of the stress burdening him. 'I sense mission-creep here — but when did a mission of value not assume creep? When did a mission that was worthwhile not acquire a motion of its own? Havoc, Peter, the name given the mission, is that Rupert's or yours? Who called it "Havoc"?'

'Rupert did.'

'And, Bertie, you gave "Havoc" your blessing?'

Ponsford squirmed. He wanted out of the meeting, wanted responsibility off his back. 'Confusion and chaos, that's "Havoc". New names for operations are so difficult to find…'

The DG's heels made a drumbeat. 'In the ninth year of the reign of Richard the Second, fourteenth-century stuff, the military command of "Havock" was forbidden under pain of death. A tract entitled the Office of the Constable and Mareschall in Time of War, states "the peyne of him that crieth havock, and of them that followeth him is a capital offence". You see, gentlemen, it was the medieval order to massacre without quarter. That's where we are — is it where we want to be?'

'I didn't see it that way…' Giles muttered.

Ponsford paced. 'It's only a name…'

'I believe you do Rupert a disservice — a very exact man. "Massacre without quarter." Very little that Rupert does has not been planned.'

'All right all right…can we go back to the beginning? Back to basics — why did we launch?'

'Loyalty,' Giles mouthed the word. 'And duty to a friend.'

Ponsford said, 'For the reputation of the Service.'

The shoes' heels pounded the desk's legs. 'Powerful ingredients loyalty, duty and reputation — matters of pride and honour. Only reconnaissance, correct? I am trusting Rupert and that, I know, is probably unwise. It will have gone beyond his control and he will be a mere spectator. No massacre without quarter, understood? The young man there, Locke, he's sensible. By dawn they're off the ground, and out. Give Locke authority. First light, out. We should not forget that we revelled and oozed pleasure when we shared Ferret's material across the Atlantic, so we will at least try to fulfil our debt to the poor wretch. Out…by first light.'

'Mowbray's no longer running it,' Locke said. 'I've been given authority.'

She blanched. It was the first time he had seen Alice's shoulders droop. 'What will you do with it?'

'Let them amble about a bit.' A coolness in his voice. 'London won't bite on it, they're still digesting Rupert's nonsense about loyalty, duty, debts — the team can do reconnaissance, whatever that means, then they abort by dawn. I have control over them.'

'You'll enjoy that.'

'And what I also understand from London, they're now talking "damage limitation". Your friend is being worked over by a senior interrogator. He'll crack. They all do. A bit of bravado, a little intellectual wrestling, then he'll break. Damage limitation and denial — the pity is Mowbray didn't think of it before they started this joke operation.'

In the kitchen's darkness he could not see her face. She said 'Rupert did.'

Bikov knelt in front of him. 'Viktor, stay awake.'

He forced his eyes back open.

'You have to listen to me, Viktor.'

He did not know if he had slept, or dozed, or whether his eyes had been closed only for a few seconds.

'We are going to go back, Viktor, over what you have told me.'

His eyes ached, his head throbbed, and the cold seemed deep in his body.

'And then, Viktor, you will sleep. Sleep a day and a night, and another day, if you want it.'

The candle's wick floated in the wax pool and the light from it puckered at his knees. It did not have the strength to reach to Bikov's face.

'Before you sleep, Viktor, I want to be very fair with you. I will repeat what you have said to me, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from it.'

He craved permission to sleep, to roll down on to the darkened concrete and curl up, knees against chest, but Bikov's hand reached past the candle and held his shoulder. He could not break the hold and lie on the floor.

'When I have told you what conclusion I draw, Viktor, you must think very carefully. You have the opportunity, then, to contradict what I suggest.'

His stomach hurt and pain nagged in the joints of his knees, hips and elbows, and the voice dripped into his ear.

'If my conclusion is wrong, Viktor, you should contradict it. If it is right, Viktor, you will tell me.'

He struggled to concentrate, could not. He did not know what he had said. 'Can we start, Viktor, so that we can finish? And then you can sleep.'

He did not know that now a tape turned. Neither did he know that the lists of each logged telephone call he had made from his office and from his room lay in a file in a box, that more logs of each classified document initialled as having been read by him were also heaped in the box, photocopies of permission for him to go across the border, and records of every meeting attended. The box of evidence was filling. Nor did he know that a jet aircraft was fuelled and ready to taxi from a remote apron at Kaliningrad Military, that the cockpit crew were alerted to be ready for a dawn takeoff, that a flight route to Moscow had been filed with Air Traffic.

'I am your friend, Viktor, and among friends only the truth is acceptable.'

Nor did he know that, far away in Chechnya, a gunship helicopter picked up a beacon's signal and located its origin as a shepherd's hut on a grassland plateau in the foothills below the Argun gorge, that the helicopter prepared to fire from its four under-wing pods a total of thirty-two 57mm missiles, and would then rake the hut with its four-barrelled Gatling gun. Nor did he know who was responsible for the helicopter's flight.

'I am an honest man, Viktor, and you are. We are going to be honest with each other. Then you shall sleep.'

He tried so hard to remember the warnings Rupert Mowbray had given him. But he was across the candle from a friend, and the warnings had been about beatings, electric torture and drugs, not the dangers of a friend.

'We shall start, Viktor? Four years ago you learned from your mother, on her deathbed, that your father had been ordered to make an experimental test flight through the cloud of a nuclear explosion. It killed him. It had no scientific value. He was murdered and the killing weapon was wasting leukaemia — which you saw, but it was only four years ago that you learned the truth of the test flight. I suggest, Viktor, it was what made you turn to the opponents of Russia. You were a walk-in, you offered to spy.'

'No!' Viktor screamed. 'No — no…'

'A spy, Viktor, because of the murder of your father.'

'No.'

A silky soft voice massaged him. 'Viktor, I believe you. Of course I believe you. Your grandmother, gang-raped by troops from the Motherland, abandoned. Four years ago you learned of the rape and death of your grandmother…'