Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Eighteen

The beach was lit to an ochre glow. The daylight fell on it beyond the point where the fence came from the trees. The colour softened on the dunes. Roman stared through the gap between Chelbia's turned shoulders and the hunched silhouette of the Pole who had come home, and he thought the beach up the peninsula was tarnished gold. With his good eyes and his good hearing, Roman watched the gradual descent of the flares and the firefly-red specks of the tracer and listened to the faint clatter of the machine-gun.

Out of the side of his mouth, Chelbia asked, without turning, 'Is it normal for them to exercise at night?'

'No, it is not normal.'

Chelbia persisted, 'On occasions, do they exercise at night?'

'A few times — what is normal is that they do not have the ammunition or the fuel to exercise either at day or night. What is more normal is that the soldiers go to pick potatoes or turnips from the fields.'

Chelbia shrugged. 'Then I do not understand what is happening.'

'Look, look…there you have your answer.'

Roman pointed, not to the distant daylight that made a bogus dawn but at the yellowed sand where the fence came down to the sea. He saw the ant-sized soldiers and the tiny shapes of lorries whose headlights shone on to the dunes. Then more light came because the searchlight from the tower roved over the beach. Only once, fourteen years before, had Roman seen soldiers on the beach, lorries' lights, the searchlight shining down from the tower, and flares fired beyond the fence, and had heard the rippling crack of gunfire. A week later he had been in Krynica Morska to ask the garage there for help in the repair of the engine for his boat. A police sergeant had been at the garage because the tyres of his car needed replacing. While the plugs and washers on the engine had been changed and the tyres fitted, the police sergeant had told Roman of an emergency in the closed military area across the border. A sailor had bludgeoned his officer, then fled towards the fence. He had been captured — and the police sergeant had not known his fate, but had smirked at the thought of it. From the north and the south there had been a closing cordon, and to the west there had been the sea and to the east there had been the lagoon. Roman had often thought, in fourteen years, of the blundering flight of the sailor, and of the dragnet that had scooped him up.

Chelbia gazed into the night, at the dropping flares that made dusk come over the beach. 'What are you telling me, Roman?'

Living in Piaski village, fishing and minding his own business, never concerned with the riots of Gdansk down the coastline, never offering an opinion on politics, never drawing attention to himself or being in trouble, Roman had found it impossible to place himself in the mind of that fleeing sailor. But in his jeans hip pocket there was now a roll of American dollars, given to him by Chelbia who was a criminal.

His voice was hoarse. 'A man runs, is hunted — that is what I am telling you.'

Chelbia nodded, as if the answer satisfied him. Roman saw him take Jerzy Kwasniewski's hand, the burned one, and heard him say quietly, 'A man runs, is hunted — would that be Archenko?'

Roman felt the pain, himself, as the fist took the burned hand. The Pole squealed, then said falteringly, 'Archenko was to be brought out in the evening, eight or nine hours ago.'

Chelbia let the hand drop away, mused, 'When I met him I thought he was a lion. He came to me with a hand grenade. He said he would kill me if I did not obey him. How many people make a threat on my life? Very few, I tell you. And I believed him. I believed he would kill me. Did he want money, as you do? I had brought a lorry full of weapons from the base, for export? No. He came to me and threatened to kill me, and would have. What he wanted was the return of one weapon from the hundreds that had been loaded on to the lorry. One. Why did he want one machine-gun from so many? He had the determination of a lion, and its arrogance. I gave him the one weapon, and I offered him an arrangement that would have made him a wealthy man. He refused me. I offer you an arrangement, and you gobble it, because you are greedy. He runs, and is hunted. Let us stay to watch his fate.'

In the last light of the distant flares, before they died, Roman saw the smile on Chelbia's face.

The Pole blurted, ingratiating, 'You can see the lights of the ship. The ship waits for Archenko. It is hoped to bring him off the beach to the ship.'

'I tell you something, Kwasniewski…' Again, Chelbia took the burned hand, but his fist must have been tighter on it because the scream was shrill in the night air. '…should you betray me as you betray Archenko and the people who help him, if I ever thought you betrayed me, having taken my money, I would break your spine with a sledgehammer — and, believe me, I would enjoy doing it.'

Around the car on the dunes a crowd was gathering, faint shapes against the trees. Roman heard his wife call his name. He answered her. She stumbled down from the dunes and strode at him across the beach. Gulls scattered. He saw her in the light of the fire. She scolded him. She had been to sleep, she had woken, her bed had been empty, she had thought him dead, hurt, washed out to sea. She had come with an escort of neighbours and fishermen, dragged from their homes in the emergency. Her voice pealing and warming to the a tack, she shouted at him. She wore her heavy boots and her wool robe, and the hem of her nightdress peeped below it. Her words cudgelled him, and he heard the titter of his neighbours and his fishing friends. He reeled from her assault.

'My fault,' Chelbia said softly. 'Boris Chelbia, madam, apologizes. I detained your husband. Sincere apologies.'

She buckled. A flask of fresh coffee was opened, and it was passed first to Chelbia. He held them in his hand, all of them. Roman watched for the next flare to be fired, and he listened for the next burst of the machine-gun. A man ran and was hunted, a ship out at sea waited, and the cold bit into Roman's body.

They were between the dunes and the fence of close mesh, topped with razor wire.

The fence ran parallel to the beach and behind it were the bunkers and silos of the missile batteries. Above it were three watchtowers and arc-lights. The ground they crossed was bare dirt with no scrub bushes. It was serrated with gullies and short, slight ravines where years of rainfall had fashioned shallow drains. More flares were fired, but not the machine-gun, and for close to a kilometre it was possible for them to scurry forward, using the gullies for cover. Twice they had been fired at from the missile batteries' watchtowers, but the weapons used had been short-range assault rifles. Bent double, hustling, they hugged the ground. When a gully petered out they would go in a crabbed crawl out of it, then scramble, then drop down into the next. Wickso was in front. Ham could hear the blistered breathing of Lofty close behind him. The ground, carved with the natural trench lines, gave them a chance — a small chance.

One of Ham's hands clung to the Skorpion machine pistol, the other was buried in the sodden material of Ferret's shirt. He had as little feeling for the weapon as for the package. Emotion had always come hard to Ham Protheroe. No feelings of affection for the men he had trekked and trained with in the Squadron. No feelings of love for his parents, who had now shut him out of their lives. No feelings of sympathy for the widows and divorcées who had bought him dinners and fine wines, who had welcomed him into their beds, and who had lost their credit cards. The emotions of affection, love, sympathy were all alien to him. His mind was a vacuum, emptied and cleansed.

In front of them was more scrub. With the scrub they would lose the hiding-places and sunken gullies. The clouds of mist had now shrunk to isolated pockets. They would be exposed. When they broke into the scrub and no longer had the gullies for cover, they must dance from cloud to cloud or they would be exposed. It was best for Ham that he had no emotion, and a short horizon, as he propelled Ferret forward.

The flares came faster and the cover was more difficult to find. For the first time, Ham loosed his hold on Ferret's shirt and let him run alone.

'Tell me — because I am ignorant — how you fire.'

He lay behind the machine-gun. The voice was a whisper. The words were sweet honey and lulled the conscript. He did not realize it, but loyalty was passed. Only Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko had ever spoken to him with the same respect. His father, when Igor had lived at home, had not shown him respect, and did not now when he returned home for annual leave; his father still talked to him as if he were a child and not a champion shot with the NSV heavy machine-gun. His platoon sergeant and the instructors on the range had shown him neither respect nor friendship, and others had tried to drown him when he had protested at the theft of the weapon that was his. The officer who supervised the range, and the men in the armoury, had not shown him respect, even when they had known that he was chosen to represent the Baltic Fleet in championships, nor had the conscripts with whom he lived in the barracks dormitory. He did not think of Viktor Archenko, who had followed his triumphs, who had talked to him of the castle at Malbork, who had requested he drive the car on occasion into Kaliningrad. He was captivated by the new friendship offered him, and by the respect. In those night hours, loyalty was transferred.

A simple boy, Igor Vasiliev would not have understood that he was a marionette in the subtle, sensitive fingers of a master puppeteer.

'I shoot well because I am fit, strong.'

'Most men would have their shoulder broken by the recoil?'

'It comes back not as a blow to the shoulder but with the impact of a heavy push, but you must have the strength to hold it so that your aim is not lost.'

There were four flares in the air, coming down like steps on a ladder. When he had last seen them, four men and not five, they had moved like fleeing rabbits, darting and weaving over a short space of ground, then going down. The last time he had had them and the sight's crosshairs had wavered over them, he had thought he had the opportunity to shoot, but then had lost it. Each time he went to the firing range he saw that ground over which they ran. He knew the ground close to the firing range as well as he knew the end of the street in Volgograd, Ulitsa Lenina, where his parents lived. So many journeys to the range, bumping in the back of lorry transport, had meant he knew the ground in front of the missile batteries. He knew the sunken rain gullies, and as loyalty had passed he had told the man, who now lay beside him and held the ammunition belt, where the scrub began again and at what range the flares should be fired. He concentrated.

The voice, a murmur with the wind, did not disturb him. He knew they must break cover and waited for them. 'I could not do it. I would panic when I saw the target — how do you control the breathing?'

In his own words he could not have explained it. It was natural to him, his given gift. He used the language of the instructors: 'You must always stay calm. The breathing must be controlled. When you shoot you have an exhilaration, an excitement, and that can destroy your aim. You must not gulp your breath, then try to hold it in full lungs, or the exhilaration will make your head pound, your brain split. You exhale, and you pause to shoot — not hold the breath, but pause. It is a difference. You must always keep your mouth open when you shoot because if your mouth is closed the noise of the discharge will destroy your hearing.'

'I understand, Igor. There.'

The men broke cover.

The flares were above them. The diamond shape was smaller. One was ahead. In the width of the diamond was his friend, the white shirt clear to see, and another black-suited figure was running close to him but not near to him. The fourth man at the back was behind his friend. The loyalty ebbed but had not died. The crosshairs wavered off the man behind, and his friend, and he eased the butt's grip fractionally, and they snatched at the target running alongside his friend…caught it…lost it when it ducked, then wove, found it again.

He held the target. It was his skill that the crosshairs were locked on the magnified spine of his target. His finger slid from the guard to the trigger bar.

Ham ran.

A flare came down in front of him, the parachute sagged and the charge burned its last light. He skipped to avoid it. The parachute's cords were clear in the daylight from the three flares still floating above him.

The moment he cleared the cords that hung — a frosted spider's web — from a scrub bush, Ham was at his full height. Instinct then, in his next stride, made him duck.

Some men, under fire, wove. Some ran tall and believed in immunity. Some ducked as if to make a smaller target. Ham ducked, and did not know that the crosshairs leaped from the width of his body by the lower spine to the back of his head.

Ham heard nothing, knew nothing of the shot that killed him.

Ham did not hear its report travelling far behind the bullet. He saw nothing of the ground and the scrub that rushed to break his fall. Ham knew nothing of the blood, tissue, brain parts, bone fragments that spattered in an arc.

Lofty fired twice back behind him. Wickso unhooked the radio from Ham's body. They sprinted towards where Ferret crouched, and they wove, ducked, went doubled, and when they reached Ferret they snatched him up. They cleared the line of the missile batteries' fence. The formation of the diamond was broken.

She sent the signal on.

She knew the tang of Wickso's voice. Different from Ham's. Ham's was quieter, less snapped, the vowels better formed. There was something bored in Ham's voice.

The signal—'Delta 1 down, proceeding to RV. ETA 25 minutes'—was transmitted to the Princess Rose.

As if she drowned, her life seemed to slide before her.

She was Albert and Ros North's 'little angel'. She was the spoiled girl-child and the apple of their eye. She was the kid who expressed no gratitude, the kid whose ambition was to break from them and make her own way. She was the girl who slipped from them, but never so far as to be without the safety-net of a trust fund. She was creeping towards middle age and, after Rupert Mowbray's retirement, her career had plateaued.

Other single women of her age, at Vauxhall Bridge Cross, schemed their way into the lives, and the hotel bedrooms, of senior executive grade officers and were available when the divorces came through. The senior men searched for women who understood the constraints of security. She'd heard it said often enough that the requirements of secrecy destroyed every marriage fashioned in heaven, but outside the confines of Vauxhall Bridge Cross she had kept away from all invitations to a quick restaurant meal and a hotel fling. She had the memory of Viktor, and an amber stone at her neck. She had nothing. She felt the love drain away from her, lost on a sand spit in Eastern Europe.

She thought them — Wickso and Lofty, who ran with Viktor, Ham and Billy — the best men she had known. She sat at the table in the holiday-house kitchen, the console in front of her, and dreaded hearing the bleeping that would alert her to the next transmission and the red winking light. The worst man she thought she had known was Gabriel Locke. Her fist clenched, she hit the table.

Far behind Locke, starting out from the border fence, was the cordon that had spilled off the lorries. He thought of home, his childhood. His mother, the women from the neighbouring farms and their children used to make a line high up on the bracken slopes above the grazing fields. They would beat through the bracken and over rock outcrops to drive the foxes down towards the hedgerows where the men made a second cordon, where his father was. The child, Locke, had hated it. The foxes were flushed out and driven down to the guns. The vixens, it was said, were worse than the dog foxes because they would take the lambs born in spring to feed their cubs. If it had been merely the culling of vermin Locke might have accepted it, might have acknowledged the necessity of it. It was the screaming of pleasure, the shouting of enjoyment, as the guns thundered, as the foxes keeled over that he had loathed. He had refused to be a part of it and on those Saturday mornings when the beaters and the guns had formed up, he had gone into the outbuildings or the barns and hidden. Their excitement at the chase and the thrill of it was something he despised in his parents and the kids off the neighbouring farms. He had seen, of course, what the foxes did to lambs and he had known that the alternative was the laying down of poison, but deep in him, carried into his manhood, was an elemental fear of a cordon driving a prey towards the guns. The line was behind him and ahead were the flares, which he saw through the pines, and the occasional cracked rumble of a heavy weapon.

The forest was deep, close-set, around him. He blundered on towards the flares' light and the machine-gun.

Now he was among the old trenches and the bunkers. He had no care for the old craters he stumbled into, or for the rough concrete angles of the sunken bunkers that scraped the skin off his shins. Low branches whipped his face and where there were thickets of thorn they tore at his jacket and ripped at his trousers. He thought of the men who had been here, down in their holes, in their trenches, in the bunkers, and two lines pressing them into an ever-diminishing sector. No escape. Had the men who had been there wanted to escape? Had they believed what they did, fighting from trench to trench, bunker to bunker, was worthwhile? Had they dreamed, in their last hours, that in half a century their names would still be spoken? When the flares ahead were highest, as they reached their zenith, slivers of light rained down between the pines. He had seen an anti-tank weapon half buried in the needles, and rifles, and a little pile of mortar shells still identifiable but richly coated in the forest lichen. He found two skeletons, entwined as if they copulated in death, arms hugging each other's white ribcages, and he thought of the comradeship of death. Gabriel Locke believed he walked, ran, stumbled in a Valhalla of heroes.

His shoe kicked the skull. It rolled away from him. Still strapped into its helmet, it bounced against a tree-trunk and he felt the shock from his toes to his ankle and his knee. Was the name of the man who had lived in the skull still spoken by an old, infirm woman? He fell. He gasped for breath and steadied himself against a mess of tangled roots. The roots of the gale-destroyed pine towered over him, and the last flare fired threw a trellis of fine shadows on to his face. To gain better support he moved closer to the wall of roots and earth at the base of the toppled tree — and he fell. Branches collapsed under him. His arms thrashed…He had closed his eyes, in reflex, to protect them as he had gone down into the hole. Blinking, he groped his hands out so that he could push himself up. Softness under his fingers. The light showed him the bergen pack and the four envelopes laid on it. He picked them up, and slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He crawled out of the hole. He knew he was close to them. The trees now thinned and the light was brighter. He stretched his stride and ran faster towards the bursting flares.

Igor Vasiliev had seen one body, but only a snatched glimpse of it in the vehicle's headlights. They had pitched and lurched past it as the petty officer steered between the thickest of the scrub and the highest of the dunes. The petty officer braked the vehicle two metres short of the second body.

The ground beside the body was a small knoll. It was the natural place for him to settle the tripod. He was out of the vehicle and Mikhail and Dmitri heaved the weight of the heavy machine-gun over the side of the open back of the vehicle and he caught it, dropped it down and pressed hard on the tripod legs to settle them. The colonel was beside him with the belts, and then the farm-boys were lifting out the mortar, and…Vasiliev looked at the body. Because he had never before fired in combat, he had never seen the crippling damage caused by a 12.7mm calibre bullet. He saw the throat and the chin and the lower jaw…nothing more. He dropped down behind the machine-gun. The upper jaw, the nose, cheeks, eyes and upper skull were gone.

He stared, saucer eyes, at what was not there. As the vomit rose in his throat, he heard the snap of the colonel's order. The vehicle's headlights were killed, the body became another shape in the darkness. The arm was around his shoulder. The voice soothed, 'You are the best, Igor…'

The vomit, foul-tasting, slid at his teeth and dribbled at his lips. He coughed it on to the ground. With his sleeve, he smeared it from his mouth. 'There are admirals and generals, commanders and brigadiers, captains and colonels. They are the great men, and they are helpless now. Because you are the best, and have the skill, you alone are important. You…'

Vasiliev said, 'The barrel is warm now. I did well to get the first hit when it was cold. With a cold barrel, the bullet can fall short. The barrel shoots better when it is warm.'

Locke saw them. He was in the last line of the trees. In front of him were a carnival's lights. It was like when the fair came at the Whit holiday to Haverfordwest where he had been taken as a child; like the fireworks over the Thames on Millennium Night when he had been alone on the Embankment with the crowds because everyone else he knew had already sealed their arrangements. The flares burned above them and the tracer rounds came past them and captivated him, as had the lasers over the river. The flares lit the ground and the tracers showered red sparks on impact.

They were, he estimated, a little more than a half-mile from him, perhaps a thousand yards. Three flares were up and they were Locke's markers. The flares tagged them. To find them he had only to look where the light fell brightest. Darting figures, tiny at that distance, they came towards him. When they crossed the fiercest of the light's pools, he could see the white shirt — see it well. Harder to make out were the black-draped figures.

Because he was exhausted, and getting breath into his lungs was an increasing struggle, it was difficult for Locke to count and to concentrate on what he saw. He had a long view of the white shirt and the spurts of progress it made, but he could never be certain of more than two of the dark shapes that scurried close to it. The tracer came in flat lines beside them or over them. Only two. He stood against the cover of the trees. They seemed to him to run twenty or thirty paces, then he would lose them, then they came on again: the white shirt and the two, where there should have been four.

He had no sense of danger, no feeling of threat. It was where he had wanted to be, had chosen to be. He had heard the crack of the last flare's detonation and the rumbled thud of the weapon firing. Far behind were the sounds of the cordon's beaters. But fear was gone from him. He pushed away from the last line of the trees. There was no going back, never had been that chance.

Locke ran.

Another cascade of flares was fired and more tracer came in scarlet lines. Together they guided him. He no longer stumbled, was light-footed, and didn't fall. He was a free spirit. The trenches were behind him, and the bunkers, and the old, abandoned weapons, and the skeletons and the skull. Beyond the point he aimed for he saw the pinpricks of headlights, and they wove a meandering way towards him. He did not feel the scrub tearing at his legs, cutting into his trousers, nor the grit stones wedged between his socks and the inner soles of his shoes. The darkness clawed at him.

He heard them.

Not voices, but the wheezing gasps of breath. For a moment they were outlined against the skies, then had gone, then were back. The gasps were closer.

Locke called out, his voice thin in the night's air, 'This way, I'm here, it's Locke.'

An answering coughing grunt from the darkness. 'Locke? Fucking hell—'

'It's me, Locke.'

'You got backup?'

'Just me.'

They were on him, came from among the scrub bushes and a black shape bounced into him, flattened him. A hand caught him and dragged him up. The white shirt veered past him. The hand freed him and the breath had been knocked from him. They'd gone on. For the first few of his strides after them, Locke thought he would not catch them. What had he expected? A bouquet of roses, a cup of tea from a Thermos, his hand shaken, his back slapped and thanks spoken? He tried to stretch his stride, legs heavy now, lungs emptied, pain in each muscle. The white shirt was a dozen paces ahead of him and the black shapes were alongside it, only two.

He called again, after them: 'Where are the others?'

From the panting to the right, 'Having a crap. Where the fuck do you think they are?'

'Where are they?'

From the left, 'Down…they're down.'

For a moment, Locke did not understand. 'Dead? Is "down" dead?'

Through the whistle of the breath, 'Ham dead, no fucking head. Billy down, hit…maybe dead, may not be. Minus a leg either way.'

'You left him?'

'Prat — this isn't the fucking Queensberry stuff. Why are you here?'

The line of trees was set against the sky. The wall of darkness the trees made beckoned them, seemed to scream for them. He had closed the gap. If he had reached out, thrown himself forward, his fist might have caught a grip of a wetsuit or the white shirt's collar. As they went past the high earth mound where the furthest of the targets were displayed, a flare burst over them. The trees reached for them. He saw Lofty and Wickso grab the shoulders of the white shirt and thrust it down. Then they were crawling on their stomachs. Because he ran and they crawled, he beat them to the trees, then dived and the wet of the ground was in his nose and the needles were in his mouth. He looked behind him. He could see each piece of the pines' bark, each cone on the lower branches, each needle on the fronds. For a moment, at half his height, Wickso knelt and raised his right arm as far as he could. The light cascaded on him and he gave them the finger. The tracer round speared at them, the bullets hammered into the trunks, and needles, branches and cones scattered over them.

'I came to help.'

'Lofty, I ask myself why would anyone come here to help?'

'Wickso, he's either got God, bad — or too much sun, worse. Give him Ham's—'

The weapon was forced into his hand. They were gone on their stomachs. More bullets hit the trees above them, or whined away off stones, and the tracers showered sparks. As he slithered after them on his knees and elbows, Locke held tight to the weapon's stock. At Fort Monkton, on the indoor range there, he had fired a Walther P5 on the indoor range, fired it for half an hour at a time on two afternoons. The instructor had said he was 'bloody useless' the first time. He had treated it as a laugh, a side-show, two afternoons off from the real business of electronics available to new officers. Shooting had seemed an unimportant distraction, as useful as instruction in covert movement through woodland as taught in the New Forest. As a child he had never fired his father's over-and-under shotgun. All his marks on electronic communications, theatre analysis, report writing had been marked with the red stars of distinction. They were all up now and charging.

'What is it, the weapon?'

Lofty's grunt: 'Skorpion, Czech—7.65 calibre, blowback, selective fire…'

'I don't know how to use it.'

Wickso's hiss. 'Then fucking well learn.'

He winced. The difference now: he could see the trees. He could hear the sea on the beach, and he could see the tree-trunks without the aid of the flares' light.

'Take it down.'

Having given the order, Piatkin stepped aside. The pain throbbed in his head, but he was sober at least. The Military Police corporal, a huge bull of a man on whose bared right arm a tattooed girl danced, readied himself in front of the door, sucked in a gulp of breath, then swung back the sledgehammer.

The door panel disintegrated at the third blow.

The corporal reached through the splintered panel and turned the key. He threw open what remained of the door, then moved away. Piatkin, alone, would enter. Behind him, and behind the corporal, were the men who staffed the fleet commander's outer office — all except the chief of staff, Captain, second rank, Archenko.

The bastard. Piatkin swore.

The desk was sideways on to the door. The top drawer of the near desk leg was open, pulled back, and the key was still in it. The pistol was on the floor. The chest and arms and what remained of the head were on the desk. The head's fall had toppled the inkwell: part of the blood flow, merged with ink, was a delicate purple rivulet that was staunched against an opened carton of Camel cigarettes. The top of the head and much of the blood was on the ceiling, around the lamp fitting.

The deputy fleet commander was in Moscow. The head of operations was in Severomorsk.

Piatkin felt hatred for this man who had been Archenko's protector. He saw again the cold faces of the men who would sit in judgement on him. He ordered that the room be sealed, that the body of Admiral Alexei Falkovsky be left. If he failed they would flay the skin off his back.

He stamped towards the operations room in the bombproof bunker under the headquarters building. Vladdy Piatkin, the zampolit, did not know how he could distance himself from the catastrophe engulfing him.

'Tell me, Mr Mowbray, because I think it is fair now to ask, why exactly did you bring us here?'

Mowbray bit at his lip. 'How far are we off the shore?'

The mate said that they were five nautical miles from the beach. For an hour, in almost total taut silence, from the bridge, they had watched the flares and the racing lines of tracer in front of them. The master had now called for full power. The Princess Rose surged towards land, not high and proud but low with the weight of her cargo. Dawn dribbled above the treeline, which he watched. 'Why, Mr Mowbray?'

He stood at his full height. 'I had a vision of what was necessary. A secure floating platform for a fallback plan. We could launch from it, slip ashore, pick up our man, return under cover of darkness to the platform, then move beyond their territorial waters.' His voice tailed off. 'That was my vision of a fallback plan.'

'We are late, too late.'

Grandly, as if he addressed his students, Mowbray retorted, 'I never acknowledge failure. It is unacceptable, failure is.'

The mate, behind him, spoke with a gentle sadness. 'If we like it or do not, failure is with us, Mr Mowbray. It has happened.'

He turned, spat, 'Unacceptable. Failure never has, never will be, acceptable.'

The mate's binoculars were handed to him. The mate pointed towards the dim, distant lights of the naval base. His sight was not as clean as the mate's, and with the binoculars at his eyes, he fiddled with the focus. Then…first he saw the moving lights, then the spreading bow wave. Then he made out the dark gun-metal shape of the patrol-boat, the arrow of its bow wave aimed straight at the Princess Rose. 'Please. I beg of you, what is possible?'

The conscript, Igor Vasiliev, clung to the vehicle's open side as Bikov directed the petty officer away from the track. It pitched, rolled through the scrub and he held the machine-gun locked between his knees. He felt pride. His skill was recognized. They crossed the scrub and rolled up on to the summit of the dunes, and the beach, open, rolled out in front of them.

His name was called quietly. Ponsford had been dozing. He jerked up from his chair, and went to the glass door. The signal was printed out on flimsy, low-quality paper. He reflected — and it was a near treasonable offence to speak it — that bloody accountants now ran the building. His mind roved: another victory for the paperclip counters, cheap paper for signals into the annexe off the central communications unit. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-five minutes since the last signal had been given him, and two hours since… Where the hell was Giles? He scraped his memory: Just going for a breath of air.

The technician passed him the second signal. Nothing could be read from the faces. The technicians who serviced the War Room in the lower basement could mask their feelings whether the message they passed on was of triumph or disaster. For the second time, no frown or glint of concern marked the young man's face. And they never commented on the signals. Ponsford took it.

He shook.

The second signal—'Delta 1 down'—seemed to kick him harder than the first had, wounded him more sharply. He had never seen the men, never met them, knew them only from the old service photographs on their files, and it had been Peter Giles's responsibility to check them out, and Mowbray's. He realized how long it was since Giles had gone for his 'breath of air'.

The technician was back through the glass door and had sat again and swivelled his chair to face the equipment that brought in the signals. The technicians were all younger men and women, in love with their gear, and he wondered if they had hearts, read the signals they deciphered and cared.

His mind was fogged. On the screen where before had been the blown-up map of the Mierzeja Wislana sand spit, which became the Baltijskaja Kosa on Russian territory, there was now a cartoon head and shoulders, crudely drawn as if at the kitchen table by Giles's grandson, then left unfinished as if the child had lost interest. The cartoon's head was an empty circle. No eyes, no ears, no mouth, no features. Why had Peter Giles drawn it while he'd slept? So long ago, a lifetime, Rupert bloody Mowbray's voice had boomed: 'Thank you for your anecdote from Grozny. An interrogator is called back to Moscow…will now be at the base at Baltiysk…a man of importance, of authority. An unknown face filled the screen. Giles had said: It's the little people's turn to take charge. Bertie Ponsford needed to share his burden.

Through the intercom link he told the technician that he was off to find Mr Giles. 'Won't be long.'

Ponsford took the lift up to the atrium floor. Some of the smokers used the terraces above the Thames at the back of the building for a 'breath of air', others preferred the fire escapes; a few went out through the electronic gates at the front, swiped their cards and huddled in the driveway. The atrium, silent except for a single polishing machine, was to Ponsford like any American chain hotel before it woke — a Holiday Inn or a Marriott — empty of soul, devoid of heart. They stayed in such hotels when they went 'across the pond' to make a pretence that a Special Relationship existed. Did it, hell. He gazed around among the tall pot plants. It was a barren place, and it was his life…soulless, heartless, barren…the working home of Bertie Ponsford.

He went on to the terraces. In the shadows a couple crouched, then parted, and eyed him with hostility. He looked at all the rails, at the benches, and into other shadows. Christ, were they actually screwing? He wondered if he knew them, then wished them bon voyage. They'd have been from the recently expanded Afghan Desk, the cocky crowd, newly important, and the time difference for their theatre meant there was always a night shift fully rostered. Bloody hell, having a ride on the terraces…

Methodically, he checked the fire escapes. He came back into the atrium and walked to the main entrance. He knew all the names of the older night staff who manned the principal doors of the building. If he spoke to them, used their given names, they beamed proudly — and Ponsford felt popular. He had almost forgotten why he had started out on this night mission through the dull-lit, hushed building. On the Service's business, two men were down.

'Morning, Mr Ponsford.'

They were all either from a Guards regiment or were paratroop veterans or had served with the Marines. They wore crisp uniforms with pride, with medal ribbons, and he could have shaved off the reflection from their shoes. He knew that one and all of them had hated the move from the shabbiness of Century House to the Yankee cleanliness of Vauxhall Bridge Cross.

'Hello, Clarence — you can help me. Have you seen Mr Giles?'

'Not since he left, sir.'

'No, no…he was just going for a breath of air.'

'I don't think so, sir. Had his coat on, and his hat, and had his briefcase. Said he was going home, sir.'

Ponsford held the wall for support. He seemed to hear a rasping, angry whine. He refused to — damn well would not — accept that the whine was from the polishing machine's motor. A chainsaw's engine pierced his mind, and the fog cleared. A chainsaw, with a big bloody blade, would cut a firebreak.

'You staying on, sir?'

'Yes, I am, Clarence,' he said, sucking the breath through his teeth.

'Big show, sir, is it? Don't see many of them, these days.' The old soldier laughed. 'But you're not going to tell me, sir, are you?'

'No, no…I'm not.'

He turned away from the main entrance, through which his longstanding friend, Peter Giles, had gone. They'd been on the same induction course and had gone up the ladder together. And now the beggar had run for safety — each man for himself — had scuttled behind the firebreak. He went back to the lift that would take him down, again, to the War Room. If those who had survived, and Ferret, were going to make it out they would be close to the beach by now. The ratchet of the chainsaw's teeth clamoured in his head.