Archangel

Gerald Seymour
Prologue

The Aeroflot was eighty minutes late.

For 'operational reasons', the girl at Information explained. Eighty minutes late out of Moscow, and she had that sweet Swiss haughty stare which seemed to say that he was lucky the damn thing was airborne at all.

Alan Millet stood close to a television monitor screen that would tell him when the Ilyushin was on final approach. He might seem calm, but it was a sham. He was nervous and excited.

The passenger would be in the back seat of the tourist section, in the centre of three, with Security on either side.

Sometimes the passenger was handcuffed for the length of the flight, sometimes only until it had left Soviet airspace, sometimes just up the aircraft steps at Sheremetyevo.

He looked at his watch. There was time for another coffee, but he had already been three times to the coffee shop. He would wait. He would watch the passengers as they came through the silent-opening glass doors. His passenger would not be delayed by baggage collection. Just a grip bag, a holdall, or a plastic sack. There wasn't much to bring, where this one was coming from. The Security men would stay on the aircraft, and there would be some insult or jibe, then their noses would be back into their magazines, the stewardesses would bring them another drink, and they would prepare themselves for four hours flying time back to Moscow.

Letters and figures raced across the width of the monitor screen. The Aeroflot was announced. He felt a dribble of sweat on the skin at his back.

It was good of the Deputy Under Secretary to have sent him. There could have been a Consul despatched from the Berne embassy, there could have been a local Century staffer. Better that it was Alan Millet, that it should be he who sealed the file on Michael Holly.

Alan Millet had thought many times of Michael Holly in the months since those first sparse reports had seeped into Century House from the camps at Barashevo. It had seemed so bright, so promising, the opening of the Holly file. But the brightness had been scrubbed clear and all because a man had been struck by coronary failure in his cell in a London gaol.

Millet lit a cigarette, drew once on it, dropped it, and crushed it under his foot. He walked towards the 'Arrivals' door. It would not be hard to identify the passenger.