Firefox Down

ONE: Down

Beginning…

The Firefox crossed the Norwegian coast eighty thousand feet above the Tanafjord. The on-board computer issued instructions to the auto-pilot for the first predetermined change of course. The aircraft banked. Mitchell Gant watched the curve of the earth far below him tilt and then reassert itself. Above him, the sky darkened almost to black. It was empty. He was entirely alone.

Beginning to relax…

The shower of turning, bright, sun-caught metal leaves, falling out of the tumult of smoke that a moment earlier had been the second Firefox, returned to flash upon a screen at the back of his mind. A white ball of flame, then erupting, boiling black smoke, then the spiralling, falling pieces, then the empty clean sky.

Nausea diminishing, almost gone. Hands almost not shaking now as they rested on his thighs. Left cheek's tic — he waited, counting the seconds — still now.

He had done it. He had won. He was able to form the thoughts with calm, precise, satisfying clarity. He had done it. He had won. And, like an undercurrent, he admitted another idea — he was still alive.

The Firefox banked once more, the scimitar-edge of the earth's surface tilted again, then levelled. The aircraft had begun its complex zig-zag across Finland, en route to its rendezvous with the commercial flight from Stockholm to Heathrow. In the infra-red shadow of the airliner, he would be hidden as he crossed the North Sea to RAF Scampton, where Aubrey the Englishman would be waiting for him with Charlie Buckholz from the CIA. Two men whose orders had placed him in continual danger for the past three days. Two men who had given him…? He let the thought go. He didn't owe them. They owed him.

The congratulations… he wanted those. The unconcealable smiles and gestures of satisfaction, even of surprise and relief. They owed him all of those.

The other faces came back, then, as if to lessen and spoil the moment. Baranovich, Pavel, Semelovsky, Kreshin — Fenton's broken face on the wet embankment of the Moskva river. All of them dead. All of them willingly dead, except for Fenton, simply to put him in physical conjunction with the Firefox. This…

His hands smoothed the controls, like the hands of a man buying his first new car and expressing his awed sense of ownership. He touched the instrument panel in front of him, he read the Machmeter — Mach 0.9. His speed would remain below Mach 1. He had no wish to trail a betraying sonic boom across Finland. The altimeter displayed 60,000 feet. The Firefox was dropping slowly towards its rendezvous altitude through the dark blue empty sky.

He didn't want to entertain the faces, and they slipped from his mind. It was all becoming unreal; hard to understand that it was no more than three days since he had arrived at Moscow's Cheremetievo airport disguised as Orton the Canadian businessman and suspected drug-trafficker. There was, increasingly, only now, this moment. He owned the moment as he owned the aircraft. The Firefox was his. In perhaps less than two hours he would have to surrender it to others — to men who could never, in a million years, fly it. It would be examined, tested, dismantled, reduced to a hollow shell; finally shipped in crates in the belly of a Hercules across the Atlantic. But now, it was his airplane. In two hours, also, he would begin his own decline, his return to the anonymity, the emptiness of what he had been before Buckholz had resurrected him.

He wanted to cry out against it, for his sake, for the sake of the airplane. Instead, he squashed the thought like a beetle. Not now, not yet -

In the mirror, the sky was dark blue behind him. The cloud-layer was far below him. The curve of the earth fell away on either side of the aircraft. He was utterly detached from the globe beneath. A stream of sparkling diamonds rushed away like the tail of a comet behind the Firefox, like the wake of a swan he had once seen lifting from a lake at evening. Sparkling water…

The aircraft's nose eased round a few degrees as the Firefox automatically altered course once more. The stream of diamond droplets altered with it. Tinker Bell, he thought, remembering the darkened, whispering, escape-from-his-father movie theatre in Clarkville and the petulant sprite and her Disney trail of gleaming dust. His mother always gave him money for the movies saved from her meagre housekeeping, if she knew his father had been drinking, though there was rarely the extra for popcorn. By the time the main feature ended, his father might have fallen into a drunken sleep.

And then he knew. His heart and stomach seemed stunned by a physical blow. Fuel droplets, escaping into the thin cold atmosphere. A broken necklace of fuel droplets -

Frantically he flicked switches, read the gauges and flow-meters, made the calculations with a frozen, horrified sense of urgency. Before he had noticed, before it had dawned on him, the tanks were almost dry. He gripped the control column, but did not move it. It helped to still his shaking hands and forearms. He guessed what must have happened. The fuselage and the tanks had been punctured during the dogfight. Either that or the second Firefox had ruptured one of the fuel-lines with cannon fire. Even one of the falling metal leaves from the exploding aircraft might have done it.

He knew that he would never make landfall in England. Perhaps not even in Norway. A safe landing? Perhaps nowhere. The calculations were horrifyingly simple. At his present speed, he had less than twenty-five minutes' flying time left. Much less, because of the fuel he was still losing. The rate of loss he could not accurately measure. He could not stop it. Twenty-five minutes…? As little as ten…?

The cloud-layer seemed a long, long way beneath him. The Firefox would drop towards and through it into a frozen wilderness. At first, the clouds would be light, gauzy, slipping past the cockpit like curtains brushed aside. Then the light would go. Greyness would thicken until he broke through to the snow that lay beneath. Trees would rush endlessly beneath the Firefox's belly as it glided on empty tanks. Finally, the airplane would run out of supporting air, as if it had gained weight, and the trees would brush against its flanks and belly. They would snap at first, then their strength in succession and combination would snap the wings, pull the Firefox into the ground.

By that time, he would have ejected. In order to die of frostbite and exposure. He would freeze to death in Finnish Lapland. All this he knew, and despite his fierce grip on the control column, his forearms quivered. His body felt weak, helpless. And filled with a self-accusation that burned him. He should have checked. After the dogfight he should have checked! He had been caught like a rookie pilot on his first solo flight.

His mistake had killed him. He was almost out of fuel, despite the mockery with which the two huge Turmansky turbo-jets behind him continued to roar as violently as ever. The noise was like their own, last protest -

Fifty-two thousand feet.

What? Where?

He couldn't land the Firefox in neutral Finland, that had been made clear to him from the beginning. Never, under any circumstances… Nor Sweden, because of the same neutrality. There was only Norway. But where? Bardufoss was far to the north-west by now — he was well south of Kirkenes. Both of those airfields were, effectively, closed to him by distance.

Oslo was hundreds of miles ahead of him still.

Did he have more than twenty minutes left? He could not believe he did.

The Firefox's nose nudged round as the aircraft altered course once more, mockingly obedient to its computer instructions. A chicken with its head cut off, still running.

What — ?

He glanced down at the map strapped to his knee. He released the control column with his right hand, stilled its quivering, and estimated distances. Kirkenes was less than ten miles from the Soviet border with Norway. Bardufoss was perhaps another hundred miles further from his present position, but it was a NATO base.

How — ?

Climb.

Climb, he thought, climb, climb… The sweat ran freely down his arms and sides. His whole body arched in a sigh of relief. His facemask was misty when he finally exhaled. Zoom climb. As he had done before, before he found the ice-floe and the American submarine with its priceless cargo of fuel. Climb.

He hesitated for no more than a moment, then switched off the auto-pilot and cancelled the on-board computer's instructions. Once more, Gant controlled the Firefox. Out over the Arctic Ocean, ignorant of the location and nature of the rendezvous, he had had to glide on over the sea, slowly dropping towards it, the Arctic ice-cap white on his horizon. Now, he knew the distances, he could calculate the length of his glide. He would make it.

He moved the control column and the Firefox banked, altering course for Bardufoss airfield. Altitude, forty-nine thousand feet. He pulled back on the column and eased the throttles forward, wincing as he did so; then he recalculated. Seventeen minutes' flying time left to him. The engines roared steadily. He lifted the nose further. The sky was dark blue almost deepening to black ahead of him. And empty. Gant felt competence return, an almost-calm. Every panic was shorter now. He came out of his helplessness more and more quickly each time. He would make it -

The aircraft began to climb. He had to assume virtually empty tanks by the time he reached Bardufoss. To glide the whole distance, he would require an altitude of more than one hundred and thirty thousand feet. Once he reached the required altitude, he would set up the engines for maximum range. Then all that remained to him was to fly until the engines failed through lack of fuel. Bardufoss was — he tapped at the tiny keyboard of the inertial navigator display, summoning a distance-to-target readout. Almost at once, the dark green screen declared in glowing red — Bardufoss was two hundred and twenty-four-point-six miles away. He calculated his best speed to be two hundred and sixty knots. Even if the engines suddenly cut at one hundred and thirty-two thousand feet, gliding at that speed he would make it all the way.

He watched, edgy as a feeding bird, as the altimeter needle ascended through the fifties, then the sixties — seventy-two, seventy-four thousand. The sky darkened; deep purple-blue. Almost space. Eighty. He listened to the Turmansky engines. They roared steadily, healthily. Eighty-four, eighty-six…

Come on, come on -

His left hand twitched on the throttles, and he had to restrain himself from pushing them forward. It was an illusion. His speed was OK, all he needed to reach the required altitude.

Ninety-eight thousand feet. Purple-black above and ahead and around. The curve of the earth was evident even in the mirror. One-zero-nine.

The engine note remained steady, comforting. Not quite empty. One hundred and twenty thousand. Almost there, almost…

He pulled back the throttles, retaining only sufficient power to keep the generators functioning. He almost heard the thin, upper-atmosphere slipstream outside the cockpit. The Firefox quivered in its flow as he began his glide.

Yes. He'd make it now. They'd need the new Arrestor Barrier at Bardufoss to help him brake. He'd have no reverse thrust by the time he arrived. The last of the fuel was trailing behind him now in a thin crystal stream.

It didn't matter. Then a warning noise bleeped in his headset. He saw that two bright blips of light had appeared on his passive radar screen. Two aircraft, climbing very fast towards him. The power used in the zoom climb must have betrayed his position to infra-red. Two jets, small and fast enough to be nothing else but high-level interceptors. The closest one was already through ninety-five thousand feet and still climbing at more than Mach 2.

Foxbats. Had to be. MiG-25s. And if they were Foxbat-Fs, they had a high enough ceiling to reach him. Two of them. Closing.

He could see them now, far below him. Gleaming.

The read-out confirmed contact time at six seconds.

The windows in the fuselage of the Tupolev Tu-144, the Russian version of the Concorde, were very small, no larger than tiny, oblong portholes. Nevertheless, Soviet Air Force General Med Vladimirov could see, in the clear, windy afternoon sunlight, the crumpled, terrified figure of KGB Colonel Kontarsky being escorted from the main security building towards the small MiL helicopter which would return him to Moscow. In the moment of the destruction of the second prototype Firefox, KGB Chairman Andropov had remembered the subordinate who had failed, and given the order for his transfer to the Lubyanka prison. His dismissive, final tone had been as casual as the whisking away of a noisy insect. Watching the defeated and fearful Kontarsky climbing into the interior of the green helicopter, Vladimirov witnessed an image of his own future; bleak, filled with disgrace and insult, and short.

He turned reluctantly to look back into the cigar-shaped room that was the Soviet War Command Centre. The map-table was unlit and featureless. Already a box of matches, a packet of cigarettes, a full ashtray, an untidy sheaf of decoded signals had invested the smooth grey surface. It was a piece of equipment for which there was no further use. The personnel of the command centre remained at their posts, seated before consoles, encoders, avionics displays, computer terminals. Motionless. Machines no longer of use. Air Marshal Kutuzov leaned his elbows on the map-table. The Soviet First Secretary of the Party stood at attention, strong hands clasped together behind his back, pinching the coat-tail of his grey suit into creases. His head was lifted to the low, curving ceiling of the room, cocked slightly on one side. He listened as if to music.

The only sound in the room, loud enough to mask the hum of radios and encoding consoles, was Tretsov's voice. The First Secretary had ordered the tapes of Tretsov's last moments to be replayed, almost as if he could edit them, alter their message, create victory rather than defeat. Despite himself, Vladimirov listened as Tretsov died in playback. The command centre was hot. He was certain of it. It was not himself nor the rush of anticipation through him, it was the ambient temperature. The air-conditioning must have failed. He was hot.

'I'm behind him… I'm on his tail… careful, careful… he's doing nothing, he's given up…' It was the excitement of a boy regaling his parents with the highlights of a school football match in which he had scored the final, winning goal. 'Nothing… he's beaten and he knows it…' Caution, caution, Vladimirov's thoughts repeated. He had silently yelled the thought the instant he heard the tone of delight in the young test-pilot's voice. The boy thought he had a kill, had already counted Gant a dead man, had begun to see the hero's reception… caution. Even had he shouted the word into the microphone, it would have been too late. Tretsov would have been dead before he heard him. Caution… 'I've got- '

That had been the end of it. A crackle of static and then silence. Total and continuing, leaking from the receiver as palpably as sound. Tretsov had not known Gant, had not understood him and the American had fooled him. He had triggered the tail decoy, in all probability, and one of Tretsov's huge air intakes had greedily swallowed the incandescent ball. 'I've got — ' the tape repeated. Not quite the end. Only the moment when. Vladimirov had known it was the end. He'd sensed the change of tone before the last words. 'Oh God' the tape shrieked, making Vladimirov wince once more, hunch into himself. The static scratched like the painful noise of fingernails drawn slowly down a pane of glass, and then the silence began leaking into the hot command centre once more. Oh God — !

'Switch it off- switch it off!' Vladimirov snapped in a high, strained voice. 'Damn, do you want to revel in it? The boy's dead.'

The First Secretary turned slowly to face Vladimirov. His large, square face seemed pinched into narrowness. His wide nostrils were white with anger, his eyes heavily lidded.

'A communications failure,' he announced. Even Andropov beyond him seemed surprised and perplexed.

'No,' Vladimirov announced tiredly, shaking his head. 'The boy is dead. The second Firefox no longer exists.'

'How do you know that?' Vladimirov could sense the large hands clenching tightly behind the First Secretary's back.

'Because I know the American. Tretsov was… too eager. Gant probably killed him by using the tail decoy.'

'What?'

'Tretsov's aircraft ate a ball of fire and exploded! Couldn't you hear the horror in his voice? There was nothing he could do about it!'

A moment of silence. Andropov's features, especially the pale eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, advised caution, even apology. But Vladimirov experienced the courage of outrage and failure. His own — future was not something he could rationally contemplate or protect.

Then, in a calm, steely voice, the First Secretary said, 'And you, General Vladimirov? What can you do about it?'

Behind the Russian leader, the shoulders of a young radio operator were stiff with tension. The back of the man's neck and his ears were red. In the distance Vladimirov heard the helicopter bearing the arrested Kontarsky lift into the midday sky and drone away from Bilyarsk. Vladimirov was aware of the awesome, complete power he had held until a few moments before, and which had disappeared with the second Firefox, and then he moved swiftly to the dull surface of the map-table, his hands sweeping the ashtray, the matches, the batch of signals onto the floor. Cigarette butts spilled near the First Secretary's shining black shoes, and the ashtray rolled beneath the chair of an encoding console operator, who flinched.

'Give me North Cape and Norway — quickly!' he snapped. The operator of the map-table's computer terminal was galvanised into frantic typing at his keyboard. The dull grey faded, the blue Of the sea, the green and brown of a country — Norway — glowed, flickered, then resolved into sharpness. The operator typed in the dispositions of aircraft and ships and submarines without instruction. The First Secretary and the Chairman of the KGB both remained aloof from the map.

Vladimirov noted the positions of the missile cruiser Riga, the Red Banner Northern Fleet hunter-killer submarines, the 'Wolf-pack' squadrons aloft. They remained concentrated in the area west of North Cape.

Where? he asked himself. Where now? He's refuelled… all he needs is friendly airspace.

The long backbone of Norway stretched from top to bottom of the map, a twisted spine of mountains. Like the Urals, Vladimirov thought. He used the Urals to mask his exit — would he use the mountains again? Perhaps -

'Any reports?' he snapped. He could not be blind again, rush at this. 'Any visual sightings, infra red — ?'

'No, sir- '

'Nothing, Comrade General — '

'No-'

The chorus was infinitely depressing. However, as he glanced up, it seemed to satisfy Andropov in particular. The KGB's failure to protect the prototype Firefox was well in the past; forgotten, avoidable now. Vladimirov had volunteered himself as the ultimate scapegoat.

'Very well.' Kutuzov's watery old eyes had warned him. Expressed something akin to pity, too, and admiration for his recklessness. But he could not prevent himself. This contest was as real and immediate as if he were flying a third Firefox himself against the American. He would not surrender. He was challenged by perhaps the best pilot he had ever encountered to fulfil his reputation as the Soviet Air Force's greatest and most innovative strategist. Gant had declared the terms of the encounter, and Vladimirov had accepted them.

He was on the point of suggesting incursions into Norwegian airspace. His voice hesitated just as his hand hovered above the spine of Norway glowing beneath the surface of the map-table. And perhaps the hesitation saved him — at least, prolonged his authority.

'Something, sir…' one of the operators murmured, turning in his chair, one hand clutching the earpiece of his headset. His face wore a bright sheen of delight. Vladimirov sensed that the game had begun again. 'Yes, sir — visual contact — visual contact.' It was the eager, breathless announcement of a miracle. The operator nodded as he listened to the report they could not hear. His right hand scribbled furiously on a pad.

'Cabin speaker!' Vladimirov snapped. The operator flicked a switch. Words poured from the loudspeaker overhead, a brilliant excited bird-chatter. The First Secretary's eyes flicked towards the speaker. Heads lifted slowly, like a choir about to sing. Vladimirov suppressed a grin of almost savage pleasure.

There was surprise, too, of course. And gratitude. He had hesitated for a moment, and the moment had proven fateful. He would have said Norway — even now the country lay under his gaze and his hands like a betrayal — and it would have been an error. Gant was over Finland; neutral innocent Finland. At one hundred and thirty thousand feet — why? And he'd been picked up visually and trailed by two MiG-25 Foxbats, at high altitude themselves. Now he had climbed almost to his maximum ceiling. Why was he at such an extreme altitude? Contact time a matter of seconds… orders required… Vladimirov blessed the young map operator who had typed in new instructions. The twisted spine of Norway disappeared. The land mass fattened, blurred, then resolved. Finland, Swedish Lapland and northern Norway occupied the area of the map-table. Orders? What — ?

His eyes met the steady, expectant, even amused gaze of the First Secretary. Everyone in the room understood the narrowness of his escape from an irredeemable blunder. Andropov was smiling thinly, in mocking appreciation.

'Sir!'

'Yes?' he answered hoarsely.

'An AWACS Tupolev has picked up the two Foxbats. We — '

'Bleed in the present position — quickly!'

Then he waited. Contact time diminishing, split-seconds now… Gant still climbing but he must have seen them by now… orders required… engage? What was that?

'Repeat that!' the First Secretary ordered before Vladimirov could utter the same words. The order was transmitted, and the voice of the Foxbat pilot repeated the information. Fuel droplets — a thin stream of fuel! Gant had a serious fuel-leak. He had climbed to that extreme altitude in order to stretch his fuel, and to be able to glide when the fuel ran out. Just as he must have done to find the submarine and the ice-floe. 'Engage!'

'No!' Vladimirov shouted. The First Secretary glared at him, his mouth twisted with venom. He took a single step towards the map-table. The positions of the two MiG-25s glowed as a single bright white star on the face of Finnish Lapland. Vladimirov's cupped hand stroked towards the pinpoint of light and beyond it into Russia. 'No,' he repeated. 'We can bring him back — we can bring him back! Don't you see?'

'Explain — hold that order.' The two men faced each other across the surface of the map. The colours of sea and land shone palely on their features, mottling them blue and brown and green. 'Explain.'

Vladimirov's hands anticipated his tongue. They waved and chopped over the glowing surface of Lapland. Then his right forefinger stabbed at the white star that represented the two MiG-2 5s.

'There,' he said. 'They are two seconds away…' The First Secretary's face was expressionless as Vladimirov looked up for an instant. Then the Soviet general, one lock of silver hair falling across his intently creased high forehead, spoke directly to the map-table. 'It's already beginning… they'll peel away and return without a definite order… they're good pilots…' They have to be, he thought — to be in their squadron. The aircraft are advanced Foxbat-Fs, the next best thing to the Firefox itself. 'The border is here…' The finger stabbed, again and again, as if an ant on the surface of the table persisted in maintaining life. 'Less than a hundred miles… minutes of flying time at the most. They can shepherd him!' He looked up once more. Puzzlement. The Russian leader's thoughts were seconds behind his own. 'Look — they can do this with him…' Once more, his hand swept across the map, ushering the white star towards the red border, away from dotted blue lakes to more dotted blue lakes — Soviet lakes. For a split-second, Vladimirov remembered reading the samizdat of Solzhenitsyn's short story of the lake guarded by barbed wire that represented his country, then he shook his head and dismissed the image.

His voice was unchanged as he continued. 'It will take clever flying, but I'm certain it can be done. Once he's across the border, then he can be brought down. He's almost out of fuel, I'm sure of that, he will have to land. We can shepherd him straight into an airfield… one of ours.'

He looked up. The First Secretary was, for the moment, dazzled. He nodded eagerly. Vladimirov listened. Over the speaker, the leading pilot of the two Foxbats was reporting the peel-off and the encroaching return. Contact time, four seconds.

'Shepherd — repeat, shepherd,' he snapped. A remote mike had been patched in. They could hear him direct. 'You know the procedure-it's… ninety miles and no more to the border-bring him home!' He grinned as the second of hesitation passed and the leading pilot acknowledged with a chuckle in his voice. Then he studied the map before ordering: 'Patch me into all forward border squadron commanders — all of them. And to flight leaders of "Wolfpack" squadrons already in the air. Every commander and flight leader who can give me a Foxbat-F.' He looked up at the Russian leader — beyond his shoulder the light glinted from Andropov's glasses but Vladimirov ignored any signal they might be transmitting — and smiled confidently. 'We'll put up everything we have that can reach that altitude,' he announced. The American will feel like the last settler left alive inside the circle of the wagon-train!'

The First Secretary seemed to remember the old cowboy-and-Indian films which, as the child of a prominent Party member, he would have been privileged to see, and laughed.

Vladimirov looked down at the map once more, and breathed deeply. It would take constant dialogue with the two pilots, instantaneous communications, if he was to supervise the recapture of the MiG-31. But, he could do it — yes. It would take perhaps eight or ten minutes' flying for any other MiGs to reach Gant. The two Foxbats would be working alone — but they would be sufficient, he assured himself. No other aircraft could achieve that altitude except another Foxbat-F. And there were only the two of them in the area. The map, with its clearly-marked border and the slowly-moving white dot of the routine Early Warning Tupolev Tu-126 'Moss' aircraft travelling southwards along its snaking line, confirmed his optimism.

For a moment, as the two Foxbats at more than Mach 1.5 had peeled away from the Firefox, the single white dot that represented them had become a double sun. Now, the separate lights had once more become a single white star.

They had come sweeping up towards him, then past and above. He had loosed neither of the remaining advanced Anab missiles, slung one beneath each wing; suppressing the mental command to fire with a certain, decisive violence of reaction. The two Foxbats had broken their unity, peeling away in opposite directions and dropping away from the purple-blue towards the globe below like exhausted shuttlecocks. Then, finally, they had begun to climb again, almost touching wings as if joining hands. Aiming at him like darts. Contact time — four seconds. Their speed was slower now, as if they had been advised to the utmost caution. Gant was fiercely aware once more of the two remaining air-to-air missiles. Two MiGs, advanced Foxbat-Fs, two missiles. Fuel — critical.

Unlike the Foxbats, he had the fuel neither to fight nor to run. He had to wait, just as he suspected the two Russian pilots were themselves waiting for orders.

They bobbed up to port and starboard of him like corks on the surface of invisible water, slightly above him at one hundred and twenty-five thousand feet and hanging, like him, apparently suspended from the purple blackness above. On his screen they had converged to a single glow and at the extreme edge the dot of the slow moving AWACS plane patrolling the Soviet-Finnish border continued its flight. He had been aware of it when he began his climb, and had smiled in the secure knowledge that he was invisible to it. Now, however, it could see the two Foxbats. His position was known — to everyone.

The fear passed quickly, surprising him by its feeble hold; delighting him, too. He accepted his role. He had to wait until they attacked… One twenty-two thousand feet. His slow flight north-west had begun, but now he would not be allowed to continue. His hand gripped the throttle-levers, but he did not move them either backward or forward. Slowly, as if tired, the Firefox continued to descend.

He looked to port and starboard. The two Foxbats were sliding gently in towards him. Each of the pilots was engaged in a visual scan. By now they knew he had only two missiles. By now, they knew he had a fuel leak, and they would have guessed at the reason for his altitude. They would be confident… Orders and decisions would be crackling and bleeping in their headsets. Not long now. Gant armed the weapons systems, switched on the firing circuits, calculated his remaining flying time. He knew he would have to use the engines, use all remaining fuel, to escape the Foxbats.

The Foxbat to starboard, no more than two hundred yards from him, was now in sharp profile, Gant waited, beginning to sweat, his mind coldly clear. The Fbxbat loomed on his right, and yawed slightly towards him. Cannon fire flashed ahead of him as the Russian plane slid across and below the level of the cockpit sill and he lost sight of it. He flung the Firefox to port -

Flickers of flame at the wingtips from the cannon, the Foxbat in profile, the savage lurch of the sky, a glimpse of the port Foxbat maintaining its course, then he was below it and levelling out, watching the radar. Two dots. He watched the mirror, the radar, the sky ahead of him, the mirror, the radar, the sky…

Bobbing corks. They were on either side of him again as he flew level, the distant dot of the AWACS Tupolev now in the corner of his screen, ahead of him.

He glanced to port and starboard. He could see the pilots. He watched them as they watched him. He understood what they had witnessed. He'd dropped away from the cannon fire rather than dived. He had confirmed his fear of empty tanks as clearly as if he had spoken to them.

Port, starboard, port, starboard… Gant's head flicked from side to side. With each movement, his eyes glanced across the instrument panel, registering the dials and screens minutely as if they were small, precise physical sensations on his skin or at his fingertips. He waited for movement. Between them, he knew himself to be safe from the AA-6 missiles. They were too close to one another to be certain of hitting only him. It would be when one of them dropped away suddenly that the other would launch a missile.

Yet they remained level.

Ninety-nine thousand now. They'd followed his slow descent exactly paralleling his course. He could try to stretch them, exceed their ceiling, yet knew he would not… he had calculated that he dare not afford the fuel. Ninety-five thousand feet, still descending… They remained with him, long slim bodies dropping from the darkening arch of the sky. Twenty miles above the earth.

Ninety-four thousand feet… three-fifty… three…

The port Foxbat-F slid towards him like a huge animal turning lazily to crush him, enlarging alongside and over him, its shadow falling across the cockpit, across the instruments, the sunlight gleaming from its closing flank -

He saw the black visor of the pilot's helmet, and understood the man's hand signals. He was being ordered to follow the Soviet fighter and to land inside Russia. Alter course… follow me… land, the hand signals read. Gant watched the pilot's turned head. He waved acceptance, his body tensing as he did so. Had he delayed sufficiently? Would his acceptance appear genuine?

He waited.

Then the Foxbat banked to its left and began a shallow descent. Gant saw it gradually accelerate. The second Foxbat remained to starboard of him, as if wary of some trick. He dipped the nose of the Firefox, following the Russian aircraft. Then he gave the command. The port wing quivered and he saw the flame at the tail of the Anab missile as it sprang ahead of him. It dropped away with terrible quickness, pursuing the descending Foxbat. Its trail quivered like the tail of an eager dog as it sought and found the heat emissions from the Foxbat and locked onto them. Gant banked fiercely to prevent the second Foxbat manoeuvring behind him. He glimpsed the engines of the descending Foxbat flare and the plane flick up and away, standing on its tail. The speed of the tactic shook loose the trailing missile. The aircraft was already perhaps three miles from the Firefox. The missile continued its now-wavering course downwards. It would run out of fuel thousands of feet from the ground.

Gant pulled back on the control column and eased the throttles forward, beginning to climb again. He had, he realised, committed himself. He could not, with the slightest certainty of success, complete his flight to Norway. But he would not be shepherded back to Russia.

The Foxbat was closing again, its white dot moving back swiftly towards the centre of his screen. The second Foxbat had done no more than remain with him, exactly duplicating his fierce bank and levelling out, popping up again to starboard and beginning to climb with him. It remained apparently passive, as if its companion had, like a child, run to play and was now returning to a complacent parent. Evidently, neither pilot had orders to fire, to destroy, unless, no doubt, he failed to comply with their instructions, or attempted to elude them.

Bobbing cork, and the second Foxbat-F had already turned, closed up and resumed its position on his port wing. One hundred and fifteen thousand feet.

The AWACS plane was on the Soviet side of the border. The border was less than seventeen miles away. He understood what they were doing. He had run between them, cautiously and yet with as little choice as a sheep between two dogs. He was almost back in the Soviet Union. He pulled back on the throttles and levelled out, then pushed the control column gently forward, dipping the nose of the Firefox. Like mirror-images, though silver not black, the two Foxbats dipped their noses in unison, beginning to descend with him.

Fifteen miles…

One hundred and eight thousand feet…

The two Foxbats were like slim, dangerous silver fish swimming downwards with him. Once again, he imagined he could hear the noise of the slipstream against the canopy, much as if he had been hang-gliding. The wingtip of the starboard Foxbat wobbled, reinforcing the impression of fragility, of slow-motion — of powerlessness.

He flung the Firefox into a tight roll, the globe and sky exchanging places with wrenching suddenness, and slowed the aircraft. When the horizon re-established itself, he was behind and only slightly to starboard of one of the Foxbats. He glanced around -

The port Foxbat had imitated his roll and drop in speed. He saw it gleam in his rear mirror. He was boxed again, and fear surfaced for a moment as he realised he had made himself a sitting target. Then the Russian aircraft drew level again to starboard. The pilot waved, as if they had been practising for an air display.

Twelve miles…

Ninety-seven thousand feet. Cloud lay like a carpet far below; the air was perceptibly bluer. Eleven and a half miles to target. The AWACS plane was still maintaining its border patrol, passing slowly across his screen. Nothing else showed, but Gant knew that the border squadrons would be waiting for the order to scramble. Once airborne, they would be only minutes away. When they came they would buzz around him like flies, hemming him in.

The port Foxbat banked slightly, slipping across the intervening space, casting its shadow on the cockpit of the Firefox. He watched it settle into a position directly over him, no more than a hundred feet above. As they dropped lower, the Foxbat increased the rate of its descent, pressing as palpably as a flat-iron towards him. He increased his own rate of descent, cursing but impotent.

Clever. Good pilots. Armed with eight AA-6 missiles.

Nine miles — eighty thousand feet.

The three aircraft slid downwards… seconds passed… seventy thousand feet… seconds passed… seven miles…

Clever, the mind behind it, the orders being issued, Gant thought, and the silence of his cockpit pressed upon him like the form of the Russian fighter above. UHF -

He switched on the UHF set, his fingers hesitating until he recognised the button for the search facility. A red dot stuttered and flashed, then steadied as the search was completed.

A voice, speaking in Russian, crackled in his ears. Gant pressed the lock-on button. It was one of the two Foxbat pilots replying to an instruction. Gant smiled. It was one of the most secret tactical channels with variable frequencies used by the Soviet Air Force. The red dot stuttered as the frequency altered, perhaps two or three times a second. But the signal was constant.

'Bring him lower,' he heard; the voice of the man in Bilyarsk who controlled the situation. 'Bring him right down.'

The order was acknowledged. Gant watched the form of the Foxbat above him as it inclined its nose more steeply, its speed exactly matched to his own. He dipped the nose of the Firefox obediently, preserving the distance between the two fuselages. Then the Russian aircraft slipped sideways, as if moved by no more than the airflow over it, and dropped suddenly towards him. At the same moment, his headset crackling with the voices of the two Russian pilots, the starboard Foxbat bobbed higher and sideways towards him, banking slightly. Then it, too, settled down towards him, as if the air were too thin to support its weight.

The two Russian fighters lowered gently, inexorably, towards his wingtips, as though applying pressure to snap them off. He waggled the wings, as if warding them off, wiping flies away. The headset gabbled at him, most of the Russian was too quick and distorted for him to understand. They were attempting to break his nerve.

Four miles — sixty-one thousand feet…

Then he heard the order, over the same frequency: 'Scramble designated squadrons.'

From the western margin of the Kola Peninsula, where the latest MiG interceptors were based, was no more than a few minutes' flying time at top speed. They had fuel to squander, literally squander.

He had run out of time, almost run out of distance. Two miles. He must be over the border by now, in Russia.

The two Foxbats pressed down upon him. Altitude now forty-nine thousand feet. The three aircraft were in what might have been termed a dive. The two Russian pilots had tilted him forward and down, throwing the Firefox over a cliff of air towards the cloud beneath.

Dive -

Gant thrust the control column forward, then rammed the throttles forward almost to the detent and reheat. The Firefox leapt at the cloud-layer, the huge Turmansky jets roaring. He saw the two Foxbats accelerate behind him, closing the gap he had opened. He opened the airbrakes, jolting the aircraft, then flung the Firefox into a roll and pull-through, suddenly changing the direction in which he was moving. It avoided the optimum firing position he had given them on his tail, and increased the time lag between them. He closed the airbrakes and pushed the throttles open as he came out of the pull-through. In his mirror, two abandoned stars gleamed and winked. On his screen, the white dot moved away from him. He forced his left hand to keep the throttles wide open. The silver trail of droplets sprayed out into a mist behind him. The white dot on the screen steadied, altered course by going through his own manoeuvre, and then began to struggle to regain the centre of the screen. His headset babbled in Russian, from the pilots and from Bilyarsk.

He jabbed the airbrakes out again, slowing with wrenching suddenness, rolled and pulled through, closed the brakes, and opened the throttles again. Once more, the two Foxbats were left further behind and away from his tail. He felt the suit around him resist the pressure of the G-forces. He was now travelling directly west, across the neutrality of Finland towards Norway. How much distance the tanks would still give him he did not know because he had no idea how quickly he was losing fuel in that sparkling, dazzling spray of diamonds behind him. But any distance between the Firefox and the border with Russia was good and right and necessary.

The Foxbats altered course and closed once more. Airbrakes, roll, pull-through, close brakes, throttles. He whirled like a falling sycamore pod once again.

Thirty thousand feet… twenty-five… twenty, nineteen… the figures unrolled on the altimeter. The white dot that was the two Foxbats still in close formation was steady in the lower half of his screen. No more than a mile away…

Fourteen thousand, and the sun disappeared and he was blind, the grey cloud slipping past as if his speed were tearing it like rags, but it was still thick enough to exclude the light. Ten thousand feet…

Eight, seven, six -

He used the airbrakes and closed the throttles. He pulled back on the column. The Firefox began to level out.

Four… three… two-point-seven, two-five. The white dot split into two tiny stars, and both moved nearer the centre of the screen. The headset babbled. Bilyarsk ordered the border squadrons at top speed to the last visual sighting, before he entered the cloud.

Cloud, cloud —

The Proximity Warning began to bleep again as the Foxbats closed.

Fifteen hundred feet, the glimpse of a sombre, snow-covered landscape, an horizon of low white hills, a uniformly grey sky now above him — he pulled back on the column, and nosed the Firefox back into the cloud. The world contracted, wrapping its shreds tightly around the cockpit. He slowed almost to stalling speed, feeling the adrenalin and nerves and fear and sweat catch up with his decisions. He breathed quickly and heavily enough to begin to cloud the facemask of his helmet. There was a heavy dew of sweat on his brow. The two white dots hurried towards the centre of his screen, blind but somehow confident. They would pass within a mile of him, to starboard of his present flight path. Other, new dots had appeared at the edge of the screen, like spectators spilling onto a football field. He demanded a range-to-target readout for the approaching squadrons. Then he altered the request — time-to-target. Two minutes seven-point-four, the computer read-out supplied. Then the distance between the two Foxbats increased, and Gant realised that one of them was retreating again above the cloud layer; a tactic designed to catch him by surprise if he suddenly increased altitude. He would pop out of the cloud into bright betraying sunlight, within missile range. He grinned.

He banked the Firefox, moving to intercept the other Foxbat as it continued to rush through the cloud. He armed the only remaining Anab missile, and waited. He cancelled the read-out, replacing it with information on the closing Foxbat. Range-to-target two miles, one-point-nine, one-point-seven… He activated the thought-guidance systems on the console to his left.

He would have to be right. Optimum moment. The Anabs that had been replaced by the submarine crew on the ice-floe were not equipped with a steering system linked to his thought-control capability. They were an earlier model, captured from a Foxbat in Syria. He had to rely on judgement, on selecting the exact moment. He could not guide the missile, once he launched it.

Point-nine… point eight-seven, six, five… six, fire. He formed the command precisely, in Russian, and felt the Anab drop, then flick forward. It was an orange glow in the cloud, then it disappeared. He watched the screen, the infra-red glow of the missile's exhaust slipping across the small gap of screen between himself and the Foxbat. The Russian fighter, blind in the cloud, continued to descend like a white meteorite, nothing showing on his radar.

Then the white dot suddenly altered course. The pilot's headset had yelled a warning. The orange dot encroached, neared, sidled towards… The white dot accelerated, changed course, dipped and weaved. The orange dot, like a faithful dog, ran behind, accelerated, sniffing the radar and other electronic emissions from the Foxbat, closed, dodged with the white dot, closed, closed -

A brief flare on the screen, and then there remained only the white dots of the second Foxbat above the clouds, the slowly-moving AWACS plane, and the more distant interceptors at the edge of the screen. Gant banked the Firefox, easing the throttles forward as he settled on his new heading, and began running west. Altitude three thousand feet, speed two hundred and seventy knots, fuel non-existent.

The crowd of white dots rushed towards the centre of the radar screen, towards the now-fading flare that had a moment before been an aircraft and a pilot. The cloud slipped past him, seemingly lighter and thiner.

He tensed himself for the first visual sighting when he ran out of the cloud.

The ministry car had left the M1 north of Leicester, and they had used the A46 through Newark and Lincoln to reach Scampton by lunchtime. Flat land beneath a cloud-strewn sky, the three honey-coloured towers of Lincoln Cathedral overlooking the red-roofed city, and then they were on a minor road between clipped, weather-strained hedges before arriving at the Guard Room of the RAF station.

Kenneth Aubrey had been voluble during the journey, as excited as a child on an annual holiday. To the two Americans, Buckholz and Curtin, he was tiresome in his complete and impenetrable pleasure at the success of the Firefox operation. Their passes were inspected by the guard, and then they were directed towards the CO's office.

Group Captain Bradnum was on the steps of the main administration building, two stories of red brick, and he hurried to the car as it came to a halt. Aubrey almost bounced out of the rear seat to shake his hand, his smile bordering on something as vulgar and uninhibited as a grin. Bradnum's heavy features reflected the expression he saw on Aubrey's lips. It was all right. Everything was all right.

'Well, Group Captain?' Aubrey asked archly. Buckholz and Curtin left the car with less speed and more dignity, yet with as much pleasurable anticipation.

'He must be safe by now,' Bradnum replied.

Aubrey glanced at his watch. 'The British Airways flight from Stockholm leaves in thirty minutes, I see. I presume Gant's going to be on time — mm, Charles?' He turned to Buckholz, who shrugged, then nodded. 'Oh, my apologies, Group Captain — Charles Buckholz of the the CIA, and Captain Eugene Curtin of the USN Office of Naval Intelligence.' Hands were shaken. When the formalities were over, Aubrey said, 'You said he must be safe by now. Why? Has anything happened?'

Bradnum's face was lugubrious. 'The Nimrod — at your request-was monitoring Gant's advised flight path…'

'Yes, yes,' Aubrey snapped impatiently. 'What of it?'

'Only minutes ago there was nothing in the area except a Russian AWACS plane on the Soviet side of the border with Finland.'

'And — ?'

'Now there are two Foxbat interceptors in that airspace — and a great deal of coded signal traffic, and — ' Bradnum shrugged. His mirroring of Aubrey's smile had been unwarranted, a moment away from the truth. 'Eastoe in the Nimrod claims they were climbing very fast, very positively…'

'On an interception course?'

'They're close enough to spit at the Firefox, Eastoe said.'

'Why weren't we told this?' Buckholz demanded heavily.

'It happened only minutes ago.'

'And in those minutes?'

'Eastoe's reported a great deal of manoeuvring…'

Aubrey turned away, facing south across the still-wet runways. Beyond the hangars and other buildings, beyond the flagpole and the perimeter fence, a sudden gleam of sunlight displayed the distant towers of Lincoln Cathedral on its perch of limestone. Then the towers were dulled as the watery sun disappeared behind a swiftly-moving cloud. He turned back to Bradnum.

The noise of an RAF Vulcan taking off seemed a mocking, unnecessary intrusion into the tense silence.

'I know Eastoe — what's his best guess?' Aubrey asked quietly. 'He would have one and he would have offered it, asked or no.'

Bradnum nodded. 'They've been in the tightest formation and descending very slowly for two minutes or more. He thinks the Firefox is there, too. It's too deliberate to be for no reason.'

Aubrey snapped his fingers in an inadequate expression of anger and urgency.

'We must talk to Eastoe,' he said, addressing Buckholz. 'At once. From your Ops. Room, Group Captain. Lead on, if you please.'

At the edge of eyesight, another shaft of sunlight warmly lit the distant cathedral towers. Aubrey shivered with the cold of the wind.

'What now? What now?' the First Secretary demanded. The Tupolev Tu-144 was cruising at fifty thousand feet, almost a hundred miles of the journey from Bilyarsk to Moscow already accomplished.

Vladimirov leaned heavily on the other side of the map-table, his eyes focused upon the dark-haired wrists that protruded from beneath the Russian leader's shirt cuffs. Grey hairs, too…

The report from the surviving Foxbat confirmed that visual contact with the Firefox had been lost. Gant was hidden somewhere in the twelve or thirteen thousand feet of the cloud layer. On low power, an infra-red trace would be difficult to establish, almost impossible to pinpoint and attack. Because attack would be the next order. Vladimirov knew that. For him the game was up. Deluded by the apparent passivity of the American and the success of his two Foxbat pilots, Vladimirov had fatally delayed the order to the border squadrons on the Kola Peninsula to scramble. Now, he was once more blind, the Firefox's anti-radar concealing the American. Neither the surviving Foxbat nor the AWACS Tupolev 'Moss' could detect his presence.

Vladimirov's own future remained difficult to envisage. His pride was hurt. He had lost to the American once again, and he could not forgive himself. The anger of others failed to interest him.

Eventually, he looked up at the Russian leader. The man's face was dark with habitual anger, habitual power. Threat. The image of the bully. Yet the stupid man had no ideas of his own — had no conception.

The scatter of luminous blips representing the scrambled interceptors, mainly MiG-25s and swing-wing MiG-27 Floggers, moved across the bright map towards the border with Finland. Other dots scurried south-eastwards from the west of North Cape, their contact time still six minutes away. Although no more than a futile gesture, the AWACS Tupolev had changed course to patrol the hundred miles or so of border which contained the point at which Gant would have crossed — had crossed, he reminded himself-into Russia. The single remaining Foxbat's white dot buzzed and twisted in tight little circles on the map, like an insect dying.

'In two minutes we will have eighteen, even twenty-four aircraft in the area,' Vladimirov said calmly. 'Visual contact will be re-established.'

The First Secretary sneered, then compressed his lips above his clenched jaw. When he spoke, all he said was: 'And what will you do if and when he is sighted?'

'I await your orders, Comrade First Secretary…' Vladimirov announced in a quiet, restrained voice. Behind the Russian leader, Air Marshal Kutuzov nodded with the wisdom and cowardice of great age, paining Vladimirov by his assent. Andropov smiled thinly, and flicked a little nod in the direction of the general. The gesture acknowledged the acquisition of good sense, proper caution; the priority of survival. The First Secretary appeared suspicious, then mollified.

'Very well.' He leant more closely over the surface of the map, the colours of the projectedjand mottling his features. It was a parody of knowledge apeing the strategist. The First Secretary had been a Political Commissar during the Great Patriotic War. His reputation suggested, even in the sanitised, history-book version now current, that he had killed many more Russians than he had Nazis. No, no, Vladimirov warned himself, stilling the angry tremor of his hands. You've begun it-play it out. 'Very well,' the First Secretary repeated. 'We — will wait, until our forces are in the area…' He looked to Vladimirov for approval, and the general nodded perfunctorily.

Masterly, Vladimirov announced silently and with irony. Quite masterly. Aloud, he said: 'Contact time of closest squadrons — one minute. Warn them to concentrate on infrared search. Blanket the area. Gant is virtually weaponless, and out of fuel.' Even to himself, his optimism sounded remarkably hollow. It appeared, however, to satisfy Andropov and the First Secretary.

The room was filled with the crackles and bleeps of exchanged communications. The Kola squadron flight leaders, the surviving Foxbat pilot, the AWACS captain. An energising electronic chatter. Easy to picture them, translate the moving dots into planes and men and tactics and search-patterns. His fingers circled the area where the Foxbat had been destroyed by Gant's last missile. In there, he's in there…

The First Secretary's impatience was evidently growing. To do nothing, to abdicate the display of power, was anathema to him. Vladimirov suspected that the impotence of inactivity had determined the Russian leader's order for the Tupolev to return to Moscow. The physical location of the War Command Centre was a matter of indifference to Vladimirov. The First Secretary studied the map, he glanced from face to face, he listened to the reports. He watched the red second-hand of the largest of the room's many clocks moving like a spider-leg around the white face. He watched time pass without the search locating the MiG-31. One minute… a minute and a half… two minutes… three… Vladimirov controlled his features, controlled his sense of rising body temperature.

Gant was out of fuel — he should be hugging the ground — the weather satellite shows broken cloud, he can't run around inside the cloud forever — he should be hugging the ground, making a run… when would the American's nerve break, when would he run for cover, skimming across Finland like a flat stone before his engines sighed and surrendered…?

Four minutes… four and a half… five… six…

Then: 'Got him! He's run out of cloud!' The operator had increased the volume so that the Foxbat pilot's ringing, boyish voice was audible above the cheer in the command centre. 'He's at zero feet and travelling sub-sonic, perhaps four hundred knots, no more. I'm going down!' Then, more formally, he added: 'What are your orders, Comrade General?'

'His exact position and heading!' Vladimirov snapped, then to the room at large: 'Alert the search to home in on the MiG-25 — repeat speed and altitude just — '

'Give the order to attack!' the First Secretary announced, glaring at Vladimirov. 'No more games — no strategy. Tell them to destroy the MiG-31 on sight!'

Ground-clutter, ground-clutter, clutter, ground-clutter, his mind kept repeating as the Firefox leapt at the landscape at an altitude of less than a hundred feet, the automatic pilot and the terrain-following radar preserving it from the snow-softened folds and contours of Finnish Lapland. Invisible, invisible, he chanted almost as a prayer. The clutter of images from the landscape would mask the Firefox from any searching eyes — other than those of the MiG-25F still on his tail, less than two miles behind him.

Two pilots with no more to do than choose the moment for the kill; to select, savour, review, revise, re-select the optimum moment. Two pilots — one with four AA-6 missiles, the other with cannon fire and empty tanks. Effectively, he and the pilot of the Foxbat were alone, skimming across the surface of Finnish Lapland. The squadrons of searching MiGs above them were rendered doubly blind — the anti-radar protected him, the ground-clutter masked his pursuer from assistance. The pilot of the Foxbat was transmitting a stream of positional fixes to his newly-arrived colleagues, but he was offering old news, history. The Firefox flicked, twisted, whipped through the landscape at four hundred knots — a butterfly that refused to be pinned to the card.

Until it ran out of fuel, finally…

The threat had hung over him for so long — perhaps fifteen minutes' flying time since he had first noticed his fuel state — that he had begun to disbelieve the gauges. They claimed he could have as much as six minutes' flying time left at his present speed. Yet each evasive manoeuvre squandered fuel, and even more fuel streamed away behind him. And he still could not shake the pursuing Foxbat. It followed him indefatigably. Over his headset, Gant heard the frantic but assured reports of his pursuer. There was a gap of time to be traversed, the optimum moment for the kill still lay in the future, but there was no doubt of the outcome.

He'd heard, too, the strong voice that had first addressed him after the take-off from Bilyarsk. The Soviet First Secretary. This time, he had heard it snapping orders, not addressed to him but to every particle of the pursuit. Kill, eliminate, obliterate. Destroy the MiG-31. The First Secretary's voice had cut across that of the strategist, the man who had weighed and watched and planned and guessed. The gambler. The man who, if Gant could outwit him, offered the chance of escape. He had pride and self-confidence and he believed he would win. Therein lay. the potential for error, for opening the wrong door just long enough for Gant to take his chance. But the Soviet leader's voice expressed only power, accepted only certainties. He wished to end the game — now.

Landscape, suddenly rushing at him with a new ferocity. Mountains, hills, ridges, folds. Lake Inari, the sacred lake of the Lapps, had been no more than a brief glimpse of ice-blocks, ice-sheets, snowbound wooded silent islets and the occasional glimmer of windows in sudden disappearing villages. Now the land creased and folded as if to baffle the terrain-following radar, confuse his eyesight. The Firefox bucked, nose up, then dipped again over the brow of a snow-covered hillock. Gant's stomach settled, and the pressure-suit relaxed its reassuring grip on his frame. Snow flew and boiled in the wake of the Firefox, flung up by the passage of his slipstream across the treetops. It made the rear mirror blind, but he knew that his pursuer remained behind him. Waiting for the moment to launch one of his missiles. The Foxbat would be carrying two infra-red homing missiles, and two which homed on radar. The rocket motors of the missiles were capable of propelling them at speeds far in excess of the Mach 3 that was the MiG-25's top speed. Gant knew that with full tanks he might have outrun a launched missile; but not now. He would have to wait. The range of the missiles was perhaps twelve miles. His pursuer, clear of his rearward-looking radar sensors, was less than two miles behind him.

Gant's course was north-west, towards the nearest point of the Norwegian border.

Wait-

It was all he could do. The two Turmanskys continued to roar but, at ground level, he was wasting the last of his fuel…

Wait -

Two narrow frozen lakes, smooth-surfaced, then white-clad forest, then the narrow valley of a frozen river. Snow flew and rumbled down behind him from the sides of the steep, knife-cut valley. He watched the rearward screen. He was travelling in a straight line, it was a moment of calm in the violent changes of course demanded by the landscape.

Optimum moment…?

A dot detached itself from the pursuing Foxbat, which had entered the valley. There was nothing in the mirror but rolling clouds of snow. Out of that would spring -

The AA-6 missile leapt up towards the centre of his screen, homing on his exhaust heat. A tenth-of-a-second, a fifth, a quarter… Gant's hands were still on the throttles. The right thumb had already armed the tail-decoy system. His left hand twitched on the throttle-levers. The missile moved dementedly, like a virulently-poisoned insect, coming at him at perhaps more than Mach 4. He hesitated… point-seven of a second, point-eight… point-nine -

He released the tail-decoy. Almost immediately, it ignited and the snow was a dazzling, torn-apart curtain, hurting his eyes. Then it brightened further, and he felt the shock wave of the explosion overtake him and shudder through the airframe. His teeth chattered. There was nothing on the radar except the pursuing Foxbat, which had broken to port to avoid the debris and had then dropped back into the narrow valley. It was already accelerating, too. Less than a mile and closing.

A hillock ahead. Without conscious thought, Gant cancelled the automatic pilot and terrain-following radar. He banked the Firefox to starboard, slowing his speed as he did so. The pursuing Foxbat swung left of the long, white, whale-backed hillock, and Gant knew that the pilot had made an error. He anticipated catching Gant broadside.on, an unmissable target for cannon fire or another missile. If he just hadn't slowed enough, however. Gant had time to form the thought in the second he was hidden from the Foxbat, and then he realised that the valley was a closed one. He would have to lift over the ridge, exposing the Firefox's flank to attack — he'd made the mistake, not the Russian. The hillock had tricked him. The valley wall rose in front of him. He pulled back on the control column, sweating with new fear.

The Foxbat leapt the ridge a split-second ahead of him; its pilot similarly surprised by the valley wall ahead, his speed no more than a few mph faster than that of the Firefox.

But he was there. For a moment, he was there — !

Gant banked savagely and pulled tighter, then fired. The Foxbat, caught like an athlete half-way through a jump, seemed to hold, even stagger in the air. As Gant closed on the silver shape, he continued firing. The cannon shells raked through the cockpit and down the spine of the fuselage.

Gant passed beneath the Foxbat, buffeted by its slipstream as it continued to climb. There was a minor explosion — Gant saw it as he pulled round to attack once more — and the cowling of the port engine was breaking up. The Foxbat lurched, staggered, but continued to climb. Gant followed, overtaking it as it reached the apex of some already-dictated parabola. He could see the pilot dead in the cockpit, beneath the cracked and starred canopy. The nose tilted, began to drop…

The Foxbat stalled at five thousand feet, dropping back towards the ground with as little weight and independence as a leaf. Gant glanced at his radar. The white dots of searching MiGs were scattered across it like crumbs from a meal untidily eaten. Fire was streaming from the Foxbat's port engine. In a matter of seconds, the aircraft would explode -

And he would, with it…

He grinned. He would disappear. The Foxbat fell towards a hillside, spinning. It would bury itself in deep snow. He spiralled down, following it. It was a second from impact and burning like a torch. He loosed a tail-decoy and it ignited, glowing on his infra-red screen, to be matched then surpassed by the explosion of the Foxbat at the base of the hill behind him.

Two fireballs in close succession. Two kills.

The cockpit was silent, except for the jabbering Russian as Bilyarsk and the search squadrons tried to raise the dead Foxbat pilot. He switched off the UHF set. It was silent.

Christ -

Then it happened. The sudden sense of the Firefox slowing that he had dreaded. His rpm was falling rapidly. In his headphones, he could hear the chatter of the auto-igniters. Altitude four thousand feet, fuel non-existent…

He could see the snowbound landscape beneath. He had no more than minutes in which to decide to eject or to land. Then the engines caught for a moment as the pumps dredged the last of the fuel from the tanks. He pulled back on the column. He needed all the altitude he could muster. Three seconds later the engines died again, the rpm dropped, the gauges presented zero readings. The engines were silent, empty. Again, he had to decide — eject or try to land…?

He wouldn't eject, he told himself. Not now, not after everything that had happened.

He banked the Firefox over the wilderness beneath the grey sky, searching for a runway that did not exist.

'AWACS Tupolev reports losing all trace, Comrade General.'

'We can't raise the pilot, sir. He's not answering.'

'No infra-red trace after the two explosions, sir.' Two explosions, Vladimirov thought, and immediately found himself trapped in the Byzantine labyrinth of his own qualifications and guesses and instincts. It was a maze which was inescapable every time he appeared to be presented with evidence that the American had died, that the Firefox had been destroyed. And again now, when it seemed certain that the second Foxbat, itself shot down, had caused an explosion aboard the MiG-31, he doubted. He hesitated, he would not look up from the map-table, he would not listen to the First Secretary's gruff sense of relief.

And yet, he could no longer express his doubts. He had learned that much diplomacy. He had learned silence.

'Very well,' he replied to the now-finished chorus of reports, still without looking up. 'Very well. Institute a reconnaissance search for wreckage of the two aircraft — and possible survivors…' He looked up into the First Secretary's face and at Andropov behind the Soviet leader. 'Just to make certain,' he added. 'Routine.' He hated the apologetic tone in his voice. This new role did not suit him, but it was the only one which offered itself. He had, at last, begun to consider his own future. 'It should not offend our friends, the Finns — if they ever discover our over-flights.'

The Soviet leader laughed. 'Come, Vladimirov — the game is over. And to you; yes, it was only a game? Played with the most expensive toys?' His hand slapped the general's shoulder and Vladimirov steeled himself not to wince at the contact. Kutuzov appeared tired and relieved. The operators began to relax. The cabin speaker had been switched off.

Nothing, Vladimirov told himself without hope of conviction, nothing… There is nothing there now except wreckage. The American is dead.

'Chairman Andropov — some drinks, surely?' the Soviet leader instructed. Andropov smiled and moved to summon a steward. 'No, no — we'll leave this crowded room — come, some comfortable chairs and good drink before we land — mm?'

'Yes, of course, First Secretary,' Vladimirov murmured, following the Soviet leader out of the War Command Centre into a narrow, deceptively spacious lounge filled with well-upholstered, deep chairs, a television screen, a bar. Already, drinks were being poured…

Kutuzov appeared at his elbow and whispered, 'You've shown good sense, Med — at last.' His voice was a dry whisper. He'd been operated on, successfully, for cancer of the throat some years before. 'It's over now.'

'Do you think so?' Vladimirov asked in an urgent whisper. 'Do you?'

Kutuzov indicated Andropov and the First Secretary, backs to them, already at the bar. 'It would be foolish — monumentally stupid-for you to think otherwise at this moment,' he whispered. Then he smiled. 'Come on, drink with them, listen to them — and remember to smile.'

'It was-such a beautiful aircraft,' Vladimirov announced abstractedly. 'And the American showed us how good it really was.'

'Perhaps they'll build us some more — but don't count on it.' Kutuzov's laughter clogged and grated in his throat. The First Secretary offered them vodka.

'Come,' he said. 'A toast.'

Two frozen lakes. Silence except for the clicking of the automatic ignition with no fuel with which to work. Gant switched it off. Silence. Two frozen lakes, lying roughly north-south, one larger and more elongated than the other, both surrounded by birch and conifer forest. Snowbound, isolated, uninhabited country in the north of Finnish Lapland.

Little more, according to the map on his knee, than forty miles from the border with the Soviet Union. His escape from the Foxbat had taken him further north than he had wished and turned him unnoticed back towards Russia.

Silence. Wind. Out of time.

He was gliding, the heavy airframe wobbling and quivering in the stormy airflow. Altitude, two thousand five hundred feet. The lakes moved slowly southwards behind him. He banked sharply and glided towards them once again.

He would not eject, would not… He'd come this far. The airplane stayed in one piece.

Two thousand feet. The larger of the two lakes was perhaps more than one mile long — long enough to be a runway. The second lake was fatter, rounder, and he would have to land diagonally across it to be certain of stopping the Firefox with room to spare. There appeared to be a lot of surface snow which would effectively slow the aircraft. It would have to be the larger lake.

Pretend it's the floe, he told himself. Just pretend it's the floe. At the end of March, the ice should be thick enough, it should bear the weight of the airframe.

It didn't matter. It was the only available alternative to a crash-landing, or to an ejection which would leave the Firefox to plough into the ground and break up once it ran out of supporting air. He would not let that happen. Instead, he would land the airplane, and wait. When he was certain the search for him had been called off, he could communicate with Bardufoss or Kirkenes — Kirkenes was much closer — and they could drop him fuel. He checked that the airbrakes were in and the booster pumps off. All the trims he set to zero. He tugged at his straps, checking their security.

He could make it. The conifers grew down to the southern neck of the narrow lake and stretched out drunkenly over it — he could see that clearly — and if he could get in close enough to the frozen shore, he would be sheltered from any chance visual sighting. Excitement coursed through him. He could do it. He could preserve the Firefox.

Altitude, a thousand feet. He had only the one chance.

He nudged the rudder and the Firefox swung as lazily and surely through the chill grey air as a great bird. He lowered the undercarriage as he levelled, and operated the flaps. Four hundred feet, well above the trees which rushed beneath the aircraft's belly. The lake joggled in his vision ahead of the plane's nose. Two hundred feet and out over the ice. He'd got it right. The Firefox sagged now, in full flap, dropping with frightening swiftness, and the wheels skimmed the surface snow for a moment, then dug into it, flinging up a great wake around and behind him. He gripped the control column fiercely, keeping the nose steady. The nosewheel touched, dug in, and Gant saw the surface snow ahead rushing towards him, beneath him. The Firefox began to slow, began to stroll, then walk…

The Firefox rolled gently towards the southern neck of the lake, towards the frozen stream that either fed or drained the lake in summer. His speed slowed quickly — too quickly? The aircraft seemed to no more than crawl towards the overhanging shelter of the trees. Would he make it? It had to reach the cover of the trees…

It was enough. The airplane had sufficient speed to move in close to the bank at the very end of the lake, where it narrowed almost to a point at its conjunction with the frozen stream. Low-hanging branches deposited their weight of snow on the cockpit canopy as he slowed to a final stop. Branches scraped along the fuselage. The nosewheel stopped just short of the bank.

He'd done it. The Firefox was hidden. In one piece, and safely hidden. He breathed deeply. Then he raised the cockpit canopy. Cold air rushed in, chilling him to the bone, making his teeth chatter uncontrollably. He grinned at the drop in his body temperature. He disconnected his oxygen supply, the radio and thought-guidance leads to his helmet; he unlocked his leg restraints, and his seat straps. He removed the helmet and, as he stood up in the cockpit, he began to laugh.

Yes, the trees hid almost everything. One wingtip and the tail assembly were still exposed, but the shape of the aircraft was altered, destroyed by camouflage. The sky was heavy with snow. A fall would hide the signs of his landing. It would be all right.

The Firefox lurched, as if the starboard landing gear had snapped. Gant clung to the side of the cockpit to steady himself, his ears filled with a terrible, strained cracking noise. He dropped the helmet he had just removed.

A black, crooked line, like a tree growing in hideous fast-motion, moved away across the ice. Branches grew from it. The Firefox lurched again, this time to port, and settled unsurely. Other black trees grew out across the ice around and behind him.

Horrified, he looked over the fuselage. He could see water behind the starboard wing, water behind and in front of the port wing. Water beyond the tail. Huge jagged plates and slabs of ice bobbed and rubbed one another around the Firefox, which now floated on its belly, buoyed up for the moment by the empty fuel tanks in the wings and fuselage. Gant knew that as soon as the engine outlets and tailpipes filled, the aircraft would sink steadily into the lake.

TWO: Deeper

The tail of the Firefox slid deeper into the water as the tailpipes and inlets flooded and the undercarriage sought the pebbled floor of the lake where it sloped steeply from the bank. The nose of the aircraft jutted into the lower branches of the nearest firs but it, too, was slowly sinking. Gant did not understand. The ice was thin and weak at the neck of the lake, even though the stream that provided the lake's outlet was evidently frozen between its banks. Everything was frozen — yet the Firefox was sinking.

He felt panic mount, rising like a thermometer. He could not control it because he had used all his reserves of energy and self-control to reach the lake with the aircraft intact, and this disaster had struck at the moment of his release, his greatest relief. The panic rose in waves through him, and his hands gripped the side of the cockpit, numb with the pressure he exerted; a mad, dazed ship's captain waiting for the end.

Floor of the lake steep — draining water leaving a pocket of air under the ice, making it thin — engine weight will roll her back into the lake, further out — she'll drown, drown…

The jagged plates of ice touched, rubbed, moved apart. He could easily make it to the shore, even though the overhead branches were already out of reach. It was the airplane, the Firefox -

There was nothing he could do. His frame shuddered with tension and futility. He was weary, and his limbs seemed very heavy. He had nothing left. Water lapped up the fuselage, very slowly moving higher — the branches over the cockpit were now over the up-jutting nose. The huge weight of the engines and the airframe was slowly dragging the Firefox deeper and further out into the lake. The long nose section thrust from the water like the snout of a creature that had breached the flimsy ice.

The cracks had stopped. They branched perhaps fifty or sixty yards out into the lake behind the aircraft. The loose plates of ice had floated away from the fuselage to gather like a motiveless crowd where the ice remained deceptively firm. To his left, the snow-covered shore of the lake was still within jumping distance.

Gant climbed onto the lip of the cockpit, poising himself, his hands gripping the edge of the cockpit tightly. He looked back down at the still-lit instruments, the fallen helmet, the pilot's couch…

The Firefox lurched backwards, out from beneath the shelter of the trees, the water lapping the fuselage. Now, it was little more than a foot from the edge of the cockpit; another movement, and the first icy ripples would spill into it — fusing, shorting, damaging everything. The panic in his stomach and chest would not subside. There was no nightmare of Vietnam, not in this cold, not with the smoky grey shoreline and the omnipresence of show. But he was as bereft of purpose as if he were suffering one of his bouts of paralysis.

The aircraft was steady now, tilting backwards on the sloping bed of the lake. Perhaps only for seconds… The water was ten inches from the lip of the cockpit… the tail was half-submerged, the huge engines already under water…

He dropped, in his apelike crouch, back into the cockpit, his hands nerveless and numb as he tried to make them operate small, delicate switches and buttons. Thought-guidance — shut down… come on… weapons-systems — shut down… radio, radar, auto-pilot, ECM systems — shut down… His hands seemed warmer now, no longer lumps at the ends of his arms but active, moving with a trained, automatic precision and speed. In seconds, he shut down the aircraft, killing it, rendering it lifeless. Then he climbed over the lip of the cockpit. He was still wearing his parachute. Clipped to his life-jacket were his inflatable dinghy and his survival pack. Icy water touched his heel, and he withdrew his foot. Awkwardly, he moved over the cockpit sill, his toes feeling clumsily for the spring-loaded steps. When he found them, and balanced himself, he pulled out the cockpit canopy hand crank from its compartment below the cockpit sill. He cranked down the cockpit canopy until it closed tightly. Then he closed the manual, exterior locks.

A moment of pain, of acute failure, and then he poised and leapt. He landed in soft snow, paining his hand on a buried tree root, rolling over and scrabbling for a hold on frozen grass and icy rocks beneath the snow. His survival pack and the dinghy lay beneath him. Snow filled his mouth and eyes, even his ears, though they were still alive to the terrible scraping lurch that meant the Firefox was moving further out, further under the surface.

Yes. He turned to look. The water had reached the cockpit — thank God he'd remembered to close and lock it — and the nose pointed to the grey sky at a more acute angle than before. He drew his knees up to his chest — the cold of the snow seeping through the pressure suit and the thin underclothing beneath — and dropped his head. He could not move. He felt it was like waiting by a deathbed — but not his father's, for that had been an impatient wait with release and the throwing off of hatred at the end of the tunnel.

It would be no more than a minute now -

He laughed; high and crazy. The noise was like the call of a rook in the thick cold air. He could not prevent it; a cackle of survival and defeat. He'd certainly hidden the Firefox, hidden it good -

He could not stop the laughter. Tears rolled down his blanched, cold cheeks, down the creases of his pained face. He cackled like a madman. He'd really, really hidden it -

Another grating lurch — some part of him remained surprised that the undercarriage had withstood the pressure upon it — and he looked up to see the cockpit now half-submerged, the water lapping towards the nose of the Firefox.

And the laughter stopped.

The locked and shut down aircraft was twenty yards from him, the black nose jutting, the cockpit half-submerged. Everything — everything electronic, every means of communication, was locked beneath the canopy, locked inside the airframe. Radio, radio, radio…

Gant swallowed, savagely wiped his mouth. The aircraft was steady again, one of the wheels, perhaps, halted against the chock of a boulder or sunk in softer mud. Tantalisingly steady -

There was nothing -

'Nothing, dammit!' he exploded, banging his clenched fists on his thighs. A bird replied in a hoarse voice from one of the trees. 'Nothing — !' He could do nothing. He couldn't sit in the Firefox until help came, he couldn't dismantle the radio and rescue it, he couldn't, couldn't couldn't -

Strangely, he heard the voice of Aubrey then. The soft, self-deprecating, insinuating tones. His final briefing, the fake transistor radio that was a homing receiver which had saved his life, listening as it had done for signals from 'Mother One', the submarine that had refuelled the Firefox. It was attached by a single adhesive strip to one corner of the instrument panel.

Receiver — ?

Transmitter, too… Aubrey had been reluctant to mention it, hovered over the words like a choosily-feeding pet until he had uttered them. In case of some — final emergency, my dear fellow… not likely, of course… but, it has an emergency signal facility if you — have to… you understand…?

Gant was on his feet, still nodding at the remembered words as he had nodded when he first heard them. Aubrey didn't want to mention crashing, injury, death, but Gant had understood.

And he had left it in the cockpit!

He slipped and scrambled down the steep bank. He undipped his survival pack, his parachute harness, the dinghy. The dinghy — ! A fringe of ice cracked beneath his weight, and he slid into the icy water. He cried out with shock. He stepped back — pebbles and larger boulders on the bed of the lake, so he moved carefully — and the water retreated. He dragged the dinghy towards him, and inflated it. It boiled and enlarged and groaned, then bobbed on the water. His teeth chattered, his whole body shuddered. A bird croaked, as if in mockery. The nose of the Firefox tilted upwards like a snub, a dismissal of his frantic efforts. He climbed into the dinghy, and paddled furiously towards the aircraft. His head bobbed up at every frantic stroke to study the unmoving nose of the plane. His body temperature continued to drop. His heartbeat raced with tension, with the sense of time lost and almost run out, with the fight to keep the blood warm and circulating.

His hand touched the fuselage, and he withdrew it as if shocked, in case the pressure of fingertips might be enough to thrust it beneath the water. He juggled and bumped the dinghy slowly along the fuselage until it was beneath the cockpit tilted crazily high above him. His hands felt for the spring-loaded steps up the side of the fuselage.

Felt, fumbled, found… He tested his chilly weight against the strength of his arms, and then heaved his body out of the dinghy, feet scrabbling — careful, don't kick, don't struggle — until they, too, discovered toe-holds. He hung there for a moment, sensing the steadiness of the airframe. It was holding. He began climbing, hand over hand, feet following with exaggerated caution, slipping more than once.

Lip of the cockpit, smoothness of the canopy…

He rested, aware of the airframe now as a see-saw. He waited for it to move. It remained still. The water covered the rear section of the canopy. Water would spill into the cockpit when he opened it. It wouldn't have to matter.

Left-hand side of the instrument panel. He unlocked the canopy, then cranked it slowly open. Water gurgled into the cockpit, splashing down instruments, becoming a pool in the well of the pilot's couch. He eased the canopy open sufficiently to insert his gloved hands, and scrabbled blindly, leaning forward, touching along the instrument panel, across dials and read-outs and displays and buttons and switches, until he felt the edge of the homing device. Like a black cigarette-case, slightly larger than that, same shape…

He tugged at it. The adhesive held it. With both hands he heaved and it detached itself from the panel. With a chilly, sodden, shivering triumph, he drew it out and clutched it against his side, hugging it to him like a prize. Still the airframe remained motionless, rock-steady. He began to crank down the canopy once more

The Firefox shuddered, and the entire airframe lurched away from him towards deeper water. The huge tailplanes sank almost to their tips. The Firefox continued to slide away. With the instinct to preserve himself and the aircraft, he cranked more furiously and grabbed with his other hand at the handhold just below the edge of the cockpit. A tremor ran through him as he heard the homing device slide down the fuselage with a clatter, then drop. He cranked furiously, closing the canopy. He dropped the cranking-handle then, in order to hang on with both hands. He knew the Firefox was going under…

He would float away. He looked around frantically for the homing device, and for the dinghy, already ten yards away. Surely he had heard the impact of the plastic on ice, not the slight splash of its falling into the water — but he could not locate it. The water mounted the canopy towards him. The airframe was steadily rolling backwards now. It would stop only when the slope of the lake-bed levelled. The water was only inches away — he would float off.

He released the grip of his right hand, then made to move his left. He unclenched his fingers from the handhold, and tried to move his arm. Water touched his fingers, embraced his thighs. The canopy was almost submerged, the nose was sinking. The tips of the tailplane were still visible, the leading edges of the wings protruded from the dark water. He could not move his left arm.

He had trapped the sleeve of the pressure suit in the canopy when he cranked it shut. Without the cranking-handle he could not open it again. As the water reached his waist, he tugged frantically, attempting with all his strength to rip the suit.

Clinging to the canopy of the Firefox, he began to slip beneath the water with the airframe. Waist, chest, neck, mouth. He could not free his sleeve…

Above the noise of his blood and breathing, he again heard the bird croak mockingly. Then he disappeared beneath the water.

'There were two explosions — two distinct explosions… you're certain of that?'

Aubrey waited. The underground Operations Room of RAF Scampton had shrunk to a microphone, two revolving tape reels, and the console and its operator controlling the highspeed, scrambled communications between himself and the captain of an AWACS Nimrod aircraft over the Norwegian Finnmark. Beyond the glass, down on the main floor of the room, Buckholz and Curtin stood beside the huge plot-table, staring at the model that represented the Nimrod. Buckholz wore a headset clamped on his short, grey hair. His shoulders were stiff with the tension generated by the transmission and reception delays of Aubrey's conversation.

The tapes rolled swiftly, halted, rewound, then Aubrey heard Squadron Leader Eastoe's voice, mechanical and distant, but clear.

'There were two, almost in the same spot, but distinct. A small time and distance gap, At…' A slight pause while Eastoe consulted something, then: 'Sixty-nine-forty North, twenty-seven-fifty East. That's no more than twenty-two nautical miles from the nearest point on the Soviet border — about the same from the Norwegian side…'

Eastoe seemed to have paused once more, rather than to have concluded his message. Aubrey lifted his head. Someone pushed a futuristic model into position on the plot-table. It was old-fashioned — on one wall of the Operations Room was a fibre-optic, computer-operated plot-map where aircraft, ships and missiles were registered by moving lights — and yet Aubrey found the plot-table comfortingly familiar. It had a wartime association. It was out-of-date, superannuated. He could see, quite clearly, that Gant was deemed by Eastoe to have met his death in a narrow neck of Finland between the Soviet Union and Norway. The model of the Firefox, placed in position, was in the nature of a memorial. Curtin and Buckholz gazed fixedly at the table — except for a brief upward glance by the senior CIA officer. His face was grim. Aubrey, almost furtively and in shame, lowered his head to the tape-reels and the microphone. Eastoe had not added to his statement.

'You conclude that one of the MiG-25s was successful?' he, snapped. The tapes spun, then waited. Spun again, rewound, played.

'Yes,' Eastoe replied. Aubrey watched Buckholz's shoulders hunch, shrug. Curtin's face was abstracted. The naval officer seemed fascinated by the small black model of the Firefox. The plotters near them hovered like deferential servants, or like the policeman bringing news of a road accident. 'They tried to shepherd him, he shook them off, took out the first of them — the second must have pursued at ground-level, and they got each other. We couldn't see the MiG-31, of course, so we don't know whether it was damaged earlier. Since the explosions, nothing. The area's filling up with MiGs now, but their activity suggests they can't locate anything.' Eastoe's voice paused, then: 'Mr. Aubrey — what do you want me to do?'

Aubrey rubbed his chin vigorously, as if conjuring the answer from a lamp. The tape-reels waited for him to speak. Alongside him, the staff of the Operations Room sat behind their consoles and radios and radars and screens. The plotters hovered. The huge wall map gleamed with moving lights. The walls of the Ops. Room displayed other maps crowded with pins and scribbled legends, coloured tapes. Blackboards revealed information regarding the serviceability of aircraft. Large meteorological maps were heavily marked, garlanded with satellite weather photographs. A long row of pale blue headsets, together with a single red telephone, stretched away on either side of him. A multiplicity of technical devices were at his disposal. He dragged his hands through the hair above his ears. His fingers touched the back of his head. He heard old bones and muscles crack and stretch reluctantly. He replaced his hands in his lap, hunching forward. He did not know what to say to Eastoe. He did not know how to begin to use the people and equipment that lay at his disposal.

Not once, not once… his thoughts murmured hesitantly. Not once, not once -

Until now, he answered himself. Until now. Not once had he doubted, truly doubted, not once had he thought the game lost, the aircraft or the pilot lost…

Until now.

Now he believed it. It had been forced upon him. Gant was dead, the aircraft scattered over the landscape like sooty dots on the carpet of snow. Nothing, nothing left of it.

Despair was an unfamiliar companion. A sometime acquaintance, away elsewhere for long periods; older and leaner at each unexpected return. Yet it was despair Aubrey felt. He had failed. The whole operation had failed. Delicate, complex, devious — brilliant and his own, it had failed. Aubrey's despair dressed in a sober suit and carried a briefcase. It was an entirely professional emotion, and bottomless.

He saw an image, then, of civilian air disasters. Newsreel film. Flight-recorders being searched for by the experts who did not concern themselves with the search for the living and the dead. Black boxes. Cockpit voice-recorders, flight recorders. The secrets of the dead.

In his mind, he could see a recent piece of newsfilm. The joggling camera registering the walking legs of a man and the two heavy, black, flame-scarred boxes he carried, one on either side of him. Walking legs, black boxes -

He rubbed his eyes. Voice-activated, the tape-reels moved.

'Remain on-station, Eastoe;' he ordered, his voice clearing and strengthening as he spoke. 'Fly up and down that piece of border until you hear something!'

A pause. Eastoe's reply returned, was rewound, then became audible. 'Please repeat, Mr. Aubrey.'

Aubrey slapped his forehead. He had not explained. 'I wish to be certain,' he said. Buckholz, one hand holding the earphone of his headset, looked up towards the glass-fronted gallery where Aubrey was sitting. 'If the aircraft has crashed or been destroyed, then there may be nothing. If Gant is alive — if the aircraft is still intact — then you may pick up a signal from his homing device. You have the equipment to activate and receive it.'

After a little while, during which Aubrey felt hot and the small sense of excitement that hope had brought deserted him, he turned pale and felt foolish like a gauche new entrant to an ancient and dignified club. Foolish — must try it-foolish, though…

'Roger, Mr. Aubrey. If he's there, we'll find him.'

'Yes,' Aubrey replied abstractedly, unconcerned that the word and its tone would be transmitted. The console operator turned to him. Aubrey flapped his hand dismissively, staring at his lap. Gant was dead. The Firefox was in pieces.

'The AWACS Tupolev is watching us watching him,' F.astoe announced. Aubrey hardly heard his voice. 'He'll be listening for the same thing. Could he pick up a signal?'

'I hope not,' Aubrey murmured in a moment of uncalculated honesty that was full of doubt and foreboding.

The shock of the icy water which engulfed him almost made him open his mouth to scream, to expel the lungful of air he had snatched as his face was dragged into the water. His chest seemed too full, inflated under pressure from within. If only he could expel the air, make his body more empty, smaller, the cold would be less intense, less painful. He forced himself to retain the air.

Even a few feet beneath the surface, the water was lightless because of the disturbed silt, as if the ice had closed over the Firefox as soon as it sank. The noise of the undercarriage moving down the steeply-sloping bed of the lake was magnified and distorted into a prolonged groan. The Firefox dragged him by the sleeve deeper beneath the water. His body banged against the metal of the nose as he bobbed and attempted to float. His body's buoyancy tugged at the trapped sleeve of his pressure-suit, turning him almost in a cartwheel, twisting him, slamming him down on his back against the fuselage, then scraping him along the nose of the aircraft.

His lungs seemed fuller. He knew he was beginning to drown. There seemed a simple solution, but he believed it was light-headedness that suggested the idea. He was trapped. He tried to reach his left arm with his right hand. The Firefox continued to roll, and he could not tell whether it was beginning to level out and slow down. He could not reach his trapped sleeve. Without purchase, he could not apply any force to the feeble grip of his right hand on the material of the suit. His hands were numb, anyway, fingers crooked like claws, frozen.

Weariness, and the knowledge that survival and escape had been snatched from him, curtailed his ability to think, to move, to even desire anything. His chest hurt with retained air. His head swirled like the dark water. Just as around him the disturbed mud drifted back towards the bed of the lake, his body sagged down to straddle the nose of the Firefox.

The napalm of his nightmare lit the scene. Freezing and numb though he was, his body still felt hot, burning. From within the bamboo cage in which he had been imprisoned, he witnessed his rescue; the attack upon the Viet-Cong detachment and their hidden village. He saw the little girl with the sadly-wise face running, and he saw her dissolve in the gout of napalm dropped near her. He saw all the others burn like matchsticks, like trees in a forest set alight. He felt himself burn. He was one of them — he was them…

The nightmare claimed him. He struggled against it, but his body seemed to have no conception of water and drowning, only of his recurrent dream, only of the napalm. The water around him seemed redly-lit by its flare. Every one of the gooks had burned, the little girl had burned. He had remained untouched physically, safe in his abandoned bamboo cage. Ever since, horror and guilt had caused him to burn, melt, dissolve with the Vietnamese; with the little girl, in her place…

His hand embraced his left thigh. He noticed the touch, the clawlike grip. The crablike scrabbling, the tugging at a press-studded flap. His mind was detached and separate from his right hand. His left hand was feelingless, somewhere above him, against the canopy of the cockpit. His lungs were bursting.

He could see only the red burning colour of the water as his right hand closed thumb and forefinger upon the flap on his thigh. Gant did not understand. The flap pulled slowly open like a hesitant mouth. He did not know what his right hand expected. He wanted, more than anything to empty his lungs, more even than to stop the nightmare because this time he was going to die inside it. His right hand closed on something and withdrew it from the pocket. It felt hard.

The little girl's body, right at the centre of the mass of golden-red fire, dissolved… he was on the point of opening his mouth to scream… and something detached itself — straw hat or head he had never known, had never dared to look — he wanted only to scream.

His right hand brought up the hard object, close to his face. His right hand needed the evidence, the use of his eyes. But his eyes did not work, dazzled by the light of the fiames. Where his hand was, where the object was, it was dark. Thin gleam — ? He could not focus. His head swirled. The flames lessened. His right hand continued to act, reaching forward, ahead of him into the place where the numbing, icy cold seemed to be coming from, where it had already swallowed his left hand, left arm. He tried to watch, to understand -

Empty your lungs, he told himself. Look -

See-

He saw the dinghy-knife trailing its safety cord which his right hand had withdrawn from its sheath, he saw it hack at his left hand, left arm, so that he wanted it to stop. Feeling returned to his left arm as it cringed in anticipation of a wound. Then the sleeve was torn, sliced open, and he expected blood but there was none and his arm drifted down towards him, to be clenched against his stomach, its torn sleeve freed from the canopy.

Feebly, he kicked with numb feet, drained and leaden legs. His face was uplifted, but everything seemed dark. He kicked again, leaving the napalm-fire behind him now, afraid at that moment that it was already too late, that he was blacking out and would open his mouth, let the bubbles dribble out as his body slackened…

He felt his boots scrabbling on the metal of the Firefox's nose, and pushed upwards. It was only a matter of feet, but in time it seemed endless, because there were gaps of inky, swirling black between his attempts to count…

One, one-two… black… two-two-two… black… one-two…

Black -

Grey -

Black -

Then light.

He roared as he expelled the air, felt his lungs painfully deflate, then draw in cold new air which hurt and made him cough. He swallowed water. His cold arms and legs wouldn't tread water. Breathe…

Inhale — hold — exhale… inhale — hold — exhale… sweeter now. The air tasted. It was sweet, cold, pure. His body hung on the surface of the water, exhausted, as if threatening to slip back beneath it. Life… jacket…

His hands fumbled on his chest, dabbling there uselessly, it seemed, for whole minutes.

Then the life-jacket inflated, bobbing him unresistingly onto his back, holding up his hanging, useless, numb legs, pushing his arms out into a crucifix, keeping his chin out of the icy water. He breathed air gently, savouring it, pushing at the water with gentle movements.

A long time later, it seemed, his feet dragged gratingly against the pebbles of the shore. He was almost sitting in the water. He tried to stand up, could not, fell on his side — the life-jacket turning his face to the grey sky at once — and then turning wearily onto all fours and crawled the last few feet to the steep, snow-covered bank.

And rested, shuddering with cold, hands and feet and knees still in the water, reminded of warmth and function by the sharp pebbles beneath them. The dinghy-knife was still in his right hand, sticking up out of the water.

When his hands began to pain him with their freezing numbness, and his feet were dead from the cold, he clambered upright, and stood, rocking with exhaustion, gauging the height of the steep bank of the lake and his ability to ascend it. He succeeded in climbing by dragging his body behind his arms up the slope, digging the dinghy-knife deep into the frozen soil and heaving against it, digging it in again further up, heaving his body up to its level. It took him ten minutes; the bank at that point was a steep slope perhaps twelve feet high. He lay, when he had inched over the lip of the slope to the bole of the first fir tree, exhausted, panting, his eyes hardly able to focus. For one thing alone he was thankful. He had left the napalm of his nightmare down there behind him, in the lake with the MiG-31.

Later, he ate chocolate. Later still, when feeling had returned to his hands, he was able to rub life into the rest of his body. The pressure-suit was stiffening as it slowly dried. Later, he inspected the area of water at the neck of the lake, realising that his panicky guess had been near the truth. The stream that acted as the lake's outlet was indeed now frozen. But it must have gone on draining the lake before it, too, froze. The draining water had left an airpocket which had kept the ice thin, dangerous.

Later still, after the noise of a low-flying, searching MiG had faded east of the lake, he realised that he should put some distance between himself and the site of the forced landing. The ice would knit again, form like a cataract over the eye of water the airplane's weight had opened. The Firefox would be totally hidden by the following dawn. Already, the short Arctic day was beginning to fade.

He had the dinghy-knife, the survival pack, his parachute, and the standard-issue Makarov officer's pistol and two spare magazines. He had no extra clothing, and his body was chilled to the bone. The dinghy had drifted out into the lake, like a marker to indicate the airplane's position. He drew the Makarov, hesitated, steadied his aim, and fired twice. The noise was deafening. Birds protested with cold voices. Slowly the dinghy deflated, began to sink. Gant sighed with relief. No trace.

He was alive. Standard procedure dictated that he remain near the aircraft. In this case, he dare not. If they seached for him — when they failed to find any signs of wreckage they could attribute to the Firefox — then they must not find him near the plane. He had to head… north-west, try to make some indentation on the daunting twenty miles or more between his position and the Norwegian border. He had to blindly hope that it was not only the Russians who would be searching for him…

The homing device. The transmitter -

In a new moment of panic, he looked around sightlessly. It was nowhere to be seen.

Had he — ? Had it been switched to transmit? He could remember every movement of his right hand as it sought the dinghy-knife and then his trapped sleeve. Now. he had to recall every moment of the few when the slim black plastic case was cradled in his left hand, against his body. Had he done it, automatically? Had he switched it on…?

His memory fumbled, struggled with the effort of recalling automatic responses, mere reflex actions.

Eventually… yes. Yes, it was switched on. His eyes scanned the ice. The remains of the dinghy had disappeared. He walked clumsily, slowly along the bank — even for the transmitter, he would not allow himself to step onto the treacherous sheet of ice on the lake — searching for what would be no more than a black dot. He did not find it. The landscape was nothing more than black and grey and white.

Finally, he concluded that the transmitter had sunk to the bottom of the lake. If it had dropped onto ice — he was certain he remembered that kind of sound when it fell — it must have slipped off when the ice had been moved or distressed by the underwater eddies created by the moving bulk of the Firefox. It was lost.

Now, distance was his only imperative. He could not stay near the transmitter, near the lake. If he was found, it needed to be miles from here.

His body failed him for a moment, daunted by the prospect of movement, of travel; of survival.

He looked northwards up the lake to where the heavy, crowded trees were little more than a dark, carbon smudge made by someone sketching the scene. The ice was a smooth sheet. He was on the western shore of the lake. He checked his compass and the map he unstrapped from his thigh. In its clear plastic, it had remained dry during his immersion. The pressure-suit was achingly cold.

He looked in the direction he must travel, towards Norway. Conifers crowding to the water's edge, low hills beyond them. He heard the mocking dissuasion of large, unseen birds. He looked down at the water, still like setting jelly, its temperature dropping. The Firefox was undetectable, invisible. It had to be enough to satisfy him; drive him on.

He picked up his parachute and buckled on the harness. He clipped the survival pack to his now deflated life-jacket, and adjusted its weight for comfort. Then he turned away from the lake and entered the trees.

Air Marshal Kutuzov glanced towards the other end of the compartment and the door which led to the small private office the First Secretary used when aboard the Tupolev. Evidently, the Soviet leader and the Chairman of the KGF intended remaining there for the rest of the flight. Kutuzov glanced at his heavy gold watch. Twenty minutes to the principal military airfield south-east of Moscow. He cleared his throat, patting Vladimirov's leg as he spoke. 'Med, I think you have secured the succession for yourself.' The old man tapped the shoulder boards on his own uniform. His pale, rheumy eyes twinkled, and he nodded vigorously. 'You're learning. And in time — just in time…' It was evident that Kutuzov was philosophically drunk…

Vladimirov stared at his own small glass. How many drinks — ? They'd been drinking for less than half an hour. No one gets drunk more quickly than a Russian. What was he drinking to? The American's death? The excessive, almost manic bonhomie of the First Secretary, the cold, glinting appraisals of the still-sober Andropov — both had ceased to irritate or impinge. The vodka had distanced them. He had managed to drown reason and insight like two wasps at the bottom of his glass. Their stings pulled out.

He glanced towards the door of the War Command Centre, then at the door to the First Secretary's office. The Soviet leader had been summoned to the telephone to deal with the diplomatic niceties of airspace intrusions.

Through the vodka, the sense of self-contempt was returning. Vladimirov warned himself against it. And, as if his companion sensed the threatened change of mood, he patted Vladimirov's hand and said: 'Be sensible — continue to be sensible, General Vladimirov.' The formality of the address was intentional. Vladimirov shook his head in what was a gesture of agreement rather than protest. The alcohol stirred like a solid mass lurching across an empty space.

'I know it, I know it,' he murmured. 'It's much better to be — oh, what? Nothing? Better to be nothing.' As he moved his hands angrily, vodka slopped from his glass onto the shining toes of his knee-boots. He watched the oily droplets flow like mercury across the polish. 'I know it.'

He stared again at the door to the War Command Centre. Through it officers had appeared periodically in the past half-hour to make their negative, comforting reports. They were like something added to the vodka, doubly calming. Wreckage photographed, pictures being returned for examination; search planes reporting no distress signals, no electronic emissions, no survivors.

Soon, it would be no more than a matter of experts examining the photographs of the wreckage to confirm that the Firefox and the M1G-25F were destroyed at the same moment in the same area. Then later the Finns would give permission for crash investigators and a recovery party to examine the site and bring the wreckage home. Black boxes would be removed, bodies would be wrapped in plastic sacks and brought back. End. Over. Finished.

The First Secretary had cancelled all over-flights of the crash area before taking his call from the Finnish President. All intrusions of foreign airspace could be apologised for because now they had ceased.

'I am offering you no more than a lesson in survival,' Kutuzov announced. It was the slurred voice of the vodka. 'Because I want you to command the air force. You.' He was patting Vladimirov's knee slowly and heavily to emphasise each word.

'I know that, old friend,' Vladimirov replied, nodding. Even to hirnself, his words sounded indistinct. He mocked himself silently, reproaching and ridiculing himself as bitterly as he could. He swallowed what little remained in his glass. His stomach surged. 'I've accepted. I — am a member of the team…" He smiled, his lips forming the expression imprecisely. 'How long before we land?' he added with sudden exasperation.

'Patience. You are now a courtier. You will get used to waiting. It is a talent.'

'Courtier…' Vladimirov murmured.

'Another drink?'

'No, old friend I wouldn't be able to keep it down.'

'No Russian can — we get drunk too quickly.'

'Do you blame us?'

'No.'

The two men stared into their empty glasses. Vladimirov lifted his to reflect the overhead light. He could see the last oily smear in the glass, see the smudges made by his lips and fingertips. Then he stood up, swaying slightly, tall, grey-haired, drunk, but evidently, so evidently, an officer of distinction. As if he saw his form reflected in a mirror, he mocked his appearance. An impressive outward show, even when he was drunk. Hollow man… hollow man.

A young officer opened the door from the War Command Centre. Vladimirov whirled almost too quickly to face him. In his hand he carried a message pad.

Hollow man…

Stop it -

It was impossible to drown the wasps, then.

'What is it?' he snapped, his tongue furry, his eyes glistening. The rest of himself retreated somewhere, to wait for a more opportune moment.

'It's the Tupolev, sir the aircraft commander, Major Antonov. This… I don't think he can understand it…'

Vladimirov snatched the pad, plucking his half-glasses from his top pocket, wobbling them onto his ears. Sobriety nudged him, having returned from its short absence. Antonov would not be the pilot of the Tupolev AWACS aircraft; but the political officer who theoretically commanded the crew. He was a member of GLAVPUR, the armed forces' political directorate. However, he might still be competent aircrew, even though he was on the Tupolev 'Moss' because it flew near all kinds of hostile borders across which its crew might be tempted to take it- liberating it and themselves in the process. So, Antonov…

At first, Vladimirov did not understand the report. A frequency-agile signal, intermittent… they'd picked it up once or twice, got a line on it — the first fix — but not a second clear fix which would give them the exact position. They only knew the signal emanated somewhere along a straight line… not near the crash site…

Finally, the request for orders; the passing of the buck. Vladimirov waved the young officer out of his path and stepped into the War Command Centre. Immediately, he sensed the familiar and the desired. Yes, it was a clean, well-lit place. It was comfortable here, at the centre; the uniformed centre.

He would have been criminally stupid, he reflected as he crossed the room, to have thrown all this away — and why, and for what? Because the Soviet leader was a boor and a thug? Because the Chairman of the KGB was a psychotic? Because he loathed their company and their intellectual inferiority? Those would have been his reasons; pride and snobbery. Caste.

A clean, well-lit, comfortable place. His place. It would have been criminal to throw it away.

'Put me through to Antonov — over the cabin speaker,' he announced calmly, soberly. A moment later, he was given the signal to proceed. 'Major Antonov — this mysterious signal of yours… what do you suppose it is?'

'Yes, Comrade General,' he heard the distant, crackling voice begin, 'we don't know what to make of it — any of us.'

'When did you first pick it up?'

'Fifteen minutes ago-but we lost it-then found it on a different frequency… the third time, only five minutes ago, we managed to get a line on it, but we haven't been able to pick it up since.' The tone was apologetic, but it managed to include the entire crew of the Tupolev in any consequent blame.

'Find it again, Major I beg of you.'

'Yes, Comrade General.'

Frequency-agile — a signals or communications emission, but without a message or code… a somehow-still-operating piece of clever electronics thrown well clear of the crash site…? How far — this was too far… some Finnish ground installation we don't know about? Unlikely. There had been no Personal Survival Beacon signals from either pilot, so Gant and the Foxbat pilot were both dead… neither of them had ejected in time.

Personal Survival Beacon — Beacon — secure signal, he remembered, secrecy when all the pilot would want was the loudest scream across the widest band. Because of the MiG-31 project there was secrecy surrounding the aircraft, the pilots, the ground crews, the instruments, the pressure-suits… the obsession of the Soviet state, how many times had it enraged him!

The PSB for Firefox test pilots was frequency-agile, and intermittent, to ensure that only those instructed how to listen would ever hear… and Gant was wearing dead Voskov's pressure suit!

'It's Gant!' he roared. Shoulders and heads twitched with shock. Vladimirov beat his fists against his thighs. 'He's alive. He's been alive all the time! You!' he barked at the officer who had brought him the scribbled transcript of Antonov's message. 'Get me the details of the frequency-code for the PSB in a Firefox pressure suit-get it now!' He hurried to the door. Turning, he added: 'Transmit it to Antonov as soon as you have it. And tell Antonov he must find that signal again and obtain an exact fix. No excuses!'

He went through the door, slamming it behind him, already knowing, without careful analysis, what must be done. The First Secretary and Andropov were emerging into the hospitality room at that moment. Immediately, Vladimirov pointed his long forefinger at Andropov as at a recalcitrant and untrustworthy subordinate.

'I want your Border Guards, Comrade Chairman!' he snapped. 'I want a helicopter patrol, three ships, ready to cross into Finland immediately — Gant's been alive all the time!'

The contents of the survival pack from the Firefox were spread around him at the foot of the fir tree. His eyes were gritty with tiredness, and refused to focus for any length of time. Tension and weariness produced bouts of violent yawning. His body shivered almost constantly now, with cold and reaction. He had escaped. He had walked perhaps a little more than three miles in a north-westerly direction, keeping to the cover of the forest. He wanted only to sleep now. The pressure suit creaked and groaned as it froze into stiff, awkward sheets and folds around his body. His toes and fingers were numb. He had to sleep.

He would repack the survival kit except for the sleeping bag, which lay like an orange and blue brick near his left knee. If he got into it, perhaps only for an hour — surely he could afford the time. He hadn't heard the noise of a searching aircraft for perhaps twenty minutes now…

He had to sleep. He could not form ideas, make plans. He could not stay awake. There was good overhead cover here. The sleeping-bag, tight around him, would eventually warm him, restore the circulation. He would be able to continue, if only he slept now.

A white Arctic hare watched him from the other side of the fir tree. Its nose twitched as it assessed the intruder. Gant watched it dully, head hanging forward, staring at the small, still animal from beneath his furrowed brow. Even to hold the white hare in focus against the snow required vast concentration.

Automatically, the Makarov pistol came out of its holster, took aim, and fired once. The noise was deafening, frightening in the silence to which he had become totally accustomed. It seemed to invite pursuit, creat lurid images of capture. The hare leapt backwards with the force of the 9mm bullet at such close range, its powerful back legs flicking up. Then it lay on its side. A small stain spread from beneath its fur, darkly red, It would supplement the rich cake, the chocolate and biscuits in the rations of the survival pack. He was tiredly, exaggeratedly saddened by the killing of the hare, and immediately he entertained the emotion it became self-pity; he was utterly weary. He could not, now, gather up, skin, cook the hare.

He began shivering again. Furiously, as if to punish himself, he rubbed his hands on his arms, trying to warm himself. Or scrape away from his skin some guilt or paralysis that clung to it.

An object. Hard. Inside one of the pockets. Left arm. He unzipped the pocket, and withdrew a small orange cylinder. He recognised it at once. His PSB, his distress signal transmitter.

He stared at it, unbelievingly. He had forgotten it, hadn't even attempted to locate it. It would have been activated — without the shadow of a doubt it would have been activated and begun transmitting — the moment it was immersed in the waters of the lake. He looked up at the sky, wildly. Nothing. The search had been called off -

Relief in his mind was a clean image of the grey, darkening sky. Intruding upon that was the white dot of the Tupolev AWACS airplane as he had seen it on his screen. The transmitter in his cupped hand would undoubtedly have the power to beam a signal the thirty or more miles of distance and the forty thousand feet of altitude to the Tupolev. They must have heard it. They knew he was alive, where he was…

Panic removed weariness with a rush of adrenalin. He stood up, swayed, then dropped the PSB. He stamped on it, grinding it out of shape, puncturing the skin, smashing the transistors and wiring within. Killing it. The hare lay beyond the distress he had made in the snow, unmoving. He knelt again, scooping the scattered items back into the survival pack. The brick of his folded sleeping-bag, the folded .22 rifle and its half-dozen rounds, the chocolate and biscuits, the compressed rations, the solid tablet stove.

He watched the hare. He couldn't -

He dragged a plastic bag from the pack, scooped up the hare with apologetically gentle hands, and thrust it into the bag, then the package into the survival pack. As he stood up, he kicked fresh snow over the small, darkening smudge of blood.

His tracks would not show because he had been beneath the forest roof for the greater part of his journey. Eventually, he would have to sleep, but now he must strike in a more northerly direction. He slipped the harness of the pack over his shoulders, wearily assuming a fully-upright posture when he had done so. He swayed with tiredness. He looked at his watch. Darkness was still as much as two hours away. Two hours, then, before he could rest.

He groaned aloud. The noise disturbed, magnified the silence of the forest. He studied the map. Ahead of him a country of patchy forest, narrow valleys, dotted lakes. Like Alaska.

He hefted the pack's weight to comfort, shivered with cold and anticipation, listened to the brooding, continuous silence, and turned to face northwards.

He began to walk.

Squadron Leader Alan Eastoe turned the AWACS Nimrod in a slow arc as he completed the southerly leg of his patrol at twenty-five thousand feet above the road which straggled across the Norwegian Finnmark from the Tanafjord to the small town of Karasjok. The road marked the border between Norway and Finland. The aircraft was above the cloud layer as it once more headed north-east, following the wriggling line of the unseen road.

It had been almost two hours since they had reported what Eastoe suspected had been the pursuit and destruction of the unseen MiG-31. He had immediately been ordered by Aubrey to remain on-station and to begin this idiotic patrol in the ridiculous hope of either picking up a signal from Gant's PSB — and they hadn't done that because Gant was dead — or evoking some response from a piece of sophisticated gadgetry that must have been destroyed with the Firefox.

Yet Aubrey needed to be convinced. Thus, they had to keep on attempting to make the Firefox's homing device emit a simple carrier wave on which they could take a bearing. According to Farnborough, the homing device would be capable of responding to their pulsed radio signal for at least eighteen hours. Eastoe did not believe they would ever pick up the carrier wave. No one but an uninformed civilian like Aubrey would have expected to do so. There wasn't a ghost in the machine. The Firefox was just — dead.

Eastoe yawned and adjusted his tinted glasses on the bridge of his nose. At their altitude, the sunlight still gleamed from the surface of the cloud-layer below, even though below the clouds it would be getting dark.

'Christ, Terry,' he murmured, looking towards his co-pilot, tossing his head in dismissal, 'bugger this for a ball of chalk. The poor sod's dead — and I'm sorry he's dead — and the plane's a write-off, and I'm sorry about that because I'd like to have seen it, just the once…But-!'

The co-pilot shook his head, smiling. 'You've worked with Aubrey before, skipper…' he began.

'Worked for, Terry — worked for Aubrey. There's all the difference in the world. He's never bloody convinced. I can see him in the Garden, swearing blind the risen Christ is only the gardener!' Eastoe laughed, despite his exasperation. He heard a crewman's chuckle in his earphones. 'Come on, then, he'd say — just one or perhaps two miracles to prove you are who you say you are — no, perhaps three miracles will suffice. Silly old sod!'

'Why worry? In half an hour, we'll have to go off-station to refuel at Bardufoss. He won't order us up again tonight, surely?'

'Don't bet on it,' Eastoe grumbled.

Except for their voices, the flight deck of the Nimrod was almost silent. As in all its endurance flying, the aircraft was using only two of its four engines. It was, in every way, a routine, empty day's flying. Yet exasperating to Eastoe-sad, too, because the Yank had almost got away with it. he'd almost pulled it off. Something had gone wrong — damage during the earlier dogfight when the second MiG-31 had been destroyed, probably — and he'd been caught on the hop, and finished off. Poor bugger.

'Anything at all, John?' he asked, almost wailing into his microphone, addressing himself to the tactical navigator seated before his displays in the first of the major compartments aft of the flight deck. 'What's that bloody stupid Russian doing?'

'Who — Pissed-off Pyotr in the Tupolev?'

'That's the one.'

'He's running up and down his bit of the border, doing just what we're doing, skipper. He's having about as much luck, by the look of it. No changes of heading, except when he comes to the end of a leg. He's now at — '

'I don't want a bloody fix on him, for Christ's sake! Is there nothing else?'

'Nothing. Not even a Finnish fighter. Keeping their heads down on orders from Helsinki, I should think. Anyway, they've been proven right. Ignore the problem and it'll go away. No MiGs anywhere over Finnish airspace. They've gone home for tea.'

'They've got their snaps of the wreckage. They'll be analysing those. Perhaps we should have…?'

'We're approaching optimum distance from the point of the explosions,' the routine navigator offered like a grinning tempter. 'Are you thinking of having a look, skipper?'

'I'm numb with boredom, but I'm not stupid,' Eastoe replied. Why bother? Aubrey would have arranged something with Finnish Intelligence, or an American satellite. If he'd wanted proof of the crash from photographs, he'd have asked for them.

Why bother? The same silent answer would be forthcoming. There was nothing to find. The captain of the Tupolev knew that's all there was just as surely as he did himself.

And then, the thought popped into his head. Why not? The Russians had been encroaching into Finnish airspace all afternoon. What if-?

The colder thought was -

We could be out of range of the bloody homing device. They might have already triggered the carrier wave, but they could be out of range by ten miles, or even a mile, if it was transmitting on very low power.

If he changed course, then the Tupolev would assume he'd found something. But, if he photographed the crash site at low level, then the bluff might work — and the snaps would be useful, more useful than tooling up and down the border.

'Anything, John?'

'Nothing, skipper.'

Eastoe glanced at his co-pilot. 'Everybody stay alert. I'm just taking a little short-cut here — a little corner off the map. I'd like some souvenir snaps. OK?'

The co-pilot watched Eastoe, then remarked: 'You really do like working for these cloak-and-dagger bods, don't you? Deeds of bloody derring-do. When are you going to grow up?'

'Like you?' Eastoe was grinning. 'Beats routine patrol. Who'll ever know? Who'll ever make a fuss? We can have our own snaps of the wreckage, and a closer listen for that bloody carrier wave — then, I promise, we'll go home.'

'Three or four minutes in Finnish airspace doesn't constitute the crime of the century, Terry,' the tactical navigator offered.

'Bob?'

'Yes, skipper?' the routine navigator replied.

'Give me a course for the crash site.'

'Roger, skipper.'

Eastoe grinned. 'Blame me at the court-martial. Terry,' he offered.

'You bet.'

Eastoe nudged the alteration of course through the rudder. The Nimrod's blunt head swung to starboard. The cloud layer beneath the aircraft was devoid of nationality. Simple, Eastoe thought, feeling the tension stiffening in his frame as they crossed into Finnish airspace.

'Twenty-four kilometres from the crash site — right on course.'

'No transmission, skipper.'

'ETA — fifteen seconds.'

Eastoe dipped the Nimrod's nose. 'I'm taking her down slowly to avoid creating any suspicion — then we'll turn and come back over the crash site. Everyone ready with their Brownies, please.'

The cloud layer rose up to meet the nose of the Nimrod, almost touching it.

'That's it!'

'Christ, what-?'

'The carrier wave. We're locked on now, transmission steady. It's her all right!'

'I'll alter course for the fix.'

The clouds slid around the Nimrod, darkening the flight deck.

'No, it's almost due south of us now — I've got the line… first fix, skipper. Just keep on course — don't alter a bloody thing.'

'South?' Eastoe remarked, genuinely surprised. 'Not at the crash site. Christ, then he didn't go down…?'

'Wait till you find the distance — it could have been thrown upwards of a mile,' the co-pilot offered.

'Jeremiah. Come on, John…'

'Give me time, skipper — fifty, fifty-one, two, three

'Do it now — I'll come back for another run if you need it — ' Eastoe ordered impatiently.

'Right. Got it.' Eastoe hummed tunelessly in the silence. His ears buzzed with anticipation. The tactical navigator would now be drawing his lines on the map, out towards the point where they would intersect and establish the precise position of the homing device. Then they'd know how far away it was — exactly where it was.

'It's almost forty kilometres south of us. On what looks like a lake.'

'His PSB-anything?'

'Nothing.'

'If he's in the plane, he'd have it working. So, where the hell is he?'

Gant awoke. Some part of his mind became immediately and completely alert, but he sensed the rest of himself, his thought-processes, his whole personality; struggling to throw off the deep sleep into which he had fallen the moment he climbed into the sleeping bag. Something had woken him — something…

He groaned, then clamped his hand over his mouth. Something, something that could already be as close as the Arctic hare had been when he had shot it -

His hand scrabbled within the sleeping bag, emerging with the Makarov pistol. It was almost completely dark. He could see little more than the glimmer of the snow, the boles of the nearest small trees like fence-posts. He listened, the remainder of his mind and senses becoming alert, shaking off sleep.

He pressed the cold barrel of the Makarov against his face, leaning against the gun as if for support.

Distantly he could hear the noise of helicopter rotors, the whisper that had penetrated his sleep. He had no doubt that the sound was approaching from the east and moving in his direction. Russians… Lights, troops, even dogs…

He kicked the sleeping bag from his legs and began to fold it untidily then thrust it into the survival pack. He hoisted the harness, slipping it over his shoulders even as he began running.

THREE: In Flight

'There!' Aubrey announced immediately he located the coded map reference Eastoe had supplied, his finger tapping at the large-scale map of Finland, which lapped down over the edges of the foldaway table. 'There — in a lake, gentlemen. In a lake.' There was a note of triumph in his voice.

'The lake would have been frozen — that's why he might have thought he could land safely,' Buckholz speculated quietly, tugging at his lower lip and glancing towards Curtin for confirmation. The USN Officer nodded.

'He must have gone straight through — or otherwise the Russians would have spotted the Firefox,' Curtin murmured, his brow furrowed. It was evident he was considering Gant's chances of survival.

'Agreed. But it's there.'

'The homing device is there,' Giles Pyott offered. He was still wearing his uniform greatcoat, his brown gloves were held in his right hand. They tapped at the map in a soft rhythm. 'But what else, mm? My guess would be wreckage. Gant must have ejected.'

'Then why is there no trace of Gant's PSB?' Curtin asked gloomily. 'Where is he Colonel Pyott, if he's alive?'

'Mm. Tricky.'

'Maybe he switched it off-or destroyed it,' Buckholz suggested. 'He wouldn't want to get himself picked up by the other side… they're a lot closer than we are, and there are a hell of a lot more of them.' Despite the offer of such qualified optimism, Buckholz shook his head. 'But, maybe he isn't alive. We have to face that possibility.'

'But the Firefox — !' Aubrey protested impatiently.

'It could be in two pieces, two hundred, or two million,' Curtin answered him. Aubrey's face wrinkled in irritation. 'This location is twenty miles from the point where the Foxbat impacted,' Curtin continued. 'That was up here…' He, in turn, tapped the map. It was as if the contoured sheet had become a talisman for them as they gathered around it. Pyott's military cap rested over northern Norway, his gloves now beside it, fingers reaching into the Barents Sea.

'So, it was damaged,' Buckholz said. 'Maybe on fire — twenty miles is nothing. There's no hope down that road, my friends.'

'We really must know.' Aubrey snapped in utter exasperation. 'We must have a look' As he uttered the words, he was staring up into Pyott's face, like a child expecting assured parental activity.

Giles Pyott smiled thinly. 'Kenneth, my dear chap — let's take this one step at a time. In the ten minutes since I got here from MoD, I've taken over his flying station from poor Bradnum, all in the name of this project of yours…what else would you have me do?'

'Eastoe must overfly — '

'The lake? What about diplomatic noises from the Finns?' Giles Pyott drew a folding chair to him, flicked it open with a movement of his wrist, and sat down. He placed his hands on his thighs, and waited. Three more chairs were lifted from a dozen or more stacked against one wall of the Scampton Ops. Room, and arranged in a semi-circle in front of Pyott. Aubrey seemed content, for the moment, to become the soldier's subordinate. Buckholz was surprised, until he realised that Aubrey was simply playing a waiting game. He expected good things from Pyott, if the colonel from MoD's StratAn Intelligence Committee was given the impression of command, of superior authority.

As if he read the American's thoughts, Pyott smiled and said, 'You're flattering me with your undivided attention, Kenneth… nevertheless, there are things to be done.' Pyott's eyes roamed the Ops. Room. His curled forefinger now rubbed at his small auburn-grey moustache. Scampton was, to all intents and purposes, at their disposal. But, what to do with its resources? Where to begin? 'I agree that Eastoe might make a single overflight. I wonder, however, whether photographs will give us enough information? It's getting pretty dark up there by now.' Aubrey's face, Pyott noticed, wore an intense, abstracted air, like that of a child furiously engaged in building a sandcastle in utter ignorance of the behaviour of tides. Aubrey was preparing himself to bully, to plead — to ignore the diplomatic in favour of the covert. And yet, his priorities might be the only really important ones in this case…

'We need someone to take a really close look,' Aubrey remarked quietly.

'Mm. Director Buckholz — Charles — what is your honest feeling? What do we have up there, at this moment?'

'I side with your Squadron Leader Eastoe, Colonel. Gant was picked up visually, pursued, and shot down. We've got wreckage up there, is my best guess.' Pyott turned to Curtin who merely nodded in support.

'I'm not disinclined to agree with you…' Aubrey made an impatient noise, but remained silent. Pyott continued: 'You all know the delicate political situation. Finland agreed — largely because of personal links between Kenneth and the DG of Finnish Intelligence — to this covert overflight by the MiG-31, if its capture was successful. Perhaps they know, or suspect, what has happened. I would expect them to take a very negative line… unless you, Charles, can convince your government, as I must convince mine, that pressure should be brought to bear?' Pyott shrugged. 'I am suggesting that we hold our fire until we are ordered to proceed by our respective governments. In other words, you and I, Charles, must be very convincing. Now, are we prepared to say, hands on hearts, that the Firefox might still be intact and the pilot alive?' He paused, looked at each of them intently. Almost willing them to answer, Aubrey felt. Then he added: 'Well? Time to consider, gentlemen?'

'Not for me,' Aubrey declared firmly. 'It may very well be true. I, for one, must know for certain.' Aubrey glared at Charles Buckholz. 'Charles?'

'I don't know — look, you could be right. I hope to God you are. But — it just doesn't look that way to us.'

'Will you say that it does — just for the moment?'

'I don't know

'We can't just write the whole thing off, Charles — !' Aubrey cried, standing up. His chair collapsed behind him, making a disproportionate noise in the Ops. Room. 'There has been too much expenditure of planning, time, and lives involved. You must want to be certain, surely? The Russians will want to be, and we may already be behind them in a race we didn't even know we'd entered!'

Buckholz's face was puzzled atid a little fearful as he looked up at Aubrey, bent intently over him like a bully. 'I — ' he began, but Aubrey seized upon his hesitation.

'Once they've seen the pictures they took of the crash site, they'll find the Firefox's remains are missing. We know the plane isn't there. Once they know — and they may know it already — they'll be looking for it. And, if it is intact…' He left the threat unelaborated.

Pyott stroked his moustache. 'I think Kenneth has a point, Charles,' he murmured.

'Maybe,' Buckholz replied reluctantly.

Curtin was nodding. 'I think we have to, Mr. Buckholz — we have to follow this thing through.'

Buckholz shrugged heavily. 'Very well. For the moment, I'll lie my head off to Washington. And you'll do the same for London, uh?'

Pyott nodded. 'We will.'

'We must get our political masters to order us to go ahead,' Aubrey instructed in a dark, Machiavellian voice, his face at first sombre but breaking into a mischievous smile as he finished speaking.

'OK.'

'Let's not waste time. There are secure telephones in the Briefing Room. You can call Grosvenor Square at once, Charles. We'll wait until you've finished your call before we make ours.'

Buckholz felt himself dismissed, but not slighted. He motioned to Curtin. 'Come on. Gene — let's agree our story before anyone makes a call.'

The two Americans disappeared into the Briefing Room, the door of which led off the main Ops. Room. Giles Pyott and Aubrey watched it close behind them.

'Can we do it?' Aubrey asked quickly.

Instead of answering, Pyott stood up and moved to the huge plot-table in the centre of the underground room. He brooded over the models and tapes and markings on its surface. 'Damn bad show,' he murmured, turning to Aubrey, who now stood alongside him. The crash site was represented on the plot-table by a model of a MiG-25 and the black, futuristic model of the MiG-31. In deadly, fatal conjunction. Deliberately, Aubrey picked up one of the cuelike rods the plotters used to alter the position of symbols on the table. Awkwardly, he reached out with it and shunted the model of the Firefox southwards, letting it come to rest on the blue spot of a lake. For a moment. Aubrey's movements reminded Pyott of a short, bald croupier.

'There!' he said with intense triumph.

'You're convinced it's in one piece?'

'I'm not convinced it's in a million pieces, Giles — besides, we could still learn a great deal from whatever is left of it — from Gant, were he alive. To know, we must have someone under the ice, so to speak.'

Pyott rubbed his moustache with a quicker, stronger rhythm. When he faced Aubrey again, he said, 'I know what you want of me, Kenneth. There are some people who would suit, up in the Varahgerfjord at the moment. Some of our Special Boat Service marines… practising landing on an enemy coast from a hunter-killer submarine, that sort of training. Routine stuff. Under the supervision of an old friend of yours — Major Alan Waterford of 22 SAS. Perhaps that seems like the workings of an auspicious fate to you, mm?'

'Can we-?'

Pyott shook his head. 'Not until we have clearance — a direct order to do something. Washington and Number Ten must give that order. You know that, Kenneth.'

'Unfortunately, yes.'

'The Finns gave us permission for the covert overflight of their country, and certain reluctant back-up facilities. They are unlikely, without pressure from our masters, to involve themselves any further in this affair. I must argue, from StratAn's point of view, you from that of SIS. JIC and the Chiefs of Staff will, in all likelihood, have to persuade Number Ten to continue with the affair. It really depends on Washington's attitude.'

Pyott's attention moved from Aubrey to an approaching RAF officer. He had come quickly down the metal steps from the glass-fronted gallery which contained the communications equipment. All that could be seen from the floor of the Ops. Room was a row of bent heads. The Pilot Officer hurried towards them.

'Mr. Aubrey — Colonel Pyott, I think you'd better come quickly. Squadron Leader Eastoe wants to speak to Mr. Aibrey urgently.'

'What is it?'

'I don't know, sir — the Squadron Leader just said it was very urgent and to get you to the mike at once.'

Pyott strode after the RAF officer as soon as the young man turned away. Aubrey scuttled after them both, his eye glancing across a litter of paper cups, bent backs in blue uniform shirts, scribbled blackboards and weather charts, before he concentrated his gaze on the metal steps as he clattered up them behind Pyott. Eastoe was waiting for him behind the glass, pausing on tape for a scrambled spit of sound that would be Aubrey's speeded-up reply.

Aubrey thrust past Pyott and said to the Operator, 'Play it for me.'

'Mr. Aubrey had better be told at once,' Eastoe began, 'even through the ground-clutter and the intermittent snow we're picking up signs of helicopter activity, moving west and southwest. Our best guess is three of them, and that they're troop-carriers. They're not interested in our lake, as far as we can tell — their course would take them north-west of it. Our ETA for the lake is four minutes two. If you want us to go, that is. Over.'

The tape stopped. Aubrey rubbed his cheeks furiously. It couldn't be — they couldn't have picked up the carrier wave from the homing device, only Eastoe could do that aboard the Nimrod. What, then?

'Eastoe, keep track of them if you can. Do whatever you have to…' He merely glanced up at Pyott, whose face was impassive. Aubrey hesitated for a moment, then said firmly, "I'm ordering you to overfly the lake — deceive them as to your object — and obtain the best photographic record you can under the circumstances. And, when you've done that, I want you to take a look at those helicopters. I want to know what they're doing- dammit!' The tape continued to run. Aubrey finally added: 'Good luck. Over and out.' Only then he did return his gaze to Pyott, whose face was gloomy. His eyes were glazed and inward-looking. Evidently, he was weighing the consequences of Aubrey's precipitation. 'I had to,' Aubrey explained. 'Things are beginning to outrun us. I had to have better information, whatever the fuss.'

'I agree,' Pyott said. 'Even though I don't much like it. Well, we'd better talk to JIC and the Chiefs of Staff — I may have to get down there myself…' He crossed to the door of the communications gallery, then turned to Aubrey. 'I do hope our American friends are obtaining the most hopeful noises from their President, Kenneth — for all our sakes.'

The icicles were like transparent, colourless gloves worn over the dead twigs of the bush behind which Gant crouched. Below him, the noise and movement belonged to a wild hunt: an image of his own pursuit, probably no more than a mile behind him now.

He had heard the noise of dogs. The helicopters — three he was almost certain — had cast about for signs of him, often appearing as they drove westwards above him or close to one of his hiding places. It was as if they knew his position, and were herding him ahead of or between them. He knew one of the helicopters was west or north-west of him now, its troops probably working back towards him…

Towards this village, too, this collection of wooden huts below him, beyond which a group of Lapps were penning reindeer. One short, brightly-clothed man was dragged on his stomach behind a galloping bull reindeer, his hands still gripping the lasso. He disappeared within a flurry of hooves and upflung snow, then rolled clear. The images seemed almost to come from within him, as they stirred memory. A rodeo, but now performed by people as alien to him as the Vietnamese. Short, olive-skinned, some dressed traditionally even to the long-bobbled woollen caps and heel-less shoes, others affecting blue denims and sheepskin jackets.

Alien. People he did not know, whose language he did not speak, therefore could not trust. Reindeer barked and hooted. Men whisked among them like matadors. Great snouted heads tossed. The sight of the round-up chilled him. He had followed the noises, stumbling upon the village, and had become rapt by a sense of the familiar. Then this parody of something American so far north of the Arctic Circle had quickly alienated him.

Torches flickered, lamps gleamed. The lights of a truck and the headlight of a motorized sledge were focused on the corral. Shadows galloped and tossed in the beams. They would be finishing soon, when darkness came. Gant could smell cooking. The Russians, too, would be here soon. It was time for him to move.

He climbed into a stooping crouch. The flying suit creaked with ice. His body was stiff and slow. He needed something warm to wear; a jacket or cloak or tunic, it did not matter. He would steal whatever he found.

In his right hand he held the folding .22 rifle, loaded with the single bullet it would hold. He had buried his parachute, but still wore his life jacket because he needed its harness to hold his survival pack. The Makarov pistol was easy to hand. He moved cautiously down the slope towards the nearest wooden huts. Behind the buildings, the noises of the round-up quietened, becoming no more than a confused babble and a drumming through the frozen earth. He hurried to the wall of the hut, pressing himself against it, reclaiming his breath before moving slowly along the wall to the steamy window from which a flickering lamplight spilled onto the snow. The black holes of his descending footprints were visible in the light. He listened. He could hear nothing except the sounds of the round-up. The Russians could be no more than half a mile behind him now. He shivered with a new awareness of the cold. He had to be warm. He would not be able to spend the night moving unless he was dressed more warmly.

He stood on tiptoe, looking into the long, low room. A huge black stove in the centre, bright rugs scattered, armchairs, a plain wooden table, places laid upon it. Time -

He listened for the noise of helicopters, but heard nothing. He tested the window. Locked. He moved around the angle of the wall towards what he assumed was the rear of the hut. One window locked, another, another…

He eased it open. The smell of cooking was strong. There was no one in the small kitchen. On an old cooker, a huge pot was simmering. The smell was coming from it. Meat. Hot meat in some kind of stew. He dragged his leg tiredly over the sill, sat astride for a moment — where was the cook? — then dropped into the room, dragging the rifle from his shoulder, aiming it towards the door into the main room. He could hear someone now, moving about, the noises of cutlery quite distinct and recognisable. He sidled across the kitchen towards the stove, moving with exaggerated stealth. There was a ladle in the pot. He reached out with his left hand, eyes still on the doorway, and touched the ladle,then removed it, tasting the stew like a chef. The meat's flavour was strong — reindeer, he presumed — but his stomach craved it. He leaned heavily, his head against a clouded mirror, all the time watching the doorway, the ladle moving as silent as he could manage from the pot to his mouth — pot to mouth, pot to mouth…

He swallowed greedily again and again, his stomach churning with the sudden, gulped feast. The warmth of it burned through him. He shivered. A pool of melted snow from his boots spread around him.

Then she returned to the kitchen. Small, olive-skinned, a pear-shaped face with a black, surprised little round hole opening in the middle of it as she saw him and understood the rifle. Dark hair, plump figure. Check shirt and denims; again, the familiar-the log-cabin imagery — surprised him for a moment. Then he motioned her into the kitchen with the barrel of the rifle. She came slowly, silently.

'I — mean you no harm,' Gant said slowly. 'No — harm. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' she replied, staring at the rifle. Its barrel dropped as an expression of Gant's surprise.

'You speak English?'

'A little. I — was taught. Who are you?' She studied his flying suit, her face screwed into lines and folds as if she were trying to remember a similar costume.

'My airplane — it crashed.'

'Oh.' Her face showed she had identified his clothing.

'I–I'm sorry about the food…' He gestured towards the stove. His stomach rumbled. The woman almost smiled. 'I–I'll leave you.'

'Why?'

'I have to.'

'We — can help you.'

Gant shook his head furiously. 'You can't get involved in this,' he said.

She moved closer. Evidently, the man represented no real threat to her, despite his intrusion into her home. 'Why not? We have a radio.' She gestured towards the doorway.

'Christ, radio — ' he blurted.

'Yes. Where are you from — the Finnmark?' Her English improved; rusty with disuse, it was now working again. She indicated her mouth, then pointed at him. His accent…

'Yes. But, how long?'

'Long?'

'Will they come now, at once?' She shook her head. 'Then no radio. I must go now. I — ' He decided to ask rather than demand. 'I need something warm — to wear.'

She nodded. 'My husband — he will take you on the sledge, when he returns, or tomorrow, to the main road, perhaps.' Not alien, somehow familiar and expected. He was warm at last. Tears of weariness and respopse pricked at his eyes. The promises of aid in the strange, halting English numbed him as certainly as the cold outside.

Could he — ? No. No risks…

Quarter of a mile, no, more than that now.

'Clothes,' he said heavily.

The beam of the searchlight from the descending helicopter swept over the room, fuzzily gleaming for a moment through the steam-clouded window. Then it was gone, bouncing off the slope before it finally disappeared and all that remained was the racket of the rotors. Gant listened. Only one, still time…

'Clothes!' he snapped, his voice ugly.

She did not, however, react as if she feared him. She nodded. 'Who are they?'

'Russians.'

She spat, suddenly and surprisingly. It was the reflex, racial memory of a once-real hatred. She snapped: 'We are Skolt Lapps — we live here now since we lost our homes in Petsamo. Petsamo belongs to them now, since the war. Russians — !'

The rotors roared, then began to wind down. Gant pressed himself against the wall, and squinted through the steam on the window. The rotors died. He heard no dogs, but the noises from the round-up had quietened. Two minutes — ?

He glanced around the room. The woman had gone. He panicked, but as he moved she re-entered the doorway, holding a heavy check jacket and a pair of thick trousers. And walking boots.

'These — I hope they fit you.'

He bundled them under his arm, fingers locking inside the boots to hold them. She moved to the outside door. He stared at the puddle that marked his presence, the one or two half-footprints on the polished floorboards. Smiling, she tilted the pot on the stove. Stew sloshed onto the floor. Then she beckoned him.

Cold threatened from the door.

He dropped his bundle, pulled on the jacket for disguise and warmth, then collected the trousers and boots and rifle. He could hear voices, almost conversational in volume and tone, but he could not hear dogs. On the doorstep, he nodded to her. She touched his shoulder, her expression already settling to a kind of passivity. She was preparing her face.

'They are pretending to be Finns,' she whispered. 'But their accents are bad. Go now. That way.' She pointed back up the slope. He saw the deep black holes of his descent of the slope. She pushed him ahead of her. 'I went for a walk, looking for the dog,' she said.

He turned to thank her, but she merely shook her head. 'Go,' she instructed. 'The Finnmark is twenty miles away.'

He was already climbing the slope, urgency driving out the sense of who had given him the jacket and the clothes he carried under his arm. He was primarily aware of his right hand once more and the rifle it held.

He turned back once, at the crest of the slope, near the bush which had earlier concealed him. The door of the hut was closed. Probably, the woman had begun to be afraid now, to physically shake with reaction, as much at his presence as that of the Russians. Now, she would be deciding she should not have helped him, that her home had been broken into, invaded.

The round-up had ended. Reindeer stamped and shuffled. The MiL helicopter sat like a squat beetle, rotors still, near the corrals. A group of men were talking. Dark clothing and white Arctic camouflage.

Three, four — six…

Spreading out, searching. There seemed no resistance from the Lapps. Perhaps they believed the fiction that the soldiers were Finns. He turned his back on the village and trudged into the trees.

Twenty miles, she had said. Twenty.

It was a huge distance, almost huge enough to be a void, something uncrossable.

Vladimirov turned from the window of the Tupolev as Dmitri Priabin entered the War Command Centre ahead of the First Secretary. The young man's face was elated, yet he also appeared to be recovering from a bout of nausea. There was a bright sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his neck was pink above the collar of his uniform. Vladimirov knew, with an inward, cold amusement, that the young officer had survived, that the collar and shoulder insignia of the uniform would soon be changed. Now, they denoted Priabin as a lieutenant. What next? Captain Priabin, or the dizzy heights of a colonelcy? It appeared that the young man's former superior, Kontarsky, was to bear the burden of failure entirely alone. Priabin had first identified Gant, probably by accident more than design, and almost in time to stop him. He had earned the reprieve of promotion.

He had arrived expecting to suffer, and had been rewarded. Vladimirov did not envy him anything except his youth as he hurriedly exited from the room. Then he turned his back on the First Secretary and looked down at the tarmac, where an imposing queue of black limousines was drawn up. Priabin went down the passenger steps and climbed into the back of one of the cars. It drove off towards the administration buildings and the perimeter fence. Presumably, Priabin had some woman to impress with his narrow escape, his unexpected promotion. Vladimirov returned his attention to the War Command Centre.

The Soviet leader had donned his overcoat. His fur hat rested like a pet in one of his gloved hands. His face was stern. He had paused only to listen to the latest report from the commander of the KGB Border Guard units they had despatched into Finnish Lapland. As the voice from the cabin speaker proceeded with the report, the First Secretary nodded occasionally.

Vladimirov watched Andropov. There was a faint gleam of perspiration on his shaven upper lip. Responsibility had passed to himself, as well as to Vladimirov. It was an uneasy and temporary alliance that the air force general did not welcome or trust.

The high-speed transmissions from the command helicopter were received by the AWACS Tupolev, then re-transmitted to Moscow. In the War Command Centre, they were played back at normal speed. Vladimirov could not rid himself of the analogy of some obscure sporting commentary. He listened through the caution, through wanting-to-please, wanting-to-succeed, and tried to assess how close they were to the American.

For he was there. The parachute had been found by one of the dogs, tracks had been followed, a village might, or might not, have given him shelter, clothing, food. He was heading in a north-westerly direction, towards the closest outjutting of the Norwegian frontier. He was, they guessed, less than twenty miles from his objective. The hunters had a night and part of a day, no more.

The transmission ended with a request for orders. Immediately, the First Secretary looked at Andropov and at Vladimirov, and then, having fixed each of them with a blunt, unwavering stare, merely nodded. Men sprang to renewed attention as he left the compartment. They heard his high shoes ring on the frosty metal of the passenger ladder. Vladimirov resisted the impulse to turn his head, and continued to watch Andropov. Suddenly, the Chairman of the KGB gestured him to follow, into the recreation suite.

'Tell the commander to hold for instructions,' Vladimirov snapped, following Andropov. He closed the compartment door behind him. Andropov was pouring himself a whisky at the bar.

'Drink?' he asked.

'No, thank you.'

Andropov gulped some of the liquor as he turned to Vladimirov. 'Well?' he demanded. 'What now?'

'From your people?'

'Our people!' Andropov snapped.

'I'd forgotten-our people.'

'What about this Nimrod aircraft in the area?'

'It must have picked up the helicopters. Obviously, they also wish to know what happened.'

'And will they have units like ours in the area too?'

Vladimirov shook his head. 'I doubt that. Unfortunately, we have been unable to help giving something of the game away. We need him quickly now. The Nimrod was very low — presumably it collected photographs, which will be analysed. That gives us time. I think enough time.'

'Damned forest!' Andropov erupted.

'I agree. It makes things more difficult. We know he was with the Lapps — but he stole food and clothing, no more. He wasn't hiding there. He cannot be more than a mile ahead of our people — once again, they must put down men ahead of his probable track.'

'Yes, yes, of course they must-!' Andropov drank the remainder of the whisky, and studied the glass. Vladimirov saw his gaze stray to the bottle on the bar, but he made no move towards it. 'Where is the plane, Vladimirov? There's not enough wreckage in those photographs… you and I know that, even though the experts will take hours to decide the same thing.' Spots of pink glowed on the Chairman's high cheekbones. 'We know it isn't there — so, where is it? Eh, where is it, this priceless white elephant of ours? We know he didn't eject because of the parachute they found-he landed that plane, Vladimirov. Do you realise that?"

Vladimirov nodded. 'Yes. I do. But I do not know where. Only he can tell us that. Had he been one of our pilots, or had it been an American aircraft, he would have stayed near it. In this case, he has been trying to open up the distance between himself and the MiG-31. The British Nimrod, too, wonders where the aircraft is, no doubt. Only Gant knows.'

'Then we must have him!'

'We will. His time is running out.'

'I wish I could be certain of that.'

'Your men are following his tracks, Comrade Chairman! What more do you want? Their footsteps are planted in his. In an hour, perhaps two, he will be ours.' Vladimirov smiled. 'Then we will both be off the hook, mm?'

Andropov merely glowered in reply. He pondered for a time, then said, 'Couldn't we track back along his journey?'

'Perhaps. But, had it been me, I would have changed direction a dozen times. And, by now, his tracks will have gone, and his scent will have grown cold. Don't worry — Gant has the answer. Soon you will be able to ask him for that answer — personally.'

'There's no doubt about these photographs,' Buckholz protested vigorously, his finger tapping the glistening enlargements that lay scattered on the plot-table of the Scampton Ops. Room. 'You use dogs to sniff for explosives — unlikely — or you use them to hunt men. Those are dogs — KGB Border Guard dogs.' His large, blunt-fingered hands spread the enlargements in a new pattern, as if he were dealing cards or flinging down items of evidence. 'These troops are in Arctic camouflage, but they're not military. These MiL Mi-4s are what the Border Guard favour for personnel and equipment transport. And they don't have any markings at all… just the way the Border Guard operates. No, Colonel, what else do you need to see before you make up your mind?'

'Charles,' Pyott began defensively, 'I realise that Washington is very keen to get on with this job, but — '

'You have to get your government off its butt, Colonel! Time is running out for Gant, and for us.'

Aubrey, as a distraction, picked up a sheaf of the photographs that had been transmitted over the wireprint from Eastoe's Nimrod. They were all pale, shining with the ghostly light of the advanced infra-red cameras that had produced them. Men almost in negative in the very last of the daylight and the ensuing darkness.

He looked at the prints of the lake. Broken ice near the neck of the lake, but very little of it. A small, shrinking patch of black water. Yet the Firefox had to be underneath the water, beneath the healing ice. The remaining pictures, of the wreckage at the point of explosion, were uninteresting. Aubrey, without study and without expert advice, knew that nothing of the MiG-31 lay there.

Pybtt glanced at Aubrey. 'Number Ten is being very reluctant over this, Kenneth,' he began, seeking an ally.

'Because the Cabinet Defence Committee has always pooh-poohed the Firefox, I wonder? The P.M. isn't bullying them any more, I suppose?' He turned to Buckholz. 'Is the President applying the right amount of pressure, Charles?' Buckholz nodded. 'Everyone would like to walk away, except for Washington.'…

'The usual restrictions, of course, Kenneth — if you're caught, we'll deny everything.'

'We work with those every day — they're not important. It's doing something — and quickly — that is important.' He stared meaningfully at Pyott, who held up his hands, wrists pressed together to represent unseen bonds. 'Tied they may be, Giles- but really.'

'What can I do?' Pyott asked softly.

'Look at them!' Aubrey returned, his hand flapping towards the scattered enlargements. 'Gant may be alive — he knows where the body is buried, as do we. If they get to him, they will know! We must at least establish what is beneath the ice — before we decide our response.' He looked at Buckholz, and shook his head. 'I don't think there's anything we can do for poor Gant — I can't order military units into that area.'

'I know that. So will he. He knows he's on his own.'

Aubrey nodded lugubriously, plucking at his lower lip. Then, as suddenly and superficially as a child, his mood changed. He turned on Pyott and said, in an intense whisper, almost hunching over the enlargements on the plot-table, 'You already have Waterford standing by with a four-man unit at Kirkenes. Their diving equipment is loaded onto a Royal Norwegian Air Force Lynx helicopter. You have the agreement of Commander, Allied Forces Northern Norway, for this flight under the guise of a search-and-rescue mission… Giles, please make up your mind to act-!'

'I have other people to please apart from yourself, SIS, or even the CIA…' Pyott began, then clamped his lips tightly shut. He shook his head, 'Unofficially, JIC wishes something done — so do the Chiefs of Staff, but Cabinet opinion is against any exacerbation of the situation. They'll settle for the loss of the two — the only two — production prototypes of the Firefox. The expert reasoning is that the Bilyarsk project will have been put back by at least two, even three years by what has happened. The Russians may even scrap the whole, hideously expensive project.'

'And if the Firefox is intact? And the Russians ask their friendly neighbours, the Finns, for their toy back?' Aubrey demanded with withering irony, his face red with frustration. His hands were clenched at his sides.

'Yes,' Pyott admitted.'Yes, I know.'

'Washington will carry the day, you know that,' Aubrey observed. 'Gresham, as P.M., and the rest of the Cabinet will have to sanction whatever the President wishes to happen — however much they dislike the medicine.'

'But they have not yet done so — '

'And we have run out of time.'

Momentarily, Giles Pyott's cheeks glowed with anger, then he turned on his heel. 'Very well,' he snapped, 'very well.'

Aubrey hurried after him as he mounted the ladder to the communications gallery. 'Tell Waterford he must check this KGB activity,' he called. Pyott stopped and turned.

'No!'

'Yes,' Aubrey insisted. 'We have to know whether or not Gant is alive — we have to know when, and if, they take him alive. Everything could depend upon it.'

Pyott paused, his brow furrowed, his cheeks hot. Then he nodded. He, too, could not escape the conclusions Aubrey offered; could not escape his imprisonment within the situation. Aubrey — the covert world that he and Buckholz represented — was his jailer. He saw himself within a fortress, a castle. The politicians had erected the outer walls; they could be breached, or removed, or their existence could be denied as circumstances dictated. But Pyott knew himself to be imprisoned within the keep of the castle, and the walls of the keep had been made by Aubrey and Buckholz and the MiG — and its pilot. The walls were impenetrable, inescapable. He nodded.

'Very well,' he announced angrily. 'Very well.'

He opened the door to the communications gallery. Aubrey scurried in behind him.

He was floundering through the snow now. They still had not released the dogs, but he could hear them barking close behind him. The snow was deep, almost solid, restraining him, pulling him back. He had abandoned the floor of the shallow valley, keeping to the slope, but even here the snow lay heaped and traplike near bushes and boulders. He slipped often. The effects of the hot food were gone. He was utterly weary.

When he had halted last, he had checked the map. More than three miles from the village, perhaps another sixteen — fifteen now, or a little more? — to the Norwegian border, to villages, to police, to another state where he might be safe. Safe — ?

They wouldn't let him remain. They would take him back.

He stumbled, his wrist hurt as his weight collapsed on it, the .22 rifle ploughed into the snow. Furiously, he shook the barrel; snow fluttered away from it. The sky was black and clear, the stars like gleaming stones. Silver light from a thin paring of new moon lay lightly on the snow. He climbed groggily to his feet and looked behind him. Noise of dogs, and a glimpse of lights. The distant sound of one of the helicopters. He did not know where the choppers were, and it worried him. They buzzed at his imagination like flies, as audible in his head as if they were physically present, their belly-lights streaming along the floor of the valley searching for his footprints. One of them had to be ahead, its platoon already fanned out and sweeping slowly back towards him, in radio contact with the pursuit behind him.

Radio -

He had known, had hidden the fact from himself.

Radio.

It winded him like a blow, the admission of their technology, their ability to communicate. Even now, at that precise moment, he was pinpointed.

He looked up at the black sky with its faint sheen, its glittering stars. At any moment, the choppers would come. The pursuit was too close now not to be able to locate him.

Somewhere along the valley floor, just — there…

A finger was tracing contours; the twisting course of the valley. A helicopter would bank, turn-

He ran. Ice glittered on a bush, and he brushed savagely against the obstacle. The rifle pumped against his thigh, against the heavy waterproof trousers. His chest hurt with the temperature of the.air he was inhaling. The survival pack bumped and strained and dragged at his back. He glanced behind once more -

Lights.

Noise — ahead-

Men had been dropped out of earshot, ahead of him, and were working their way back down the valley from the northwest towards him. Pincer.

He stopped running, bent double. He listened. A thin breeze had carried the noises. Shuffling, the clinking of metal, the slither of cross-country skis. The barking of a single dog. Behind him, more dogs, more men, and wobbling flashlight beams. No rotor noise. Nothing. Surprise.

The two groups of Russians were no more than a few hundred yards apart. He began to struggle up the slope, out of the valley. Icy rock betrayed him, a hollow trapped his leg with soft, deep snow. His chest heaved, his back bent under the weight of the survival pack so that his face was inches from the glittering snow. He climbed, feet sinking, body elongating so that he threatened to become stretched out, flat on his stomach. His legs refused to push him faster or further. He used his hands, the .22 clogging with snow as he used it as a stick.

Crest. Dark sky above white snow like a close horizon.

He staggered, pushed up from all-fours to try to stand upright. He gasped for breath, saw the legs, saw the Arctic camouflage, shook his head in weary disbelief, saw the next man perhaps fifty yards away, already turning in his direction, saw, saw -

He cried out in a wild yell of protest and used the rifle like a club, striking at the white form on the crest of the slope. The Russian fell away with a grunt, rolling down the steeper slope on the other side. Gant staggered after the rolling body, as if to strike again, then leapt tiredly over it and charged on down the steep slope.

Trees. A patch of black forest, then the flatness of what might be a frozen lake beyond. The ground levelling out. The trees offering cover, the barrel of his rifle clogged with snow -

He careered on, just keeping his balance. Whistles and the noise of dogs behind him, but no shooting. He ran on, floundering with huge strides towards the trees.

FOUR: Recovery

The Westland Lynx Mk 86 helicopter, its Royal Norwegian Air Force markings concealed, dropped towards the arrowlike shape of the lake. Alan Waterford, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, watched intently as the ghostly ice moved up towards him, and the surface snow became distressed from the downdraught of the rotors. He ignored the noises from the main fuselage as the four-man Royal Marine SBS team prepared to leave the helicopter. Instead, he watched the ice.

'Hold it there,' he ordered the pilot The downdraught was winnowing the surface snow, but there was no billowing effect. Waterford did not want the surface obscured, the snow boiling around the cockpit like steam, as it would if they dropped any lower. Even so, a few crystals were melting on the perspex. Beyond the smear they made, the ice looked unbroken and innocent as it narrowed towards the neck of the lake where Eastoe's infra-red pictures had revealed a patch of dark, exposed water.

The Lynx steadied at its altitude and began to drift slowly over the ice, the faintest of shadows towed behind it like a cloth. Waterford craned ahead and to one side, searching the surface. As with the photographs, he could see no evidence that an airframe had broken up over the lake. There appeared to be only the one patch of clear water and jostling, broken ice right at the end of the lake.

No undercarriage tracks, but he could not count on them. There could have been a light snow shower, or the wind could have covered them as effectively as fresh snow. Had he landed the plane, or ejected before it ever reached the lake? And if he'd landed, how efficient in saving the airframe and the electronics and the rest of the MiG-31's secrets had the American been in his terror of drowning? Or had he left the cockpit before the plane began to break through the ice?

Behind him, the SBS men, all trained divers, were preparing to discover the answers to his questions. It was too late and too dark to assess fire-damage to the trees on the shore. Gant had to be alive — the Russian activity confirmed that — but had he ejected or landed?

The Lynx moved towards the trees. The patch of dull black water was visible now; ominous. Waterford removed his headset and stood in a crouch. His bulk seemed to fill the cockpit like a malevolent shadow. The pilot, a Norwegian lieutenant, glanced up at him.

'I can't put down this side of the trees — I'm not risking the ice. Tell them they'll have to walk.' He grinned.

'They're used to it,' Waterford grunted and clambered back into the main cabin of the helicopter. Four men in Arctic camouflage looked up at him. Beneath the white, loose tunics and trousers, they were wearing their wetsuits. Oxygen tanks, cutting equipment, lamps, rifles lay near the closed main door. 'You're going to have to walk it,' Waterford announced to a concerted groan. 'You know what they want, Brooke — evidence that the airframe is intact — don't give it to the buggers unless it's absolutely true. Any damage — any at all — has to be spotted. And don't forget the pictures for Auntie Aubrey's album, to go alongside the pressed flowers…' He grinned, but it seemed a mirthless exercise of his lips. 'Keep your heads down — you are not, repeat not, to be detected under any circumstances. And,' he looked at his watch, 'Gunnar tells me we have no more than an hour to look for our American friend — even if we don't run into trouble — so that's all the time you've got. And, sergeant?'

'Sir?'

'Make sure you conceal that commpack properly — we won't be the last of our side in and out of here, I'm sure of that, and they'll all want to talk to London as quickly as possible.' Waterford indicated one of the packs near the sergeant's feet. 'This'll give them satellite direct-don't leave it where a reindeer can piss on it and fuse the bloody thing.'

'Certainly not, sir,' the sergeant replied. 'Commpack not to be left where reindeer may piss on it — sir. One question, sir?'

'Yes, sergeant?'

'Does the Major know the exact-height to which a reindeer can piss, sir?'

The Lynx drifted slowly downwards. Waterford, smiling at the tension-releasing laughter in the cabin, glanced at the window in the main door. Snow surrounded them like steam. They were almost down. As he observed the fact, the Lynx touched, bounced as if rubber, settled. Immediately, the rotors began to wind down, their noise more throaty, ugly. The sergeant slid back the main cabin door.

'Out you get-quick as you can,' the lieutenant ordered, nodding at Waterford. Packs and equipment were flung out of the door. Through his camouflage parka, the night temperature chilled Waterford. He felt the tip of his nose harden with the cold. When they had dropped to the ground, he moved to the cabin door.

'Good luck. One hour — and I'm counting.' He waved, almost dismissively, and slammed the sliding door closed, locking it. Then he climbed back into the cockpit and regained his seat, rubbing his hands. He slipped on the inertia-reel belt, then his headset. 'OK, Gunnar-let's see if we can find this lost American chap, shall we?'

The Lynx jumped into the air almost at once, the rotors whining up, the blades becoming a dish that caught the moonlight. The four SBS men were already trudging briskly into the trees, laden with their equipment. The helicopter banked out over the lake, and headed north-west. The ice diminished behind them.

There was no nightsight on the folding .22 rifle. There were six rounds, each to be fed separately into the breech. It was a weapon of survival — for Arctic hares for the solid tablet stove or any fire he might have been able to light — but not for defence. Never for offence. Gant had no idea how much stopping-power the slim, toylike rifle possessed, and he hesitated to find out. The nearest of the Russians, white-tunicked, white-legginged, Kalashnikov AKM carried across his chest, was moving with great caution from fir-bole to low bush to fir-bole. The dogs had been kept back, still leashed; perhaps moving with the remainder of the unit to encircle the clump of trees in which they knew he was hiding.

Time had run out. His only advantage was that they wanted him alive. They would have definite, incontrovertible orders not to kill him. Maim him they might, but he would be alive when they reached Murmansk or Moscow or wherever.

The frozen lake was behind him, as clean and smooth as white paper, almost phosphorescent in the moonlight. His breath smoked around him like a scarf; he wondered that the approaching Russian had not yet caught sight of it, not heard the noise of his breathing. Forty yards, he guessed. A glimpse of another white shape, flattening itself behind a fir, farther off. The noise of the dogs.

And, omnipresent and above the trees, the rotors of two of the helicopters. He had glimpsed one of them, its outline clear for a moment before he had been blinded by the searching belly-light. Slim, long-tailed MiL-4s. Frost glittered on the dark trunk of the fir at the fuzzy edge of his vision. He had now recovered his night vision after the searchlight, except for a small, bright spot at the centre of the Russian's chest as he sighted along the seemingly inadequate barrel of the rifle. The man bulked large around the retinal image of the searchlight. Gant could not miss at that range.

Still he hesitated, sensing the moment at the eye of the storm; sensing that any move he now made would be his last. Capture was inevitable. So why kill — ?

Then he squeezed the trigger, knowing the true futility of the attack. A sharp little crack like a twig broken, and the white-dressed Russian flung up his arms and fell slowly backwards. Snow drifted down, disturbed by the downdraught, onto Gant's head and shoulders. Beyond the body, which did not move, did not begin to scrabble towards the nearest cover, another white form whisked behind a dark trunk. Gant turned towards the lake, regretting, loathing the gesture of the kill. Through the trees, the shore appeared empty.

Orders shouted, the crackle of a radio somewhere, the din of the dogs. His head turned back towards the body, then once more to the lake. A light was creeping across the ice. Above it, as if walking hesitantly on the beam, a MiL-4 came into view. The ice glared. He heard the noise of dogs released — released, unleashed, loose…

He began to run, even though some part of him knew they would be trained not to harm him if he remained still. He could not help himself. He had to run. The dogs were loose.

Yowling behind him, a shot high over his head. Small, low branches whipping at his face, depositing snow in his eyes and mouth and nostrils. He held on to the rifle with both hands, almost heaving the air aside as he ran out of the trees, across the snow-covered, slippery stones of the shore, out onto the surface snow that made the ice tactile, sure-footed. The MiL-4 turned its baleful black face of a cockpit in his direction, and the beam of the searchlight licked across the ice towards him.

No more trees, no more cover, his mind kept repeating, attuned to the frantic beating of his ears, but he could not regret the sky. The trees had hemmed him, formed a prison before he was, indeed, captured. The MiL slipped over him like a huge, moving blanket, whirling up the snow around him, cleaning the ice and making it suddenly treacherous. He staggered, then whirled round.

The leading Alsatian was out of the trees, hardly hesitating as it met the stones on the shore and then the smoother ice. He raised the .22 and fired. The dog skidded, sliding on towards him, mouth gaping. He looked up. A face appeared at the open cabin door of the helicopter. It was grinning, savagely. Gant fumblingly ejected the cartridge, thrust a new round into the breech, raised the gun — two more dogs, now on the ice, but he could no longer care even about dogs — and fired. The head ducked back inside the helicopter, but Gant knew he had not hurt it.

He ran on, skating, slipping, then hurrying through patches of undisturbed snow. Then, the MiL slid towards him again, pinning him in the searchlight beam. Whistles, men on the shore…

He reloaded the .22, but the dog was on him, its leap driving him backwards, struggling to keep balance. He was winded, but as he doubled over he struck the dog across the head with the rifle. The Alsatian twisted away, yelping. The other dog watched, suddenly more wary. Gant stood his ground, watching the men approach behind the dogs, caught for their benefit in the glare of the searchlight. The rotors above him hammered, drowning thought.

He knew he would not move now. It was finished. He was defeated. Or perhaps satisfied at having protested, struggled enough. He had made his gesture. Energy drained away, as if drawn out of him by the light. Both dogs now crouched on the ice, growling, only yards from him. The first troops were forty yards away.

Then the crackling of a loudspeaker from the MiL above him:

'Major Gant — please put down your weapons. Major Gant — put down your weapons.'

The dogs seemed more alert now. The men had hesitated. He held up the rifle slowly, then threw it aside. He drew the Makarov with his left hand, butt first, and dropped it. The white-clad troops hurried towards him. Beyond them, the second and third MiL-4s slid over the trees and out onto the lake. He hunched his shoulders, thrusting his hands into the pockets of the check jacket. He might have been waiting for a bus. One of the two approaching MiLs settled onto the ice and its rotors slowed.

Ten yards. Seven…

The dogs were quiet, tongues lolling, suspicious and forgiving.

Fourth MiL, rotors hammering, its fuselage slim and knifelike as it banked savagely. The searchlight blinked off him, loping away across the ice as the helicopter above moved as if startled. Gant looked up. Nose-on, closing and dropping swiftly. The Russian troops looked up, halted, uncertain. The dogs growled.

MiL-4…

Sharp-nosed, not round-nosed as it whipped into full silhouette. Concealed markings, not unmarked like the others. Sharp-nosed, and a white-clad form at the open cabin door, gesturing. The MiL that had hung above him sidled towards the newcomer, much as a dog might have investigated a bitch. The newcomer rose rapidly, hopping over the MiL and closing on his still figure on the ice. The form waved. The helicopter danced closer, then away, enticing him.

The second and third MiLs wound up their rotors, both having landed. The airborne MiL-4 swung nose-on, closing. The form bellowed something. He did not know in what language, but it did not seem to be Russian.

Sharp-nosed…

Lynx -

The language was English. He moved his feet, lifted his reluctant legs and began to run. The dogs were up, shaking themselves, moving more quickly than himself. The Lynx helicopter danced slowly away, tempting him to reach it, hovering only feet above the ice. The winch had been swung out of the main cabin and its rescue wire trailed like a black snake across the ice.

He slipped, righted himself, plunged on, arms flailing. One of the dogs snapped at him, leaping at his side. He flung his arm at it, fist clenched. The dog rolled and skidded away. Twenty yards, fifteen -

He kicked out at the second dog — the first was recovering, moving again — missed, kicked again, almost losing his balance. The dog watched for its opportunity. Ten yards. Only ten -

Eight, seven, five… the wire was almost underfoot, the Lynx rising a little so that he could grasp it without bending, be heaved upwards immediately…

The noise of the dogs. Something ripped at his calf, making him stagger. A yard, no more, the face of someone yelling and cursing, firing over his head. The dogs yelping, whining suddenly…

He touched the wire -

Then the helicopter was flung away from him. The ice came up, he was winded, the searchlight came back, something pressed down on him, almost smothering him. He smelt onions, felt hot breathing on his cold face. His head cracked against the ice. He groaned. More dogs, renewed barking, as if they expressed his howl of despair.

He watched the Lynx lift away, the cabin door slam shut, the helicopter hop over the nearer of the two MiLs, skitter like a flung stone towards the trees…

The Russian soldier who had knocked him over in a flying tackle got slowly, heavily to his feet. Despite his efforts, he seemed satisfied. Other faces crowded around him, dipped into the glare of the searchlight. The light began to hurt, dazzling him as if it were being filtered through a diamond. He closed his eyes and lay back. His calf hurt where the dog had torn at it.

He heard the distant noise of the fleeing Lynx and the rotors of a pursuing MiL. Then nothing except the rotors above him, the shudder of the downdraught, the cloud of snow around him, and the sense that he was dreaming…

Dreaming of the Lynx, dreaming that he was being lifted, carried… dreaming…

Waterford slammed the main cabin door of the Lynx with a curse, heaving at it to expel his rage. He locked it furiously, as if breaking into the environment outside rather than making something secure. Then he staggered as the pilot flung the Lynx into a violent alteration of course. He grabbed a handhold and looked out of the cabin window. The lake streamed beneath them. Craning, he could catch the lights of one of the MiLs, a sullen wash upon the ice. Then they were over the trees, and Waterford clambered back into the cockpit, regained his seat and his headset, and strapped himself in. In the co-pilot's mirror, Waterford could see two of the MiLs dropping slowly behind them. The third would be loading Gant aboard and scrambling for home. The Lynx was approaching its top ground-level speed, perhaps forty miles an hour faster than the Russian helicopters.

'We're in Norway,' Gunnar announced casually and without any slowing of the Lynx. 'They will not follow, I think.'

They flashed over car headlights, glaring as they twisted along a north-south road, then the scattered, muffled lights of a small village.

'More important things to do,' Waterford muttered, his hands clenched on his thighs as if gripping something tightly. He could hear himself grinding his teeth. To have missed him by a yard — a yard 'Oh, fuck it!' he raged.

'They've dropped back — shaking sticks at us, I expect, now that we have been seen off the property.' Gunnar chuckled. 'Are you all right, Major!'

'No.'

'You don't like losing?'

'I hate losing.'

'We were too lucky ever to find them — it could not hold.' Gunnar altered course. Two white dots registered on the radar. 'Ah. They are heading east, very quickly now. Soon we will lose track of them, they are very low.' The dots already appeared to lose sharpness, becoming pale smears. There were other smudges on the screen from the general ground-clutter. The MiLs and the Lynx were all too low for effective radar tracking; which had exaggerated their luck in stumbling onto the Russians.

Only to lose him, Waterford thought. 'How long?' he asked.

'A matter of minutes.' Cloud was building above the canopy of the cockpit, the sliver of moon threatened. To the east, it might already be snowing on the Russian border. 'In a few minutes, we can return to the lake.'

'We're all fucked if that plane's in one piece!' Waterford growled.

///

'Well done, Colonel — well done!'

It was difficult not to smile at Andropov's enthusiasm — smile with it, Vladimirov corrected himself. Smile in concert. The War Command Centre was like the scene of a promotion or medal-presentation party, though the guests were not yet drunk. But they had done it — !

'My congratulations, too, Colonel,' Vladimirov added into the microphone. He and Andropov watched one another until they heard the Border Guard commander's reply.

'Thank you, Comrade General — thank you.'

'What of the other helicopter?' Andropov asked Vladimirov. 'It was Norwegian, I presume?'

'The Nimrod knew we were looking. It, too, was looking. We found him. Soon, he will tell us what happened to the MiG-31. What he has done with it.'

Andropov leaned towards the transmitter once more. The operator seemed to flinch slightly from the proximity of the Chairman of the KGB. 'Transfer him to Murmansk with all possible speed, Colonel — then he'll be flown to Moscow He turned away from the transmitter, and added to Vladimirov: 'Midday tomorrow, at the latest. He'll be here by midday.' Andropov removed his spectacles and wiped them. His narrow features sagged. 'It has been a very long day,' he said nonchalantly, 'and now I feel tired.' He suppressed a yawn.

'I, too.' Vladimirov watched the Chairman replace his gold-rimmed spectacles. When he looked up once more, brushing the disturbed wings of hair above his ears, his confidence had returned. Pleasure had been succeeded by calculation. It was evident that the capture of Gant was of some kind of political significance to Andropov. Already, the incident was being prepared as a piece of propaganda, something to be used against the military, or employed to impress the rest of the Politburo. Their temporary, uncomfortable alliance was at an end.

'Of course, General.' The remark was a sneer, a comment upon energy, on advancing age. Vladimirov straightened his form, standing three or four inches taller than Andropov. The Chairman turned away. His grey suit could not match the uniform and he realised it.

The Border Guard commander acknowledged his orders, almost unnoticed.

'I'll arrange for a transport aircraft to be standing by. The weather is worsening east of Murmansk, but there will be no delay. A detachment of GRU troops will provide an escort for the American — '

Andropov turned sharply. 'Make certain they fulfil their duties, Comrade General,' he snapped icily.

Vladimirov's cheeks burned. 'Of course.'

'Then I will say goodnight,' Andropov offered without mollification, as a bodyguard placed the Chairman's overcoat over his shoulders and then handed him his fur hat. He tipped his gloves to his forehead in salute to Vladimirov, and then exited from the War Command Centre.

Vladimirov turned to the map-table. On impulse, almost as if reaching for a bottle or a sedative, he said, 'Give me the area of the capture again.'

Slowly, tantalisingly, the north of Finnish Lapland and the coast of Norway at the northern edge of the projection, appeared then hardened on the table. It was a relatively small area, it had to be… the man had not used his parachute, he must have landed the MiG -

Or survived a crash-landing.

North to south, no more than fifty or sixty miles, east to west, eighty miles — it could be narrowed down within that area by time, by Gant's condition, by his rate and mode of travel. He must have been with the aircraft when it grounded.

Where?

His hand stroked the surface of the table, glowing white and green and blue as it moved, catching the colours, fuzzy bright colours…

Vladimirov blinked and yawned. He was bone-weary; he needed sleep.

He could sleep, he told himself with an undistinguished thrill of satisfaction, until the following midday. Gant knew, Gant would tell them…

He stifled another yawn, and blinked the hypnosis of the map and its colours out of his head.

'Stand down all personnel — transfer the transmission monitoring to the operations room here,' he instructed quickly, anxious now to get out into the cold night air, to reinvigorate himself with the chill. 'And — well done, all of you. Well done.'

A chorused murmur of satisfaction and assent vanished behind him as he closed the door of the War Command Centre. In the compartment aft of it lay his cap, uniform greatcoat, and his gloves. How long ago had he laid them down? When he had boarded this aircraft in Moscow; on his way to witness the weapons trial of the production prototype — a million years ago… yesterday…?

He looked at his watch. Eleven. No, today still. Early that morning.

He rubbed his eyes and picked up his greatcoat.

Brooke reached out his hand and stroked the metal of the fuselage, just behind the headlike nose and cockpit. It was like stroking some huge, sleeping pet whose body retreated out of the fuzzy glare of his lamp into the dark water. He had swum down the length of the airframe, lifting slowly over the huge wing, gripping the edges of the massive tailpipes as he rounded the tail section, his lamp dancing wildly off the contours of the plane. He had propelled himself forward towards the second great spread wing. His flippers had touched against the metal as he lifted over it, before he returned to the nose section.

It had taken no more than minutes to find the intact airframe. His sergeant had been first down, after he had checked and then hidden the satellite commpack which would carry any transmissions from the site direct to a geostationary communications satellite, and on to London. Almost at once, Sergeant Dawson had been confronted by the blunt, ugly nose of the MiG-31. His lamp had disappeared beneath the new thin coating of ice, for which Brooke was grateful, since their search would be undetectable from the air. He had made the preliminary inspection while Brooke and the two corporals had scouted the shore of the lake, the closest trees and the ice itself for the homing device whose carrier wave Eastoe had picked up. They had searched most carefully where the ice had congregated into rougher, jerry-built shapes, presumably from the break-up after the MiG had landed. They had found it jammed between two resoldered plates of ice, after Dawson had returned to the surface and was warming himself with coffee. Brooke had switched it off, and then listened to Dawson's preliminary damage report. The undercarriage door appeared to have been buckled, there was cannon damage in the port wing and in two places along the fuselage where fuel lines might have been ruptured, but the cockpit was closed — some water inside, but not much — and the aircraft appeared to have been fully shut down, presumably by Gant.

Brooke understood the significance of the report. The intact airframe was more dangerous, a hundres times more dangerous, than shards and pieces of wreckage on the floor of the lake. The Bilyarsk project continued to exist. He had dived himself the moment Dawson had finished, instructing one of the corporals — the best among them with an underwater camera — to prepare for a full photographic record.

The aircraft had awed him. Its size, of course, was huge in the partial, weak light of his lamp. More than that, its black paint, its almost total absence of markings, its praying-mantis head, its drooping wings, made it alien; most of all, its location beneath the frozen lake was sufficient to make it mesmeric, almost nightmarish as his lamp's beam danced over it.

The corporal grinned behind his facemask as Brooke jumped at the heavily gloved hand on his shoulder. Bubbles, air tanks, facemask, all fitted the scene and the airframe. He nodded, indicating the length of the fuselage, the undercarriage, the wings. Almost at once, the corporal, propelling the large underwater camera steadily in front of him, its flash unit like a blank television screen, began swimming along the airframe. The flash unit fired time after time. Each time, a part of the fuselage glared. Cannon-holes, wing section, tail, tailpipes, belly of the airframe, undercarriage, wing, cockpit… the light flashed again and again as each part of the MiG was recorded.

Brooke almost felt betrayal under the ice as he recalled the explosive charges they carried in one of the packs. They had no orders, but the airframe was intact… the easiest way to solve the problem, from London's point of view, would be to plant and detonate enough explosive to shatter the airframe, melt the electronics, destroy the hydraulics — kill the aircraft. That aircraft, that huge thing in the repeated glare of the flash or in the beam he played almost lovingly over it. He was surprised by his own sentiments; perhaps it was the too-familiar expectation of wreckage whenever he dived. Bodies, twisted metal, charred plates, signals of damage and destruction everywhere. But this — ? It was complete, almost untouched; salvageable.

Impossible. They'd be ordered to destroy it.

The corporal swam towards Brooke, his thumb erect. Brooke slapped his shoulder and the corporal swam towards the surface. His form bumped along the last feet of ice, and then he was only a half-body in the beam of light, legs flapping lazily, moving away to where the shore sloped upwards. Brooke danced his lamp over the MiG once more, and then rose to the surface. He was becoming very cold. He left the aircraft in the darkness in which he had discovered it.

As he waded out of the lake, he saw Waterford, white-clad, waiting for him, and already in conversation with the corporal. Waterford patted the camera equipment much as he touched everything; large, possessive, dangerous contacts. Dawson handed the corporal towels and a mug of coffee. Waterford waited for Brooke to remove his facemask. The moment they confronted one another, even before Dawson could take Brooke's air tanks, Waterford said:

'Well? Looks as if he taxied it to the shore and found the ice too thin?' Brooke nodded.

'It seems like it. The stream would have continued to drain the lake for a while before it froze over. It must flow pretty quickly in summer — it's not a deep channel, anyway. It left thin ice and a nice big air-pocket. Oops!'

'The corporal tells me the airframe's factory-fresh. Is that true?' It sounded like an accusation, a laying of blame upon the Royal Marine lieutenant.

Brooke nodded. 'Almost. Even the undercart is intact. One of the doors is buckled, but — '

'Christ! That's all we need. So the silly sod landed the bloody thing in one piece, did he?'

Again, Brooke nodded. 'He must have done,' he said. 'Even closed the canopy before he left. God, Major, you should see the thing!'

'No, thanks!' Then he continued, as much to himself as to Brooke: 'I almost had the poor sod…' His hand clenched into a grip in front of him, almost touching Brooke's chest. 'He was as close to me as you are now. Sheer bloody luck we found him — but they'd found him, too. Some bloody Ivan rugger-tackled him just as he had hold of the wire… we could have had him here now, for Christ's sake — !' Then, more calmly and even more ominously, he added: 'Having been that close to rescue, having looked in my face, into the cabin of the Lynx behind me, he'll go to pieces now — fast. From what I've heard of him, he's half-way off his head already. He's going to last about five minutes when they start to question him.' He looked out over the lake. 'By tomorrow, the Russians will be crawling over this place like ants. Getting ready to cart the thing home.'

'You think so?'

Waterford's face was grim. 'I've seen them, lad,' he snapped sourly. 'In Belfast, in Cyprus, Borneo, the Oman-I've seen how communicative people can be when they're put to it.' His square, stone-cut features were bleak as he spoke. 'Gant, poor sod, won't be able to help himself… and I haven't helped him either, arriving like the Seventh Cavalry just after they've burned down the fort!' He threw up his hands, and added: 'OK, let's tell Aubrey the good news. Dawson, have you hidden that commpack successfully? Will it work for the next lot in?'

'Reindeer permitting, yes, sir,' Dawson replied.

'He's going to love this, that podgy little clever-dick — Christ, is he going to love this!'

The rain blew out of the darkness like something alive and impishly malevolent. Aubrey had closed his umbrella because it threatened to turn inside-out in every gust of searching wind, but he held his hat jammed onto his head. Buckholz walked beside him, bareheaded, chilly and soaked, hands thrust in his pockets, head bent against the splashes and gouts of rain. They had been silent for some minutes. Buckholz, numbed by the signals they had received via the satellite link, as he knew Aubrey must be, had no wish to interrupt the silence. The splashing of the rain against the administration building windows as they passed, the faint noises from the Officers' Mess, their clicking or sloshing footsteps, the sudden yells of the wind, all expressed his mood and deadened it at the same time. He was able not to think, not to consider.

Aubrey dabbed at puddles with the ferrule of his umbrella, breaking up their rippling reflections of light. As always to Buckholz, his anger seemed no grander than petulance. Yet it was real and deep. The smaller, older man shivered at the intrusion of rain into his collar, and expelled an angry, exasperated breath. Buckholz thought he might be about to speak, but they continued their patrol in silence. Down in the Ops. Room, Curtin was trying to contact Pyott in London.

They had come to a dead-stop, Buckholz had to admit. They needed fresh orders, a fresh guarantee of support, from Washington and London and Brussels and Oslo, and they had to make fresh approaches to the Finns. But — to what end? For why?

Buckholz brushed away the thoughts, his face cleansed of worried frowns by the splash of rain that met them as they turned the corner of the building, into a gleam of light from a doorway. Buckholz thought it was Bradnum, standing there in his uniform raincoat, but the RAF officer, whoever he was, saw them and turned suddenly back into the building. They passed the main door. Noises from the Mess emerged as warmly as the heat of a fire. They passed on, feet crunching on gravel, no longer clicking or splashing on concrete.

Finally, as if in the grip of a tormenting, unbearable secret he must blurt out, Aubrey turned to Buckholz and said, almost in a gasp: 'They have everything, Charles — in the palm of… oh, dammit, they have everything.' Buckholz was prompted, for an instant, to pat Aubrey's shoulder, but desisted. The Englishman would find it patronising, too gauchely American.

'I know, Kenneth- it's one hell of a blow.'

'Both prizes, Charles — both of them, lost to us. The airframe is intact and less than forty miles from the Russian border, and the pilot is by now probably in Murmansk, if not on his way to Moscow!' Aubrey leaned towards Buckholz, lowering his voice to an intense whisper as he said, 'And they will make him talk, Charles. Believe me, they will. He is alone, you see — their first and sharpest weapon. Before, he was never alone, not for a moment. He had help. Now, he will know he is alone, and that resistance, courage, defiance, all have no meaning. Sooner or later he will tell them where to find the airframe of the Firefox.'

'I know you're right, Kenneth.'

'And, like me, you can see no way out?'

Buckholz shook his head emphatically, as if to dispel any lingering, foolish hope in Aubrey, who merely nodded once in reply to the gesture.

'No, all I can see is we've painted ourselves into a corner, Kenneth.'

'I won't accept that — '

'You have to, Kenneth. I have to talk to Washington again, you to London. And we have to tell them that, in our considered estimation, we've lost both ends of the operation — Gant and the Firefox.' Buckholz shrugged expressively. Water ran from his short hair in droplets that gleamed in the light above the main doors of the admin, building. 'What else can we say, for God's sake?'

'You want me to order Waterford to set charges and destroy the airframe? Before it's too late to do so?' Aubrey challenged.

'Man, what else in your right mind can you do? You can't let them take it back over the border!'

'If only they didn't have Gant!' Aubrey raged. 'We'd then have the advantage of our knowledge. We could spend weeks examining the airframe, the electronics and avionics, the anti-radar, the thought-guidance systems… everything. But they do have him, and they'll make him talk!' His umbrella stabbed at the puddles that had gathered in the tyre-marks of a heavy vehicle. Stab, stab, stab, destroying the gleaming mirrors, the petrol-rainbowed water.

'The Finns wouldn't let you — '

'It would have to be covert, I agree — '

'Sneaking around Finnish Lapland for weeks — civilian and military scientists… underwater? Come on, Kenneth, that's a dream and you know it.'

'What good are spies to us now?' Aubrey asked, his tone that of someone dissociating himself from his lifelong profession.

'Good use enough to blow the airframe to pieces.'

'Is that your only advice, Charles? It's not very constructive.'

'Sorry.'

Rain slapped at their faces and raincoats. Buckholz shivered, but Aubrey seemed not to notice.

'I should never have decided on that clever, so clever flight across Finland — it should have been Norway — '

'Where they might have been waiting? The flight should have lasted a lot less than an hour and a half, there wasn't a risk — when you drew up the scenario.'

'Thank you, Charles — it doesn't help, I'm afraid.' The words were murmured. Aubrey walked a little away from the American, his head bent forward, oblivious of the falling rain. Water ran from the brim of his hat. Buckholz recognised the signals of intense concentration. He waited, looking up into the rain. The lights of Lincoln glowed dully on the clouds to the south.

Minutes later, Aubrey turned back to him. His face was determined. Buckholz, knowing the Englishman, recognised Aubrey's refusal to accept defeat.

'Very well. Waterford may lay his charges — he may need an opinion from someone here — but he is not to detonate them. I shall alert Shelley to talk to Edgecliffe and Moscow Station — they're to look out for Gant's arrival. We must know the moment he gets there, where they take him, how long we might have…'

'Why-?'

Aubrey did not seem to hear the question. Instead, he pursued his explanation. 'I must talk to Hanni Vitsula in Helsinki.' He smiled, briefly and for the first time. 'Hanni has no love for Russians since they killed his father, and less love for "Finlandisation" as a way of life. He will see the problem from our point of view.'

'The DG of Finnish Intelligence is a government official, Kenneth, even if he is a friend of yours. What will he do?'

'I don't know — at the moment, we need friends, and he's one. Perhaps — oh, I don't know… I simply trust to a Finn's long memory. He's from the south-east himself- the part that now lies in Russia, what used to be known as Karelia. He's never been back since he was a child.' Aubrey raised his hands, palms outward, and desisted from the explanation, then added: 'I don't know what to do, Charles — I'm merely running around in this old, deserted house, opening doors with a bang and whistling to myself in the dark. Who knows what may come of it?'

'You're hopeful something will?' Buckholz asked in surprise.

'No. But I must try — !'

Dawn was leaking into the heavily-clouded sky as Gant stepped stiffly out of the large MiL-8 transport helicopter. Light puffs of snow pattered against the fuselage, melting almost at once and drizzling down the olive-drab camouflage paint. Two GRU guards stood on the tarmac of the helicopter base, Kalashnikovs pointed at him, and there were another four behind him in the Mil's main cabin. His hands were handcuffed in front of him. His right arm ached. It had been locked to one of the handholds above his hard seat for the entire journey. His whole body, however, submerged that pain in a general ache. It was difficult to move. His feet seemed numb, the wound the dog had made in his calf pained him, and he staggered as he reached the bottom of the steps. A guard held him upright, not ungently but with care to keep his rifle out of range of Gant's hands.

Then he was surrounded again by his full escort. A truck drew up near the parked MiL. Gant, with almost no interest, watched more guards debouch from it, noticed a staff car and emerging senior officers beyond it — curiosity rather than business had brought them, he thought. Then he raised his head so that he looked beyond the helicopter base down towards the town of Murmansk and the grey Kola fjord which disappeared north-wards into the heavy mist and snow towards the Barents Sea. There was the smell offish on the snowy wind. The hills behind the base were hidden by cloud. The transport airplane which was to transfer him to Moscow would just get off before the weather closed in sufficiently to prevent further flying.

He shook his head, half-amused. He wondered why he bothered about met conditions. He was in the Soviet Union, and he was alone and he was manacled. It made no difference whether his location was Murmansk or Moscow; they were the same, cells in the same fortress prison.

He was gestured into the back of the military truck, and helped over the lowered tailgate when his legs appeared to fail him He struggled in and sat down opposite one of the GRU guards, whose rifle was levelled. Everything was constant, and constantly repeated; wrists manacled, rifles levelled, boxlike metal containers — trucks or aircraft did not matter — and this routine would proceed endlessly… endlessly…

He tried to believe that the routine would never change because, at the end of the journey, at the change of routine, they would begin to ask their questions. He did not wish to consider the abyss of failure that would open up then, in the first hours or even minutes of his interrogation. Thus, the journey possessed him, was everything.

The truck moved off with a jerk the moment the rest of his guards had boarded it. Gant watched the MiL shrink in size as they left it behind. The metal and canvas of the truck pressed close around him. Someone coughed; metal scraped, boot-studs perhaps. Leather creaked. The engine of the truck throbbed. Through the V-shaped gap in the canvas at the back of the truck, he could see belching chimneys and anchored ships and grey water — most of all, he registered the movement of the truck itself.

After some minutes, a brief stop. Red-and-white pole, a guard room. Then a glimpse of runway, a control tower. Most of all, the renewed movement of the truck. He was still travelling, the journey was everything…

There was no destination. Only movement…

FIVE: Restraints

'I have divers — who also happen to be expert soldiers — at Kirkenes, sixty or seventy miles from our lake and our intact airframe… pray, what else do I need!' Aubrey asked, waggling his fork in Curtin's direction.

The USN Intelligence officer brushed a hand through his hair and adopted a lugubrious expression, staring down at his plate of bacon and eggs. Eventually, unnerved by the heavy silence around the breakfast table, he murmured a reply, clearing his throat as he did so as if in apology for what he said.

'A hell of a lot else, sir — too much, if you don't object to me saying so. Much too much.'

Aubrey snorted, then stabbed his fork at the centre of his remaining egg. Yolk oozed onto the plate. Buckholz glanced at Pyott, who had arrived no more than an hour earlier and evidently had not slept. The Deputy Director of the Covert Action Staff of the'CIA searched the English soldier's face for signs of complicity; a willingness to squash Aubrey's ever more unrestrained imagination. Pyott, however, appeared willing to remain silent while Aubrey rambled, prodded, enquired, snapped.

Buckholz sighed audibly. 'There's nothing you can do, Kenneth — nothing at all. You're clutching at straws.' He spread his hands in front of his chest, in sign of pacification. 'It's not realistic, it's not even adult, to scratch at this particular sore the way you're doing. Let's settle for your guy Waterford triggering the charges he's planted…?'

Aubrey glared at him, his nostrils pinched and white, his lips bloodless. 'Adult? Childish?' he repeated scathingly. 'Do you think, when we play our suburban, late-century version of the Great Game, we are ever being adult?'

'Kenneth — ' Pyott warned quietly.

'It was not adult — it was not the behaviour of a gentleman — to throw prisoners under interrogation from helicopters or encourage murder in south-east Asia!'

'Kenneth be quiet!' Pyott snapped. 'It was not civilised to sacrifice people for metal, lives for avionics — as you did, as we all have done with this operation.' Pyott's face was white, highlighting the dark smudges beneath his eyes. Aubrey appeared abashed, even ashamed.

'Forgive me, Charles — I apologise for that remark,' he said.

'It's long ago and far away-another country,' Buckholz replied.

'Thank you.' Aubrey turned to Pyott immediately. The soldier saw that four hours' sleep had done nothing to improve Aubrey's temper or patience. He was the pestering, gifted child of SIS, and his impatience had become habitual, even incessant. Like the highly intelligent children he somehow suggested, he was solitary, frustrated, intolerantly and urgently alive inside his own mind. He could handle people with suavity and aplomb when he chose, but for the most part he regarded the world as a stumbling-block, no more, placed between himself and his goal. Aubrey was simply too clever.

'Kenneth, you are silently pleading with me,' Pyott said with heavy humour. 'What is it?'

'I — ' Aubrey waved his hands over the table like a hypnotist. 'I've seen airframes transported on motorways-in this country. Their wings are folded, or they are absent. What I need is someone to take the wings off this poor butterfly.'

Pyott nodded to the Americans, requiring them to answer. Curtin, grinning suddenly and rubbing his hand through his hair once more, said, 'You may have seen them here-but you won't get trucks to move far enough and fast enough in Finnish Lapland at this time of year. You don't even have roads they could use, always supposing they could move!'

Aubrey's face was taut with disappointed anger. 'I see,' he managed to utter.

'What you need is a chopper — a very big chopper,' Curtin added. Aubrey's face brightened.

'Which one?' He immediately placed a small, gold-bound notebook beside his plate, and touched the tip of a pencil to his tongue. 'Pray, what is the name of this marvellous beast?'

'You need the new Sikorsky. Skyhook — it could lift fifty thousand pounds in a sling load with no trouble.'

'And — this helicopter could transport the airframe?'

'It might take it as much as two hours to get the Firefox back into Norway from the lake. The problem is — the closest one is probably in Germany, as far south as Wiesbaden.'

'But it could transport it, in a single lift, all the way out of Finland?'

'Yes.'

'Christ, Gene-you're getting as crazy as he is!' Buckholz exclaimed. 'Have you seen the met. forecasts for that area? You'd be real lucky to get the Skyhook up there, never mind operating!'

'I'm afraid that's true, Mr. Aubrey,' Curtin reluctantly agreed.

'Could it lift it straight out of the lake?' Aubrey persisted.

Curtin nodded. 'But, I suggest you have winches as a back-up, to haul that airplane's ass out of the water onto dry land. The Skyhook would like that — and the weather wouldn't help a straight lift, either.' He watched Aubrey scribbling furiously in his tiny notebook, and added, as if dictating: 'From Waterford's report, it must have run backwards into deep water — you could winch it out, up the slope, along a portable roadway…'

'Just a moment!' Pyott snapped. 'I'm going to put-a hypothetical case, shall we say? — to the RAF's Field Recovery Unit at Abingdon. I want an expert opinion — with apologies to Captain Curtin — on all this speculation.' He stood up, dabbing his lips, then dropped his napkin on the table. 'I shan't be long,' he offered in a cheery voice.

When the door had closed behind him, Buckholz leaned over the table and whispered fiercely at Aubrey: 'We know men and machines can do anything you want them to — but what about politicians, Kenneth? You haven't got a dime's worth of change out of the Finns since yesterday. Even your buddy in Helsinki isn't too crazy about more interference from us — '

'Or from the Russians.'

'Don't count on that,' Buckholz said abruptly. Ignoring him, Aubrey addressed Curtin. 'What else do I need?'

'I agree with Director Buckholz, Mr. Aubrey — you need the politicians to say yes to you. But, if you're asking me, I'd think about maybe even dismantling the airplane and taking it away in pieces — in case you haven't gotten a Skyhook to the lake. You could hide the pieces and go back later…?' Curtin shrugged. 'So,' he continued, 'you need technicians, equipment, winches and pulleys, cutting tools, airframe experts, and a hell of a lot more besides, all gathered around your lake, and you need the utmost secrecy and you need time.'

'How much time?'

'From beginning to end — a lot of days.'

'And Gant isn't going to be able to give you that time, Kenneth,' Buckholz supplied, staring at his fingertips as he spread them on either side of his cup of coffee. They drummed pointlessly, without discernible rhythm. 'Gant hasn't got any time left, so neither do we.' He looked up from the table, shaking his head. 'This whole conversation's pointless.'

'Don't say that- '

'I have to, Kenneth. All right, you're the guy, the main man, the one who dreamed up this crazy scheme — and almost made it work — but it hasn't worked. Blow the damned airframe into little pieces!'

Aubrey stood up. 'And that is your considered, your expert, opinion, Charles?' he asked.

Buckholz nodded. 'That's it.'

'Then I beg to disagree.' He looked at his plate with an old man's reluctance to leave food uneaten, then shook his head. 'I must talk to London — to Helsinki via London, to be exact. You gentlemen will excuse me.'

He closed the door of the small dining-room in the Mess behind him. A secure line direct to Shelley at Queen Anne's Gate had been installed in the bedroom he had been allocated. He went heavily up the staircase, his mind whirling with the possibilities of his scheme. Pride stung him into desire. He wanted action, activity, organisation, a scenario. He would not let the aircraft go; could not bring himself to destroy the airframe. Guilt, too, hounded him now; had awoken him in the short night when he had tried to sleep. Guilt for Fenton, who had been tricked to his brutal murder on the bank of the Moskva after doing good work trail-blazing for Gant; guilt for Pavel Upenskoy, guilt for Baranovich and Semelovsky and Kreshin, all of whom had died at his orders, or had been considered no more than expendable in promoting the success of the operation. It was a heavy toll of good people; best people.

To destroy the airframe now, scatter it over the bed of the frozen lake, would be more criminal than creating the circumstances of those deaths. Gant was lost. Strangely, he did not feel any acute guilt at the American's loss… but the others…

He closed the door behind him and crossed to the telephone. He felt the physical sensation of weight between his shoulder-blades, slowing him, wearing him down. He felt he would only rid himself of it if he recovered the Firefox; would only reduce and lighten it if he tried for such a recovery.

He dialled Shelley's number.

'Peter?'

'Yes, sir. Good morning.'

'What news?'

'As far as we can tell, he hasn't arrived yet… sorry.'

'Put me through immediately to Hanni Vitsula, Peter, I must talk to him. I'll wait until you call me back.'

He replaced the receiver, and rubbed his hands on his thighs. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he recaptured the position his body had adopted when he first woke and made to rise. Hunched, small, lost. Guilt, yes — guilt and pride. Two emotions to move mountains; or bury people beneath mountains.

Stop it, he told himself, sitting upright, hands thrust into his pockets. Prepare yourself for the next step, for this conversation.

The Finns — more precisely, the Finnish Cabinet Defence Committee under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister — had agreed to the overflight of the Firefox and to certain, very limited back-up facilities and incursions of Finnish airspace. Aubrey had been tempted by a new mood in the country, under the new government, to use Finnish airspace rather than order Gant to fly the longer journey down the spine of Norway to rendezvous with the British Airways flight from Stockholm to London. Infra-red invisibility would have been guaranteed by the aircraft's proximity to the civilian airliner for the last crucial stage of its flight across the North Sea. The Finns had agreed because 'Finlandisation' had become a term of abuse, an insult to a resurgent mood of independence in the country. But-

But, but, but…

Army deserters crossing from the Soviet Union into Finland had been publicised, and not handed back. Granted asylum. Key industrial projects in the Soviet Union designed and built by the Finns had been halted or suspended until more acceptable trade agreements and repayment terms had been agreed. All good signs…

But, but, but -

The telephone rang, startling Aubrey out of his reverie of justification and optimism. He snatched at the receiver. 'Yes?'

'Director Vitsula,' Shelley said, and then he heard, more distantly, the voice of the Director-General of Finnish Intelligence.

'Good morning, Kenneth.'

'Good morning, Hanni — '

'What is this business we have to discuss — your aide tells me it is urgent… is that so?'

'I'm afraid it is.'

'What has changed since last night?'

'Nothing — except our attitude here to what we discovered.'

'Yes.'

'What is the feeling at present in your Cabinet Defence Committee?'

'Deadlock — I can put it no more hopefully than that.'

'What about the Russians?'

'I think they are more angry with them than with your country and the Americans. They do not know about — your little escapade, only about the overflight by the Nimrod, which they permitted, in the event… but, there has been a leak in the newspapers here

'What?'

'Only concerning intrusions into our airspace by Soviet fighters — nothing more. But the Prime Minister has made the most serious protest to Moscow concerning the matter.'

'Is there any hope there, Hanni?' Aubrey was speaking very loudly now because the Finn's voice seemed more distant.

'Hope for what?'

'A — ' Aubrey hesitated, then said: 'That matter we talked about last night… a fishing expedition.'

'Kenneth — I have seen the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister — nothing, I'm afraid.'

'Do they understand?'

'Yes, Kenneth, they understand. They are not unsympathetic. But — troops, vehicles, helicopters — it would be easier to ignore the whole problem, or drop a bomb in the lake…"

Aubrey, enraged, snapped: 'What is it they want?'

'Ah,' Vitsula sighed. In front of his reply, as if coming from the next room, the line crackled and spat. 'Reciprocity and access were two of the words being tentatively used, I believe,' Vitsula said.

'Would they agree, in that case?' Aubrey snapped.

'I — don't know. It might… soften them.'

'It's a high price.'

'Higher than you think. Access to highest levels, access to the codes, access to the scenarios regarding Scandinavia…'

'You mean your people want a full Intelligence partnership with NATO while remaining neutral?' Aubrey asked, taken aback. He rubbed his forehead, wiping slowly and with force at the creases he found, as if they surprised him.'It's your price, of course.'

'My suggestion, yes.'

'In return-?'

'We would keep our heads down — three wise monkeys. '

'For how long?'

'I — don't know. How long must you have?'

'I don't know!'

'Then you must think it over. Just one more thing, Kenneth.'

'Yes?'

'Can you assure me — give me your word — that our friends across the border know nothing, nothing at all, of the whereabouts of their property? I must have that assurance, Kenneth, before I do anything more. Are you able to give it?'

Aubrey envisaged Gant's face for an instant, cleared his throat, and said, 'Yes. I can give you that assurance. They are in complete ignorance.'

'Thank you. When do we talk again?'

'Later. I will talk to London and Washington.'

'Good.'

'The price is very high.'

'So are the risks.'

The young KGB Colonel, whose shoulder boards and uniform seemed remarkably new, had hurried aboard the Antonov An-26 short-haul transport aircraft with the eagerness of someone meeting a dear relative. Gant watched him clatter up the lowered beaver-tail ramp into the fuselage, his eyes seeking along the row of tip-up seats. Gant was seated on one of them, hands manacled in front of him, a guard on either side, the remaining GRU men positioned on the opposite side of the fuselage.

The young colonel stood in front of the American, hands on his hips, appraising him frankly but without malice. There might have been something akin to admiration in his gaze. Then, almost smiling, he turned to the officer in charge of the guard detachment.

'OK, he's ours now,' he said.

As if he had been overheard, KGB men in civilian clothes clambered up the ramp into the aircraft's belly. The cold of the day outside followed them, striking through Gant's check woollen jacket and waterproof trousers. He shook his head, trying to fully wake himself. It had been surprisingly easy to sleep in the noisy main compartment, surrounded by guards. Now he was hungry. The journey was almost over — bath, food at the end of it. He knew why his mind had narrowed and was working at this fiction.

'Major Gant, would you accompany us, please,' the young colonel requested. The four civilian-clothed KGB men stood behind him.

Gant stood up, stamping the cramp out of his calves and thighs. The dog-bite in his calf ached. The GRU men were already at their ease. Cigarette smoke was pungent in the cold air. The colonel reached out a steadying hand, but Gant motioned it angrily away. The officer nodded almost respectfully.

Gant moved towards the ramp and the tarmac outside, a KGB man close on either side. Their arms touched him as they moved, and he could smell staleness and smoke on one of the suits, mustiness on an overcoat. The men's faces were pinched and whitened with the cold. Gant shivered as the sleet blew into his face.

The officer was suddenly beside him, one of his guards having dropped back a step.

'I'm Colonel Dmitri Priabin,' he explained, the rank still a strange, pleasant taste on his tongue. 'I found you,' he added, gesturing the American towards a rank of black limousines drawn up on the tarmac. Gant's attention wandered over the military airfield. Familiar, except for the aircraft types and their markings.

'Yeah?' he murmured. 'Found?'

Priabin's hand was on the door-handle of the second and largest limousine, a Zil. He nodded. The grin was boyish, the eyes alert, clever, studious. 'Almost in time,' he explained. 'You were on our computer files, of course. But — it was an accident, even then. A minute too late, no more than that!' He laughed.

'What happened to your boss?' Gant asked suddenly. Priabin's face frowned, then cleared.

'Colonel Kontarsky is — in disgrace, I'm afraid.' His head had turned from side to side, as if checking that his new shoulder boards remained in place. 'However, will you please get in the car.'

'Where are we going?'

Priabin grinned reprovingly. 'Come, come, Major-you know that as well as I. Please…?' He opened the door and gestured for Gant to get in. The American clambered into the Zil. The other rear door opened and a KGB man — the one whose overcoat smelt of mothballs and disuse — slid in next to him. Priabin got into the front passenger seat. The KGB man who was scented with harsh tobacco followed Gant into the car. He was pressed between them. No guns had been drawn. Priabin turned to watch the American as the driver accelerated towards the perimeter fence of the airbase. Passes were shown at the guardroom, and then they were turning onto the main road, towards Moscow.

Why hadn't he used his overcoat? Gant wondered irrelevantly, the smell of mothballs and mustiness overpowering now.

'Where did you discover that overcoat, Oleg?' Priabin asked good-humouredly, wrinkling his nose. 'It can't have been used for years.' Gant grinned crookedly.

'My son took mine before I was up,' Oleg grumbled. 'You know what kids are like, sir. What's yours is theirs — what's theirs is their own.' He tossed his head in mock disgust.

The midday traffic was light on the Volgograd road as they passed through farmland and forest; deceptive countryside, flat and passive like his home state. Only the black car in front and the two black cars behind forced his real context and status upon him. Industrial smoke belched beyond woodland ahead of them, from chimneys scrawled against the grey sky. The sleet slithered on the windsceen as the wipers flicked at it.

'I might make you walk the rest of the way,' Priabin said to Oleg, smiling. 'Get rid of that smell, at any rate.' He turned his attention to Gant. 'A pity about the aircraft,' he murmured conversationally.

'Sure,' Gant replied. 'A real crying shame.' He converted himself in his own mind to a laconic, simple, truculent figure; as if flexing the first muscles he would use in a contest yet to come. 'It caught fire,' Gant added.

'Mm. You ejected, then?'

'What else, man? I saw it go.' He nodded vigorously. In his mind, from the vantage point of his ejector seat, he saw his Phantom explode in Vietnam. That had been the moment before the quick, breathtaking rush through the trees, the catching jolt as the 'chute caught and held him, the arrival of the party, of armed Gooks…

He continued nodding. Priabin rubbed his top lip with his forefinger. 'Yes,' he remarked. 'You have certainly seen aircraft destroyed — blow up…?' His hands made the expansive gesture of a mushrooming cloud. Gant contented himself with a final, decisive nod. 'What a pity — all that money wasted,' Priabin said soothingly. 'I hope they believe you,' he added quickly.

Gant's eyes narrowed, but his features remained passive. Outside the car, a suburban town in the Moscow oblast offered low factory units, chimneys, then wet-black streets and hurrying figures. Scarved or fur-hatted women, a preponderance of black, unfashionable winter overcoats, short fur-lined boots and galoshes. Old-fashioned, poor. Again, the familiar…

They halted at traffic-lights. He felt the two bodies on either side come to greater alertness. He relaxed, slumping back against the seat. The Zil moved off as the lights changed. Hoardings stared down, alcohol and cheese and chocolate rivalling the flags and the Party portraits for his attention. The town straggled away behind them in the sleet, and an airliner dropped out of the cloudbase towards the Bykovo airport on their right. There was little that was unfamiliar, except the city ahead crowding on its hills like a vast gathering of people waiting for important news. Four days before, when he had entered it from the northrwest, from Cheremetievo, he hadn't noticed the hills. Now, the city might have been Italian; a holiday destination that had strayed to some wet, cold northern latitude.

He gave up trying to assimilate the city, change its nature. For him, it was now no larger than Dzerzhinsky Street and the Lubyanka prison behind the dignified facade of KGB headquarters. They passed beneath a railway bridge. Sparks flashed against the sullen sky from apassing train's overhead cage. He was holding on, but only just, only just -

Just keeping out the future. It was beginning to ooze through a hairline crack in the dam he had built with inadequate materials, but he was holding on…

Priabin scrutinised him carefully, keenly, as they drove along the wide Volgogradski Prospekt towards the inner ring orchard, the Garden Ring. He saw the onion domes of a church and a building near it that was large enough, alien enough to Gant, to have been a monastery. He was startled by the outline of a distant bridge over the Moskva as a gap between buildings revealed it to him. Beyond the monastery, against the sky and almost obscured by the sleet, he saw the Krasnoknlinski Bridge. He remembered its lights blurring with sudden tears as Vassily jerked his head back and held him while Pavel beat Fenton's face into an unrecognisable blood-covered dough.

He saw that his hands were shaking when he followed Priabin's keen gaze downwards, towards his lap. He clenched, them, ground his teeth, and looked up.

'Yeah,' he said suddenly.

Priabin had evidently seen the bridge, for he said; 'Well-remembered scenes, mm, Major?' Then he shrugged, and added. 'It was clever — ruthless, but clever. I'm afraid it doesn't make you the most popular visitor to Moscow.'

Taganskaia Square. They crossed it quickly, using the central lane marked with its broad yellow lines which was free of all but official traffic at any time. Ahead of the cars, Gant saw ugly concrete blocks towering above yellow-stuccoed buildings and monuments and columned arches.

Priabin turned to follow his gaze. A huge hotel block drifted past the Zil's windows. People hurried beneath, dwarfed, hunched into overcoats. There were very few umbrellas. Apart from the buildings, that was the most alien thing he had seen. Most of the people wore hats, or scarves, but there were almost no umbrellas. It was an alien place.

Priabin turned back to Gant. Ahead, through the smeared passage of the wipers, the city seemed to hurry like a crowd towards the centre. The streets narrowed, appeared to squeeze closer. The distance from Red Square to the KGB's headquarters was perhaps no more than two minutes' drive.

'Welcome to Moscow, Major Gant,' Priabin said, grinning.

The dam broke. Gant was no longer able to fend off, keep back, the future. It broke over him. His hands would not keep still on his lap, however hard he watched them, however much he willed them to stop.

'It's remarkably astute of the Finns, in my opinion,' Aubrey observed to Buckholz as they stood at the plot table. Yellow, red and green tape was stretched between pins. The futuristic model of the Firefox remained where he had placed it, squatting on the lake. It ought to be under the table, he observed to himself irreverently. 'Everyone has their price, especially governments, and the Finns have been very clever at deciding upon theirs — but then, Hanni Vitsula is a clever man.'

'Sure,' Buckholz grumbled.

'They don't want Russians in Finland, collecting and taking back their most secret warplane — think of the bad publicity that would give this new Finnish government… and they certainly wouldn't want to destroy it themselves, and have to own up to the Russians — too much diplomatic flak for anyone's liking there. So, what do they do? Give us the job of cleaning their stables for them, and making us pay an exorbitant price for the privilege of so doing! One really has to admire them.'

'Does one?' Buckholz asked reluctantly, sarcastically.

'I think so, Charles — oh, don't be such a spoilsport. In the end I don't suppose it will come down to us giving them very much more than we do already. You know that as well as I do. What is it that is really upsetting you? The fact that your President, at the eager prompting of the Chiefs of Staff, the entire Pentagon, the NSA and your own Director, have ordered us to rescue the airframe if we humanly can?'

Aubrey's complacent smile irritated the American, made him unreasonable; even disposed to violence. Washington had given him explicit orders, outlined a specific course of action; pressured London into agreement, into the supply of men and facilities and materials. Buckholz was angry with Aubrey for anticipating, in his insatiable desire for success, the way in which the President's Crisis Management Committee would resolve the matter. An all-night meeting, a morning of computer-discussed scenarios, and the White House had agreed with Aubrey. The attempt must be made, and the Finns made to allow it.

Charles Buckholz felt he now appeared stupid, narrow, defeatist. Aubrey had forced such a view of himself upon him, and he therefore disliked Aubrey intensely at that moment. He disliked Pyott, too, he thought, as the soldier, now attired in a dark suit rather than his uniform, entered the Ops. Room, a sheaf of papers in one hand. To Buckholz's extreme irritation, he proceeded to wave them like a flag above his head as he came to wards them.

'Well?' Aubrey asked eagerly. Pyott, on reaching them, seemed disconcerted by Buckholz's sullen expression and glinting eyes. 'Oh, don't mind Charles,' Aubrey remarked airily. 'He's sulking because the President ignored his Jeremiad this morning!' Then he turned to Pyott again. 'Is that Abingdon's shopping list?'

'Yes, it is.'

'Good. And how were JIC and the Chiefs of Staff, not to mention Andrew Gresham, our revered leader?'

'Sullen,' Pyott observed maliciously, looking at Buckholz with amusement. 'At least, Gresham and the Cabinet Defence Committee are writhing at the pressure the President is putting on them — but wilting, of course. JIC is fence-sitting, and the Chiefs of Staff are promising the moon in the way of assistance!'

Aubrey grinned broadly, almost snatching the sheaf of papers from the taller Pyott. Pyott handed them to him, and brushed at his moustache; a preening gesture, Buckholz thought.

'Kids,' he remarked. 'You're like kids.'

'Charles,' Pyott soothed. 'Let's not get into that again.'

'It's not a game — not even your old imperial Great Game, Giles,' the American said heavily, leaning on clenched knuckles on the plot table; a heavy, reluctant figure, someone to be taken seriously. 'Kenneth's idea of Christmas, this is,' he continued. 'And maybe yours.' He looked at each of them in turn, intently, then he added: 'The President never mentioned Gant, though-uh? Not a goddamned word!' Buckholz threw his hands up in the air, continuing with great vehemence: 'What did he do, uh? Stand in front of the green-tinted window in the Oval Office, put his hand on his heart and tell the Chiefs of Staff and the gathered multitudes that Mitchell Gant was a true American and he'd never talk to the damned Russkies!' Pyott dropped his glance. His eyes seemed to cast about on the plot table for something he had mislaid. Aubrey, too, seemed abashed. 'You haven't got a chance — not the ghost of a chance — because they've got him and they're going to make him talk. Today, tomorrow, or maybe if you're lucky the poor dumb bastard will hold out until the day after tomorrow — but eventually, he's going to tell them go look in the lake, comrades. That's where it is. And if he holds out that long, you might just have gotten it out of the lake before they arrive — they won't even have to fish for it!'

Buckholz glared at them, then turned on his heel and walked noisily across the Ops. Room towards the door. He slammed it behind him.

Aubrey stared at the plot table and the coloured tapes marking supply routes and aircraft types and journey times and dropping zones. The sheaf of papers he held tightly in his right hand quivered at the lower edge of eyesight. He could hear his own breathing, nasal but barely under control. Finland appeared so accessible on the plot table. Coloured tape stretched out towards it from the UK, from Norway. The black model of the Firefox sat stolidly on the pinprick of the lake. The quivering sheets in his hand were the foundation, the scenario.

And yet Buckholz was right.

The telephone startled him. He looked at Pyott almost wildly. The soldier crossed the room to the foldaway table on which the secure telephone rested.

'Yes?' he asked, then immediately held out the receiver to Aubrey. It seemed slippery as soon as he touched it. 'Shelley.'

'Yes, Peter?' he asked anxiously. 'Yes… yes… I see-they're certain, yes, yes, I appreciate they are… very well. Yes, the surveillance must be of the best, they may not keep him there… yes, Peter. Thank you.' He put down the telephone heavily. Pyott, in response to Aubrey's bewildered glance, furiously rubbed at his moustache with a crooked right forefinger. 'He's arrived,' Aubrey announced in a voice that might, in less serious circumstances, have sounded comically gloomy. 'Almost an hour ago, he was driven into Moscow Centre.' He glanced up at the large clock on the Ops. Room wall. It was as if he could hear it ticking in the empty silence of the underground room. 'Damn it!' he cried, thumping the foldaway table with his fist. 'Damn and blast it, it's already begun.'

They had taken him directly to Andropov's office. The cobbled courtyard behind the main building had seemed desolate and ice-cold, gleaming with melted sleet. He had glimpsed the old buildings of the Lubyanka as they hurried him from the car. The office of the KGB Chairman seemed like some kind of bribe. Warm, opulently furnished with embroidered sofas and oriental carpets, panelled walls, tall windows looking down on Dzerzhinsky Square and Marx Prospekt. He was given a drink — bourbon, which he disliked but which they might have assumed was to his taste. It burned his chest and stomach, but the sensation, after the chilling cold of the cobbled courtyard, was comforting.

Andropov watched him from behind his large, intricately-carved French desk, hands steepled, face not unkindly. Merely curious. A tall, uniformed man stood at his side, outlined against the artificial whiteness provided by the net curtains. His eyes gleamed even in half-shadow. Gant sat on a delicate antique chair covered with embroidered silk, cradling his drink, while Priabin stood behind him. There was no one else in the room, but the illusion of innocence that the smallness of the company at first provided, soon dissipated. Instead, the status and size of the office, the heavy silence, the furnishings, the intensity of the air force general's gaze and the patent and insatiable curiosity on Andropov's face began to unnerve him.

Vladimirov, standing beside Andropov, was aware of a slow-growing cramp in his left calf. The sense of stiffness reminded him of how motionless he had remained since Gant entered the room; a stillness of body that belied the state of his emotions and thoughts. After a night's sleep and breakfast with his wife and the reading of a treasured letter from their only son regarding his promotion to deputy director of the power station in Sverdlovsk, he realised that he hated Gant. It was some kind of delayed stress reaction, he concluded. He had suspected it in the staff car as he was being driven to the Centre from his apartment. Suspected it even as he recalled his son's childhood, his poor academic record at school, the fudging that had got him into a technical university, his dislike of the armed forces and his choice of a career in electricity. In Andropov's office, drinking coffee, engaging in the halting small-talk that was all the Chairman could command, he had begun to be more certain. When they had brought in the American — weary, disorientated, fearful — he had known with certainty that he hated him. No admiration, no ex-flyer's fellow-feeling, no objectivity at all…

Gant had almost ruined him, almost made him fail; almost outwitted him. He had destroyed the other prototype and lost the one he had stolen. He would be made to pay.

Eventually, Andropov cleared his throat with a small, polite sound, smoothed his silk tie, and said, 'Major Gant — Major Mitchell Gant…' He smiled thinly. 'We have — asked you to come here today to tell us what you have done with the prototype MiG-31 which you removed from the secret complex at Bilyarsk early yesterday morning — what have you to say?' The tone was an attempt at silkiness, at a kind of indirect, ironic humour. Priabin sensed that Andropov was unused to the tone, had had little use for it in the past.

'It blew up — I told him,' Gant replied sullenly, gesturing over his shoulder at Priabin. Andropov's gaze flickered to the young colonel's face, then back to Gant.

'I see. You, of course, ejected?' Gant nodded. 'Where, precisely? Would you describe the incident for us? General Vladimirov is most interested to know what became of the aircraft — aren't you, General?'

'Yes,' Vladimirov replied in a choked voice. The American's sullen, insulting voice, his pretence to stupidity, further angered him. Even now, he was preparing to play a game with them.

Gant sniffed. 'Could I have another drink?' he asked, holding out his glass.

'Of course. Colonel — ?'

Priabin brought the bottle, half-filled the crystal tumbler, returned the bottle to the dark, inlaid cabinet against one panelled wall. Then he resumed his stance behind Gant.

Gant swallowed, cleared his throat, and said, 'The airplane was breaking up and on fire…' Vietnam, he reminded himself. Remember the cockpit, filling with smoke. 'The cockpit was full of smoke — '

'What caused this damage?' Vladimirov suddenly snapped.

'Cannon fire — the second of the two MiG-25s was on my tail. I tried to shake him off, but my fuel was too low already… we flew into a closed valley, he came up first and I thought I'd gotten him… I had, then he got me… I hit the button and got out of there fast… I don't know if he did…?' He looked up then, at Andropov. Vladimirov was a tall threatening shadow at his side.

'You lost fuel — why?' Vladimirov asked.

'The second Firefox-must have ruptured my fuel-lines. I was trying to glide her all the way to Bardufoss when your MiG-25s sighted me visually. I was in a corner. I didn't have the fuel to outrun them.'

'I ordered them to shepherd you back.'

'They almost did — I was lucky, I guess.'

Vladimirov was silent for a moment, and then he burst out: 'Now I am certain you are lying, Gant!'

'What do you mean, General?' Andropov asked, turning his head to look at Vladimirov.

Vladimirov rounded the desk and moved towards Gant's chair. Gant could see the one clenched fist for a moment before the other hand closed over it, calming it. Then Vladimirov said, 'Not you. Never you, Gant. Your life is a mess, you live like a hermit, you couldn't keep a job if you were given one. But, you don't rid the world of yourself, you don't give in to the mounting evidence of failure. And why?' Vladimirov leaned forward, his face level with Gant's eyes. 'Why? You are a badly-wrapped parcel, Major, and you are held together by an unsurpassed egotism. You really do believe you are the finest pilot in the world, perhaps ever. You would never be lucky. Not you — you could never admit it!'

As Vladimirov turned triumphantly to Andropov, his face reddened with emotion and delight, Gant said, 'If I'm so fucking clever, General, then what the hell did I do to get rid of the airplane?' Vladimirov turned back to Gant. 'Your guy blew my ass out of the sky.'

'Liar!' Vladimirov shouted. The fist he had been cradling swung at Gant's head. One of the legs of the delicate French chair snapped like a twig as Gant tumbled onto the carpet. The bourbon spilled, seeping onto the polished floor. Gant's head turned. His dazed vision encountered Priabin's boots in fuzzy close-up. He waited to be kicked.

'Can we possibly do it in four days, Giles?' Aubrey asked. Curtin, whose timetable they were discussing, also looked at the tall soldier.

'With this shopping-list of Curtin's — it might be possible. If, and only if, everything works like clockwork. It won't, of course, but this is theoretically feasible.'

'Very well — What have we got so far?' Aubrey said, more in the nature of an announcement than an enquiry. He pushed away his plate — lunch had been served in the Ops. Room, a white cloth laid over two pushed-together foldaway tables. Buckholz had not joined them. Aubrey studied the last of the claret in his glass, then swallowed it. 'Giles?'

'Politically, we're OK, with the crucial exception of the Finns. Their Cabinet still has to decide.'

'Yes, yes-' Aubrey interrupted impatiently, waving his hand, then standing up, thrusting his hands deeply into his pockets as soon as he had done so. His professorial manner angered Pyott. Aubrey paced alongside the plot table while Pyott continued.

'Washington and London have agreed that the rescue is to be attempted, and that it continues as a covert operation — deniable and disownable if and when necessary. Therefore, we report only to the Cabinet Secretary here, who represents Number Ten and the JIC, while Charles will report via his director to the Chief of Staff at the White House so that the President may be kept in touch.'

'Good, good. That gives us a free hand. Now, what about the substance of the meal?'

'One Hercules has been requisitioned from RAF Lyneham. We think Kirkenes makes the better HQ. Despite the greater range of facilities at Bardufoss, it's too far away…' Aubrey was bending over the plot table. Pyott glanced at Curtin, nodded, and they joined him, Curtin having sipped at his glass of water before rising. Aubrey gazed at the map as if he coveted it; a stylised portrait of a conqueror. Pyott waved his hand over the plot table like a conjuror. 'Bardufoss — ' he said. 'Kirkenes — ' He cleared his throat. 'We have the transport, we have the troops to set up a defensive perimeter, SBS already in Kirkenes. We have a Royal Engineer detachment-winches, tripods, pulleys, cutting gear… RAF engineers, four of those and appropriate tools. Curtin has our giant Sikorsky Skyhook fuelling now for its first hop from — where is it, Gene?'

Curtin grinned at the use of his Christian name; his welcome to the comfortable circle of conspiracy. 'Germany, Giles.' His smile did not diminish. Eventually, Pyott nodded, accepting the familiarity. 'We have to finalise the refuelling points — this baby can't travel more than two hundred miles on a full tank of gas… that means two, maybe three refuellings before she gets her ass out of Germany, since she's coming up from Wiesbaden. Then there's Denmark, Sweden — we don't anticipate problems with their neutrality — and she's going to come awful slowly up Sweden and across Lapland to the lake. And the met reports are getting worse, Mr. Aubrey, they really are.' Curtin looked dubious, uncertain; as if he had blasphemed. Aubrdy glared at him.

'And there,' Giles Pyott said heavily, looking hard at Aubrey, 'is where the best laid plans, et cetera, will stumble and fall. You have no back-up; Kenneth. No fall-back. No second line.' He continued to stare at Aubrey.

Eventually, Aubrey shrugged. His face was chastened; and angry. Once more, the image of the frustrated, gifted child came to Pyott. Aubrey really was almost impossible -

'Giles, there can be no fall-back or back-up or whatever you wish to call it. The best we could hope for, if the Skyhook does not arrive, is to remove some of the more vital systems from the airframe, then destroy it. Which is why this plan must work!'

'Too much hinges on the weather and a single large helicopter, Kenneth. If the ice were thick enough to bear the weight of the Hercules…' He brushed at his moustache, a flicking motion. 'But, it won't. Waterford's people are certain of that. Even if it landed, and the ice held, it wouldn't bear the weight of the Hercules with the dismantled Firefox inside its cargo compartment.'

Aubrey glanced from Pyott to Curtin, then back to Pyott. 'Have you two been rehearsing this?' he asked with evident sarcasm. 'I, too, have digested Waterford's reports. I know there is no alternative to the Sikorsky. It must arrive. It is our job to prepare for its arrival!'

Pyott shrugged, then relented and said to Curtin, 'And how have you been getting on?'

'We've had experts study the pictures of the lake, we've spoken to one of your university professors — '

'Gilchrist at King's,' Pyott explained casually. 'Geologist — actually knows the area.'

'What does he say?'

'He pointed out, having seen the pictures, that we might have to do some tree-felling if we want to drag anything out of that lake. Brooke's detailed report on depth of water, slope of the shore, indicated the same thing:'

'So — tree-felling. Easy to pick up visually by an overflight.'

'I agree. It will have to be made to look — natural…"

'How many drops?' Aubrey asked.

'All our people — thirty to forty, including SBS — could go in the first drop, onto the lake. Any non-parachutists will have to be taken in by Lynx helicopter. Equipment can go in a second drop. A lot of what we need is at Bardufoss already… our good fortune.'

'When?' Aubrey burst out.

'If you get permission from the Finns — if all the pressure being exerted finally makes them bend — tonight.'

'Then I must talk to Hanni Vitsula-!' Aubrey exclaimed, hurrying from a lingering glance at the plot table towards the telephone. Immediately he moved, Pyott and Curtin began murmuring rapidly as they leaned over the table. Aubrey dialled the Queen Anne's Gate number, then requested Shelley's extension, having satisfactorily and impatiently identified himself.

'Peter-get me Helsinki at once… What? No, nothing. I see — yes, Peter, I realise the importance of the matter, and yes, it does worry me-however, will you please get Director Vitsula on the telephone!' Aubrey realised that Pyott and Curtin were watching him. He could see the model of the Firefox on the table between them, as if they had moved apart solely to reveal it. For a moment, his eyesight became unfocused, the model seemed almost to dissolve as he thought of Gant. The telephone connection clicked and stuttered.

'Kenneth?' he heard Vitsula say at a great distance.

'Yes, Hanni — can you hear me?' It was a ridiculous remark, clashing absurdly with the coloured tapes, with a loaded Hercules transport aircraft and a giant Sikorsky helicopter flying several hundreds of miles north.

'Perfectly, Kenneth — you caught me as I was about to call you.'

'You have news?' Pyott and Curtin had stopped murmuring. Both of them were staring in his direction. 'Good news, I hope.'

'All communications are to be between the two of us.'

'I understand — our people have the same idea.'

'Good. Then I can tell you that you have — you would call it, I think, a qualified yes.'

'Qualified? How?'

'There is a strict time-limit.'

'We feel we need a minimum of four days — '

'Then I am sorry, but you do not have it. Forty-eight hours is the offer I am authorised to make. No.negotiations.'

'Forty-eight hours? Impossible — !'

'Nevertheless, that is the offer. After that, Finnish units will move into the area, seal it off, and inform the Soviet Union of the precise location of their aircraft. I think my government sees some political advantages in this course of action.'

'It's still impossible, Hanni,' Audrey almost pleaded.

'It is a fact, however. Pernaps you will consider it more carefully…?'

'Forty-eight hours from when?'

'The clock is already running. Noon today — GMT, of course. It is already less than forty-eight, Kenneth.'

They had not hit him again. He had not been kicked. He had lain there for almost a minute, staring at the drying white rime of dampness around the toes of Priabin's boots until the young colonel had helped him to his feet. Vladimirov had stared through the net curtains, out of the tall windows down towards the square for a long time. Then Andropov had ordered a map to be brought in. A secretary spread it on the surface of the large, ornate desk, and then retired. Gant, reseated on a more substantial chair, waited. The broken, delicate French chair had been removed from the room.

Andropov rose and spoke briefly to Vladimirov at the window — the general sucked his bruised knuckles while the Chairman talked — and then sat down once more. Slowly, Vladimirov turned from the window. Light fell on his profile for an instant, and Gant recognised that the man was in no way calmed or mollified. He wondered whether he was the most dangerous, or merely the most obvious, enemy in the room.

'Major Gant,' Andropov began, crooking his finger at the American, 'there would appear to be some discrepancies in your account — would you show us, please, on this map?'

Gant got up slowly and moved to the desk. The map was a large-scale projection of northern Finland and Norway, and the Kola Peninsula area of the Soviet Union. It was weighted down where it had been unrolled by a gold inkstand and a large paperweight that might have been jade.

'General Vladimirov,' Andropov commanded quietly. 'You wish to ask the Major some questions?'

'Yes,' Vladimirov replied tensely. He remained on the opposite side of the desk from Gant. His long forefinger tapped over the map like a blind man's stick, probing and uncertain. Gant saw only the lake for a moment, then refocused. 'Where was the MiG-25 destroyed?'

Gant hesitated, counting the seconds as he had begun to do in the long silence after Priabin had helped him to his feet. Each second of silence was valuable; he had no idea why. It simply postponed…

'There, as far as I can remember,' he said at last.

Vladimirov's finger tapped the map. 'Quite so. Correct. This is the closed valley you described — there is wreckage at this point, here…' Gant nodded. Vladimirov did not continue. His finger merely continued to tap at the indicated point on the map. Gant looked up into his face. His eyes gleamed. The general was barely in control of his emotions, but Gant saw clearly the lucid, suspicious intelligence of the man. He might be the most obvious enemy in the room — perhaps he was also the most intelligent? Certainly, he was the most expert…

'So?' Gant said in a surly tone. The general's lips twitched. 'Wreckage? I told you that.'

'Strangely, though, our reconnaissance photographs — which have been examined by experts — indicate no signs of wreckage from the MiG-31. How would you account for that, Major?'

Think, think -

'Uh — it's got to be around there somewhere…' In control of his features, he straightened and looked at Vladimirov. 'I hit the button, the airplane was on fire, I parted company from the seat, I saw the airplane explode — how far away it was by that time, I don't know.'

'And you landed — ?'

'Less than a mile from the MiG-25's wreckage, I guess…'

'So you consider that a radius of-oh, what, ten miles? A radius of ten miles around the point would contain the wreckage of the MiG-31?'

'Can't be more than that. It was a couple of seconds, maybe ten — speed was down, and I saw the explosion…' He nodded, inwardly envisaging that moment of suspension as the burning Phantom raced away from him and he turned over and over before parting company with the ejector seat — then the Phantom had exploded, a bright orange ball of flame… Yes, that was it. Hold onto that. With luck, the reconnaissance photographs were of too narrow a strip. Time, time -

'I see,' Vladimirov murmured, fingering his top lip, making little hollow plopping sounds as he tapped it against his teeth. Then he bent to Andropov's intercom, and snapped, 'Bring in the exhibit, please.'

One of Andropov's bodyguards from the outer office dragged something that looked like a rucksack into the room, then left as Andropov's wave dismissed them. Gant stared at Andropov, who was smiling. Then he looked into Vladimirov's face. The general's mouth was working, is if he were chewing at something indigestible and cold. Finally, Gant looked back towards the pack. Priabin bent to pick it up. His smile was almost radiant. He brought it to the desk and dropped.it at Gant's feet.

'Your parachute, I imagine?' Andropov remarked.

'No-!'

'There are not too many of these lying casually unused in the snow of Finnish Lapland. In fact, I should be surprised if there were any others. A pity. I believed your story — except that I knew about this, of course.'

Gant leaned on the desk. 'That's not my 'chute, man! The airplane blew up just after I ejected. I buried my 'chute near the landing point. Where did you find this?'

'Exactly where you had buried it. Not far, in fact, from the village where you borrowed those clothes — which smell of Lapp, I must observe. Dung, grease and sweat…'

'It's not my 'chute!' Gant shouted.

'It is, Gant,' Vladimirov snapped. 'You landed that aircraft somewhere — where was it? Where is it?'

'No-'

Andropov pressed the buzzer on his intercom. Immediately, two of his personal bodyguards, torsos large and muscled beneath their suits, stepped into the room. Gant watched them, tensing himself, counting the last futile seconds. Now he knew why he had been counting. It was a record of the time before this began, before the pain.

His fists clenched. Priabin's hand was at his holster. The two large men moved swiftly, lightly towards him, almost as if they floated over the carpet. They were close — he tensed -

Stomach, jaw, back, head, legs, side…

As he fell, they punched then kicked. Perhaps a dozen blows were struck before he lay stretched on the floor, each a separate, new, agonising pain. It was an assault. Frighteningly fast, terrifyingly damaging. He felt paralysed, unable to move, hardly able to breathe and groan.

Then he was dragged to his feet. His breath disappeared again. He was doubled over in their grasp. Their holds on his forearms and elbows were separate, distinct, new pains. Head hanging, He looked up at Andropov's smiling face. A white handkerchief was held over his mouth and nose, as if they intended suffocating him. But it was loose. It was simply to prevent blood falling on the carpet, the desk.

'He does know, Vladimirov?' he heard the Chairman of the KGB ask quietly.

Vladimirov seemed disappointed that the beating had stopped. 'Oh, yes, he knows,' he replied. 'He knows precisely. He's the only one who does.'

'Very well — this must be done quickly — ' Gant felt his stomach heave, his body struggle inside the chain-mail of the spreading, burning pain. Andropov pressed his intercom, and snapped, 'Tell the Unit to prepare for an important arrival.' Then he looked at Gant. There was distaste, probably at the blood staining the white handkerchief. He nodded dismissively. 'Take him to the Unit. Tell them to prepare him for interrogation — within the hour!'

Gant was swung around, dragged towards the door. As he passed the young colonel, Priabin was smiling a sad, wise, confident smile. You'll tell, the smile and the eyes announced. Bad luck, but you'll tell…

'Kenneth, it's impossible! Forty-eight hours is a strict, complete, total impossibility. Please take my word for it.' Pyott shook his head sadly.

'But, if we leave tonight…?' Aubrey persisted.

Again, Pyott shook his head. 'I'm afraid no. We could be in position by tomorrow. But, the Sikorsky would not be there and half our supplies would not be there. That would leave us less than twenty-four hours to lift the airframe and get it over the border!'

'Giles, don't be stubborn — '

'You are the one who is being stubborn, Kenneth, for Heaven's sake — ! I lose all patience with you. The discussion is closed. It cannot be done in the time available. We must decline the Finnish offer.'

'It's there-intact. The prize is still there — '

'Unfortunately,' Pyott replied with freezing irony, 'we have been scratched from the race.'

'Damn you, Giles!' Aubrey breathed, looking around at Curtin and then Buckholz for support. The argument had been in progress for almost an hour. The had skirted the plot table, paced beside it, leaned upon it, as if it were the dock, the judge's seat, the gallery of a court. And ended where they had begun, the Americans siding with Pyott and Aubrey more and more exasperated.

'I'm sorry you feel like that, Kenneth, but — damn your insufferable self-esteem, your pride. That's what is at the root of the matter — your success or failure…' Aubrey's face was white with rage, with admission. Pyott dropped his gaze and murmured an apology.

Buckholz looked at his watch. Curtin coughed, shuffled his feet, glancing at the plot table where symbols and counters, even torn slips of paper with folded bases to make them stand like cardboard soldiers, indicated their state of readiness. Outside, on the tarmac, the Hercules transport stood awaiting them. It was being loaded with supplies flown in from specialist RAF and army units. Aubrey had been up to see it once; he was gloating when he descended again to the soured atmosphere of the Ops. Room.

Buckholz and Curtin waited. Pyott glanced at the plot table. Nothing more than a box of child's toys, stirring memories but of no use to the adult.

Aubrey hurried to the telephone the moment it began to ring. He snatched up the receiver.

'Yes?' he demanded breathlessly. 'Peter — what is it? What — you're certain of it… followed the car, saw it drive in… no, there can't be any doubt-yes, Peter, thank you.' He put down the receiver with great and pointless deliberation. There was, he knew, nothing to consider or think about — nothing to delay his agreement with Pyott that the operation was impossible… more impossible now than stealing the aircraft had ever been. He studied each of them in turn.

'Well?' Pyott demanded.

'Well? Well?' Aubrey snapped. 'Gant has been transferred to the KGB Unit out on the Mira Prospekt — ' He waited for their reaction. He could see that they sensed his depression, but the name meant little or nothing to them. 'It is a unit operated for the KGB by the Serbsky Institute. They are going to interrogate Gant under drugs, gentlemen — I'm afraid we do not have forty-eight hours, after all… we probably do not have twenty-four, perhaps not even twelve…' He sighed, then added: 'Gant will not be able to help himself. He will tell them everything.'