Mirror Image

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The StarLifter landed on a remote runway at the corner of the Helsinki airport, and Major Aho was there to meet it. The tall weight lifter introduced himself in fluent English to Lieutenant Colonel Squires as "a token, black-haired Lapp" in the military. As the representative of Defense Minister Niskanen, he said he had specific instructions to give the Americans whatever they needed.

As they stood in the open door of the aircraft, the cold wind swirling in from the dark night, Squires told him the only thing he wanted was to close the door and wait for the Il-76T.

"I understand," said Aho, whose sonorous voice, like his carriage, had great dignity.

Leaving an aide behind to work as a liaison with the ground crew, Aho waited while Private George accepted and tendered a round of good-luck wishes, then escorted him to a waiting car. Both men sat in the back.

"Have you ever been to Finland, Private George?" Aho asked.

"Sir," said the soldier, "until I joined the Army, I'd never been out of Lubbock, Texas. After I joined, I never got out of Virginia till now. I wasn't around for the first mission. On the second mission, to Philadelphia, I was sick. On the third mission, to Korea, I got myself bumped by a General."

"In life as in chess, king takes pawn." Major Aho smiled. "At least you'll be making up for it this time out. You get to visit two countries."

George returned his smile. There was a priestly benevolence to the Major's expression and a softness in his fair eyes that George had never seen in a military officer. But beneath Aho's tight brown uniform, George also saw muscle definition he'd never seen, except in bodybuilding competitions on cable TV.

"But you're fortunate," said the Major. "The Viking men believed that a foreign warrior who came to Finland first, in peace, is invincible in battle."

"Only the men believed that, sir?"

Aho sighed. "It was a different world, Private. And— you haven't met your partner, is that correct?"

"That's correct, sir, though I'm looking forward to it," George said diplomatically. In fact, she worried him. He had read the dossier that was faxed to the plane and wasn't at all sure he was ready for a civilian barnstormer.

"I wouldn't say this to her," Aho said, leaning toward him conspiratorially, "but Viking society was always about warrior men. Each man carried an axe, a dagger, and a sword on his person at all times, and wore garments of fox or beaver or even squirrel that left one arm free, his fighting arm. Each woman wore a box on either breast, made of iron, copper, silver, or gold, indicating the wealth of her husband. She also wore a neck ring to show her subservience to him. We had a bit of a row in the schools years ago about how to teach the history of these people." He settled back into his seat. "You can't offend women, you can't offend the British who were victims of the Vikings, you can't offend the Christians who were killed by the heathens— heathens who didn't want to see their cultures destroyed like those of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards, and Alamanni. Fortunately, accuracy won over political expedience. Can you imagine being ashamed of a history such as ours?"

"No, sir," George said, then looked out at the starry night sky. It was the same sky the Vikings had looked at— in awe or fear? George wondered. He couldn't imagine that the Vikings were afraid of anything but dishonor. His own training, like the training of Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta unit or the Russian spetsnaz, emphasized attitude as well as physical skills: not just twenty-hour marches with a fifty-five-pound rucksack to keep you in shape, but the belief that while death is fast, failure stays with you for a lifetime. And George believed that utterly.

Still, he couldn't deny that he felt a lot better when he "overdressed": wearing a hip pouch stuffed with flash grenades, a Kevlar bulletproof vest with lapel daggers for hand-to-hand combat, his Leyland and Birmingham respirator, and carrying a few spare 9mm magazines. Instead, in his rucksack, he had AN/PVS-7A night-vision goggles, an AN/PAS-7 thermal viewer to see hidden objects by the heat they generated, and his Heckler & Koch MP5SD3 with a collapsing stock and integral silencer— even the bolt noise was absorbed by rubber buffers— which, used with subsonic ammunition, couldn't be heard fifteen feet away. And his passport. He had that too. That was the exit strategy Darrell McCaskey had come up with.

"I don't think your ancestors did anything like what we're doing, though, sir," George said, trying not to let the details distract him. He turned away from the sprawling beauty of the Milky Way as the car entered the city proper and turned onto the main boulevard, the Pohjoesplanadi, the Northern Esplanade, which runs east and west through the center of the city. "I mean, it would've been kind of difficult to sneak a Viking with three weapons and a horned helmet into another country unnoticed."

"True," said Aho, "nor did they want to sneak in. They believed in panicking the countryside as they approached their target, forcing local officials to deal with domestic unrest as well as the invaders."

"And here we are, sir, coming by mini-sub," George said.

"We call them midget marauders," said Aho. "A little more gung-ho, don't you think?"

"Yes, sir," George said as they stopped in front of the majestic, sprawling Presidential Palace, which was built for the Russian Czars who ruled the city starting in 1812. after fires burned down the wooden buildings that Queen Christina of Sweden had built there over the previous two centuries. Aho led the private through a side entrance.

The Palace was quiet at this hour. After presenting his credentials to a guard, Aho greeted several members of the skeletal night staff, then took George to a small office at the far end of a narrow, dimly lighted corridor. Beside the six-panel door was a bronze plaque that said Defense Minister. Aho used two keys to let them in.

"Minister Niskanen has several offices in the city," said Aho. "He uses this one when he is on good terms with the President. He is not using it now." The Major grinned and said quietly, "There's something else that's changed. In the days of generals like Halfdan or Olaf Tryggvason, or monarchs like Knut or Svein Forkbeard, leaders didn't take disagreements to a parliament or congress or the press. They put a slave girl up against the wall, threw axes at her, and the man who hit her lost. Then everyone went back to drinking and the dispute was forgotten."

"I can see where that wouldn't work today, sir," George noted.

"Oh, it would work," Aho said. "It just wouldn't be very popular. "

A light was on, and George saw a woman standing behind the desk, leaning on her rigid arms and looking down at a map. She was slight, with large, blue eyes framed by short-cropped dirty-blond hair. Her mouth was small and her lips naturally ruddy, her nose was strong and ended in a little upturn, and her skin was extremely pale with a faint smattering of freckles on her cheeks. She was dressed in a black jumpsuit.

"Ms. James," said Aho as he shut the door and doffed his hat, "Private George."

"Glad to meet you, ma'am," George said, smiling at her as he put down his rucksack.

Peggy looked up briefly, then resumed examining her map. "Good evening, Private," she said. "You look like you're about fifteen."

Her clipped accent and brusque manner reminded George of a young Bette Davis. "Fifteen and a half," he said, walking toward the desk. "If you mean neck size."

She looked up. "And you're a comedian.

"I have many talents, ma'am," he said. Still smiling, George leapt on the desk, his feet straddling the map; in the same quick move, he'd snatched up a letter opener and put the blade to Peggy's throat. "I've also been trained to kill, quickly and silently."

Their eyes locked, and almost at once George realized that that had been a mistake. She'd done it to distract him as she brought her rigid forearms together hard on either side of his wrist. The letter opener clattered to the desktop and, a moment later, she swung her stiff right leg across the map, kicking his legs out from under him. As he fell to his side, she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to the floor, dropping him on his back and putting her foot on his neck.

"Just make sure," she said, "that if you plan to kill, you do so without the speech. All right?"

"All right," he said, kicking up with both feet so that he was momentarily resting on his shoulder blades. Locking his ankles around Peggy's neck, he pulled her down and flipped her onto her back. "Though I'll make an exception this time."

George kept the operative in a chokehold for several seconds to teach her a lesson, and then released her. As she sucked down air, he helped her to her feet.

"Impressive," she gasped, rubbing her throat with her left hand. "But you missed one thing."

"What, ma'am?"

She showed him the letter opener in her right hand. "I grabbed it when you brought me down. The way you were holding me, I could've stuck you anywhere."

Rubbing her throat, Peggy returned to the map while Private George looked at the letter opener and silently cursed himself. It didn't bother him that a woman had bested him; in training, Sondra and he had knocked each other around mercilessly. But on a mission, missing something like the letter opener would have meant the difference between living and dying.

Still standing by the closed door, Aho said, "Now that the introductions have been made, perhaps you'd care to go to work?"

Peggy nodded.

"When you reach the boat at the harbor," Aho said, "your password for the boat will be 'wonderful stempost.' The response is 'handsome dragonhead.' Private George, I've already explained the process of gaining access to the midget submarine to Ms. James. I've also given her money and the Russian uniforms you're to wear." He grinned. "We have more Russian uniforms here, and better fitting, than the Russians do." He took a sealed packet from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Private George. "Here are the papers identifying you as a Principal Shipboard Starshina Yevgeny Glebov and Senior Sailor Ada Lundver in the Russian Navy. You're the Sailor, Ms. James, assigned to coastal mapping and buoy refurbishing. This means that if anyone sees you, you'll have to look like you're following Private George's orders."

"He doesn't speak Russian," she said. "How will that work?"

"You've got a ninety-minute boat ride and a ten-hour submarine trip to teach him some basics," Aho said. He put his hat back on. "And that covers everything, I believe. Further questions?"

"None, sir," George said.

Peggy shook her head.

"Very well, then," said the Major. "Good luck."

George picked up the heavy rucksack containing his gear and jogged after Major Aho, who opened the door, walked into the hallway, and shut the door behind him.

George stopped short to avoid running into the door. "Officers!" he said with a disgusted sigh as he reached for the knob.

"Don't!" Peggy barked.

George turned around. "Excuse me?"

"Put your gear down," Peggy said. "You and I aren't going anywhere yet."

"What do you mean?"

She took an instant camera from atop a filing cabinet. "Smile," she said.

As Major Aho left the building, a woman and her dog were standing by the calm waters of the South Harbor, watching him. Valya had ridden her bicycle from the apartment of their longtime Helsinki operative, a retired Finnish policeman, and had leaned it against a high lamppost while she walked away from the cone of light. When she was safely hidden in darkness, she let the dog rest from its short run— a cuddly, less energetic springer spaniel having replaced the wild Jack Russell terrier she'd used against the British agent in St. Petersburg. Valya didn't need to deactivate anyone here: she had come over simply to watch and report back to Colonel Rossky.

It had been easy for the Operations Center to track the jet from the United States, and even easier for her to follow the Major and his American friend when they left the airport. Now her driver was waiting out of sight on Kanavakatu, by the tall, majestic Uspensky Cathedral, and she was watching to see what the Finnish officer and his spy did.

His two spies, she noted as two companions joined Aho when he walked toward his car.

When she was sure they were going inside, Valya tugged on the dog's collar and it began to bark loudly, twice, twice again, and then two more times.

"Ruthie!" Valya shouted, tugging on the leash a second time. The well-trained dog fell silent.

Major Aho looked over, apparently failed to see anyone in the darkness, then slid into the passenger's side of his car, the other two climbing in the back. Beyond them, the Russian saw her partner's Volvo swing onto the Esplanade, alerted by the bark. They had agreed beforehand that he would follow the car to see where it went, then come back for her: she wanted to remain behind and make sure no one else popped out of this wing of the Palace. Having lost two agents, they might take unusual precautions to protect more. Some countries did that as a matter of course: five years before, when she first joined the spetsnaz intelligence bureau, her superior had been stung by a fake English operation covering the real one, and he took his life after being dismissed in disgrace. Valya Saparov had no intention of letting that happen to her.

She continued to stroll along the steps of the embankment, listening to the tranquil waters lap against the stone and into the drainpipes, watching the few cars and even fewer pedestrians that came and went along the thoroughfare.

And then she saw something that brought a smile to her lips: two people leaving the Presidential Palace, people who looked suspiciously like the ones who had departed with the officer shortly before