Northlight

23 TEAPARTY

'The circus, yes. I remember the circus. The clowns. The hot coals shimmered between us.'

'When was that?' I asked her.

The ancient face was so lined that her smile was almost lost in it, but it touched her rheumy eyes, lighting them. 'Oh, a long time ago, comrade. A. very long time ago.'

I took another chestnut and bit into it, feeling the urge to eat as the cat had eaten, the urge to survive. I suppose, if I'd wanted to go totally mad, I could have somehow got old Pussy across the frontier to London and put him in front of the fire, and fed him, and fattened him, and given him the right shots for distemper, turning him into a pet, a Kensington kitty, just for sentiment's sake because we'd once soldiered together in the winter of Murmansk. But that would only be a way of killing him, of bringing him a slow death among the bowls of warm gold top milk and the cushions and the hearthrugs, never again to know the fierce demented joy of seeing those fish come bursting out of that smashed crate and ravaging them, heady with rapture, scattering tails, scales and bones in that frenzied celebration of life renewed.

'You are from Moscow, comrade?'

'Yes.'

'The clowns were the best of all.' She took the poker in her withered hand and stirred the coals, and I tried to see her as she'd been then, wriggling on a board bench under the big spread of canvas, shrill with laughter as the men in their baggy trousers tumbled across the sawdust sixty years ago, seventy. 'I married one of them. One of the clowns.' Her head was going down, until I could only see the bone-yellow forehead below the black shawl. 'It is true what they say. Behind the make-up there is always sadness. And they do not live long.'

'But they live longer than others, old mother, in our memories. To bring laughter is to light the soul.'

She wasn't listening. She could span time more easily than I could, and she wasn't with me any more. I left her like that, crouched over her brazier in the midst of the new snows.

Then I rang Croder.

'You've got a bloody nerve.'

It had taken three hours to make the connection, going through the embassy in Moscow and then Cheltenham, using the 909 hotline route.

'I'm sure you're aware of the situation.'

His voice came through a lot of background slush but we didn't have to listen for bugs: I'd found this hotel at the end of a street half lost under the snow, with abandoned trucks and rubbish bins making humped white shapes under the lamps. The concierge had gone back to his desk and was asleep again.

'Yes,' I told Croder, 'I'm aware that since I'm still alive you're asking me to go on working for you.'

I couldn't catch what he said because of the slush.

'What?'

'For us all.'

Typical of him. Team spirit, so forth, mustn't let the side down.

'You'll have to find someone else.'

'Things are too urgent for that.'

It was the phrase Fane had used; I suppose he'd picked it up from Croder. They'd been in signals just before I'd gone to the warehouse.

'I brought you here,' Fane had said, 'to tell you I've just heard from London.' The smoke from his cigarette curled from his mouth. 'Something rather interesting has come up.' I didn't ask him what it was. It didn't look, after all, as if he'd brought me here to put a slug into my skull and shove me under the snow. 'The Soviet naval officer, Kirill Zhigalin, who torpedoed the American submarine, was arrested for exceeding his duties. Last night he escaped his escort and disappeared.'

Zhigalin.

That was his name? I'd only heard his voice.

Advise me.

New position: 17-G on the east grid. You have a kill.

Keep me advised.

Did we make a hit? Did we make a hit?

Confirm. You made a hit. I repeat: you made a hit.

Lieutenant Kirill Zhigalin.

A third man running.

Fane watched me.

I said: 'That's your problem.'

'Hardly a problem. It gives us a splendid chance of forcing concessions from the Soviets in Vienna. Karasov is dead, but if we could take Zhigalin across, London would be terribly pleased.'

'Fuck London.'

He dropped his cigarette butt with care and put his foot on it. 'I understand your feelings, of course. But you should try to see our point of view. If we can-'

'No.'

He shrugged slightly. 'There would be a definite advantage for you if you agreed to-'

'No.'

He inclined his head. 'Mr Croder would appreciate it if you'd at least signal him and hear what he's got to-'

'No.'

I turned and walked out of the place. And then, because my mind had started to work out all the possibilities, the alternatives, the opportunities, and perhaps because the ancient mother's voice had calmed me with its tales of circuses and clowns while the smoky tang of the chestnuts had reminded me of life renewed, my mood had changed, and I had looked for a small hotel where I could telephone.

'The fact that things are urgent,' I told Croder, 'doesn't concern me.'

'Then why did you signal?'

'To make a deal, if there's one available.'

The cubicle stank of cabbage and the dank vestiges of tobacco, and I inched the folding door open, watching the concierge. If he woke up he'd catch the sound of a foreign tongue, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he wanted to tip off the militia that a foreigner had come to the hotel to make a telephone call I'd be miles from here before they could take any kind of action: they'd have to get here on foot.

'What sort of deal?' Croder asked cautiously.

'I'll take Zhigalin across for you, if you'll set it up. But not with Fane directing me.'

The slush came in again, and faint voices, one of them speaking in Estonian.

'Why not?'

'I want someone I can trust.'

'He was simply following my instructions.'

'I know. I want someone who'll refuse your instructions if it becomes expedient again to kill me.'

Just the slush again. He hadn't liked that. Croder is a great lover of euphemism: eliminated, despatched, so forth. He likes his truths sanitized.

'That won't occur.'

'Things can change. Look, if I'm wasting your time, let me know.'

'On the contrary. But you can't hope to bring Zhigalin across without local control, or even get across without him for that matter.'

'I know. But I don't want Fane.'

'There's no one else I could send there, even if there were enough time. And Fane knows the area. He's extremely-' 1 'I want Ferris.'

The line was pretty bad, and he might not have heard properly. 'Say again?'

'I want Ferris.'

Quite a long pause. 'He's in Tokyo.'

'Then fly him out.'

'There isn't time.' He waited for me to answer that, but I didn't. I'd told him what I wanted and there was nothing I needed to add. 'It would be very helpful,' Croder went on at last, 'if you would consider the enormous gravity of the world situation. It is, after all, the reason for, your mission.'

'I haven't had time to read the papers.'

'Negotiations,' he said slowly, 'have now broken down between Moscow and Washington. The United Kingdom is the last link between the super-powers, and yesterday Lord Cranley flew to Moscow in an aircraft of the Queen's Flight to attempt a last-ditch agreement with the Soviets to freeze the present status of affairs and keep diplomatic relations open until a solution can be found to this crisis. He may not succeed. When I sent you out there, your mission was urgent. Its success, in my informed opinion, is now the only remaining chance of saving the Vienna conference and preventing a cataclysmic severance of East-West relations. Zhigalin is the ace in our hand, and only you can get him for us.'

I'd been listening to his tone, and even over the longdistance line it was unmistakable. It had the despair of a hushed voice in a graveyard. I didn't know how bad things had got. But it didn't change anything: there was still only one way out.

'I understand what you're saying, Croder. And I'll get Zhigalin for you — if you'll get me Ferris.'

'But can't you see-'

'It's the only way. Are you listening? The only way.'

'But the logistics-'

'I'll spell them out for you. There's been heavy snow here but Fane said they've managed to keep a couple of runways open at the airport. It's the only way in from Leningrad: the overland routes are blocked. If it starts snowing again they'll even have to shut down air traffic. Do you understand?'

In a moment: 'Yes. But-'

'If you work fast enough you can get Ferris here within twenty-four hours. If you get him here I'll do what I can to bring Zhigalin across. But not unless.'

'You don't realize-'

'Not unless. Ferris or nothing.'

I hung up the receiver.

The next day it was still dark at noon. The sun wouldn't show on the east horizon for another month, and today there were black snow clouds hanging across the city.

I'd given the concierge a fifty-ruble note.

'There's more,' I said, 'but you won't get it if you do anything stupid.' His faded eyes had gazed at me, seeing visions of stolen sable, chamois bags of diamonds, a crate or two of American cigarettes if it was a thin week. This was a major seaport.

'You'll find me reliable, comrade.'

This morning I'd got him to light the brass geyser in the only bathroom and fill the bath with hot water so that I could soak my bruises, but the smell of gas got me out before the water had cooled.

At noon Fane came.

'How long did it take you to get here?'

'Most of the morning? He kicked the snow off his boots.

'I've talked to Croder.'

He looked up sharply. 'Have you?'

'All I want to know at this stage is where to find Zhigalin.'

He lit a cigarette. 'Are you going to take him across?'

'It depends.'

'Depends on what?'

'If they can get Ferris out here.'

'To direct you?'

'Yes.'

He looked down. 'He's very good.'

'I know.'

'Did Mr Croder agree?'

'No. I just left him with the choice.'

Fane went over to the small cracked window but all he could see was his reflection; it was like night outside. 'Ferris is somewhere in the Far East, I believe.'

'That's right.'

'We have to assume he's directing someone there.'

'Yes.'

He turned back to face me. 'It's a pretty thin chance.'

'That's Croder's problem. I don't mind whether it comes down heads or tails.'

It was a lie and he probably knew that.

The bulb in the ceiling flickered, and we waited. Power cables were breaking all over the city as the permafrost shifted under the weight of the snow and brought poles down. 'There has not been a winter like it,' the concierge had told me. 'Not in my lifetime.' He'd stared through the glass doors as if at his first Christmas morning.

'I think you should assume,' Fane said in a moment, 'that they won't be able to get Ferris here in time to do any good.'

'That's up to them. If they can't, I'm resigning the mission. That means they'll have to fly someone else out here to replace me, and that could take just as long as to send Ferris.'

'You've given them quite a problem.'

'That's a shame.'

He might have known what was in my mind and he might not. I didn't particularly care. The thing was that Croder had his hands full in London trying to set up the mechanics that would give the West an edge over the Soviets in Vienna. He wouldn't have time to get me across on my own, now that Zhigalin had become his new objective. He'd leave me to find my way home alone and the chances of doing that were lethally thin. That was why I'd offered Croder a deal: Zhigalin was my only ticket home.

'I understand your reasons for asking for Ferris to replace me, of course. But to impose a delay at this very critical stage is at the least dangerous, for you and everyone else. I know this area and I've got all my courier lines and communications still intact. Ferris would have to-'

'You're wasting your time. I've got absolutely no guarantee that the deal you made with the KGB isn't still exposing me to risk. I don't know that the minute you leave here you won't call them up and tell them where I am. I-'

'They believe you're dead.'

'How do you know?'

'I told them.'

'I don't know if you're lying, Fane. I don't know how complex Northlight still is, or whether you might not get instructions at any time to wipe me out.'

He shrugged. 'I can only give you my word.'

'What the hell is that worth?'

The cheap tin frame of the picture of Lenin on the wall vibrated to the pitch of my voice and I lowered it. 'On the face of it you want me to meet Zhigalin and get him across the frontier and that sounds simple enough, but on the face of it you wanted me to meet Karasov and get him across the frontier and what actually happened was that you were sitting here in Murmansk with your fingers in your ears while I was getting into that truck in Kandalaksha and that is why I can't take your word for anything now.'

He looked down, and it occurred to me that he wasn't in point of fact as cold-blooded as a toad and that he hadn't exactly thrown a party when London had told him to dig a grave for me in Soviet Russia but it didn't make any difference: he'd followed instructions before and he'd do it again.

'I'm simply warning you,' he said in a moment, 'that you could be driving yourself into a dead end. If London decides it's quicker to send out a replacement for you instead of a replacement for me, we shall be too busy to get you across the border, and you've got a pretty accurate idea of your chances of getting across on your own.'

'I have.'

He was silent for a time. He knew the score but he thought there was still a chance of keeping me in the mission without changing my director. There wasn't. Maybe there were other 1 things I could have done if there were time to think about them. There wasn't. This kind of red sector was totally new to me: the local security forces were the primary danger and if a KGB man asked for my papers he could check them with the information that the computers had been spilling out for their all-points bulletin for the past twenty-four hours and come up with the Petr Stepanovich Lein who'd been found half-dead and taken to the General Maritime Hospital and that would be enough to make them take me along to their headquarters, and that would be that because my cover was light: it hadn't been designed to protect me under interrogation.

The secondary danger was still there in the background. Rinker had got on to me at the hotel and he'd taken a capsule to protect his cell but it hadn't kept them off: they'd been there on the train to Kandalaksha because they wanted Karasov and wanted him desperately. Now they would want Zhigalin. They were running a very sophisticated cell and they had a vital objective: to scuttle the summit conference in Vienna and widen the rift between Moscow and Washington. They would have effective communications in this city and they would know by now that Zhigalin was on the run and they'd expect me to lead them to him just as I'd been expected to lead them to Karasov. Nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed except that I was in a red sector I'd never experienced before. The primary and secondary and the whole range of hazards are common to most missions and you've got to deal with them in whatever way you can but you've always got your director in the field to support you and give you couriers if you need them and give you rendezvous if you need them and keep you in signals with London hour by hour and day by day, and if a fuse blows and you go pitching into a shut-ended situation and there's nothing at last between you and Lubyanka or the Gulag or an unmarked grave then you can still hope that your director can do something before it's too late.

Not now. My only chance now was Ferris.

'We'd better assume,' Fane said evenly, 'that you'll decide to complete your mission and take Zhigalin across whatever the circumstances. In which case I need to brief you.'

'All right.' It made sense. If they sent Ferris out here I'd want to be ready for him.

'I suppose we can't get any heating in this place, can we?'

I think I remember laughing when he said that. It was so human, from such an inhuman man. He didn't think he'd said anything funny; he looked rather offended.

I said, 'In this hotel?' He should have tried hanging underneath that bloody train all night. 'The old man would bring us some tea if you like.'

He shook his head. 'I'd rather keep a low profile.' He lit another cigarette and studied the glowing tip, perhaps taking warmth from it in his mind. 'We have it from our contacts here in the Murmansk cell that Captain Zhigalin was put under close arrest in the naval barracks about an hour after the top brass learned that the Cetacea had been torpedoed and had gone down with all hands. It was probably a panic move. It was quite obvious that the summit conference was suddenly in grave jeopardy unless they could bind and gag the man responsible. From the reports I've received, Zhigalin was at first bewildered and then outraged. He told someone he expected a military honour for protecting the security of his country's most important naval base, not summary arrest and humiliation. This ties in with the dossier I was able to look at: Zhigalin is young for his rank and has received rapid promotion. He's said to be a staunch patriot, a fervent ideologist in terms of Marxist-Leninism and a dedicated officer.'

'The type to break.'

'Yes. We think he broke.'

'You think it's genuine.'

'From the reports. They're all we have to go on. I can't see any other reason for him to have escaped.'

'Unless it was arranged.'

He lifted an eyebrow. 'With what in mind?'

'So that they could've had an excuse to shoot him down on the run. The Soviet navy isn't a rag-tag pack of pirates — they can't simply drop a full captain into a hole and lose him. He'll I I have a family, he'll have friends. There'd be an enquiry, and they wouldn't want that. They want a total blackout on the sinking of the Cetacea.'

'There'd be an enquiry if he were shot dead.'

'Nothing like as big. His escape would imply guilt, and his family wouldn't want any questions asked.'

'I think he'd have been shot by now,' Fane said reflectively, 'if that's what they meant to do. He escaped soon after ten o'clock last night when they were transferring him from his cell to the medical block for a routine examination. If he were. dead by now, we would have heard. I'm in very close touch.'

He was standing outside the door with a tray in his hands when I jerked it open.

'Some tea, comrade.' He was bent almost double under the weight of the tray: it was solid brass and the teapot was copper, the real thing, none of your plastic pissware in romantic Russia. 'I thought you might like some tea.'

I'd heard a stair creak only ten or fifteen seconds before I'd pulled the door open; he hadn't been standing outside for very long but that didn't mean he hadn't been going to. We've got all kinds of exotic cover in this trade from hotshot international journalist to butterfly collector but in local situations you don't need more than a tea tray.

'Come in,' I told him.

His faded eyes were taking in the room and resting now on Fane, but Fane had turned his back and was looking out of the window. He wouldn't say anything: the less they see of your face the better, and the less they hear of your voice.

'Unfortunately, comrades, we have trouble with the boiler room. It is often so. Tea will warm you, however.' He lowered the tray onto the split mahogany dressing-table, the strain in his arms setting a tea-cup raiding.

'Good of you,' I said.

He straightened up, turning his weathered face to me. 'I try to be of service, comrade.' On his way to the door his head swung slightly but not enough to afford him a direct look at Fane's back. He knew the delicate intricacies of the situation; a fifty-ruble note gets you more than a tray of tea: it gets you privacy so inviolate that you can have a visitor in your room without any questions asked. But he couldn't resist turning his head just that fraction. Who was the man standing there at the window? A dealer in sables and gems? A magician who could move your name to the top of the waiting list for a little Volga saloon, an official with one life in the corridors of Party power and another in the dockside labyrinths of international crime? 'This is dangerous,' Fane said when the concierge had gone.

'Yes, but the risk is calculated. Milk and sugar?'

'No.'

The cord round the handle of the huge copper pot was coming unwound and I got one of the thin grey towels from the washstand. 'You'll be out of this soon,' I told Fane, 'don't worry.' It's easy for the directors: they keep their foreign cover.

'That will depend on Mr Croder.' He took his tea and sniffed the steam that rose thickly in the chill of the room. 'On whether he can get Ferris.'

'He'll have to.' I picked a strand of sacking out of the coarse brown sugar and put some into my tea, adding some milk. 'This is rather cosy. Quite Tunbridge Wells.'

'You really do have a weird sense of humour.'

'Takes all sorts. You worried?'

'That man.'

I sipped some tea; it was scalding, and half the chill went out of the room. 'A calculated risk is one that you have to forget you've taken, once you've taken it. If that man is going to bring the KGB here he'll have called them by now and there's nothing we can do about it.' The directors are never happy when they have to leave the security of their grand hotels and hobnob it with the ferrets out in the field. 'How did you get on to the Zhigalin escape?'

'He contacted the embassy.'

'The US embassy?'

'No. Ours.'

'Ours? Why?'

We were briefing again. Fane said: 'It seems he's ready to turn his back on the mother country and take his revenge by offering himself to the West. But he said he was afraid that if he put himself directly into the hands of the Americans they'd lynch him on sight.'

'Did he actually say that?'

'Not directly to me. I got the gist of this through the DI6 chief of station. But it's accurate thinking on his part: he'll need a lot of protection from the Company if he gets to America.'

'Does Zhigalin speak English?'

'Very little. A few naval phrases he's picked up on the ship's radio bands.'

'Where is he now?'

'He refused to say. He's to phone me as soon as he can find somewhere safe to hole up.'

'Then he'll ask for a rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

'Give me everything you've got, then.' If Zhigalin phoned the hotel and Fane wasn't there, we might lose him. The longer he stayed on the run the bigger the risk of his getting caught or shot.

Fane pulled a folded sheet of paper out and turned it to catch the light. 'Zhigalin is five foot nine, stocky, dark brown hair, brown eyes, clean-shaven, a scar below his left ear. He's wearing a merchant seaman's clothes — dark blue sweater and coat, dark blue trousers. That's his provisional cover, as-'

'He hasn't got new papers?'

'No.'

'Is he trying to get any?'

'No. He's leaving it all to us.' I poured him some more tea. 'That doesn't worry me,' he said. 'I wouldn't expect a dedicated naval officer to know what he's expected to do when he's suddenly the subject of a manhunt. I'd say his mind is in a state of some turmoil at the moment.'

'What are the chances of his thinking twice and giving himself up?'

'We don't know. But DI6 treated his call with extreme caution. They didn't promise him anything, except to respond to any further contact he might make.'

'This isn't a KGB trap?'

'It can't be. They're dependent on our cooperation.'

'Still?'

He looked up from his tea rather quickly. 'No.'

'So tell me the score now, Fane. Whether I believe you or not is my business.'

He looked offended. 'I really wish you-'

'You weren't there. You didn't get into that truck and sit within an inch of getting your guts plastered all over the roof of the barn.'

In a moment he said: 'Very well. The situation with Karasov was that although he was a Soviet national he was working for the West. The Soviets knew that the only thing he could do, once he'd deserted his unit, would be contact us and request transit out of Russia and asylum. They therefore came to us with a deal and we agreed to it. They could have hunted Karasov for weeks or even months without finding him, but we could find him very easily: as soon as he made contact with us.'

The light from the yellow bulb in the ceiling was reflected upwards from the surface of his tea, and played across his eyes; they were looking down, not at me. As I listened, I had to catch the import and tone of every word, and decide, now or some time later, whether he was telling me the truth or setting a trap for me as he'd done before. 'The situation with Zhigalin,' he went on 'is different. He too is a Soviet national but he has no ties with the West. They won't expect him to make contact with us, and so they won't suggest another deal. We shall deny strongly any report that we are involved with him. They'll hunt him themselves, and are doing so now, and vigorously. That makes it infinitely more difficult for us to take him across. For you, perhaps-' he looked up — 'to take him across.'

I turned away, going to the window. There were lights out there now, breaking the near darkness of midday. I could hear the ringing of shovels as work gangs moved along the street.

'All right,' I told Fane. 'But the rest of it is the same as before. Zhigalin is now the objective for the mission. We want him. The Soviets want him. The Chinese want him.'

'The only difference,' Fane said from behind me, 'is that we want to take him across.'

'Yes.' I turned to face him again as he went to the dressing-table and squeezed his cigarette butt into the ashtray. 'That's the only difference. This time, when I rendezvous with the objective, you might not have plans to blow us both into Kingdom Come.' I went over to him, bringing out the small steel cylinder from the pocket of my coat and unscrewing the end, dropping the capsule into the ashtray. 'But if I find out you're following any new instructions to endanger me, I'll go straight into the nearest KGB headquarters and blow London. Tell Croder that.'