Northlight

26 FERRIS

It was A high-impact crash but not totally head-on because the main instrument panel was almost intact although the deceleration forces had wrenched it away from the left side holding bolts and smashed most of the dials. One wing sloped downwards from the main cabin, sheared off at the root; the other was missing altogether.

Smell of burning, and something else, like a stale oven, and I connected this with the soft charred shreds stuck to the instrument panel; in the faint light it looked like the remains of a scalp.

Small bells ringing, rather prettily.

I didn't know how long this thing had been here or whether they'd hauled it out of the way of the air traffic or whether it had finished up here smothered in fire foam, choosing its own grave-site where it could rest until the salvage crews came to settle on it like vultures and pluck it apart for what they could find. It wasn't pleasant in here because of the smell and the cold but I thought Fane had done well: as a rendezvous location it was as good as we'd get; it was a half-mile from the main runways and difficult to reach over the snow and unless we showed a light or made a noise nobody would come here.

The only light filtering in through the sooty glass of the windows was from the control tower and the occasional sweep of headlights as the Navy bulldozers turned across and across the perimeter roads, shovelling the snow into the waiting trucks. The little warning bells rang automatically when the bulldozers reversed.

A short-range commercial Aeroflot Yak-40 had landed five minutes ago with its centre engine reversing thrust as it slid past the lights of the terminal and left the scent of burnt kerosene seeping into the wreck where I sat wailing. It should be in from Leningrad.

I'd thought that the heat from my body was misting on the window where I sat but when I wiped my sleeve across the glass nothing changed. When I'd reached here twenty minutes ago the runway lights in the far distance had been clear; now they were shining through some kind of haze, perhaps sea fog from the north. Now that the sound of the Yakovlev had died away it was quiet in here, and I could hear metal creaking along the main wing as it contracted in the night's increasing cold. I could also hear faint screaming, and believed at first that a wind was rising and fluting through the gaps in the wreckage; but there was no wind outside: the tiny pennant drooping from the airspeed Pilot tube at the wingtip was perfectly still. It was just that my nerves were ultra-sensitive at this stage of the mission, taking the organism close to the zone where the psyche was picking up extrasensory vibrations from what we call the past.

Lights moved from the main terminal along the highway that had been kept clear by constant ploughing, allowing traffic to shuttle from the town and back, most of it dark blue Navy transports and coal-trucks piled with snow. Beyond them the red beacon of a radio.mast winked rhythmically, then it vanished as a dark shape passed close to the window and the screams were loud suddenly as the nerves froze because I hadn't expected him to get here so soon and he'd made no sound over the snow.

Ferris.

I hadn't recognized him because he'd passed close against the window, but it couldn't be anyone else; no one would come here alone: the militia and the airport security guards always patrolled in pairs.

He moved the lever down and pulled open the emergency door just aft of the flight deck and my scalp shrank as I watched the faint flood of light that came in. But if it wasn't Ferris there wouldn't be any problem: I was crouching now within arm's length of the door and the necessary imagery had started in my mind, going through the most effective moves at the calculated height and distance of a drawn gun.

Then he was suddenly there, pulling himself through the doorway and sending his shadow flitting across the smashed bulkhead on the other side. I could recognize his profile now.

'Greetings,' I said softly.

He stopped moving and his head turned, the right lens of his glasses catching the light and reflecting it across his temple, so that he looked like a thin, deformed monster with one huge eye.

'Sorry I'm late.'

He closed the door as quietly as he could, though the movement sent a metal spar twanging; then he lowered himself on to the jump seat opposite me, putting his briefcase down and settling it neatly in that awful prissy way he had of doing everything.

He sat gazing at me in the faint light, a thin pale owl with bits of straw-coloured hair sticking out below his fur hat like broken feathers, his gloved hands resting on his knees. This was the man who'd sat on the stairs in the Hong Kong snake-shop with a gun on his lap while those bloody things had writhed among the smashed glass jars on the floor and the assassin had brought more and more pressure to bear on my throat, the man who had taken a neat step out of his way on the pavement in Barcelona to crush a cockroach under his shoe while he'd told me this was precisely what London would do to me if I didn't take on the Sinkiang thing, the man who had seen me closer to the brink than any other control in the field and who had twice pulled me back from it, the only man I could trust to see me through the rest of the mission if there were still the ghost of a chance left to finish it.

'Not easy,' he said, 'this one, is it?'

'Do you know what they did to me? 'Never mind that.'

I tried to let myself go limp and half managed it, furious because I'd shown him what he'd got on his hands: the makings of a burnt-out case who was ready to sell the Bureau down the river the instant it tried another trick — I'll go straight into the nearest KGB headquarters and blow London.

Had Fane told him I'd said that? 'I just felt a bit annoyed,' I told him much more quietly, 'that's all.'

'I'm not surprised.'

Then I asked him. I hadn't meant to: I'd told myself again and again on my way here that there was one question I wouldn't ask Ferris because it would embarrass him, but it came out in a kind of soft explosion that I couldn't stop.

'Why did you refuse this mission?'

He didn't look down. Fane would have looked down. That was the difference.

'I detected a faint smell of fish.' He went on watching me, his expression lost behind the reflection across his glasses.

'Is that all?'

'Croder was running it, and there was the most monumental flap going on. Too noisy, for my liking.'

'Did you know-' and I should have stopped right there and perhaps tried to, but again I couldn't do it. 'Did you know I was down for termination?'

'No. But I thought it could happen. I'd caught a whiff of the deal they were making.'

'Then why-' but this time I managed to stop, because Ferris had the ability to make you go on talking until you gave yourself away and I was damned if I were going to let him do it now. He'd told me enough. I'd been answered.

'You know perfectly well why,' he said rather sharply. 'If I'd warned you about it, would you have taken any notice?'

'Perhaps.'

'Bullshit.'

'True.'

'Perfectly true. You would have seen it as the ultimate challenge to your resourcefulness and you would have gone headlong into the mission with your blood up and you would have probably got yourself killed off before they'd even had time to light the signals board.'

I don't know how I manage to like a man who keeps a blueprint of my soul hung on his wall.

'It was far better,' he said, 'to let you go into Northlight with your talent for survival uncompromised. Don't ever say I haven't got your best interests at heart.'

'You really are a bastard, Ferris.'

'You shouldn't ask stupid questions.'

Absolutely right, yes. That's why I'd asked London for him. Ferris has been more absolutely right about everything to do with controlling the executive in the field than any local director I've ever worked with.

'A long way to bring you,' I said.

'From Tokyo?'

'Yes.'

'It was a bit important. Have you seen any news lately?'

'I've been rather busy.'

He watched me steadily for a moment. 'Don't underestimate things, Quiller. They've got far beyond the level of normal international diplomacy: that broke down, days ago. It's always the last thing that happens, isn't it, before a war? The talking stops, and they get out the guns.'

Cold crept along my spine.

'Jesus Christ… It's as bad as that?'

'It's as bad as that. And you know I wouldn't try to give you any bullshit, especially at this late stage. It's your life on the line, I understand that.' He turned his head and watched the window for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. 'It's all our lives, actually.'

I pulled in a slow breath.

'Unless I can take him across. Zhigalin.'

'Precisely.' He looked back at me in the strange half-light.

'What are the chances, Ferris?'

'I'm not sure there are any.'

Ferris has never deceived me.

'Then we'll have to make some.'

'Yes.'

'The snow's blocked the roads, from here to the frontier. I assume you know that.'

He looked through the small grimed window again. 'Yes. We shan't try to get you out by road. Even if we could get you both to the frontier, it wouldn't work. That snow's a killer.'

He was thinking of the rifles. Snow is the perfect background for a running target: they wouldn't miss.

'How much briefing did you get, Ferris?'

'I've been in signals for hours, but you'd better fill me in on the local scene. It's not good, I imagine.'

'No. They're looking for Zhigalin.'

'Of course. Checkpoints everywhere?'

'Yes. I had to go through one on the way here: I was on a truck and they stopped it.'

He became very still. 'You showed your papers?'

'Yes.'

'Well that's good news.'

'It can't last. I had to kill a man on a train and they'll have found him by now. Then there was the bang in Kandalaksha — did Fane tell you?'

'Yes. He met my plane.'

'So they'll connect me with the man who was taken to the hospital, as soon as the computers have spewed out the coincidences, I daren't go through another checkpoint.'

He thought about that. 'Did they match your papers with any kind of all-points bulletin?'

'No. They were using tape recorders, to speed things up.'

'Pretty intensive.'

'Yes. In the last two days I've seen fifty checkpoints putting half the population of Murmansk through the sieve. If they don't get me next time they'll get Zhigalin.'

'Oh,' Ferris said, 'he's safe for the moment.'

'He's made contact again?'

'Yes.'

'Where is he?'

'Not far. We're looking after him.'

'That was fast.'

'There isn't a lot of time.'

A diesel engine gunned up outside as a bulldozer started reversing. Ferris turned to the window again.

'Pretty bells,' he said. 'Rather like Christmas, with the snow and everything.' He was half in profile, his glasses no longer hiding his eyes. They were watchful.

'Are we all right?' I asked him.

He gave a sigh and turned back to me. 'Tell me about the Chinese. The Rinker cell as you call it.'

'They've lost me.'

'Are you sure?'

'They didn't show up in Kandalaksha after I'd killed one of them on the train.'

'But we're not expecting them to "show up" until we bring Zhigalin to the surface. Are we?'

I didn't like this.

'You think they're still active?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'For one thing, I would say that the Chinese would go to very great lengths to secure Zhigalin. Once they'd persuaded. him to give a press conference they could wreck the last of our chances for a summit meeting in Vienna, and that would give them a priceless advantage.' He looked through the window again. 'For another thing, and rather more immediately, I think they're watching us now.'

The whole of the fuselage began drumming and I felt the vibration through the metal seat. Light swept across Ferris as the plane lifted from the runway, leaving the sound of its jets echoing across the airport like the booming of a thunderstorm. A loose chip of glass in one of the smashed instruments set up a tinkling vibrato.

'Where?'

'Among the trees.'

'Which trees? Which direction?'

'Forward of the plane-'

'This plane?'

'Yes.'

'How far away?'

'A couple of hundred yards. I-'

'One man?'

'I'm not sure. All I could see were the field-glasses.'

'Two lenses? Are you sure there were two?'

In a moment he said: 'Good question.'

'You're not sure?'

'I could have been mistaken.'

'It could have been just one lens.'

'Yes.'

'A telescopic lens.'

'Yes.'

The drumming eased off, and the chip of glass stopped tinkling. It seemed quieter because of it, quieter than before, and colder, even colder than before, the kind of cold that shrinks the scalp and crawls on the skin.

'I was opening the door,' Ferris said, 'when I saw him. The only way to warn you was to come aboard, as if I hadn't seen anything.'

'Civil of you.'

He could have turned back and left me here waiting. The director in the field is almost never at risk: he's too valuable to the opposition as a human constant; his job is to keep in contact with the executive, to keep the lifeline intact, to be instantly available if something goes wrong. Half the time when the executive goes to ground and the opposition lose track of him they can find him again by throwing a surveillance net across the local director's environment, physically and electronically, and there's nothing we can do about that because the alternative is to send the shadow in alone and he wouldn't last more than a couple of days in the field without support and communications: it'd be like throwing a man off a ship in mid-ocean.

'Does he know you saw him?'

Assume one man. One sniper with a long-distance rifle. It would be dangerous to assume anything else.

'I don't think so.'

'Why not? You were looking straight at him.'

'At a distance of a couple of hundred yards. And I didn't stop moving.'

'It looked as if you were just making a last check before you came in here.'

'Yes.'

He was slowly pulling off his gloves.

'It can't be the KGB,' I told him.

'No.'

They wouldn't work like that. This was their territory, what London so graciously calls the host country. The KGB don't need to set up a sniper to pick off a spook: they'll just send a van in and drag him on board and if he gets clear then they'll send in a hundred men, cover a whole city with checkpoints as they were doing now. You don't in any case get very rapid promotion in the KGB for hauling a dead spook into headquarters without giving anyone a chance to put him under the light and pick everything out of his head.

'Then it can only be the Rinker cell.'

'As far as my briefing tells me,' Ferris said, 'they're the only active people in the field.'

Three lights, red, green and white, crossed the oblong of the window as the plane climbed into the circuit. They vanished quite suddenly into the fog layer. It was getting worse, creeping in from the sea.

'I couldn't be absolutely sure,' I said, 'when I came here.'

'Of course not.' He said it at once and with emphasis.

I always know when I'm being followed. No one had followed me here to the rendezvous. They'd used chain surveillance, and at a distance: two or three of them taking up positions at strategic points and using field-glasses — they'd be totally undetectable. If they'd used more people than that, they would have been some of the men with shovels among the work gangs: again, undetectable. It wasn't important any more to question how they'd got a fix on me at the hotel. It could have been the courier in Kandalaksha turned by the Rinker cell to work for them under duress or a bugged line or the hotel porter or simply efficient field work. What was important now was how to leave this hulk alive and if that were possible then how to lose them before I went to meet Zhigalin.

Ferris took a card out of his pocket and passed it to me, a regulation issue made of wide-grain wood fibres treated with magnesium and designed to burn in less than one second or dissolve into pulp in water. On it was an address in Murmansk.

'Your safehouse,' he said, 'though you may not need it for more than a few hours; it depends on what my people can arrange for you. The phone number is mine, though I may have to move in with you until we can secure Zhigalin. If you lose contact with me you can still call that number and they'll put you in direct touch with the chief of station in Moscow.' He stared through the window again. He couldn't see the man with the lens from this angle; he wanted to be ready if anybody came past the window from that direction: there would be one or two seconds' warning before they opened the door.

I put the card into my wallet.

'If someone else answers the phone when I call that number, do I speak English or Russian?'

'It doesn't matter. They're fluent in both.'

'Is it strictly secure?' Briefing terminology for bug-proof.

'Yes.'

'I don't think Fane's line was.'

Ferris turned from the window to gaze at me. 'Possibly not. Mine is. You're safe with it in any eventuality.' He paused to give it emphasis. 'If there's no answer, it just means they've had to abandon.'

'They'd cut the phone?'

He looked faintly shocked. 'No. Blow it up.'

'Sorry.'

'You really have been slumming it, haven't you?'

This was why I'd demanded Ferris from London. He's not only highly experienced in handling a shadow but he's also technically faultless. Most people would cut a phone line and leave it at that if they had to clear out, but a line can be joined together again and you can call up and blow the whole of the mission if you don't know they've done that. Ferris had rigged a bang.

'Any briefing?' I was getting impatient now. I wanted to know what was going to happen when I went through that doorway, whether I was going to get my brains blown all over the place or whether I could go back through the snow and find a cafe and sit with a bowl of soup by the steamy windows and let everything else wait while I celebrated life as the warmth reached my stomach.

It happens often during a mission but you never quite get used to it. It's the feeling that comes to you when you know you've moved into a close-focus red sector that can prove terminal, when you can't go back and you can't stay where you are and you can't move forward without risking the absolute totality of all that your life has meant until this point in time. The feeling is like hunger but less physical, more ethereal, almost mystical, because you're close to the final answer and it might not be what you hope.

'No further briefing,' Ferris said, and put on his gloves and looked at his watch. '22:14?'

I checked my own and had to set it back half a minute. It doesn't ever matter what the time is by your own watch or by the local clocks: the time is what your local control says it is, because everything depends on him.

Without my gloves on the cold was already numbing my hands; as soon as I'd reset my watch I put them on again but the cold didn't go; it was everywhere in my body now, in my bones, because I would have to go out there first. One field director could run a dozen missions, a dozen executives: he was normally an older man with infinitely wider experience and infinitely greater responsibility to the Bureau; he would always get home safely because his papers were unimpeachable, unless he ran foul of a strike or a trap that was set for the man he was running.

So I got up first, pulling my gloves tighter and stepping past Ferris to the door as the wrecked fuselage creaked to the shifting of my weight.

The man out there would be cold too, crouching against the trunk of a tree and unable to move, impatient, as I was, but for a different reason: he'd want to get it done with successfully, get it over and report back to base while the blood still seeped from the body and the whiff of cordite tainted the stillness and the arm lay outstretched with the hand reaching for what now it could never hold.

'Probably just field-glasses,' I heard Ferris say as I pushed open the door.

'Yes.' I stepped down onto the snow.