Northlight

29 DOLL

Liz threw the KGB patrol car into reverse across the ruts and then sent it forward in a tight sliding turn to miss the van and straightened up, driving on dipped headlights now.

I could hear a siren somewhere.

Zhigalin had been forced into the front of the car and I was in the rear with the KGB sergeant. He was holding his gun at my head.

Liz got into third gear, sending the car in a series of zigzags across the treacherous surface. She was in KGB uniform with major's insignia on the shoulders.

'Clive, can you deal with that man?' She said it in English.

Zhigalin sat in the front with his head turned to watch her, not understanding what she'd said.

There were more sirens now from the shore road, and headlights were swinging onto the quay towards us.

I had to take her on trust. There was no other way.

'Clive, you've got to see to that man. It's no good if you-'

There was only a marginal vector available because if I tried dragging the gun-hand downwards I risked taking the shot in the pelvis and if I knocked it aside it would send it in an arc across Liz and Zhigalin so I used a rising wedge-hand to send it straight upwards but there wasn't enough leverage and the first shot ploughed through my scalp and I had to work very fast and connect my left hand with his neck and even then I wasn't in time to stop a second shot smashing into the door pillar before I could impact with the baroreceptors in the carotid artery and shut down his nervous system. The gun dropped across my leg and I kicked it under the front seat and got the window down to clear the air before we started choking on the cordite fumes.

Liz threw a white-faced glance over her shoulder. 'Shit, he had two kids-'

'He's not dead.'

The car lurched as the wheels lost traction across a patch of ice and the headlight beams swung across the stern of a fishing boat tied up at the quayside. A lot of militia patrol cars were coming past us from the shore road with their code lights flashing and their sirens on, one of them clipping our rear wing as it slewed across the ruts.

'Hit that window, Clive. I don't want anyone seeing in.'

I wound it shut and took a look at the sergeant. He was slumped over across his knees and I dragged him upright because I didn't want him to get the blood back into his brain too soon.

'What about my courier?' I asked Liz. 'The one in the blue van.'

She talked across her shoulder. 'I told him to get the hell out of here on foot if he could. I didn't want him along.'

'How did it happen,' I asked her, 'did they get Fane?' It was difficult to think logically with this amount of action going on but I needed to know things because I didn't want to go into this kind of situation without a rough idea of the score. And that was all that could have happened: somehow they must have got hold of Fane. He'd set up this rendezvous and handed the briefing to Ferris.

'Right.' Liz swung the car at ninety degrees onto the shore road, sending a white bow-wave up from a snow drift. 'They got your courier in the freight-yards in Kandalaksha and grilled him and he blew Fane.' She had to choke something out of her voice. 'It took four days.'

'When did they pick up Fane?'

'Last night when he was getting on a plane for Berlin in Leningrad. They started work on him right away. Jesus Christ-' she was slapping the wheel with the flat of her hands-'I didn't know it was going to be like this when I-'

Someone else hit us and she swung the wheel and straightened up along the shore road. There weren't so many code lights flashing now and I jerked a look through the rear window and saw a whole line of patrol cars jockeying along the quay towards the barge. Fane must have held out until only minutes ago.

'Can we make the airport?' I asked Liz. There was some torn metal whining on a rear tyre where we'd just been hit.

'I'm going to try. There was no way you could've got there in that van — we're stopping everything that moves.' She tugged the radiophone off the clip and began talking in fluent Russian. 'This is Major Benedixsen. I have Captain Zhigalin under arrest and I'm proceeding straight to headquarters with him. There is no need for further action. I repeat: I have Captain Zhigalin with me now under close arrest.'

Zhigalin jerked a look at me across the seat-back.

'Everything's under control,' I told him. 'Don't do anything stupid.' I looked at the nervy green eyes in the driving mirror. 'Liz, how long have you been doubling for the CIA?'

Her eyes flicked upwards to watch mine, and she gave a strange little laugh. 'I've been doubling three years, but not for the CIA. I'm KGB. A defector from the militarist West. I'm working for peace, Clive, and right now the only chance of getting it is the Vienna summit. We've got to make it happen, and this man is the key. You've got to take him across.'

The front wheels hit something in the snow and sent us into a wild slide against a lamp standard before Liz got traction again. The KGB sergeant started moaning and I flicked his earlobe and got his eyes open and said, 'If you make any kind of move I'm going to blow your head off.' I looked back at the mirror but Liz was concentrating on the road again. Only if we are seen as a fellow nation, with worth to offer the world, with goods to trade, with ideas to exchange and with the future to share on an equal footing, can it also be seen that we are ready to go to the conference tables and join with others in drawing the world back from the abyss of war and mutual annihilation that lies in our path.

I had seen, in that hotel room, that she'd believed hi this, but I didn't realize till now that she'd actually written that pamphlet and slipped it under my door.

'Did Fane give your people the whole set-up?' I asked her.

'No. Just the rendezvous. I got it over the radio twenty minutes back when I was still trying to locate you and get you out.'

And then — oh God, this is going to sound so corny — after two pointless marriages I realized I wanted to spend my life with something much more than a man. I wanted to marry a cause.

She switched on her code lights and got the siren going through the next intersection because a work gang had got half the street closed off. 'Which runway is it, Clive?'

'Runway Two, north end.' I could see the airport tower lights through the haze; then they swung out of sight as we turned into a side street and accelerated past a checkpoint with our codes still flashing. 'Clive,' she called over her shoulder, 'we're still not through yet. They're still working on Fane and if he blows the airport set-up that's going to be it, you know that?'

'Yes.'

'If that happens I'll hear it over the radio but they'll close in right away and from that time on you'll be on your own, okay? There won't be anything more I can do.'

'Understood.' The torn wing was screaming on the tyre again and if it burned through the wall we'd have a blow-out. 'If you can pull up for a minute I'll see to that noise.'

'I can't stop, Clive, we've got to chance it.'

We swung into the airport boulevard and the tyre stopped screaming as the weight shifted on the turn. The sergeant half-fell against me and I pushed him back. 'Remember, you'll get your brains blown out if you try anything.' The gun was under the seat and if he tried to reach it he wouldn't make any progress.

Voices were coming through faintly on the radio and Liz turned the volume up as headlights swung across our bows as we went through the airport gates with the figure of a guard jumping out of the way. Another siren had started up somewhere.

We have a report that Captain Zhigalin has been seized and is under arrest… a lot of static as we passed a stationary diesel outside a hangar… confirm the order to call off further action… Then another voice cut in. Major Benedixsen, will you repeat your signal that you have… under arrest and are proceeding… headquarters.

She picked up the mike and responded. The windscreen was misting up and she wound her window down; the freezing night air cut against our faces as we gunned up along a taxiway road that had just been cleared of snow.

The radio came in again.

We have a report that an aircraft waiting for permission to take off on runway number two will attempt to cross the frontier into Norway. Patrols in this area will converge immediately… The static got very bad and we lost him for five or six seconds… Twin-engined Beriev civilian machine and the pilot is alone on board. He is to be seized immediately.

Fane had broken.

The airport authorities are to ensure that this aircraft does not take off.

Somewhere, under a bright light and with the tang of fresh blood on the air, Fane had broken.

The night was filled with sound as sirens began fading in and merged with the whine of jet engines as an aircraft turned into the north end of the runway and a red lamp began flashing from the control tower.

'Clive, I'm going for it.'

But the pilot was already listening to the tower's instructions not to take off and he'd know he was blown. We were late for the rendezvous and he wouldn't wait any longer: this side of the frontier he'd be for the firing squad and the frontier was only thirty minutes' flight. And he'd been briefed to expect a dark blue van.

I leaned forward. 'Liz, do you know Morse?'

'Sure.'

'Switch off your codes and use your headlights. Spell out Potemkin.'

'Like the battleship?'

'Yes.'

She began working the switch. Sand was flying up from the tyres and crackling under the wings. A siren was coming in strongly now and a wash of headlights was filling the car from behind us; then the tyre burst and Liz brought the wheel hard over to counteract the shift in balance, one hand still hitting the headlight switch in a series of jabs. There was no answering light from the aircraft.

'Clive, are you ready?'

'Yes.'

She used the brakes and we went into a full-circle spin as the burst tyre was wrenched off the wheel and we finished broadside on to the aircraft with the doors wrenching open as Zhigalin dropped on to the snow and began running.

'Go for it, dive. Go for it.'

There was ice and I slipped and went down and got up again and went after the Russian as the door of the Beriev came open and a man stood there with a gun raised in the aiming position and it was then that I began yelling the one word, the one name, Potemkin… Potemkin… until the pilot holstered his gun and crouched at the top of the ladder to grab Zhigalin and haul him inside as I got there and started climbing. The aircraft was lit with the dazzle of the militia and KGB cars as they came crowding in from the perimeter track with their code lights flashing and their sirens wailing and the first shot sounding, a thin crack in the medley of louder sounds as the pilot gunned up and let the brakes off with the red lamp still flashing from the tower.

Another shot came as we started rolling but when I looked out of a window I saw it wasn't for us: the leading patrol cars were sliding to a halt with the doors swinging open and I saw Liz fire again at the KGB sergeant as he tried to go for her. Even as he went down she was turning her gun on the uniformed figures spilling out of the cars and running for the plane with their hands at their holsters until one of them turned and took aim and fired and Liz was rocked back, a small doll-like figure in her grey belted uniform and sable hat with one arm flung into the air before she crumpled and went down onto the snow.

The twin jets screamed on full power for takeoff and drowned out the radio as the pilot put the Beriev down the runway with the red lights still flashing him from the tower. All I could see of him in the glow from the instrument panel was a dark hook-nosed face under a balaclava and one hand steady on the control column. Zhigalin was slumped against the pilot's locker with his head back and his eyes shut.

Were you hit?'

He answered but I couldn't hear what he said in the screaming of the jets so I went to him and asked him again and he opened his eyes. 'No. I was not hit.' I suppose he was pining for his bloody motherland again.

'You're doing the right thing,' I told him.

'I'm doing the only thing.'

Then the runway lights went out and the pilot cursed the tower and I didn't see how he was going to get this thing off the ground because all the headlights showed was a waste of snow with the runway lost in a kaleidoscopic pattern of ruts and drifts and sand without enough definition to keep a straight course and I waited for him to take the power off and slow under the brakes but he wasn't doing that — he was still accelerating because either we were already past the point of rotation and couldn't stay on the ground without smashing into the solid snow-banks south of the airport or all he could see through the windscreen was a firing squad and the only alternative to that was to get airborne if he could.

We were already off the runway because we hit something and the whole plane shuddered and the pilot cursed again and brought the control column back and put a hand out to the undercarriage switch as we nosed up and the rumbling of the wheels died away.

'What happened?' Zhigalin had been flung forward against the pilot's seat and tried to get up but he had his foot caught in some harness.

'We lost the nose-wheel,' I told him. It had sounded like that. Then the pilot began yelling obscenities as a red flock of tracer bullets came curving up at us and he banked sharply and brought a box of flares off its wall-bracket and scattered them all over Zhigalin.

'Then we won't be able to land,' he told me, 'if the nose-wheel is gone.'

'We'll flop down on the belly.'

'Not if the nose-wheel is damaged. He won't be able to retract it.'

Perfectly right but he wasn't thinking terribly straight because if these tracers found their target we wouldn't need to worry about how to make a landing. Something hit the rear end of the fuselage and I lurched my way back there but couldn't see what had happened unless a bullet had gone clean through. I went back to the cockpit and Zhigalin caught my arm, staring into my face.

'I regret, of course, the death of the submariners. But I had no choice. They were the enemy and they were in our waters.'

Oh Jesus Christ. I like a man to have a conscience but not if he spends the entire time sitting on the pot with it.

I leaned over the pilot.

'Where are you heading?'

He glanced up. 'Why were you so fucking late?'

'The alarm clock didn't go off.' Some people can't take a little disappointment but I knew what he felt like because this was Our last ride by the look of things and I'd got beyond the point of worrying whether we had any hope of getting the objective across and saving the Vienna summit because we were going to finish up like roast pig if one of those tracers hit a fuel tank. 'Are you still going to make the frontier?'

'I'm going to try.'

'What are the chances?'

'We have to get through whatever flak they send up, and they'll be sending up a lot, but we could make it with some luck. But we have to fly close to Pechenga and if they up a pursuit plane they'll just blow us out of the sky.'

We were heading north-west on the compass and if we turned south even by ten degrees we'd be increasing the distance to the frontier and if we turned north there'd just be ice-floes.

The radio was now audible again with the jets running at altitude but there was a lot of static and we couldn't pick much out and the pilot wasn't answering… Warned that in the… will be attacked and brought…

The aircraft shuddered again as a brace of tracers made a hit somewhere amidships in close succession and Zhigalin got to his feet and went aft to see what the damage was, dropping something on the floor. I picked it up: it was some kind of ikon he'd been fussing with, that's all very well and you can carry a rabbit's foot with you but don't forget it didn't do the rabbit any good.

Smoke was clouding forward and I saw Zhigalin unclip a fire extinguisher and start pumping it. There was another one on the bulkhead and I broke it out of the clip and went aft with it. It looked as if a tracer had lodged into one of the seats and all we had to deal with was a slow-burn fire. Zhigalin was doing well enough and I went forward again and told the pilot what was happening, but he didn't answer because his head was angled to listen to the radio. … Repeat that two military machines are now airborne… forced… are waiting your response… a lot of static again… airborne and moving into an interception course…

'They're up from Pechenga,' the pilot said. 'What's that fire back there?'

'It's under control. So what are our chances now?'

'We don't have any if they attack with an air-to-air missile or even cannon-fire. I'm going north — there's nowhere else.'

'To the sea?' "There is nowhere else.' He hit a ventilator open to clear the smoke. 'If we make the coast there's a chance of turning west again across Norwegian waters.' … And upon interception the order will… we urge you to respond to this signal. The order mil be to attack you without further warning…

I could hear Zhigalin coughing his heart up in the rear of the cabin but there was no flamelight through the smoke. I went into the lavatory and soaked my handkerchief and held it over my face and went back to the cockpit as the pilot put the Beriev into a tight turn for the north.

It was no good at the coast.

The first shot had ripped the skin of the fuselage shell within a foot of where Zhigalin was crouched with his ikon and the air was screaming through the gap and he stumbled past me with his face white but I didn't know where he thought he was going because one of the pursuit planes had us in it's sights and all we were waiting for now was a clean hit from a cannon or an air-to-air missile and we couldn't avoid it.

I leaned over the pilot. 'Is there anything down there we could land on with the nose-wheel gone?'

'Rocks and ice-floes and the sea, yes.'

'Could we-'

Then they hit us with something big and the impact flung me across the cabin and I heard Zhigalin screaming but couldn't see him anywhere because of the smoke. We were angled nose-down in a steep dive and I tried to get off the floor and see if I could find out what had happened to him but the angle was something like forty-five degrees and I couldn't make any headway. Another one hit us and the aircraft shivered to the impact and a lot of stuff came out of the lockers and crashed across the cabin and came crashing back as we went into a tight spiral turn with the nose down and the pilot shouting something I couldn't understand. A fire had started in the rear end of the fuselage and the flames spread, fanned by the air rushing through the ripped shell, and I made another effort to climb aft up the sloping floor to get at an extinguisher and find Zhigalin and drag him back to the cockpit if I could but it was strictly no go because the angle was too steep and we were still locked in a spiral and the pilot was shouting again but his voice was half lost in the roaring of the air-rush. All I could do was heave myself round to face the cockpit hi case there was anything to see through the windscreen but it was blacked out with the reflection of the pilot's white face in the glow from the instrument panel until bits of something pale began showing up ahead of us across the windscreen and forming a mottled pattern that swirled as we spiralled lower and suddenly flattened as the pilot got the control-column back in a last attempt to put us down on the belly but it didn't work because we were over the sea and black water rose in a wall as we made impact.