Snow Falcon

Eleven: The Limits of Diplomacy

There was no call-sign, simply:

'This is restricted airspace over a military exercise area. Your flight is unauthorised, and you are guilty of aerial trespass. You will accompany us to Military District HQ. Acknowledge this message.'

After he had automatically done so, the pilot turned to Vorontsyev. Outside, the four gunships jockeyed into their positions; one to port, one to starboard — one flying a little higher, the other a little below them. He could see the helmeted military pilot, and the crewman who controlled the chopper's arsenal, as he looked down through the perspex of the starboard MIL's cabin.

He craned round, and the pilot said, 'They're behind us — one up, one down. We aren't going to be able to slip away from the party.' He was unworried. Carrying a major in the SID was surety that nothing bad could happen to him. He would only have been obeying orders from the Committee for State Security.

'We have to,' Vorontsyev said quietly, his face grim with strain.

'You're joking!'

'No — I'm not.' He looked at the pilot, and was about to continue when one of the gunships slid overhead and took up a position a hundred metres in front of them, at exactly the same flight level. Then the voice crackled again.

'There is no course reference. Simply follow the helicopter in front of you. Acknowledge.'

'Message acknowledged. I am following.'

The leading chopper immediately banked to port, easing down a grey rock face. The nose of the small MIL dipped and then it imitated the larger machine ahead of it.

'Think!' Vorontsyev snapped. 'How far are we from the headquarters?'

'Now?' He glanced at the chart on his knee. 'Ten minutes flying time — from here.' He looked glum, unresponsive, his assurance evaporated.

'How can you set me down?'

'What?'

'Set me down! Listen — if I'm caught…' He had to tell the pilot the truth, but frighten him with it. He went on: 'And you're with me, then we'll both of us be quietly removed!' He thought of Ilya and Maxim. Missing. Now he knew they were dead. 'We'll have an arranged accident.'

There was open fear in the pilot's eyes. It was a situation he could not comprehend, hearing that information from an officer in the most elite section of the KGB. It made no sense whatever.

He said, 'You — got to be joking, my Major. They don't kill KGB men, just like that!' And something made his eyes widen more. Vorontsyev knew he was remembering the Separatist terrorism. Then the eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'You are joking?'

'No, my friend. The Army will kill me if it can get its hands on me — after they've checked to find out it's me, and what I might nave seen. You — you they might leave alone. I don't know…' He shrugged. 'But if you're with me, then your life isn't worth a one rouble note!'

They were flying along a valley wall, heavily wooded, dark with firs.

'I can't put you down in this!' the pilot said, as if accusing him.

'Find somewhere where you can!'

They were flying at little more than sixty feet above the trees. The valley widened. Patches of meadow, snow here, dotted houses, and dumps of forest.

'Better,' the pilot muttered He turned to Vorontsyev. 'Look, if I drop like a stone, then I can put you down before they can get down. But that's no good to you — or to me. It has to be a small clearing — the very smallest, so that they can't get down except by a rope ladder, unless they want to crash on top of us. Then you'll have time to start running.' He seemed to beseech Vorontsyev's approval. Vorontsyev nodded. 'And, listen, my Major the prize shit — you forced me to do it, at gunpoint!'

'Agreed. I can stand the infamy!'

Vorontsyev looked at the ground flowing beneath them.

'You'll want a map — in the pocket of the door, beside you.'

Vorontsyev dipped in his hand. His nails filled with crumbs, or dust, then he picked out a folded, scruffy map. It was local, large-scale.

He said, 'How far are we from Khabarovsk?'

'No more than twenty miles.'

'Right. The first one you see that's near enough and small enough — drop in it!'

The pilot managed a small grin. 'Right, my Major.' His smile became more open. 'You really are a bastard! Conning me into this flight when you're really a dangerous villain! I must want my brains tested.'

'Just look, friend. And — thanks.'

'Bloody good luck to you!'

The shallower valley they were following forked ahead of them, and the hills became sheer again. Vorontsyev looked at the map. Villages, not many miles from the valley he could identify. Yes, that was their present position — Khabarovsk more or less south-east, more than twenty miles, he thought. He would need a car, something.

He did not think about what he would do when he reached Khabarovsk. He was under no illusions. Once they talked to the pilot, they would realise that he had seen sufficient to make the guess he had made. He would have to be eliminated. And the whole of Ossipov's army would be pitted against him.

If he got to Khabarovsk, they wouldn't give up. He would be killed, even if they thought he must have passed on a message to Moscow. They would kill him then out of revenge, rage at the loss of secrecy.

He wondered about killing the pilot, once they touched down. He was uncertain. He might not be able to do it, even though it seemed to be demanded by the situation. He decided to compromise, even as the pilot said, 'Down there — up ahead.'

They were passing over thick fir forest now, in a narrower valley that looked very much like a pen, something into which he could be driven, and boxed. It would have to do. Steep sides to the valley, but no altitude. They passed over the spot in the trees, a tiny clearing, perhaps where timber had been cut for local use.

'What—?' Vorontsyev began. The pilot shoved something into his hand. A small compass.

'You'll need it. Down we go!'

The helicopter stopped almost dead, as if it had struck solid air. Vorontsyev was jolted in his seat. Immediately, the two gunships on either side overshot, and the one following loomed over them.

The helicopter was shuffling in a curious crab-like motion, and descending rapidly, when the voice snapped in the headset: 'Maintain position!'

Vorontsyev flicked the switch so that his voice would be heard by the leader of the flight, and he barked, 'Get down, you bastard, or I'll kill you now!'

The pilot juggled the MIL level, and the trees slid past the windows as they dropped the last few feet. The clearing was only yards across, too small to accommodate themselves and one of the big gunships. The MIL bounced as the wheels touched, and in the same moment Vorontsyev slid the door open. He looked at the pilot, and saw the suspicion of death in his face.

'Sorry!' he said, and struck him across the temple with the Makarov he had drawn from the shoulder holster. The pilot slumped forward.

Vorontsyev jumped out of the door, his legs buckling as he hit the frozen ground. He ducked under the slowing rotor blades, and in ten paces he was under the cover of the trees. The noise from the gunships overhead was deafening, as if expressing the pilots' anger. The trees swayed in the down-draught.

He had only minutes. He took a compass bearing, turned on his heel, and began running deeper into the trees.

Khamovkhin was in a rage of impotence. There was no part of him any longer able to weigh his words, observe himself as if at some performance. He did not care that the duty-officer, Ozeroff again, heard him, or would repeat what he had heard to his companions. He could be a laughing-stock — in two days, he might be nothing at all, hardly a memory. Erased.

'I don't want excuses, Yuri — I want action! he raged into the transmitter. He had broken code transmissions during the first conversation with Andropov after his flight back from Helsinki — impatience had become a black animal clawing at his back while he waited for encode-and-decode in order to relieve his feelings.

'I can only offer you a hope, Feodor. Our opponents are close to panic — they have begun to kill, on the least premise. If — if, we can keep our heads, then we may have a chance.'

'That's politician's talk — just farting in the storm! You've got half a million people in your bloody service — what are they doing? Sitting on their backsides in the restaurants you provide for their comfort?'

'My men are doing their best, Feodor — my survival, their survival, depends upon success.'

'Work it out, man! We know who they might be — get rid of them all! If you hit hard enough, the ones we want are going to get hurt—'

'No! I won't do it — not until there is a stronger indication, a stronger proof. Besides, Moscow Garrison is not replying to our signals.'

'What? What did you say?' Khamovkhin felt his breath coming as from a distance, insufficient to fill his lungs, keep him alive.

'I said — at six this morning, Moscow Garrison appeared to cut off all contact with the Centre, with anyone. I've had people trying to ring up on all sorts of pretexts — without success. I had a helicopter overfly — and it's as still as the grave down there.' Andropov's voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, as if the signal was fading. Khamovkhin nipped the transmit switch.

'Then it's beginning — we're too late.'

'Not yet. Nothing happening yet, anyway. The date is the twenty-fourth, remember, Feodor? Someone must have to get through to them before then. This is only part of the operation. We have to find him.'

'Do it — do it!'

'We will—' Andropov cut the connection suddenly, so that Khamovkhin thought at first the signal had been lost, then that it had been intercepted, then realised that Andropov was weary of his tantrum. He became aware of Ozeroff behind him, smelling faintly of aftershave, and of the clownish, terrified figure he had cut. And cursed himself.

'You'll see the Englishman and the American now, sir?' Ozeroff asked politely.

'When I've shaved!' Khamovkhin snapped.

Andropov opened the tall window, but did not step out on to the balcony. The early morning air chilled him in a moment, but he remained standing in its draught, feeling refreshed, as if the cold were cleaning his skin, cooling his face of emotion. He hated Khamovkhin, insofar as he was capable of that dark an emotion. A panic-stricken child, an imbecile, a coward. And he the adult, the whole weight of it thrown on him.

In two minutes, he was cold, and he shut the window with hands already slightly numb, and returned to his desk. He hovered, as if about to sit, and then chose to sit in one of the armchairs.

On, yes. Kill them all. Group of Soviet Forces North — Praporovich, and Dolohov. Kill them, and stop the invasion of Scandinavia — easy, if you could be sure of finding them out in the open, with their backs turned, easy targets. And you could be sure that that would be the end of it, that they were in sole command, and that whoever was behind the whole thing wouldn't be able to order the invasion anyway Or arrest the whole of the Politburo — but, just in case, the Central Committee too, the Secretariat. Only a few hundred, maybe a thousand arrests, just to be on the safe side.

And you were sure that Praporovich and Dolohov wouldn't go ahead anyway.

Find the leader, and stop it all As long as you could be certain that Moscow Garrison would not go it alone.

He wanted to use naked power. Yes, he understood, complied with, Feodor's reasoning that wasn't reason so much as panic of a threatened animal — because he was a threatened animal, just the same.

But he had to face — as Feodor was hiding from the fact in rage — had to face the brute, inescapable fact that naked power was insufficient. That there was no complete, satisfactory solution — no way of stopping it, dead. A tyranny — it was called that, his service, by the journalists from outside, by the malcontents, the dissidents, even by some of the thugs inside it — a tyranny was impotent, incapable of protecting itself.

A tyranny isn't enough — He wanted to laugh, except that, even now, he could not find himself an object of levity.

Khamovkhin had changed his clothing — shaved and washed, then a clean shirt, a tie, another suit; for a moment, in the bedroom still darkened by shutters and curtains, he had thought of changing his long underwear. But he could not bear the thought of so literal a nakedness, or the sight of the shivering old body in the long mirror. As he came into the high room, and saw the two intelligence agents waiting for him, near the huge fireplace, their faces lit more by the log fire than the lamps or the light from the distant window, he quailed as if he were an emperor without clothes.

Aubrey received the impression of a warlord in a grey suit; albeit one prey to doubts, and apparently unsure of himself. There was an impression, a patina, of confidence overlying a tangible lack of assurance. Buckholz saw a much simpler figure — the representatives of an alien system now to be habilitated; and a man to whom his President had given ultimata, and whose representative he was.

'Mr Aubrey — Mr Buckholz,' Khamovkhin said, waving them back to their seats beneath some unidentifiable armorial crest over the fireplace. There was no one else in the great room; Khamovkhin spoke better English than most of his predecessors, and he would not have admitted lack of confidence by having a security man inside the door.

'Mr First Secretary, good of you to see us so promptly,' Aubrey murmured deferentially as Khamovkhin stood with his back to the fireplace, wanning himself. The crest above him — no, Aubrey reflected, there is nothing chivalric about his face, or his posture. A warlord, Buckholz, next to Aubrey, stirred at the diplomacy of tone.

'Of course. You are now accredited representatives of your governments. You have been — legitimised, mm?' Khamovkhin laughed.

Aubrey dipped his head. 'Quite so, sir.'

'I have this morning for— my affairs. Please to proceed with your counsel, gentlemen.' To complete the spell of confidence, he waved his hands and sat down opposite them, on the other side of the fireplace. The firelight strengthened his square features with shadows and highlights, and Aubrey realised that the effect had been calculated, stage-managed.

'Mr Secretary—' Buckholz began, bridling at the delicacy of exchange. 'This visit is in the nature of a follow-up, if you take my meaning. The President wishes me to discuss — in more detail — matters of importance to both our countries—' He tailed off, as if caught himself in some diplomatic web. Then he added: 'You know why we're here, sir.'

'Indeed I do.' Aubrey caught the hesitation, sensed the man shying from the subject.

'OK, sir. Then we understand each other. I have to make it clear to you, sir, that my country will go to war, if that's what it takes. The President, and his allies in NATO, are deeply worried by developments inside the Soviet Union, especially by troop concentrations in the theatre of northern Europe, so close to the date for the signing of the Treaty—' Buckholz blundered on, as if reciting his speech in reverse, throwing away the ultimatum as an opening remark.

Aubrey interjected: 'Mr First Secretary, our combined intelligence services are in possession of information which strongly indicates that the Soviet High Command intend to move troops into Finland and Norway — and perhaps to threaten yourself and the legitimate, elected government of the USSR, at the moment when you and President Wainwright would be signing the Helsinki Arms Control Treaty — in two days' time.' He paused, and Buckholz, jaw jutting, prow of a nose in profile to him as he leaned in his chair, seemed to have resigned the task to him. Khamovkhin remained silent, but Aubrey was aware of the sense of strain, of the way in which the words, though familiar, inflicted themselves on the Russian.

He pressed on: 'What Mr Buckholz, in his position as representative of his government, and myself, wish from you — is an assurance that these matters are not unknown to you, and that they are being, and will continue to be dealt with successfully.'

Aubrey waited. He had given the man a means of admission that would not appear damaging, or impotent. Khamovkhin stirred in his chair, then said, 'Very well, Mr Aubrey. You have been candid with me, I shall be similarly so.' He stood up again, and placed his back towards the fire, hands clasped behind him. Irreverently, Aubrey expected a comic policeman's crouch.

'The discontent of the Army towards our mutually beneficial Treaty is well known to you, as it is to us. I will not disguise from you the fact that we have long suspected that elements in the Red Army might attempt some kind of— non-diplomatic, non-democratic action against the time when the Treaty was signed, and ratified. The security service of the Soviet Union has been assiduous, dedicated, in its investigations — in all parts of the Soviet Union and the territories of our Warsaw Pact allies — into possible centres of discontent and subversion—' He looked at each man in turn. Aubrey saw a quick image of a man hanging wallpaper, and wondered quizzically at the way in which irreverence was creeping into his attitude to his work; even at such a crucial tune as this.

'We have had to tread very carefully, as you will appreciate, gentlemen. We had no wish to trigger, prematurely, the very thing we wished to prevent.' He smiled — an exercise of the facial muscles. 'But, we are now — and I have confirmed this with Chairman Andropov by radio-transmitter only this morning — in a position where the leaders of this conspiracy against peace are clearly identified, their plans known to us — and their arrests imminent!' He finished with an actor's nourish, one hand raised a little in the air. Then he dosed it into a fist, to emphasise his meaning.

'Your assurances are most welcome, sir,' Aubrey remarked smoothly. 'We understand that you cannot order the withdrawal of troops — which you so evidently wish to do — until these dissident elements have been placed under arrest. I am sure that my colleague — and his government — will be reassured, as I know Her Britannic Majesty's Government will be.' He nodded in a little theatrical bow. Khamovkhin watched Buckholz carefully.

'Thank you, Mr First Secretary,' the American began, 'for your frank admissions. I will convey your remarks to the President. However, I am sure that he would wish you to know that his sympathies and support are with you — and that he will commit troops to the northern sector at dawn on the twenty-fourth! Unless you can put your own house in order.'

Khamovkhin shivered, very slightly, but Aubrey considered it was with suppressed rage.

'I take your President's meaning to heart, I can assure you, Mr Buckholz. However, the situation you seem to consider with such — calm — will not arise. I have told you, the leaders of the conspiracy will be arrested within the next twenty-four hours!' The voice was slightly out of control, and not simply for effect. Khamovkhin had reached the limits of diplomacy, Aubrey considered — and Aubrey understood that it was hopeless; that Khamovkhin's cupboard was bare, his hand empty of high cards. He was simply wishing for the moon.

Aubrey covered the void of the moment, and his own inward quailing, and said, 'There is one other matter, Mr First Secretary. In the interests of your personal security, sir, we propose, that a new security team, from our intelligence services, be drafted to Lahtilinna.'

Khamovkhin was visibly disconcerted. 'Why is this, gentlemen? My security officers here have been verted by the Chairman himself.' An edge of fear — rank, personal fear. Surprise, anger too.

'Sir, we have a suspicion — no more than that — that you may be in personal danger while in Finland. The thought must also have occurred to you. Considering the possible ramifications of the plot against your government, it is not inconceivable that a move might be made against you—'

'I am to be your prisoner?'

'Our charge, sir. Only our charge.'

Silence. Khamovkhin fidgeting, uncertain whether to sit or stand. The fire crackling loudly, and visible restraint against the tiny shock from each of the three men.

'We'd like to move the team in tonight, sir.' Buckholz, at last enjoying a small victory. 'But naturally, you can have time to think it over. We have the men selected. You will be safe with them — with us.' The bribe was evident.

'I will consider this — unprecedented step,' Khamovkhin said slowly. 'In consultation, naturally.' A sweep of the arm. 'Now, you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have much to do.'

'Of course, sir.' Aubrey stood up and said, bowing slightly, 'Thank you for seeing us.'

'Yes — thank you,' Buckholz added, as if reminded of his manners.

When they had gone, Khamovkhin stared into the fireplace for a long time, and felt he was looking into a tunnel — he hardly saw the flames, only the blackened back of the fireplace; he was running down that tunnel, and a great train, the monolith of the Soviet Union itself, so it seemed, was thundering and roaring behind him drawing closer and closer.

As they went down the steps of the castle, and their feet began crunching on the icy gravel as they walked to their car, Aubrey said, 'Well played, Charles — we should have worked more often as a team.'

Buckholz grinned. 'Why do you British assume, by divine right, I guess, that you have all the diplomacy, and us colonials only get to be the stooges? Next time, I want to play the smartass — you be the dummy!'

'Very well, Charles. Not that it would seem to matter much. Khamovkhin is relying on a miracle — and therefore, so are we.'

'Dammit, yes! I know that. What the hell is the KGB playing at? When they got a real job on, they foul up!'

'Never mind, Charles. I think, for the moment, we will interest ourselves in the smaller matter of one man's safety. And the identity of the mysterious Captain Ozeroff. That should be enough for two old night-soil men like ourselves.' He paused, then added bleakly, 'It should do to fill in time until the twenty-fourth,'

The Englishman was near to breaking — perhaps within himself he had already broken. The fierce attention he seemed to be paying to Kutuzov indicated a distraction from self, rather than a real awareness, a calculated assessment of his situation. Novetlyn stood beside Kutuzov, deferential and silent. The narrow cell with its poor light from one high, barred slit of window, smelt foul. Folley's smell, as if something was rotting beneath the soiled clothes, rotting inside the man.

'Well, Colonel?'

'Sir?

'Are we going to learn something of value, or not?'

Folley blinded, leaned forward on the filthy cot as if straining to comprehend — or simply to keep himself awake. The body's posture flinched, even while he did it. Kutuzov was obscurely moved by the sight, but to no specific feeling.

'Possibly, sir. What he knows, how much he knows — it's open to question.' Novetlyn sounded as if he had already done with the Englishman, discarded that particular card. The attitude irritated Kutuzov. 'Then I came to Leningrad for nothing?'

'If you came to see him, sir — perhaps.'

Novetlyn obviously knew about the border incident, and the escape of one of the agents in Helsinki. Perhaps that explained his indifference. And an indifferent interrogator would obtain nothing of value.

'What do they know?'

'Less when he was sent than they know now.'

Kutuzov was suddenly tired of the smell, the confinement. Perhaps disturbed, too, though he ignored the feeling.

'Very well, let's go. The Marshal should have arrived by now.'

'And him, sir?'

Folley's body looking as if it was pleading; but the eyes, as if overworked, were blank with an idiot's stare; the body might only be an actor's imitation of supplication, or a haphazard arrangement of weary, beaten muscles.

'Keep him here for the moment. We might be able to use him later — in some sort of show-trial.' Kutuzov seemed pleased with the idea, as if it explained the vague reluctance he perceived with regard to Folley. 'Perhaps so. Agent of the Western imperialists — a courier to Khamovkhin's gang. Yes. Keep him alive!'

Upstairs, Praporovich waited in civilian clothes in the main drawing-room of the old house. When Kutuzov entered, they embraced, kissed cheeks. Kutuzov held the Marshal at arms' length for a moment, smiling, assessing.

'You look tired, Grigory Ilyich.'

Praporovich dismissed the observation. 'Nothing the twenty-fourth won't put right!' They laughed together. 'I was not followed,' Praporovich added.

'Nevertheless, this is the last time you must come out of headquarters, until things are under way.'

'Perhaps. I will be careful, you know.'

'I know it.'

'Ossipov, then—?'

'He has been told to radio you the full instructions, timings, everything.'

'We need twenty-four hours minimum to deploy and transport.'

'Ossipov knows that.'

'A pity it's so late in the day — being so important.'

Kutuzov settled himself in his chair, studying Praporovich, suddenly wearied by the prospect of argument.

'We could take no chances — chemical warfare training is an annual event. Last year, we failed to get it right, and we had to wait. Soldiers talk, Grigory Ilyich — and that is something not to talk about. Ossipov's men think they are only carrying out normal training—' Praporovich raised his hand.

'Very well, old friend. I agree. Let us not quarrel. As long as the cleaning-up is timed to the minute, I don't worry about it.'

'It will be. Radio-traffic for everything, using the hourly changes of code, from now on. Tell Dolohov.'

Praporovich nodded. 'Your part of it?'

'Valenkov's gone underground. The KGB know it, but they can't do anything about it. Valenkov will be ready at 06:00, when I give the order, to move his tanks into the centre of Moscow. They will take up positions around and inside the Kremlin, and in Dzerzhinsky Street — a display of strength. Andropov will be— collected at home by a special squad. The Politburo members will be similarly rounded up. As for Feodor the traitor — he will be taken care of.'

'He must come back for trial—'

'What else? It is taken care of.'

Praporovich nodded reluctantly. 'GFSG are still bellyaching about not being in on the action,' he observed.

'They won't move?'

'No. Marshal Bezenkov will do nothing. "1812" will come to a complete stop at 06:00, as you ordered.'

'Good.'

Kutuzov stood up, crossed to the drinks cabinet in one corner, and poured vodka for them both. He raised his glass, aware of, pleased at, the theatricality.

'Your health, old friend.'

'Yours, also.' They touched glasses, drank off the liquor. Kutuzov stayed the Marshal's hand for a moment.

'I have to stay alive, because without me, Valenkov will never order his garrison regiments into the streets of Moscow. You have to stay alive, because without you the Army has no leader in the north. Remember that when you're tempted to walk the streets today or tomorrow — eh, old friend?'

Praporovich nodded. Then, together, they threw their empty glasses into the fireplace. Praporovich roared with laughter, the laughter of a young man. After a moment, Kutuzov, too began to laugh.

The senior Helsinki detective had been deferential, almost silent, certainly careful to avoid recognition of Davenhill and the wounded arm he nursed in a sling. He had his orders, evidently, and satisfied his frustrations by enjoying the discomfort that the cold of the city morgue brought to the pale-looking Englishman. Diplomacy, intelligence services, twist justice the way you want — the thoughts rumbled away in the back of his head.

'I'll leave you, if you wish, Mr Davenhill?' he said, sliding out the drawer of the great metal cabinet that might have contained gigantic files. The expected white sheet with its contours like those of hidden furniture nevertheless shocked Davenhill, made him gag as if the thing under the sheet had rotted.

'Don't you want my identification?' Davenhill snapped.

'Naturally. I meant afterwards—'

'I—'

The detective pulled back the sheet like a conjurer. Waterford's face stared up at them. Davenhill could imagine the eyes beneath the closed lids, glowering, discontented with the ordinariness, the boredom of death. Davenhill nodded. Then he remembered his lines.

'Yes — that is Mr Alan Waterford, of the British Diplomatic Service.' It was incredible, even insulting. The detective accepted the blatant untruth, the agreed version of identity.

'Thank you, Mr Davenhill.'

Davenhill was staring into the cabinet drawer. Waterford was neat, tidy. He did not hear the detective walk away, to wait outside for him.

Civil servant — dear God! he thought. At last they had put Waterford in a category, and one he could not threaten or burst from. Waterford the killer, the operator, the desperate man — a clerk. Davenhill could feel nothing more than the irony of his words, his identification. He could not feel that Waterford had saved his life, more than once; he could not apprehend the person that Waterford had been. But he was assailed by a sense of loneliness that had nothing to do with the white room, the ranked drawers, the table with its sluice in the middle of the tiled floor, the gowns hanging up on the door. It was a loneliness that belonged not to himself, but to Waterford. Waterford in life rather than dead.

Stupid tears pricked at the back of his eyes. In an effort to dismiss them, he slammed the heavy drawer shut. It slid smoothly on its oiled rails, and clanged shut. The noise rang from the white walls, from the chequered tiles of the floor.

Vorontsyev sat huddled in a narrow gully, staring at the Makarov 9 mm automatic in his hands. Hands that were clumsily gloved so that he could only just press the trigger-finger into the guard. Eight rounds in the magazine, and three spare clips in his pockets. Thirty-two 244 milligram bullets between himself and the whole of Ossipov's Far East Military District forces. He could not bring himself to contemplate the number of divisions posted at this end of the Soviet Union.

Ludicrous.

His breathing had now become less harsh, and his heartbeat no longer thudded in his ears. He must have been running for miles, for hours.

It had been for nearly an hour. It was twelve-fifteen on the 22nd. In Moscow, eight hours away by jet, it was — what was it? Midnight.

He threw aside the thought with a shake of his head. It did not matter. What mattered more was that he wished he had the larger Stechkin 9 mm automatic, with a twenty-round magazine, better range, more stopping power, instead of the particularly futile Makarov.

He laughed aloud when he considered the uselessness of either gun against a T-54 tank, or even the platoon of men that might leap out of an Armoured Personnel Carrier.

He fumbled the map from his pocket, and folded and refolded it until it revealed his present position. He checked with the sun's position, then the compass, then the shape of the land — here, on the edge of the long knife of forest that had followed the valley as it narrowed. Pointing south.

He was eighteen miles from the outskirts of Khabarovsk.

He crouched instinctively as he heard the beat of a helicopter, coming up the narrow valley from the south. He was just under the outlying trees, in an olive-green anorak and brown slacks, and jammed into a narrow dry watercourse. The beat of the rotors became louder, and he felt his arms against his head throbbing with nerves as he covered his fair hair. The noise was directly overhead, and he could feel the small down-draught. Dirt jumped and quivered near him, and the trees overhead were swaying in the created wind.

Then the noise died away northwards, the way he had come, the pilot and observer in the chopper hoping that their down-draught might part the trees like some green and spiky Red Sea just long enough for them to spot a running man. He waited, not uncurling from his crouch, because he now knew the pattern they were using.

Two minutes later, the second helicopter passed overhead. They could not seriously believe that he had come this far in the time — probably these were the original choppers that had escorted, then lost him.

He stood up. He brushed his trousers free of the little hard dirt that had accumulated, and stepped out of the gully. There was no snow on this side of the narrow valley, facing the sun. The day was almost spring-like, mild. He had even heard insects in the intense silence, above his own breathing.

A vague plan had formed itself in his mind — something akin to a half-dreamed ambition, and connected with childhood. Certainly not a definite plan of action. But it was all he had. It meant getting to Khabarovsk, at least to the eastern outskirts, soon after dark.

He knew he could not enter Khabarovsk, or return to his hotel. He could not even rely on Blinn and the rest of the forensic team, or the replacement KGB officers flown in from Moscow. A tiny force, impotent. He could not attempt to board a plane in Khabarovsk — the airport was outside the town, but it would be patrolled by now, or soon, anyway. He would be arrested, probably on some trumped-up charge and by a GRU detachment, and brought to Military District HQ.

And then, he thought, the light would go out.

Beyond the trees, the narrow neck of the valley opened out. He looked at the map. A small village — Nikoleyev — lay behind the valley, where the mountains and uplands surrendered temporarily to high pasture. A sloping bowl of meadowland, then narrow, radiating valleys again, before the land dropped down to the long hills which cradled Khabarovsk.

In the village, he had to obtain a car. Covertly, or overtly, it did not matter. Probably, there were troops in the village already. It did not matter. He had to get to the village, and he had to have the car. Only by having transport could he hope to make the rendezvous that was already assuming a prominent place in his thinking.

There was some kind of hut on a little rise, perhaps half a mile from where he stood. Not a house, perhaps a store for winter fodder.

He stepped cautiously away from the trees, as if expecting to see the belly of a helicopter slide into view just above the tree tops. He scanned the sky, revolving on his heels until he began to feel dizzy. Nothing. He began to run.

The ground was tussocky with the poor grass, flinty stones unsettling his footsteps. He ran as carefully as he could, his eyes scanning the ground immediately ahead of him, yet his mind screaming at the sense in the back of his neck, across his shoulders, that he was nakedly exposed as he moved with such idiotic slowness across that half-mile of grass and stones.

His breathing became heavier, the steps more automatic, and more laboured. He began to consider the futility of running, of crossing half a mile when thousands of miles separated him from the people who could help him — no, not help, now; protect, hide. His breath began to tear and sob, like cloth being pulled apart roughly, something human in him being made into rags for cleaning.

He forced his legs on, his body seeming to bend lower, his face closer to the ground — stumbling more now, trying to shift weight immediately so that an ankle wouldn't give, twist. He could feel the body-heat, rising and breaking out in sweat. There was even sweat on his forehead now. He looked up. The hut appeared hardly any nearer than the last time he had looked up — perhaps one hundred strides ago. No, two hundred at least.

One hand pushing away from the ground as he stumbled, and the tiredness stressed as he tried to drive the legs in a [reasserted upright position.

He heard the noise of the helicopter, behind him, and it ' seemed as if the sound was gaseous, unnerving him, causing I the moving legs to quiver as if he had already stopped running.

He turned round, staggering as his body shifted clumsily.

The small scout helicopter, like the civilian one he had flown in, was fifty feet up, and moving across the grass towards him — a black, insect spot just horizoned above the dark lines of the trees.

He whirled round, stumbling again, and it was now as if he moved through some restraining element. The beat of rotors behind him became louder: he stumbled on, careless of stones and tussocks, waiting for the shadow of the helicopter, the waving of grass as it bent before the downdraught.

The hut wobbled on the rise, joggling in his vision as he looked up. The breath tearing, and the heartbeat frenzied. Above everything, the futility of it, the stupid blind panic to run, to keep running, thousands of miles from safety.

The grass leapt with small stones, flying dirt, near his right foot, then ahead and to his side. Gunfire. The noise of the rotors drowned the rifle shots. The helicopter was no gunship, but it carried at least one marksman. Again, flying spots of dirt. He saw the distressed earth scatter on his boot like scuffed sand.

Then his breath was knocked from him, and his shoulder jarred cruelly as he banged into the wall of the hut. He looked up, and the shadow of the chopper passed over him. White plucked splinters of dry wood stung his cheek as the rifleman, with the AK-47 on automatic, loosed a volley before he disappeared behind the overflown hut.

Sobbing, straining to get his breath — one breath, clear and deep would be sufficient, as the blood roared in his ears — he banged against the locked door. Wood splintered — he heard the sound, even as the rotor noise increased again — and he fell into the darkness, redolent of stored fodder, and tumbled against stacked hay bales.

A line of jagged holes, striped across one wall, entry of sunlight in splashes like yellow blood, as the marksman in the helicopter sprayed the hut on automatic. He buried his head, wriggling his body between the spiky, hard edges of the bales. Bullets plucked into the packed earth door, thumped softly into bales beside him. He put his hands over his ears, terrified.

The noise of the rotors came down to swallow him.

He was unsure how long it was, but he was aware of the changing noises outside. The rotors dying away, then the cracking of a voice, voices, as the helicopter's cabin speaker amplified the calls from nearest units in the search. He was stiff with ear, weak and unable to move.

The door of the hut was hanging open. He had to get out. He pushed himself upright, and staggered stiffly to the door, rugging the gun free of its shoulder holster. A ridiculous little thing, set against the AK-47 waiting for him outside.

He pressed himself against the wall, craning round the door frame. The soldier, in olive-green combat dress, was stepping cautiously towards the door. The small MIL was behind him, its rotors turning sluggishly. The pilot was bent forward over his equipment, his head turned to watch the soldier.

Vorontsyev went into the crouch, arms stiff, gun cradled by two hands. He fired three shots, all towards the centre of the target shape that the soldier had become. The man leapt aside, but a movement without volition, only the jerk of impact as two of the bullets hit him in the stomach, the other passing through his upper arm as he fell away. The AK-47 spun in the air, catching the sun along its stubby barrel and curved magazine. The pilot was moving to shut the door of the helicopter when Vorontsyev, still in the same crouch, two paces out of the door, shot him. Red hole in the temple, then the head dropping back out of sight behind the body which had been lifted out of the seat, held in some grotesque position of sexual proffering over the seat back.

He turned the soldier with his boot, then bent to pick up the AK-47. Then, he rummaged in the dead man's combat suit for the extra magazines. They were bulky, unsuitable unless he wore combat dress himself. He threw one aside in irritation, and thrust the other into the deepest pocket of his anorak. Then he went to the MIL, moved the body slightly, and only then realised, as the mood of semi-robotic efficiency left him, that he had killed the pilot, and could not fly the helicopter himself.

His legs buckled under him, and he felt tears prick against his eyes as his thinking returned fully. He could have escaped in the chopper, and instead he had killed the pilot.

Voices, querulous and puzzled, demanded reply from the MIL's cabin speaker. Idem codes, positions, movements, details of force strength — spinning in his head.

He looked around. Specks to the west, lifting clear of a rise. Bigger helicopters. Away to the east, down a long slope, as far as a mile away, dots moving across a field, out of the cover of trees. Men on the ground already. A road away to the north of them. Olive-green APCs moving swiftly.

He was watching his encirclement.

Nothing, as yet, south of him, down towards the village of Nikoleyev that he could now see, nestling in gentler folds of country; not as flat as he had thought from the map, better for him. Dotted clumps of trees. He began to run again, the unfamiliar AK-47 banging against his thigh. The tussocky grass seemed longer on this long downslope — something to do with drainage, he wondered incongruously — and it seemed to wrestle with his tired legs, continually throwing the body too far forward, out of balance.

Bending low as he ran, he watched the sky. Only the air concerned him for the moment. Nothing on wheels or afoot was close enough.

Except that he knew they would put men down in Nikoleyev now. If they hadn't already done so.

Something had happened to him, however. Probably a result of the killing he had done, the evident superiority given him by two dead bodies that belonged to the enemy. He no longer thought ahead more than minutes. He had no sense of distances other than the little way to the village, the seventeen or eighteen miles to Khabarovsk. No promises, none of the luxuries of larger thought. Only the body moving, its imperatives occupying him.

He paused behind a rock, near the bottom of a stretch down from the hut. Below him, the road into the village wound through a shallow defile, cracked with frost, icy puddles in the shadows of trees. Empty. He paused long enough to regain something like casual breath, then jumped down on to the road. The hard earth jarred his legs and spine, and he groaned. More in fear of injury than in pain.

He crossed the road, which was lined with dark trees, and began to trot carefully, under their shadow, towards Nikoleyev. He stopped only once, hearing behind him the dull thump of an explosion. He knew what it was, and shuddered with knowledge. The first gunship at the hut had destroyed it with rocket fire. Probably simply because of the dead pilot, and the dive drab spot of a body below them. Incensed anger transmitted to firepower before reason could interfere. He consciously stopped the trembling of his body.

The road dropped down into the village — a straggle of houses, peasant dwellings of wood, single-storeyed and ramshackle. He bit his glove as his hand wiped his face. A car — there. It was like a grainy photograph from some old album; from Gorochenko's pictures of his peasant origins on the steppes. Chickens flicked across the road, and a cow ambled I between two houses. Straggling dead gardens, patches of dark, cultivated earth marking the properties, darker than the packed earth of the village's one street. He looked for a store. Yes.

He breathed deeply, as if he had gained some kind of victory. There had to be some kind of delivery van. Unless they still delivered by cart.

He waited, his body eager, the legs quivering with the need move; but he had to be sure of troops, yet the longer he waited the more surely they would come. As he stood up, caution finally satisfied, an olive-green APC rolled up and over the rise at the other end of the village street, He dropped back into the shadow of a fir with a groan. He had waited too bloody long.

Twelve: The Train

The APC rolled to a halt at what the driver considered the centre of the tiny hamlet. There was almost a contempt about the reluctant way in which the vehicle slowed, then stopped. It was a BTR-152, standard model without roof armour. Vorontsyev could see the heads of the troops it carried, bobbing up and down, two rows of flattish Red Army helmets, like mushrooms or Chinese straw hats painted green.

When it stopped, the gun mounted at the front began to swivel threateningly. There was no one on the street. Only the officer stood up, a Stechkin automatic in his hand. His movements were lazy, confident. Either he hadn't heard about the two dead men, or he had accepted the unchanged, sleepy parameters of the scene before him. Nothing could happen there, in the precise middle of nowhere.

Eventually, he barked an order, and the soldiers began to dismount from the back of the personnel carrier. Vorontsyev clutched the AK-47 tighter, as if it were a talisman.

There were twelve men. Some women, one or two old men, began to emerge from the low wooden houses. The officer spoke to one of the women, who seemed undeterred by his tone of voice. A large woman, great bosom and dragged-back hair, wiping her hands on a check apron. Vorontsyev, relaxed by the slow pace of the scene, the indifference of the troops who fanned out slowly, and the NCO who was already smoking a cigarette, watched the encounter. He could almost see the scowl on the woman's face.

The officer walked away eventually, then questioned another villager, an old man; he shrugged repeatedly, and appeared simple-minded. The officer's step expressed frustration as he rejoined the NCO. He gave his orders with a deal of arm-waving, and it was as if the projector showing a film had slipped into another speed. The whole scene speeded up. Men went now from house to house with a purpose, and much noise. The officer and the NCO stood by the APC, where they were joined by the driver, who also lit a cigarette. The officer, as if the habit was somehow beneath him, walked a little apart, watching the search.

It took little more than ten minutes. Then, at an order from the NCO, the men doubled back to the APC. For one moment, Vorontsyev thought he might be given the unbelievable luck of their leaving the hamlet of Nikoleyev.

Then he saw that they were detailed to fall out, except for individuals posted one at either end of the village, on the road. There seemed, then, nothing more to do, and the officer cast about, his head turning like that on a doll. Vorontsyev thought he must be looking for a drink, or a chair.

He had to move now. Soon, the men would drift towards the store, which might proffer food, or something to drink. The officer would, having absorbed the motionless innocence of the hamlet, allow them to relax as the afternoon wore on. They were obviously detailed to remain in the hamlet, and until they received new orders they were no longer part of the search.

He studied the land immediately round the village. He could, by moving carefully around the southern perimeter, use such things as wood-stacks, outhouses, to shield him. Only if one of the villagers saw him would he be in danger.

He stood up, let his cramped legs relax, then moved off to his right through the thin belt of trees until he was overlooking, from a slight rise, a stack of logs behind the most outlying of the poor wooden houses. This one appeared deserted, he could see a cracked window and there was no smoke from the thin chimney. Cautiously, he moved out of the trees and half-slid down the slope, resting only when he was concealed by the logs.

A few moments, then he raised his head cautiously. Here, he could not see the APC nor the soldiers. He fished out the map, and studied it carefully. The nearest village was three, perhaps four miles away, and in the wrong direction. He looked at his watch and made a swift calculation. He would not have enough time, unless he took a vehicle of some kind from Nikoleyev.

He considered, uselessly, the APC. He could not overpower twelve men, an NCO, a driver and an officer, not even with surprise and an AK-47. The store had to have some kind of van.

He looked at the roads on the map, fully marked even to farm tracks. He thought he could see a way of keeping away from any road that might be carrying troops, or have a roadblock in operation. He would be safe from everything, perhaps, except aerial patrols. Which might, or might not, investigate a civilian vehicle.

But the APC…

He wished he had taken the dead soldier's grenades.

How could he leave, without being followed, and captured? It was an impossibility, so impossible that his body became weak, his mind irresolute. He sat with his back against the wood, its rough bark pressing into him, the rifle upright between his legs like a prop — he gripped it tightly.

Stupid, stupid.

The soldier who had come to relieve himself behind the pile of logs was as surprised to see Vorontsyev as the KGB man was to be stumbled upon.

It was a ridiculous moment. The soldier's hand was in his flies, and his rifle was over his shoulder. He was helpless, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. He appeared at every instant to be about to cry out, but no sound would come. Vorontsyev himself, moving as if through a great pressure of water, or clinging nets, moved the gun to his hip, turned his body so slowly, levelled the gun, and squeezed the trigger. The soldier jumped back, his hand and his penis appearing from his trousers, and then he lay still on his back.

A single, loud shot.

This time Vorontsyev scrabbled in the combat dress, and unfastened the two RGD-5 fragmentation grenades the man carried. He could hear, at a distance, shouted orders, and perhaps the soldier's name being called. He ducked behind the togs again, then leaned forward, caught hold of the dead man's boot, and pulled the body awkwardly towards him, out of sight.

Twelve men.

Ridiculous.

They came at the run, disorganised and unprepared, because they might have been mistaken and the officer was evidently panicking and they had had to throw away cigarettes. Vorontsyev raised his arm, swung back and then forward, and lobbed the grenade into them. Then the second one. Five of them, not bunched, but the grenades, more like fat tins than pineapples, carried heavy charges and an effective fragmentation radius of twenty-five metres. The first one exploded, and he heard something thud into the logs on the other side. The second explosion. A thin scream, then he was on his feet, all but head and shoulders masked by the logs, and firing at the two men still moving, staggering though they were. He did not miss.

He could hear one of the wounded men behind him, screaming something incoherent and terrible about his guts, and then he pressed against the wall of a house twenty yards away, his head bobbing round the corner of the house, cheek rubbing against the rough board — and the APC, a background to the stunned officer and the NCO, who looked white, was fifty yards from him.

Then the officer screamed rather than shouted some confused orders. It was as if he did not realise that his force had been cut to half, and he no longer had sufficient men to perform the demanded tasks.

Vorontsyev grinned. Death, violent death, and winning, even temporarily, charged him with new energy. It was one he would despise later, if he lived. But not now.

One soldier came at a reckless run, because his officer was screaming behind him, down the earthen alleyway between two of the larger houses in the hamlet. His boots pounded on the packed, dark earth, cracked by frost. Vorontsyev waited until he was level, then fired. There was no thought of silent disposal — noise was a part of it, part of the electricity that now galvanised him. It was as if the man had been shoved in the back — arms thrown out, legs going, then face down in a chicken run. Vorontsyev wanted to laugh, because that, too, was a source of energy, of destructive confidence — ways of dying. One man burying his face in chicken-shit, another pulling his pisser out as he died. It had to be good, that.

He ran up the alleyway, seeing the officer confronting him, the NCO already moving away towards the place where the grenade had exploded. He could see no one else now — a face at a little window, barely glanced as he raced past it, then the stutter of the AK-47 on semi-automatic, forty rounds a minute, quicker than single, aimed shots. Vulgar, untrained destruction.

The officer was sliding down the side of the APC even as the NCO dived into the hard dirt of the street. Both of them were dead. He trained the gun, trigger pressed against the back of the guard, until he was sure they had been hit repeatedly. He was ten yards from them, still in the narrow alleyway. Eight dead, and the driver, who had been climbing back into the seat of the APC, perhaps to move it forward, clutching his leg, still bent as if to mount the side of the carrier, knuckles of the hand gripping the rung above him turning white with the pain, and the effort of hanging on. He was afraid to drop on the wounded leg.

Vorontsyev felt the dangerous energy flag. He had known the mood only once before, in a brief KGB firefight with a hijack team surprised in their warehouse headquarters. He had killed two of them, and received a commendation. It had helped to obtain his transfer to SID. He felt exhausted now, as if slipping into sleep or coma. There was little time left, as if the effects of some drug were wearing off.

He dashed to the APC, and bundled the driver out of the way. The man screamed as he fell on his wounded leg, and Vorontsyev saw the hand red with gouted blood. He hauled himself up and tumbled into the body of the carrier, bruising his ribs against the hard edge of a seat.

Bullets puckered and whined against the side of the APC. But he was safe now, the armour of the vehicle protecting him. As he lifted his head cautiously, he saw a soldier's head peer from behind a wooden wall, and he pumped four rounds, heard the scream as the high-velocity bullets passed through the two walls of the building that met at the corner concealing the soldier and hit their target; then the rifle clicked twice.

He tore the magazine off, and struggled with the one in his pocket, which threatened to snag awkwardly. Then it was dipped in, and he raised his head again.

The street was empty.

He felt desperately tired.

With his back against the armoured side of the APC, he raised his head and shouted into the silence of the street:

'Everyone else is dead! How many more of you are there — four, five? You won't get close enough to throw a grenade in! Give it up. Let some other bastard take me on!'

He listened. Nothing, for a long time.

'You bastard!' he heard someone shout, away to the left of the APC, 'You killed all our mates, you bloody terrorist!'

He wanted to laugh. They were dying, and prepared to die, for the same fiction that had killed the KGB team in Khabarovsk — the Separatists. And then he hated Ossipov. Not the men out there, but Ossipov.

He tried to think coolly, because the mention of grenades had been deliberate. There would be only a few moments more of cold logic, before thought became muddy, indefinite.

He shouted: 'Give up, you stupid bastards! I'll kill the lot of you unless you do!' Then he raised his head. The right arm, half the frame, of a soldier had appeared, hand raised with a grenade. The soldier moved to get a freer throw, and Vorontsyev fired. The arm disappeared, and the grenade bounced twice, then exploded. He heard a scream.

They would have used grenades anyway. He had made them try on his terms, in the moment of his choosing. He did not know how many he had killed or disabled. Probably two.

'Come out, you stupid bastards!' he repeated. 'Give yourselves up!'

It had to be now, in the next few seconds, while their minds clogged still with the number of the dead, with their own lack of safety in diminishing numbers. Had to be.

From one side of the street, two soldiers appeared. Across from the APC, another. One of them was holding a bloody, torn sleeve. He must have been behind the others when the grenade went off. They ostentatiously dropped their guns. The wounded driver wriggled on the ground.

Vorontsyev stood up, almost swaying with weariness. He motioned with the gun.

'Come on!' he barked. 'Get in! Get in or I'll kill you!' He should have done, but he was beginning to be appalled at the slaughter. It was no longer a gratuitous feeling, but wrenched at his stomach. There seemed a stench in his nostrils. The perspective he had rigidly bound in the toil of action loosened and came free, and he was still eighteen miles from the only airport, and thousands of miles from safety. He waggled the gun down at the young peasant faces. Men on military service, without sophistication or great intelligence. Badly frightened automata, shocked out of their normal machine-like operation, their officer dead.

'Get hi!' he barked. 'One of you drive!'

They seemed to hold a silent debate, and then one of them climbed into the driving-seat.

Tick him up!' he shouted, pointing at the wounded figure on the ground. They did so, bundling him gently into the back of the APC, the double doors opened. One of them examined the wound, and took out a field dressing, binding the calf that had been torn by a bullet. 'Get moving!' Vorontsyev called, sitting down next to the driver in the officer's accustomed seat, turning so that he could watch the two men and the driver, and the wounded man supported in one of the seats.

'Where?' the driver asked, his hands gripping the wheel to still fear.

'Turn round — back the way you came. I'll give directions.'

The APC's engine roared, and then they turned on the dirt of the street, picking up speed as if to leave the carnage behind. Vorontsyev felt the weariness leave him, feeding instead on the shocked, stunned faces of the men he had captured, lifting himself up from the level of their self-abnegation. Now they did not even hate him. They were feeling nothing.

The APC left the village behind. Still no one had come out of any of the houses as they bumped over the rise and the village dropped out of sight. Within a quarter of a mile, Vorontsyev barked, 'Right here!' They turned off the road, down a narrow dirt track. The driver appeared puzzled. The rifle prodded against his arm, which quivered as at the touch of an electrode, and he changed down. The surface of the track was pitted with craters, in some of which icy pools remained.

Vorontsyev watched the sky, and the road ahead. It would be some time before the men became dangerous again with renewed hatred; and by that time he would have dumped them, and the driver. He would not kill them. He would simply leave them, in the middle of nowhere, on foot.

During the short afternoon, as they wound slowly, methodically along tracks and lanes, often screened by trees or high hedges and walls, always heading generally eastwards, the sky darkened swiftly and heavy cloud pressed down on them. A wind, too, sprang up; the weather had been deceptive in the morning. When it began to snow, large flakes driven into their faces, pattering against the sides of the APC, he knew he had been given the kind of luck he needed. The weather closed in on them. He worked from the map and the compass as the scenery was blotted out by curtains of rushing snow.

No air traffic.

Eventually, he abandoned the soldiers. They feared him, momentarily, but hatred was already beginning to make them calculate recklessly. They were beginning to be dangerous to him. They climbed out of the APC reluctantly, hauled out the wounded man without tenderness, and stood beneath the trees, sheltered from, the worst of the weather, looking up at him in a murderous little knot effaces. He almost abandoned his plan to take the uniform of the man nearest him in build — but he knew he had to disguise himself if he was to drive the APC the rest of the way.

The man did, shivering with rage and cold as he stripped to his underwear, then donned Vorontsyev's sweaters and anorak and slacks. He seemed to hate the still-warm clothes, but he was forced by the temperature to put them on quickly. Vorontsyev bundled the uniform into the cab, jumped in shaking with cold, and drove off. He drove until the wind and temperature made it difficult to hold the wheel or use the gears — then he stopped, dressed in the chilly uniform, and swigged from the vodka in the first-aid kit.

Gradually, warmth returned. He had abandoned the men at least three miles from the nearest dwelling. They wouldn't die, but it would be a long time before they could describe what had happened.

He drove on, ten miles still from Khabarovsk, having covered nearly eighteen miles of country tracks and lanes. It was already beginning to grow dark with evening rather than storm.

He picked up the first of the roadblocks in the gleam of the headlights, only yards ahead of him. He had skirted Khabarovsk as best he could, keeping to the east of the town, but eventually, after three hours, he had had to join one of the main roads, which would take him through the outer suburbs to cross the river. He wanted to be south-east of Khabarovsk, and time was running out.

The roadblock was thrown across the approach to the bridge, a red-and-white pole, bollards to close the traffic flow down to a single lane, armed soldiers. He slowed behind the cars ahead of him as the brake lights went on, glaring in the falling sleet. He put out the cigarette, adjusted his uniform to some impression of tidiness, and waited to creep forward, or for them to come to him. He tried to shake off the narcosis of the journey. He had thought about nothing, made no plans beyond getting to the destination he had decided upon — even when he began running it had been there, a means of escape more like a child's dream than a plan. But, it had settled itself, apparently, and he had made no conscious effort to rid himself of it.

As the soldier marched down the little rank of waiting cars, he realised the mistake he had made. The sleet shifted aside for a moment, and he could see an army truck up ahead, in another lane. He had ignored the sign he had passed a hundred yards back redirecting priority traffic — which meant any army vehicle. Quickly, he wound down the window.

The cold flowed in, sleet peppered his face. The soldier looked up at him. He believed, in that moment, that they knew who he was — even though the chances of the soldiers he had abandoned getting to a telephone had been almost zero. They might, might just have to run into another army unit 'What the hell's the matter with you?' the guard asked, his face old and flat under the helmet. 'Can't any of you buggers read?'

'Sorry—' Vorontsyev murmured, thickening his Muscovite accent, not able to trust himself to assume another way of speaking; he made himself more stupid, uneducated. 'Nearly asleep — been driving this bloody thing for hours.'

'Papers?' The guard held up his hand lazily. He didn't want to listen to anyone else, had his own grouses about being on duty so long his feet had gone numb and his back ached.

Vorontsyev handed over the papers as nonchalantly as he could; sensing a situation developing even as the heavy mittened hand took them, flicked a torch on them. Perhaps it was the click of the officer's boots coming down the line, or the fact that the car ahead of him pulled away, its boot having been slammed down after a perfunctory search.

'Where's the bloody picture, then?' The guard held out the ID papers. 'And your movement orders — in the cab?'

'Picture fell out,' Vorontsyev mumbled, looking sheepish. 'Sent it to some tart, I expect.'

Nothing, nothing yet. 'What's going on here, Boris?' the officer said, and Vorontsyev saw the soldier wince at the use of his first name by the younger officer.

'Nothing much, sir. Silly bugger — sorry, sir — this man pulled up in the civilian queue — and he's lost the picture in his ID card.'

'Has he? You, where's your picture? Have you reported this to your officer?'

'Sir — he said he had more important things to worry about.'

'Mm. From Moscow, are you?'

'Sir.'

'All as thick as cowpats, they are, sir,' Boris offered, obscurely in league with Vorontsyev now that the officer was present.

'It says here you're from Tallinn.'

'Lived in Moscow for years, sir. Mother's from Tallinn—'

'Bloody conscripts for you,' Boris murmured helpfully.

'Why are you driving around on your own. Where's your officer, the rest of the platoon?' the officer snapped, then strolled to the back of the APC. As Vorontsyev leaned out of the cab to answer, Boris winked up at him. The officer glanced into the back of the vehicle.

The blood — there had to be blood. A car horn hooted at the delay caused by the APC. Vorontsyev saw the young officer's back straighten, his attention fixed on the offending driver.

'You watch this,' Boris muttered, grinning and showing bad, stained teeth. Vorontsyev could smell the tobacco on his breath. 'All bullshit, he is. Don't worry, mate — he won't keep you long now.'

The driver of the car behind had wound down his window. The officer was half-swallowed by the interior of the car, his words muffled as he remonstrated with the driver, his tone evident. Then he re-emerged from the car, and it pulled meekly over to the side of the road. The officer strode back towards the APC's cab, Vorontsyev's papers in his hand.

'You — why are you alone?' he snapped, his face red with outrage and cold.

'Sir? This is going to the depot for repairs — new gearbox needed, seems like. I was detailed to take it.'

'Then you're not—?' The officer was confused.

'Not what, sir?'

'Never mind. Oh, get on with it — get moving. Boris, come with me!'

As Vorontsyev would up the window again, Boris winked again, then swaggered off briskly behind the officer, towards the hapless driver who had expressed his impatience.

Vorontsyev felt weak, and grateful that he had been able to sit through the last few minutes. It was an effort to depress the dutch, get the APC into gear, pull forward to the pole. It went up, out of his view, and he was through and on to the bridge across the Amur. He dared not look in the rear-view mirror, nor the side-mirror. He sat as if there was nothing behind, only the rutted slush on the bridge. As he pulled off the other side of the span, he slumped more in his seat, tried to relax, to pretend that his weakness, his quivering arms and legs, was due to tiredness and not fear.

The track lay below him, gleaming icily in the moonlight, the white, snowbound fields spreading away below the steep, in-dined embankment the tracks followed. It was ten o'clock. The storm had lasted until only an hour earlier, and then had been brushed aside by the mounting wind which now swept the last rags of high cloud across the night and howled across the expanse of lower land between the eastern hills and Khabarovsk.

Vorontsyev lay in the shelter of a rock ledge which overlooked the main line between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. It had been his destination all that day, since the killings in Nikoleyev certainly.

He had abandoned the APC in a steep-sided gully, beneath dark trees. It had ploughed into a snowdrift below, wheels spinning, engine racing. Then it had collapsed on one side, like something dying, and then the engine stopped. Silence.

That had been six miles and three hours before. He had struggled across open country, the snow deepening as he followed the lines of hedges and walls, and passed from clump to clump of thin trees as best he could. He had stayed away from all roads, all traffic. The flask of vodka from the AFC was almost empty.

He was chilled to the bone, even the uniform fatigues hopelessly thin and useless now. His feet, he thought, must be frostbitten, and there was little feeling in his hands. His face, where he had been unable to keep it masked by his hood, he had rubbed periodically, feeling the flesh deadening as he walked or rested, the wind-child removing all feeling.

Clumsily, he unscrewed the stopper on the flask, and poured the last of the vodka into him, burning his throat. He felt it like a dribble of molten metal, thin and scalding, tracing its way to his stomach. Then, as if a light going out, its effect dissipated and was gone. He shivered. If the train did not come soon, then he would be asleep and dying as he crouched there.

He kept himself wakeful, at least fitfully so, by concentrating his feelings on two objects — Ossipov and his own wife. It generated a mental life, to swing now between what had become opposite poles of experience. He did not consider that he might have falsified either or both of them. They became devil and angel to him, and the dynamism of his responses kept his mind alive, and his body less insistent to succumb to the cold.

Khabarovsk was a minefield for him; he had known that from the beginning. He had to get to Vladivostok, and to the KGB Resident there. He had to communicate with Moscow, because what he knew about Ossipov, and the fact of his escape, thus far, meant that whatever was going on — and it was the invasion of Finland — would be moved forward. As would the coup, if that was intended, as it had to be, to coincide with the invasion.

He began to despair — not of his escape, but of its being a trigger. They had no idea, in Moscow, just as he had no idea, who was involved, which of the High Command, if not all, and which of the Politburo and the Central Committee and the Secretariat. They were no nearer arrests, or prevention, than before he arrived in Khabarovsk.

How could they get Ossipov or one of his senior officers into a KGB office, and make him talk? Impossible.

He made himself not think about the larger perspective. His survival depended on the importance of what he had discovered, not its limitations. He had to live, to get to Vladivostok, and perhaps then to Moscow. What he knew was priceless.

He thought of his wife. He would have to call her, when he got to Vladivostok. He would have to tell here he was safe.

The deep bellow of the train hooter reached him through thoughts becoming foggy. He roused himself. It was hatred that was required, not love. In thinking of his wife, he had been betrayed almost to sleep. He tried to stand, staggered against the rock, and began to pummel frantically at the weary, numb legs. He beat his fists against them, and that action seemed clumsy and ineffectual. He almost wailed with anguish, at the thought of failing to get on the train.

He hobbled out of shelter, into the force of the wind which pushed him backwards. He raised his hands as if to ward off physical blows, and forced himself to place one stiff leg before the other, bending his body as if approaching an assailant.

The hooter of the train roared again, its noise loud even above the wind. A couple of miles further up the track, the line branched south and entered the Khakhtsir Mountains. The train would be slower there, but it would have been impossible for him to have reached them.

He scrabbled down the slope, his feet numb brakes which seemed unable to stop him. He jolted his elbow, then he was brought up jarringly short by the packed, snow-covered gravel lining the track. The cutting was very narrow. He heard the train labouring, and looked down the track. Great gouts of steam billowed against the black sky. He pressed back against the wall of the cutting, the one tiny outcrop of rock that lifted above the level of the country, and which had given him shelter. He began to run, to force his legs to move, as if he were being pursued by the train.

He was out of the cutting, struggling up the embankment, a couple of hundred yards ahead of the train. Its noise now drowned the wind. He lowered himself down the embankment until his head was below the level of the tracks. The huge engine crashed past him, pistons churning as it laboured up the slope. He stood up. It was unlikely that anyone on the train would see him, not from the high windows of the carriages. He began to run alongside the train. He forced his legs to move, trundling forward in a hideously slow jog, stumbling more than once and almost losing his footing. The carriages slid past him, accelerating away from him because of the labours of the huge locomotive. Patterns, squares of light gleamed over him, slid on, gleamed, slid on — each one marking the passage of a window. Too quick. He wondered how many windows to a carriage.

Then, suddenly, he was laughing. He lifted his head, and remembered the childhood hobby that had brought this train to mind. If he had dreamed, then, staring at the picture books, that he would one day run for his life alongside the great trans-Siberian Express, trying to board it…

It was a fulfilment. He drove on, counting now the moments it took for each carriage to pass, and looking back to check down the remaining length of the train. The guard's van, last carriage. Observation platform, or hand rails. He had to board this train.

He was sheltered from the bitter wind by the bulk of the express. He ran on, his speed, untiring now, nowhere matching that of the labouring train, but making the difference of speed more acceptable, less deadly.

The last carriage still took him by surprise. The corner of an eye, and moonlight and a snowbound field — he swore he could see them behind the train — and then he leaned into the train, grabbing for the handrails at the side of the guard's van. His arms seemed wrenched from their sockets, and his strides leaped out until they were great lunar bounds, then one foot on the step, then the other.

He was clinging to the side of the Trans-Siberian Express, like someone in a film, and he wanted to laugh because he was certain that somewhere down there on the track his child-self had watched it all, laughing with glee, and clapping hands and wanting to imitate the man he had become.

He stepped up on to the narrow observation platform. It was only then that he understood that a steam engine would no longer be used on the Trans-Siberian, and that the last carriage would not be the guard's van, but an observation coach. He wasn't on the Trans-Siberian at all. He laughed, loudly and almost hysterically. He had saved his life only because of a fantasy. It wasn't real. This was just a local train. Even the timetable he had scrupulously dredged out of the past was out of date, and no longer applied. Which was why the train had been late. It was the wrong train.

He sobered, realising how near to some kind of frozen death he must have been during the last hour.

He gripped the handle of the door, almost wrenching the Makarov free of the shoulder holster. He had abandoned the AK-47 in his rush for the train. Which train? He opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him with a bang.

The guard was a little man, perhaps nearly sixty, with grey hair plastered across a bald dome. He was sitting with his uniform jacket unbuttoned, the tiny room fuggy and heady with the heating. A mug of tea was raised to his lips. When he saw Vorontsyev, and the gun, his eyes widened helplessly, and the mug quivered in his grip. Some of the dark tea slopped on to the grimy wooden table.

'Where is this train going?' Vorontsyev asked. It seemed the most important question at that moment, to satisfy the strange sense of disappointment he felt, as if awakening reluctantly from a pleasant dream. He shook his head as if to clear it.

The guard's mouth moved for a time without sound, then: 'Nightsleeper to Nakhodka.'

'Vladivostok?' He moved threateningly closer, the gun levelled at the little man's face. 'Does it go to Vladivostok?'

Somehow, it had to go there. The little man nodded, carefully putting down the mug as if aware that he might drop it. Vorontsyev sighed, and almost slumped against the wall in his relief. He felt the train speeding up, having reached the top of the incline. 'When?' he asked, more gently; tiredly. 'When do we arrive?'

'Four in the morning.' The little man could cope with that kind of enquiry.

'Good.' Vorontsyev sat down in a hard chair, on the other side of the unvarnished wooden table from the guard. He reached into his pocket, and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he passed it to the guard. Vorontsyev could already feel the skin on his face pricking with returning feeling, and the numb feet hurting as if thrust into a fire.

The guard looked up from his inspection of the ID card. For him, all was satisfactorily explained. A KGB officer had boarded his train. It was not permitted to ask why, or to question the peculiar method of boarding. Or the army uniform. His face was smoothed to indicate attentiveness, and efficiency. He said, 'What can I do, Major?'

'Is there a KGB man on the train?'

'Yes, Major. One of the stewards. Levin. Shall I fetch him?'

'In a moment.' His feet and hands were burning now. He put down the gun. 'Has this train been searched in Khabarovsk?' he asked.

'Yes, Major. From end to end. It is why we are late.'

Vorontsyev did not bother to observe the additional luck that had come to him. He said, 'Who carried out the search?'

The little man shrugged, as if indicating Vorontsyev, then when he saw him shake his head, he said, 'Then they must have been army, Major. There were some in uniform.'

'They were — looking for me,' Vorontsyev said. 'Are there any on the train — any late passengers?'

The guard looked puzzled, and frightened. He glanced at the ID card in the wallet, then swallowed. He said, 'There were a few — all men.'

'Very well. You will do as I say. You know enough to know what SID is?' The guard nodded. 'Then I need say no more to you, comrade. The people who searched the train are — traitors. Naturally.' He watched the guard glancing over his dishevelled clothes, then at the ID card again. Then the little man nodded.

'You would like some tea, Major?'

'Yes. Then fetch this Levin. I have orders for him.'

His eyes felt heavy. The man bustled to pour tea, cleaning a mug with his woollen slipover, out of politeness, deference. Then he sugared it well, and placed it before Vorontsyev. Vorontsyev nodded his thanks.

When the little man was at the door, to run his errand, he said, 'When does the Trans-Siberian cover this stretch of track?'

The guard appeared surprised. He said: 'Two days' time, Major.'

Behind him, as he closed the door, Vorontsyev was laughing helplessly.

A postal van, drab and windowless, met the train at Vladivostok, usurping the normal mail-collection. It drove on to the platform, and its open doors masked Vorontsyev's passage into its rear compartment from the guard's van. Inside was the Resident, Svobodny, and two other armed KGB men — one of them seated next to the driver — and a doctor. Even as the van drove furiously out of the station, the doctor began to attend to Vorontsyev's frostbitten fingers and toes.

Vorontsyev felt stretched, worn — he had had a couple of hours of uneasy sleep on the train which had not refreshed him; he was unable to consider the fate of his fingers and toes. It didn't seem to matter, especially when the Resident, without expression on his flat, Mongol features, said, 'What the hell is going on, Major Vorontsyev? I have to pick you up from the rear of a train, just after getting a Blue Call from Moscow Centre!'

'You what?' Vorontsyev was on the point of asking about the secure channel to Moscow, and Aeroflot flights. Now, with a sick wrench that might have been hunger, he sensed that his questions no longer mattered.

'Yes — Blue Call. That's stand by to destroy all records, and make your own way out. It's never been used inside the Soviet Union before, has it?' Svobodny was frightened, and bemused. He had come to collect Vorontsyev personally in order to fine answers, allay fears. But Vorontsyev's face indicated ignorance and shock.

'I know what it means,' Vorontsyev murmured. Then he asked, very slowly, 'When was the message timed?'

Priority messages from Moscow Centre were always timed according to a code. The almost mythical Blue Call, used in normal circumstances to warn cells, units, or bases outside the Soviet Union, would be timed so that the recipient would understand the deadline of the call — the hour of maximum danger.

'06:00, on the 24th — tomorrow.'

Vorontsyev slumped in his seat, so evidently that the doctor looked up from his feet, reached for his pulse. Vorontsyev brushed his hand aside.

'I'm too late — too bloody late!'

'What's the matter?' Svobodny was anxious, but almost indifferent since realising that the SID Major could provide no answers to his own fears. 'We might all be too bloody late. Major!'

'I can't get to Moscow in time — I know what they intend doing!'

'Who?

'The bloody army — they're going to invade Finland and Norway — I know it, and it's too bloody late to tell anyone!'

'What the hell are you talking about, Major?'

'Wait — what time is it in Moscow, now?'

Svobodny looked at his watch for an interminable time: Vorontsyev could almost see the wheels and cogs in the gold case moving, and imagine them moving in Svobodny's head. It didn't seem to matter to the man, or was too difficult for him.

'Four in the afternoon — yesterday.'

'The 22nd?'

'Yes.'

'Eight hours' flight — when is the first plane 'Seven.'

'You're not going anywhere, Major,' the doctor said, now examining Vorontsyev's left hand.

'Are you going to amputate anything?' The doctor shook his head.

'You have to rest.'

'We can all do that after we're dead — seven, seven — eight hours, going backwards. I'd get to Moscow before I started, wouldn't I?' Svobodny nodded. 'Three in the afternoon here, three in the morning there. I can do it — I can do it!' He moved his bandaged feet, and groaned. The doctor looked at him as if at an idiot.

'It gives a little over twenty-four hours before the deadline. What will you do with it?'

'The Blue Call concerns an attempted coup—'

'What—?'

'Listen! By the Army — but I know who's behind it. It's obvious — the same men who are behind the invasion they're planning — Group of Forces North. Praporovich, Marshal Praporovich. We can get him!'

'Oh, yes,' Svobodny observed. 'Just like that — hands up, the Red Army.'

Vorontsyev missed the evident irony. He was flexing his fingers, trying to move his toes, as if in preparation for some extreme physical effort, One thought now possessed him — that he had an answer, some answer which was better than ignorance, and he had to communicate it to Andropov personally.

'Use the transmitter and stay here,' Svobodny said. 'It's not Moscow, but there are Things to do.'

'In the time that's left, you mean? No — your transmitter will be intercepted, I'm sure of that. Tell them — you speak to them, only what you can tell them without giving the game away. Don't attract attention. Use a low-grade code — warn them I'm coming, but don't give details.' Svobodny nodded.

The engine of the car was switched off.

'We're here, Chief,' the driver called back.

'Any tail?

'No.'

'Good.' Svobodny looked at Vorontsyev. 'So, the world's falling round our ears — I'll get you a ticket, and get on the radio.'

As he limped out of the back of the van across the courtyard behind the KGB building, Vorontsyev thought — they must think I'm dead of the cold by now. They must think I'm dead.

By six-thirty he was at Vladivostok Airport, looking out over the windy tarmac to the Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 which would take him to Moscow. He was dressed in a dark woollen suit borrowed from one of the KGB staff, and a heavy overcoat. He carried a briefcase, and some luggage had been sent on to the plane ahead of him to further enhance the cover he possessed as a civil servant in the Bureau for Industry and Construction. His new name was Tallinn. He would be met at Cheremtievo by an armed escort, and taken straight to Andropov's office.

If Kapustin understood the simple code.

He had become more and more confident that by now Ossipov and his staff would consider him dead. No one outside the KGB knew otherwise. Levin and the guard had been removed from the train before it left Vladivostok — no one could ask them questions. Before the mistake could be discovered, he would be in Moscow.

He knew he should not call his wife.

He walked slowly, getting used to the unaccustomed stick, his feet aching and his gloved hands sore and prickly, towards the telephone booths. Eight hours, and he could call her from Moscow. Eight hours, and Svobodny could tell her.

He barely understood the compulsion, or why the compulsion made the risk seem minimal. It had to do with almost dying as he waited for the train, and the narrow mental life, almost obsessional, of those hours. And it had to do with the burden of knowledge he carried, the sense of isolation that it gave him. He had to talk to her. Whatever — she had to be told now that he was safe.

Or perhaps he required her comfort now, because it had been unavailable earlier. He dialled the operator, using a pen in his gloved hand, and asked for the hotel in Khabarovsk. She would be there; eagerness to hear her voice overrode any remaining reserve, as the line hummed and crackled with static, then buzzed with the connection.

'Madame Vorontsyevna,' he said. 'Room 246.'

He waited. The operator came back.

'I'm afraid that Madame Vorontsyevna is not in her room, I'll have her paged, if you'll wait.'

'Very well.'

It was only after the operator had gone away again, and he could distantly hear the tiny noises of the switchboard, a mumbled voice, then the tannoy call for Natalia, that he realised I bow long it was taking. A minute to make the connection with the room — now how long to find her?

He should ring off — just in case. Then he heard her.

'Alexei! Alexei! Thank God you're safe! Where are you?1 She seemed breathless, but he could not be sure. Then his mind stopped investigating her.

'Never mind. I'm all right. I called to tell you I'm all right.'

'I was so worried—!' she said, her voice thick with emotion. It warmed him, yet he looked at his watch. Six forty-seven. In I a few moments, they would be calling his flight. She could probably hear the sounds of an airport coming down the connection — stop it, stop it! he pleaded with himself.

'It's all right, darling. It's all right. Look, I'll be in touch. Don't worry — it's all right now.'

'Alexei — where are you, darling? Where are you?' And there was no mistaking the imperative in the voice. Someone behind her had shaken his head. The trace was not completed, despite the fact that they would be working back through the Vladivostok exchange. She was being encouraged by a waved hand and an imploring face to keep the conversation going. He knew that. He did not know or care how he knew it — but he did. Just as certainly as he knew that she was helping whoever it was voluntarily. She was not being coerced.

As a last chance, he said, 'Can you talk freely?' And he prayed that she would give the right answer.

She said, 'Of course, darling. What's the matter with you? Where are you, Alexei? I'll come right away!'

He prayed for control over his voice.

'Sorry, darling — must go now. I'll be in touch soon!'

He slammed down the receiver. When he took his hand away from it, it was quivering. There was perspiration on his forehead, and he wiped it angrily, miserably away.

They knew he was speaking from Vladivostok, but they hadn't completed the trace. He looked at his watch. Six fifty. They were calling the flight, he realised. He settled the briefcase under his arm, adjusted the stick, began to walk.

He tried very hard not to understand that his wife was working for Ossipov, and the people who had tried to kill him. And behind that fact, there was another terrible possibility, which he could more easily bury — because he simply had no desire to entertain it.

But — boarding a plane? he thought as he crossed the chilly tarmac slowly. To give the service twenty-four hours to round up the Army? His wife's final infidelity dragged at his purpose, tried to diminish and ridicule it; told him to turn round, give himself up, or get away with Svobodny and his team. Stupid, stupid—

The steward at the door of the Tupolev noticed how white and upset Mr Tallinn looked as he boarded the plane for Moscow. His eyes were unduly wet, too, for someone who had merely walked across the tarmac in the wind.

Thirteen: The Couriers

The passengers boarding the Moscow flight travelled from the terminal building across the windy stretch of tarmac to the Tupolev accompanied by a military truck. There were four soldiers with Kalashnikovs thrust upright from between their knees, and three officers in fur hats and great-coats. In the distance, Vorontsyev could see the olive-green and drab brown vehicles and knots of men that signified the military presence at Khabarovsk Airport. The Moscow flight from Vladivostok had landed at Khabarovsk, a scheduled stop of twenty minutes, less than an hour after taking off. It was a return to the hub of the search for him that Vorontsyev could not avoid.

With the tension mounting within him, he involuntarily fingered the papers in his pocket that declared him to be Tallinn, and a member of the Secretariat. They were good papers, since they were KGB, but the passport photograph on his identity visa — which he had to use for internal air travel — was a hasty affair. And it looked too hastily affixed to the ID card. The other papers would pass inspection.

He wondered who amidst the cold little huddle of passengers climbing the gangway had been detailed by Ossipov to travel on this travel — or had Ossipov decided that a search would be sufficient? He hoped so.

Vorontsyev was travelling first class, as befitted a civil servant visiting the Soviet Far East on state business. There were only a handful of fellow-passengers, including one KGB officer from Vladivostok — a tough, capable looking individual with a broad stomach and a bandy-legged walk — loaned to him for his protection by Svobodny. The man had boarded the plane separately, and gave no sign that he was in any way connected with Vorontsyev.

Vorontsyev turned. The man was looking out of his window, studying the ascending passengers. His only real concern would be with anyone who was to travel first class.

Then the great-coated officer, a colonel, pushed aside the curtain from second class, nodded as the passengers, with one accord, looked up into his face, and said, 'My apologies for any delay and inconvenience, comrades. An inspection of documents is necessary. If you please.'

He was a tall man, his thin face reddened with the wind, then the abrupt change of temperature inside the Tupolev. His eyes were grey, and keen. He waited to be obeyed.

Slowly he moved down the narrow aisle, checking each passenger's papers. He was methodical, and scrutinised photographs carefully comparing them with faces. Once or twice, he held papers up to the light, as if looking for some watermark of authenticity. Vorontsyev, watching him as unobtrusively as he could, did not see him make any comparisons with a photograph he might have possessed. Perhaps Natalia — he remembered her perfidy with a sick lurch of the stomach — had no picture of him. Perhaps there was only a spoken description.

His hair was tinged with silver at the temples, and he had acquired some padding in his cheeks so he appeared fatter-featured. It was a hurried and partial job — Svobodny had clicked tongue against teeth in disparagement at the effect — but it might just defeat a spoken description of an apparently younger man.

The Colonel stood at his side, his hand extended. Vorontsyev passed him the small bundle of documents with an assumed confidence. From the second class compartment, masked by the curtain, came the sound of stifled argument. An irregularity. For some reason, it steadied Vorontsyev. The Colonel looked over his shoulder, momentarily distracted.

It seemed an age until the papers were handed back. The Colonel tipped his fur hat with his gloves, and clicked his heels.

'Thank you, Comrade Tallinn. A pleasant flight.'

Vorontsyev was the last passenger in first class to have his papers scrutinised. The soldier turned on his heel, and clicked back through the curtain. Vorontsyev breathed deeply, and returned his attention to the window. After a few minutes, he saw the detachment of soldiers climb back aboard the truck, which pulled away from the aircraft, followed by the passenger gangway and the bus.

No one had entered the first class compartment. Vorontsyev could hardly believe his luck. The 'No Smoking' notice flicked on at the end of the compartment, and the voice of the steward instructed him to fasten his seat belt. He did so, amused at the quiver in his hands; a record of a past tremor. It was over now. He settled back in his seat as the Tupolev turned out of the taxiway on to the long runway.

The steward entered the first class only minutes after the Tupolev had reached its cruising height and speed, taking orders for drinks and breakfast. Vorontsyev decided at first against a drink, then relented and ordered whisky rather than vodka, but no food. He could not feel hungry, even though the steward had hovered at his elbow until he ordered at least a drink. He had again succumbed to the sapping imagery of Natalia's betrayal.

The steward went away. Vorontsyev, as if for distraction, glanced behind him at the KGB man. He was apparently sleeping, head lolling on the shoulder of a good-looking girl, who appeared reluctant to enjoy the experience, reluctant to move the greasy-haired head. As if she knew the man's occupation. Probably she had seen the ID card.

Natalia. The betrayal went to his loins, to his head; touches of hands and lips, but now cold, revolting. He felt sick, and cursed the feverish imagination she had always encouraged whenever he thought about her. It was not time now to fall to pieces, to dissolve like a snowman into the comfortable seat. He had to be strong, he told himself, tears pricking behind his eyes, and his nose seeming to run. He sniffed like a child, loudly.

He could not believe they had forced her to do it. That was the trouble. He knew she had agreed, that she had only come with him to watch him, to — distract him. He could see her, vividly naked, even when he opened his eyes and tried to concentrate on the dazzle of sunlight off the cloudbase below the wing. Her arms out to him.

He hated, too, the thought that someone else, other than her, knew him well enough to exploit his weakness, his stupid, pleading, childish desire for her. That, perhaps, since all things seemed to return to himself, more than anything; that he was known, and his weaknesses were sufficiently understood to make him a tool, a pawn, on someone's operations.

He coughed, the bile of anguish in the back of his throat, choking him. More than anything, the impotence — the lack of secrecy about his deep self.

The steward proffered the whisky on his tray — soda in a tiny bottle. He looked up in surprise, then seemed to come to himself, and nodded. He wanted the drink now. The steward smiled, the tray with its ringed white cloth waiting for his money. He pulled out his wallet, then, clumsily, fitted the glass into the socket attached to his seat. Then he juggled the bottle from hand to hand, trying at the same time to open his wallet on his lap. He fumbled for money, as if he had just been awoken from sleep, and saw his SID identity card staring up at him. He looked up at the steward, hastily closing the wallet, a ten-rouble note gripped in his free hand.

The steward had noticed nothing. The suspicious quality in his behaviour was that there was no flicker of increased deference in his manner. Simply the bland, smiling features of a young man who saw nothing. Vorontsyev passed him the money, and raised the glass to his lips. Then things happened confusingly, and his only impression was of the steward being elbowed aside and his lap getting wet as the whisky was spilled. He leaned out in his seat. The steward was on the floor, and a heavy body was astride his, a gun — a big Stechkin — was at the steward's temple.

'What's going on?' Vorontsyev asked, standing up, wiping foolishly at the wet lap of his suit.

'This little bastard put something in your whisky, comrade. I was going to tell you after he went — but you couldn't wait for your reviver!' There was a certain contempt in the voice, as well as delight at the KGB man's own prowess.

'In the drink?' Vorontsyev asked stupidly. He looked round at the other passengers, all of whom were moving out of shock into calculated lack of attention. Except the girl. She seemed relieved that the KGB man had left his seat. With a delicate but angry movement, she wiped at the shoulder of her coat where his head had rested. Vorontsyev returned his attention to the tableau in the aisle.

The KGB man had dragged himself and the steward upright — then he pushed the slight figure in the white uniform jacket into an empty seat. The Stechkin was again thrust against the temple. Vorontsyev, studying the steward for the first time, could see an evident fear, and behind it something that appeared like confidence. It was as if he had the gun, or he were protected by the kind of power and organisation the KGB man had on his side. Puzzling.

'What was it?' the KGB man asked in a harsh voice. The steward said nothing. The KGB man slapped him across the face, then forced his head back with the barrel of the gun, and roughly searched the steward's pockets. The steward did not resist, but even when the KGB man held up a small phial, empty, in his big hand, the steward showed no fear, no terror of discovery. 'What's this?'

The steward did not reply.

'You know who I am?' Vorontsyev said quietly, and the deference that had been missing seemed automatically to reappear in the other KGB man. The steward stared at him unblinkingly.

'Answer the Major!' the KGB man snapped. Silence.

'Who are you?' Vorontsyev asked.

'Boris Vassiliev — a steward, as you see.' Something had happened to the steward; the deference that was part of his function seemed to have been removed by the surprise with which he had been assaulted, discovered. But nothing else had gone, in the face of the gun and the threats. Now he tried to reassume the mask of ordinariness it fitted incompletely, letting the strong personality they had already seen glance out.

'Who gave you the order to dope my drink? It was lethal, I take it?' Vorontsyev was fascinated now. There was no reaction to the attempt on his life — shock or hate or anger. Just the aroused, challenged curiosity. 'Who gave you the order? Is that why no one boarded the plane, because you were here already?'

'Answer the Major!' The gun pressed beneath the jaw. The face distorted, but only because of the pressure. Still was there no real, shaken fear.

Ideas tumbled through Vorontsyev's head. He needed a shape to contain them, a process to undergo.

'Watch him,' he said. 'Don't hurt him — yet.' Then he walked forward, towards the galley and the door to the flight-deck.

As he opened the door, the flight-engineer, sitting side-on to him and to the rear of the two pilots, glanced up, and said, 'Please return to your seat at once.'

Vorontsyev showed him the ID card. The flight-engineer studied it suspiciously, then spoke into his microphone.

'Captain — Major Vorontsyev, SID, would like to speak to you…?' Vorontsyev nodded. 'Now, I think.'

'Take control, Pavel,' the captain said to his second officer, and then released the control column. He took off his headset, and squeezed past the second officer, to confront Vorontsyev. He seemed surprised at the man's youth, being probably fifty, Vorontsyev estimated. A bulky, solid individual, still in command on his own flight-deck.

Vorontsyev said as they confronted one another, 'Captain, what do you know about your steward, Vassiliev?'

Immediately, the captain appeared puzzled. His mouth opened, and even the flight-engineer, looking up at them like a wondering child, smiled at the question.

'Know about him?' the captain said. 'The little — he's one of yours, KGB!' He seemed unwilling, even defiant, about concealing his dislike of Vorontsyev.

'He's not,' Vorontsyev said. 'I would have known that. The officer from Vladivostok travelling with me would certainly have known it. Why do you believe it?'

'He has the proper authority, Major,' the captain said stiffly, as if his dignity had been affronted. 'I have flown with Vassiliev on board a number of times. He has always presented himself to me as KGB Airline Security.'

Vorontsyev nodded. 'Thank you, captain. You may leave the matter in my hands. How soon before we can talk direct to Moscow?'

The pilot appeared puzzled.

'A matter of hours yet, I'm afraid. However, anything you wish can be relayed ahead of us…'

'Thank you for your cooperation. Tell me, you say that Vassiliev has travelled with you many times. He is your regular steward, then?'

'Not really. It doesn't work like that. We draw from a pool of available stewards and stewardesses, for internal flights. They're always changing flights and journeys with one another — proper little capitalist enterprise, Major!' There was a smile in the blue eyes, and round the mouth. 'They very much suit themselves — especially the ones who are in your organisation. They fly where they want, and when they want.'

'I see. But Vassiliev flies this route regularly?'

'Quite often. When I come aboard, I don't expect to see the same faces. But his — yes, quite often.'

'You always thought him — one of us?'

'Yes — his arrogance.' The pilot was cool, even amused. Vorontsyev smiled, and saw in his mind the face of the young steward. Yes, he could be KGB. Certainly not a steward.

Working for Ossipov — travelling all over the Soviet Union. Nor frightened by the KGB, even masquerading as a KGB man. Pleasing himself which destination — changing his travelling arrangements at the last moment, perhaps.

Vorontsyev was quivering with excitement. He knew what he had caught.

'Leave — this matter in my hands, captain.' He had to make him talk — had to! 'Captain, I must ask you to descend to a level where the pressurised cabin is not needed!'

'Must you hell!'

'That is an order! Disobedience to that order may be construed as treason!' Vorontsyev was in no mood to trifle, to bargain or persuade. His face was grim with determination. He would not need to touch the gun in his holster. He knew the power of SID, even on people like this experienced pilot.

It was a moment only. Then the pilot, with ill grace in his voice and impotent, angry contempt in his eyes, said, 'Very well. What are you going to do, throw the little sod out?'

'Threaten to. You understand, captain. This aircraft is effectively under the control of an officer in the SID. I shall not interfere, more than is necessary, with your flight-plan or your authority. But I must have your complete cooperation!'

'Very well,' he replied surlily. 'Very well, Major Vorontsyev.' He leaned to speak into the flight-engineer's microphone. 'Pavel, descend slowly to flight level seven-zero. And tell no one.' Then he straightened up. 'Will that do you? Seven thousand feet. It will be bloody cold, so don't leave the door open too long, will you?' There was an acid humour in the voice, the truculence of forced assistance.

'Thank you, captain. And keep her steady, would you? I have no wish to fall out somewhere over Siberia!'

He dosed the door behind him, the jubiliation of the humour of his last words bubbling in him. He had the answer, a mouthpiece now, if only he could force it to speak.

A courier.

The missing piece of the puzzle; the communications network. Using the resources of Aeroflot, the network of the internal airline services, to transmit their messages — from Moscow to the Far East and who knew where else — by jet airliner; by stewards who rendered themselves virtually secure from interference by posing as members of the KGB. It would work, too.

He stood looking into the first class for a moment, as the thoughts resolved themselves. He could feel the airliner descending, not rapidly enough to arouse the passengers — but descending.

The couriers would know to whom they spoke — they would even know the man or men behind Group 1917 and Finland Station. He had an almost physical longing to shake the information from the steward, now seated upright, the KGB man alongside him, the gun evident between them. The other passengers were consciously inattentive.

Messages transmitted by word of mouth, within hours. Simple, and effective. If there was a KGB man on the flight, Vassiliev — and the others, for there had to be others; twenty, thirty, how many? — would simply not reveal his assumed authority. If not, and always as far as the flight crew were concerned, he was KGB. Who would think to check?

'Bring him!' he snapped.

The KGB man hauled Vassiliev out of his seat, and prodded him along the aisle until all three of them were jammed into the tiny galley. Vorontsyev could smell rank sweat. It was the KGB man, not Vassiliev. He glared into the confident young face — no, there was an ashen tinge to the cheeks now that they were so close to him, or now he was alone with them.

'Listen to me, Boris Vassiliev. I know what you are.' The steward still appeared confident. He straightened his tie. 'I know about Group 1917 and Finland Station. Which is why you had to kill me. But I know what you are, and I'm going to know what you know. You are a courier from the top men…' The eyes bolted, as if seeking escape. The KGB man, as if on cue from Vorontsyev, thrust the gun into Vassiliev's back. The steward gasped.

'You see? I know, and I want to know what you know. Everything. As no doubt you will have noticed, the aircraft is descending. When it has done so, I will open the passenger-hatch opposite us…' He watched the steward's eyes stray towards the locked hatch; it was a movement the man could not control. 'And if you don't then tell me everything I wish to know — I shall throw you out!'

The barely furnished room was icy cold, even in the middle of the afternoon. He had removed only one glove in order to dial without making a mistake in the number. The telephone had been freed of bugs; it was the first of his secure lines, in a flat in a northern workers' suburb, part of a grey block of cement with tiny, slitted windows.

His breath smoked in the room. He sat at a rickety table which was smeared with the marks of mugs and plates, and gritty with sugar, on one of the two upright chairs that constituted the remaining furniture. It was an apartment that was officially occupied, but in fact had been empty for some weeks, and the superintendent of the block of flats had kept it so at his instruction.

Kutuzov was there to make one telephone call. He had travelled by metro from his house, smug in the confirmation that even now, with Andropov and the KGB so desperate and short of time, he was not being followed. Naturally, he had planned that it would be so; but the relief was still very real, and the sense of success — omen of greater success — warming as he had ridden the metro.

His finger was icy. He dialled the number — only he possessed it. The central switchboard at Moscow Military District HQ outside the city would register the number, and the call would be diverted to Valenkov, commandant of the Moscow Garrison regiments. Moscow Garrison was cut off from the outside world — but it would accept his call.

Finger numb — he fumbled the glove back on to his thick hand, the telephone tucked between cheek and shoulder. He wanted action, quick, vivid decision, as he listened to the sputter and clicking of the connection. Valenkov had to be handled carefully, he told himself. Carefully 'Good afternoon, sir.' Valenkov himself, twenty years younger and knowing who must be his caller.

'Dmitri. Good afternoon. I'm still here, as you can hear.' He held his breath, trying to sense telephathically the mood of a younger man. The heavy joke seemed to delay in the wire, as if too indigestible to travel down its gut.

'Yes, sir.' Nothing. No commitment.

'I need cheering up, Dmitri,' he tried again. 'So I called you.'

'Sir.'

He was angry — Valenkov was behaving like a stubborn, idiot corporal. He had expected the call, since it was part of his agreement with Valenkov that he should report his safety at intervals before the final call at six on the twenty-fourth.

So that Valenkov would know he was still alive, he thought with contempt.

'Tell me again — your final decision.'

'Airborne assault on the Kremlin, at oh-six hundred. Tank assault on Dzerzhinsky Street, special squads to round up the designated targets.' Valenkov sounded as if he were reciting a lesson — one that bored him.

'Excellent, excellent!' Kutuzov enthused, watching his breath curling up to the low ceiling — seeing the ring of smoke-stain round the light-fitting — and noticing the ice forming diamonds on the windows. 'How long do you estimate the whole operation will take, Dmitri?'

'Forty minutes.'

'Excellent. Dmitri—?'

'Sir?'

'When it's over, promise me one thing?'

'What — would that be?'

'That you will smile! Show a little enthusiasm for our great enterprise.'

He waited for the reply, listening almost as if he could hear the man wrestling with his conscience, hear its grunts as he twisted it to what he thought of as treasonable shape; all for him, for Kutuzov, he reminded himself. He was the talisman, the ikon.

'If you give me the word, personally, to move against the Kremlin the day after tomorrow — then I will smile, sir. As I have said, sir, I will make no move against the Politburo or the KGB without knowing you are safe and will assume control after the operation.'

'Very well, Dmitri—!' he spluttered angrily. Then, more calmly: 'Very well. You will hear from me. Goodbye, Dmitri!'

When he put down the telephone, his hand was shaking. The weight of the promise he had given Valenkov seemed heavy on him. It was as if he had promised to run far and fast, or be young once more He slapped his hands on his thighs, and thought of the long underwear beneath the trousers of the formal suit, looked down at the high boots he had taken to wearing since he had slipped on ice-bound Ministry steps last winter and broken an ankle. And he hated it.

He could hear his teeth grinding, in the room and inside his head, in the blank silence. Freezing outside the grimy windows, the dirty diamonds of the ice thick on the panes. He was a monarch in exile, the forgotten hero about to return.

The fictions comforted him. His surroundings were not epical, but his purpose was. And though it was linked by a piece of wire to a frightened soldier, by his very voice he could change the world. Valenkov would obey, when the time came.

He fiddled with a loose button on his overcoat, looking down at the garment as it swelled over his ample stomach. It had once been a hard body. Now all that was left was the hard mind, the stubborn, dedicated clinging to an ideal.

He remembered the death of Lenin — the grief of young manhood. The great leader had never recovered from the assassination attempt by Churchill's agent. Then the years of Stalin the pig, the death of Trotsky in exile, murdered by the NKVD in the hands of the butcher-king, Beria. Socialism in one country, the filthiness of the Purges — the point of counterrevolution being reached — and the Fascist invasion saving Stalin from what he deserved at the hands of the people. Pig-Stalin had used, relied on, the greatness of the Russian people to save him while they saved their country.

And since then only the decline offeree, the collapse of will. Trading with the capitalists for the trinkets, the worthless things — the Soviet Union being bought like a whore.

The rush of thoughts was like volcanic activity, or the gases of indigestion. They discomfited him, even as they filled him with a shallow rage. He could hardly control himself while the procession of his own history, the history of his country and his ideology, passed through his awareness.

Look, his hands were quivering now. He clenched them, and banged them on his thighs as if they were the witnesses of senility, of imbecility. He breathed deeply, the exhalations seeming to roar in his ears in the room's silence.

Nothing could stop them — whatever had gone wrong, whatever was known — nothing could stop it.

Vorontsyev.

He was dangerous — though he knew nothing, knew nothing.

Frightening. Because, in the last few days, it had come down to a few old men — Ossipov, Praporovich, Dolohov, Pnin and the other generals. And a young man — two young men, he corrected himself. One in Helsinki, and the other flying back from the Far East.

He was thankful that Vorontsyev knew nothing about him, in no way threatened him. He knew about Ossipov's exercises, and guessed the invasion. But he did not know about the coup, and he did not know about Kutuzov. He was grateful for that. He was only an old man in a dirty bare room, and feeling very old, as he did at that moment, he could not but be afraid that the young man would find him.

Which was why Vassiliev would kill him, aboard the airliner.

Thirty-nine hours seemed a very long time to wait — to hide.

'What height are we at now, Boris?' the voice asked him softly, insistently. 'What does the altimeter read? Are we low enough for you to survive the fall?' And the voice chuckled in his ear, a dry, pitiless sound. Boris was even able to perceive how the menace of the voice had grown during the last — how long? And that was not the quality of the voice; it was his fear. He was hunched in a forced, doubled position on the cold floor of the baggage compartment. His buttocks were numb already, and the cold had ascended to his stomach, his genitals. He desperately wanted to urinate. The SID officer had held him at the closed hatch opposite the galley, in first class, until he was shivering with fear — then they had blindfolded him. Down the aisle, brushing past the rough curtain, its material against his face, through second class. The dick of locks, and the door closing behind them. Their breath, eagerly harsh — his own, barely controlled.

Then they had forced him to sit, dragged his arm between his knees, and the click of handcuffs, tightened so that they hurt. Then something to strap his ankles tight together. Then they had lifted him, and now he was close to the fuselage. He knew that. He thought — could not avoid thinking — he was placed close to the baggage door.

If it was unlocked, folded back — it would take one small push to tumble him out over the Yablonovny Mountains, or Lake Baikal. A shudder went through him.

He had rehearsed what he knew in his own mind in the early moments, or minutes — not hours? — before the sense of his isolation pressed down on him. There was the faintly creaking silence of the baggage compartment and nothing more for a long time, before the voice began to speak to him. The handcuffs had hurt then. Now, he could not feel his hands. They might have rotted on the ends of his wrists for all he knew. His stomach churned at the thought, and he hated the weakness that allowed such ridiculous imaginings to take root.

He knew some things, but not all. What could he tell them, what keep back? If he told them, would it help them, or himself?

It was the blindfold, of course. And the numbing cold. Deprivation of sense; so easy to achieve. He had lost the ability to know his surroundings, and the space around him expanded and contracted like something malleable. He could retain no firm hold on his environment. It was, at the worst moments, like falling from the plane.

They would not kill him, they would not kill him.

'You are a brave man, Boris. Many would have already broken. But not you.' He dung to the voice, now at his other ear, pathetically. It told him he was not alone, that he was still in the baggage compartment. Then someone moved a heavy weight across the floor, a deep scraping noise. He twitched, as if the door had opened and the sub-zero air outside had flowed over him. 'I don't think you will tell me what I want to know.' He felt proud of that. 'I shall dispose of you, then. You can be of no use to me.'

Then, silence.

He wanted to cry out, but they had gagged him as well with an evil-tasting woollen scarf. It filled his nostrils with the smell of cheap hair-oil. He wanted to cry out — it was too late, he realised. He shook his head, then nodded it stupidly, like a moving doll, and tried to wriggle his numb limbs about. To show them he was alive.

He could not tell them, if they didn't take off the gag! Desperately, he worked his mouth on the gag, trying to chew at it, his mouth full of the strands of wool. He couldn't get his teeth outside the great wrap of the scarf — if only he could do that. He tried to pull his arms back to his face, but he must have been tied in such a way that he wouldn't — couldn't move them…

His one chance lay in getting the gag off, crying out. They could not see his eyes, he could not move his arms. He could not show them how much he wanted to talk — that he did not want to die.

Someone laughed, a distance away. So disorientated was he, that it could have come from beneath him. He moaned, and could not even hear the noise he made.

Cold air — he swore it. The click of a lock — he bent his body towards the sound, straining to hear it. Then the arms round him, moving him so that he was against the bulkhead. Gratefully he pressed his head against its solidity. Then the door slid back — he was against the door! The air — freezing. The wind, terrible. He screamed, and screamed. He was falling, he knew he was falling…

At that moment, some sensation at the back of his head.

The blindfold was coming off! He passed out, gratefully. He did not want to see the jagged mountains, the endless lake towards which he was falling.

Vorontsyev stood against the luggage, securely strapped except for the one chest they had used to make a noise, just before opening the hatch. He was smoking a cigarette, the feeling just returning to his hands and feet and face, despite the fact that he had worn gloves, and wrapped his scarf around his cheeks when they opened the hatch. The gale that had blown on them had terrified him, and he understood a little of what Vassiliev had undergone.

He had no pity for him; he had had to break him, and quickly. They were half-way to Moscow, possibly, and due to refuel at Novosibirsk before very long. That respite in his agony would have given Vassiliev the strength to hold out, perhaps.

Besides which, Vorontsyev knew and accepted without qualm that he was avenging his private betrayal on the steward who was also a courier. It served the man right. They had used his own wife against him.

He drew deeply on the cigarette, watching the KGB man — Tikhon — as he revived Vassiliev. The trick now was too appear friendly, reconciled. The heavy coat was loosely buttoned around Vassiliev, and the handcuffs and the strap had disappeared. There was vodka in a flask. Tikhon poured some against Vassiliev's blue lips, the man spluttered, and his eyelids echoed the movement.

Then he was staring at Vorontsyev, who smiled at him, took out his cigarette case, and offered Vassiliev a cigarette. They had moved the steward so that he was sitting on a strapped pile of luggage, Tikhon holding him almost in his arms, the vodka flask tilted towards the man's lips. It was as if two other people had come and rescued Vassiliev.

'Well, Boris?' Vorontsyev said, coming to sit beside him, so that all three sat like children on a wall, legs dangling free. Vassiliev coughed on the cigarette smoke. 'Tell me about it.'

It was important not to mention what he had been through, or to indicate that it might recur. He would remember vividly and know.

'I–I wanted to, didn't want to…' Vassiliev stuttered, his eyes rolling in his head.

'I know, I know. But that is over now. Just tell me. Shall I ask you questions? Will that make it simpler?'

Vassiliev stared in silence at the closed cargo hatch, checking minutely that the locks were fully shut. He drew on the cigarette — a bout of nausea gripped him, lurching his stomach sideways. He gagged on the vomit, then lay back, the sharp edges of a case digging into his spine. When Tikhon offered him the vodka, he guzzled at the narrow neck of the flask, and the liquor burned down into his stomach.

It seemed to settle him. He sat up again, and nodded. 'Yes. Ask me.'

Vorontsyev knew he could not take long. Vassiliev, after his experience, would retreat progressively into a grudging silence. There would be some recovery of the will, enough to lead to lying and prevarication. The truth would come only at first.

'Who is your superior? Who recruited you? Who is behind Group 1917?' Vassiliev appeared disappointed that he could not answer the question. He said: 'I — don't know…'

'You've never met him?'

'A few times — to report directly to him.'

'And?'

'It was always at night. He kept his face away from the light. Just an old man, with a dog.'

'Where were these meetings?'

'Usually in the "Field of Virgins", near the Tolstoy statue. You know it?'

Vorontsyev nodded. He did not consider the information. He said, 'What is his code-name?'

'Kutuzov,' Vassiliev replied, still at the point of being eager to help.

Vorontsyev smiled. 'A liking for heroic figures,' he commented. 'So have you, no doubt. How many are there like you?'

'Perhaps thirty — no more than that.'

'You will write down all the names you know, when we have finished talking. Now — Ossipov is the dry-run for the invasion, is he not?' Vassiliev nodded. Vorontsyev stifled his sigh of relief. 'Who will command the invasion?'

'Praporovich himself.'

Vorontsyev had known, of course. It had to be the Commander of Soviet Forces North. Nevertheless, the information was like a blow that expelled breath, left him winded. He was silent for a time, then he said, 'His entire staff is involved?'

Vassiliev nodded. Vorontsyev forebore to call them traitors. 'What do his staff know?'

'Some of them have the complete picture, but most believe it is — sanctioned by the Kremlin.' There was a contempt in the voice. 'Dolohov is involved, too,' Vassiliev offered confidingly.

'Yes, he would have to be.' He lit another cigarette, then said: 'When is it to happen?'

Vassiliev was silent. Vorontsyev wondered whether he was already becoming truculent, considering evasion and lies. Then: 'I have been relieved of my job as a courier. It must be close.'

'How are they communicating now?'

'Secure telephones.'

'Kutuzov is in Moscow?'

'I suppose so.'

'What of the coup?' It was difficult to keep the excitement from his voice.

'To co-incide with the invasion of Norway and Finland. Exactly.'

'Who is involved? When does it take place?'

The cold silence of the baggage-compartment seemed interminable, seemed to press upon them. Then Vassiliev said, 'I do not know. It is the truth. I carried messages concerning Finland Station, but not the coup. I do not know how, or when.'

There was hesitation in the voice, but Vorontsyev did not think he was lying. With a nauseous certainty, he knew that Andropov knew as much already as he was able to tell him — the 24th. It had to be. He forced himself to consider only the interrogation. In an attempt to enlarge the innocence of the atmosphere, so that Vassiliev might volunteer any remaining information, Vorontsyev said, 'We should be at normal cruising height and speed by now — unless we are already descending to Novosibirsk.'

It was the observation of a seasoned passenger, nothing more, but it affected Vassiliev. He felt an inexplicable rush of gratitude to his interrogator. He said eagerly, 'There is an Englishman, in Leningrad. At the safe house. He was captured in Finland.'

It was not what Vorontsyev had expected; nothing like. He drew on his cigarette, then asked, 'What use would he be?'

'He spoke to Kutuzov, I was told.'

Vorontsyev stubbed out his cigarette on the metal of the floor, and stood up. He looked at Vassiliev, then said to Tikhon, 'When he has given you the names — every name he knows, take him back to first class.' Tikhon nodded. Vassiliev looked grateful, and dog-like. But the eyes were staring, and tired. He would be little more use. Tikhon had already taken out a notebook, and pen, offering them to Vassiliev. The numb hands hung from the swollen wrists, apparently useless.

'He will write for you,' Vorontsyev said kindly, and went out, closing the door behind him.

When he entered the flight-deck again, the captain turned his head, and scowled. Yet there was a gleam in his eyes. He evidently did not care what had happened to Vassiliev, but his dislike for Vorontsyev was unmistakable.

He said, 'It's snowing in Moscow. We refuel at Novosibirsk, then fly on to Sverdlovsk. We'll hold there until it clears.' He knew the information would anger Vorontsyev.

'You'll hold at Novosibirsk until I've talked to Moscow!' he snapped. 'Radio ahead. I want to talk to the KGB man in the Tower. I want to arrange a secure channel to Moscow Centre.'

The snow was thickening outside the window of the restaurant. Kutuzov had watched it throughout his meal. When he had finished his coffee and a glass of Ghorilka s pertsem, Ukrainian vodka with peppers in it, he went to the telephone booth — it had been checked for security that afternoon by someone posing as a KGB telephone engineer — and dialled Valenkov. When the man came on the line, Kutuzov said, 'What if it is snowing on the morning of the 24th, Dmitri?'

Valenkov seemed surprised, even insulted, by the question. His voice was testy as he said: 'We have contingency plans for that eventuality, sir. A special airborne detachment will travel by APC to the Kremlin. A plan I personally prefer — except that you seemed always to favour the Blitzkrieg of airborne assault.'

It was a just rebuke. Kutuzov laughed, and again: 'Forgive me, Dmitri. I am in your hands. Goodbye.'

When he came out of the booth, he was shaking with anger at himself. A stupid, nerveless old man! That was all he was becoming. All through his meal the falling snow had nagged at his stomach like indigestion.

He went back to his table. One of the GRU men in the restaurant, as his special guard, settled back in his seat as Kutuzov ordered another Ukrainian vodka. He felt cold. There was no word from Novosibirsk concerning Vorontsyev, who should be dead by now. He would have to make a call from secure line four later if there was no message.

He swallowed gaggingly at the peppered vodka.

Vorontsyev stared up at a street map of Novosibirsk as Kapustin, at the other end of the radio-link, digested his first bout of information. He was in the KGB duty-room at the airport. He had never been to Novosibirsk before, the third largest town in the Soviet Union, a vast industrial complex spurred to enlarge its industrial capacity ten times after the evacuation of industry from European Russia to Siberia during the war against the Fascists.

There were more than a million people in Novosibirsk. Vorontsyev cared about none of them. The map of the city, that lay to the south of the airport, divided by the River Ob, was simply a distraction. It bore no relation even to the sprawling mass of lights he had seen beneath the wing as they made their descent.

The temperature outside the plane had been minus five degrees centigrade. Mild for the time of year, milder than Moscow at that moment. Already he had been told that the weather was closing in outside the windows of Kapustin's office, where he and Andropov listened to the tinny, strange voice with its apocalyptic messages. Vorontsyev knew he would be unlikely to get into Cheremetievo or any other Moscow airport that day, or night.

He felt impotent and frustrated.

'How were these men recruited, Vorontsyev?' It was Kapustin again.

Vorontsyev felt unreasonably angry, as if his superior was simply tinkering with unimportant parts of the machine instead of ripping out its wiring, stopping it.

'My assistant was told by Vassiliev that he was an army reject — though there was no reason given at the time he applied for a commission. Then, after a time, an approach was made to him. He believes all of them were recruited in the same way — high-grade officer material rejected, then picked up for this special work…'

He was interrupted by Andropov's dry tones. He was surprised that he could catch the full acid superiority of the voice, even at this distance on a satellite radio-link.

Andropov said, 'Read me the full list of names again.' Vorontsyev did so, slowly, spelling out many of them. There were seventeen in all. When he had finished, he said, 'What will you do now, sir?'

'Aeroflot will be informed. KGB men inflight will make immediate arrests — the others will be collected on arrival at destination. From them we will build up the complete picture.'

Vorontsyev said urgently, 'Sir, you don't seem to understand the urgency…'

'I understand, Vorontsyev. What would you have me do — order the KGB Resident in Vladivostok to go and arrest Ossipov?'

'No, sir — I simply…'

'What else have you for us, Vorontsyev?'

'There is an Englishman at the Leningrad safe house they've been using. He can identify Kutuzov — at least, he is supposed to have seen him!'

'An Englishman?'

'A soldier — sent to Finland to verify some infra-red photographs. He is, apparently, still alive.'

'Then we shall have him.' There was a silence, as if Andropov had turned and looked out of the window. Then: 'Can we trust anyone in the Leningrad KGB? The address of the safe house is an address used by the KGB. What is your opinion?'

'I don't know, sir. It seems to be mainly GRU — Vassiliev is vague. He doesn't know very much of the whole picture.'

Another silence, then: 'We can't fly in a team from outside. At least, not from here. You will do it from there. Understand? I will speak to the Resident at Novosibirsk, and place you in charge. Can we trust them, do you think?'

'Again, sir — I don't know. But it's a risk we have to take…'

'I agree. Select a team, and brief it to take the safe house. Then catch the first available flight to Leningrad. The weather is fine there, I believe.' Vorontsyev sensed the irony, even thousands of miles from the grey face, the thin lips that would have been slightly curled as the words were spoken. Someone had once called Andropov a demonic bank-clerk; Vorontsyev could not be sure now whether it was a notorious dissident or someone in SID.

He shook his head slightly, and said, 'Sir, is the object to get the Englishman, or everyone we can?'

'Everyone — but the Englishman most importantly.'

'What about Praporovich, sir?' He was nervous of reminding the Chairman; yet it seemed encumbent upon him. There was an arid vagueness about the conversation, akin to the atmosphere of an academic exercise.

'Yes. There is one man in Leningrad we can trust absolutely.' Vorontsyev knew that would be the department 'V' operative, a man unconnected with the official hierarchy of the Resident and his staff. He would have a job, a family, a normal civilian life. The KGB assassin in Leningrad. 'The man will be briefed to report to you before you take the safe house — after the accident has occurred.'

'Sir.' Vorontsyev thought, then: 'Will that stop it, sir? The invasion, I mean?'

A silence, as if he had gone too far, enquired too nearly into matters beyond him. Then, as if admitting his right to know, a reward of unprecedented confidence for the man who had broken Vassiliev, Andropov said, 'I do not know. Dolohov in Murmansk is a different matter. He cannot be got at so readily. However, the same kind of operation is necessary there. I — will come back to you on that, Vorontsyev. Meanwhile…' Andropov went on as if talking to himself. '…we need time, Vorontsyev, time in which to assure loyalties. We have no time left!'

'No, sir. Sir — don't you think — I mean, it has to be the Moscow Garrison, doesn't it? If they're going to make the coup effective…'

'I agree. What do you suggest?' Again the trace of irony, distinct as the odour of tobacco. 'We arrest the whole Garrison?'

'Sorry.'

'No. Your task is to get a team to Leningrad before tomorrow morning — find the Englishman, and identify Kutuzov. If we have him, and Praporovich and Dolohov are dead — then there will be no order for the invasion, and none for the coup. Do I make myself clear?' Andropov was without pleasantry or obligation now. Simply efficient. 'Kutuzov is the key. We must have him!'

When he had broken the radio link, Vorontsyev sat in the swivel chair before the set for a while. In his mind he could see, quite clearly, a picture of an old man in the park known as the 'Field of Virgins', walking a dog. In only one respect did the picture differ from anything conjured by Vassiliev's information. In the image in Vorontsyev's mind, the old man and the dog were accompanied by a child.

Fourteen: Beyond Discussion

'Just in time to catch the post office before it closes,' Philipson observed to the driver, who was too dulled with the cold to reply. The observation car had been parked opposite the Central Post Office in Station Square for less than fifteen minutes, but already Philipson had to keep wiping the windscreen to clear the mist that was freezing — he rubbed now with his heavy mitten until a scratchy little patch of clear glass allowed him to check that it was Captain Ozeroff entering the glass doors of the post office.

'All units,' Philipson said into the car radio, now that he was certain, 'subject has just entered the post office. No one is to follow him in — I'll go. He hasn't seen me.' He looked at Greaves, the driver. 'Come on, old son. Let's go and see who's been writing to our friend.'

The driver merely grunted. Outside the car, the wind cut instantly through Philipson's sheepskin coat, and the snow struck through his fur-lined boots. He wondered whether a centrally-heated office had made him soft, then thrust his hands into his pockets, and crossed the Mannerheimintie from the railway station, careful with his footing as he dodged the last of the home-going commuter traffic heading north to the suburbs.

He went up the steps, suddenly aware of the unfamiliar gun in the small of his back, tucked into his waistband, as if the temperature of its butt had suddenly dropped. He avoided a woman in a tent-like fur coat, then went through the revolving doors into the delusory warmth of strip-lighting in the high Riling. It was warmer — where was he?

Philipson had only a vague idea of why Aubrey was interested in Captain Ozeroff of the Soviet security team at Lahtilinna. But, as surveillance jobs went, he had done a good one, in his own estimation, especially since Ozeroff had been off-duty and in Helsinki for most of the day, and surveillance of a slow-moving, undistracted subject was more difficult, and wearing. Ozeroff had been to the Ateneum Art Gallery, the Parliament building, the National and Municipal Museums, and down to the harbour in a taxi — plenty of open spaces, and plenty of confined spaces. But the surveillance, it appeared, had remained unsuspected.

Philipson had had to shuffle men, monitor everything; enjoy the organisation and be bored to tears by the passing, monotonous hours.

Ozeroff was over by the mail collection counter, talking to a grey-haired assistant, explaining in affable terms and halting Finnish — by the look of the smiles — what he wanted. Philipson sensed the little tug of excitement in his belly — something? Or nothing; the answer came like a breath of the outside air through the revolving doors. Greaves had taken up a watching position behind him, filling in some interminable form — perhaps for a Finnish driving licence. Ozeroff was fifteen yards away. Philipson, pleased with himself, confident of security, moved towards Ozeroff, and stood as if forming the first of a queue behind him at the counter. He tried to appear bored — recalled the hours and the scrappy sandwich lunch, and had no difficulty in looking uninterested in the conversation.

'Your aunt — naturally. A strange name to come from Karelia,' the old man behind the counter was murmuring, half to himself. 'However, you have the little warrant, there is no difficulty.' He turned to search in the alphabetically-labelled pigeon holes behind him. Philipson caught an impression of the edge of Ozeroff's jaw, tight with muscle, and his hand resting on the counter, hopping like a bird — suspicion, tension? Silly old bugger, Philipson thought as the old man pulled out air mail letters and inspected them carefully through his thick glasses before putting them back.

'You're not from Karelia, are you?' the old man asked conversationally, without turning round.

'From the Russian part — we had to learn Russian at school.' Ozeroff was reluctant to reply. Philipson admired the story, but that small feeling was swept away as the feeling of delight overcame him, Ozeroff was here, pretending to be someone else. He concentrated on not moving, then on allowing all the tension of his frame to flow into a desultory shuffle of his feet, as if he was bored with waiting. Ozeroff did not look round.

The old man turned from the pigeon holes, and held out a letter to Ozeroff — Philipson watched as the hand came out, almost in slow-motion, to take it, then speed up as it was pocketed.

'Thank you,' Ozeroff said. 'She will be pleased to hear from her sister.'

'A pleasure,' the old man replied, staring at the breastpocket into which the letter had gone, as if envious of it or its Russian stamps. Philipson stepped aside as Ozeroff turned away and headed for the door. The old man adjusted his glasses, put his head on one side, and was about to ask Philipson what he could do for him.

Philipson said, 'Who was that letter addressed to?' The old man was taken aback. 'Quickly.' Philipson held out the Helsinki CID card that identified him as an Inspector, so that the old man adjusted his glasses once more, stared at the photograph that matched the face of the man in front of him, nodded a couple of times, and cleared his throat, as if he were about to utter a solemn promise of prayer.

'Ah, Inspector — a letter for the young man's aunt. I think the man is Russian, but he could be from Karelia, eh? The Russian part. Lots of people have crossed the border in the last-'

'He hasn't got an aunt from Karelia. Now — who was the letter for?'

Philipson tried to be neutral, because the old man ought not to remember him too clearly, for any reason — and he was staring attentively at him now, enjoying a sense of conspiracy.

'A strange name — probably a Jew, mm?'

'How would I know — you haven't told me yet.'

'Oh, sorry, Inspector. I hear myself in my head most of the time, living alone. Think I've spoken when I haven't. Fanny Kaplan — that's her name. Strange, isn't it? Fanny Kaplan.'

'Thanks. And keep this to yourself, uh?' There was no hope of it, but it had to be said.

'Of course, of course—'

The old man watched Philipson join the man filling out the form and both men as they went out of the doors, shaking his head with puzzlement, and excitement, all the time.

Outside, Greaves pointed out Ozeroff's retreating back.

'He's probably heading somewhere he can read that,' Philipson remarked. 'Unless he already knows what's in it. Let's go.'

As he went gingerly down the frozen steps, he considered the addressee of the letter with the Russian stamps. There was something familiar about the name, but he could not remember what it was. And it had nothing to do with espionage — he had a ridiculous idea that it had something to do with sixth-form history lessons. Ridiculous, of course.

'Fanny Kaplan—'

'What?' Greaves said, stepping carefully alongside him, a hundred yards behind Ozeroff.

'Look, I'll report this over the radio. Aubrey might as well know at once. You follow our chum, and I'll pick you up in the car.'

'Don't be long, then,' was all Greaves said by way of reply.

As he crossed the Mannerheimintie, Philipson tried to remember where he had heard the name before — but all he could think of was getting drunk after the school fifteen had beaten the old boy's strongest side in his last year. The history master had played at wing-forward, being an old boy. Fanny Kaplan — he could almost hear him saying it now.

Praporovich stared down from the gallery at the huge map table. He had come out of the glass booth where the computer-operators were feeding in movement reports and dispositions, because the atmosphere seemed unreal in there. The glass had become that of a soundless fish tank, and the events registering down there on the board of no more interest that gawping faces staring into the tank. Out on the gallery, there was still little noise. Each of the staff-officers round the table wore headphones and throat-mikes, and their murmurs were indistinct and desultory. But it was more real — the lights glowed more brightly, and he could see through them to the tanks and guns and ships they represented.

Pnin was across the border, taking up concealed position prior to the attack on Ivalo and the capture of the airfield. He thought of Pnin because of the trouble his rehearsals had almost caused — the other Finland Stations were also in position. Attack Force One was massed on the Kirkenes road, right up against the border with Norway. Dolohov's Red Banner Fleet units were putting to sea from ice-free Murmansk — troop-carriers and their submarine and destroyer escorts. And the submarines — the big ones, were in position at the mouths of the principal fjords all the way to Tromsø. Further to the east on the map, well inside the Soviet Union, GSFN airborne troops were being moved up to forward positions; they were less than an hour behind schedule, well within the tolerances they had set.

The size of it — the reality — ran through him with the effect of an electric shock. He could not help his features assuming a fierce smile, as if he had been confronted with some massive present in childhood, or some anticipated sexual joy as a young man. There, there Ships, tanks, APCs — the chemical platoons, because Ossipov had got it right in time and the computer programme for the use of the VX gas on each of the target areas had been transmitted to GSFN HQ. Ships, tanks, guns, men; regiments, battalions, divisions, armies; concepts, words, little pictures from old army exercises rolled through his mind in the humbled image of a dreamer.

Tomorrow.

'Very well — Kapustin, order the eliminations to be carried out! You have the list.'

Andropov watched Kapustin's back until the Deputy Chairman had closed the door behind him. Then, just as clearly, he seemed to watch his own features, though there was no mirror before him and no reflection from the polished surface of his desk. Something was happening to his face, and he could see it clearly, as if each muscular twitch and movement was a brush-stroke on the wall in front of him. His face was collapsing into a mirror of fear.

It was like a nightmare — he put up his hand to remove his glasses, because he was sweating around the eyes, then put his hand hastily away because that nakedness would have further reduced his face to a frightened blob. He remembered his trick of making the light catch his spectacles, so that his eyes disappeared into two moons of light — but there was no one to see the trick, so it would not work. His hand, then trembling. He put it away, silting on it with his thigh; and he could feel the quiver in his thigh.

Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the KGB, sat on his hands, his body hunched forward in his chair, as if he had been caned at school and was trying to still the throbbing. Yuri Andropov's face was out of control, sliding into an expression of terror at what he ordered, and its now undoubted consequences. He had just ordered the deaths of a dozen men, Yuri Andropov hated himself.

When the man died, the invasion would be stopped. It would begin. He had used the only weapon he had, murder, and it was insufficient. Just as his face was insufficiently endowed with muscular control to present another look than the one of terror he knew it was assuming.

The coup would go ahead — they knew nothing, nothing.

Vorontsyev — Major Vorontsyev. A few men, raiding a house in Leningrad. How could that stop anything? He, as Chairman, could stop nothing by ordering the deaths of Praporovich and Dolohov and a dozen generals. It could not come to good. They had left it too late. Too late. He realised, as his body calmed, and the persistent image of his collapsing features went away, that he was a fatalist. They had played and they had lost. Temerity, poor investigative technique, over-confidence — it did not matter what the reason was. They had lost.

In accepting that fact, he told himself, there is a kind of strength. Certainly, he felt calmer, stronger.

'Sir — a message from your daughter.'

'What — now?'

'Yes, Admiral.'

'Very well. What is it?' Dolohov could not resist being amused, even on the point of leaving for Praporovich's headquarters. His own work was done — the units of the Fleet were at sea — and, yes, there was time for his only child to ask him what he would like for his birthday, or to tell him that she would be staying for supper so what did he want her to cook for him—?

He would be sorry to tell her that he would not be home for the next forty-eight hours.

'It's your wife, sir. Apparently, she's been taken to hospital.'

'What? When?'

'Your daughter found her, in the kitchen, sir. She had collapsed—'

'How is she, man?'

'Your daughter says she's all right, that you're not to worry, sir—'

'Worry? How can I not worry? Dammit — which hospital?'

'Sir — she's feeling much better, just a dizzy spell—'

'Which hospital? I must go and see her.'

Aubrey stood at the tall window of the study in which Khamovkhin had first received him and Buckholz. There was no warmth from the huge fire behind him, and he was aware of the cold striking through the frosty glass. He wondered why he had come away from the fire at all, except that, he had wanted to see the light of a cigarette from down on the snowbound paths and lawns, the flicker of torchlight from the security team on duty. Silly. But, the news was deeply disturbing. He turning again to Anders, Buckholz's chief aide.

'You're certain of this ident, Anders?'

The tall American was little more than a bulky shadow on the far side of the fireplace.

'Yes, sir. We're sure.' The voice seemed to come out of the firelit shadow, and Aubrey had to force himself to attend to the mere words, not their dramatic delivery.

'And Captain Ozeroff is nowhere to be found, you say?'

'Sir, Mr Buckholz checked every one of the Russians himself. Our man wasn't one of them — he's gone AWOL, Mr Aubrey.'

'Damn!' He turned to Anders, then as if he felt his back suddenly exposed to the window, turned back again. 'Ilarion Vikentich Galakhov, Lieutenant, GRU. One-time Intelligence Adviser to Cuba — you're sure about that suspicion of attachment to Cuban Intelligence, are you?'

'One of our senior Latin American analysts was on the wrong end of that attachment, sir,' Anders replied without expression. 'Mission curtailed — and his successor in the field.'

Aubrey looked down at the message in his hand. It had been delivered to Lahtilinna over the radio, in a simple code, and been broken down for him by an operator drafted in from Copenhagen earlier in the day as part of the replacement security team. The message scribbled in a bold, quick hand on the message form was from Philipson, and it was originally timed some hours earlier. By the time he had it, it had been too late to arrest the substitute Ozeroff. He had disappeared — probably triggered by the letter with the Russian stamps.

'Fanny Kaplan,' he murmured.

'Begging your pardon, sir?' Anders murmured deferentially.

'You know your immediate post-Revolutionary history, Anders?'

'Some.'

'Remember Fanny Kaplan?' He wished Anders would not remember, as if that might make his own conclusion less real. Ozeroff had reported back to Lahtilinna from his day off, had spent less than an hour in his room before the official handover of security duties had led to his being required to report to Buckholz — and had calmly disappeared. So completely that repeated searches of the castle and the grounds had not unearthed him.

Anders was silent for a long time, so long that Aubrey thought he was bemused by the question.

'Yes,' he said eventually.

'I ask you again — you are certain about Galakhov's role in Latin America, and his real function while acting as adviser to Cuban Intelligence?'

'Yes.'

'Then the letter was a trigger — it probably contained blank paper. Perhaps even a black spot, mm?' Anders seemed not to understand. 'It meant simply — go underground, carry out your mission. Isn't that the final signal in a Department "V" operation?'

'Often it is, sir.'

'Fanny Kaplan! She killed Lenin — shot him up so badly he never recovered. My God, but these people in Group 1917 love their recent history!' Now he turned to Anders. 'I must see Khamovkhin — and cut through the bluff and the bull. He has to be made to realise that he is the target for Fanny Kaplan—' His words died suddenly as a thought struck him. 'I think we may have been extremely stupid to have taken over security here, Anders.'

'How's that, sir?'

'Because, if Khamovkhin now comes to harm, it will be our fault. And a perfect excuse for our friends in Group 1917 to make war on the murderers of the Soviet First Secretary!'

'Mr First Secretary,' Buckholz spluttered, losing patience at last, 'we're way beyond any performance here! You could be on the verge of rounding up the so-called ringleaders back home — though I doubt it — but we're talking about your life!'

'Very well. Air Buckholz!' Aubrey could see that Khamovkhin was shaken by the outburst as he was by the threat, which he had seemed capable of absorbing in some way, as if digesting it. 'Very well. However, your men have now completed the take-over. One of them will be on guard outside the door of any room I occupy, until you give orders otherwise. What more can I say or do to please you?' The square features were defiant, the thick eyebrows seeming to bristle, the jaw to jut like a prow.

'You're a prisoner here, sir — I have to make that clear to you, and you must make it clear to your people, and to the world, that you are unwell. That's why you have had to cancel your speech to the conference tomorrow.'

'And what about President Wainwright? Is he ill, too?'

'Weather delay. Washington's snowbound.'

'Fortunate.'

'He'd have found another reason.'

'Very well — I will have a communique drafted, for the conference and for the President of Finland.'

'I have it here,' Aubrey said quietly, holding it out. Khamovkhin took the sheets of paper and studied them. Then he removed his glasses, nodded at them, and walked out of the room.

'Sweet Jesus Christ,' Buckholz breathed, slumping into the chair opposite Aubrey. 'What is it with that guy? World War Three is about to happen, his life's in danger — and he spends his time offering us drinks and making small-talk!'

'He's beyond consideration of his predicament, Charles. He can't bear to think about it. A condition that is going to get worse.'

'Hell. Is he kidding when he tells us the ringleaders are on the point of being arrested — Andropov says so?'

'I should think so. Killed, perhaps, but not arrested. If the Chairman's men can get at them in time.'

'In time for what? They could start the whole thing!'

'I realise that, Charles. I was trying not to think about it. Just like the First Secretary, I consider that the scenario doesn't bear thinking about!'

Buckholz looked at his watch, then into the fire.

'The first units of the AMF should be landing at Bardufoss about now, Kenneth.'

'Please don't remind me.'

Ilarion Vikentich Galakhov looked up at the window of the first floor study. A thin strip of light where the curtain had not been closed properly. Probably the security men, Aubrey and Buckholz, were still discussing his disappearance.

He cursed Kutuzov for the romanticism of the letter from Moscow. All the way, since the beginning of the operation, he had argued against any final signal to Helsinki. But the old man had been adamant. There had to be a back-up, a contingency. Withdraw — abort — go ahead. A range of signals indicated by the arrangement of the stamps and their dominations on letters addressed to 'Ozeroff' care of the post office — or the final signal, the 'kill' alert, indicated by the addressee — Fanny Kaplan. Nothing had come for the man he was pretending to be, but that afternoon there had been a letter for Ms Kaplan. Stupid game-playing — he was going to kill Khamovkhin anyway.

He adjusted the rifle over his shoulder, and clapped his hands to his sides as he felt the cold of the night. He heard footsteps behind him, smelt cigar smoke on the freezing air.

'Anything?' the American asked him.

'Not a thing,' he replied in English. He might have been Norwegian with his accent. 'Quiet as the grave.'

'As long as it's not your grave — or his,' the American commented, tossing his head to indicate the lighted window above them.

'He's safe now,' Galakhov said lightly.

'Let's hope so. If anything happens to — him, old man Buckholz will put my ass in a sling!' Galakhov laughed, the American puffed a wreath of smoke up against the hard stars, and walked on, his footsteps crunching like the sounds of a child eating a hard biscuit as he move; on the snow-covered gravel. 'Keep your eyes peeled!' he called back.

'Sure,' Galakhov replied.

When the American had gone, he grinned to himself. Easy. Simple and easy. Become Norwegian, join the hunters. A for in a pink coat, riding a horse, he thought. The image amused him.

Fanny Kaplan, the envelope had said. Fanny Kaplar. Khamovkhin was a dead man. The only problem would be getting away alive, afterwards.

The nose of the huge USAF Galaxy transport plane opened even as the dying roar of the reverse thrust from its engine still hovered at the edge of audibility. The ramp of the cargo-hold thudded against the cleared runway of Bardufoss, northern Norway, and almost immediately a camouflaged truck rolled on to the ramp, then another and another, out into the landscape which glinted a ghostly silver in the moonlight. Exhaust: rolled in white clouds behind them as they moved away from the hard-lit, ribbed interior of the transport plane towards their assembly point.

Two RAF Harriers roared over the airfield, a deafening wave of sound succeeding them, only to be followed by a lesser wave which lapped against the low surrounding hills as a flight of Wessex helicopters circled the perimeter of the field. Then another Galaxy, which disgorged field artillery, then a Luftwaffe Transall carrying tanks, and an RAF Hercules which contained Royal Marines, landed in swift succession, settling their bulks into the iron-hard airstrip.

From the tower of the air station, a group of senior NATO officers watched the arrival of the first units of the Allied Mobile Force, the lynch-pin of any NATO first-stage land defence against a surprise attack.

Among the officers, and the most senior of them, was Major-General Jolfusson, Commander Allied Forces Northern Norway. As the succession of whale-like transport planes disgorged their cargoes of men and war machines, he was unable to take any satisfaction from the sight. His staff were also subdued. This was no NATO exercise — and it was happening all over the north of Norway that night — or would happen the following morning and afternoon. Especially at Kirkenes, where the main thrust of the Soviet attack would come. Jolfusson was due at Kirkenes, then Tromsø, before midday.

Major-General Jolfusson had never expected to see the day. Never. The unthinkable was happening. On both sides of the border of his country, the world was massing to begin the next war. And it was all but too late to avoid the first clash. His orders stated oh-six hundred, tomorrow, the twenty-fourth. That was when the invasion would begin.

It was too late. He looked at his watch. Already, it was four o'clock in the morning of the twenty-third.