The Furies

INFILTRATION

Sharp has made a discovery. He has found that, until now, he never really knew what stress is.

Problem: to infiltrate two spies — Sharp and Ambra — into a village six thousand kilometers away, in a military area of Arctic Russia. To do so within the next few hours. And, their task completed, to get them out quickly. The small MI6 team assigned this problem has developed a monstrous collective headache.

A British presence in the area, they soon find, is thin to vanishing point. True, HMS Victorious is at that moment eight hundred kilometers to the north of the peninsula, measuring the depth of sea ice in an underwater Arctic passage, oblivious to Russian territorial claims to the region. There is a brief, far-fetched discussion about dropping the spies from a long-range Nimrod somewhere over the Arctic and collecting them in the Victorious, which then delivers them to Chelyuskin Point on the Poluostrov Taymyr, the northernmost peninsula on earth. But under Article Seventy-six of the Law of the Sea Convention, Russia certainly has two hundred nautical miles of offshore sea as their exclusive territory. And the Poluostrov Taymyr is on the great circle route from Omaha, Cheyenne Peak, and the old Kansas missile silos — stick a nose out of the water and radar stations all around the peninsula bristle with curiosity. The team feel that if the Russians detected HMS Victorious in their territorial waters, armed as it is with forty-eight nuclear warheads preprogrammed for Russian targets, unpredictable and dangerous reactions might follow.

There is another British presence in the form of a Liverpool-registered ship sent by Greenpeace to investigate the dumping of nuclear waste in the Arctic, but as this has been impounded by Russian coast guards and the crew imprisoned in Murmansk, the team feel that this isn't useful, either. Murmansk, in any case, is as far from the destination as is Aberdeen from Naples.

Runways built on drifting ice and run by commercial operators are another possibility: There is an ice station at eighty-nine degrees north with such a runway, and this is within flying range of Khatanga. Used by polar explorers and intrepid tourists, a switch might be arranged, with the spies "returning" to Khatanga from their North Pole trip. However, these runways are only open in the spring; there are no explorers to switch with.

The team learn that there is a joint Cambridge– Russian scientific group somewhere on the drifting Arctic ice, with an arrangement to charter Russian MIL-88 military helicopters. But they can't see how to exploit this.

Several tour ships operate in the area, and some of these have helicopters that, at some risk, might be used for infiltration. But a quick survey shows that there are no such cruise ships currently in operation. This is unsurprising since the pack ice has almost closed in.

Finally, the increasingly desperate team are driven to tackle the main problem head-on: Russian bureaucracy. The standard Russian visa they can handle; MI6 has long experience in that line. The real headache is the rhazporezhenie, a local permit which has to be signed by the governor of the Taymyr Autonomous District. And there is also a military permit to be forged, from the Frontier Directorate of the Federal Security Service of Russia for the Murmansk region. There could well be problems with the Frontier Detachment of the Murmansk military: The team quickly uncovers horror stories of visitors being arrested and held by armed guards at Khatanga airport even with all the proper permissions. But how to obtain signatures of officials, civilian and military, from this remote area of the world? For their forgeries, the document experts need them now!

The MI6 team, at last, have a much-needed breakthrough: They find an adventure trekking firm in London, with experience of expeditions taking off from Khatanga. They rouse its managing director from his Virginia Waters bed and transport him swiftly to his office in central London. Photocopies of documents signed by the authorities are removed and taken by motorcycle courier to Hanslope Park, where the technicians are standing by like emergency surgeons awaiting an accident victim. The document specialists get busy.

The flying time from London to Moscow is three hours and fifty minutes. From Moscow, there is a weekly flight to Khatanga, the last regular flight of the year taking place later that day — "regular" meaning subject to the vagaries of Arctic weather. False passports already exist for Sharp and Ambra; an improvised cover story is quickly put together. If the infiltration goes perfectly, and if Max Krafft exists and is in Khatanga, and if he isn't ga-ga, and if he's willing to talk about his wartime work, then it might — or might not — happen that he will have something useful to say.

The team leave a problem unsolved. They can get the spies into Khatanga — maybe — but they can't see how to get them out again. The last incoming flight turns and goes straight back out, fleeing the Siberian winter. The spies are going to have to find their own way home. And a polar front is moving in from the Arctic ice, and the Siberian village is about to be closed off until the following spring.

KHATANGA

Sharp's Russian is basic and he sits dumbly while Ambra does the talking. She says, "You didn't get notice we were coming?"

"Only the Pravda message. Nothing official." The chief of police stirs his tea with a pencil. He is a round-faced, wrinkled man who doesn't smile. Sharp remembers that Russians only smile when they have something to smile about.

The mayor isn't smiling, either. "It happens we have an American team heading for the pole. We don't meet too many Westerners out here, and two groups at once is just amazing, especially at this time of year."

Sharp is having difficulty following the conversation, but Ambra is speaking Russian like a native. They are in a big echoey hall, which seems to serve as a common room, entrance foyer to a hotel, and café all at once. Locals are crowded at the big glass window, staring in curiously, and a cleaning lady, with the leathery skin, wrinkles, and Mongoloid eyes of the Evenki, is finding a lot to do at the table next to them. And why not, Sharp thinks. Martians don't drop in every day.

The chief of police says, "I see you have a permit from the Russian Department of Tourism. That's strange." He is small, bald without the Cossack hat, and round. Sharp senses contemplation behind the man's dark eyes.

Ambra sips her lemon tea. "Really?"

"Yes. I understand there was an administrative reform in the government about six months ago. The department has been required to change its function. It no longer accepts applications for expeditions."

"We put in the application about six months ago. Perhaps we caught it at the tail end."

"Actually, now I think about it, the administrative change was nine months ago. Your permit came through three months after the department stopped issuing them. That is odd, is it not?"

Ambra laughs lightly. "I'll never understand the Russian way of doing things, sorry. It was a joint undertaking with Pravda. They fixed the paperwork."

The police chief shakes his head. "Moscow bureaucracy."

"What are your plans here?" the mayor wants to know.

"Just stroll around town, maybe take a few photographs, if that's all right."

"And speak to one or two people," Sharp adds in English. Ambra translates.

"Our visitors come in the spring and summer, along with our supplies. Mostly it's an influx of students doing research. We had a parachute team jumping out over the North Pole this year. I'm afraid you're catching us just as we're going into hibernation. The harbor is already closed up with several ships locked into it. We still have the airfield, but the weather could close it up anytime."

The police chief says, "If that happens, you might have a long wait before you get out." Something about the way he says it; a vague feeling of unease comes over Sharp, but he can't say why.

Ambra says, "Research students we can find anywhere. National Geographic wants us to speak to some of the older people with tales to tell. People who've been here a long time, who can tell us about Khatanga as it was."

The mayor says, "We're four hours ahead of Moscow time. Mind you, this close to the pole, day and night don't mean much."

The chief of police says, "But it means our bureaucrats in the Kremlin are still tucked up in bed." He doesn't bother to explain why he said that.

Sharp finishes the last of his tea. Ambra translates his comment: "We'd like to meet some of your local characters." And get the hell out of here before Moscow wakes up.

A cluster of young people, fur hats lightly dusted with snow, bustle in and sit down noisily at a table close to them. Their features are more Western than Mongol, and their clothes, once the fur coats have come off, could have come out of any High Street store in Kensington. One of them, a girl of about twenty with gypsy earrings, glances at Sharp, ignoring Ambra, and says something incomprehensible to the mayor.

Ambra translates: "They're having a party tonight and would like us to join them. The Americans will be there."

Sharp says, "We haven't time."

There is a rapid three-way exchange among Ambra, the girl, and the mayor, followed by nodding of heads. Sharp follows Ambra out of the doorway while the mayor and the police chief continue to chat over tea. There is a light, freezing fog and the air is bitter: Siberian bitter, a whole new meaning to the word. A husky with no visible owner is trotting along a broad, sloping street. Ice and icicles are everywhere; water has been poured over the town and froze where it hit.

Sharp flaps his arms. "What was that about?"

"I said I wanted to meet one or two of the older people with a wartime connection. They said they'd rustle up a few geriatrics. Party's in a couple of hours at the end of town. Blue-painted house. I said meantime we'd just cruise the mean streets."

"The cop was suspicious."

"Wasn't he just!"

"He'll be telephoning as soon as Moscow wakes up."

She stamps her feet on the ground. "Let's hope we can do our business and get the hell out of here before the alarm bells go off."

"They already have." Sharp looks around, both nervous and fascinated. The roads are concrete slabs laid down on the permafrost. Every house is a foot or two above the ground. He thinks a couple of them might be shops, but it's hard to tell. Pipes encased in wooden frames crisscross between the little houses, clouds of steam in lines mapping them out. A couple of small, fat women and what look like a handful of reindeer herders are clumping along these boards, using them as walkways. A huge, four-wheeled, open truck roars past, its exhaust fumes black. A dozen locals are staring at the Martians. The Wild West is alive and well and living in Siberia.

Sharp, his face almost invisible inside a parka, says, "Think positive. They don't have the gulag to throw us in anymore. Let's paint this town red."

MAX KRAFFT

"This is Police Commissioner Gosha Pavlovski, from Khatanga. In the Taymyr District? I want to know who is in charge of all official authorizations, permits, and licenses for polar expeditions. Can you give me a number, please?"

"Commissioner, the office doesn't open for eight hours." Pavlovski visualizes a plump, stupid woman. Scolding tone; but then, she's been roused from sleep at one A.M.

"I'm aware. I want to speak to him at his home. Head of department, the Big Chief."

"I'm just the duty officer. I don't have the authority to give you his home number."

"Who would have the authority?"

A thoughtful silence, then: "That would be the secretary, Victor Dudinka."

"Ask him to call me."

"I don't have the authority for that, either."

"Just do it."

"It's one in the morning."

"This is an urgent police matter. If you want to keep out of trouble …"

An expressive sigh, and then: "I'll transfer you through to his house."

Pavlovski is a patient man. He is on his second cigarette, feet up on his desk, when another disembodied female voice says, "Commissioner of Police Pavlovski?"

"Yes."

"What is the nature of your inquiry, Commissioner?"

"I need to speak to Victor Dudinka."

"My husband's with friends, I don't know where. He won't be home for some hours."

"Ask him to call me the moment he comes home."

"He's a bit … you know." The Beard circles a forefinger around the side of his head, in the universal gesture. His name is Stefan, he is well educated, and his magnificent black beard makes Sharp wonder if the young man is in the priesthood, or has ambitions to become a patriarch in his old age and is starting early.

"But that's what we're here for. Local color." Sharp is on his fourth vodka. He's made a determined attempt to keep the drinking down, but the hospitality is verging on the ferocious. More than once he has made his way to the little bathroom, flushed his vodka down the toilet, and refilled the glass with icy tap water. Ambra, strangely, seems neither up nor down despite sipping steadily the whole evening. She has brought along a plain black dress; suitable for any occasion, the sign of a seasoned female traveler. She looks sensational among the traditional party dresses of the local women — brightly embroidered squares on cotton — and she's flirting outrageously with whatever males happen to be nearby. Sharp isn't sure whether it comes naturally or is part of a performance. In either case, it's a side of Ambra that takes him by surprise. The Khatanga solution to life in the big Siberian freezer is simple: piping-hot radiators in every room, in the corridor, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Wherever Sharp goes in the apartment he is immersed in heat like Jamaica. About thirty people, mostly thirtyish, are jammed into the little living room, sharing it with a sideboard, a couple of chairs, a couch, and a long table stacked with every conceivable kind of vodka and every conceivable body part of reindeer and fish. Mick Jagger, stripped to the waist and bile green, leers down from a poster on one wall, while opposite him the Beatles are scampering across a zebra crossing on the Old Kent Road.

Three Americans introduced themselves earlier. Sharp mentally calls them Tom Cruise, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe, although the resemblances are worse than marginal. Judy and Marilyn are dancing unsteadily. "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" is playing on an old-fashioned tape recorder, possibly in deference to the Americans. It's on its third play.

And in the last half an hour, three old people have turned up and been introduced as Pavel Medvedev, Anna Sobolev, and Max Krafft.

The Beard shouts above the noise. "How's your German?"

"I can get by. Max speaks German?"

"And Russian with a thick German accent. Well, I warned you. Show the slightest interest and he'll talk all night. And don't expect much sense. It's mostly rubbish. I don't think the German metabolism is well suited to Russian vodka. Are you sure about this?"

"Sounds perfect for the magazine."

The Beard steers Sharp through the crowd. "Max, this is the Englishman who wants to talk to you." He grins, flicks his beard cheekily, and leaves Sharp to it.

"They think I'm mad." Krafft speaks in German. Sharp doesn't know the language well enough to place the dialect, but it certainly isn't country-boy Bavarian. The man is tall and has a big hand, still as cold as the outside air, but his handshake is firm. "Stefan told you that I'm mad, am I right?" It's an old man's face, wrinkled, but with craggy features. Sharp judges he was handsome in a film-star sort of way long ago. He still has his hair, which is white and in need of a trim. His eyes are light blue, and he is looking at Sharp intently. Sharp, under the gaze, feels uncomfortable. "He did, Mr. Krafft. But I still asked to speak to you."

"My name is Max. I like Stefan, he's a good boy, very bright, but he still lacks wisdom. Do you understand me? The difference between intelligence and wisdom?" He's having to raise his voice over Glenn Miller and the vodka-fueled party.

Sharp sips killer vodka, spots Ambra skillfully detaching herself from a cluster of young admirers and moving his way. "Not really. But then, I'm just dumb on all counts."

"He's an engineer, as I was. They're trying to build a nuclear reactor in an old naval dockyard in Kola. They've already had a dozen irradiated workers shuffled from one hospital to the next because they don't know what to do with them."

He might be a white-haired old man in his eighties, but there is no sign of dotage in his conversation. Eccentric, maybe — and who wouldn't be, living out here for half a lifetime?

"It's you I want to talk about, Max, not a nuclear reactor in Kola. How did a German end up in Khatanga?" From the corner of his eyes, Sharp sees Ambra detach herself from another group of young men and maneuver herself toward them.

"It's a long story and it would bore you to tears. Look at the pretty girls here. I'm sure they're far more interesting to you. Let me introduce you to Dora, for example." He nods toward a far corner.

Sharp doesn't follow the man's gaze. "Pretty girls I meet everywhere. But for the National Geographic …"

"Yes, they told me about that."

"Can I introduce you to my colleague?" Ambra shakes hands with Max. Sharp says, "Alice, I've found just the person. This is Max Krafft. He's a German with a long history."

"Ah, but I'm a mad German."

Something clicks with Sharp. "Forgive me, but didn't you say you were an engineer?"

"I was, during the war. I was with Hausser's panzers. I saw action in Poland and Kharkov." Spoken casually.

It doesn't fit. Max Krafft was a scientist developing a bio-weapon.

Sharp senses Ambra's alarmed sideways glance, feels a brief surge of alarm. Two Max Kraffts and an intelligence cock-up. Max Krafft the secret weapons man, dead and buried somewhere in Obolensk. Max Krafft the tank engineer, dead and buried in Khatanga. God, no.

"Kharkov. That would be 1943."

Krafft's eyes light up. "You know your history, young man."

"After that you were pushed back all the way to Berlin."

Krafft laughs. "No, no, no. I saw nothing of that. I was taken away, you see, pulled off the front. I spent the war in a convent in Bavaria." He laughs again — the SS soldier, hard as nuts, pulled from the Eastern Front and transferred to a convent. He's still finding it funny sixty years on. Sharp laughs, too, weak-kneed with relief.

Ambra throws back her Cruiser vodka in a single big gulp — "Real Murmansk vodka, my dear, not the Moscow shit they export to England." While the fierce liquid is still burning its way down her gullet, she says, "This is beginning to sound like the story we want to hear."

"Is that Police Commissioner Gosha Pavlovski?"

"Yes."

"Inquiring about …?"

"I need to contact the head of authorizations and permits in the tourist office."

"At this hour?"

"Yes, at this hour."

"For the Taymyr District?"

"Yes, for the Taymyr District."

"One moment, please." From the intonation, Pavlovski guesses that he is in for another two-cigarette wait. But he is in no hurry.

POLAR FRONT

Sharp is surprised to find about two feet of snow already covering the path outside the house. The falling snow is heavier than anything he's seen outside of one memorable winter when he was stranded in a skiers' hut in the Alpbach for three days.

Three days. "Are we liable to be stranded here?" He is speaking to Krafft's back; his voice comes out strangely muffled in the snow. They are in single file, Krafft in the lead, Sharp and Ambra stepping in his wake.

Krafft's voice comes back equally flat. "Quite possibly."

They trudge in silence through pristine snow. Ahead of Sharp, Krafft is turning into an animated snowman. They reach the main road and trudge along tire marks left by a truck. In ten minutes the houses begin to peter out; the old man's house doesn't seem to be in the town itself. Finally he leaves the tire tracks and plows knee-deep toward an isolated bungalow.

The first thing that hits Sharp is the heat. Again. They take off gloves, hats, and coats, shedding snow on the floor, and Krafft ushers them through a narrow corridor into a brightly decorated room covered with thick-pile rugs and heaped with cardboard boxes. The old man disappears into a kitchen while Ambra and Sharp assess their new surroundings.

The boxes are filled with papers, some printed, others handwritten. There are a lot of engineering sketches around, UFO-type shapes, scribbled equations. Sharp glances at Ambra, who sticks her tongue out. Shelving all around the walls is sagging with books. Books about everything, in no order: The Bootleggers, Comets and Dragons, Offenbahrung, Diary of a Manhattan Hooker, Im Shatten der Sensation, Fin de Sičcle Vienna, Greek Myths, Fleshmarket Close, Inside the Third Reich, A Taste for Death, The Lure, Die Atomkerne, The Los Alamos Primer … he can't make out the Russian titles.

A few blank spaces of wall are taken up with pictures — photographs of flying saucers for the most part, apparently torn out of magazines, the alien craft hovering over desert cacti or rooftops, crowds looking skyward, or skimming over mountains. A dining room table has an ancient, ragged toy elephant minus its tusks and a couple of black-and-white photographs.

The photographs, in cheap wooden frames. One of them shows a middle-aged Max Krafft with his arms around a thin, almost haggard woman, against a background of what looks like a chemical works. Intelligence and, Sharp thinks, a sort of despair are showing in her eyes; she looks like an archetypal Russian intellectual, possibly from the Stalin or Khrushchev era. The other photograph shows a recognizable Max Krafft — a thin, handsome man in his twenties — stretched out on a picnic rug shared with another girl, this time on what looks like an Alpine meadow. They're smiling and sharing their rug with fruit and sandwiches, a bottle of wine between them balanced precariously on a plate. Squatting behind them, cross-legged, is a bespectacled man in Lufftwaffe uniform, grinning, with a 1940s haircut. Without the uniform he could have been British or American or German or Polish or …

Krafft comes through carrying mugs of tea and biscuits. "I'm sure I have little to tell you of interest. Except perhaps, for my eccentric hobby." He nods toward the flying saucer photographs and smiles impishly. "Which guarantees my local reputation as a harmless lunatic."

What did you do in the war, Max? Sharp tries to think of some subtle way to steer Krafft into it. The girls in the photographs maybe; but that may be too sensitive.

Ambra solves the problem. "What did you do in the war, Max?" She flicks snow off her boots.

"Is that really something that would interest National Geographic readers?"

Is there a tone of suspicion in the man's voice? A sudden alertness? Sharp can't be sure. Ambra gives him a big smile, the same one he's seen her use on the males at the party. "It could be of great interest. You weren't building flying saucers, by any chance?"

Krafft pours tea, his face expressionless. Either he's not given to humor, or he doesn't see the question as funny.

Sharp says, "That's quite a pile of stuff you have here."

"Not much of it is wartime memorabilia, if that's what you're wondering. It's mostly what you might call flying saucer material. I'm an engineer, you see. The engineering aspect interests me. Propulsion, aerodynamics — that sort of thing."

A crank?

"If they exist. I understand the scientists don't take them seriously."

Krafft passes over lemon tea. "That is the consensus of opinion." He says it like a man who knows a whole lot better. "I hardly know where to start."

"Anywhere at all," Ambra says. He looks around the room thoughtfully, then nods.

"I could start with my first day in Berlin, after they pulled me off the Eastern Front. It was the start of a very strange adventure."

"That would be good."

"Yes, I loved Berlin. It was my favorite city."