The Tightrope Men

Twenty-Five

The meeting with the Finns took place that night in a house on the outskirts of Imatra. ‘There are three of them,’ said Carey, as they drove towards the rendezvous. ‘Lassi Virtanen and his son, Tarmo, and Heikki Huovinen.’

Armstrong giggled, perhaps more out of nervous tension than anything else. ‘I never thought I’d meet the Son of Lassie.’

‘If you have any more remarks like that left in your system bottle them up until this operation is over,’ said Carey grittily. ‘This particular crowd doesn’t have a strong sense of humour. Old Virtanen was a fighter pilot during the war and he still reckons it’s a bad thing the Germans lost. I still don’t know which is topmost in him — the Nazi sympathizer or the Russian-hater — probably a fifty-fifty mixture of both. He’s brought up his son in his own image. Huovinen is a shade more liberal, but still well to the right of Atilla the Hun. These are the tools we have to work with and I don’t want them turning in my hand. Remember that.’

‘I’ll remember,’ said Armstrong. He felt as though Carey had suddenly thrown a bucket of ice water over him. ‘What’s the scheme?’

‘The Finns are expert paper makers,’ said Carey. ‘And the Russians are quite willing to take advantage of their expertise. They’re building a new paper mill in Enso; all the machinery is Finnish and the installation is done by Finns, most of whom live in Imatra. They go over the border every day.’

A great light broke on Armstrong. ‘And we go with them. How convenient.’

Carey grunted. ‘Don’t shout too soon. It won’t be as easy as all that.’ He pointed. ‘There’s the house.’

Armstrong drew the car to a halt. ‘Do these three go over to Enso?’

‘That’s it.’

Armstrong thought for a moment. ‘If the Virtanens hate the Russians so much why do they help them build paper factories?’

‘They belong to a half-baked secret society — very right wing, of course. They fondly believe they’re spying and preparing for Der Tag.’ Carey shrugged. ‘It’s my belief they’re at the end of their rope and the government is going to hang them with it. One of the troubles with the Paasikivi Line is keeping to the middle ground between right and left. The government can’t crack down too hard on the communists because of Russian pressure, but who the hell cares what happens to a lot of neo-Nazis? They’re only left loose as a makeweight on the other end of the political see-saw, but if they get out of line they get the chop. So let’s use them while we can.’

Lassi Virtanen was a hard-faced man in his middle-fifties who walked with a limp. His son, Tarmo, was about thirty and did not look much like his father, he was fresh-faced and his eyes sparkled with excitement. Armstrong measured him carefully and thought he would be too excitable to be relied on for anything important. Heikki Huovinen was dark with a blue chin. To look respectable he would have to shave twice a day but, to Armstrong’s eye, he seemed not to have shaved for two days.

They sat around a table on which there was an array of dishes, the open sandwiches of Scandinavia. There were also a dozen bottles of beer and two bottles of a colourless spirit. They sampled the herring and then the elder Virtanen filled small glasses with the spirit, and raised his glass slightly. ‘Kippis!’ His arm went up and he threw the contents of his glass down his throat.

Armstrong took his cue from Carey and did the same. The fierce spirit bit the back of his throat and burned in his belly. Carey put down his empty glass. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad at all’ He spoke in Swedish for the benefit of Armstrong. Finding Finnish speakers for the Service was the very devil and it was fortunate that Swedish was the second language of Finland.

Tarmo Virtanen laughed. ‘It’s from the other side.’

‘Their vodka is the only good thing about the Russians,’ said Lassi Virtanen grudgingly. He refilled the glasses. ‘Heikki is worried.’

‘Oh!’ Carey looked at Huovinen. ‘What about?’

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ said Huovinen.

‘Of course it’ll be easy,’ said Lassi. ‘Nothing to it.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ said Huovinen. ‘You won’t be there. It’s me who has to come up with all the explanations and excuses.’ He turned to Carey. ‘It can’t be done for three days.’

‘Why not?’

‘You and your friend, here, are taking the place of the Virtanens — right? Well, the Virtanens have got work to do over there — I know, I’m their damned foreman. Tomorrow Lassi is working on the screening plates, but Tarmo hasn’t much to do and he wouldn’t be missed. The day after that Tarmo will be busy. The only time I can spare them both without too many questions being asked will be the day after, and even then I’ll have to tell a hell of a lot of lies.’

Carey thought Huovinen was getting cold feet but not by any sign did he show it. He said, ‘What about it, Lassi?’

‘It’s true enough — as far as it goes — but it doesn’t have to be that way. Heikki, you could fix things so that no one works on the screens tomorrow. A little bit of sabotage?’

‘Not with that Georgian bastard Dzotenidze, breathing down my neck,’ said Huovinen heatedly.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Carey.

‘The Chief Engineer for the Russians. He’ll be Chief Engineer of the mill when it gets working, and he wants everything right. He watches me like a hawk.’

‘No sabotage,’ said Carey flatly. ‘I want things to go right, too.’

Huovinen nodded vigorously. ‘In three days,’ he said. ‘Then I can conveniently lose the Virtanens.’

Carey said, ‘We’ll come here in the evening the day after tomorrow. We’ll spend the night here and we’ll leave in the morning just as the Virtanens would. Won’t the rest of the crew be surprised at a couple of strangers joining it?’

‘That’s taken care of. They may be surprised, but they won’t talk.’ Huovinen drew himself up. ‘They’re Finns,’ he said proudly. ‘They’re Karelians.’

‘And you’re a foreman.’

Huovinen smiled. ‘That’s got something to do with it, too.’

Carey regarded Lassi and Tarmo Virtanen. ‘And you two will stay in the house that day and you won’t go out. We don’t want anyone asking questions about how in hell can you be in Imatra and Enso at the same time.’

Young Virtanen laughed and tapped the bottle of vodka. ‘Leave us plenty of this and we won’t go out.’

Carey frowned, and Lassi said, ‘We’ll stay in the house.’

‘Very well. Did you get the clothing?’

‘It’s all here.’

Carey took two folded cards from his pocket. ‘These are our passes — will you check them?’

Huovinen picked them up and studied them. He took out his own pass for comparison, then said. ‘These are very good; very good, indeed. But they look new — they’re too clean.’

‘We’ll dirty them,’ said Carey.

Huovinen shrugged. ‘It doesn’t really matter. The frontier guards have got tired of looking at passes. You’ll be all right.’

‘I hope so,’ said Carey drily.

Lassi Virtanen picked up his glass. ‘That’s settled. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing over there, Mr Englishman, but I know it will do Ryssä no good. Kispps!’ He knocked back his vodka.

Carey and Armstrong both drank and immediately Virtanen replenished their glasses. Armstrong looked about the room and saw a photograph on the sideboard. He tipped his chair back to get a closer look and Lassi, following his gaze, laughed and got up. ‘That’s from the Continuation War,’ he said. ‘I had fire in my belly in those days.’

He passed the photograph over to Armstrong. It showed a much younger Lassi Virtanen standing next to a fighter aircraft decorated with the swastika insignia. ‘My Messerschmitt,’ said Virtanen proudly. ‘I shot down six Russian bastards in that plane.’

‘Did you?’ said Armstrong politely.

‘Those were the good days,’ said Virtanen. ‘But what an air force we had. Any aircraft that had been built anywhere in the world — we had it. American Brewsters and Curtis Hawks, British Blenheims and Gladiators, German Fokkers and Dorniers, Italian Fiats, French Morane-Saulniers — even Russian Polikarpovs. The Germans captured some of those in the Ukraine and sent them to us. Unreliable bastards they were, too. What a crazy, mixed-up air force we had — but we still held the Russians off until the end.’

He slapped his leg. ‘I got mine in ’44 — shot down near Räisälä and it took four of them to do it. That was behind the lines but I walked out with a bullet in my leg, dodging those dammed Russian patrols. Good days those were. Drink up!’

It was late before Carey and Armstrong were able to leave because they had to listen to a monologue from Virtanen about his war experiences, interspersed with glasses of vodka. But at last they got away. Armstrong got behind the wheel of the car and looked eloquently at Carey. ‘I know,’ said Carey heavily. ‘Drunken and unreliable. I’m not surprised they’re getting nowhere.’

‘That man lives in the past,’ said Armstrong.

‘There’s a lot like him in Finland — men who’ve never really lived since the war. Never mind the Virtanens — they’re staying here. It’s Huovinen we have to rely on to get to the other side.’

‘He was packing the stuff away as though he wanted to start a drought in vodka,’ said Armstrong dispiritedly.

‘I know — but they’re all we’ve got.’ Carey took out his pipe. ‘I wonder how McCready and company are doing up north. They can’t be doing worse than we are.’