Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Six

'He is a very senior man,' Bikov murmured, and the squinting of his eyes betrayed surprise at what he was told.

'Wherever you dig you will find moral decay, probably the degeneracy of alcohol abuse,' the general rapped at him.

Bikov doubted it, but did not contradict. He guarded himself. 'There are many reasons for a man to turn to treachery.'

'Vanity and vainglory…'

'He will have an ego, I agree.' He seldom reacted to what he was told. He preferred to depend on what he found for himself.

'…malicious and distorted self-pride. Dissatisfaction with his work, the yearning for the material trinkets he will have been given.'

'Perhaps, though, some reasons will be deep in the psyche of the man.'

'There is no place on this earth for a soldier who has sold his Motherland. Greed will have led him to the path of the criminal.'

'It will be far in his past — far, far back in the life of Viktor Archenko,' Bikov mused. 'It might go to childhood. It is a puzzle to be unpicked.'

'Unpicked with delicacy, with extreme care…' The general leaned forward, dropped his voice.

'Of course.'

'Exceptional delicacy and care. Archenko is an officer of seniority and with a distinguished record. He has the patronage of an officer who is listened to, is heard in the highest places. A mistake, and we are fallen men. A mistake, and you — we — have no future, we're on the street.'

'I understand what you say.' Bikov smiled coolly.

It was a challenge that Yuri Bikov relished. He cared little for the reputation that had gathered on his back. He was a predator who pitted himself against a prey. He sought challenges that were worthy of him, but the praise that came with success left him indifferent. Other predators relied on teeth or claws, or a rifle, but Bikov's weapon was his mind. He had never hurt, physically harmed, a man he had interrogated. It was simply crude to use the Pentathol truth drugs, cruder to extract fingernails and to rely on the rubber truncheons or the electrodes. He read books on psychology and when he had time, in Moscow, he visited the offices of professors of that discipline, perched on a hard chair and invited them to talk with him. His reputation said that Yuri Bikov had never been bested by a man across a bare table from him. What happened to the prey afterwards…it was outside his responsibility.

The youngest lieutenant colonel in the FSB's military counterintelligence section had arrived in Moscow in darkness. His shoebox apartment was sub-let and unavailable. Bikov, instead, had gone to the residential complex used by the FSB in the capital and been allocated a tiny, cold room. The file had been delivered to him by messenger and he had read it through the night, going back and forward over the few pages it contained. The file had been divided into two sections. The first section comprised the naval career of Archenko and read as a success story for a man protected by a fleet commander.

There had been a photograph with that section. He had lifted it out of the file and laid it on the bed where he'd sat, and all the time he'd turned the pages he had kept vigil with the photograph of an open-faced man with the jaw of a decision-taker, a friendly face, and one of calm and authority. Father, now dead, a commended airforce flier, reared in the military community, naval entry and quality marks as a cadet, a hobby listed as 'medieval military archaeology', the staff of Admiral Falkovsky, the four unremarkable years at the Grechko staff officers' academy where there had been no complaints, a transfer back to the Northern Fleet, and the Kaliningrad posting, a regime of personal fitness from beach running. No relationship was listed. There was no woman. He had written a note of that on the outside of the first file, and then he'd looked again at the photograph. A handsome man with prospects, who would be chased, but no woman was listed. In his own life, Yuri Bikov's, there was a wife (divorced) and a child now aged fifteen years (estranged). It was joked of him that he was married to his work. He slept occasionally with other officers' wives who were bored or itchy, but never for more than two or three nights. He had underlined what he had written.

The second file was thinner. A book of matches was stapled in a plastic sack to the inside of the cover. The matches were from a hotel in the Polish city of Gdansk where a delegation, including Archenko, had visited a new dry dock. But the zampolit at the Baltiysk naval base, Piatkin, had questioned the other men on the delegation and they had sworn that the delegation had not visited that hotel. The most recent pages in the second file dealt with that hotel's residents on the three dates Archenko had visited the dry dock in Gdansk. Various nationalities featured: Swedish, German, American and Norwegian had been resident in the hotel on one of the three dates. A British pair had been in the hotel during each of the three dates that Archenko had gone to the dry dock, and Roderick Walton and Elizabeth Beresford had not been in that hotel on any other date. The information had been gained by FSB officers travelling from Warsaw the previous week — with the aid of a donation to the night porter's retirement fund — but the address boxes in the hotel's registration cards had not been filled in. It was interesting but not conclusive. More conclusive were the two most recent sheets added to the file. They detailed the surveillance, carried out by Piatkin on the order of the general in the Lubyanka. Twice the admiral's chief of staff had had proper authorization to visit the castle at Malbork and the church of the Holy Cross at Braniewo, in pursuit of his listed hobby, and the first time he had possibly identified the tail vehicles and the second time he had probably identified them, and each time the journey over the border had been aborted. The files had given him food to feed off, but he thought them not conclusive evidence of guilt.

He would die — Archenko would be executed inside or outside the law if he were guilty. When or where was a matter of no importance to Yuri Bikov. The gaining of a confession was a matter of importance, was the challenge confronting him.

A nervousness shimmered in the general. He stood at the window and his hands fidgeted behind his back. 'We have to walk on eggs, because he is protected. I rely on you. Look, come here, look down there. He is still alive. Incredible. Come…'

Bikov rose from his chair and went to the window. He was beside the general, and followed the line of the general's jabbing finger. A man shuffled on the far side of the square. He was ancient, bent, wore a heavy greatcoat and a woollen cap from which faint wisps of white hair were visible; a grey, straggling moustache hung round his mouth. His appearance was that of a long-retired schoolmaster. He used a stick to steady himself and carried a small plastic bag weighted with shopping. Carpet slippers were on his feet as he crossed the tarmac, and the stick was raised defiantly to halt the traffic he walked between. Now the general seemed to Bikov to cringe.

'I thought he was dead. You know him? He must be ninety years old. He worked here…that is Ivan Grigoreyev. They say even the dogs did not dare to go close to him. Stalin's man and Beria's. He was the executioner. He succeeded the executioner Maggo. The forties was his time, this was his place. For ten years he killed, always with a revolver, here, under us. It was said of him: "He has a serious attitude to his work." No firing squads, just him. He was so close that he was spattered. Generals, professors, doctors, intellectuals, officials, they all knelt before him. I was told he stank of blood. He worked with two buckets beside him. One had eau-de-Cologne to hide the smell and the other was filled with vodka. All he stopped for on a busy day was to reload his pistol and to drink the vodka. They say he is deaf in his right ear. He was here, his last year, when I first came to work in the Lubyanka. I thought he was dead.'

The general shook his head and turned away. His visage had whitened. Somewhere in the bowels of the building, in a room off a side corridor, was the now underemployed successor to Ivan Grigoreyev. There was a yard off the back of the building with a door to the cell block. When he had his confession, Bikov would bring Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko to this building, to that cell block, and would leave him within a few paces of the yard.

'There is a plane waiting for me. Please excuse me.'

'Nail him, just nail the shit.'

Mowbray and Alice arrived after lunch. He hadn't wanted a pool chauffeur, and she'd driven. They'd stopped for an early sandwich in a pub to break the journey from London.

'God, they've let the place go.'

'It'll be the cutbacks,' Alice said. 'The handyman's gone, only Maggie's here now.'

The large gaunt house of dulled red brick had been built with a brewer's profits a century ago, requisitioned for the military in the Second World War and never returned to after the cessation of hostilities. It had been passed to the Foreign Office for training courses in the fifties and sixties, then given to the Service in the seventies. It was rarely used now. The paint peeled on the window frames and the Virginia creeper was rampant. A pane was broken in an upper window and a gutter above the front-door porch dripped. It was listed as having fifteen bedrooms, of which six were habitable, and twelve acres of grounds. The grass hadn't been cut for a month, and Alice muttered something about Crown maintenance being a bit behind. Wet sycamore leaves coated the drive and clogged the drains. A dog, marking their arrival, barked hoarsely inside.

'It used to be rather a useful accommodation.'

'I'm sure it'll be fine,' Alice said briskly.

She took his bag, and hers, from the back seat and followed him to the door. They were deep in rolling Surrey countryside, near to Chiddingfold. Mowbray yanked down the bell pull. The ring pealed inside and the dog's barking came to a frenzy. He scowled until the door opened, and Maggie — mid-forties, her waist bulging — reached up, took his head, kissed him wetly on each cheek. Then he grinned.

'So pleased to see you, Mr Mowbray. It'll be just like the old days. You're so welcome.' She arched her eyebrows and said softly, coyly, 'Seems like it's a big one.'

He winked at her. 'All in place, are they?'

'In the lounge. I lit the fire. Hasn't been one in there this year, might smoke a bit. Mr Locke is in his room.'

'Is he?' Mowbray looked up the stairs. The carpet was threadbare and one of the rails on the lower flight had come loose from its fitting. He shouted, 'Mr Locke — Gabriel Locke — your presence is required.'

Locke appeared on the upper landing, a grim look on his face. He was coming down the stairs and his speech rattled. 'Is that dog shut away? Should be shot, it's savage. It's quite unacceptable having a wild dog.'

'They have arrived, I understand.'

'The schedule was ridiculous. I've had no sleep, no chance for a break.'

'And what are they doing now?'

'I'm not their bloody keeper. I've no idea.'

Alice said, 'I'll take the bags into the dining room…oh, and I'll ring Jerry, tell him to expect you.' She'd learned never to push herself forward, and he appreciated that. Later, he thought, she'd help Maggie prepare a meal, and then they'd leave, all of them, but him first. The house was a transit point, out of sight and out of mind.

At the end of a darkened corridor was a closed door and behind it a murmur of conversation. Locke pushed forward, then spun and blocked Mowbray. 'Do I have permission to say what I think?'

'If it's relevant…'

'Actually, I can't believe this is happening,' Locke hissed.

'…and time is pushing on.'

'The whole thing is pathetic and doomed.'

'It has the sanction of the Director General and ministers.' It was said lightly, intentionally so. He sought to belittle Locke.

'It'll fail.'

Mowbray thought this was Locke's big throw. No doubt that it had been rehearsed. His smile was avuncular. 'A faint heart never won a fair lady. I don't fail.'

'It's a world, yours, with cobwebs on it. You're deluded.'

'You want to walk away, young man, then walk. See if I miss you.'

'But I can't — I fucking can't. Those men in there…' Locke's arm was flung back and gestured to the door. '…you should have been with me, to see where I dragged them out from. Weirdos, dropouts, fourth rate…'

'They'll be adequate. They'll be perfectly adequate. Worried about how it will play on your curriculum vitae?' His voice hardened. 'Walk away and see how that plays, young man. If you've finished…'

'Adequate? They're deadbeats — one of them's even a goddamn criminal. Is that your idea of adequate?'

'For what we're asking of them— more than adequate. And now please stop the whine. May I come past?'

Locke stepped back. For a moment Mowbray paused. He took a comb from an inside pocket and slipped it through his hair. He gave his tie knot a little straightening tug, then flicked a single dandruff speck from his shoulder. He opened the door. First impressions always mattered. He breathed hard. Confidence and authority were demanded from the beginning. He strode into the room. The interior was gloomy, the curtains had not been drawn back, the easy chairs were shielded by dust covers, and he smelt the mustiness that the open fire had not cleared. The four men, sitting round a table playing cards, looked up.

Mowbray beamed. 'Welcome, gentlemen — what a tip of a place. Sorry about that. My name's Mowbray and I seldom, as those who know me will tell you, deal in untruths. Like yourselves, I'm retired, pensioned-off, but I've been called back for this one operation because the present generation of heroes don't want to risk dirtying their hands. It's never been a problem for me, dirty hands.

'Why are you here? You're here because those fine courageous people from Hereford say they're not too "keen on a trip in there". "There" is Kaliningrad, a shit-heap, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania. The equally fine people at Poole, whom you'd know rather better than me, said that they didn't want to know and asked, "Is he worth it?". "He" is a naval officer at the Baltic Fleet headquarters, and has been my asset for the last four years. He is now under close surveillance and near to arrest, and if he is arrested his ultimate fate will be a bullet in the back of the neck. He is one of the finest men I have been privileged to know, and I — and you—are going to save his life. If any of you wishes to leave, now would be the correct moment.'

He looked into each of their unshaven faces. They wore a uniform of trainers, jeans and sweatshirts. None of them moved. None of the chairs scraped back on the parquet. Mowbray heard Locke's sharpened breathing behind him.

'We begin our journey tonight. There's rather too much to cram in, but we'll manage. We'll start with the maps — Kaliningrad, its borders, the naval base and so on. You all come recommended — you're the best and you will achieve the best result and we'll leave the faint hearts with their scrubbed hands in awe of us.'

They started on the maps, and pored over them until the helicopter came for Rupert Mowbray.

There was shooting further up the beach.

The wind had turned and came from the north, otherwise the fisherman would not have heard the staccato bursts. Roman often heard shooting on the range far behind the fence that separated the Polish stretch of the beach from the dunes on the spit where the Russian troops exercised and practised. He worked at repairing his nets. It was most likely that rubbish had been thrown overboard from a passing freighter that week and had drifted then gone to the bottom. He would have said, and so would all the other fishermen who worked from the village of Piaski, that he knew where every obstruction lay in the shallow waters where he fished. Roman was the expert and always brought home the best catches of dab, flounder and plaice. His fingers moved fast, with a whipping motion, as he made good the tears in his net. If it had been early summer he would not have stayed out on the beach to repair the rents, he would have gone to the café in Piaski, drunk beer with the other fishermen and put off the work until the morning. But autumn had come, and soon winter would be hurrying after it. In two more weeks, or three at the most, and Roman was as expert on the weather as on the fishing grounds, storms would lash the beach most days and it would not be possible to launch the boats. The fishing would be over until spring. Then there was no money to be earned and Roman and his family, and the other families of Piaski, would have to scrape, scrimp, for survival. Each day that he was able to fish before the storms was valued. There were a dozen boats pulled up on the sand, white-painted planks with a yellow-painted gunwale, all numbered, but the other fishing crews, and the colleagues who sailed with him, were long gone to the village café. The border was two kilometres down the beach.

If he looked up, away from the nets on which he concentrated — and he was blessed with eyes as sharp as the cormorants' who competed with the gulls to feast on the heads and carcasses that were thrown over his shoulder when he gutted and filleted his catch — he could see the empty Polish watchtower and beyond it the Russian watchtower, which was always manned. If he squinted he could see the border's fence, which ran from the spit's pine forest and down onto the beach to the low-water tideline. Beyond were the exercise areas, the missile launching pads and the ranges. He knew the sounds of the different weapons the Russians used. Thirty-one years before, he had been a conscript in the Polish army and he remembered well the sounds of tanks firing, mortars and machine-guns. But he had not heard that day the familiar thunder, carried on the wind, of the 12.7mm heavy machine gun.

Riding on her anchor, the Princess Rose pitched in a swell made worse by the wind that strained the cable and tried to drive her towards the rocks and the shore.

The engineer watched from the rail. The master and the mate were on the bridge and had brought the boat to within a nautical mile of what the map called Mew Stone. He could see the lights up the estuary of the town of Dartmouth, and the white waves thrown back into the darkness by the rapid approach of the dinghy.

He was from Rostock, the old principal port of eastern Germany on the Baltic. He had worked in the shipyards until his life had crashed around him and he had been sacked as a casualty of the new grail of capitalism. Reunification had cost him his safe job and the security of cradle-to grave certainties. His wife and daughters were in Rostock and the coaster would sail north of the port where the shipyards were now silent, but he would not have a chance to stop off and visit. He was a heavily built man, with a shaven head, and next week he would celebrate, with the master and the mate, his forty-eighth birthday.

His life on the Princess Rose involved eating, watching wildlife films on video, and keeping the diesel engine alive. It was near to death; without the tender, nursing care Johannes Richter gave it, it would have failed long ago. He liked to say the engine was 'temperamental — like a woman', and he did not allow the master or the mate near it. It was in his care, and he gave it love. When the Princess Rose had reached the Mew Stone, as the anchor was dropped, the master had radioed the coast guard and Customs — Richter had heard him do it — on shore and they had been cleared immediately to take a small cargo on board. Richter did not understand how there should be so little interest from the authorities in their coming close to land, at night, and taking on a cargo.

The dinghy came alongside them and pitched under the hull. He threw down a rope-ladder and saw that its crew wore naval berets, but their bodies were in black wetsuits. The master had ordered the Filipinos below deck, the able seamen and the cook, as if the loading of the cargo was not their business. They had no integral crane on the Princess Rose, but two of the dinghy's crew scrambled up the rope ladder and the two left in the dinghy passed up four heavily weighted black canvas bags, then four big cardboard boxes that were more than a metre long and a half-metre deep and wide, then a deflated dinghy and an outboard motor.

The last man on the dinghy, rocking below on the swell, was not a sailor. He wore an oiled weatherproof coat, had polished shoes and a mane of silver hair that the wind tangled. When the bags and boxes were on board, and the deflated craft and the outboard, this older man was helped up the rope-ladder with one of the dinghy crew clutching his coat collar from above and one finding the rungs for his feet from underneath. The man showed no fear as he climbed up from the tossing black waters splashing between the hull and the dinghy. The master had come down from the bridge. Richter saw the man pass a thick brown envelope to him, and he watched as the master was given a receipt to sign. He thought the man had come to supervise the loading personally, as if he did not trust others to do his work. It impressed Richter, and confused him, that an obviously senior man bothered to board the Princess Rose to see the stowing of a cargo of less than a tonne weight.

Richter was joined by the mate and they started to transfer the bags and boxes, the craft and the outboard off the deck, and he had no more time to be impressed or confused. He did not see the man and the dinghy's crew leave. When the last box was in the mess, the master came to him and said that he should bring the ship to power. He went down into the bowels of the Princess Rose. Within fifteen minutes Richter had coaxed thrust from the diesel engine, heard the clanking grind of the anchor's cable being winched up, and felt the motion of the ship as she ploughed out into the Channel's wind. If he achieved the maximum from his engine, it would take them four days to reach the Polish port of Gdansk.

He came without fanfare, like a wraith in the dark evening.

There had been delays in Moscow because a warning light, governing the undercarriage of the aircraft, had played up. Yuri Bikov should have been into Kaliningrad Military in the late afternoon. The problems of maintenance were more acute with each passing day. It suited him better to land in darkness. He had ordered a signal to be sent ahead that forbade any welcoming party. He wanted neither senior officials from the city's headquarters of the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti nor the FSB resident at the Baltiysk naval base to meet him. One car and one driver were all that he required. He did not wish to draw attention to himself, was determined that his arrival should not be announced.

When his aircraft had taxied to a remote corner of the apron, the two men who had travelled with him were out first and down the steps, which bucked under their weight. They were his major and his sergeant. The major's expertise was in the areas of office organization, and his sergeant's was in the area of personal protection. They had been with him before and the respect between him and them was mutual. The major wore the executive suit of a young, successful businessman, and the sergeant wore a bulky jacket — sufficient to hide the Makharov pistol in his shoulder holster and the submachine-gun with the folding stock that rested in the jacket's inner pocket. Bikov followed them.

As was intended, the ground crew would have thought that the major was the man of enough importance to be flown from Moscow by military jet. Bikov was not noticed. A heavily filled duffel bag was hitched on his shoulder. He wore the boots that had been hosed but had not lost all of the Chechen mud that clung to the stitching and the laces, and the jeans he had had there, which had been washed but not pressed. There was a small fraying tear in the right knee. He had shaved the night before, the first time since going to Chechnya, enough for his audience with the general at the Lubyanka, and he would not shave again until he left Kaliningrad with his prisoner and his prisoner's confession; the stubble was already on his cheeks and chin.

They were driven away on the outer perimeter road, past a silent, darkened battery of surface-to-air missiles, avoiding the lights of the civilian terminal. They headed for the city and a hotel used by tourists from Germany, which military staff officers would be unlikely to visit. There they would dump their bags. Later, they would go to the back entrance of the city's FSB headquarters.

If any had known of the reputation of Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Bikov, they would have felt the aggravated chill of the north wind that blew on the Kaliningrad oblast. They would have recognized a man who was formidable, dangerous, who did not travel on business of slight importance. He was relaxed and at ease. Bikov asked no more of life than that challenges should be served up to him. He was sandwiched on the back seat between his sergeant and his major. His sergeant told the driver to switch off the car's heating, and his major wound down the window; neither needed to be told what he wanted. He sniffed the air, and on the chill of the wind was the sea's tang.

He was smiling.

Crow's flight, 475 kilometres away from Kaliningrad, another military aircraft landed. A C-130 Hercules, of transport command, out of the RAF base at Lyneham, landed at Templehof, the airport to the west of central Berlin.

Gabriel Locke had tried as they'd boarded to distance himself from the rest of Mowbray's army — and Mowbray, who still smelt of salt spray after his helicopter ride — but the loadmaster had refused him the seat forward and on the far side to the rest of the group. He was with them, was a part of them. When they'd stacked and circled over Templehof, he'd heard Mowbray launch into a description of the Airlift, as if what had happened in the summer of 1948 was important today. Locke had tried not to listen, and Smith, Protheroe, Flint and Wicks had made no pretence and had slept. The woman had worked hard at her nails with a file. In the dimmed light of the transport plane, where their leg movement was constricted by the cargo of wood crates on pallets destined for the embassy's military attaché, only Locke had been Mowbray's unwilling audience. On Mowbray's voice was a whiff of excitement — as if he had come home, as if he valued the city spread out below them in myriad pinpricks of light.

They came down feather sweetly.

Mowbray had shrugged out of his restraining harness before the aircraft had come to a halt, before the loadmaster had given him permission to disentangle himself, with the eagerness of a child about to play a favourite game. When the Hercules finally lurched to its stop, Mowbray had to reach out to steady himself, and Alice caught his arm. It was all pitiful to Gabriel Locke. The rear hatch ground down on its hydraulics to reveal a forklift waiting to lift down the cargo. Mowbray was first off. Locke wondered if the older man was going to do a papal job and kneel to kiss the oil-smeared tarmac. He didn't. He made a little jump to get from the hatch to the ground and then stood, his hands locked behind his back, and seemed to smell the air. Locke wondered why Mowbray should feel such blatant affinity with Berlin.

The team filed off. They were quiet. Alice followed them, carrying Mowbray's briefcase and his bag, and her own briefcase and suitcase; she was loaded like a hotel porter. Locke followed. The loadmaster was already busy with the forklift and had started to supervise the movement of the crates. Three cars waited for them with the engines ticking, spewing fumes. A woman came forward.

Locke heard her say, 'Welcome to Berlin, Mr Mowbray. I'm Daphne, Daphne Sullivan.'

He heard Mowbray say, 'You did well, Daphne. I congratulate you — first-class tradecraft.'

Daphne Sullivan was introducing them to a German civilian, who had brought a passport stamp with him. Mowbray's passport, false name, then Alice North's with her bogus identity. Locke seethed. His passport was genuine, in his own name. Why was he not considered sufficiently important to have been given a new passport with a new name? The team stood back once their passports had been stamped, then began to follow Mowbray to the cars. Alice was close to the greeter, Daphne Sullivan. Locke heard her low voice: 'But he'd been there?'

'The chalk was fresh. The footprints were very clear. I could see that he'd run along the beach. Yes, he'd been there.'

'There were two crosses and Y and F?'

A woman was queried and a woman scratched back. Locke heard Daphne Sullivan say sharply, 'That's what I wrote in my report. Is it a state secret? The Y and the F, that was important?'

Locke thought there was a fractional choke in Alice North's voice, and wouldn't have noted it if he hadn't been close. 'His first communication with us, when he'd walked in, he signed off as "Your Friend" — YF — and in his last line of the letter he'd written, "Protect me." Thank you for having gone there.'

Locke might have registered more, but he was tired as a dog, and his ears still hammered with the engine noise of the transport aircraft — and Alice was scampering with her briefcases and bags, towards the cars, and Mowbray was waving imperiously for him to hurry.

He murmured, 'How was it in there?'

'Foul,' Daphne Sullivan said curtly. 'It's an armed camp…I don't know what boys' capers you're going to indulge yourselves with, and don't want to know. I'm glad I'm not a part of it.'

Locke took the last place in the third car. Why had Alice North craned to listen when told about bloody footprints in the sand on a beach? They drove out of the airport. Why had Alice North thanked an officer from the Berlin station for merely doing her job? They took the fast lane in the late-night traffic.

Under the bright light of a spot lamp, Yuri Bikov read the files that were brought to him. His major had chosen the room and Bikov approved the choice. The room's door led on to a corridor, and at the end of the corridor were the fire-escape steps leading directly to the rear car park behind the building. While Bikov read, the sergeant was at work with a heavy screwdriver, changing the lock on the door. His major was setting up the new telephone system that would carry scrambled calls to the Lubyanka in Moscow.

Already, by midnight, a photocopier had run off a four-times-life size copy of a picture of Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko, which was now fastened with adhesive strips to the wall behind the door. Neither man interrupted Bikov. He would work through till dawn, until the light came up on the windows across which the blinds were drawn. He read and pondered and let the thoughts swim, then looked up at the face that stared back down at him. He circled the man, and searched for weakness…it was always in the files, it would be there if he could recognize it.

'Land or sea — that's the first thing to be worked out. What do we want, land or sea?' Billy asked them.

'Do we have the choice?' Lofty shrugged.

'Course we do.' Ham snorted. 'That's why we're here, the "experts" — God help them. Go in by land or go in by sea? We tell Rupert God Almighty what we want.'

'Land. Land's better,' Wickso said. 'Go in by land, come out by land — last bit is cross-country. Better than by sea.'

Locke listened.

The hotel on Hardenbergstrasse was big and anonymous, and they hadn't roused a second glance from the harassed girls behind the desk. Rupert Mowbray wasn't with them, was elsewhere, and Alice had told Locke that 'Mr.' Mowbray had gone round the corner to a pension he'd always used in the 'old days'. Locke had repeated 'old days' to her sneeringly, but she hadn't responded. As soon as she'd taken her key, Alice had gone to the room allocated to her rather than stay with him for a drink. Locke had had two beers in the bar, then gone up to the corridor, fifth floor, where their rooms were.

The TV had been on in Smith's room and he'd knocked at the door, too awake to sleep. Maps were out on the bed. He was sat down by the TV, on which an overweight singer performed in short trousers and braces. They ignored him.

'We don't have the time to piss about. If it's land, what do we need?' Billy asked.

'Get off the road, go cross-country, cut the fence,' Wickso said. 'Then me and Ham either side of the fence in the treeline.'

'Lofty's the driver, got the class act,' Billy said. 'So God Almighty's got to get us a car on the far side, and a driver — we can't, not on the way in. Lofty drives on the way out.'

'What does "close surveillance" mean?' Lofty asked.

'Means you got to drive like there's a bayonet, a sharp one, adjacent to your arse, when we've done the pickup.'

'What do we call him?' Ham spoke.

'He's Ferret, so we call him Ferret.'

'He's got to be at the pickup, that's Ferret's problem.' Wickso said.

Locke noticed that the one called Lofty had tilted his head back as if that might help him to understand a difficulty. His eyes were narrowed and gazed at the ceiling light and a frown creased his forehead. To Locke, Lofty was the slowest of the four and the one who had been hardest to recruit. The idea of any man wanting, volunteering, to spend his days at Tyne Cot was beyond his comprehension; it was an awful place, seriously awful. The conversation died, and Billy was folding away the maps of Kaliningrad, coastal and land. The singer belted on.

Lofty said, all the time shaking his head, 'What bugs me — why us?'

Ham grinned, without charity. 'You stupid, Lofty? More stupid than usual?'

'Why not the Regiment or the Squadron?'

Wickso said, 'Because, Lofty, we don't exist…'

Billy said, 'Because, old cock, we're deniable.'

Locke slipped out into the corridor, and none of them seemed to notice his going. He walked past Alice North's door. He was outside the loop, and he'd bloody well change that.

He saw the cluster of men gathered at the wharf's edge.

Viktor walked aimlessly. As the admiral's eyes and ears in the base it was known that he often prowled late at night to have the feel of the fleet's headquarters, to be able to report on moods and conditions. He was going towards berth number fifty-eight of basin number one in the naval harbour. It was past two in the morning. The floodlights shone down on the cranes above the berth and on the superstructures of the destroyers.

All the fleet destroyers were in basin number one, and the frigates of the Krivak class, and would stay there through the winter because there was no fuel for them to go to sea. In basin number two were the submarines, one of the Kilo class, five of the Tango class and one of the Foxtrot class. It was something that concerned him. Since the first meeting in Gdansk at the Excelsior Hotel he had started to alter in his mind Russian class designations for warships to those of NATO. Sometimes a submarine was Kilo class and sometimes it was Vashavyanka class — and it was the little thing that could kill him. Shadows spilled between the light pools thrown down by the arc-lights. He walked because each night, now, it was harder to sleep alone in the silence of his room. If he walked he did not toss in his bed and kick against the cold around him. Sometimes he heard the following feet of the men who trailed him. He did not know how it would end, or when or where. He was close to basin number one, and to berth fifty-eight where the destroyer, empty and dark, was moored, and he heard the cry.

It came like the shriek of a gull. At the cry the cluster of men seemed to dance in a frenzy on a one-metre square of concrete.

He stopped, was dragged from his dulled thoughts of survival. The nearest of the arc-lights did not reach the group, but he could see the silhouette shapes of the men. His mind cleared and he gasped. The feet did not dance, they kicked. The cluster moved. It edged, as if that was the discipline of the music controlling the dance, towards the quayside and the black gap between the concrete and the hull of the destroyer moored there. There was a low moan, and he heard the sounds of the boots or shoes of the men as they thudded into what might have been a grain sack. In the middle was a shape and it moved without the energy of hope, slow and lethargic. The cluster of men, five or six, closed round it, kicked it towards the quayside's edge. He forgot himself, his own pain. Five or six men propelled another man, by kicking, towards the darkness under the destroyer's hull. He started to run.

Viktor tried to shout but his voice died in his throat.

He heard the last scream, and the dulled splash. He ran as if his own life were at stake. There was laughter as the cluster peered down into the darkness. Now they heard him. As one, they spun. Viktor ran under a light pool. They would have seen an officer in best dress for dining in the senior officers' mess sprinting towards them. They scattered. Two or three went right, towards berth number fifty eight, and two or three went left and round the corner of the basin, towards berth number sixty. He saw the flashes on their arms that marked them as senior NCOs, but he did not see their faces, and he had no more thought of them. The edge of the quay was empty. He heard the thud of their feet. Viktor tore at the buttons, and when his tunic flapped away from his body he shook it off him. He was at the quay, level with the forward pod of missile launchers, and the boat above him was darkened. He yelled into the night, but there was no answer. A thickened black ink was below him and his eyes could not see into it. The answer to his yell was a faint thrashed movement under him.

Viktor went in.

He jumped, feet first, down into the void. For a moment he was clear, free falling ten metres, then the water met him. He went under. The sensation was of the numbing cold. He groped. His fingers caught loose material, then an arm, but he lost them. The oil was in his nose and the water in his mouth. He surfaced. Viktor trod water, reached in front and behind and to each side, and his hands did not find the man. He spluttered then breathed hard, trapped the air in his lungs and jackknifed his body so that he dived. He went deep. His eyes could not help him. The air dribbled from his lungs, the pain broke in his chest. It was at the end, the final gasps of air in him, that his outstretched fingers caught a plunging leg in the total darkness. He hung on to it, then kicked upwards. There was a moment when death seemed inevitable, then he broke the surface and he still held the leg. The man he gripped no longer struggled. On his back, holding the man's body on his stomach and chest, Viktor paddled the dozen strokes towards the quay.

A torch shone down and blinded his eyes where the oil made fires of agony.

He wondered, another drowning man's moment, if he were about to be shot. A boat hook stabbed at his shoulder and tore his neck, but he was able to hold it with one hand while he still clung to the man he had gone down into the sea to save. His eyes cleared but the pain came sharper and the ache in his lungs. Instead of the boat hook, hands now held him. He could see the face, young and pale, of Igor Vasiliev, the conscript boy. Rescuers were on the iron ladder flush against the quay's wall and they held him vice-like, and more hands reached to take the weight of the boy from him.

He saw love and gratitude in the eyes of the conscript.

They were pulled, together and coupled, up the ladder. Alone, Viktor would not have had the strength to climb the ten metres of the ladder with the weight of Igor Vasiliev. They were at the top and Viktor doubled on his knees and coughed, retched, spat out the water and the oil in it, and men were over the conscript and hammered at his chest until he coughed up what had lain in his lungs. Viktor knelt beside him. He shouted his name and rank to the men who had lifted him up the ladder and he ordered them back. There was a fury in his voice that none dare disobey. They made a circle around him. Far in the distance was the wail of an approaching ambulance. He crouched and bent his head so that he spoke into the conscript's ear.

'I have to know, who did this to you?'

No answer, only the fear in the eyes of Igor Vasiliev.

'Don't fuck with me. Who did this to you?' He strained to hear the whined response.

'My sergeant.'

'And who? Your sergeant and who?'

'Corporals.'

'Why did your sergeant and the corporals try to kill you, drown you?'

'I said I was going to report them.'

'To whom were you going to report your sergeant and corporals?'

'To you, Captain Archenko.'

He held Vasiliev's hand. 'Why were you going to report them?'

'Because they sold…' The boy's breath came in gasps.

'What? What did they sell?'

'With Major Piatkin, they sold from the armoury.'

Viktor soothed him. 'All right, they stole weapons from the armoury for Major Piatkin to sell on. I hear you. What weapons?'

'Rifles, mortars, ammunition and grenades — and all of the NSVs.'

'Tell me.'

It was the supreme effort of Igor Vasiliev. He tried to sit up. The ambulance was close. He clutched at Viktor's hand. 'All of the NSV heavy machine-guns. The one I fire with, and all the others. I could not shoot today, it was gone. The sergeant said it was sold. I found him tonight, I told him I was going to report to you, unless my machine-gun was returned. They were going to put me into the water. They said that because I was going into the water — and would not be able to report to you — they would tell me. They had loaded the weapons on to lorries at the direction of Major Piatkin. The weapons were for a man they called Chelbia. They all get a share from the sale, from Chelbia. It was my machine-gun, and they had sold it. They called him Boris Chelbia — they said he was more important than Captain Archenko, and even more important than Admiral Falkovsky. They sold my machine-gun.'

Viktor stood. The water dripped from him. He waved the stretcher team forward.

When the ambulance had gone he walked back to his quarters. His feet squelched in the sea-water. He accepted neither help nor a blanket nor a lift in a vehicle, merely picked up his discarded jacket. A blinding anger consumed him. There was little enough of the night left, and in the morning he would act. He would not count the cost of it — he was doomed. What was the importance of the cost? He wondered where Alice was, where she slept, whether she thought of him and what she wore at her neck.

He walked past the dormitory blocks of the conscripts, and the fleet commander's headquarters, and across the parade area and past the armoury from which all of the NSV heavy machine-guns had been taken for sale. He said Alice's name quietly and no one was there to hear him.