Firefox Down (24 page)

Five huge pallets of equipment were secured in the aft section of the cargo compartment. The team of fifteen men lounged or stretched or checked equipment. Charles Buckholz once more familiarised himself with the cargo manifest, in conversation with the WRAP Air Loadmaster. Curtin was standing at a folding table on which lay a large-scale map. He was talking to the Hercules' co-pilot. Everything had been decided, the briefings had been completed. This was repetition to occupy time, nothing more.

The Hercules would land at Kirkenes and Aubrey, Buckholz and the other members of the team without parachute training would disembark. Waterford and his SBS unit, twenty-five men in total, would then embark and the Hercules would take them and their equipment to the area of the lake. The dropping zone for the parachutists had already been selected; the surface of the lake. Waterford had confirmed its suitability. Once the men had dropped, the Hercules would make a low-level run and the five pallets of equipment would simply be dropped, without parachutes, from the rear cargo doors. At first, Aubrey had considered the method primitive, unsophisticated, potentially dangerous to the valuable equipment - especially the winches. RAF reassurances had failed to convince him, even though he accepted them. It still seemed an
amateurish
manner of accomplishing the drop.

Above the Norwegian border with Finland, Eastoe's AWACS Nimrod was back on-station. It would operate in an airborne, early-warning capacity, a long-range spyplane, observing the Russian border for any and every sign of movement. Also it would provide a back-up communications link with Washington, London, Helsinki and the lake to supplement the direct satellite link established when Waterford's initial search party had left the commpack at the lake.

He turned away from the scene. Buckholz and the non-parachutists would be flown by RNAF Lynx helicopters, arriving no more than an hour behind Waterford's party. Aubrey looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. By four-thirty, the whole party would be in place at the lake, where the Firefox lay in twenty-six feet of icy water.

Twenty-six feet. It was hardly submerged. A man standing on the fuselage would have his head above water. Eighty feet in length - the tailfins in perhaps thirty-four feet of dark water - with a wingspan of fifty feet, it had to be winched no more than one hundred and fifty feet before it was ashore. Or, preferably, plucked out of the water like a hooked fish by the Skyhook which had refuelled on the German-Danish border thirty minutes earlier. The figures were temptingly simple, the task easy to achieve. Yet he could not believe in it, in its success.

Gant -

The nose of the Hercules was dipping into the clouds when the operator of the communications console that had been installed for Aubrey's use, turned to him.

'There's a coded signal coming in, sir - from Helsinki.' He attended to his headset; nodding as the high-speed frequency-agile message ended. 'There's no need to reply, sir. They've signed off.'

'Very well-run it.'

The operator flicked switches, dabbed at a miniature keyboard set into the console, and hidden tapes whirred. It was Hanni Vitsula's voice.

'Charles!' Aubrey called.

Buckholz arrived as the replayed voice chuckled, then said: 'Don't rely on the weather, Kenneth. Forty-eight hours from midnight tonight is our final, repeat final offer. Our forecasts suggest it might be easier to reach the site than you're supposing… don't expect us not to arrive. Good luck. Message ends. Out.'

Buckholz shook his head ruefully.

'He guesses we're relying on getting ourselves socked in by the weather. Think he'll decide to move in before the deadline?' Aubrey waved his hand dismissively. 'No. But, otherwise he means what he says.' He slapped his hands on his thighs. 'Well, that's it. Your President has gained us the dubious bonus of a few more hours.' Through the porthole, Aubrey could see the grey cloud pressing and drizzling against the perspex. 'But that's all the time we have.'

'Let's just you and me hope the weather turns real sour, uh?'

'Then we will have lost the game, Charles. The Skyhook will never arrive in the weather you're hoping for!'

Dmitri Priabin turned slowly and gently onto his back and sat up. In the soft lamplight, he stared intently at the hollow of Anna's naked back, as if he were studying the contours of a strange and new country. Eventually, he clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling. He pursed his lips, pulled dismissive, laconic faces, prevented a sigh, but knew that the time of recrimination had once more arrived. He slipped from the bed and hoped she would not wake.

He sat cross-legged on a padded chair. He could taste the onions from the hot-dog one of the boys had pressed upon him, unable himself to finish it. He belched silently behind his clenched hand. Yes, onions - it recurred more strongly than the wine, than dinner, than the vodka. It was more persistent than the taste of the perfume from her neck and breasts on his tongue and lips.

Onions - recrimination. Both brought back the park and the metro station and the other reminders of her treachery that had assailed him at the ticket-counter so that the clerk's face had changed from puzzlement to nerves before he had recollected himself sufficiently to buy the tickets.

Now, recrimination, guilt, fear all returned like some emotional malaria as she slept. It was an illness which never left him, only remained dormant.

He leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist, studying her.

He lived on the verge of a precipice. He had done so ever since the momentary looks of guilt and fear he had noticed wheri he had answered unexpected telephone calls, looks which had vanished as soon as he put down the receiver and shrugged. And, he reminded himself, he always put it down with the sense that he had been speaking to an American who spoke good but very formal Russian.

He had lived on the cliff edge ever since he began to follow her himself. Ever since he witnessed her make covert contact wih a man who might have been her Case Officer. Ever since he had tailed that Case Officer to a known CIA safe house…

He had been on the edge for six, almost seven months -

She stirred, alarming him, as if surprised in some deep disloyalty of his own. She turned onto her back but did not wake. Her flattened breasts were revealed as her unconscious hand pushed the bedclothes down. It was a strangely erotic exposure; crudely inviting. He studied her unlined, sleeping face; unlined except where the brow was creased even while she slept. He felt tears prick his eyes, and because he could never bring himself to even begin to tell her that he knew, that he wanted to help…

Recrimination, palpable as the taste of onions -

As soon as he had moved into her apartment, he had looked for bugs. He had spent the whole of that moving day checking the telephone, pictures, walls, floorboards, cupboards, wardrobes, bed. His relief at finding no traces of surveillance or bugging had overwhelmed him. As soon as he had straightened from pushing back the last corner of fitted carpet, he had had to rush to the bathroom and vomit into the avocado-coloured toilet.

For weeks after that he had been unable to rest until he had checked the files, checked her office, followed her to discover whether anyone else was following her. He had become like a jealous lover, or like the private investigator such a lover might have employed.

Like a spy -

Gradually, he came to believe that it was only he who knew. There was no evidence, no one was gathering information, no one even suspected.

What she supplied was not state secrets, it was little more than high-grade gossip. Details of the Soviet Union's social services, housing programmes, illnesses, alcoholism - the temperature of Soviet society - which would be useful to them in building their total picture of the Soviet state. Promotions inside the Secretariat and the Politburo and the ministries, glimpses of the working or stumblings of the Soviet economy, matters of that kind -

Almost not like spying at all. Little more than indiscreet gossip, careless talk which was overheard by strangers.

Priabin could make himself believe that. She was not an important agent, hardly an agent at all. Revenge, disgust with the system that preferred weapons to a wheelchair, had made her do it, were her motives. He could understand that. How much the suicide of her husband, in unexplained circumstances years before she met Baranovich and his damned wheelchair, had to do with it, he had no idea. He preferred the motive of revenge. It gave her a certain honest dignity.

Recrimination. He was certain she did not suspect he knew. He blamed, even hated himself for not telling her, for not weaning her away from the addiction, for not saving her. But he dare not risk losing her…

He stood up and crossed the room swiftly to kneel by the bed. Very gently, he kissed each flattened breast, each erect nipple. Then he continued to kneel, as if partaking in a further religious ceremony. He could not let her go, but he could not let her be discovered. He must speak to her -

He could never admit his knowledge -

Angrily, he stood up. She stirred and moaned lightly, half-turning away from him. The glow of the lamp fell on the fine down along her arm. He watched, then walked swiftly into the bathroom. He did not switch on the light because he had no wish to see himself in the long, bevelled mirror. Instead, he fumbled in the poor light that came from the open doorway, found a glass and filled it with tepid water.

Recrimination.
He must do something -
!

But he would lose her -

His mouth was dry and the taste of onions was making him feel nauseous.

Whispering near the door, as it squeaked shut once more. Gant came awake immediately, shocked that he had dozed, making a vast effort to stop his left arm rising from the bed to display his watch. He breathed in, slowly and deeply, and listened.

Dressing change… who? He was sufficiently propped up by the pillows to see the two figures at the table without lifting his head. Starched cap, long hair tied back. The male nurse had put down his book. Gant saw him nod, then the woman began moving across his line of sight towards - his bed? - no, the bandaged patient, the mummy. Gant relaxed, and immediately the sense of isolation returned. He did not know how he had slept, or for how long. How had he been capable of sleep?

He could see the nurse's back as she bent over the second bed from his own. She had flicked on the overhead light. The mummified head murmured. It might have been a stifled groan. Gant watched crepe bandage being unrolled, stretched upwards by a slim arm in the muted light. Something glinted, and the arm fell. The mummy murmured again in a frightened tone, as if someone intended him harm. Something glinted, and clicked lightly.

More clicking, like the sound of distant hedge-clippers…

Gant felt his body tensing itself without his will. His hands curled and uncurled, his arms lifted slightly, testing their own weight. His body felt compact, less weary. Bruised, though. The drugs had worn off, leaving the pain of his brief, violent beating.

The nurse was murmuring, the mummy seemed to protest. Then her arm stretched again in the light. Then the clicking noise, and something slim and metal gleamed. And, at the moment of realisation, as his thoughts caught up with his body, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor towards the ward, and he moved.

One chance, only one…

He flicked the bedclothes away, rolled, wondered for an instant what strength he had, and then rolled across the next door bed, his right hand reaching for her arm, his body closing with her, knocking the breath out of her. Gleam of the scissors, her frightened mouth and eyes turning to him, the eyes of the mummy and the half-exposed, purple cheek and swollen mouth. Then he dragged the nurse sideways so that they did not topple on the patient, and whirled round -

'Don't - !' he yelled in Russian, feeling his legs buckle but holding the snatched scissors at the girl's throat, the blade imitating a slight downward stabbing motion. 'Don't
think
about it!'

The male nurse was on his feet, his hand reaching into his short white coat to where a breast pocket or a shoulder holster would be. Then he was bumped forward as the doors opened behind him.
The doctor-

Gant recognised the man and fought off the weakness that followed his realisation of how late he had left it. He moved forward with the nurse in front of him, even as the doctor was asking what was happening and breaking off in mid-sentence as he understood.

'Over here!' yelled Gant, pushing the reluctant nurse forward. The doctor snapped on the main strip lights, which flickered and then glared on the scene. There were two plain clothed guards with him. A stretcher waited behind them; he could see it through a gap where one of the guards still held the door half-open. 'Move!' His voice sounded panicky. His legs felt weak, even shuffling at that snail's pace. The scissors gleamed. He pressed the point of them down, touching the girl's throat. It would not take a minute more, perhaps only seconds, before they moved out of shock and drew their guns and killed the girl and took him for interrogation as if nothing had occurred.

The male nurse moved slowly, reluctantly. Three yards separated them now, then only two, but Gant hesitated because the manoeuvre seemed too complicated. He lacked the necessary co-ordination. The man's eyes were quick and alert, the girl had gone soft and unresisting in his arms. Both of them were beginning to think he was already beaten. In the man's face Gant could already detect his anticipation of what might happen to the girl when he made his move, and his lack of concern.

One of the guards was moving his hand very slowly to the breast of his jacket. The doctor, sensing the approaching moment of violence, had made a single step to one side, away from the doors. Two yards, a yard-and-a-half -

Now - !

His left hand gripped the girl's arm, his arm across her breasts. He spun her away from him, flinging her to the left. Then he kicked the male nurse with his bare right foot, almost losing his balance, striking at the groin. He had already dropped the scissors to the floor. He grabbed the nurse, hoisted him upright, fumbled in the man's coat, withdrew the Makarov. Awkwardly, he juggled the pistol until it pointed towards the group at the doors.