Firefox

by Craig Thomas

  All three groups were focusing their attention on four men and a woman. They watched everything, saw and knew everything.

  Kontarsky, prematurely luxuriating in the congratulations of his superior, said, after a while, steepling his fingers as he leaned back in his chair: ‘We will make doubly-sure, my friends. We must take no risks at this point - this late point in time. Therefore, I suggest we commandeer a special detachment from the 5th Chief Directorate, one of their Security Support Units. You agree?’

  Lanyev, the man on the spot, seemed somewhat insulted. ‘There is no need. Comrade Colonel.’

  ‘I say there is - every need!’ Kontarsky’s eyes were angry, commanding. ‘I must have the most complete assurances that nothing will, or can, go wrong at Bilyarsk. Are you prepared to guarantee - in the most definite, unequivocal way - that nothing can go wrong?’

  Kontarsky was smiling at Lanyev. The middle-aged man, who had risen as high in the ranks of the KGB as he would ever achieve, looked down, and shook his head.

  ‘No, Comrade Colonel, I would not wish to do that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Naturally - and we are not asking that you should, Viktor Alexeivich, no.’ He beamed at his two subordinates. Priabin sensed the swing of Kontarsky’s mood.

  At times, his chief struck him as portraying many of the symptoms of the manic-depressive in miniature. Now the doubts of the previous day were deeply buried. Kontarsky would, almost, not have recognised himself had he confronted the frightened man of yesterday.

  ‘How many men. Colonel?’ he asked.

  ‘Perhaps a hundred - discreetly, of course - but a hundred. We may run the risk of frightening them on, but that will be better than failing to catch them at whatever they have planned.’

  ‘Comrade Tsemik does not believe that anything is planned. Comrade Colonel,’ Lanyev interpolated.

  ‘Mm. Perhaps not. But we must act as if they intend to sabotage the test-flight - something wrong with one of the missiles, or with the cannon … a mid-air explosion. I do not have to draw pictures for either of you.

  Production of the Mig-31 would be put back, perhaps reconsidered. Either that, or we should all, all of us, be - heavily disgraced?’ Kontarsky was still smiling.

  For a moment, there was a worried drawing together of the eyebrows, and then he shook off the doubts. He could face his fear now, because he could not see or envisage how he might fail. Mere multiplication gave him confidence. Almost two hundred men at Bilyarsk not to mention the informers…

  ‘I must check with the Political Security Service as to which of the informers we have been - loaned - are most reliable,’ Kontarsky went on briskly. ‘We should not need them - but they will be inside the factory complex, and therefore closest to the dissidents. They will be armed, under your direction, Viktor Alexeivich.’ Lanyev nodded. ‘And issued with communicators. Now, where will our three traitors be in the hours before the flight, when the aircraft is being armed?’

  Lanyev consulted his notes.

  ‘All three of them will be inside the hanger itself, Comrade Colonel - unfortunately.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Three times as dangerous as they might otherwise be. Give me details.’

  ‘Baranovich has worked on the weapons system itself. Comrade Colonel - as you know.’

  ‘He will be working on the aircraft during the night, until it takes off-‘

  ‘Yes. Comrade Colonel.’

  ‘He cannot be replaced?’

  ‘Not possibly.’

  ‘Very well! What of the others?’

  ‘Kreshin and Semelovsky are both little more than highly-favoured mechanics. Comrade Colonel,’ Lanyev supplied. ‘They will be concerned with the fuelling, and the loading of the missiles and the other weapons. Also, the Rearward Defence Pod. But they are most familiar with the systems, and not easy to replace.’

  ‘They can be watched?’

  ‘Very closely. Our informers will be shoulder-to-shoulder with them throughout the night.’

  ‘As long as our informers know enough to recognise attempted sabotage when they see it!’

  “They do. Comrade Colonel.’

  ‘Good. For that, I can take your word. Dherkov, naturally, will be at home, sleeping with that fat wife of his.’ Kontarsky smiled. His mood was being sustained by what he was hearing, by the action he appeared to be taking, the decisiveness of his manner, his voice … ‘Yes. May I sum up, gentlemen? Our a GRU colleagues will throw a ring around Bilyarsk that will be impregnable; our borrowed Security Support Unit will arrive tomorrow, and will assist the guards on the perimeter fence, the hangars, the factory, and the boundaries of the town itself. Our three dissidents will be very closely watched - especially Baranovich. Have I left anything out, Dmitri-‘

  ‘I have everything here, in my notes,’ Priabin said.

  Kontarsky stretched behind his desk, arms above his head. The smile that was beginning to irritate Priabin was fixed on his thin, dark features. His uniform collar was open at the neck, showing his prominent Adam’s apple, and the thin, bird-like throat, the skin stretched, yet loose, like a turkey … Priabin dismissed the irritation from his mind.

  ‘I think, as a further precaution, we will go and collect the Moscow end of the chain. No, not tonight. If they disappear with almost forty-eight hours to go, then Lansing may discover that fact, and warn off our friends at Bilyarsk. No! Tomorrow will do, giving us perhaps twenty-four hours to find out what they know! You will take care of that, Dmitri?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel. I shall have the warehouse they use as a cover watched from tonight - and move in on your orders.’

  ‘Good. I would like to see them before - before I myself fly down to Bilyarsk tomorrow. Yes. Ask for surveillance by the 7th Directorate, Dmitri, on the warehouse. We - need not spare too many of our own men, and they are in business to watch people. They can be replaced by our team when I give the word.’

  ‘Very well, Colonel.’

  ‘Very well? Yes, Dmitri - I begin to feel that it may indeed be very well!’ Kontarsky laughed. Priabin watched the Adam’s apple bob up and down in the turkey-throat, hating his superior’s overconfidence more” than he feared his lapses of nerve.

  The black saloon had eased itself into a convenient parking-place opposite the portico of the Moskva Hotel. As Gant had passed into the hotel foyer, and had patted his pockets as if to ensure he still had his papers, he had observed that the two men inside the saloon had made no move to follow him. One was already reading a newspaper, while the other, the driver, had just lit a cigarette. Warned by their inactivity, Gant surveyed the foyer from the vantage point of the hotel desk, and picked out the man who was waiting to identify him. His picture must have been transmitted via wireprint from Cheremetievo to Dzerzhinsky Street.

  Had he not been thoroughly briefed by Aubrey as to what to expect, Gant might have been left breathless by such efficiency; the intrusive, dogged pursuit of himself. As it was, the realisation of the degree and intensity of the security with regard to himself, merely as a suspected ‘economic criminal’, though deadened, still caused him a momentary feeling of wateriness in the pit of his stomach.

  The man watching for him. masked by his copy of Pravda, showed no sign of interest. He was seated in one of the many alcoves off the central foyer, overcoat thrown over a chair, apparently at his ease. If, and when, Gant left the Moskva, that man would follow him. Probably already, the car outside had been relieved by another, operating under the auspices of the same Directorate of the KGB as the man behind the newspaper.

  Once in his room, Gant removed the clear-glass spectacles, ruffled his hair deliberately, and pulled off his tie. It was as if he had released himself from a strait-jacket. He opened his suitcases, then slipped off his shoes. The room was a small suite, with the tall windows looking out over the windswept expanse of Red Square. Gant ignored the window, and helped himself to a Scotch from the drinks trolley placed in one corner of the room. He seated himself on a low sofa, put his feet up, and trie
d to relax. He had begun to realise that his attempted indifference would not work, not even in the apparent, luxurious safety of his centrally-heated, double-glazed hotel room. He had been instructed not to look for bugs, since he couldn’t be sure that he was not being observed through some two-way mirror device.

  He glanced in the direction of the huge mirror on one wall, and then dragged his eyes away from it. He began to experience the hypnotic effect of KGB surveillance. It was too easy - it required a real effort of mind to avoid doing so - to imagine himself pinned on a card, naked and exposed, with a bright white light beating down upon him. He shivered involuntarily, and swallowed at the Scotch. The liquor, to which he had become used merely as a part of his general training to assume the mask of Orton, warmed his throat and stomach. He inhabited a landscape of eyes.

  It was difficult to consider, coldly, objectively, the Russian defence system, the hours of the flight in the Firefox, the training on the Foxbat and the simulator constructed from the photographs and descriptions supplied by the man at Bilyarsk - Baranovich. With an effort, he decided to postpone such considerations.

  He lapsed into thoughtless inactivity. Getting up, he moved to the window and looked down from the twelfth floor over Red Square. He had no interest in the rank of cars parked directly below. Under the lowering sky, in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon, he stared, for a long time, down the vast length of the square, over the roof of the History Museum, towards the towers and domes of the Kremlin. He could just pick out the guards before the bronze doors of the Lenin Mausoleum, and the tiny figures moving in and out of the glass doors of the grey edifice of GUM. At the far end of the square, huge, incredible, was St. Basil’s Cathedral - garish, irreligious. His eyes continued to rove over the desert of Red Square, barely focused.

  The Scotch, as he swallowed another mouthful, no longer warmed him. Already his thoughts were reaching into the immediate future, towards the meeting with three men he did not know on the embankment of the Moskva, near the Krasnoknlinski Bridge. He was to leave the hotel after dinner, and behave as a tourist, no matter who tailed him. All he had to do was to be certain to arrive at ten-thirty. He was to be sure to take his hat and overcoat - no, to wear them - and he had to take the transistor radio. That told him that he would not be returning to the hotel; it would be the beginning of his journey to Bilyarsk.

  Alexander Thomas Orton left the bar of the Moskva Hotel a little before ten that evening, having taken dinner in the hotel dining-room. Throughout his meal he had been observed by a KGB man from the Surveillance Directorate - a short, obese man who had dined at a single table placed advantageously so that he could observe everyone in the huge room. The man had followed him into the bar, and had sat blatantly watching him, a large vodka before him on the table.

  Gant suspected that his room would be thoroughly searched during the meal, which was why the small transistor radio sat in the pocket of his overcoat, as it had done throughout dinner - he had hung the coat where he could see it, and where he could be seen to be able to see it. The pockets had not been searched.

  Throughout dinner, he had studied his Nagel Guide to Moscow, following the text on a large map which he folded ostentatiously out over the table cloth during his dessert. He had continued to study map and text during the hour he had spent in the bar. When he left, he was followed almost immediately.

  As he went down the steps of the hotel, into Red Square, the short fat man paused, and overtly lit a cigarette, the gas lighter flaring in the darkness. Gant did not see the signal, but he saw the dark figure detach itself from a large car parked near the spot where the tail-car had pulled in that afternoon. Only one man there, he thought - and the short fat man coming down the steps behind him.

  Two.

  The headlights of the car flared in the darkness, flickered in time with the coughing engine, then blazed as the engine roared. It had seemed quiet until that moment, that the noise of the engine was exaggerated.

  Gant had a momentary fear that he was about to be arrested, prevented from leaving the vicinity of the hotel - but there was no attempt to overhaul him, even though he paused to check, turning up his collar against the wind that was blowing down the square into his face. He had to hold the unfamiliar, irritating trilby on his head, and bend forward into the wind.

  He chose the left-hand pavement as he came out of Manezhnaya Square and into the Red Square proper.

  This would take him past the facade of GUM. There were many Muscovites in the square - the queue outside the Lenin Mausoleum had dispersed, but many people window-shopped in the glass of the great store, cold faces lit by the white lighting. Gant did not bother to check his tail - its distance, or persistence. He knew they would stay with him, and that some kind of general alert would go out the moment they lost him, and he would be hunted. Which was precisely what he did not want. These men had to stay close to him.

  Hence, he spent some time looking at the fashion displays, the often inadequate replicas of Western fashions that GUM offered, the grey monster that was the largest department store in the world, before he passed out of Red Square, again taking his time, strolling, staring across the windy space at the towers of the Kremlin.

  By the time he reached the Moskva river, and the Moskvoretski Bridge, he was thoroughly cold. His hat was jammed on his head, and his hands thrust in his pockets. He did not appear to be a man going anywhere in particular, but he could no longer be taken for a sightseer, enjoying Moscow by lamplight. The wind coming off the river seemed icy, and he now reluctantly held on to his hat, because it was a signpost, it informed the man tailing him where he was, even though he would have rather kept his numb, white hand in his overcoat pocket. He bent over the parapet of the road bridge, looking down into the black, lampflecked water, its surface rippled by the wind. Someone paused further back down the bridge, immediately highlighted by his lack of movement since all the other figures on the bridge moved swiftly, tugged and pushed by the wind. Gant smiled to himself.

  He turned his back to the river, and pulled his collar tight around his neck. Casually, he inspected the road across the bridge. The car had stopped, headlights switched off, seemingly empty, parked well away from the street lamps. And there was a second pedestrian, leaning with his back against the bridge, on the other side of the road, slightly ahead of him.

  Gant began to walk again. Despite what he had been told, despite the tail-spotting in which he had engaged in New York and Washington as part of his training under Buckholz, a small knot of tension had begun to form in his stomach. He did not know what would happen when he reached the Krasnoknlinski Bridge, downriver of where he was now, but he had been instructed not to lose his tail. Aubrey had made that clear in the smoke-filled room of his hotel in London the previous night. The KGB was to be kept with him.

  As he crossed the Drainage Canal that ran beside the Moskva and turned onto the Ozerkovskaia Quay, descending a flight of stone steps down to the embankment, he wanted to stop and be violently sick. He realised that the artificial calm he had felt until that moment had deserted him finally. He could no longer pretend to himself that this was only a tiresome preliminary, to be gone through before he came face-to-face with his part in the total proceedings. This was real.

  The cold and the wind had now been abated slightly by the level of the bridge; the men on his tail - he could hear them now, footsteps softly clattering, unhurried and assured, down the flight of steps to the embankment, forty or so yards behind him. He was frightened. One hand came out of his pocket and he gripped his coat where it sat across his stomach, twisting the material in his hand.

  He wondered about the car and its occupants. He could not turn round now, to count heads. He knew, with a sickening certainty, that there were three, perhaps four men behind him now, and that the car would be driving along the Ozerkovskaia Quay above him, waiting for him to regain the street.

  He passed the Oustinski Bridge, and glanced at his watch. Ten-twenty. It would take him no mo
re than another ten minutes to reach the next bridge, where he was to make his rendezvous with … with whom? In the shadow of the bridge there was a strange silence.

  The Sadovisheskaya Embankment, where he stood, was empty except for one or two couples strolling towards him, arm-in-arm, idling by the canal as if miles from the centre of the city.

  He breathed deeply three or four times, in the way he had done when settling his flying-helmet on his head, and glancing, for the first time, across the instrument panel of the aircraft he was about to fly. The memory, inspired by the physical control he asserted, seemed to calm him. He had to think that he was doing something of which he was a master - flying. If he could think that, then he could go on. The footsteps had stopped behind him, like patient guardians, waiting until he might be strong enough to continue.

  He walked on, passed a young couple absorbed in each other without even a glance in their direction, and measured the pace of his footsteps. He could hear footsteps behind him, a little clatter rebounding from the embankment wall, then the stronger, overlapping signals from the following KGB men. The footsteps of the couple, slower it seemed and less purposeful, faded away behind him. He wanted to run - he could not believe that they would let him reach the bridge. He wanted to run … It was a question of easing back the speed, not to overfly: he imagined the aerial situation, of having overflown a target, pulling back. waiting patiently, even though he had lost sight of the Mig, lost sight of the Phantom, when he himself had been flying the Foxbat… the terrible moments before re-contact.