Firefox

by Craig Thomas

  He ushered Edgecliffe from the room with a winning smile.

  ‘Then who is this man?’ Kontarsky was saying, holding the photograph of Gant standing by the truck at the checkpoint under the noses of Borkh and Priabin. ‘Have either of you any idea?’

  The light was on in his office as the day outside the window darkened. It had been a fine April day. Kontarsky had walked in the Alexandrovski Gardens after lunch and the air had been mild. Now, with something of a satisfied mood about him still, he looked at his two subordinates. He was hardly worried, merely concerned that the driver’s mate with Upenskoy had not yet been identified. He was unknown to the ‘M’ Department.

  The truck, naturally, was being tailed, always in sight of the tail-car. Lanyev had returned alone to Bilyarsk, with new orders for Tsemik, and advance information concerning the movements of Upenskoy and the truck.

  ‘We do not know. Colonel,’ Priabin said.

  Kontarsky, despite his confidence, was adroit at displaying anger with his subordinates. He said: ‘Do not know - we have had this photograph for hours!’

  ‘We are checking. Colonel. The Computer and Records Directorate is giving it priority, sir,’ Borkh felt called upon to say.

  ‘Is it? Is it, indeed? And why them?’

  ‘We are assuming that this man is a foreign agent, sir,’ Priabin said. ‘British, perhaps?’

  ‘Mm. Is that likely?’

  ‘Why don’t we stop the truck and ask him. Colonel?’ Borkh blurted out.

  Kontarsky turned his angry stare upon him. ‘Idiot!’ was all he said.

  Priabin understood. Kontarsky was looking for a spectacular triumph. He sensed that the man in the truck with Upenskoy was important, but he reacted by assuming that Bilyarsk was impregnable - which it was, Priabin had to admit - and that he therefore had leisure to play this man on a line, hoping that he would lead him to others, tie in with some big SIS or CIA operation. Priabin was irritated - but he, too, could not consider the threat of a single individual, even if he was travelling towards Bilyarsk, as anything to be taken seriously.

  Kontarsky, seeing the keenness of his assistant’s study of him said: ‘What of your interrogation?’

  ‘Nothing - so far. They’re holding out, so far.’

  ‘Holding out, Dmitri?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You showed the man Glazunov this photograph of someone who was pretending to be him - was he not outraged?’

  Priabin did not feel called upon to smile. He said: ‘Colonel - I don’t think he knows who is in the truck with Upenskoy.’

  ‘But - you and I agree the truck is heading for Bilyarsk?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel - it must be.’

  ‘Then this man, whoever he is, and from wherever he comes - must be a saboteur?’

  ‘Probably, Colonel.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, Dmitri.’ Kontarsky rubbed his blue jowl. ‘But, what can one man do to the Mig-31 that cannot be done by Baranovich and the others already on the spot - eh?’ He was thoughtful for a moment, then he added: ‘What kind of operation could it be? If we knew who he was, then we might net ourselves something very useful.’ He smiled, and Priabin wondered again at his motives. Kontarsky was enjoying himself, of that there was no doubt. He expected some kind of additional success, connected with this man but what? Priabin would have stopped the truck by now.

  Kontarsky went on: ‘I shall delay my flight to Bilyarsk by a few hours. Meanwhile, alert the security there concerning this truck … Borkh, get me Colonel Leprov in Records - I want this man identified as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Dmitri, get back to our friends and ask them once more who he is!’

  Kontarsky’s finger tapped the photograph of Gant as Borkh dialled the number and Priabin left the room.

  Gant was tired, cramped with travel, his mind numbed by the endlessness of the Russian steppe, that great sweep of plain stretching as far as the Urals, two hundred miles beyond Bilyarsk. His mind had plumbed his own past, prompted by the similarity of the country to his own Mid-West. It had not been a pleasant experience, and he was sick with the memories and the petrol fumes that seeped into the cab.

  It was dark now, and Upenskoy had switched on the headlights. The tail-car was a steady five hundred metres behind. It had picked them up on the outskirts of Kazan, taking over from its predecessor as they had crossed the vast new Lenin Bridge over the Volga which had replaced the ferry. The tail-car was not using its lights - but both he and Pavel knew it was there.

  ‘How far now?’ he asked, breaking a long silence.

  ‘The turn-on is about four miles further on - then Bilyarsk is fourteen miles up that road.’

  ‘And I have to meet the pick-up on that road - at the point you showed me on the map?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s time for me to leave you…’ Gant said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Yes. The first copse up ahead, and I’m going to jump for it,’ Gant said decisively.

  Pavel looked across at him, then said, ‘Very well. I will try not to let them overtake me for as long past the guard-post as possible. Then, with luck, I shall leave them behind when I abandon my trusty vehicle, which is bringing the benefits of modern plumbing to the Volga Hotel at Kuybyshev!’ Pavel, curiously to Gant, roared with laughter.

  Gant said, ‘Don’t get yourself caught.’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Pavel replied. ‘Semelovsky will have passed through the guard-post less than fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘How do you know?” ‘He was at the petrol station in Kazan. I didn’t speak to him, but he was there.’

  ‘How - did he get out of Bilyarsk? I thought it was sealed up tight until after tomorrow’s show.’

  ‘It is. He’s from Kazan - his mother is dying, so they let him out - in company with a KGB man, of course.

  No, don’t worry. The KGB man saw him on his way.

  They’re not worried about him. They know he’s one of us, and they expect him to return to Bilyarsk.’

  ‘His mother is - really dying?’

  ‘It would appear so - to the doctor, that is. However, she is a very tough old lady…‘He smiled.

  ‘Semelovsky will be waiting for you on the road.’

  It seemed to Gant that every man he had come into contact with was under sentence of death. A sentence they all accepted as their lot. He wanted to say something to Pavel, in the selflessness of the moment.

  Pavel’s voice cut across his mood. ‘Trees coming up, and a few bends in the road, just to keep truck drivers from falling asleep!’ He looked at Gant, and added: ‘Don’t say anything - your words would be useless, maybe even insulting. Just fly that damn aeroplane out of Russia!’

  Three.

  THE SUSPICIONS.

  A pair of men’s shoes were placed on Police Inspector Tortyev’s desk, under the hard striplighting, and the young man’s attention seemed to be riveted upon them.

  He leaned back in his chair, one foot pushing against the desk, steepled fingers tapping insistently at his pursed Ups. At that moment, he was alone in his office and had been for half-an-hour, because he had wanted to think. He had still not decided what to do about the shoes.

  The chair creaked as he regained an upright position, and reached out a hand. He picked up the white label tied to one of the shoes, and read again that it was the property of Alexander Thomas Orton. Shaking his head, as if in puzzled amusement, he shunted the left and right shoes, which were not a pair - one being black, the other brown - together. One shoe was a size-and-a-half bigger than the other. The black shoe from Orton’s body was still damp from its ducking in the Moskva. The other shoe, still shining and barely worn, though the heel was showing signs of wear already - the other shoe had been taken from Orton’s room at the Moskva Hotel.

  He shunted the shoes apart, then together again, his lips pursing as he did so. He whistled softly, tunelessly, his eyes staring at the shoes, as if willing them to inform him of the cause of their discrepancy in size.
The hat size had been the same, the collar size the same, the overcoat at the hotel had fitted the dead man, the suits had fitted, the socks … but not the shoes. Why not? Did any man have shoes that varied so much in size? Why?

  He pushed back his chair again, assuming his former position. It was, indeed, mysterious. The answer, of course, forming itself in his mind all the time he had been alone in his office, was that the man in the river was not the man who had booked into the Moskva Hotel, the man who had passed through security at Cheremetievo, who had taken that walk from the hotel along the embankment, only to be murdered.

  Why was it not the same man? The question was more important than the discovery, the solution to the problem of the shoes. One of the three men who had met Mr. Orton had - taken his place in the river? Why?

  The question might not have interested an ordinary policeman, not as directly, or as insistantly as it interested Tortyev. But then, Tortyev was not an ordinary member of the Moscow police. He held a police rank, and his offices were situated in the Police Headquarters but, like many of his colleagues, he was a member of the KGB 2nd Chief Directorate. His only superiors, the only people to whom he was answerable, were KGB officers in the Political Security Service.

  Tortyev had been in charge of the Orton case since the first addiction cases had come to the attention of the Moscow police and, naturally and inevitably, to the attention of his section of the KGB. His rank in the police had been made up to Inspector, at thirty-three and he was given authority to co-opt suitable resources in order to unearth, and smash, the ring creating the addiction.

  Tortyev had a hatred of drugs, and of pushers. It was as burning a hatred as belonged to any member of any drugs squad anywhere in the world. Tortyev would have done equally valuable work in New York, or London, or Amsterdam. He hated Orton. When Holokov, fat, efficient Holokov, had informed him of the Englishman’s death, he had been pleased, though, in another way, frustrated. He had wanted to confront Orton, see him sentenced. Yet his death had not mattered - they knew the others, the ones Orton had supplied.

  Yet now, Orton was not dead at all, he admitted.

  His teeth ground together audibly in the silence of the room. He picked up the telephone. An operator at a special switchboard divorced from the switchboard that served the rest of the police building, answered.

  ‘Get me the Seventh Directorate - the office of Colonel Ossipov,’ he said, and waited for his call to be answered. When it was, he swiftly requested assistance, in the form of men and time, from the KGB Colonel responsible for the surveillance of English tourists. The call took less than a minute. Tortyev had priority with the Seventh Directorate.

  When he had put the telephone down again, he went back to studying the shoes, pushing them together, pulling them apart, as if making them perform some simple dance. Now that he had requested more men, to begin checking on Orton’s movements, he would need Stechko, Holokov, and possibly the sergeant, Filipov, even if the man was a Jew, to begin checking through their records of the previous visits of Orton to Moscow, their records of his contacts, behaviour-pattern, habits…

  As he pressed the intercom switch to summon his subordinates, he was still staring at the odd shoes. He was smiling, as if they represented a challenge to him.

  At the moment he was about to speak, he suddenly wondered what had become of the transistor-radio that had been itemised at the airport - and had been inspected for drugs. It had not been in his hotel room, nor on the body. Of course, it might be at the bottom of the river.

  ‘Stechko - get Holokov and Filipov right away - I’ve got some important paperwork for you,’ he said, his smile becoming puzzlement once more. Where was that radio?

  Semelovsky was waiting for him, the small Moskvitch saloon pulled into the side of the narrow road leading to Bilyarsk, the bonnet open. Gant could see the faint outline of Semelovsky hunched into the open jaws of the car, as if in the process of being swallowed.

  He settled down at the peak of the bank, which bordered the road, and waited. The man went on working, or appearing to work, on the engine of the small car.

  Gant spent ten minutes checking that the figure was alone, and that the road was empty. When the man stood up, stretched his back, and cursed in Russian, Gant ducked back out of sight. Semelovsky was small - Gant saw light glint from the two moons of his spectacles. The man looked around him, and up and down the road, then returned his head beneath the bonnet.

  Gant heard muffled tinkering, and a tuneless whistle, then slowly got to his feet, and eased himself down the slope of the bank. The man’s back was to him, and if he were not Semelovsky, then…

  ‘How long have you been watching me-‘ the little man asked in Russian, in an irritated voice, without lifting his head from beneath the bonnet. Gant stopped in his tracks, one foot raised from the ground in a half-made step.

  ‘Semelovsky?’ he asked as the shock dissipated in his system.

  The man emerged from beneath the bonnet, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He studied Gant by the light of the moon, low on the horizon still, nodded to himself as if in satisfaction, and closed the bonnet loudly.

  Gant moved closer to him. The man was in his late forties, possibly fifties. The remainder of his frizzy grey hair clung to his ears, but the top of his head was bald.

  He was dressed in a drab suit, and wore a raincoat. He was barely more than five feet in height. He looked up at Gant, the light glinting from his spectacles as he studied the American.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said at last.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gant snapped back, irritated by the man.

  ‘It’s a question of the guards,’ Semelovsky explained, as if to a child. ‘A little longer, and one of the guard-posts, either at the junction or the other end of the road, would have sent someone to discover where I was. It is almost an hour since I checked through the first guard-post - which is why my car has, to all intents and purposes, broken down.’

  Gant nodded, and then said: ‘How do I get into Bilyarsk?’

  ‘A good question. In the boot of the car, of course.’

  ‘Won’t they search it?’

  ‘Probably not. It was searched at the other end. Thoroughly. The KGB work very mindlessly, most of the time,’ he added, as if lecturing on the subject of an inefficient mechanism. ‘If the one guard-post is detailed to search all incoming vehicles, and the other all outgoing traffic, then they do not, as a rule, change functions - despite the recent draft of extra guards into the town. Do you know, there were more than a dozen jammed into the guard-post at the highway junction.’

  Semelovsky smiled suddenly, brilliantly. ‘They must be expecting trouble, of one kind or another!’

  He walked round Gant to the rear of the car, and opened the boot. He gestured to the American, sharply, as if accusing himself of having wasted valuable time, and Gant joined him. The boot was empty, and small.

  Pocketing the gun he had held all the time in his right hand, Gant climbed into the small space, hunched himself into a foetal position, and nodded. The Russian stood watching him for a moment, and then nodded back. The light disappeared, and Gant was in a confined, cramped darkness. He accepted that Semelovsky would have prepared the boot so that he would not asphyxiate. The darkness held no terrors for him. The boot was not as cramped as his own thoughts had proved, those months in the hospital. He heard the tinny roar of the engine, realised that Semelovsky, with careful attention to detail, was firing on only three cylinders, and then was heaved against the cold metal of the boot-door as the Russian pulled onto the road.

  Semelovsky gave little thought to his passenger as he negotiated the remaining miles to the outskirts of Bilyarsk, where the quarters for the technical and scientific staff had been constructed. The road was narrow and deeply rutted by the passage of numerous heavy vehicles, bringing equipment to the project site. Semelovsky thought only of his function within the total operation that was intended to bring Gant and the Mig-31 into successful proximity. He had bee
n recruited into the underground cell by Baranovich, for whom, and for whose sufferings at the hands of the NKVD and later the KGB, he had an almost religious respect. Semelovsky was himself a Jew, but had spent most of his adult life working successfully on various technical and military projects for the regime that despised and harried in large numbers, the people of his race. But, Baranovich was sufficiently his hero to shake him out of the political cowardice of years; like all converts, he was zealous to an extreme.

  The second guard-post lay in a gap in the high wire fence that surrounded the whole project area, including the airstrip. The original farming village of Bilyarsk lay outside the wire, a separate, and separated, community of wooden houses, communal agriculture, and poverty. The project-town had been grafted on to it, a hybrid growth surrounded by trees, ordered, secret.

  Semelovsky slowed the car as he approached the gates in the wire, and he saw the increased size of the guard, a pattern he already expected from the junction guard-post fourteen miles down the road. Two guards, rather than the usual one, approached the vehicle, and he was almost blinded by the new, powerful searchlight mounted on the back of a truck. The beam of a searchlight mounted on one of the guard-towers, fifty yards away, swung to pick him up, and he was bathed in cold, white light. He wound down the window, and stuck out his head. He recognised the guard.

  ‘Ah, Feodor - I see you have some new toys to play with, eh?’ He laughed naturally, smiling inwardly at his own bravado.

  ‘Dr. Semelovsky - where have you been? You were checked through the guard-post more than an hour ago.’ The guard was frowning, more, Semelovsky suspected, because an officer he did not recognise watching the little scene, than because he was suspicious, or angry.

  Semelovsky held out his hands, and the oily stains were clearly visible in the searchlight’s glare.

  ‘Damn car broke down!’ he said. ‘Much as the latest Five-Year Plan has achieved, it has not solved the problem of the Moskvitch - eh.’ He laughed again, inviting the guard to join him. The guard smiled.