Snow Wolf

by Glenn Meade

  Not for the first time she noticed the photograph over the fireplace. A couple and three small children. A pretty blond girl and two boys, one dark, one fair. She thought one of them resembled Slanski, but she looked away when she noticed his watching her.

  Vassily placed a breakfast of eggs, cheese, and corn bread in front of her and said, “Eat, little one.”

  When the old man had poured her tea and left the room, Anna looked at Slanski. “Perhaps you’d better tell me what we’ll be doing today.”

  “Nothing too strenuous to begin with, just enough to start getting you in shape.” He smiled. “Not that there’s much wrong with your shape as it is.”

  “Is that meant to be a compliment?”

  “No, an observation. But it’s really a question of building up your stamina. The training is purely a precaution. It’s over six hundred miles from Tallinn to Moscow, a relatively short route, and that’s why it was chosen. But if something goes wrong and you have to look after yourself, you had better be prepared.”

  “I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

  He smiled again. “Let’s make certain of it. We’ll take a gentle walk in the woods. Ten miles to start with. When Popov arrives in a couple of days the real training begins. Then, I assure you, it gets a lot tougher.” He stood. “One more thing.”

  Anna looked up and saw the blue eyes stare down at her, and for a moment she felt an odd flutter in her chest. “What?”

  “Something Massey will explain, but I think you’d better know now. You’ll be given a pill when we go in. Cyanide. It kills instantly. You’ll have to use it in a situation where it’s likely you’re going to get caught and there’s no way out. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

  Anna hesitated. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

  “No, just making sure you know this is not some elaborate game we’re playing. And that there’s still time for you to change your mind.”

  “I’m quite aware it’s not a game. And I won’t change my mind.”

  • • •

  Anna dressed in the warm clothes Massey had bought her, fur-lined walking boots and heavy trousers and a thick sweater and navy oilskin. It was still dark as they set off through the forest. The snow had stopped when they came to a clearing after half a mile, and Anna saw the first rays of sunshine on the far horizon, streaking the sky orange and red.

  She noticed the way Slanski moved through the woods. It was almost as if he were familiar with every inch of the forest, every branch and twig, but she knew that was impossible. He halted in the clearing and pointed toward a sloping mountain that rose up in the distance through a thin bank of pine trees. “See that plateau on the mountain? It’s called Kingdom Ridge. That’s where we’re headed. Five miles there and five back. Think you’ll be able to manage it?”

  There was a smile on his face and she thought he was goading her but she didn’t reply, simply marched on ahead.

  Anna was exhausted after the first two miles. The rising ground was hard on her legs, but Slanski walked as if he were on flat ground and the tilt of the land seemed to make no difference to his stamina. Once or twice he looked around to check on her, but by the fifth mile, as they reached the top, he was way ahead.

  She came out of the forest onto the ridge, exhausted, fighting for breath, and by then the sun was up, the view of the lake and forest below quite stunning. In the distance was an enormous ridge of snowcapped mountains. In the morning light the rock looked as if it were tinted blue.

  Slanski was sitting on a rocky outcrop overhanging the ridge, smoking a cigarette. When he saw her he smiled. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Give me a cigarette,” she almost gasped.

  He handed her one and lit it for her.

  When she had caught her breath she said, “The view is incredible.”

  “The mountains you see are called the Appalachians. They stretch over a thousand miles.”

  She looked out at the view again, then back at him. “Can I ask you a question, Slanski?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t want me to be part of this, did you?”

  He grinned. “Now what makes you think that?”

  “From what you said back in the cabin. And besides, you strike me as the kind of man who likes to do things alone. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to know your life history. Just enough to know you better. We’re going to have to pretend to be man and wife, and I presume that means sleeping in the same bed if necessary. I’d like to know something about the man I’m supposed to be married to.”

  “What did Massey tell you?”

  “Hardly anything. Were you ever married?”

  “It crossed my mind once or twice. But what woman in her right mind would want to live up here?”

  She smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s really quite beautiful.”

  “To a visitor, maybe. But most of the local girls can’t wait to get the heck out and head for New York.”

  “You never met any women you liked?”

  “Some, but not many I’d care to lead up an aisle.”

  “The photograph back in the house—tell me about it.”

  There was a sudden look of pain on his face, and he stood as if to stop the conversation going any further. “A long time ago, as they say. And a tale not for the telling. We’d better be getting back.”

  “You haven’t told me about this Popov. Who is he?”

  Slanski looked down at her. “Dimitri Popov is a weapons and self-defense instructor. With a knife and gun and fists, he’s probably one of the best there is.”

  “He’s Russian?”

  “No, Ukrainian. And that means he hates the Russians. He fought against them during the war with a Ukrainian SS regiment before he finally joined the émigré movement. He’s a nasty piece of work but in a matter like this, he’s worth his weight in gold. That’s why Massey’s people use him. Come on, let’s get back. Unless, that is, you want to sit here all day and admire the view.”

  Anna looked at him with irritation on her face. “I don’t have to like you, Slanski, and you don’t have to like me. But if I’m supposed to be your wife, then I have some rules of my own. In my company you’ll be more polite. You’ll treat me as you would a wife or at least as if I’m a human being. Or do you think that would be too difficult?”

  His eyes blazed back at her a moment, and then he tossed away his cigarette and said dismissively, “If you don’t like the arrangement, you don’t have to put up with it. Now let’s get going.”

  As Anna went to stand she slipped off the rock. He caught her wrist and pulled her in, and at that moment she looked up into his face. The blue eyes stared at her, and suddenly for no reason at all he kissed her, his mouth moving on hers. For a few moments she was caught up in it all, but then she pushed herself free. “Don’t!”

  He smiled. “As you said, I ought to treat you as a wife. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  Anna knew he was simply provoking her and said angrily, “Understand one thing: if we have to share a bedroom for the sake of appearances on this mission, I don’t want you ever to touch me again, is that clear?” He turned and started to walk back down the ridge.

  HELSINKI

  FEBRUARY 8

  The southwest coast of Finland, seen from the air in winter, looks like a shattered jigsaw puzzle of frozen green and white shapes, as if some giant hammer had smashed land and frozen sea into a million particles. Islands and ice meet whenever a harsh winter freezes the Baltic, and that winter it was no different. To the west lay Hanko and Turku, ancient seafaring towns that had seen invaders come and go—Russians, Swedes, and Germans. For almost all her history Finland had had to endure invasion by her Baltic neighbors. To the east lay Helsinki, and to the south, fifty miles across the narrow frozen Gulf of Finland, lay the Baltic States, occupied by Stalin’s army.

  It was almost noon when Massey arrived in Helsinki on
the morning flight from Paris, and Janne Saarinen met him in the Arrivals area. As they drove west along the coast in Saarinen’s little gray Volvo, the Finn looked across at Massey. “I thought I was going to have a rest from flying until I got your phone call. Who is it this time, Jake? Not more types like those two SS creeps I dropped last month from Munich?”

  “Not this time, Janne.”

  Saarinen smiled. “Thank heaven for small mercies. How many passengers do you want to drop?”

  “Two. A man and a woman.”

  “What is this, Jake? Something special? Your people don’t normally drop from up here in winter. The weather’s usually too bad.”

  “Between you and me, Janne, it’s an unrecorded drop. You’ll be well paid, but that goes without saying.”

  Saarinen grinned. An unrecorded drop meant it was highly secret and unofficial, and usually perilous. “Smells like danger, and I could do with a bit of that right now. Say no more. We can discuss money when it’s done.”

  The roads were icy, but the sturdy little Volvo was equipped with snow chains and they came to a small fishing village twenty minutes later. It was no more than a clutch of brightly painted wooden houses set around a frozen harbor.

  An inn stood at one end, and Saarinen pulled up outside it and said to Massey, “This will do nicely. Belongs to a cousin of mine. There’s a room at the back where we can talk and won’t be bothered. Let’s go inside where it’s warmer, Jake.”

  The Finn eased his false leg out of the car, and they went into the inn. It was surprisingly large inside and all done in pine, a blazing fire roaring and a ceramic stove going at the same time, and the view looked out onto the frozen harbor locked in solid ice. There was a man behind the bar, tall and blond, wearing a spotless white bar smock and reading a newspaper.

  Saarinen said to him in Finnish, “Give us both a drink quick, Niilo, before we freeze to death. We’ll use the room at the back, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a bit of business to discuss.”

  The man behind the bar placed a bottle of vodka and two glasses on the table and handed Saarinen a set of keys. Saarinen led the way to a room at the side of the inn and unlocked the door. Inside, it was icy cold. He grinned as he closed the door. “Don’t know why Niilo bothers to open this time of year. Most of the locals stay at home. I think he must be missing a couple of slates off his roof. In summer the place is crawling with kids from Helsinki out on a bender, but in winter it’s as quiet as the morgue.

  “So tell me what you have in mind.”

  “The two people I spoke about, I want them dropped near Tallinn.”

  Saarinen raised his eyes. “Why Tallinn? It’s a garrison town. Crawling with Soviet troops.”

  “There are two reasons,” Massey explained. “Number one, it’s only a short hop across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia, and the Soviets would never expect a drop in that area in winter. And number two, there’ll be a welcome committee from the Estonian resistance waiting to help my people on their way.”

  “I see. Where to?”

  “Sorry, Janne. That I can’t tell you.”

  “Fair enough. As long as you know the dangers. Where do you plan to take off from?”

  “I had thought the place you’ve got farther up the coast, if it’s not too close to the base at Porkkala.”

  “Bylandet Island? Why not? It’s where I keep my plane hangared in winter, and it’s pretty much ideal. And don’t worry about the Soviet base on Porkkala.”

  The Porkkala Peninsula, more than twenty miles from Helsinki, was occupied by a small Soviet military and naval force. Such an occupation was a touchy subject for Finns. But having sided with Germany in the war, Finland had been forced to allow a small part of its country to be used as a Russian base until Helsinki had paid Moscow its war reparations in full.

  “By air, the peninsula is over six miles from Bylandet Island,” Saarinen explained. “But the Soviet base has never caused me any problems—it’s strictly out of bounds to Finns, and the Russians keep to themselves. And if we go from Bylandet the crossing shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes. Maybe forty at most if there’s a headwind.”

  “You think the weather will be a problem?”

  Saarinen smiled, a rakish smile. “It’s always a problem up here. But if it’s bad it can work to our advantage in a situation like this. We can use cloud cover most of the way in. Stick right in it almost until the drop.”

  “Isn’t that taking a big risk?”

  Saarinen laughed. “Not as big a risk as getting blown out of the sky by the latest MiG fighter. There’s a squadron of the latest all-weather model stationed south of Leningrad that covers Baltic coastal patrols. Those machines are pretty darned good—the fastest thing around right now, even faster than your latest American fighters. And the Russians have got radar on board.”

  “What if they pick you up on their radar?”

  “The news is the Soviet pilots are not that familiar with the new equipment, so they won’t stay in the cloud too long at the kind of speeds they cruise at. They prefer to be able to see where they’re going. And if it’s really bad, like heavy snow, they’ll stay safely on land getting drunk in the mess.”

  “Can your plane stand the kind of buffeting you’ll get if the weather’s bad?”

  Saarinen grinned. “The little Norseman I’ve got could come through a blizzard of horse dung in one piece.”

  • • •

  It was almost eight that evening when Saarinen dropped off Massey at the Palace Hotel in Helsinki.

  They had one drink in the bar together before the Finn bade him goodbye. When Massey went up to his room there was a message waiting. Henri Lebel had called from Paris. Massey made the return call after waiting twenty minutes for the Helsinki operator to patch him through to Paris on a crackling line.

  “Jake? I’m going to be in Helsinki the day after tomorrow, and I thought we could meet to discuss our business arrangement further.”

  Massey knew Lebel meant to show him the hidden compartment in the private freight train the Frenchman leased from the Finns before Lebel traveled on for a brief visit to Moscow.

  “What about the other information I require?”

  “I’m working on it, but it hasn’t been easy, mon ami. A matter of greasing the right greedy palm. But I hope to have something for you soon.”

  “Good, Henri. Give me a call when you get here.”

  When Massey replaced the receiver he crossed to the window that overlooked the harbor. If Lebel got the information he wanted, he knew what he had to do next, despite what Branigan had warned.

  In the moonlit winter’s darkness the entire Baltic seemed frozen white as far as the eye could see. As he stood looking at the scene, Massey couldn’t help thinking of Anna Khorev. Two weeks from now she’d be flying out over that frozen gulf with Slanski, taking one of the biggest risks she had ever taken in her life.

  19

  * * *

  NEW HAMPSHIRE

  FEBRUARY 11

  Anna was standing at the window when she saw the old black Ford pull up outside the house.

  The man who climbed out was big and powerfully built. His dark, bushy beard and greasy black hair gave him the appearance of a wild-looking mountain man. When he and Slanski came up the veranda and stepped inside the cabin, the big man saw her and grinned, broken teeth showing behind his beard. “So this is the woman,” the man said to Slanski.

  Slanski said, “Popov, this is Anna.”

  The man held out a huge bearlike paw. Anna didn’t offer to shake it but said to Slanski, “When you want me I’ll be outside,” then walked past the Ukrainian and down the steps of the veranda.

  Popov watched her retreating figure appreciatively as she walked toward the woods. He grinned and stroked his beard. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “I don’t think former Ukrainian SS are among her favorite types, Dimitri.”

  Popov grunted. “Massey said she was Russian. Russians and Ukrainians have always
fought like cat and dog. The Russkis have tried to grind us to dust for centuries.” A brief smile flashed on his face. “Still, I’d call a truce as far as that one’s concerned. Nice figure on her, I’ll say that.”

  “You’re here to do a job, Dimitri. Get fresh with her, and I’ll take it personally.”

  Popov frowned as Slanski glared at him. There was a flash of anger in Popov’s bearded face as he went to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it and broke into a wide grin. “You know me, Alex, always willing to keep the peace for the sake of harmony.”

  “Let’s go down to the lake. I want to talk.”

  Popov left his things in the car, and as they walked down to the water Slanski said, “You think you can cover everything in ten days?”

  “You I know about. The woman I don’t. It depends on her.”

  “Massey thinks she should be okay.”

  “And what do you think?”

  Slanski smiled. “Much as I hate to admit it, she’s good. The last week she’s put her heart into getting fit.”

  “Better let me be the judge of that. But if anyone can do it, Popov can.”

  • • •

  When Popov had settled in he met them downstairs in the dining room. Slanski poured coffee, and the three of them sat at the table.

  The Ukrainian looked across at Anna and Slanski. “First things first. The program. You wake every morning at four thirty. We take a five-mile run, even if there’s snow, then back here for more exercises. After breakfast we do some self-defense training, how to defend yourself, and also how to kill.” He looked at Slanski. “You, too, Alex. The day you think you know it all, you’re dead. The woman here, I know nothing about her background, so I’ll have to assume she knows nothing and go on from there.” He looked directly at Anna. “What kind of experience have you had with this kind of thing?”

  Slanski answered, “She’s had some, Dimitri.”

  Popov raised his eyebrows and grunted. “I asked the woman, Alex. So let her answer.” He looked at Anna. “Show me your hands.”

  “What?”