Anna waited.
His eyes stopped roaming the page and read and reread a single phrase; then he read the bit before and the bit after, to make sure that there was no mistake.
When at last he looked up, he was beaming.
‘Anna! They’ve said yes!’
Her broad smile reflected his delight back at him. Andrei began to laugh as well, catching their mood, and she reached across to cuddle him.
‘Papa is going to be a teacher, Andrei. Imagine! In a big university. As big as Moscow State! Perhaps one day he’ll teach you. Viktor, how wonderful!’
She stood up to lean across the table and kiss him. He passed the letter over to her, and she kissed it too. Andrei giggled.
‘Oh, Viktor!’
It was the best breakfast they’d ever had in Stratfield Saye; or anywhere else, he decided. No: the best breakfast since the day Andrei was born!
‘I’ll thank Mr Sumner,’ he said later in their room, as he wrote his acceptance.
‘Thank him, yes,’ she said. She came across and stroked his hair, laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘But remember – you did this, Viktor Genrikhovich. You earned it.’
‘I know, but Mr Sumner helped. He took me to them. He introduced me to the right people. It’s his old university. They’re his friends.’
‘He didn’t pull strings. He told you he wouldn’t do that. They’re taking you because they know you’ll be a brilliant teacher of philosophy – like your father could have been.’
‘I hope so, Anna. I’ll make you both proud of me.’
It was settled. The gruelling weeks with Sumner and the others were over: the weeks of remembering and talking, describing and repeating. Their future was settled. They were new people, with new identities, and now he had a new job to look forward to. A little money had been provided, enough to start them in a modest home, and they could borrow the rest: a mortgage, it was called. Soon they would make new friends; they’d have to gloss their past a little, of course. That was an uncomfortable way to start friendships, but they’d get used to it. At least they wouldn’t have to disguise where they’d come from. A population almost the size of London’s had left the Soviet Union in the last forty years. Thousands were allowed to emigrate each year, despite the emigration authorities’ mixture of inefficiency and obstructiveness; it gave a measure of the many thousands more who were waiting in line behind the lucky ones. He and Anna and Andrei would be virtually untraceable.
Later they went walking in the quiet country lanes around the house; they were allowed to do that now although someone always stayed with them, trailing a few steps behind.
‘Suddenly there’s a lot to do,’ she said, awed at the prospect of their new future. She was more animated than she’d been for weeks, almost dancing along by his side, catching his arm, laughing and swinging Andrei. ‘You’ll have lectures to prepare, we’ll have to start looking for an apartment or a little house –’
‘Two,’ he corrected her.
It was a mistake; she glanced over her shoulder at the security man.
‘Our guardians,’ she muttered. ‘I forgot.’
Suddenly the spark was gone. Her head drooped. He put his arm about her and squeezed her close.
‘It’s not for forever, Anna. Look at me. Just a few months, probably. Maybe a year. Until they know we’re not being searched for.’
‘You said it could sometimes be as much as three or four years. Sometimes even for the rest of a person’s life.’
‘Oh, that’s so unlikely, Anna. Even three or four years. That was just something I said to show you how careful these people are prepared to be if it’s necessary. I said it to make you feel safe. To reassure you. But they only keep someone with you if they think there’s a continuing risk. If I’d been a high-ranking person, for example. But we’re not that important. After a few months, who in Moscow will remember Viktor and Anna Kunaev?’
‘The FCD has the longest memory in the world.’
‘Yes, but times change, people move on, get promoted, get fired. New problems come along and the old ones – old names too – are forgotten. Why would these people want to keep guardians with us any longer than necessary? It all costs money, Anna.’
‘Pah! Money!’
‘Of course, Anna. Be practical. Our guardians have to be a couple, for them to be inconspicuous; they have to be housed and paid, one of them has to be found some kind of job to stay close to me. That’s why Mr Sumner had to help me – so that one of them can have a university post. But they refund the university. It’s all money, Anna, and they don’t want to pay it for any longer than they have to. Do they?’
‘Just as I said to you – everything comes back to money.’
‘Let’s think about the nice things.’ He squeezed her again, and reached down to snatch up Andrei. ‘Here’s a young man who needs a school! With luck, we’ll be settled just in time for him to start. Won’t that be fun, Andrei! We’ll buy a little car. We will! Oh – and English lessons for Andrei. We’ll have to work on that.’
So they strolled on through the moist Hampshire lanes, and eventually he brought her around and was rewarded as the laughter returned to her eyes.
And when he closed his own eyes, the picture of a small boy growing up in a free country didn’t seem as elusive as for a time it had been.
*
But that had been in the morning. At lunchtime the message came from Sumner. One line, dictated over the telephone and jotted down by the female security officer. Be packed and ready to leave, it said; from anytime after ten tonight. No explanation, no reasons given; only those few dreadful words.
The day, that had started as fresh as spring itself, became agony. Sumner never called back and the guards said he couldn’t be reached.
It was ten thirty that night when he came. They were ready and waiting, had been for an hour; there was precious little to pack anyway. They’d put Andrei to bed as normal. He could be lifted and wrapped in his dressing gown for the journey. Whatever and wherever it was.
Viktor hurried out to the hallway as soon as he saw headlights in the drive. He was taken aback by what met his gaze when the security man opened the front door. Sumner was climbing out of a large van with black side windows, like the kind Viktor had seen carrying policemen about in London. There were four police motorcycle outriders with him.
‘What’s going on, Mr Sumner? Why all this?’
Sumner looked at him without saying anything. He led the way into the living room, where Anna and their two suitcases were waiting. There he planted himself in the middle of the floor and looked from one to the other. Viktor saw that he was as jumpy as a flea.
‘I apologise for the suddenness of this,’ he said. ‘But we think it’s wise to move you from here. Without delay.’
‘Why?’ Viktor felt a knot harden up in his stomach.
‘We don’t think there’s any real danger – let me make that absolutely clear – but we don’t want to take any chances.’
‘Danger?’ Anna’s eyes were large with fright. ‘What danger?’
Sumner seemed to gather his thoughts for a moment. Then he looked back at her. ‘The Spetznaz unit that your husband warned us about. We have good reason to believe they’re still in this country.’
Anna made a small noise in the back of her throat. Viktor sat down beside her and put his arm about her.
‘Dear God,’ he said quietly.
‘We don’t know for certain that they’re interested in you. But it’s a possibility. That’s all we can say at this stage. And obviously we don’t want to take the risk. The man you helped us identify as a Soviet sleeper, he’s confessed. He’s given –’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s given us further information – I can’t be more specific – and we’re acting on that. What I will tell you is that it suggests that, after the murder of the Saudi prince, the unit may have been set a further objective of some kind.’
Anna turned her pale face to Vikto
r. ‘So much for us not being important enough,’ she whispered.
Viktor thought of Andrei sleeping peacefully upstairs and suddenly felt an overpowering urge to go and grab him at once. He was thankful when Anna, clearly seized by the same need, rose and hurried out of the room; he heard her clattering up the stairs.
‘You think they might know where you’re keeping us, Mr Sumner?’
‘Possibly. The man you uncovered insists that he hasn’t passed any details over, but we’re playing safe.’
‘Thank God. So where are you taking us?’
‘To another house a couple of hundred miles from here. Partly to get you into a new place but also because it’s in a spot that’s even quieter than here, where anyone or anything out of the ordinary will be very obvious.’
‘And we drive there tonight?’
Sumner shook his head. ‘We wouldn’t feel happy about going all that distance by road. You know how mobile these units can be. If they do know this location, they may be watching the area. They might not try a hit or a snatch tonight, but we don’t want them following us.’
‘How do we get there?’
‘We fly you. We drive you from here to a military airfield and put you on an aircraft that’ll take you the rest of the way.’
‘Won’t we be in danger between here and the airfield?’ Viktor’s thoughts were racing. ‘Shouldn’t we go there by helicopter?’
‘Couldn’t land one in this area – too many trees. I’ve brought an armoured van instead. And you saw the escort we’ve got.’
Viktor felt a measure of relief. Sumner seemed to have covered all the angles.
‘Thank you, Mr Sumner. You’re looking after us well. I’ll go and fetch my wife and child.’
He left the room and Sumner stood alone, looking at the two pathetic suitcases and the little mound of toys on the floor. He felt sick with guilt.
*
At 23:30 hours mid-European time, 22:30 hours Greenwich Mean Time, the An-72 crossed into West German airspace in the vicinity of Brunswick and held its course along the civil air corridor towards Hanover. Hanover logged it as far as the Netherlands, where Amsterdam picked it up. It continued to the coast, veering out over the North Sea and towards Britain. By the time it crossed the English coast at Clacton-on-Sea, Amsterdam had handed it on to the London air traffic control centre at West Drayton.
At each leg, as it blipped across the radar screens of north-western Europe, the jet identified itself to the air traffic centres with the call sign of a privately owned civilian aircraft. This aircraft was one that belonged to a billionaire entrepreneur whose dealings over more than half a century in both East and West Europe had made his plane, with or without him on board, a familiar user of the international airlanes. No one saw the jet that was laying claim to his reporting signal that night, so no one had any reason to challenge it; and, as Gramin had said, the aircraft’s route had been pre-notified in the normal way.
Consequently, its passage through the skies that night was unexceptional and immediately forgettable.
*
Knight got to RAF Northolt at eleven thirty. It was a crisp, dry night, no fog, and with only wisps of cloud veiling the stars here and there. His first stop was at the meteorological room in the operations block, where he learnt that the perfect conditions were much the same over the North Sea and across most of north-western Europe, and were forecast to stay that way for the next thirty-six hours.
When he got to the section of the aerodrome that had been reserved for them, he found a barrier across the approach road and three RAF service policemen manning it. They made him step out of the car and open the bonnet, tailgate and all of the doors. Two of them checked the car visually, including passing a pole-mounted mirror and light underneath the chassis, while the other verified his identity against some details on a clipboard. Knight noticed that they were armed with sidearms. He deliberately inched his way to their glass-fronted hut as he chatted with the third officer; three machine pistols were tucked handily under the counter beneath the window.
Further on, at the spot to which the tower would direct the aircraft to taxi, there was a scattering of bored-looking RAF ground staff, two RAF Land Rovers with police officers on board, and a couple of civilian cars. As Knight parked and stepped out onto the tarmac, he realised that one of the cars was Gaunt’s. A shadowy figure sat motionless in the back seat.
Knight turned in the opposite direction and strolled across to the other civilian car. Four men were inside it. He introduced himself, giving his name and describing himself as military intelligence, and waited pointedly to hear what their business there was. Grudgingly they owned up to being customs and immigration control officers who’d been dispatched from nearby Heathrow. He wondered privately what genius had found time to think about inviting them. They explained that they would take no part in the immediate proceedings; papers could be sorted out later. They’d been sent along only to ensure that no one and nothing disembarked other than what was specified on their Home Office advice notices. One of them waved a copy under his nose. Female; Caucasian; one. Nobody wanted any nasty surprises later. Did they? Sir.
Thinking about nasty surprises of many different kinds, Knight returned to his car.
47
When the men on the ground in Northolt saw the lights in the eastern sky at midnight, they had no way at first of telling whether or not it was the craft for which they were waiting. Only when it was down and was undeniably taxiing towards them were they sure.
Knight’s hands, clenched about his steering wheel, were suddenly slippery with sweat. They left glistening marks on the padded rim when he released his grip.
He got out and began walking the hundred or so yards to where the aircraft had been guided and flagged to a halt by one of the ground staff. Its engines remained at idling speed. He forced himself not to hurry. The RAF policemen had now also emerged from their Land Rovers and were standing in a rough semicircle twenty or thirty yards from the plane. As an extra reminder of their presence, they’d turned on the flashing lights on the roofs of their vehicles. The floodlights that had been set up on the tarmac behind them came on, bathing the aircraft and the area around it in light. The policemen supplemented the glare with the headlamps and spotlights of the Land Rovers.
Gaunt stepped out of the Jaguar; he glanced across at Knight from twenty yards away and their eyes met. For a moment only. Then Gaunt turned away.
More lights, moving fast, appeared on Knight’s left. He turned his head and saw that a tight formation of vehicles was accelerating away from the security barrier and towards them. After a second he made out the shape of a large van behind one pair of the bright lamps; the others were motorcycles. It would be Sumner and the Kunaevs.
As he resumed his steady progress towards the plane, he realised that his heart was pounding.
He passed beyond the floodlights, halting when he drew level with the line of policemen. The passenger door on the port side of the aircraft began to swing open.
*
What Viktor could see through the dark windows was far from clear at first. An aircraft, yes, but many more people than he’d been expecting. Most of them were policemen, judging from the flashing roof lights. And the place was lit like a film set. Clearly, Mr Sumner was taking no chances whatsoever.
It was only when the van swung around to face the aircraft directly, and he was able to see the plane through the clear windscreen and between the shoulders of Sumner and the driver, that something began to trouble him.
Andrei had been jolted awake by the stop–start process of negotiating the aerodrome; now, excited by the blazing lights and the racket outside, he leant across from where he sat on Anna’s lap and tugged his father’s arm.
‘Yes, yes,’ Viktor muttered absently.
Then they were parked and Sumner was out of the van and pulling open its door. Andrei tumbled out at once, breathless to see all that was going on; Anna leapt out laughing in pursuit, her earlier
fears forgotten in the boy’s exuberance. They walked ahead between two of the security officers who’d travelled with them from the safe house.
On the tarmac, Sumner was urging Viktor to hurry. But Viktor paid no heed. Across the growing distance between Anna and himself, he heard her laugh.
‘Yes, Andrei!’ she was saying. ‘It’s for us, this big plane! We’re going to fly up into the sky in it! Yes, it’s just like your toy one – but real!’
*
While Knight watched, figures appeared in the doorway of the aircraft, averting their eyes from the harsh lights, and waited for the ground staff to wheel a set of steps into position.
Two figures: a man and someone close by his side, being supported by him.
No, three figures; there was someone else behind them, someone who was hanging back.
*
Just like the toy plane?
Viktor wasn’t so sure. The toy plane had markings. Red stars on its tail and wings, call letters as tall as the pilot on its fuselage. This plane had nothing. Nothing at all. Not even so much as a dancing lady by the cockpit, like Andrei’s had. This plane apparently belonged to no nation, had come from nowhere. This plane wanted no one to know of its existence.
He froze on the door sill of the van and tried to make sense of the scene.
Quickly! his mind screamed, as Anna and Andrei drew further and further away from him and closer to an aircraft whose snub-nosed silhouette, with its drooping wings and huge engines mounted forward of them, was starting to seem disturbingly familiar.
*
Now the first two figures had descended the steps from the aircraft and were coming across the tarmac towards where Knight and Gaunt and the policemen waited. Surely, Knight decided as the figures drew closer, that third figure who had now disappeared back into the aircraft was a nurse. He had glimpsed her white uniform. Why was a nurse necessary?
The man supporting the other figure, which was now visible as a slim, long-haired girl, halted ten yards away. He shielded his eyes from the battery of lights to peer at the row of men facing him.
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