Snow Falcon kaaph-2

by Craig Thomas

  Aubrey sighed audibly. 'Thank you, Charles.'

  'What'll you do if your guys come back with something — but not enough?'

  'Order an overflight — one Harrier, under the net.'

  'You could do that?'

  'I'm sure it can be done.'

  Buckholz nodded. Then he stretched his chair.

  'I'll have to be good, to convince the White House. Mrs Wainwright just bought two new fur coats, ready for the visit to Finland in winter.' He laughed. 'Why is Khamovkhin here on a State Visit, if he's planning to ride all the way in a tank?'

  'No simple answer — except that he may not know.'

  'Mm. Hell!' Buckholz slapped his palm thunderously against the desk. 'All Joe Wainwright wants to do is rebuild the urban deserts, get the Blacks and the Puerto Ricans educated and in useful work, and solve the energy crisis, and I have to tell him-'

  'Perhaps First Secretary Khamovkhin just wants to improve Soviet agriculture, and open up Siberia a little more. One thing is certain — at least to me — someone doesn't want the world ticking like that.' Aubrey rubbed his cheeks. 'Will you help with this mysterious substitute V 'Captain Ozeroff?'

  'Remember that Ozeroff is dead, Charles. It's the new Captain Ozeroff who interests me.'

  'Do what I can. You're right — he had to come from somewhere, and he must be known to someone. It'll be checked out.'

  'Thank you — when we know who, we will know why.'

  Buckholz stood up. 'Drink?'

  Aubrey looked at his watch. 'Just a small Scotch — no ice.'

  As he was about to move the dumb-waiter, Buckholz stopped, and looked down at the still seated Aubrey.

  'Hell, don't you long to be legitimate, Kenneth? Just once, to close your eyes to what might be happening, uh?'

  'My illegitimacy has weighed heavily upon me of late,' Aubrey remarked with a smile. 'One knows, or suspects that one knows, so many nasty things!'

  'For Christ's sake, Alex — swallow!'

  Davenhill felt the flask tipped against his lips. As soon as he unclenched his teeth, they began to chatter uncontrollably, and the brandy spilled on his chin and over his chest. Looking up into Waterford's face, he was afraid to question the man. He gagged on the little liquor he swallowed, and then sank back against the seat of the jeep. Waterford's face disappeared from above and beside him — a moment of colder air, if that was possible, and then distant slamming of the door as he sank back into a pain-lit dream where a great dark bird — bird or dragon he could not be sure but it breathed flames and burned his arm — hovered over him as he lay helpless on a smooth white sheet of paper.

  Waterford dialled the number of the hotel in Ivalo. He had pulled up on the main road, just outside the settlement — the first time he had halted the jeep since he had stopped under the trees to bind Davenhill's arm, sliced open from elbow to shoulder by a fragment from one of the missiles, just as he had careered off the road and under cover. As he waited for his call to be answered, he drummed savagely on the coin box, though the rest of him — as if all energy had flowed suddenly into his square fingers — slumped against the glass of the call-box. He stared at the ceiling, watched his breath cloud the glass, felt the cold of the night for perhaps the first time; felt the chill of reaction possess him.

  'Philipson?'

  'Yes?' The voice sounded very distant. He shook his head, and the receiver. 'Who is that?' The voice was no louder.

  'Where are you, in the bloody bar or the restaurant?'

  'Call-sign, please.' He realised what it was — Philipson was whispering confidentially down the line. He laughed. 'What — '

  'Bugger the codes, sonny. We're blown — and we have the evidence to put the Soviet Union behind bars for a long time.'

  'Where are you?'

  'Never mind. Davenhill's wounded. Get the pilot out of his — or anyone else's — bed, pronto. We'll meet you at the airport.'

  'If he's wounded, then he'll — '

  'Forget it! I've got the bloody Indians right behind me. No time to stop. Get there!'

  'It'll take more than an hour for clearance — '

  'It better be quicker than that. Get moving!'

  He slammed down the receiver, and left the call-box. As an instinct, he glanced back down the road the way they had come.

  Nothing. The emptiness chilled, isolated him. Diminished him in an unfamiliar and frightening way. He winced, as if a helicopter had appeared overhead, or he shared Davenhill's dreams for a moment. He hurried to the jeep.

  Davenhill roused himself as they pulled away, opening one vague eye, staring at him as he tried to focus.

  'Bad, is it?' Waterford asked, seeing the lights of Ivalo as a pale splash low on the sky ahead. They passed a wooden house on his side, silent, a glow of subdued light from behind shutters. The airport was south-west of the settlement — he needed to start looking for a left-hand fork.

  'Oh, Jesus-fuck-off — ' Davenhill muttered between clenched teeth. Waterford wasn't certain whether the remark was addressed to him, to the pain in the limp arm, or to something else.

  'Hold on, son, won't be long now. Philipson's meeting us at the airport.'

  In the headlights, the road forked. A silhouetted aircraft on a signpost. The jeep slid into the corner, and Davenhill lurched against Waterford. Even as Waterford glanced at him, he saw the spite, even the hatred, on Davenhill's face, and the almost desperate attempt to pull himself upright, away from physical contact. Waterford stared bleakly ahead.

  'You — bastard — ' he heard Davenhill mutter.

  'Save it. You'll get cold, talking and hating. Fold into yourself.'

  'Your world — ' Davenhill began, staring at the canvas roof of the jeep, his head lolling. 'Your world — '

  'Like this most of the time, son,' Waterford said angrily. 'No pissing about with bits of paper, conferences, operational planning. This is the sharp end, and you don't like it, rolling in the shit.' Waterford watched himself with amusement — part of him was always eternally angry with people like Davenhill; part of him wanted to take the younger man's mind off his hurt. 'You ought to hate me, son. I'm the thing that comes up the plughole, breeds under the stones. Your bogeyman — the one you'd like to think was on the other side…'

  Davenhill murmured, then began a compulsive nodding of his head, silently punctuating each of Waterford's statements. He was beginning to ignore the self, to attend, listen, absorb.

  'Oh, yes — I liked doing it to that young Russian. Make no mistake about it. Plenty of instant-result techniques I could have used — just wanted to do that to him.' Waterford, obedient to another snowblown signpost, turned left again, and the suffused lights of Ivalo, creeping alongside them until that moment, slid away. Ahead now there was a paler, whiter glow. Ivalo airport. He hoped Philipson was already on his way. He slowed the jeep, the chains biting as the snow, less compressed, threatened beneath the wheels.

  'Liked it,' he murmured. 'Oh yes. Pull his trousers down, throw a bucket of water over him. Bet you liked that bit, eh, son — bare-arsed boy to look at.'

  'Balls — ' Davenhill murmured. The price of concentration was being extracted, and he was drifting into sleep.

  'Yes — I noticed he had two,' Waterford replied, and glanced at Davenhill. His eyes were closed, his facial muscles relaxed. Waterford sighed with relief, then tossed his head as if he felt he had wasted valuable time. The piled snow from the plough's passage leaned threateningly over the road on both sides. The lights of the airport were brighter now. Waterford felt tired, but not because of their escape, or because of the driving. He looked across at Davenhill and, as if reasserting some old self, murmured, 'Stupid little queer.'

  'There is no time to go through the formalities!'

  'I say we must. Kutuzov has to be informed at once.'

  'He will be — eventually. General Pnin will inform him of the escape of these agents. Meanwhile, Kutuzov will want to be informed from this office that the agents told nothing, that they have been
eliminated.'

  'I'm not so sure. We declare our hand by taking precipitate action here in Helsinki. Are you sure you're not just panicking because of what has happened? Consider the repercussions — '

  'Repercussions? The whole thing is turning into a night mare, and it's up to us to bring some sense back into things. You know we have to try and stop a report being made. They attacked agents from a MIL! It is something of a give-away, wouldn't you agree.'

  'I'm not sure — '

  'Then it's a good job I outrank you. Get on to it at once. Either at the airport, or before they reach either of the two likely consulates. And if you can, take out the man Aubrey as well!'

  'Is he going to die?' Philipson asked, leaning over Waterford, staring down at Davenhill's pasty features, garishly purpled by the dimmed overhead light of the passenger cabin of the Cessna. Davenhill was stretched out on two seats, and Water-ford was re-dressing the torn arm.

  'Don't be bloody soft, Philipson,' Waterford replied without changing the focus of his attention. 'Just a scratch. Alight never be able to play tennis again, but he won't die.'

  'Thank God for that.'

  'He had very little to do with it, I imagine — don't worry, there won't be a diplomatic stink about a British Civil Servant dying of his wounds in Finnish Lapland. It won't ruin your career.'

  'That wasn't my concern,' Philipson said stiffly.

  'Be a good boy — make sure the pilot's sent that message ahead, will you? I want to be met by our side at the airport!'

  Philipson hesitated, then moved forward towards the cockpit. Waterford tossed his head, then finished binding Davenhill's arm, his nose tickling at the smell of brandy on Davenhill's breath as he began to breathe more stertoriously in drunken, wearied sleep.

  Aubrey watched the Cessna seemingly sag out of the lowering sky just after dawn. It touched down as if reluctant, with a waver of the wings, then trundled down the narrow runway towards them. The private airfield at Malmi was almost deserted, but he had come with an armed escort selected from the security staff drafted in by SIS and the CIA for the Treaty visit by Wainwright. At that moment, even as the small plane rolled to a stop, they were searching the airfield and its perimeter, carefully.

  There had been a moment, just one, as he first spotted the plane seemingly materialising as it emerged from the cloud, when he had thought in terms of terrorists rather than an enemy security service, and had thought of the RPG-7 antitank grenade launcher — even a Dragunov sniper's rifle might have been sufficient. A couple of shots. So vivid was the impression, he could not rid himself of it, could not help but feel that the enemy had lost its best chance.

  The Cessna halted less than a hundred yards from him. He nodded to the driver of the Consulate limousine, and climbed into the back seat. The big Daimler pulled silently level with the aircraft, and Aubrey could see the pilot kicking the door-ladder down so that it thumped into the slush at the end of the runway. Quickly, Aubrey got out of the car, feeling the chill of the light breeze suddenly more keenly, sensing the evaporation of warmth in tension. Only now, standing at the foot of the ladder, did he allow himself to wonder how seriously Davenhill might be wounded.

  Waterford appeared in the doorway of the Cessna. His face was tired, strained but alert. His eyes suggested the rapid movements of a dreamer, but with specific purpose.

  'It's all clear, for the moment,' Aubrey called up to him.

  Waterford nodded, then disappeared back inside. When he reappeared, with Philipson helping him to support a barely conscious Davenhill, Aubrey was shocked at the waxen, hanging face of the younger man. Philipson he hardly noticed. 'Help them get him down!' he snapped at the driver. The driver took Davenhill's waist, and Waterford lowered the upper torso carefully, wearily, down below his own level on the steps. Seeing Waterford using last reserves of energy, Aubrey felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable on the tarmac — defenceless.

  'Come on, come on,' Waterford instructed in a tired voice.

  'Get him in the car.'

  They slid Davenhill into the back of the Daimler. Aubrey saw the bloody bandage on his upper arm smear the trim and the window as they arranged him as comfortably as possible. The breeze, freshening, hastened things.

  'You've got it?'

  Waterford looked at Aubrey quizzically, then: 'Oh, yes — you won't have any problems convincing anyone.' He pushed the pack containing the cameras and film into the back of the car. 'Now, let's get out of it.'

  Aubrey sat next to the driver while Waterford took Davenhill's weight on his shoulder and leaned himself against the cold glass of the rear window. All he wanted to do was sleep, and he heard only distantly Aubrey issuing instructions over the radio to the escort.

  'Car One — move to the gates, then give us the signal. Car Two, fall in behind us when we move off.' Waterford could not be bothered to watch the first of the two Volvos move away from in front of the small terminal building, startlingly white under the grey sky.

  'They're just leaving the airport gates.'

  'What formation?'

  'Usual — lead car, then the Daimler, then a second Volvo.'

  'Very well. Minimum tail, then hand over.'

  'Sir.'

  'Anything, Car One?'

  The radio sputtered with background, then: 'Not so far.' A Welsh voice — who was that? Aubrey dismissed the question as irrelevant.

  'Keep your eyes open. They have to try — and I mean that. It will appear imperative to stop us.'

  'Sir.'

  'Car Two — close up.'

  'Sir. Nothing behind us — wait! -'

  'What is it?'

  'Volvo truck — OK, taking the last left, is it? Yes. Relax, everybody.'

  Aubrey felt irritated at the momentary levity from the trailing car, then dismissed his own nerves. He looked out of the window, still cradling the microphone in his palm. Waterford's breathing was audible from the back seat — but he wasn't asleep. Aubrey had a sense of experiencing something like it before — where was it? Negro tennis player, at Wimbledon? Yes, that was it. Concentrated relaxation, the animal curled up, just for a moment, but ready.

  Innocuous suburb — small houses in vivid colours, neat gardens, white fences, all strangely unreal under the grey sky. They were taking a careful, long route, but one which did not leave them far from the main road into the city, in case they were required to make a run for it. Most of the houses too low for the kind of thing a sniper would like as a vantage Aubrey dismissed the thought. A sniper would like to be level with the windows of a closed car. The glass was reinforced, but impossibly fragile against a Kalashnikov, let alone a Dragunov sniper's special. Would they kill them? Hardly anyone about — the problems of disposal might be minimal — an incident, yes. But for reasons unknown, if they were all dead. Yes, they would do it.

  'Car One — anything?' He could see the car, turning the corner ahead. 'Go ahead, Car One.'

  The radio crackled with background.

  'Coming your way, Twelve.'

  'Already got them.'

  'Go!'

  Aubrey had heard nothing. Waterford's breathing, Davenhull's more ragged noise, the humming heater, the background from the radio — enough noise?

  The lead Volvo was already burning, and men were moving towards it, cautiously, while others formed a line across the street into which the Volvo had turned. Even as he reacted, he realised that they knew Helsinki better than he did, that the street into which he had turned was a sudden blotch of light industry, old warehouses and grass-usurped, unsold plots.

  'Get out — get out!' He cried, even as the driver wrenched the wheel, slid the Daimler into reverse. Aubrey saw the first two holes appear in the nearside wing of the car. Waterford said behind him. 'Just move out of it! They don't want prisoners!'

  Aubrey felt the draught of air as Waterford lowered the passenger window.

  'For God's sake!' Waterford squeezed off three shots from the Parabellum, all of them missing, Aubrey thought, as he craned an
d crouched in one awkward movement, the scene spinning past the windscreen of the car as it slewed its tail towards the oncoming men. No, one body was sprawled across the road, near the Volvo — one of his, or the enemy?

  He banged his head painfully against the dashboard as the Daimler surged forward, and then heard bullets thudding dully into the boot and the reinforcement behind the passenger seats.

  'All right?'

  Tor Christ's sake, I don't want another cucumber sandwich!' Waterford yelled. Aubrey sensed the delight in the voice, the vivacity. 'Tell them to cover us, quickly!'

  They were passing the second Volvo which was turning slowly into the wide street. Aubrey saw a face, said into the microphone, 'Cover us — but make your way out as quickly as you can.'

  He saw the window of the Volvo coming down, the passengers in front and back leaning out.

  'Take the main road — as quickly as you can!' he ordered the driver, who turned right almost at once, doubling back the way they had come.

  'No!' Then the sound of Waterford knocking out the rear window, and the interior of the car like a fridge. 'They must have a spotter — that wasn't just luck.' Silence, the car merely retracing its journey and the ambush still between them and the centre of Helsinki. 'Yes. A helicopter. Fuck it! You know Helsinki?'

  'Yes,' the driver said.

  'Use your judgement — don't listen to the rest of us.'

  Hesitation, then Aubrey said: 'Do as the Major suggests.'

  'Sir.'

  'Poor sods,' Aubrey heard from behind him. He craned round in his seat, and saw the second Volvo swerving round the corner from the ambush, then staggering across the road as if drunk. It piled against a lamp-standard, and was suddenly still.

  The Daimler swerved right again, then left in a second or two. Aubrey, despite the pressure he felt, was amused at the independence the driver had suddenly assumed. Then he thought of Davenhill, and realised, from the way his own heart was beating and his palms felt damp inside his gloves, what the younger man had been through. He looked at Waterford, who was staring out of the shattered rear window, his greying hair plucked by the slip-stream, and said, 'You seem to attract extreme circumstances, Major.'