Snow Falcon kaaph-2

by Craig Thomas

  'What's going on?' Vorontsyev asked, standing up, wiping foolishly at the wet lap of his suit.

  'This little bastard put something in your whisky, comrade. I was going to tell you after he went — but you couldn't wait for your reviver!' There was a certain contempt in the voice, as well as delight at the KGB man's own prowess.

  'In the drink?' Vorontsyev asked stupidly. He looked round at the other passengers, all of whom were moving out of shock into calculated lack of attention. Except the girl. She seemed relieved that the KGB man had left his seat. With a delicate but angry movement, she wiped at the shoulder of her coat where his head had rested. Vorontsyev returned his attention to the tableau in the aisle.

  The KGB man had dragged himself and the steward upright — then he pushed the slight figure in the white uniform jacket into an empty seat. The Stechkin was again thrust against the temple. Vorontsyev, studying the steward for the first time, could see an evident fear, and behind it something that appeared like confidence. It was as if he had the gun, or he were protected by the kind of power and organisation the KGB man had on his side. Puzzling.

  'What was it?' the KGB man asked in a harsh voice. The steward said nothing. The KGB man slapped him across the face, then forced his head back with the barrel of the gun, and roughly searched the steward's pockets. The steward did not resist, but even when the KGB man held up a small phial, empty, in his big hand, the steward showed no fear, no terror of discovery. 'What's this?'

  The steward did not reply.

  'You know who I am?' Vorontsyev said quietly, and the deference that had been missing seemed automatically to reappear in the other KGB man. The steward stared at him unblinkingly.

  'Answer the Major!' the KGB man snapped. Silence.

  'Who are you?' Vorontsyev asked.

  'Boris Vassiliev — a steward, as you see.' Something had happened to the steward; the deference that was part of his function seemed to have been removed by the surprise with which he had been assaulted, discovered. But nothing else had gone, in the face of the gun and the threats. Now he tried to reassume the mask of ordinariness it fitted incompletely, letting the strong personality they had already seen glance out.

  'Who gave you the order to dope my drink? It was lethal, I take it?' Vorontsyev was fascinated now. There was no reaction to the attempt on his life — shock or hate or anger. Just the aroused, challenged curiosity. 'Who gave you the order? Is that why no one boarded the plane, because you were here already?'

  'Answer the Major!' The gun pressed beneath the jaw. The face distorted, but only because of the pressure. Still was there no real, shaken fear.

  Ideas tumbled through Vorontsyev's head. He needed a shape to contain them, a process to undergo.

  'Watch him,' he said. 'Don't hurt him — yet.' Then he walked forward, towards the galley and the door to the flight-deck.

  As he opened the door, the flight-engineer, sitting side-on to him and to the rear of the two pilots, glanced up, and said, 'Please return to your seat at once.'

  Vorontsyev showed him the ID card. The flight-engineer studied it suspiciously, then spoke into his microphone.

  'Captain — Major Vorontsyev, SID, would like to speak to you…?' Vorontsyev nodded. 'Now, I think.'

  'Take control, Pavel,' the captain said to his second officer, and then released the control column. He took off his headset, and squeezed past the second officer, to confront Vorontsyev. He seemed surprised at the man's youth, being probably fifty, Vorontsyev estimated. A bulky, solid individual, still in command on his own flight-deck.

  Vorontsyev said as they confronted one another, 'Captain, what do you know about your steward, Vassiliev?'

  Immediately, the captain appeared puzzled. His mouth opened, and even the flight-engineer, looking up at them like a wondering child, smiled at the question.

  'Know about him?' the captain said. 'The little — he's one of yours, KGB!' He seemed unwilling, even defiant, about concealing his dislike of Vorontsyev.

  'He's not,' Vorontsyev said. 'I would have known that. The officer from Vladivostok travelling with me would certainly have known it. Why do you believe it?'

  'He has the proper authority, Major,' the captain said stiffly, as if his dignity had been affronted. 'I have flown with Vassiliev on board a number of times. He has always presented himself to me as KGB Airline Security.'

  Vorontsyev nodded. 'Thank you, captain. You may leave the matter in my hands. How soon before we can talk direct to Moscow?'

  The pilot appeared puzzled.

  'A matter of hours yet, I'm afraid. However, anything you wish can be relayed ahead of us…'

  'Thank you for your cooperation. Tell me, you say that Vassiliev has travelled with you many times. He is your regular steward, then?'

  'Not really. It doesn't work like that. We draw from a pool of available stewards and stewardesses, for internal flights. They're always changing flights and journeys with one another — proper little capitalist enterprise, Major!' There was a smile hi the blue eyes, and round the mouth. 'They very much suit themselves — especially the ones who are hi your organisation. They fly where they want, and when they want.'

  'I see. But Vassiliev flies this route regularly?'

  'Quite often. When I come aboard, I don't expect to see the same faces. But his — yes, quite often.'

  'You always thought him — one of us?'

  'Yes — his arrogance.' The pilot was cool, even amused. Vorontsyev smiled, and saw in his mind the face of the young steward. Yes, he could be KGB. Certainly not a steward.

  Working for Ossipov — travelling all over the Soviet Union. Nor frightened by the KGB, even masquerading as a KGB man. Pleasing himself which destination — changing his travelling arrangements at the last moment, perhaps.

  Vorontsyev was quivering with excitement. He knew what he had caught.

  'Leave — this matter in my hands, captain.' He had to make him talk — had to! 'Captain, I must ask you to descend to a level where the pressurised cabin is not needed!'

  'Must you hell!'

  'That is an order! Disobedience to that order may be construed as treason!' Vorontsyev was in no mood to trifle, to bargain or persuade. His face was grim with determination. He would not need to touch the gun in his holster. He knew the power of SID, even on people like this experienced pilot.

  It was a moment only. Then the pilot, with ill grace in his voice and impotent, angry contempt in his eyes, said, 'Very well. What are you going to do, throw the little sod out?'

  'Threaten to. You understand, captain. This aircraft is effectively under the control of an officer in the SID. I shall not interfere, more than is necessary, with your flight-plan or your authority. But I must have your complete cooperation!'

  'Very well,' he replied surlily. 'Very well, Major Vorontsyev.' He leaned to speak into the flight-engineer's microphone. 'Pavel, descend slowly to flight level seven-zero. And tell no one.' Then he straightened up. 'Will that do you? Seven thousand feet. It will be bloody cold, so don't leave the door open too long, will you?' There was an acid humour in the voice, the truculence of forced assistance.

  'Thank you, captain. And keep her steady, would you? I have no wish to fall out somewhere over Siberia!'

  He dosed the door behind him, the jubiliation of the humour of his last words bubbling in him. He had the answer, a mouthpiece now, if only he could force it to speak.

  A courier.

  The missing piece of the puzzle; the communications network. Using the resources of Aeroflot, the network of the internal airline services, to transmit their messages — from Moscow to the Far East and who knew where else — by jet airliner; by stewards who rendered themselves virtually secure from inter ference by posing as members of the KGB. It would work, too.

  He stood looking into the first class for a moment, as 'he thoughts resolved themselves. He could feel the airliner descending, not rapidly enough to arouse the passengers — but descending.

  The couriers would kno
w to whom they spoke — they would even know the man or men behind Group 1917 and Finland Station. He had an almost physical longing to shake the information from the steward, now seated upright, the KGB man alongside him, the gun evident between them. The other passengers were consciously inattentive.

  Messages transmitted by word of mouth, within hours. Simple, and effective. If there was a KGB man on the flight, Vassiliev — and the others, for there had to be others; twenty, thirty, how many? — would simply not reveal his assumed authority. If not, and always as far as the flight crew were concerned, he was KGB. Who would think to check?

  'Bring him!' he snapped.

  The KGB man hauled Vassiliev out of his seat, and prodded him along the aisle until all three of them were jammed into the tiny galley. Vorontsyev could smell rank sweat. It was the KGB man, not Vassiliev. He glared into the confident young face — no, there was an ashen tinge to the cheeks now that they were so close to him, or now he was alone with them.

  'Listen to me, Boris Vassiliev. I know what you are.' The steward still appeared confident. He straightened his tie. 'I know about Group 1917 and Finland Station. Which is why you had to kill me. But I know what you are, and I'm going to know what you know. You are a courier from the top men…' The eyes bolted, as if seeking escape. The KGB man, as if on cue from Vorontsyev, thrust the gun into Vassiliev's back. The steward gasped.

  'You see? I know, and I want to know what you know. Everything. As no doubt you will have noticed, the aircraft is descending. When it has done so, I will open the passenger-hatch opposite us…' He watched the steward's eyes stray towards the locked hatch; it was a movement the man could not control. 'And if you don't then tell me everything I wish to know — I shall throw you out!'

  The barely furnished room was icy cold, even in the middle of the afternoon. He had removed only one glove in order to dial without making a mistake in the number. The telephone had been freed of bugs; it was the first of his secure lines, in a flat in a northern workers' suburb, part of a grey block of cement with tiny, slitted windows.

  His breath smoked in the room. He sat at a rickety table which was smeared with the marks of mugs and plates, and gritty with sugar, on one of the two upright chairs that constituted the remaining furniture. It was an apartment that was officially occupied, but in fact had been empty for some weeks, and the superintendent of the block of flats had kept it so at his instruction.

  Kutuzov was there to make one telephone call. He had travelled by metro from his house, smug in the confirmation that even now, with Andropov and the KGB so desperate and short of time, he was not being followed. Naturally, he had planned that it would be so; but the relief was still very real. and the sense of success — omen of greater success — warming as he had ridden the metro.

  His finger was icy. He dialled the number — only he possessed it. The central switchboard at Moscow Military District HQ outside the city would register the number, and the call would be diverted to Valenkov, commandant of the Moscow Garrison regiments. Moscow Garrison was cut off from the outside world — but it would accept his call.

  Finger numb — he fumbled the glove back on to his thick hand, the telephone tucked between cheek and shoulder. He wanted action, quick, vivid decision, as he listened to the sputter and clicking of the connection. Valenkov had to be handled carefully, he told himself. Carefully 'Good afternoon, sir.' Valenkov himself, twenty years younger and knowing who must be his caller.

  'Dmitri. Good afternoon. I'm still here, as you can hear.' He held his breath, trying to sense telephathically the mood of a younger man. The heavy joke seemed to delay in the wire, as if too indigestible to travel down its gut.

  'Yes, sir.' Nothing. No commitment.

  'I need cheering up, Dmitri,' he tried again. 'So I called you.'

  'Sir.'

  He was angry — Valenkov was behaving like a stubborn, idiot corporal. He had expected the call, since it was part of his agreement with Valenkov that he should report his safety at intervals before the final call at six on the twenty-fourth.

  So that Valenkov would know he was still alive, he thought with contempt.

  'Tell me again — your final decision.'

  'Airborne assault on the Kremlin, at oh-six hundred. Tank assault on Dzerzhinsky Street, special squads to round up the designated targets.' Valenkov sounded as if he were reciting a lesson — one that bored him.

  'Excellent, excellent!' Kutuzov enthused, watching his breath curling up to the low ceiling — seeing the ring of smoke-stain round the light-fitting — and noticing the ice forming diamonds on the windows. 'How long do you estimate the whole operation will take, Dmitri?'

  'Forty minutes.'

  'Excellent. Dmitri — ?'

  'Sir?'

  'When it's over, promise me one thing?'

  'What — would that be?'

  'That you will smile! Show a little enthusiasm for our great enterprise.'

  He waited for the reply, listening almost as if he could hear the man wrestling with his conscience, hear its grunts as he twisted it to what he thought of as treasonable shape; all for him, for Kutuzov, he reminded himself. He was the talisman, the ikon.

  'If you give me the word, personally, to move against the Kremlin the day after tomorrow — then I will smile, sir. As I have said, sir, I will make no move against the Politburo or the KGB without knowing you are safe and will assume control after the operation.'

  'Very well, Dmitri — !' he spluttered angrily. Then, more calmly: 'Very well. You will hear from me. Goodbye, Dmitri!'

  When he put down the telephone, his hand was shaking. The weight of the promise he had given Valenkov seemed heavy on him. It was as if he had promised to run far and fast, or be young once more He slapped his hands on his thighs, and thought of the long underwear beneath the trousers of the formal suit, looked down at the high boots he had taken to wearing since he had slipped on ice-bound Ministry steps last winter and broken an ankle. And he hated it.

  He could hear his teeth grinding, in the room and inside his head, in the blank silence. Freezing outside the grimy windows, the dirty diamonds of the ice thick on the panes. He was a monarch in exile, the forgotten hero about to return.

  The fictions comforted him. His surroundings were not epical, but his purpose was. And though it was linked by a piece of wire to a frightened soldier, by his very voice he could change the world. Valenkov would obey, when the time came.

  He fiddled with a loose button on his overcoat, looking down at the garment as it swelled over his ample stomach. It had once been a hard body. Now all that was left was the hard mind, the stubborn, dedicated clinging to an ideal.

  He remembered the death of Lenin — the grief of young manhood. The great leader had never recovered from the assassination attempt by Churchill's agent. Then the years of Stalin the pig, the death of Trotsky in exile, murdered by the NKVD in the hands of the butcher-king, Beria. Socialism in one country, the filthiness of the Purges — the point of counterrevolution being reached — and the Fascist invasion saving Stalin from what he deserved at the hands of the people. Pig-Stalin had used, relied on, the greatness of the Russian people to save him while they saved their country.

  And since then only the decline offeree, the collapse of will. Trading with the capitalists for the trinkets, the worthless things — the Soviet Union being bought like a whore.

  The rush of thoughts was like volcanic activity, or the gases of indigestion. They discomfited him, even as they filled him with a shallow rage. He could hardly control himself while the procession of his own history, the history of his country and his ideology, passed through his awareness.

  Look, his hands were quivering now. He clenched them, and banged them on his thighs as if they were the witnesses of senility, of imbecility. He breathed deeply, the exhalations seeming to roar in his ears in the room's silence.

  Nothing could stop them — whatever had gone wrong, whatever was known — nothing could stop it.

  Vorontsyev
.

  He was dangerous — though he knew nothing, knew nothing.

  Frightening. Because, in the last few days, it had come down to a few old men — Ossipov, Praporovich, Dolohov, Pnin and the other generals. And a young man — two young men, he corrected himself. One in Helsinki, and the other flying back from the Far East.

  He was thankful that Vorontsyev knew nothing about him, in no way threatened him. He knew about Ossipov's exercises, and guessed the invasion. But he did not know about the coup, and he did not know about Kutuzov. He was grateful for that. He was only an old man in a dirty bare room, and feeling very old, as he did at that moment, he could not but be afraid that the young man would find him.

  Which was why Vassiliev would kill him, aboard the airliner.

  Thirty-nine hours seemed a very long time to wait — to hide.

  'What height are we at now, Boris?' the voice asked him softly, insistently. 'What does the altimeter read? Are we low enough for you to survive the fall?' And the voice chuckled in his ear, a dry, pitiless sound. Boris was even able to perceive how the menace of the voice had grown during the last — how long? And that was not the quality of the voice; it was his fear. He was hunched in a forced, doubled position on the cold floor of the baggage compartment. His buttocks were numb already, and the cold had ascended to his stomach, his genitals. He desperately wanted to urinate. The SID officer had held him at the closed hatch opposite the galley, in first class, until he was shivering with fear — then they had blindfolded him. Down the aisle, brushing past the rough curtain, its material against his face, through second class. The dick of locks, and the door closing behind them. Their breath, eagerly harsh — his own, barely controlled.

  Then they had forced him to sit, dragged his arm between his knees, and the click of handcuffs, tightened so that they hurt. Then something to strap his ankles tight together. Then they had lifted him, and now he was close to the fuselage. He knew that. He thought — could not avoid thinking — he was placed close to the baggage door.