Snow Falcon kaaph-2

by Craig Thomas

  'Tell me, Alan,' Vorontsyev said, rocking to and fro slightly, as if cradling a child. 'Tell me about the men who questioned you — all about them. Then we can catch them. Begin with the one I shot, outside the door…'

  It was as if he had turned on some tap in the Englishman. At first a trickle of rusty water; then an increasing flow. Patiently, he listened, attending to only one thing, which did not come. Desperate not to hear it, yet knowing he had to ask.

  Folley was still in his arms, and he was brushing the matted hair and patting the shaking shoulder, when he appeared to have finished his self-purgation, self-justification.

  Then, in the sudden and unfamiliar quiet, Vorontsyev said, 'Wasn't there someone else, Alan? Perhaps he only came once, so you forgot him. I don't know when it was — but I know he came to see you. An — older man.. ?' Folley was quiet, like a child thinking in the arms of a parent. Then, after a long while, he said, 'But he didn't — interrogate me.'

  'No, he wouldn't,' Vorontsyev said. Or not seem to, he added to himself. 'Tell me what he looked like.'

  'Is he a traitor too?' It was direct and unfeeling as the question of a child. Piercing.

  'Yes — he is,' Vorontsyev said quietly.

  And then he listened. He did not, he was sure, draw breath once until the Englishman had finished. His hands plucked nervously at the stuff of Folley's shirt, and he perceived a despair more real than he had ever felt before.'

  He could envisage the features that were being described; the clothes, too, betrayed the picture. It was as if an outline that he had deliberately blurred were redrawn, etched then coloured and shaded.

  Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and his own adoptive father — was Kutuzov. What he had suspected when Natalia had tried to betray him in Khabarovsk — the man had sent her with him to the Far East — and what he had seen in his mind as Vassiliev had talked, was now confirmed. There could be no mistake about the face these two words confirmed. Gorochenko was Kutuzov. The despair of acknowledgement welled up in him; he could not prevent the tears, though the tears now were slow in coming, an emotional condition already abandoned by the rushing brain.

  He sensed Folley moving a little apart from him, but took no heed of it. His thought at that precise moment — of a moment before it had been to kill Folley, silence him — was that no one else must hear what he had just heard. For whatever reason he had come to the cellar room, whatever confirmation he had sought — now he must act. He must bury the truth, and find Mihail Pyotravich.

  He would not kill Folley. He would do as he had promised, take him to the US Consulate on the Grodnensky. They would take him in, and he would be safe there; as Gorochenko might be.

  He snapped at Folley: 'Are you ready to leave now?' The Englishman appeared confused, sullen even. He stared dumbly at Vorontsyev. 'Get up! Where are your shoes?'

  Folley doubled over, peering under the cot. It would have been stupidly comical, had not Vorontsyev felt the insistent urgency of the passing moments.

  'Quickly!' he snapped. Folley shrugged. There were no shoes. 'Come with me!'

  He caught hold of Folley's arm, and hurried him out of the cell. Someone had dragged the man in the dressing-gown away from the doorway. He pushed Folley up the cellar stairs in front of him.

  The small group of exhausted men were gathered hi the kitchen. There were three men, in various states of undress, against the wall. Standing. Only the man in the dressing-gown appeared to be wounded. His face was grey with weakness and pain, and he slumped against the wall. Around the table were the driver, one of the men who had entered from the rear, and the two who had searched the first floor. One of them was wounded. He nodded to them. Only one dead.

  'What do we do now, sir?' the driver asked, staring at Folley, who hovered behind Vorontsyev.

  'Mm? Now?' Vorontsyev was ready to leave; this was a delay. He snapped, 'Use the radio — then take these men to the safe house. Keep them there until arrangements can be made.'

  'What about him, sir? Shall I report him?' The driver was nodding in Folley's direction.

  'What? Yes. Now, have you brought the cars round?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Very well. I shall be going. Don't waste time getting this little gang under cover!'

  They all wished to question him, it was evident. He felt guilty, caught out. He hoped they would not ask. The driver said, 'Aren't you — ?'

  'Don't question me!' he snapped. 'Report in when you get to safety!'

  They sat stiffly in their chairs as he turned his back on them. He had not congratulated them, thanked them. They had done well — it did not matter; was irrelevant. He had to get rid of the Englishman now, and get the first flight to Moscow.

  How long did he have?

  He had no idea. It might be only hours.

  The thought pressed in his back, almost expunging breath. He opened the front door, and pushed Folley on to the steps. One of the Volgas was parked by the steps.

  'Get in!' he snapped. Folley stared at him dumbly, as if retreated into some catatonic escape from his situation. 'Get in!'

  Vorontsyev slammed the door, fitted the key in the ignition, and then looked at his watch. Six fifty-nine. Nineteen minutes. Was that all?

  He stared at the dashboard in a blank moment, then switched on. The tyres squealed on the frosty gravel as he pulled out from the drive into the still empty street. Again, he looked at his watch. Seven.

  Twenty minutes to get to the Consulate, bang on the door until a marine opened it, or perhaps the doorman in pyjamas — then allow another forty minutes to get to the airport and through the controls. What time was the early-morning flight to Moscow? Eight? Nine?

  Eight-thirty.

  He would be in Moscow by ten.

  And by that time Andropov would be looking for him, just as he would be looking for Gorochenko.

  'Gone — what do you mean, gone?'

  Andropov's face darkened, and he held the telephone a little from his freshly-shaven cheek as if suspicious of it. He had felt comfortable, pleased with the initial report from Leningrad, having shaved and washed to rub away some of the sleepless night's grime, and the residue of his panic. Then this. Vorontsyev was not available. 'Where is the Englishman — not dead, I hope?'

  'Comrade Chairman,' replied the voice with punctilious respect, 'we assumed he had orders from you. Major Vorontsyev left before us, with the Englishman.'

  'Had he questioned him?'

  A slight delay, then: 'He was alone with him for at least ten 'minutes, Comrade Chairman.'

  'And he left hurriedly?'

  'Very — sir.'

  Andropov was silent in his bemusement for a moment, then remembering there were certain courtesies required, he said abruptly: 'Very well. Well done. I shall despatch a team to take over from you. You will all be commended for your work, and the commendations noted on your files. That is all.'

  'Thank you, Comrade — ' He put the receiver down quickly. His first action was to look at his watch. Nine twenty-five. The early flight from Leningrad would already have landed.

  Why had that occurred to him?

  The more proper enquiry was — why had Vorontsyev disappeared and where was he now?

  A stupid return to logic — he already knew the answer. He had disappeared because he had discovered the identity of the ringleader. Kutuzov. Vorontsyev had found out who Kutuzov really was Andropov watched his hand on the desk slowly opening and dosing, like a small, independent, grabbing animal. And he felt the excitement of knowledge.

  Vorontsyev would do that because For only one member of the Politburo. One hitherto trusted, unsuspected, almost senile member of the Politburo Andropov savoured not pronouncing the word in his thoughts, even the way in which he refused to countenance an image of the old man. Instead, he picked up one of his battery of telephones and dialled the duty-room on the ground floor of the Centre.

  'Andropov. Alert the security team at Cheremetievo. If Ma
jor Alexei Vorontsyev lands, he is to be detained and brought to me here.' He broke the connection and pushed his glasses more firmly on to the bridge of his nose. Then he dialled a second extension. 'Records? Bring me Major Alexei Vorontsyev's personal file, at once. And the file on Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko — yes, the Deputy Foreign Minister.'

  He put down the phone and looked at his watch. Vorontsyev might have passed through visa control already. If he had done, where would he go?

  The two personal files he had requested might tell.

  He felt a twitch of fear. The night's fatalism had disappeared not so much with the dawn, but with this sudden knowledge, and the danger offered by the disappearance of Vorontsyev.

  They could not have known, of course. He allowed himself to think that, quite clearly and precisely. Even now that he knew, it was hard to believe, hard to elevate the shambling has-been Gorochenko to the level of arch-plotter, overthrower of the state. A broken-winded nag who's toed every line ever pointed out to him, whoever owned the pointing finger. Army, yes — they'd spotted that right away, but that was during the war, and he'd gone straight back into government. A good man with paper, patient on committees, a good right-hand for Gromyko. Never any trouble As Andropov rehearsed the innocuousness of the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, the confidence that the KGB had been rightly and unavoidably fooled became the hollow laughter of the hoaxer. He could almost hear Gorochenko laughing at the manner in which they had been taken in for thirty years — by a caricature of the third-rate Party man!

  He dosed hands into fists, one containing the other, and the knuckles whitened as he squeezed. He had played the booby, and taken them, Beria and himself. His very spotlessness should have been sufficient proof I He released his hands from the mind's grip, and nibbed them, as if washing.

  Concentrate on Gorochenko. Think, think — forget Vorontsyev, concentrate on Gorochenko. Find him — stop a coup. He reached for the telephone. There would be time to tell Khamovkhin at Lahtilinna later, when he had given his instructions. Perhaps they had as much as twenty hours A tyranny is sufficient, he thought. He is ours already.

  Kutuzov sat in his study. He concentrated on each item of furniture, each painting and photograph, even the grandfather clock which told him it was almost nine-thirty, as if in valediction. He felt very tired. He had been unable to sleep — who would have done, in his situation?

  Twenty hours to go. Only twenty.

  He stared at the telephone. Praporovich dead, Dolohov dead, Pnin and other generals — dead, too. He put his head in his hands for a moment, then shrugged and made himself sit upright in his chair. He was angry, and would not accept, not for a moment, the image of defeat such a slumped posture would portray. An angry movement of his hand, as if brushing something aside, rattled the bone-china cup and saucer on the delicate little table with the leather surface at the side of the chair. He glanced at it, then replaced the base of the cup firmly in the centre of the saucer.

  He was all will-power; a strong man. He had always known that. He had needed it, all of it, then, as he had listened to the report from Leningrad. Or, most of all perhaps, when he had been told that Vorontsyev had talked to the Englishman, and then disappeared.

  He stood up. There, he could do it steadily, betraying no reaction from the news he had received. It was as if he were aware of some audience. He laughed, a deep, almost threatening noise. Yes, he did behave as if for an audience, a great deal of the time. He was his own audience now. Once, the audience had been Kyril Vorontsyev, Alexei's father. Then Alexei himself. Not usually his wife. She, though he had sometimes loved her, occasionally needed her, had borne with him as he was without make-up and a role to play.

  Yes, Alexei would know by now — would have talked to the Englishman, primed by Vassiliev as to what to look for. And he would know about the stupid bitch, Natalia, and how she had been used against him. There was a moment of admiration for his adopted son. He was clever, and brave, and dogged.

  And now, doubtless, would be coming for him. And, even if he had not told Andropov — he might not have — Andropov would have guessed.

  He crossed to an escritoire, opened a drawer, and took out a Makarov automatic. He checked the mechanism, and inserted a full clip. Then he put two more clips in his coat pocket. He closed the drawer again.

  The invasion — that may have been stopped. But the coup — that would proceed. Oh, yes, that would proceed. He swept his hand through the air in a slicing motion. That, and Fanny Kaplan. The Kremlin gang and their secret police would be swept away. Valenkov would obey him, as long as he was free to make the telephone call at six the next morning.

  The traitors to the Revolution would be swept from power, from life. Andropov and his gang of thugs and leeches. The KGB — Beria's gift to Russia, descendant of the MVD, the NKVD, and OGPU, the Cheka — the Cheka alone might have been necessary. The others were sores and lice on the bear.

  He went to fetch his overcoat, and a small bag he had packed. He would only come back after it was all over. He paused for a moment before a photograph on the wall, of a young man, which he had draped with black crepe. He shook his head, and left the study. He had the city of Moscow in which to hide, and only twenty more hours to hide.

  'Alexei — !' he cried involuntarily, ashamed of the sound in the moment he uttered it. He tugged on his coat stiffly. Then he picked up his bag, heard the dog snuffle at the closed kitchen door, and went out into the below-zero temperature of Kropotkin Street. He stopped at the gate for a moment, and looked back at the restored house. Then he walked away, upright, his stick clicking on the icy pavement.

  Galakhov looked up at the window of Khamovkhin's bedroom as if studying a target or an obstacle in his path. He was on the point of being relieved of duty. He would disappear until the following night, when his return to duty would provide him with the opportunity of killing Khamovkhin.

  Kill him — for what? A part of him he did not wish to acknowledge asked the question in a precise, cool mental voice. Kill him, now that they knew who Kutuzov was? And the generals were all dead? It had been a long night, after he had heard the gossip of the radio traffic coming in from Moscow — a longer early morning after Andropov's last message, the one they had relayed direct to Washington and London — the ringleader, code-name Kutuzov, has been identified and is on the point of being arrested in Moscow. Subject identified as Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. Subject identified — Kill Khamovkhin, who had laughed like a bully-boy when he heard the news, so the rumour said? An American CIA agent had told Galakhov, had sounded relieved, and then spat into the snow cursing all Russians for bastards.

  Security was relaxed — except that they still worried where 'Captain Ozeroff' was. He could kill — but why?

  He saw a guard hurrying along the path to relieve him.

  Kill him for revenge — do the worst you can. Kill him because it did not work, he told himself.

  Sixteen: Anna Dostoyevna

  Vorontsyev let himself into the empty house with the key that he had been given on his sixteenth birthday — an inordinate time to wait, he had thought as a youth, before Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko had let him come and go as he pleased. But he had always kept the key, and now it enabled him to enter the house silently by the front door.

  The dog barked from the back of the house as he pushed open the door. He knew the house was empty, and that Gorochenko had left the dog. Vorontsyev laughed — of course he had left the dog. He intended coming back — the next day, or the day after that.

  He pushed open the kitchen door, and the big, overweight bundle of red fur was planted against his chest, the pink tongue slobbering for his face. He lowered his head and let himself be licked, ruffling the fur, bunching it in his hands as memory assailed him, making the small incident perilous with allusion.

  'Down, boy,' he said softly, pushing the dog away. The great paws left his chest, and the dog ambled beneath the kitchen table,
curling in its huge basket which was still too small. Brown eyes stared up at him, tongue lolling out, breaths wheezing. It was always hard to realise the dog was old.

  Like Gorochenko.

  He looked at the sink-unit. A cup filled with water, a single saucer and plate. A slight smell of the breakfast that had been cooked remained. Gorochenko was not long gone, and he had left in no particular hurry.

  Swiftly, after closing the kitchen door behind him, he searched the rest of the house. He did not go near the room he had once occupied himself, nor the room that had confined his adoptive mother in the months before her death. It was evident that no one else had yet searched the place, and he became anxious, having frequently to shrug off the slow-motion that memory imposed, to complete the task before he was surprised.

  He found that the gun was missing from the drawer of the escritoire. And that it was nowhere else in the house. It was a realisation that filled him with foreboding. He was sustained by a certainty that he would find Gorochenko, sometime that day or night, and to know the old man had a gun depressed, worried him. Apart from the gun, there was little missing. The dog had been given only one meal, and he had already guzzled half of it.

  It was certain, then. Twenty-four hours. No more than that. The old man had perhaps one fresh shirt, his shaving tackle, his heavy overcoat, galoshes. All in the small bag he had had since the war. The bag had belonged to Kyril Vorontsyev. He had been told that the first time he had asked Gorochenko why such an important man used such a shabby old bag. A soldier's luggage, had been the unsmiling reply.

  Talismans to ward him off — the old bag, the old dog — ?

  He had not asked himself what he would do when he and Gorochenko came face to face — had not asked on the plane, that sleepless hour, nor as he showed his papers at Cheremetievo, his palms tacky and his forehead beating as he waited for them to arrest him. But he had been too quick, just a little too quick, and the word to bring him in had not then been issued, he realised.