Snow Falcon kaaph-2

by Craig Thomas

'No Anders, — I'm afraid he hasn't. All we can do is hope the coup will fizzle out — or he's got Druzhinin or somebody to order other units into defensive positions — ' Anders was scowling. 'I agree, Anders. It does seem unlikely.'

  'So — what the hell does Khamovkhin matter?'

  'He is the elected head of the government of the USSR,' Aubrey said with no trace of irony. 'He must be kept alive. We simply cannot afford to let him be killed. Your President has made that more than dear.' He looked at his watch. Four-forty.

  'The more he runs, the more that guy is going to realise he has nowhere to go,' Anders observed.

  'I know that, Anders!' Aubrey snapped. He studied the map. 'Now, where can he go? Get my driver in here.'

  The smile on the driver's face was inappropriate, but Aubrey recognised it not as self-importance or amusement, but derived from the experience they had shared escaping from the ambush in Helsinki — when Waterford had been killed.

  'Quickly, Fisher — tell me where they could go. They're here at the moment.'

  Fisher bent over the map, studied it briefly, then said, 'If you let him get beyond Heinola, to here — ' His finger traced a minor road. 'This cross-roads gives him choice again — and if you let him go either left or right, then he's into deeper forest, and you might lose him.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'I spent a holiday up there, fishing and walking. Very private country.' Fisher grinned with memory. 'It would take hours, maybe days, to root him out. And who's going to be alive by then, I wonder!

  'Yes — thank you, Fisher. One other thing — is Philipson anything of a shot?'

  'Handgun, not bad. Never fired it in anger, I don't think. Rifle — ?' Aubrey nodded. 'Nowhere near good enough, sir.'

  When Fisher had been dismissed, Aubrey looked directly at Anders, his hand raised to signal the police helicopter.

  'I have little or no choice in the matter.'

  'I realise that, sir. I just hope that helicopter has a marksman in it.'

  Aubrey flipped the switch.

  'He might stop in Heinola. We must hope that he does.' He bent to the microphone. 'Philipson, come in, Philipson.'

  'Sir.' The voice seemed very far away, and unreal. And it was hot again in the radio room, just as it had been in the corridor, earlier. Just hot flushes, he thought.

  'Is there a trained marksman among the helicopter crew?'

  'Pardon, sir?'

  'Have you a trained marksman on board?'

  A protracted silence, then: 'Yes, sir. Just the one, and he's out of practice-'

  Aubrey looked at the map, measuring distances with his finger and thumb, shaking his head.

  'No car could get far enough ahead of them — do we know what's out there, Anders?1 He stabbed his finger north of Heinola.

  'Some cars, but keeping out of sight — local police from Heinola. We haven't got anything out that far by chopper, and nothing from Helsinki.'

  'Then he will have to do,' Aubrey commented. His finger went on tapping the map, as if he were trying to influence something in the place to which he was pointing, trying to cast some spell over it by mental suggestion. Then he said into the transmitter, 'Very well — fly ahead of the car. Warn local units hi Heinola to keep clear of it, but to keep an eye on it. You find a good vantage point for the marksman. Then set down.'

  'What — do you want him to do, sir?'

  The usual — engine-block, tyres — ' He glanced at Anders.

  'And the car must be stopped dead — understand? You must place police near the road, and they must get to the car in time to prevent any retaliation whatsoever. Is that clear?'

  'Jesus Christ,' Anders breathed.

  'You do not need to be told that the driver must not, repeat not, be killed. Understand?' Anders appeared relieved. 'You use Vehicle Arrest, Method D, Philipson — understand?'

  'But-'

  'Understand, Philipson?'

  'Sir.'

  'Leave this channel open from now on.'

  'Sir.'

  Aubrey stared at Anders. The man was evidently concerned, but Aubrey had checked the anger and disgust that had been welling in him when he thought Aubrey intended killing Buckholz. Aubrey smiled slightly. Method D of Vehicle Arrest called for the wounding of the driver — death if the quality of marksmanship was not sufficiently high — in stopping of any fleeing vehicle. But Anders, not privy to the Marksmanship Manual of SIS, did not know it.

  'Let's hope this policeman spends a lot of time hunting, shall we?'

  He looked at the crackling radio.

  It was simply an old letter. There was no dramatic dried and faded blood, it seemed stained by time rather than tears or despair. It was almost falling apart, of course, Vorontsyev saw as he tried to consider it forensically, detached from its words. Heavy creases full of pocket-fluff, the writing faded — done in pencil that must have been licked a hundred times before the short account was complete. Perhaps the dirty fingers that had held the rough paper — it was writing-paper, not packing-paper or toilet paper, so God knew where it had been obtained. Those hands had pressed the paper down on some wooden table, gripped the pencil stub stiffly because the mittens didn't really keep out the cold. The letter is simply old, he tried to tell himself forensically.

  Then Gorochenko was speaking, and he listened, even while he turned the letter in his hands. He heard every word, even though he did not want to listen.

  'Your father was a hero in the war against the Fascists. He was — arrested by the NKVD twelve miles from Berlin, when he was part of Zhukov's army group. It was for letters he had written home to your mother, describing the conditions at the front, and expressing sympathy for the refugees he saw every hour of every day. And criticising the way the war had been run from Moscow.'

  Vorontsyev suddenly glanced up from the letter. His eyes were wide, but he could say nothing. 'He was tried, and sentenced to hard labour. He went into the camps — one near Moscow, at first. Later, he was transferred to Siberia, to the Kolyma region in the north-east. When he was arrested, your mother was pregnant, carrying you. She bore you, weaned you, then killed herself because she knew she would never see your father again. She knew by then that he would not take even his freedom from them. I was to be your guardian, your adoptive father.'

  There was no question of denial, even though the hot rejections rushed to his throat. He knew Gorochenko had spoken the truth. He was dumb, while his mind whirled crazily out of its accustomed orbit. He felt, with a sense of literal truth, that he was going mad.

  'It is not that she did not care for you,' Gorochenko said softly, 'but his arrest and imprisonment destroyed her. She lived for him. He, once he knew that she was dead, became ever more reckless with his life. He smuggled out accounts of their treatment — the filth, the cold, the starvation diet, the beatings, everything. Each time they caught him, he was punished. And his sentence was lengthened. And then he died in 1952, the year before the Beast himself — still righting them.' He looked at Vorontsyev, saw the dull eyes and sensed the mind retreating behind their opaque surfaces. He bellowed, 'Don't you understand? Your father wasn't killed in the war — he was alive until you were eight years of age — a zek, one of the inhabitants of the Gulag archipelago! Stalin had him imprisoned just for what he thought and felt and said!' There was a spittle of foam on his lower lip. He grabbed Vorontsyev's hands across the table, clutching them as if to squeeze truth through the pores of the younger man's skin. 'I loved your father — loved him!'

  'And they killed him — the NKVD, the MVD, the KGB. They're all the same — filth! Scum! Pigs who wallow hi the dirt they make of life! Can't you see that? I tried to save you from them by hiding you inside the organisation!' He paused, wringing Vorontsyev's hands, his face distorted with pain. Yet Vorontsyev still failed to respond. Gorochenko wanted nothing but to see him weep for the death of his father; it was a moment without calculation. He said, 'Believe me. It happened to millions — and it's still happening, I want revenge for your father,
for Kyril Mihailovich Vorontsyev, and for all the others who are dead or dying. That is what I want.'

  Vorontsyev looked at him, and what Gorochenko saw made him afraid. There was something like hatred in his eyes for a moment, then the returning blankness. Gorochenko had the sense that he had failed in some inexplicable way. He had not persuaded, perhaps not even immobilised Vorontsyev. He reached out and pulled the telephone towards him, watching Vorontsyev's gun all the time.

  'No,' Vorontsyev said, looking up at him.

  Gorochenko lifted the receiver, and began to dial the number. He was too early, but Valenkov would act. He had to act, just as Gorochenko had to telephone, now in the next few minutes, before Vorontsyev He dialled the third digit of Valenkov's number.

  'No,' Vorontsyev said again.

  'It's crazy! One dumb Finnish cop with a rifle — you got the Soviet First Secretary out there, and the Deputy Director of the CIA! You can't mean to go through with it!'

  'Be quiet, Anders!' Aubrey turned his back on the American, and spoke into the transmitter. 'Your man has a dear field of fire, Philipson?'

  'Sir. We're just back in the trees, on a slight rise. Hell see the car about a hundred yards before it draws level with him, then another hundred and fifty after that. It's the best we could do.'

  'Early warning?'

  'A spotter with an R/T, quarter of a mile down the road.'

  'Where are the others?'

  Thirty — forty, fifty yards beyond me.'

  'Move two of them closer.'

  'Sir.' Philipson's voice could be heard faintly as he spoke into a handset. Otherwise, Aubrey was aware only of Anders's eyes staring into his back. Aubrey concentrated on the face of the transmitter, because there was nothing else to be done. He was shuffling pieces on the board, but he knew as well as Anders his practical impotence. He was reiving on one policeman whose name he did not know, on a moonlit road thirty miles away from him.

  There was no sense of satisfaction — something he had felt on past occasions when he moved the wheels of the political world a fraction by his own hand. Nothing except the dreadful possibilities of what he was attempting.

  Anders loomed behind him like the keeper of his conscience, or an arresting officer.

  'In position, sir. We're ready.' Philispon did not sound confident, not at all.

  'How much time do we — ?'

  'Sir, he's in sight. Spotter has him picked up now.'

  Tell me everything, Philipson — you have no orders to give. Tell me.'

  'Sir. Passing spotter — now, travelling at approximately fifty mph — spotter has him on the bend — now.' Philipson's voice was mounting like mercury in a thermometer. The end-play was going critical. 'We have him in sight, sir — here he comes — '

  Aubrey glanced up at Anders, who had moved closer to the transmitter, as if threatening it. Aubrey could see the clenched white hand at the man's side as he turned back to the micro phone. But he could say nothing. Spectator — radio commentary, as if he might be listening to a horse race.

  'Drawing level — now!' Aubrey strained — he heard the noise of Anders's other hand rub his stubbly jaw, tried to hear the shots — two, three, four tinny, unsubstantial clicks — static or gunfire?

  'What's happening, dammit?' His voice was squeaky.

  'The — car's stopped. Two shots through the engine-block, no fire — car swung off the road — '

  'The driver?' Anders bellowed.

  'The passengers — where are your policemen, Philipson?'

  'Two more shots, sir, into the car — '

  'Jesus living, get down there, you dumb bastard!' Anders roared, flipping the switch to transmit. Aubrey took the microphone from his white hand.

  'Find out what has happened, and report back, Philipson.'

  He flicked the switch, and there was nothing but static. And the static went on, and on, until it was like white noise being used to empty their minds, reduce their will. Aubrey felt himself crumbling inside, so that he was spent and empty and wanted to sleep. The static went on and on.

  'You bastard — oh, Kenneth, you're a bastard!'

  It was Buckholz.

  'Khamovkhin?' Aubrey snapped, as if coming out of deep hypnosis. Then he flipped the switch, remembering. 'Khamovkhin?'

  'Alive — you lucky son of a bitch! Shaking like a leaf, but alive.'

  'Galakhov?'

  'Got his from the cops who rushed the car. Banged his head on the head-rest behind me, and Khamovkhin wrestled with the gun until someone blew his head off. Khamovkhin will bill you for a new coat and a bath. Galakhov's brains are all over him.'

  Aubrey shuddered, as was intended.

  'You're not hurt?'

  'Of course I am. You knew I would be — isn't that the way it works. Only the arm — your man aimed as far away from my body as be could, I guess — at the wheel.' A silence, then: 'You bastard, Kenneth — you ass-hole!' Finally: 'Thanks.'

  Aubrey held out the microphone to Anders, and saw that his hand was shaking. But then, so was Anders's big hand, and he was a much younger man. Much younger.

  Gorochenko stopped dialling. There was a strange light in Vorontsyev's eyes, and he was afraid of it. It looked like madness, and he silently cursed himself for what he had done. The miscalculation of arrogance, or desperation — or even anger. Break Alexei, then rebuild him. Perhaps he had overloaded him — buried him in truths?

  How would he dig himself out? He dialled two more digits swiftly. His eyes flickered to the gun, once, just as he paused before the final digit.

  Vorontsyev saw the old man resume dialling, and understood only that the truth about his father was just another ploy — like Natalia, like Vrubel, like Ossipov. Gorochenko had used everything — everything sacred — against him. Especially his father. He had used his father's memory to stop him.

  He lifted the gun, and heard Gorochenko say, 'Stay calm, Alexei.' The dial of the telephone purred back to rest. He focused his gaze on Gorochenko's free hand — tapping on the edge of the table, the drumming muffled by the glove, the anxiety dear in the movement. He attended to the face. It was dear in his strangely foggy vision, and seemed wizened, shrunk. The cunning eyes were transfixed by the levelled gun. It was a hateful, arrogant face.

  'Put down the phone,' Vorontsyev said, the gun pointing at Gorochenko's forehead. 'Put it down. You're under arrest.'

  Gorochenko appeared surprised. Then he said into the telephone, 'Valenkov? Where is he — get him to the phone, at once!'

  The telephone was a little way from Gorochenko's ear, and Vorontsyev could hear a distant, tinny voice referring to the caller as Kutuzov. Obeying the order. That name, though The traitor. The man who had tried to kill him. Kutuzov, the conspirator.

  A long moment of silence, in which Gorochenko seemed to concentrate utterly on the telephone. Until he looked up at the gun, and at Vorontsyev's face, and whatever he saw there caused a spasm of fear to cross his features. Vorontsyev felt himself inside a dream or a concussion, and he was simply doing his duty. He concentrated on the hand, the telephone, the shape of the jaw, the dark coat. Only physical things.

  He could not kill his stepfather — but he would stop him. He was afraid that there would be an answer from Valenkov — an aide scurrying through corridors, ringing out on another line — just as Gorochenko, he could see, was beginning to fear that Valenkov would ignore the call.

  Vorontsyev had buried his appalling misery for a moment. He felt clear-headed in a kind of delayed shock.

  It was an endless moment for Gorochenko. He sensed that Vorontsyev was trying to excise areas of reality, concentrate only on the stupid inadequacy of his duty. He stared at his son for a long time, then he heard the receiver at the other end being lifted from a desk or table. He pressed the mouthpiece close, made as if to speak.

  Before he uttered a sound, Vorontsyev did his duty. There was no time for thought or passion or memory. He shot Gorochenko through the head, twice, neatly. The body flew backwards out of th
e chair under the impact of the heavy 9 mm bullets, and the telephone clattered on to the floor squeaking tinnily.

  As he sat there, the gun now resting on the table, he appeared from his angle of vision to be alone in the room. So he sat quietly, without moving his head. Not even slightly.

  He had done his duty.

  Because there was nothing else. Gorochenko had taken away everything else, except his duty, his loyalty to the state.

  He grasped the heroic fiction of the moment. He had prevented the coup. Then he abandoned speculation for a dreamlike emptiness. Perhaps he would go and look at the body in a little while. But not yet, not just yet. At the moment, it was sufficient just to sit quietly in the silence of the dusty, cold little room. The telephone, its connection broken, buzzed like a distant insect. Everything else was quiet. It was five forty-six on the 24th.

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