by Craig Thomas
The walk from the British Airways BAC-111 across the tarmac of Cheremetievo Airport seemed interminable to the slightly-built man at the end of the file of passengers. The wind whipped at his trilby, which he held in place, jamming it firmly down with one hand while in the other he held a travel bag bearing the legend of the airline. He was an undistinguished individual — he wore spectacles, heavy-rimmed, and his top lip was decorated with a feeble growth of moustache. His nose was reddened, and his cheeks blanched, by the chill wind. He wore a dark topcoat and dark trousers, and anonymous shoes. Only the churning of his stomach, the bilious fear, placed and defined him.
It was only because it was the express practice of the KGB to photograph all passengers arriving on foreign flights at Moscow's principal airport that he, too, was photographed with a camera equipped with a telephoto lens. He guessed that it had happened, though he could not have said at what point in his walk across the tarmac, his head bent in an attempt to keep the flying dust from his face and eyes.
The sudden warmth of the disembarkation lounge struck him, tempted him to turn down the collar of his coat, remove his hat, and brush at the brown hair. He slicked it away from his forehead, so that with its evident white seam of a parting it belonged to a man unconscious of fashion. At that point, he was photographed again. In fact, it was as if he had posed for such a study. He looked about him, and then moved towards the customs desk. Around him, the human tide of any international terminal flowed, attracted his attention. Delegations filed through, and his eyes picked out the flamingo colours of African national costume. There were others — Orientals, Europeans. He became an item in that vast congress, and the cosmopolitan familiarity of an airport lounge settled his stomach. If anything, he appeared very cold, and more than a little airsick.
He knew that the men who stood behind the customs officials were probably security men — KGB. He placed his airline bag between the screens of the detector, and his other luggage came sliding towards him on the conveyor belt. The man did not move — he had already anticipated what would happen next. One of the two men standing with apparent indifference behind the customs men, stepped forward and lifted the two suitcases clear of the belt.
The man watched the customs officer fixedly, seeming to ignore the security man as he opened each of the suitcases, and urgently, thoroughly, ruffled through the clothing they contained. The customs official checked his papers, and then passed them to the controller at the end of the long counter. The ruffling of the clothes became more urgent, and the smile on the KGB man disappeared, replaced by an intent, baffled stare into the well of each suitcase.
The official said: 'Mr. Alexander Thomas Orton? What is your business in Moscow?'
The man coughed, and replied: 'As you can see from my papers, I am an export agent of the Excelsior Plastics Company, of Welwyn Garden City.'
'Yes, indeed.' The man's eyes kept nickering to the frustrated mime of the security officer. 'You — have been to the Soviet Union several times during the past two years, Mr. Orton?'
'Again, yes — and nothing like this has happened to me before!' The man was not annoyed, merely surprised. He seemed determined to be pleasant, a seasoned, knowledgeable visitor to Russia, and not to regard the insults being levied at his possessions.
'I apologise,' the official said. The KGB man was now in muttered conversation with the customs officer. The remainder of the passengers had already passed through the gate, and spilled into the concourse of the passenger lounge. They were gone, and Mr. Alexander Thomas Orton was feeling rather alone.
'I have all the correct papers, you know,' he said. 'Signed by your Trade Attache at the Soviet Embassy in London.' There was a trace of nervousness in his voice, as if some practical joke which he did not understand were being perpetrated against him. 'As you say, I've been here a number of times — there's never been any trouble of this kind before. Does he really have to make such a mess of my belongings — what is he looking for?'
The KGB man approached. Alexander Thomas Orton brushed a hand across his oiled hair, and tried to smile. The Russian was a big man, with flattened Mongol features and an unpleasant aura of minor, frustrated, power about him. He took the passport and the visas from the official, and made a business of their scrutiny.
When he appeared satisfied, he stared hard into Orton's face and said: 'Why do you come to Moscow, Mr. - Orton-'
'Orton — yes. I am a businessman, an exporter, to be exact.'
'What do you hope to export to the Soviet Union, from your country?' There was a sneer in the Russian's voice, a curl of the lip to emphasise it. There was something unreal about the whole business. The man brushed his oiled hair again, and seemed more nervous than previously, as if caught out in some prank.
'Plastic goods — toys, games, that sort of thing.'
'Where are your samples — the rubbish you sell, Mr. Orton?'
'Rubbish? Look here!'
'You are English, Mr. Orton? Your voice… it does not sound very English.'
'I am Canadian by birth.'
'You do not look Canadian, Mr. Orton.'
'I — try to appear as English as possible. It helps, in sales abroad, you understand?' Suddenly, he remembered the vocal training, with a flick of irritation like the sting of a wet towel; it had seemed amidst his other tasks absurd in its slightness. Now, he was thankful for it.
'I do not understand.'
'Why did you search my luggage?'
The KGB man was baffled for a moment. 'There is no need for you to know that. You are a visitor to the Soviet Union. Remember that, Mr. Orton!' As if to express his anger, he held up the small transistor radio as a last resort, looked into Orton's face, then tugged open the back of the set. Orton clenched his hands in his pockets, and waited.
The Russian, evidently disappointed, closed the back and said: 'Why do you bring this? You cannot receive your ridiculous programmes in Moscow!' The man shrugged, and the set and the passport were thrust at him. He took them, trying to control the shaking of his hands.
Then he stooped, picked up his hand grip, and waited as the KGB man closed his suitcases, and then dropped them at his feet. The locks of one burst, and shirts and socks brimmed over. The KGB man laughed as Orton scrabbled after two pairs of rolling grey socks, on his knees. When he finally closed the lid, his hair was hanging limply over his brow, interfering with his vision. He flicked the lock away, adjusted his spectacles, and hoisted his cases at his sides. Then, mustering as much offended dignity as he could, he walked slowly away, into the concourse, towards the huge glass doors which would let him into the air, and relief. He did not need to look behind him to understand that the KGB man was already consulting with his colleague who had not moved from his slouched, assured stance against the wall behind the customs desk, and who had obviously been the superior in rank. The second man had watched him intently throughout his time at the desk — customs, passport and KGB.
Gant knew that they would be 2nd Chief Directorate personnel — probably from the 1st section, 7th department, which directed security with regard to American, British, and Canadian tourists. And, Gant reflected, his stomach relaxing for the first time since he had left the aircraft, in a way he was all three, and therefore, very properly, their concern.
He called for a taxi from the rank outside the main doors of the passenger lounge, setting down his suitcases, and cramming his trilby on his head once more against the fierce wind, little abated by the shelter of the terminal building.
* * *
A black taxi drew up, and he said: 'Hotel Moskva, please,' in as pleasant, innocuous a voice as he could muster.
The driver opened the door for him, loaded his suitcases, jumped back in the cab, and then waited, engine idling. Gant knew he was waiting for the KGB tail-car to collect him. Gant had seen the signal from the KGB man who had bullied him, a shadowy, bulking figure. He took off his hat and leaned sideways, so that he saw the long, sleek, vividly-chromed saloon in the driver's mirror.
Then the driver of the taxi engaged the gears and they pulled out of the airport, onto the motorway that would take him south-east into the centre of Moscow — the wide, prestigious Leningrad Avenue. He settled back in his seat, being careful not to glance behind him through the tinted rear window. The black saloon would be behind him, he knew.
So, he thought, feeling the tension drift down and vanish, Alexander Thomas Orton had passed his first inspection. He was not sweating — the taxi had an inefficient heater, and the temperature inside was low. Yet, he admitted, he had been nervous. It had been a test he had to pass. He had had to play a part already familiar to his audience, so familiar that they would have noticed any false note. He had had to become totally self-effacing, not merely behind the mask of Orton's greasy hair, spectacles, and weak jaw, but in his movements, his voice. At the same time, he had had to carry with him, like the scent of a distinctive after-shave, an air of suspicion, of seediness. Thirdly, and perhaps most difficult for him, he had had to possess a certain, ill-fitting, acquired Englishness of manner and accent.
As he considered his success, and was thankful for the solid lack of imagination and insight of his interrogator, he acknowledged the brilliance of Aubrey's mind. The little plump Englishman had been developing Gant's cover as Orton, a cover merely to get him unobtrusively into Russia, for a long time. For almost two years, a man looking very much as Gant did now, had been passing through customs at Cheremetievo. An exporter, touting with some success a range of plastic toys. Apparently, they sold rather well in GUM, in Red Square. A fact that had amused Aubrey a great deal.
There was, naturally, more; Alexander Thomas Orton was a smuggler. The KGB's suspicions had been carefully aroused concerning Orton's possible activities in the drug-smuggling line a little more than a year before. Orton had been watched carefully, closely — yet never harried so openly before. Gant wondered whether Aubrey had not turned the screw on him. The big, dumb KGB man had expected to find something in his luggage, that was certain. And, now that his suspicions, aroused and then frustrated, had remained unfulfilled, Gant was being tailed to his hotel.
The taxi passed the Khimky Reservoir on the right, the expanse of grey water looking cold and final under the cloudy, rushing sky. Soon, they were into the built-up, urban mass of the city, and Gant watched the Dynamo Stadium sliding past the window to his left.
Aubrey, Gant knew, had been unimpressed by him. Not that he cared. Gant, for all his involvement in the part he was playing, had never intended to impress. He was at the beginning of his journey and, if he felt any emotion at all, it was one of impatience. Only one thing had mattered to him, ever since Buckholz had found him, in that dead-beat pizza palace in Los Angeles during his lunch-break, when he had been working as a garage-hand — it had been the first, and only time, he had left the Apache group, the tame Mig-squadron belonging to the USAF, and only one thing had ever mattered. He would get to fly the greatest airplane in history. If Gant possessed a soul any longer, which he doubted, it would be in that idea, enshrined perhaps, even embalmed therein. Buckholz had got him to fly again, on the Mig-21, and then the Foxbat; then he had left, tried to run away. Then Buckholz had found him again, and the idea had been broached… the Firefox.
His playing at being Orton amused Aubrey — was necessary. With true and utter single-mindedness, however, Gant viewed it merely as a prelude. It got him nearer to the Firefox.
Gant had always possessed a self-belief that amounted almost to illness. He had never lost that belief. Not in the nightmares, in the drugs, in the hospital, in the breakdown, in the attempted atonement. He had never ceased to think of himself in any other way than as a flyer — and as the best. Buckholz had known that, the bastard, Gant reflected — and he had used that because it was the lever that would work, the only one… He couldn't run away. The job in Los Angeles — that had been a fake, a drop-out as real as putting on a disguise. Before that, the hospital, and the white uniform he had adopted — they had been disguises, too. He had tried to hide from the truth, the truth that the best could be afraid, that he could overtax himself, that he could, might fail.
That had been the real nightmare. Gant's precarious world, the whole person that he was, was threatened, by stretched nerves, by too many missions, by too much danger and tension.
Gant rubbed a hand across his brow, and looked down at his damp fingertips. He wore an expression of distaste, almost disgust, on his face. He was sweating now. It was not reaction from the goddam stupid games he was beginning to have to play with the KGB, on their home field — not that; rather the memory of his attempts to escape.
'Gant came from a family of nonentities. By the time he entered his teens, he despised his parents, and brother, the insurance salesman who was a conspicuous failure. He despised, though he could not help loving, the elder sister who was an untidy slut with four kids, and a drunk for a husband. He had come from a dirt town in the vast, featureless expanse of the Mid-West — Clarkville, pop. 2763, the signposts had read — together with the legend 'A Great Little Town'. Gant had hated Clarkville. Every moment he spent within its confines, or locked within the rolling, flat corn-belt that buried it, he had been nothing, had felt himself nothing. He had left Clarkville behind him long ago, and he had never been back, not even for the funeral of his mother, or the comfort of his ageing father. His sister had written to him, once, berating and pleading in turns. He had not replied. The letter had reached him in Saigon. Gant had never escaped from Clarkville. He carried it with him, wherever he went. It had shaped him.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead on the leg of his dark trousers. He closed his eyes, and tried not to think about the past. It had been the dream, he thought. That damned dream had started this. That, and his nettled, irritated pride because smug, patronising Aubrey had looked down his nose at him. Gant's hands bunched into fists on the plastic seat. Like a child, all he wanted to do now was to show them, show them all, just as he had wanted to show them in Clarkville, that dead town of dead people. There was only one way to show Aubrey. He had to bring back his airplane — the Firefox.
* * *
Kontarsky was on the telephone, the extension that linked him with his superior officer within the Industrial Security Section of the 2nd Chief Directorate, of which the 'M' department formed a small, but vital, part. Dmitri Priabin watched his chief carefully, almost like a prompter following an actor, script open on his knees. Kontarsky seemed much more at ease than during their interview the previous day, as if action had soothed him during the last twenty-four hours.
During that elapsed period, Kontarsky had received an up-to-date report from the KGB unit at Bilyarsk, and surveillance of the underground cell had been increased. There had been no unaccountable arrivals in Bilyarsk during the past forty-eight hours, and only the courier, Dherkov, had left the small town. His grocery van had been thoroughly searched on his return from Moscow. Kontarsky had ordered searches of all vehicles arriving in the town, and a thorough scrutiny of all personnel passing inside the security fence of the factory. Dog patrols had been intensified around the perimeter fence, and the number of armed guards in the hangars had been trebled.
Once those things had been done, Kontarsky and Priabin had both begun to feel more at ease. Priabin himself was to leave for Bilyarsk that night by KGB helicopter, and take over effective command of the security forces from the officer on the spot. Effectively, within hours, he could seal Bilyarsk tight. Kontarsky had decided not to travel with the First Secretary and his party, but to impress by being on the spot himself twenty-four hours before the test-flight. They would arrest the members of the underground only a matter of hours before the flight, and at the time of arrival of the First Secretary, they would already be undergoing interrogation. It would, he calculated, be sure to impress the First Secretary and Andropov who would be part of the entourage. Both Priabin and Kontarsky anticipated extracting the maximum satisfaction from the interrogations. Baranovich, Kreshin, Semelovsky, Dherkov and his
wife, would be snatched out of their false sense of security in a theatrical and impressive display of ruthless KGB efficiency.
Kontarsky put down the telephone receiver. He smiled broadly at his aide, and at the third person in his office — Viktor Lanyev, assistant KGB security chief at Bilyarsk. Lanyev had been flown to Moscow to make a report, thereby doubling Kontarsky's sense of security after having received a written report from Tsernik, the chief security officer at Bilyarsk. After listening to Lanyev's meticulous diary of the movements and contacts of the three men under observation, Kontarsky had been relieved, had set himself on a course of optimism, at the end of which journey he could already envisage a successful conclusion.
The security arrangements at Bilyarsk were a minor classic, entirely orthodox, without imagination — a policy of overkill. There were the resident, declared hierarchy of KGB officers, and their select squad from the 2nd Directorates; as a support group, there were personnel of the GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence, who performed as guards and patrols both at the airstrip and in the town; thirdly, there were the 'unofficial' members of the KGB, the informants and civilian spies closest to the research and development teams. All three groups were focusing their attention on four men and a woman. They watched everything, saw and knew everything.
Kontarsky, prematurely luxuriating in the congratulations of his superior, said, after a while, steepling his fingers as he leaned back in his chair: 'We will make doubly-sure, my friends. We must take no risks at this point — this late point in time. Therefore, I suggest we commandeer a special detachment from the 5th Chief Directorate, one of their Security Support Units. You agree?'
Lanyev, the man on the spot, seemed somewhat insulted. 'There is no need, Comrade, Colonel.'
'I say there is — every need!' Kontarsky's eyes were angry, commanding. 'I must have the most complete assurances that nothing will, or can, go wrong at Bilyarsk. Are you prepared to guarantee — in the most definite, unequivocal way — that nothing can go wrong?'