Firefox mg-1

by Craig Thomas

  Pavel and the old man were sitting at a small, bare table in the despatch-office of the warehouse. As yet, none of the day-staff had reported for work. Pavel intended to be long gone before they arrived. He looked up as Gant shut the flimsy door behind him, as if inspecting the American critically in the light of the naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. The room, like the warehouse, was cold and Gant rubbed his hands together for warmth. Pavel indicated the coffee pot on the ancient electric ring plugged into the wall, and Gant collected a chipped mug from the table and poured himself some black coffee. Without sugar, the drink was bitter, but it was hot. Uneasily, as if uninvited, he settled himself at the table. The old man, as if at a signal, finished his coffee, and left the room.

  'He goes to see if we are under surveillance here,' Pavel explained without looking at Gant.

  'You mean they…?' Gant began quickly.

  'No — I do not mean they know where you are,' the Russian replied. 'These will not be the men who followed you last night, or that gang at the station — but the department of the KGB that is concerned with the security of the airplane knows who I am, and who the others are — they will be watching, no doubt, since the weapons-trials are in,' he looked at his watch, 'less than thirty hours' time!'

  'Then — they'll know I'm on my way?'

  'Not necessarily. They will merely be watching us.'

  'If they stop us?' Gant persisted. 'It'll all be blown to hell, before I can leave Moscow!'

  'No! If we are stopped, there are other arrangements.' Pavel seemed to be battling with some doubt in himself.

  'What other arrangements?' Gant said scornfully. 'I've got to get six hundred miles today, man! How do I do it — fly?; Gant laughed, a high-pitched sound. Pavel looked at him in contempt.

  'I am ordered to — die, if necessary, to ensure that you get away free,' Pavel said softly. 'It is not what I would consider a willing or worthwhile sacrifice… However, if we get out of here safely, then we shall not be stopped again until we reach the circular motorway, where another vehicle will be waiting, in the event of trouble, to collect you. If there is no trouble, then you continue with me. Understood?'

  Gant was silent for a time, then said: 'Yes.'

  'Good. Now, go and shave, in the next room — clean yourself up, a little, yes?' Gant nodded, and crossed the room. Just as he was about to close the door behind him, he heard Pavel say: 'Gant — can you fly that plane — really fly it?'

  Gant poked his head back round the door. Pavel was staring into the bottom of his mug, hands clasped round it, elbows on the bare wooden table. His big frame seemed somehow shrunken in the blue overalls.

  'Yes,' Gant said. 'I can fly it. I'm the best there is.'

  Pavel looked up into Gant's eyes, stared at him for a long moment in silence, then nodded, and said: 'Good. I would not want to die to deliver faulty goods to Bilyarsk.'

  He returned his gaze to the coffee mug, and Gant closed the door behind him. He switched on the weak, naked bulb, ran the water until it was lukewarm, and inspected himself in the speckled mirror. Pavel had cut his hair the previous night, and then he had washed it. It was short now, flat on his head, without hair oil. He looked younger, perhaps a little like he had done as a teenager in Clarkville — except for the ridiculous moustache that survived from his personae as Orton and then as Grant. He soaped his face with a stubby brush and tugged at the bristles of the moustache until it had become hairs floating in the grey shaving water. Then he began, methodically, to shave the rest of his face.

  When he returned to the office, Pavel was obviously ready to leave. The old man had returned, and vanished again, presumably to keep watch.

  'They are here,' Pavel said softly. Gant sensed a new tension about the man, his ordinariness showing through.

  'How many?' Gant asked, keeping his voice steady with an effort.

  'Three — in one car. The old man has seen them before. They are part of the team appointed to the security of the Bilyarsk project. They follow Mr. Lansing about Moscow, and Dherkov, the courier who comes from Bilyarsk. The old man thinks they are only watching — if they had come to make arrests, there would be more of them.'

  Gant nodded when the Russian had finished. Then, his expression turned to one of surprise when Pavel drew an automatic from his overall pocket.

  'What — ?'

  'You can use this?'

  Gant took the gun, and turned it over in his hand. It was a type he had not met before, a Makarov, but it seemed close enough to the Walther P-38 that he had used more than once, if only on the range. He nodded.

  'Good. Don't — unless it's absolutely necessary!'

  'Yes.'

  'Are you ready?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then let us be gone from here. It is a little before six — soon it will be light, and we have six hundred miles to go.' He opened the door, and followed Gant through.

  Once they were in the big cab of the truck, whose nose pointed at the double-doors of the warehouse, Pavel started the engine and flickered the headlights. Gant spotted the old nightwatchman by the doors, then they began to swing open; Pavel eased the truck into gear and they rolled forward towards the widening gap of grey light. He caught a glimpse of the old man's face, smiling grimly, and then they were out into the side street, with Pavel heaving on the wheel of the truck to straighten it. Gant caught a glimpse of a black saloon further down the street, in the opposite direction to the one they had taken, and then they were turning into the Kirov Street, sodium-lit, grey, and deserted.

  Behind them, the KGB car was quiet. No one had panicked, started the engine. Instead, one of the three men, the oldest and largest, had picked up the car telephone, and was in direct contact with KGB Colonel Mihail Kontarsky within seconds.

  'They have just left — two of them, in the sanitary ware delivery truck. What do you wish us to do, Colonel?'

  There was a pause, then: 'I will check with Priabin at the Mira Prospekt. For the moment, you may follow them — but do not close up!'

  'Yes, Colonel.' He nodded to the driver, who fired the engine. The car pulled out from the kerb, past the now-closed doors of the warehouse, and stopped at the junction with the Kirov Street. The truck was a distant black lump on the road, heading north-east towards the Sadovaya, the inner ring road around the city.

  'Close up,' the man in charge said to the driver. 'But not too close. Just enough not to lose him on the Sadovaya.'

  'Right!' The driver pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the saloon shot forward, narrowing the distance between itself and the truck. By the time they were a hundred metres in the rear, the truck was slowing at the junction of the Kirov Street and the Sadovaya. The saloon idled into the kerb, waiting until the truck pulled out into the heavier traffic of the ring road. The indicator showed that the driver, the man Upenskoy, intended to turn right, to the south-east.

  The truck pulled out, then the man in the passenger seat said: 'Colonel — Colonel, they're on the Sadovaya now, heading south-east. We're pulling out — now.' The car skittered across the road, and was hooted at by an oncoming lorry, straightened, and the truck was more than five hundred metres away. 'Close up again,' the man said, and the driver nodded. He skipped the saloon out into the outside lane, and accelerated. Kontarsky's voice came over the radio receiver.

  'Priabin has just requested you to pick up the man Upenskoy — he has the other two, Glazunov and Riassin. Who is that in the truck with him, Borkh?'

  'I do not know, Colonel — it should be—'

  'Exactly! It should be Glazunov, should it not, if Upenskoy is making a real delivery somewhere… should it not?'

  'Yes, Colonel. The truck has turned onto Karl Marx Street now, Colonel — it looks as if they're heading out of the city, all right.'

  'Where is Upenskoy scheduled to deliver?'

  'I don't know, Colonel — we can find out.'

  'He will have to report to the travel control on the motorway, Borkh, we can find out then. You follow
them until they reach the checkpoint, then we shall decide what to do. Priabin is bringing in Glazunov and Riassin — perhaps they will be able to tell us?'

  The men in the car heard Kontarsky's laughter, and then the click of the receiver. Borkh replaced the telephone, and studied the truck, now only a hundred metres ahead of them on Bakouninskaia Street, headed like an arrow north-east out of the city, towards the Gorky road.

  'Our Colonel seems to be in a merry mood this morning,' the driver observed. 'Then, he hasn't spent the night in a freezing car!'

  'Disrespect, Hya?' Borkh said with a smile.

  'Who — me? No chance! Hello, our friend is taking a left turn,' he added. The car was crossing the Yaouza, the tributary of the Moskva, flowing south at that point to join the river at the Oustinski Bridge. The truck ahead of them had turned left directly after the bridge over the sluggish tributary. The car followed, keeping its required distance. 'Think he's spotted us?'

  'Not necessarily — he's picking up the Gorky road, maybe — see, I thought so — right onto the Chtcholkovskoie Way, and heading east.' Borkh said. 'He's on his way to Gorky, all right.'

  'And to Kazan — and then to…?' the driver, asked, smiling.

  'Maybe — maybe. That's for our Colonel to worry about.'

  'And worry he will,' the third man added from beneath his hat in the back seat, where he was stretched out comfortably.

  'Oh, you're awake then, are you?' Borkh asked with heavy sarcasm.

  'Just about — it must be the boring life I lead, and the boring company,' the man replied, settling himself back again.

  'You will have your photograph taken at this checkpoint,' Pavel was saying as he pulled the truck into the side of the road, along the narrowing line of bollards that signified the lane for heavy goods vehicles. Gant, looking ahead, saw that they were approaching what, to all intents and purposes, was a customs post, as if the motorway ringing the outskirts of Moscow marked some kind of territorial boundary.

  'Are they KGB on guard here?' he asked, as the face of a soldier in drab brown uniform slid past the cab window.

  'No — Red Army. But they're commanded by a KGB man — he'll be sitting in that hut over there.' Gant followed the nod of Pavel's head, and observed a young man in civilian clothes lounging in the doorway of a wooden hut, smoking a long cigarette. Gant could not see through the window into the interior — the newly-risen sun reflected in a sheet of yellow-orange from the glass.

  'What happens — just a check on papers?' he asked.

  'Usually, and your photograph is taken, from the smaller hut next to the office, but don't smile — they'll wonder what you're trying to hide!' Pavel smiled grimly, and tugged on the handbrake loudly. 'Now, get out,' he said.

  Gant opened the door, and climbed down. The tension in his stomach was returning, but not severely — it seemed just to be moving up a gear from the slightly unsettled feeling that had been with him ever since Pavel had told him that the saloon had followed them all the way from the Kirov Street out to the motorway. He resisted an itching desire to look behind, to see the faces behind the windscreen of the KGB car.

  Pavel stood beside him, casually smoking a cigarette. Gant tried not to look about him with too obvious an interest. His cover presumed him to have undergone this formality a number of times before.

  A military guard collected their papers, and took them away and into the office. Gant idly watched the cars and lorries that drew up in the three lanes that were used by outbound traffic. The circular motorway swept above them on huge concrete piles, and he could hear the thrumming of the traffic from overhead.

  'One of the men from the car has just gone into the office,' Pavel said levelly. 'You know where the car is, if you have to run for it…'

  'You think it might come…?'

  'No. At the moment, you are unremarkable as far as they are concerned. Ah, here come our papers.'

  * * *

  The same guard crossed from the office, his boots clattering distinctly on the concrete, and handed them their papers, which had been stamped with the necessary permit for travel as far as Gorky on the main road. At Gorky, they would need another permit to travel as far east as Kazan, and then another from Kazan to Kuybyshev. Pavel nodded, stubbed out the remainder of his cigarette, and climbed back aboard the truck. Gant, careful not to watch the door of the office, rounded the front of the truck and regained his seat.

  Pavel switched on, slid the engine into gear, and drew away. A red and white barrier slid up in front of them, to allow them to pass beneath the motorway out onto the Gorky road.

  Pavel looked across at Gant, and said, 'Gorky by lunchtime, and Kazan in time for tea — or don't you Americans take tea?' He laughed, encouraging Gant to smile.

  Gant said, 'Are they tailing us?'

  Pavel looked into the wing-mirror, and said: 'No, not yet — but they'll have someone pick us up later on. Don't worry! The KGB aren't worried — just curious. They want to know who you are!'

  'You mean they don't believe I'm this guy Glazunov?'

  'If they do now, they won't do before long. Your picture will be at the records office of the State Highway Militia by this afternoon, and checked against existing photographs of Glazunov, then they'll really want to know who you are!'

  'And they'll stop us, and ask me?' Gant persisted.

  'Perhaps. But — they are very confident, at Bilyarsk. Let us hope they want to play a waiting game. There are alternatives for you at each of our scheduled stops, so don't worry. If they stopped us on the road, they would be asking for trouble, wouldn't they?' He smiled. 'We shall hope that they leave us alone, until they come to be just a little bit afraid — and that takes a long time for the KGB.

  * * *

  It was early in the afternoon when David Edgecliffe, looking immensely regretful, grave and dignified, identified the body of his agent, Fenton, as the mortal remains of Alexander Thomas Orton. He stood with Inspector Tortyev of the Moscow Police in the mortuary, a cold and depressing room, and gazed down at the battered, barely recognisable face and nodded after a suitable pause and catch in the throat. The wounds did not take him by surprise. Fenton looked now as Gant might have looked, in his personae as Orton. There was not sufficient left of the features for anyone to be able to distinguish between the American and the Englishman — especially since Gant had gone through two further transformations since he left the Moskva the previous night.

  'Yes,' he said softly. 'Insofar as I can judge, that is the body of Mr. Orton.' He looked up at Tortyev, who dropped the cloth back over Fenton's ruined features.

  'You could not be mistaken, Mr. Edgecliffe?' he asked.

  'I — don't think so, Inspector,' Edgecliffe said levelly, with a tiny shrug. 'There was a — lot of damage, of course.'

  'Yes, indeed. Almost as if his former associates did not want him to be recognised?'

  'Quite. Why, though?'

  Edgecliffe's eyes appeared a little baffled, but he was watching Tortyev keenly. He did not know the man, but he was aware that, though he posed as an ordinary civil policeman, Tortyev was KGB.

  'I don't know, Mr. Edgecliffe — nor do you know, I suppose?' Tortyev was smiling. He was young, ruthless, charming, and tough. His grey eyes were piercing and intelligent. He was one of the university graduates increasingly appearing in the front-line of the KGB, Edgecliffe reflected. A man to be watched.

  'Mm. Wish I could help you, Inspector — devil of a fuss, this'll cause at home.'

  'It will cause a devil of a fuss, Mr. Edgecliffe, here in Moscow,' Tortyev snapped, 'until we find the men who killed him!' Then he relaxed, and he said: 'But come, Mr. Edgecliffe, I am sure you could do with a drink. This is not a pleasant task. Shall we go?'

  He ushered Edgecliffe from the room with a winning smile.

  * * *

  'Then who is this man?' Kontarsky was saying, holding the photograph of Gant standing by the truck at the checkpoint under the noses of Borkh and Priabin. 'Have either of you any id
ea?'

  The light was on in his office as the day outside the window darkened. It had been a fine April day. Kontarsky had walked in the Alexandrovski Gardens after lunch and the air had been mild. Now, with something of a satisfied mood about him still, he looked at his two subordinates. He was hardly worried, merely concerned that the driver's mate with Upenskoy had not yet been identified. He was unknown to the 'M' Department. The truck, naturally, was being tailed, always in sight of the tail-car. Lanyev had returned alone to Bilyarsk, with new orders for Tsernik, and advance information concerning the movements of Upenskoy and the truck.

  'We do not know, Colonel,' Priabin said.

  Kontarsky, despite his confidence, was adroit at displaying anger with his subordinates. He said: 'Do not know — we have had this photograph for hours!'

  'We are checking, Colonel. The Computer and Records Directorate is giving it priority, sir,' Borkh felt called upon to say.

  'Is it? Is it, indeed? And why them?'

  'We are assuming that this man is a foreign agent, sir,' Priabin said. 'British, perhaps?'

  'Mm. Is that likely?'

  'Why don't we stop the truck and ask him, Colonel?' Borkh blurted out.

  Kontarsky turned his angry stare upon him. 'Idiot!' was all he said.

  Priabin understood. Kontarsky was looking for a spectacular triumph. He sensed that the man in the truck with Upenskoy was important, but he reacted by assuming that Bilyarsk was impregnable — which it was, Priabin had to admit — and that he therefore had leisure to play this man on a line, hoping that he would lead him to others, tie in with some big SIS or CIA operation. Priabin was irritated — but he, too, could not consider the threat of a single individual, even if he was travelling towards Bilyarsk, as anything to be taken seriously.