Firefox Down (11 page)

The tape stopped. Aubrey rubbed his cheeks furiously. It couldn't be - they couldn't have picked up the carrier wave from the homing device, only Eastoe could do that aboard the Nimrod. What, then?

'Eastoe, keep track of them if you can. Do whatever you have to…' He merely glanced up at Pyott, whose face was impassive. Aubrey hesitated for a moment, then said firmly, "I'm ordering you to overfly the lake - deceive them as to your object - and obtain the best photographic record you can under the circumstances. And, when you've done that, I want you to take a look at those helicopters. I want to know what they're doing- dammit!' The tape continued to run. Aubrey finally added: 'Good luck. Over and out.' Only then he did return his gaze to Pyott, whose face was gloomy. His eyes were glazed and inward-looking. Evidently, he was weighing the consequences of Aubrey's precipitation. 'I had to,' Aubrey explained. 'Things are beginning to outrun us. I had to have better information, whatever the fuss.'

'I agree,' Pyott said. 'Even though I don't much like it. Well, we'd better talk to JIC and the Chiefs of Staff - I may have to get down there myself…' He crossed to the door of the communications gallery, then turned to Aubrey. 'I do hope our American friends are obtaining the most hopeful noises from their President, Kenneth - for all our sakes.'

The icicles were like transparent, colourless gloves worn over the dead twigs of the bush behind which Gant crouched. Below him, the noise and movement belonged to a wild hunt: an image of his own pursuit, probably no more than a mile behind him now.

He had heard the noise of dogs. The helicopters - three he was almost certain - had cast about for signs of him, often appearing as they drove westwards above him or close to one of his hiding places. It was as if they knew his position, and were herding him ahead of or between them. He knew one of the helicopters was west or north-west of him now, its troops probably working back towards him…

Towards this village, too, this collection of wooden huts below him, beyond which a group of Lapps were penning reindeer. One short, brightly-clothed man was dragged on his stomach behind a galloping bull reindeer, his hands still gripping the lasso. He disappeared within a flurry of hooves and upflung snow, then rolled clear. The images seemed almost to come from within him, as they stirred memory. A rodeo, but now performed by people as alien to him as the Vietnamese. Short, olive-skinned, some dressed traditionally even to the long-bobbled woollen caps and heel-less shoes, others affecting blue denims and sheepskin jackets.

Alien. People he did not know, whose language he did not speak, therefore could not trust. Reindeer barked and hooted. Men whisked among them like matadors. Great snouted heads tossed. The sight of the round-up chilled him. He had followed the noises, stumbling upon the village, and had become rapt by a sense of the familiar. Then this parody of something American so far north of the Arctic Circle had quickly alienated him.

Torches flickered, lamps gleamed. The lights of a truck and the headlight of a motorized sledge were focused on the corral. Shadows galloped and tossed in the beams. They would be finishing soon, when darkness came. Gant could smell cooking. The Russians, too, would be here soon. It was time for him to move.

He climbed into a stooping crouch. The flying suit creaked with ice. His body was stiff and slow. He needed something warm to wear; a jacket or cloak or tunic, it did not matter. He would steal whatever he found.

In his right hand he held the folding .22 rifle, loaded with the single bullet it would hold. He had buried his parachute, but still wore his life jacket because he needed its harness to hold his survival pack. The Makarov pistol was easy to hand. He moved cautiously down the slope towards the nearest wooden huts. Behind the buildings, the noises of the round-up quietened, becoming no more than a confused babble and a drumming through the frozen earth. He hurried to the wall of the hut, pressing himself against it, reclaiming his breath before moving slowly along the wall to the steamy window from which a flickering lamplight spilled onto the snow. The black holes of his descending footprints were visible in the light. He listened. He could hear nothing except the sounds of the round-up. The Russians could be no more than half a mile behind him now. He shivered with a new awareness of the cold. He had to be warm. He would not be able to spend the night moving unless he was dressed more warmly.

He stood on tiptoe, looking into the long, low room. A huge black stove in the centre, bright rugs scattered, armchairs, a plain wooden table, places laid upon it. Time -

He listened for the noise of helicopters, but heard nothing. He tested the window. Locked. He moved around the angle of the wall towards what he assumed was the rear of the hut. One window locked, another, another…

He eased it open. The smell of cooking was strong. There was no one in the small kitchen. On an old cooker, a huge pot was simmering. The smell was coming from it. Meat. Hot meat in some kind of stew. He dragged his leg tiredly over the sill, sat astride for a moment - where was the cook? - then dropped into the room, dragging the rifle from his shoulder, aiming it towards the door into the main room. He could hear someone now, moving about, the noises of cutlery quite distinct and recognisable. He sidled across the kitchen towards the stove, moving with exaggerated stealth. There was a ladle in the pot. He reached out with his left hand, eyes still on the doorway, and touched the ladle,.then removed it, tasting the stew like a chef. The meat's flavour was strong - reindeer, he presumed - but his stomach craved it. He leaned heavily, his head against a clouded mirror, all the time watching the doorway, the ladle moving as silent as he could manage from the pot to his mouth - pot to mouth, pot to mouth…

He swallowed greedily again and again, his stomach churning with the sudden, gulped feast. The warmth of it burned through him. He shivered. A pool of melted snow from his boots spread around him.

Then she returned to the kitchen. Small, olive-skinned, a pear-shaped face with a black, surprised little round hole opening in the middle of it as she saw him and understood the rifle. Dark hair, plump figure. Check shirt and denims; again, the familiar-the log-cabin imagery - surprised him for a moment. Then he motioned her into the kitchen with the barrel of the rifle. She came slowly, silently.

'I - mean you no harm,' Gant said slowly. 'No - harm. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' she replied, staring at the rifle. Its barrel dropped as an expression of Gant's surprise.

'You speak English?'

'A little. I - was taught. Who are you?' She studied his flying suit, her face screwed into lines and folds as if she were trying to remember a similar costume.

'My airplane - it crashed.'

'Oh.' Her face showed she had identified his clothing.

'I - I'm sorry about the food…' He gestured towards the stove. His stomach rumbled. The woman almost smiled. 'I - I'll leave you.'

'Why?'

'I have to.'

'We - can help you.'

Gant shook his head furiously. 'You can't get involved in this,' he said.

She moved closer. Evidently, the man represented no real threat to her, despite his intrusion into her home. 'Why not? We have a radio.' She gestured towards the doorway.

'Christ, radio - ' he blurted.

'Yes. Where are you from - the Finnmark?' Her English improved; rusty with disuse, it was now working again. She indicated her mouth, then pointed at him. His accent…

'Yes. But, how long?'

'Long?'

'Will they come now, at once?' She shook her head. 'Then no radio. I must go now. I - ' He decided to ask rather than demand. 'I need something warm - to wear.'

She nodded. 'My husband - he will take you on the sledge, when he returns, or tomorrow, to the main road, perhaps.' Not alien, somehow familiar and expected. He was warm at last. Tears of weariness and respopse pricked at his eyes. The promises of aid in the strange, halting English numbed him as certainly as the cold outside.

Could he - ? No. No risks…

Quarter of a mile, no, more than that now.

'Clothes,' he said heavily.

The beam of the searchlight from the descending helicopter swept over the room, fuzzily gleaming for a moment through the steam-clouded window. Then it was gone, bouncing off the slope before it finally disappeared and all that remained was the racket of the rotors. Gant listened. Only one, still time…

'Clothes!' he snapped, his voice ugly.

She did not, however, react as if she feared him. She nodded. 'Who are they?'

'Russians.'

She spat, suddenly and surprisingly. It was the reflex, racial memory of a once-real hatred. She snapped: 'We are
Skolt
Lapps - we live here now since we lost our homes in Petsamo. Petsamo belongs to
them
now, since the war. Russians - !'

The rotors roared, then began to wind down. Gant pressed himself against the wall, and squinted through the steam on the window. The rotors died. He heard no dogs, but the noises from the round-up had quietened. Two minutes - ?

He glanced around the room. The woman had gone. He panicked, but as he moved she re-entered the doorway, holding a heavy check jacket and a pair of thick trousers. And walking boots.

'These - I hope they fit you.'

He bundled them under his arm, fingers locking inside the boots to hold them. She moved to the outside door. He stared at the puddle that marked his presence, the one or two half-footprints on the polished floorboards. Smiling, she tilted the pot on the stove. Stew sloshed onto the floor. Then she beckoned him.

Cold threatened from the door.

He dropped his bundle, pulled on the jacket for disguise and warmth, then collected the trousers and boots and rifle. He could hear voices, almost conversational in volume and tone, but he could not hear dogs. On the doorstep, he nodded to her. She touched his shoulder, her expression already settling to a kind of passivity. She was preparing her face.

'They are pretending to be Finns,' she whispered. 'But their accents are bad. Go now. That way.' She pointed back up the slope. He saw the deep black holes of his descent of the slope. She pushed him ahead of her. 'I went for a walk, looking for the dog,' she said.

He turned to thank her, but she merely shook her head. 'Go,' she instructed. 'The Finnmark is twenty miles away.'

He was already climbing the slope, urgency driving out the sense of who had given him the jacket and the clothes he carried under his arm. He was primarily aware of his right hand once more and the rifle it held.

He turned back once, at the crest of the slope, near the bush which had earlier concealed him. The door of the hut was closed. Probably, the woman had begun to be afraid now, to physically shake with reaction, as much at his presence as that of the Russians. Now, she would be deciding she should not have helped him, that her home had been broken into, invaded.

The round-up had ended. Reindeer stamped and shuffled. The MiL helicopter sat like a squat beetle, rotors still, near the corrals. A group of men were talking. Dark clothing and white Arctic camouflage.

Three, four - six…

Spreading out, searching. There seemed no resistance from the Lapps. Perhaps they believed the fiction that the soldiers were Finns. He turned his back on the village and trudged into the trees.

Twenty miles, she had said. Twenty.

It was a huge distance, almost huge enough to be a void, something uncrossable.

Vladimirov turned from the window of the Tupolev as Dmitri Priabin entered the War Command Centre ahead of the First Secretary. The young man's face was elated, yet he also appeared to be recovering from a bout of nausea. There was a bright sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his neck was pink above the collar of his uniform. Vladimirov knew, with an inward, cold amusement, that the young officer had survived, that the collar and shoulder insignia of the uniform would soon be changed. Now, they denoted Priabin as a lieutenant. What next? Captain Priabin, or the dizzy heights of a colonelcy? It appeared that the young man's former superior, Kontarsky, was to bear the burden of failure entirely alone. Priabin had first identified Gant, probably by accident more than design, and almost in time to stop him. He had earned the reprieve of promotion.

He had arrived expecting to suffer, and had been rewarded. Vladimirov did not envy him anything except his youth as he hurriedly exited from the room. Then he turned his back on the First Secretary and looked down at the tarmac, where an imposing queue of black limousines was drawn up. Priabin went down the passenger steps and climbed into the back of one of the cars. It drove off towards the administration buildings and the perimeter fence. Presumably, Priabin had some woman to impress with his narrow escape, his unexpected promotion. Vladimirov returned his attention to the War Command Centre.

The Soviet leader had donned his overcoat. His fur hat rested like a pet in one of his gloved hands. His face was stern. He had paused only to listen to the latest report from the commander of the KGB Border Guard units they had despatched into Finnish Lapland. As the voice from the cabin speaker proceeded with the report, the First Secretary nodded occasionally.

Vladimirov watched Andropov. There was a faint gleam of perspiration on his shaven upper lip. Responsibility had passed to himself, as well as to Vladimirov. It was an uneasy and temporary alliance that the air force general did not welcome or trust.

The high-speed transmissions from the command helicopter were received by the AWACS Tupolev, then re-transmitted to Moscow. In the War Command Centre, they were played back at normal speed. Vladimirov could not rid himself of the analogy of some obscure sporting commentary. He listened through the caution, through wanting-to-please, wanting-to-succeed, and tried to assess how close they were to the American.

For he was there. The parachute had been found by one of the dogs, tracks had been followed, a village might, or might not, have given him shelter, clothing, food. He was heading in a north-westerly direction, towards the closest outjutting of the Norwegian frontier. He was, they guessed, less than twenty miles from his objective. The hunters had a night and part of a day, no more.