Firefox Down (15 page)

'Reindeer permitting, yes, sir,' Dawson replied.

'He's going to love this, that podgy little clever-dick - Christ, is he going to love this!'

The rain blew out of the darkness like something alive and impishly malevolent. Aubrey had closed his umbrella because it threatened to turn inside-out in every gust of searching wind, but he held his hat jammed onto his head. Buckholz walked beside him, bareheaded, chilly and soaked, hands thrust in his pockets, head bent against the splashes and gouts of rain. They had been silent for some minutes. Buckholz, numbed by the signals they had received via the satellite link, as he knew Aubrey must be, had no wish to interrupt the silence. The splashing of the rain against the administration building windows as they passed, the faint noises from the Officers' Mess, their clicking or sloshing footsteps, the sudden yells of the wind, all expressed his mood and deadened it at the same time. He was able not to think, not to consider.

Aubrey dabbed at puddles with the ferrule of his umbrella, breaking up their rippling reflections of light. As always to Buckholz, his anger seemed no grander than petulance. Yet it was real and deep. The smaller, older man shivered at the intrusion of rain into his collar, and expelled an angry, exasperated breath. Buckholz thought he might be about to speak, but they continued their patrol in silence. Down in the Ops. Room, Curtin was trying to contact Pyott in London.

They had come to a dead-stop, Buckholz had to admit. They needed fresh orders, a fresh guarantee of support, from Washington and London and Brussels and Oslo, and they had to make fresh approaches to the Finns. But - to what end? For why?

Buckholz brushed away the thoughts, his face cleansed of worried frowns by the splash of rain that met them as they turned the corner of the building, into a gleam of light from a doorway. Buckholz thought it was Bradnum, standing there in his uniform raincoat, but the RAF officer, whoever he was, saw them and turned suddenly back into the building. They passed the main door. Noises from the Mess emerged as warmly as the heat of a fire. They passed on, feet crunching on gravel, no longer clicking or splashing on concrete.

Finally, as if in the grip of a tormenting, unbearable secret he must blurt out, Aubrey turned to Buckholz and said, almost in a gasp: 'They have
everything
, Charles - in the palm of… oh, dammit, they have
everything
.' Buckholz was prompted, for an instant, to pat Aubrey's shoulder, but desisted. The Englishman would find it patronising, too gauchely American.

'I know, Kenneth- it's one hell of a blow.'

'Both prizes, Charles - both of them, lost to us. The airframe is intact and less than forty miles from the Russian border, and the pilot is by now probably in Murmansk, if not on his way to Moscow!' Aubrey leaned towards Buckholz, lowering his voice to an intense whisper as he said, 'And they will make him talk, Charles. Believe me, they will. He is alone, you see - their first and sharpest weapon. Before, he was never alone, not for a moment. He had help. Now, he will know he is alone, and that resistance, courage, defiance, all have no meaning. Sooner or later he will tell them where to find the airframe of the Firefox.'

'I know you're right, Kenneth.'

'And, like me, you can see no way out?'

Buckholz shook his head emphatically, as if to dispel any lingering, foolish hope in Aubrey, who merely nodded once in reply to the gesture.

'No, all I can see is we've painted ourselves into a corner, Kenneth.'

'I won't accept that - '

'You
have
to, Kenneth. I have to talk to Washington again, you to London. And we have to tell them that, in our considered estimation, we've lost both ends of the operation - Gant and the Firefox.' Buckholz shrugged expressively. Water ran from his short hair in droplets that gleamed in the light above the main doors of the admin, building. 'What else can we say, for God's sake?'

'You want me to order Waterford to set charges and destroy the airframe? Before it's too late to do so?' Aubrey challenged.

'Man, what else in your right mind can you do? You can't let them take it back over the border!'

'If only they didn't have Gant!' Aubrey raged. 'We'd then have the advantage of our knowledge. We could spend weeks examining the airframe, the electronics and avionics, the anti-radar, the thought-guidance systems… everything. But they
do
have him, and they'll make him talk!' His umbrella stabbed at the puddles that had gathered in the tyre-marks of a heavy vehicle. Stab, stab, stab, destroying the gleaming mirrors, the petrol-rainbowed water.

'The Finns wouldn't let you - '

'It would have to be covert, I agree - '

'Sneaking around Finnish Lapland for weeks - civilian and military scientists…
underwater
? Come on, Kenneth, that's a dream and you know it.'

'What good are
spies
to us now?' Aubrey asked, his tone that of someone dissociating himself from his lifelong profession.

'Good use enough to blow the airframe to pieces.'

'Is that your
only
advice, Charles? It's not very constructive.'

'Sorry.'

Rain slapped at their faces and raincoats. Buckholz shivered, but Aubrey seemed not to notice.

'I should never have decided on that clever, so
clever
flight across Finland - it should have been Norway - '

'Where they might have been waiting? The flight should have lasted a lot less than an hour and a half, there wasn't a risk - when you drew up the scenario.'

'Thank you, Charles - it doesn't help, I'm afraid.' The words were murmured. Aubrey walked a little away from the American, his head bent forward, oblivious of the falling rain. Water ran from the brim of his hat. Buckholz recognised the signals of intense concentration. He waited, looking up into the rain. The lights of Lincoln glowed dully on the clouds to the south.

Minutes later, Aubrey turned back to him. His face was determined. Buckholz, knowing the Englishman, recognised Aubrey's refusal to accept defeat.

'Very well. Waterford may lay his charges - he may need an opinion from someone here - but he is not to detonate them. I shall alert Shelley to talk to Edgecliffe and Moscow Station - they're to look out for Gant's arrival. We must know the moment he gets there, where they take him, how long we might have…'

'Why-?'

Aubrey did not seem to hear the question. Instead, he pursued his explanation. 'I must talk to Hanni Vitsula in Helsinki.' He smiled, briefly and for the first time. 'Hanni has no love for Russians since they killed his father, and less love for "Finlandisation" as a way of life. He will see the problem from our point of view.'

'The DG of Finnish Intelligence is a government official, Kenneth, even if he is a friend of yours. What will he do?'

'I don't know - at the moment, we
need
friends, and he's one. Perhaps - oh, I don't know… I simply trust to a Finn's long memory. He's from the south-east himself- the part that now lies in Russia, what used to be known as Karelia. He's never been back since he was a child.' Aubrey raised his hands, palms outward, and desisted from the explanation, then added: 'I don't know what to do, Charles - I'm merely running around in this old, deserted house, opening doors with a bang and whistling to myself in the dark. Who knows what may come of it?'

'You're hopeful something will?' Buckholz asked in surprise.

'No. But I must
try -
!'

Dawn was leaking into the heavily-clouded sky as Gant stepped stiffly out of the large MiL-8 transport helicopter. Light puffs of snow pattered against the fuselage, melting almost at once and drizzling down the olive-drab camouflage paint. Two GRU guards stood on the tarmac of the helicopter base, Kalashnikovs pointed at him, and there were another four behind him in the Mil's main cabin. His hands were handcuffed in front of him. His right arm ached. It had been locked to one of the handholds above his hard seat for the entire journey. His whole body, however, submerged that pain in a general ache. It was difficult to move. His feet seemed numb, the wound the dog had made in his calf pained him, and he staggered as he reached the bottom of the steps. A guard held him upright, not ungently but with care to keep his rifle out of range of Gant's hands.

Then he was surrounded again by his full escort. A truck drew up near the parked MiL. Gant, with almost no interest, watched more guards debouch from it, noticed a staff car and emerging senior officers beyond it - curiosity rather than business had brought them, he thought. Then he raised his head so that he looked beyond the helicopter base down towards the town of Murmansk and the grey Kola fjord which disappeared north-wards into the heavy mist and snow towards the Barents Sea. There was the smell offish on the snowy wind. The hills behind the base were hidden by cloud. The transport airplane which was to transfer him to Moscow would just get off before the weather closed in sufficiently to prevent further flying.

He shook his head, half-amused. He wondered why he bothered about met conditions. He was in the Soviet Union, and he was alone and he was manacled. It made no difference whether his location was Murmansk or Moscow; they were the same, cells in the same fortress prison.

He was gestured into the back of the military truck, and helped over the lowered tailgate when his legs appeared to fail him He struggled in and sat down opposite one of the GRU guards, whose rifle was levelled. Everything was constant, and constantly repeated; wrists manacled, rifles levelled, boxlike metal containers - trucks or aircraft did not matter - and this routine would proceed endlessly… endlessly…

He tried to believe that the routine would never change because, at the end of the journey, at the change of routine, they would begin to ask their questions. He did not wish to consider the abyss of failure that would open up then, in the first hours or even minutes of his interrogation. Thus, the journey possessed him, was everything.

The truck moved off with a jerk the moment the rest of his guards had boarded it. Gant watched the MiL shrink in size as they left it behind. The metal and canvas of the truck pressed close around him. Someone coughed; metal scraped, boot-studs perhaps. Leather creaked. The engine of the truck throbbed. Through the V-shaped gap in the canvas at the back of the truck, he could see belching chimneys and anchored ships and grey water - most of all, he registered the movement of the truck itself.

After some minutes, a brief stop. Red-and-white pole, a guard room. Then a glimpse of runway, a control tower. Most of all, the renewed movement of the truck. He was still travelling, the journey was everything…

There was no destination. Only movement…

'I have divers - who also happen to be expert soldiers - at Kirkenes, sixty or seventy miles from our lake and our intact airframe… pray, what else do I need!' Aubrey asked, waggling his fork in Curtin's direction.

The USN Intelligence officer brushed a hand through his hair and adopted a lugubrious expression, staring down at his plate of bacon and eggs. Eventually, unnerved by the heavy silence around the breakfast table, he murmured a reply, clearing his throat as he did so as if in apology for what he said.

'A hell of a lot else, sir - too much, if you don't object to me saying so. Much too much.'

Aubrey snorted, then stabbed his fork at the centre of his remaining egg. Yolk oozed onto the plate. Buckholz glanced at Pyott, who had arrived no more than an hour earlier and evidently had not slept. The Deputy Director of the Covert Action Staff of the'CIA searched the English soldier's face for signs of complicity; a willingness to squash Aubrey's ever more unrestrained imagination. Pyott, however, appeared willing to remain silent while Aubrey rambled, prodded, enquired, snapped.

Buckholz sighed audibly. 'There's nothing you can do, Kenneth - nothing at all. You're clutching at straws.' He spread his hands in front of his chest, in sign of pacification. 'It's not realistic, it's not even adult, to scratch at this particular sore the way you're doing. Let's settle for your guy Waterford triggering the charges he's planted…?'

Aubrey glared at him, his nostrils pinched and white, his lips bloodless. 'Adult? Childish?' he repeated scathingly. 'Do you think, when we play our suburban, late-century version of the Great Game, we are
ever
being adult?'

'Kenneth - ' Pyott warned quietly.

'It was not
adult
- it was not the behaviour of a
gentleman
- to throw prisoners under interrogation from
helicopters
or encourage
murder
in south-east Asia!'

'Kenneth be quiet!' Pyott snapped. 'It was not civilised to sacrifice people for metal, lives for avionics - as you did, as we all have done with this operation.' Pyott's face was white, highlighting the dark smudges beneath his eyes. Aubrey appeared abashed, even ashamed.

'Forgive me, Charles - I apologise for that remark,' he said.

'It's long ago and far away-another country,' Buckholz replied.

'Thank you.' Aubrey turned to Pyott immediately. The soldier saw that four hours' sleep had done nothing to improve Aubrey's temper or patience. He was the pestering, gifted child of SIS, and his impatience had become habitual, even incessant. Like the highly intelligent children he somehow suggested, he was solitary, frustrated, intolerantly and urgently alive inside his own mind. He could handle people with suavity and aplomb when he chose, but for the most part he regarded the world as a stumbling-block, no more, placed between himself and his goal. Aubrey was simply
too
clever.

'Kenneth, you are silently pleading with me,' Pyott said with heavy humour. 'What is it?'

'I - ' Aubrey waved his hands over the table like a hypnotist. 'I've seen airframes transported on motorways-in this country. Their wings are folded, or they are absent. What I need is someone to take the wings off this poor butterfly.'

Pyott nodded to the Americans, requiring them to answer. Curtin, grinning suddenly and rubbing his hand through his hair once more, said, 'You may have seen them here-but you won't get trucks to move far enough and fast enough in Finnish Lapland at this time of year. You don't even have roads they could use, always supposing they
could
move!'