Snow Wolf (24 page)

"Why?"

"I don't want to know your life
history. Just enough to know you better. We're going to have to pretend to be
man and wife and I presume that means sleeping in the same bed if necessary.
I'd like to know something about the man I'll be sharing a bed with."

"What did Massey tell you?"

"Hardly anything. Were you ever
married?"

"it crossed my mind once or twice.
But what wot-nan in her right mind would want to live up here' ' "'

She smiled. "Oh, I don't know. It's
really quite beautiful."

"To a visitor, maybe. But most of
the local girls can't wait to get the hell out and head for New York."

"There weren't any women you ever
met that you liked?"

"Some, but not many I'd care to lead
up an aisle."

"The photograph back in the house,
Tell me about it."

There was a sudden look of pain on his
face and he stood as if to stop the conversation going ' any further.

"A long time ago, as they say. And a
tale not for the telling. We'd better be getting back."

"You still haven't told me about
this Popov. Who is he?"

He looked down at her. "Demitri
Popov is a weapons and self-defense instructor. With a knife and gun and fists
he's probably one of the best there is."

"He's Russian?"

"No, Ukrainian. And that means he
hates the Russians. He fought against them during the war with a Ukrainian SS
regiment before he finally joined the immigrant movement. He's a nasty piece of
work but in a matter like this he's worth his weight in gold. That's why
Massey's people use him. Right, let's get back. Unless, that is, you want to
sit here all day and admire the view."

She looked at him with irritation on her
face. "I don't have to like you, Stanski, and you don't have to like me.
But if I'm supposed to be your wife then I have some rules of my own. In my
company you'll be more polite. You'll treat me like you would a wife or at
least like a human being. Or do you think that would be too difficult?"

His eyes blazed back at her a moment, and
then he tossed away his cigarette and said dismissively, "if you don't
like the arrangement, you don't have to put up with it. Now let's get
going."

As Anna went to stand she slipped off the
rock. He caught her wrist and pulled her in and at that moment she looked up
into his face.

The blue eyes stared at her and suddenly
for no reason at all he went to kiss her, his mouth moving on hers. For a few
moments she was caught up in it all but then she pushed herself free.

@ I Don't ... He smiled. "Like you
said, I ought to treat you as a wife. That is what you wanted, isn't it?"

She knew he was simply provoking her and
said angrily, "Understand one thing-if we have to sleep together for the
sake of appearances on this mission I don't want you ever to touch me, is that
clear?" He turned and started to walk back down the ridge.

Helsinki. February 8th The southwest
coast of Finland, seen from the air in winter, looks like a shattered jigsaw
puzzle of frozen green and white shapes, as if some giant hammer had smashed
land and frozen sea into a million particles.

islands and ice meet whenever a harsh
winter freezes the Baltic, and that winter it was no different. To the west lay
Hango and Turku, ancient seafaring towns that had both seen invaders come and
go-Russians, Swedes and Germans. For almost all her history Finland had had to
endure invasion by her Baltic neighbors. To the east lay Helsinki, and to the
south, fifty miles across the narrow frozen Gulf of Finland, lay the Baltic
states occupied by Stalin's army.

It was almost noon when Massey arrived in
Helsinki on the morning flight from Paris, and Janne Saarinen met him in the
Arrivals area. As they drove west along the coast in Saarinen's little gray
Volvo, the Finn looked across at Massey.

"I thought I was going to have a
rest from covert mission flying until I got your phone call. Who is it this
time, Jake?

Not more types like those two SS creeps I
dropped last month from Munich?"

"Not this time, Janne."

Saarinen smiled. "Thank God for
small mercies. How many passengers do you want to drop?"

"Two. A man and a woman."

"What is this, Jake? Something
special'? Your people don't normally drop from up here in winter. The weather's
usually too bad.

"Between you and me, Janne, it's an
unrecorded drop, Y(U'll be well paid, but that goes without saying."

Saarinen grinned. An unrecorded drop
meant it was highly secret and unofficial, and usually highly dangerous.

"Smells like danger, and I could do
with a bit of that right now. Say no more. We can discuss money when it's
done."

The roads were icy, but the sturdy little
Volvo was equipped with snow chains and they came to a small fishing village
twenty minutes later. It was no more than a clutch of brightly painted wooden
houses set around a frozen harbor. y There was an inn at one end and Saarinen
pulled up outside it and said to Massey, "This will do nicely. Belongs to
a cousin of mine. There's a room at the back where we can talk and won't be
bothered. Let's go inside where it's warmer, Jake."

The Finn eased his false leg out of the
car and they went into the inn. It was surprisingly large inside and all done
in pine, a blazing fire roaring and a ceramic stove going at the same time, and
the view looked out onto the frozen harbor locked in solid ice. There was a man
behind the bar, tall and blond, wearing a spotless white bar smock and reading
a newspaper.

Saarinen said to him in Finnish,
"Give us both a drink quick, Niilo, before we freeze to death. We'll use
the room at the back, if you don't mind. I've got a bit of business to
discuss."

The man behind the bar placed a bottle of
vodka and two glasses on the table and handed Saarinen a set of keys.

Saarinen led the way to a room at the
side of the inn and unlocked the door. Inside, it was icy cold. He grinned as
he closed the door.

"Don't know why Niilo bothers to
open half the winter. Most of the locals stay at home. I think he must be
missing a couple of slates off his roof. In summer the place is crawling with
kids from Helsinki out on a bender, but in winter it's as quiet as the inorgue.
So tell 'me what you have in mind."

dropped near "The two people I spoke
about, I want them Tallinn."

Saarinen raised his eyes. "Why
Tallinn'? It's a garrison town. Crawling with Soviet troops."

"There are two reasons for the drop
in that area," Massey explained. "Number one, it's only a short hop
across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia and the Soviets would never expect it in
winter. And number two, there'll be a weldrop in that area come committee from
the Estonian resistance waiting to help my people on their way."

"I see. Where to?"

"Sorry, Janne. That I can't tell
you."

"Fair enough. As long as you know
the dangers. Where do you plan to take off from?"

"I had thought the place you've got
farther up the coast, if it's not too close to the base at Porkkula?"

"Bylandet Island? Why not, it's
where I keep my plane hangared in winter and it's pretty much ideal. And don't
worry about the Soviet base on Porkkula."

The Porkkula peninsula, over thirty
kilometers from Helsinki, was occupied by a small Soviet military and naval
force. Such an occupation was a touchy subject for Finns. But having sided with
Germany in the war, Finland had been forced to allow a small part of its
country to be used as a Russian base until Helsinki had paid Moscow its war
reparations in full.

"By air, the peninsula is over ten
kilometers from Bylandet Island," Saarinen explained. "But the Soviet
base has never caused me any problems-it's strictly out of bounds to Finns and
the Russians keep to themselves. And if we go from Bylandet the crossing
shouldn't take more than thirty minutes. Maybe forty at most if there's a
headwind."

"You think the weather will be a
problem?"

Saarinen smiled, a rakish smile.
"It's always a problem up here. But if it's bad it can work to our
advantage in a situation like this. We can use cloud cover most of the way in.
Stick right in it almost until the drop."

"Isn't that taking a big risk?"

Saarinen laughed. "Not as big a risk
as getting blown out of the sky by the latest Mig fighter. There's a squadron
of the latest all-weather model stationed south of Leningrad that covers Baltic
coastal patrols. Those machines are pretty damned good-the fastest thing around
right now, even faster than your latest American fighters. And the Russians
have got radar on board.

"What if they pick you up on their
radar?"

"The news is the Soviet pilots are
not that familiar with the new equipment, so they won't stay in the cloud too
long at the kind of speeds they cruise at. They prefer to be able to see where
they're going. And if it's really bad, like heavy snow, they'll stay safely on
land getting drunk in the mess."

"Can your plane stand the kind of
buffeting you'll get if the weather's bad?"

Saarinen grinned. "The little
Norseman I've got could come through a blizzard of shit in one piece."

It was almost eight that evening when
Saarinen dropped Massey off at the Palace Hotel in Helsinki.

They had one drink in the bar together
before the Finn bade him goodbye. When Massey went up to his room there was a
message waiting. Henri Lebel had called from Paris. Massey made the return call
after waiting twenty minutes for the Helsinki operator to patch him through to
Paris on a crackling line.

"Jake'? I'm going to be in Helsinki
the day after tomorrow and -I thought we could meet to discuss our business
arrangement further."

Massey knew Lebel meant to show him the
hidden compartment in the private goods train the Frenchman leased from the
Finns, before Lebel traveled on for a brief visit to Moscow.

"What about the other information I
require?"

"I'm working on it, but it hasn't
been easy, mon ami. A matter of greasing the right greedy palm. But I hope to
have something for you soon."

"Good, Henri. Give me a call when
you get here."

When Massey replaced the receiver he
crossed to the window that overlooked the harbor. If Lebel got the information
he wanted he knew what he had to do next, despite what Branigan had warned.

In the moonlit winter's darkness the
entire Baltic seemed frozen white as far as the eye could see. As he stood
there looking out at the scene, Massey couldn't help thinking of Anna Khorev.
Two weeks from now she'd be flying out over that frozen gulf with Stanski,
taking the biggest risk taken in her life. she had in New Hampshire.

February 11th Anna was standing at the
window when she saw the old black Ford pull up outside the house.

The man who climbed out was big and
powerfully built. His dark bushy beard and greasy black hair gave him the
appearance of a wild-looking mountain man. When he and Stanski came up the
veranda and stepped inside the cabin, the big man saw her and grinned, broken
teeth showing behind his beard.

"So this is the woman," the man
said to Stanski.

Stanski said, "Popov, this is
Anna."

The man held out a huge bearlike paw.
Anna didn't offer to shake it but said to Stanski, "When you want me I'll
be outside," then walked past the Ukrainian and down the steps of the
veranda.

Popov watched her retreating figure
appreciatively as she walked toward the woods.

He grinned and stroked his beard. "A
good one to have beside you in a bed on a cold night, I'll say that much. But
did I say something wrong?"

"I don't think former Ukrainian SS
are among her favorite types, Dimitri." Popov grunted. "Massey said
she was Russian. Russians and Ukrainians have always fought like cat and dog.
The Russkis have tried to grind us to dust for centuries." A brief smile
flashed on his face. "Still, I'd call a truce as far as that one's
concerned. Nice ass on her, I'll say that."

"You're here to do the job,
Diniitri. Get fresh with her and I'll take it personally."

Popov frowned as Stanski glared at him.
There was a flash of anger in Popov's bearded face as he went to say something,
but then he seemed to think better of' it and broke into a wide grin.

"You know me, Alex, always willing
to keep the peace for the sake of' training."

"Let's go down to the lake. I want
to talk."

Popov left his things in the car, and as
they walked down to the water Stanski said, "You think you can cover
everything in ten days?"

"You I know about. The girl I don't.
It depends on her."

"Massey thinks she should be
OK."

"And what do you think?"

Stanski smiled. "Much as I hate to
admit it, she's good. The last week she's Put her heart into getting fit."