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
