Fielding stopped and said, ‘Good evening. I’m Fielding. Glad you could come.’
‘Geoffrey Donaldson,’ said the man. ‘It was no trouble at all.’ He was middle-aged with a thin moustache and a generally military demeanour. He looked briefly at the gunman, then back at Fielding. ‘It’s rather chilly — I suggest we get straight into the car.’
Fielding glanced back at the plane, which was now in darkness, with the chute hanging limp from the door. Donaldson added, ‘We haven’t got a lot of time.’
Fielding followed him to the Volvo. Donaldson opened the front passenger door for him, and got into the back. The engine was running and the inside of the car was very warm. The man at the wheel nodded to Fielding and said, ‘I’m Brian Hughes. Hope you had a good journey.’ He had a smooth round face with tortoise-shell spectacles and an accent that at once suggested to Fielding more the commercial traveller than the officer and gentleman.
From the back seat Donaldson said, ‘I’m afraid our friend Worrnold hasn’t been having much luck with his vacuum-cleaners. He’s been meeting a lot of sales resistance.’
Fielding smiled to himself: it must have rankled with London when he’d made them draw on Graham Greene’s savage satire on the Service. Yet Donaldson had spoken without any irony or embarrassment. Perhaps he didn’t have a sense of humour — or maybe he just wasn’t much of a reader?
A second Volvo, this time with Finnish registration, drove past and stopped in front of the French gunman. Hughes had slipped into gear and they began to move forward.
‘Did you get the Birkenheads?’ said Fielding, turning to put his hat and coat on the back seat beside Donaldson.
‘I’m sorry,’ Donaldson said, ‘but Robert Lewis tell me they can’t get them anymore. The Cuban government is standardizing all their brands of cigar.’
Fielding nodded. ‘How long till they find the plane?’
‘Not long. They’re giving us a five-minute start. As soon as Pol’s men are taken off, the pilot will raise Helsinki and they’ll get the police out from Lovisa and Borga Porvoo. We’ll no doubt pass the ones from Borga.’
‘What d-danger of someone identifying the cars?’
‘Almost none. We were too far for anyone to read the numbers, and in this country almost every other car is a Volvo.’
‘Unless they set up road-blocks at once,’ Fielding muttered. He gripped the armrest as the car bounced up a steep slope off the frozen bay, the chains screaming and churning a spray of snow and powdered ice, the back wheels sliding on to the level of a narrow track. ‘So what’s the programme?’ he asked.
‘The ferry leaves Helsinki in just over two hours,’ said Donaldson. ‘We should do it nicely.’
‘What ferry?’
‘The overnight car-ferry to Stockholm.’
‘That wasn’t the plan,’ said Fielding. ‘They promised a direct flight to Stockholm, then a car to meet me and take me to a safe house.’
‘That is precisely what is planned,’ said Donaldson; his voice was exasperatingly calm. ‘Only it was decided against a flight, because of the highly changeable weather conditions at this time of year. You could be kept waiting at the airport for as long as it takes the ferry to cross. I suppose no one recognized you on the plane? None of the journalists, I mean?’
‘I don’t think so. But they’ll remember me. And they’ll remember the gunmen. Only knowing Pol, he’ll have laid on a private plane to collect them.’ He laughed bitterly: ‘I suppose that was too much for London? A false passport’s routine stuff, but hiring planes costs money.’
‘It would also involve infringing Finnish air-space,’ said Donaldson; ‘and London does not want to compromise the Finns more than is absolutely necessary. These things are very delicate.’
‘Don’t flatter yourselves,’ said Fielding. ‘Delicacy doesn’t come into it. It’s just the old business of having to go through the proper channels.’
‘There were no proper channels,’ said Donaldson. ‘There never have been. If you must know, quite a few people in London are still very unhappy about the whole business. And a lot of others couldn’t even be told. At one point London was insisting that the whole thing be handled by Pol.’
‘What made them change their minds?’
‘London still has an interest in all this,’ said Donaldson stiffly. ‘Even you might appreciate that.’
‘Personally,’ said Fielding, ‘when it comes to the crunch I’d as soon deal with an honest crook like Pol than a bunch of deskbound hypocrites in Whitehall.’
‘As you please,’ said Donaldson, and lapsed into silence. Fielding groped for his hip-flask, shook it, and found it was empty. Instead, he took out some cigarettes — a blue and white packet of Kazbeks. He tapped one out and was just pinching the hollow cardboard stem, when Donaldson leaned over and said, ‘Try one of these.’ He offered him a packet of Rothmans. ‘And better give me that other one,’ he added. He took the Kazbeks from Fielding and opened his window just enough to throw the packet out. ‘A small detail,’ he added, ‘but it’s so easy to become careless.’
‘Quite.’ Fielding smiled. ‘And it’s nice to be looked after. But of course, you have to, don’t you? Because London knows that if anything goes wrong, I can always break my side of the bargain too.’
Donaldson did not reply. They had left the narrow track along the peninsula, with the snow banks reaching above the roof of the car, and now came out on to the Helsinki-Leningrad highway. The snow-ploughs had recently been along it, but there was still a danger of black ice, and the chains kept their speed down to
