Craig Thomas
Snow Falcon
'The situation at the moment is such, the Soviet Union's economy is on such a war footing, that even if it were the unanimous opinion of all the members of the Politburo not to start a war, this would no longer be in their power.'
Principal Characters
Kenneth de Vere AUBREY: Deputy head of SIS Intelligence
Maj. Alan WATERFORD: Attached as instructor to 22 SAS
Alex DAVENHILL: Foreign Office Special Adviser to SIS
Lt. Allan FOLLEY: 22 SAS, seconded to British Intelligence
PHILIPSON: SIS Staff, Helsinki
Charles BUCKHOLZ ANDERS: Deputy Director, CIA
President Joseph WAINWRIGHT: his chief assistant
Maj. Alexei K. VORONTSYEV: Special Investigations Department (SID), KGB
Feodor KHAMOVKHIN: First Secretary, Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
Yuri ANDROPOV: Chairman of the KGB
KAPUSTIN: Deputy Chairman, KGB
GROMYKO: Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union
Milhail Pyotravich GOROCHENKO: Deputy Foreign Minister
Ilya Maxim Alevtina Pyotr: Junior officers of the SID
Marshal PRAPOROVICH: O.G Group of Soviet Forces North (GSFN)
Admiral DOLOHOV: Red Banner Northern Fleet
Col. Gen. OSSIPOV: O.C. Far East Military District
Lt. Gen. PNIN: GSFN
Capt. NOVETLYN: GRU (Military intelligence)
Capt. Yevgeni VRUBEL: KGB Border Guard
Maj. Gen. VALENKOV: Commandant, Moscow Garrison
Capt. Ilarion V. GALAHKHOV: GRU
Anna DOSTOYEVNA: former Minister of Culture
Natalia GRASNETSKAYA: wife of Vorontsyev
PRELUDES
At the border between the Federal Republic and the DDR west of Eisenach, the E63 ceases to be an autobahn, and becomes merely a main road for the sixty or more kilometres through the Kaufunger-Meissner Wald to Kassel. At one specific point along that more twisting metalled strip, Kenneth Aubrey had decided upon a road accident involving a container lorry and three cars — one of them a Mercedes, the others Volkswagens.
He stood under the shelter of dark trees above the level of the road, the rain sweeping between him and the scene below. Behind and to his left, in a lay-by, the squat white shape of an ambulance waited, seemingly inappropriate to the erected carnage he was watching. The ambulance was still, its engine turned off, a fug steaming its windows.
Aubrey watched the mobile crane lowering the crushed bodies of the two Volkswagens painstakingly into the middle of the road. Small wet figures scurried around it, arranging the two wrecks as if in some display of modern sculpture. After perhaps twenty minutes, during which time he began to imagine the damp from the needle-coated earth under his feet was seeping into his Wellingtons, and he was resting on a shooting-stick, the Mercedes was towed up by a breakdown truck, unhooked, and men pushed it towards the two Volkswagens. Aubrey heard the rend of torn metal as it was edged into a grotesque three-pointed star against the smaller cars.
The German alongside him coughed. Aubrey glanced to one side, lowering his glasses, and said in German, 'Yes, that will do very well, Herr Goessler.'
'I am pleased, Herr Franklin,' the German replied without humour or enthusiasm. Punctilious, but reluctant, Aubrey decided. He smiled at the use of his cover-name. Silly — but new regulations at every turn. Goessler knew him as Aubrey had done for years.
He turned back to the road, gleaming like the PVC jackets and capes of the men down there.
The container lorry, SAUER AG large in yellow on its cab and cargo, was being driven slowly towards the mobile crane which hung above the wreck like a sinister carrion vehicle. One man in a cape was directing the driver with precise indications. Aubrey looked at his watch — plenty of time. Rain spilled from the brim of his hat as he bent his head. It wetted the knees of his suit, and he ducked his tongue in disapproval.
He watched as the mobile crane, gently at first, then as if delighting in its own strength, raised the body of the trailer, then jerked like an animal breaking its prey's neck, so that the container toppled upon the wreckage of the three cars.
The metal shrieked. Aubrey winced, as if he had seen the weight topple upon himself in some dream. When the great truck had settled, he nodded, satisfied, and looked again at his watch. Late afternoon, perhaps an hour more to wait, and the day drawing in under heavy grey cloud.
The wind changed, blowing rain into his face. He rubbed the wetness away.
'It appears to be very convincing,' he offered.
Goessler said, 'It's as good as you will get — without
'A reasonable facsimile will suffice,' Aubrey said stuffily.
He watched the mobile crane move off, and the shiny figures of the men gratefully dear the road, heading for the mobile canteen he had ordered for the purpose. Their bent shoulders, ducked heads, suggested gratitude.
Then, suddenly, the road was deserted. Towards Kassel there was a diversion sign, and east down the road, two miles away, there was another sign directing traffic on to the 487. That sign would be removed quickly, when the time came. He could faintly hear the helicopter that was spotting for them. God knew what the visibility was like — but he had to trust…
He focused on a bend in the road, perhaps fifty yards away, towards the east. From there…
Less than an hour.
The driver of the container lorry travelling west from Jena and the Zeiss factory, carrying cameras and camera parts into the Federal Republic, was about to remark on the absence of traffic on that part of the E63 to the man seated alongside him — a man perhaps somewhat too old to be convincingly a driver's mate — when his truck rounded the bend on which Aubrey had focused his glasses.
The wreckage was bundled high in his vision like some grey bonfire ready to be ignited. He stamped down on the brakes, gripping the wheel as he felt the skid beginning. He eased off the brakes, eased them on again — but there was too little time and distance, and he knew it.
Aubrey watched the impact shift the wreckage as if the oncoming truck were a bulldozer. The noise assailed
