Snow Falcon

some kind of reassurance about Vorontsyev's apparent interest.

As the lights died behind them, Vorontsyev switched off his lights. He felt a sudden chill as the road disappeared, and the flat countryside winked out. The road was becoming icy, and the night was hard with stars. Gradually, he became accustomed to the pale gleam of light reflected from the snow still covering the fields. And he followed the lights of the car ahead of him, which still masked his presence from Vrubel.

As far as Vorontsyev could tell, they were heading for the excursion spot, Arkhangelskoe; they had taken the Minsk road, the continuation of the Kutuzov Prospekt, then turned right on to the Rublevo road. When they turned left again, it was towards Uspenskoe. And the car between the Zil and Vorontsyev turned right at the crossroads. Vorontsyev waited, then pulled out, lights still off. Moving away from him, he saw the red rear lamps of the Zil. Unsuspicious acceleration.

Gradually, they slid together into a country of sum trees fining the road, and shimmering, snowbound fields. There was something sufficiently beautiful about it to affect Vorontsyev. They crossed the Moskva, heading south- west, and then the Zil turned off the main road, into the trees. Vorontsyev stopped die car, saw the small sideroad, unmarked and unsurfaced, md slowly turned into it. Ahead of him, winking suddenly through the trees then lost again, were the rear lights of the Zil. He wondered for a moment whether he was being led into a trap — then he sensed that the meeting-place was to be one of the many wooden dachas built in the Arkhangelskoe district — summer and week-end homes for prominent members of the Party and the bureaucracy. He smiled. SID had investigated, in its time, a number of peculiar reports concerning social and personal behaviour in dachas like the ones dotted through the woods.

The dacha was appropriate to conspiracy, as well as to sexual perversion, he considered with satisfaction. Then he saw the brake-lights go on ahead of him, and he stopped the car immediately. He wound down the window, and listened. In the clear frosty air, he heard the door of the Zil slam shut like a rifle shot. Carefully, he got out of the car, taking the Makarov pistol from the glove compartment before he did so.

The ground was covered lightly with snow, masking sound but masking also any sticks that might betrayingly snap. He trod carefully, keeping to the deeper shadow of tree trunks, heading for the spot where the Zil had stopped.

His feet were cold through his thin shoes by the time he reached it. Its lights were off- and it was empty. He wondered for a moment whether it was indeed a trap as he looked around him swiftly, gun held in front of him — then he saw the dim light, from behind curtains, a little way ahead. As his night-vision improved, he saw that he was at the edge of a small, man-made clearing, on the other side of which was a low wooden dacha — a large one, he noted with a creeping excitement he could not altogether restrain or disapprove. He enjoyed the sensation of crouching against the Zil, watching the destination of his journey just fifty yards away. He did not notice the cold now, except as a sharp sensation in his nostrils.

He circled the clearing, watching for signs of movement at the lighted window or the almost invisible door set back beneath an over-hanging porch. Nothing.

The young trees grew close to the side of the dacha. He paused in their shelter for a moment, checked the Makarov, and slid a round into place. Then he moved swiftly across the strip of moonlit ground, his feet crunching on snow that had begun to freeze hard. He slipped over the rail, on to the wood of the porch. He steadied the rocking-chair that remained there from the summer, felt its material damp beneath his hand, then moved quietly towards the door, ducking beneath the curtained window.

He drew what seemed his first breath as he paused outside the door — and experienced a moment of doubt, the sense of traps laid and about to be sprung; how many were there inside the dacha? The door was open. He pushed it gently wider. A narrow wooden hall, a strip of dull carpet, the feel of rough wood under the hand he used to guide himself in the darkness. Ahead of him, and to the left, a glow of light from beneath a door. He listened for voices, but there was a deep silence about the house. Nothing, not even his own breathing.

He stepped back from the door, raised his foot, and kicked at it. The thin door swung open, the lock tearing, and then he held it open as it swung back towards him. Through the door, gun ready. There was no one behind it.

No one in the room. The dim light, he saw suddenly, had to be a decoy, and he turned swiftly, as if sensing someone behind him. Again, no one.

He moved cautiously out of the room, closing the door so that the light would not outline him, and began a search of the remaining room.

The body was in one of the bedrooms, at the rear of the dacha; it was still dressed in the formal black overcoat, and he almost expected to see the homburg hat resting on the bedside cabinet. Someone had folded the arms decently across his chest, and there was, he saw, a dark hole in the white forehead, near the hairline. White hair. The face, staring up at the ceiling, was reposed, still with lack of expression. Chiselled. He moved closer.

There was no one living hi the house. Not now. He looked out of the window, saw nothing; listened for the noise of the Zil's engine starting up. Silence. He looked down at the body.

It was the Ossipov-substitute. He felt disappointed — even cheated in some obscure way. He leaned over the face, as if demanding an explanation. The dead face stared sightlessly up at him, seeming now irritated that he had come between the open eyes and their concentration on the ceiling.

The body was small, like that of Ossipov. The tight, drawn skin appeared unreal in the moonlight — the face of an actor. He looked nothing like Ossipov; if only the surveillance team had seen the face, they would have raised the alarm. But only the back — the black overcoat, the hat. They had made only one mistake — to be seen together at all; no, not even that — only the mistake of the substitute having his features recorded in the museum.

And that error had been corrected. Vorontsyev, with distaste, touched the hole of the wound. Dry blood, what there was of it. And cold skin. The man had been dead for some time. How long?

He raised an arm. Stiff. Dead perhaps more than twenty-four hours. A careful anticipation, the discarding of something soiled by wear or faded with exposure. A liability.

But, why was it here?

Because the sense of the trap returned at that precise moment, as he felt the delicate cold wire running from the hand up the sleeve of the black overcoat — he understood what it meant.

He turned and ran, out of the bedroom, crashing against the wooden wall so that it shook, cannoning off, seeing the patch of starlight from the open door at the end of the corridor…

And then the bomb that had been so carefully wired to the body, and which he had triggered when he moved the arm — exploded. Something shoved him in the back, through the frail wooden fence in front of the porch — he felt the rail bite into his thighs, and then he was tumbling over it, bringing it down after him. Snow — just the merest sensation of wetness as his face ground into it, and the horrific noises that deafened him, and the after- shock wrenching through his body. Then black silence, even as the pain began.

The restored house was on Kropotkin Street, and suitably spacious for a long-serving and respected member of the Politburo. Ilarion Vikentich Galakhov sat opposite the man he knew as Kutuzov, and from whom he took his orders. Galakhov, at thirty-three, was a Senior Lieutenant in the GRU, Military Intelligence. As such, there were many superior officers to whom he was, apparently, responsible. For two years now, however, he had covertly obeyed only this man, the leader of Group 1917. He and those deputed by him to issue orders. One of those, Yevgeni Vrubel, he had obeyed earlier that night, only to find that the order had come not from Kutuzov, but was a panic-measure by Vrubel himself.

Kutuzov was angry, the rage of flouted authority barely concealed; and also beneath the striven-for calm there was hatred of a man who had jeopardised a strategy the extent of which could only be guessed by Galakhov. He watched the old man carefully, studied the strong face with its deep lines of concentration and authority, and silently cursed Vrubel for tricking him into the killing of the Ossipov-substitute and rigging the bomb that had almost killed the SID Major. How Kutuzov had heard, how he knew Vorontsyev was still alive, he could not guess; but he had.

'Where is Vrubel now?'

'A safe house.'

'You know which one?' Galakhov nodded. 'Good. Ilarion Vikentich — we must cut our losses. Get rid of Vrubel tonight, before you leave Moscow.' It was said without emotion, as if the projected action had cleansed the old man of his feelings. Except for one final mutter, almost an aside: 'He tried to kill the SID man — to save his own skin.