Snow Falcon

'Hey — in there.' American!

'Y- yes? What is it?'

'You dropped a letter, or something?'

'Yes — yes I have.'

'In Russian?'

'Yes.' All the time, Galakhov had spoken with a more pronounced accent than he normally used when speaking English. 'Business — I am from Finland.' He looked into Ozeroff's dead face, and smiled.

'Sure. None of my business. Here — '

The letter appeared at his feet, pushed under the door. Next to the notebook and pencil that he had dropped — Galakhov realised he hadn't heard them fall.

'Thank you — thank you very much.'

The washroom door swung shut behind the American. Galakhov relaxed, staring at the high ceiling of the room, ignoring the body slumped on the seat. Then the door of the occupied toilet swung open. Water flushing, then hands being washed, then the click of the roller towel — the washroom door opening, sighing shut, then opening again, the footsteps of two men.

Water running.

'All clear,' he heard in the tall man's excellent English.

He opened the door, saw the man dressed in white overalls, and took the suitcase that was handed to him. He changed in the next cubicle, listening to the noises of Ozeroff's body being bundled into the linen basket on wheels, covered with dirty linen. The other man changed the roller towels.

The men were gone before he finished changing, taking the suitcase with the chauffeur's uniform when he passed it out to them, leaving another suitcase, Ozeroff's, for him to employ in his cover.

Galakhov made the final flight call for his Finnair jet to Helsinki. It was the evening of the i8th.

PART TWO MAIN FORCE 18th to the 22nd of……19

'A civil war is inevitable. We have only to organise it as painlessly as possible.'

— Trotsky

Six: Things Fall Apart

He was left now, on the A40, the driving, persistent sleet obscuring vision and inducing lethargy, with nothing more than a desire to stop. Only when the small delivery van stopped would he begin to think of a drink, or food. He and the tall man had finished the flask of coffee — and he knew he could not drink anything more from the silver hip-flask without falling asleep.

The M40 had been bad enough — lunatic drivers overtaking, spraying the windscreen, and the sluggish wipers, with slush; out the A40 was worse. He and the tall man and the body of Ozeroff seemed to have been imprisoned in the delivery van for an endless time. He was irritated, and careless, with the fatigue of long having completed his task, and not being able to relax from it. They had not even stopped at a pub; something stupid, even superstitious — pushing their luck — about leaving Ozeroff in the car park while they drank whisky by a fire. He shrugged, amazed at his own surrender to the conditions of this aftermath. After all, the signal had gone off to Kutuzov direct; all they had to do was to lose this body for the space of less than a week. By that time, it would all be over — and they would be out of the country, anyway. Stupid.

Kutuzov, of course. Old Magnet-man — Svengali. If he said it was important — vital — then you did it, no matter how gritty your eyes were, or how your stomach protested.

He glanced at his companion, heaped uncomfortably in the narrow seat, and trying to doze. Then he stretched his eyes wide, and concentrated on the flying sleet, the fuzzy headlights, the sudden slow rush of other lights out of the darkness.

He saw the other lights, realised that they were high up, as on a truck, and swerved. He was aware, in the few seconds remaining to him, of a noise as Ozeroff lurched like something resurrected in the back of the van, and his companion stirring as he was jolted awake, mumbling through a dry, sticky mouth for him to take more care. He was aware, too, quite certainly, that he was going to die, and that the betraying Ozeroff was lying in mock state in the back of the van — and he hoped the local police were very stupid men.

Then the car-transporter, having strayed across the white line because the driver was tired, and hurried, flipped the van over on its back, as a child might turn a tortoise upside-down with the aid of a stick. The van, apparently that of a towel service firm, ended up in the ditch at the side of the A40 just outside Wheatley, after somersaulting twice. The back doors burst open, sliding out, almost as in a farce, the body of Ozeroff, feet first, on to the roadside verge. The driver was crushed against the wheel — the passenger flung through the windscreen. The driver of the transporter, uninjured, was sick when he inspected the wreck and the three bodies. Then he called the Oxford police from the nearest telephone box.

Kenneth Aubrey was chilled, angry, and fascinated. Traffic on the A40 had been reduced to a single lane, and a canvas screen erected to shield the accident from the inquisitive. Behind this, spotlamps glowed in the sleet, shining down on the sodden bundles, side by side now, and covered with grey blankets, themselves sodden wet; policemen directed the moribund queues of cars coming home from pubs and parties, or analysed the events of the accident. Aubrey alone, perhaps, now that he had been introduced to the three bodies, remained still, and contemplative.

'So much stuff on them, sir, we got in touch with the Branch. They must have thought of you.'

'They did, indeed, Inspector. My thanks for your promptitude,' Aubrey had replied stiffly to the Inspector, who was bending to peer under the umbrella Aubrey carried. And such stuff- chauffeur's uniform, British passport for someone, with a face not identifiable among the dead here, another change of clothes, and one of the dead murdered with a rather out-of-date, though still effective, KGB tool, the watch-wire — Times Cravats, he understood were their popular name. It was KGB, that was evident — the one security machine above all others that enjoyed the gadgetry of violent death, the little toys that killed.

And towels from the airport — strange that they had not rid themselves of them, or the white coats. Aubrey thought he understood the lethargy of aftermath. But — who was dead, and who killed him? And — Aubrey could almost taste the feline pleasure of the mystery — who owns the face on the British passport?

'Inspector?' he called.

The policeman, disgruntled and wet, hurried up.

'Sir?1

CI have some instructions to give. Perhaps I might use your car radio?'

'Certainly, sir.'

'And I shall have need of photographs of these three — not here, but when they've been cleaned up. As quickly as possible — you can get them removed now. All papers, anything you remove, will be collected for our own investigation, early tomorrow.'

'Sir.'

As they walked bowing to the windy sleet, the Inspector grateful for Aubrey's offer of a crescent of the umbrella, Aubrey had a sudden image of the crash outside Kassel, months before. And he sensed an excitement he could not quite explain, certainly not define with any precision, that here was coincidence in a certain direction. He hurried his steps, unconsciously, to the police car.

'You'll want it rigged through to — London, sir?