Snow Falcon

the eyes, as if the blank mirrors had been removed. It was excitement, Davenhill thought. Perhaps love? Something strangely absorbing to the soldier. Then he understood it. The passion of the hunter close to the game. The spoor was beneath the thin film of snow at his feet. He could sense it. It did not make him like Waterford; but it added a kind of respect, and he placed himself more readily in his hands.

'What do we do?'

'Look. We'll need the jeep. Each one of these trails. And — watch out for felling work that may have taken place.'

As they walked back to the jeep, Davenhill said. 'Why were they here, Waterford? In my enthusiasm to believe, I didn't ask why.'

'Why? I don't know.' He started up the jeep, and pulled off the road, heading up the trail which most nearly paralleled the road from Ivalo. After a while, he said, 'The theory is — to succeed, at high speed, entails airborne operations, air-dropped supplies, all that kind of thing. That means transport aircraft. And they may not have sufficient. If so, an armoured column would take Ivalo, to support the lightest possible airborne assault. Then consolidate at Ivalo, air-drop light forces ahead, and follow up with armour. Sending armour up these roads…' He smiled as they bucked out of their seats. 'Like pouring a waterfall through a bottle-neck. Overcome lack of airborne transport by using armour as quick as you can. In this case, someone decided that it needed practice. The dry-run, as I said.'

'Then when will they be back?'

'I don't know.' He pulled off the track at that moment, into the softer snow under the trees. 'A nice tunnel,' he said enigmatically. Almost immediately, they came to a clearing, roughly circular. And the trees, shorn of branches, stacked as if for the spring. 'There.'

Davenhill sat in the jeep, absorbing the innocent looking clearing.

Waterford got out and cast about. Walking as if over a film of ice, he moved around the circle. Then Davenhill saw him stoop over the snow, brush at it with the tenderness of archaeology, then raise his hand to beckon him.

The snow beneath the freshest fall was stained with engine oil.

'This is it,' Waterford said. He stood up, and waved his arms around the clearing. 'Bright as a new pin.'

'What's under here?'

'Troy,' Waterford replied. 'Get digging.'

'So that's it,' Vorontsyev ended, looking at Alevtina and the three men gathered in a crowded, littered study. While he had talked, they had looked at the walls, eyes straying to the scattered files, the pasted, clipped strips of information.

There was no relief now that there was silence, no release. Rather, all four of the junior officers seemed insistently appalled by mental digestion of what they had heard.

'Chief?' Maxim said in a small voice. He tittered with em barrassment, then cleared his throat. 'We have to keep coming back to this bugger Vrubel, and who killed him. Do we know any more about him?'

Vorontsyev settled in the single easy chair — his team were stiff and upright on dining-chairs from the other room. He said, 'Alevtina, what's new?'

'Nothing, sir,' the girl said, correctly, almost primly.

'Sent the bill for your coat to Tortyev, have you?' Ilya asked.

'I have,' she snapped. Then, to Vorontsyev, who was smiling: 'We can't trace anything suspicious in his contacts — and no one saw him that night. This is a dead-end, sir.'

'Naturally. He wasn't mugged for his wallet. All right — his history. He's been on the Finland border for two, three years. In charge of a section of the wire. Overall security. You know how the Border Guard works — compartments, autonomously run, but with a central co-ord.'

'Then is he being used in his capacity as a Border Guard officer, or as something else?' Pyotr's mind seemed to unclog as he asked the question. There was just a dull patch of brain at the front of his head now, solid as an undigested dinner.

'As a Border Guard — what for?'

'Doesn't it depend what this Finland Station is supposed to mean?' Alevtina remarked. Vorontsyev looked at her carefully. The girl never started hares.

'Explain.'

'What I wondered, sir, was whether it was just his code, or the code for something bigger.'

'Bigger? In what way?'

'What are we dealing with, sir — revolution, or something else? We are dealing with the Army, aren't we?'

'We are. But it's the revolution aspect that we have to be concerned with here — so where does Vrubel fit into that setup? I can't believe that a Border Guard Captain is behind a revolution! Can you?' Ilya shook his head. 'Quite. However, we are going to divide our strength, as of now. What we have to know is what the set-up along his stretch of the wire is. Know everything. His men, their attitude, his movements, and the like.'

'You know what you're saying, sir?' Maxim said. 'You are suggesting that he's concerned in some kind of border crossing…'

'Don't talk rubbish!' Pyotr burst out, then saw Vorontsyev's unamused features. 'Sorry.'

'Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?' he said. 'But — is it? I want to know. Which is why I'm going to Finland in the morning — at least, to the border. Deputy Kapustin has placed this team in charge of the Vrubel business — run everything down. You four will stay here, and branch out as much as necessary over the next couple of days — tracking down any lead suggested by his contacts, his background, his behaviour-pattern.'

Not one of them uttered an audible protest. Then Pyotr said, 'This is while we're checking on your Rogues' Gallery, sir?'

'Yes. I want you to concentrate on Vrubel, but on the others as well, taking two each for the moment. When I get back from Finland, I'll take on the other two myself — Ossipov and Praporovich.'

'We can presume that Vrubel knew a lot — otherwise why try to kill you when you tailed him?'

'That may have been already set up — witness the body of the old sod in the black coat. I wonder whether Vrubel wasn't laying for me all the time? However, I can't see it. We assume no one else knew of our suspicion that Ossipov had a double…'

'Hundreds of people did, by the time we started asking questions. Vrubel was in the KGB. So are a lot of others who must be helping!' Maxim said, his eyes staying fixed on the wall-chart that Vorontsyev had drawn.

'Agreed. It could be anyone. Which is why we have to turn up something, and soon. Some common factor.'

'How widespread is it, sir?' Ilya asked. 'I mean, you don't need much to knock over the Politburo, not if you're using tanks.'

'True. Moscow Military District could supply more than enough — even a nice airborne assault on the Kremlin!'

'What a bloody mess that would be!'

Vorontsyev smiled thinly, then went on: 'So, we have to gain some kind of inside knowledge of Moscow District without arousing suspicion. But, if it's Moscow, then why Ossipov — he's at the other end of the world? And why Vrubel — he was based a thousand miles away? And all the others. What of them?'

He napped his hands on his thighs, an audible disturbance in the sudden silence.

'We're going to make a lot of noise doing this, sir,' Ilya offered unhelpfully.

'I know. We can't afford low profile, but we have to look like a small and isolated group, just making enquiries. Remember that. We can't afford to trigger off the thing we're trying to prevent.'

'But, sir — ' Ilya again. 'Do you really think that a revolution is on the cards? It's impossible, surely?'

'Is it? Not if the Army does it, surely? Can you see the Air Force bombing their comrades in the tanks, or the fleets shelling Moscow from the Baltic? It only needs a little push — and what is there to tumble down? The Politburo, the Kremlin clique — and MS! Do you fancy taking on a T-72 with a 9 mm pistol, Ilya?'