Snow Falcon

sensing that Vorontsyev would react unfavourably to a greater obsequiousness, and because he could not overcome the habitual lack of fear the KGB inspired five thousand miles from Moscow Centre.

'I don't know! A town of nearly half a million, and there are seven KGB men to look after it.'

'Don't forget we're here too,' Seryshev muttered.

'What happens in the summer — tourists?'

'The KGB come in with the Intourist guides. More of them here, then. Bloody uncomfortable, being out here otherside. Military District, too — the GRU are more than enough to make up for the absence of your lot.'

'Are they?' Vorontsyev said musingly, and Seryshev decided not to enquire. 'Tell me about the Separatists. What sort of information do you have on them?' He rounded on the policeman as if he expected to be told lies, or fed excuses. His face was drawn with cold and with anger. And perhaps something, something like fear, Seryshev decided, even though he could not understand such a feeling.

Seryshev looked around at the forensic team poking among the wreckage of the shipping office while he replied. Four hundred pounds of explosive — it could be as much as that. He shook his head. There were still some bodies in there — or parts of things that had once been people.

'No fuss just lately,' he said. 'About eighteen months ago, one or two minor incidents…'

'Any with bombs?'

'One. A car blown up. No one injured.'

'What else?'

'Some nameless threats — leaflets, banners. One or two arrests.'

'Anybody special? What's the set-up?' Vorontsyev, despite his indifference to Seryshev, felt an anger which he could not define welling up in him, so that his throat was constricted. It was as if he suddenly sensed the distance between himself and Moscow; was one of the men who had died. Certainly angry on their behalf.

'No,' Seryshev replied in a stolid, unexcited way. 'Only students. Heavy sentences, to discourage others, of course. But — no leads to anything. No expectation of anything…' He waved a heavily mittened hand towards the wreckage. 'Anything like this.'

Vorontsyev rounded on him.

'The men here were wiped out! Someone did a very professional job on them — wives and families, too, in some cases. Each one with a bomb. Don't you have any idea?'

Seryshev shrugged. 'No.' He did not like the admission, but it was safer than bluff, he considered, at that moment.

Vorontsyev stared at the wreckage, as if willing himself to remember every detail. Then he said, 'Nothing else?'

'Not for months.'

Silence, then Vorontsyev called, 'Blinn! Anything yet?'

The stooping forensic officer looked up, his face caught by the revolving, winking light on the police car. He looked chilled, and irritated.

'Don't be stupid, Vorontsyev! What would you expect? I'm still putting together the parts of the people here!'

'Get moving, then!' Again, the unreasonable, unreasoning anger flared, filled his throat like nausea. 'Balls to the bodies! I want to know how they died, and who killed them!'

Blinn took a step towards him, casting aside a charred length of carpet. It rolled back over something humped and blackened that Vorontsyev did not care to identify.

'You're a prize bastard, Vorontsyev! Its people who died here, don't you realise that?'

Vorontsyev was shouting now, in contest with the wind and Blinn. Blinn seemed even more deeply shocked than he over the atrocity. As if the massive safety of his organisation and his office had been stripped from him like so many inadequate clothes.

The two men stared at one another across the spars and frozen waves of the ruined building, Blinn's taut, thin face reddened by the light, the sleet blowing across it caught by the same glancing light.

'I want to catch the bastards who did it! And I may not have a lot of time to do it. Can you get that into your thick skull?'

Blinn's nostrils flared. Vorontsyev saw the puzzlement succeed anger in his face. He had said too much.

'What the hell has tune got to do with it? All the watches and clocks around here have stopped!'

'I–I'm sorry,' Vorontsyev said. 'It — look, it may be urgent,' he added, stepping away from Seryshev. 'Urgent. So put someone on the explosive — exclusively. At each house that was blown up. I want to know type, amount — all of it.' Blinn was already nodding in the concert with the demands. 'I want to know how much there was. And then perhaps we can guess where it came from.'

'OK, I understand.' He looked at Vorontsyev. 'I wondered why they sent you out here.' He turned away.

Vorontsyev looked once more at the rubbish of the building and its occupants. Where did the explosive come from? Ossipov, you bastard, he thought, this isn't like slipping a tail in the cinema toilet… Again the unreasonable anger. If it was you — I'll finish.

Even then, in the street, despite the sleet, the chilling cold, and the traffic thinning in the square behind him, it did not sound a particularly stupid boast.

General Ossipov was entertaining a young man in civilian clothes in his quarters; his town quarters, a suite of rooms on the top floor of the Dalni Vostok Hotel on Karl Marx Street.The young man was standing before him, almost at attention, staring into a mirror above the mantelpiece — an ornate, gilded mirror in which he could see the back of Ossipov's grey head and sometimes the side of his face as he spoke. The young man felt angry with his orders from Moscow, and half-afraid of their effect on Ossipov.

The General had taken too much to drink already, that was evident. His tie was slightly askew, and the grey suit appeared rumpled — the collar was wrinkled to the hairline, he could see. He was feeling aggrieved that he should have to berate the General, imitating the anger that Kutuzov had shown when he had briefed him the previous night. He was not certain the General, in his present semi-drunken mood, would respect his status as courier.

'You dare to tell me that I have acted precipitately — that I am wrong?' Ossipov snarled, a second or two later than he would have done, the emotions muddied by the drink. The young man winced at the evident blame he was attracting.

'Sir,' he said again, 'I am only repeating what I was told to say. You know that is my function. My opinions are irrevelant.'

'You arrogant young turd!' Ossipov snapped, and the young man saw the head jolt upwards, in the mirror, and refrained from meeting the General's eyes.

'No, sir,' he said.

'You tell me that Kutuzov considers me a fool who has acted like a silly, middle- aged virgin when a man looks at her? God, I got rid of that stinking KGB gang in one night! And the Separatists will get the blame!' The General laughed, but the young man considered it was only the confidence of alcohol.

'I was told to inform you that the SID have a man here — a Major. That Kutuzov considers to be an indication that the — enemy — have a strong suspicion that all is not as it appears out here.'

'Considers? Rubbish!' Ossipov poured himself another vodka, a noisy meeting of bottle and tumbler. 'We have five days, if his bloody marvellous plan works! What, pray, is there to fear?'

'You become an object of suspicion, General,' the young man proceeded. 'An SID unit was on to you — you eliminated your double with Vrubel's help. Now you have attracted this attention to the Far East District, just a few days later.'

Ossipov shifted in the chair — the young man saw the head jerk, the whole body move, as he came out of the chair. Shorter by five inches or more, his head came into view at the edge of eyesight as the young man strained to stare into the neutral mirror.

'Attention? Attract attention? What the hell does that mean?'

The young man swallowed, then said, 'It means — Kutuzov considers that the exercises should be suspended while the SID man is here.'