Snow Falcon

other huts in the HQ compound of Wire Patrol Station 78, increased. Movement between huts: men emerging into the failing light tugging on jackets — a fur-lined flying-jacket, he would have guessed in one case — the tread of heavy boots audible, even through the double-glazing.

He looked once at the Senior Sergenat, a heavy man with a square, passionless face, probably looking a dozen years older than he was — grizzled hair stiff on his head, creased low forehead. The man was glancing over Maxim's shoulder. As his gaze caught Ilya's, he looked promptly back at Maxim.

'Thank you, Sergeant, that will be all,' he said on impulse. He saw Maxim's shoulders flex, then relax. He would play along.

'You've been very helpful,' Maxim said.

The Sergeant seemed suspicious, then nodded and stood up. The chair scraped on the wooden floor.

When he was gone, Ilya said, 'Come over to the window — tell me what you see.'

Maxim, amused rather than intrigued, joined him. They were silent for a few moments, then Maxim said in a curious voice:

'The wire which divides Comrade Lenin from Coca-Cola — was that what you wanted?'

'No, idiot. Closer than that.' Ilya, too, looked across the six or seven hundred metres of treeless, levelled ground that separated them from the wire and the two visible watch-towers that overlooked it.

'Oh. Mm.. ' He rubbed his chin in mock-thoughtfulness. 'Ah — a Border Guard running, is that it?'

'Yes!'

'Unusual, I agree. Shall we put him on a charge? Perhaps he is a follower of Trotsky?'

'Why is he running?' 'Caught short?'

'Lot of people about?'

'Some.'

'More than earlier? See that man in the flying-jacket? That's the second I've seen in a couple of minutes.'

'Oh, no!' Maxim exclaimed in an assumed falsetto. 'It's happening! Finland is invading us!'

'Seriously…'

They both heard the sound of rotors quickening, and across the snow from somewhere out of sight a redness was splashed from helicopter lights.

'Where are they off to?' Maxim asked.

'I wonder. Let's ask.'

He walked swiftly to the door, taking his fur-lined coat from a peg beside it, jamming on the fur hat as he went through the door. The sudden change from the fugginess of the room struck both men — the crisp air after the fumes of the stove.

They walked out into the middle of the open space before their hut. Suddenly, Maxim began to trot, a mere half-dozen steps before he cannoned into a soldier, who lost his balance and fell over. Maxim pulled him to his feet, dusted him down, and snapped:

'What the devil's the rush, soldier?'

'Trouble across the wire, man! All hell's broken loose by the sound of it!' Then he gagged, saw the civilian topcoats, the two strange faces, and backed away. Maxim moved after him, but felt Ilya holding his arm. The soldier was fiddling with the strap of his rifle.

Then all three of them looked up involuntarily as a helicopter, red lights at tail and belly, lifted over the huts, the nearest trees parting like dark waves from the downdraught. Then the soldier, sensing his release, trotted off- looking back over his shoulder from time to time until he was out of sight behind a barrack block.

The helicopter shifted sideways in the air, gained a little more height, and streamed away from them, towards and across the border wire.

'What in hell's name — ?' Maxim breathed, watching it.

'Come on!' Ilya snapped. 'This is it!' He turned Maxim away from the sight of the diminishing helicopter, a black spot winking red.

'What the hell is?' he asked, in his puzzlement returning to the humour they had shared in the hut.

'The whole bloody shooting-match!' He was looking about him, realising that his voice was raised unnaturally. 'Finland Station!' It came out as a harsh whisper, just audible above the retreating drone of the helicopter.

The HQ seemed to settle, briefly, then another high-pitched whine of rotors, and, away to their right, where their own helicopter had landed in a clearing, the winking of lights.

'Finland Station?' 'Yes, you silly bugger!' Ilya was shaking his arm as he gripped them. 'That chopper is over the border, in Finland. Why? Ask yourself why! It has to be the answer to the puzzle!'

'Oh my — !' Maxim's face went blank, then came back to the present. 'What do we do?'

'Where the hell is our pilot?'

'Canteen?'

'On his back reading a naughty book! Where the hell is the rest room — where are their quarters?'

The two young men looked around wildly, feeling the puzzle that the HQ presented.

'He went off that way,' Maxim said, pointing to their left.

'He did. A hut down there.'

They began to run, feet slipping minutely with every stride on the packed snow. They seemed to be the only people now running in the whole of the camp.

'What about that bloody soldier?' Maxim panted.

'If he's as thick as the usual, he'll spend an hour realising he's given the game away!'

They went on running. Heads turned to look at them, but with the incuriosity of routine. They were part of the retreating wave of activity.

'But if he's not-?'

'Then they know that we know — and up yours!'

'What the hell is over there?'

'Who knows? Hell! Our people?' Ilya skidded to a halt, mounted the two steps up to the porch, and wrenched the door open. Maxim crowded into the doorway with him, and Ilya felt the prod of his Makarov automatic in his back.

'Careful!' he could not resist saying. 'My virginity.'

Their pilot, the young, assured man who had been so unguarded, it had appeared, during the flight from Murmansk, was lying on his bunk at the far end of the small barrack. He was alone. The room was warm, and a record player beside his bunk was tinnily producing Mozart. He lifted his head from the pillow and his supporting arm, smiled — then saw the two drawn guns.

'On your feet!' Ilya barked, then: 'You do and I'll blow your hand off! You won't fly again.'

The pilot stopped reaching for the automatic in his holster, hung on a peg above the bed with his flying- jacket. He raised his hands, and the recognitions nickered in his face as his thoughts embraced the sequence of half-observed events that had brought them there.

'Yes — we know,' Maxim said. The pilot nodded in acquiescence. 'Get up.'

'Stupid,' the pilot observed.

Ilya, the scheme forming desperately in his mind, as a sequence of ill-linked episodes, a badly-edited film, said; 'One chance! Only one — but it's there. With your assistance.'

The pilot remained seated. 'Assistance?'

'Don't drawl, and don't delay! On your feet, and get into that flying-jacket. You're going to take us up, and show us the view!' He smiled. Turning to Maxim, he added: 'Ever been to Finland, Maxim?'

'No. Always wanted to, though.'

'Great. Let's have a little holiday.' He walked over to the pilot, careful to leave Maxim a clear field of fire, and pulled the pilot to his feet. The young man, sensing, perhaps, that an extreme purpose had settled uncomfortably on the room, made little physical protest. Instead, he put on the jacket that Ilya handed down to him, picked up his cigarettes and lighter, and walked slowly to the door, his hands in his pockets.

At the door, a sheepish grin on his face, he said, 'And what do we do now?'

'We walk directly to the chopper, and we make it go up in the air, and head west, across the border,' Ilya