Snow Falcon

contact a courier and relay a message to Kutuzov. The Americans were suspicious, forewarned. But Khamovkhin knew nothing, feared everything. He would even, as duty officer, hear what was said between Andropov and the First Secretary. The American suspicions would change nothing. Wainwright was bluffing — all the High Command knew he would not go to war for Norway and Finland — it was an axiom of strategy.

He enjoyed Khamovkhin's fear as he went down the stairs to the duty-room to prepare the car and the helicopter.

'So that's it, Kenneth — Khamovkhin isn't behind anything. Right this minute, he's got about as much clout as my Aunt Fanny!'

Buckholz appeared suitably grim, but Aubrey saw the gleam in his eyes, the set of his jaw, and admired, and was amused by, the easy way in which the man had been impressed by the manner of his President's conversation with Khamovkhin.

'I accept your reasoning, and see you are pleased with the President's enactment of your scenario — ' Buckholz turned on Aubrey, grimaced, then smiled swiftly, raising his hands in an admission. 'However, I am not certain — '

'Not certain of what?'

'How effective it will be. It places us in a position of impotence not unlike that of Khamovkhin himself. We can do nothing more, except sit and wait.'

'Tomorrow, we go see Khamovkhin, for openers — '

'Charles, what good will that do? The man knows nothing! Otherwise, this Group 1917 would have disappeared from sight long ago, into Gulag or the ground or the mental home, Khamovkhin doesn't know who they are, dammit! It hasn't worked out. We can't expect him to move against the High Command, even though we helped put him on the knife-edge.'

'Don't come cold water with me, Kenneth. Right now, Khamovkhin is on board his chopper, heading hell-for- leather for his castle on the hill to talk to the Chairman of the KGB!'

Buckholz walked round his desk to confront Aubrey. The round face of an ancient, cunning child looked up into his. Buckholz shook his head, walked over to the dumb-waiter.

'It isn't that I don't want to be optimistic,' Aubrey said in a more conciliatory tone. 'It's simply a matter of looking at facts head-on, without the squint imparted by the status of representing a super-power. I can do that, having been born into the aftermath of the British Empire, on which the sun has firmly set — ' Aubrey smiled as Buckholz handed him the tumbler of whisky. 'Your health. No, it is simply that we now have to rely on the efforts of the KGB for our survival — as simple as that.'

'It won't come to war — they'll back down.'

'Khamovkhin would turn somersaults, I agree. But — the Red Army. Will they feel threatened, or simply challenged to a fight — and respond by picking up the gage?'

'It won't come to it, Kenneth.'

'In the time that may be left to us, I shall do my best to solve the mystery surrounding Captain Ozeroff — after all, he may know something useful. My surveillance of him begins with the dawn. And I have a way of placing him in our hands — do you wish to hear it?'

Buckholz nodded.

'Very well, but bring the bottle first. And I shall tell you what we shall request of Khamovkhin tomorrow.' Then, struck by a sobering realisation, he added, 'I wonder who the KGB have investigating this matter. I hope it's someone first-class — I really do!'

Vorontsyev stirred in the big bed, reached out, and found Natalia near him. She was still, apparently, asleep, and he touched her only lightly on the arm, not wishing to wake her.

As he came awake himself, there was the groundswell of urgency, and fear, in the pit of his stomach, making the bed colder, his wife distanced. He had been in Khabarovsk for thirty-six hours, and nothing. Except that they followed him everywhere, and probably laughed as he got nowhere, learned nothing.

Yet he could not move. It was just a case of getting out of bed, stepping on cold tiles in the bathroom — but, literally and metaphorically, he did not want to leave this bed.

He looked at his wife again. They had dined together early the previous evening, and drunk perhaps more than was good for them. Later, they had made love for the first time in months; it had been a natural conclusion to the evening — and perhaps he had wanted to bury his waking, wakeful mind in the temporary dream of sex. It had been as if they were on holiday together, and their behaviour imitated domestic life but with the added piquancy of a new place, a strange bed.

Thus, his reluctance to consider himself a policeman, on an investigation.

A beginning?

He refused to think about that, by an effort of will. Nevertheless, now he had recaptured the mood, there was a deep contentment in him for those few minutes after waking. He had enjoyed eating with her again, and enjoyed the clever, familiar humour they both brought, at one time, to conversation. And their first love-making, hurried and urgent though it was. He had been close to her then, for a few moments — lost in her.

When he had woken her later in the night, then perhaps that had been — more erotic, yes, but not as he would have wished. There was a small wince of shame, of impurity, that ran through his frame; it sprang, he knew, from the kind of puritanism he had inherited from his father, and had imbibed in Gorochenko's house.

In the ecstasy, he had asked her to reassure him, and she had done, telling him over and over that he was better than her other lovers, there was no one like him.

Alexei, Alexei — yes, yes.. He felt the stirrings of an erection even at the memory, and the little shame — deeper than the embarrassment at recollected intimacy.

He had wanted her to master him, riding above him, her breasts like fruit just out of reach of his mouth — yes, he had wanted that, and it had seemed real for her as well.

It was himself he disliked a little.

But she had come back to him. And now, while she was still asleep and there could be no contradiction of perfection by anything she did or said, or they did or said, he was content again. He felt his eyes pucker at the sense of her nearness, and the weight of memory pressing on tear-ducts.

He got softly out of bed, and went over to the window. He lifted aside the heavy drape; it was a clear day, windy, high-clouded. It would serve for his purpose.

He looked back at his sleeping wife, the bare arm over the coverlet, the black hair massed on the pillow, hiding the small face. Because the moment offered a complete contentment, he had abandoned it. It would be preserved in memory, ready to be returned to. If he had let it go on any longer, it might have passed ripeness. He was afraid, he admitted — as afraid of happiness as he had been of isolation, disappointment.

So, he returned to his job. He looked out of the window again.

The police had rounded up a few suspected Separatists, and he had tried to show a polite interest, but he had known those frightened little people could never have planned to take out the whole KGB Office in Khabarovsk. They amounted to little more than slogan-daubers, booers at public meetings from the safety of crowds.

Which left the Ivanov Charter Company, which rented hangar-space at Khabarovsk Airport, nine kilometres outside the town. Ivanov, or whoever was in charge of the operation, owned two old Antonov high-wing monoplanes, and a helicopter. A small MIL. Which was paid for by, and reserved for, the KGB in Khabarovsk. An economy measure — the lawman's twentieth-century horse in the Soviet Far East.

Ivanov was obviously a local entrepreneur; the charter company was not state owned, like many of the small companies and businesses in this part of the Soviet Union; it was more efficient to allow enterprising capitalists to set up, and fund and operate, such ventures. Ivanov delivered mail to outlying villages, flew missions for the doctors and hospitals, delivered groceries to state-owned outlets throughout the region. And he assisted the KGB in the matter of a helicopter.

Vorontsyev had stumbled across the information by chance. A policeman had referred to the fact that 'Old Ivanov was lucky he didn't get blown up too, and his precious helicopter.' When Vorontsyev had elicited the source of the reference, he had trembled with excitement. A non-military aircraft; the only successful means of sniffing around the Military District HQ — from the air.

'Have you got any cigarettes, Alexei?' he heard Natalia ask. She was sitting up in bed, her breasts free of the sheets, her arms stretched as he pushed the thick dark hair away from her forehead. He breasts were taut, inviting. He was almost certain it was an unconscious gesture. Something like the feelings of the previous evening, an