Snow Falcon

leaped out until they were great lunar bounds, then one foot on the step, then the other.

He was clinging to the side of the Trans-Siberian Express, like someone in a film, and he wanted to laugh because he was certain that somewhere down there on the track his child-self had watched it all, laughing with glee, and clapping hands and wanting to imitate the man he had become.

He stepped up on to the narrow observation platform. It was only then that he understood that a steam engine would no longer be used on the Trans-Siberian, and that the last carriage would not be the guard's van, but an observation coach. He wasn't on the Trans-Siberian at all. He laughed, loudly and almost hysterically. He had saved his life only because of a fantasy. It wasn't real. This was just a local train. Even the timetable he had scrupulously dredged out of the past was out of date, and no longer applied. Which was why the train had been late. It was the wrong train.

He sobered, realising how near to some kind of frozen death he must have been during the last hour.

He gripped the handle of the door, almost wrenching the Makarov free of the shoulder holster. He had abandoned the AK-47 in his rush for the train. Which train? He opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him with a bang.

The guard was a little man, perhaps nearly sixty, with grey hair plastered across a bald dome. He was sitting with his uniform jacket unbuttoned, the tiny room fuggy and heady with the heating. A mug of tea was raised to his lips. When he saw Vorontsyev, and the gun, his eyes widened helplessly, and the mug quivered in his grip. Some of the dark tea slopped on to the grimy wooden table.

'Where is this train going?' Vorontsyev asked. It seemed the most important question at that moment, to satisfy the strange sense of disappointment he felt, as if awakening reluctantly from a pleasant dream. He shook his head as if to clear it.

The guard's mouth moved for a time without sound, then: 'Nightsleeper to Nakhodka.'

'Vladivostok?' He moved threateningly closer, the gun levelled at the little man's face. 'Does it go to Vladivostok?'

Somehow, it had to go there. The little man nodded, carefully putting down the mug as if aware that he might drop it. Vorontsyev sighed, and almost slumped against the wall in his relief. He felt the train speeding up, having reached the top of the incline. 'When?' he asked, more gently; tiredly. 'When do we arrive?'

'Four in the morning.' The little man could cope with that kind of enquiry.

'Good.' Vorontsyev sat down in a hard chair, on the other side of the unvarnished wooden table from the guard. He reached into his pocket, and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he passed it to the guard. Vorontsyev could already feel the skin on his face pricking with returning feeling, and the numb feet hurting as if thrust into a fire.

The guard looked up from his inspection of the ID card. For him, all was satisfactorily explained. A KGB officer had boarded his train. It was not permitted to ask why, or to question the peculiar method of boarding. Or the army uniform. His face was smoothed to indicate attentiveness, and efficiency. He said, 'What can I do, Major?'

'Is there a KGB man on the train?'

'Yes, Major. One of the stewards. Levin. Shall I fetch him?'

'In a moment.' His feet and hands were burning now. He put down the gun. 'Has this train been searched in Khabarovsk?' he asked.

'Yes, Major. From end to end. It is why we are late.'

Vorontsyev did not bother to observe the additional luck that had come to him. He said, 'Who carried out the search?'

The little man shrugged, as if indicating Vorontsyev, then when he saw him shake his head, he said, 'Then they must have been army, Major. There were some in uniform.'

'They were — looking for me,' Vorontsyev said. 'Are there any on the train — any late passengers?'

The guard looked puzzled, and frightened. He glanced at the ID card in the wallet, then swallowed. He said, 'There were a few — all men.'

'Very well. You will do as I say. You know enough to know what SID is?' The guard nodded. 'Then I need say no more to you, comrade. The people who searched the train are — traitors. Naturally.' He watched the guard glancing over his dishevelled clothes, then at the ID card again. Then the little man nodded.

'You would like some tea, Major?'

'Yes. Then fetch this Levin. I have orders for him.'

His eyes felt heavy. The man bustled to pour tea, cleaning a mug with his woollen slipover, out of politeness, deference. Then he sugared it well, and placed it before Vorontsyev. Vorontsyev nodded his thanks.

When the little man was at the door, to run his errand, he said, 'When does the Trans-Siberian cover this stretch of track?'

The guard appeared surprised. He said: 'Two days' time, Major.'

Behind him, as he closed the door, Vorontsyev was laughing helplessly.

' A postal van, drab and windowless, met the train at Vladivostok, usurping the normal mail-collection. It drove I on to the platform, and its open doors masked Vorontsyev's! passage into its rear compartment from the guard's van. Inside was the Resident, Svobodny, and two other armed KGB men — one of them seated next to the driver — and a doctor. Even as I the van drove furiously out of the station, the doctor began to attend to Vorontsyev's frostbitten fingers and toes.

Vorontsyev felt stretched, worn — he had had a couple of hours of uneasy sleep on the train which had not refreshed him;

he was unable to consider the fate of his fingers and toes. It didn't seem to matter, especially when the Resident, without expression on his flat, Mongol features, said, 'What the hell is going on, Major Vorontsyev? I have to pick you up from the rear of a train, just after getting a Blue Call from Moscow Centre!'

'You what?' Vorontsyev was on the point of asking about the secure channel to Moscow, and Aeroflot flights. Now, with a sick wrench that might have been hunger, he sensed that his questions no longer mattered.

'Yes — Blue Call. That's stand by to destroy all records, and make your own way out. It's never been used inside the Soviet Union before, has it?' Svobodny was frightened, and bemused. He had come to collect Vorontsyev personally in order to fine answers, allay fears. But Vorontsyev's face indicated ignorance? and shock.

'I know what it means,' Vorontsyev murmured. Then he asked, very slowly, 'When was the message timed?'

Priority messages from Moscow Centre were always timed according to a code. The almost mythical Blue Call, used in normal circumstances to warn cells, units, or bases outside the Soviet Union, would be timed so that the recipient would understand the deadline of the call — the hour of maximum danger.

'06:00, on the 24th — tomorrow.'

Vorontsyev slumped in his seat, so evidently that the doctor looked up from his feet, reached for his pulse. Vorontsyev brushed his hand aside.

'I'm too late — too bloody late!'

'What's the matter?' Svobodny was anxious, but almost indifferent since realising that the SID Major could provide no answers to his own fears. 'We might all be too bloody late. Major!'

'I can't get to Moscow in time — I know what they intend doing!'

'Who?

'The bloody army — they're going to invade Finland and Norway — I know it, and it's too bloody late to tell anyone!'

'What the hell are you talking about, Major?'

'Wait — what time is it in Moscow, now?'

Svobodny looked at his watch for an interminable time: Vorontsyev could almost see the wheels and cogs in the gold case moving, and imagine them moving in Svobodny's head. It didn't seem to matter to the man, or was too difficult for him.

'Four in the afternoon — yesterday.'