Snow Falcon

'And provoke the very thing we wish to avoid? The High Command is edgy — I might almost say, desperate, about this Helsinki agreement. If it is signed, there will be no going back for us. The Army will be melted down — a missile become a shotgun. That is how they see it. And America is waiting to see us go through with what we promise. We're in the cleft stick, Feodor. At least, I will be when you have left for Helsinki.'

'Then find them. Find a way of proving who is involved what exactly they plan to do, and when. Then — finish them!' 'Easy to say,' was Andropov's reply as he sipped at his whisky. 'Easy to say.'

Alex Davenhill switched off the engine of the Porsche, and Aubrey was grateful for the silence. The swishing of the rain under the tyres, the throatiness of the engine — even the speed at which Davenhill drove — had all conspired during their journey to Hereford to irritate and depress him. He resented inhabiting the sleek, expensive shell of Davenhill's car, just as he resented the cheerful flamboyance of the man's conversation and behaviour. He had decided that he felt old tonight — and determined not to be roused from his irritated contempt for his companion.

'Right, Kenneth, shall we go up and see the sinister Major Waterford?'

'I see no other reason for having travelled for two hours in this wingless jet aircraft.'

'Don't be so crabby, Kenneth dear,' Davenhill laughed, opening the door and climbing out. The noise of the rain loudened, and Aubrey felt cold. Davenhill came round the car and opened his door. Aubrey made an old man's fuss about climbing out of the low, comfortable seat, Davenhill holding his arm. 'Come along, Auntie,' he said with a grin.

Aubrey straightened himself, and turned up the collar of his dark coat. Davenhill looked at the facade of the small hotel, across the street from the car park.

'I agree,' Aubrey said, as if mind-reading. 'Not a very prepossessing place. However, Major Waterford prefers it to SAS HQ just up the road.'

'He must have a penchant for the Gothic.'

'Bring those papers from the back seat, would you, Alex?' Aubrey replied, scuttling off at a surprising speed to the shelter of the hotel porch. Davenhill took out a briefcase, locked the car, and crossed the splash of wet-lit street after Aubrey.

They climbed the stairs, Aubrey still in the lead. Alex Davenhill, unbuttoning his leather coat, smiled behind him, pleased to feel himself Aubrey's messenger-boy as an alternative to the unnatural stuffiness of most of his professional life as Foreign Office Special Adviser to the SIS.

Aubrey paused before a door that was merely a dull veneered sheet of hardboard, and knocked. Davenhill could see the tic of interest at the corner of his mouth, and composed his own features into an intelligent superiority. Aubrey had warned him not to bicker with Waterford; Davenhill eased his animosity towards the soldier into the back of his mind.

Aubrey heard a muffled voice through the door, and pushed it open. Davenhill followed him through into the cramped room with the hideous wallpaper, purple trumpeting mouths of flowers and wreathed stems on a yellow ground. The sight of it made him shudder.

Waterford was sitting in an armchair with soiled and frayed loose covers. He did not get up when they entered. Davenhill noticed that the single-bar electric fire was less efficient than the heater in his car.

'Mr Aubrey — Davenhill.' Aubrey took a chair opposite the SAS instructor. Alan Waterford was a big man, threatening the chair he sat in with his bulk. Davenhill decided once again that it was that fact that was most potent about the man — threat. A barely contained violence. His face, even now, was angry with a grimace that occupied mouth, eyes, jaw. The moustache seemed to jut at them, as if they had trespassed. Yet there was interest in the grey eyes, too. Davenhill perched himself on the edge of a rickety cabinet, the briefcase clutched, as if protectively, across his chest.

'What's the news?' He lit a cigarette, seeming indifferent to any reply.

'The Falcon is loose,' Aubrey said. Waterford nodded. 'No contact as yet.'

'Tonight's the night, then.'

'Possibly.'

Davenhill wondered why they had come. Aubrey seemed tense with doubt.

'Are you sure?' he blurted out.

'Of what?' Waterford asked, staring at a patch of damp on the ceiling. 'Bugger upstairs has just had a bath', he observed, suddenly glaring at Davenhill. 'Sure of what?'

'He'll get back,' Aubrey confessed reluctantly.

'No. What's the matter — lost your nerve?'

'Not at all. But — I must know. Things may become — more urgent than I supposed. I need definite proof, not speculation.'

'Then Folley will have to dig for it, won't he?'

Davenhill suddenly sensed the underlying mood possessing Aubrey. Almost as if he had seen the man's real age, highlighted by shadows from the standard lamp. Aubrey was old, and they had come from London because he felt at a loss — perhaps even felt he was making a complete idiot of himself. And he wanted to blame Waterford.

'I came to you and Pyott in StratAn,' Aubrey began with a bluster designed to conceal the lack of confidence Davenhill had perceived, 'to interpret infra-red photographs that ended up on my desk. You — both of you — placed a weighty interpretation upon them which caused me to act as I have done.'

Davenhill could see Waterford's rising anger, and wondered whether Aubrey was aware of it. He felt rather pityingly towards the old man, and disappointed.

'Not forgetting the gentleman you picked up on the road outside Kassel,' he said softly. Both men seemed to turn to him immediately, as if resenting his interference. 'You can't shuffle off — '

'I am not shuffling!' Aubrey snapped. 'I merely wish to confirm our suspicions in this matter. But now I will need proof of some kind — irrefutable proof. Both of you must understand that. It may be a case of the Pentagon, and therefore the White House, having to be convinced by hard evidence. There is no cause for alarm, ladies and gentlemen. Now — is there, or is there not?'

There was a silence, then Waterford said, 'There is — oh, yes, there is cause for alarm. Don't worry, Air Aubrey. Folley will find you something to wave under their noses.'

It was deep night now, and Folley was having to get up periodically, move about to ease warmth and feeling back into stiff, cold limbs and joints. He had established himself the previous dawn in the shelter of an outcrop just beyond, and overlooking, the village of Rontaluumi, half a mile from the Soviet border. Below him, one narrow road led through the village and away behind him towards Raja-Jooseppi and Ivalo.

He had watched the village for hours — eerie, he thought it, die way there was no movement, nothing down there. When night had come, no lights; in daylight, not a footprint, no sounds even of animals. He had stopped watching hours ago — now he had turned his attention to the border itself. Check that out, and make sure you're thorough, Waterford had said. And bugger all more revealing or useful than that! Normal normal normal — the Red Army's gone to bed, he thought, and almost laughed aloud because boredom made easy irreverence amusing and he wanted to hear a noise — other than those drifting from across the border.

In front of him, clear through the Star-tron night-vision glasses, he could see the watch-tower that overlooked the road. There was a fence, high and barbed but seemingly fragile; then, beyond that, the huge electrified fence that marked the Russian side of the border. Across the mere hundreds of yards separating him from the Russian tower he could hear a radio, tuned to some all-night European pop programme. Occasionally, shadows passed across the windows of the hut atop the spindly tower, and the searchlight swept across the snow in a hungry pattern on both sides of the border.

Quick look back at the village. Silent, deserted. In the morning, or before, he would have to go down there, and check it out — thoroughly. Not a bit like Goldsmith, he thought — comfortable Gothic. It was sinister — better watching the border. Where have all the reindeer gone — and the Lapps? And the chickens and the pigs and dogs?

He was bored. Now, with the USSR, once again in his night-glasses, the hard starlight gathered and magnified, he had lost the edge of danger. Nothing but the routine of border guards, the innocuousness of buried mines and the still wire. There was no watch-tower to guard the Finnish fence, only the fence itself pretending that