Snow Falcon

and an RAF Hercules which contained Royal Marines, landed in swift succession, settling their bulks into the iron- hard airstrip.

From the tower of the air station, a group of senior NATO officers watched the arrival of the first units of the Allied Mobile Force, the lynch-pin of any NATO first-stage land defence against a surprise attack.

Among the officers, and the most senior of them, was Major-Gcneral Jolfusson, Commander Allied Forces Northern Norway. As the succession of whale-like transport planes disgorged their cargoes of men and war machines, he was unable to take any satisfaction from the sight. His staff were also subdued. This was no NATO exercise — and it was happening all over the north of Norway that night — or would happen the following morning and afternoon. Especially at Kirkenes, where the main thrust of the Soviet attack would come. Jolfusson was due at Kirkenes, then Tromso, before midday.

Major-General Jolfusson had never expected to see the day. Never. The unthinkable was happening. On both sides of the border of his country, the world was massing to begin the next war. And it was all but too late to avoid the first clash. His orders stated oh-six hundred, tomorrow, the twenty-fourth. That was when the invasion would begin.

It was too late. He looked at his watch. Already, it was four o'clock in the morning of the twenty-third.

PART FOUR KUTUZOV 06:00 on the 23rd to 06:00 on the 24th

'I do not welcome venerable gentlemen… because in their wake, in their footsteps, springing up like sharp little teeth, I are these dark young men of random destiny and private passions — destinies and passions that can be shaped and directed to violent ends.'

— Paul Scot: A Division of the Spoils

Fifteen: The Twain Meet

Admiral Dolohov walked as quickly as caution would permit up the steps of the Murmansk Central Hospital. All the time, he watched his feet on the icy steps. And he kept his head bent because he was worried, and disturbed, and feeling small and vulnerable because of his fears for his wife, and did not wish anyone to see the look on his face.

He glanced up only once, as he reached the top of the steps. The glass doors of the main public entrance were directly ahead of him — and he could see a white-uniformed nurse crossing the well-lit reception lobby. A man bumped into him, and he lifted his head again, almost taking his hands from his coat pockets to right his balance. He did not catch even a glimpse of the man's face — noticed only the soft exhalation of the gas from whatever cylinder the Department 'V' operative carried, before his breath seemed snatched away as if by a wind, so that he gagged in surprise, then in fear, then terror as his breath would not come.

The operative was too far away by the time he staggered for him to fall against him, and he began to lean drunkenly backwards — glimpsed the lit corridor beyond the reception lobby, the imposing facade of the hospital which he had always thought more like a museum, then the starlit sky, then a street light — which had been behind him? — then he tumbled down the icy steps, his heels ringing in a distressed, irregular pattern.

The woman at whose feet he rolled to a halt, on the pavement at the bottom of the short flight of steps, dropped her little plain paper bag of fruit and clutched the collar of her fur coat round her throat before she began to scream.

Army General Sadunov, commanding Attack Force One at temporary headquarters near Pecenga, almost on the border with Norway, and less than fifty kilometres from Kirkenes, complained of indigestion almost as soon as his senior staff officers, with whom he had dined, began passing round the good Ukrainian vodka. Reluctant to miss the bout of drinking — at least so much of it as was concomitant with respect from his officers — he decided that a short walk outside would cure his complaint. He bantered and laughed with his staff while he was helped into his grey winter great-coat, and while he donned. his fur hat.

Outside, the night was fine, starlit and cold. Immediately, and for a few moments, he felt better, attending to the chill of the air in his lungs, to the noises of his army — hum of generators, wind-up of helicopter engines, dicks of tested artillery like the snapping of iron twigs.

He was thinking that perhaps he should not have eaten the bliny after the beef Stroganov, certainly not after the krasnayaikra, when the pain surged through him, starting in the pit of his stomach and reaching into his chest like a burning hand, spreading its fingers as it reached upwards. He had time to half-turn, as if to call back into the wooden building on the steps of which he stood, before he tumbled outwards, falling on his side in the snow. He rolled on his face for a moment, as if trying to put out the raging fire in his stomach by rubbing it in the snow, then lay still.

They were lined up to see him board the helicopter. General, Pnin, commanding Finland Station Six, already in position south-east of Ivalo, across the border with Finland, was pleased and gratified by the sight. He shook hands with each of his headquarters staff, who would join him only after Ivalo was taken and secured, and they snapped into salutes one by one — like a row of clockwork soldiers, he thought, then dismissed the unkindness. Good men.

He ducked under the rotors when the last man had been saluted, and climbed into the MIL helicopter. His aide saluted, and proceeded to strap him into his rear seat in the passenger-compartment of the command helicopter. Then Pnin nodded that he was secure, and comfortable, and the aide spoke into the microphone.

Immediately, the beat of the rotors increased, and Pnin, twisting his head to look out of one of the ports, saw his staff retreating to a distance where the downdraught would be less distressing. He raised his hand once more in salute. The noise of the rotors reached a whine, and there was that little fearful moment as the whole helicopter wobbled as it first left the ground. Then it rose slowly, its lights — he could see them reflected through the port — splashing redly on the snow of the take-off pad. He could see the upturned faces of his staff, caught by the light, hands holding on to fur hats Then the seat seemed to lift quicker than the rise of the whole machine, but he could not be sure because the scene in the MIL turned from shadow into orange into whiteness and he could see nothing. He could feel, just for an instant. He was being pulled apart, and scalded and deafened.

The staff officers below saw the MIL stagger, then rip like a tin can, belching flame, spit off bits of molten metal and chunks of rotor blade and fuselage — before they began running to escape the debris as it sagged then drove down towards them.

Marshal Praporovich had not heeded his own warning, nor that of Kutuzov. He was faintly amused, rather than disturbed, by the knowledge. And tickled at the idea that, while he had made love to the young lady whose apartment he had visited, two of his officers had stood guard outside the door — another two had been posted outside the entrances to the apartment block.

A risible occasion — but he could not help but be smug about his performance. Not that he had been impotent — no, never that. But — disinterested, certainly unenthusiastic. And he could not explain why the study of the map-table, the digestion of the innumerable movement and disposition reports, the smiles and confidence of his staff-officers — why those things had concentrated themselves in a genital itch which blossomed into lewd images, a vulgarity of mental language that had surprised him, gratified him.

And the girl's call — that had come at just the apposite moment. He had not thought it strange, only convenient — even mystically appropriate. And, laughing, he had collected his little team of bodyguards, and as if they had all been Suvorov cadets they had passed round a flask of vodka in the staff car, and there had even been jokes and vulgarities about occasion and performance and community of indulgence — which he had allowed, so satisfied had been his mood.