Snow Falcon

another. All of them with the same indifference to speculation. It irritated him that the duty-teams should have been so unused to search operations that they had covered the same ground three times in a space of hours. By that time, anyway, several other items in the reports had irritated him, then began to disappoint him, then turn his mood slowly to dissatisfaction.

Meal times were slack times, agreed. Sleep or rest periods were undisturbed. Patrols seemed efficiently organised — he picked up a series of duty-change items, and saw Anders's bold hand scoring through names — on three different sheets — because he had forgotten the names, or had been wrongly informed who was going on or coming off duty. And the individual reports — he reached further across the desk for a handful of them, the light from the standard lamp catching the shiny baldness of the top of his head — these were sloppy in the extreme. He began to read one aloud in a stage-Cockney accent, to ridicule it.

'Ah took owver from this geezer a' ayt-uh-clock. Tall blowke, pahka on. Don' know 'is nayme.' He snorted, then added: 'What use is this sort of thing? None whatsoever!'

Once he began to look — there was some sense of anti-Americanism in the exercise — he saw signs of it everywhere. Then he had the justice to admit that the substitute duty-team, drafted in from half a dozen countries and belonging to two or three different security services, had been his idea. He mentally apologised to Buckholz, leaned back in his chair because he had suddenly lost interest in mockery which had turned to self-mockery, rubbed his eyes so that he pushed his half-glasses up on to his forehead, and stared at the ceiling.

His mouth opened like that of a fish, as if he could not catch his breath. Immediately, he sat upright, fiddling his hands across the sheafs of papers as if playing a piano or uncertain of what he wanted. Then he pressed both palms down Sat and hard on the paper, as if a wind might disturb them. It was in there — it was in there!

He looked at his watch — almost three. Three? Three in the morning, and the date was the twenty-fourth.

He picked up the telephone, dialling Anders's extension. The voice, when it came, was drowsy but unruffled.

'Yeah?'

'Aubrey here.'

'Sir — anything wrong?'

'I'm not sure. I've just been reading over your collated reports and roster stuff here — '

'Yeah?' Now the voice was that of a civil servant and anticipating some ministerial displeasure.

'No, not a rocket for you, dear boy — just a thing that struck me, looking at the thing overall, as it were.'

'Something wrong?'

'Possibly. Tell me one thing — how many of the names can you recollect, just off-hand?'

Silence, then: 'Maybe seventeen, eighteen — why?'

'I can't recall all SIS personnel here, either. To me, they were names Shelley supplied from London, or Philipson here, or other Station Heads. All we worried about was getting sufficient bodies here. Our little friend, 'Captain Ozeroff-Houdini' — he relied on a similar situation, didn't he?'

'He had papers, and records must have been altered — '

'Yes, dear boy — but, they didn't know his face, did they? As long as they expected the face that turned up, no one there would recognise him as someone else, would they? Now, if you take that a stage further — ?'

Anders digested the idea in a moment.

'I'd better wake Mr Buckholz!'

'I think you'd better wake everybody — and we'll do a spot-check of everyone who is inside Lahtlinna at the moment — then those outside can come in and be recognised!'

Galakhov looked at his watch — three-o-two. He was standing in the darkened kitchen of the castle, the moonlight slicing through tall narrow windows. He had stayed long enough to make himself a cup of coffee, even turning on the lights while he did so. But, assailed by a sense of approaching crisis, he had switched them off as soon as the mug was in his hands, the coffee on his lips. He had been on patrol round the castle grounds, only occasionally meeting other duty personnel, exchanging a word or two with them, they leaving amused by something he said, he secretly revelling in the ease with which he was able to remain at Lahtilinna while the hunt for him went on.

He finished the last of the coffee, put the mug in one of the huge enamel sinks. He paused for a moment, a shaft of moonlight weirdly illuminating his narrow young face, as he visualised the sketch-plan of the route to Khamovkhin's room. Softly, softly, he told himself, a smile on his lips. In and out, and then back on patrol, to slip off when he was alone in the grounds. So simple.

He let himself out of the kitchens, and took the stairs to the main hall. From the furthest point of the corridor, he could see that there were lights on in the hall — off-duty men at the billiard table? Hardly likely they were watching Finnish TV — especially at that time? Cautiously, he approached the archway into the hall.

There were perhaps a dozen men already there, and he could see others coming along the galleries above, or down the staircase. Most of them were in dressing-gowns, some with coats over the pyjamas all of them were wearing. He saw Aubrey, in shirt-sleeves, and Buckholz in dressing-gown and pyjamas, fur boots on his feet. Anders was dressed, and looking extremely wide-awake and efficient. He listened to his opening remarks and then, as if by reflex, he visualised again the sketch-plan of Lahtilinna. Anders's words about a complete head-count, and the men staying where they were until everyone was accounted for, went a long way away because he had understood their intention at once. What he wanted was an alternative route to Khamovkhin's bedroom.

Anders's voice faded behind him as he returned down the corridor, fur-lined boots silent on the stone floor. At the end of the corridor was a flight of stairs — servants' route to the master bedrooms on the floor above. He listened — a distant, muffled burst of laughter cut short in the hall, but nothing closer than that. Galakhov felt the urgency press him, and he ascended the stairs as quickly as he dared.

He paused on the landing, feeling time running ahead of him. He had to move swiftly now — the job was nothing in itself, occupying no more than a minute. He looked up the next flight of stairs from the landing. Shadow, but lights from a corridor beyond and to the left.

He was almost at the top of the stairs when the sleepy man with disarranged hair and silent slippers bumped into him — and recoiled at the still-cold touch of his parka and the barrel of the rifle. A Finnish copy of the Kalashnikov, issued by Anders.

'Sorry,' he murmured.

'What the hell's going on?' the other man muttered, rubbing his arm where he had bumped the gun, yawning. Galakhov could have driven the rifle butt into his face — but he would only waste precious moments.

'Some sort of identity check, I think'

'What? Jesus — what a waste of good sleeping time!'

He tossed his head, rubbed his hair more into place, and began to descend the stairs. Then he paused, and looked up quizzically, taking in Galakhov's outdoor clothing and the gun. And perhaps the face he had not seen before. Galakhov cursed that he had not killed the man — now, he could not reach him, and dare not fire a shot. Then the man seemed satisfied, nodded, and went on down the stairs.

Galakhov ran along the corridor, his footsteps thumping on the strip of carpet. Up one more short flight, stopping just before the turn into another corridor, well-lit, and a man on guard at the door of Khamovkhin's room. The man hi the dressing-gown, going now perhaps into the ball. If Anders or one of the others was still speaking, he might wait before he mentioned the man in outdoor clothing, armed, too, that he had passed on the stairs. But he might have thought about it He looked once. The guard was sitting on a chair, alert but comfortable. Then he took the last step, two strides to the middle of the corridor — fifteen yards. He fired twice, and the guard, only then looking at the intruder, hand hardly moved at all where the gun rested on his lap, was flung off the chair and slid across the corridor, a piece of carpet rucking up beneath him, a vase tumbling with a hideous noise from a delicate table whose legs were snapped by the impact of the body.

Fifteen yards — his hearing was coming back now as he ran to Khamovkhin's door. He fired another two shots at the lock, then kicked in the door. The bedroom was dark, but Khamovkhin had left one lamp on in the sitting-room. Galakhov saw his quarry, impotent and foolish in striped pyjamas in the bedroom doorway, and pointed the rifle at the middle of the figure. Khamovkhin was frozen with terror.

And Galakhov cursed. Shots, shots. The guard had been despatched noisily, now he was going to kill