Snow Falcon

licked a hundred times before the short account was complete. Perhaps the dirty fingers that had held the rough paper — it was writing-paper, not packing-paper or toilet paper, so God knew where it had been obtained. Those hands had pressed the paper down on some wooden table, gripped the pencil stub stiffly because the mittens didn't really keep out the cold. The letter is simply old, he tried to tell himself forensically.

Then Gorochenko was speaking, and he listened, even while he turned the letter in his hands. He heard every word, even though he did not want to listen.

'Your father was a hero in the war against the Fascists. He was — arrested by the NKVD twelve miles from Berlin, when he was part of Zhukov's army group. It was for letters he had written home to your mother, describing the conditions at the front, and expressing sympathy for the refugees he saw every hour of every day. And criticising the way the war had been run from Moscow.'

Vorontsyev suddenly glanced up from the letter. His eyes were wide, but he could say nothing. 'He was tried, and sentenced to hard labour. He went into the camps — one near Moscow, at first. Later, he was transferred to Siberia, to the Kolyma region in the north-east. When he was arrested, your mother was pregnant, carrying you. She bore you, weaned you, then killed herself because she knew she would never see your father again. She knew by then that he would not take even his freedom from them. I was to be your guardian, your adoptive father.'

There was no question of denial, even though the hot rejections rushed to his throat. He knew Gorochenko had spoken the truth. He was dumb, while his mind whirled crazily out of its accustomed orbit. He felt, with a sense of literal truth, that he was going mad.

'It is not that she did not care for you,' Gorochenko said softly, 'but his arrest and imprisonment destroyed her. She lived for him. He, once he knew that she was dead, became ever more reckless with his life. He smuggled out accounts of their treatment — the filth, the cold, the starvation diet, the beatings, everything. Each time they caught him, he was punished. And his sentence was lengthened. And then he died in 1952, the year before the Beast himself — still righting them.' He looked at Vorontsyev, saw the dull eyes and sensed the mind retreating behind their opaque surfaces. He bellowed, 'Don't you understand? Your father wasn't killed in the war — he was alive until you were eight years of age — a zek, one of the inhabitants of the Gulag archipelago! Stalin had him imprisoned just for what he thought and felt and said!' There was a spittle of foam on his lower lip. He grabbed Vorontsyev's hands across the table, clutching them as if to squeeze truth through the pores of the younger man's skin. 'I loved your father — loved him!'

'And they killed him — the NKVD, the MVD, the KGB. They're all the same — filth! Scum! Pigs who wallow hi the dirt they make of life! Can't you see that? I tried to save you from them by hiding you inside the organisation!' He paused, wringing Vorontsyev's hands, his face distorted with pain. Yet Vorontsyev still failed to respond. Gorochenko wanted nothing but to see him weep for the death of his father; it was a moment without calculation. He said, 'Believe me. It happened to millions — and it's still happening, I want revenge for your father, for Kyril Mihailovich Vorontsyev, and for all the others who are dead or dying. That is what I want.'

Vorontsyev looked at him, and what Gorochenko saw made him afraid. There was something like hatred in his eyes for a moment, then the returning blankness. Gorochenko had the sense that he had failed in some inexplicable way. He had not persuaded, perhaps not even immobilised Vorontsyev. He reached out and pulled the telephone towards him, watching Vorontsyev's gun all the time.

'No,' Vorontsyev said, looking up at him.

Gorochenko lifted the receiver, and began to dial the number. He was too early, but Valenkov would act. He had to act, just as Gorochenko had to telephone, now in the next few minutes, before Vorontsyev He dialled the third digit of Valenkov's number.

'No,' Vorontsyev said again.

'It's crazy! One dumb Finnish cop with a rifle — you got the Soviet First Secretary out there, and the Deputy Director of the CIA! You can't mean to go through with it!'

'Be quiet, Anders!' Aubrey turned his back on the American, and spoke into the transmitter. 'Your man has a dear field of fire, Philipson?'

'Sir. We're just back in the trees, on a slight rise. Hell see the car about a hundred yards before it draws level with him, then another hundred and fifty after that. It's the best we could do.'

'Early warning?'

'A spotter with an R/T, quarter of a mile down the road.'

'Where are the others?'

Thirty — forty, fifty yards beyond me.'

'Move two of them closer.'

'Sir.' Philipson's voice could be heard faintly as he spoke into a handset. Otherwise, Aubrey was aware only of Anders's eyes staring into his back. Aubrey concentrated on the face of the transmitter, because there was nothing else to be done. He was shuffling pieces on the board, but he knew as well as Anders his practical impotence. He was reiving on one policeman whose name he did not know, on a moonlit road thirty miles away from him.

There was no sense of satisfaction — something he had felt on past occasions when he moved the wheels of the political world a fraction by his own hand. Nothing except the dreadful possibilities of what he was attempting.

Anders loomed behind him like the keeper of his conscience, or an arresting officer.

'In position, sir. We're ready.' Philispon did not sound confident, not at all.

'How much time do we — ?'

'Sir, he's in sight. Spotter has him picked up now.'

Tell me everything, Philipson — you have no orders to give. Tell me.'

'Sir. Passing spotter — now, travelling at approximately fifty mph — spotter has him on the bend — now.' Philipson's voice was mounting like mercury in a thermometer. The end-play was going critical. 'We have him in sight, sir — here he comes — '

Aubrey glanced up at Anders, who had moved closer to the transmitter, as if threatening it. Aubrey could see the clenched white hand at the man's side as he turned back to the micro phone. But he could say nothing. Spectator — radio commentary, as if he might be listening to a horse race.

'Drawing level — now!' Aubrey strained — he heard the noise of Anders's other hand rub his stubbly jaw, tried to hear the shots — two, three, four tinny, unsubstantial clicks — static or gunfire?

'What's happening, dammit?' His voice was squeaky.

'The — car's stopped. Two shots through the engine-block, no fire — car swung off the road — '

'The driver?' Anders bellowed.

'The passengers — where are your policemen, Philipson?'

'Two more shots, sir, into the car — '

'Jesus living, get down there, you dumb bastard!' Anders roared, flipping the switch to transmit. Aubrey took the microphone from his white hand.

'Find out what has happened, and report back, Philipson.'

He flicked the switch, and there was nothing but static. And the static went on, and on, until it was like white noise being used to empty their minds, reduce their will. Aubrey felt himself crumbling inside, so that he was spent and empty and wanted to sleep. The static went on and on.

'You bastard — oh, Kenneth, you're a bastard!'

It was Buckholz.

'Khamovkhin?' Aubrey snapped, as if coming out of deep hypnosis. Then he flipped the switch, remembering. 'Khamovkhin?'

'Alive — you lucky son of a bitch! Shaking like a leaf, but alive.'

'Galakhov?'

'Got his from the cops who rushed the car. Banged his head on the head-rest behind me, and Khamovkhin wrestled with the gun until someone blew his head off. Khamovkhin will bill you for a new coat and a bath. Galakhov's brains are all over him.'

Aubrey shuddered, as was intended.