Firefox

look of the KGB, or the GRU, intimately, through long and bitter experience. Gant surrendered his own ego, accepted the expertise he was being offered. 'Now — sit down. You stand rather well, eh, Ilya?'

Gant sat down, first wiping the seat of the vacant armchair, and inspecting his fingertips for dust. Then he sat in the chair, completely relaxed, one booted leg crossed over the other. Without looking at them, he drew a silver cigarette case from his pocket, and a rolled-gold lighter — items he could only have purchased in the KGB luxury shop across the square from the Centre itself in Dzerzhinsky Street — extracted an American cigarette, lit it, exhaled noisily, picked tobacco from the tip of his tongue, and then turned his head and looked stonily towards Kreshin in the armchair. The young man clapped loudly.

'It is amazing,' Baranovich observed. 'How melodramatic it all was — and how correct.' His face clouded, as if he were assailed at that moment by a bad memory, then he smiled, his eyes clearing, and added: 'That was very good — you have the gift, Mr. Gant. You can be, without trying, someone else…'

Gant nodded his head politely, frostily.

'Tell me about the observations you made on your lovers' walk earlier,' he said to Kreshin, his eyes hard. It was not a request, but an order. Gant had found that he could channel the useless, wasted adrenalin pumping in his system into his characterisation of Chekhov, whose fictitious papers he had in his pocket, complete with the all- important yellow GRU ID card, transit papers, and the rest. His fake dog-tags were on a thin chain around his neck. He had not asked how the forgery, the disguise, had been accomplished. Baranovich was an expert, driven by hate, and by ego. The results were good.

Kreshin smiled, and said: 'The guard on that gate has been reinforced — there are troops of the usual KGB guard, but more of them. The Security Support Group has not been used there — probably because Tsernik feels insulted that the GRU have been called in… it's always happening.'

'What about the perimeter fence?'

'The watch-towers are full to overflowing — and there are dog patrols inside the fence, every ten minutes or so. It's a double fence, by the way, and the dogs will be loose by the time you arrive — no one in their right mind would try cutting the wire. The watch-towers are a hundred yards apart — you'll have to pass at least four of them.'

'You must look as if you are inspecting the wire itself — don't forget to challenge the guards in the towers, wake them up,' Baranovich interrupted. 'Go on, Ilya.'

'There is a lot of light at the gate itself — you will be seen from some distance as you approach. The outer gate is merely a barrier with its accompanying guardpost. You will be required to show your papers here. The guards will be curious, because they will not recognise you, but the GRU tabs on your uniform will allay any suspicions they might have. When you are allowed to pass inside the outer barrier, you will encounter a mesh-gate, which will be locked. The guard will be inside this gate, and they will require you to show your papers again before they will open up.'

'They will open up?' Gant asked softly.

'There is no need to worry — we have checked the current papers and identification of GRU officers of the Special Groups, and yours are in order,' Baranovich explained. Gant merely nodded. Baranovich took up the narrative, Kreshin returning to an idle, thoughtful patting of Natalia's hand as it lay on his shoulder. 'Once inside, you should make as directly as possible across the airfield. You may ignore any helicopter activity overhead — the uniform will be enough to satisfy them. When you arrive at the security guard outside the administrative building which, as I mentioned earlier, is physically linked to the hangar containing the Firefox, you will need to show your papers but, since you will be walking into the KGB headquarters at Bilyarsk, no one is likely to assume that you do not, in fact, belong there!' Baranovich smiled. 'Once inside, make for the pilots' rest-room on the floor above. It will not be occupied at that time.'

'Where is the pilot — Voskov?' Gant asked sharply.

'At this moment?' Kreshin asked, exaggeratedly looking at his watch. 'He will be in bed.'

'He has quarters in a special compound — where the KGB and other reliable members of the team here are housed.' Baranovich's contempt showed for a moment, as if he had lifted a veil and shown a corner of his soul.

'It is where they keep those who work on the anti-radar, which is why we have picked up nothing in scientists' gossip during the last months.'

'But, he will come to the rest-room?' Gant persisted.

'Yes. He will change there, and perhaps have a meal — though Voskov is not a good eater before one of these flights… Are you, Mr. Gant?' Baranovich's eyes twinkled.

'No, but I can usually sleep,' Gant replied.

'Yes, of course. We will be leaving at two-thirty. You will have perhaps only a couple of hours.'

'Never mind,' Gant said, stifling a yawn and forcing himself into wakefulness. 'I want to go over it all again.'

'The security?'

'No. The airplane. The weapons-system, the Rearward Defence Pod. Tell me again — everything.'

Gant felt himself as two layers of response, suddenly. At the surface of his mind was the growing excitement, now that he had put aside his masquerade as a GRU officer, the tension connected with the Firefox, burning hot as a lust in him; he had a curious reluctance to stay awake, an unformed desire to be in darkness, with an empty mind. It was the first time he had ever wished back the void of the Veterans' Hospital, since the day he had left it. It was a feeling he avoided examining.

* * *

Dmitri Priabin and Alexei Tortyev knew each other — not as close friends, but as graduates of the KGB training school. They had been contemporaries, and as junior officers had worked within the same department. This was before Priabin, who was regarded as the more promising, was promoted as aide to Kontarsky in department 'M' s and Tortyev, whose brilliant mind was officially mistrusted by such a degree which would ensure his rotting at his present rank until he retired, had moved into the KGB section of the Moscow Police, into the Political Security Service.

It was not unnatural, then, that having met in the cold, metallic room which housed the programmers for the central records computer, below ground level in Dzerzhinsky Street, and having enquired after each other's recent careers, and complained about their own and each other's superior officers, that they began to discuss the cases on which they were working.

It was a remarkable coincidence that had brought them to the central computer at the same time. Such discussion was the privilege of young officers, safe from their superiors, each alive to the possibilities of their separate cases. The senior echelons of the KGB, like its predecessors, have always discouraged the professional gossip associated with police forces in other countries, other societies, in a further attempt to enforce the absolute security seemingly demanded by a secret police force. However, the present generation of KGB officers, among whom were Tortyev and Priabin, both highly intelligent graduates of the Lenin University of Moscow, possessed, in the eyes of many of their seniors, a remarkable degree of scepticism towards some of the cherished aims of the service — notably in the matter of gossip. They realised, unlike their hidebound seniors, that the cross-fertilisation of such gossip more than outweighs its detraction from absolute security. Priabin, seated in one of the armchairs in the waiting-room next to the metallic, sterile room with its banks of lights and spools and controls, was saying as much to Tortyev.

'They don't realise, Alexei, how much they lose by being so rigidly compartmentalised. One hand never knows what the other in doing.'

Tortyev, who had shoved his file of photographs into the hands of one of the white-coated operators, and was merely waiting for an estimate of how long the computer-run would take after the features of the man Orton had been broken down into computer-language, nodded his head sagely, a smile of complicity playing around his mouth.

'Quite true,' he replied. 'Take us, for instance.'

'True — we are, after all, both looking for foreign agents, are we not?'

There was a silence. Priabin lit a long cigarette, of British manufacture, while Tortyev was content to pick at his finger-nails. Priabin had revisited the computer room throughout the afternoon and evening, almost as a kind of