Firefox

As he went down the steps of the hotel, into Red Square, the short fat man paused, and overtly lit a cigarette, the gas lighter flaring in the darkness. Gant did not see the signal, but he saw the dark figure detach itself from a large car parked near the spot where the tail-car had pulled in that afternoon. Only one man there, he thought — and the short fat man coming down the steps behind him. Two.

The headlights of the car flared in the darkness, flickered in time with the coughing engine, then blazed as the engine roared. It had seemed quiet until that moment, that the noise of the engine was exaggerated. Gant had a momentary fear that he was about to be arrested, prevented from leaving the vicinity of the hotel — but there was no attempt to overhaul him, even though he paused to check, turning up his collar against the wind that was blowing down the square into his face. He had to hold the unfamiliar, irritating trilby on his head, and bend forward into the wind.

He chose the left-hand pavement as he came out of Manezhnaya Square and into the Red Square proper.

* * *

This would take him past the facade of GUM. There were many Muscovites in the square — the queue outside the Lenin Mausoleum had dispersed, but many people window-shopped in the glass of the great store, cold faces lit by the white lighting. Gant did not bother to check his tail — its distance, or persistence. He knew they would, stay with him, and that some kind of general alert would go out the moment they lost him, and he would be hunted. Which was precisely what he did not want. These men had to stay close to him. Hence, he spent some time looking at the fashion displays, the often inadequate replicas of Western fashions that GUM offered, the grey monster that was the largest department store in the world, before he passed out of Red Square, again taking his time, strolling, staring across the windy space at the towers of the Kremlin.

By the time he reached the Moskva river, and the Moskvoretski Bridge, he was thoroughly cold. His hat was jammed on his head, and his hands thrust in his pockets. He did not appear to be a man going anywhere in particular, but he could no longer be taken for a sightseer, enjoying Moscow by lamplight. The wind coming off the river seemed icy, and he now reluctantly held on to his hat, because it was a signpost, it informed the man tailing him where he was, even though he would have rather kept his numb, white hand in his overcoat pocket. He bent over the parapet of the road bridge, looking down into the black, lamp-flecked water, its surface rippled by the wind. Someone paused further back down the bridge, immediately highlighted by his lack of movement since all the other figures on the bridge moved swiftly, tugged and pushed by the wind. Gant smiled to himself.

* * *

He turned his back to the river, and pulled his collar tight around his neck. Casually, he inspected the road across the bridge. The car had stopped, headlights switched off, seemingly empty, parked well away from the street lamps. And there was a second pedestrian, leaning with his back against the bridge, on the other side of the road, slightly ahead of him.

Gant began to walk again. Despite what he had been told, despite the tail-spotting in which he had engaged in New York and Washington as part of his training under Buckholz, a small knot of tension had begun to form in his stomach. He did not know what would happen when he reached the Krasnoknlinski Bridge, downriver of where he was now, but he had been instructed not to lose his tail. Aubrey had made that clear in the smoke-filled room of his hotel in London the previous night. The KGB was to be kept with him.

As he crossed the Drainage Canal that ran beside the Moskva and turned onto the Ozerkovskaia Quay, descending a flight of stone steps down to the embankment, he wanted to stop and be violently sick. He realised that the artificial calm he had felt until that moment had deserted him finally. He could no longer pretend to himself that this was only a tiresome preliminary, to be gone through before he came face-to-face with his part in the total proceedings. This was real. The cold and the wind had now been abated slightly by the level of the bridge; the men on his tail — he could hear them now, footsteps softly clattering, unhurried and assured, down the flight of steps to the embankment, forty or so yards behind him. He was frightened. One hand came out of his pocket and he gripped his coat where it sat across his stomach, twisting the material in his hand.

* * *

He wondered about the car and its occupants. He could not turn round now, to count heads. He knew, with a sickening certainty, that there were three, perhaps four men behind him now, and that the car would be driving along the Ozerkovskaia Quay above him, waiting for him to regain the street.

He passed the Oustinski Bridge, and glanced at his watch. Ten-twenty. It would take him no more than another ten minutes to reach the next bridge, where he was to make his rendezvous with… with whom? In the shadow of the bridge there was a strange silence. The Sadovisheskaya Embankment, where he stood, was empty except for one or two couples strolling towards him, arm-in-arm, idling by the canal as if miles from the centre of the city.

He breathed deeply three or four times, in the way he had done when settling his flying-helmet on his head, and glancing, for the first time, across the instrument panel of the aircraft he was about to fly. The memory, inspired by the physical control he asserted, seemed to calm him. He had to think that he was doing something of which he was a master — flying. If he could think that, then he could go on. The footsteps had stopped behind him, like patient guardians, waiting until he might be strong enough to continue.

He walked on, passed a young couple absorbed in each other without even a glance in their direction, and measured the pace of his footsteps. He could hear footsteps behind him, a little clatter rebounding from the embankment wall, then the stronger, overlapping signals from the following KGB men. The footsteps of the couple, slower it seemed and less purposeful, faded away behind him. He wanted to run — he could not believe that they would let him reach the bridge. He wanted to run… It was a question of easing back the speed, not to overfly: he imagined the aerial situation, of having overflown a target, pulling back, waiting patiently, even though he had lost sight of the Mig, lost sight of the Phantom, when he himself had been flying the Foxbat… the terrible moments before re-contact. He calmed himself. It wasn't the same, this situation, it was less dangerous.

He walked on, having regained an hallucinatory equilibrium. He was the best there was… he was flying.

He climbed up the steps of the embankment to the Krasnoknlinski Bridge, crossed the canal without seeming to hurry, and descended the flight of steps down to the narrow embankment of the Moskva, on the south side of the river. The black water stretched away to the line of yellow lights along the Kotelnitcheskaia Quay on the other bank. There were no footsteps behind him for seconds after he ended his descent, yet his refined, nervous hearing picked up the muffled sound of the engine from the bridge above. The car had rejoined the tail. Now, the KGB would be predicting his movements and purposes. He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. They, too, would probably see some significance in the exactitude of the time. He heard footsteps come cautiously down the stone steps, as he stared out into the river. Two pairs. Then only one. One of the KGB men had paused half-way down the steps.

He stared into the darkness under the bridge. No figures detached themselves from the shadows. He turned his back, and began to walk along the embankment.

It was only a few hundred yards to the first flight of steps down from the Gorovskaia Quay and, as he approached, three shadows appeared on the steps and moved towards him. For a moment, he wondered whether they were not KGB men — then one of the men spoke softly in English.

'Mr. Orton?' the voice said.

'Yes.' There had been no trace of a foreign accent.

The three men joined him swiftly, and a torch flared in his face. The English voice said: 'Yes, it's him.'

The tallest of the three men, young, square-featured, blond, took up the dialogue.

'How many followed you?' His accent was Russian, though he spoke in English.

Gant replied in Russian, testing his pronunciation: 'Three on foot, I think — and a car. It's up on the bridge.'

'Good,' the Russian replied. Gant was watching the first man, the Englishman he assumed was from the Embassy security staff. He was the same build as Gant, and his hair was brushed back from his forehead. He smiled at Gant, as if in encouragement, or conspiracy. Gant returned the smile.

'What are they doing, Pavel?' the Englishman asked, keeping his eyes on Gant.

The one on the steps has returned to the car — the short fat one is wondering what to do, since there are four of us here now.' The Russian laughed softly. 'I think he is frightened!'