the bile at the back of his throat. He stared, helplessly, at the door connecting his carriage with the one ahead, waiting for it to open, to admit an over-coated figure whose manner would betray his authority, whose eyes would scorch across his features.
The train slowed, the darkness beyond the grimy windows becoming the harsh lighting of the Komsomolskaia Station. Involuntarily, he looked at Pavel. The big man had got casually to his feet, and was hanging idly onto a handrail near the sliding doors. Gant got up unsteadily — he knew that his face must be pale and sweating — and stood squarely at the second set of doors in the carriage.
As the train stopped and the doors slid open, he realised that he knew nothing of what the papers in his pocket contained. In sudden panic, he had forgotten. He stepped shakily down onto the platform, was pushed from behind by another passenger and the movement was a grateful trigger. Grant… like his own name. He remembered. His eyes sought the exit flight. Yes, there were two KGB men there.
Pavel pushed close to him, as if as a reassuring presence. A small crowd of people seemed to have left the train at that station, and he and the big man were at its heart. It moved slowly, as if with communal wariness, towards the exit. The station's opulence glanced across his awareness. Even here there were no hoardings, no advertisements of women in underclothes or huge bottles of Scotch or cinema posters — only frescoes of the great and praiseworthy victories of the Russian people since 1917, in the bold, awkward, cartoon style of Soviet realism.
He sensed Pavel fade back into the crowd again, but did not turn his head. The crocodile drifted towards the waiting men at the foot of the exit stairs. They were inspecting papers, and he reached into his pocket for Michael Grant's documents. He pulled them from his pocket and re-inspected them as swiftly as he could. Michael Grant — passport, entry visa, hotel reservation, Intourist information brochure.
The KGB man's face loomed in front of him, a white, high-boned, thin face, with a large, aquiline nose, and sharp, powerful eyes. He was inspecting Gant's papers thoroughly, and glancing from photograph to face, and back again. Then he looked at the documents issued to Michael Grant since his arrival in Moscow, three days before. Gant wondered whether such a man had booked into the Warsaw Hotel on that day — and he knew it wouldn't have been overlooked. Michael Grant would be a bona-fide tourist, whose papers had been-borrowed and duplicated.
'You do not appear to be in the best of health, Mr. -Grant?' the KGB man said in English. He was smiling, and seemed without suspicion.
'No.' Gant faltered. 'I — a little tummy trouble. The food, you know…' He smiled weakly.
'In your photograph you are wearing glasses, Mr. Grant?'
Gant patted his pockets, and continued to smile, a smile that was wan, and remarkably stupid. 'In my pocket…'
'The food at the Warsaw — it is not good?'
'Yes, fine — just a little too rich for me.'
'Ah. Thank you, Mr. Grant.'
The man had taken the number of the passport, and the numbers of the documents that he had handed back. Gant had walked a dozen steps before he realised that he had bluffed his way through, that his feet had automatically stepped onto the ascending flight of stairs, and he was being moved up and out of sight of the two KGB officers. His stomach felt watery, and he belched, He wanted to be sick with relief. He forced himself not to turn round to look for Pavel and the other man, to stifle the growing panic of the thought that they might have been picked up, and he was now alone…
He stepped off the staircase, and moved over to study a large map of the Moscow metro system. He did not dare to turn his attention from the map, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of the topcoat, his shoulders slightly bowed, as he fought against the tide of nausea. He told himself, over and over, that this tension was the same as flying, the sudden, violent twists of time which moved from calm and boredom, to terror, were things that he had experienced many times before. But it did not seem to work, the sedative of familiarity. Perhaps, in the huge, ornate foyer of the metro station, with its gigantic statuary, marbles and bronzes, and the mosaic floor and frescoed walls — perhaps he was unable to transpose himself to the cockpit, and calm his growing panic. All he knew that moment was that he was alone, stranded — they would have picked up Pavel, and the other man. What could he do?
A hand fell on his shoulder, and he jumped away as if stung by some electric charge within him. He turned round, and Pavel saw the damp, frightened face, and doubt flickered in his eyes.
'Thank God,' Gant breathed.
'You look terrible,' Pavel said, without humour. 'Mr. Grant — I watched your performance… it was not very convincing.'
'Jesus! I was shit-scared, man!' Gant burst out.
Pavel looked at him, towering over him. Gant seemed smaller, slighter, less impressive than even his disguise would normally have made him. Pavel, remembering what Edgecliffe, the SIS Head of Station in Moscow, had said of the American, agreed. This man was a risk, Edgecliffe had said — if he causes serious trouble on the journey, get rid of him — don't risk the whole network, just for him. And Gant looked as if he might be big trouble.
'Go and make yourself sick,' Pavel said, with distaste in his voice. 'Go, and hide yourself in the toilets. There will be more KGB men on the way. We shall leave the station
David Edgecliffe, ostensibly Trade Attache to the British Embassy, was in the bar of the Moskva Hotel. From his position near the door, he could look out into the foyer of the hotel. He saw the KGB men arrive, together with at least two people from the Political Security Service. If his diagnosis was correct, then Fenton, poor lad, had not died in vain. He shook his head, sadly, over his Scotch, and swallowed the last of it. The appearance of those particular KGB officers would mean that the bluff of Orion's murder at the hands of his supposed Moscow pushers because of the failure of supplies to reach them, would have been swallowed. Ortori was dead — long live Gant.
He smiled sadly to himself and a waiter, at his signal, came over with another Scotch on a tray, together with a small jug of water. He paid for his drink, and appeared to return to his book. Covertly, he watched the KGB men as they carried away Gant's luggage. They would have searched the room, he knew, and would have removed everything. Orton, the mysterious Englishman who looked so harmless, but who had infected the youth of Moscow with the terrible affliction of heroin, would be thoroughly investigated. Edgecliffe was smiling. In his signal to Aubrey, that night at least, he could report a state of satisfactory progress.
Besides the false papers he had shown to the KGB searching the metro, to protect himself from identification as a suspected drug-trafficker, Pavel had in his pocket, among other things, something that would have caused Gant to become far more ill than he had thus far seemed to be: it was a red card, such as was only carried by members of the KGB. It was a card which he sincerely hoped not to have to use since it was a fake, but which he knew he might have to employ if there was no other way out of the station.
He had watched them arrive. As yet there were few, but they were thorough. He had already shifted his ground a dozen times in less than fifteen minutes, straining his nerve and patience to make his movements appear casual, unobtrusive. There were KGB men at the main entrance, where a hastily erected barrier had been thrown across the gap into the square and the night, and all departing and arriving passengers were having their papers inspected. They were a motley collection of duty and off-duty personnel from the various departments of the 2nd Chief Directorate, and some faces he knew from Edgecliffe's files on the Political Security Service. They were looking for the murderers of Orton, the 'economic criminals' that formed one of their main interests in life.
He had seen Vassily, the third man on the embankment, only once, sitting in a station restaurant, eating a huge, doughy cake, and sipping coffee. The coffee was good, and the pastries and cakes cheap and filling for a man like Vassily, whose papers proclaimed him to be a nightwatchman. Vassily could stay in the restaurant for a couple of hours yet, and be searched and questioned, without arousing suspicion. So might he — but not Gant.
The remainder of the KGB personnel, who had not dropped out of sight to the lower levels and platforms of
