Firefox Down

paralysed, unable to move, hardly able to breathe and groan.

Then he was dragged to his feet. His breath disappeared again. He was doubled over in their grasp. Their holds on his forearms and elbows were separate, distinct, new pains. Head hanging, He looked up at Andropov's smiling face. A white handkerchief was held over his mouth and nose, as if they intended suffocating him. But it was loose. It was simply to prevent blood falling on the carpet, the desk.

'He does know, Vladimirov?' he heard the Chairman of the KGB ask quietly.

Vladimirov seemed disappointed that the beating had stopped. 'Oh, yes, he knows,' he replied. 'He knows precisely. He's the only one who does.'

'Very well — this must be done quickly — ' Gant felt his stomach heave, his body struggle inside the chain- mail of the spreading, burning pain. Andropov pressed his intercom, and snapped, 'Tell the Unit to prepare for an important arrival.' Then he looked at Gant. There was distaste, probably at the blood staining the white handkerchief. He nodded dismissively. 'Take him to the Unit. Tell them to prepare him for interrogation — within the hour!'

Gant was swung around, dragged towards the door. As he passed the young colonel, Priabin was smiling a sad, wise, confident smile. You'll tell, the smile and the eyes announced. Bad luck, but you'll tell…

* * *

'Kenneth, it's impossible! Forty-eight hours is a strict, complete, total impossibility. Please take my word for it.' Pyott shook his head sadly.

'But, if we leave tonight…?' Aubrey persisted.

Again, Pyott shook his head. 'I'm afraid no. We could be in position by tomorrow. But, the Sikorsky would not be there and half our supplies would not be there. That would leave us less than twenty-four hours to lift the airframe and get it over the border!'

'Giles, don't be stubborn — '

'You are the one who is being stubborn, Kenneth, for Heaven's sake — ! I lose all patience with you. The discussion is closed. It cannot be done in the time available. We must decline the Finnish offer.'

'It's there-intact. The prize is still there — '

'Unfortunately,' Pyott replied with freezing irony, 'we have been scratched from the race.'

'Damn you, Giles!' Aubrey breathed, looking around at Curtin and then Buckholz for support. The argument had been in progress for almost an hour. The had skirted the plot table, paced beside it, leaned upon it, as if it were the dock, the judge's seat, the gallery of a court. And ended where they had begun, the Americans siding with Pyott and Aubrey more and more exasperated.

'I'm sorry you feel like that, Kenneth, but — damn your insufferable self-esteem, your pride. That's what is at the root of the matter — your success or failure…' Aubrey's face was white with rage, with admission. Pyott dropped his gaze and murmured an apology.

Buckholz looked at his watch. Curtin coughed, shuffled his feet, glancing at the plot table where symbols and counters, even torn slips of paper with folded bases to make them stand like cardboard soldiers, indicated their state of readiness. Outside, on the tarmac, the Hercules transport stood awaiting them. It was being loaded with supplies flown in from specialist RAF and army units. Aubrey had been up to see it once; he was gloating when he descended again to the soured atmosphere of the Ops. Room.

Buckholz and Curtin waited. Pyott glanced at the plot table. Nothing more than a box of child's toys, stirring memories but of no use to the adult.

Aubrey hurried to the telephone the moment it began to ring. He snatched up the receiver.

'Yes?' he demanded breathlessly. 'Peter — what is it? What — you're certain of it… followed the car, saw it drive in… no, there can't be any doubt-yes, Peter, thank you.' He put down the receiver with great and pointless deliberation. There was, he knew, nothing to consider or think about — nothing to delay his agreement with Pyott that the operation was impossible… more impossible now than stealing the aircraft had ever been. He studied each of them in turn.

'Well?' Pyott demanded.

'Well? Well?' Aubrey snapped. 'Gant has been transferred to the KGB Unit out on the Mira Prospekt — ' He waited for their reaction. He could see that they sensed his depression, but the name meant little or nothing to them. 'It is a unit operated for the KGB by the Serbsky Institute. They are going to interrogate Gant under drugs, gentlemen — I'm afraid we do not have forty-eight hours, after all… we probably do not have twenty-four, perhaps not even twelve…' He sighed, then added: 'Gant will not be able to help himself. He will tell them everything.'

PART TWO THE AGENT

'This is most strange,

That she whom even now was your best object

… should in this trice of time

Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle

So many folds of favour.

Sure her offence

Must be of such unnatural degree

That monsters it; or your fore-vouched affection

Fall into taint.'

— King Lear

SIX: Echoes In A Tunnel

The dream required the presence of his father. His father had to be made to walk along the Mira Prospekt and be seen from the vantage point of a passing black car. If he could make his father walk in a northerly direction, if he could slow down the moving car to a kerbside crawl, if, if if…

It was important to remejnber the Mira Prospekt. Important, too, to remember the room in the moments before the needle, the pause, the unconsciousness. White, clinical, smelling faintly of antiseptic, rubber, ether, furnished with an operating table and hard chairs. Most important to remember the faces…

Vlad — i - mir — ov -

The Soviet general looked like his father now, but Gant remembered who he was. White coats — doctors… Guards, a nurse, others he did not know. He tried to see his father's face, but was forced to allow the shirt-sleeved, shambling figure to wear Vladimirov's features. However, he made him move and glance from side to side like his father. The imaginary car slowed, sliding along the kerb, and Gant peered at the passing faces as they kept pace with his father's intoxicated, shiftless, shameful progress. Nurse, doctor with the needle, other doctor, guard, man in suit — who was he? — Andropov, Priabin — no, no — !

Pavel, Baranovich, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Fenton — his face like red-dyed dough — other faces… Gant concentrated. He could see, ahead of them and farther along the Mira Prospekt, against the snow-laden clouds, the huge cosmonaut's monument of a rocket atop its narrowing trail of golden fire. His father was an insect-figure moving towards it, then the car turned off the road, moving at a snail's pace behind the shambling, despicable gait he knew so well. His father was heading through tall iron gate towards the front entrance of a large house hidden from the busy road by tall, thick, dark hedges.