Firefox Down

'Source Burgoyne,' he said enigmatically. 'I'll have to confirm with Langley… Source Burgoyne seems the most — expendable.' He flinched as he saw the look on Aubrey's face, then snapped: 'Like Fenton and Pavel and even Baranovich — you were pretty wasteful there, Kenneth.'

'Damn you, Charles,' Aubrey breathed, but his face was white with admission and a surprising self-disgust. 'Burgoyne is less important than your other Sources, I suppose?' he asked acidly. 'How many Category-A Sources are there at present, Charles?'

'Maybe thirty — scattered through the ministries, the Secretariat, the Supreme Soviet, top industrial concerns, the Narodny Bank — '

'And Burgoyne is one of the least significant, I take it?'

'You got it. I — we've tried to persuade her to request — '

'Her?'

'Right. A woman. We've tried to get her to move into more sensitive areas for years now — she won't. She's useful, but she's not crucial, as you put it. You want her or not?'

Aubrey pondered for a moment, — then brightened: 'Yes, I'll take her. A female companion would avert suspicion, and she must have intelligence or resource pr you wouldn't have tried to get her into more useful work! She can travel with some ease. Yes, I'll take her. Does the codename Burgoyne suffice to wake the sleeper?'

'It does. Let me talk to Shelley. I'll supply the telephone number. It's then up to you what you do with her. She's a limited asset and no longer our concern — she'll be all yours!' Buckholz grinned crookedly.

Aubrey moved away from the console. Fenton, Pavel, and now Source Burgoyne …

'What's her name?' he asked without turning around.

'Anna — Anna Akhmerovna. She's a widow. Touching forty. She has almost complete freedom of movement. Just one thing, though. She lives with a KGB officer, if I remember correctly.'

Aubrey turned on his heel. ' What — ?'

'She's the one you're going to get, Kenneth. Langley would never agree to any of the others.'

Aubrey turned away. His mind raced, skipping over crevasses and chasms that opened beneath his optimism, threatening to swallow it. If Gant could be saved — ? Edgecliffe could work up a suitable escape route, provide good papers, the woman was good cover…

Buckholz completed his instructions to Shelley, then addressed Aubrey. 'You still want London, Kenneth?'

'I do!' He faced Buckholz once more. 'I'll save him if I can,' he murmured. 'And her — I'll save her, too!' It was mere bravado and he knew it, as did the American, who merely shrugged.

'I don't think you can win this one, Kenneth. You'll just be losing the Company a useful agent. You'll get Burgoyne killed along with Gant.'

'No I won't, Charles!'

Buckholz snatched off his mittens angrily, and held up the fingers of his left hand, splayed. He counted them off with his right forefinger, folding them into his palm at each of the names he recited.

'Fenton — Pavel — Baranovich — Semelovsky — Kreshin — Glazunov — the old man at the warehouse, I forget his name…'

'Damn you, be quiet!' Again, Aubrey's face was white and his mouth trembled. Appalled, he witnessed the appearance of guilt in his mind. It made his heart race, his stomach turn. Guilt -

Shakily, he said, 'I will atone, Charles — I'll save Gant and your Source Burgoyne. Now, let me talk to Shelley — !'

* * *

'Yes, Comrade Deputy Chairman — yes, of course. I'll come at once!' Priabin put down the bedside receiver and turned to Anna, his face flushed with an almost boyish pride and self-importance. Anna watched him, watched his innocent pleasure spreading in a broad grin.

'What is it?' she asked sleepily, glancing at the travelling clock on her bedside cabinet, propped open in its leather case. Two o'clock. Then she yawned, as if the reminder of the lateness of the hour and her interrupted sleep had wearied her.

'Orders,' he said almost blithely, getting out of bed and opening the sliding door of the fitted wardrobe.

'You're going out?'

'I am. Panic stations — ' he answered, hoisting his uniform trousers then pulling his shirt from its hanger. He buttoned it hastily, looking down at each button as he did so. He talked as he dressed. 'Your friend the American pilot is on the loose — seems they mislaid him…' He looked up and grinned. His tie was draped over a chair. He snatched it up and began to knot it.

'What happened?' She was leaning on one elbow, her small breasts invitingly exposed, nipples erect in the coolness of the bedroom. She shivered, then, and rubbed her goose-pimpled arms. Then she stretched. Priabin hunted for his jacket in the wardrobe.

'Some monstrous cock-up, I expect. Deputy Chairmen don't give explanations over the telephone to newly- promoted colonels.' He thrust his arms into the jacket, and buttoned it. 'Where's my cap?'

'When will you be back?'

He shrugged. 'Can't say, love. I'm appointed one of the coordinators of the search. They've got saturation cover on the streets as a matter of routine, now they want people like me to sort it out…' He stopped smiling. 'And people to blame, no doubt, if he gets away. Still, we colonels must bear our appointed loads — ' The smile was back. He moved to the bed, bent and kissed her. She folded her arms behind his neck, holding him in the kiss.

'Take care,' she murmured.

'I'll watch my back.' He grinned. 'I suppose you're a little bit on his side, aren't you — with your attitude to the project?'

She shook her head vehemently. 'Not if he endangers you,' she said.

He winked and crossed to the dqor. 'See you,' he said, and opened the door. 'I love you.' He closed the door behind him. Anna heard the front door of the apartment close quietly a few moments later. Doubtless, he had paused only to collect his holster and greatcoat from the rack in the hall.

She shivered, rubbing her arms again. She swung her legs out of bed, crossed to the door and took down her dressing-gown. Warm and sensible, but silk-lined. She buttoned it quickly.

As she crossed the hall, she listened at Maxim's door. Satisfied he had not awoken, she went into the kitchen. Her anxiety at Priabin's departure was usual, even though disproportionate. To her, every departure was only the prelude to a meeting where he would be ordered to arrest her.

She turned on one of the small strip-lights beneath the kitchen cabinets. It gave the room a hard but confined glow which she could tolerate. It preserved a quality of secretive darkness the room had possessed when she entered it. She switched on the percolator, having checked that enough coffee remained in it.

What was it — ? What had disturbed her so much? It wasn't simply her recurring nightmare of discovery and arrest… no. It was something — the arrival of fate as palpably as a knock on the door. Yes, that was it. A sense of fate, renewed by the American's escape. It had been with her ever since Dmitri was transferred to security on the Bilyarsk project. Baranovich's wheelchair had begun her double-life — Dmitri had moved closer to that double-life when he was transferred. Now, leading the hunt for the American, he seemed in some vague and shadowy way to threaten her. There was something fateful about the whole affair.

Of course, Dmitri knew. She had known for months. She had learned to live with that terror; it had been like a mad dog in the back garden, gradually tamed and thus ignored. He would not give her away and therefore lose her-not yet, at least, and perhaps not ever.

To go back, she thought bitterly, pouring the heated coffee into a thick brown mug. Just to go back.

The futile recrimination wailed like a lost child in her head. Baranovich, and before that, her husband. Suicide because he had lost his academic post — samizdat copies of banned writings in his locked drawer at the university -

She had had to live with the knowledge that he had killed himself to protect her. She had known nothing until the KGB told her, after she had found him dead in the bath, afloat in red water.