Firefox Down

Samizdats, meetings, planned protests, anti-Soviet activities. A dangerous criminal, the loving, gentle, innocent husband? It was impossible to believe; impossible, later, not to realise that he had the courage to face them, to undergo imprisonment. He had killed himself to protect her, to free her from the stigma of being the wife of a prisoner, a zek in the Gulag -

Gradually, very, very gradually, she had returned to life and to her career from that dark tunnel where he had left her. And then Baranovich, corrupted forcibly from his idealistic work — his wheelchair — to build a warplane more destructive than anything ever known…

That had been the breaking-point. Not her husband's suicide but the destruction of Baranovitch's project. She had made her first contact with an American diplomat-agent at the next embassy cocktail party she attended.

And then Dmitri, and Dmitri working to protect that damned, infernal aircraft project, and Dmitri discovering her double-life -

And now hunting the American. It was fate. She could not disbelieve it. It was a time of ill-omen -

If only they would let her go, if only she could go back. Her head cried like a lost child — if only…

The coffee scalded her mouth as she sipped it, then spilled onto her dressing-gown as the telephone startled her. She put down the mug, staring at her quivering hands. Then she snatched at the receiver hanging on the kitchen wall, as if to protect her sleeping son from its intrusion.

'Yes?' she said breathlessly.

'Burgoyne, is that you?' a voice asked in English.

'What-?' she breathed. 'I–I'm afraid I don't understand…' She spoke very deliberately in Russian.

'But I do,' the voice said. It sounded English — but if it was, then why not an American accent? She felt panic mount in her, filling her throat.

'Who is this, please?' she asked as calmly as she could.

'Listen carefully, Burgoyne — my name is Edgecliffe, British Embassy. This line is secure at my end, and I know yours is not tapped — I also know that Colonel Priabin left the apartment ten minutes ago. You're alone, except for your son…' The details were as palpably nauseating as hands pawing her, caressing her body beneath the dressing-gown.

'What do you want?' Now, at last, she spoke in English.

'Your help. Please listen carefully. You may confirm my identity and instructions with your Case Officer, if you wish. When I have finished. You've been loaned to us, Burgoyne, by your present employers, to do a special job.'

'What-?'

'Colonel Priabin, no doubt, has been summoned to the Centre to take charge of some part of the search for the escaped American pilot — we want your help to find him before your lover does…' There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. 'We're a little limited as far as resources are concerned — we need your help.'

'Go to hell!' Suddenly, she was frighteningly angry, hardly able to speak, so full was her throat, so tense her whole body. 'Go to hell, whoever you are!'

'Listen to me, Burgoyne.' the Englishman snapped. 'I don't have time to play games. You'll do as you're told. Otherwise, well, you know what might happen to you — enough of that, however. It will be up to you to get our American friend out of Moscow, once we've located him. I'll have papers for the two of you, travel permits, everything — and a full scenario in a matter of hours. All you have to do is be ready to move when I tell you.'

He fell silent, and into that quiet Anna dropped the small pebble of her voice. 'And what if — if Colonel Priabin catches him?'

'Then we won't require your services. You can carry on with your life as before.'

'But what do I tell him — what about my son — ?'

'I'm sure you can discover a sick relative somewhere if you try hard enough. You have many friends, I'm told. Send your son to stay with one of them. Or with your father, perhaps?'

'Just like that-?'

'Everything is just like that, I'm afraid. You don't have a choice. None at all. You must comply with our wishes — I'm sure you realise that. I won't even bother to assure you that if the KGB recapture the American they will get back their aircraft — the one you loathe so much. Even though that is true, it isn't necessary to persuade you, Burgoyne, because you must do as we say and you are intelligent enough to realise it.'

'But — how? How?' Anna asked.

'The details have yet to be decided. Simply prepare yourself for a journey, perhaps by train. Be ready to move as soon as it becomes necessary.'

'I can't — ' she wailed.

'You must. And, who knows? With your connection with Colonel Priabin, our American might be safer with you than anyone else we might have been loaned — mm? Goodbye for the present, Burgoyne. I'll be in touch — soon.'

The line clicked, then purred. Anna sat for some moments, staring into the receiver, as if the man who owned the voice might emerge from it, oozing smokily out like an appearing jinn. One hot, angry, frightened tear fell on her upturned wrist. Then she lifted her head to the pine-panelled ceiling of the kitchen, and howled like an animal in pain.

* * *

It was the absence of pedestrians that worried him most. In the small hours, he might have expected the streets to have emptied, but there had been no crowds and little traffic from the time he had vanished into the dark canyons between the endless blocks of apartments. It had taken him more than two hours to work his way back into the centre of Moscow via side-streets and alleys and lanes and waste ground. And all the time he did so, he knew he was moving slowly but certainly into the mouths of the trawling net the KGB and the police had cast for him.

Sirens, prowling cars, foot patrols, even helicopters. From the Mira Prospekt he had moved east, then north, then west, using the deeper darkness of open spaces, sports complexes, recreation parks, climbing their frosty railings, resting in the deep shadow of trees; fighting his rising panic and sense of isolation like two attackers in the darkness. He passed through Dzerzhinsky Park which contained the Ostankino television tower; the park surrounding the army museum; the zoo park. He kept away from the streets as much as he could; avoided streetlights.

The shops of the Kalinin Prospekt were lit like fishtanks. Above the windows, ranks of unlit offices marched towards Tchaikovsky Street and the American Embassy. Gant knew, though he suppressed the knowledge, that it would be guarded — barred to him. But he needed a destination, an objective. It was the only one he could enlarge in his mind and store with the comforts of safety, help, food, sleep. During his two hours of walking and skulking and scuttling across lit spaces and shrinking into doorways and behind trees, the embassy had become furnished and warmed in his imagination. There was no need to imagine anything after its doors opened. When the door closed behind him, he would be safe. It would be over.

He stared down the Kalinin Prospekt as if studying a minefield. Two foot patrols, two parked police cars, another cruising slowly towards him from the direction of the Kalinin Bridge. It would be a gauntlet he would not survive. He turned right, into the sparsely-lit Malaya Molchanovka Street. Ranks of tall offices and department stores retreated towards the Tchaikovsky Street and the bridge on his left. The street was empty, except for the quick darting shape of a cat crossing the road. Gant hurried, hands thrust into the pockets of the short coat, the cap he had found in one of those pockets pulled down over his eyes. He had long abandoned the white coat. His heels were raw from the rubbing of the too-big shoes, and the pain in his calf where the dog had bitten him had resurfaced now that the effect of the drugs and sedatives had disappeared. He stamped out the memory of the frozen lake and the Lynx helicopter only yards from him, waiting to save him.

He heard music coming from a still-lit window as he passed a low apartment block opposite the rear of a cinema. A child cried somewhere, startled from sleep. A car turned the corner from the Kalinin Prospekt behind him, and he forced himself not to run but to turn into the entrance of another apartment block. The outer door was not locked. He pushed his way inside. The foyer smelt of cabbage and greasy cooking. He flattened against the wall and