Firefox Down

her eyes. Then she clenched her hand once more in front of her. She was staring at her lap, not at Priabin. 'I don't — I can't go on with it, Dmitri…' Then she looked up. 'If only I could go back — you don't know how much I'd give just to go back!'

Priabin appeared to be about to speak, but then he slumped back against the window blind, his eyes staring at Gant.

Gant said quietly, 'Come with me to the border, Anna — get me out, and I promise they'll let you go. If you let him kill me, they'll turn you over to his people. His plan won't work because the Company won't let it work. My way, you have a chance — his way, you have none.'

'You'll be his hostage, Anna.'

'Sure she will. But, there's a way out at the end of it. All you'd do for her is to put her in the bag for the rest of her life — do you want that? Really want it?'

Priabin blinked slowly, heavily. His features expressed confusion, indecision. 'I can't let you go,' he said. Gant thought that he was speaking to Anna, but the remark was addressed to himself. 'I can't do that.'

Must be no more than three or four minutes, Gant told himself. Stay with this.

'You could go home, resign from the ministry, take a job where you're no use to them. They'll be angry, but they won't be able to stop you. And they won't turn you over just for the hell of it.' His voice was soft, the syllables like careful footsteps through a minefield. She looked up at him, attentive, almost beginning to hope. Gant squashed a sense that he might be lying to her, that the Company might indeed turn against her and betray her to the KGB.

'I'll help,' he said. 'Get me to Finland — keep this guy off my back until we reach the border, and I promise you'll walk away free. Come to Helsinki with me — ' he added urgently. Two minutes, was the train already beginning to slow — ? 'Talk to the Company-talk to Charlie Buckholz or to Aubrey…' The names confused her, but he pressed on: 'Aubrey would be on your side. It wouldn't take long, don't come unless you want to. Just get me over the border alive. That way you have a chance — his way, there isn't a hope in hell you can get away free!'

The train was slowing -

Priabin stared at Gant, then at Anna. When his gaze returned to the American, there was a deep, unsatisfied hatred in his eyes. The pistol was still aimed at the centre of Gant's chest, and the man was still intent upon using it. It depended on Anna. Now they were silent and watching him once more, he had no chance of jumping from the door of the slowing train.

The lights of a small town through the snow. White fields. The green splash of a signal light at the trackside.

'Well?' he asked.

Anna looked up. She reached for Priabin's hand, and clutched it. Still looking at Gant, she said: 'I must do it, Dmitri. I must do as he suggests — '

'No!'

'My darling, I must. You've wanted only to help me — we kept it from each other, but all you wanted to do was help me. Now, please help me. Help me, my darling. Let him go, and let me go with him. Don't follow us, don't stop us… I'll come back, I swear. You know I will. But let him get away, and we can both be free. They will do it, won't they?' she asked Gant.

He nodded. 'The people I know — they'll let you go. I swear they will.'

Station lights, rushing at first, then slowing to walking pace as they passed the window.

'Quickly, Anna,' he said, looking at Priabin. The gun was cradled in his lap. His face was miserable, angry and defeated and fearful for her safety.

'Dmitri — '

He nodded, just as the train sighed to a complete stop. 'Yes,' he said, then added to Gant: 'It had better work, American. It had better work!'

'It will. I swear — '

'Then get your coats and luggage. I'll escort you — '

'No,' Gant said.

'Yes. Your excuse for leaving the train here is flimsy, suspicious. With me, you will be asked no questions.'

'And afterwards?'

'I'll wait for the next train. I'll wait for you in Leningrad, Anna — '

She rushed into his arms while Gant gathered the coats and luggage. He felt the ache of their passion, the intensity of their relationship. He had walked through the minefield, but until now he had never realised quite how dangerous it had been. And, deep inside himself, he felt something he could only describe as envy.

He owed her. He would, at least, try on her behalf -

'Come on,' he said, turning to them, interrupting their kiss, almost embarrassed by it. 'Hurry — '

* * *

Brooke shone his lamp on the nosewheel strut of the Firefox for what might have been the tenth or twelfth time. He could not help his reaction, avoid the jumpy tension in his body. It reminded him vividly of that period of childhood when he had avoided walking on the cracks in paving stones, always followed the borders of rugs and carpets, always checked and checked again that the light was properly switched off — at first it had needed four checks, then six, then eight… He had thought he was mad, until he discovered that half his classmates engaged in the same obsessive routines. Checking the ropes around the three undercarriage legs was now the same kind of thing. He felt almost obsessional. They had to be right. The raising of the aircraft was about to begin, everything depended on these three nylon ropes, on his checking them…

He bobbed beside the nosewheel strut. The rope passed several times around it, wound over heavy padding to avoid damage to the undercarriage leg. For that reason, too, the rope was high on the leg. He tugged, quite unnecessarily, at the nylon rope once more, ran the beam of his lamp along it as it stretched away towards the shore.

Yes, he thought, nodding his head — yes.

He turned his back on the aircraft, his lamp's beam running Over the MO-MAT that reached down from the shore to the nosewheel. The portable roadway was of fibreglass-reinforced plastic and lay over the mud and rubble of the lake bed, the incline of the shore itself and the trampled snow of the cleared site beyond that. The Firefox would be winched along its non-skid surface, moving easily and smoothly, in theory, up onto dry land. The light bounced and wobbled over the waffle-like appearance of the MO-MAT, then Brooke's head bobbed out of the water and he began walking easily up the lessened incline of the shore. As he removed his facemask, he saw Waterford and Buckholz, dressed in white parkas, silhouetted against the lights suspended from the perimeter trees. They were standing together on the MO-MAT, waiting for him.

Snow flew across the glow of the lights as Buckholz waved his hand in Brooke's direction. The SBS lieutenant returned the wave. It was all right — they could begin.

'Yes,' he said, nodding. He turned to look at the frozen lake, just as the American and Waterford were doing. 'Anything in the latest report from the Nimrod?' he asked. An SBS corporal took his air tanks and facemask, and Brooke climbed into the parka. He did not feel cold.

'Sod all,' Waterford replied. 'Nothing.'

'They still don't have Gant — he's on his way to Leningrad,' Buckholz said. 'He didn't tell them.'

Through the curtains of snow that seemed dragged across the scene at irregular intervals, Brooke located a lump of timber floating in the patch of clear water. It was wrapped in Dayglo tape, and was attached by a thin line to the nose of the Firefox. Beyond it, more difficult to make out but spectrally visible, a huge crucifix of planks and logs, similarly wrapped with luminous tape, represented the position of the aircraft under the ice. He and his divers had measured that outline. Now, all that remained was for the ice marked by the cross to be broken where it had thinly reformed after the plane had sunk. Then the winching operation could begin.

Brooke sensed the excitement in the American beside him. It matched his own. Waterford looked grim, but the expression was habitual. Brooke could not deduce any meaning from it.

Buckholz pressed an R/T handset to the side of his face, watching Brooke as he did so. 'OK, diving party. Let's start clearing that ice.'

Brooke's SBS divers moved down to the shore. Two of them entered the clear water, walking like penguins