then returned to appointed tasks, as they crossed the floor together and climbed the ladder onto the gallery. Expectant faces looked up as they entered the control room of the command centre. Yet no one joined them at the fibre-optic map. Finnish Lapland remained as they had left it, except for a dotted red line that had inched south-east during their absence.
'Well?' Andropov asked, surrendering the consequences to Vladimirov.
The general traced the dotted red line with his finger. The reconnaissance party had made good time, moving on a very narrow front, retracing Gant's journey… from a lake, he reminded himself. Where? His finger continued southeastward, moving swiftly over the roads and tracks he had at first nominated. How could he have been so
Two lakes, almost in a direct line with the route of the reconnaissance party; certainly within the tolerances which allowed for slight changes of direction by the American. One of the lakes was rounded, the other longer and narrower. He recalled the scale. Either might have done…
And there was a third lake to the north of that pair, and a fourth to the east. Four lakes. The red dotted line was closest to the pair of lakes. His finger tapped the surface of the map.
'There,' he said, 'First priority — a reconnaissance of those two lakes.' He stared at Androppv.until the chairman silently nodded his head. Then he said, more loudly, 'Major, please check these co-ordinates, then transmit them to our reconnaissance party. At once!
A young major in the GRU hurried forward to join them at the map.
ELEVEN:
Crossing The Border
Harris stopped the hired car, switched off the engine, and turned in his seat. For a moment he appeared to study Gant and Anna with a cool objectivity, then he said, 'I'll just call in and check with my people in Leningrad. The border is ten miles up the road…' He pointed through a windscreen that was already smeared with snow now that the wipers had been switched off. 'I don't want us to get caught out by any alarm or increased security. The Finns are waiting for us. They'll have signalled Leningrad in case of trouble. We passed a telephone box on the edge of the village.' He smiled. 'Best not to park near it — if any one sees me now, they'll assume I'm a local. Just sit tight. I won't be long.'
Harris opened the door. Snow gusted in. He climbed out and slammed the door behind him. Gant turned his head and watched him trudge away, back towards the few scattered lights of the tiny hamlet through which they had passed a minute earlier. Harris had pulled the car off the main road, into a lay-by which was masked by tall bushes heavy with snow.
Harris disappeared from view. Gant turned to Anna.
'Check your papers again,' he instructed. He pulled his own documents from his breast pocket, unbuttoning his overcoat to do so. As he opened the travel documents and visas, he wondered once more about Anna. She had accepted the papers Harris had supplied, and the cover story. She had examined the documents periodically during their three-hour car journey from Kolpino, via the outskirts of Leningrad and the industrial city of Vyborg. Yet he sensed that she still in no way associated herself with them. They were like a novel she had picked out for the journey and in which she had little interest.
Harris, a British businessman with a Helsinki base and frequent opportunity for business travel inside the Soviet Union, was to pose as a Finn when they reached the border. He possessed a Finnish passport and his visas had been stamped to indicate that he had travelled from Helsinki to Leningrad a few days before. Gant and Anna were to remain as Russians, and as members of the Secretariat. They were accompanying Harris from Leningrad to inspect his facilities on behalf of the Leningrad Party. Harris was in the metallurgical business, and factories and businesses in the area covered by the Leningrad
The covers were impressive, even unnerving to a border guard. The only suspicious circumstance was the time of arrival at the border and the manner of travel. Yet, Gant knew it would work. He no longer noticed the hairpiece and the half-glasses, and in the same fashion he no longer considered the flaws in Harris's plan.
The journey helped, of course. The constant moving away and, after Moscow, the openness of the dark, snowbound countryside. Frozen lakes gleamed in scraps of moonlight between heavy snow showers. Moscow had hemmed him. It had been a huge trawl-net laid just for him. Here, he saw no evidence of the hunt and he accepted the innocent-seeming time at its face value. He even dozed in the back of the warm car, head nodding on his chest, waking periodically to glimpse the countryside or the lights of a village or see the snow rushing out of the night towards the windscreen.
But, Anna — ?
It was as if some motive force within her had seized up. She seemed incapable of action or decision. He did not even know, this close to the edge of the Soviet Union, whether she really intended to cross with them. He could imagine her opening the door of the car, even as the red and white pole began to swing up, and start walking back down the road into Russia. Also, he did not know whether Priabin was to be trusted.
At Kolpino, he had looked like a man striving to cling to the wreckage of his life; trying not to display emotions he might normally have considered womanish. He had waved them through the inspection at the station, chatting to them, strutting a little with his superior rank, dropping hints of mystery and important Party business. He had watched them into Harris's hired car, had stood in the falling light of a lamp outside the station, a solitary and enigmatic figure, as they had driven off. Gant, glancing round, had the impression of a small figure with arm aloft. And then his sense of intruding upon some private act had made him turn away. Anna had remained with her head turned to the rear window long after the bend in the road had removed him from sight.
He did not think Priabin would follow them or betray them at the border, because of Anna's safety. But, he was not quite certain. As they had all three left the train, Gant and he had come face to face for a moment. Priabin had still possessed the grim, almost fanatical look that had been on his features when he first entered their compartment — when he had intended shooting Gant.
Priabin still wanted to kill him.
'You are coming over?' Gant now asked hoarsely, slipping his papers back into his breast pocket. He fiddled with the glasses on his nose, as if working himself back into a portrayal just before going on-stage.
Anna looked up at hitn. She looked older, even in the semi-darkness. He heard her shallow, quick breathing. He thought she was very minutely shaking her head, but it did not seem to be any kind of denial. He touched her hand as it lay on her lap. The hand jumped like a startled pet, but did not withdraw.
'It's going to be all right — I promise,' he said. He had made Harris support his idea, render assurances. Anna could be got back into the Soviet Union without difficulty — via the same route and within a couple of days. Harris knew Aubrey — yes. Did Aubrey have the necessary clout with the CIA — ? Yes, Harris thought so. Yes, he didn't see any reason why she should not be let off the hook for getting Gant back to the West…
'A couple of days,' he murmured, prompted by his memories of Harris's reassurances. 'That's all it'll take, I promise you.' He smiled crookedly, sorry that she could not see clearly the reassuring expression. 'I'm big for them now — at the moment. I
Her head was shaking now. 'I can't believe it is going to work.' She looked up at him, having taken his hand. 'I do not blame you, Mitchell Gant — believe that, at least. You were just… the wrong man at the wrong time.' She might have been talking of a ruinous love-affair, one which had cost her her marriage. That heartfelt tone gave Gant an insight. For her, the relationship with Priabin had been somehow altered, perhaps even destroyed. She could not envisage a satisfactory future unless she restored her relationship with him.
Gant envied and pitied her. And realised the mutuality of their passion. Priabin's hatred, harrowed to himself alone now, was as palpable as if the man had just put his head into the car. The three hours since they had left him would have done nothing to dissipate that hatred. It would have grown, perhaps run out of control like a forest fire.
And Gant knew that Priabin would not give up, would not be content to wait in a Leningrad hotel for her return.
'Listen to me,' he said urgently. 'You love him, he loves you. What is there to be afraid of? Only people like your Case Officer — nothing more dangerous than that. And the Company will be warned off. You won't have to
