He floundered along the road, arms pumping, chest heaving. He remembered the dreams and realised their significance. Then he slipped and went flying, skidding on his back across the road. The shock woke him as it expelled the breath from his body. He climbed to his feet, brushed down his clothes, and began running again. Not far now, only hundreds of metres, no more.
He passed the telephone box where he had killed Harris. He had intended that. Isolate Gant, he had told himself. Get Anna out then kill Gant — have him killed at the border. Turn back the clock, make it five days earlier, before all this had happened.
He could have done it, but she would not
He saw one or two early lights in the village ahead. His car was only a short distance now… yes, there! He slid the last steps, bumping painfully against the side of the vehicle. He fumbled the keys from his pocket while he wrenched open the driver's door with his other hand. He collapsed heavily into the seat, hesitated, then thrust the key into the ignition.
And turned the key, holding his breath.
The ignition chattered. On the third attempt, the engine fired, then stalled. He applied more choke. The engine caught, he revved blue smoke into the snow beyond the rear window. The engine roared healthily.
Just cold.
He eased his foot off the pedal and moved the car slowly out into the middle of the road. The studded tyres bit, and he gradually accelerated. Passing the telephone box, passing the place where the snow was distressed by his skidding body, passing the lay-by. He jooked at his watch, but could not estimate how long he had been unconscious. He stabbed the accelerator, and the back of the car swung wildly. He eased his foot from the pedal, turned the wheel swiftly to straighten the car, and drove on.
He had protected Anna because, in part, it preserved his own self-esteem. He was
He would have saved her, got her away, but Gant had changed everything. Gant had placed her in danger. Gant had taken her away, she was in the car with him now. She was ready to cross the border with him -
Priabin wiped something from his eyes with the damp sleeve of his overcoat, then concentrated on the snow rushing towards the headlights. He knew he had peeled the onion a layer too deep.
He knew that he had not trusted Anna. From the moment when he had seen Gant on the train and realised how she was to help him escape, he had believed in his heart that she would go with the American. He had not trusted her to stop short of the border, or return if she did cross.
He wiped his eyes again, savagely.
Gant had held up the mirror, had shown him the vile little heart of himself, beneath the layers of love and protection and self-esteem. He loathed his reflected image.
He had to kill Gant. More than anything, he would kill Gant.
'One, Two and Three, stop winching!'
Buckholz heard Moresby's voice over the R/T, and immediately glanced at Waterford beside him. The soldier seemed unimpressed that the Firefox had now been winched safely to the far end of the clearing. Instead, he continued to stare at the ice beneath their feet. They were fifty or sixty yards out onto the lake. The wind flung snow between them and the well-lit clearing. Fortunately, the arc-lamps hadn't been brought down from the trees with burning camouflage netting.
'Well — what is it you wanted me to see?' Buckholz asked. He wanted coffee, and he needed rest. Reaction had established itself now that their damage report was complete and his work temporarily done. Moresby's danger hardly impinged upon Buckholz's fuddled, slow thoughts. 'Well?'
'Look at the bloody ice, man!' Waterford snapped in return.
'What-?'
'Snow — dammit, snow. Bloody snow!' He waved his arms above his head and kicked at the snow beneath his feet. The weather howled and flew around them in the darkness, Waterford was haloed by the lights from the clearing — where Moresby was working against time, he remembered with difficulty. As Waterford continued in a ranting tone, a break in the wind showed him the aircraft, black and safe, showed him the ragged extension of the clearing along the shore, allowed him to hear the chain-saws at work. 'No bloody aircraft is going to be able to take off from this surface,' Waterford was saying. 'You know how long this lake is. Do you know how much runway that aircraft needs? No? Listen, then — the airspeed won't come up quick enough to give the pilot lift-off with this thickness of snow on the ice. It's as simple as that. So, what are you going to do about it?'
In the silence, which the wind filled, Buckholz heard Moresby's voice issuing from their R/Ts. 'This thing is drying out rapidly, gentlemen…' They had no idea to whom the remark was addressed. Perhaps to all of them. 'Icing up. I hope to God that whatever system they've installed, it isn't water-activated. There's nothing in the cockpit or rigged to any of the systems that looks like an auto-destruct.' Moresby paused, but his next words wiped away Buckholz's momentary sense of relief. 'But, I'll bet there is an auto-destruct, all the same. You'd all better clear the area. Gunnar — ?'
'Yes?'
'Any joy?'
'I don't know. I can't find anything in the Pilot's Notes at first look. And there's nothing marked or stencilled on the fuselage so far.'
The weather had removed them from Buckholz's sight, but he could envisage them clearly. Gunnar, who spoke good Russian, had been given the task of translating the Pilot's Notes which Moresby had found in the cockpit — a leaflet of fifty pages or more. At the same time, he was translating every stencilled word and instruction on the entire fuselage, searching for a clue to the nature and location of the auto-destruct mechanism.
'That's it, then,' Moresby continued. 'Everyone clear the area. Five or six hundred feet back should do it. Go and hide in the trees — '
'Jesus,' Buckholz breathed. 'Is there anything we can do?' he said into the R/T, addressing Moresby.
'You're not helping the situation, Mr. Buckholz,' came back the reply. 'I suggest you hurry along and see a taxidermist, if you would!' Buckholz heard Gunnar's laughter, and beside him Waterford guffawed.
'Jesus.'
'Even we can walk on frozen water,' Waterford said. 'But planes can't take off from this thickness of snow. Even if the bloody thing survives its ordeal at Moresby's hands, it can't take off. You think we'll have a nice warm, sunny day tomorrow?'
'Don't blame me — !' He was aware of the murmurs from the R/T now. Moresby and his technicians. Gunnar's translations. He knew everyone else would be listening, too. The noise of the chain-saws had stopped.
'I don't. You're just another of Aubrey's trained monkeys, just like me. That silly sod has flipped his lid this time and no mistake!'
Without conscious decision, they had begun to walk back towards the clearing. Light blazed out at them as they approached the. shore. The trees along the shore had been cleared. MO-MAT would be laid along the shore, and then the tractor tug would tow the Firefox to a point where thicker ice would bear its weight before pulling the aircraft onto the lake which would become its runway.
Which would not be usable as a runway, he reminded himself.
They trudged along the shore. The snow was blowing almost horizontally yet, in the clearing itself, there was a sense of quiet, urgent desperation. As he saw Moresby, seated in the cockpit, and the technicians gathered around the fuselage, he realised he had no idea how large an explosion there would be. What would happen. Would it be small enough not to be visible until a little black flag of smoke raised itself above the cockpit? Or would it be large enough to open the nose section of the airframe like an exploded trick cigar? Enough to kill Gunnar and Moresby and the technicians…
And himself and Waterford, he thought as they trudged up the MO-MAT towards the aircraft.
There was a film of ice over much of the fuselage and the wing areas. There were great gaps in the camouflage netting which could not be replaced. The fallen tree lay to one side of the clearing, which was empty except for themselves, Moresby's team, and the Firefox. There might have been no chaos only a half-hour earlier. It
