Gant nodded his head politely, frostily.
'Tell me about the observations you made on your lovers' walk earlier,' he said to Kreshin, his eyes hard.
It was not a request, but an order. Gant had found that he could channel the useless, wasted adrenalin pumping in his system into his characterisation of Chekhov, whose fictitious papers he had in his pocket, complete with the all-important yellow GRU ID card, transit papers, and the rest. His fake dog-tags were on a thin chain around his neck. He had not asked how the forgery, the disguise, had been accomplished. Baranovich was an expert, driven by hate, and by ego. The results were good.
Kreshin smiled, and said: 'The guard on that gate has been reinforced - there are troops of the usual KGB guard, but more of them. The Security Support Group has not been used there - probably because Tsernik feels insulted that the GRU have been called in ... it's always happening.'
'What about the perimeter fence?'
'The watch-towers are full to overflowing - and there are dog patrols inside the fence, every ten minutes or so. It's a double fence, by the way, and the dogs will be loose by the time you arrive - no one in their right mind would try cutting the wire. The watch-towers are a hundred yards apart - you'll have to pass at least four of them.'
'You must look as if you are inspecting the wire itself - don't forget to challenge the guards in the towers, wake them up,' Baranovich interrupted. 'Go on, Ilya.'
'There is a lot of light at the gate itself - you will be seen from some distance as you approach. The outer gate is merely a barrier with its accompanying guard-post. You will be required to show your papers here. The guards will be curious, because they will not recognise you, but the GRU tabs on your uniform will allay any suspicions they might have. When you are allowed to pass inside the outer barrier, you will encounter a mesh-gate, which will be locked. The guard will be inside this gate, and they will require you to show your papers again before they will open up.'
'They will open up?' Gant asked softly.
'There is no need to worry - we have checked the current papers and identification of GRU officers of the Special Groups, and yours are in order,' Baranovich explained. Gant merely nodded. Baranovich took up the narrative, Kreshin returning to an idle, thoughtful patting of Natalia's hand as it lay on his shoulder. 'Once inside, you should make as directly as possible across the airfield. You may ignore any helicopter activity overhead - the uniform will be enough to satisfy them. When you arrive at the security guard outside the administrative building which, as I mentioned earlier, is physically linked to the hangar containing the Firefox, you will need to show your papers but, since you will be walking into the KGB headquarters at Bilyarsk, no one is likely to assume that you do not, in fact, belong there!' Baranovich smiled. 'Once inside, make for the pilots' rest-room on the floor above. It will not be occupied at that time.'
'Where is the pilot - Voskov?' Gant asked sharply.
'At this moment?' Kreshin asked, exaggeratedly looking at his watch. 'He will be in bed.'
'He has quarters in a special compound - where the KGB and other reliable members of the team here are housed.' Baranovich's contempt showed for a moment, as if he had lifted a veil and shown a corner of his soul.
'It is where they keep those who work on the antiradar, which is why we have picked up nothing in scientists' gossip during the last months.'
'But, he will come to the rest-room?' Gant persisted.
'Yes. He will change there, and perhaps have a meal - though Voskov is not a good eater before one of these flights ... Are you, Mr. Gant?' Baranovich's eyes twinkled.
'No, but I can usually sleep,' Gant replied.
'Yes, of course. We will be leaving at two-thirty. You will have perhaps only a couple of hours.'
'Never mind,' Gant said, stifling a yawn and forcing himself into wakefulness. 'I want to go over it all again.'
'The security?'
'No. The airplane. The weapons-system, the Rearward Defence Pod. Tell me again - everything.'
Gant felt himself as two layers of response, suddenly. At the surface of his mind was the growing excitement, now that he had put aside his masquerade as a GRU officer, the tension connected with the Firefox, burning hot as a lust in him; he had a curious reluctance to stay awake, an unformed desire to be in darkness, with an empty mind. It was the first time he had ever wished back the void of the Veterans' Hospital, since the day he had left it It was a feeling he avoided examining.
Dmitri Priabin and Alexei Tortyev knew each other - not as close friends, but as graduates of the KGB training school. They had been contemporaries, and as junior officers had worked within the same department. This was before Priabin, who was regarded as the more promising, was promoted as aide to Kontarsky in department 'M', and Tortyev, whose brilliant mind was officially mistrusted by such a degree which would ensure his rotting at his present rank until he retired, had moved into the KGB section of the Moscow Police, into the Political Security Service.
It was not unnatural, then, that having met in the cold, metallic room which housed the programmers for the central records computer, below ground level in Dzerzhinsky Street, and having enquired after each other's recent careers, and complained about their own and each other's superior officers, that they began to discuss the cases on which they were working.
It was a remarkable coincidence that had brought them to the central computer at the same time. Such discussion was the privilege of young officers, safe from their superiors, each alive to the possibilities of their separate cases. The senior echelons of the KGB, like its predecessors, have always discouraged the professional gossip associated with police forces in other countries, other societies, in a further attempt to enforce the absolute security seemingly demanded by a secret police force. However, the present generation of KGB officers, among whom were Tortyev and Priabin, both highly intelligent graduates of the Lenin University of Moscow, possessed, in the eyes of many of their seniors, a remarkable degree of scepticism towards some of the cherished aims of the service - notably in the matter of gossip. They realised, unlike their hidebound seniors, that the cross-fertilisation of such gossip more than outweighs its detraction from absolute security. Priabin, seated in one of the armchairs in the waiting-room next to the metallic, sterile room with its banks of lights and spools and controls was saying as much to Tortyev.
'They don't realise, Alexei, how much they lose by being so rigidly compartmentalised. One hand never knows what the other in doing.'
Tortyev, who had shoved his file of photographs into the hands of one of the white-coated operators, and was merely waiting for an estimate of how long the computer-run would take after the features of the man Orton had been broken down into computer-language, nodded his head sagely, a smile of complicity playing around his mouth.
'Quite true,' he replied. 'Take us, for instance.'
'True - we are, after all, both looking for foreign agents, are we not?'
There was a silence. Priabin lit a long cigarette, of British manufacture, while Tortyev was content to pick at his finger-nails. Priabin had revisited the computer room throughout the afternoon and evening, almost as a kind of obsessive, childhood habit, as if he could, by appearing before the officers with irritation plainly written on his features, prompt the operators into jogging the computer into more rapid activity. Thus far, the computer had failed to answer his question - who was the man in the truck with Upenskoy. This was despite the fact that it had at its disposal the files, descriptions, possible disguises - a whole identifit library of each face in every file, and suggestions as to how those faces might be disguised successfully - and present whereabouts, if known, of thousands of known or suspected agents - American, European, Israeli; even Warsaw Pact countries and developing African nations had their places in the computer-banks as possible enemies of the KGB.
Priabin was angry with the computer - he had presented the machine with a simple problem, the sort of problem it would take a large team of men a week to complete, and he wondered what machines were for if they couldn't come up with the answers he required.
He puffed angrily at his cigarette now that the conversation had idled, and wished that indeed, Tortyev could help with his problem - what was it he was worrying about, some body in the Moskva, with its face beaten in?
'Who is this man you're after?' he asked, as much for the sake of distracting himself as for the sake of conversation, or interest in what Tortyev was doing. Kontarsky would already be at Bilyarsk, strutting like a turkey-cock, attempting to drive doubt from his mind by an over-zealous inspection of security there. While he left his assistant holding the damned baby! Priabin concluded. What was it Kontarsky had said to him, just before leaving, and for perhaps the twentieth time since he had seen that bloody photograph of the man who called himself Glazunov, and who had popped up out of nowhere like the devil himself. What was it? Find out, Dmitri - for your sake, and for mine. Find out tonight. Yes - that was it.
Priabin grimaced at his thoughts. Dmitri Priabin was doing it for Dmitri Priabin's sake - he would find out, if that damned computer didn't break down - for his own sake.
'Ah,' said Tortyev meditatively in reply. 'That is what I want our noble machine to discover - I know him as Orton...'
Priabin creased his brow in thought, and said: 'What's he supposed to have done?'
Tortyev looked slighted for a moment, and then replied: 'He came to my attention as a drug-smuggler.'
Priabin nodded, and appeared to lose interest. Tortyev continued, nettled that a man with whom he was at training school should regard his problems as unimportant : 'But, the strange thing is - this Orton, who died by the hand of one of his associates - or so we believed - is not the man who arrived at Cheremetievp two days ago.'
Two days ago... Priabin sat bolt upright in the comfortable armchair. 'When?' he snapped.
'Two days ago...'
'When did he - die?' Priabin asked, his voice shaky with excitement. Even as the surface of his thoughts leapt at the impossible proximity, he was telling himself that he was being merely foolish.
'The same night.'
'You - caught the men?'
'We rounded up all of Orton's known associates - and found nothing to connect his death with them,' Tortyev explained, gratified that he seemed to have stung Priabin into interest, though he was puzzled at the man's upright, attentive posture.
'Who killed him, Alexei?'
'We - don't know, in fact, we don't know who died.'
'What?'
'As I said - the man who died was not the Orton who arrived at the airport, complete with passport and papers from the London Embassy...'
'Then who the hell was he - who were they both?'
Tortyev spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance.
