'I have enlisted the aid of our glorious revolutionary computer to discover that very fact.'
Priabin nodded, then said, a tone of suppressed excitement in his voice: 'All right - you think there was a substitution - yes?'
Tortyev nodded. 'Why?' asked Priabin.
'One reason only - the one who arrived two days ago - is an agent, covering his tracks with this dead body.'
Priabin slapped his forehead. His face was flushed with excitement - then paled, momentarily with doubt, then he smiled at Tortyev.
'What - happened to the men who - left the body?'
'They ran off.'
'Where?'
'To the nearest metro station - the Pavolets.'
'And then?'
'Nowhere. They were lost - by the people from here, and the police - they weren't looking out for Orton then.'
Priabin said, 'We're looking for a man - an agent, we are sure - who appeared suddenly driving out of Moscow in a truck early yesterday morning...' His face drained of all colour. 'Stop...' he breathed, as if realising for the first time with the whole of his mind what he had stumbled upon. 'Stop...'
Tortyev leapt in the same direction as Priabin, a fact which pleased, and comforted, Kontarsky's lieutenant.
'You think-?'
'There's no record of a man of his appearance arriving in the Soviet Union during the past two weeks. He could have been here longer but, even then, how did he get in? I'm having the computer run down all known or suspected American or British agents, trying to match the photograph.'
'And I'm looking for Orton...' Tortyev added.
'Where is this agent of yours now?'
'In Bilyarsk.'
'God! You mean he's...'
'Probably he's inside the complex by now - in another disguise.'
'To do what?'
'Who knows? Anything - blow up the bloody plane, perhaps?'
Tortyev stared at Priabin, seeing the fear, the recurrent fear, that had replaced the earlier fiery enthusiasm, There was a knock at the door. 'Come in,' Priabin said abstractedly.
A young, crumpled individual in a dirty white coat at entered, a sheaf of photographs in his hands. He stood before Priabin, evidently pleased with his work, but nervous of its reception by the KGB lieutenant, 'We haven't run down your man...' he began.
'You haven't?'
'No. Nothing in the files on him, under American or British.'
'Then start with the...' Priabin began.
'What we've done meanwhile,' the young man pressed on, keeping his eyes behind their horn-rimmed spectacles on the sheaf of photographs, 'is to draw up for you a series of identikit pictures of what he might look like in various disguises - without detectable make-up or surgery. We're running these through the computer, to see whether he appears in any guise. It'll be a long job, I'm afraid.'
Priabin looked up at the young man, scowled, and the said: 'You'd better bloody get on with it, then - hadn't you?'
The young man, considering himself let off lightly, turned on his heel and scuttled from the room, leaving the sheaf of papers in Priabin's lap. Priabin glanced down at them, shuffled them disconsolately.
'Well?' Tortyev asked, on the edge of his chair.
'Well what?'
'Look at the bloody pictures, man!' Tortyev said angrily.
'What's the point?'
Tortyev crossed the space of dark carpet that separated them, snatched up the sheaf and nipped through them. Once or twice, he stopped, or looked back at a previous identifit mock-up, then he threw the sheaf away from him. Priabin smiled at his irritation, until he saw his face and the fact that he retained one picture still in his hand.
'It's him - Orton,' he said softly, turning the picture of a seedy, tired, moustached individual with spectacles in Priabin's direction. 'It's him...'
Priabin stared at him. The knock on the door caused him to leap to his feet, as if guiltily surprised. The door opened to reveal Holokov, out of breath, his overcoat badly tugged on, collar up, his face red with exertion.
Tortyev had left him in the restaurant at the Centre, upstairs, where the food was as good as any of Moscow's principal hotels, and cheaper. Holokov had spilled tea on his tie, which was askew, Tortyev noticed.
'What is it?' he said sharply, rising to his feet.
'Stechko...' Holokov said wheezingly. 'Phone call from headquarters - that bloody little Jew, Filipov, has been in contact with the British Embassy.'
'What?'
'True. They were monitoring the phones in the restroom, and he placed a call from there. Stechko's got him in your office now.'
Tortyev continued staring at Holokov for a moment, digesting his information. Then he turned to Priabin, and said: 'All our problems solved in one fell swoop, Dmitri - eh? This bloody little traitor must know who Orton is, and why he's gone to Bilyarsk! He's warned the British that we're close to finding out who he is we have the answer in the palm of our hands.'
Priabin's face broke into a slow smile. 'Come on,' he said. 'Your car still waiting for you?' Tortyev nodded.
'Then I'll come, too - with your permission?'
Tortyev smiled. 'Naturally, Dmitri.'
As they passed through the door, and fat Holokov closed it behind them, Priabin said: 'The value of gossip, eh, Alexei - the value of gossip!' He slapped Tortyev on the shoulder, and he and the detective laughed loudly in unison.
Priabin stood at Tortyev's desk, the telephone receiver in his hand, waiting for the Centre's code-room to answer him. He looked across the room, to where the unconscious, bloody form of Filipov was collapsed into a chair, held there only by the straps on his wrists.
The man's dark, ascetic features were bruised and swollen. Blood had run over his chin from broken teeth and a damaged lip, and the skin was split and discoloured around his closed eyes. His nose had bled freely when Holokov's huge fist had broken it. Stechko and Holokov hovered in that same corner of the room, silenced machines awaiting fresh commands, while Tortyev paced the room. The time was after one in the morning.
Priabin was indifferent to the damage done by Tortyev's apes. They had had to work swiftly - too crudely for his taste but, surprisingly, not for Tortyev. Perhaps Alexei Tortyev was angry with Filipov, especially angry because he had trusted him - or merely because he was a Jew. Such anti-Semitism was by no means unusual in the KGB.
