'Christ, radio — ' he blurted.
'Yes. Where are you from — the Finnmark?' Her English improved; rusty with disuse, it was now working again. She indicated her mouth, then pointed at him. His accent…
'Yes. But, how long?'
'Long?'
'Will they come now, at once?' She shook her head. 'Then no radio. I must go now. I — ' He decided to ask rather than demand. 'I need something warm — to wear.'
She nodded. 'My husband — he will take you on the sledge, when he returns, or tomorrow, to the main road, perhaps.' Not alien, somehow familiar and expected. He was warm at last. Tears of weariness and respopse pricked at his eyes. The promises of aid in the strange, halting English numbed him as certainly as the cold outside.
Could he — ? No. No risks…
Quarter of a mile, no, more than that now.
'Clothes,' he said heavily.
The beam of the searchlight from the descending helicopter swept over the room, fuzzily gleaming for a moment through the steam-clouded window. Then it was gone, bouncing off the slope before it finally disappeared and all that remained was the racket of the rotors. Gant listened. Only one, still time…
'Clothes!' he snapped, his voice ugly.
She did not, however, react as if she feared him. She nodded. 'Who are they?'
'Russians.'
She spat, suddenly and surprisingly. It was the reflex, racial memory of a once-real hatred. She snapped: 'We are Skolt Lapps — we live here now since we lost our homes in Petsamo. Petsamo belongs to them now, since the war. Russians — !'
The rotors roared, then began to wind down. Gant pressed himself against the wall, and squinted through the steam on the window. The rotors died. He heard no dogs, but the noises from the round-up had quietened. Two minutes — ?
He glanced around the room. The woman had gone. He panicked, but as he moved she re-entered the doorway, holding a heavy check jacket and a pair of thick trousers. And walking boots.
'These — I hope they fit you.'
He bundled them under his arm, fingers locking inside the boots to hold them. She moved to the outside door. He stared at the puddle that marked his presence, the one or two half-footprints on the polished floorboards. Smiling, she tilted the pot on the stove. Stew sloshed onto the floor. Then she beckoned him.
Cold threatened from the door.
He dropped his bundle, pulled on the jacket for disguise and warmth, then collected the trousers and boots and rifle. He could hear voices, almost conversational in volume and tone, but he could not hear dogs. On the doorstep, he nodded to her. She touched his shoulder, her expression already settling to a kind of passivity. She was preparing her face.
'They are pretending to be Finns,' she whispered. 'But their accents are bad. Go now. That way.' She pointed back up the slope. He saw the deep black holes of his descent of the slope. She pushed him ahead of her. 'I went for a walk, looking for the dog,' she said.
He turned to thank her, but she merely shook her head. 'Go,' she instructed. 'The Finnmark is twenty miles away.'
He was already climbing the slope, urgency driving out the sense of who had given him the jacket and the clothes he carried under his arm. He was primarily aware of his right hand once more and the rifle it held.
He turned back once, at the crest of the slope, near the bush which had earlier concealed him. The door of the hut was closed. Probably, the woman had begun to be afraid now, to physically shake with reaction, as much at his presence as that of the Russians. Now, she would be deciding she should not have helped him, that her home had been broken into, invaded.
The round-up had ended. Reindeer stamped and shuffled. The MiL helicopter sat like a squat beetle, rotors still, near the corrals. A group of men were talking. Dark clothing and white Arctic camouflage.
Three, four — six…
Spreading out, searching. There seemed no resistance from the Lapps. Perhaps they believed the fiction that the soldiers were Finns. He turned his back on the village and trudged into the trees.
Twenty miles, she had said. Twenty.
It was a huge distance, almost huge enough to be a void, something uncrossable.
Vladimirov turned from the window of the Tupolev as Dmitri Priabin entered the War Command Centre ahead of the First Secretary. The young man's face was elated, yet he also appeared to be recovering from a bout of nausea. There was a bright sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his neck was pink above the collar of his uniform. Vladimirov knew, with an inward, cold amusement, that the young officer had survived, that the collar and shoulder insignia of the uniform would soon be changed. Now, they denoted Priabin as a lieutenant. What next? Captain Priabin, or the dizzy heights of a colonelcy? It appeared that the young man's former superior, Kontarsky, was to bear the burden of failure entirely alone. Priabin had first identified Gant, probably by accident more than design, and almost in time to stop him. He had earned the reprieve of promotion.
He had arrived expecting to suffer, and had been rewarded. Vladimirov did not envy him anything except his youth as he hurriedly exited from the room. Then he turned his back on the First Secretary and looked down at the tarmac, where an imposing queue of black limousines was drawn up. Priabin went down the passenger steps and climbed into the back of one of the cars. It drove off towards the administration buildings and the perimeter fence. Presumably, Priabin had some woman to impress with his narrow escape, his unexpected promotion. Vladimirov returned his attention to the War Command Centre.
The Soviet leader had donned his overcoat. His fur hat rested like a pet in one of his gloved hands. His face was stern. He had paused only to listen to the latest report from the commander of the KGB Border Guard units they had despatched into Finnish Lapland. As the voice from the cabin speaker proceeded with the report, the First Secretary nodded occasionally.
Vladimirov watched Andropov. There was a faint gleam of perspiration on his shaven upper lip. Responsibility had passed to himself, as well as to Vladimirov. It was an uneasy and temporary alliance that the air force general did not welcome or trust.
The high-speed transmissions from the command helicopter were received by the AWACS Tupolev, then re-transmitted to Moscow. In the War Command Centre, they were played back at normal speed. Vladimirov could not rid himself of the analogy of some obscure sporting commentary. He listened through the caution, through wanting-to-please, wanting-to-succeed, and tried to assess how close they were to the American.
For he was there. The parachute had been found by one of the dogs, tracks had been followed, a village might, or might not, have given him shelter, clothing, food. He was heading in a north-westerly direction, towards the closest outjutting of the Norwegian frontier. He was, they guessed, less than twenty miles from his objective. The hunters had a night and part of a day, no more.
The transmission ended with a request for orders. Immediately, the First Secretary looked at Andropov and at Vladimirov, and then, having fixed each of them with a blunt, unwavering stare, merely nodded. Men sprang to renewed attention as he left the compartment. They heard his high shoes ring on the frosty metal of the passenger ladder. Vladimirov resisted the impulse to turn his head, and continued to watch Andropov. Suddenly, the Chairman of the KGB gestured him to follow, into the recreation suite.
'Tell the commander to hold for instructions,' Vladimirov snapped, following Andropov. He closed the compartment door behind him. Andropov was pouring himself a whisky at the bar.
'Drink?' he asked.
'No, thank you.'
Andropov gulped some of the liquor as he turned to Vladimirov. 'Well?' he demanded. 'What now?'