Static came on the air.
21 to station 6 and halted.
Colonel Belyak sat with his bulk in the corner between the seat and the door, the microphone in his hand. He wasn't worried about my attempting an escape: this area was already a super-trap and if I'd wanted to escape I wouldn't have set it up for my self, and so far I'd got him to believe in that.
34 to station 7 and halted.
Engines sounded everywhere in the quiet of the streets, a background murmur. Normal traffic had been stopped, and there were no lights moving anywhere, only the blacked-out shapes of the patrol cars. Dogs loped past us, singly and in packs, hollow-flanked and with their heads down, scenting; this wasn't far from the big No. 3 Meat Market, closed because there was no meat but still attractive because of its smell.
19 to station 12 and halted.
The time on the dashboard clock was 7:13.
The colonel flipped the mike open. 'What units are still moving?'
There was only static and some faint Morse we were picking up from another band.
'If any unit is not yet deployed, report immediately.'
Static.
Belyak looked at me. 'You are ready?'
'Yes.'
He got out of the car with me, bringing a walkie-talkie with the antenna extended, and I took him to within a block of the safe-house.
'It looks,' I told him, 'as if he's still there. It's the fifth room along on the third floor.' the chink of yellowish light showed clearly enough through the gap in the curtains. I looked at my watch. 'Do you have 7:21?'
'I do.'
'You're giving me fifteen minutes. That was agreed?'
'It was.'
'Then you can send your men in at 7:36 if I haven't brought him out. If I can get him under control before then, you'll see the light in that window go out and you can expect both of us to leave the building by the main entrance. You won't need to order any rush: I'll have a gun at his back.'
I couldn't see the Colonel's eyes in the shadow of his cap, knew only that they were watching me.
'Very well. And whether you bring this man out or not, you understand that you will remain my prisoner. That also was agreed.'
'Yes, I understand.'
I turned away and began walking, and heard the sound of boots over the snow as my two escorts began tailing me at a distance. There would be others, as I moved closer to the building, and once I was through the entrance door they would close in from all sides with their assault rifles covering every exit and every window.
The edges of the snow-ruts broke under my boots as I kept on walking. From somewhere over to my left I heard a radio come to life, and faint voices; then it was quiet again.
He had done well, Belyak. I could only see two of the patrol cars from where I was now and their crews were inside them, keeping a low profile, but there'd be upwards of thirty vehicles forming the peripheral ring at two blocks' distance, because it would take at least that number to seal off the area effectively. When we'd left Militia Headquarters I'd counted five personnel carriers, and there could be others here, so that the actual number of armed bodies within and around the ring was probably in the region of two hundred. If I tried to break and run at any time, at any time at all, I would have as much chance as a rat in a dog-pack.
It was 7:23 when I reached the building and kicked the worst of the snow off my boots and went through the entrance door and heard it swing shut behind me.
Chapter 17: LIGHTS
Ferris caught it before the second ring.
"Things went off all right,' I told him.
In a moment he said: 'I'll tell London.'
He just meant he was pleased, that was all, because he hadn't believed I'd got a ghost of a chance of going into Militia Headquarters and coming out again of my own free will. There was nothing in point of fact to tell London. The purpose of the exercise had been to stop Captain Vadim Rusakov from going down there and offering himself as the sacrificial lamb in order to get his sister out. I needed him.
I hadn't advanced the mission; I'd simply averted the terminal damage that Tanya had come appallingly close to causing when she'd walked out of that safe-house in spite of my warning. But that was something, at least; we hadn't crashed Meridian, though it wasn't the kind of signal the director in the field could flash to Control in London.
Novosibirsk's just come in, sir. We've still got a mission running.
Croder would freeze him with his obsidian eyes.
How nice.
We're expected to do rather better than that, we the brave and underpaid ferrets in the field. But I had felt something move softly within when I'd seen her look back, just that once, before she'd vanished into the trees of the little park; you could call it joy of some kind, I suppose, or as close as I can ever get to such a thing inside the cold and scaly carapace of my defences.
As close as I'll let myself get? You read well, my good friend, between the lines.
'I blew the safe-house,' I told Ferris. 'It was full of militia when I left there.'
'They were looking for you?'
'Yes.'
'What's your location now?'
'I'm about three miles away, at Iskitim Prospekt and — wait a minute.' the glass panels were steaming up.' Iskitim Prospekt and Borodin ulica. And I've got the car here.' I'd just walked across the patch of waste ground where I'd left the Skoda earlier this afternoon. 'You've got Tanya in safe keeping?'
'Here at the hotel.'
'For God's sake try and make her understand,' I said,'that if she goes off on her own again we won't be able to help her.'
Lights swept across the telephone booth and I turned my back until they'd gone. I wouldn't have long: they'd be spreading the hunt.
'She's hating herself,' Ferris said. 'Feels she let you down.'
'Then maybe she's learned.' I tried to remember the names of the major intersections east of here, but a lot had gone on since I'd studied the map of the city on board the Rossiya. 'Look, I'm still a bit too close to things at the moment, so I'm going to start driving eastwards from here as soon as we shut down. Have I got a new safe-house?'
'Yes. Nothing posh.'
'I'll take anything. I need someone to intercept and lead me there. You should also send someone to the Harbour Light Bar on the river.' I gave him the location. 'Captain Rusakov should be going there in a couple of minutes from now.' I repeated the description Rusakov had given me of himself and told Ferris about the recognition mark: the odd pair of gloves. 'He should be told as soon as possible that his sister's free and in safe keeping and that I'll meet him there as soon as I can. Where's the safe-house?'
I could hear the faint crackling of a map on the line. 'Five kilometres from the Harbour Light, downstream on the river.'
'What sort of place is it?'
In a moment, 'It's an abandoned hulk. We didn't have much time to find anything better.'
'No problem.'
But it wasn't good news. If the best the director in the field could find for his executive was an abandoned hulk on the river it meant that the local support people were not only spread thin on the ground but couldn't come up with anything safer. It was the nearest they could get, I suppose, to a bloody cellar.
'There'll be a change of clothes for me there?' I asked Ferris. The collar of the uniform was rough and my neck had started itching.
'Clothes,' Ferris said, 'food, oil stove, oil lamp, bedding, the usual supplies.'
There hadn't been a trace of satisfaction in his tone but I said, 'More than I could have hoped for, considering.'