'What is it, sir?' Alevtina asked, craning forward in her chair, staring at the flecked expanse of overcoat. Snow, the flurried curtain.
'Where were you when he came out of the toilet — the hotel toilet?' Vorontsyev snapped.
'Recess in the foyer.'
'At the bar,' added Ilya.
'Where did he put on his coat?' Vorontsyev enunciated the words slowly, carefully. They sensed the importance of their answer. They screwed up their faces helpfully.
'In — the bar,' Ilya said finally.
The girl added eagerly, 'He was wearing it as he crossed the foyer.'
'And you were behind him all the time, from the moment he left the toilet until he got into the taxi?'
'Yes.' Her voice held an apprehension of failure, but puzzlement was more evident.
'Then that's it!'
'What is?'
'What's the next slide?' Vorontsyev calmed himself, afraid of his leap of insight, the certainty of suspicion. 'Before this one, I mean.'
'Entering the hotel — there.' The cartridge clicked like the bolt of a rifle, Vorontsyev thought, his imagination gleaming with effort.
'Back again… back again… back again. See it?' The two slides were swiftly interposed — back of the man, entertaining in a comic juxtaposition. In and out of the revolving doors of the foyer of the Moskva Hotel. A television trick, Alevtina reminded herself, stifling a smile.
'What — sir?'
Vorontsyev, an impatient parent, yet happy in his own secure knowledge, crossed to the wall, and his finger jabbed, mottled monochrome, at the back of the dark overcoat.
'See the tilt of the shoulders here?' The hand wiggled impatiently, and another back appeared, leaving the foyer. 'Now here… If you enlarged the hand…' He squinted at the hand holding the dark hat down on the head — the snowflakes were huge, like irritating butterflies on a specimen slide, obscuring some scientific data. 'If you enlarge the hand. I've no doubt you will find a different one — fatter, shorter fingers, or shorter nails.'
He turned to them, grinned, and dramatically crossed to the window and let up the blind. Strong morning light now, not so grey.
'It's not the same man. The man you sat behind in the cinema was not the Colonel-General! You spent two hours following the wrong man.' In the pleasure of confirmation, Vorontsyev was uncondemning. 'So — why and where did the General go?'
'How did they switch back, sir?'
'The cinema toilet. I'll bet you were given a good look at the face, coming out of the cinema…' Alevtina's face betrayed a childish sense of being made to appear stupid by an adult. 'Of course. Now, go back to the man in the Museum of the Revolution — the one with the dark coat and hat, about the General's age. And place your bets, my children — place your bets!'
Folley rumbled a new film into the camera, the cold stiffening, thickening his fingers in the few seconds since he had removed his mittens. Already he had six rolls of film — infra-red the first two, then a change when dawn came — in his pockets, but he seemed possessed now to record everything he could. He was overwhelmed by the evidence, and by a disbelief that made him collect every scrap of it he could; perhaps he already heard Waterford's mocking tones, or those of the superior, affected queer, Davenhill.
He closed the back of the camera, raised it to his eye, focused, checked the exposure, and pressed the stud. The camera began to photograph, silently and automatically, a group of soldiers erecting a camouflage net, beneath which rested, somnolently evil, three T-72 tanks, the gun of each seeming to point straight at him.
He had been there for three hours, and he knew he should have left long before. Whatever luck there was had to be disappearing rapidly. Twice already, patrols had almost stumbled upon him as he skirted the fringes of the camp beneath the forest roof, pointing his camera like a gawping eye wherever he could — a child in a huge military exhibition.
All the time, he felt an irrepressible urgency to continue taking photographs — snap, snap, snap, move on, snap, snap, move on — lie wondered whether he was acting out some caricatured parade-ground behaviour in order to avoid considering the reality of what he photographed.
Snap, snap, snap — tanks, two guards lighting cigarettes, erection of an HQ hut; snap, snap, snap, move on — a man peeing behind a tree, lifting lie skirts of his winter overcoat, head with its fur hat bent in solemn inspection, motor rifle transports; change lens to telephoto; snap, snap, snap — smoky distance brought nearer, the ranks of T-72s stretching away, giving a sense of the size of the area they occupied; he sensed he was even beginning to compose the shots.
Voices. He stumbled backwards, ducking behind a tree, straining to catch their direction, number. Three, four? Coming closer, moving from the left, calling so they were spread slightly apart, having to raise their voice. He felt nothing, nothing more than alertness to every tiny noise of movement, below the clear voices. He dropped the camera into a deep pocket of his combat clothing, the long lens hard against his thigh, and brought the rifle slowly round to a position where he could fire it through the canvas sleeve. He flexed the cold index finger.
Four of them. Sweep patrol, round the perimeter. One of a number of teams, perhaps as many as six. Coming with the dangerous morning. Twenty yards — he caught a flash of whiter whiteness, less smoky than the vague distances of snow-heavy trees. A guard, rifle held slackly but ready for use, wending through the tight-standing pines.
Another, away to his right. They would pass just beyond him, if he slipped round the tree, just a little…
Footprints. Deep holes in the thick snow. His footprints, coming to the tree, from the direction towards which they were moving. He couldn't hide them. He eased the rifle level with his waist, reached for the barrel with his left hand.
Something in one of the photographs — quickly, quickly, he urged his cold brain. A stream of urine, smoking in the freezing air…
He turned his back to the approaching men, fumbling in his overtrousers, bending his head, visualising the picture he had taken. He tried to urinate, concentrating, wanting to giggle with nerves and the urge to verisimilitude. The feeble stream splashed against the tree, washing the snow down the trunk.
'Don't let it hang out for too long, son,' the nearest man called. 'You might need it again!' Someone else laughed. He laughed too, and the sound was ridiculously thin and pretended to his ears.
'Thanks for the advice,' he called back in Russian, and stood there, all awareness now in his back, the great stretch of white between his shoulders — target.
Then he let himself look round. He had long finished urinating, and he was freezing cold, the iciness spreading through his loins, his thighs. The nearest man who had passed ten feet from him, was moving away again, into the trees. He heard him laughing, calling out some obscenity — not back in his direction, but to one of the others. A laugh like an animal's bark returned from someone hidden further in the trees.
Folley adjusted the rifle, slipped on the mittens, looked around him carefully. He had to go now, get out quickly before the next sweep-unit came upon him, following the last one round the perimeter in an anti-clockwise direction. He moved away from the tree, treading carefully, placing his feet in the deep snow as if he might have to move quickly, would need extra purchase, at any moment.
There was one thing left to do — check the village, Rontaluumi. He wanted photographic evidence that it was empty.
Away from the camp, near the road they had turned off to hide in the forest, he buckled on his skis. As he bent to do so, the reaction hit him, and it was a long time before he could even stand upright on limbs suddenly watery and without strength.