'About what? She's never needed my permission before for the things she does!'
Gorochenko's face darkened. He said, 'Don't sulk, Alexei! Listen to me. Your calling there the other night — it disturbed her. And I think she felt humiliated. And even sorry that it had to happen.' He spread his hands for silence. 'I'm not saying she's changed, or that she wants to begin again. Just that she wants to see you.' He patted Vorontsyev's thigh again. 'I want to help you — not her, but you, Alexei. You believe that, don't you?'
Vorontsyev fought back something akin to tears. He felt young, brittle as glass, foolish. And he did want her back. He had always known that, as Gorochenko knew it. He knew he would agree to it, agree that they meet. He nodded.
'I believe it.'
'Then I'll say no more. You can think it over. Then let me know. I said I would — let her know what you decide. A meeting with no promises, on either side.'
'Very well,' Vorontsyev said stiffly, sitting upright, starched by the emotion beginning to move in him. He poured two more vodkas with a perceptibly shaking hand, then said, 'You look tired, father. You are working too hard.'
'May be, my boy.' He played with the thick white moustache, his homage to Stalin as he called it, and smiled. He drew on the cigarette, coughed, and added, 'That cunning old bastard, Feodor, sniffs treason — as usual!' His eyes seemed suddenly to focus on Vorontsyev's face.
'Treason?'
'Don't worry. I'm not digging. Merely telling. The last meeting of the full Politburo. A performance of exceptional merit from our First Secretary. Plots against him, against all of us — inspired by the West, naturally. And he was hot on the trail! Quite like the old days.'
'You — discount the idea?'
'Not necessarily.' He barked with sharp laughter, and in the sound he was a powerful man, and unafraid. Wisely cynical, wordly-wise. 'But I have heard the whole thing before. I think it comes with age, like prostate trouble or sciatica.' He laughed again. Then he said suddenly, 'Who tried to kill you, Alexei?'
'I–I don't know,' Vorontsyev said, seeing the hard anger in his adoptive father's eyes. The old man looked at him for a long time, then, seemingly satisfied, he nodded and looked at his watch.
'I must go, Alexei. I have an important meeting.' He stood up. 'You — take good care of yourself,' he added gruffly. 'Understand?'
'Yes, father.' The words were so sombre, so charged with parental domination, that Vorontsyev felt as if the old man were rehearsing him in his school learning, or overlooking his mathematics. Or perhaps in the days of his student arrogance, arguing with him.
Gorochenko said, as if divining something, 'To try to kill an SID man means it is serious. Whatever it is — take care of yourself. You know what it would do to me if anything happened to you — eh?' Vorontsyev nodded again. 'And — think about that other matter. Natalia. I don't like things as they are…' A hint of inflexible command in the voice, then: 'Try to allow yourself to see her. Try to solve things, eh?'
'I–I'll try.'
When he had seen the old man out, he had no desire to return to the study. Faces on the wall or relegated to the frayed carpet. He wanted — yes, wanted, he admitted, to think about his wife.
Folley was in little condition to register tangible scenes. Only the sense of personal movement, the grip of mittened hands on his arms, and being bundled into the back of a small, cramped vehicle, roofed with tarpaulin; he registered the change of environment with painful concentration. The aching body adopted unsuccessfully the hard outlines of the cold metal. Lights. He could remember lights, and the din of tracked vehicles waiting to move. Moving.
He tried to notice, to absorb and retain impressions. A litmus imagination. But it was difficult, because of the gouts of pain from the broken ribs, the bruised flesh, still overwhelmed him. He slipped in and out of awareness, as if hiding from something. Yet someone might ask him to remember; so he tried.
It was snowing — the snow blowing into his hanging face, or flung as noisily as gravel against the tarpaulin. Two men in the seats in front.
The swollen tongue rasping thickly against the broken craters of teeth. Real, that.
The jolting of the journey — he raised himself to look out from the flap of the tarpaulin, once; saw a succession of tanks winding down a slope of the road behind him. And at the speed of his vehicle, they were not being left behind. Racing, almost, in that weather. A ridge in the road jolted him down again, and he passed out. After that, he did not attempt to look out again. Snow, bunding like a curtain — orange haloes of headlights, from somewhere behind. That was all.
He had no distinct awareness of time, or direction. And little idea of his context within the Russian column as it moved back towards the border. He believed he had told them nothing — but as the shocks of pain went on, all he wished was that the journey would end, or the vehicle stop for a little; he could not remember the interrogation clearly at all. Did not remember its object.
Only the movement, then; after an undetermined time, it was only the next jolt, the next protest of the body, that concerned him. The minute changes of position, finding un-bruised parts of himself that might cushion the shocks as the vehicle careered down the road to Rontaluumi; no longer just a vehicle, napping tarpaulin or screaming, chained wheels or plastic seating thrust against his cheek — his whole world, now.
He had, in fact, passed out once more when the column began to pass through the border wire east of the village; his own vehicle, driven by Lieutenant Shapkin of the GRU, was near the lead, behind the advance Motor Recce Company, because orders had been received from Leningrad that the Englishman be returned to Russian soil as soon as possible. Pnin, the General in command of the Ivalo strike force, 'Finland Station Six', had obeyed each of his instructions, relayed from Praporovich in Leningrad; even the one concerning Folley. By the morning, which would come late and dark with the convenient storm, the only Russians remaining on Finnish soil would be a covering party left in the deserted village.
Folley was unconscious for most of the helicopter journey to Leningrad. The brief and violent storm had abated sufficiently to allow a helicopter to set out from the deep forest that now concealed 'Finland Station Six' on their own side of the border. Folley had slept in stillness for a few hours, in a wooden hut, of which he had perceived little — shape of planking, and the heat from the stove. Then, when they hauled him to consciousness, in darkness still, the snow thick against the windows, he had cried out once, as if robbed, and passed out.
Galakhov waited until the Finnair flight to Helsinki was called, and his target had begun to stir in his seat in the Departure Lounge in the Queen's Terminal, before making his approach. He required the distraction of time slipping away to cover any suspicion by the target. He was dressed in the uniform of an Embassy chauffeur; a disguise which would excuse his unknown face but supplement the fiction that he was KGB. The tall man had taken away the suitcase and his travelling clothes, then returned. Both of his contacts were seated elsewhere in the lounge, waiting to follow him and the target.
Ozeroff, GRU Military Attache at the Soviet Embassy in London, drafted by special order of the Chairman of the KGB to security duties in Helsinki, was just gathering up his topcoat and suitcase when a chauffeur snapped to attention in front of him, and saluted.
'Sir—' the young man began, when Ozeroff snapped, 'You bloody young fool, what do you mean by drawing attention to me like that?'
'Sorry, sir,' the young man muttered, shuffling his feet, rigid stance collapsing into nerves. 'Urgent communique from Moscow Centre, sir — I was told to catch you before you left. There's a reply expected—'