'Please don't remind me.'
Ilarion Vikentich Galakhov looked up at the window of the first floor study. A thin strip of light where the curtain had not been closed properly. Probably the security men, Aubrey and Buckholz, were still discussing his disappearance.
He cursed Kutuzov for the romanticism of the letter from Moscow. All the way, since the beginning of the operation, he had argued against any final signal to Helsinki. But the old man had been adamant. There had to be a back-up, a contingency. Withdraw — abort — go ahead. A range of signals indicated by the arrangement of the stamps and their dominations on letters addressed to 'Ozeroff' care of the post office — or the final signal, the 'kill' alert, indicated by the addressee — Fanny Kaplan. Nothing had come for the man he was pretending to be, but that afternoon there had been a letter for Ms Kaplan. Stupid game-playing — he was going to kill Khamovkhin anyway.
He adjusted the rifle over his shoulder, and clapped his hands to his sides as he felt the cold of the night. He heard footsteps behind him, smelt cigar smoke on the freezing air.
'Anything?' the American asked him.
'Not a thing,' he replied in English. He might have been Norwegian with his accent. 'Quiet as the grave.'
'As long as it's not your grave — or his,' the American commented, tossing his head to indicate the lighted window above them.
'He's safe now,' Galakhov said lightly.
'Let's hope so. If anything happens to — him, old man Buckholz will put my ass in a sling!' Galakhov laughed, the American puffed a wreath of smoke up against the hard stars, and walked on, his footsteps crunching like the sounds of a child eating a hard biscuit as he move; on the snow-covered gravel. 'Keep your eyes peeled!' he called back.
'Sure,' Galakhov replied.
When the American had gone, he grinned to himself. Easy. Simple and easy. Become Norwegian, join the hunters. A for in a pink coat, riding a horse, he thought. The image amused him.
Fanny Kaplan, the envelope had said. Fanny Kaplar. Khamovkhin was a dead man. The only problem would be getting away alive, afterwards.
The nose of the huge USAF Galaxy transport plane opened even as the dying roar of the reverse thrust from its engine still hovered at the edge of audibility. The ramp of the cargo-hold thudded against the cleared runway of Bardufoss, northern Norway, and almost immediately a camouflaged truck rolled on to the ramp, then another and another, out into the landscape which glinted a ghostly silver in the moonlight. Exhaust: rolled in white clouds behind them as they moved away from the hard-lit, ribbed interior of the transport plane towards their assembly point.
Two RAF Harriers roared over the airfield, a deafening wave of sound succeeding them, only to be followed by a lesser wave which lapped against the low surrounding hills as a flight of Wessex helicopters circled the perimeter of the field. Then another Galaxy, which disgorged field artillery, then a Luftwaffe Transall carrying tanks, and an RAF Hercules which contained Royal Marines, landed in swift succession, settling their bulks into the iron-hard airstrip.
From the tower of the air station, a group of senior NATO officers watched the arrival of the first units of the Allied Mobile Force, the lynch-pin of any NATO first-stage land defence against a surprise attack.
Among the officers, and the most senior of them, was Major-General Jolfusson, Commander Allied Forces Northern Norway. As the succession of whale-like transport planes disgorged their cargoes of men and war machines, he was unable to take any satisfaction from the sight. His staff were also subdued. This was no NATO exercise — and it was happening all over the north of Norway that night — or would happen the following morning and afternoon. Especially at Kirkenes, where the main thrust of the Soviet attack would come. Jolfusson was due at Kirkenes, then Tromsø, before midday.
Major-General Jolfusson had never expected to see the day. Never. The unthinkable was happening. On both sides of the border of his country, the world was massing to begin the next war. And it was all but too late to avoid the first clash. His orders stated oh-six hundred, tomorrow, the twenty-fourth. That was when the invasion would begin.
It was too late. He looked at his watch. Already, it was four o'clock in the morning of the twenty-third.
PART FOUR
KUTUZOV
06:00 on the 23rd to 06:00 on the 24th
'I do not welcome venerable gentlemen… because in their wake, in their footsteps, springing up like sharp little teeth, I are these dark young men of random destiny and private passions — destinies and passions that can be shaped and directed to violent ends.'
Fifteen: The Twain Meet
Admiral Dolohov walked as quickly as caution would permit up the steps of the Murmansk Central Hospital. All the time, he watched his feet on the icy steps. And he kept his head bent because he was worried, and disturbed, and feeling small and vulnerable because of his fears for his wife, and did not wish anyone to see the look on his face.
He glanced up only once, as he reached the top of the steps. The glass doors of the main public entrance were directly ahead of him — and he could see a white-uniformed nurse crossing the well-lit reception lobby. A man bumped into him, and he lifted his head again, almost taking his hands from his coat pockets to right his balance. He did not catch even a glimpse of the man's face — noticed only the soft exhalation of the gas from whatever cylinder the Department 'V' operative carried, before his breath seemed snatched away as if by a wind, so that he gagged in surprise, then in fear, then terror as his breath would not come.
The operative was too far away by the time he staggered for him to fall against him, and he began to lean drunkenly backwards — glimpsed the lit corridor beyond the reception lobby, the imposing facade of the hospital which he had always thought more like a museum, then the starlit sky, then a street light — which had been behind him? — then he tumbled down the icy steps, his heels ringing in a distressed, irregular pattern.
The woman at whose feet he rolled to a halt, on the pavement at the bottom of the short flight of steps, dropped her little plain paper bag of fruit and clutched the collar of her fur coat round her throat before she began to scream.
Army General Sadunov, commanding Attack Force One at temporary headquarters near Pecenga, almost on the border with Norway, and less than fifty kilometres from Kirkenes, complained of indigestion almost as soon as his senior staff officers, with whom he had dined, began passing round the good Ukrainian vodka. Reluctant to miss the bout of drinking — at least so much of it as was concomitant with respect from his officers — he decided that a short walk outside would cure his complaint. He bantered and laughed with his staff while he was helped into his grey winter great-coat, and while he donned his fur hat.
Outside, the night was fine, starlit and cold. Immediately, and for a few moments, he felt better, attending to the chill of the air in his lungs, to the noises of his army — hum of generators, wind-up of helicopter engines, dicks of tested artillery like the snapping of iron twigs.
He was thinking that perhaps he should not have eaten the bliny after the beef Stroganov, certainly not after the krasnaya ikra, when the pain surged through him, starting in the pit of his stomach and reaching into his chest like a burning hand, spreading its fingers as it reached upwards. He had time to half-turn, as if to call back into the wooden building on the steps of which he stood, before he tumbled outwards, falling on his side in the snow. He rolled on his face for a moment, as if trying to put out the raging fire in his stomach by rubbing it in the snow, then lay still.