Croder had said: 'If we haven't found either Schrenk or the Zil by five o'clock this evening we shall begin patrolling the outer ring road in the hope of sighting the Zil on its way to the Kremlin.' His face had been pale, and his head sunk into the collar of his overcoat. 'We shall maintain constant radio contact and A-Able will be prepared to go into action if we sight the Zil. What action he may take will depend on the circumstances and his own discretion, but whatever happens we have to realize that the Zil may explode without warning at any time. It may be triggered with a timing device, or Schrenk may choose to detonate the charge by radio beam, sacrificing the driver. We don't know. This is a last-ditch stand, and I expect every conceivable effort to be made to avert disaster. I've already pointed out to you that the disaster we have to avert does not simply concern the explosion of a motor-car in a crowded city, but concerns the explosion of a totally unpredictable situation on an international scale. Thank you, gentlemen, that is all.'
I'd asked Bracken if they were going to reconsider the idea of warning the Guards Directorate by an anonymous phone call a few minutes before the four leading members of the Politburo got into their motorcades. He'd just said, 'God knows. That's up to London, not us.'
We knew that Croder was in signals with London hourly through a timed system of public phone box calls to the Embassy. We also knew that Croder was personally against the risk of exposing a plan to assassinate the Soviet chief of state by warning his security forces in time, without making 'every conceivable effort' to block Schrenk on his run in and get control of the Zil.
'There is, of course, the other thing,' Bracken had told me privately. 'That Zil might already be inside the Kremlin. If it is, there's nothing we can do.'
With the bridge behind me I watched the mirror for a few seconds longer than normal because a militia patrol was coming up fast and I started looking for an immediate right turn. The Volga stayed in the mirror for ten seconds and then overtook and left me behind. A minute later I caught up with it again at the Kamensciki street junction, slowing behind a mess of vehicles trying to make their way past some sort of accident by the Metro station: I saw a stove-in radiator with rusty water blowing out of it and a Moskvich draped halfway across the kerb. Sirens had started up from the opposite direction.
The surface was tricky in places now because the ruts were getting lost under the new snowfall and you couldn't use them to steer with. I was keeping my speed down to a little below the limit and checking the mirror the whole time: there shouldn't be any tags but if I missed sighting the Zil ahead of me I might see it in the mirror and send out a fix on the radio.
'We shall expect it to be crossing the ring road,' Croder had told us at the briefing, 'towards the Kremlin. But that doesn't mean it might not have to make a right turn on to the ring road itself and follow it for a time until it can turn left. Watch for that.'
I hated Croder and I pitied him. I pitied him because he'd run a reasonably effective mission up to the point where I'd failed to kill Schrenk, and in less than twenty minutes from now he looked like seeing the mission being blown out from under him through none of his own fault; and I hated him because the fault was going to be mine and he'd taken pains to let me know it. All right then, not hate. Guilt.
5. 43.
G-George… I'm making west along Samotocnaja, just passing the circus building.
Shortlidge. He was keeping station a mile behind Croder, who would now be moving south and west, somewhere near the planetarium.
Calling G-George. Repeat signal.
Radio reception was strengthening and fading as we circled the centre of the city, the new steel-braced constructions affecting the signal. We'd been told to mention a landmark when we could, as well as the street's name. We knew them by now: we'd spent two hours with the maps.
Shortlidge was repeating. His voice sounded dead. He was the one who'd found Logan and Marshal; he'd known them for three years and had worked closely with Logan on the Yugoslavian spy-bust thing when half the foreign a-i-ps in Moscow were being smoked out of their holes. Logan had a wife, a young ice-skater working her way up through the city championship teams, and Shortlidge was going to have to tell her what had happened.
I used the set again.
A-Able… I'm going north, leaving Narodnaja with the Kotelniceskaja Hotel on my left. Where is F-Freddie now?
No one came on the air for almost a minute; then Croder began asking for a signal. We didn't get one.
Calling F-Freddie. Location Please.
No answer. Croder went off the air. F-Freddie was Wilson and either his set was out or he'd skidded on the snow or the police had pulled him in for something.
At 5.44 I saw a black limousine half a block ahead of me and the set was in my hand a couple of seconds later but I didn't signal yet: it could be a Chaika. I pulled out and got past some of the traffic in front of me with the front wheels shifting across the ruts of packed snow and the rear end breaking away and correcting and breaking away again until I had to start slowing for the lights, Chaika, finding a slot in the right-hand line of traffic and pulling over, it was a Chaika, not a Zil.
B-Bertie… Proceeding south and west along Bolshaja just past the Gorkogo intersection, the Hotel Peking on my right. Did we lose F-Freddie?
I checked the time at 5.45.
A-Able to C–Charlie… This is the deadline.
Croder came back straight away
C–Charlie… We continue until further orders.
The lights in front of me went green and I got going again. The deadline was 5.45 because Ignatov had said the Zil was to be handed over to the chief of state's personal chauffeur ten minutes before Brezhnev was to board the car outside the Grand Palace, and it was a five-minute run from the ring road to the Kremlin at this time of the evening. The pickup time was six o'clock. So this was zero and the seven of us were circling the target area and the radio was silent and I was beginning to sweat because Schrenk was a professional and had enough hate burning inside him to carry this thing through to the final blast and if he succeeded the headlines would carry the shock around the world.
Because I had failed to carry out the instructions.
5.46.
Zero plus one and too late.
E-Edward… going north on Ckalova and just crossing Karl Marx.
The snow drifted out of the dark sky, eddying in the slipstream of the car ahead of me. It was becoming mesmeric, and I wound the window down and let the freezing air come in, taking deep breaths of it. I'd slept for nearly four hours after I'd got back from the warehouse but the blood loss was still a problem. In less than a minute the left shoulder was numbed by the draught and I put the window up again but went on breathing consciously until the haze went out of my head.
5. 47.
If I'd been given this information I would have eliminated Schrenk the minute I found him.
But the instructions were already there.
The snow swirled against the windscreen. There was of course a chance that Schrenk had made a mistake or the stuff hadn't arrived in time or the Zil had come unstuck in the snow but he was highly talented and they'd crippled him and he knew what he wanted to do and it wasn't particularly difficult with that amount of feverish dedication driving him: history was liberally punctuated with successful assassinations and he wasn't trying to do anything new.