Northlight

He lit a cigarette. 'Are you going to take him across?'

'It depends.'

'Depends on what?'

'If they can get Ferris out here.'

'To direct you?'

'Yes.'

He looked down. 'He's very good.'

'I know.'

'Did Mr Croder agree?'

'No. I just left him with the choice.'

Fane went over to the small cracked window but all he could see was his reflection; it was like night outside. 'Ferris is somewhere in the Far East, I believe.'

'That's right.'

'We have to assume he's directing someone there.'

'Yes.'

He turned back to face me. 'It's a pretty thin chance.'

'That's Croder's problem. I don't mind whether it comes down heads or tails.'

It was a lie and he probably knew that.

The bulb in the ceiling flickered, and we waited. Power cables were breaking all over the city as the permafrost shifted under the weight of the snow and brought poles down. 'There has not been a winter like it,' the concierge had told me. 'Not in my lifetime.' He'd stared through the glass doors as if at his first Christmas morning.

'I think you should assume,' Fane said in a moment, 'that they won't be able to get Ferris here in time to do any good.'

'That's up to them. If they can't, I'm resigning the mission. That means they'll have to fly someone else out here to replace me, and that could take just as long as to send Ferris.'

'You've given them quite a problem.'

'That's a shame.'

He might have known what was in my mind and he might not. I didn't particularly care. The thing was that Croder had his hands full in London trying to set up the mechanics that would give the West an edge over the Soviets in Vienna. He wouldn't have time to get me across on my own, now that Zhigalin had become his new objective. He'd leave me to find my way home alone and the chances of doing that were lethally thin. That was why I'd offered Croder a deaclass="underline" Zhigalin was my only ticket home.

'I understand your reasons for asking for Ferris to replace me, of course. But to impose a delay at this very critical stage is at the least dangerous, for you and everyone else. I know this area and I've got all my courier lines and communications still intact. Ferris would have to-'

'You're wasting your time. I've got absolutely no guarantee that the deal you made with the KGB isn't still exposing me to risk. I don't know that the minute you leave here you won't call them up and tell them where I am. I-'

'They believe you're dead.'

'How do you know?'

'I told them.'

'I don't know if you're lying, Fane. I don't know how complex Northlight still is, or whether you might not get instructions at any time to wipe me out.'

He shrugged. 'I can only give you my word.'

'What the hell is that worth?'

The cheap tin frame of the picture of Lenin on the wall vibrated to the pitch of my voice and I lowered it. 'On the face of it you want me to meet Zhigalin and get him across the frontier and that sounds simple enough, but on the face of it you wanted me to meet Karasov and get him across the frontier and what actually happened was that you were sitting here in Murmansk with your fingers in your ears while I was getting into that truck in Kandalaksha and that is why I can't take your word for anything now.'

He looked down, and it occurred to me that he wasn't in point of fact as cold-blooded as a toad and that he hadn't exactly thrown a party when London had told him to dig a grave for me in Soviet Russia but it didn't make any difference: he'd followed instructions before and he'd do it again.

'I'm simply warning you,' he said in a moment, 'that you could be driving yourself into a dead end. If London decides it's quicker to send out a replacement for you instead of a replacement for me, we shall be too busy to get you across the border, and you've got a pretty accurate idea of your chances of getting across on your own.'

'I have.'

He was silent for a time. He knew the score but he thought there was still a chance of keeping me in the mission without changing my director. There wasn't. Maybe there were other 1 things I could have done if there were time to think about them. There wasn't. This kind of red sector was totally new to me: the local security forces were the primary danger and if a KGB man asked for my papers he could check them with the information that the computers had been spilling out for their all-points bulletin for the past twenty-four hours and come up with the Petr Stepanovich Lein who'd been found half-dead and taken to the General Maritime Hospital and that would be enough to make them take me along to their headquarters, and that would be that because my cover was light: it hadn't been designed to protect me under interrogation.

The secondary danger was still there in the background. Rinker had got on to me at the hotel and he'd taken a capsule to protect his cell but it hadn't kept them off: they'd been there on the train to Kandalaksha because they wanted Karasov and wanted him desperately. Now they would want Zhigalin. They were running a very sophisticated cell and they had a vital objective: to scuttle the summit conference in Vienna and widen the rift between Moscow and Washington. They would have effective communications in this city and they would know by now that Zhigalin was on the run and they'd expect me to lead them to him just as I'd been expected to lead them to Karasov. Nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed except that I was in a red sector I'd never experienced before. The primary and secondary and the whole range of hazards are common to most missions and you've got to deal with them in whatever way you can but you've always got your director in the field to support you and give you couriers if you need them and give you rendezvous if you need them and keep you in signals with London hour by hour and day by day, and if a fuse blows and you go pitching into a shut-ended situation and there's nothing at last between you and Lubyanka or the Gulag or an unmarked grave then you can still hope that your director can do something before it's too late.

Not now. My only chance now was Ferris.

'We'd better assume,' Fane said evenly, 'that you'll decide to complete your mission and take Zhigalin across whatever the circumstances. In which case I need to brief you.'

'All right.' It made sense. If they sent Ferris out here I'd want to be ready for him.

'I suppose we can't get any heating in this place, can we?'

I think I remember laughing when he said that. It was so human, from such an inhuman man. He didn't think he'd said anything funny; he looked rather offended.

I said, 'In this hotel?' He should have tried hanging underneath that bloody train all night. 'The old man would bring us some tea if you like.'

He shook his head. 'I'd rather keep a low profile.' He lit another cigarette and studied the glowing tip, perhaps taking warmth from it in his mind. 'We have it from our contacts here in the Murmansk cell that Captain Zhigalin was put under close arrest in the naval barracks about an hour after the top brass learned that the Cetacea had been torpedoed and had gone down with all hands. It was probably a panic move. It was quite obvious that the summit conference was suddenly in grave jeopardy unless they could bind and gag the man responsible. From the reports I've received, Zhigalin was at first bewildered and then outraged. He told someone he expected a military honour for protecting the security of his country's most important naval base, not summary arrest and humiliation. This ties in with the dossier I was able to look at: Zhigalin is young for his rank and has received rapid promotion. He's said to be a staunch patriot, a fervent ideologist in terms of Marxist-Leninism and a dedicated officer.'

'The type to break.'

'Yes. We think he broke.'

'You think it's genuine.'

'From the reports. They're all we have to go on. I can't see any other reason for him to have escaped.'