Northlight

'All right. In the small waiting-room at the north end of Platform 4. Repeat that.'

When she'd finished I said: 'Tell me what you look like.'

She hesitated again. 'I am young, and not very tall. I will be wearing an old sable coat, and-'

'What colour are your eyes?' Everyone here was wearing fur; it was twenty-five degrees below freezing.

'They are dark.'

'Brown? Blue?'

'Brown.'

'All right. Don't approach anyone. I'll approach you. Wear an odd pair of gloves, that don't quite match.'

That had been an hour ago and as the train pulled out I saw the man opening a paper behind the grimy glass. He didn't glance out.

In this unearthly light the station had the aspect of an illusion. With the snow-covered roofs reflecting the sky and the shadows darker than they'd been at noon, definition was lost, and the shadows seemed more solid than the buildings themselves. Her short figure had the same sense of unreality: her shadow, moving across the open expanse of snow between the lamps, leaned and turned with a movement of its own as the light changed around it.

I let ten minutes go by after she'd walked into the little waiting-room, checking and double-checking the configurations in the environment: the line of three taxis alongside the iron railings; the black Pobeda with snow on its roof, parked facing the gates; the two men talking near the cafeteria, their breath clouding under the lamps; the group of children stamping their feet to a rhythm that was becoming a dance and leading to laughter; and the sailors over by the huge red tea-wagon. It had taken me fifteen minutes to get here from the hotel and the rest of the time I'd spent absorbing the changing patterns of movement in the whole of the area overlooking the waiting-room, and I was satisfied.

London doesn't warn you to take care when it sends you into a rendezvous. It's your responsibility to check the other party for surveillance and for traps: you're expected to go in and get out and leave no trace, but we don't look at it as a tactical regulation because if we get anything wrong it's our own skin.

'Good evening.' I stood looking down at her for a moment.

She turned quickly to face me, half-catching her breath, her bronze eyes staring into mine with something like fear. She brought her hands upwards across the front of her worn sable coat as if protecting herself, though it was probably to show me her gloves didn't match.

'I thought you weren't coming,' she said huskily.

'Sorry I'm late. It was the snow.'

'Did you-' she left it.

'Did I what?'

'Did you come in a car?'

'We're better off in here. Nobody can watch us. The car's in the open.'

She looked quickly through the small smoke-grimed window, her lips parting as if to say something. Then she looked back at me but said nothing. A shiver went through her.

'Come and sit down.' I led her across to the wooden bench. There was no heating in here; that's why I'd chosen it: so that we'd be alone. It was the best of the four or five places I'd checked out yesterday when the embassy in Moscow had prepared me for an imminent rendezvous.

'Do you know where he is?' She'd been holding the question back: it came out with a little rush, her breath clouding under the light that hung from the ceiling.

I ignored the question.

'Why aid you call my embassy, Tanya?'

She took it as an accusation. 'I… I hoped someone there might know where he is.'

'It's perfectly all right to call us. I just want to know why you did. I mean, why us.'

She was watching my eyes intently, either not trusting what I was saying or believing there was a hidden meaning.

A lot of rdv's are like that, with strangers.

'I…' She looked down, then up again. 'He said sometimes that he had "British friends".'

'In Russia?'

'He didn't say that. He just said friends.'

'So you phoned the British embassy?'

'Yes.' She darted a glance at the window again and at the glass-panelled door.

She says she's Karasov's mistress, the message had told me. It had been in read-through code with the name changed, handed to me by a small man in a duffle coat as I was getting out of the lift at the hotel, a perfect pass — I'd hardly seen his face as he'd turned away. Fane hadn't told me he was running couriers, and I didn't know how the embassy could have made contact with him: the rooms were bugged. We suggest you meet her and see if she can be useful in any way. The telephone number had followed.

'Have you heard from him?' I asked her, and she looked back at me from the window.

'No. That's why I'm so worried.'

I didn't know if she'd seen anyone outside, or was simply frightened. For me there wasn't much risk: I'd gone from covert to clandestine when I'd left the hotel, putting my London papers inside a door panel of the car and bringing the others — Boris Antonov, Moscow work and residence visa — because a visiting foreign journalist had no business talking to a Soviet citizen in the waiting-room of a Murmansk railway station and they'd send me out of the country at a minute's notice after the interrogation was done with. At best. If I made some kind of mistake they'd keep me here and go to work on me.

I took one of her gloved hands. 'It's all right if the militia come in here. I'm a Soviet citizen with full visa.'

She looked surprised, then relieved.

'Then what is your name?'

'You don't know it. You came in here because I was pestering you, but I still followed. With your looks, they'd believe that.'

She glanced away with a little dipping motion of her head.

'Very well.'

'Just go with whatever I say. You're perfectly safe.' I took my hand away. 'He hasn't tried to get in touch with you, even, through friends?'

'No.' She looked suddenly desolate. 'I love him. I love him very much.'

'Are there friends he could use as a go-between?'

'No. We… meet very privately.' Suddenly she asked, 'Do you think he's dead?'

'No. Why?'

'Because even if they'd arrested him, he would have got a message to me.'

'How?'

Her head came down. 'I don't know. Somehow.'

'There's no reason why he should be dead. You should be hearing from him at any time.'

She seemed to know I was just trying to make it easier for her. 'Do you think he's a spy?'

'Why should he be?'

'Because he's missing from his unit, and has British friends. And there's this news about the American submarine.'

'We don't know very much about him.'

'Then why did you come to meet me, when I asked?'

'We're always interested in any Soviet citizen who contacts the embassy, in case they need our help.'

Her hands gripped mine quite hard. 'Would you give him asylum, if he asked for that?'

'Probably.'

'I love him so much, you see.'

'We understand.'

Laughter came suddenly from outside, raucous, masculine. She didn't look up; she wasn't afraid of laughter, only of eyes in the shadow of peaked caps, only of questions.

'If he makes contact with you,' she said with less despair, 'will you tell me?'

'Of course. Will you be at the same number?'

'Yes. It's my apartment.'

'What's the address?'

She gave it to me, and I wrote it down.

The laughter broke out again, and I saw the heads of three sailors passing the window, their breath steaming. I said: 'Did you go to any bars together, any cafes?'

'Sometimes.'

'Which ones?'

'It was never the same ones.'

'But you've gone there, asking if they've seen him?'

'No. I'm afraid.'

'Have the naval police questioned you?'

'No. We-'

'Has anyone?'

'You mean the KGB?'

'Why the KGB?'

She shrugged. 'That's what we always mean when we say «anyone». But nobody has questioned me. They don't know I'm his friend.'