You can't keep away, Volodarskiy, can you? You're like me.
I think so, yes.
There's one born every minute.
Time check. 10:53. I'd been here almost an hour and the train from Murmansk was due in at the station in thirty-seven minutes and there wouldn't be a lot of time to check the environment of the freight-yards but if we delayed the rendezvous until 13:00 hours we'd risk exposure and I didn't want to do that, I wanted to get Karasov out before they came for him again.
I moved the mirror in the gap, angling it and sliding it from one end to the other, lighting the underside of the floorboards with the torch. There were no contacts and I pulled the boards higher and took another look. The bomb was the size of a small brick and preserrated with a shrapnel sleeve. The end terminal carried the wire to the junction box underneath the dashboard and the side terminal connected with earth through the chassis: they'd scraped an area clean and used grip tape, a decent enough job. But I didn't like the flat back lever on the underside of the pack and as I turned it a couple of degrees for a better look I realized it was a grasshopper switch and knew that all I had to do was pick up the main pack to send the truck through the roof of the barn, so I worked on the terminals first and freed the pack from the wires and then picked it up slowly, inching my fingers underneath to keep the switch flat to the body.
There was no sound of ticking. A timing device would have been visually evident; all we'd got here was two and a half pounds of TNT and provision for electrical initiation from an outside source and a liquid chemical in a glass tube to detonate internally by percussion: I could see the end of the tube recessed into the main pack and when I tilted it I could see the bubble.
Think. Consider binding the lever with some string and then putting the bomb onto the curved bonnet of the truck and starting the engine and walking away and letting the vibration shake the thing off and send the barn up. It had worked in Berlin and it would work now. The Rinker people weren't likely to come here and poke among the wreckage to make sure there were bodies in it: they'd hear the bang and assume that what had been designed to happen had happened, simply because the human mind prefers to believe in success rather than failure. And even if they came as far as the barn they wouldn't have much time to poke about in the wreckage before Volodarskiy told Fido to tear their throats out.
But it wouldn't work, in the long run. It would mean getting to a phone and asking Fane to organize some more transport for us and that could take days and I didn't know how long Karasov could hold out before his nerves tipped him over the edge and he went stark raving bonkers, which wouldn't please London at all. There was something on that man's mind that wasn't letting him sleep, wasn't letting him believe that I could get him out, something that was frightening him so badly that it could blow him out of his skull before I could get him to the West.
This thing in my hand wasn't ticking, but Karasov was.
Get him out. Get him out now.
There was some string holding some empty sacks together in the corner of the barn and I cut off a length but it was rotten with age so I raked in the tool compartment of the truck and found some electric cable and used that, winding it round the grasshopper switch and putting the bomb on the floor under the front seat on the driver's side and chocking it with a bit of wood from the littered floor of the barn so that it couldn't roll about; a thing like that could come in handy. Then I connected the battery lead and started the engine and left it running to warm up while I fetched Karasov.
He was coming out of the cave when I got there. They'd heard the engine start.
'So you found your toy,' Volodarskiy said.
'Yes.' I sensed that he hadn't told Karasov what kind of toy it was: it would have pushed him right over the edge.
'Then I wish you a good journey.'
'Thank you.' I looked at Karasov. 'We're going.'
He moved his head slowly, like a punch-drunk, and stared at me in the cold light of the morning, and all I could see in his eyes was the knowledge of death. As I led him across the snow to the barn it occurred to me that his mind, at the brink of hysteria, might be open to the dark voices of premonition that I could not hear.
18 RENDEZVOUS
The huge iron scoop slammed down and black gas rose. 'Back!' a man shouted, waving, and I reversed the truck again.
The snow plough moved forward another ten yards, its diesel roaring under full throttle as it lifted another ton of snow and swung it clear of the road. The exhaust gas drifted past us like a smoke screen and I felt safe for a moment, because they would have known by now that the barn hadn't gone up and they might be short of time and bring a gun in. It wasn't certain they'd do that. You've got to take calculated risks.
The man waved us forward again, standing back this time to let us through the gap: they were clearing the intersection, routing us through a detour.
Karasov sat beside me, leaning his head back against the seat and gazing through the windscreen with his eyes narrowed. He had the look of a man in a tumbril on his way to the guillotine, slack with despair.
'Was it a bomb?' he had asked me a little time ago. 'A bomb he was talking about, when he spoke of a 'toy'?'
'Yes.' He might as well know.
'How did you find it?'
'Bit of luck.'
I didn't tell him it was still here under the driving-seat. He would have got out and walked.
We ground along in first gear, shunting between a coal truck and a beaten-up Zhiguli van.
I didn't think they'd bring a gun in because they could have done that before: they could have dropped us as we'd come out of the cave. There were plenty of other ways, quieter ways, less public. But it was a calculated risk and every time we shunted to a halt I felt my head settling instinctively onto the top of the spine and my shoulders rising into the primeval startle attitude, because this was when they'd steady the aim and fire, when we were stationary. They would have to shoot twice or use two guns unless it was only Karasov they'd been trying to kill in the barn, expecting him to climb into the truck with me before I started the engine. My death could have been planned as incidental but that wasn't certain either: the Rinker cell could have reasons for taking me down, putting me out of their way.
The windscreen was filthy but I hadn't wiped it clean before we'd started off; we wouldn't be hitting up any kind of speed and it gave us a degree — just a degree — of safety: they'd have to judge where our heads were if they meant to station a gun somewhere in front of us along the road.
'Then they'll try again,' Karasov said suddenly. I didn't realize he'd been all that time thinking it out; there were a thousand things on his mind, I knew that. But I didn't know what they were.
'Not necessarily.' We halted again, and my head settled.
'Of course they will. When they know the bomb didn't kill us, they'll try again.'
'They wouldn't have let us get this far, don't worry.'
He didn't say anything to that, but put a hand into the pocket of his dark woollen coat and held something out to me. I glanced down and saw a cassette tape.