''Get moving! Come on, get moving?
I botched the gears in through their worn shafts and we went forward again, shunting into the truck ahead and sliding into the clearway and getting some speed up. No trap, then, according to Karasov's behaviour: I'd been overestimating things — whatever he'd been doing and whoever he'd been busy working for he was still a burnt-out case.
'If you've got a gun on you, Karasov, I don't want you to use it. Do you understand?' He didn't answer. 'We may run into a road check between here and the coast and I don't want you to pull a gun on anyone. Do you understand?
He flinched again and a hand disappeared and he brought out a Soviet military JK-3. I took it from him and checked the safety-catch and shoved the thing under the seat.
'Who are they using? Who are the Chinese using?'
'They're being serviced through Zurich.'
The Rinker cell. Rinker had been a Swiss. But they'd used local agents: the two men on the train, one of them a Latvian. I didn't know about the third man, the other man: he'd looked European.
So Peking was worried about Washington and Moscow getting round a table in Vienna next month and they'd seized a chance in a lifetime: if they could get hold of a tape or Karasov himself and hit the American news media with the message that the Soviets had indeed sunk the Cetacea with a hundred and five lives on board they could scuttle the summit conference and leave that on the bottom too.
'So why didn't you sell them the tape?' He didn't answer. 'Wasn't the money good enough?'
The truck ahead of us was putting on more speed and I took up the slack; we were making nearly forty kph over sanded ruts. There was a lot of honking behind us in the distance; I supposed the fanner's vehicle was blocking the road because he still couldn't find any petrol.
'They wanted me to go in front of journalists, in Moscow.'
'Didn't they know you'd done a tape for them?'
'Yes. They knew.'
'Then why — come on Karasov I want some fucking information.'
'They knew I had a tape but they said they wanted me to be there too at the broadcast.'
'What was their price?'
'A million US dollars.' I looked at him. 'So why didn't you take it?'
'I knew then how serious things were. There was some talk at the naval base about the summit conference having gone down with the submarine, that kind of thing. So I told my contact the tape had-'
'Your contact for Peking?'
'Yes. I told him the tape had been accidentally wiped out when I'd passed through one of the power-station rooms. They said they still wanted me to make a broadcast, and for the same money. They also said that if I wouldn't do it, they'd blow me to the KGB.'
'That was when you got out?'
'Yes.'
'I still don't understand why you turned them down.' He leaned towards me and a light came into his wet brown eyes. 'I was making a little on the side, don't you see, I was selling a few things to the Chinese from time to time because it wasn't doing London any harm, it wasn't anything I was keeping back from your people, it was simply a matter of duplication, don't you understand, I wasn't doubling, I was only augmenting my income. London came first with me. I'm not a man completely without loyalty, I didn't do anything that isn't done among — among-' he waved a gloved hand — 'among business people all over the world, but when I saw how serious things were, with the summit in jeopardy and the headlines talking about it every day, I backed out of my commitment with the Chinese and went to ground.'
'You turned down a million American dollars?'
'Yes. Do you think money is everything? Do you-'
'You got frightened, that was all, it got too big for you?' He gave a kind of sob and I kicked the throttle and started a slide and smashed the sidelight off an abandoned trailer with the rear of the truck and got control again, slowed again, it wasn't for me to judge the poor bastard, what the hell did I know about the things I'd do if the pressure got too much or a deal got too hot to handle, I wasn't this man and I hadn't faced what he had faced, I wasn't my brother's keeper, nor his judge.
'I would've done the same, Karasov. I would've got frightened.'
I don't think he heard me. He was a man of conscience, I suppose, and what he was trying desperately to rescue from the ashes was some kind of pride.
'Slow down! There's a detour! Slow dorm!'
More men waving, and a truck overturned and half-smothered under a snow drift, someone sitting by a fire he'd made from some oily rag, warming his hands while the black smoke rose like a dead vine from the ground to the winter sky.
We turned left, all of us, a dozen vehicles in front of me and a lot more behind, and I saw a railway signal poking up from the horizon: we were less than a mile distant now from the station and the freight-yards were this side.
11:47.
There wasn't going to be time to check out the environment: we were going to run in cold to the rendezvous and I couldn't do that with the objective for the mission on board. But the only option was to leave him somewhere safe while I went on and kept the noon appointment: this would leave him alive and available to London if anything came unstuck at my end, but it wasn't certain that Fane could ever find him again before he died of exposure or went trudging into the nearest KGB headquarters looking for a martyr's grave or waited for the next train and lay down on the sleepers with his neck on a rail — there was no knowing what he'd do.
We could find a side turning and hole up under a drift until noon plus fifteen and then go in and check the environment but that would mean delaying the rendezvous until 13:00 hours and the longer we hung around Kandalaksha the bigger the risk we ran of drawing the opposition against us. There was no real reason for the KGB to be watching the freight-yards specifically: this was just paranoia on my part, a reluctance to take a calculated risk in broad daylight. The aura of this man's fear was reaching me, touching the nerves.
Make a decision.
A snow-clearing gang was filing along the railway lines towards a group of men hacking at frozen points with pickaxes. The truck directly in front of me was turning to the left, taking the ramp down to the main section and leaving me at the fork.
Make a decision.
If the train had been on time and the courier had got through without any trouble he'd be waiting under natural cover now for the noon rendezvous with the papers for Karasov, and the minute we had them we could head north and hope for clear roads and a final run in to the coast. We could be there in a few hours, before nightfall at mid-afternoon. By tomorrow morning we could be in Norway, in the West. And London by evening.
Make Karasov, listen carefully. We're going to make a rendezvous in a few minutes from now with a courier who'll have papers for you, good ones, reliable enough to get us to the frontier. I don't want you to do anything. Do you understand? I want you to sit there and look like the upholstery, keep your mouth shut and keep your hands on your lap. Do you understand?'
He was watching me with his craven eyes, his bulk in the big coat cowering in the corner between the seat and the door.
'What will happen if the KGB are watching the station?'
'We're not going near the station. We're going into the freight-yards. The KGB won't be there. The rendezvous has been arranged by my own local control and he's extremely efficient. We can have absolute faith in him. You understand?'