Northlight

Lights moved from the main terminal along the highway that had been kept clear by constant ploughing, allowing traffic to shuttle from the town and back, most of it dark blue Navy transports and coal-trucks piled with snow. Beyond them the red beacon of a radio.mast winked rhythmically, then it vanished as a dark shape passed close to the window and the screams were loud suddenly as the nerves froze because I hadn't expected him to get here so soon and he'd made no sound over the snow.

Ferris.

I hadn't recognized him because he'd passed close against the window, but it couldn't be anyone else; no one would come here alone: the militia and the airport security guards always patrolled in pairs.

He moved the lever down and pulled open the emergency door just aft of the flight deck and my scalp shrank as I watched the faint flood of light that came in. But if it wasn't Ferris there wouldn't be any problem: I was crouching now within arm's length of the door and the necessary imagery had started in my mind, going through the most effective moves at the calculated height and distance of a drawn gun.

Then he was suddenly there, pulling himself through the doorway and sending his shadow flitting across the smashed bulkhead on the other side. I could recognize his profile now.

'Greetings,' I said softly.

He stopped moving and his head turned, the right lens of his glasses catching the light and reflecting it across his temple, so that he looked like a thin, deformed monster with one huge eye.

'Sorry I'm late.'

He closed the door as quietly as he could, though the movement sent a metal spar twanging; then he lowered himself on to the jump seat opposite me, putting his briefcase down and settling it neatly in that awful prissy way he had of doing everything.

He sat gazing at me in the faint light, a thin pale owl with bits of straw-coloured hair sticking out below his fur hat like broken feathers, his gloved hands resting on his knees. This was the man who'd sat on the stairs in the Hong Kong snake-shop with a gun on his lap while those bloody things had writhed among the smashed glass jars on the floor and the assassin had brought more and more pressure to bear on my throat, the man who had taken a neat step out of his way on the pavement in Barcelona to crush a cockroach under his shoe while he'd told me this was precisely what London would do to me if I didn't take on the Sinkiang thing, the man who had seen me closer to the brink than any other control in the field and who had twice pulled me back from it, the only man I could trust to see me through the rest of the mission if there were still the ghost of a chance left to finish it.

'Not easy,' he said, 'this one, is it?'

'Do you know what they did to me? 'Never mind that.'

I tried to let myself go limp and half managed it, furious because I'd shown him what he'd got on his hands: the makings of a burnt-out case who was ready to sell the Bureau down the river the instant it tried another trick — I'll go straight into the nearest KGB headquarters and blow London.

Had Fane told him I'd said that? 'I just felt a bit annoyed,' I told him much more quietly, 'that's all.'

'I'm not surprised.'

Then I asked him. I hadn't meant to: I'd told myself again and again on my way here that there was one question I wouldn't ask Ferris because it would embarrass him, but it came out in a kind of soft explosion that I couldn't stop.

'Why did you refuse this mission?'

He didn't look down. Fane would have looked down. That was the difference.

'I detected a faint smell of fish.' He went on watching me, his expression lost behind the reflection across his glasses.

'Is that all?'

'Croder was running it, and there was the most monumental flap going on. Too noisy, for my liking.'

'Did you know-' and I should have stopped right there and perhaps tried to, but again I couldn't do it. 'Did you know I was down for termination?'

'No. But I thought it could happen. I'd caught a whiff of the deal they were making.'

'Then why-' but this time I managed to stop, because Ferris had the ability to make you go on talking until you gave yourself away and I was damned if I were going to let him do it now. He'd told me enough. I'd been answered.

'You know perfectly well why,' he said rather sharply. 'If I'd warned you about it, would you have taken any notice?'

'Perhaps.'

'Bullshit.'

'True.'

'Perfectly true. You would have seen it as the ultimate challenge to your resourcefulness and you would have gone headlong into the mission with your blood up and you would have probably got yourself killed off before they'd even had time to light the signals board.'

I don't know how I manage to like a man who keeps a blueprint of my soul hung on his wall.

'It was far better,' he said, 'to let you go into Northlight with your talent for survival uncompromised. Don't ever say I haven't got your best interests at heart.'

'You really are a bastard, Ferris.'

'You shouldn't ask stupid questions.'

Absolutely right, yes. That's why I'd asked London for him. Ferris has been more absolutely right about everything to do with controlling the executive in the field than any local director I've ever worked with.

'A long way to bring you,' I said.

'From Tokyo?'

'Yes.'

'It was a bit important. Have you seen any news lately?'

'I've been rather busy.'

He watched me steadily for a moment. 'Don't underestimate things, Quiller. They've got far beyond the level of normal international diplomacy: that broke down, days ago. It's always the last thing that happens, isn't it, before a war? The talking stops, and they get out the guns.'

Cold crept along my spine.

'Jesus Christ… It's as bad as that?'

'It's as bad as that. And you know I wouldn't try to give you any bullshit, especially at this late stage. It's your life on the line, I understand that.' He turned his head and watched the window for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. 'It's all our lives, actually.'

I pulled in a slow breath.

'Unless I can take him across. Zhigalin.'

'Precisely.' He looked back at me in the strange half-light.

'What are the chances, Ferris?'

'I'm not sure there are any.'

Ferris has never deceived me.

'Then we'll have to make some.'

'Yes.'

'The snow's blocked the roads, from here to the frontier. I assume you know that.'

He looked through the small grimed window again. 'Yes. We shan't try to get you out by road. Even if we could get you both to the frontier, it wouldn't work. That snow's a killer.'

He was thinking of the rifles. Snow is the perfect background for a running target: they wouldn't miss.

'How much briefing did you get, Ferris?'

'I've been in signals for hours, but you'd better fill me in on the local scene. It's not good, I imagine.'

'No. They're looking for Zhigalin.'

'Of course. Checkpoints everywhere?'

'Yes. I had to go through one on the way here: I was on a truck and they stopped it.'

He became very still. 'You showed your papers?'

'Yes.'

'Well that's good news.'