Gunfire again, its echoes mimicking.
He could have been anyone, the man they'd seen watching the camp from his car, but I thought I knew who he was, and if he'd been there yesterday he would be there today; he'd driven away before he could be challenged, but he would have come back, must have come back, standing off at a greater distance now, finding cover in the trees. They'd nothing to fear from him, the soldiers in the camp; they were an armed battalion. They wouldn't have sent out scouts to hunt for him; they'd been curious, that was all.
He could have been anyone, but I thought he was the rogue agent in the field — Talyzin, if Ferris were right.
There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin who spoke out rather too loudly against the generals… From raw intelligence data going into London, he might be your agent.
I'd sensed his presence in the environment ever since the Rossiya had been blown up, had thought I'd seen him once, getting clear of the militia blocks at the scene of the wreck, as I had. I didn't think he'd had anything to do with the death of Roach: he'd had no motive; and I didn't think he'd had anything to do with the surveillance on the Skoda that had brought that man Yermakov on my track, may he rest in peace. But I thought he might have set that bomb, the rogue agent, and if so, his motive would obviously have been to wipe out the three generals and their entourage, because it doesn't take high explosive to destroy life force in a single human being — Velichko, say — you can do it with one bullet, as Rusakov had done. So if it was the rogue agent who had set that bomb, then he would still be locked onto his private — personal? — mission: the death of the two generals who were still pursuing their own operation in Novosibirsk, pursuing it just over there, in point of fact behind the wire fence of die camp.
So I would expect him to be here, the agent, somewhere in the immediate environment, observing the generals — perhaps that mar. on the hill between the trees, sitting in the car.
He'd been there before I arrived, or I would have seen him drive up; he would have had to use the further road branching from the fork, and I could see its whole length, from the fork to the hill. The minor road didn't go up the hill, only around it, but he was nevertheless on higher ground there, with a good view of the camp. He was also in rather good cover, buried among the trees, and I wouldn't have known he was there if I hadn't been looking for him, hadn't caught the glint on the windows of the car as the strengthening light of the day came creeping across the land from the east.
A crackle of gunfire, stitching the silence.
I'd etched the configuration of his car by now on the visual memory, and if it changed I would detect it at once — if, for instance, he opened one of its doors on this side. I would have put the distance between us at close to half a kilometre, but 1 could see that he was sitting in the front of the car, because his dark coat altered the reflective value of the window glass. The distance from his car to the nearest line of huts in the camp was more like a kilometre and a half, so that he'd have to be using at least a pair of 10 x 10s to pick up anything useful.
He could have been — must have been — there all night, unless he had anyone in support, which I didn't believe: a rogue is a rogue, and works solo. They 're a breed apart, often neurotic, occasionally psychopathological, you can't ever trust them. Even if you can persuade them into working with you, with your cell or your network, you can't turn your back on them, they'll slip a knife in if it suits them, sometimes for kicks, ask that bastard Loman, he'd been running Fairfax through Tigerfish in the South China Sea when that executive had been found floating among the off-shore trash in Saigon, and it hadn't taken the Bureau five minutes to find out that Fairfax had been using a rogue agent who knew the area, and that the said rogue agent had decided to take a hundred per cent of the credit for the successful completion of the mission and the only way to do that was by putting a bullet into the executive's brain and dropping him off a pier.
A glint came from the trees on the hill, this time in motion, brightening and dimming out. I hadn't seen that before.
It was difficult at this distance to understand what that glint had meant. It wasn't the degree-by-degree passage of the morning light reflecting from the windows of the car up there: it was smaller, the glint, more focused — and then I got it, because when it moved again I saw it had a twin.
I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew they were on me now, pressed to the 10 x 10s.
Crackle of gunfire and this time the nerves reacted a little, goose flesh under the sleeves. The sudden contact that only the eyes can make at a distance between two creatures is intimate and dramatic. When that incredible girl looked up — remember? — from halfway across the crowded room and saw you watching her, there was a rush of hormones, wasn't there, as the glands kicked in; it was like swallowing all the perfumes of Araby in one gulp, I know the feeling, but that wasn't the feeling I had now as I sat in the car among these alien snows and kept still, perfectly still, submitting to a hostile scrutiny I couldn't escape.
It wasn't unexpected. I'd known that if the man with the field-glasses were watching the camp again today he would also make frequent checks on his environment, and my cover wasn't as good as his: there were no trees here and all I'd been able to do was squeeze the Skoda in between the ruined hulk of a barn and the dry-stone wall that ran past it — not even cover, call it camouflage.
It wasn't unexpected but there was engagement now; contact had been made at a distance between these two creatures out here under the early morning sky, and the scene had changed. He wouldn't just leave things like this, the agent up there among the trees. He wouldn't want to be watched. He would need to make a move, but it wouldn't be like yesterday's, because yesterday he would have had a whole battalion to contend with if he'd stayed his ground, and today there was only one man.
He would be a violent antagonist, if he chose to confront me. That would be his nature: he was a rogue. And he would be armed. Their lives in the field are short, but they'd be shorter still without the advantage of weapons. I'd known this when I'd left the Natasha an hour ago and put the mission into hazard, but I'd had no choice. I still didn't know whether I had any chance at all of monitoring the movements of the generals and infiltrating whatever operation it was they were running, but I knew at least that I'd never be able to do it if a rogue agent were in the field and moving ahead of me with the intention of finishing what he'd started on that train — of killing them off.
Listen, Zymyanin had said as the corridor of the train had rocked under our feet, this is all I can tell you for now. The Bureau should do everything — everything — to keep those people under surveillance.
That was why I was here this morning, with the ice caking the windows and the rasping of the digital clock on its worn bearings stressing the silence inside the car — to reach the objective for Meridian if I could, and get the information to London. I'd lost my director in the field but I'd set up a close support base with communications and liaison for Rusakov, but it would all be useless if I let that man on the hill take over the action.
I'd found him. Now I had to stop him, get him out of the picture.
He was here to follow the generals when they left camp, and in this we had the same purpose, but I believed it would end there. He had their death in mind, and when he'd followed them far enough from the camp to do the thing without bringing all hell on his head, then he would do it. Or it could be a suicide run he was here for, and the moment the generals left camp through those gates across there he'd move down from the hill and intercept and pump a volley of dum-dums into them as the alarm was sounded and the first of the armoured cars was started up and sent in pursuit. He wouldn't get far and he would know that, but a suicide run would fit quite well into the thinking process of a typical rogue agent, and he could be one of the psychopaths, capable, for instance, of bombing a crowded train with no thought for the women and children.