'Does Rusakov know the destination?'
'Yes. There's a building on the road east from the town, Kievskay a ulica. It's a mansion, used to be the residence of the state governor The generals are going to have some kind of meeting there.'
I opened the map with one hand and spread it on the table. 'Did he give you a reference for the location?'
'It's setback in a park, a kilometre west of the power station. I've got it, have you?'
'Yes.' there was silence while we both worked on our maps' Twenty kilometres from the camp, twenty-five from here.'
'Right.'
I wouldn't be able to reach the camp before the generals left, but I could reach the mansion before they did, if the road wasn't snowed under.
'How soon can you get here?' I asked Frome.
'Gimme ten minutes.'
'Bring the Mercedes.' The little Trabant out there didn't have enough ground-clearance.
'Got it.'
I checked the time. 'Listen, we're cutting it very fine — I want you to do a running drop and put me outside that building before the generals arrive.'
'Oh Jesus,' he said, 'I better move it.'
Chapter 23: VOICES
The dark pressed down across the snows from horizon to horizon, and our headlights cut a dazzling swathe through the landscape, the back-glare painful against the eyes.
I had asked Frome to drive. He knew the car and I was still slipping focus now and then. There was a certain amount of discomfort hanging around: the seat-belt in the Skoda had snapped while we were going through the final crunch, and the impact had opened a thigh wound and left sundry bruises. But the pain was a help, keeping the organism aware of itself during the time when consciousness wavered.
'Have you done a running drop before?' I asked Frome.
'Seen a couple.'
The front end of the Mercedes hit a transverse rut where tracks crossed the road, and we slid at an angle until Frome got it worked out. I didn't say anything. He already knew we were running things critically close and that if we lost even five minutes having to dig ourselves out of a drift we'd be too late and blow the drop.
The generals' transport column would be somewhere to the south, according to the map, and heading for the mansion in the park along a road more or less parallel to ours, and it shouldn't be long before we picked up their lights in the distance. The meeting would obviously be policed by the military contingent on board the transports, and once they were deployed in a ring round the building I wouldn't have a chance of getting inside. There could be security guards there now, and that was why I'd decided to do a running drop.
'We'd better go through it,' I told Frome. 'First, if it doesn't look as if I've got a reasonable hope of making it, don't do it at all, jus: back off and get clear. Second, when you give me the signal, keep running straight for at least five seconds, given a speed often c: twelve miles an hour — don't turn earlier than that.' the top of the windscreen began coming down across my eyes, and I realized my head was tilting backwards against the padded rest as the sound of the car faded. Sat up straight and got focus again.' third, whatever happens, don't go back if there's any opposition around — leave me to make my own way out. Let's run through it again.'
'Don't do it,' Frome said parrot-fashion, 'if it looks dicey, don: turn for five seconds, don't go back if there's a crowd. Got it.'
I checked the time at 5:49 and twisted in my seat to watch the south. The lights of the city slashed the dark along the west horizon; the rest of the world was a snowfield, ghostly pale under the stars.
'Shit,' Frome said and played with the wheel as the Merc drifted the winter stems of a copse swinging across the windscreen, the lights throwing their shadows in a moving frieze against the snow I picked up the convoy to the south two minutes later, a thin chair of lights lying across the steppe.
'We're well ahead of them,' I told Frome.
Another minute and we reached the east-west road out of the city and the trees of the park lifted from the landscape, silver-grey snow-covered, not far from the two chimneys of the power station to the east.
'Anywhere here,' I told Frome and he pulled up on the churned surface of a truck exit to minimize wheelspin later.
I got a tyre-lever out of the boot and dropped it onto the passenger's seat and stood for a moment watching the string of lights to the south. It was near enough to show movement now: the transports had met the east-west road and were turning towards the park.
'Is it a go?' Frome asked me.
'Yes. Stand off somewhere outside the park. If I need you later I'll use the walkie.'
I got down onto the snow and slid under the Mercedes, feeling for hand-holds good enough to use with gloves on, staying aft of the gearbox and to the driver's side of the propeller shaft away from the exhaust silencer, finding a cross-member with enough space above it for my hands and swinging my feet up, getting one of them lodged above the chassis and kicking with the other one until my boot found purchase on the back-axle casing.
Light began flooding the road to the west, and I could hear the rumbling of the military column, the faint ringing of the snow-chains on the smaller vehicles, the drumming of diesels. My right foot had slipped off the rounded axle casing and I shifted backwards, swinging my boot up again, but everything was blacking out and the sound of the transports died to silence, and in the silence I heard Frome's voice, a long way off.
'You all right?'
My shoulders were on the snow and the nape of my neck was freezing, but I couldn't move: the intention was there but the muscles were numbed. The light from the leading vehicle of the column was creeping under the Mercedes.
'You all right, are you?"
Said yes, but it didn't make any sound.
Cold against the neck, freezing cold, and my left foot coming away from the chassis and dropping onto the snow. The light crept, brighter now.
We needed to be inside the mansion over there. That was the objective for the mission, for Meridian: to get the information that was in the generals' heads, send it to London. But I was lying on the ground with the awareness floating insubstantially, the awareness of the creeping light and the rumbling of heavy vehicles and the man's voice.
'You got a problem?'
I sensed him near me, Frome, caught a glimpse of his face as he peered under the car, felt the known world coming back into focus, the strength moving into the muscles, my fingers tightening inside the heavy gloves, the lungs expanding against the ribcage.
'Look, we're leaving it too — '
'Minute,' I said. 'Give me a minute.' Reached for the cross-member and got a grip on it with one hand, both hands, the headlights flooding the snow and the drumming of the diesels filling the night as I got my left boot lodged again and kicked upwards, finding the rear axle, shouting to Frome, 'Get going.'
His face vanished and the door of the car slammed above me and the engine gunned up and the rear chains cut into the snow as the wheels span and then got a grip and the tension came into my hands and I locked my fingers and closed my eyes, we stay like this, felt a drop of oil against my face as Frome made the turn through the gates of the park, we stay exactly like this with the fingers locked, this is all we have to do, someone shouting somewhere, perhaps a guard at the gates, is he armed and do we wait for a shot, no, we stay like this and think of nothing else, nothing at all, the gears banging as the military column slowed outside the park, the transmission shunting, the light brightening again as the leading vehicle turned, then dimming out as Frome took the Mercedes in a curve alongside the building, we stay like this until the time is right and he signals, exactly like this, the clinking of the Mercedes' snow-chains echoing from a wall now, from stone or brickwork, my body swinging as the car straightened and I hung on, if it doesn't look as if I've got a reasonable hope of making it, don't do it at all, just back off and get clear, the tension in the fingers burning now and my shoulders brushing the snow and the light of the convoy spreading again and then going out as the double knock from the tyre-lever sounded against the floorboards above my head and I let go and dropped.