Time went by. Three men came out. Kroll was one of them. They split, two going towards the western side of the village, Kroll to the eastern. Strutt followed Kroll, saw him back-track, then turn up the hill. He lost sight of him in the mist, but the Norwegian walked heavily, breathed noisily, and the American was in no danger of losing him. At times Kroll would stop. Instantly, Strutt would do the same. The American, younger and fitter, moving silently in rubber-soled shoes, soon reduced the distance between them.
When Strutt was no more than twenty feet from the man ahead he heard him stop. As Kroll moved forward again the American slid a hand into a raincoat pocket and quickened his pace. In his haste he stumbled over a heap of loose gravel. The noise must have alarmed Kroll. He stopped and turned, facing the pathway. Strutt called out in Norwegian. ‘Doctor Kroll. Doctor Kroll. Excuse me. I have a message for you.’
‘Who are you?’ It was a laboured, breathless voice.
Strutt moved forward in the darkness until he was a few feet from the doctor ‘Major Martinsen asked me to give you this, sir. It’s urgent.’ He held out the envelope. As Kroll took it, Strutt slipped an arm round the fat man’s neck in a half-Nelson. The Norwegian’s muffled cry changed to muted gurgling as Strutt plunged the knife deep into his throat, jerking it to and fro with sharp tugs. Kroll sagged, Strutt let him fall, watched the dark twitching shape for a few moments before taking it by the ankles and dragging it behind some rocks clear of the pathway. Strutt placed the envelope addressed to the Ordforer in the doctor’s pocket, removed the surgical gloves, stuffed them into his raincoat, and disappeared into the mist.
As the American made his way east across the upper limits of Kolhamn towards Spissberg he did some mental arithmetic: time to make the five hundred foot ascent and descent to the beach on the far side; time to get along the beach to the RV one mile southwest of the Ostnes Beacon. Certain things were fixed in his mind: the blown-up aerial photo provided by the US Air Force Base at Keflavik which showed the ridge he had to cross and the section of beach on the far side; the diagram drawn by Plotz and Ferret who’d reconnoitred the route; the mental picture of what he’d seen from the USOS helicopter the day before when it had run down the beach and lifted over the Spissberg on the approach to the air-strip.
He recalled that the north-eastern end of the beach ended in the rocky promontory of Ostnes. He planned to come down from the Spissberg just south of that. If he couldn’t see the beacon for mist he’d back-track to the rock face, then turn about and travel the mile south-west to the RV. His watch showed one-forty-three. He reckoned he’d make the RV within the hour if all went well. Not that it mattered. The skimmer would wait if necessary until an hour before first light. That gave him to close on five o’clock.
He reached the slope and began the ascent. The going was wet, slippery, mostly rock with occasional patches of tundra. His rubber shoes though deep-treaded were not what he’d have chosen for that part of the journey. But he was strong and lithe. He’d walked, climbed and run in the Appalachians day and night in worse weather and over tougher terrain. That had been a year back, a routine part of the course at the ‘Farm’ in Virginia.
Several times he stopped, set up the pocket compass and checked his bearings on its luminous dial. His task was simplified by the knowledge that he must keep his face to the upward slope. He reached the top and began the descent. The mist from the sea thickened and he checked his pace, coming down in long oblique contours, losing height slowly, slipping and slithering at times. Twice he fell. Each time he covered the metal-cased transmitter with both hands. His body could take the tumbles but the transmitter might not. It was vital to his mission.
Working his way down the slope, Strutt’s thoughts turned back to the man he’d just killed. Kroll alias Charlsen, alias Rodsand, alias Sorensen, alias Lillevik… ‘Alias Christ knows who else,’ Rod Stocken had said after reeling them off at the briefing. It had long seemed that Kroll’s past was buried in those aliases as securely as it he’d been buried beneath the earth, which was where a number of people would like to have seen him.
Strutt recalled Rod Stocken’s run-down on Krolclass="underline" Born in Sweden in 1916 of Norwegian parents. Graduated from Malmo University in 1938 with a physics degree. Began teaching in a state secondary school in Oslo in October that year. Collaborated with the Nazis after the occupation of Norway. Secured employment with the German scientific team working on the A-bomb project at Norsk Hydro plant in the mountains near Venmork. Stayed with them until late 1943 when Allied bombers destroyed the power station.
When the Germans moved the project to a site in the Reich, Kroll opted out.
After the Russians had cleared the Germans from Norway, Kroll re-appeared in December 1945 in the Bergen district. Name then was Rodsand. KGB agents — tipped off by Norwegian wartime underground — picked him up, threatened to expose him as a Nazi collaborator unless he came clean on the Norsk Hydro project. Kroll told all he knew. Then, under pressure of blackmail, he was taken on as a KGB agent. After a long apprenticeship he became a useful low-key unit in the KGB apparat in Norway.
In 1963 Kroll, always a conceited man, decided the KGB had burned him out, weren’t using him enough, weren’t paying him enough. He contacted the CIA. Fed them sample information on the KGB network in Norway. CIA checked, found it reliable, classified him potentially useful — unsafe — minimum access — possible double agent. Over the next few years he was used to feed mix-info to the KGB. CIA’s confidence in him grew, he was re-classified useful — probably unsafe — limited access — double agent.
During this time he gained, of necessity, certain knowledge of the CIA Norwegian network: communications system, hatches, channels for the procuration of false documents. For some time he continued to work for the KGB and CIA. He was proving useful to both sides, received reasonable rewards for information, and profited from dual expense accounts. He saved money and invested shrewdly.
In 1961, due to an administrative and security failure, Kroll gained access to a highly-classified CIA dossier. On learning this the Directorate instructed a deep-cover agent in Moscow to plant evidence that Kroll was feeding KGB systems material to the CIA. It was confidently anticipated that the KGB would liquidate Kroll. In the event, a senior KGB agent in Oslo confronted him with the evidence and the choice of liquidation or revelation. Kroll, anxious to live, told it all. As a result the cover of two contact men, long-established CIA agents in Norway, was blown; so was much else — including the communications system, the cipher-crypts, letter-drops, safe houses and escape hatches — before the CIA realized what had happened.
Kroll, now fearing both the CIA and KGB, did an overnight skip to Sweden, underwent cosmetic surgery, fattened on hormones and grew the beard which masked his face. He obtained employment in a Swedish secondary school teaching physics. For this purpose he used faked cover documents which he’d long before procured for just such a purpose.
Several years later he turned up on Vrakoy as Dr Gustav Kroll, a Norwegian of private means, long retired from school teaching in Sweden. He chose Vrakoy because of its extreme remoteness from the main stream of people and events.
A few weeks before the stranding of the Zhukov the CIA had — by a strange chance arising directly from Kroll’s vanity — discovered that he was on Vrakoy. If he were still active he was a potential threat. For that reason, and because of the damage he’d done to the CIA, it was decided to recommend his liquidation. It would serve, too, as a salutary warning to the KGB and their Norwegian agents.