He had seen the tower from his office window, and had made his apologies to the fleet commander, Admiral Falkovsky, whose man he was, and said what time he would be returning, and had been reminded to bring tobacco. He had driven out from the base and had started the detour demanded by the lagoon. It was a long drive on a rutted road from the base to Kaliningrad, then south-east on the secondary route with the lagoon to the west of him. The city behind him, the Pregel river crossed, he drove his small Lada through the fishing village of Usakovo and the camping resort of Laduskin, then the road was clear ahead to Pjatidoroznoe and on to Mamonovo where life was suckled by the border. It was flat ground, leading on his right side to the reed banks of the lagoon; on his left were the wet, harvested, lifeless fields. A kilometre short of the village of Pjatidoroznoe, where there was a school, a shop and a church built a century before by the Germans that was now used as a community centre.
He slowed to confirm what he knew, what he had seen a week earlier.
A Polish lorry hooted at him, then swung out to overtake. His mirrors were clear and showed the view back down the poplar lined road. A hundred metres behind him was a red saloon, behind that was a dirty silver one, and behind that a black van. He had fine eyesight, and he had cleaned the mirrors before leaving the base. The black van had a smoked dark windscreen. The red saloon, the silver one and the black van had slowed. He eased his weight on to the brake pedal and lightly turned the wheel. His nearside wheels slid off the tarmac and onto the soft mud of the verge. It was what he had done a week earlier. The red saloon had stopped. The silver vehicle seemed about to ram the bumper in front of it, then also stopped, but the black van powered past the cars, covered the empty road at speed and came alongside him. The passenger window, too, was darkened. He saw the dull flicker of a lit cigarette, but could not make out the faces hidden in the interior cab.
He was not an innocent. He had a working knowledge of surveillance. His friends, in the three face-to-face meetings, had told him what to look for but that had been hurried and there had been so much else to talk of — no more than an hour's tuition to save his life. His safety, the talk of it, always came at the end of the meetings, when he'd been leached dry of tactical and technical detail. But they had talked of it, and sheets of hotel notepaper had been used to scrawl the evasion procedures he should utilize…And in the last four years since he had walked into the skipper's cabin of a trawler tied up to the quay at Murmansk, he had never lost an opportunity to make conversation with the security men at the Northern Fleet headquarters and now at the Baltic Fleet headquarters. Gently and carefully, he had pumped, probed and joked, over vodka and beer, at picnics and receptions, with those men so that he might learn how they worked. Alone in his quarters, in his chair with the radio playing, in his bed in the darkness, the images of the surveillance teams and what he knew of them had played in his mind. They never left him.
A week ago it had only been a suspicion, but that suspicion had been sufficient for him to turn back. A bead of sweat ran down his neck and into the small of his back. A week ago, when he had known the first rise of the sweat through his pores, and the trembling in his hands, he had not been certain. His handlers had told him that it was always better to use the quiet road beside the lagoon than the main highway that was away to the east of his route. It was a rarely used road, with little traffic on it, which gave him a better chance to identify surveillance. His mind raced. He had the radio on in the Lada, but he seemed not to hear the shrieking announcer and the American music on the speakers. The black van had now stopped a hundred or so metres ahead of him. A tractor coming from behind him filled his interior and wing mirrors. Mud flew from its wheels and exhaust fumes from its stack.
A week before it had seemed sensible to turn back, although the risk was not confirmed. The tractor pulled a trailer of high-heaped beet past him and spattered the side windows and the body of the Lada, and a man waved to him. He did not wave back because his attention was now on the red and silver cars stationary 150 metres behind him. Gold autumn leaves wafted down on them. There was no doubt of it. He could not wriggle away from it, as he had last week, and tell himself that this was only a sensible precaution to take. The message from what he saw beat hammer blows in his skull. If they stopped ahead and behind him, they did not care whether or not he was aware of them. Perhaps they wanted him to run, drive at speed towards Mamonovo, and then the border post, wanted to shepherd him towards the fences, the dogs and the guns. There they would spill him out of the car, the handcuffs would go on his wrists and they would smile broadly because his running had confirmed the guilt. Or they would radio ahead, and there would be men waiting for him, men of the Federalnaya Pogranichnaya Sluzhba, with guns and dogs to track and hunt him down long before he reached the fence. He was trapped.
He eased the Lada into gear and drove forward. The package was wedged under his seat and in his jacket pocket was the unused, unopened strip of chewing-gum. He passed the black van and saw the red saloon and the silver car pull out. Then, in his mirror, he saw the black van pull off the verge and join the little convoy behind him. He thought, on this day and on the day a week before, that they did not have evidence of his treachery but suspicion of it. If he ran, if the package were found, their suspicion would turn to certainty. On his right side was a turning to Veseloe, and he swung into it. But he did not travel down that road to the small fishing village where the men caught trout, carp and pike in the lagoon for sale in Kaliningrad's fish market. He stopped, turned his wheel and reversed, then eased the Lada into the direction of Pjatidoroznoe, Laduskin and Usakovo. A gull might reach Braniewo, but he could not. If the package were found his reward would be a dawn shuffle into a prison yard and death. It would take him a little more than two and a half hours to drive back to the base at Baltiysk and his office. He should not panic. It was panic that they wanted from him. He should not help them. He did not look at the two cars as he went by them. He drove carefully and slowly, and it was only the thought of his friends that enabled him to keep steady hands on the wheel.
For the second week he had aborted his journey to the dead drop. He was a captain, second rank, of the Russian navy, Viktor Alexander Archenko.
The sentries on the main gate saluted him if they only carried sidearms on their webbing belts but came to attention and the present if they had rifles. He received the salutes and the rigid 'present arms' because his photograph was in the guardhouse, and all of the conscript sentries knew that he was a man of influence and power. The barrier was raised for him, then dropped behind his Lada.
Viktor was young for his rank.
Aged thirty-six, his power and influence were guaranteed because he served as chief of staff to Admiral Alexei Falkovsky, commander of the Baltic Fleet. It was said, in the guardhouse, that the admiral did not take a shit unless he had first consulted Viktor Archenko, and did not wipe his backside unless he had first asked Viktor Archenko which hand to use. But for all his authority and his closeness to the admiral's ear, he was well liked by the young men far from home who manned the guardhouse. They said he was fair, and there were few officers of whom that was believed.
He acknowledged the salutes with a brief, shallow wave and drove on.
In his mirrors he noted that his trio of watchers had parked up back from the gate and saw men climb out of the vehicles and light their cigarettes. One of them, from the black van, spoke into the sleeve of his padded coat.