Northlight q-11 Read online

  'What about your family?'

  'They'll follow me, if I can get the job.'

  He was taking more trouble than usual, listening for that single wrong word, looking for it on my papers, matching what I was saying with what he was reading. The other man was watching me the whole time; I could see him in my peripheral vision. The trickle along my spine grew colder.

  The greatest weapon in the initial interrogation is persistence. This hadn't been written by those snivelling bureaucrats upstairs: it was in the manual they give us on refresher courses in Norfolk — Techniques in Interrogation. This is the reverse of the coin, though we don't do much of it ourselves; it's to teach us what to expect and how to deal with it.

  Even the steathest subject will eventually yield to persistence, and there is a sound psychological basis for this. The subject's psyche has already been disturbed by the approach of the potential interrogator, who is often in uniform and armed. It is necessary only to develop that initial disturbance in the subject's psyche to reach a point where he will begin to doubt his chances of surviving the interrogative process without giving something away. This further alarms him on a multi-conscious level, and he may begin to exhibit subtle speech defects: hesitation, slight stuttering, the inadvertent elision of speech components and so on.

  'If you find work in Kandalaksha, can you be sure your wife will be as successful?'

  'She's a nurse.'

  Nurses were in demand everywhere: the pay was insulting.

  'What about your two children?' He was looking the whole time at my papers now, and this was also in the Norfolk manual.

  To gaze steadily at the subject will intimidate him if he has anything to conceal, but this can be taken to a new phase where one can remove that gaze and study the subject's passport or visa or appropriate document without allowing the eyes to move from left to right as if reading. This gives the clear impression that one has discovered something suspicious during the interrogation and that one is therefore concealing this fact by the removal of the direct gaze and adopting an attitude of exceptionally careful listening.

  'The kids will have to go to a new school,' I said. 'We can't let them dictate where we live, can we?'

  He went on gazing at my papers. 'When did you move to apartment 68 in the East Park Building?'

  'Apartment 58. Last July. Did they put down the wrong apartment number?'

  He didn't answer specifically, but held the papers obliquely to the light, and I began feeling less worried. He'd thrown in a routine trap and I'd avoided it and left him with the impression that I didn't recognize it as a trap at all. The apartment number on the papers was in fact 58 and if I hadn't pointed out his mistake it would have meant I hadn't even read them. He'd got out of it by tilting them to the light to suggest he'd misread the number.

  A trap like that can send you all the way to the Gulag if you don't recognize it.

  'When did you board this train?'

  'As soon as it stopped.'

  'Did you see anyone else getting on?'

  'I didn't notice anyone particularly. All I wanted was to get in here before my balls froze off.'

  He gave the papers back to me with that typical gesture they all use to show who's in charge, half dropping them and making you catch them. It's rather endearing: there's comfort in the familiar. But the sweat was still gathering on me as I folded the papers and put them away.

  'Did you notice anyone hurrying to board the train?'

  'Not particularly.'

  'Anyone who seemed unusual?'

  I gave the impression of considering the question.

  'I can't say that.' I wondered if he were actually going to describe Karasov. They must be getting desperate by now: it was four days since he'd gone to ground.

  'If you notice anything unusual on the train, I want you to report it at once. Anyone who looks anxious, who looks as if he's trying to hide something. You understand?'

  'Of course. Where shall I find you?'

  'We shan't leave this carriage. Or you can tell the attendant.'

  Karasov was a Latvian, with a facial resemblance to a northern European or an American. That was why the KGB man had taken so much interest in me.

  'I'll keep my eyes open,' I said.

  He nodded and went back into the corridor.

  It was another half an hour before I knew they'd got me. Not the KGB. The Rinker cell. They were here and they were on to me and there was nothing I could do to reach the objective or keep Northlight running or save myself. Nothing.

  14 GUN

  Gromyko warns: we are reaching the point of no RETURN. Picture of Gromyko, one finger held up, face blank as usual.

  It was the only story on the front page of Pravda and the headline was twice as big as usual.

  Let it be stated once again. The obstinacy on the part of the Western Powers to admit to the fact that the United States of America committed what was tantamount to an act of war, in sending an armed nuclear submarine into Soviet waters, is now offering a threat to world peace of a magnitude that has never before faced mankind.

  In times of normal diplomatic relations the affair of the US Cetacea would have brought the two great powers to a situation of precipitate crisis. When it is considered that the Vienna meeting was agreed upon in order to alleviate a- crisis in diplomatic relations that already existed before this irresponsible and dangerous act was undertaken, it will be seen even by the least intelligent of America's allies that only a miracle can now save the Vienna summit meeting, and the world from final and irrevocable disaster.

  One of them was the man with the shapeless leather bag.

  Until this is clearly understood by the intransigent West, the world must remain poised on the edge of an abyss in whose depths lies the grave of civilization as we know it today.

  The other was the man with the briefcase, but he wasn't watching me now. I was holding the newspaper to cover the whole of my face except when I turned the pages. Then I checked his image.

  It had taken me half an hour to realize what was happening because they were working in shifts, one at a time, and using the interior window glass of the compartments and the windows across the corridor to give them a double mirror effect.

  Only a miracle can now save the Vienna summit meeting, so forth. Dear Comrade Gromyko, have a little patience, for Christ's sake. Miracles take a little longer, you know that.

  But I wasn't, in fact, feeling terribly confident now of pulling one off. What we must never allow to happen had happened, on pressure from Control. Although I could understand the cause of that pressure — the front page of Pravda had spelt it out clearly enough — the fact remained that the executive in the field had been forced to move into a red sector without being sure he was clean in terms of surveillance and was on his way to a critical rendezvous and taking with him two components of a formidable opposition cell.

  There was also a third man.

  I didn't have time to worry about the third man because the other two had me in a surveillance pincer movement, but one thing about him was interesting. He wasn't working with the other two. He wasn't with the Rinker cell at all.

  I knew this because I'd become aware of him earlier, soon after the train had started off, and I'd mapped his rather elaborate movement patterns: when I'd gone along to the restaurant car for the paper he'd sought immediate cover and didn't show up again until I was back in my compartment, when he'd used another passenger as a shield as he'd come past to check on me. It wasn't that he was inefficient: it was all he could do in this kind of closed environment with only a narrow corridor as the terrain. He was under an added strain, and I'd noted this soon after he'd surfaced.

  He not only knew I was under surveillance by the Rinker people. He had to keep it from them, as well as from me, that I was his target too.

  In the normal way I would have been extremely interested in the fact that a second opposition network had sent an agent into the field but he was already out of the running bec
ause the Rinker cell was on to me and they wouldn't let me go and if I tried to lead them anywhere except directly to Karasov they'd close in and trap me and put me under a light and work on me until I betrayed my objective and blew the mission to bits.

  There wasn't any question about this in my mind as I watched the image in the double mirrors, the face of the man who was sitting three compartments along from me with his head tilted back against the quilted upholstery and his eyes apparently closed. His cell was professional and they'd already lost a man and they'd moved in again as if nothing had happened. They wanted Karasov as badly as I did, as London did. Somewhere eke a mission control had sent his people into the field with instructions to find our sleeper.

  I began reviewing the environment, but there was nothing here that you wouldn't find in most long-distance trains across the vast expanse of Soviet Russia: doors, windows, brass rails, glass-shaded lamps and upholstered seats, leather straps and racks of netting for small baggage, the emergency chain running through the compartment, glazed posters proclaiming work targets and industrial scenes, a woman in a head scarf, a man in a worker's cap. There wasn't anything that would make a weapon useful enough to offer decisive advantage in a close encounter, nothing better than my own hands; and if I finally made up my mind to draw the opposition into my own immediate vicinity and make a last-ditch attempt at dealing with them and eliminating the threat to Northlight I wouldn't be able to do it without alerting the KGB.

  The only choice I had was to close down the mission and leave the field and try to survive.

  He'd taken over his shift ten minutes ago, and although he was watching my reflection from between his half-closed eyelids his attention would be less acute than when he'd changed places with his partner. Static surveillance is fatiguing; on the move there is the physical stimulus offered by the need to keep the target in sight and not lose him, but to sit in a rocking train with your head against the cushions and your eyes half-closed is wearying and even mesmeric: the mind plays tricks, and that man in the mirrors wouldn't be absolutely certain that when I moved, it wasn't in his imagination. He would react, by moving himself.

  If he didn't, it would be easier, for me.

  I got up and kept his mirrored image in sight and made to turn to my left out of the compartment but his head moved and I abandoned the first choice and turned right instead, initiating the more dangerous play and walking past him along the corridor with my head turned away to look through the windows, not because I could hope to conceal my identity at this late stage but because it was the natural thing to do. The scene out there was eerie; there was no true daylight yet but the edge of the snow cloud was drawing away from the northeast and leaving a shimmering luminosity across the face of the hills, and from the huddle of buildings in the valley there was smoke rising from fires that in the winter here would never go out. The light was so strange in its quality that it could be either dawn or dusk or even full moon; in this region I was already finding that the only temporal constant was provided by my own biological clock.

  He didn't turn his head as I walked past his compartment; in reflection he could follow me with his eyes as far as the end of the carriage and he'd only get up and take a stroll if I went further than that.

  The panel on the toilet door read Unoccupied and I went in and shut the door and locked it and got my heavy coat off because the window was small and I wasn't certain I could squeeze through it. They were larger in the compartments but if I'd left my seat and opened the window he would have heard it and been along here very fast. I'd checked this toilet as soon as I'd got onto the train because it was the only place where I could break any kind of surveillance and make an escape if I had to. The air outside was below freezing and the window frame was shrunk to a loose fit and slid upwards when I pulled on the strap.

  The cold air hit my face and I squeezed my eyes half-shut as I looked out. The speed of the train was somewhere in the region of sixty kph and the terrain alongside the track was black rock under a light snow covering: we'd been running due south and the wind was easterly and the drifts had formed on the other side where I couldn't jump without being seen At this speed and with those rocks below me it was going be sudden death but I couldn't see any choice because they could hold off until I got out at Kandalaksha but from that point they'd expect me to lead them straight to the objective and I started trying to lose them they'd close in right away: they couldn't afford that, and they wouldn't give me more than an hour or two before they shut the trap and took me to their safehouse and went to work. If I didn't lead them to Karasov they'd have to force me to tell them where he was. I didn't know, but the rendezvous was in my mind and they might salvage that.

  I put my head half out of the window and looked south, the way we were running, but the wind was so cold that my eyes blurred at once and I was blinded. Looking below and behind I could still see nothing but rocks: there was no embankment to roll down, no deep snow to break my fall. But we'd passed through Olenegorsk and there'd be no other stop until Kandalaksha in forty minutes' time and if I didn't get out now I'd be moving into a strictly shut-ended situation.

  Rocks, and light snow, and rocks, and now a stretch of flat ground with scrubland beyond it and immediately below me the dizzying comb-tooth sequence of the sleepers. There'd be some kind of chance to make a rolling aikido fall with my coat on but without it I didn't expect much hope of getting away with less than a smashed skull.

  But there was a compromise between staying in the trap and doing a suicide drop and I pushed my shoulders through the window and twisted round and got a hand-hold on the half-inch gutter valance and hung on with my left hand and reached inside for my coat. I'd left it in a bundle across the tiny marbled handbasin and it caught on one of the taps but I freed it by whip action and pulled it through the window. The running board was three feet below me and I felt for it, swinging in the slipstream with the cold hitting my body and going through to the bone before I found the board and put my weight on one foot and dropped and grabbed for the windowsill and steadied, getting my balance.

  The idea was to hang on like this until we were running across better ground but there was no guarantee: these rocks were lethal but in this terrain I couldn't hope for more than flat ground frozen iron-hard under the snow and if I jumped wrong and landed badly I could pitch under the wheels.

  It was difficult even to see what was below me because at this speed the ground was blurred, and in any case it was no go because a sound came and I looked upwards into the barrel of his gun.

  They were really very good.

  But he was nervous. He hadn't left me in the toilet for more than a couple of minutes before he checked on me from the next window along.

  It was the next window forward of the toilet and he'd chosen it so that he could look back without the slipstream in his face. His gun was perfectly steady and his eyes were narrowed, sighting along the barrel. He was the Lithuanian with the shapeless leather bag.

  'Come back,' he said in Russian. His voice carried well above the roaring of the wheels.

  I looked down and away from him to clear my eyes. I didn't need time to think; there was no decision-making to be done. We were both professionals and we understood that, and the situation was simple enough. He'd taken away the only chance I'd had — the hope of dropping and rolling on flat ground and getting away with it. If I dropped now the last sound I would hear would be the shot. He'd only need one: it was a magnum he was holding, a man-stopper.

  His chances of saving his own mission weren't very good now because he couldn't afford to let me get away: if I got away I might survive and reach Karasov and take him to a frontier. The Rinker cell could no longer use me as a tracker dog to lead them to Karasov: I was blown. But if this man had to shoot me dead there would still be a small chance for him and for his mission. He would expect my network to replace me, just as his own had replaced Rinker. He would then hope to pick up the tracks of my replacement and follow him to the object
ive.

  So there was nothing to stop him putting a shot through my spine if I let go and dropped.

  'Come back into the train,'

  He'd got the bloody thing cocked.

  The acrid stink of the locomotive up there ahead was in my lungs and I began shallow breathing. The valance was sharp under my fingers and I didn't know how long I could hold on: the whole of my body was numbed by the blast of the slipstream and I began wondering if it would have been any good trying to squeeze through the window with my coat still on, and when you begin wondering things like that when you should be planning your next move it's time you 'Three,' he said, and held up three fingers.

  His voice brought me back to full consciousness: I'd been slipping into alpha waves because the cold was clamped round my skull and shrinking the carotid arteries below the jawline. I would have to do something, or You've got to do something.

  Yes, bloody little organism starting to panic.

  If you don't do something we 'II get killed and I don't want to the.

  For Christ's sake shuddup.

  Panic. Panic's the real killer when all's said and done.

  'One,' I heard the Lithuanian calling out.

  A rush of clear thought came and I realized he wouldn't be joking because he didn't have a lot of time to spare: if those KGB people came past the compartment he'd have to shoot them if he could before they got to their guns because dial would be professional: he still had a mission running and his instructions would be to do anything necessary to protect it and see it through, and even though the major Western services try not to do the kind of thing I did to that KGB colonel in Moscow when the car was being smashed up they sometimes have to take things to a conclusion if there's no other way, just as the KGB sometimes knock some spook off his perch in Paris or London or Bonn if they're running a tricky operation and he's making things difficult.