The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘And you’re a foreman.’

  Huovinen smiled. ‘That’s got something to do with it, too.’

  Carey regarded Lassi and Tarmo Virtanen. ‘And you two will stay in the house that day and you won’t go out. We don’t want anyone asking questions about how in hell can you be in Imatra and Enso at the same time.’

  Young Virtanen laughed and tapped the bottle of vodka. ‘Leave us plenty of this and we won’t go out.’

  Carey frowned, and Lassi said, ‘We’ll stay in the house.’

  ‘Very well. Did you get the clothing?’

  ‘It’s all here.’

  Carey took two folded cards from his pocket. ‘These are our passes - will you check them?’

  Huovinen picked them up and studied them. He took out his own pass for comparison, then said. ‘These are very good; very good, indeed. But they look new - they’re too clean.’

  ‘We’ll dirty them,’ said Carey.

  Huovinen shrugged. ‘It doesn’t really matter. The frontier guards have got tired of looking at passes. You’ll be all right.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Carey drily.

  Lassi Virtanen picked up his glass. ‘That’s settled. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing over there, Mr Englishman, but I know it will do Ryssä no good. Kispps!’ He knocked back his vodka.

  Carey and Armstrong both drank and immediately Virtanen replenished their glasses. Armstrong looked about the room and saw a photograph on the sideboard. He tipped his chair back to get a closer look and Lassi, following his gaze, laughed and got up. ‘That’s from the Continuation War,’ he said. ‘I had fire in my belly in those days.’

  He passed the photograph over to Armstrong. It showed a much younger Lassi Virtanen standing next to a fighter aircraft decorated with the swastika insignia. ‘My Messerschmitt,’ said Virtanen proudly. ‘I shot down six Russian bastards in that plane.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Armstrong politely.

  ‘Those were the good days,’ said Virtanen. ‘But what an air force we had. Any aircraft that had been built anywhere in the world - we had it. American Brewsters and Curtis Hawks, British Blenheims and Gladiators, German Fokkers and Dorniers, Italian Fiats, French Morane-Saulniers - even Russian Polikarpovs. The Germans captured some of those in the Ukraine and sent them to us. Unreliable bastards they were, too. What a crazy, mixed-up air force we had - but we still held the Russians off until the end.’

  He slapped his leg. ‘I got mine in ’44 - shot down near Räisälä and it took four of them to do it. That was behind the lines but I walked out with a bullet in my leg, dodging those dammed Russian patrols. Good days those were. Drink up!’

  It was late before Carey and Armstrong were able to leave because they had to listen to a monologue from Virtanen about his war experiences, interspersed with glasses of vodka. But at last they got away. Armstrong got behind the wheel of the car and looked eloquently at Carey. ‘I know,’ said Carey heavily. ‘Drunken and unreliable. I’m not surprised they’re getting nowhere.’

  ‘That man lives in the past,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘There’s a lot like him in Finland - men who’ve never really lived since the war. Never mind the Virtanens - they’re staying here. It’s Huovinen we have to rely on to get to the other side.’

  ‘He was packing the stuff away as though he wanted to start a drought in vodka,’ said Armstrong dispiritedly.

  ‘I know - but they’re all we’ve got.’ Carey took out his pipe. ‘I wonder how McCready and company are doing up north. They can’t be doing worse than we are.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Harding. ‘But I don’t think I’ll sleep.’

  Denison inspected the narrow patch of ground for stones before he unrolled his sleeping bag. He flicked an offender aside and said, ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t get used to broad daylight in the middle of the night.’

  Denison grinned. ‘Why don’t you prescribe yourself a sleeping pill?’

  ‘I might do that.’ Harding picked a blade of grass and chewed it. ‘How are you sleeping these days?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Dream much?’

  ‘Not that I can remember. Why?’

  Harding smiled. ‘I’m your resident head-watcher - appointed by that chit over there.’ He nodded towards Lyn who was peering dubiously into a camp kettle.

  Denison unrolled his sleeping bag and sat on it. ‘What do you think of her?’

  ‘Personally or professionally?’

  ‘Maybe a bit of both.’

  ‘She seems to be a well-balanced young woman.’ There was amusement in Harding’s voice. ‘She certainly knew how to handle Carey - she caught him coming and going. And she jabbed me in a sore spot. She’s very capable, I’d say.’

  ‘She took her father’s death pretty coolly.’

  Harding threw away the blade of grass and lit a cigarette. ‘She lived with her mother and stepfather and didn’t have much to do with Meyrick apart from quarrelling. I’d say her attitude to her father’s death was perfectly normal. She had other things to think about at the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denison pensively.

  ‘I don’t think you need worry about Lyn Meyrick,’ said Harding. ‘She’s used to making up her own mind - and the minds of others, come to that.’

  Diana Hansen came down the hill looking trim and efficient in the neat shirt and the drab trousers which she wore tucked into the tops of field boots - a world removed from the cool sophisticate Denison had met in Oslo. She cast a look at Lyn and walked over to the two men. ‘Time to do your bit with the theodolite, Giles.’

  Denison scrambled to his feet. ‘Are they still with us?’

  ‘So I’m told,’ said Diana. ‘And there’s another party. We’re becoming popular. I’d go up on that ridge there - and stay in sight.’

  ‘All right.’ Denison took the theodolite out of its case, picked up the lightweight tripod, and walked up the hill in the direction Diana had indicated.

  Harding smiled as he watched Denison’s retreating figure. He thought that Lyn Meyrick would make up Denison’s mind were she allowed to. From a psychiatric point of view it was most interesting - but he would have to have a word with the girl first. He got up and walked over to where Lyn was pumping the pressure stove.

  Denison stopped on top of the ridge and set up the theodolite. He took the sheet of paper from his pocket, now much creased, and studied it before looking around at the view. This was the bit of fakery Carey had given him to make the deception look good. It had been written with a broad-nibbed pen - ‘No ballpoints in 1944,’ Carey had said - and artificially aged. Across the top was scrawled the single word, Luonnonpuisto and below that was a rough sketch of three lines radiating from a single point with the angles carefully marked in degrees. At the end of each line was again a single word - Järvi, Kukkula and Aukio - going around clockwise. Lake, hill and gap.

  ‘Not much to go on,’ Carey had said. ‘But it explains why you’re wandering around nature preserves with a theodolite. If anyone wants to rob you of that bit of paper you can let him. Maybe we can start a trade in theodolites.’

  Denison looked around. Below ran the thread of a small river, the Kevojoki, and in the distance was the blue water of a lake pent in a narrow valley. He bent his head and sighted the theodolite at the head of the lake. Every time he did this he had a curious sense of déjà vu as though he had been accustomed to doing this all his life. Had he been a surveyor?

  He checked the reading on the bezel and sighted again on the hill across the valley and took another reading. He took a notebook from his pocket and worked out the angle between the lake and the hill, then he swept the horizon looking for a possible gap. All this nonsense had to look good because he knew he was under observation - Carey’s red herring appeared to be swimming well.

  It had been at lunchtime on the first day that Diana had said casually, ‘We’re being watched.’

  ‘How do you know?’ a
sked Denison. ‘I’ve seen nobody.’

  ‘McCready told me.’

  McCready had not been in evidence at Kevo Camp and Denison had not seen him since Helsinki. ‘Have you been talking to him? Where is he?’

  Diana nodded across the lake. ‘On the other side of the valley. He says that a party of three men is trailing us.’

  Denison was sceptical. ‘I suppose you have a walkie-talkie tucked away in your pack.’

  She shook her head. ‘Just this.’ From the pocket of her anorak she took a small plate of stainless steel, three inches in diameter; it had a small hole in the middle. ‘Heliograph,’ she said. ‘Simpler than radio and less detectable.’

  He examined the double-sided mirror - that is what it amounted to - and said, ‘How can you aim it?’

  ‘I know where George McCready is now,’ she said. ‘He’s just been signalling to me. If I want to answer I hold this up and sight on his position through the hole. Then I look at my own reflection and see a circle of light on my cheek where the sun comes through the hole. If I tilt the mirror so that the circle of light goes into the hole, then the mirror on the other side flashes light into George’s eyes. From then on it’s simply a matter of Morse code.’

  Denison was about to experiment when she took the gadget from him. ‘I told you we’re being watched. I can get away with it by pretending to make up my face - you can’t.’

  ‘Has McCready any idea of who is watching us?’

  She shrugged. ‘He hasn’t got near enough to find out. I think it’s about time you started your act with the theodolite.’

  So he had set up the theodolite and fiddled about checking angles, and had repeated the charade several times during the past two days.

  Now he found what might, by a stretch of imagination, be called a gap and took the third reading. He calculated the angle, wrote it into his notebook, and put the notebook and the fake paper back into his pocket. He was dismantling the theodolite when Lyn came up the hill. ‘Supper’s ready.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Hold this.’ He gave her the theodolite. ‘Did Diana say anything about another group following us?’

  Lyn nodded. ‘They’re coming up from behind very fast, she says.’

  ‘Where’s the first group?’

  ‘Gone on ahead.’

  ‘We’re like the meat in a sandwich,’ Denison said gloomily. ‘Unless it’s all a product of Diana’s imagination. I haven’t seen anyone around - and I certainly haven’t seen George McCready.’

  ‘I saw him signalling this morning,’ said Lyn. ‘He was on the other side of the valley. I was standing next to Diana and saw the flash, too.’

  Denison collapsed the tripod and they both set off down the hill. ‘You and Harding have had your heads together lately. What do you find so interesting to talk about?’

  She gave him a sideways glance. ‘You,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve been finding out about you; since I can’t ask you I’ve been asking him.’

  ‘Nothing bad, I hope.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Nothing bad.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘What’s for supper?’

  ‘Bully beef stew.’

  He sighed. ‘I can’t wait.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  McCready was desperately tired. He lay on a hillside in a grove of dwarf birch and watched the group of four men making their way up the valley on the other side of the river. He had had very little sleep in the last two days and his eyes were sore and gritty. He had long since come to the conclusion that it needed two men to do this job.

  He lowered the binoculars and blinked, then rubbed his eyes before checking on the camp on the top of the bluff across the river. There was a new figure on the rock above the camp which looked like Denison. At three in the morning there was quite enough light to see; the sun had skimmed the horizon at midnight and was already high in the sky. It seemed that Diana had insisted that a watch be kept.

  He shifted his elbows and checked on the higher reaches of the valley and his mouth tightened as he saw a movement. The three men of the first party were coming down, keeping close to the river. Earlier he had crossed the river to scout their camp and, although he had not got close enough to hear clearly what they had been talking about, he had heard enough to know they were not Finns. Their tones had Slavic cadences and he had seen that they were very lightly equipped with no tents or even sleeping bags.

  He switched his attention to the group of four who were coming up the valley. The two groups could not see each other because of a bend in the river where the water swirled around the bluff. He judged that if both groups kept up the same pace they would meet under the bluff and just below Denison.

  McCready frowned as he watched. If the first group was under-equipped the second was well-outfitted to the point of decadent luxury. He had watched them stop for a meal and had seen what seemed to be a collapsible barbecue. Two of the men carried coils of rope as though they might expect rock climbing. Maybe Finns, he had thought, but now he was not so certain; not even Finns made route marches at three a.m.

  At the time he had first seen the second group he had been too far away to distinguish faces, but now the men were nearer and he had a better chance. As he waited patiently he pondered over the differences between the two parties and came to the conclusion that they were indeed quite separate. Two minutes, later he was sure of it when he saw the face of the leading man of the four.

  It was Jack Kidder, the big loud-mouthed American who had cropped up in Oslo and, later, in Helsinki.

  Whatever the first group had been speaking it had been neither Finnish nor English. It was reasonable to assume that not only were the two parties quite distinct but also that neither knew of the existence of the other. Even more interesting, they were going to run into each other within twenty minutes.

  McCready put down the binoculars and twisted around to open the pack which lay beside him. He took out what appeared to be the stock of a rifle and slapped open the butt plate which was hinged. From inside the hollow glassfibre stock he took out a barrel and a breech action and, within thirty seconds, he had assembled the rifle.

  He patted the stock affectionately. This was the Armalite AR-7, originally designed as a survival rifle for the American Air Force. It weighed less than three pounds and was guaranteed to float in water whether knocked down or ready to fire, but what made it suitable for his purpose was the fact that, stripped down, it measured less than seventeen inches in length and so could be smuggled about unobtrusively in a back pack.

  He inserted a magazine containing eight rounds of long rifle and put another clip in his pocket, then he crawled backwards out of the grove of trees and began to make his way down to the river along a ravine he had previously chosen for the eventuality. He came out to the river’s edge opposite the bluff and right on the bend of the river, and took shelter behind boulders which a long-gone glacier had left in its passage.

  From his position on the outside bend of the river he could see both groups although neither, as yet, was aware of the other. He looked at the bluff and could not see Denison who was farther back up the hill. Nothing like adding confusion, he thought, as he raised the rifle to firing position.

  As both groups were about to round the bend he fired, not at Kidder but just in front of him, and the sand spurted at Kidder’s feet. Kidder yelled and rolled sideways and, as if by magic, all four men disappeared.

  McCready did not see that sudden transformation of the scene; he had already turned and slammed another shot at the leading man of the trio which ricocheted off a rock by his head. The man ducked instinctively and went to ground fast, but not so fast that McCready did not see the pistol that suddenly appeared in his hand.

  McCready withdrew into his niche like a tortoise drawing its head into its shell and waited to see what would happen next.

  Denison heard the shot from below and jerked to attention. Even before he took the second quick pace back to the camp he heard the flat report of
the second shot which echoed from the hill behind him. Then there was no sound but the thudding of his boots on the rock.

  He stooped to Diana’s sleeping bag and found her already awake. ‘Someone’s shooting.’

  ‘I heard. Wake the others.’

  He roused Lyn and then went to Harding who, in spite of his pessimism, was fast asleep. ‘Wassamatter?’ he said drowsily, but came awake with a jerk as two more shots broke the early morning silence. ‘What the hell?’

  Diana was gesturing vigorously. ‘Over the ridge,’ she called. ‘Away from the river.’

  Harding hastily thrust his feet into his boots and cursed freely. Denison ran over to Diana who was helping Lyn. ‘What about the gear?’

  ‘Leave it. Leave everything except your gun. Get moving.’

  He hauled Lyn to her feet and they ran for it, up the hill and over the top of the ridge, a matter of some three hundred yards. There they waited, breathless, until Diana and Harding caught up. Three more shots were fired in rapid succession, and Denison said, ‘It sounds like a bloody battle.’

  ‘We’ve got to get lost,’ said Diana. ‘There’s cover over there.’

  They ran for it.

  On the other side of the river, at the water’s edge, McCready watched and smiled. As he had figured, neither of the groups had time to find out where the shots had come from. They had taken cover immediately in the manner of professionals, and now they were dodging about on each side of the bluff in skirmish lines, ready for defence or attack. Kidder, on the left, caught a glimpse of a man on the right, and fired. He missed but, in firing, he exposed himself and someone took a shot at him. Another miss.

  Kidder pulled back and unslung his pack which was hampering him. As the others did the same McCready smiled. A typical battle situation was developing in miniature. Kidder, to improve mobility, was divesting himself of supplies, which might be a good idea considering he outnumbered the opposition—although he could not know that. But if he lost and was overrun and had to retreat then his supplies would be lost.