He called again, after them: 'Where are the others?'
From the panting to the right, 'Having a crap. Where the fuck do you think they are?'
'Where are they?'
From the left, 'Down…they're down.'
For a moment, Locke did not understand. 'Dead? Is "down" dead?'
Through the whistle of the breath, 'Ham dead, no fucking head. Billy down, hit…maybe dead, may not be. Minus a leg either way.'
'You left him?'
'Prat—this isn't the fucking Queensberry stuff. Why are you here?'
The line of trees was set against the sky. The wall of darkness the trees made beckoned them, seemed to scream for them. He had closed the gap. If he had reached out, thrown himself forward, his fist might have caught a grip of a wetsuit or the white shirt's collar. As they went past the high earth mound where the furthest of the targets were displayed, a flare burst over them. The trees reached for them. He saw Lofty and Wickso grab the shoulders of the white shirt and thrust it down. Then they were crawling on their stomachs. Because he ran and they crawled, he beat them to the trees, then dived and the wet of the ground was in his nose and the needles were in his mouth. He looked behind him. He could see each piece of the pines' bark, each cone on the lower branches, each needle on the fronds. For a moment, at half his height, Wickso knelt and raised his right arm as far as he could. The light cascaded on him and he gave them the finger. The tracer round speared at them, the bullets hammered into the trunks, and needles, branches and cones scattered over them.
'I came to help.'
'Lofty, I ask myself why would anyone come here to help?'
'Wickso, he's either got God, bad—or too much sun, worse. Give him Ham's—'
The weapon was forced into his hand. They were gone on their stomachs. More bullets hit the trees above them, or whined away off stones, and the tracers showered sparks. As he slithered after them on his knees and elbows, Locke held tight to the weapon's stock. At Fort Monkton, on the indoor range there, he had fired a Walther P5 on the indoor range, fired it for half an hour at a time on two afternoons. The instructor had said he was 'bloody useless' the first time. He had treated it as a laugh, a side-show, two afternoons off from the real business of electronics available to new officers. Shooting had seemed an unimportant distraction, as useful as instruction in covert movement through woodland as taught in the New Forest. As a child he had never fired his father's over-and-under shotgun. All his marks on electronic communications, theatre analysis, report writing had been marked with the red stars of distinction. They were all up now and charging.
'What is it, the weapon?'
Lofty's grunt: 'Skorpion, Czech—7.65 calibre, blowback, selective fire…'
'I don't know how to use it.'
Wickso's hiss. 'Then fucking well learn.'
He winced. The difference now: he could see the trees. He could hear the sea on the beach, and he could see the tree-trunks without the aid of the flares' light.
'Take it down.'
Having given the order, Piatkin stepped aside. The pain throbbed in his head, but he was sober at least. The Military Police corporal, a huge bull of a man on whose bared right arm a tattooed girl danced, readied himself in front of the door, sucked in a gulp of breath, then swung back the sledgehammer.
The door panel disintegrated at the third blow.
The corporal reached through the splintered panel and turned the key. He threw open what remained of the door, then moved away. Piatkin, alone, would enter. Behind him, and behind the corporal, were the men who staffed the fleet commander's outer office—all except the chief of staff, Captain, second rank, Archenko.
The bastard. Piatkin swore.
The desk was sideways on to the door. The top drawer of the near desk leg was open, pulled back, and the key was still in it. The pistol was on the floor. The chest and arms and what remained of the head were on the desk. The head's fall had toppled the inkwell: part of the blood flow, merged with ink, was a delicate purple rivulet that was staunched against an opened carton of Camel cigarettes. The top of the head and much of the blood was on the ceiling, around the lamp fitting.
The deputy fleet commander was in Moscow. The head of operations was in Severomorsk.
Piatkin felt hatred for this man who had been Archenko's protector. He saw again the cold faces of the men who would sit in judgement on him. He ordered that the room be sealed, that the body of Admiral Alexei Falkovsky be left. If he failed they would flay the skin off his back.
He stamped towards the operations room in the bombproof bunker under the headquarters building. Vladdy Piatkin, the zampolit, did not know how he could distance himself from the catastrophe engulfing him.
'Tell me, Mr Mowbray, because I think it is fair now to ask, why exactly did you bring us here?'
Mowbray bit at his lip. 'How far are we off the shore?'
The mate said that they were five nautical miles from the beach. For an hour, in almost total taut silence, from the bridge, they had watched the flares and the racing lines of tracer in front of them. The master had now called for full power. The Princess Rose surged towards land, not high and proud but low with the weight of her cargo. Dawn dribbled above the treeline, which he watched. 'Why, Mr Mowbray?'
He stood at his full height. 'I had a vision of what was necessary. A secure floating platform for a fallback plan. We could launch from it, slip ashore, pick up our man, return under cover of darkness to the platform, then move beyond their territorial waters.' His voice tailed off. 'That was my vision of a fallback plan.'
'We are late, too late.'
Grandly, as if he addressed his students, Mowbray retorted, 'I never acknowledge failure. It is unacceptable, failure is.'
The mate, behind him, spoke with a gentle sadness. 'If we like it or do not, failure is with us, Mr Mowbray. It has happened.'
He turned, spat, 'Unacceptable. Failure never has, never will be, acceptable.'
The mate's binoculars were handed to him. The mate pointed towards the dim, distant lights of the naval base. His sight was not as clean as the mate's, and with the binoculars at his eyes, he fiddled with the focus. Then…first he saw the moving lights, then the spreading bow wave. Then he made out the dark gun-metal shape of the patrol-boat, the arrow of its bow wave aimed straight at the Princess Rose. 'Please. I beg of you, what is possible?'
The conscript, Igor Vasiliev, clung to the vehicle's open side as Bikov directed the petty officer away from the track. It pitched, rolled through the scrub and he held the machine-gun locked between his knees. He felt pride. His skill was recognized. They crossed the scrub and rolled up on to the summit of the dunes, and the beach, open, rolled out in front of them.
His name was called quietly. Ponsford had been dozing. He jerked up from his chair, and went to the glass door. The signal was printed out on flimsy, low-quality paper. He reflected—and it was a near treasonable offence to speak it—that bloody accountants now ran the building. His mind roved: another victory for the paperclip counters, cheap paper for signals into the annexe off the central communications unit. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-five minutes since the last signal had been given him, and two hours since… Where the hell was Giles? He scraped his memory: Just going for a breath of air.
The technician passed him the second signal. Nothing could be read from the faces. The technicians who serviced the War Room in the lower basement could mask their feelings whether the message they passed on was of triumph or disaster. For the second time, no frown or glint of concern marked the young man's face. And they never commented on the signals. Ponsford took it.
He shook.
The second signal—'Delta 1 down'—seemed to kick him harder than the first had, wounded him more sharply. He had never seen the men, never met them, knew them only from the old service photographs on their files, and it had been Peter Giles's responsibility to check them out, and Mowbray's. He realized how long it was since Giles had gone for his 'breath of air'.
<
br /> The technician was back through the glass door and had sat again and swivelled his chair to face the equipment that brought in the signals. The technicians were all younger men and women, in love with their gear, and he wondered if they had hearts, read the signals they deciphered and cared.
His mind was fogged. On the screen where before had been the blown-up map of the Mierzeja Wislana sand spit, which became the Baltijskaja Kosa on Russian territory, there was now a cartoon head and shoulders, crudely drawn as if at the kitchen table by Giles's grandson, then left unfinished as if the child had lost interest. The cartoon's head was an empty circle. No eyes, no ears, no mouth, no features. Why had Peter Giles drawn it while he'd slept? So long ago, a lifetime, Rupert bloody Mowbray's voice had boomed: 'Thank you for your anecdote from Grozny. An interrogator is called back to Moscow…will now be at the base at Baltiysk…a man of importance, of authority. An unknown face filled the screen. Giles had said: It's the little people's turn to take charge. Bertie Ponsford needed to share his burden.
Through the intercom link he told the technician that he was off to find Mr Giles. 'Won't be long.'
Ponsford took the lift up to the atrium floor. Some of the smokers used the terraces above the Thames at the back of the building for a 'breath of air', others preferred the fire escapes; a few went out through the electronic gates at the front, swiped their cards and huddled in the driveway. The atrium, silent except for a single polishing machine, was to Ponsford like any American chain hotel before it woke—a Holiday Inn or a Marriott—empty of soul, devoid of heart. They stayed in such hotels when they went 'across the pond' to make a pretence that a Special Relationship existed. Did it, hell. He gazed around among the tall pot plants. It was a barren place, and it was his life…soulless, heartless, barren…the working home of Bertie Ponsford.
He went on to the terraces. In the shadows a couple crouched, then parted, and eyed him with hostility. He looked at all the rails, at the benches, and into other shadows. Christ, were they actually screwing? He wondered if he knew them, then wished them bon voyage. They'd have been from the recently expanded Afghan Desk, the cocky crowd, newly important, and the time difference for their theatre meant there was always a night shift fully rostered. Bloody hell, having a ride on the terraces…
Methodically, he checked the fire escapes. He came back into the atrium and walked to the main entrance. He knew all the names of the older night staff who manned the principal doors of the building. If he spoke to them, used their given names, they beamed proudly—and Ponsford felt popular. He had almost forgotten why he had started out on this night mission through the dull-lit, hushed building. On the Service's business, two men were down.
'Morning, Mr Ponsford.'
They were all either from a Guards regiment or were paratroop veterans or had served with the Marines. They wore crisp uniforms with pride, with medal ribbons, and he could have shaved off the reflection from their shoes. He knew that one and all of them had hated the move from the shabbiness of Century House to the Yankee cleanliness of Vauxhall Bridge Cross.
'Hello, Clarence—you can help me. Have you seen Mr Giles?'
'Not since he left, sir.'
'No, no…he was just going for a breath of air.'
'I don't think so, sir. Had his coat on, and his hat, and had his briefcase. Said he was going home, sir.'
Ponsford held the wall for support. He seemed to hear a rasping, angry whine. He refused to—damn well would not—accept that the whine was from the polishing machine's motor. A chainsaw's engine pierced his mind, and the fog cleared. A chainsaw, with a big bloody blade, would cut a firebreak.
'You staying on, sir?'
'Yes, I am, Clarence,' he said, sucking the breath through his teeth.
'Big show, sir, is it? Don't see many of them, these days.' The old soldier laughed. 'But you're not going to tell me, sir, are you?'
'No, no…I'm not.'
He turned away from the main entrance, through which his longstanding friend, Peter Giles, had gone. They'd been on the same induction course and had gone up the ladder together. And now the beggar had run for safety—each man for himself—had scuttled behind the firebreak. He went back to the lift that would take him down, again, to the War Room. If those who had survived, and Ferret, were going to make it out they would be close to the beach by now. The ratchet of the chainsaw's teeth clamoured in his head.
... Chapter Nineteen
Q. Where do the tourist agencies claim Russia's most breathtaking and unspoiled beaches are?
A. Kaliningrad.
She heard the message.
Alice listened.
Wickso's voice, laconic, and the brevity of old messages was gone, was clear in her headset.
'Delta 3 calling in to Havoc, whatever number Havoc has. We are on the treeline. Dunes, beach and sea are in front of us. It's lit by flares, all of it, it's bloody midday here. I am with Lofty and Ferret. We have to cross the dunes and the beach, get into the sea, raise the dinghy, then… They've got a heavy machine-gun on us.'
She thought Wickso teased her. He seemed so close, with the sharp edge in his voice, as if he were beside her. He was close, as a crow flew: she remembered the quiet courtesy with which Wickso had passed coffee from his flask, in the farm gateway near Braniewo, when Ham had told her of the failed pickup in the zoo park—Lofty had had his arm round her for comfort. She heard him, crisp in her headset. 'Have to use the dinghy. Have to get over the dunes and the beach… They've a blocking force between us and the frontier—to be expected, actually. We're being squeezed. Well, that's the way it goes…oh, and Locke showed up.'
Her mouth gaped, and then her teeth seemed to chatter. He had said: 'I'm going outside. I'll be gone some little time.' The voice droned on, as if careless to interception. She sat very still, her hands pressed the headphones tight against her ears.
'He sort of pitched up, like it was just before closing time, like this is Last Chance Saloon. Why? Said he'd come to help… We're about to go for the beach. If we get out of the saloon…no, no, when we get out of the saloon, you owe me a drink, ma'am… Going now. Out.'
She clicked to 'Transmit'. She couldn't match the laconic mood in his words. She quavered, 'Received for onward transmission. Anything further, send direct to Havoc 2. Not to me. Change to necessary frequency. Communicate direct with Havoc 2. Out.' She was too shaken, too beaten, to offer her personal encouragement. It would have insulted them, she'd thought fast, to have wished them luck—and luck was already beyond the reach of Billy and Ham. She should not clutter their minds with emotion. Viktor would have been beside Wickso. It would have been unprofessional to ask for the microphone and the headset to be passed by Wickso to Viktor. What to say? 'How's the weather where you are? I love you?' Nothing to say, and if she had heard his voice sharp in the earphones, she would probably have cried—and that would have been unprofessional.
She tipped the earphones off her head and snatched her coat off the chair. She left the door to the kitchen open behind her and as she ran for the back fence she heard its hinges sing in the wind.
She caught her coat on the wire as she scrambled over it. She ran between the trees. When they were on the beach, when they had gone into the water, when the flares lit them and the machine-gun fired on them, there would be no more transmissions. She wanted to see it, the last-chance drink in the saloon. She must be there, must be a witness. It was owed them…
The binoculars rattled in the pocket of her coat, bounced on something. She could not identify what they hit against, and did not care. She reached the path between the trees. A car came behind her and its lights blazed on her. It swerved to pass her, and a man waved cheerfully at her, as if it were not exceptional for a young woman to be stampeding through a dump village, out beyond nowhere, at dawn. She passed the church. The car had stopped there. She saw that the man who had waved to her wore a priest's habit. Should she follow him inside, beg a candle and light a flame for them? She did not break her stride
.
She ran towards the dunes and the beach, and in front of her a scrum of cars, casually abandoned, threw down guiding lights.
Alice North ran as if the devils chased her. She was responsible. She had gone to Rupert Mowbray with the transcribed minutes of the meeting. She had worked his vanity, she felt the guilt. She had to be there on the beach to see it finish.
The cool of the wind blustered on her as she came to the dunes' summit. It was where she had shown Gabriel Locke a grave. At the front of the parked cars, where the dunes fell away to the beach and the shore, the engine of a saloon ran, the driver revved it and its lights speared down. She saw the crowd of men and women standing around a low fire. She stumbled in the loose sand of the dunes. The crowd stood in silence. She slowed and walked the last steps to join it, and she saw from the flames the sombre stare in their faces.
Near the fire, beyond the crowd's backs, the gulls pranced and scrapped for fish heads. She wondered if Gabriel Locke would soon be carrion. She didn't know why he had gone out into the night for 'some little time' and what he could do 'to help'.
She saw Jerry the Pole, and the blackened mess of his hand, clenched like a claw, and she followed his eyes down the beach. Where she looked, the beach had an eerie brightness. Flares dispersed the dawn's first shadows and the night's rain mist melted under them. The dunes, the beach and the sea close to the sands were exposed and the light, garish in its intensity, left no cover and no hiding-place.
From the edge of the treeline to the last fall of the dunes was, Wickso estimated, seventy-five metres. The width of the beach from the dunes to the shore where the sea rolled in little ripples then fell back was a further 150 metres. From the surf to the sunken dinghy was an additional 100 metres. Running or swimming, there was no protection. Far out to sea, far beyond the light pools, was the hulk of the ship, and he saw from its bow wave that it came towards them, grey and remote. N
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