Paskar had two other soldiers helping him strip the bodies. Economical use of flashlights was permissible; guards had been posted on a wide perimeter in case a finnish Frontier Force patrol should inconveniently show up. Not that it was at all likely, the pattern of such deployments having been carefully monitored over a period of months… They’d dealt with the first two bodies and were starting on the man Belyak had killed — a stocky, thick-limbed Finn whose head had been almost blasted off his shoulders. The exit of the crossbow bolt on the right side of the neck had created that damage.
Gerasimov was spreading reindeer skins, one for each of the corpses which were now rolled on to them; the edges of the hides were then drawn together, leather thongs tightened and knotted. Long traces also of reindeer hide were coiled ready for the skiers who’d take the loads in tow, frozen solid as logs as they very soon would be. This ultra-simple form of freight-sledge was the most basic type of Lapp geres or pulka, traditional transport since ancient times for reindeer meat and other stores.
Belyak knew a lot about Lapps — in Russian, Laplandtsi or Lopari — and their history and way of life. Or rather ways, plural, because the Loparis’ lifestyle varied according to habitat and primary occupation. There were for instance mountain Lapps who herded reindeer, river Lapps who lived by farming and some fishing, and coast Lapps whose livelihood came from the sea. There were also many who’d been assimilated into the ‘settler’ ways and lived like their Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish neighbours. Belyak had studied the Lapp customs, folklore, eating and living habits and the principles of reindeer husbandry; he’d also looked carefully into the grudges and political aspirations which a few of them nursed. He and his Spetsnazi professionals had investigated the Lapp background so well that they could just about pass themselves off as Lapps when they needed to.
Yuri Grintsov was a reek of onions at his side. There’d be a moon in about an hour and its radiance would permeate the overhang of cloud, lighten the scene down here to some extent, but for the moment the world consisted of shadows etched against snow’s whiteness — and muted sounds, odours including the sweet sickliness of fresh blood. The boys were clearing up, throwing clean snow over the sodden patches; snow that fell looked natural, whereas raked-over snow did not. Belyak asked Gerasimov, ‘Are you clear on how you’re to dispose of them, Aleksandr Borisovich?’
‘Clear enough.’ The sergeant’s affirmative was a growl as he straightened, but Yuri Grintsov chipped in, ‘Wherever they’re dumped, won’t their pals in the Ivalo barracks know this is where they must have been hit?’
‘No.’ Belyak gave him the answer quietly. It wasn’t for everyone to hear. ‘At Ivalo they know fuck-all.’ The toe of his boot nudged one stiffening corpse. ‘This one telephoned his boss. Not at Ivalo — they’re not locals, they’re from Rovaniemi, undercover squad. This guy’s half Lopar, as it happens. He was… He called in to report he’d be out of touch for a while, snooping down in this direction. Didn’t say for what or why — and his boss didn’t ask, for shit’s sake — so I’m starting from scratch now.’ He shrugged. ‘Well. Not quite.
‘How d’you know that much?’
‘His boss passed it on to us. He’s our man, you see. Unfortunately, slow in the uptake. Now, look here…’
It was time to get his team together, and move out.
*
This had started for Andrei Belyak nearly a year ago, with a summons to a high-level meeting in Moscow after a sudden recall from service in Afghanistan. Ushered into the underground conference hall of the Verkhovnoye Glavnoye Komandovaniye, Supreme High Command, he’d found himself in company with two Marshalls of the Soviet Union, several lesser generals, a whole crowd of other senior officers and a small group of civilian officials whom he’d guessed might be GRU 2nd Chief Directorate officials. Rarified air indeed, at first gulp. Not that he himself was any nonentity, despite his junior rank: he was known nationally for his athletic achievements, and as most of the senior men glanced at the powerfully built young officer they’d have noticed that on his airborne forces’ uniform he wore a para badge. Soviet air assault troops wore that uniform but they used helicopters, not parachutes, and the badge was the one thing that marked him for what he was.
Presiding over the meeting was Marshall V.V. Rosenko, who was to be the ‘Representative’ on this Operation Temnota — code-word meaning ‘darkness’. Viktor Vassilievich Rosenko outlined the intention and objectives and spent several minutes on a swift review of the historical, geographical and political background. Then from Lapp origins, history, present political ‘subjugation’ by the settler populations of Norwegians, Swedes and Finns, he expanded on the golden opportunity which Lapp dissidence in northern Scandinavia now presented. Operation Temnota was designed to use it, enabling Soviet forces to take possession of Finnmark, Norway’s northern province, with the main object of securing the coastline from Kirkenes on the present Soviet/Norwegian border via North Cape and numerous intermediate small ports to Alta with its fine deepwater anchorages in sheltered, ice-free fjords, and all of this would be achieved without risk of confrontation with NATO forces.
On ‘Lapp dissidence’, Rosenko explained that where the basis for anything like an insurrectionary movement did exist, steps were being taken to nurture and develop it. Where none existed, it would be planted, created through various kinds of persuasion, or it would simply be invented. The physical takeover would then be accomplished by clandestine penetration — in preference to a swift, armed grab of that weakly defended territory — first because fighting was still in progress in Afghanistan and anti-Soviet propaganda was being maintained at such levels that a new military initiative, which would be falsely interpreted as aggression against a neighbour state, was politically undesirable, and second because it wasn’t necessary, as the situation in Lappland would permit the more or less bloodless achievement of the same aims. It would be a fait accompli, all objectives secured, before the NATO hierarchies woke up to the fact that it was happening.
Timing: Rosenko told his audience that in order to fit in with other longer term strategic plans, all stages of preparation would have to be completed by mid-January. There would be two options then: either to attack immediately or to wait until maybe April, ie to move in advance of the NATO winter exercise deployments or after the withdrawal of those forces. There were various factors to be taken into account — including weather, snow and ice conditions.
Belyak had left the conference hall with enough reading matter to fill a large suitcase. He and other force commanders were also given individual briefs detailing their own areas of planning. Language study, too, commenced immediately. Other Spetsnaz officers and NCOs, from okhotnik (‘hunter’) units in the East and reidovik (‘raider’) western-based units — Belyak himself was an okhotnik — were sent to special language courses in their own districts, without knowing what need they’d have of that language, those languages. Linguistic ability being one of the Spetsnaz characteristics, the desired results were achieved in nearly all cases within the time allowed, and in his own six months of study Belyak acquired not only the Northern Lapp tongue but also passable Norwegian and enough Finnish to get by — to pass for a Finn when in Norway, for instance.
V.V. Rosenko meanwhile moved west to set up a subordinate headquarters at Kandalaksha on the White Sea. He took over his command under the alias of V.V. Sidorenko and in the rank of colonel, this demotion being a standard security precaution and an element in the overall cover, maskirovka, as of course was the location of his stavka — convenient enough at this stage to the scene of projected action but not so close as to point to it. Belyak spent some time there before deploying with his Spetsnazi, also Mountain Recce Troops and a regiment of Combat Engineers, to a heavily camouflaged forward base southwest of Prirechnyy, not far off the highway from Murmansk to Raja-jooseppi on the Finnish border. Here the spearhead units were joined by a detachment of Kola Lapps. Drawn from rear-echelon units into which they’d been conscripted,
they were now put through the gruelling Spetsnaz training — Belyak’s NCOs watching them closely, picking only the best to join operational sections and relegating the majority to duties around the base. Later they’d help to marshal other Lapps in convincing the outside world that the takeover of Lappland had been a spontaneous Lapp initiative. V.V. Rosenko had given an illustration, at that first Moscow meeting, of how this would be put across, in newspaper and television pictures. The fast, clandestine invasion would have been through Finland, two light columns linking with air and sea insertions, and there’d be no attempt to breach the USSR’s frontier with Norway; but after a Lapp declaration of independence there’d be a formal, peaceful opening of that border from the Norwegian side, Soviet troops pouring through to a spectacular welcome by cheering, flag-waving Lapps.
The two Kola Lapps who set off that night with Belyak were the only conscripts in his team of nine skiers. Five of them happened to be from the south, from states east of the Caspian: Kunaiev and Kusaimov from Kazakhstan, Pereudin from Turkmenistan, Rakhmanin the Uzbek, and Akhmatbek Tsinev who was a Kirghiz. Markov, who was from Leningrad and the only westerner in the group, was a praporschik, warrant officer. All were trained killers and saboteurs and all except the two Lopari had proved themselves in action in Afghanistan.
Personal weapons on the march were limited to fighting-knives and P220 SIG-Sauer 9-millimetre parabellum automatic pistols — designed by SIG in Switzerland, made by J.P.Sauer in West Germany — and MKS 5.56-mm assault rifles from Interdynamic Forsknings AB of Stockholm. Within the principles of maskirovka, which in Spetsnaz operations forbade the trans-frontier use of identifiably Soviet weapons, the Swedish MKS was Belyak’s personal choice. He’d selected the short-barrelled version with folding stock and the smaller, twenty-round magazine. Rations and spare clothing, and gear such as tents, cooking equipment and an R350M radio, were packed into another traditional kind of Lapp sledge, a pulka of the boat type with a keel, ribs and transom. It was a facsimile, strutted with aluminium, but to Sami or Norwegian eyes it would look like the genuine article — although that would have had reindeer, not Spetsnaz skiers, to haul it.
Belyak led them west. After crossing the main highway south of Ivalo he intended making a dogleg course alteration to the right, pushing northwestward into a frozen emptiness so vast and desolate that you could lose an army in it, let alone nine men.
1
Grey, wind-patterned waters of Ofotfjord were sliced by a jagged edge of rock foreshore, snow and ice-covered, slanting into frame as the Hercules banked, allowing Ollie Lyle that glimpse then replacing it with a sliding rush of the Evenes airfield at a distance amongst whitened mountains. Then he’d lost that picture too; his view was of much higher mountains stretching back from the other side of the fjord — south side, Narvik side, except that Narvik town was up near the fjord’s top end — white mountains shiny and clean-looking against a dirty sky in which some of the peaks were hidden. The closer, less dramatic summits crowned slopes that were greyish under a stubble of fir and birch.
There’d be more snow coming soon, he guessed, by the look of that cloud—layer inland. Also coming soon would be darkness, the long night which at this latitude and time of year started at about three-thirty or four p.m. — or even earlier, among the mountains…
He glanced round from the little window in the aircraft’s fuselage, at an RAF crewman who’d yelled at him, gesturing to him to sit down and fasten his seatbelt in preparation for the landing: and why not, indeed. He slid down, into the plastic-webbing seat which he’d occupied on and off for about six hours, the long flight from RAF Lyneham in Wiltshite to Gardemoen in the south and then northward up most of the considerable length of Norwegian coastline. The RAF crewman raised a thumb and grinned ingratiatingly as he continued aft, climbing over the top of the stack of cargo filling the centre of the hold. There were only seventeen passengers on board but there was a lot of cargo. Wings level now, condensation dripping like a rain shower as the Hercules settled nose-down into its approach run and the noise of its four engines rose to a skull-splitting scream. Ollie had flown in these C130s often enough, but on this flight even with the little yellow foam protectors in his ears the volume of sound seemed excessive.
Not that he was in any position to complain, when he was getting a free ride. Oliver Lyle, civilian, having replaced Captain Lyle, Royal Marines, of the RM Special Boat Squadron. Maybe when you became a civilian you automatically took more notice of minor discomforts like having your eardrums turned inside out.
If so, it was something he’d brought on himself; he’d been in no way obliged to leave the Corps. They’d tried to persuade him not to, one very senior officer going so far as to invite him to be less of a pig-headed bloody fool… But they’d suggested, after his hospitalisation and eventual return to duty, ‘You’ve had a good long run in the Squadron, Lyle, don’t you agree it may be the right time for a change?’
He had not agreed. His back had been passed as OK — he’d fractured a vertebra but it had mended and the medics had assured him it would be as good as new — and he’d dug his heels in. The prospect of returning to general service had actually appalled him, because in the SB Squadron he’d found his métier — the job, life and motivation he might have been born for, might have joined the Royal Marines for in the first place. Whereas in the months before he’d been accepted for the SB training course — and passed it, despite a current failure rate of seventy-five per cent — he’d been thinking of chucking his hand in. That far back, when he’d been a young lieutenant; and not because he’d thought there was anything wrong with the Corps, only because he was Ollie Lyle, something of a maverick, inclined at times to buck the system — any system. And one of his characteristics was what he’d heard referred to as a ‘high degree of taciturnity’.
It wasn’t rudeness, nor was it intentional; he thought it might have been inherited from his father, who’d been a Scot and less polished socially than he’d been competent as an engineer. But he’d see sometimes in people’s faces — including those of senior officers — the question, Is this guy being deliberately offensive? He was not — not usually — he was only being himself. OK — as the man had said, obstinate, pig-headed, and knowing it, recognising that being the way he was he probably didn’t have such a great future in the Corps. So why not get out while the going was good, before you fouled it up? But they’d given him the chance of getting into SB, and there among fellow individualists with a sense of motivation so high it defied description he’d found himself completely happy maybe for the first time in his life; and consequently good at it, bucking no system because the system could have been tailor-made for him.
So what the hell. Sooner than go back to being an also-ran, he’d left. With a sense of gratitude for those truly marvellous years, and also aware that he should also be grateful for being alive at all, seeing that men whose parachutes fail to open can reasonably expect not to be hopping around much thereafter.
His own had part-opened. A tree had broken the resulting plummeting descent.
Bump…
The pilot hadn’t handled it too cleverly. Two more bone-shaking crashes were followed by smaller bumps and side—to-side lurchings. Then the worst was over; the Hercules was taxiing towards the military terminal, the crewmen back aft were making ready with the aluminium ladder and the passengers were unclipping their belts, collecting gear and zipping up DPMs and/or other protective clothing. They were a mixed lot — two civilians who were probably technicians, an Army gunner commando major, two other Army in light-blue berets — Army Air Corps but REME insignia — three RN flyers, and the rest Royal Marines, Bootnecks who would no doubt have been sick or on special leave or otherwise mislaid when the Commando had deployed to the Norwegian snows a couple of weeks ago. At which time Ollie Lyle had had no idea at all that he’d be getting an offer of a job that would bring him out in the same direction.
It had started with a telephone call from a fellow Royal,
a man by the name of Barry Dark. Ollie hadn’t seen him for a long time but he’d heard over the grapevine that he’d gone to the Ministry of Defence as Royal Marine PRO. Dark had called through to Mary’s pad in Brighton, and Mary had answered the phone rather tersely because they’d been having a row and her last words had been, ‘You don’t have to take it out on me, Ollie. If you‘re going to spend the rest of your life snarling, count me out of it!’
She’d been voicing something that might have been shaping in her not inactive mind for quite a while, he thought. She was right, some of his half-suppressed anger, frustration — whatever it had been — had been spilling over, and each time he was ashamed of it.
He’d taken the receiver from her. ‘Who is it?’
‘Barry Dark, Ollie. Did I interrupt one of those golden moments?’
‘Not by a long chalk. How’d you get this number?’
‘Rang around, tuned in to the dirt. I mean the gossip, don’t take that literally… Ollie, I was damn sorry to hear about your smash.’
‘Calling to say that, are you?’
He heard a chuckle. Then: ‘Did spoil something, didn’t I?’
‘No, you did not.’
‘I’m relieved. Look, Ollie — d’you want a job?’
He hesitated. The question touched an exposed nerve, his present lack of gainful employment being part of the frustration that had been bugging him. He explained, ‘I’m marking time, at the moment. I’m hoping I may have one lined up, you see. Had an interview, chances seem fair, but they won’t make up their minds before about mid—April.’ He named the airline in which there was a vacancy for a deputy to the chief of security, which in these days of hijacking and bombing was a post of importance and — he anticipated — interest. He’d been given to understand that he was currently the front-runner, but they had other men to interview and two of them were coming from abroad, on leave from jobs in the Middle and Far East, which accounted for the long wait and a degree of nervous tension. He asked Dark, when he’d told him about it, ‘What are you offering? Some whelk-stall need a manager?’
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