'Why aren't we stopping - looking ?'

'This is the only road, Davenhill. I don't intend being caught, like Folley. So far, there's been nowhere anything big could have left the road. This . . . 'He waved a hand at the lines of the firs. 'This isn't deep cover, not enough for the kind of thing.. .'

Davenhill studied the trees lining the road. Dark and impenetrable they appeared to him.

'God - it's hard to believe in Aubrey's idea out here!'

'It isn't Aubrey's idea, and it isn't hard.' Waterford said drily. 'It's just the way you civilians look at it that makes it hard to believe.' His breath smoked around him. He was big and solid in the driving seat. He still frightened Davenhill who, used as he was to the Foreign Office, and the professional detachment that allowed only glimpses into souls in moments of indiscretion, could see no further than the skin with Waterford.

He was not a type of person he had met before; and his self appeared as hooded as his eyes.

'Well, then?'

'Well what?

'Will we find anything ?'

'Who knows ? Anything may find us.'

'That's a pleasant thought to start the day. I - hadn't thought of it like that before.'

'You wouldn't.'

Waterford started the engine, which coughed like a cry in the cold silence. He eased out the dutch, and the jeep skidded, then rolled smoothly forward, the packed surface of the road now rutted tangibly below the skin of snow.

'What are we looking for ?' Davenhill asked after a while, 'Not tracks - just a clearing, or a track. Damage to trees - anything.'

'Right.'

It was more than another hour before Waterford stopped the jeep, a look of irritation on his face.

'You and your bloody water!' he snapped. Davenhill smiled disarmingly, and jumped out of the jeep. 'Christ!' Waterford added as he moved away. 'Who's going to see you ? I shan't be looking!' Davenhill was already off the road and moving more clumsily through deeper snow.

When he had finished, he moved from behind the tree, and knelt in the snow. With a smile on his face, he fashioned a snowball, looking up to see Waterford with his head averted, and aimed and threw. The ball of snow spattered like a ripe fruit against the side of the jeep. Waterford looked round, brushed some snow from his sleeve, and tossed his head. He appeared as if he might be amused. Davenhill walked towards him. The white gouge in the trunk of a tree almost slipped his gaze.

Then he went back to it.

'Waterford,' he called.

'My mother says I can't come out to play,' Waterford replied.

'Look at this,' Davenhill said firmly, already moving to another tree. A hole in the trunk, a piece of bark plucked away when something was removed. 'Where are we on the map, Waterford ?' he asked, his voice still uninflected with excitement. He did not understand, as he moved from tree to tree, what the spike-marks might be. But understood they were man-made, and recent. Snow had been brushed from the places where the wind had fixed it, as if by heavy curtains or a large gloved hand.

Waterford said, close beside him: 'The forest is deeper here - begins to stretch for a couple of miles, maybe more, either side of the road. Trees are thicker, too.'

'What does it mean?' Davenhill said caustically.

'Not much,' Waterford said quietly. 'Perhaps the fixing-points for camouflage nets.'

Davenhill looked at him. 'What?'

'Maybe. But maybe not Russian, anyway. The Finns do have an army, you know.' Davenhill suspected Waterford's habitual sarcasm, but his face was expressionless - except for a thoughtful frown as he peered at the gouge in the tree. Then he bent down, and brushed at the snow, disturbing it.

He stood up, brushing the snow from his gloves.

'What were you doing ?'

'I wondered about the pin, that's all - they took it away, like good soldiers should.'

He crossed to another tree, then another, working his way in a vague circle back to Davenhill, studying the trunk of each tree before which he paused.

'Well ?' Davenhill was impatient now.

'Something has been pinned to these trees all right. Possibly netting - enough to cover half a dozen vehicles.'

'Tanks?'

'Possibly. Troop-carriers, whatever.'

'Thank God.'

'Hardly. Not really evidence.'

'What do you want - a packet of Russian fags, the odd Kalashnikov rifle dropped in a hurry ?'

'More than this. Let's find where this unit, if unit it was, pulled off the road, shall we ?'

'Aren't you going to take pictures?' Davenhill sounded childishly disappointed.

'Make a real impression on the Pentagon and NATO, eh ?' Waterford said with a slight smile. 'Please, gentlemen - conclusive proof that the Red Army invaded Finland - pictures of nail-holes in trees!'

As he walked back to the car, he was laughing, Davenhill trailing in his wake, his shoulders hunched with disappointment. He had perceived only then how ridiculous he must seem to Waterford.

'How could they move through those trees ?' he asked as he climbed back in the jeep.

'They couldn't - not far without damage, anyway. No delightful groves to assist movement.'

He started the engine, and they followed the road once more, Davenhill now alert for any break in the trees.

'They wouldn't cause damage, though - would they ?'

'Not unnecessarily.'

A few minutes later, Davenhill said excitedly, 'There 1'

'I see it.'

Waterford pulled into the side, and switched off the engine. There was a gap in the trees, probably caused by a felling operation, on a small scale, the previous summer. A wedge of trees had been lifted from the forest, a slice of dark cake.