Waterford got out, and said: Stay here. I don't want your fairy footsteps over that ground just yet.'

'Why not?'

'Because I am looking for something in particular.'

He walked away while Davenhill savoured the new ease in their relationship. Waterford, engaged in action, was easier. Not more human, enlarged in compassion. Merely distracted from bitterness; indifferent to his contempt for others.

Davenhill watched him kneel just off the road, and sweep gently at the powdery snow which crackled as its iced surface was disturbed. The sky was palely blue now, and high and empty. The scene, Davenhill observed, was losing its hostility, becoming photogenic.

'What are you doing ?' he called.

Waterford went on brushing, over a wider area, his hand smoothing the snow aside until he exposed the packed ice-snow beneath. Then, eventually, he stood up.

'Bring the camera over here, would you?'

Davenhill joined him. Waterford had exposed, like the tracks of some strange species, the rutted ridges of caterpillar tracks. Tanks, or personnel carriers.

'Well done.' Davenhill observed, capitalising on a new familiarity. 'How many ?'

'Just a few. Outriders. Some sort of advance guard, close to the road, ahead of the main column.'

'But they're not here now!' Davenhill burst out with the pure disappointment of a child.

'I should hope not. If they are, then there could be a couple of regiments, even a couple of divisions - in there.' He pointed towards the trees.

'Mm.' Davenhill photographed the exposed tracks, then said, 'What next?'

'Fancy a walk in the woods ?

Waterford said, 'That depends. What are we looking for ?'

'What we find. Come on - let's get the jeep off the road and under the trees, then we'll scout around a bit.'

For more than an hour they combed the ground beneath the trees, working gradually further into the forest, taking any path that suggested itself as wide enough for the passage of tanks. The search proved fruitless, and when they returned to the jeep, Davenhill was disappointed. He understood that they would find very little - perhaps nothing. But to kneel in drifts of snow, to part the blanket or examine the bark of trees for marks - was an invidious, tiring, frustrating job.

'We need to get further east.' Waterford observed, swallowing from a small flask which he then passed to Davenhill. Davenhill felt the brandy warm his stomach.

He said, 'What happened to Folley, Waterford ?'

'Christ knows.' Waterford looked at.him, as if appraising some reaction. 'Probably dead. We know they've been here. He must have found them, too. And they found him - otherwise we could all be sitting in London listening to his report.' He looked at the camera, still slung round Davenhill's neck. 'Fuck,' he said softly. 'All we've got is some caterpillar tracks. I wonder what he saw ?' He looked at the trees as if envisaging camouflaged vehicles beneath them.

'Where was the main body ? The heavy stuff?'

'East of here.' He reached over and lifted a folded map from the pouch at the side of the door. He pointed a finger. 'Look, the forest is Y-shaped, stretching north and south of here. In either arm, I should think.'

'Where are they now, then ?'

'Gone home ?'

'Because of Folley ? Perhaps they've called the whole thing off?' It was not a serious suggestion.

Waterford said, 'I doubt it. I think they had a dry-run. Timing would be of the essence to them - getting to Ivalo, then north-east to link up with a main attack.' He traced their route on the map. Davenhill, looking over his shoulder, nodded as he saw the line of advance unfold. Waterford pointed out Kirkenes, in Norway, and the road from the Russian border. 'That's where they'd cross,' he said. 'Down here would be the second thrust, to link up - oh, there.' His finger picked out Lakselv, on the Porsangerfjord. 'But they'd hop along that road with airborne troops, and land men by amphibs in the fjords.' He looked up at Davenhill. 'It would be a shit to stop them,' he added unnecessarily.

'A few pictures of tracks in the snow won't stop them, either.'

'What we want is Folley.' Waterford admitted. 'But he won't be in very good voice, even if we should find him.' He threw the map into the jeep. 'Come on, let's get moving.'

An hour later, they stopped for the fifth time. At each of their previous stops, they had inspected likely gaps in the hedge of the forest that pressed in on either side of the road. They had uncovered nothing. There was something phantas mal to Davenhill in the way a simple snowstorm had obliterated any trace of the forces he now knew had been on Finnish soil. Perhaps as recently as forty-eight hours ago. Folley - he thought of him with a wince of pain, sharing the man's route now - must have found them. And as Waterford had said, they had found Folley.

He climbed reluctantly out of the jeep, and trailed after Waterford towards a star-shaped pattern of forest rides that was obviously used to allow the passage of lumberjacking equipment and the removal of felled trees. It would appear that here they were at the heart of the forestry operations.

'How would they have known about these paths ?' he called as a thought struck him.

Over his shoulder, Waterford said, 'Low-level photography -under the radar net, snap, snap, and off home. Easy.'

'I see.' He paused, as Waterford had done. Four trails snaked away through the forest. The trees seemed dense, heavy with snow, silent. 'Here ?' he said.

'Here - if anywhere,' Waterford replied. Then he turned to Davenhill, and the younger man saw a flicker in the eyes, as if the blank mirrors had been removed. It was excitement, Davenhill thought. Perhaps love? Something strangely absorbing to the soldier. Then he understood it. The passion of the hunter close to the game. The spoor was beneath the thin film of snow at his feet. He could sense it. It did not make him like Waterford; but it added a kind of respect, and he placed himself more readily in his hands.

'What do we do?'

'Look. We'll need the jeep. Each one of these trails. And -watch out for felling work that may have taken place.'

As they walked back to the jeep, Davenhill said. 'Why were they here, Waterford ? In my enthusiasm to believe, I didn't ask why.'

'Why ? I don't know.' He started up the jeep, and pulled off the road, heading up the trail which most nearly paralleled the road from Ivalo. After a while, he said, 'The theory is - to succeed, at high speed, entails airborne operations, air-dropped supplies, all that kind of thing. That means transport aircraft. And they may not have sufficient. If so, an armoured column would take Ivalo, to support the lightest possible airborne assault. Then consolidate at Ivalo, air-drop light forces ahead, and follow up with armour. Sending armour up these roads...' He smiled as they bucked out of their seats. 'Like pouring a waterfall through a bottle-neck. Overcome lack of airborne transport by using armour as quick as you can. In this case, someone decided that it needed practice. The dry-run, as I said.'

'Then when will they be back ?'

'I don't know.' He pulled off the track at that moment, into the softer snow under the trees. 'A nice tunnel,' he said enigmatically. Almost immediately, they came to a clearing, roughly circular. And the trees, shorn of branches, stacked as if for the spring. 'There.'

Davenhill sat in the jeep, absorbing the innocent looking clearing.

Waterford got out and cast about. Walking as if over a film of ice, he moved around the circle. Then Davenhill saw him stoop over the snow, brush at it with the tenderness of archaeology, then raise his hand to beckon him.

The snow beneath the freshest fall was stained with engine oil.

'This is it,' Waterford said. He stood up, and waved his arms around the clearing. 'Bright as a new pin.'

'What's under here ?'

'Troy,' Waterford replied. 'Get digging.'

'So that's it,' Vorontsyev ended, looking at Alevtina and the three men gathered in a crowded, littered study. While he had talked, they had looked at the walls, eyes straying to the scattered files, the pasted, clipped strips of information.

There was no relief now that there was silence, no release. Rather, all four of the junior officers seemed insistently appalled by mental digestion of what they had heard.

'Chief?' Maxim said in a small voice. He tittered with em barrassment, then cleared his throat. 'We have to keep coming back to this bugger Vrubel, and who killed him. Do we know any more about him ?'