'Kenneth?'

'Secure. Go ahead, Charles.' Aubrey was desperately tired. Davenhill had rambled, and the films had been developed. A little disappointing, but they clarified Davenhill's broken account. As hard evidence, just sufficient to convince of past events. The events of that day would have to suffice to arouse suspicion of present, and future. 'There's been code-traffic all morning - I've been in conference with Langley and the Pentagon, and the President patched it when we went to satellite com -'

Aubrey felt too tired for a recital of American technological achievement; unreasonably irritated.

'The outcome, Charles ?'

Buckholz continued unabashed. 'There's a SAMOS reprogramming under way, and a launch slot later today. The sat can have a look-see. We don't usually have the coverage up here, and the President and the Pentagon won't make any premature moves just on my say-so.'

'What will the President do, Charles ?'

'I told him to stay home.' Buckholz chuckled. 'He's fixing a dialogue over the red telephone for this evening, our time, with Finland's most prestigious guest of the moment. The First Secretary will be informed of the call at lunch. He'll have to take it in the Embassy here.'

'I see.'

'What of your people, Kenneth ?'

'I am sure they would rather not believe it - any of it. But I do think they're worried.' Frustration burst out almost as petulance, suddenly. 'Charles, are we the only two sane people in the world, or the only two madmen ?'

'Hang in there, Kenneth. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes activity in Washington - meetings, dialogues, contingencies, war-games. It isn't being allowed to fall down the back of the wardrobe. There'll be an alert issued by now. Brussels is in constant contact, and I guess we're stepped up to Readiness Two by now.'

It sounded a little more reassuring. Buckholz had not been wasting his time, and he could divine the mood in Washington perhaps more clearly than any other CIA officer Aubrey had ever met. Aubrey decided to be conciliatory.

'Very good, Charles. Then we must await developments. One other thing - that trace your people are doing for me -'

'You're worried about that - now ?'

'I think it may be more important than ever.'

'OK - I won't cancel.'

'I'd be very grateful if you didn't. My people in Moscow have come up with nothing so far. I'm on to Africa, Satellites, and Far East now, and its getting urgent.'

'Why?'

'You told Wainwright about the twenty-fourth ?'

'He laughed - a little. But, he doesn't ignore things. I'll come to see you before this evening.'

'Very well. I must allocate some people here to the mysterious Captain Ozeroff - or whoever he is.'

Ten: Proof of Intent.

It was the acceleration of events that tired him so much. Having waited for ten years, it was as if he had adjusted to a somnolent, covert pace, and could not shake off what was now lethargy. In the Diplomatic Lounge at Cheremetievo, waiting to meet a courier, he was confronted by the almost archaic method of communication he had carefully and secretly constructed. And knew that he would have to issue the order in the next twelve hours to switch to radio traffic.

Kutuzov hated feeling a tired old man - but he could not escape, or disguise, the impression his old body forced upon him, the leaden grooves in which his physique seemed to make his thoughts function. Folley, the English soldier - the desperate ambush in Helsinki, after the border incursion - the accident on the road outside Oxford, where Ozeroff's body had fallen into the hands of the SIS - Ossipov's presumptuous destruction of the Khabarovsk KGB Office He rubbed his hands down his leathery cheeks. A system of deep-cover couriers transmitting verbal orders and instructions disabled him - broken nerves, failing to transmit in time to the brain, so the hand gets burned, injured, the legs bang into things. The body of Group 1917 thrashing blindly about like an automaton.

The operation was beginning to develop a frightening momentum. He had to go to Leningrad, to see Praporovich, even Folley, to establish, if he could, what level of suspicion or half-knowledge had prompted three separate attempts to investigate Finland Station Six. Yet he could not blame them - they had acted on assump tions, and they had acted out of the kind of precipitate confidence he had felt himself a couple of days before - so close, he could taste it, feel it against him like another body, the sense of victory. The Army induced over-confidence, and the kind of action that had been taken on his authority, without his orders.

When it all came down, in the final analysis, to the word of one old man over the telephone. He felt chill, and ancient, and imprisoned in the weak, stick-like, hateful body. Really, was it like that ? Yes, he admitted, then wondered if anyone in the lounge, especially the security men, had seen him nod absently in concert with the admission - trick of a decrepit, of the senile He had to give the order, on the 24th. Valenkov, at Moscow Garrison, insisted on that. Part of the total operation, he had said, part of the whole. Praporovich would give the orders to the Attack Groups at Kirkenes and along the Finland border. Dolohov would give the Fleet its orders. Below them, perhaps a dozen generals to transmit those orders further down, to regimental commanders, to sections of regiments, to companies and platoons - to each tank and rifle and gas-wagon.

His thoughts stung him like an attack of insects; but all the time, with the clarity that pain sometimes had brought him in the past, this emotional infliction cut away at the confusion -and the few small lights upon which his enterprise was founded gleamed brightly and in isolation. But they were small lights, little bulbs strung together - and each one of them dependent upon the others, and he, the fuse that prevented them going out.

Praporovich, Dolohov, Valenkov in Moscow - himself. Millions of men, millions - and nothing would happen unless he and those others gave their orders on the 24th. 06:00 to be precise.

He looked at the security men as he fidgeted in his seat and pretended to read a book - there were more of them on duty at Cheremetievo. No, there were enough of them on duty, if they knew their targets, to prevent Rabbit Punch, and to prevent the overthrow of the regime. Ridiculous, but true.

He glanced at his watch, put down the book, and walked out of the lounge, waving his personal security guard to relax. He went down the steps to meet the courier.

Simple, simple, he told himself. They do not know, and there are only fifty-six hours of former days left. Fifty-six hours. And no one knew, no one. Valenkov and the Moscow Garrison would be incommunicado in eight hours' time, until the dawn of the 24th. Praporovich and Dolohov need take no risks, could make themselves unreachable.

And, in forty-eight hours, he would disappear himself.

Simple, simple, simple - the litany relaxed him.

He found the courier in the main departure lounge, still in his uniform, and they sat a little apart on a plastic-covered bench set below a panoramic window which looked out over the light-splashed tarmac, the garishly illuminated plumage of the aircraft caught by the lights. The courier read Pravda, and he smoked a cigarette as nonchalantly as he could, and drank bad coffee.

When the courier had finished his brief narrative, Kutuzov said: 'Ossipov cannot be forgiven for attracting attention to Far East District, even though he cannot see where he was at fault. However, on second thoughts, he must continue with the "Exercise Mirror" operations as far as the gas-attacks are concerned - yes ...' His voice tailed off. The gas was the most necessary. The chemical attack had to be right, and it had to be done without the assistance, in planning and practice, of scientific advice and knowledge. They were soldiers, not research scientists, and the gases they had in sufficient supply in GSFN were unreliable, even unpredictable. And it had to be right! Ossipov was too important to be disliked, and his task too important to be postponed, or cancelled. Anger had betrayed him into issuing an order that Ossipov was right to ignore -even though the courier might not understand.

'Very well,' he went on. 'You have one more trip to make, back to Khabarovsk. You will instruct Ossipov to radio his final report direct to Praporovich - and you will tell him that the SID Major, Vorontsyev, is not to be eliminated. He is to be taken and held in custody until - You understand ?'

'Sir.'

'Very well.' He looked at his watch. 'They will be calling my flight in a moment.' He stood up, and walked immediately away, his cigarette-stub burning in the ashtray where he had left it.

'Goodbye, sir,' the young man said to his back, and went on reading his paper.

All the way back to the Diplomatic Lounge, Kutuzov wondered what the Englishman, Aubrey, was doing - and kept repeating the litany of time running out. Fifty-six hours, fifty-six hours, fifty-six hours. It seemed to settle his stomach, tidy and soothe his thoughts.

Khamovkhin sat at the Ambassador's desk in a spacious third-floor room of the Embassy on Tehtaankatu. With him was the Soviet Ambassador to Finland, Foreign Minister Gromyko, and the head of the duty security team, Captain Ozeroff. Ozeroff stood away from the desk, and its red telephone drawn nearer the First Secretary than the battery of black telephones, as if in deference to the call about to be received, while Gromyko and the Ambassador sat within hearing distance of the amplifier rigged to the 'hot line'.

Khamovkhin looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. In Washington, four-thirty in the afternoon. President Joseph Wainwright would call him at any moment. Khamovkhin was nervous. Wainwright wanted answers, assurances that he could not give. There was no way he could bluff convincingly.

The four men in the room heard, distinctly, the connection being made by the Embassy exchange, the slight crackle of the static, then Wainwright's voice as he was instructed to begin his call. The slight delay in the signal, transmitted by satellite, then the illusion that the President of the United States was in the next room, or the next town.

'Mr First Secretary - good evening.'

Khamovkhin gagged on his reply for a moment.

'Mr President - good afternoon.'

And silence, for a long time. Khamovkhin felt, already, a bead of perspiration, standing out on his heavy brow, and his palms damp as he closed his hands into fists in his lap. A child, waiting for the rebuke of an adult.

'Mr First Secretary - ' There was a freezing hauteur about the voice now, a righteousness, even. Wainwright spoke from strength. But what followed surprised Khamovkhin in its cunning, its obliqueness. 'I have a suggestion to make to you which I am sure would be in the interests of both of us, and of the world.' Khamovkhin shuddered at the grandiloquence which he found rolled so easily from the tongues of American Presidents. He could see Wainwright, dapper, handsome, middle-aged, leaning slightly forward across his desk in the Oval Office, as if to make distinct, unmistakable, each of his words.

'Yes, Mr President?'