"It is academic now what we tell Mikhail's group about our plans. It appears they have a plan of their own."

"What?"

"Mikhail's people have concocted a plan to a.s.sa.s.sinate Stalin."

"You are sure?"

"Quite sure. My informant says they plan to kill Stalin and make use of the double who has been so considerately prepared by Beria. The double will issue a few crucially wrong orders to the Red Army. The Germans will march into Moscow and the double will sue Hitler for peace. Only two men know about the existence of the double-Beria and Malenkov-and they are to be removed early on." The Baron added drily, "You must grant it is an ingenious plan."

Anatol was stunned; he wasted no effort trying to hide it. "How soon is it to take place?"

"As soon as possible, I should imagine. Why should they wait? Hitler is within three days' march of Moscow. If the Red Army withdraws from his front there will be nothing to stop him."

Anatol watched the Baron's small expressionless face. "We must prevent it."

"How? There is no time to effect our own coup ahead of them. Clearly Danilov requires several weeks yet before he is in readiness. And there would be no time to subst.i.tute Va.s.sily Devenko's plan."

"There is one way."

"Forgive me but I do not see it."

"It is quite simple," Anatol said. "We must warn Stalin."

At five Alex presided over a ground-company meeting of field officers. The four of them stood on the tarmac beyond the shadow of the main hangar.

Across the field Pappy Johnson's pilots were swarming over the bombers like children. A nimbus layer filtered the highland sun's direct rays and even now there was a thin smell of winter in the air.

John Spaight and the two Russian majors wore gabardine jump suits with bellows pockets. Major Ivan Postsev and Major Leo Solov had worked in tandem since the inception of the Russian Free Brigade under Va.s.sily Devenko in 1934; in combat they were remarkable. If one needed support the other would appear with his men-ready, knowing what his partner wanted of him; there would be no evident signal but each of them had that trick of soundlessly imposing his will on the other.

Physically they presented a ludicrous contrast. Postsev had the muscular strength of ten but to look at him you wouldn't have thought he'd have made it through the day: he was a cadaver-pasty and wrinkled. Solov was squat and had a smashed face; his ears were like sc.r.a.ps of beef liver; he moved with a dangle-armed roll. He was cautious by training but not by nature; with Postsev it was the reverse.

"We're going to be officer-heavy," Alex told them. "That's the way I want it because when we go into operation we'll be in squad-size teams. I want an officer in command of each team. But for training purposes we're splitting the company down the middle. There'll be two platoons-one of you will command each of them. You're going to have to be ahead of the others because General Spaight can't be everywhere at once-you'll have to lead a good bit of the training yourselves. Any problems?"

Postsev said, "All our pilots seem to be in bomber training. Who is to fly the parachute training flights?"

"You won't start jumping from aircraft for more than a month yet. By then we'll have the air contingent sorted out and six of the pilots will be a.s.signed to the paradrop transports. In the meantime you'll be learning to jump from a rapelling tower."

"Which brings us to a th.o.r.n.y one," Spaight said. "We haven't got a rapelling tower."

"Tomorrow morning Colonel MacAndrews is sending us a dockyard construction team with a mobile crane. They're going to tear one of those small hangars apart and use the girders to build a tower on top of this hangar. It'll give us a hundred-and-twenty-foot slide drop. It's a little shorter than usual but it'll have to do. I've got MacAndrews's word it will be ready to climb by Thursday morning."

The regiment already had its obstacle course in the woods beyond the far end of the runway-coiled concertina barbed wire, trenches, inclined logs, culverts, climbing trestles, even a stream that came down out of the dark highlands beyond and flowed across the slope and down toward the Inverness flats.

Alex said, "You'll have to sort out your drivers. Make sure they're qualified on the vehicles they may have to commandeer. Most of the Soviet staff cars are Packards. The lorries and ambulances are mainly Daimlers and Mercedes."

The two majors nodded. That equipment would be roughly the same as they'd had to contend with in Finland.

"All right. Now we've got a defector. Brigadier Cosgrove's bringing him along tomorrow morning. You'll have about ten days with him. He's a Red Army officer-a lieutenant colonel. He crossed the line into Finland about three weeks ago. I don't know what incentives the British have offered him to cooperate with us but I'm told he's coming here voluntarily. I want you to pump him dry. Everything he knows. Make a note of every piece of information no matter how insignificant it may seem. We want everything from their order-of-battle to the gossip in his officers' mess. When we go in we'll be posing as officers and men from his battalion. You'll have to know the names and ranks of every officer in that battalion and as many non-coms and enlisted men as he can give you. And not just names-physical descriptions, peculiarities, backgrounds, gossip-you've got to be able to behave as if you really know those people, in case you run into someone who really does know them. Once you've got the information you'll pa.s.s it on to your men and be sure they've got it straight. Every night I want the men briefed on these things-and I want them awake enough to absorb it. All right?"

Major Solov said in his thick Georgian accent, "It would save time if we could detail subordinates to some of this. To continue the debriefings while we are in training during the day."

Spaight said, "We can't pull anyone out of training for that."

Alex said, "I've got someone who can do it for us."

At the hangar door Sergei appeared, beckoning; Alex excused himself and went that way.

"It's the telephone. Brigadier Cosgrove, from Edinburgh."

He closed the office door behind him before he picked up the phone. "Danilov here."

"Bob Cosgrove. You may recall we discussed your meeting with a certain naval official?"

"I recall it."

"It's been laid on for this Friday-nineteenth September. It would be most appreciated if you could make yourself available in London."

"What time?"

"Sometime in the evening. The arrangements are rather informal-I'm sure you understand."

"Yes."

"I should come by rail if I were you-one can't promise good flying weather in London, can one. Not to mention the Luftwaffe. Do you recall the address I mentioned to you this morning?"

"Yes." It was a Knightsbridge pub: Cosgrove had said, It's a contact spot. I chose it at random. If we meet in London we'll meet there. I'm giving you this now because I shan't want to specify an address over the telephone.

Cosgrove said, "Five o'clock Friday then. We'll have dinner and then confer with the Navy. Come alone, of course."

He didn't mean that the way it sounded; he meant Be sure you're not followed.

"Really we need cloaks and beards, darling-we ought to be carrying black bombs with sputtering fuses."

She sat up straight at the kitchen table and twisted her head to ease the cramped muscles. On the table the Clausewitz was dog-eared and the pad beside it was cluttered with pencil-printing and numerals in alternate lines; the numerals stopped two-thirds of the way down. That was as far as she'd got with it. It had taken nearly three hours to do that much.

"Oleg must have stayed up nights to dream this up. Nothing could be clumsier."

"It's secure," he said. "Unless they know what book to use there's no way on earth to break the code."

He stepped behind her chair and kneaded the back of her neck. She tipped her face back and smiled, upside-down in his vision; he bent to kiss her.

Then he had another look at his wrist.w.a.tch. Where the devil was Cosgrove's radio man? It was getting on for eleven o'clock; the first contact with Vlasov was scheduled in something less than three hours.

She misinterpreted his gesture. "I deplore your lack of confidence," she said mischievously. "I'll finish it in time."

"All right. But where's that d.a.m.ned radio?"

A chill highland mist hung about the bungalow; he extinguished the parlor lights before he stepped outside for a breath of air. The night was total; the base was blacked out. He heard the disembodied growl of a vehicle moving across the tarmac not too far away; in the mist he saw nothing. If there was a gunman out there good luck to him.

He turned his head to catch the moving vehicle's sound on the flats of his eardrums. It was on the runway itself and when it stopped it was by the main hangar. The engine idled for several minutes and then he heard it go into gear and start moving again. Back toward the main gate, changing through a couple of gears, never getting into high. It stopped briefly-getting clearance at the gate-and his ears followed it out to the high road. He heard it come forward in the night. The two slitted lights were ghostly emerging from the mist; he stepped back out of the drive.

The lights went out; the ignition switched off. He heard the door open and he spoke merely to identify his presence: "h.e.l.lo?"

A brief but absolute stillness; then a heavy breath and a stranger's voice: "Who's that-who's that?"

"General Danilov. Are you looking for me?"

"Cor, you gimme such a fright, sir!" A vague shape swam forward in the fog.

"You'd be Cooper?"

"That's right, sir. Lance Corporal Arry Cooper. You want this rig inside the ouse?"

"I'll give you a hand."

It turned out to be a small van. Lance-Corporal Cooper opened the back doors and they manhandled the shortwave transceiver across the lawn into the house.

"Just set it down on the floor and stand still until I shut the door and get some lights on."

When he switched the lamp on he saw he'd been fooled completely by the voice. He'd expected a weasel-faced little c.o.c.kney. Cooper was as wide and muscular as a Percheron draft horse. He had a handsome square young face with a thatch of yellow hair combed neatly across his forehead.

Cooper stood at attention but his eyes roved about the homey little room. I'm sorry I'm so late, sir. It was the fog and all. I lost me way three times. I'm not a native here."

"I gathered that much, Cooper. Let's set it up on this table, shall we?"

The wireless set was a bulky monster; it had to weigh a good hundred pounds. The case lifted off like that of a motion-picture projector. Cooper turned the empty case upside-down and it wasn't empty after all: a thin wire was coiled neatly against the lid, snapped down with leather straps.

"Ave you a ladder then, sir?"

"There's a stepladder in the pantry. Will it do?"

"Ave to, won't it." Cooper was attaching one end of the coiled wire to the antenna lead at the back of the set. Then he carried it toward the front door, paying it out as he went. He waited by the door, not opening it, until Alex brought the stepladder and switched off the lights. Then they threaded the wire out through the window beside the front door and Alex went outside with him.

"D'you mind steadying the ladder for me, sir?"

Alex jammed its legs hard down into the earth and braced it with one hand while he hooked the other hand into Cooper's belt and boosted him up toward the low-sloping roof.

Cooper was gone a good five minutes; Alex heard the tw.a.n.ging rustle of the antenna wire as Cooper drew it along after him and pulled it taut before fixing it to the chimney.

They went inside. Irina had finished coding the message. Cooper pulled the telegrapher's key out of its slot and began twisting wires around knurled connectors. "The weight of it's in those dry cells, y'see, sir. We can't trust the electric up here so we carry our own."

Alex had a look at Irina's pad: groups of numbers-each five digits separated from the next by an X. It would mean nothing to Cooper but that was how it had to be.

"Ave you got frequencies for me, sir?"

"Set to send and receive on five-point-six-two megacycles. Have you got a wrist.w.a.tch?"

"No sir, sorry to say."

"I'll warn you when it's time then. We've got about an hour."

He took the pad and rolled the top sheets over until he came to a blank page; he glanced back at the list of notes Irina had made and then he jotted something on the clean page and tore it out and carried it to Cooper.

"This is the message you'll receive first."

On the sheet of notepaper he'd written: x.x.x30X21901X 63302X19016X33021X90163X.

Cooper had neat small white teeth. "Same word three times, in't it, sir?"

It meant he knew his job and that was good. "It's a recognition signal. If you don't get that opening you don't respond to the message."

"I understand, sir."

"Now here's your reply to it." He gave him the second sheet.

Cooper glanced at it and nodded. To him it didn't say Condotierri three times; it was merely a string of twenty-seven digits separated by Xs. But it was obvious he understood the procedure.

"When you've broadcast that recognition code you'll continue immediately without waiting for an answer. You'll broadcast the message on these sheets. At the end of that transmission you'll switch over to Receive and you should get an acknowledgment that looks like this one."

KollinXCarnegie.

"There won't be a message from your opposite number then, sir?"

"That'll be tomorrow night."

Cooper nodded. "Right, sir. Got it." He displayed his fine teeth again. "All quite mysterious-like, in't it."

"When it's all over you'll find out what it was about, Corporal. You're part of something very important."

"Yes sir. That's what Brigadier Cosgrove told me."

Irina said, "Would you like coffee, Corporal?"

"I wouldn't mind a cuppa, madam. If you'd show me to the larder I'll brew it meself."

"I'm sure Sergei will be glad to do it." She left the room.

Cooper pushed his lips forward and lifted his eyebrows. He didn't say anything; he grinned at the doorway where Irina had disappeared, transferred the grin to Alex and then went back to his key to test the circuits. Tubes began to glow in the ungainly apparatus and Cooper twisted the tuning rheostat; the bra.s.s telegrapher's key began to tap out staccato rhythms, picking up incoming messages on the various bands. Satisfied it was working properly, Cooper shut it down and leaned back in the wooden chair. "Well then sir, I expect we're ready to go to war, ain't we."

Thursday morning he watched MacAndrews's drafted dockyard crew put the finishing touches on the spidery rapelling tower and then he spent nearly three hours with Irina interviewing Colonel Yevgeny Dieterichs, the Soviet defector. At half-past ten they took a break and he walked outside with Irina.

"He seems genuine enough," she said.

"Keep putting him through his paces. Milk him-you know how important it is."

"I wish I were going with you instead. Dinner at the Savoy-an evening at the Haymarket.... I could do with a bit of that. I feel as though I've been shipwrecked up here."

"This was your own idea."