Firefox by Craig Thomas Read Free Book Online

nodded, once. Gant understood him. KGB. They were covering their bets.
    Even if they had not yet begun the massive operation of boarding every metro train, they were already sealing up the bolt-holes. They knew how good an escape route the metro was - they had a map of the system and a timetable, just as Aubrey had done when he planned the escape route. And the murder had been done conveniently near the Pavolets Station.
    Swiftly, almost as a distraction, he studied the papers Pavel had given him. When he had finished, he put them away, and his eyes were drawn hypnotically to the window again.
    The dark tunnel rushed past the window, and Gant felt the knot of tension harden in his stomach, and tasted the bile at the back of his throat. He stared helplessly, at the door connecting his carriage with the one ahead, waiting for it to open, to admit an overcoated figure whose manner would betray his authority, whose eyes would scorch across his features.
    The train slowed, the darkness beyond the grimy windows becoming the harsh lighting of the Komsomolskaia Station. Involuntarily, he looked at Pavel.
    The big man had got casually to his feet, and was hanging idly onto a handrail near the sliding doors.
    Gant got up unsteadily - he knew that his face must be pale and sweating - and stood squarely at the second set of doors in the carriage.
    As the train stopped and the doors slid open, he realised that he knew nothing of what the papers in his pocket contained. In sudden panic, he had forgotten. He stepped shakily down onto the platform, was pushed from behind by another passenger and the movement was a grateful trigger. Grant … like his own name. He remembered. His eyes sought the exit flight. Yes, there were two KGB men there.
    Pavel pushed close to him, as if as a reassuring presence. A small crowd of people seemed to have left the train at that station, and he and the big man were at its heart It moved slowly, as if with communal wariness, towards the exit. The station’s opulence glanced across his awareness. Even here there were no hoardings, no advertisements of women in underclothes or huge bottles of Scotch or cinema posters - only frescoes of the great and praiseworthy victories of the Russian people since 1917, in the bold, awkward, cartoon style of Soviet realism.
    He sensed Pavel fade back into the crowd again, but did not turn his head. The crocodile drifted towards the waiting men at the foot of the exit stairs. They were inspecting papers, and he reached into his pocket for Michael Grant’s documents. He pulled them from his pocket and re-inspected them as swiftly as he could.
    Michael Grant - passport, entry visa, hotel reservation, Intourist information brochure.
    The KGB man’s face loomed in front of him, a white, high-boned, thin face, with a large, aquiline nose, and sharp, powerful eyes. He was inspecting Gant’s papers thoroughly, and glancing from photograph to face, and back again. Then he looked at the documents issued to Michael Grant since his arrival in Moscow, three days before. Gant wondered whether such a man had booked into the Warsaw Hotel on that day - and he knew it wouldn’t have been overlooked.
    Michael Grant would be a bona-fide tourist, whose papers had been borrowed and duplicated.
    ‘You do not appear to be in the best of health, Mr. Grant?’ the KGB man said in English. He was smiling, and seemed without suspicion.
    ‘No.’ Gant faltered. ‘I - a little tummy trouble. The food, you know…’ He smiled weakly.
    ‘In your photograph you are wearing glasses, Mr. Grant?’
    Gant patted his pockets, and continued to smile, a smile that was wan, and remarkably stupid. ‘In my pocket…’
    ‘The food at the Warsaw - it is not good?’
    ‘Yes, fine - just a little too rich for me.’
    ‘Ah. Thank you. Mr. Grant.’
    The man had taken the number of the passport, and the numbers of the documents that he had handed back. Gant had walked a dozen steps before he realised that he