Free Firefox by Craig Thomas

truck was a distant black lump on the road, heading northeast towards the Sadovaya, the inner ring road around the city.
    ‘Close up,’ the man in charge said to the driver. ‘But not too close. Just enough not to lose him on the Sadovaya.’
    ‘Right!’ The driver pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the saloon shot forward, narrowing the distance between itself and the truck. By the time they were a hundred metres in the rear, the truck was slowing at the junction of the Kirov Street and the Sadovaya. The saloon idled into the kerb, waiting until the truck pulled out into the heavier traffic of the ring road. The indicator showed that the driver, the man Upenskoy, intended to turn right, to the south-east.
    The truck pulled out, then the man in the passenger seat said: ‘Colonel - Colonel, they’re on the Sadovaya now, heading south-east. We’re pulling out - now.’ The car skittered across the road, and was hooted at by an oncoming lorry, straightened, and the truck was more than five hundred metres away. ‘Close up again, the man said, and the driver nodded. He skipped the saloon out into the outside lane, and accelerated.
    Kontarsky’s voice came over the radio receiver.
    ‘Priabin has just requested you to pick up the man’ Upenskoy - he has the other two, Glazunov and a Riassin. Who is that in the truck with him, Borkh?’
    ‘I do not know. Colonel - it should be-‘
    ‘Exactly! It should be Glazunov, should it not, if Upenskoy is making a real delivery somewhere … should it not?’
    ‘Yes, Colonel. The truck has turned onto Karl Marx Street now. Colonel - it looks as if they’re heading out of the city, all right.’
    ‘Where is Upenskoy scheduled to deliver?’
    ‘I don’t know. Colonel - we can find out.’
    ‘He will have to report to the travel control on the motorway, Borkh, we can find out then. You follow them until they reach the checkpoint, then we shall decide what to do. Priabin is bringing in Glazunov and Riassin - perhaps they will be able to tell us?’
    The men in the car heard Kontarsky’s laughter, and then the click of the receiver. Borkh replaced the telephone, and studied the truck, now only a hundred metres ahead of them on Bakouninskaia Street, headed like an arrow northeast out of the city, towards the Gorky road.
    ‘Our Colonel seems to be in a merry mood this morning,’ the driver observed. ‘Then, he hasn’t spent the night in a freezing car!’
    ‘Disrespect, Ilya?’ Borkh said with a smile.
    ‘Who - me? No chance! Hello, our friend is taking a left turn,’ he added. The car was crossing the Yaouza, the tributary of the Moskva, flowing south at that point to join the river at the Oustinski Bridge. The truck ahead of them had turned left directly after the bridge over the sluggish tributary. The car followed, keeping its required distance. ‘Think he’s spotted us?’
    ‘Not necessarily - he’s picking up the Gorky road, maybe - see, I thought so - right onto the Chtcholkovskoie Way, and heading east.’ Borkh said. ‘He’s on his way to Gorky, all right.’
    ‘And to Kazan - and then to…?’ the driver asked, smiling.
    ‘Maybe - maybe. That’s for our Colonel to worry about.’
    ‘And worry he will,’ the third man added from beneath his hat in the back seat, where he was stretched out comfortably.
    ‘Oh, you’re awake then, are you?’ Borkh asked with heavy sarcasm.
    ‘Just about - it must be the boring life I lead, and the boring company,’ the man replied, settling himself back again.
    ‘You will have your photograph taken at this checkpoint,’ Pavel was saying as he pulled the truck into the side of the road, along the narrowing line of bollards that signified the lane for heavy goods vehicles. Gant, looking ahead, saw that they were approaching what, to all intents and purposes, was a customs post, as if the motorway ringing the outskirts of Moscow marked some kind of territorial boundary.
    ‘Are they KGB on guard here?’ he