Target 5 by Colin Forbes

about the American, that they were going to question him. He had to hold out until after midnight, North Pole 17 time, which was four in the morning in Leningrad. He would have to hold out for over an hour.
    As they came in to land at Leningrad his stomach muscles felt tighter than the strap which Serge ordered him to fasten. They were gliding down through the snow when the first motor cut out. Seconds later the second engine failed. Could they land on only two engines? Gorov had no idea. The pilot spoke to airport control with a note of hysteria. 'Emergency situation, emergency situation ...'
    Gorov closed his eyes, felt his head starting to spin, opened them and saw the glare of the landing lights coming up. The plane wobbled badly. The co-pilot cursed, waved the empty vodka bottle at Serge. 'You're coming in too fast .. . you're going to kill us...' Gorov sat in his seat bathed in sweat, unable to take his eyes off the incoming lights which tilted as the plane wobbled. His clothes were soaked but his mouth was parched, his throat constricted. They were drunk, both of them, the criminals. He was going to burn to death, horribly.
    At the last moment the two dead motors burst into action, the wheels bumped the runway, the machine cruised between the lights, made a perfect landing. The pilots waited until Gorov had disembarked without speaking to them, then Serge burst into laughter as he waved the empty bottle. 'I don't like mineral water - next time ask them to put the real stuff in it . . .'

Gorov would never know it, but he had been flown to Leningrad by the two most experienced pilots in the Baltic Command. They were probably the only men who could have handled the plane in such an appalling manner and survived. It was Papanin himself who had phoned the airport controller at Tallinn and given him the instructions. 'I want you to play a little game with your passenger - scare the guts out of him. When he lands he must be a jelly.'
    The man in the chair was sweating and the spotlight shining on his face reflected off the sweat globules. Fear - and the green-tiled stove - were responsible. Papanin sat behind his desk in the gloom. The other men were shadows behind the chair, unnerving presences Peter Gorov couldn't see. One of them coughed - to remind Gorov he was there. The watch on Gorov's left wrist registered 3.20 am.
    Papanin, who was completely on the wrong track, who still believed he was close to identifying the money courier financing the Jewish underground - whereas Michael Gorov had never had the slightest connection with that shadowy organization - had exactly forty minutes left to break Gorov. In forty minutes it would be 4 am in Leningrad and only midnight at North Pole 17. In forty minutes Michael Gorov would have disappeared on to the polar pack.
    'We'll go over it again, 5 Papanin said. 'Just to make sure I've got it right. Start with when you went into the park.'
    Go over it again ... Gorov's head was reeling. He had been driven from the airport in a battered old Volga. Kramer had made him travel without his coat and with the windows open, so during the drive Gorov had become steadily frozen. It was a detail which Papanin had planned: sudden violent changes of temperature reduce a man's resistance. He had visualized the overheated control cabin in the plane, had frozen Gorov during the journey from the airport, now he was roasting him again. Gorov's stomach was empty, his nerves shattered, and he could hardly think straight as Papanin repeated, 'Go over it again.'
    Gorov had lost count of how many times he had explained it. He tried to repeat it as a catechism as the heat of the stove burned his back. 'I went into the park . . .'
    'Why?'
    'I was on my way to the docks.'
    'So you went straight along the Nevsky Prospekt - it's the direct route.'
    'I went along the Nevsky Prospekt.. .' The voice was a monotone, like a child repeating its rote.
    'You didn't - you went into the park. Why?'
    They came to the part