12:30 AM
TONI was driving at ten miles an hour, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer into the blinding snowfall, trying to see the road. Her headlights did nothing but illuminate a cloud of big, soft snowflakes that seemed to fill the universe. She had been staring so long that her eyelids hurt, as if she had got soap in her eyes.
Her mobile became a hands-free car phone when slotted into a cradle on the dashboard of the Porsche. She had dialed the Kremlin, and now she listened as it rang out unanswered.
"I don't think anyone's there," Mother said.
The repairmen must have downed the entire system, Toni thought. Were the alarms working? What if something serious went wrong while the lines were down? Feeling troubled and frustrated, she touched a button to end the call.
"Where are we?" Mother asked.
"Good question." Toni was familiar with this road but she could hardly see it. She seemed to have been driving forever. She glanced to the side from time to time, looking for landmarks. She thought she recognized a stone cottage with a distinctive wrought-iron gate. It was only a couple of miles from the Kremlin, she recalled. That cheered her up. "Well be there in fifteen minutes, Mother," she said.
She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the headlights that had been with her since Inverburn: the pest Carl Osborne in his Jaguar, doggedly following her at the same sluggard pace. On another day she would have enjoyed losing him.
Was she wasting her time? Nothing would please her more than to reach the Kremlin and find everything calm: the phones repaired, the alarms working, the guards bored and sleepy. Then she could go home and go to bed and think about seeing Stanley tomorrow.
At least she would enjoy the look on Carl Osborne's face when he realized he had driven for hours in the snow, at Christmas, in the middle of the night, to cover the story of a telephone fault.
She seemed to be on a straight stretch, and she chanced speeding up. But it was not straight for long, and almost immediately she came to a right-hand bend. She could not use the brakes, for fear of skidding, so she changed down a gear to slow the car, then held her foot steady on the throttle as she turned. The tail of the Porsche wanted to break free, she could feel it, but the wide rear tires held their grip.
Headlights appeared coming toward her, and for a welcome change she could make out a hundred yards of road between the two cars. There was not much to see: snow eight or nine inches thick on the ground, a drystone wall on her left, a white hill on her right.
The oncoming car was traveling quite fast, she noted nervously.
