The main reason for him being there sometimes becomes secondary to how he is going to achieve it but the author drives the plot on relentlessly, whilst stretching credulity a little at the end, still left me satisfied and wondering whether there was some mileage left for Johnny Porter.

Kolymsky Heights - Wikipedia

With the help of a surprising ally, whose identity is best withheld here, and a group of indigenous Evenk herdsmen, Porter gains access to the forbidden unit at Tcherny Vodi.

I’d been meaning to reread KH ever since - and although I admit that I no longer have that same stamina of youth (and although the central scientific puzzle out of Tcherny Vodi holds up less well after 25 years) it is the magnificence of the plot on either side of the secret station that still makes this book such a pleasure. Putting it to the test for a second time, I found that the ferocious narrative pace had lost none of its pull; yet the compulsion to read faster is slowed by the dense web of material detail, all essential to the interlocking plot.

Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson | Goodreads

The buildup to the Kolyma basin, the preparation, the subterfuge, the traveling across vast distances, the chameleon Khodyan inveigling himself into the society of the far north - and then once his job is done, the chase. However, the authorities have worked out that Kolya the Chukchi is not who he claims to be, and a manhunt kicks in. Pullman rightly points out that Davidson manages the trope of mechanical detail brilliantly by embedding these moments deep into the plot rather than pausing the action to give us the excruciatingly dull particulars of some bit of military hardware.Happily Faber, spotting quality, reissued all eight of them before he died in 2009, and four of the best have now once again been made available. The CIA’s interest and training would eventually deliver Johnny in to Siberia but then he would be alone.