by Dick Francis
‘Except,’ I said apologetically, ‘that of course Farringford was also told in the summer that if he came to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting to extract revenge for the stresses which gave Hans Kramer a heart attack.’
There was a short thoughtful silence.
‘People change their minds,’ said Polly Paget at length, judiciously. ‘Maybe in the summer, when Kramer died, this Alyosha sounded off a bit hysterically, and now, on reflection, the last thing he wants is to be involved.’
Herrick shook his head impatiently, but it seemed to me the most sensible solution yet advanced.
‘I really hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘The only trouble will be proving it. And the only way to prove it, as it always has been, is for me to find Alyosha, and talk to him, and get from him his own positive assurance that he means Farringford no harm.’
Polly Paget nodded. Oliver Waterman looked mildly despairing, and Malcolm Herrick unmirthfully laughed.
‘Good luck to you, then, sport,’ he said. ‘You’ll be here till Doomsday. I tell you, I’ve looked for this bloody Alyosha, and he doesn’t exist.’
I sighed a little and looked at Ian Young. ‘And you?’ I said.
‘I’ve looked too,’ he said. ‘There isn’t a trace.’
There seemed little else to say. The party broke up, and I asked Waterman if he could telephone for a taxi.
‘My dear chap,’ he said regretfully. ‘They won’t come here. They don’t like to be contaminated by stopping outside the British Embassy. You can probably catch an empty one on the main road, if you walk along to the bridge.’
We shook hands at his outer door, and, again swathed in overcoat and fur hat, I set off towards the guarded gate. It had stopped snowing at last, which improved the prospects slightly. Ian Young, however, called out after me and offered a lift in his car, which I gratefully agreed to. He sat stolidly behind his steering-wheel, dealing with darkness, falling snow and road-obscuring slush as if emotion had never been invented.
‘Malcolm Herrick,’ he said, still dead-pan, ‘is a pain in the arse.’
He turned left out of the gate, and drove along beside the river.
‘And you’re stuck with him,’ I said.
His silence was assent. ‘He’s a persistent burrower,’ he said. ‘Gets a story if it’s there.’
‘You’re telling me to go home and forget it?’
‘No,’ he said, turning more corners. ‘But don’t stir up the Russians. They take fright very easily. When they’re frightened they attack. People of great endurance, full of courage. But easily alarmed. Don’t forget.’
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘You have a man called Frank Jones sitting at your table at the hotel,’ he said.
I glanced at him. His face was dead calm.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Did you know he was in the K.G.B.?’
I copied his impassiveness. I said, ‘Did you know that you are going a very long way round to my hotel?’
He actually reacted: even went so far as to smile. ‘How did you know?’
‘Went on a bus tour. Studied the maps.’
‘And does Frank Jones sit with you always?’
‘So far,’ I said, nodding. ‘And a middle-aged couple from Lancashire. We sat together by chance at dinner yesterday, our first night here, and you know how it is, people tend to return to the same table. So yes, the same four of us have sat together today at breakfast and lunch. What makes you think he is in the K.G.B.? He’s as English as they come, and he was thoroughly searched at the airport on the way in.’
‘Searched so that you could see, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ I said, thinking. ‘Everyone on the plane could see.’
‘Cover,’ he said. ‘There’s no mistake. He’s not sitting at your table by accident. He came with you from England and he’ll no doubt go back with you. Has he searched your room yet?’
I said nothing. Ian Young very faintly smiled again.
‘I see he has,’ he said. ‘What did he find?’
‘Clothes and cough mixture.’
‘No Russian addresses or phone numbers?’
‘I had them in my pocket,’ I said. ‘Such as they are.’
‘Frank Jones,’ he said, driving round back streets, ‘has a Russian grandmother, who has spoken the language to him all his life. She married a British sailor, but her sympathies were all with the October revolution. She recruited Frank in the cradle.’
‘But if he is K.G.B.,’ I said, ‘why do you let him… operate?’
‘Better the devil you know.’ We swung into yet another deserted street. ‘Every time he comes back we are alerted by our passport control people back home. They send a complete passenger list of the flight he comes on, because he always travels with his business. So we scan it. We get someone out pronto to the airport to see where he goes. We follow. Tut tut. We see him book into the Intourist. We drift into the dining-room. If it’s safe, he also sits with his business. We see he’s with you. We know all about you. We relax. We wish Frank well. We certainly don’t want to disturb him. If his masters discovered we knew all about him, next time they’d send someone else. And then where would we be? When Frank comes, we know to pay attention. Worth his weight in roubles, Frank is, to us.’
We went slowly and quietly down a dark road. Snow fell and melted wetly as it touched the ground.
‘What is he likely to do?’ I said.
‘About you? Report where you go, who you see, what you eat and how many times you crap before breakfast.’
‘Sod,’ I said.
‘And don’t ditch him unless you have to, and if you have to, for God’s sake make it look accidental.’
I said doubtfully, ‘I’ve had no practice at this sort of thing.’
‘Obvious. You didn’t notice him follow you from your hotel.’
‘Did he?’ I said, alarmed.
‘He was walking up and down the Naberezhnaya waiting for you to come out. He saw you drive out with me. He’ll go back to the Intourist and wait for you there.’
The lights from the dashboard shone dimly on his big impassive face. The economy of muscle movement extended, I had noticed, throughout his body. His head turned little upon his neck: his hands remained in one position on the steering-wheel. He didn’t shift in his seat, or drum with his fingers. In his heavy raincoat, thick leather gloves, and fur hat with the earflaps up, he looked every inch a Russian.
‘What is your job here?’ I said.
‘Cultural assistant.’ His voice gave away as little as his face. Ask silly questions, I thought.
He slowed the car still further and switched off the headlights, and, with the engine barely audible, swung into a cobbled courtyard, and stopped. Put on the handbrake. Half turned in his seat to face me.
‘You’ll be a few minutes late for dinner,’ he said.
5
He seemed to be in no hurry to explain. We sat in complete darkness listening to the irregular ticking of metal as the engine cooled to zero in the Moscow night. In time, as my eyes adjusted, I could see dark high buildings on each side, and some iron railings ahead, with bushes behind them.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
He didn’t answer.
‘Look…’ I said.
He interrupted. ‘When we get out of the car, do not talk. Follow me, but say nothing. There are always people standing in the shadows… if they hear you speak English, they will be suspicious. They’ll report our visit.’
He opened the car door and stood up outside. He seemed to take it for granted that I should trust him, and I saw no particular reason not to. I stood up after him and closed the door quietly, as he had done, and followed where he led.
We walked towards the railings, which proved to contain a gate. Ian Young opened it with a click of iron, and it swung on unoiled hinges with desolate little squeaks, falling shut behind us with a positive clink. Beyond it, a curving path led away between straggly bare-branched bushes,
the dim light showing that in this forlorn public garden the snow lay greyly unmelted, covering everything thinly, like years of undisturbed dust.
There were a few seats beside the path, and glimpses of flat areas which might in summer be grass; but in late November the melancholy of such places could seep into the soul like fungus.
Ian Young walked purposefully onward, neither hurrying nor moving with caution: a man on a normal errand, not arousing suspicion.
At the far side of the garden we reached more railings and another gate. Again the opening click, the squeaks, the closing clink. Ian Young turned without pause to the right and set off along the slushy pavement.
In silence, I followed.
Lights from windows overhead revealed us to be in a residential road of large old buildings with alleys and small courtyards in between. Into one of these yards, cobbled and dark, Ian Young abruptly turned.
Again I went with him, unspeaking.
Scaffolding climbed the sides of the buildings there, and heaps of rubble cluttered the ground. We picked our way over broken bricks and metal tubing and scattered planks, going, as far as I could see, nowhere.
There was, however, a destination. To reach it, we had to step through the scaffolding and over an open ditch which looked like the preliminary earthworks of new drains: and on the far side of the mud and slush there was a heavy wooden door in a dark archway. Ian Young pushed the door, which seemed to have no fastening, and it opened with the easy grind of constant use.
Inside, out of the wind, there was a dimmish light in a bare grey entrance. Gritty concrete underfoot, no paint, no decoration of any kind on the greyish concrete walls. There was a flight of concrete steps leading upwards, and, beside them, a small lift in an ancient-looking cage.
Ian Young pulled open the outer and inner folding metal gates of the lift, and we stepped inside. He closed the gates, pushed the fourth floor button, and forbade me, with his eye, to utter a word.
We emerged from the lift on to a bare landing; wooden-floored, not concrete. There were two closed doors, wooden, long ago varnished, one at each end of the rectangular space. Ian Young stepped to the left, and pressed the button of a bell.
The hallway was very quiet. One could not hear the sound of ringing when he pushed the button, as he did again, in a short-short-long rhythm. There were no voices murmuring behind the doors. No feet on the stairs. No feeling of nearby warmth and life. The lobby to limbo, I thought fancifully; and the door quietly opened.
A tall woman stood there, looking out with the lack of expression which I by now regarded as normal. She peered at Ian Young, and then, more lingeringly, at me. Her eyes travelled back again, enquiringly.
Ian Young nodded.
The woman stepped to one side, tacitly inviting us in. Ian Young went steadfastly over the threshold, and it was far too late for me to decide that on the other side of the door was where I had no wish to be. It swung shut behind me, and the woman slid a bolt.
Still no one spoke. Ian Young took off his coat and hat, and gestured for me to do the same. The woman hung them carefully on pegs in a row that already accommodated a good many similar garments.
She put a hand on Ian Young’s arm and led the way along the passage of what seemed to be a private flat. Another closed wooden door was opened, and we went into a moderately-sized living-room.
There were five men there, standing up. Five pairs of eyes focused steadily on my face, five blank expressions covering who knew what thoughts.
They were all dressed tidly and much alike in shirts, jackets, trousers and indoor shoes, but they varied greatly in age and build. One of them, the slimmest, of about my own age, held himself rigid, as if facing an ordeal. The others were simply wary, standing like wild deer scenting the wind.
A man of about fifty, grey-haired and wearing glasses, stepped forward to greet Ian Young and give him a token hug.
He talked to him in Russian, and introduced him to the other four men in a mumble of long names I couldn’t begin to catch. They nodded to him, each in tum. A little of the tension went out of the proceedings and small movements occurred in the herd.
‘Evgeny Sergeevich,’ Ian Young said. ‘This is Randall Drew.’
The fiftyish man slowly extended his hand, which I shook. He was neither welcoming nor hostile, and in no hurry to commit himself either way. More dignity than power, I thought: and he was inspecting me with intensity, as if wishing to peer into my soul. He saw instead, I supposed, merely a thinnish, grey-eyed, dark-haired man in glasses, giving his own impression of a stone wall.
To me, Ian Young at last spoke. ‘This is our host, Evgeny Sergeevich Titov. And our hostess, his wife, Olga Ivanovna.’ He made a small semi-formal bow to the woman who had let us in. She gave him a steady look, and it seemed to me that the firmness of her features came from iron reserves within.
‘Good evening,’ I said, and she replied seriously in English, ‘Good evening.’
The rigid young man, still tautly strung, said something urgently in Russian.
Ian Young turned to me. ‘He is asking if we were followed. You can answer. Were we followed?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you think so?’
‘No one followed us through the garden. The gates make an unmistakable noise. No one came through them after us.’
Ian Young turned away from me and spoke to the group in Russian. They listened to him with their eyes on me, and when he had finished they stirred, and began to move apart from each other, and to sit down. Only the rigid one remained standing, ready for flight.
‘I have told them they can trust you,’ Ian Young said. ‘If I am wrong, I will kill you.’
His eyes were cool and steady, looking unwaveringly into mine. I listened to his words, which in other contexts would have been unbelievable and embarrassing, and I saw that he quite simply meant what he said.
‘Very well,’ I said.
A flicker of something I couldn’t read moved in his mind.
‘Please sit down,’ Olga Ivanovna said, indicating a deep chair with arms on the far side of the room. ‘Please sit down there.’ She spoke the English words with a strong Russian accent, but that she knew any English at all put me to shame.
I walked across and sat where she pointed, knowing that they had discussed and planned that I should be placed there, from where I couldn’t escape unless they chose to let me go. The deep chair embraced me softly like a bolstered prison. I looked up and found Ian Young near me, looking down. I half closed my eyes, and faintly smiled.
‘What do you expect?’ he said.
‘To learn why we are here.’
‘You are not afraid.’ Half a statement, half a question.
‘No,’ I said. ‘They are.’
He glanced swiftly at the six Russians and then looked back, with concentration, at me.
‘You are not the usual run of bloody fool,’ he said.
The rigid young man, still also on his feet, said something impatiently to Ian Young. He nodded, looked from me to the rigid man and back again, took a visible breath, and entrusted me with a lot of dangerous knowledge.
‘This is Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov,’ he said.
The rigid young man raised his chin as if the name itself were an honour.
Ian Young said, ‘Boris Dmitrevich rode in the Russian team at the International Horse Trials in England in September.’
It was a piece of information which had me starting automatically to my feet, but even the beginnings of the springing motion reawoke the alarm in all the watchers. Boris Dmitrevich took an actual step backwards.
I relaxed into the chair and looked as mild as possible, and the atmosphere of precarious trust crept gingerly back.
‘Please tell him,’ I said, ‘that I am absolutely delighted to meet him.’
The same could obviously not be said for Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov, but I was there from their choice, not my own. I reckoned if they hadn’t wanted to see me
pretty badly, they wouldn’t have put themselves at what they clearly felt was considerable risk.
Olga Ivanova brought a hard wooden chair and placed it facing me, about four feet away. She then fetched another and placed it near me, at right angles. Ian Young took this seat next to me, and Boris Dmitrevich the one opposite.
While this was going on, I took a look round the room, which had bookshelves over much of the wall space and cupboards over the rest. The single large window was obscured by solid wooden cream-painted shutters, fastened by a flat metal bar through slots. The floor was of bare wooden boards, dark stained, unpolished and clean. Furniture consisted of a table, an old sofa covered with a rug, several hard chairs, and the one deep comfortable one in which I sat. All the furniture, except for the two chairs repositioned for Boris Dmitrevich and Ian Young, was ranged round the walls against the bookshelves and cupboards, leaving the centre free. There were no softeners: no curtains, cushions, or indoor plants. Nothing extravagant, frivolous, or wasteful. Everything of ancient and sensible worth, giving an overall impression of shabbiness stemming from long use but not underlying poverty. A room belonging to people who chose to have it that way, not who could not afford anything different.
Ian Young carried on a short conversation with Boris Dmitrevich in impenetrable Russian, and then did a spot of translation, looking more worried than I liked.
‘Boris wants to warn us,’ he said, ‘that what you are dealing with is not some tomfool scandal but something to do with killing people.’
‘With what?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what he said.’ He turned his head back to Boris, and they talked some more. It appeared, from the expressions all around me, that what Boris was saying was no news to anyone except Ian Young and myself.
Boris was built like a true horseman, of middle height, with strong shoulders and well-coordinated movements. He was good-looking, with straight black hair and ears very flat to his head. He spoke earnestly to Ian Young, his dark eyes flicking my way every few seconds as if to check that he could still risk my hearing what he had to tell.