by Dick Francis
I said, ‘I’d b… better give you your coat,’ and tried to undo the buttons. The fingers of my right hand seemed both feeble and painful, so I did them with the left.
‘You’d better have a hot bath,’ he said diffidently. No decision, no swearing, no immense effectiveness in sight.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
His eyes flickered. ‘Lucky I happened along.’
‘Luckiest thing in my life.’
‘I was just out for a walk,’ he said. ‘I saw you get out of a taxi ahead and go down those steps. Then I heard a shout and a splash, and I thought it couldn’t possibly be you, of course, but anyway I thought I’d better see. So I went down after you, and luckily I had my torch with me, and well… there you are.’
He had omitted to ask how I could have fallen accidentally over a breast-high wall.
I said obligingly, ‘It’s all a bit of a blank, actually,’ and it undoubtedly pleased him.
He helped me out of his coat and into my dressing-gown.
‘Will you be all right, then?’ he said.
‘Fine.’
He seemed to want to go, and I made no move to stop him. He picked up his torch and his hat, from where they were lying on the sofa, and his coat, and, murmuring something about me getting the hotel to dry my clothes, he extricated himself from what must have been to him a slightly embarrassing proximity.
I felt very odd indeed. Hot and cold at the same time, and a little light-headed. I took off the rest of my clammy clothes and left them in a damp heap on the bathroom floor.
The fingers on my right hand were in dead trouble. They hadn’t bled much because of their immersion in ice-water, but there were nasty tears in the skin of three of them from nails to knuckles, and no strength anywhere at all.
I looked at my watch, but it had stopped.
I really had to get a grip on things, I thought. I really had to start functioning. It was imperative.
I went over to the telephone and dialled the number of the University, foreign students department. Stephen was fetched, sounding amiable.
‘Something else?’ he said.
‘What time is it? My watch has stopped.’
‘You didn’t ring just to ask me that? It’s five-past-six, actually.’
Five-past-six… it seemed incredible. It was only three-quarters of an hour since I had set off to the Embassy. Seemed more like three-quarters of a century.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Will you do me a great favour? Will you go…’ I stopped. A wave of malaise travelled dizzily around my outraged nervous system. My breath came out in a weird groaning cough.
Stephen said slowly, ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Look… will you go to the British Embassy, and pick up a telex which is waiting there for me, and bring it to the Intourist? I wouldn’t ask, but… if I don’t get it tonight I can’t have it until Monday… and be careful… because we have rough friends… At the Embassy, ask for Polly Paget in the cultural attaché’s office.’
‘Have the rough friends had another go with a horse box?’ he said anxiously. ‘Is that why you can’t go yourself?’
‘Sort of.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’
I put the receiver back in its cradle and wasted a few minutes feeling sorry for myself. Then I decided to ring Polly Paget, and couldn’t remember the number.
The number was on a sheet of paper in my wallet. My wallet was or had been in the inside pocket of my jacket. My jacket was wet, and in the bathroom, where Frank had put it. I screwed up the energy, and went to look.
One wallet, still in the pocket, but, not surprisingly, comprehensively damp. I fished out and unfolded the list of telephone numbers and was relieved to see they could still be read.
Polly Paget sounded annoyed that I had not even started out.
‘I’ve finished my jobs,’ she said crossly. ‘I want to leave now.’
‘A friend is coming instead of me,’ I said. ‘Stephen Luce. He’ll be there soon. Please do wait.’
‘Oh very well.’
‘And could you give me Ian Young’s phone number? Where he lives, I mean.’
‘Hang on.’ She went away, and came back, and read out the number. ‘That’s his flat here in the Embassy grounds. As far as I know, he’ll be home most of the weekend. Like all of us. Nothing much ever happens in Moscow.’
Lady, I thought, you’re a hundred per cent wrong.
Stephen came, and brought Gudrun.
I had spent the interval putting on dry pants, trousers and socks, and lying on the bed. I disregarded Frank’s advice about hot baths, on the Ophelia principle that I’d had too much of water already. It would be just too damned silly to pass out and drown surrounded by white tiles.
Stephen’s cheerful grin faded rapidly.
‘You look like death. Whatever’s happened?’
‘Did you bring the telex?’
‘Yes, we did. Reams of it. Sit down before you fall down.’
Gudrun folded her elegant slimness on to the sofa and Stephen dispensed my scotch into toothmugs. I went back to sitting on the bed, and pointed to the sensitive spot on the wall. Stephen nodding, picked up the tape recorder, switched it on, and applied it to the plaster.
No whine.
‘Off duty,’ he said. ‘So tell us what’s happened.’
I shook my head slightly. ‘A dust-up.’ I didn’t particularly want to include Gudrun. ‘Let’s just say… I’m still here.’
‘And ve have vays of not making a fuss?’
I more or less smiled. ‘Reasons.’
‘They’d better be good. Anyway, here’s your hot news from home.’ He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and threw it to me. I made the mistake of trying to catch it naturally with my right hand, and dropped it.
‘You’ve hurt your fingers,’ Gudrun said, showing concern.
‘Squashed them a bit.’ I took the telex message out of the envelope and, as reported, there was reams of it: Hughes-Beckett busy proving, I thought sardonically, that my poor opinion of his staff work was unjustified.
‘While I read all this,’ I said. ‘Would you cast your peepers over that stuff there?’ I pointed to the cough-lozenge tin and Misha’s pieces of paper. ‘Translate them for me, would you?’
They picked up the little bunch of papers and shuffled through them, murmuring. I read the first section of the telex, which dealt exhaustively with Hans Kramer’s life history, and included far more details than I’d expected or asked for. He had won prizes on ponies from the age of three. He had been to eight different schools. He appeared to have been ill on and off during his teens and twenties, as there were several references to doctors and clinics, but he seemed to have grown out of it at about twenty-eight. His earlier interest in horses had from that time intensified, and he had begun to win horse trials at top level. For two years, until his death, he had travelled extensively on the international scene, sometimes as an individual, and sometimes as part of the West German team.
Then came a paragraph headed ‘CHARACTER ASSESSMENT’, which uninhibitedly spoke ill of the dead. ‘TOLERATED BUT NOT MUCH LIKED BY FELLOW MEMBERS OF EVENT TEAM. UNUSUAL PERSONALITY, COLD, UNABLE TO MAKE FRIENDS. ATTRACTED BY PORNOGRAPHY, HETERO AND HOMO, BUT HAD NO KNOWN SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP OF ANY LENGTH. LATENT VIOLENCE SUSPECTED, BUT BEHAVIOUR IN GENERAL SELF-CONTROLLED.’
Then a bald, brief statement. ‘BODY RETURNED TO PARENTS, STILL LIVING IN DUSSELDORF. BODY CREMATED.’
There was a good deal more to read on other subjects, but I looked up from the typed sheets to see how Stephen and Gudrun were doing.
‘What’ve you got?’ I said.
‘Four autographs of Germans. A list in Russian of brushes and things to do with looking after horses. Another list in Russian of times and places, which I should think refer to the horse trials, as they say things like “cross-country start two-forty remember weight-cloth”. Both of those must have been written by Misha, bec
ause there is also a sort of diary, in which he lists what he did for his horses, and what feed he gave them, and so on, and that’s all.’
‘What about the paper in the cough-lozenge tin?’ I said.
‘Ah. Yes. Well. To be frantically honest, we can’t be much help with that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It doesn’t make sense.’ He raised his eyebrows at me comically.
‘Or do ve have vays of sorting out gibberish?’
‘You never know.’
‘Well, right then. We are of the opinion that the letters on the paper probably say the same thing twice over, once in Russian and once in German. But they aren’t ordinary words in either language, and they’re all strung together anyway, without a break.’
‘Could you write them in English?’
‘Anything to oblige.’
He picked up the envelope which had contained the telex and wrote a long series of letters, one by one.
‘There are some letters which come near the end, which do make an actual English word…’ He finished writing, and handed me the envelope. ‘There you are. Crystal as mud.’
I read: Etorphinehydrochloride245mgaceprornazinernaleate romgchlorocreso lo 1 -dimethylsulphoxidegoantagonistnaloxone.
‘Does it mean anything?’ Stephen said. ‘A chemical formula?’
‘God knows.’ My brains felt scrambled eggs. ‘Maybe it’s what’s in these ampoules: they’re stamped with something about naloxone.’
Stephen held one of the baby phials up to the light, to read the lettering. ‘So they are. Massive chemical name for a minute little product.’ He put the phial back in the tin, and the original paper on top of it. ‘There you are, then. That’s the lot.’ He closed the tin and put it down. ‘What a dingy-looking matrochka.’ He picked up the doll. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It contains the rest of Misha’s souvenirs.’
‘Does it? Can I look?’
He had almost as much difficulty in pulling it apart as I had had the first time, and everything scattered in a shower out of it, as before. Stephen and Gudrun crawled about on the floor, picking up the pieces.
‘Hm,’ he said, reading the veterinary labels. ‘More of the same gobbledegook. Anything of any use?’
‘Not unless you have bed bugs.’
He put everything back in the doll, and also the tin and the autographs.
‘Do you want me to take this out to Elena’s new flat some time, after she’s settled in?’ he said.
‘That would be great, if you have the time.’
‘Better to give Misha his bits back again.’
‘Yes.’
Stephen looked at me closely. ‘Gudrun and I are on our way out to supper with some friends, and I think you’d better come with us.’ I opened my mouth to say I didn’t feel like it and he gave me no chance to get the words out. ‘Gudrun, be a lamb and go and wait for us in those armchairs by the lifts, while I get our friend here into some clothes and do his buttons up.’ He waved at my non-functioning fingers. ‘Go on, Gudrun, love, we won’t be long.’
Good temperedly, she departed, long-legged and liberal.
‘Right then,’ Stephen said, as the door shut behind her. ‘How bad is your hand? Come on, do come with us. You can’t just sit there all evening looking dazed.’
I remembered dimly that I was supposed to be going to the opera. Natasha’s earnest ticket to fantasy seemed as irrelevant as dust: yet if I stayed alone in my room I should feel worse than I did already, and if I slept there would be visions of death in balaclavas… and hotel bedrooms were not in themselves fortresses.
Frank had not mentioned seeing my attackers, and very likely when he ran to the rescue they had kept out of his sight. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t hung around for a bit… and they might know that he had fished me out.
‘Randall!’ Stephen said sharply.
‘Sorry…’ I coughed convulsively, and shivered. ‘Wouldn’t your friends mind, if I.came?’
‘Of course not.’ He slid open the wardrobe door and pulled out my spare jacket. ‘Where’s your coat… and hat?’
‘Shirt first,’ I said. ‘That checked one…’
I stood up stiffly and took off the dressing-gown. There were beginnings of bruise marks on my arms, where the riot sticks had landed, but otherwise, I was glad to see, my skin had returned from an interesting pale turquoise to its more normal faded tan. Stephen helped me speechlessly to the point where he went into the bathroom for something and came out looking incredulous.
‘All your clothes are wet!’
‘Er, yes. I got shoved in the river.’
He pointed to my hand. ‘With that sort of shove?’
‘I fear so.’
He opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish. ‘Do you realise that the temperature tonight has dropped way below zero?’
‘You don’t say.’
‘And the Moscow River will freeze to solid ice any day now?’
‘Too late.’
‘Are you delirious?’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised.’ I struggled into a couple of sweaters, and felt lousy. ‘Look,’ I said weakly, ‘I don’t think I can manage the friends… but I also don’t want to stay in this room. Would there be any chance, do you think, of me booking into a different hotel?’
‘Not the faintest. An absolute non-starter. No other hotel would be allowed to take you without a fortnight’s advance booking and a lot of paperwork, and probably not even then.’ He looked around. ‘What’s wrong with this room, though? It looks fine to me.’
I rubbed my hand over my forehead, which was sweating. The two sweaters, I thought, were aptly named.
I said, ‘Three times in two days, someone’s tried to kill me. I’m here through luck… but I’ve a feeling the luck’s running out. I just don’t want to… to stand up in the butts.’
‘Three times?’
I told him about Gorky Street. ‘All I want is a safe place to sleep.’ I pondered. ‘I think I’ll ring Ian Young… he might help.’
I dialled the number Polly Paget had given me for Ian’s flat in the Embassy grounds. The bell rang and rang there, but the Sphinx was out on the town.
‘Damn,’ I said, with feeling, putting down the receiver.
Stephen’s brown eyes were full of troubled thought. ‘We could slip you into the University,’ he said. ‘But my bed’s so narrow.’
‘Lend me the floor.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Mm.’
‘Well… all right.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s too late to get you in through the proper channels, so to speak. They’ll have knocked off for the day… We’ll have to work the three card trick.’
He took his student pass out of his pocket and gave it to me.
‘Show it to the dragon when you go in, and keep on going, straight up the stairs. They don’t know all the students by sight, and she won’t know you aren’t me. Just go on up to my room. OK.?’
I took the pass and stowed it in a pocket in my jacket. ‘How will you get in, though?’ I said.
‘I’ll ring a friend who has a room in the block,’ he said. ‘He’ll collect my pass from you, and bring it out to me, when Gudrun and I get back.’
He held my jacket for me to put on, and then picked up the sheets of telex and folded them back into the envelope. I put the envelope in my jacket and thought about black cars.
‘I’d awfully like to make sure I’m not followed,’ I said.
Stephen raised his eyes to heaven. ‘All in the service,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
What we did, in the event, was for me to travel in one taxi to the University Prospect, the tourist stopping place for the view down over the stadium to the city, and for him and Gudrun to follow in another. We all got out of the cars there in the thickly falling snow and exchanged vehicles.
‘I’ll swear nothing followed you,’ Stephen said. ‘If anyone did, they used about six different cars, in
relays.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Any time.’
He told the taxi driver where to take me, and disappeared with Gudrun into the night.
13
The dragon on the door was arguing with someone else when I went in. I shoved Stephen’s pass under her nose closely enough for her to see that it was a pass, and kept it moving. Her eyes hardly slid my way as her tongue lashed into some unfortunate offender, and I went on up the stairs as if I lived there.
Stephen’s cell-like room felt a proper sanctuary. I struggled out of my jacket and one sweater and collapsed gratefully on to his bed.
For quite a long time I simply lay there, waiting for what one might call the life force to flow back. What with illnesses and the inevitable knocks of life on the land, not to mention the crunches involved in jump racing, I was fairly experienced in the way one’s body dealt with misfortunes. I was accustomed to the lassitude that damped it down while it put itself to rights, and to the way that this would eventually lift it into a new feeling of vigour. I knew that the fierce soreness of my fingers would get worse for at least another twelve hours, and would then get better. I’d been concussed enough times to know that the sponginess in my mind would go away slowly, like fog clearing, leaving only an externally tender area of bruised scalp.
All that, in fact, would be the way of it if I gave it rest and time: but rest and time were two commodities I was likely to lack. Better to make the most of what I had. Better, I dared say, to sleep: but one factor I was not used to, and had never had to deal with before, was keeping me thoroughly awake. The sharp threat of death.
There wouldn’t be any more lucky escapes. The fourth close encounter would be the last. For if my attackers had learned one thing conclusively during the past two days, it must have been that it was necessary to kill at once, and fast. No fooling around with horse boxes, kidnappings, or icy rivers. Next time… if there was a next time… I should be dead before I realised what had happened. It was enough, I thought, to send one scurrying to the airport… to leave the battle to be fought by someone else.
After a while I sat up and took the long telex out of my pocket.