by Dick Francis
I dialled the number on the paper, and he was at home. His big voice positively crackled through the receiver.
‘Where’ve you been sport? Been trying to reach you. Moscow at weekends is like Epsom when they’re racing at Ascot.’
‘Out to the Hippodrome,’ I said obligingly.
‘Zat so? How’s it going? Found Alyosha yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Told you it was a bum steer, sport. I looked. I told you. If I couldn’t find a story, there is no story. Right?’
‘You’re an old hand, and I’m not,’ I said. ‘But Kropotkin at the Hippodrome has called on all the horse people in Moscow to work on it. So we’ve an army of allies.’
He grunted, not sounding very pleased. ‘Has the army come up with anything?’
‘Only with something pretty small, so far. In fact,’ I said, half making a joke of it, ‘a page which looks as if it came from one of your notebooks.’
‘A what?’
‘Page… with the name Alyosha on it. And Johnny Farringford’s name, ringed with stars. And a lot of doodling. I’m sure you wouldn’t remember writing it. But the thing is… do you remember lending or giving a piece of scrap paper to anyone at Burghley who could now be here in Moscow?’
‘Christ, sport, you ask damn silly questions.’
‘Yeah…’ I said, coughing on a sigh. ‘Um… if you’re dead bored, care to come to the Intourist Hotel for a drink in my room, around six? I’m going out for a bit, but I’ll be back by then.’
‘Sure,’ he said easily. ‘Bloody good idea. Saturday night’s made for drinking. What’s the room number?’
I told him and he said fine, and disconnected. I put the receiver down slowly and reflected that I’d done some silly things in my time but that that probably topped the lot.
‘I thought you didn’t much like him,’ Stephen said.
I made a face and shrugged. ‘Maybe I owe him for the dinner in the Aragvi.’
I sat on the sofa and gingerly explored my right-hand fingers with those of the left. The worst of the soreness was beginning to wear off, and I could bend and unbend them a bit. It seemed probable that a couple of bones were cracked, though one often couldn’t tell for sure without X-rays. I supposed I should count myself lucky they weren’t splintered.
‘When do you doodle?’ I said.
‘Doodle?’
‘Like that.’ I nodded towards the page of Malcolm’s notebook.
‘Oh… during lectures, mostly. I do zigzags, and triangles, not boxes, stars and question-marks. Any time when I’m listening with a pencil in my hand, I suppose. On the telephone, for instance. Or listening to the radio.’
‘Mm… Well…’ I stopped unsuccessfully doctoring my fingers and got through on the telephone to the International operator. Calls to England, I was told, would entail a long delay. How long was a long delay? Calls to England were not at present being connected. Did that mean hours or days? The International operator couldn’t or wouldn’t say. Frustratedly, I stood up. ‘Let’s go out.’
‘Where to?’
‘Anywhere. Round and round Moscow in a taxi.’
‘Out of thugs’ reach?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said with mock disparagement, ‘you’re quite bright.’
We took with us the matroshka in its string bag, and also (in my pocket along with the telex) the two pages from Malcolm’s notebook, on the basis that as these four treasures were the only tangible results of my efforts, they should not be carelessly left around to be pinched by Frank or anyone else who could open my bedroom door.
Even though he’d stopped saying it was cheaper on the metro, Stephen boggled a bit at the expense of that afternoon. The Prince was paying, I said, dealing out roubles in hefty instalments at half-hour intervals to a taxi driver who thought I was mad. Stephen suggested the University, for which in the morning he had got me a visitor’s pass in order to avoid the juggling of the day before: but for some reason I always thought best on wheels, and had planned many a campaign while driving continually up and down on a tractor. There was something about a moving background that triggered shifts of mind, and left new ideas standing sharp and clear where they hadn’t existed before. I was an outdoor man, after all.
We saw a lot of Moscow, old parts and new. Old elegance and new functionalism, historically at odds but united in the silent white freezing slide into hibernation. Thick white caps on the golden domes. Shops with more space than goods. Huge advertisements saying ‘Glory to the Communist Party’ over the rooftops. On me the cumulative effect was a powerful pervading melancholy, a sadness for so great a city entangled in such suffocating bureaucracy, such denial of liberty, such a need to look over its shoulder before it spoke.
When darkness closed in we stopped once, to buy a couple of glasses and some reinforcements in the booze line, and a souvenir for me to take home to Emma: and I chose a bright new matroshka with all its little matroshkas nestling inside, because it seemed to me that what I had been doing in Moscow had been in effect like opening that sort of doll. When one pulled off one layer, there was another layer underneath. Remove that, and another layer was revealed. Under that, another: and under that, another. And, in the centre, not a tiny wooden mama with rosy cheeks, but a germinating seed of terror.
When we finally returned to my room it looked uninvaded, undisturbed.
Perhaps we could have stayed there safely; but wasted precautions were never to be regretted. ‘If only’ were the saddest words in the language.
The tape-recorder still stood silently on its precarious tower, and, when Stephen pressed the ‘record’ button, it told us mutely that the listeners slept.
It was five to six. We left the recorder switched on, and went along to the armchairs by the lifts to await the guests.
Ian came first, by no means drunk but slightly rocking. It made no difference to his face, which was as white, calm and expressionless as ever, or to his speech, which had no fuzzy edges. He told us with great lucidity that on Friday evenings and Saturdays, when there was no flap on, he embraced the great Russian leisure-time activity with the fervour of the converted. And where, he asked, did I keep the bottle?
We retracked down the corridor to my room. Ian chose vodka and had tossed off his first before I had finished pouring Stephen’s. I refilled his glass, and got myself some scotch.
Without visible emotion he regarded the tape-recorder.
‘If you play that up there much, my old son,’ he said, ‘you’ll want to look around for a sticky stranger. If they think you’ve got something to hide, they’ll plant another ear.’
Stephen silently reached for the recorder and took it on a thorough journey round the room. Ian watched, absentmindedly downed his drink, and poured himself a replacement with an almost steady hand.
The search results were fortunately nil. Back on its perch, still no whine. Stephen left the recorder there on sentry duty, and he and Ian sat down on the sofa.
Ian spent five minutes describing the extreme boredom of the diplomatic life as lived by the British in Moscow, and left me fervently wishing he were stone cold sober.
Malcolm arrived like a gale blowing in from the desert, hard, noisy and dry.
‘Extra,’ he said boisterously, picking up the vodka bottle and reading the label. ‘The Rolls-Royce of the domestic distilleries. I see you cotton on to the, best pretty damn quick, sport.’
‘Stephen’s choice,’ I said. ‘Help yourself.’
For him too, it appeared, Saturday night was to-hell-with-inhibitions night. He poured and tossed back in one draught enough to put an abstainer asleep for a month. ‘You didn’t tell me it was a party, sport,’ he said.
‘Only the four of us.’
‘Could have brought a bottle.’
At the present rate of consumption, we might need it. Stephen was looking as if that sort of party was low on his list of favourite hobbies, and I guessed that he was only staying out of a vague sense of not leaving the sinkin
g ship before the rats.
‘What’ve you got, then, sport?’ Malcolm said, with half a toothmugful in his grasp. ‘What’s all this about a page from my notebook?’
I fished it out of my pocket and gave it to him. He buried his nose in his glass and looked at the small page sideways, over the rim. Some loose drops of vodka trickled down his chin.
‘Christ, sport,’ he said, removing the glass and wiping himself up with the back of his hand, ‘it’s just a lot of doodles.’ He turned it over. ‘What’s all this writing?’
‘I don’t know.’
He looked at his watch and seemed to be coming to a fast decision. A fresh gulp brought him near to the bottom of the glass, and he put it down on the dressing shelf with a snap.
‘Look, mate, got to run.’ He folded the page of notebook and began to put it in his jacket pocket.
‘I’d like to keep that for a bit,’ I said mildly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘What on earth for?’ He tucked it firmly away out of sight.
‘To see if I can decipher the writing on the other side.’
‘But what’s the point?’
‘I’d just like to know who you gave it to in England… to see what he wrote on it.’
Malcolm still hesitated. Ian clawed his way to his feet and helped himself to Extra.
‘Oh give it to him, Malcolm,’ he said irritably. ‘What the hell does it matter?’
Malcolm collected observant stares from three pairs of eyes and reluctantly put his hand in his pocket.
‘It won’t do you any bloody good, sport.’ His voice was sharp with the beginnings of malice.
‘All the same,’ I said, taking back the note and stowing it away, ‘it’s interesting, don’t you think? You wrote that page at Burghley… but you didn’t tell me you were at that meeting. I was surprised that you didn’t mention being there. I was surprised you were there, actually.’
‘So what? I went to write it up.’
‘For The Watch? I thought you were a foreign correspondent, not a sportswriter.’
‘Look, sport,’ he said, the muscles setting like rock in his solid neck. ‘Just what is the point of all this crap?’
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘that you know… you’ve known all along… what I came here to find out, and you’ve been trying all along to make sure I ended up in a fog… if not in a mortuary.’
Stephen and Ian had their mouths open.
‘Balls,’ Malcolm said.
‘Can you drive a horse box?’
His only reply was a stare of intense animosity reinforced by some sort of inner decision.
‘Dinner at the Aragvi,’ I said. ‘Your invitation, your dinner. There were two men there, sitting near us. They in my sight… I in theirs. Face to face, for a couple of hours. After that, they would always know me again. You took my glasses away… and everyone could see I was lost without them. When we left the restaurant I was attacked in Gorky Street… by two men who tried first to knock my glasses off, and then to bundle me into a car. They wore balaclavas, but I saw their dark un-Russian eyes very clearly. And I asked myself… who knew that I would be walking alone down Gorky Street at precisely that moment?’
‘This is a load of horse shit. Look, sport, you’ll end in a psychiatric hospital at the wrong end of a needle if you go on like this.’
Malcolm was deeply angry but his basic confidence was unshaken. He was still certain that I would not hit the absolute bull’s-eye.
‘The telex,’ I said. ‘And your little informer. I’ve no doubt that when a very long telex came for me, you were told. So I set off to the Embassy by the shortest route, and on the way I was jumped on by the same two men, who were waiting for me. That time I was saved only by a sort of ironic miracle… but when I got my senses back I asked myself, who could possibly have known I would make that journey?’
‘Half of Moscow,’ Malcolm said roughly.
‘I knew,’ Ian said, sounding studiedly impartial.
‘Of course,’ Malcolm said forcefully. ‘And Ian knew we were dining at the Aragvi. And Ian knew you were going to see Kropotkin at the Hippodrome, because you told us both in Oliver’s office… So why the hell aren’t you accusing Ian of all this? You’re off your bloody rocker, sport, and I’ll have you for slander if you don’t back down and apologise this immediate bloody instant.’ He looked at his watch again and revised this ultimatum. ‘I’m not staying here to listen to any more of this bloody junk.’
‘Ian helped me. You just told me to go home,’ I said.
‘All for your own bloody good.’
‘It isn’t enough,’ Ian said uneasily. ‘Randall… all this might be possible, but you’ve surely got it all wrong.’
‘I haven’t got to prove anything to any court of law,’ I said. ‘All I do have to do is to let Malcolm know what I think. That’s enough. If a prying neighbour knew you were planning to rob a bank, you’d be a fool to go on with the plan. So call me a prying neighbour… but what Malcolm was planning was far worse than robbing banks.’
‘What, then?’ Ian said.
‘Killing people at the Olympics.’
Malcolm’s reaction went a long way to convincing Ian and Stephen. The shock turned his skin as white as the walls, leaving odd blotchy patches of broken thread veins on cheeks and nose. He literally lost his breath: his mouth opened, and no sound came out. There was sick disbelief in his eyes; and this time I really had chopped into the self-confidence with a lethal axe.
‘So you may never get to court,’ I told him. ‘But if any of the Olympic riders die the same way Hans Kramer died, the world will know where to look.’
He was, in effect, stunned: almost as if losing consciousness on his feet. The room was still, with a silent intensity you could almost touch. Ian and Stephen and I all watched him almost without breathing: and at this impossibly fraught moment, someone knocked briskly on the door.
It was Ian’s bad luck that it was he who moved first and went to open it.
Malcolm’s friends attacked with their usual brutal speed, bursting in through the opening door like bulls and hitting out at whatever stood in their way. The sheer animal fury swept into the room like an emotional volcano, and the half concealing balaclavas only seemed to intensify the horrendous impact.
The swinging riot stick wielded by the one in front crunched solidly into Ian’s head. He fell without a sound and lay un-moving by the bathroom door.
The one behind kicked shut the door to the corridor and strode forward purposefully, holding a small screw-topped glass jar. On his hands, he wore rubber gloves. In the little jar, a pale golden liquid, like champagne.
Everything happened exceedingly fast.
Malcolm came to life with wide-staring eyes and shouted, ‘Alyosha.’ Then he said, ‘No, no.’ Then, as he saw the riot stick swinging at Stephen he said, ‘No, no, that one,’ and pointed at me.
I leapt on to the bed and picked up the tape recorder, and threw it at the man who was attacking Stephen. It hit him in the face and hurt him, and he turned my way even more murderously than before.
The man with the little jar unscrewed its cap.
‘That one,’ Malcolm screamed, pointing at me. ‘That one.’
The man with the jar stared with appalling ferocity at Malcolm, and drew back his arm.
Malcolm screamed.
Screamed.
‘No. No. No.’
I picked up the chair and lashed out at the man with the jar, but the one with the riot stick stood in the way.
The man with the jar threw the contents into Malcolm’s face. Malcolm gave a high wailing cry like a seagull.
I crashed the chair down again and hit the wrist of the jar-carrier with a blow like chopping wood. He dropped the jar and jerked with agony. I jumped off the sofa and laid into both of them with the chair with a fury fed by theirs, and Stephen picked up one of the vodka bottles and slammed it at one of the eye-slits of the balaclavas.
I had never in my lif
e felt such a rage. I hated those men. Shook with hate. I swung the chair not to preserve my life, but to smash theirs. Sheer primitive blood-lusting vengeful hatred, not only for what they were doing in this city and this room, but for all their counterparts round the world. For all the helpless hostages, for all the ransom victims, I was bashing back.
It may have been reprehensible and uncivilised, but it was certainly effective. Stephen smashed his bottle against the wall and crowded into them with the broken ends thrusting forward sharply, and I simply belted them with chair and feet and fury, and we beat them back into the narrow passage by the bathroom, where Ian still lay unmoving.
With what looked like a joint and instantaneous decision they suddenly turned their backs on us, dragged open the door to the corridor, and fled.
I turned back into the room, panting.
‘After them,’ Stephen said, gasping.
‘No… come back…’ I heaved for breath. ‘Shut the door… Got to see to Malcolm.’
‘Malcolm?…’
‘Dying,’ I said. ‘Ninety seconds… Jesus Christ.’
Malcolm had collapsed, half on the floor, half on the bed, and was whimpering.
‘Open the matroshka,’ I said urgently. ‘Misha’s matroshka. Quick. Quick… Get that tin with the naloxone.’
I yanked open the drawer which contained my breathing things and snatched out the plastic box. My fingers wouldn’t work properly. Serve him bloody right, I thought violently, if I couldn’t save his life because they’d smashed my hand when he tried to have me killed.
Couldn’t tear the strong plastic cover off the hypodermic syringe. Hurry. For God’s sake hurry… Did it with my teeth.
‘This?’ Stephen said, holding out the cough lozenge tin. I opened it and put it on the dressing shelf.
‘Yes… Get his trousers down.’
Ninety seconds. Jesus Christ.
My hands were trembling.
Malcolm was gasping audibly for air.
‘He’s turning blue,’ Stephen said with horror.
The needle was packed inside the syringe. I got it out and fitted it in place.