by Len Deighton
We had coffee in the large station buffet. It was clean, warm and bright and had that hygienic Scandinavian atmosphere that goes so well with the Christmas-card landscape outside. We stood in the falling snow and watched the locomotive: a huge green toy with bright red wheels and a red star on its navel. It clanked gently against the train which now had shed its Finnish coaches.
‘What happens next?’ Harvey asked.
‘Finnish and Soviet customs and immigration get aboard and process us as we go through the border zone. At Vyborg they put a diesel locomotive on to the train and add some extra coaches to take zone traffic to Leningrad.’
‘So once I’m back aboard I’m as good as in Russia?’
‘Or as bad as in Russia,’ I said. I climbed up the steps and into the train.
‘As bad,’ said Harvey. ‘What have you got that the people of Leningrad can’t get?’
‘Speaking personally, a ticket back to Helsinki.’
Harvey punched me in the air but when I went to hit him—equally playfully—he said, ‘Take care now, I’m a nursing mother.’ He thought I had forgotten that he was carrying the eggs, but I hadn’t forgotten.
It was a long journey to Leningrad. The afternoon light was beginning to go. The snow was still falling and the flakes were light against the darkening sky. Harvey took off his coat and settled into the corner seat. There was a white embroidered cloth on the table, and a reading lamp. The train trundled on for what seemed like hours, stopping and starting every few yards for men to do technical things with the switch levers, throw salt on the points and wave flags and lamps. We stopped in a forest. The clearing was as big as a football field and from it an unused timber-siding looped off to a tumbledown shed and weighbridge. Along the firebreak between the trees came a large black Russian motor car. It drove cautiously over the rough track, skirting piles of sleepers and heaps of brushwood. At this point the forest road was about fifty yards from the railway. It was as near as the car could get to us. It stopped.
‘So this is Russia,’ I said to Harvey. I switched on the table lamp, the yellow light reflected our faces in the window.
Harvey said, ‘Are you sure there’s no dining-car, all the way to Leningrad?’
‘Ask them,’ I said. ‘You’re friendly with the management.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me it’s my last chance?’ Harvey said.
‘It’s too late,’ I told him. ‘The MVD are here.’ I could see them through the half-open door, walking down the corridor as if they owned the train. They slid the door back with an abrupt crash. ‘Papers,’ said the shortest one and he saluted. They wore khaki jackets and shirts, dark trousers and green peaked hats. The sergeant who had saluted examined Harvey’s passport tentatively as though he was having difficulty with the Western script. The captain reached across him and snatched it away. ‘Newbegin?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Harvey.
‘Proceeding to Leningrad?’ Harvey nodded.
‘Come with me, bring your baggage.’ The captain turned to go. The sergeant snapped his fingers at Harvey to hurry him up. They didn’t seem too friendly.
‘I’ll come along too,’ I said.
The captain turned back to the compartment and addressed me. ‘You will stay on the train. Mr Newbegin will be travelling to Leningrad by car. You will stay aboard the train. My orders were especially clear about that.’
The sergeant pushed me back into the compartment and closed the door. From the corridor I heard the captain tell the sergeant not to get near Newbegin. I suppose he didn’t want him to crush the eggs. The train started again and ran forward a few yards. It stopped. I opened the window in time to see the man in captain’s uniform drop to the ground and help Harvey with his case. It was more than forty yards between the timber road and the railway and although the Volga car moved forward to stay abreast of the train it was a long walk across the deep snow. The windscreen had gone grey from the snowfall, but two shiny black triangles were swept clean by the wiper blades. The exhaust rose in an evil-smelling black cloud that Russian petrol gives off and I could almost smell it from where I was leaning out of the train. The three men seemed to be moving very slowly, like athletes in slow-motion films. Harvey looked back at me and smiled. I waved good-bye to him. The two Russians hustled him towards the open door of the car. Perhaps it was because they were in deep snow or perhaps because they were all wearing such thick outer clothing, but they all moved with a slow choreographic grace. Harvey took his overcoat off with a twirl and the sergeant stood behind him with a small cardboard box for the eggs. The car driver was sitting well forward in his seat and I could see him staring fixedly at the train as though it was the first one he had seen and he was a little frightened of it. Harvey took off his overcoat and his jacket to get to the eggs that were under his shirt. The wind was inflating his shirt like a spinnaker and his face was pinched with the pain of the icy gusts. The captain laughed and made motions for him to hurry so that they could all get into the warm car. I don’t know what happened next exactly, but suddenly Harvey—still in shirt-sleeves, with the wind inflating him like a Michelin man—was running. He ran towards the train. His movements were curious: the deep snow made him lift his feet high in the air like one of those horses specially trained for trotting races. He scrambled across the first lot of tracks, slipping and sliding on the icy sleepers and taking his weight briefly on the fingers of his right hand. Pursuing Harvey came a column of ants, tiny red ants. Harvey stumbled and fell forward up to the waist in the snow, but he pushed himself clear and was up and running in strange convulsive movements, weaving and twisting, falling and rolling in the air as he fell, touching the ground with a finger tip and springing up to full height like a jack-in-the-box. All Harvey’s skill was mustered in this one long choreographic routine. All his balance, timing and speed were tested as he jumped, slipped and slithered through the deep snow.
The sergeant had dropped the empty carboard box and was standing in the classic stance of the pistol range, his elbow slightly bent. His arm jerked abruptly as he fired at Harvey. The driver of the car let in the clutch. The car came bouncing forward after Harvey. Harvey was trying to get to the train. The column of red ants was still following him across the snow and I realized that they were tiny drops of blood scattered by the wind. The captain was hanging out of the front door of the Volga car and also firing at Harvey with a large pistol. It seemed unlikely that he would hit him for the car was bounced up and down by the mounds of ice, old sleepers and junk frozen tight into the earth.
The train made a loud clanging and jerked forward. Harvey had been very close to the train but now it was snatched away from him. The car had stopped at the place where the forest tracks curved sharply away from the railway lines. The sergeant had stopped firing. He stood lonely and motionless out there in the snow, his pistol arm outstretched, his head cocked on one side like a perverted statue of liberty. His gun was steady and sighted on the entrance to the train. Harvey would have to climb those metal steps and when his arm reached up to grasp the handrails his body would be fully extended: a large target even for a pistol shot. Harvey reached towards the train. I watched the sergeant as he fired his gun. It jumped in his hand and there was almost no smoke.
He fired three shots in rapid succession, not waiting to see the effect of the first as he put the others into the target area. I don’t think Harvey knew what was waiting for him at the steps to the train; it was one of the few pieces of good luck that he had ever enjoyed. He slipped. He slipped on a sleeper or tripped over a rail or a spike and went down full length into the snow. I couldn’t see him very clearly now but as he picked himself out of the indentation he had made in the snow I could see that one elbow was red with blood and he was wearing a yellow girdle of smashed raw egg. The sergeant took ten seconds to remove the empty pistol clip, find a fresh one in his pocket, insert it and go back to the firing position, but it was long enough for Harvey to fling himself headfirst into the open door of the c
arriage. When I got down the corridor he was wriggling on his belly like an eel. The train jerked forward with a terrible groan then began to pick up speed. Harvey was breathing slowly in deep noisy gulps and his whole body was shivering. He rolled over very slowly until he could see me. His heavy eyes were only half open. ‘Christ I was frightened,’ he said. ‘Christ.’
‘I can see your yellow belly,’ I said.
Harvey nodded and continued to use every muscle he had to keep his lungs moving. Finally he said, ‘I thought the bastard was going to give me one last volley up the backside as I was lying there.’
I said, ‘You’d better let me look at that arm of yours.’
‘Let you look at it?’ said Harvey. ‘Do you think I don’t know that they were your boys? That railway sign there, about ice on the points, is in Finnish. We’re still on the Finnish side of the frontier. They were your boys dressed up as Russian border men.’
‘They were Americans,’ I said. ‘We would have done it better than that. Let me look at your arm.’
‘What do you want to do, finish the job for them?’
‘Don’t be bitter, Harvey. There were no recriminations when your protégés arranged a violent end for me in Riga.’
‘That had nothing to do with me,’ Harvey said.
‘On your honour, Harvey?’ I said. Harvey hesitated. He couldn’t lie on his honour. He could cheat, steal, have Kaarna murdered and the man in the dentist’s chair. He could even have his boys attempt to kill me, but he couldn’t tell a lie on his honour. Harvey’s honour was important to him.
‘OK. Look at my arm,’ said Harvey. He turned his elbow towards me. ‘I cut it on the car door.’ From the conductor’s room I could hear the snoring of a man in a drugged sleep and out of the corner of my eye I could see the Volga car speeding away down a narrow forest road. Harvey had sticking-plaster in his luggage. I pulled it tight across his cut. ‘It’s only a scratch,’ I said. There wasn’t much time before the real customs men got down to us.
Chapter 26
We both stayed at the Europe Hotel that night. The next morning Harvey and I had breakfast together in the buffet—curd cakes and sour cream—and I got around to saying good-bye as gracefully as I could.
‘Coming out to the airport?’ I said. ‘I’m catching the morning flight.’
‘What’s waiting out there for me? Twenty strong-arm men and a padded jet plane?’
‘Don’t be that way, Harvey.’
‘Don’t be that way, Harvey,’ Harvey echoed. ‘What I should be doing is turning you over to the Russians right now.’
‘Listen, Harvey. Just because you’ve been playing electronic Monopoly out there in Texas for too long, don’t get the idea that you’re in the intelligence business. Every senior-grade Russian intelligence man knows that I came into town on the train last night. They know who I am just as I know who they are. No one puts on false hair-pieces and pebbles in one shoe and sketches the fortifications any more.’
‘I did,’ said Harvey.
‘You did and that’s what had us fooled for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t make anyone believe that there were people like you around any more except on late-night TV.’
‘I could still tell them a couple of things they don’t know about you.’
‘Don’t bet on it, sonny. If you take my advice you are going to stay dumb, because it’s my guess that you are going to get very disenchanted with this town and when you do, you are going to need some nice friendly country to move to—and you’re running short of countries to move to—especially since you are going to have no hot news or live eggs to peddle next time.’
‘That’s what you think…’
‘Don’t say a word,’ I told him. ‘You may spend the rest of your life regretting it.’
‘All I regret is that those boys in Riga didn’t knock you off.’ Harvey wiped sour cream off his mouth and threw down his serviette. ‘I’ll see you to your cab,’ he said.
We walked out. There were signs of a thaw. All along the Prospekt the huge drainpipes were groaning and rattling and emitting sudden avalanches of ice across the pavement. Sweeping machines were removing the final traces of last night’s snowfall, but even as Harvey remarked on how clean the streets were a formation of suicide flakes came spinning down, preparing the way for a new snowstorm.
A few cabs went by, all hired. One of them switched out his green light when he saw us. I suppose he was heading home—all over the world taxidrivers return home the moment the weather takes a turn for the worse. Harvey got depressed because he couldn’t find a cab. I suppose he felt everyone should be greeting him and thanking him for being a convert. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ Harvey said. ‘And last night I had a temperature and the cut on my arm hurt. I bet I’ve got a temperature right now.’
‘You want to go back to the hotel?’
‘No, I’ll be all right, but everything goes black. Whenever I bend down, everything goes black. Why does it do that, I mean is it serious?’
‘That’s because everything is black and you only see it properly when you’re bending down.’
‘You don’t give a damn about anybody. I’m sick.’ But Harvey didn’t go back to the hotel. We walked slowly up the Nevsky; it was crowded like a rough sea of dull overcoating and fur. There were the wide faces of Mongolia, small pinched Armenians with little black moustaches, naval officers in black uniforms and soldiers in tall astrakhan hats.
A boy in a jazzy bow tie grabbed Harvey’s arm and said, ‘You an American? You want to sell something; cameras…’
‘No I’m not,’ Harvey said and wrenched free. The youth blundered into a group of naval officers and as we moved on I could hear their voices scolding him. ‘He hurt my arm,’ Harvey explained. ‘My bad arm.’ He rubbed the arm. Harvey wanted to cross the Prospekt against the red light, but I dissuaded him. ‘Is it man’s ultimate fate to be ruled by machines?’ Harvey said. He smiled. I tried to see the extent of his irony. Was that Harvey’s comment upon the billion-dollar Brain? I couldn’t tell. I’ll never know, for that was virtually Harvey’s last remark to me. We edged down the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt, Harvey stroking his grazed arm and me watching for a taxi.
‘Yes,’ I said, still looking for a taxi.
‘More cabs on the other side of the street,’ Harvey said. We stood on the corner watching the fast-moving traffic. ‘There,’ I said. ‘There’s one.’
He stepped off the pavement. There was a scream of brakes and a man shouted, but the single-decker bus slammed into Harvey fairly and squarely and Harvey disappeared under it. The bus gave two jolts, then as the brakes were applied the locked wheels slid on a slick of red oil. A bundle of rags spewed out from the rear of the bus as it slewed round and came to rest broadside to the traffic. The long puddle of oil was streaked with blood. There were two shoes sticking out from the bundle but they were at a strange angle. The driver climbed stiffly down from the bus. She was in her early thirties, her large peasant face made even rounder by the headscarf tied tightly under her chin. She was wiping the palms of her hands on her hips and watched while the man who had shouted—a tiny wiry man—knelt down beside the bundle and clawed at it gently, after first removing his fur hat.
‘Dead,’ he called.
The bus driver was crying and wringing her hands. She intoned a short Russian prayer over and over again. Two policemen arrived on a motor cycle and sidecar. They fastened back the flaps of their fur hats and began to question the bystanders. One of the passengers on the bus pointed to me and as the policeman looked round I eased my way back into the crowd. The man immediately behind me did not stand aside. He was still blocking my escape when one of the traffic cops reached me. The cop began to speak to me in Russian but the man showed them a card and they saluted and turned on their heel. ‘This way,’ said the man, ‘I’ll get you along to the airport.’ The woman bus driver’s prayer was broken by her racking sobs. They had moved Harvey’s body and she could see his face. I didn’t want to go with
this man, I wanted to comfort the driver. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. I wanted to explain that she was just a victim of circumstances which she couldn’t possibly have avoided. But as I thought about it I thought that perhaps it was her fault. Maybe it was Harvey who was the victim of circumstances where the driver and a few million others do nothing to cure a mad world in which I am proud of myself for being on my side, and I despise Harvey for his code of honour and telling the truth.
‘The airport?’ said the man again.
One of the policemen began to scatter sand over the pool of oil and blood. ‘Yes please, Colonel Stok,’ I said. Near by a thawing drainpipe gave a great rumble and vomited a heap of wet ice across the pavement.
Stok stepped clear of the crowd and snapped his fingers. From across the street a Zis car swung through the traffic and drew up in front of us. The driver leapt out and opened the door. Stok motioned me in. The car radio was going and there were warnings being broadcast. The ice was cracking on the river Neva, people were warned against walking across it. Stok told the driver to switch the radio off. ‘Ice,’ Stok said. ‘I know all about that.’ He pulled a small flask out of his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Have a drink; it’s warming.’
I drank a little and then coughed. It was thick and so bitter as to be almost undrinkable.
‘Riga Balsam,’ said Stok. ‘It will warm you.’
‘Warm me? What do I have to do, set fire to it?’ But I took a second swig anyway as the car pulled out on to the road for the airport. I looked back towards the bus. No matter how much sand they put down, the blood and oil showed through it.
Some of the Zis cars have a special tone of horn that warns policemen on point duty that a VIP is on his way. Stok’s car had such a horn and the car roared through the intersections without pausing.
Stok said, ‘It’s an anniversary for me today. My wound.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘I was wounded by a sniper during the Finnish business. If he’d had a little less vodka perhaps he would have killed me.’ He laughed. ‘It wasn’t often their snipers missed—cuckoos we called them—they infiltrated miles behind the front and killed even generals. Some of them would infiltrate our lines, eat at our field kitchens and then vanish back to their own bunkers. Remarkable. It was a day a little like today. Icy, a slight snowfall. I was with a tank regiment. We saw a group of men in Red Army traffic-control uniforms complete with arm-bands, waving their flags and diverting us off the road. That was not unusual, we often travelled across open country. But those men were Finns in Red Army uniform. Suddenly we came under a terrible fire. I kept the hatch open. I had to see. It was a mistake.’ He rubbed his shoulder and laughed. ‘It was my first day of front-line action.’