by Adam Hall
The whiteness coming in from the window, lighting half her face; the heat of the wood stove filling the air; the brass glow of the samovar in the mirror; the stillness.
‘I can well imagine,’ I said. ‘But of course you’ve got friends.’ The quiet bubbling of the saucepan out there, with its sound of comfortable domesticity; the heaviness of the curtains; the weight of the minutes.
‘Not many,’ she said, and moved again, this time towards the samovar. ‘Would you like some tea, Comrade Rashidov?’
‘I wish I had time.’ I touched the piece on the table, outlining the jade with one finger. ‘Perhaps I could come again, before tomorrow, to discuss the proposal I have for Alexei.’
She considered this, as she considered everything before she spoke. We stood within three feet of each other, across the low table; her back was to the windows now and her body was in silhouette.
‘If you wish.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I shall be here this evening.’
‘Very well.’
I bowed slightly and turned away, and she came with me to the door, opening it for me and waiting, perfectly still. This would have been the moment but I let it go and went into the passage and walked to the staircase without looking back. The door didn’t close until I was going down past the third floor.
The old dezhurnaya called something to me as I went out through the hall but I didn’t stop: there was a minimal risk I had to take care of as a matter of routine and time was running out.
The Mercedes started on the first go and I put the lever into drive and pulled out as the Wolga swung into the mirror and then slowed, giving me room.
Time check: it was four minutes fifteen seconds since I’d turned away and walked down the passage to the staircase because I’d looked at the time then: the minimal risk phase had begun running at that point.
The Wolga didn’t have a transmitter aerial of the conventional sort but it might have something more sophisticated slung underneath or built into the bodywork and I assumed it could send and receive at short range. There wasn’t anything stuck on top of the Union Building but it had a flat roof and there could be a deep enough parapet to conceal a whole array of antennae. Or of course she could simply have picked up the phone.
Traffic was light: they’d thrown sand along the main streets but everywhere else I was driving on snow and the snow was becoming ice as the traffic packed it down. The automatic gears were going to be a nuisance on this kind of surface because I wouldn’t have any control over the back end but I couldn’t just let them sit there because they’d got my license number already and they could bring in a mobile police net as soon as they wanted to push the button. I started by using the truck just ahead of me and went into the first intersection with enough acceleration to give me steerage but they knew what they were doing and the Wolga was still in the mirror when I slewed out of the camber and straightened up along the street to the right of the square.
There wasn’t any point in pretending I hadn’t seen them or didn’t mind being followed because I minded very much indeed : I’d only just got into the target area and it was going to waste a lot of time if I let them do a snatch and put me into the KGB headquarters for grilling, strictly no go because there was also the risk that I might not be able to get out again.
Two trucks and I got between them by swinging deliberately wide and hitting some piled snow at the roadside and bouncing off and getting enough traction across the ruts to put on a little speed before I had to start slowing in time to stay clear of the truck still in front. At this point there weren’t any brakes because on this stuff you could go just as fast with the wheels locked and I had to keep turning across and across the ruts in a series of zigzags to break down the speed. One of the trucks had started hooting because I wasn’t making the conditions any easier for them and I saw their point but hoped to Christ they didn’t decide to take a swing at me.
Two skid turns and I hit something, part of a street island, but nothing burst.
I don’t think London had known I was going to walk straight into a trap when I called to see Kirinski, or if they’d known they’d had a good enough reason to let me do it my way: when you start investigating an unknown man on cold-war soil you take a lot of care and the only risk had been that the Union Building might be under permanent surveillance from one of those windows and that the observer cell had instructions to report on strangers. Apart from that consideration there’d been no hazard in calling at the flat because the woman Liova couldn’t make a move while I was with her: I’d watched her through the doorway to the kitchen when she’d gone in there and in any case she couldn’t have timed that stuff to boil over at any given effective moment - you can get terribly paranoiac about this kind of thing in the first few hours of work in the target area because everything’s new to you and you haven’t got any friends.
Crump.
I think the Wolga had crumped a wing on one of the trucks because it was hooting again and I could see the black saloon going into a slow spin across the street with some bare metal flapping up and down on the left front corner. I kicked at the throttle but there wasn’t any traction: the 220 was keeping a reasonably straight course at just below forty miles per hour but we were on ice and there wasn’t any useful degree of control. I was looking out for patrol cars now because it was essential to assume this was going to finish up in a concerted snatch with every department brought in to make sure they got it right. At any next second they could start coming in from somewhere ahead of me and then I’d have to do something different.
Much too fast and I took my foot off and touched the brakes and didn’t get anything. There were some deep ruts in the middle of the roadway and I managed to bring the 220 over there by turning the wheel a few degrees and waiting for some grip; then I did the zigzag thing again and got down to below twenty miles an hour and found some sand and made an immediate left turn into a side street because on principle you can get an advantage by changing the pattern though of course there’s the calculated risk of running into terrain you can’t handle, I mean a truck across the road or a cul-de-sac, so forth. This one was all right and I thought I’d lost them because in Russia you never make a left turn: you’re meant to go past the side street and do a U at the prescribed place and come back the other way, so they hadn’t been ready for it and it could have given me a couple of seconds or a couple of yards while they shifted their planning but it wasn’t a big success because the Wolga came into the mirror again and I said shit and speeded up as best I could and started using the kerb as a cush to keep me off the crown of the road: you could hit something head on without even trying and London is terribly fussy about that sort of thing, You will remember that on foreign soil you are a guest and your status is civilian, so forth, reference to the rights of citizens and the sanctity of private property and all very fine, we really do see the point about leaving innocent people alone and not scraping their paintwork but when it comes to the crunch and you’re running straight into your very own little private Armageddon with sirens and flashing lights all round you it’s not quite so easy to remember the Active Executive General Rules and Procedures thing and last year Fairchild dropped a grenade down a sewer outside the British Consulate in Costa Rica because some silly clown had pulled the pin out and he couldn’t see anywhere else to put it. There weren’t any casualties but Tewson said they’d had a signal through the Foreign Office complaining that someone had blown the ambassador off the pot, but Tewson’s always saying things like that.
Very nasty slide and the front end caught the post at the corner and the 220 swung right round and lost most of its speed and I had to throttle up in a series of jerks until the rear wheels found some rubbish in the gutter and pushed the whole thing forward to the point where I regained some of the steering. The Wolga was filling half the mirror now and I didn’t like it because we’d got into phase two a long time ago - it works like this: you can just drive off as if you haven’t
noticed them and try to lose them somewhere in the traffic without it looking deliberate or you can let them tag along and stay with you long enough for them to know where you’re going, that’s all right, they won’t give you any trouble because all they want to do is get a fix on your travel pattern and find out where you’re based and you haven’t shown your hand.
Or you can decide to get rid of them as fast as you can and that’s what I’d done and we’d gone straight into phase two and the next decision was up to them: they could bring in the traffic police to set up a block or put out a stop-and-arrest call and that would be that because the odds were stacked and in this particular case they could simply wait for me to hit a wall or another car and come and get me while I was picking the glass out of my hair.
It was a T-section and I turned right, looking for phase three. There was a tramway on this street and they’d thrown a lot of sand down and the moment I saw it I gave her the gun and whipped up to forty again and slid wide to get past a horse-drawn wagon and got it right and saw the police car coming across the intersection and touched the brakes and got some friction out of the sand but not nearly enough: we were still going too fast and the lights were at red and if I did anything wrong they’d want to pull me in for it.
Wolga close now. Close in the mirror.
They could have called for that patrol car. I didn’t know.
No sirens yet.
A lot of slewing because I was trying to bring the speed down and the surface was a mixture of sand and ice where the traffic had packed it down on the approach to the lights. Speed now below twenty, nothing like slow enough to be able to stop. Traffic going across at right-angles: pickup truck, two Moskwicz saloons, a man on a bicycle so I spun the wheel hard over and got into a slow spin that smashed the rear end across a parked van and sent pieces of glass and chrome scattering across the snow. Facing the wrong way and I put my right foot down on the floorboards and waited for traction while the black Wolga saloon came skating towards me, two men in it, I hadn’t been able to make out the details in the mirror but now I was facing them and there was a siren starting to wail but the thing was I’d missed the man on the bike and the rear tyres were getting through to the rough stuff underneath the ice and the front came round in a slow waltz and we got going again, snaking into the side street, two sirens, the other one fainter but Hearing.
Phase three is when you get out and run but it won’t work unless you can get into some kind of cover and there wasn’t any here or at least I couldn’t see any because the 220 was pulling straight now and I had to concentrate and put on all the speed I could with this bloody surface like a skating rink and sirens all over the place and the Wolga close suddenly and the shriek of metal on metal as it clouted a lamp standard and heeled half over, rocking a lot until I lost sight of it, klaxons beginning and a voice on a loudhailer, no go, there isn’t a phase three because there’s no hope of any cover in a street like Hit something again, a parked truck, oblique-angle front impact with the seat belt biting across the shoulder and a cloud of steam as the rad took the crunch and I hit the buckle and kept low and waited for the sickening force of the swing to lose its momentum, side to side, the sirens closing in and the klaxons barking, side to side and still slowing, watch it, watch it and wait, slowing, try now.
Hit the door open and got out very fast and went for the nearest oblong shadow, dark green gate but it was locked and I swung up and over, dropping and hitting a stack of crates with one foot smashing through the slats and having to tear it out, the whole stack lurching as I tugged the foot and fell back and flung a hand out in time, dogs somewhere 7 can’t stand the bloody things and someone shouting and hitting the gate you’d better run you’d better run like hell, a man’s face surprised with his mouth open run very hard with my shoes slipping on the snow where it had drifted into the corners of the yard, stop, they were shouting, stop.
There was some kind of basement and I went through it and out again, nobody in it, a stink of resin or some kind of industrial chemical keep running. Wide street with nobody near me, several doorways, a window grey with steam and some peeled lettering so I stopped dead and opened the door at the side and walked into the restaurant, taking my time, going through to the back and finding the lavatories, three small windows, two of them jammed by the ice, the third one swinging upwards and out.
It took me fifteen minutes to get clear, walking just fast enough to keep warm, the way everyone else was walking, head down against the light fall of the snow, eyes on the ground to avoid slipping. Two police cars went past me with their chains clinking over the snow and their lights flashing, and another siren started up somewhere north near the area they were still searching.
I used the map and worked my way east to the post office near the Museum of Folklore and Minerals and called up the hire firm and told them in a shaky voice that the Mercedes had been stolen from Union Square while I was in the reading room of the Civic Library in Gromyko Prospekt. Then I called Chechevitsin and asked if he’d got anything for me and he said yes, there was a courier coming through from Tashkent on the evening train arriving at 10.25, Central Station, Yelingrad. Name, description, rendezvous instructions, so forth. I said I’d be there.
4-56.
The snow had stopped.
I watched the Union Building.
I’d been here two hours and I was frozen stiff.
Every five minutes I had to wipe the inside of the windscreen because it kept misting up; there was ice on the outside and the wipers had seized up on the way here so I’d scraped the last of the snow away and left it like that. It was a fourteen horse-power Trabant with a stick shift and a defunct heater and a body like a foreshortened turd but Chechevitsin had said it was all he could get for me. It had been no good my trying another car-hire firm because the police would be on to that one: my call reporting the stolen Mercedes was just a routine action. On the principle that your survival in the target area can often depend on the narrowest margins of error you always take every possible step you can to cover yourself - it was highly unlikely that the civil and secret police would miss the obvious but I couldn’t be certain. I only had the two sets of papers and I couldn’t use the Voronov cover because the whole of the Red Air Force knew by this time that his MiG-z8D had been shot down within fifty miles of this city and that he might have got out alive.
There was another risk factor coming into phase and it was the same wedge shape as the first one had been: Comrade Andreyev Rashidov and Colonel Nikolai Voronov were now the subject of a search from two directions and the more the opposition found out about them the nearer those two lines would get, until they came to a point. When it did, I wouldn’t have to be there.
4-59.
I’d counted more than thirty people entering or leaving the Union Building in the last two hours but she hadn’t been among them. She could be away from the place now, in which case I was wasting my time, but the train didn’t have to be met until 10.25 this evening and I could work on the target centre for the next five hours and maybe pick up some extra material for the courier to take away with the film.
This area was clean, at this moment. I’d checked it thoroughly and dangled my image three times round the square and twice past the Union Building in case any one of the hundred or so windows had an observer posted. There wasn’t one. They’d picked up the Mercedes in this immediate area and I’d pulled a phase three on them and if they were going to set traps anywhere it would be here.
At 5.12 the first street lamps came on and I started up and took the Trabant closer, parking it in fair cover between a military jeep and a small black Syrena at the corner of the square. It had meant taking my eyes off the field for a few seconds at a time and I nearly missed her as she came down the steps and started walking towards the corner. The engine was still running and I switched off and got out and waited two minutes and took up the tag.
She was crossing the intersection at Prospekt and Station Street when she saw the queue
of people. I think she was on her way to a different place because there was a kind of double take in her attitude and she stopped to talk to a woman outside the store. She then joined the queue herself and I made a close detour and saw that a consignment of kitchenware had just come in: a truck with a Tashkent number plate was still unloading. There were approximately forty people already in the queue but that wasn’t too long for a Russian provincial city store in the middle of winter when transport problems were added to the general lack of supply. If Liova Kirinski stayed the course she’d be here for more than an hour because she’d have to reach the head of this queue, choose the merchandise, join the next queue with her order form for payment at the cashier’s booth and then join this one again to collect her purchases.
I gave it ten minutes. She was then off the street and inside the store, with exactly thirty-two people still in front of her. Assuming she’d been on her way somewhere else and might still go there when she left this store I assessed the risk as low and calculated and walked back to the Union Building and made one circuit on foot to check for ticks and then went round to the rear. The last of the daylight had gone but there was a three-quarter moon hanging across the eastern skyline and the street lamps were throwing down an ash-grey diffusion of light that picked up the iron fire-escape. On my first visit here I’d noted that the traditional custom was in force: on a lot of apartment buildings they remove the lowest section of the fire-escape so that it’s still easy for people to come down and drop to the ground if the place is on fire but difficult for them to climb it. The official reason is to discourage burglars but everyone knows that it’s to oblige people to go past the dezhurnaya every time they leave and return home: the Party, police and military factions are particularly interested in strangers visiting any given residential area and in Yelingrad this interest is increased by the city’s proximity to the Chinese frontier.
There was snow on the windowsill below the first platform and I threw dirt on it and got the necessary purchase without making any noise. The rest of the climb was slippery but I was in shadow the whole way up and the back door of the Kirinski apartment was in good visual cover because the three buildings standing nearby were blank-walled on this side and five storeys higher. The door had a glazed panel but I didn’t want to break it unless I had to. The lock was a standard tumbler bit and I started work on it.