by James Rouch
Inside the respirator he was very conscious of the sound of his own breathing, and its magnified rasping and whistling filled his ears. He was sweating, and if the discomfort of the droplets trickling down the small of his back was not sufficient evidence, there were crescents of condensation forming at the tops of his lenses.
On the far side of the six-wheeler dark hummocky shapes lay scattered among the tufts of grass and clumps of weeds sprouting from the road surface. None of the bodies were more than a score of paces from the truck.
Double-checking the reading on the monitor attached to his belt, Revell confirmed its negative reaction with Hyde aboard the Marder before turning over the nearest of the corpses with his foot.
It moved easily, felt so light it seemed it could have no substance at all, only its filled-out shape betraying that there were the remains of a man inside it.
From deep within dark sockets shrivelled eyes glared at him through the clouded lenses of a disintegrating respirator. As though it had waited for precisely that moment the perished rubberized fabric broke apart and an unnatural idiot grin, caused by the dehydrated flesh pulling drum-skin tight over the skull, was fully exposed.
‘No indication of the cause of death.’ Revell kept the transmit switch down on his radio. ‘Until it fell apart it looked like the suit was okay. Nothing suspicious in that, I think it’d just been out in the weather too long.’ He hadn’t really been expecting to be able to determine the exact cause of death; at best he hoped to eliminate some possibilities and ascribe it to a general category. As he went to move away, to inspect another of the bodies he saw something he hadn’t anticipated, something he hadn’t even been looking for. Suddenly he realized why their instruments had failed to detect even a trace of residual contamination.
Reaching for the straps securing his respirator he began to pull it off. There was no point in wearing it any longer, it made no difference. No respirator would ever save him from what had killed these men.
FIVE
Gross had pestered and bullied Father Venables into changing places with him and now lounged forward to hang on the back of the front passenger seat. He let the tips of his pudgy fingers rest on the woman’s shoulders, and occasionally deliberately stray from the quilted surface of her anorak to the bare nape of her neck.
‘Will you get your wet paws off me, you fat slug.’
‘Oh, so sorry.’ Gross withdrew and slumped back into the rear seat. ‘I didn’t realize you had such an abhorrence of physical contact. Those horny cheap porno films you made must have given me the wrong impression, mustn’t they, Sherry. Sherry… Sherry Kane, that has to be a stage name, doesn’t it. Did you change it to try and get away from your old clients, from when you were a ten dollar call-out model?’
It was Edwards who made the protest, getting in before the woman or the elderly priest, but he complained to the same person they would have, their driver.
Webb caught a glance of the old man in the rear view mirror, saw spittle fly from his misshapen mouth as he appealed for an authoritative voice that would curb the ex-union leader. Already he was tired of them all. They were not the travelling companions he would have chosen, but his KGB control in London had been adamant in guiding his choice. On a train he would have stood in the corridor rather than share a compartment with any of them. Kane with her tarty looks and shallow intellect, Venables with his pious innocence, Edwards with his overbearing air of superiority: and Gross, a physically repulsive man with a matching mind.
In an attempt to fill his thoughts with other things, he paid full attention to the road. Subtle but distinct changes were coming over the countryside through which they were driving. Autumn had not yet set in, but already many of the trees and hedgerows were losing their leaves. Even the needles of the evergreens had a life-leached and discoloured appearance. The grass too had a prematurely win-tery look, with the exception of few hardy weeds that maintained a healthy dark green hue, the turf of gardens and clearings being a sickly yellow shade, like it had been covered and kept from the sun overlong.
Webb noted, but wasn’t alarmed by the unnatural transformation of the flora. This was the second time he’d tried to make this journey and in his previous, lone, attempt he had seen more violent, more ugly changes in the landscape.
Then he had been stopped by a full scale battle raging in his path. In the event it had proved to be a blessing in disguise. After the initial anger and disappointment he’d begun planning again, and recognizing, after his irate controller had forcibly pointed it out to him, the inherent weakness of acting alone, he’d enlisted the support of this diverse group.
‘It looks pretty weird out there. Does fall come early here?’ Sherry Kane pulled her jacket tight about her as she looked out on the withering foliage. ‘Are you sure it’s safe to come this way?’
‘Are you afraid of catching something that’ll give you a rash and reduce your value between the sheets?’ Gross watched her toss her head and flick at the ends of her hair without retorting. He longed to reach forward, slide his hand over her shoulder and inside her anorak. A good hard tug and he’d pull her tee-shirt from the top of her jeans, then drag the material up over her big breasts. His fingers would creep into the large cups of her bra and he’d squeeze those fat warm mounds hard, roll and twist her nipples until they became firm and jutting, then dig his nails into them until she screamed. Lovely.
In his creased and soiled trousers he felt the coiled dampness of his fleshy penis stir sluggishly, short pulsing movements as it expanded toward full erection. He liked to feel it doing that, knew that soon, if he worked at the thought, it would start to leak. Oh lovely, really lovely, he was going to… oh it hadn’t done that since he was a schoolboy, when the prefect had played with it in the showers, and afterwards he’d stood on his own in a corner of the locker room and watched the damp patch spread on his worsted shorts… The sensitive circumcised head of his penis was suddenly sticky, and his pants were wet… oh lovely.
Years of taking confession had instructed Father Venables in all the vices of man, and woman, and now helped him to disregard the vulgarity, the pettiness, that was displayed around him. Save for making an occasional protest when he heard the Lord’s name being used as an epithet, and took extreme exception, he spent all of his time working on the speech he would make to the world press when they reached the Russian lines.
A balance had to be struck. His words would at once have to be an appeal for Christian love and forgiveness and peace, and a declaration of his faith in the basic honest intent of the Russians. But no matter what form of words he used, he found himself including every time a passage that would convey to his detractors back in Britain that his motives were pure, that he espoused no cause, favoured no side.
For so very long he had worked for disarmament, had spoken, marched, written, campaigned. He had borne the criticisms, said nothing when he had been called a tool of the communists, a dupe, a self-deceiving innocent, even when he had been labelled the Red Priest. At each accusation he had agonized, examined his position, his conscience, but each time he had come to the same conclusion. He simply could not believe that the communist leaders in the Soviet Union could truly be the totally evil men their reported actions indicated. There was good in all, they had only to be given the chance to show it and they would, he devoutly believed that… but still in all his public utterances there ran that thread of persistent apology. No, he must wipe it from his mind, what he was doing was right. He had prayed so hard for an opportunity such as this, he must make the most of it. There was some good in all men, there had to be…
Under its previous chief, Department A had been allowed to slide, become slack and inefficient, but it had not slipped so far, become so lax that its staff were unaware who the new man was to be. Rozenkov knew that his reputation would have gone before him. From the heads of sections down to the lowest filing clerk everyone would be waiting, poised to launch themselves into a make-believe of frenetic activity at t
he warning of his approach. To get more than cosmetic results from the staff he had to do more than just walk in and take over.
For lasting improvements in the department’s performance he would have to create an impression that even the dullest would understand as a clear warning that things were not going to be the same.
The security guard on the little used side door was half asleep over a crossword puzzle when the colonel entered, a state from which he was abruptly shaken when the legs of his chair were kicked away.
‘You know who I am?’ Rozenkov stood over the soldier. ‘Yes, yes Comrade Colonel.’ He attempted to get up, but the officer stood on his fingers.
‘Good. In precisely fifteen minutes you will report to the duty officer, and tell him you are under close arrest for a list of charges that will be supplied by me, later. Remember, fifteen minutes, if before then you move from here or do anything that might alert the rest of the building I shall personally take a hand in your punishment by returning and breaking many of the bones in your body.’
As the door to a service stairway swung shut behind the colonel, the guard began to puke, violently and repeatedly. When all his stomach contents were used he went on heaving. He tried to pull himself up, but the racking spasms grew worse until he collapsed in writhing agony, the muscles of his stomach strained and ruptured.
Rozenkov’s reign of terror had claimed a first victim.
The corridor serving the top floor was deep pile carpeted, and the suites of offices leading off exuded an air of luxury from their half open doors.
There was none of the usual tinny clatter from ill-made, worse maintained and worn out typewriters so typical of Moscow government offices; instead there was the muted chatter of near new Adlers and 3Ms. A computer terminal ‘tinged’ an apologetic warning before smoothly disgorging a print-out.
Barging into the first room he happened upon, ignoring the indignantly imperious bleats from a plump breasted secretary, Rozenkov went to each highly polished desk in turn and swept every paper onto the floor. He treated four more offices in the same fashion, before coming to one even more opulent than the rest, that intuition told him had been prepared for his arrival.
Expensive, mostly western manufactured desk furniture shoved into a velvet covered waste paper basket, and after the hall-marked silver ink stands and onyx ashtrays went a pair of signed water colours of the Kremlin and Red Square from the wall behind the desk, and a group of bronzes from the top of a book case. As he might a bucket of swill, he hurled basket and contents into the corridor where they bounced from and made dents in the Hessian covered panels on the wall.
The initial commotion caused by his violent arrival had brought many people from the sanctuary of their offices, but as confusion and surprise had been replaced by the shock of recognition, they’d disappeared faster than they’d materialized. Rozenkov let the ensuing silence hang for a long moment, before hitting every button on the intercom simultaneously.
‘I want every head of section in here now.’ He could imagine, but did not concern himself with the panic that simple announcement would have produced.
Those with an interest in who won, or lost, the race, extended far beyond the handful of individuals immediately concerned. All of the KGB staff in the department were career men, and all were aware, suddenly well aware, that their future could as easily be spent going rapidly down as steadily up. How they progressed in the service depended as much on the performance of their whole section as their individual performance and achievements. The section’s results were principally judged by how well the section head operated, so there were many who waited in the lower levels of the building for first details to filter back down.
Hardly giving the men time to get into the room, let alone vie for position before him, Rozenkov wasted no time with preliminaries. He could be sure that some of the nervous men in front of his desk would not be fit for their jobs. Some would be stupid, some lazy, but there was not the time to replace them, and in any event he was certain that their deputies would be of similar stamp, chosen so as not to outshine their bosses. It would be a case of having to squeeze the best from them now, and later weeding those who could not take the pressure.
Indeed all of them would be on a form of probation as far as Rozenkov was concerned. Those whose performance was adequate would be given longer to prove their worth, any of the staff who did not come up to the required standard would get no second chance,’ and in addition their names would go on a special list he intended to keep. If by their failure they caused him to fail, then his last act before his removal would be to ensure that he dragged them down with him.
‘There is an operation underway that is of special interest to me…’
‘I had anticipated that, Comrade Colonel… eh, Director…eh, Comrade Director. Full details are here.’
His confusion and hesitancy over Rozenkov’s proper title cost the head of operations much of the advantage he’d hoped to gain by his forethought and thoroughness. The remainder of it was lost when the summary page was ripped from the front of the bulky file, and the rest of it thrown back at him.
Hardly seeming to have glanced at the half page of double spaced lines, Rozenkov singled out the head of communications, identifying him by the radio-technical corps insignia on his shoulder.
‘I want a radio link installed in here, on my desk, so that I can keep in personal touch with our units in the Zone.’
‘Of course Comrade Colonel.’ The head of communications smugly beamed as he avoided his discomforted colleague’s mistake. ‘I can have you patched through on the army net. It will mean running cables through the building from the communication centre in the basement, but…’
‘I do not want to talk with army, not with corps, not division, not even battalion. I want to be able to talk direct with platoon and company commanders in the field. What technical problems may be involved I do not care. Have it done.’
Glancing again at the summary, Rozenkov frowned, and there was a noticeable ripple of movement among the crowd, like a contagious shudder. ‘There is no mention of the arrangements for press coverage, why is that?’
‘The intention is, Comrade Colonel, to fly the delegation to Moscow, to meet the representatives of the world media here.’
It was only when she spoke that Rozenkov realized there was a woman in the group before him. Little beside-the lack of shadow on her chin betrayed her. In a suit of very masculine cut, with a severe hairstyle, she was otherwise an unremarkable member. ‘And if we do that we lose half the value of the exercise. There must be no hint, no possibility of the suggestion being made that we brought them into the country via a neutral. A press conference we can arrange any day, an event, a genuine event, could be of propaganda value behind price. The press must be somewhere close at hand when we make contact with these civilians.’
‘But how Comrade Colonel…’
She was ugly, squat and ugly, Rozenkov found time to wonder how a woman with no natural talent for her work could have got so high, without having had the advantage of attractive femininity to play on. Later he would learn more about her.
‘… that is a quiet sector. There is no reason for correspondents of the calibre we require to be there, what pretext could we give?’
‘We shall select some unit within a short flying time of where we can anticipate the civilians making contact. If we tell the media people that the unit is to be inspected by the President of the Supreme Soviet, then they will be clamouring to go.’
‘With respect, Comrade Colonel, the foreign press have been speculating on the Comrade Leader’s health. You will recall that they have made much of the fact that he has not been outside the Kremlin in six months.’
‘Then can you think of anything more likely to attract their interest and attention? There need be no embarrassment. Until they see him they will print nothing, and when the delegation appears instead they will take that as their story and forget the other. Now, what arrangements ha
ve been made for the civilians’ interception?’
‘All field units have been alerted…’
‘Are you mad?’ Rozenkov exploded. ‘Would you have them make contact first with a bunch of stupid Cossacks, or Serbs, who are either going to shoot them by mistake or bugger them and give them the pox? Order all units withdrawn from the immediate area, then get me the GRU liaison officer. Perhaps Military Intelligence will have units in the vicinity that can cover for us until we are ready to airlift a Spetsnatz company into place.’
Rozenkov was having to rebuild the whole operation from the ground up. Virtually nothing had been done, and what had was ill planned and uncoordinated. He was about to dismiss the gathering but checked himself, and lowering his voice so that they had to strain to hear every word, spelled out his position, and theirs.
‘If this operation does not reach the successful conclusion expected of it by… by those above us, then there will be… changes… It should not need saying, but I do so to make everything clear; no excuses will be acceptable. The operation is basically simple, with only three component stages. That civilian delegation will be located, intercepted and used to the fullest advantage in the world press. It is possible, even likely that NATO troops will be used to prevent that happening. At all costs they will be stopped from interfering. Before they can do any harm to our plan they must be destroyed.’
It took Revell only a minute to check the corpses of the remainder of the decontamination squad. In the suit of each he found the same neat circular punctures he had noticed in the first. Several of the bodies had been riddled, and it was very obvious that the men had walked into a hail of high velocity automatic fire.
With the Marder grinding and growling along behind him he started toward a pair of Land Rover ambulances parked at the roadside a hundred yards on.