Call for Simon Shard

by Philip McCutchan

  “You know, Tuball.”

  “I don’t. I say again, I can’t tell you anything.”

  “You’re scared, Tuball. You’re dead scared of the Russians. Why put yourself into the lion’s mouth? I’ve said, I may find it possible to backtrack.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Tuball put his head in his hands, obviously on a rack of uncertainty. To some extent Shard felt himself in a quandary as well: did Tuball really know about the phone number — or did he, genuinely, not? And Shard, too, on another aspect, had had those reservations about his role as a very temporary acting agent, in spite of Hedge’s explanations. What was Hedge up to? Where if anywhere was the jiggery-pokery? Men of Hedge’s calling were never too scrupulous, not when it came to intrigue of this sort: in today’s world, they couldn’t afford to be. It was hard to stay on top, but of course you wanted to, and if you couldn’t do it by superior ability you did it by fast talking. Shard felt the need of a little more time. He was trying to push open the hatch cover to the cab, to tell Franz, who had slowed for the check-point, to stop for a while, when Franz stopped without the order to do so; and Shard, at last getting the hatch open, saw uniforms and weapons and a face already looking in. The face, that of a West German soldier, was talking to Franz, who was producing papers. There was hurry in the air: a cargo to be passed across as swiftly, as anonymously as possible. Authority had spoken.

  “Just a minute,” Shard said.

  The soldier looked at him, looked away, taking no notice. Franz half turned, and Shard caught the facial warning, the warning to keep his trap shut. Shard felt a rush of blood to the head, a terrible and unusual inability to make a decision. Whatever he did could be wrong; and they couldn’t, he knew, put this thing on again if he went into reverse at this stage, and was wrong. In the event he hesitated a fraction too long. The soldier stepped back, waved the van through the check-point, past civilian police, past plain-clothes men, past customs. Even now it was not quite too late, but it was at last late enough to convince Tuball.

  Tuball screamed out, “Stop! For Christ’s sake, Shard, stop! I’ll — ”

  He broke off. Again, Franz had pulled up. The hatch was still open, and Tuball and Shard both saw the new face at the van window. Spectacles, and an angry look like a hen disturbed when sitting on eggs: P. V. Krosky.

  With P. V. Krosky on the step, the van rolled on to the waiting Vopos.

  CHPTER XVI

  Franz took the van back empty, back to the security of the West. Shard had a sinking feeling in his guts: stupid! There was no cold war now, the Russians, the East Germans, were okay. Communism wasn’t a bogey any more: but, somehow, so stupidly, the Kremlin was — to Shard. To be over the frontier was a nasty naked feeling and he found he couldn’t wait to cross back again. He was way off his manor now, all right!

  He and Tuball, after the van had disappeared, were taken to a big black car: Shard didn’t recognise the make, but it looked fast and it looked like a gunman’s car. Four men, plus P. V. Krosky of possibly ambassadorial rank, accompanied them; and Shard was certain each had a gun. One drove, one sat by his side in front, two more sat on let-down seats in the back, facing the rear cushions on which sat Shard and Tuball and P. V. Krosky.

  No-one was talkative: the circumstances were unpropitious. Before they had entered the car P. V. Krosky, thrusting a sharp nose towards Shard, had indicated Tuball and asked in English, “This is the man?”

  “Yes.” Shard felt that Tuball’s face, Tuball’s cower from hidden guns, and Tuball’s leg in plaster, should have provided its own answer: but possibly P. V. Krosky was thorough. He said, “Somehow I didn’t expect to -meet you until we got to Moscow…Comrade.” He used the title stiltedly, felt an insane desire to laugh. P. V. Krosky was pure cinema, the average Briton’s stereotype of a female comrade. “No? You were wrong.”

  “Yes. You speak very good English.”

  “Thank you. You do not speak Russian?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “This does not matter. You are armed?” Shard hesitated, then shrugged and said, “Of course.”

  “Your weapon, please.”

  He brought out his gun and handed it over. Comrade Krosky frisked him to make quite sure, then said, “In the car, please.”

  In spite of the cinema aspect, he had obeyed: faster than he would have obeyed Hedge. Funny — the effect of the political East! That was when silence set in. No-one had addressed Tuball directly, but the two men facing him were looking at him hard, watching every possible move. Not that Tuball was at all likely to try anything. He would have noted the odds, and he was too petrified in any case. So they sat and were driven east and a little north: past fields and then over high ground, and then more fields, and later industrial regions. Shard had no idea where he was: he found the signposts confusing. Nor did he like to ask. P. V. Krosky looked the sort who would tell all in her own time and no-one else’s. The drive, in the event, lasted two hours and ended at an airfield: military, not civil. In a tight group, with Tuball in the middle, they walked from the car to an aircraft of the Red Air Force, across a biting wind that swept the tarmac bare. Beneath a lowering sky full of snow the hangars and administration blocks and quarters looked starkly menacing. Reaching the plane, Shard saw the pilot, ready and waiting behind perspex in the nose: a God-like figure, lofty, remote, shrouded in his equipment. Men waited, a reception committee at the head of the embarkation ladder.

  They climbed up, assisting Tuball. The interior was bare, no comfort, utility seating and metal deck, likely to be deafening in flight. Outside, the wind gathered strength, lashing the sides of the aircraft, and soon there was a white flick of driven snow that gathered in the window rims, settling hard.

  They waited: expressionless Russian faces stared blankly. Shard felt a curiously increasing unease, Tuball was sunk in wordless misery, quite beyond speech now, a very different Tuball from the West Kensington one, from the Sydney one.

  Shard spoke. “When do we go?”

  “We await another passenger,” P. V. Krosky said. Having spoken, she brought out a book and started to read, holding the pages close to her spectacles. Shard couldn’t make out what she was reading, assumed it to be some political tract. She didn’t look the sort for fiction: no doubt she lived her own adventure, and love wouldn’t be much in her line. She looked as cold as ice. Shard felt as cold as ice: no heating. He was grateful for his gifted coat and fur hat. Time passed. There was a full-scale blizzard blowing outside now, and the tarmac was pure untrodden white, deepening fast. It seemed unlikely they would take off in this — unless they could quickly rise above it. On the way in he had seen factories, tall buildings — a town, but it could be presumed not to be too close for safe take-off and landing, even in bad weather. So maybe the snowstorm wouldn’t cause delay. Not like this additional passenger.

  Idly, as more time passed and P. V. Krosky continued reading, Shard wondered who it would turn out to be. Some extra guard, not that such was needed, some big-wig or service chief, Moscow bound? Or Barclay and Elgood, all ready for handing over to the representative of Britain? P. V. Krosky, however, had referred to one only. She looked precise: rule out Barclay and Elgood…

  Shard was shaken rigid when that passenger embarked. At first he saw only a group of thickly-clad figures coming out from one of the hangars, figures only just visible through the driving snowflakes, making for the plane. About time, he thought angrily, looking at his watch: they had been waiting a good two hours. Badly, he wanted to get home. Now that take-off was presumably imminent, he was seized with terrible impatience, felt he couldn’t have waited any longer without going stark raving mad, felt he couldn’t endure the remaining minutes while the Russians ploughed through the snow — carrying something heavy.

  He had just realised that in the instant that P. V. Krosky looked up from her reading and glanced through the window, then caught Shard’s eye. “The one we await,” she said, “comes now.”

  Shard felt colder
than ever, and dead frightened, as Tanya Gorukin’s aluminium cylinder reached the side of the aircraft. Men opened up the entry hatch, and the body was embarked. No more delay: there was a roar of shattering sound as the jets came on, a gale that swept the snow from under the body, and the aircraft began to vibrate. A move forward, speed gathering for take-off…snow or no snow, they were Moscow bound at last. Shard felt as much as saw P. V. Krosky’s look, a look that seemed to sweep him bare, a look extremely knowing and sardonic.

  How much did she, in fact, know? Shard would have given much to have the answer to that one. On the answer might now depend his life. Like the airfield that melted into blinding snow beneath, the ground seemed to have fallen from Shard’s world, leaving him utterly defenceless and without any knowledge of what hand if any he should now seek to play. All he knew for sure was that there had been a God Almighty balls-up, somewhere. Hedge had come unstuck. In coming unstuck, Hedge had sent him shooting up a gum tree.

  God damn Hedge. God damn security. In Shard’s mind only one security registered now: his own. And that, mainly, because of Beth.

  *

  Moscow: Moscow gripped by the throat, by deadly winter weather. Snow everywhere, thick snow, hard snow. Ice in the very air, ice in Shard’s anxious heart at touchdown. During the flight he had seen clearly enough that Tuball had had no preknowledge of this new turn. Tuball, staring sickly at the canister, staring at the encasement of the body he had wanted so much to get for himself, was as worried, as scared, as Shard. Tuball was seeing all manner of unpleasantnesses.

  The walk from the plane was in itself murder: even Shard’s cold-weather clothing was not geared to this degree of frost. It was like walking into a super-low refrigerator. Breath froze into spiky patterns, and broke off, crackling. Exposed flesh was blue. On their way to another car, a closed van passed them, lurching through the lying snow on chained tyres. To pick up the canister? Probably, Shard decided: and wondered when he would be brought face to face with it again. During the flight, he had refrained from questioning P. V. Krosky: he knew he wouldn’t get the truth, and obscurely he felt the less he appeared to be concerned the better. Useless, most likely, but all he was left with as a course of action. Again — God damn Hedge! Hedge should have used an experienced agent, a real agent, a man used to intrigue of this sort — not a cop in thin disguise, naked to the blast. Hedge: another thought about Hedge came insidiously…was Hedge up to more jiggery-pokery? For Shard, just as much as Tuball, knew about the telephone number — that number that so obsessed Hedge. (And Assistant Commissioner Hesseltine must share some blame for that obsession: his insinuations had much disturbed Hedge.) So was Shard, too, expendable, another sacrifice? But he must not think along those lines: he had a strong need of a base, something to hold to. Hedge was all he had. Hedge had to be trusted, come what may.

  From the airfield, the car took the party into Moscow: to Dzerzhinsky Square, white with the snow lying deep and thick, with the Muscovites stepping stoically about their business. On the one hand Detsky Mir, great toy emporium of Moscow, the children’s Mecca, a happy place and carefree. On the other a grim grey-stone building, a place of tears, the Lubyanka Prison. Though he had never seen it before, Shard knew instantly what it was and that they were all going there. He glanced at P. V. Krosky: he caught her glancing at him. She looked away quickly, jerking her face round to look to her front like a soldier, but not before Shard had seen, and noted, what had looked like a thaw. Maybe she was human after all, maybe she was sorry for the trap — as it seemed to be — sorry for what was going to happen. It didn’t help much.

  *

  Once inside, Shard met politeness. The four plain clothes men who had accompanied the party from the frontier went off with Tuball, who was in such a state of terror by now that he had practically to be carried, crutches and all. P. V. Krosky stayed with Shard when he was courteously asked to follow a thickset man with no neck, dressed in a smart black suit with white collar and light tie. This man took them up two floors in a lift and then along a thickly-carpeted corridor, halting by a heavy but unmarked door upon which he knocked.

  Standing back, he ushered Shard and P. V. Krosky into the room. Coming in behind them, he stood with his back against the door and made the introductions to a tall, thin man who got to his feet behind a desk.

  “Mr. Shard from London. Comrade Krosky. Colonel Bulnakov.”

  “Comrade Krosky I know.” Bulnakov smiled, showing bad teeth. He indicated chairs. “Please sit.”

  They did so.

  Bulnakov, sitting also, said, “You are Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Shard, late of the Metropolitan Police, now attached to a certain department of your British Foreign Office.” He spoke in beautiful English. “You agree?”

  “I agree — since you seem to know it all, Colonel.”

  “I know much, but not all. I am, after all, human…is this not so, Comrade Krosky?”

  “It is so, Comrade Colonel Bulnakov.”

  A look passed between them. Shard wondered about the relationship, the degree of humanity manifested by Colonel Bulnakov: it took much imagination to visualise P. V. Krosky preparing for bed, but there was something in the look that did suggest just that. No doubt even Russia had its backsliders, the men and women who might let the side down. Bulnakov returned to business. In his faultless English he went on, “You are married, currently with no children.”

  “Correct.”

  “And your wife Elizabeth — you call her Beth — is sick, and is in a private room at Barts.”

  Even the colloquialism, Barts. Shard had never in fact doubted Russian efficiency, but now he was impressed by the proof. Impressed, and badly worried. He said, “Yes, that’s right too.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Shard. I hope she will very soon be better. It is a long recovery — a brain operation. However, you must not worry.”

  Shard made no answer to that.

  “You have, I think,” Bulnakov said with a bland smile, “other things to worry about. Is this right too?”

  Shard shrugged. “I have a job to do, Colonel. I suppose one is always a little worried until it’s been done successfully.”

  “Yes. And the job, this time?”

  “I rather think you know that for yourself, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps. You smoke?” Bulnakov pushed a cigarette box across his desk. Thanking him, Shard took one and Bulnakov flicked a lighter. “Your job, Mr. Shard. I would like to hear what it is, from your own lips. Please?”

  “Very well.” Shard took a deep lungful of smoke, blew it out slowly. “I am ordered to hand over a man to the Soviet authorities — a man named Edgar Graver Tuball. This I’ve done. In exchange I am to take back two Britons — Barclay and Elgood.”

  “And?”

  It had to be faced and admitted. “And there is the body of Tanya Gorukin. This you wanted back, Colonel Bulnakov. I had orders to hand it over…once the man Tuball was dead.”

  “Yes.” Bulnakov’s voice had changed now: it had been bluff, genial; now it was soft, soft with ice in it, cold as the snow outside on the roofs and in the Moscow streets, snow reddened by sunset now — by blood? The atmosphere in the room had changed as well: bare already, with no furnishing beyond the desk and chairs and a steel filing cabinet, it began to feel like a prison. Bulnakov repeated Shard’s own words: “Once the man Tuball was dead. How were you to satisfy yourself that he was dead? How, Mr. Shard?”

  Shard said, “I’d naturally have taken your word for it, that he’d been executed after his trial and sentence.”

  “You expected the death sentence?”

  “It was a foregone conclusion. He’s a murderer and a drug trafficker, in your country as in ours. The one difference is — here he dies. In Britain he wouldn’t.”

  “Yes. And you would really have taken our word, and then you would have brought in the body of Tanya Gorukin from Einbeck? This you would have done?” There was much sarcasm.

  Shard said, “Yes. Those wer
e my orders.”

  “You admit this?”

  “I was never instructed to the contrary, Colonel Bulnakov. I understood that…all arrangements had been made. I realise things have changed now you’ve beaten me to it — now you’ve had the corpse brought in. By the way…how was that done, if I may ask?”

  Bulnakov said, “By gun and by cooperation — a mixture of both. We have a need of Comrade Gorukin. Her father and mother have strong parental feelings. You may rely upon it that Tuball will die.”

  “There’s a connexion — with Tanya Gorukin?”

  “Our information is that the man Tuball paid other men to kill her, Mr. Shard.”

  “She wasn’t killed, Colonel Bulnakov. It was a natural death.”

  “To a little extent only. Death from enforced starvation followed by an enforced climb of Rough Tor, with men there to enforce a night-long stay.”

  Shard stared. “You’re sure of this, Colonel?”

  “I am positive, Mr. Shard! One of our own men was present — unknown, of course, to Tuball’s men. Sadly, our man could not prevent what happened. There were other considerations, and he was under very precise and strict orders not to show his hand — you understand?”

  “Why were the drugs left on the body — all that heroin, all that value?”

  Bulnakov said, “I will come to this soon, Mr. Shard. It links with another aspect — ”

  “But — this drug connexion, Colonel. Her death — her killing — was it on account of Tuball’s trade in drugs?”

  “Yes. Comrade Gorukin became a threat to him. As it happened, she worked for us — but Tuball did not in fact know this, not then. It was the surface drug connexion that made her die, for Tuball believed, we think, that she was about to try to steal away his trade.”

  Shard nodded. “I had that theory, too, among others.”

  “Yes? And the telephone number, the one of the man you call Hedge?” Bulnakov gave a sudden loud laugh. “What did you theorise about that, Mr. Shard?”

  “We — ”