by Clive Barker
They had dug a pit in a small clearing no more than a hundred yards from the compound. It was not deep, this pit, nor was it very large. The mingled smells of lime and petrol cancelled out any other scent.
Tetelman, who had reached the clearing ahead of Locke, hung back from approaching the lip of the earthworks, but Dancy was not so fastidious. He strode around the far side of the pit and beckoned to Locke to view the contents.
The tribe were putrefying already. They lay where they had been thrown, in a jumble of breasts and buttocks and faces and limbs, their bodies tinged here and there with purple and black. Flies built helter- skelters in the air above them.
'An education,' Dancy commented.
Locke just looked on as Bj0rnstr0m moved around the other side of the pit to join Dancy.
'All of them?' Locke asked.
The Norwegian nodded. 'One fell swoop,' he said, pronouncing each word with unsettling precision.
'Blankets,' said Tetelman, naming the murder weapon.
'But so quickly ...' Locke murmured.
'It's very efficient,' said Dancy. 'And difficult to prove. Even if anybody ever asks.'
'Disease is natural,' Bj0rnstr0m observed. 'Yes? Like the trees.'
Locke slowly shook his head, his eyes pricking.
'I hear good things of you,' Bj0rnstr0m said to him. 'Perhaps we can work together.'
Locke didn't even attempt to reply. Others of the Norwegian party had laid down their rifles and were now getting back to work, moving the few bodies still to be pitched amongst their fellows from the forlorn heap beside the pit. Locke could see a child amongst the tangle, and an old man, whom even now the burial party were picking up. The corpse looked jointless as they swung it over the edge of the hole. It tumbled down the shallow incline and came to rest face up, its arms flung up to either side of its head in a gesture of submission, or expulsion. It was the elder of course, whom Cherrick had faced. His palms were still red. There was a neat bullet-hole in his temple. Disease and hopelessness had not been entirely efficient, apparently.
Locke watched while the next of the bodies was thrown into the mass grave, and a third to follow that.
Bj0rnstr0m, lingering on the far side of the pit, was lighting a cigarette. He caught Locke's eye.
'So it goes,' he said.
From behind Locke, Tetelman spoke.
'We thought you wouldn't come back,' he said, per- haps attempting to excuse his alliance with Bj0rnstr0m.
'Stumpf is dead,' said Locke.
'Well, even less to divide up,' Tetelman said, approaching him and laying a hand on his shoulder. Locke didn't reply; he just stared down amongst the bodies, which were now being covered with lime, only slowly registering the warmth that was running down his body from the spot where Tetelman had touched him. Disgusted, the man had removed his hand, and was staring at the growing bloodstain on Locke's shirt.
TWILIGHT AT THE TOWERS
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF Mironenko which Ballard had been shown in Munich had proved far from instructive. Only one or two pictured the KGB man full face; and of the others most were blurred and grainy, betraying their furtive origins. Ballard was not overmuch concerned. He knew from long and occasionally bitter experience that the eye was all too ready to be deceived; but there were other faculties - the remnants of senses modern life had rendered obsolete - which he had learned to call into play, enabling him to sniff out the least signs of betrayal. These were the talents he would use when he met with Mironenko. With them, he would root the truth from the man.
The truth? Therein lay the conundrum of course, for in this context wasn't sincerity a movable feast? Sergei Zakharovich Mironenko had been a Section Leader in Directorate S of the KGB for eleven years, with access to the most privileged information on the dispersal of Soviet Illegals in the West. In the recent weeks, however, he had made his disenchantment with his present masters, and his consequent desire to defect, known to the British Security Service. In return for the elaborate efforts which would have to be made on his behalf he had volunteered to act as an agent within the KGB for a period of three months, after which time he would be taken into the bosom of democracy and hidden where his vengeful overlords would never find him. It had fallen to Ballard to meet the Russian face to face, in the hope of establishing whether Mironenko's disaffection from his ideology was real or faked. The answer would not be found on Mironenko's lips, Ballard knew, but in some behavioural nuance which only instinct would comprehend.
Time was when Ballard would have found the puzzle fascinating; that his every waking thought would have circled on the unravelling ahead. But such commitment had belonged to a man convinced his actions had some significant effect upon the world. He was wiser now. The agents of East and West went about their secret works year in, year out. They plotted; they connived; occasionally (though rarely) they shed blood. There were debacles and trade-offs and minor tactical victories. But in the end things were much the same as ever.
This city, for instance. Ballard had first come to Berlin in April of 1969. He'd been twenty-nine, fresh from years of intensive training, and ready to live a little. But he had not felt easy here. He found the city charmless; often bleak. It had taken Odell, his colleague for those first two years, to prove that Berlin was worthy of his affections, and once Ballard fell he was lost for life. Now he felt more at home in this divided city than he ever had in London. Its unease, its failed idealism, and - perhaps most acutely of all - its terrible isolation, matched his. He and it, maintaining a presence in a wasteland of dead ambition.
He found Mironenko at the Germalde Galerie, and yes, the photographs had lied. The Russian looked older than his forty-six years, and sicker than he'd appeared in those filched portraits. Neither man made any sign of acknowledgement. They idled through the collection for a full half-hour, with Mironenko showing acute, and apparently genuine, interest in the work on view. Only when both men were satisfied that they were not being watched did the Russian quit the building and lead Ballard into the polite suburbs of Dahlem to a mutually agreed safe house. There, in a small and unheated kitchen, they sat down and talked.
Mironenko's command of English was uncertain, or at least appeared so, though Ballard had the impression that his struggles for sense were as much tactical as giammatical. He might well have presented the same facade in the Russian's situation; it seldom hurt to appear less competent than one was. But despite the difficulties he had in expressing himself, Mironenko's avowals were unequivocal.
'I am no longer a Communist,' he stated plainly, 'I have not been a party-member - not here -' he put his fist to his chest'- for many years.'
He fetched an off-white handkerchief from his coat pocket, pulled off one of his gloves, and plucked a bottle of tablets from the folds of the handkerchief.
'Forgive me,' he said as he shook tablets from the bottle. 'I have pains. In my head; in my hands.'
Ballard waited until he had swallowed the medication before asking him, 'Why did you begin to doubt?'
The Russian pocketed the bottle and the handker- chief, his wide face devoid of expression.
'How does a man lose his ... his faith?' he said. 'Is it that I saw too much; or too little, perhaps?'
He looked at Ballard's face to see if his hesitant words had made sense. Finding no comprehension there he tried again.
'I think the man who does not believe he is lost, is lost.'
The paradox was elegantly put; Ballard's suspicion as to Mironenko's true command of English was confirmed.
'Are you lost nozi>?' Ballard inquired.
Mironenko didn't reply. He was pulling his other glove off and staring at his hands. The pills he had swallowed did not seem to be easing the ache he had complained of. He fisted and unfisted his hands like an arthritis sufferer testing the advance of his condition. Not looking up, he said:
'I was taught that the Party had solutions to everything. That made me free from fear.'
'And now?'
'Now?
' he said. 'Now I have strange thoughts. They come to me from nowhere ...'
'Go on,' said Ballard.
Mironenko made a tight smile. 'You must know me inside out, yes? Even what I dream?'
'Yes,' said Ballard.
Mironenko nodded. 'It would be the same with us,' he said. Then, after a pause: 'I've thought sometimes I would break open. Do you understand what I say? I would crack, because there is such rage inside me. And that makes me afraid, Ballard. I think they will see how much I hate them.' He looked up at his interrogator. 'You must be quick,' he said, 'or they will discover me. I try not to think of what they will do.' Again, he paused. All trace of the smile, however humourless, had gone. 'The Directorate has Sections even I don't have knowledge of. Special hospitals, where nobody can go. They have ways to break a man's soul in pieces.'
Ballard, ever the pragmatist, wondered if Mironenko's vocabulary wasn't rather high-flown. In the hands of the KGB he doubted if he would be thinking of his soul's contentment. After all, it was the body that had the nerve-endings.
They talked for an hour or more, the conversation moving back and forth between politics and personal reminiscence, between trivia and confessional. At the end of the meeting Ballard was in no doubt as to Mironenko's antipathy to his masters. He was, as he had said, a man without faith.
The following day Ballard met with Cripps in the restaurant at the Schweizerhof Hotel, and made his verbal report on Mironenko.
'He's ready and waiting. But he insists we be quick about making up our minds.'
'I'm sure he does,' Cripps said. His glass eye was troubling him today; the chilly air, he explained, made it sluggish. It moved fractionally more slowly than his real eye, and on occasion Cripps had to nudge it with his fingertip to get it moving.
'We're not going to rushed into any decision,' Cripps said.
'Where's the problem? I don't have any doubt about his commitment; or his desperation.'
'So you said,' Cripps replied. 'Would you like something for dessert?'
'Do you doubt my appraisal? Is that what it is?'
'Have something sweet to finish off, so that I don't feel an utter reprobate.'
'You think I'm wrong about him, don't you?' Ballard pressed. When Cripps didn't reply, Ballard leaned across the table. 'You do, don't you?'
'I'm just saying there's reason for caution,' Cripps said. 'If we finally choose to take him on board the Russians are going to be very distressed. We have to be sure the deal's worth the bad weather that comes with it. Things are so dicey at the moment.'
'When aren't they?' Ballard replied. 'Tell me a time when there wasn't some crisis in the offing?' He settled back in the chair and tried to read Cripps' face. His glass eye was, if anything, more candid than the real one.
'I'm sick of this damn game,' Ballard muttered.
The glass eye roved. 'Because of the Russian?'
'Maybe.'
'Believe me,' said Cripps, 'I've got good reason to be careful with this man.'
'Name one.'
'There's nothing verified.'
'What have you got on him?' Ballard insisted.
'As I say, rumour,' Cripps replied.
'Why wasn't I briefed about it?'
Cripps made a tiny shake of his head. 'It's academic now,' he said. 'You've provided a good report. I just want you to understand that if things don't go the way you think they should it's not because your appraisals aren't trusted.'
'I see.'
'No you don't,' said Cripps. 'You're feeling martyred; and I don't altogether blame you.'
'So what happens now? I'm supposed to forget I ever met the man?'
'Wouldn't do any harm,' said Cripps. 'Out of sight, out of mind.' Clearly Cripps didn't trust Ballard to take his own advice. Though Ballard made several discreet enquiries about the Mironenko case in the following week it was plain that his usual circle of contacts had been warned to keep their lips sealed.
As it was, the next news about the case reached Ballard via the pages of the morning papers, in an article about a body found in a house near the station on Kaiser Damm. At the time of reading he had no way of knowing how the account tied up with Mironenko, but there was enough detail in the story to arouse his interest. For one, he had the suspicion that the house named in the article had been used by the Service on occasion; for another, the article described how two unidentified men had almost been caught in the act of removing the body, further suggesting that this was no crime of passion.
About noon, he went to see Cripps at his offices in the hope of coaxing him with some explanation, but Cripps was not available, nor would be, his secretary explained, until further notice; matters arising had taken him back to Munich. Ballard left a message that he wished to speak with him when he returned.
As he stepped into the cold air again, he realised that he'd gained an admirer; a thin-faced individual whose hair had retreated from his brow, leaving a ludicrous forelock at the high-water mark. Ballard knew him in passing from Cripps' entourage but couldn't put a name to the face. It was swiftly provided.
'Suckling,' the man said.
'Of course,' said Ballard. 'Hello.'
'I think maybe we should talk, if you have a moment,' the man said. His voice was as pinched as his features; Ballard wanted none of his eossip. He was about to refuse the offer when Suckling said: 'I suppose you heard what happened to Cripps.'
Ballard shook his head. Suckling, delighted to possess this nugget, said again: 'We should talk.'
They walked along the Kantstrasse towards the Zoo. The street was busy with lunchtime pedestrians, but Ballard scarcely noticed them. The story that Suckling unfolded as they walked demanded his full and absolute attention.
It was simply told. Cripps, it appeared, had made an arrangement to meet with Mironenko in order to make his own assessment of the Russian's integrity. The house in Schoneberg chosen for the meeting had been used on several previous occasions, and had long been considered one of the safest locations in the city. It had not proved so the previous evening however. KGB men had apparently followed Mironenko to the house, and then attempted to break the party up. There was nobody to testify to what had happened subsequently - both the men who had accompanied Cripps, one of them Ballard's old colleague Odell - were dead; Cripps himself was in a coma.
'And Mironenko?' Ballard inquired.
Suckling shrugged. They took him home to the Motherland, presumably,' he said.
Ballard caught a whiff of deceit off the man.
Tm touched that you're keeping me up to date,' he said to Suckling. 'But why?
'You and Odell were friends, weren't you?' came the reply. 'With Cripps out of the picture you don't have many of those left.'
'Is that so?'
'No offence intended,' Suckling said hurriedly. 'But you've got a reputation as a maverick.'
'Get to the point,' said Ballard.
'There is no point,' Suckling protested. 'I just thought you ought to know what had happened. I'm putting my neck on the line here.'
'Nice try,' said Ballard. He stopped walking. Suckling wandered on a pace or two before turning to find Ballard grinning at him.
'Who sent you?'
'Nobody sent me,' Suckling said.
'Clever to send the court gossip. I almost fell for it. You're very plausible.'
There wasn't enough fat on Suckling's face to hide the tic in his cheek.
'What do they suspect me of? Do they think I'm conniving with Mironenko, is that it? No, I don't think they're that stupid.'
Suckling shook his head, like a doctor in the presence of some incurable disease. 'You like making enemies?' he said.
'Occupational hazard. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I don't.'
'There's changes in the air,' Suckling said. 'I'd make sure you have your answers ready.'
'Fuck the answers,' Ballard said courteously. 'I think it's about time I worked out the right questions.'
Sending Suckling to sound him out smacked o
f des- peration. They wanted inside information; but about what? Could they seriously believe he had some involvement with Mironenko; or worse, with the RGB itself? He let his resentment subside; it was stirring up too much mud, and he needed clear water if he was to find his way free of this confusion. In one regard, Suckling was perfectly correct: he did have enemies, and with Cripps indisposed he was vulnerable. In such circumstances there were two courses of action. He could return to London, and there lie low, or wait around in Berlin to see what manoeuvre they tried next. He decided on the latter. The charm of hide-and-seek was rapidly wearing thin.
As he turned North onto Leibnizstrasse he caught the reflection of a grey-coated man in a shop window. It was a glimpse, no more, but he had the feeling that he knew the fellow's face. Had they put a watch-dog onto him, he wondered? He turned, and caught the man's eye, holding it. The suspect seemed embarrassed, and looked away. A performance perhaps; and then again, perhaps not. It mattered little, Ballard thought. Let them watch him all they liked. He was guiltless. If indeed there was such a condition this side of insanity.
A strange happiness had found Sergei Mironenko; hap- piness that came without rhyme or reason, and filled his heart up to overflowing.
Only the previous day circumstances had seemed unendurable. The aching in his hands and head and spine had steadily worsened, and was now accompanied by an itch so demanding he'd had to snip his nails to the flesh to prevent himself doing serious damage. His body, he had concluded, was in revolt against him. It was that thought which he had tried to explain to Ballard: that he was divided from himself, and feared that he would soon be torn apart. But today the fear had gone.
Not so the pains. They were, if anything, worse than they'd been yesterday. His sinews and ligaments ached as if they'd been exercised beyond the limits of their design; there were bruises at all his joints, where blood had broken its banks beneath the skin. But that sense of imminent rebellion had disappeared, to be replaced with a dreamy peacefulness. And at its heart, such happiness.