by Mark Blair
Chapter 41
‘So where is she being held?’ asked Konstantin. He’d arrived unannounced five minutes before at Malaya Morskaya and been quickly ushered in to Misha’s office.
‘Leningrad Oblast Main Internal Affairs Directorate, GUVD,’ replied Ivan. Vladimir had just radioed through that they had moved her to police headquarters on Suvorovskiy Prospect.
‘That’s a shithole of a place,’ said Misha. ‘People go in there and never come out, not in one piece anyway.’
‘Why was she arrested?’ said Konstantin.
‘I’ve sent a lawyer over there to find out. It’s something to do with the murder of that Khozraschet director who got washed up on the Neva years ago. It doesn’t make any sense… what would she have to do with that? She was only a student at the time.’
Konstantin rubbed his chin. What could they have on her after all this time? How many years had it been? Only five people had known, if he included Viktoriya’s father, and he was clearly no longer a witness.
‘Any ideas?’ prompted Misha.
‘Nope,’ he said, genuinely at a loss. And if they had something on her, did they have something on him? The police weren’t knocking on his door, not yet. He had to trust she would keep her cool and deny everything, but the GUVD were hardly famous for their record on human rights. They had broken stronger people than Viktoriya.
‘Let me dig around, see what I can come up with. Let me know what your lawyer says.’
For once, thought Konstantin, not without some irony, they were on the same side.
***
Viktoriya waited for what seemed hours. The room was airless, lit by two recessed lights protected by a metal mesh. Her jewellery and watch had been removed when she had arrived and there was no way she could measure passing time. A policeman entered and took down her personal details: date of birth, address, place of work, marital status. When she had asked for a glass of water she was simply ignored.
A few minutes later the interview room door swung open. Two police officers walked in and took the chairs opposite her: one a woman – a sergeant by her stripes – and the other, the man who had served the arrest warrant at her apartment.
‘So tell me, where were you on the night of December 11, 1982?’ asked the man.
‘I’ve no idea; you can hardly expect me to remember so far back. Can you remember what you were doing that night?’
The sergeant leaned forward threateningly. ‘You may have money and a fancy apartment, but in here they are worth nothing… don’t be smart.’
The man extracted a photograph from a file.
‘Do you recognise this man?’
It was Antyuhin. She felt her heart quicken and her face go red.
‘No,’ she said, looking him directly in the eye with a confidence she did not feel.
‘The night before he disappeared it says in the file he drank at the Muzey bar. You worked there as a student – it says so here in your file.’ He referred to a second file with her name on it. It was at least three centimetres thick.
‘Yes, that’s true, I waitressed there as a student… but I served hundreds of customers. I don’t keep a mental log of each of them. Do you remember everyone you interview?’
‘Absolutely.’
He picked up the other file again. ‘It goes on to say that a young girl, of your description, was spotted outside the Palace Bar the following night, the night he disappeared and was probably murdered.
‘Murdered?’ She acted astonished. ‘And you think I had something to do with it?’
‘There are witnesses that say he drank at the Palace that evening.’
‘I did meet my boyfriend that night outside the Palace Bar. I remember the policemen. I never saw this man though,’ she said, tapping the photograph.
The captain reached into the file again and tossed an ID card onto the table.
‘And you haven’t seen this before?’
It was Antyuhin’s ID card. How had it got into their hands? Had Kostya betrayed her? But that didn’t make sense either; he would only be incriminating himself if he had.
‘It came with this note.’
He showed her a piece of paper with her name on it, nothing else.
‘An anonymous note, it’s all circumstantial. You should be trying to find the person who sent you this. I want to see my lawyer.’
The captain picked up the papers he had spread on the table and carefully put them back in their folder.
‘We are trying to locate your previous flatmate, Agnessa; maybe she can throw some light on this.’
Chapter 42
Konstantin sat in his armchair, staring at his desk, going over that night nearly seven years before. Ilia, who, with his friend Lev, had been with them on that night long ago, had been as surprised as he when confronted with Viktoriya’s arrest. What possible motive would he have anyway? And Ilia knew the price of disloyalty.
He reached into his desk drawer and felt for Antyuhin’s ID card, as if by looking at his photo it might tell him more… nothing. He scrambled around, unpacked it; the ID was nowhere to be found. For a moment he wondered whether it had fallen down the back of the drawer, but then he noticed the bag of coke. He held it up to the light. It was a good deal emptier than when he last looked at it. He picked up the telephone and dialled the bar upstairs. A minute later Dimitri Bazhukov appeared in the doorway.
Konstantin looked at his watch: eight o’clock.
‘Where is Adriana?’
‘Upstairs, getting ready to go on?’
‘Get someone else to cover for her and send her down. In fact, accompany her down. I don’t want her doing a runner.’
Alone again, Konstantin wondered what was happening at the GUVD. He knew Viktoriya; she was smart, but she wasn’t indestructible.
Adriana walked into the room and sauntered over to his desk. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and held in place by a headband.
‘Early for you, Kostya. As you see, I’m not properly dressed yet,’ she said sarcastically.
Konstantin picked up the small polythene bag containing the cocaine and waved it in front of her.
‘I reckoned you owed me after last time,’ she pouted defiantly.
‘Anything else you removed from my desk?’ he said casually. She shifted onto her other foot.
‘No, just some coke,’ she replied, shaking her head.
Konstantin got up, walked round the desk, grabbed her by the hair and banged the side of her face down hard on the desk. Doubled over and clearly in pain, she squinted up at him sideways.
‘All I took was the coke,’ she whimpered.
He lifted her head up from the table and this time banged her face down on the table. Blood gushed from her broken nose. He gave her her due; she did not give in easily. She was moaning now. Her legs gave in and collapsed. Konstantin dragged her by the hair to the coffee table, flicked on the cigar lighter and moved it close to her hair.
‘No, no, stop!’ she stammered. ‘All right, yes, I took the ID card. That bitch, she deserves it, with her airs and graces.’ Konstantin moved the flame closer and wondered if her hair would just singe or go up in a whoosh with all the product she had in it. ‘I posted it to the police with her name on a note – that’s all, nothing else. I didn’t mention you or anything.’
So they hadn’t got anything concrete yet, Konstantin thought, it would all be circumstantial. Maybe they could place Antyuhin at the Muzey the night before he disappeared but then so what… what else?
‘Dimitri, find Agnessa Raskolnikova Agapova. She works at Technopromexport. Keep her out of sight; send her on holiday… anything, while I sort this out. And you,’ he said to Adriana, ‘you are going to write a confession, fiction of course, that a punter gave you the ID and that in a fit of jealous rage you tried to
incriminate Viktoriya Nikolaevna. Igor is then going to take you down to Suvorovskiy and you are going to hand it in personally to the police and take the consequences. Do I make myself clear?’
She nodded.
‘And clean yourself up, you’re a mess.’ Konstantin let go of her hair and pulled her to her feet.
Bazhukov waited until Igor had led Adriana out of the room.
Konstantin looked up at him, wondering why he was still hanging around.
‘There was a message from the general, boss. He said to make sure you got it, he was in a hurry.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Stroika… just Stroika… he said you’d understand.’
13 October 1989
Chapter 43
Moscow
Yuri boarded the military transport by the cargo ramp and made his way up to the cockpit. Four faces looked up at him as he entered.
‘General,’ said the captain. He introduced himself as Captain Yevgeny Derevenko. ‘We’ll be pushing off in fifteen minutes, now that you are on board. There’s a seat up here in the cockpit, if you’d prefer.’
Yuri nodded and buckled himself in in the seat behind the co-pilot. Opening his attaché case, he pulled out his brief for the weapon’s test scheduled for that afternoon in Archangel – a new anti-aircraft shoulder missile – and sat there staring at it, struggling to concentrate. Misha had assured him Viktoriya would soon be released and that Konstantin had it all in hand, but the fact was that she hadn’t been, not yet. His first instinct, when Misha had told him, was to hop on a plane to Leningrad, but Misha had convinced him against it and persuaded him he would be more use to her in Moscow with his contacts there if there was no progress. He had reassured himself he could be back in Moscow that evening if necessary but still a big part of him felt he was deserting her.
‘Coffee, General?’ The engineer handed him a welcome shot of caffeine. He looked at his watch: seven thirty.
Ten minutes later they were airborne. Yuri marked familiar landmarks as they cleared Moscow on a perfect October morning. There was nothing he could do now. He would ring Misha when he landed at Archangel and decide whether to return that afternoon.
Yuri looked around the crew, each intent on some task or other. Hardly anyone spoke. He wondered if they would be more talkative if he weren’t riding up front but was grateful for the quiet after everything that had been going on. He picked up his brief again, ready to read, when a loud thud reverberated down the fuselage. The aircraft shuddered like a fatally wounded bird.
‘We’ve lost all fuel pressure on the port engine,’ said the co-pilot, reading off the control panel. The aircraft lurched to the left. Derevenko threw his coffee into the bin, reached forward and switched off the autopilot.
Warning lights flashed red. An alarm sounded. Yuri leaned forward and looked back at the high octane fuel that trailed the aircraft.
‘Pyotr,’ said the captain to the flight engineer, ‘cut the fuel supply to the port engine.’
Derevenko took a firm hold of the stick to correct the yaw. The aircraft steadied momentarily.
‘Send out a Mayday, Anatoly,’ the captain said calmly. ‘Let’s do a position check.’
The navigator checked the computer navigation system and a foldout map indicating surrounding airfields.
‘The nearest airport is Cherepovets, 100 kilometres to the south-east’ said the navigator, reading out the bearing. He handed the map to the captain.
‘Anatoly, give them our position and airspeed.’
‘We don’t want to bring her in over the city,’ he said, studying the map. ‘We need to swing in over the mountains to the north.’
‘We can jettison fuel here,’ said the navigator. He indicated a position twenty kilometres south of Cherepovets.
Anatoly switched to Mayday frequency.
‘Air traffic control Cherepovets, this is Flight 236, we have an emergency… do you read?’
There was a pause and then the reply: ‘We read you, Flight 236. We have you on radar.’
Yuri looked over Derevenko’s shoulder at the map; a mountain still stood between them and the runway… if they made it that far. It was hardly the easiest approach, even on full power. Yuri guessed their chances at less than even.
Derevenko tacked the aircraft through a slow turn eastwards. The co-pilot looked rattled but busy, checking instruments and gauges. The flight engineer and navigator had their heads down concentrating on the flight displays and mapping systems.
‘We just follow the book, all of us. It’s not going to be easy but we can bring her in. Is there any coffee left in the thermos, Anatoly?’ asked the captain, trying to bring some normalcy to the situation.
Anatoly reached for the thermos and poured his friend a cup of hot strong coffee, his hand shaking.
‘General?’
Yuri held out his cup for a top-up.
Cloud had settled in over the mountains ahead. If there was any error they would have little or no time to adjust their inbound course. With only one engine and no fuel they would have insufficient lift or time to circle the airport a second time and the descent from the mountain to the forest canopy in front of the runway would be almost vertical.
The minutes ticked by painfully slowly.
‘We’ll only have one chance at this, boys,’ said Derevenko.
‘This is air traffic, Flight 236 adjust your bearing five degrees to south. This will put you into the wind when you approach the mountain.’
‘Roger that, control tower. That will help’ said Derevenko, turning around to face Yuri. ‘It will give us some natural lift.’
The mountain loomed on the radar. It would not be long now, just minutes. The captain banked the plane using the rudder to counteract the effect of the dead engine and began a one hundred and fifty knot turn before tipping the yoke forward to begin their descent.
The aircraft yawed as the plane picked up speed and the flight engineer started to dump fuel. The captain stared alternately at the radar and out the cockpit window. They were descending rapidly now through thick cloud. Air traffic had told them this would break at about five thousand feet, which was no great height above the mountain top. Eight thousand feet… seven thousand feet… Yuri watched the LED clock their descent. Derevenko had already switched the warning systems to silent. Every one would be flashing or buzzing right now.
The cloud broke. They had come in too low. The mountain rose up in front of them, a flat wall of stone. Derevenko reached for the throttle. He had only seconds to correct the Antonov’s height before they flew into the cliff face. Pulling back on the yoke, he throttled the engine to full power and applied left rudder with his foot to prevent the aircraft turning round on itself. A fraction’s delay and the engine kicked in. The nose of the aircraft lifted, hauling its load upwards, the noise deafening. Loose objects clattered to the deck. Slowly at first, but with gathering momentum, the aircraft began to rise.
Too slow… too slow! thought Yuri. Like a siren, the mountain beckoned them forward.
Seconds later, it was upon them. The screeching and rending of metal seemed to go on forever. Yuri imagined rock ripping undercarriage panels and lights.
‘Air traffic control,’ said the captain, ‘we’re over. We’ve incurred damage. We are beginning our final descent.’
Final descent, Yuri said to himself.
Derevenko made one final check. ‘Everyone strapped in? General?’
Yuri fastened his seat belt as tight as it would go.
‘Flaps half down, Anatoly.’
Derevenko tipped the controls forward and throttled back. The aircraft nosed down towards the forest that stretched for a mile directly in front of the runway.
‘Eighty-five knots,’ Derevenko read from the airspeed dial. ‘Wheels down,’ he said calmly.
Anatoly pulled the lever
to lower the landing gear, but nothing happened – the undercarriage display flashed fault. It must have been damaged in the scrape.
‘Air traffic control, we have no landing gear. I’m going to crash-land. Brace to my order.’
Nineteen kilotons of metal hurtled earthward. Yuri could see the forest immediately below and then, in front, the runway welcoming the Antonov to her final resting place.
Derevenko lifted her nose a fraction. She was parallel with the surface now. Eighty-five knots and they crossed the runway’s edge.
‘Brace!’ he shouted, and plunged the controls forward. Anatoly, on cue, cut all power to the engine.
All that was aeronautical flight vanished in that instant. The stricken aircraft lost all lift and collapsed onto the runway. Torn by gravitational force and mortally wounded, she began to disintegrate as she hurtled, sparks flying, along the landing strip, a half-dozen emergency vehicles in pursuit. There was nothing they could do now until the aircraft came to a halt, exploded, or both… except pray.
Finally unable to bear the stresses pulling her in every direction, the Antonov snapped. The starboard wing tore free of the fuselage as the Antonov abandoned its preordained route and ploughed off the runway into the mud and quite suddenly stopped.
Silence replaced the ear-splitting sound of rending metal. Frozen for seconds that seemed like minutes, Yuri’s hearing adjusted to the sound of burning and fire engines. The engineer was only semi-conscious and bleeding from a cut to the face. Yuri hit the release of his safety belt and wrestled him from his seat. How long they had before the whole aircraft went up could only be seconds. The captain and co-pilot opened the emergency exit and helped lower the engineer to the ground, Yuri followed, and the captain jumped last. Four firemen rushed up and pointed towards the fire trucks. They staggered thirty feet before the fuel tank ruptured and the explosion blew them off their feet. A hand pounding his back told Yuri he was still alive. He looked up at Derevenko’s mud-covered face.