by Mark Blair
‘What are his chances, doctor?’ Viktoriya said, almost too afraid to ask.
‘Hard to say. He’s young. The body is a marvellous thing.’
There was a pause.
‘We are not mafia, doctor, if that’s what you’re thinking. The mafia is the reason my friend is here.’
‘I see this every day. Our new-found freedom comes at a price.’ The doctor wrote down his number on a pad he pulled from his white coat. ‘This is my telephone number. If you need to speak with me at any time, just call. They are moving him to a private ward. Someone will come and find you and let you know where. You can see him then.’
Twenty minutes later she followed a nurse to the fourth floor and a private room normally reserved for Communist Party members. Hooked up to an IV and monitor, Misha lay there serene in a clean white gown and fresh head bandage. Viktoriya gently squeezed his warm hand and lowered herself into the leatherette armchair by his bed. What should she do now? The one man she would have naturally turned to for the answer was fighting for his life. And where was Yuri? No one had heard from him. She had to come up with the answer herself. Through the open door, Viktoriya took stock of two of Ivan’s men, heavily armed, standing next to two police officers. She relaxed a little. Ivan brought her a bowl of goulash from the hospital kitchen.
‘I’ve just heard the radio,’ he said, ‘it may explain Yuri’s silence. The general secretary has been taken ill and Gerashchenko has temporarily stepped into the role.’
‘I wonder how many people are buying into that?’ she said. Did this spell the end of perestroika? Would they all soon be fleeing the country? She looked back down again at the face of her helpless friend and fought off the urge to cry.
‘Come on, eat. You haven’t eaten all day.’
Ivan was right. She was hungrier than she thought. After devouring the goulash, she pulled a spare blanket over her and fell instantly asleep.
***
Viktoriya woke with a start. At first she wondered where she was. Disorientated, it all came flooding back to her. She turned to look at Misha, unconscious in the hospital bed beside her. She got up and stretched her stiff limbs, rubbing her aching back and neck from sleeping awkwardly. Her watch said two in the morning. She walked to the open door.
‘Would you like me to get you a coffee, Vika,’ one of the two bodyguards asked.
‘No, thank you,’ she responded in a cracked voice, ‘a glass of water would be good though.’
The guard disappeared down the corridor towards the small ward kitchen. It was then, with only one man left, she noticed they were missing.
‘Where are the police?’ Viktoriya asked anxiously. ‘Weren’t they supposed to have been on duty?’
‘They left about fifteen minutes ago. They said their replacements would be here shortly,’ the bodyguard replied, sensing that he had missed something.
‘Where’s Ivan?’ Viktoriya demanded.
‘Out in front of the hospital with the others.’
With a rising sense of alarm, she grabbed him by the arm. ‘Go and find him.’
The second bodyguard came back with the glass of water. She took a long gulp knowing that it might be her last for a while.
‘Vladimir, Kostya’s men are coming.’
Viktoriya did not question her intuition. The police had abandoned them, and they weren’t going to be there when Kostya’s men returned and the shooting started.
One guard here and around seven between the ward and exit, she thought; enough to put up a resistance but not to overcome a determined attack. There were too many exits, and there was no way they could cover them all.
Ivan appeared, breathless, gun in hand.
‘We’ve got to get Misha out of this room!’
More bodyguards appeared. Moving Misha might kill him, but staying was certain death.
‘Okay, Vladimir, we need to move Misha to another floor. Disconnect the monitors; be careful not to touch the IV.’
Vladimir waved at a colleague. Carefully they began disconnecting the monitor. A third man quickly arrived as a nurse responding to the flat monitor signal ran into the room.
‘What are you doing? He’s in no state to be moved!’
‘The people who tried to kill him this morning are coming back for him now. They’ll be here any minute,’ said Viktoriya, grabbing hold of one corner of the bed and flipping the wheel locks with her foot.
The nurse looked terrified.
‘We need your help,’ said Viktoriya. ‘We’ve got to get him off this floor, hide him.’
‘There’s an empty ward two floors down. I can show you,’ she said, pulling herself together and checking the IV was properly in place.
‘Thank you,’ said Viktoriya. ‘I’m going to ask you another huge favour,’ she pleaded. ‘We’re not staying in this hospital; it’s too difficult to defend. I need you to come with us.’
‘But I have a ward to look after… this is totally irregular… I am not a doctor. Where are you taking him?’ she protested, no doubt frightened to be caught up in a street killing.
‘There are other nurses on duty tonight. You are not on your own. I’m afraid I can’t give you a choice in this but you will be well rewarded.’ Viktoriya mentioned a number greater than her annual salary.
‘Let me tell the other duty nurse. I’ll need to get medical supplies to take with us. Where are you taking him?’ she asked a second time.
‘I’ll fill you in on the details when we are on our way but you will need enough medical supplies for the night and tomorrow at least.’
Viktoriya turned to Vladimir. ‘Go with her!’ And to the nurse, ‘Don’t give your colleague any details. If the ward needs cover you can have them call one of the off-duty nurses. I’ll make it well worth their while too.’
‘Take him down to floor two, ward six. I’ll be down there in a minute.’ The nurse pointed down the corridor to the service lift.
The security men wheeled the bed out of the room while Vladimir and the nurse headed to the nurses’ room.
Viktoriya walked back into the office and picked up the receiver and dialled. Come on, come on. The phone rang for a minute before it was wrenched out of its cradle. A breathless voice answered.
‘Grigory, I haven’t time to explain. Get yourself over to Morskaya.’ She hung up without giving him the opportunity to respond, and dashed out the room.
***
The two men’s transit passed unnoticed as they made their way up from the underground staff car park. Moving from floor to floor, gripping automatics concealed underneath green hospital orderly overalls, they headed for the fourth floor. It had not been difficult to find out on which ward Mikhail Revnik had been placed; one call to a police contact had quickly resolved that.
It took them less than five minutes to reach the lift and take it to the fourth floor. Overalls hanging loose and unfastened, fingers tightly round the trigger guards of their automatics, they exited the lift. It was empty; the hallway was deserted.
‘Fourth floor, right?’
The other nodded and pointed at the room number.
The abandoned cardiac monitor stood there flatlining, making its singular high-pitched monotone.
‘Somebody left in a hurry.’
Dashing back into the corridor, they almost bowled over a nurse.
‘Where is Mikhail Revnik?’ the first man asked threateningly. He edged out the barrel of his gun from under his gown. Her eyes travelled up to the lift floor indicator. It rested on two.
‘We haven’t got time, lady.’ He raised the gun and put it to her head. ‘Now where is he?’
She hesitated.
‘I’m going to count to three and then pull the trigger.’
‘It’s probably the second floor… second floor, ward six,’ she stammered.
Ignoring the li
ft, they took the staircase down to the second floor and listened for the sound of movement. A motorbike zipped by on the road below; a flashing blue light strobed the length of the hallway. Holding their automatics in front of them, they eased out onto the empty, wide, green-lino-covered walkway. Above them a faulty fluorescent light flickered on and off. Flattening themselves against the walls, one on each side, they edged forward, moving door to door, alert to any sound or movement. Two-thirds of the way along, they froze. A chair scraped against the floor. Silently, one of the men pointed to a ward door, three down on the left, very slightly ajar. It was marked with the number six. His partner a few feet ahead of him crept forward and squinted through the narrow aperture. The room was dimly lit. He could make out the edge of a hospital bed and the slim figure of a blonde woman leaning forward, plumping up the patient’s pillow.
Where were the guards? His partner pointed to the swing doors further down. She must have stationed her guards on the other side. Their best escape would be back up the stairway. He held up two fingers indicating the number of people in the room, braced himself and kicked open the door.
***
A bullet hit him full in the chest, sending him cartwheeling backwards towards the door. Viktoriya was already on her feet by the time the second man rushed into the room; against the back light of the doorway he was a perfect target. Viktoriya squared the barrel of the Makarov to the silhouette and loosed off two shots in rapid succession. Still standing, a look of shock horror on his face, he raised his gun to exact his dying revenge on the woman he knew had killed him. The patient rose from his bed and shot him at almost point-blank range.
A bullet exploded from the chamber of the dead man’s gun. Viktoriya felt a searing pain in her leg.
‘You’ve been hit!’ shouted Ivan, jumping out of the bed.
‘It’s all right, it’s only a scratch… I can have this attended to later.’
They were still half deafened by the close proximity of gunfire. The whole episode could not have lasted more than thirty seconds.
‘There’ll be more from where they came from, and others outside. We’ve got to get Misha out of here quickly,’ Viktoriya said, as two of their own men appeared from the corridor.
‘We need an ambulance.’
Two doors down, a nurse attended Misha guarded by two security men.
‘Where is the ambulance bay?’ she asked urgently of the nurse who was clearly terrified by the thunderous exchange. ‘Look, we are all going to get out of here,’ Viktoriya reassured her, ‘but you’ve got to focus now,’ she said calmly.
‘On the east side of the hospital.’ The nurse clicked the ward phone disconnect bar up and down and was quickly put through to the ambulance bay. A voice she recognised answered. ‘Albert, we have an emergency. We need to transfer a patient to the Aleksandrovskaya Hospital.’
‘Okay, Ivan, let’s clear the men to a less obvious distance for the ambulance crew and lock the other room. We don’t need any more complications right now.’
Chapter 47
Cherepovets
Yuri stood looking out of the window towards the runway and the fire crews still pouring water on the smouldering wreckage. Repair gangs cleared debris from the runway, filling gashes with steaming asphalt. A small crane manoeuvred itself into position and lifted a piece of wing that lay diagonally across the edge of the runway. A man waved it forward onto the muddy grass verge where it summarily deposited its load. There clearly wasn’t going to be any investigation, not of any meaning. How long would it take before they had the airstrip operational, Yuri thought, before the military police arrived? At most an hour or two at the rate they were progressing. And when they did arrive, how would he be sure they were who they said they were and had not been despatched by one of the clandestine services?
The crash and his arrest were not a coincidence, of that he was certain, and if they had tried to kill him once, wouldn’t they just finish the job? That would be much tidier than having a three-star general locked up in some prison or reinvented gulag. He had to escape, but how? He checked the window. Only a flimsy plastic downpipe, hanging off loose guttering, provided any means of descent to the concrete surface thirty feet below. And that was only if he could open the badly corroded window that had been glued into its frame with grey gloss paint. No, that would be fatal. The downpipe looked ready to detach itself from the wall without any help from him.
The sound of the door opening made him turn.
‘Captain?’
Derevenko stood in the doorway, a parka jacket in his hand.
‘Put this on, General.’ Yuri caught it and quickly pulled it on. ‘The major has given us a twenty minute start before he raises the alarm.’
There was no time to ask questions. Yuri flipped up his hood and followed Derevenko out the door. Save for a military jeep, the large open area between the building and the gatehouse was deserted, the guards gone. Fifty metres ahead, the security barrier stood raised and the sentry box abandoned.
For a moment Yuri wondered if it was a trap. Was it all part of an elaborate ruse? Shot while trying to escape. It would make life much simpler for whoever wanted him out the way. He looked over at Derevenko, who waved a set of car keys in the air.
‘Courtesy of the major, General,’ said Derevenko smiling.
‘You do not have to do this, Captain; you don’t have to get involved. You saved me once today already.’
‘I think I am, General. They didn’t mind killing me and my crew to get to you. That is what that was about?’
Yuri nodded. ‘As sure as I can be.’
Yuri jumped into the passenger seat as Derevenko gunned the engine. Seconds later they were through the gate headed towards Cherepovets.
‘So we can go any number of ways: Moscow, Leningrad, or east to Yekaterinburg. Russia is your oyster.’
‘Derevenko handed Yuri a map from the side pocket.
‘The MPs land in about an hour according to the major. They are going to be close on our heels.’
‘I have a bad feeling about them.’
Yev pointed to the front compartment.
Yuri reached forward and flipped open the lid, picked up his automatic and released the magazine clip. It was fully loaded. The major had not let him down after all. Which way to go? Leningrad and Moscow were a similar distance, maybe five hundred kilometres, he guessed. North-west to Leningrad, Viktoriya and a boat to Finland, or due south to Moscow, and whatever awaited him there. Leningrad and perpetual exile; the capital, arrest or the chance to clear his name. There was no real choice.
‘Moscow, it has to be, Yev.’
Derevenko nodded. ‘Offence is the best defence. You can’t play dead with these boys.’
Yuri opened the road map; west or east of the reservoir and Sheksna River? West was a little longer but took them out of the conurbation that much quicker, and if they had to beat a retreat they would be on the right side of the globe to head north to Leningrad.
‘A114, then south, Ustyuzhna…’
‘Kalinin, Klin…’
‘You’ve got it,’ said Yuri. He looked at his watch: it was nearly ten. ‘We can switch driving after an hour or so. We don’t want to be falling asleep at the wheel after what we’ve both been through.’
Snow began to fall.
‘They said there was early snow on the way,’ said Derevenko.
‘Let’s see how far we get?’
Chapter 48
Viktoriya watched the nurse and ambulance crew gently slide their hands under Misha and lift him delicately onto the hospital trolley. He had shown no sign of regaining consciousness. The nurse reassured her that this was intentional – a barbiturate-induced coma, she called it. The brain needed time to heal. All the same, she worried that her best friend might be a different person when and if he did eventually resurface. She bent down and kissed him on the
cheek.
‘Ivan, we need to split up, or they are going to spot us. You can lend me Vladek and take the rest of the men downstairs to the cars.’
Ivan extracted an automatic from his holster and handed it to her.
‘I know you know how to use this. I’ll see you downstairs by the ambulance exit ramp.’
Viktoriya donned a nurse’s uniform and tucked her hair securely under a white cap. The nurse adjusted her apron.
‘Perfect,’ she said, smoothing the fabric over Viktoriya’s shoulders. She handed her a mask and told her to hook it over her ears and pull it down so it partially obstructed her face.
Viktoriya saw Vladek on the brink of making some wisecrack.
‘And no smart comments from you,’ she said, smiling for the first time she could remember that day.
Vladek handed her gun back. She lifted her apron and secured it firmly under her belt and prayed she wouldn’t have to use it for the second time that night.
‘Are we all set?’
The nurse and two ambulance men nodded. Squeezed between a rock and a generous bonus, the two ambulance men had fallen quickly into line. Viktoriya would deal with the driver when they were safely on board.
The hospital was a maze of intersecting corridors. It was easy to become quickly disorientated. Viktoriya looked for a reassuring sign and began to worry that the nurse might have tipped off the police.
‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine… just get me back here tomorrow,’ said the nurse, clearly sensing her anxiety.
Viktoriya guessed she was more used to dealing with critical situations than most.
Five more minutes of twisting and turning and they came out unopposed on the pick-up bay. An ambulance slipped the rank and stopped next to the trolley. Viktoriya warned the nurse not to say anything to the driver; their destination was the Aleksandrovskaya. Up at the exit, two armed men she didn’t recognise had stopped an ambulance and were peering in.