Mazurka

by Campbell Armstrong

  One of the leading figures …

  Carl Sundbach was suddenly depressed. The murder of Romanenko wasn’t a decision he’d taken lightly. He and Aleksis had fought side by side for years, not always liking each other, and not always agreeing, but they’d developed a mutual trust, a dependency. And the Brotherhood’s plan had always seemed feasible to Carl, although less so with each passing year. It wasn’t just that his memory of his native country was beginning to fade around the edges and had begun to recede in importance to him. It wasn’t even the fact that age had depleted his energy, his sense of commitment. It was the idea that fresh new voices were being raised in the Soviet Union which had caused him to stop and think and to debate whether the Brotherhood’s way had any merit in the end, or whether it was time to put the scheme under wraps – at least until the new directions in Russia had come into focus. Perhaps the directions would be good, perhaps not. But it was a chance worth taking, especially when the consequences of the Brotherhood’s scheme could bring about wholesale slaughter – and not simply inside the Baltic countries.

  Carl, who knew Mikhail Kiss was beyond reasonable argument and could never be persuaded to give the Kremlin a chance, saw only one way to make the plan grind to a halt. Aleksis had to die. He had to die because nothing short of his murder would make Mikhail Kiss consider abandonment. And it hadn’t worked. If anything it had backfired, because both Kisses were simply more determined than ever to go ahead. Especially this young one, this terrifying boy with the yellow hair and the face that wouldn’t melt margariini, this young creature with ice in his veins.

  “I asked a question, Carl,” Andres Kiss said.

  “There are alternatives that are less destructive. That’s all I’m saying. I’m talking about reality.”

  “I’m listening,” Andres said. “Reality fascinates me.”

  “You don’t hear the pulse, sonny. You and Mikhail, you’re deaf men. You don’t want to hear.” Sundbach picked up the decanter, but it was empty.

  “Tell me about this pulse, Carl. I’m curious.”

  The old man wandered round the living-room in an unsteady way. “Things are changing over there. The time for this plan has gone, Andres. It’s time to put violence in cold storage.”

  “You really believe what you’re saying?”

  “Listen to me,” and here Sundbach placed a bony hand on the young man’s wrist. “We can’t get our country back the way it was. But we can get something back. We can get some kind of self-determination over there but only so long as we stay inside the system. So maybe it’s not independence. Maybe it’s not the way it was. But it’s the best goddam shot we’ve got! Your way is doomed, sonny. Your way is pure romantic bullshit – a fart on the wind, Andres. I didn’t always see it like that. But I’m prepared to give this new regime a chance.”

  Andres Kiss shook his head. “You swallow their crap about all these terrific changes?”

  “I believe it can happen. Slowly, sure. But it can happen.”

  “Nothing’s so cheap as words. The Russians can talk up some fine intentions. After all they’ve put us through, you’re still ready to trust them?”

  “Up to a point –”

  “You’ve grown soft in the head, Carl.”

  “Listen,” Sundbach said. “Try to have patience. Don’t go ahead with this foolish scheme. Things will get better in the old country. More freedoms will come. Why not let the new system have a chance? And if it doesn’t work out, you can go back to the plan later.”

  “In your world, Carl, cows will fly.”

  Sundbach sat down in a very old grey leather armchair. “You’re an impossible boy, Andres. What do you know? From where I sit I can smell milk on you.”

  “You want us to fail, don’t you?” Andres asked. “You want the whole fucking thing to fall apart!”

  Sundbach said nothing. Why bother to answer the question? It was wasted breath. Tomorrow, over the Baltic, Andres Kiss might have his moment of truth.

  “What did you feel when Aleksis was shot, Carl? Glad?”

  “Glad isn’t the word,” Sundbach said.

  “What is the word, Carl?”

  Sundbach was quiet a moment. “I thought it would be a time for quiet reconsideration. Why rush into violence? Why go ahead with something so drastic if another way could be found?”

  Andres Kiss stepped closer to where the old man sat. He saw Sundbach turn his face to the side and look across the room. Andres folded the hand in his pocket around the length of soft, silky material that lay concealed there. It wouldn’t take long, he thought. A minute perhaps. A little more. He gazed into Sundbach’s discoloured eyes, detecting nervousness in them, something furtive.

  Andres touched Sundbach’s shoulder very lightly. “You listen to the Russians, you think you’re hearing something new. But there’s nothing new. It’s the same old song only with a new singer. Freedom isn’t in the melody, Carl. The words haven’t changed. The only thing that’s changed is your mental condition.”

  “All I said was we give it a try. Postpone –”

  “Postpone nothing.”

  Sundbach began to rise from his chair, but Andres gently pushed him back into it. It wasn’t a violent gesture, but Sundbach interpreted it that way, as the first trivial skirmish in a situation that would escalate. He tried to rise again, but again Andres pushed him back down. Carl Sundbach, who had always been a little afraid of this young man, albeit in an abstract sense, was surprised to find how quickly the fear could become a concrete thing.

  Andres Kiss said, “With Aleksis dead, you thought the plan would be abandoned, didn’t you? That’s how you wanted it to be.”

  Sundbach didn’t speak. He sensed violence all around him, the very air of his apartment electrified by it. He saw it in this young man’s cold eyes and mirthless smile. So much beauty and no heart.

  “You thought if Aleksis was killed, Mikhail would lose his nerve and give up.”

  Sundbach shut his eyes. The sound of a gun fired in a railroad station echoed through his imagination. He didn’t believe he’d been mistaken in arranging for Aleksis to be murdered. But he’d failed to change anything, and it was a failure purchased at a very high price.

  Andres Kiss took the soft length of material from his pocket. It weighed nothing in his hand. He let the thing dangle against the old man’s lips. Carl opened his eyes quickly.

  “What’s this?” He pushed it away from his mouth.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “A stocking, a lady’s nylon.”

  “You got it, Carl.”

  “Mikhail sent you here,” Sundbach said. “Mikhail sent you here to be my goddam assassin!”

  Sundbach, panicked into movement, tried to get up out of the chair but Andres struck him quickly on the mouth, knocking him dizzy. Sundbach felt the nylon go around his neck and he kicked vigorously at the young man, striking Andres Kiss on his cheek. The old man got up, rushing across the room to the door. Andres caught him there. He pinned him against the wood and shoved his palm up under Carl’s chin and thrust the old man’s face back. Sundbach gasped and made a claw of one hand and dug it into Andres’s forehead, scratching the flesh, breaking the skin. For a moment, shocked by pain, Andres Kiss released his grip and Carl was able to get a hand on the door-handle. But before he could pull it open Andres struck him on the back of the head with his clenched fist.

  Carl slid to the floor and moaned.

  Kiss went down on his knees, twisting the nylon stocking around Carl’s neck even as the old man flayed at him feebly with his fists.

  “For the love of God, Andres.”

  Andres crossed the ends of the nylon. He pulled them very tightly, hearing Carl groan and feeling Sundbach’s hands, which fluttered desperately upwards, pressing against his mouth. Andres held his breath and kept tightening the stocking.

  And then Carl was finally silent and his neck, caught in the fatal tourniquet Andres Kiss had applied, hung at an odd angle to his body. Kis
s, out of breath, stood up.

  “I think it’s time,” Frank Pagan said, and got out of the car, slamming the passenger door shut. He took a step in the direction of Sundbach’s building, conscious of Klein sliding out from behind the wheel, aware at the same time, from the edge of his vision, of the TV repair van pulling away from the pavement.

  Later, Pagan might marvel at the gall of the operation, but his first impression was of the van swinging in a squealing arc, making an illegal turn on a one-way street. Then the vehicle clambered up on the kerb and struck a fire-hydrant, which immediately sent a great jet of water rainbowing into the air behind Klein’s Dodge. Pagan, halfway across the street, watched the van continue in its destructive path, seeing it plough into the trunk of Klein’s car, which crumpled like construction paper. Klein, emerging from the driver’s side, was tossed forward by the impact. He fell face down under the glittering cascade of water that rose out of the ruptured hydrant. Pagan hurried back to the sidewalk and leaned over Klein, who was sitting up and dazed, looking at Pagan with the expression of a man on thorazine.

  “Holy shit,” Klein muttered. “Was it lightning?”

  The van, which had the logo Rivoli’s TV & Radio Repair on the side panel, wheeled into reverse and pulled away from the smashed Dodge. It came to an abrupt halt half-on, half-off the sidewalk and then, roaring madly, lunged straight towards Pagan, breaking open plastic garbage sacks and strewing the air with fishbones and potato peels and clouds of feasting, breeding flies. Dear Christ! Pagan, half-blinded by water, threw himself to the side as the van rocketed towards him. He slid down a short flight of steps to the door of a basement apartment, twisting his head in time to see the van roar along the street. He rose, raced back up to the pavement. The van was already turning the corner at the end of the street, leaving a pall of blue exhaust like something conjured out of existence by a flamboyant magician.

  He walked to where Max Klein sat. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live,” Klein said.

  Pagan helped Klein to his feet, then stared through the sunlit water at the empty space where the Jaguar had been. Slick, he thought. The whole thing, dead slick. He looked up at the windows of Sundbach’s apartment and something caused him to shiver, and he thought he knew what.

  “You want to go after the van?” Klein asked.

  Pagan saw the way Klein’s feathery red hair had been plastered across his scalp with water. “Let’s go back to Carl’s.”

  Saaremaa Island, the Baltic

  Colonel Yevgenni Uvarov walked between the computers and the consoles, passing the stern portrait of Lenin, whose eyes seemed to follow one no matter where one moved. The Colonel gazed across the wide expanse of floor towards his desk, then up at the clock on the wall. He couldn’t put this moment off for long, not now. He checked his watch, returned his eyes to the clock, as if he were all at once obsessed by time – but he was in reality stalling, delaying the moment from which there was absolutely no return. Burning the bridges, Uvarov thought. Setting them all aflame.

  He moved towards his desk. A technician named Agarbekov stepped in front of him. Uvarov was startled by the sudden movement and it must have shown on his face because Agarbekov gazed at him strangely.

  “Console eight isn’t working, sir,” Agarbekov said.

  Why was he being bothered by this utterly trifling detail now? Uvarov wondered. “You know the procedures, Agarbekov.”

  Agarbekov was hesitant. “I followed procedures, comrade Colonel, and nothing was ever done. The repairs were never made. Don’t you remember?”

  Uvarov put one hand up to the side of his face. He was flustered suddenly, thinking he heard reproach in Agarbekov’s voice. He couldn’t remember, it was really that simple. For weeks he’d been operating on a level where ordinary things receded, and his memory malfunctioned. He was living – not in the now, the present – but in the immediate future. He looked at Agarbekov, a white-faced twenty-year-old from Kiev with a lock of greasy black hair that fell over his forehead and which he kept pushing away.

  “Are you unwell, comrade Colonel?” Agarbekov asked.

  Uvarov shook his head. “I’m perfectly fine, Agarbekov. I have so many things on my mind. I can’t be expected to concern myself about one small repair. Go through the usual procedures a second time.” The sharpness in the voice, the impatience – Uvarov wondered if Agarbekov detected stress in his behaviour. He smiled and tried to appear calm. He placed a hand on Agarbekov’s shoulder and made a mild little joke. “Procedures are designed by Moscow with only one purpose, Agarbekov. They weren’t written to help you, only to test your ingenuity in getting around them. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I had my suspicions, comrade Colonel,” Agarbekov said.

  Uvarov walked to his desk. He sat down, looked at the clock on the wall. He was aware of Agarbekov watching him from across the room. Had the small joke alerted Agarbekov to something? Uvarov wondered. How could it have done? It was innocent, a simple act of sympathy for Agarbekov, who was caught up in the often stupid rules and regulations and procedures that were a part of military life. Uvarov shut his eyes and wondered if Agarbekov was KGB, if he’d been stationed here to observe men in sensitive positions. He opened his eyes, and now there wasn’t any sign of Agarbekov. KGB! You see them everywhere. You imagine them all over the place.

  He opened the middle drawer of his desk and quietly removed a sheet of typewritten paper. He scanned the words quickly even though he knew them by heart. Then he looked at the top of the page where bold letters read: From the Office of the Deputy Minister. Uvarov picked up his pen and his hand shook and he had to work hard to still it. He carefully signed the name S. F. Tikunov across the bottom of the page, then he rose and walked to the Orders Board, where he pinned the sheet up. He could barely breathe. He looked at the sheet hanging on the board and he had the thought that his forgery was utterly childish, anybody could see through it, it would be spotted at once by the operators who religiously took note of all new material on the Orders Board.

  His face covered in perspiration, he went unsteadily back to his desk. He passed the computers, two of which were out of order still, and lay exposed to his view – circuit boards, yards of thin wire, the intestinal confusion of broken electronic equipment. He looked at the clock again. At midnight, the message he’d placed on the Orders Board would be routinely transmitted by computer from this installation which – as the major tracking station in the area – was an electronic post office for all pertinent orders issued in Moscow by the Deputy Minister, and relayed to a score of lesser installations along the Baltic coast.

  Uvarov sat down. He was conscious of Agarbekov watching from the other side of the enormous room. The young Ukrainian’s face was white and expressionless, floating in the bleak fluorescent lighting like a balloon. Don’t stare at me, Uvarov thought. But then Agarbekov had turned away already and had vanished beyond the banks of screens, leaving Uvarov with a strange sense of unfocused discomfort.

  The Colonel looked in the direction of the Orders Board. Even though he couldn’t read anything from this distance, he felt that the sheet he’d just pinned there was very distinct, the letters large and bloated. He imagined he could read it plainly. Routine Electronic Maintenance Order Number 09 06, 1600–1700hrs Wednesday September 6.

  Uvarov got up. For a second he was tempted to remove the notice before anyone had seen it. But he’d made his mind up, and he couldn’t cancel now, and besides one of the operators was already standing in front of the board and looking at the faked order pinned there. Uvarov, who expected his forgery to be detected there and then, was filled with relief when the operator turned away from the order without any unusual expression on his face.

  Uvarov stepped out of the building. The night air was chilly and he shivered. He listened to the soft sound of the tide, and he thought of the dark waters beyond the range of his vision, and how for one short hour tomorrow the defences of the Baltic coast would be stripped of their eyesight,
and in this state of temporary blindness astonishingly vulnerable.

  15

  Manhattan

  Frank Pagan’s room had that dreary unlived-in look of hotel rooms all the world over. As soon as he stepped inside, he removed his jacket, still damp from the fire-hydrant, then his shirt. From the inner pocket of the jacket he took out a long brown envelope, which he set on the bedside table. Then he lay across the bed and pondered the ceiling.

  He felt the weariness that is an accumulation of things. Travel, frustration, loneliness. And murder. He’d known roughly what he was going to see inside the old man’s apartment, he’d guessed it, but even so he hadn’t been prepared for the sight of Carl Sundbach with a nylon stocking knotted round his throat. There, surrounded by all his Baltic memorabilia, the old man lay in the middle of the room as if he were himself just another useless, albeit grotesque, keepsake. The broken spectacles, the false teeth scattered over the rug – murder had a way of diminishing a person, of breaking somebody down into his less admirable components. And the killer, assisted by whoever drove the kamikaze van, had slipped neatly away.

  Pagan went inside the bathroom, doused his face with cold water, returned to the bedroom, turned on the radio – what this room needed was noise. He found a station playing Frankie Ford’s classic Sea Cruise, and he walked to the window, looking out over mid-afternoon Manhattan. The sun, made hazy by pollution, was the colour of a bruised daffodil. A frolicsome wind flapped along the cross streets and died out in the avenues. Pagan pressed his forehead to the window. Since there existed no such company as Rivoli’s TV & Radio Repair – surprise, surprise – the problem now was whether Max Klein could extract some useful information from the registration plate of the Jaguar.