‘What if you don’t get her out? I get nothing from this.’
‘We’re down to the wire, Harry. No guarantees. If you don’t give me the name, we pull out and you’ll never find her. That’ll be the end of it. I promise we’ll do our best. I can do nothing else.’
Harry stared straight ahead of him. Row upon row of bottles from all over the world were piled up behind the bar, but he didn’t see any of them. He hadn’t planned for the way he’d feel when the moment came.
Yanayev began speaking again but he couldn’t hear him. People were singing and shouting, waves of laughter rose and fell and it seemed to Harry that the world didn’t give a damn what he was about to do.
In a moment, surrounded by raucous revellers in a Georgetown bar, he would reach into his pocket and sign a death warrant for a man, thousands of miles away, heading for an airport and dreaming of a new life. A man he had never met.
Too bizarre, almost, to comprehend.
Sure, he had done terrible things in the past – but always for the country. Never for himself. This time it was personal.
My own hand on the gun.
Harry reached inside his jacket and took out an envelope.
‘I don’t do this with any pleasure, Vitaly.’
Yanayev stood up and stared angrily into the American’s eyes. ‘Since when has any of this been about pleasure, Harry? You want your package, you pay for it.’
Inside his car, Yanayev tore open the envelope and swore involuntarily.
‘Yob’ tvayu Mat’.’ The most brutal, commonplace obscenity in the Russian language.
Mazurin’s name meant nothing to him – but the paper made clear his flight was leaving Russia in just over ninety minutes.
There was no time for security. Against all protocol, he dialled a Moscow number and dictated the name and the flight number that Harry had given him.
He was asked to repeat it.
‘For fuck’s sake I just told you … you want it broadcast on every TV network? Mazurin, Arkady. Flight 640 from Domodedovo.’
The connection was cut and Yanayev sank back into his seat. He was breathing heavily.
Had it worked? Had he sent it in time? Would Moscow get its act together and detain the man – or fuck about for two hours and then blame the disaster on him?
He didn’t know, but he’d hear soon enough.
DOMODEDOVO AIRPORT, MOSCOW
Much, much later Margo Lane was to recall the sequence of events that followed in excruciating detail – as if it had transpired in slow motion.
She had become part of the airport furniture. Around her the travellers, coated and scarved, hurried to their flights. To all of them she appeared relaxed and good-humoured. Until Evans’s voice broke into her ear.
‘What is it?’
‘Visitors.’
‘How many?’
‘Six in two cars.’
‘Blue lights?’
‘No. But they’re in a hurry.’
‘You sure you know where they’re headed?’
‘I am now. Light just came on in the fourth-floor apartment.’
‘Keep watching.’
Less than thirty seconds later, Evans came back to her.
‘They’re leaving in a hurry – both cars. They’ve just put the blue lights on the roof. FSB, I’m guessing. Looks like he’s blown.’
Almost in slow motion, Margo finished her third coffee, picked up her mobile and dialled Arkady’s number but the call diverted immediately. She tried a second time.
‘He’s not picking up.’
‘I don’t have another number. Can you head him off?’ Evans’s voice seemed to have risen an octave. She didn’t reply.
Beyond the coffee shop and the check-in desks she was already scanning the main doors for any sign of him. Crowds were streaming into the terminal. Harder to make out the faces, raw from the cold, shrouded in caps and fur hats.
She tried Arkady’s mobile a final time but still there was no reply. Where the fuck was he? If she couldn’t find him, the man would be dead within minutes.
‘How long is this going to take?’
Arkady leaned forward to the driver. Traffic was blocked solid on the main approach road to the airport.
‘I don’t know.’ The driver was surprisingly breezy. ‘Always like this around six. Especially in the snow. Last week I sat here for almost an hour – just to go the last 300 metres.’
Arkady breathed deeply. It was to be expected. There was no cause for concern. He sat back and shut his eyes.
He remembered the first time he’d travelled in a taxi – that was in the early days when the KGB had posted him to Kharkov in Ukraine. He and the other trainees were just a bunch of kids, looking for something different, some fun; didn’t really believe all the crap about building Socialism – it was just a way in … You had to buy a ticket to see the show.
And the show was all about joining the Party and going to discos and special shops, and Beatles records and caviar, when you really made it. And girls, only too happy to sleep with your Party card.
What’s more there had been travel – you acquired the magic label ‘Viyezdnoi’ – literally ‘eligible for travel abroad’ – and that had been gold dust. It meant you could pass through the borders, not just to the other miserable East Bloc states, but all the way to the spanking, brand new West, with cafés that sold food and coffee on clean tables, reached along clean streets with glossy shops, with assistants who smiled and asked if they could help you – and even a little money in the pocket to spend. So that when you came home, you had a gift or two for the ladies and you could lord it over everyone, how you’d seen London or Paris, drunk champagne even if you hadn’t – and pissed yourself at midnight along the Champs-Élysées. Which of course you had.
It meant you were someone in a land where most people counted for nothing at all.
Arkady opened his eyes and studied the faces in the cars alongside. Everyone fraught, impatient. In the distance, he could hear sirens. Probably an accident. Russians were lousy drivers.
For the tenth time he felt for the passport and ticket in his inside coat pocket.
They were all that mattered. A passport out of Russia and a ticket to the West.
And they’d be there at the airport to watch him through. He knew they would. Brits were solid, reliable. It was good to have them on his side.
A question occurred to him. How would he celebrate when he reached New York?
He smiled.
Probably with a hot dog from one of the cheap mobile stands on Fifth Avenue. Plenty of onions and mustard on top, and the steam rising from it into the clear, cold, city air. Arkady could taste it.
Behind him, the sirens sounded much closer.
Margo could hear them too. Where the hell was Arkady?
Casually, she moved to the side of the main door, found a set of stairs and climbed two or three to get a vantage point. Mazurin was blown. The only question now was whether she could save him. She checked that the black VW was in position on the concourse. As she watched, the traffic began to flow again.
Someone would have told the airport police to clear the lanes because the big boys from Moscow were on their way. They weren’t going to leave this one for the locals.
The usual Russian pissing match – with everyone trying to scramble up the ladder on someone else’s back. Stand aside for the pros. A very big someone wanted to make his name and wanted it today.
And then she saw him – the long, black coat, silver hair, the single suitcase. Quite unmistakable.
In the same moment, a hundred metres away, she glimpsed the first of the blue lights. Police were shouting at drivers, waving wildly at them to get out the way, cars began skidding on the rutted, icy tarmac …
Margo knew there were only seconds left. She dropped her bag, jumped the stairs and pushed her way to the door.
Mazurin looked up – but the eyes registered nothing.
Time for a quick pass, a single hop
eless chance, nothing more.
She knocked into the Russian, held his arm briefly and apologized loudly. A quick hand on the shoulder let her lean in towards his ear.
‘You’re blown … Get out of here … you’ll never make the plane.’ Just a whisper. ‘Black VW opposite, keys inside. Find a safe place. We’ll get to you.’
And Margo had already passed, lost among the dark winter shapes and the cold, white faces, pushing in all directions through the airport.
Arkady stood still for a moment and looked around. His face registered no expression – he simply turned abruptly and headed towards the outer doors.
It must have been the first whistle that made him run.
And the fear that they’d seen him. He was still ten yards from the main door but he took in the grey uniforms in the distance. He barged into an elderly couple, saw others scatter in front of him, scared at the sight of a wild figure, too old to be running, too dangerous to be near.
Even before he’s through the doors, he can see the black car in the distance. They didn’t let him down. Didn’t throw him to the wolves.
Traffic everywhere. The jam cleared. Cars picking up speed outside the concourse.
And he’s through the glass doors now, shoving anyone in his way, his eyes seeing only the black car across three lanes, keys in the ignition, the one chance to get away, to save the dream.
He crosses one lane, skidding crazily on the ice and snow. And somehow a thought begins to arrive, half-formed, half-imagined, the start of a realization that he isn’t going to make it.
There’s too much in the way, too many uniforms around him, too many guns out.
He can see the sneer on the sharp rock-like faces. They would shoot him without a qualm, but they know they can save the bullets. He’s unarmed and cornered. An old man in a hurry, going nowhere.
But he isn’t going to stop. Won’t go quietly. The thought of the days and months of beatings and interrogations won’t let him give up.
And there’s a way out. But not the black car. A blessed way out. Past one more set of railings and he’s seen it way over to his left. A freight truck with a driver in a freezing blue cabin, the police shouting at him, gesticulating with their sticks and guns to get him out of the way. And he’s scared, scared like a rat. His right foot flat on the floor and the wheels spinning insanely in the ice.
Arkady catches sight of him and his heart jolts.
The driver stares straight ahead seeing nothing but the road.
Three feet away and Arkady launches himself into the truck’s path.
There is nothing the driver can do to stop. His brakes shudder, but the wheels race on regardless. Impact is so fast that he’s barely aware it’s happened. And the vodka that he drank, to keep from dying of cold in the heater-less cabin, has slowed his reactions.
The truck jacknifes, hits a bollard and lurches violently onto its side.
Somewhere, under the massive superstructure, Arkady Mazurin felt a flash of relief. His heart stopped thumping and he could feel the new calm flooding into his bloodstream. His run from the airport, his refusal to give in – these were life-affirming gestures. He was indeed free. He had exercised that freedom and made his choices. And in the moment before darkness, it occurred to him that now, after all, he might reach the new life he had wanted for so long.
Margo walked away and didn’t turn back. She spoke into the two-way microphone for no more than fifteen seconds, then caught a taxi outside the arrivals hall.
Another few minutes and they would surround the airport, close the whole area. No one would get out for hours.
All the way back, the images kept repeating, Arkady’s face, the cold, wide eyes, his clumsy dash through the concourse, the shocked faces, an old man in a long, black coat, tearing headlong across the blackened ice towards his death.
Dozens, scores of people had turned to watch his final seconds on earth, the police with their guns drawn, the rest with open mouths, the ending of this desperate, last bid never in doubt. Not for a second.
It had been the worst of all sights, seeing the dogs surround their victim, ready for the kill. The point, visible to all, where hope finally trickles away and the dying begins.
At least Arkady had cheated them of the torture and misery they would have enjoyed inflicting.
Small comfort on a lonely airport road, way outside Moscow, frozen in by the Russian winter.
Two hours later she found the British Embassy all but deserted. Only Evans was waiting for her. He retrieved his key from the main desk, let her into his office and watched in silence as she wrote the coded cable to London.
The facts, the impressions, the context. Ministers always wanted context – a working hypothesis – something to indicate they knew what they were talking about. Especially when they didn’t.
She couldn’t know what had gone wrong, but it was clear that Arkady had almost got away.
Even before he left his flat, she was certain Moscow had known nothing about him or his intention to defect.
And yet a snap tip-off, a gift from a clear blue sky, had reached them just in time.
Margo got up and looked out across the city.
She’d seen other women cry when bad news had hit the Service. Men too. There was no longer the same pressure to ‘button it’ and ‘hold it together’ as there had been. The fact was that these days you could cry your bloody eyes out and no one took any notice.
But Margo felt not the slightest inclination to cry. Besides, she decided, Arkady would have had no use for tears. Not with his childhood in an orphanage, nor later at the KGB where they had worked on decoupling his emotions, marrying him to an ideology, buttressed by fear. No, he would have found a more useful way to show his feelings. And he’d have been right.
She thought she’d grown up since Mikhail’s abduction, but there was a coldness inside her that she hadn’t felt before.
Manson called on the secure line. No greeting. No enquiry about her or the Moscow team. ‘What’s the working hypothesis?’
Pompous arse, she thought. ‘He was blown for God’s sake …’
‘Or he fucked up himself …’ Manson seemed out of breath, as if he’d just climbed the stairs.
She was going to answer but didn’t want them to squabble like two children in a playground. Seemed undignified, disrespectful after a man had died.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘this conversation can wait. Get yourself to London in the morning. Meeting at midday. By then we might know a little more.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘You’d better be.’
Margo caught the blame in his intonation.
She cut the connection and looked across at Evans. So there was to be a witch hunt in London and Manson was already leading the charge. Hadn’t taken long. Mazurin’s body would have barely reached the mortuary. By the time she arrived in London the venom would be flowing everywhere, especially in her direction.
But she wasn’t finished yet in Russia.
‘Thank you for what you did …’ she told Evans.
‘I was just a bystander. He wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘I’m worried about his family – ex-wife, really. You know what they’ll do.’
‘Maybe not. They’ve been divorced a long time. But I’d be surprised if they didn’t bring her in for questioning at some point, especially since he’s not around anymore.’
‘We need to look in on her pretty quickly and move her if possible. We owe her something for what happened.’
Evans put on his coat and held the door for Margo. He could have kicked himself for not having the same idea.
MOSCOW
Somehow she knew. The same way people often do. Knew that Arkady had gone. The dog had felt it first. Ever since early evening Vasya had lain in his basket and refused to get up or to eat. His bowl of water lay untouched beside him.
Yelena had tried reading her papers, a new scientific journal, some mathematical research, but her eyes ke
pt sticking on the lines, absorbing nothing.
As a scientist, she had little faith in telepathy but she also had a keen sense of the limits of her knowledge, reminding her students that a little humility in science went a long way. ‘You should always allow for the universe of the unknown,’ she would say. ‘And that’s pretty much everything around us. A hundred years from now and people will be wondering why we were so stupid, why we didn’t see what was staring us in the face.’
She looked down at Vasya, his eyes open, fixed on the wall ahead of him. Whatever had happened, he had felt it and his mood had darkened visibly. Something of that unknown universe, had come into the little kitchen and sat down beside them.
Poor Arkady, she thought. His mistake had been to want the wrong things. Like a different life. Dream if you have to but you’re always stuck with the life you were born with. The one that shapes and conditions you. The one that never lets you go.
Escape – real escape – was nothing more than a dangerous fantasy.
She pulled an ancient scrap of linen from her skirt pocket, blew her nose and wept a little for the man she had once loved.
At midnight she turned on the radio news, heard of an accident at the airport at Domodedovo. A man had been killed by a truck. There’d been a huge police presence, so far unexplained. A cordon remained around the airport. It looked as though flights might be delayed well into the morning.
So that was it. There would be no sleep tonight. And by the time the sun came up over Moscow, her life would be changed forever.
‘Someone might come and ask questions.’ That’s what Arkady had said.
Damn right, someone would come. Maybe five or six someones, breaking down her door in the hours to come and inquiring about what her ‘traitor husband’ had been intending to do.
They’d beat her first. That was the way such ‘inquiries’ began. And then the interrogation, on and on, hour after hour.
When did you see him last? What did he say? Who put him up to it? Who was he working for? You’re lying, lying, lying.
She remembered it all so well – the time when they’d caught her in the sixties with some underground literature, a few flimsy sheets of nonsense that she had found in the street, and had banged her up in a cell, before finding out her husband was KGB.
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