The Man Who Was Saturday

by Derek Lambert

  That would take half an hour, Boldin calculated.

  He bought a glass of kvas from a stall on the edge of the field. A few heavy drops of rain fell in the dust at his feet.

  He drank thirstily. It was the most refreshing drink in Russia and being fermented from rye bread, the most nutritious and he couldn’t understand why anyone bothered with beer or spirits.

  The bruised clouds inched nearer. Lightning forked the sky. Thunder chased it. A crack of thunder just as he pulled the trigger wouldn’t be unwelcome, he reflected.

  And now the purchase. Calder had made six thousand roubles from the sale of the Zhiguli and he had brought five thousand and a wad of dollars with him. It was the dollars that would count; they were the pass-keys to luxury.

  He approached a speculator wiping spots of rain from the windshield of a white Volga. He peered at the dashboard: seven hundred kilometres on the clock: it could have been rewound but the car, the pride of Gorky assembly lines, smelled new.

  The speculator who wore black boots made of soft leather and wrap-round sun-glasses assessed Calder. ‘Roubles or dollars?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Okay, we do business.’

  They drove to the end of the cul-de-sac for a test drive.

  Watching them depart, Boldin calculated: three-quarters of an hour. He was no soft touch, that bandit in the shades.

  He drank another three kopeks worth of kvas, then climbed into the Moskvich and drove in second gear to the bottom of the hill.

  He parked it out of sight on the quay. He put on a fawn raincoat and, taking the Mosin-Nagant from the rear seat, began to climb the wooded slope to the ledge of rock.

  When he reached it the clouds burst. Raindrops splashed ankle-high. Serpent tongues of lightning flickered across the rooftops of Moscow. Thunder cracked overhead. The wet dust had-a primeval smell about it.

  Calder drove the white Volga away from the field with pride. He hadn’t felt like this about a car since he had bought the Stingray. The Volga was no Stingray, no Mercedes come to that – too inflexibly practical – but impressive on the streets of Moscow. He touched the controls lovingly. Then, peering through the swotting windshield wipers, he began his descent to the river.

  Calder, observed through the telescopic sight, was smiling. Pride of ownership. So he would die happy.

  Boldin took first pressure on the trigger of the Mosin-Nagant mounted on a collapsible tripod. He wanted to hit Calder as he was level with the ledge. He would slump to the left pulling the wheel and the car would careen into the river.

  Fifty metres.

  Boldin was vaguely aware of scuffling behind him but his concentration was everything, the concentration known only to hunters of men. He checked his breathing.

  Twenty metres.

  The barrel of the rifle that had shot a German marksman more than forty years ago in Stalingrad moved fractionally to the right.

  The rain sluiced down.

  Lightning.

  He pulled the trigger as the thunder cracked.

  As the man behind him threw himself at him. The bullet ricocheted off the mudguard. The Volga swerved, straightened, accelerated.

  Boldin rolled clear of the tripod. ‘What the fuck ….’

  The Estonian driver of the battered cream Volga kicked him in the crotch. In the ribs. In the face. Then he rolled Boldin off the ledge and watched his body splash into the puddles below.

  CHAPTER 10

  Spandarian who normally schemed, raged.

  How could the Executive Action Department have been so shit-stupid? Muscling in on his territory, seeking a slice of the glory – that, being a Georgian, he could understand.

  But the crudeness, that was beyond belief. For two years he had been controlling the life-spans of the Twilight Brigade, assessing through surveillance when they might be entering the menopause of defection, contemplating re-defection even. And he had acted accordingly, helped by an accomplice whose identity would never be suspected.

  Accidents and natural causes, those were modus operandi. Nothing to deter a potential defector with a shopping bag full of secrets. But who would want to make the crossing if he thought a bullet in the head might be his ultimate reward?

  After the phone call from the Estonian, he vented his anger first on a girl named Nina. Standing in front of him shimmying into a green dress, she asked him for money. Fifty dollars – dollars! – to buy some mink ear-rings she had seen on sale in a beryozka shop. He hit her across the face with the back of his hand and told her to get out.

  When she had made a tearful departure Spandarian prowled the living room of his apartment in the Arbat caged by his fury.

  Even though it had been a balls-up by the Executive Action Department – sabotage, kidnapping and assassination – of the First Chief Directorate – some of the stink would rub off on him. Why, for instance, had he failed to accomplish what the Executive Action Department had attempted?

  Why? Because he hadn’t yet ascertained whether Calder had reached that dangerous state of re-assessment, that was why. In fact on the face of it it seemed, according to Katerina Ilyina’s reports, that Calder was coming to terms with his life in exile.

  Not that he necessarily bought that: the girl might be protecting Calder. There was also another factor to consider: Calder’s love affair with Russia might owe a lot to his feelings for her. If that liaison ended Calder would either slump back in the rut or make a run for it. But before that happened he would make sure that, through the girl, he discovered why Calder was treated like a VIP.

  You had to be a Georgian to understand such subtleties, to manipulate men’s lives. It was through just such inspired manoeuvering that Spandarian intended one day to take his place at the helm of the Politburo.

  And he had no intention of allowing some moron in the Executive Action Department, obsessed with blood letting, to prejudice his chances.

  The rage subsided.

  Think, Spandarian, you whose Chechen ancestors once terrorised the dizzy heights of the Georgian Military Road dispatching any marauding Slavs from Muscovy back to St Petersburg.

  He lit a cigarette and poured himself a shot of Armenian brandy.

  Adapt. The attempt on Calder’s life had been incredibly clumsy. Since when did you set up an assassination without first making sure that you weren’t being followed yourself? He would have to make sure the Chairman of State Security appreciated his own finesse. He would have to show him how it should be done.

  How? Patience. That would come. Natural causes or accident … brilliance whichever.

  ‘Spandarian poured himself more brandy and thoughtfully stroked his moustache. One aspect of the Calder shooting attempt particularly bothered him. Why had the Executive Action Committee wanted to kill Calder?

  He walked to his office. It was Saturday afternoon and the crowds in the hot streets were festive. He assumed it was some sort of commemoration day: it usually was. Merchant Navy Day the other day, Fisherman’s Day coming up.

  Queues waited thirstily for kvas and cherryade and ice-cream. Soldiers and sailors led their girls towards the parks; plump women fanned themselves with copies of Pravda – someone should draw up a list of the uses to which it was put; children fidgeted in front of ancient monuments; a couple of fugitive toy balloons floated high over the Kremlin.

  Spandarian strode briskly down Kalinin Street. He would make two protests. One to the head of the Second Chief Directorate which contained his own department, the other to the head of the First Chief Directorate which ruled the Executive Action Department – if anyone ruled that gang of cutthroats.

  And make sure both protests were brought to the Chairman’s notice.

  Spandarian was currently making a study of the Chairman for his own coercive files. Since the one-time Chairman Yuri Andropov had been made Soviet Supremo and died in harness there had been several changes in the leadership of the KGB.

  The latest Chairman was old. Weren’t they all? But he was astute and a
pparently honest – in Spandarian’s view a bizarre qualification for the job – and dedicated to stamping out corruption in his clandestine legions massed across the Soviet Union and the globe.

  In his office Spandarian called on his computer to refresh his memory about Dmitry Kirov.

  Age 71.

  Formerly Director of Central Committee liaising all Communist parties.

  Joined Party 1934.

  Fought as guerilla behind German lines in Great Patriotic War.

  Member of NKVD and MGB prior to re-organisation as KGB.

  Married, two children.

  Vices –

  Spandarian sighed as the green letters on the computer screen quivered negatively. Give me time and I’ll fill in the blank.

  He pressed the remote control button and another chapter in the Chairman’s life appeared. Foul-ups that could be traced directly to him. Even they were pretty thin on the ground. But they were a beginning.

  The red telephone on his desk rang. He picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end of the line said: ‘Dmitry Kirov speaking.’

  The dachas of the nachahtvo, the élite, lie around the hamlet of Zhukovka twenty miles from Moscow. It is a lovely, untroubled place where men climb from big black limousines to change their identities. In summer it smells of pine and river-water; in winter it smells of cold, a comforting knowledge when you are playing with your grandchildren in front of a log fire.

  It was to this settlement, suspended in time on the banks of the Moscow, that Spandarian came that afternoon at the request of the Chairman of the KGB. To observe protocol he had collected his own driver, but as they drove deeper into the sylvan heart of privilege his Volga seemed more and more prosaic. This was Chaika country, any minute now they would be in Zil territory.

  Twice they were stopped by militia. His red ID hauled up a couple of salutes but they weren’t as snappy as they would be if he had been in the back of a Chaika or a Zil. One day, comrades, one day.

  Kirov’s dacha was surrounded by a tall green fence. Two armed guards stood at the entrance. They logged Spandarian, let him pass.

  Kirov was standing at the door of the dacha, a wooden palace. Two spaniels panted at his feet. He looked avuncular, a family man who couldn’t possibly know what the inside of a KGB mental home, where dissidents were broken with aminazin, reserpine and sulfazin, looked like; couldn’t visualise a Siberian labour camp where frost-bitten prisoners lived like vermin.

  He was tall and trim. There were warrior lines on his face. His nose was a prow. His eyebrows silver. He walked with a slight limp, a German bullet at Smolensk. He clapped Spandarian on the shoulder: they might have been comrades at arms. What did he want?

  ‘I thought we’d take the dogs for a walk,’ Kirov said. ‘Get some summer air.’

  They walked towards the river, dogs snouting in pale woodland grass. Sunlight on water sparkled through the pine trees.

  Kirov pointed at a clearing rucked with old earthworks. ‘Know what they are?’ And without waiting for a reply: ‘What’s left of the trenches we built to defend Moscow against the Hun. But he didn’t come this way. I’m not going to have it smoothed over. It’s a reminder and we need reminders, people like you and me.’

  Spandarian who had no idea why he should be reminded of the last war didn’t answer.

  ‘We need to be reminded of the threats that surround us. A long border is a vulnerable border. Throughout our history it’s been violated. It must never happen again.’

  The paranoic side of the Russian Slav, Spandarian thought. The complex seeded in history that accounted for the mistrust of foreigners, the over-reaction to arms threats.

  ‘I should have thought your wound was sufficient reminder,’ Spandarian ventured.

  ‘That was a long way from here. This is Moscow. The Germans almost took our capital.’

  Your capital, Spandarian thought, not mine.

  ‘And when I look at those old trenches I realise that everything I do is justified. I am charged with containing our enemies inside and outside the Soviet Union. But I forgot, you’re a Georgian. Perhaps these things don’t matter so much to you?’

  Oh no you don’t! ‘I’m a Soviet citizen first, a Georgian second.’ Spandarian’s tongue was thick with the lie.

  ‘I always thought it was ironic that Georgians should have rallied to the flag to fight the Germans and been exiled by Stalin to Kazakhstan for their pains.’

  I am being tested, Spandarian realised. Why? ‘And yet Stalin is still venerated in Georgia. That’s an indication of the strength of Georgian character.’

  They reached the river-bank. One side of Kirov’s estate was a Japanese print. Men of power finding lonely therapy fishing in calm waters.

  Kirov threw a stick and the two spaniels raced into the water for it. Ripples chased each other towards the anglers. No one would protest.

  Kirov said: ‘A wily Georgian …. We need people like you in State Security. Particularly in your specialised domain. The Twilight Brigade – velvet gloves, eh, Comrade Spandarian?’

  So finally, through a circuitous route, they were getting to the point. He had been assessed and for the moment found adequate. Now was the time to take the initiative.

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Comrade Kirov,’ he said, ‘and as you appreciate how delicate my responsibilities are,’ playing his line as carefully as one of the anglers downstream, ‘you will understand my feelings’- not anger, that would be overplaying his hand – ‘when I learned that the Executive Action Department had trespassed on my territory.’

  Silence, apart from a lot of splashing and panting from the dogs. Trespassing. Too strong? Perhaps it had been Kirov’s decision to shoot Calder.

  A brown and white butterfly tripped its way across the water.

  Finally Kirov said: ‘I owe you an apology, Comrade Spandarian.’ Unbelievable. ‘Let me explain.’

  Kirov revealed that he had discussed Calder with the head of the First Chief Directorate. A mistake. The director had in turn discussed it with the head of the Executive Action Department which was his responsibility. The head of the Executive Action Department had interpreted this – ‘Perhaps the discussion was oiled by a few grams of firewater’ – as an order to eliminate the American. Stupid. Especially the way the assassination attempt had been carried out. Spandarian shouldn’t worry: he had every right to have Calder shadowed, every right to have forestalled interference.

  Spandarian said: ‘With respect, Comrade Kirov, you must have implied to the head of the First Chief Directorate that Calder should be eliminated. Why?’

  ‘Implied, perhaps. But in no way did I authorise him to take the matter into his own hands. Regrettable, most regrettable ….’

  Kirov made no attempt to answer the question; instead he threw another stick for the dogs. A white steamer rounded a curve on the other side of the river. Kirov shaded his eyes above his hawk nose and stared at it. The decks were crowded with passengers. The good citizens that Kirov was protecting.

  The dogs returned and showered the two men with water.

  Kirov threw the stick again and said: ‘Your methods would have been far better. We shouldn’t assassinate defectors in broad daylight. Who would ever defect again?’ Not even Kirov could have guessed the identity of the subtle executioner; the knowledge soothed Spandarian. ‘By the way, Bertoldi, it was suicide, wasn’t it?’

  Spandarian said it was. An unfortunate occurrence that had increased the incidence of death in the Twilight Brigade beyond his estimates.

  ‘The five-year plan?’ Kirov smiled thinly. ‘I’m afraid you will have to revise your estimates, comrade.’

  ‘Calder?’

  ‘In certain matters my predecessors have been far too lax. Too trusting.’ You had to admire Kirov’s capacity for not answering questions. ‘In the case of Calder, for instance. You have been assessing his mental state?’

  ‘A routine process, Comrade Kirov.’

  ‘Quite. But there is a possibi
lity that he might renege?’

  ‘There’s always that possibility with a defector. Once a traitor always a traitor.’

  ‘Traitor? They think they’re idealists.’

  ‘Traitors in my book,’ Spandarian said.

  ‘How soon can you kill him?’

  Shocked, Spandarian stopped walking. He lit a cigarette. ‘Can you tell me why?’ He waited for the answers to the questions about Calder that had plagued him since he took office.

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Subtlety, that is the essence of my job. Why I was given it, I believe.’ Kirov should write a treatise on the art of evasion, Spandarian thought.

  Impatiently, Kirov said: ‘Let me put it this way: I want Calder dead and I want him dead as soon as possible. I understand the need for subtlety as you put it. That’s why I’m giving you twenty-one days – in the interests of burgeoning defectors all over the world. But if you can’t do the job subtly within that time then I shall hand the job over to the Executive Action Department. If you succeed then there’s another job waiting for you – head of the First Chief Directorate. A well placed stepping stone, eh, Comrade Spandarian, to the chairmanship of State Security and ultimately to the Politburo which is where, I understand, you have your sights set upon.’

  For the last time Spandarian asked: ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s quite simple. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned Robert Calder is the most dangerous man in the world.’

  CHAPTER 11

  It was Katerina’s birthday, she was twenty and Calder was thankful because now he wasn’t quite so old. While she attended a women’s rally he went shopping for a present in the open-air animal market.

  Rabbits, guinea pigs and white mice twitched whiskers at him. Pigeons pulsed their throats and canaries sang about freedom. Tiny fish hung in jam-jars of water like irridescent pendants. Puppies of dubious parentage yapped beside peerless aristocrats.