The Man Who Was Saturday

by Derek Lambert

  The phone rang. It was evening and in the empty office the shrilling was a dentist’s drill touching a nerve.

  Kirov. ‘Have you traced him yet?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Comrade Chairman, he’s still in Moscow. He’ll surface any time now.’

  The lie stood up and took a bow.

  ‘I hope for your sake, Comrade Spandarian, that you find him before the Executive Action Department.’ Click.

  That bastard Tokarev. The best.

  Spandarian consulted the computer in the communications room adjoining his office.

  An hour ago the last militia and stukachi reports covering the period since Calder escaped from Sokolniki Park had been fed into it.

  He pressed a button. Predictably the tremulous green letters repeated the routes that Calder could have taken.

  What am I missing? Spandarian poured himself a brandy. Brandy! Booze! Spandarian snatched a telephone and called the central number for the sobering-up stations.

  Names of the customers? The voice on the end of the line was plaintive. ‘In three days there are so many ….’

  ‘The names,’ Spandarian said amiably, ‘or you will spend the rest of your life strapped to a bed in one of your own stations.’

  He listened attentively to the dreary recital. Not that he expected CALDER to leap over the line but names had a way of giving themselves up.

  Yakhimovich, Yakir, Yacob ….

  His senses bristled. He cut short the weary monologue. YACOB. He concentrated. Then he activated his accomplice, the computer. He had seen the name trembling on the screen. When?

  Incidents involving militia …. He re-cycled the incidents. Plenty of them. Robbery, mugging, hooliganism, attempted rape …. No, as the green letters flickered, this had been different. How different? Spandarian sipped his brandy.

  Booze!

  He sought confirmation from the computer: MILITIAMAN OLEG VOLOKOV ARRESTED FOR BEING DRUNK ON DUTY ….

  Where?

  At the quay at Khimki Port from which passenger ships depart, Spandarian remembered without further recourse to his accomplice. Three nights ago. Guarding the Tobolsk. Shit! So Calder had got away on a riverboat. He should have thought of that – had thought of it but only by checking passengers as they boarded the ships.

  But with luck Calder would assume that he had got away with it. Spandarian called the port authority. ‘Where does the Tobolsk sail to?’

  He heard paper rustling. A woman’s voice read a list of ports.

  Spandarian hung up. What would I do? I certainly wouldn’t chance my luck by staying too long on a geriatric steamboat ….

  He returned to the map. I would jump ship and pick up the Moscow-Leningrad highway, that’s what. And try and cross the border into Finland.

  Over the phone Spandarian issued orders to watch all points of disembarkation visited by old Tobolsk. In particular the obvious port at which to pick up the Leningrad highway, Kalinin.

  Tokarev, feeling relaxed, fondled the ears of his cocker spaniel in the garden of his dacha near Peredelkino, the writers’ colony eighteen kilometres south of Moscow. The spaniel drooled.

  Why should I make a move yet? Tokarev asked himself. Spandarian lost Calder: let him find him. Take the flak if he fails.

  He threw a stick for the spaniel. Resignedly, the dog fetched it and, quivering, waited for another fondle.

  The telephone rang inside the wooden house. Tokarev took the call in the conservatory.

  His assistant’s voice said: ‘Spandarian’s moving.’

  The spaniel watched sadly as Tokarev climbed into his black Moskvich and, tyres spitting gravel, took off for Moscow.

  Just before Spandarian left his office to drive to Kalinin the phone rang.

  ‘Calder’s on a riverboat called the Tobolsk,’ Dalby told him.

  ‘I know.’

  Unperturbed, Dalby said: ‘There’s one thing you d … don’t know – he’s growing a moustache.’

  CHAPTER 17

  The priest drove a fawn Zaparozhet. The tiny cars manufactured in the Ukraine were sometimes given to invalids; in the priest’s case the car was the invalid – the brakes squealed, the exhaust pipe grazed the rutted road and the windshield wipers switched the warm rain when the mood took them.

  They drove first to Klin, once the home of Tchaikovsky, where the priest had ecclesiastical business at the Uspensky Monastery. While he was gone Calder waited in the Zaparozhet. Tchaikovsky, according to the priest, had written his sixth Symphony, the Pathètique, here and you couldn’t get much nearer the soul of Russia than that. Nor could you escape the fact that today was Construction Workers’ Day: a red-on-white banner stretched across the street invited workers to BUILD FOR THE ULTIMATE TARGET, THE GLORY OF THE SOVIET UNION.

  When the priest returned, shaking rainwater dog-like from his beard, he said: ‘We have a long drive ahead of us; let’s hope that my little dochka,’ patting the car’s dashboard, ‘makes it.’

  Tobolsk and the priest’s dochka, unconventional vehicles for a fugitive but effective. So far. ‘You’d better pray, Father.’ He smiled at the burly cleric. He warmed to him; not once had he asked why he was on the run. He had also beaten Calder five times at chess, one draw when the priest had interrupted the game to pray.

  But what moved Calder most was his spirit: his church, it materialised, was used in winter for storing beet and the only Russian Orthodox church in use in the area was in Kalinin. It required a sturdy faith to survive. He asked the priest about it as the Zaparohzet made its unsteady way past fields of vegetables, deserted hamlets and villages secretive in the rain.

  The priest was surprised by the question. ‘Don’t you understand, I’m taking part in a crusade? What can be more exhilarating? You see Russians are the most religious people in the world and I’m helping to bring their love of God into the open once more. All the Bolsheviks did was burn the trappings of religion. The phrase God-fearing is often misused but in the case of the Communists it’s apt: they do fear his influence over the Russian people and secretly most of them also believe: that’s why God has never been banned from the land: the Party’s soul is in torment. And a great revival is taking place.’

  Something dropped off the Zaparozhet and rolled into a ditch; the car went faster.

  ‘As you’re a man of God does that mean you’re anti-Communist?’

  ‘On the contrary. You must never forget that, despite inefficiency, miracles have been worked in this land after a war in which twenty million died. A decent wage, a roof over their heads, enough food, cheap holidays …. Can you say that about America?’

  The equation.

  ‘We have freedom,’ Calder said.

  ‘Not much of a meal for the family when you’ve just been laid off work.’

  But today Calder had no stomach for the equation. ‘So you can reconcile Communism and religion?’

  ‘Why not? They have the same aims.’ He pulled at his formidable nose. ‘And there’s plenty of room in heaven for Communists.’

  Five hours later they drove through fields of flax on the approaches to Kalinin. Calder alighted by the Lenin Monument in Sovietskaya Street, the urban stretch of the Moscow-Leningrad Highway, and shook the priest’s hand.

  ‘May God go with you,’ the priest said. ‘And teach you to play a better game of chess.’ He pulled at his beard as though trying to re-adjust it and drove away, leaving behind a bolt which fell off the chassis and rolled into the gutter.

  Calder made his way to the Tsentralnaya Hotel on Pravda Street to await the party of American tourists breaking their coach journey from Leningrad to Moscow to have lunch and tour the city on the Volga considered by Catherine the Great to be ‘the most beautiful in the empire.’

  He asked the receptionist if he could use a room in which to bath and change and was given the key to No. 23. The room was functional, decorated in pastel colours with a painting of Mikhail Kalinin, the venerated Bolshevik and one-time President, on the wall.

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sp; He ran a bath and, before shaving, examined his face in the mirror above the washbasin. No doubt about it, younger. The lines had filled out, the black hair was glossier. That was what came from being loved and betrayed and hunted. He stroked the moustache with his fingertips: it worried him.

  When he had shaved he dressed in the grey lightweight suit he had brought in the suitcase and rehearsed his Milwaukee heritage. Beer, of course – he would make a point of comparing it favourably with Soviet brews – and German ancestry and fishing for coho salmon and eating kielbasa sausage with the Polish community.

  And what are you doing in Kalinin? ‘Writing a history of the Soviet Union, ma’am, at the request of Marquette University. And any historian worth his salt has to visit the city where Ivan the Terrible slaughtered ninety thousand of its inhabitants because there was some doubt as to whether they supported one of his campaigns. And did you know, ma’am, that in White Trinity Church blood from victims killed in secret rooms trickled down the pillars into the nave?’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘And that Kalinin was once as powerful as Moscow? Why, we’re even suggesting twinning Kalinin with Milwaukee. We might even teach the Russians how to brew beer ….’ Laughter.

  And he would explain that, having researched Kalinin, he was joining their party on the journey to Moscow. ‘Why I might even be persuaded to show you round the Kremlin; guess I know more about it than the guides.’

  He went downstairs to the bar handing the receptionist the other half of the twenty-dollar bribe to use the room.

  Spandarian arrived in Kalinin half an hour after Calder and went straight to the offices of State Security at the rear of the militia HQ close to the Regional Executive Committee building on Sovietskaya. Militia and plainclothes officers, he was told, were already combing the city; all vehicles leaving the boundaries in the direction of Leningrad were being searched. He demanded the services of two officers experienced in apprehension and search and concentrated on the places where he, Spandarian, would take cover before making a dash for Leningrad and the Finnish border. Bus and train stations, parks, cafés, bars, even hotels.

  Tokarev followed Spandarian and the two officers in a taxi.

  ‘Why I might even be persuaded to show you round the Kremlin ….’

  Mrs Sundlun said: ‘I don’t think Intourist would take too kindly to that, Mr Stephenson.’ She had a wise, sun-browned face, a blue rinse and fingers that seemed too fragile for the rings on them.

  She was an archaeologist from San Diego. In fact the party eating lunch in the Chaika Restaurant on the banks of the Volga were all archaeologists from California. Jessel hadn’t told him that: it wasn’t going to be easy to be a convincing historian.

  ‘Where are you from, Mr Stephenson?’

  ‘Milwaukee. Did you know that more popcorn is consumed in Milwaukee than any other city in the world?’ Popcorn was safer than history.

  ‘I stayed there once,’ she said.

  Why couldn’t Jessel have kept him in Boston?

  Mrs Sundlun picked up her heavy coffee cup; her fingers made a jewelled clasp of the handle. ‘I don’t know about popcorn,’ she said, ‘but I do know about the Joan of Arc Chapel at Marquette University. You know about it, of course?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Joan of Arc prayed there before being burned at the stake in 1463. The chapel was brought to Milwaukee from France. They say the stone she kissed before leaving the chapel is colder than the others. And do you know something, Mr Stephenson, I rather think it is.’

  ‘I haven’t touched it,’ Calder said.

  ‘And do you know something else?’

  Calder spread his hands.

  ‘You’re a fraud, Mr Stephenson.’

  It had to be Kalinin, Spandarian thought. According to the steward Calder had been on board the Tobolsk until it docked that morning: he wasn’t there now.

  It shouldn’t be difficult to find him; Kalinin was built on a grid-system, almost an island lodged between the Volga and two of its tributaries, the Lazur and the Tmaka. The riverboat station was on the other side of the Volga, opposite the Chaika Restaurant, but to reach the highway Calder would have to cross one of two bridges.

  A taxi-driver outside Party Headquarters on Sovietskaya gave him his first lead. He had seen a man answering Calder’s description get out of a Zaparozhet driven by a bearded priest.

  ‘Wearing?’

  ‘White shirt and black trousers.’

  ‘Heading in which direction?’

  ‘I was cruising. I think he went down Pravda Street towards the Tsentralnaya Hotel.’

  ‘Did he have a moustache?’

  The cab driver nodded.

  But the receptionist at the Tsentralnaya hadn’t seen anyone answering Calder’s description. The only visitors had been a party of American tourists. They were lunching at the Chaika.

  ‘Joan of Arc was burned in 1431. Not much of a historian, Mr Stephenson. KGB?’

  He shook his head. ‘I am American. I’ve got to get back to the States. My son’s ill. It’s a long story ….’

  ‘You’re on the run?’

  ‘Have been for a long time. I’m in your hands, Mrs Sundlun.’

  She lit a cigarette and stared across the Volga, dancing with shoals of light, at the riverboat station. ‘What I don’t get is why you’re heading for Moscow. Shouldn’t you be going that-a-way?’ jerking her thumb west.

  ‘That’s the way they expect me to go.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy it. But give me a call back in the States. If you make it’ she added.

  Calder saw Spandarian as the party spilled down the steps of the restaurant to the waiting Intourist coach. He was talking to the driver.

  Calder, who had shaved off the moustache in the Tsentralnaya – Dalby might report it – swung round to Mrs Sundlun. ‘Would you do something for me? Drop one of your rings on the ground and shout.’

  The ring bounced off the steps and she shouted, a robust noise for such a fragile lady. Archaeologists scrambled for it as though it were a find. Calder slipped into the coach and kept his head down behind a seat half way down the aisle.

  He sat up for the head count before the coach departed. Mrs Sundlun, holding the errant ring, said: ‘You know something? This sure beats the hell out of digging for pottery.’

  Spandarian watched the red and white Moscow-bound coach take off. At least he could rest assured that Calder wasn’t on it: he wouldn’t be trying to go back into the cage.

  Tokarev watched it more thoughtfully.

  CHAPTER 18

  Every footstep was a contradiction of logic. He knew that but he continued to walk.

  And as he waited in the darkness across the street from the apartment block on Leningradsky he thought: ‘Madness.’ But he stayed. Despite the fact that others would be keeping watch on Katerina Ilyina. That was elementary: to catch a fugitive watch his woman. And they, too, would know that Katerina walked the brown-nosed dog – puppy no longer – at eleven every night.

  Unless Spandarian is convinced that I’ve left Moscow. Dalby my saviour!

  The dog came out first dragging Katerina behind it. She was a silhouette a hundred yards away but he could feel her. A light shone inside him.

  She turned right. Calder walked ahead of her on the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare knowing that she was going to the small park near the Dynamo stadium. He hurried ahead, scanned the street and sidewalk behind Katerina’s briskly moving figure. No shadows, no dawdling cars.

  Calder entered the park.

  Madness.

  He called from behind a tree and, gasping, she was in his arms.

  They held each other until the dog, overcome by jealousy, began to jump.

  He looked at the moonlit intensity on her face. The flower-scented park rustled.

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why did you go?’

  He told her but the explanation sounded worthless. He had seen her talking to Spandarian, that was all.
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  ‘But you knew I would never betray you. He asked me to make you come to another apartment. I refused. Of course I refused,’ incomprehension in her voice.

  He stroked her face with his fingertips. ‘They want to kill me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who? Who wants to kill you?’

  He told her as much as he dared. He also told her about Harry. ‘I have to go back,’ he said.

  ‘For ever?’

  He kissed her.

  ‘How will you go?’

  ‘To the east,’ he told her. Truth was a luxury.

  ‘I have friends on Lake Baikal. The Petrovs. Remember? I told you about Yury Petrov, a friend of my mother …. Yury hasn’t any love for the KGB: he used to be a gold thief! Here.’ She took a ballpoint pen from her coat pocket and wrote the address and a message – Please help this man, Kata – on the back of an envelope.

  The dog began to bark.

  Calder made a heart with his hands and held her face in it. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  She nodded her head slowly, solemnly.

  He kissed her and turned towards the gates to the park and sank into the ocean of the night.

  ‘It seems to have worked,’ Jessel said, soft voice carrying as though it were on a wavelength of its own. ‘The heat’s off in Moscow: the KGB is convinced you’re heading west.’

  They had met, as arranged, outside the Metropole Cinema on Sverdlov Square. Crowds hurrying to catch the last house at 10.45 pm swept past them. The film, Calder noted, was Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

  They walked round the big, theatrical square presided over by the imperial bulk of the Bolshoi.

  ‘And now,’ Jessel said, ‘you’re going to make your third and last identity change. How does Grainger grab you? Franklin Grainger, chess freak.’

  ‘A master?’

  ‘Not quite. But no slouch. Not anymore, though.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘He collapsed a couple of weeks ago playing in a tournament in Chicago. He was going to play with me in Vladivostok. Remember I told you about the tournament? I had written him off: when the contract was put out on you I resurrected him. He’d got his visa, the works. I told Washington to get hold of his documents and send them over in the bag. Here they are. And dollars, lots of them.’ Jessel handed Calder a copy of Evening Moscow. ‘Read the biog. and destroy it. You’re well-heeled, a bachelor, a fan of the Chicago Symphony and a wow with the Marshall Attack.’