The Man Who Was Saturday

by Derek Lambert

  Petrov drove on through a valley to the border. The Russian frontier post was manned by one drunk in a fur hat and crumpled uniform. His colleagues, he explained frowning at the jeep, had taken off when all traffic from Ulan Bator had been stopped and the Peking Express had been diverted. ‘No trains, no work,’ he said defending his missing colleagues. ‘But cars ….’ He pressed his knuckles into his red eyes.

  Petrov told him a part truth. They had mounted the track this side of the wrecked bridge because an avalanche had blocked the road. ‘Ingenious, eh?’

  The official agreed blearily. ‘Papers?’

  ‘Green ones,’ Petrov said. He handed the guard a wad of dollar bills. ‘And here’s something to wrap them round,’ handing over a ten-tola ingot.

  He put the jeep into gear and they drove towards the Mongolian frontier post. ‘I’ll take a small bet,’ he said, swigging vodka and handing the bottle to Calder, ‘there won’t be a soul there. Russia, Mongolia, one and the same.’

  He was right.

  They drove into Mongolia as the sun rose in a blue sky and a small red biplane entered the valley behind them.

  Shoemaker, crouched at the controls of his electric blue snowmobile, noticed the biplane as he approached the border. But he didn’t pay much attention to it: his numbed senses were concentrated on the quarry ahead, Calder with Spandarian in pursuit.

  He wondered how far ahead they were now. When he had bought the snowmobile he had assumed that he was hours behind them. But in these conditions the sleek little gasoline-propelled sled would make better progress than any other vehicle.

  It was similar to the model he had driven in Alaska. Single-cleated caterpillar tracks at the rear and broad skis in front for negotiating deep snow and a 350 cc engine capable of speeds of around 50 mph. But he didn’t go flat out because even at 20 mph at freezing point there would be a wind chill factor of around minus 40.

  He wore the crash helmet, face mask, visor and black insulated suit he had bought at Univermag and, as he had driven through the night, some of the skills he had learned in Alaska had returned. Shift your weight on the turns, sit back to maintain track contact, take the bumps like a horseman ….

  And there had been plenty of bumps as, gripping the handlebars and following the beam of the headlamp – with its broad windshield and sleek coachwork the snowmobile was like a luxurious motorcycle – he had plunged through the darkness.

  He had twice hurtled off the track into snowdrifts but the worst stretches of track had been the tunnels – entrances like sharks’ mouths with icicle teeth. If the moisture between the two sets of rails hadn’t frozen he doubted whether he would have been able to navigate them; even with the ice he kept striking the track and slamming into the walls.

  With the morning light came hope. He noticed the stump of sawn pine and sawdust on the track. It must have taken someone a long time to accomplish that. They couldn’t be that far ahead.

  They? If the fallen pine had stopped Calder then surely Spandarian would have caught up with him. Or perhaps the pine had fallen after Calder, before Spandarian. Or – in the new light he noticed that there was only one set of wheel tracks – maybe Spandarian is behind me!

  When he reached the border a dishevelled guard waved at him vaguely. Shoemaker thought he noticed a flash of gold in his hand.

  As he entered Mongolia he spotted the jeep about a mile ahead.

  Oh no, Spandarian thought when he saw the snowmobile, Calder is mine. And the snowmobile was catching the jeep fast.

  Spandarian, flying at 350 kilometres an hour – a little too fast for the veteran Avia judging by the shudders racking it – fingered the firing button of the machine-gun.

  The gun was synchronised to fire through the propeller. According to the Airport Director there was enough ammunition for two or three bursts. If the belt didn’t jam or blow up.

  Spandarian kicked the rudder and pushed the stick forward. He breathed deeply, loving the hot-oil smell of the cockpit; as always it intoxicated him.

  Maybe I’m a little crazy, he thought. Because of Calder. He had despised him: now he admired him: he should have been a Georgian. He adjusted the goggles of his flying helmet with a gloved hand and lined up the Avia with the snow-covered railway track.

  Calder or me … you, you poor brave bastard. But first the other predator, Shoemaker. He felt no emotion about him: he should have stayed at his desk in Washington where he belonged. One burst should finish the snowmobile, two left for the jeep.

  Finger on the firing button on the stick, Spandarian began his approach.

  Snowmobile in the sights … tightness in his chest … two detonations … hardly a burst … the gun had jammed … but the two bullets had done the job … the snowmobile was plunging off the track … finger still on the button … firing again …

  The bullets, synchronisation thrown by the misfire, chopped off the blades of the propeller and the Avia began its last descent to the white grave below.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Buddhist monastery was five kilometres from a railway halt reached by a track quilted with snow. The buildings, grouped in a prayer circle round a red temple, were built from wood and separated from the desolate white world by a stockade.

  Black-printed prayer flags made from surgical lint fluttered in the breeze coming down from the mountains; Buryats, stamping a circular path of ice in the snow, pushed a prayer wheel; Siberian tigers moulded in stone looked on impassively.

  Inside the temple lamas wearing saffron robes, hair shaven or cropped, intoned prayers in the light of yak-butter lamps. Drums throbbed, from time to time horns dispatched sonorous echoes into devout corners.

  A Buryat wearing rimless glasses served Calder and Petrov with sugared yoghurt and yellow soup. Petrov, Calder thought, seemed popular although it was difficult to believe that he could be associated with peace.

  When the Buryat had departed to fetch cheese Calder said: ‘So do you think he’s dead?’

  When the biplane had disappeared behind a hill oily black smoke had billowed towards the sky. Petrov had decided that it would be foolhardy to investigate. ‘The smoke didn’t mean a lot. If he’s a good pilot he could have made some sort of landing. There was plenty of snow away from the track, the plane was equipped with skis …. He could be out there waiting for us.’

  ‘He wasn’t strafing us,’ Calder said. ‘Just before he went out of control I saw something rear up on the ground like a shark … a snowmobile!’

  The Buryat brought their cheese. ‘A lama will be with you shortly,’ he said.

  He left them in the company of a statue of Buddha. Petrov cut the cheese with a long knife.

  The lama was plump, butter-coloured and bald; he reminded Calder of Kruschev. He said some monks had gone to the scene of the crash and asked them what he could do to help them, looking warily at Petrov whom he knew of old.

  Petrov told him.

  When he had gone Petrov said to Calder: ‘He doesn’t realise what I’m going to do – may Buddha have mercy on my soul.’

  Spandarian who had managed a soft landing in the snow limped clear of the Avia before, with a discreet explosion, it caught fire. He had two alternatives: to make for the snowmobile or the monastery where Calder and Petrov would have taken sanctuary. If he concentrated on the snowmobile he ran the risk of a shoot-out: it was a risk he couldn’t afford – blood was dripping steadily onto the snow from a wound in his groin. Snow began to peel from a darkening sky; it would hide him as he made a run for the monastery.

  Leaving a trail of red poppies behind him, he made for the temple. Snow closed around him, flakes as big as leaves. He pushed the goggles back from his face. His strength was seeping away. He opened his flying jacket and stuffed a balled-up handkerchief into the wound; the wound swallowed it and could have taken more. He gripped the walnut butt of the automatic in his belt.

  When he reached the monastery he had only one option: he would have to gain admittance before he collapsed in t
he snow and bled to death. His ID should do the trick. If not, the gun. As he stumbled along he smelled coffee perfumed with brandy in a café near the funicular climbing Holy Mountain and smiled at a girl with green eyes and she smiled back ….

  On the snow the red petals grew larger.

  It took Shoemaker twenty minutes to fix the snowmobile. Nothing serious. A fractured petrol feed. But God knows how much gas he had lost. Following the red-splashed trail he took off towards the monastery through the thickening snow.

  Standing at the door of the temple, one hand inside his robe, a lama with unevenly cropped hair said: ‘And what can I do for you, my son?’

  His voice was gentle but Spandarian heard flints in it. Spandarian said: ‘I’m coming inside … you are harbouring an enemy of the State.’ He could barely hear his own voice; he showed the lama his ID.

  The lama was not impressed. He pointed at a wooden hut. ‘Over there, you will be given food and shelter.’

  As Spandarian produced his gun Petrov took his hand from inside the robe the lama had given him and leaned forward. The knife that he had used for cutting the cheese, an extension of his arm now, slid easily between Spandarian’s ribs and into his heart.

  Spandarian staggered back into the soft arms of the falling snow. Four, five paces and there was another face suspended in front of him. Shoemaker.

  So Calder had won. A worthy opponent … should have been a Georgian ….

  But at the end there can only be one of us. Raising the pistol he shot Shoemaker in the chest, throat and head.

  What was it Shoemaker had shouted as he pulled the trigger? Stupid, meaningless words. As Spandarian died Shoemaker’s words seemed to reach him from Holy Mountain: ‘Don’t shoot, I’m Saturday.’

  CHAPTER 30

  The travelling chess-set was handed to Holden while he was having breakfast with his wife in the west wing of the White House.

  Although it had been electronically checked by security he handled it delicately. As though it was more precious than its intrinsic value.

  It had been delivered half an hour earlier by special courier after a phone call from Ruth Calder the previous evening. According to Ruth, a Mrs Betty Quarrick from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, had brought a small parcel to her door; it had been handed to her on the platform of a railway station in Siberia.

  When Ruth had opened the package she had found the chess-set and a note from Calder: Get this to Holden urgently, he’ll understand. Signed: Bob.

  ‘Did she describe the man who gave her the package?’ Holden asked.

  ‘A bearded cripple.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Only that Siberia wasn’t anything like the travel books.’

  Holden felt the soft leather. Then he smelled it although he wasn’t sure why. A trace of perfume.

  His wife, efficiently pretty even at this hour, stared curiously at him across the small flower arrangement – roses and maiden-hair fern – which she changed every morning. ‘You look like a guilty husband,’ she said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Holden said. ‘Guilty? Maybe ….’

  She poured him more coffee. ‘I’m being shut out, aren’t I?’

  He reached out and touched her hand. Breakfast was one of their best times. Sleepy and intimate in a room he had designed to look like a breakfast room anywhere from coast to coast. Even the table-cloth was red and white gingham.

  He held up the slim leather wallet. ‘I know this is important, vital, but I don’t know why.’ He opened it. White pawn to king four, no message there. Or was there?

  ‘You used to play chess with Calder, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sure. We were chess freaks.’

  His wife said: ‘Think back: that’s where the message is.’

  Holden took the chess-set into their bedroom.

  P to K4. That was the key, had to be.

  He tucked a white shirt into charcoal grey pants. Security Council this morning. Sombre dress for a sombre occasion.

  Whoever played white …. He froze teetering on the brink ….

  Whoever played white …. PUT THE NAMES OF PEOPLE HE DETESTED UNDER THE MAJOR BLACK PIECES.

  With clumsy fingers Holden slid the slivers of plastic from their leather slots. With the exception of the king each major piece was labelled with a name and occupation printed on a stick-on tab.

  He laid them on the dressing table. The names made him feel faint. Sweat broke out icily on his forehead. He leaned against the wall. He heard rain against the window-pane on the other side of the drapes. He drew the drapes back, opened the window and breathed cold, rain-washed air.

  Then he turned again to the names.

  SUNDAY. A rook. Marion Shannon.

  MONDAY. Knight. The chief adviser to the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, in Paris.

  TUESDAY. Bishop. Director of Communications for NORAD, the American Defence system, buried in the Cheyenne Mountains in Colorado.

  WEDNESDAY. No, there was no name under the king. There were only seven codenames and in any case the king wasn’t primarily an attacking piece.

  The name under the queen …. Holden frowned. A garble of letters. And printed under them in minute letters SATURDAY.

  So the queen’s bishop was WEDNESDAY. A vice president of the Commission of the European Communities, policy makers of the EEC, at their headquarters in Brussels.

  THURSDAY. Queen’s knight. How appropriate – Thursday had been knighted by the Queen: he was the deputy head of the British Secret Service.

  FRIDAY. Queen’s rook. The West German non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council currently serving a two-year term of office in New York.

  Jesus Christ! The Soviets were poised to colonise the West. Through Marion Shannon, deceased, they had won the minds of the young; through NATO they could manipulate the armed forces; through NORAD the early warning systems; through the EEC the policies of its European members – easy meat because they were always at each other’s throats; through British Intelligence the entrée into clandestine operations; through UNO a pro-Soviet voice issuing from ostensibly pro-West lips.

  SATURDAY? The garbled name was under the queen and the queen was the most powerful attacking piece on the board.

  Holden stared at the letters. Ten of them. An anagram. With a ballpoint pen he printed the letters on a sheet of White House notepaper and, with a pair of nail-scissors, cut them out one by one.

  As he snipped away he wondered what had happened to Shoemaker in Russia and when he started to shuffle the letters on the polished surface of the dressing table he subconsciously began with S H … fingers working busily … O E … praying: ‘No, please, no,’ … M A ….

  Relief spread warmly inside him. No K. In any case Shoemaker was only nine letters. So what had he got left? ICRE. He pushed the I and the C together and they became a K and transposed the R and the E and there was Shoemaker and he knew whom SATURDAY had been briefed to manipulate.

  ME.

  He picked up the telephone and cancelled the meeting of the National Security Council.

  Calder was escorted from the 747 at Boston’s Logan Airport by two laconic FBI agents who had joined the flight from Tokyo at San Francisco. They were awkward but kind enough and they laid his crutches on the floor of the black VIP Cadillac gently as though they were brittle-boned.

  Calder who had shaved off his beard on the last leg of the flight stared out of the window at the inquisitive-faced aircraft, the foraging trucks, the busy people. It was raining. America wet-nosed for his arrival.

  He closed his eyes and said goodbye again to Yury Petrov in another world. Another life.

  Together they had caught a train from Darhan to Ulan Bator, the capital of Outer Mongolia; there were no security checks – only two predators knew they had crossed the Soviet border and they were both dead.

  At Ulan Bator Petrov put him on the Peking Express, the first across the frontier since the bridge had been
wrecked.

  On the platform before boarding the train Calder handed Petrov an envelope. It was addressed to the Chairman of the KGB in Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow. ‘I want you to post this in three weeks time,’ he said.

  Petrov, frozen faced but still raffish in his fur hat and sheepskin coat, held the envelope in his gloved hand as though weighing it. ‘Am I allowed to know what’s in it?’

  ‘Better that you don’t. You’ve never really known what this was all about. I’d like you to think of me just as a guy on the run. Someone you helped, trusted. Nothing more.’

  A bitter dusty wind blowing north from the Gobi Desert narrowed Petrov’s eyes and bowed the heads of a group of Mongols saying their farewells.

  Shrugging, Petrov slid the envelope into the pocket of his sheepskin. ‘Whatever you say.’ He smiled piratically. ‘I envy you, my old run ….’

  Calder wanted to say: ‘Then come with me,’ but he knew Petrov had to get back to Raisa. And ….

  ‘Don’t worry, Katerina will be all right,’ stealing his thoughts. ‘Probably back in Moscow by now chaining herself to the gates of the Kremlin. With Spandarian out of the way she won’t have any problems. What did she do? Went on tour with a pop star, that’s all – and probably got a good job with him into the bargain. She’s better off than she was in that Institute of yours.’

  The Institute …. Calder saw starlings trapped inside the dome of a disused church, the fluttering of their wings becoming more and more feeble. Mrs Lundkvist’s hockey voice losing itself in echoes.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked Petrov.

  ‘I’ll always be okay. I have Raisa and I have gold. One to keep me warm, the other to warm the palms of greedy hands.’

  ‘Where will you find Raisa?’