The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  The moments were slipping away. I had no idea how others might act, or how quickly. But the only other option was to try to get to Åland, to try to get back to the U-boat and prove that the leak originated from the canisters in it. That would mean finding a way past the roadblocks, and all the men hunting us… but it also meant we would have less interference. The only interference we would face would be from those trying to kill us.

  Sarah was looking at me, waiting to see what I was up to. All my instincts were telling me we would be wasting time staying here trying to convince Smale any further. Sometimes all we have is our instincts. I motioned to Sarah and pushed open the door, stepping into the street and walking briskly, not looking back. The rain was coming down hard, and I stepped around a puddle in front of the Volga.

  ‘What are we doing?’ said Sarah from just behind me.

  ‘Plan B,’ I said. ‘Get in the back of the car and be prepared.’

  The man behind the wheel looked up in surprise as we reached him. As Sarah opened the rear door, I opened the one on the passenger side, leapt into the seat and placed the fork to his groin.

  ‘Drive,’ I said.

  VIII

  He was youngish, perhaps in his early thirties, with dark hair, blue eyes and a strong jawline: a model militsiya man. And so he hesitated. Perhaps he thought I was bluffing. I pressed the prongs of the fork into the cloth of his trousers and leaned in to his ear.

  ‘If you haven’t started this car by the time I’ve counted to three,’ I whispered, ‘I’ll slice your balls off and drive myself. One…’

  His jaw was clenched in fury, but he switched on the ignition and depressed the clutch. The starter coughed for a moment, then sputtered out. Christ. Looking around the car, I saw it wasn’t in good shape: there was no mat beneath my feet, just the bare steel floor. I glanced back at the café and saw his colleague turn and spot us, alerted by the noise. He began running towards the entrance, his arms waving, shouting at us.

  ‘Wave to him,’ I hissed. ‘And make it convincing.’

  He glanced at me, then reluctantly lifted a hand from the wheel and half-saluted his colleague, who peered at us, not understanding. I smiled at him and gestured with my hand to indicate that we were just taking a quick spin around the block. He would figure out what we were doing pretty soon, but it might just slow him down for a minute or two – and that minute might make all the difference.

  Something moved in the rear-view mirror, and I saw another man already running across the street, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He had fair hair and a moustache, and I realized with a shock that it was Dawes – so much for Smale’s gentlemanly regard for my stipulations.

  I leaned into the fork again, and sweat broke out on the driver’s face. But that wasn’t helping him focus, so I relented a little. He tried the ignition again and this time the starter caught and we were off. The car jumped and tilted as we caught a wheel on a pothole, before righting as we came into the lane, directly behind a taxi.

  ‘Put your foot down!’ I shouted at him. I was looking at Dawes in the rear-view mirror: he’d reached the other side of the road and jumped into a light grey Pobeda containing one of his colleagues, and they were now only twenty yards or so behind, with just four cars between us. We had to lose them, because I didn’t have time to be taken to the embassy and convince everyone I was telling the truth.

  The driver accelerated, squinting through the windscreen. One of the wipers was broken, so it wasn’t much use against the rain; it just kept getting stuck and drawing back early like a bird with an injured wing. Apart from the taxi there were no cars in front of us and I thought he was dramatizing to give his colleague a chance to catch up. I could also see that despite the fact I was holding something very sharp to his crotch, he was itching to make a move on me: perhaps because of the holster at his hip, which contained a Makarov; perhaps because I was having to keep the prongs a little at bay in case I skewered him by mistake. So I leaned across him very fast and snatched the gun with my other hand, then rammed it against his temple, removing the fork from his groin at the same time. Something about the sensation of cold steel pressed into his skull got through, and his squint disappeared.

  I handed the fork to Sarah in the back seat, and told her to keep it handy in case he got any ideas. In the meantime, he pulled out to overtake the taxi. As we passed it, I told him to take a right, but he reacted too late and had to slow to swerve into it, the back wheels skidding on the tarmac. In the rear-view, I saw the Pobeda preparing to make the same turn. The militsiya man must have sensed my anger at his delayed reactions and feared I was going to pull the trigger, or perhaps I was pressing harder than I realized, because he accelerated again as the street widened. He swung a left, and then another right, bringing us onto a boulevard, Rozhdestvensky, its neo-classical buildings flashing by us, and I shouted at him to move into the Chaika Lane, the central one reserved for party officials, which was empty.

  But the Pobeda had now made the corner as well and was gaining on us, so I told him to prepare to turn again, and this time he reacted faster, taking a side street on the right that, after a few bumpy yards, brought us out onto a small square. I glimpsed the entrance of an underground station and dozens of people queuing at a small market outside it, dead chickens hanging by their necks, and then the street narrowed again.

  I told him to keep going, and to take as many turns as he could, while I kept an eye on the rear-view mirror for the Pobeda. I couldn’t keep him in control like this for much longer, so I had to figure out a way to lose Dawes and friend first.

  I turned back to the driver and asked him if he knew who we were. He didn’t respond, but his eyes flicked over to me. ‘I said do you know—’

  ‘Yes! You’re fugitives from justice.’

  ‘Take the next left,’ I told him, ‘and keep your eyes on the road. Of course we’re fugitives, but what else do you know about us?’

  He took the turn well, and I grunted approval. The man could drive, and Dawes, or whoever he was in the car with, would have a job keeping up with us – for as long as I could keep this man under control.

  ‘You are English,’ he said. ‘We were given instructions to look for you.’

  There was a handset next to the radio, so presumably they were using a two- or three-way communications system.

  ‘What were your instructions, exactly?’

  ‘You are to be stopped by any means. Shoot on sight. Call back-up at once if needed.’

  All of that was to be expected. The rain was intensifying, so I had to raise my voice against the sound of both it and the engine.

  ‘Anything else?’

  He registered a flicker of surprise. ‘The whole Service has been put on the highest alert for civil disorder.’

  An alert for impending unrest was another sign they were preparing for an attack. The Service’s experts had predicted widespread riots and looting in Britain if it ever became clear a nuclear conflict was imminent.

  ‘Was there any indication as to why we are fleeing justice?’

  ‘That’s not our concern. If State Security says you’re fleeing from justice, you are.’

  Give the order and the hounds will run.

  ‘What measures are in place to stop us?’

  ‘I can’t speak for the other Services, but we had a full alert, with every available man scrambled and told to look for you intensively.’

  ‘Roadblocks?’

  ‘Yes, I believe—’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. They are arranged by Central Control.’

  A gust of wind smacked against my side of the car, and I tensed to stop myself from losing balance. The window on the passenger side would no longer close all the way, and a thin icy wind was whistling in through the gap. My hand was cramping from holding the pistol in such an awkward position, and I was getting worried that if there was another gust of wind or we went over another pothole I might accidentally pull the trigger. I locked m
y wrist and placed my other hand around my forearm to keep it in place, then stole another glance in the rear-view. The Pobeda was overtaking a red Moskvitch, coming into our lane, closing ground.

  ‘The roadblocks,’ I said to the driver. ‘You must have favoured spots in the city.’

  He nodded. ‘We have sixteen points. Judging by the alert we were given, I expect most or even all of them will have been set up.’

  I thought about this for a moment. That many meant there was no chance of our leaving the city without going through one. And there was no obvious way we could get through any of them, because they’d have several cars waiting and barricades blocking the way. I checked the rear-view again: the Pobeda was trying to make it past a small van, creeping ever closer.

  ‘Keep making turns,’ I said. ‘Sarah, take hold of the gun, please.’

  She leaned forward and I transferred the grip so that she was now holding the pistol in place at the driver’s temple.

  ‘Shoot him if he tries anything.’ The man looked to be sneering, perhaps feeling he could overpower her. ‘She was first in her class on the shooting range three years running,’ I told him, ‘so I wouldn’t advise it.’

  It was a reasonably good lie, because his sneer vanished. I leaned across and unhooked the latch of the glove compartment. Rummaging through, I saw two spare holsters and breast badges, a map and two small green booklets with gold stars pinned to the front. I took out the booklets and flicked one open. It was for his colleague. I quickly flicked open the other one, and the face of the man next to me stared up from the photograph. He was Sergeant Grigor Ivanovich Bessmertny of District C-12, and this was patrol car identification 1464. I could have got his name and rank out of him easily enough, but not the rest of it.

  ‘What’s the call sign of Central Control?’ I asked. ‘Lie, and I’ll tell my companion here to shoot you in the head and I’ll take over the wheel myself.’

  He inhaled sharply through his nose.

  ‘Big Bear.’

  ‘And when you call in, how do you identify yourself? Fourteen Sixty-Four?’

  ‘One Four Six Four.’

  I dropped the booklet onto my lap and grabbed the handset from the radio, then pressed the transmit button and spoke into it. ‘Big Bear, this is One Four Six Four reporting a possible sighting of the English fugitives, subject of earlier alert.’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then a crackle of static burst from the receiver.

  ‘One Four Six Four, this is Big Bear. What is your current location, and that of the fugitives?’

  I lifted the receiver again, looking out at the street signs. ‘We are on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, at the corner of Milyutinskiy. They are in a pale grey Pobeda’ – I glanced in the rear-view mirror and read off Dawes’s licence plate – ‘which we saw them get into at a café on Neglinnaya a couple of minutes ago. Please send backup.’

  Another crackle, and then: ‘Thank you, One Four Six Four. Keep up the pursuit, and I will direct all cars in the area to help you out.’

  They signed off, and I placed the receiver back in its hold. A few moments later Big Bear came on repeating my information, and moments after that there was the sound of a siren somewhere behind us. Dawes must have heard it too, because the Pobeda peeled away from behind us and took the next side street. I told Bessmertny to take a left, and that was when I spotted the other car.

  It had appeared behind the Moskvitch as if from nowhere, presumably having cut in from one of the side streets. Was it in pursuit, though? Its bodywork was black, and I guessed it was a GAZ-23 – the special model created just for the KGB. From the outside, it looked exactly like a 21, which was what we were in, but it had a V8 engine under its bonnet, which meant it could reach 160 horsepower, as opposed to our 65: it was the most powerful car in the Soviet Union.

  As it approached us, a man leaned out of the passenger window and opened up with a machine-pistol. A shot hit a rear tyre and we started to skid, losing control fast. A moment later the car was overtaking us and made to turn in the road to block us off. The man in the passenger seat was still shooting, and this time he hit the front windscreen. I started to scream at Bessmertny to yank the wheel around but my right hand was throbbing and when I looked down at it I realized why: it was covered in blood, and a spike of glass was sticking out of the flesh between my thumb and forefinger.

  The image of it sent pain shooting through me, and I clenched my eyes shut as the roar of gunfire and engines around me increased, but then I thought of Brezhnev in the bunker and forced them open again. Half the windscreen had shattered, and chips of glass were strewn across the dashboard and wheel, but Bessmertny still had his hands gripped on the latter, his jaw clenched tight and his eyes staring wildly ahead. The 23 had made its turn and I screamed at him to steer us off the road, but the distance was too short. The driver in the 23 saw what was happening and tried to reverse, but he wasn’t fast enough and our wheels locked as we began to slide towards him, the tyres squealing as they scraped across the road.

  There was a massive jolt as we caught the front end of the 23 but I kept consciousness and even began to move my hands to the back of my head, until I remembered the glass and took them away again. I was being spun around, but my mind was in danger of detaching from the situation. Then panic rose to the surface as a car came from the other direction and I lunged towards the wheel, another surge of pain swelling through my hand as I did. There was a blast of the horn and then whoosh, the car had gone, but the road was still where I’d last seen it, which meant I was alive. Somehow we had righted on the road, and Bessmertny was still hunkered over, his hands in position. I leaned over and grabbed at the wheel to help him right us some more, looking in the mirror as I did and expecting to see the maniac with the gun leaning out of the window, but I saw nothing – just traffic streaming by, Moscow, life. The 23 had gone, either driven off the road or forced into a turning.

  I turned to check on Sarah in the back.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But we need to deal with your hand.’

  ‘Get us somewhere quiet,’ I told her, ‘away from the centre.’

  She nodded, and while she instructed Bessmertny to take turnings, I examined the wound. It looked worse than it was, I thought – there was just the one large shard and although it had produced a lot of blood, it looked to be relatively clear. There was always the risk contamination would spread, but we couldn’t go to a hospital.

  Soon the traffic started to thin out and we passed rows of concrete blocks of flats, squat and uniform. Sarah ordered a few more random turns until we had reached a small clearing that appeared to be an abandoned picnic area. Car tyres and pieces of rusting metal lay half-buried in a patch of overgrown grass, beyond which was a row of small wooden cabins. The stench of urine and faeces rose as we approached: public toilets. I told Bessmertny to pull up by some tree stumps, and once we had come to a standstill I took the key from the ignition and climbed out.

  *

  The area looked to be completely deserted, and the nearest road at least a mile away. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still very low. I ripped away the sleeve of my jacket and balled it up and placed it in my mouth. Then, without looking at it, I yanked the spike of glass from my hand, my screams muffled as the pain seared through me in waves.

  Once I’d steadied myself a little, I walked back to the car and tapped on Sarah’s window. I gestured for her to hand me the gun, then opened the driver’s door.

  ‘Get out,’ I said to Bessmertny. He did so, and I told him to walk towards the wooden cabins, focusing on keeping the Makarov on him steady despite using my left hand. Every muscle in my body was tensed, because if I were in his shoes I would be looking to turn suddenly and snatch the gun. So I kept a good distance from him, watching every move he made, waiting for any sign that he was about to try something. When we had gone a few yards, I told him to stop and undress. He didn’t respond.

  ‘Do it now!’ I shouted.

&
nbsp; He started removing his jacket. ‘I wouldn’t advise throwing it at me or anything like that,’ I said as he reached the final button. ‘You don’t have anywhere to run. Just place it on the ground, understand?’

  He nodded, sullen now or perhaps frightened, and he folded the jacket over his arm, then crouched and placed it on the ground. I told him to strip off the rest and he did, until finally it was all laid out and he was standing in front of me, shivering in billowing white underpants and a vest.

  I told him to open the door of the cabin nearest him. Shivering, he did it, and I glimpsed a wooden shelf with a plastic lid.

  ‘In,’ I said.

  He hesitated, considering whether to rush me. I kept my eyes level on his and tightened my grip on the butt of the gun.

  ‘I’ll shoot if you’re not in there within five seconds,’ I told him. ‘Four.’

  He walked in, and I stepped forward and turned the latch, locking it. He started thumping his fists on the door, and I told him that if he carried on I’d unlock it and finish the job. There was a thudding behind me and I turned to see Sarah running over from the car.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she shouted as she reached me. ‘You can’t lock him in there! He’ll freeze to death. It’s not—’

  ‘What?’ I said, turning to her. ‘Cricket? Would you rather I shot him, like you did Charles in Italy?’

  I jerked my head back to avoid the slap and grabbed hold of her wrist, then twisted her round in a simple hold. She lashed out with her other arm and when that didn’t work either, she tried to kick me in the groin, but my body was too far away, so she started thrashing about angrily, screaming at me to let her go. I dropped the hold, but made sure to keep the gun steady – not aimed at her, but present.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said, her eyes drilling into mine. ‘You know what Charles did to me, and what he was planning to do to others. But you’re worse than he was. You’re no better than an animal.’