Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  I got to my feet as Storvac came back, having found no handy implement. I said, “Too late, Storvac.”

  “She is dead?”

  “Yes, very. Do you know who she was?”

  He said, “Yasnov’s daughter Irina.” Storvac was trembling and his face was paler than ever, all blood seeming to have left it. “She was nineteen years of age. Just nineteen years, Commander.”

  As he finished speaking there was a sound in the hallway, footsteps coming in from the open front door. I reached for my shoulder holster but as a man entered Storvac put a restraining hand on my arm. I saw the reactions in the man’s face: a welcome for Storvac, some alarm at the sight of me, a stranger, then the shock and horror as he saw what lay on the floor. Like Storvac, he shook. He knelt down by the body. Storvac went to him and put an arm about his shoulder.

  “What can I say, Igor, my friend?”

  “Who did this?” Tears were streaming, the face was haunted.

  “I do not know. We found her – ”

  “I have been out all day at work and she was alone, my little daughter who is all I had left.”

  No mention of a wife: I assumed the man was a widower. He got to his feet, staggering, his face buried now in his hands. I left the room and went out into the hall, then into another room where there was a scrubbed wooden table and chairs, and a sink and a dresser. I opened cupboard doors in the dresser and found what I was looking for, a bottle of vodka. I took this, with a glass, to the room where Irina Yasnov lay, caught Yasnov’s eye, lifted my eyebrows at him and began to pour. He snatched the bottle from my hand and put the neck to his mouth, and tilted it. Then, when he had taken what he needed, he looked at me and addressed me for the first time. In Russian, asking me, I was able to understand, who I was. I lifted a restraining hand and said in a whisper to Storvac, “Say to him – not so fast. We’ll go on a bug hunt first.”

  “Bugs, yes.” Storvac whispered in Yasnov’s ear and then we had a good look round and it wasn’t wasted time: I found two small devices in the flat, one in the kitchen-cum-living room, one in the bedroom where the body lay, and I ripped them out. I carried on the search but didn’t find any more. As an added precaution I switched on a battery radio that I’d found in the kitchen: the damn thing didn’t work.

  “We’ll keep our voices low,” I said, “just in case. So in a whisper, Storvac, you can confide in Yasnov.”

  He did so. “A British agent,” Yasnov said softly, glaring at me.

  “But friendly, Igor. You have my assurance. He is not here to act against the Soviet. Only against Greenfly, like you and I.”

  Yasnov took another pull at the bottle. “It is Greenfly who has done this. I know it.” He paced the room, passing and repassing the broken, crucified body, his face working. I had understood his Russian and I fancied he could be right, although I would have expected to find the green bug emblem, as in my own flat. There seemed to be no love lost between the old guard of WUSWIPP and Greenfly. After a few more pacings Yasnov halted and swung round on me, and spoke in just understandable English.

  “What do you know of Greenfly, Englishman?”

  I said, “Nothing, Comrade Yasnov. I’m here to find out. I hope you’ll help me.”

  There was a grunt and then Yasnov and Storvac began speaking Russian and I was largely lost. While they were talking I heard the bang at the front door and then footsteps in the hall and the two men, the two thugs from the Volvo, came in. One of them reported to Storvac, something about the car – Storvac told me later that they had garaged it in a warehouse managed by a friend. Then the new arrivals saw the body, or rather the sheet that by this time Storvac had placed over it. There was much natural consternation and the KGB was mentioned; presumably the murder would have to be reported to some authority or other but I hoped it wasn’t to be the KGB. So, I gathered, did Storvac. The involvement of the KGB would complicate matters for more than just me. There was a personal element in all this, the vendetta between WUSWIPP and the break-away killers of Greenfly, and Storvac didn’t want any State interference at this stage. There was a good deal of argument, Igor Yasnov grew a little drunk on vodka, and passed the bottle round. It was soon empty. Irina Yasnova still lay on the floor beneath the sheet while her disposal was discussed: I found that gruesome, and left the room, going back again to the kitchen where I’d found the vodka. I flicked off the light and circumspectly peered from behind the curtain. The snow was falling heavily, obscuringly, and no-one was about. It was a whitened scene of total and brooding silence. Somewhere in this vast country was Felicity. I saw her in my mind’s eye, lying like Irina Yasnova, crucified, tortured by inhuman hands, the antennae of Greenfly. But I was being too fanciful: a hostage wouldn’t be killed. Not so soon, anyway. But I might need to be fast, and to date I had got nowhere, and time was passing too quickly.

  As I came away from that high-up window, thinking my unproductive thoughts, Storvac joined me. Checking the curtain, he switched on the light. He said, “We have been discussing the body.”

  “I got that far,” I said. “Any decisions yet?”

  “Igor Yasnov is friendly with a person who was formerly a People’s Judge for the constituency. He will be asked for advice and help.”

  “He won’t stick his neck out against the KGB, Storvac. Or will he?”

  “Yasnov says he is a good friend, and was fond of Irina and of her mother.”

  “Who is dead?”

  Storvac nodded. “Yes, dead.”

  The way he said it made me ask how she had died. He said, “She was raped to death, Commander, by men of the KGB, drunken men. And I repeat, this friend of Yasnov’s was fond of her and would have married her if Igor Yasnov had not done so.”

  “I see,” I said. I went on, “I’ve been wondering, how was Irina crucified … without anyone overhearing, without anyone interfering? I assume all these flats are occupied?”

  “Only sparsely during the day,” Storvac answered. “In Russia everyone works, or almost everyone other than the old. As to interfering … “ He shrugged. “You are a man of the world, after all.”

  “Yes,” I said. Inside Russia, anywhere behind the Iron Curtain, also in certain states of South America and elsewhere, the prudent never interfere. You just let screams happen and you cover your ears if you’re squeamish. All the same, I’d have thought sheer curiosity alone would have brought doors ajar and faces peering from behind curtains as the killers left. But then I remembered what Storvac had just said about the KGB rape. There would be people here who would recall that, people who knew that sometimes screams were due to the KGB, people who would be taking no chances thereafter; and I accepted Storvac’s point.

  I said, “This People’s Judge. Are you going to tell him about me?”

  Storvac said, “He might be of help to you.”

  “It’s a risk. I can’t say I’m keen.”

  “You will not get far in Russia without help.”

  “I have your promise of yours, Storvac. I believe that’s good enough.”

  “It is for you to decide. I shall do as you wish.”

  “Then keep quiet about me to anyone close to officialdom.”

  “Very well. What do you propose to do now?”

  “Start looking for Miss Mandrake,” I said, “and she’ll lead me to Greenfly. I know it’s a needle in a haystack, you needn’t remind me. But one thing has a habit of leading to another, right?”

  “Perhaps,” Storvac agreed, and then gave a ghost of a smile. “But so far, I think, you have not got the one thing.”

  “Never mind,” I said, and then added, “But perhaps I have, if we’re assuming it was Greenfly that killed Irina Yasnov.”

  “How so?”

  “The dog to its vomit. They’ll be around somewhere, just to see what the reaction is.”

  Storvac didn’t offer any comment on that. He left me again, going back to the others in the crucifixion room, and a few minutes later he left the flat with Yasnov, making, I assumed,
for this People’s Judge. I was left with the two strong-arm boys from the Volvo, taciturn men and watchful. I could see the bulges of the shoulder holsters and even though they knew I was a mate of Storvac’s, those bulges had to be reckoned with. Do anything they didn’t like and they would react. Not that I could do anything but wait for Storvac’s return. I tried to be friendly in the meantime, smiling at them and trying some Russian, but they didn’t respond. After I’d uttered a few platitudinous sentences one of them came up with some brief colloquial English.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  Storvac and Yasnov were absent a little over two hours, the longest two hours of my life to date. I was having nightmares about Greenfly watching and seeing me when I emerged, and possibly recognising me. Storvac had mentioned some names of the known break-away group and although they hadn’t rung any bells with me I knew there would be others, the ones whose names even Storvac didn’t know, whom I could have come up against in the past. And when they recognised me they would probably lose no time in making a report to the KGB if only to discredit Storvac and Yasnov and the official WUSWIPP. It wouldn’t do WUSWIPP any good at all to be tarred with the brush of collaboration with a Western agent and all would naturally be grist to Greenfly’s mill. I had been helpful to the Soviet government in the past but that was purely in the interest of a specific job, the time I’d been called upon to stop Rollerball in its tracks before its huge explosive power shattered the world’s peace, and on that occasion I’d entered the Soviet Union by invitation and was thus well sponsored. Not so this time; I’d come in as a straight-out undercover man, a spy, if with the best of intentions and no enmity towards the Soviet …

  Storvac and Yasnov came back. Storvac said, “It has been decided. The body is to be disposed of.”

  I asked, “When and how?”

  “Tonight. Irina will be driven out of Minsk, to the marshlands. Afterwards it will be said locally that she has gone away.”

  I didn’t like the sound of it, the implications, but Storvac must know what he was doing. “Where to?” I asked.

  “To stay with an aunt in Moscow. Comrade Yasnov’s sister, who exists and will co-operate.”

  I shook my head. “Is that going to be believed? After what we assume was the noise that must have been heard … and suppose you’re seen, taking the body out?”

  “We shall not be,” Storvac said. He sounded confident. He looked at his wrist-watch: the time was getting on and outside it was as wintry as ever, more so in fact, and the darkness was intense. Once the body was on the ground floor and out to whatever conveyance Storvac planned to use, the Volvo no doubt, it would of course be easy. The danger and the difficulty lay between this flat and the entrance lobby. Storvac turned to Yasnov. “There is food, Igor?”

  “Yes … “

  “We should eat. We must keep up our strength, Igor, you and us.”

  Yasnov broke down then. He said in a shaking voice, “Irina cooked for me. I am useless without her.” He slumped onto the hard chair in the kitchen and put his head in his hands and sobbed. It was a distressing scene; Storvac patted his friend on the shoulder and said he would cook. There was no reaction from Yasnov. Storvac rootled about and found a loaf of black bread, a tin of beans and some eggs. There was an electric stove, old and lethal-looking. Storvac found a pan in a cupboard beneath the sink, filled it with water from the tap, and put it on one of the hotplates. On another he placed a saucepan with the beans from the tin. He used the grill to toast four slices of the black bread. The hotplates took ages to gather any heat at all but after a long wait the meal was ready. During its preparation and the subsequent eating scarcely anyone spoke, each busy with his own thoughts and the pervading presence in the bedroom of that tortured, broken body. We sat around the table glumly, only the two strong-arm boys seeming to have much appetite. But Storvac made Igor Yasnov eat, insisting again that he must keep up his strength. Yasnov gagged, but ate. When the meal was finished and cleared away, Storvac gestured to his thugs to wash the dishes and pans. Then he said, “Now we wait for three more hours.”

  I asked, “You’ll use the Volvo, Storvac?”

  He nodded. “It will be brought when we are ready. Not before.”

  “Suppose the flats are being watched?”

  “By the KGB? I think not – ”

  “Not the KGB, Storvac. Greenfly.”

  “Yes, I have thought of that. So be it. There are two things we can do: shake them off when they follow, or allow them to follow and then deal with them.” Once again he seemed wholly confident. I glanced across at the thugs. There was a smile on each face, a look of anticipation. They looked as though they loved shooting and were about to come alive.

  I told Storvac I’d like to accompany the cortege. He seemed to understand that I would want to be around if and when Greenfly showed, and he raised no objection and neither did Yasnov, who was still sunk in his misery.

  After that we sat on in silence, waiting. Every now and again Storvac looked at his watch.

  *

  Both the thugs went down to fetch the Volvo from the warehouse. One of them said they would need to fit chains over the tyres: the snow, though by this time it had stopped falling, was thick. Down they went, clumping on the stairs. Storvac, watching from the door of the flat, said the stairs were deserted so far as he could see. Coming back in, he put the finishing touches to the body, which had now been wrapped heavily in sheets and blankets and had been curled round into something like a ball, securely tied into a large square of tarred canvas that Yasnov had produced from his broom cupboard – it had been supplied by the janitor to cover a broken window and had not been returned when the window had been re-glazed some eight months later. More rope was bound around the canvas. Irina had been a girl of small stature but nevertheless would be a considerable weight to carry in a nonchalant manner so that the burden would give the appearance of being no more than, say, a bundle of old clothing or such.

  It would be cruel to ask Yasnov to carry it, Storvac said to me in a whisper, and he himself was not a strong man. He would stagger.

  I took the hint. “Very well,” I said.

  “There is the cross.” There was indeed. It was a modern cross, not made of wood but of some sort of alloy with screw holes, quite light in fact, and bendable. It had already been bent but I said I couldn’t carry both – not the weight but the awkwardness was the trouble. Storvac said he would carry it but seemed worried. I said it no longer looked anything like a cross and shouldn’t arouse any particular suspicion if seen on the way out. With the body tied up, all that remained to do was to clear up the last traces of blood, and Storvac got on with this, going around on hands and knees with a wet cloth from the sink. Then, as soon as the Volvo was heard below, crunching slowly through the snow, we left the flat and Yasnov pulled the door to behind him.

  He led the way to the stairs, tears pouring down his cheeks. I prayed that no-one would be about to see. I went next, carrying my burden, with Storvac and the bent-up cross in rear. It was bitterly cold on those unheated concrete stairs, colder still in the entrance lobby with its door to the open air, the freezing air. There was light in the lobby and I could see the Volvo with its chained tyres, drawn up close to the doorway. Unobserved I carried the bundled body through and laid it thankfully in the boot, already opened by one of Storvac’s men. Yasnov got into the back of the car and Storvac followed him with the cross. I got in on the other side at Storvac’s request and sat there with the sharp ends of the cross biting into me: some of the bends had ended as fractures. The boot lid was shut down and locked and both the tough chaps got in the front and with no time lost we drove off. Both Storvac and I were keeping a sharp lookout for anything like a Greenfly but there was no-one at all around so far as we could see, which was a piece of luck though it would have taken a lot to get any ordinary member of the public to venture out in that freezing air. Thereafter and for a long way I kept a watch for a tail but again there was nothing. A sense of ant
iclimax set in. Maybe Greenfly wasn’t involved after all; but if they weren’t, who was? You don’t get crucified by accident or suicidal intent … and lovers’ tiffs, for instance, don’t normally lead to crucifixion. I reckoned it had to be Greenfly. They just weren’t on the ball, that was all. I found that strange in itself. Outfits like Greenfly, living their lives on the brink of death, are normally ultra efficient because they have to be.

  As it turned out, Greenfly had been on the ball all the way through.

  5

  The marshlands were not so far off: about fifty miles, Storvac had said, to Mar’ina Gorka, south-east of Minsk, and then a little way beyond until we were well out in the lonely places. Not far, but the weather was against us and the thug who was driving – his name was Badyul – was taking it carefully even with chains. None of us wanted an accident, a skid off the road, with our burden in the boot. So it took time and it was after two a.m. when we passed through Mar’ina Gorka, not much of a place, lying under a blanket of snow. It wasn’t the best of times to dump a body in a marsh, as Storvac realised well enough, but we would have to do the best we could, break the ice and so on and make sure that the canvas bundle vanished sufficiently not to be discovered before more clement weather allowed it to sink or be sucked down finally.

  Some ten miles south-east of Mar’ina Gorka Storvac leaned forward and said, “Here we shall stop.” The car came to a halt on the lonely road. I had been looking out ahead and to right and left. I couldn’t see much, only where the headlights showed, and what I saw was dreary country with the shapes of scrubby bushes and stunted trees, flat and unwholesome-looking even though the snow covered all.

  I said, “I suppose you know where we are, Storvac.”

  “Yes. Well enough.”

  “I assume there’s marsh both sides. Do you know the safe tracks through?”

  “We must take a risk,” Storvac said, and got out.

  Yasnov and I got out with him, and stood shivering in a bitter wind from the north-east, from the Siberian wastes I supposed. It certainly felt like it, seeming to carry the sting of death. It was pitch dark, not a star in the sky. The risk was frightening; one false step and whoever made it could be in the marsh, though the big freeze might protect him from immediate immersion in the sucking mud.