Stoutly Storvac said, “I shall lead.” He was a brave man. “Badyul, you and Belov will stay with the car. I shall go to the left of the road. Swing the car so that the headlights show that way.”
We stood and watched as Badyul shifted the car, laying it slap across the road. What would happen if anyone came along I just didn’t know, but supposed, or anyway hoped, any traffic would be unlikely. I mentioned it but all Storvac said was that the job shouldn’t take long. He had the cross with him. He unlocked the boot, gestured at the bundle, and caught my eye.
“All right,” I said. I bent and heaved the body out. Storvac took it and hefted it onto my back. Before he shut the boot he brought out the heavy jack. Then, with the bereaved father, we moved off the road to the left in the long beam of the Volvo’s headlights. We moved very, very slowly behind Storvac, who took it cautiously, a step at a time, gradually easing his weight onto each outthrust foot in turn. The wind whistled eerily and the cold bit hard, right through to the bone. There was the weird hoot of some night bird from across the marsh and the first time I heard it I almost dropped the bundle. Behind me Igor Yasnov gave an occasional dry sob but came on stoically. We had gone perhaps fifty yards when there was an exclamation from Storvac and I heard a cracking, crunching sound. Storvac lurched and fell, cursed briefly, then picked himself up, looking muddy and smelling terrible.
“We have arrived,” he said. “This will be the place.”
“Not too iced up?”
Storvac said, “Oh no. Not as thick as I feared, Commander Shaw. Some work with the jack. You may put down the – the canvas.”
“Right,” I said, and did so. Gingerly Storvac reached forward with the car’s jack and bashed at the marsh. There was more crunching and some muddy ooze spattered horribly and there was more stench. Storvac worked away for some time until he had made a considerable hole in the thin ice cover, then he ceased operations and stood for a moment breathing heavily from his exertions.
“Now,” he said. “Lift. I will help.”
He did so; we lifted the bundle together and began to swing it to Storvac’s orders. When we had a good swing on, he gave the word to let go. The pathetic bundle went ahead perhaps four feet and dropped into the broken-up marsh. There was a plop and a shower of filth. Yasnov stood on the firm ground, eyes shut, saying something in a keening voice, a prayer perhaps. I didn’t know if he believed in any God; being part of WUSWIPP I doubted it. Perhaps he was just taking precautions against the chances of the Party dictum about ‘no God’ being wrong. Lenin, Stalin and the rest – they didn’t have to be right all the time. The bundle was already starting to disappear, the sucking action of the marsh having its effect.
Storvac laid a hand on Yasnov’s shoulder. “I am so sorry, Igor. Now we go. It is done.”
“Yes, it is done, Comrade.”
Yasnov turned away, his face haunted in the headlights’ beam. We all turned away. A moment later I heard a scuffle of feet behind me, followed, as I turned quickly and saw the leaping figure, by another plop and a shower from the marsh. In the Volvo’s lights I saw Yasnov’s torso some distance from the firm ground, saw his arms reach for the vanishing bundle, saw him begin to sink.
Storvac’s face was as haunted as Yasnov’s had been. He said, “There is nothing we can do. It is perhaps for the best.”
“Perhaps,” I said. I didn’t know quite which way Storvac had meant it. The best for a despairing father, or the best for us, those involved, if the KGB should ask questions about a disappearance – there would now be one man the less to perhaps break under torture.
When we turned away towards the Volvo we saw the distant lights of a vehicle coming dangerously fast along the road from Mar’ina Gorka.
Badyul had acted commendably fast. We saw the swing of the headlights away from us as he straightened the car. Now we were in total darkness. Safe from one angle, in much danger from another – the surrounding marsh. “Who d’you think it is?” I asked.
“Who can say? Perhaps Greenfly, perhaps not. You have your revolver?”
“Yes,” I said, reaching for the shoulder holster.
“I too. Now we wait to see if it stops. We shall move closer meanwhile.”
Slowly, very slowly, we moved. I prayed hard that we didn’t literally put a foot wrong. The approaching car now had the Volvo in its own headlights. A few moments later it started to slow, then it stopped immediately behind the Volvo. I saw that it didn’t carry any police insignia but that didn’t have to mean much: the KGB don’t advertise. Neither, it was to be presumed, did Greenfly. I wondered why Badyul and his mate hadn’t scarpered, left the vicinity like bats out of hell. They were either brave and loyal, or bloody stupid. Or perhaps they knew that WUSWIPP’s revenge would be as bad as anyone else’s. Anyway, they stayed put, not getting out of the car as four men in dark clothing, carrying sub-machine guns, Kalashnikovs I believed, bundled out from the other car and ran for the Volvo.
They had their backs to us now, which gave us a chance if we wanted to open fire. I wasn’t at all keen to open fire on the KGB and said so as I saw Storvac lift his revolver.
“It is not the KGB,” he said softly. We were closer now. “One of them I recognise. Stefan Grulke.”
“And he is?”
“A seceder to Greenfly,” Storvac answered. He pointed him out, lifted his revolver again. I knew from the old days that he was a first-class shot, one of the best I’d come across. I wasn’t bad myself. When Storvac opened fire and one of the men dropped and lay twitching in the snow, I knew I had to back him. I took aim and fired, and another went down. But the other two had had time to take cover on the other side of the car, and as Badyul and Belov inside reacted a stream of rapid fire came out over the marsh and we ducked. The firing was kept up for a while and when it stopped I heard a loud scream from inside the Volvo and a fraction of a second later I saw a lick of flame curl up from around the bonnet and then almost before I had time to take a breath the Volvo was a seething mass of fire, just as though a petrol bomb had gone off inside. Flames shot skywards, smoke poured, and the gunfire was resumed, sweeping out across the marsh. By now Storvac and I were both lying flat on the firm ground. No doubt making the assumption that that would be precisely what we would be doing, the gunmen kept their fire low. I heard the whine and buzz of sustained fire, saw the men outlined in the blaze from the Volvo, firing from the hip. Bullets thudded into the ground all around us. Storvac was a little ahead of me and in the lurid orange light I saw him get hit. He gave a short scream and half lifted his body, twisting in agony, and took more bullets, this time in the head, which seemed to split in half and that was that. I knew I couldn’t do much good now but I lifted my revolver and fired back at the men, and missed. I missed because in the precise second that I squeezed the trigger a bullet took the revolver and tore it from my hand, and sent it spinning away. The men probably saw that; there was no more gunfire and I saw them moving cautiously out from the road towards me.
With his Kalashnikov pointed down at me, the leading man said in English, “Commander Shaw, I think?”
The car that had brought the gunmen had backed away fast from the blazing Volvo, which was now no more than a glowing skeleton with twisted frames and the remains of Badyul and Belov still sitting there with smoke drifting up from their corpses. I reckoned they’d been killed by the guns before the fire had started. It was a gruesome sight. I was marched past all that was left and put into the other car, a Lada. No-one spoke until the Lada had been turned and was heading back towards Mar’ina Gorka. Then the man whom Storvac had identified as Stefan Grulke, the one who had addressed me by name in English and who was sitting alongside me in the back, prodded me with a revolver and said, “You will have disposed of the girl, of course.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’d be obliged if you’d tell me who you are.”
There was a laugh. “Did Comrade Storvac not recognise me?”
“All right,”
I said. “Yes, he did – Comrade Grulke.”
“So the introductions have been made. And you have disposed of the body, Commander Shaw.”
“You seem to think you know it all. Why should I argue the toss?”
“There would be no point. You are not so clever as you think, Commander.” Again Grulke laughed, an unpleasant sound and a threatening one. “You failed to check the Volvo. A device held underneath by suction. Most effective!”
I took a deep breath. So that was it; they’d just followed a bleep at a discreet distance, no need even to hurry. It could have been fixed easily enough after the strong-arm men had left the car. I said, “I suppose you killed Irina Yasnova?”
“Not me personally.”
“Why was she killed?”
“A score to settle with her father – it is not important.” Grulke’s voice was totally impersonal, he might have been discussing the casual squashing of a woodlouse. “Storvac, no doubt, told you that I am a member of Greenfly. I shall tell you something else.” Grulke seemed addicted to his loathsome laugh; he gave it again. “Do you wish to hear?” I’d already guessed what was coming. I said, keeping my tone level, “I’m a captive audience, am I not?”
“Yes.” He seemed to find that unduly funny. When he had stopped laughing he confirmed my suspicions. “We have your Miss Mandrake,” he said.
“I see,” I said, feeling suddenly cold inside now that I knew for certain. “Where?”
“Somewhere.”
“I’m being taken to her?”
“No.”
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth, Grulke?”
“I shall show you.” With his free hand he reached inside his heavy greatcoat, through to his jacket, and brought something out. A photograph. This he held in front of my eyes and spoke in Russian to the driver, who flicked on the interior light. It wasn’t a good light but I was able to make out Felicity. She was lying on a floor and she was spread-eagled as to her arms, and she was tied with rope to a cross.
*
I was driven on for a long time, back through Mar’ina Gorka after which we headed out along a road that Grulke said led away from Minsk. There was, he said, nothing to go back to Minsk for. The Minsk end was closed now; the fact that I had gone there with Storvac was a bonus for Greenfly – I’d not been expected but they were delighted to have me. It appeared that Felicity hadn’t told them what they wanted to know, whatever that might be. I was not immediately informed of Greenfly’s wishes. But I was told that already London was beginning to react to my disappearance and Miss Mandrake’s; also, of course, to the botched border crossing made by one of the Ladybirds. Greenfly had its men in London, Grulke said, men with big flapping ears. Both Whitehall and 6D2 HQ were playing it all down and there had been nothing in the press about disappearances. Not yet, I thought, but it wouldn’t be long; of course, the shooting incident on the East German border had been given the press treatment – and the press was speculating after getting the official handouts. The East Germans had waxed synthetically indignant about the West assisting would-be escapers; much had been made of the presence of Hans Schulz, citizen of Braunlage in the Harz. As for Whitehall, they had categorically denied any involvement on their part, which was strictly true since it had been handled by 6D2. We’re all of us two-faced these days, from sheer necessity. Government and the maintaining of peace has become dirty business. According to Grulke, the diplomatic furore had a long way to go yet: it had only just begun and would escalate.
“And the times are dangerous,” he said. “For the West.”
“Meaning?”
That damned laugh. “You will see, Commander Shaw. There is a little time yet.”
I asked casually as though I’d never heard of them before, “What are these Ladybirds you spoke of, Grulke?” Arthur Webb had been so certain, back in Focal House, that the Ladybirds were on to something big, something brewing behind the Curtain, something that had made a woman risk, and lose, her life. But I didn’t get any information about the Ladybirds from Grulke. He laughed yet again and made some remark in Russian to the driver, who also laughed, making a spiteful sound of it. Conversation died after that and I was left to think about Felicity and what she was undergoing. That cross on the floor; Grulke hadn’t elaborated after he’d put the photograph back in his jacket and of course there had been no need to. In my mind’s eye I could see the cross being screwed into its upright position, and the nails being driven into the flesh and gristle, and the weight coming on, and the constricting diaphragm … Everything was lined up ready and I wondered in an agony of my own what the time-schedule might be. Then Grulke started up again and, right out of the blue as it were, said something intriguing.
He said, “Since Comrade Gorbachev came to the supreme power in the Kremlin, the supreme effective power, there has been a growing movement towards a peaceful life with the West.”
“Towards detente?”
“Yes. Away from confrontation.”
“Why do you make that point, Comrade Grulke?”
I was reaching screaming point at his laugh. That was his only reaction to my question and he returned to silence. According to dead Storvac, it was WUSWIPP that wanted less confrontation, seeing what it was leading to and having suffered a metamorphosis of their own. Not so Greenfly. And as if in confirmation I had detected a criticism of Gorbachev in Grulke’s tone.
*
We drove through the night; the Lada carried petrol cans in its boot and en route the car was stopped so that the driver could top up the tank. As the dawn came up, iron hard, bitterly cold with more snow in the sky, I saw that we were heading east into the rising sun. Shortly after that I was told to get down on the floor: I wasn’t to see where we were going, and that must mean journey’s end was not far off. I crouched on the floor, very uncomfortably under Comrade Grulke’s feet and gun, the latter making sure I didn’t try to lift my head for a look. When I eased my neck after a while, I got a hard tap on the head from the barrel, just as a warning. When we slowed I guessed we were coming into some sort of built-up area; and, though it was early, there were traffic and pedestrian sounds, the workers on their way to complete some quota or other to the greater glory of the Soviet Union. After a while the Lada slowed still more, took a sharp turn, and seemed to be going down a slope. The daylight went and I became aware of the backglow from artificial lighting and of a smell of stale air mixed with petrol fumes. An underground parking lot was my guess, but it turned out to be more than that. When I was allowed off the floor, and pushed from the car in front of Grulke’s gun, I got the impression, which turned out to be correct, that we were in a private car park belonging to some kind of organization, or maybe just a group of offices split up among a number of interests.
There were several cars parked, around twenty, but no persons beyond ourselves. The driver remained in the car while Comrade Grulke propelled me across towards a door, a heavy fire-proof door with a notice on it in red, a warning that the door was to remain closed at all times. Inside, there was a long corridor, concrete all around and underfoot, with light bulbs in recesses in the ceiling. The air was cold and dank and our footsteps echoed. A few years earlier, I’d landed up inside the Lubyanka prison in Moscow – we wouldn’t have had the time to make Moscow on this trip from Mar’ina Gorka but this place had a similar feel to the Lubyanka with its torture cells, its interrogation rooms, its overall horrible security and sense of doom. I had to fight down mounting claustrophobia: when you’ve once been in the Lubyanka, in the hands of the security police, you don’t want to face anything like it again.
The corridor ended in a lift and I steeled myself: I recalled the lifts in the Lubyanka – split into two halves with a steel partition, you on one side, the armed guard on the other, the lifts that brought you to the lush-carpeted corridors and the terrifying silence of the rabbit warren, not unlike Broadcasting House in its complexity of passages and doors.
We entered the lift; Grulke pressed a button a
nd we went up fast, a stomach-sinking sensation followed by an upward surge as we stopped.
The doors slid open and Comrade Grulke laughed and said, “After you, Commander Shaw,” and prodded my backbone with the snout of his gun, and I went out into a passageway. It was a more ordinary one than those of the Lubyanka. A few people passed us, girls looking like secretaries, some male executives for want of a better word, and one or two exchanged polite greetings with Grulke, whose gun was now in his pocket – I’d seen him shove it out of sight as we left the lift, and I’d wondered why. The place had the feeling that guns would be a pretty normal sight within its portals, but on the other hand there might be a facade to be kept up.
I was halted at a door eight doors right from the lift. Grulke knocked and pushed the door open, and I was herded through into a small square office with one window looking out over a sizeable town, a panoramic view of mostly bare concrete, some of it being in the form of high-rise blocks. I had no idea where it was. A man was sitting at a desk, a squat man with a totally bald head and small, hard eyes, a swarthy man who looked as if he’d need to shave three times daily, a man built like a barrel with a wide, deep chest. He remained seated as we went in, and Grulke spoke in Russian, too fast for me to understand much of it, though I heard my name mentioned.
When Grulke had finished, the man turned towards me and stared, looking me up and down as if wondering what my pain threshold might be.
He said, “Commander Shaw.” He had a high, squeaky voice, the sort I would have associated with a eunuch, and it didn’t fit the body.
I didn’t make any response. He asked, “Why have you come to Russia, Commander Shaw?”
I said, “I’m sure Comrade Grulke has advanced a theory.”
Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18) Page 6