by Craig Thomas
‘You know, dammit!’ Lock raged. ‘You know the connection between Vaughn Grainger and Tran!’ The pistol waggled dangerously in his hand, as if animate. The truth about Beth’s murder was in the room with them. ‘Tell me, Kauffman, or by God I’ll blow your head off!’
The threat was real. Kauffman believed it, his features venomously afraid.
Then, in a quieter voice. Lock said: ‘Tell me, Kauffman. Tell me all of it. About the drugs … everything. I want to know because nothing else matters now. Not you, not me. Tell me …’
Vorontsyev stood looking at the onion domes of the church, sombrely heavy against the hard glow from the town. The wind cried in an empty pla’ce, which might almost have been inside him, and he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and hunched into the hood of the parka.
After some time, when his irresolution and fear had subsided, he turned from the church and trod carefully along the path to the door of the brothel. Two scientists were missing — they had to be people who were to use other fake passports, they were at the Gogol with Pomarov — and he hoped to God they were
“still in Novyy Urengoy … hiding out in a place like Teplov’s brothel, which Mostafa Vahaji had used.
There was a grubby light at one of the windows, behind thin curtains. It was an hour before dawn, early or late enough for Teplov to feel vulnerable; invaded and violated by his arrival.
He ignored the doorbell and banged on the wood, yelling out Teplov’s name. A light went on somewhere far back in the hall.
The stained glass panel of the door threw liver spots of light over his face and hands. He felt icily cold in the wind.
The door opened on a safety chain. Sonya, eyes bleared with sleep, had the magnificence and size of a ruined monument as she stared suspiciously at him. Then, when she snarlingly spoke, she was just an ageing whore and even the soft glow from behind her was too much betraying light.
‘You — what do you want now?’
He pushed past her. The stuff of her vast wrap rustled against the parka. ‘Just a chat — another talk.’
“Why don’t you leave him alone, Major — he doesn’t know anything,’ Sonya protested, her slippers flapping heavily behind him as he moved down the hall towards the stairs. ‘You know him, Major.’ Her voice was rough, coarse, yet neither whining nor pleading. Sonya was dealing in statements of fact. ‘He walks a fine line, but he walks it. People like Panshin leave him ‘
He turned on her and her face told him she sensed her own indiscretion.
‘Val Panshin — what’s Panshin to our mutual friend? To the respectable, tightrope-walking Misha?’ He grinned.
‘Nothing, Major. I was just going to say he doesn’t move in such circles, not Misha. They leave him alone. You know all this!’ she concluded.
‘What is it, love?’ Teplov called from the top of the stairs.
Vorontsyev looked up and Teplov saw him. ‘Oh — yes, Major?
To what do we owe the-?’ He was galloping down the stairs, his silk dressing-gown flowing about him.
‘It’s not a friendly visit,’ Sonya warned, folding her arms across her huge breasts. She stood at the foot of the stairs, protecting Teplov.
‘I’m not going to beat him up, Sonya — or arrest him. At least, not yet. You can stay, if you want. Make us some coffee. Come on, Misha — along to your office, I think.’ He put his arm around the man’s narrow shoulders, almost hugging him to his side.
‘Let’s talk about Val Panshin, for one thing.’
‘Nothing to do with him,’ Teplov protested in a tired, uninflected voice, unlocking the door of his office. Sonya hesitated, then made for the kitchen. ‘Come in. Major.’ The church gloomed in the darkness beyond the window before Teplov switched on the light. ‘What is it now?’
Teplov sat down, pulling his thin dressing-gown closely around him. He lit a cigarette. Vorontsyev helped himself from the box and they smoked in silence for some moments. The office seemed almost warm to him.
‘Have you ever been asked — by Mr Al-Jani, our late lamented Iranian friend — to put people up here overnight? Or for longer?’
He studied Teplov through the smoke he exhaled. He had — but hadn’t complied, Vorontsyev guessed.
‘Never.’
‘But you were asked — he asked you if you would?’
A long silence, into which Sonya galleoned with a cafetiere and two china cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and a milk jug.
The mockery was evident, as was the taste that had acquired the china. She poured Vorontsyev’s coffee, murmuring:
‘People don’t ask people like us to do things like that, Major.
They just come here for a good time.’
‘Good coffee,’ he replied, then added: ‘You won’t be mentioned, or this place. I just want to know.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘No raids for two months, I guarantee. Just so long as you don’t take too much advantage. No under-age giris—’
Teplov looked affronted, Sonya malevolent.’- no drugs, no SM beyond the usual whips and scorpions. No raids for two months
… Really good coffee.’
‘You only bully us because we’re not connected!’ Sonya observed caustically. ‘Why don’t you raid Panshin?’
‘He’s really under your skin, Sonya — why?’
‘Because he’s a fat bastard!’
‘Have you had trouble with him — Misha, have you?’
‘If we had, what would you do?’ Sonya challenged, arms folded, positioned behind the chair like a bodyguard.
Vorontsyev adopted a gloomy expression. ‘Not much, that’s true,’ he admitted. ‘But enough to look after you two.’
Sonya appeared sceptical, but Teplov’s pinched, chilly features seemed warmed, as if by the idea of heat rather than an actual fire.
‘Well?’ he added. ‘Do you want to talk about Panshin, or not?
The bastard’s into drugs, correct?’ Teplov nodded involuntarily before Sonya’s arm descended warningly on his thin shoulder.
‘What’s the connection between Panshin and the Iranian exactly?’
‘There isn’t one,’ Sonya replied quickly.
‘There must be. Why else was Al-Jani here? He was Iranian Intelligence, by the way.’ Teplov was startled. ‘It’s true. No tricks.
He has to have been the main supplier, right?’
Teplov said slowly, carefully: ‘From what we heard. Overheard … the heroin you’re interested in came in under his supervision.’ He glanced up at Sonya’s clouded features. His hand touched hers as it lay on his shoulder. ‘We mind our own business. Even the Iranian understood that. He didn’t abuse it.’
He puffed furiously at his cigarette. Sonya’s grip remained firm, but relaxed. She’d squeeze his shoulder if she thought him too compliant. ‘Panshin became interested about a year or so ago I think.’
The Iranian hooked him?’
‘I think so.’
‘And the American doctor, Schneider, was connected — and the hospital?’
They were genuinely puzzled, without knowledge. Vorontsyev was disappointed.
‘We don’t know about that.’
‘OK. Did the Iranian ask you to put up people who didn’t come for the fun and games — any time?’
‘Once.’
‘When?’
‘Four, five months ago. I — we — said no. Pushers with the heat underneath them, were they?’
‘No. Nothing like. Did it seem important to the Iranian? Really important?’
Sonya said. ‘He tried to make it casual, nothing much. It didn’t fool me — or Misha,’ she added. Teplov looked glum and guilty.
‘But he didn’t explain?’
‘No. He left it at that.’
‘Would he have asked Panshin?’
‘I doubt it. He didn’t like Panshin. He thought he was a greedy bully — the girls he used all had tales of his mockery of Panshin with his haircut, cigars, rings and big gut!’ He smiled, shrugging at Sonya’s withering contempt
. Vorontsyev grinned.
‘Poor old Val — he couldn’t bear it if he knew we didn’t think well of him!’ He spread his hands. ‘OK. Four or five months ago, there were people the Iranian wanted to hide. Not more recently?’
Teplov screwed up his narrow face, but the effort at memory seemed no more than politic. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘He might have been in a panic. A couple of weeks ago? Was he here? Did he have to do something in a hurry — come down from the rig unexpectedly?’
‘All right, so you know already!’ Sonya snapped. ‘It wasn’t four or five months ago, it was the week before last! We said no.’
‘Good. How many people, for how long?’
‘Two, he said. For a couple of days, till he got something else sorted out — what’s the matter now?’
Vorontsyev had stood up.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ He yawned, ‘Thanks for the coffee, Sonya. No raids for a couple of months
— even if you weren’t going to volunteer the information! I’ll keep my side of the bargain.’ Sonya’s expression was dismissive, and relieved. Teplov smiled weakly. They didn’t want to know more, hadn’t wanted to at the time. Like himself, he reflected dully. ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he muttered. ‘Take care, both of you.’
‘Why, Major? You’re not going to do something, are you?’ Sonya snapped.
Pained, he replied: ‘I think I may have to, Sonya. Tell me one more thing. Any idea who the Iranian would have used to hide these people? You say it wouldn’t have been Panshin. Who else?’
‘There are Iranians and other wogs all over town. Major, or hadn’t you noticed?’
He shut the door behind him. Any decrepit flat anywhere in the town. One of the dachas outside, a hut, a shed …? The wind howled and the sky was lit only by the lights from the town and the menacing breaths of flame from the rigs. Ice sparkled on the onion domes and crosses of the church.
He had to involve Dmitri. Didn’t want to, but it was necessary, now. The two men who had been with Pomarov had disappeared, Vahaji was dead. Rawls-? Connected or not, he was dead … he had to find those scientists
She had waited until the end of the night; just before dawn when the nursing shifts changed and while the corridors were still only anticipatory of the smells of the first meal of the hospital day. Yet her vulnerability did not diminish. It was partly reaction from the way she had nearly died up at the rig, but also her own bodily weakness, however much despised, and the sense of herself in slippers, pyjamas, dressing-gown. The hospital clothing refused to become a disguise, a declaration of harmlessness.
And then there was Goludin, ten paces behind her, his hand furtively inside his jacket, hovering near the butt of his pistol.
There was an element of farce in the situation that Maria could not help feeling was the prelude to error or discovery. People had already died, she had almost died, on this same journey. She halted at a turn of the long, aseptic corridor and Goludin caught up with her.
‘Is this it?’ she whispered hoarsely.
Goludin’s face was solemnly certain. ‘Yes. The door’s at the end of this hallway. I double-checked,’ he all but pleaded. It would be the easiest of things, to ask him to die protecting her, such was his guilt at what had happened at the rig. She shrugged his sentiments aside.
‘Right, let’s have a look at the locks.’
He remained beside her now. The silence pressed behind them as palpably as if the corridor were being bricked up, entrapping them. She reached the door and began at once to study the lock.
The warning notice, in Russian and English, forbade entry to any but authorised personnel. Otherwise, it was simply a general storeroom.
‘Stiff plastic should do it,’ Goludin offered.
‘Do it, then.’
He seemed reluctant to damage his credit card from a German bank, but began to insert it beside the lock. Maria listened behind them and heard only the heating pipes grumbling and the sough of the air-conditioning and dust extractors. The Foundation Hospital wasn’t even cluttered and rat-infested and unsafe below ground level — God certainly blessed America. She sniffed, and was afraid of the sudden volume of the noise in the oppressive silence. The lock’s click was quieter. Goludin, beaming and red faced, opened the door for her like an escort. She switched on the lights — and shuddered.
It was nothing like the hangarlike shed where she had been caught, knocked unconscious and dragged to the garbage bins
… but the shelving and the orderliness made it seem like a doll’s house image of the other place.
‘All right?’ he whispered, his breath tickling her cold ear.
‘Yes,’ she snapped back sternly.
‘I just thought —’
‘Keep quiet.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure this storeroom is the most likely?’ She pushed the door quietly to behind her, leaning back against it. Reaching out, she touched Goludin’s hand for the reassurance of the cold barrel of the pistol he was holding.
‘It’s the least used. Look over there — linen, bandages, toilet paper. Reserve supplies — ‘ More doubtfully, he added: ‘I thought it seemed the most likely, if it wasn’t used very much.’
‘Let’s get on with it — you take that side. Go on.’
She began to pace along the farthest shelving on the left-hand side, as if measuring the ground for planting. She could hear Goludin’s footsteps, as deliberate as her own, and his breathing, artificially steady. Toilet paper, sanitary towels, swabs, bedlinen, bandages … almost immediately, it seemed a ridiculous waste of time to be investigating this storeroom. No drugs, just the mundane. Disinfectant, cleaning fluid, toilet paper … She turned on her heel, almost losing her slipper in her impatience, and began the next valley of shelves.
‘Anything?’ she called out in a hoarse whisper.
‘Nothing yet.’ His disappointment was as evident as her own, mingled with a growing embarrassment.
She completed the second defile of shelves, already inattentive, her nerves beginning to mount, her sense of time exaggerated, the seconds hurrying much more quickly than her breathing. Nothing, nothing’Goludin!’ she snapped angrily. Bloody waste of time. The shelves were closing in, claustrophobically. ‘This is-‘ She glanced upwards, feeling hot and constricted, trapped by futility and anger. The downlighters in the low ceiling were like the eyes of infra-red cameras — were there cameras? She hadn’t even checked.
He appeared at the end of the rows of shelves which enclosed her.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
She must have looked ridiculous, standing there, like someone in a drought area amazed at rain falling on her face. She continued to stare at the downlighters and the top shelves. Then she pointed.
‘Up there.’ Her throat was tight.
‘What?’
The top shelves. No one ever looks up in a storeroom. They’re difficult to reach, too.’
‘Yes?’
She shook his arm, gripping it with both hands.
‘The bloody shelves are full of boxes! Climb up and have a look!’
He nodded eagerly as a puppy and handed her the pistol. Then he gripped the shelving and shook it. Dust rose slowly.
‘Solid enough,’ he muttered and began climbing, grunting as he did so. His feet scrabbled past her, then stilled. He was raised above the top shelves like someone looking carefully over a parapet.
‘Well?’
‘Lots of boxes — Medical Supplies they — all of them say. Just that.’
‘Country of origin?’ she snapped. ‘Brandnames? There must be brandnames.’
‘USA, it says on this one — and that one. Looks like most of them are Yankee’
‘And?’
‘And what?’ He seemed breathless, impatient and disappointed.
‘Who manufactured them?’
‘Doesn’t say.’
‘It must!’
‘Well, it doesn’t!
Do you want to climb up and have a look?
It just says General Medical Supplies on plain cardboard boxes, except USA. Otherwise, they’re anonymous. Wait — ‘ He grunted, leaning out across the top shelf to which he clung. She heard the scrape of cardboard on dusty metal. ‘This one says Grainger Foundation, Phoenix, Arizona — what you’d expect, isn’t it?’
‘Vorontsyev says the delivery came from Tehran, not Phoenix.
Come down from there. You’ve wasted our time —’
‘Sod that! I’m opening one while I’m up here. No one will know.’ She heard grunting and ripping, the screamlike tear of masking tape being tugged free.
‘Come on, we haven’t got time—!’
‘Bugger off, Marfa! I’ve said I’m sorry — said nothing else, ever since you were brought here. But you’re not my superior officer, so bugger you!’ She wanted to laugh at his ridiculous, pompous protestation.
‘Hurry up!’ she barked in lieu of amusement.
‘It wouldn’t say Heroin, a Present from Iran on the boxes, would it?’ His breathing was ragged, the tearing noises somehow more desperate. ‘Oh, bugger this-!’ he growled. The box continued its struggle against his efforts, seeming to back away from him along the top shelf with gritty, grumbling steps. ‘There!’
Silence. Eventually, maddened, she barked: ‘Well?’
‘Catch,’ he replied and his hand dropped a package. Brown paper tied with string, as unadorned as some of her Christmas presents as a child. Those had usually been knitted mittens, a repainted doll, a scarf or balaclava.
‘Have you —?’ She cleared her throat. ‘Do you know what it tastes like, heroin?’
Unwrapped, the parcel contained a cellophane block of compressed whiteness which could as easily have been soap powder or talcum as ‘Yes,’
Goludin breathed, reaching the floor.
She watched him as she might have watched a careful parent lighting a candle for her, so that she would avoid all hurt. He opened a penknife, slit the package at one corner, dipped in his finger as if into sherbet, placed the powder on his tongue, tasted — and spat.
‘Yes!’ he sighed orgasmically. She felt her cheeks hot with excitement and admiration. Goludin’s whole face was a beaming grin. ‘Yes!’