‘I might not see much of you for a while,’ said Sir Marcus as his driver took them down to Piccadilly, where the traffic was heavier. ‘It’ll be tough, now that Gaunt’s at the top.’
Knight wasn’t looking at him. ‘I’m quitting anyway.’
The older man’s grey eyes studied him in silence, his fingers folding and stretching the pair of gloves that lay in his lap. The car turned down towards St James’s.
‘This is the drink talking,’ he said eventually.
Knight shook his head. Sir Marcus watched him for a moment longer, decided that he was serious, then the grey eyes left Knight’s face and gazed along Pall Mall. The fingers crushed one of the gloves in his hand.
‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
Knight sighed and settled back for a long session.
4
Moscow
Serov awoke to darkness and the ringing of the telephone. Alone in his own apartment, stiff from the armchair in which he’d dozed off. Dreaming from the book on his lap. Shaken by the dream. He grabbed at the phone to shut it up.
‘Yes?’ He shook the sleep from his brain and hauled himself upright.
‘I need to see you, comrade.’ He recognised Gramin’s hoarse tones, mangled by the crushed nose. ‘I think it’s important. As soon as possible.’
His mind came rapidly into focus. The dream was only a dream. Across the city Galina was waiting for him. In the darkness of the room he picked out the time on the glowing digital display of the video recorder and pulled his thoughts together.
‘The Armenian’s,’ he told Gramin. ‘In an hour or two.’
The line went dead and he put the instrument down. He went around the room, switching on each and every light and closing the curtains against the night.
A glass of bourbon later he returned to the armchair and picked up the book where it had slid down the side of the cushion.
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Forbidden reading, of course. As were most of the books in his apartment. All of the major English-language writers were represented. Right up to date, not just the approved classics like Dickens or Shakespeare that the libraries carried. Serious authors, pulp fiction, biographies. British, American, history books, even poetry: they were all here, and in the original English, untouched by the Glavlit censors. It was the library of a cultured man.
He took another draught of the bourbon and surveyed the apartment. His kingdom. In this place where he admitted no visitor, not even Galina, where he was surrounded by tokens of his own intellectual breadth and by luxury goods that would have left most of his countrymen pop-eyed, Nikolai Vasiliyevich Serov defined himself.
Eleven thirty. Time to go. He drained the glass and put the book back on the shelf. In its proper place.
*
Even at this time of night it was impossible to be unaware of the extra activity on the streets. Not even the weather got in its way. There were uniformed and armed militia and plain-clothes men and women at every Metro exit he drove past, stopping people at random and demanding their identity papers. In some cases body searches were being carried out on the spot. He saw a gang of young people being shepherded at gunpoint into a grey investigators’ van, whether for more detailed searching or because they had been arrested, he had no way of knowing. He slowed down as if he was just curious to see what going on, but as far as he could tell none of them looked like any of the cocaine dealers that had escaped the Druzhba Park swoop. Driving over the Krasnokholmskiy Bridge onto the island, he saw a group of tipsy business types, Westerners judging from their appearance and obvious indignation, who were being photographed and quizzed by three well-built men. That worried him: it was a bad sign if even the tourists and businessmen were being hassled.
With all this going on, he wasn’t too surprised when he himself was flagged down a kilometre or so later. Traffic inspectors were streaming every fourth or fifth car off the road at the intersection with Great Ordynka Street and directing them into a floodlit sidestreet. Here he waited in line, under the guns of a file of young militia regulars, until a shivering detective came to his car. He saw him take in the fact that it was a Chaika. Although the long black saloon was unmarked, the officer at once adopted a more respectful bearing.
‘Good evening, comrade,’ he said carefully, as Serov’s window hummed open a fraction. ‘Sorry to inconvenience you. Might I ask to see your papers, please, and know the object of your journey?’
Serov held his KGB card up to the window. It was the yellow one, the general purpose card that stated only his name and rank, discreetly omitting any reference to his directorate or function.
‘No, comrade Detective, you may not ask the object of my journey. Tell your friends in the road to pay more heed to which vehicles they’re pulling in. I’ve got better things to do than sit here half the night.’
‘My apologies, comrade General. I didn’t realise who you were when I enquired, otherwise of course I wouldn’t have done so. I’ll have you out of here at once. I’m sorry you’ve been delayed. What with the traffic and the weather all the inspectors can see are headlights; they can’t tell what kind of car they’re pulling in.’
‘What’s this in aid of, anyway?’
‘To tell you the truth, sir, I’m not sure. It’s a Second Directorate operation. I’m CID, from Pyatnikskaya Street. We’re just extra arms and legs. We’ve been given a list of names to look out for and told to get on with it.’
‘The usual tightly coordinated operation, eh?’
The detective, glad to feel the thaw in Serov’s attitude, went off to shunt the cars in front forward so that the long Chaika could move off. As Serov pulled away he glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the man stamping his feet for warmth while he signalled the queue to tighten up.
At the end of the street were three grey vans. Serov heard dogs barking in one as he cruised past.
Back on the main road, he turned south and picked up the Varshayskoye Shosse. As he left the city centre and the carriageway lights became less frequent, the snow eased off but an icy fog began to close in. Settling back at a sensible speed, he switched his wipers back on and thought about what had happened at Ordynka. Being flagged down was no more than a nuisance; he was carrying nothing he shouldn’t be and the car was clean. The real issue was the extent of what was going on in the city; and the rest of the country, if everything he heard was to be believed. That and the fact that at Ordynka he had counted no less than four agencies involved: the Second Directorate, the militia, the CID, and even the City Traffic Control Board. Whoever had set the operation up packed plenty of clout. That was disturbing. With practice they could only get better.
He found a further disagreeable omen at the Ecranas electronics warehouse. A fleet of the now all-too-familiar grey vans and half a dozen police Volgas, headlights blazing, were drawn up alongside the loading bays. He let the car’s speed fall while he peered through the fog, and made out what he supposed were members of the nightshift, still in their overalls, being frogmarched to the vans.
After eleven or twelve kilometres, well up in the hills by now, he swung west onto Balaklayskiy Prospekt and followed it to Vernadskovo. Here the road became the Aminyevskoye Shosse. Cheaply built apartment blocks lined the right-hand side; on the left, beyond where the Ochakovka river paralleled the shosse, the concrete blocks of the Olympic Village lay hidden in the darkness. By the roadside, also on his left, he discerned the red and yellow petrol pumps and hut of the filling station, barely visible through the fog. Beside it, in a chain-link enclosure, stood rows of used cars for sale, some under canvas covers, all beneath a crust of snow. He braked, turned into the forecourt and drew up behind the enclosure, the cars within it concealing the Chaika from passing traffic on the shosse.
One other car, a Zhiguli it looked like, sat at the far end of the wasteland behind the lot. He studied it in the headlamp beams. Snow covered its roof and boot lid but the windscreen was clear. There were no tyre tracks across the snow other than t
hose that it had made.
He switched off his engine and lights and waited. Few other vehicles went past on the shosse; those that did pressed on without slowing or stopping. All was still and quiet in the vicinity of the apartment blocks. Although he was already behind schedule because of the unexpected delay at Ordynka, he made himself sit tight for a few minutes until he had the feel of the place. Then he pulled on the rubber overshoes that he had ready in the passenger footwell, withdrew the Makarov from its holster and slipped the torch he kept in the glove compartment into his pocket. Choosing a moment when no vehicles were in sight or within earshot on the road, he slipped out of the Chaika, locked his door and made his way carefully onto the snow-clad moorland where it dropped away from the level of the filling station.
Low bushes and clumps of tough grass frozen into sharp sticks lay hidden under the snow, snagging his steps. The snow also made it impossible to be sure of the contours of the ground, so that he almost stumbled several times before he reached the path that led down to the Ochakovka. He was reluctant to use the torch out here because it would only make the surrounding blackness seem more impenetrable. Anyway, the beam might attract the unwelcome attention of a passing motorist. Or turn him into a sitting target if anyone was that way inclined.
The area had been landscaped when the athletes’ village was built, so that the river was trapped into a series of small lakes crossed by arched footbridges. Most of the high fence that had been put up to keep the local people and the athletes safely separated still enclosed the walkways. Although man-sized sections had long since been removed by fishermen and children, apparently no civic or local decision had ever been made simply to take the whole lot down.
He made his way through one of the gaps and stood motionless again, watching and listening as before. Ten metres above him and a hundred metres away a bus passed on the shosse. He waited for the note of its engine to fade, then tested the river’s surface with his foot, cautiously taking a few paces. As he expected, the river was frozen rock hard. He returned to the walkway and followed it towards the footbridge, where a small weir controlled the flow down to the next lake. Only when he was at the edge of the chamber beneath the footbridge did he take the torch from his pocket. Down here, its beam would no longer be visible from the shosse.
Just before he switched it on to sweep the sides of the chamber he became aware of someone standing directly ahead of him, a presence felt as much as seen. If he looked straight at the figure, he saw nothing; but by looking to the side, he could make out a vague outline through the darkness and fog. He angled the torch at the region of the figure’s waist, where a weapon would be if the man was armed, and switched it on.
‘Put it out, for God’s sake!’ a voice pleaded. It was filled with fear. ‘Before someone sees!’
There was no gun. Serov swept the beam up so that it caught the man’s face.
Little, flabby Ratushny squinted away from the bright light, his chins trembling.
‘Hands,’ Serov said. Ratushny held them out, palms forward. Serov stepped onto the frozen river, then into the footbridge chamber and down to the weir’s lower level, and rammed the Makarov into Ratushny’s soft belly. At the same time he flicked the torch beam around the chamber until he was satisfied that it was empty. He switched the torch off. A truck thundered past on the shosse.
‘Alone?’ he asked Ratushny when the silence returned.
‘I swear it.’
‘The gun stays here until we’re finished. Then you walk ahead of me back to the cars.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘So, my friend. What have you got for me this time? Omit nothing. You know how much I like details. For good intelligence I’ve got all the time in the world. Even on a night like this.’
*
After the sub-zero temperature outside, the Armenian’s shebeen was like a steam room. Gramin was holding court at a corner table right at the back of the bar. He had his arms around two middle-aged hookers. All three were laughing fit to burst. They were audible to Serov right across the packed hall, even over the general mêlée.
When Gramin saw him approach he whispered something to the women. They rose unsteadily to their feet and looked Serov up and down before tripping off giggling into the hurly-burly. One of them screeched as a bald man with a huge cigar in his mouth crept up behind her and squeezed her buttocks.
‘This is what you call a low profile?’ Serov slid in beside Gramin at the table and pushed some of the glasses and bottles out of his way.
‘It was your idea to meet here,’ Gramin said slyly. ‘I was only trying to blend in.’
‘What’s the name of that electronics king? The one from Lvov who expanded his operation here when times were good under Brezhnev.’
‘You mean Volkonsky?’
‘I saw one of his organisations getting gutted tonight. It’s like I told you. They’re crawling over this city like maggots.’
Gramin looked sobered by the memory of their exchange. ‘Volkonsky can afford a knock or two. Let’s drink to his poverty. As for the maggots, may they chew on plenty of carcasses so they run out of appetite before they reach us.’
He ignored Serov’s sceptical gaze and poured two good measures of vodka from a litre bottle of Stolichnaya, followed by two glasses of beer from the pitcher that a waiter had just delivered.
‘The glasses are clean,’ he said when he saw the look of distaste on Serov’s face. ‘Well, as clean as you’re likely to get here. You don’t think I’d have you using the whores’ glasses? Drink for your health!’
He tossed the vodka back while Serov sipped. Then he set about the beer. A woman, not one of the hookers, passed the table and fluttered her fingers at him. Gramin winked at her over the beer glass.
‘Why did you want to see me?’ Serov reminded him. ‘You told me it was urgent.’
Gramin belched and put the empty glass down. He noticed that Serov hadn’t touched his.
‘Good beer, this. If the Armenian pisses in it like they say, that’s some piss. Don’t you want yours? I’ll have it if you’re just going to let it die in the glass.’
‘Be my guest.’ Serov put his hand over the top of the glass just as Gramin was reaching across. ‘After you answer the question.’
Gramin wiped his mouth and sat back.
‘Remember a guy called Lysenko?’ he said.
Serov thought a minute. ‘Jewish?’
Gramin nodded. ‘He was one of our pushers at Druzhba Park. I was going to dump him because he’d got himself a habit. Not a good idea for a dealer. But then came the raid. In fact, he wasn’t there that night because he was stoned –’
‘What do I want to know all this for?’
‘I’m coming to that. He works for Melodiya, the music and recording administration. Since Druzhba Park, he’s got no sources. He’s desperate. He’s a garbager now – uses anything he can get his hands on. I ran into him this evening. He tried to score from me. “I’ve got something to sell,” he said.’
‘Everybody’s got something to sell.’
‘Lysenko has a girlfriend. She’s a dopehead too – used to look to him for her supplies. Now he’s afraid she might go to new pastures. She’s a statistician. Works at the Plekhanov Institute.’
Serov shook his head. ‘And you’re trying to set me up for some kind of trade with Lysenko or his little bitch. What does a statistician have that would interest me?’
‘With respect, comrade, I don’t think you should be so dismissive. Not until you’ve heard me out.’
Serov thought about the other things he would rather have been doing at that moment. Galina was waiting. But good intelligence was like grains of gold in a river: it only came to the prospector who kept sifting for it.
He sighed and tossed back the vodka.
‘Go on then,’ he told Gramin. ‘But don’t take all night over it.’
5
Morning. The north-eastern corner of Vagankovskoye cemetery was where the newest g
raves were. The snow was like a shroud over the whole place, as if laid communally over the souls there. Her cheeks raw and numb from the biting wind, Galina came at last to the hedged area where her mother lay. The disorderly jumbles of crosses and headstones, each grave surrounded by iron railings to keep out prowling dogs, reminded her of the perspective drawings she used to try to fathom in fine art classes at high school: no colour, just grey outlines diminishing as they marched into the distance, interspersed with the bare birch trees.
Death was no easier to fathom. She stared blankly at the laconic inscription on her mother’s marble slab. Katarina’s name and dates, that was all. No loving epitaph, not even her picture encased in glass on the slab, only the bare facts.
She meant no criticism of Nikolai, of course. How could she? After Katarina’s death – death? why couldn’t she call it what it was? – he’d taken charge of everything on his own. He’d had to; she’d been worse than useless, close to total breakdown herself. Just another burden for him to bear. He never once complained. God knows how much he’d handed over in bribes just to get hold of the burial plot.
She owed him everything; mother and daughter, they both had. Their home, their welfare, all had come from him. He had always been there, as long as she could remember. A lover to Katarina, a father to herself. Provider and protector to both of them.
And in those terrible months after her mother’s death – suicide – he’d given her back her sanity.
‘I don’t want to lose you too,’ he would say. ‘My Katya’s gone – not you too. You can’t just give in like this. We must go on, Galya. Just you and I now. Don’t close me out. I’ll take care of you.’
He cocooned her in care and tenderness, and in the end it worked. Gradually she returned to life, like someone who had almost died from exposure. He thawed her, warmed her, held her close to him until she breathed again.
So she had to repay him. She knew his needs, was woman enough by then to sense them. Who better? She repaid him in the only way she could when he’d given her so much love over so long. She loved him back.
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