He consulted the slip of paper again and tapped some more keys until he was satisfied with the wavelength reading indicated on the digital LED display panel above the keypad, then extended a telescopic aerial from a corner of the unit. The highway was empty of traffic. He stepped quickly out of the car, placed the transmitter on the roof and pressed another key. The transmission lasted less than half a second, then he and the unit were safely back in the car.
When the toolbox was snapped shut, the unit was automatically switched off and its memory erased. He burnt the slip of paper in the ashtray, crushed the ashes in his hand and cast them out of the window, and set off for home.
All Moscow had to do was slow the transmission down to its original speed, decode it, and the people who ran the watcher would learn that a consignment was on its way.
7
Moscow
Police Station Number 24, just off October Square, was the nearest to the Tretyakov, and it was here that Galina had been taken.
Serov found Superintendent Glassov an amiable man, more so than the distraught gallery administrator. When this tearful individual finally left them in peace, Serov also discovered that Glassov knew the value of money. The policeman’s roundabout approach had a certain polish.
‘Seems a shame to lock up such a lovely young woman, comrade General. You and me, sir, we’re practical men. What’s so special about one old picture? It’s not as if she took a knife to it, after all. A few fingernail scratches, that’s all.’
‘The administrator said she tore the paint to the bare canvas in places.’
‘These art people get a little hysterical. It’ll fix. We’re always hearing how damaged paintings get repaired so you’d never know anything had happened. Amazing.’
Serov passed the superintendent a cigar and glanced at the forms spread out on the table by his elbow.
‘I suppose those are the records of the young lady’s arrest.’
Glassov nodded lugubriously as he lit up. ‘Mind you, records do get lost.’ He blew out a smoke ring and looked appreciatively at the cigar. ‘Sometimes finding records here is as hard as finding a decent mechanic to fix your car.’
‘You’ve got car problems?’
‘I’m afraid so, comrade General. Top brass like you don’t have to worry about that sort of thing. You’ll have an official car, no doubt. Don’t look so apologetic, sir. You’ve got more important things to do than hunt for mechanics and car parts. Our citizens don’t want you worrying about that kind of thing. Or about whether you can afford a new engine.’
‘That sounds expensive.’
Glassov became even gloomier. ‘I tracked down a fellow last week who says he can do it. But eight hundred roubles is a lot of money for a fellow like me. Four months’ salary.’
Serov produced his wallet and counted eight hundred-rouble notes onto the table. Glassov scooped them into his fist without a murmur and shredded the booking forms.
‘The duty medical officer sedated the young lady a short time ago.’ He knocked out the tip of the cigar on the table leg, blew on the stub to check that it was dead, and slipped the cigar into a breast pocket. ‘Allow me to take you to her.’
Ten minutes later Serov was back in the street, supporting Galina on one arm as he tramped through the freezing slush to the car. He dismissed Gramin and drove her straight to her apartment. She was blue with cold from the cells and her hands and feet were like ice. He set her in the warmest corner of the living room, turned the heating up full and prepared hot soup, which she supped listlessly. She remained as distant and utterly silent as she had been during the drive.
He knew the symptoms well enough. They weren’t just the result of whatever sedatives she’d been given. This was how she’d been in the months following Katarina’s death. In some ways she could appear perfectly normal. She would dress herself, eat normally, even continue with her sculpting and painting. The impenetrable silence would be the only clue to her imbalance. Then, without warning, she would collapse in silent tears and lie or sit motionless for hours, completely withdrawn from the world. All he could hope for was that this time the relapse wouldn’t last too long.
He spent what was left of the afternoon trying to coax an account from her of what had happened; the police report had concentrated on her onslaught on the painting. Something, he knew, had to have provoked it. Had she made the visit to the cemetery that she had been talking about?
It was no use. Try as he might, he couldn’t get a word out of her. In the evening he put her to bed and searched the kitchen until he found a bottle of bourbon. The hot liquid was welcome, but it did nothing tonight to burn the tension out of him. He found his mind returning to the changes that were sweeping through Moscow. Dangerous days, he’d told Gramin. Days that could bring not only the annihilation of his comfortable world, but his own death; in the dog pack the most vicious fate was when the pack turned on one of its own.
He poured another bourbon and looked in on Galina. At least she was sleeping soundly. He returned to the living room and put on the television to catch Vremya, the evening news.
At first the headlines were just the usual pap. Another speech by Gorbachev about reform; another rerun of the Red Square parades, with no reference made to Zavarov’s absence; latest output figures for machine building; more nuclear tests by the USA. He let it all wash over him as he sipped the bourbon and took another cigar.
Then the female newscaster spoke a name that registered at once in his mind and he became very still.
‘… Food Shop Number One, formerly known as Yeliseyev’s. The spectacular raid is being acclaimed as a major coup in the mounting campaign to defeat corruption. We have an interview with the officer who led the raid, comrade Vladimir Chernavin. Comrade Chernavin is a senior special inspector in the Department for Struggle Against Embezzlement of Socialist Property and Speculation. This is the KGB division which is spearheading the anti-corruption drive …’
Nikolai Vasiliyevich Serov watched and listened with close attention as the pudgy KGB officer detailed the day’s events.
The pack was yelping.
*
The phone rang just as the news was ending. There was no extension in the living room, only in the bedroom and kitchen. He dived into the kitchen to answer it before its ringing could wake Galina. Gramin was on the line. Serov listened in silence to what he had to say.
‘You’re sure Gulyaev’s dead?’ he replied at last. ‘This man Chernavin said nothing about that.’
‘Of course not. He wants to make us sweat. That’s the Second Directorate’s way. Gulyaev’s dead all right. They needed a shovel to get him into the body bag. He didn’t just jump – he dived. He wanted there to be no mistake. It must’ve been a star performance. I’m sorry I missed it.’
‘Maybe he was helped on his way.’
‘Because they’d finished with him? No. It was his own idea. There are neater ways of getting rid of a person. Anyway, they’d want to keep him alive for a fancy trial.’
Just then Galina moaned. Serov moved to the edge of the kitchen where he could see her through the open bedroom door.
‘Gulyaev told them nothing, comrade,’ Gramin went on. ‘I saw Chernavin’s face when he came down to the street to look him over. What’s more, I’d say Gulyaev wanted us to know he’d kept his mouth shut.’
‘What were you doing there anyway?’
‘The loading manager in the Food Trade Administration depot at Mytishchi called me. He’d been phoning the store to set up some delivery dates. I got down there to have a nose around – you know, see who was being taken away. I arrived just after Gulyaev did his stuff.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘Who’d recognise me there? Only the drivers know me and none of them was there today.’
‘How many of them were involved at the Church of the Saviour?’
‘Four.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘They took off.’
‘The
y can’t hide forever. They need identity cards, their work records have to be kept up to date. They don’t have the kind of money it takes to buy new identities.’
He knew how much that was. So would Gramin; no doubt that was why he was remaining silent.
‘Sooner or later they’ll have to surface, whether they want to or not. Gramin?’
‘Yes, comrade?’
‘Do you know where they are?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Find out.’ Serov spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘Find out tonight. And your friend in the depot at Mytishchi. Visit him. Those would be wise things to do. Yes?’
Gramin knew when not to argue. ‘I’ll do as you say. There’s one more thing, comrade.’
‘We’ve been on this line long enough.’
‘I spoke to Lysenko. We agreed a venue.’
He began to go through the details; Serov crossed to the breakfast bar and jotted them down on a shopping pad. Afterwards he looked them over sceptically.
‘That’s the best you can come up with?’
‘There’ll be plenty of people for cover, comrade. And this is a very natural place for Lysenko.’
‘For Lysenko, maybe. What about me?’
‘I thought –’
‘Never mind.’ As he glanced again at Galina’s bedroom, an idea occurred to him. ‘Maybe it has its advantages. I’ll be there. Everything else is as I told you.’
He put the receiver down before Gramin could reply, tore off the sheet of paper and slipped down from the stool.
The open-plan kitchen gave onto a wide-windowed studio that made up most of Galina’s apartment. The studio was perfect for her work, bright and airy. As he left the kitchen, he detoured to the two sculpting pedestals that were positioned at one end of the room. The work on them, in clay at this stage, was hers. She was good. The finished piece was a female head and shoulders. It was Katarina. The likeness was perfect, unsettlingly so. All the more remarkable for having been done from memory. On the other pedestal, under a damp cloth because it wasn’t yet complete, was his own image. When both were finished Galina would make moulds and cast them in bronze.
He knew better than to remove the cloth from his own bust; she had forbidden him sight of it until it was done. His fingers brushed the cloth but left it alone. He continued to the living room, topped up his bourbon and flopped down on the couch.
A noise startled him a moment later and he looked up. Galina was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He rose at once and went to her.
‘Galya?’
She was tousled and still half-asleep. The green eyes flickered open and tried to focus on him.
‘Here I am,’ he whispered. He thought he caught the hint of a smile, and smiled back. ‘You knew I wasn’t far away, didn’t you? Did you hear me talking? Is that what woke you? Come and sit down. I’ll get you a drink.’
He took her arm and guided her to the couch, carefully putting his own glass in her hand. When her fingers were locked around it he sat beside her and raised the glass to her lips. Its touch made her start slightly, but she took a sip.
‘Good.’ He forced cheer into his voice, as if he were cajoling a child. ‘Now, I’ve got something to tell you.’
He went over to the audio cabinet and riffled through her record collection. It was extensive; he kept her supplied with all the latest Western releases as well as the output of the Soviet underground bands. The albums he was looking for were grouped together near the end of the row; he took them over to the couch with him.
‘I’ve got a special treat for you, Galya,’ he told her. ‘I think you’ll find it exciting.’
*
Over breakfast the next morning he watched her closely and spent an hour chatting to her afterwards. She seemed less distant than before. When he suggested that he ought to go to headquarters for an hour or two she showed no alarm. He waited another while, reassuring himself that she would be all right on her own, then set off.
‘Tonight,’ he reminded her as he took his leave. ‘Something for you to look forward to.’
Again the almost-smile in response.
The roads were clearer now, especially in the centre of town, the snowploughs having been busy. As if in confirmation, Moscow Radio was broadcasting a report about the billions of roubles spent each winter on snow clearance. It followed this with a lecture on the need for each citizen to be less wasteful with hot water and heating.
He made first for the foreign currency shop on Kutuzovskiy, one of the chain meant for tourists and therefore more likely to have reliable stocks of goods. It was ten o’clock by the time he got there, and the shop was just opening. He parked the Chaika half on the wide pavement just before the underpass at the Dorogomilovskaya intersection, an act that only official vehicles could get away with, and went into the store. Less than five minutes later he returned; his purchases were two pairs of binoculars, which he dropped on the rear seat and drove off.
Next he stopped off at the Rossiya Hotel to pick up the West European newspapers that the manager set aside for him each day. He preferred his own scanning of the foreign press to the clippings service at headquarters. That way he got the information he wanted, rather than whatever someone else thought he should have: always assuming the papers had been let through.
A quick glance at the headlines told him that OPEC’s problems with oversupply and tumbling prices were still the main item; with the consequent beneficial effect on the Western economies.
Out around Tsaritsynskiye Ponds on the southern outskirts, heading for the ring motorway, the roads grew a little more treacherous but became better again in the vicinity of the First Chief Directorate complex; the KGB had the knack of getting itself looked after.
‘It’s been very quiet, sir,’ Sergei assured him as he took his greatcoat. ‘You’ve missed nothing of any significance. Not here anyway.’ He followed Serov into his office. ‘But did you hear about the raid on Yeliseyev’s? And the store director? Mind you, comrade General, you won’t find a word about his death in the papers. People are saying the investigators worked him over too hard and killed him by mistake. So they had to fling him out of the window to cover their tracks.’
He grunted a response, took the coffee that Sergei poured, and resumed the attack on yesterday’s paperwork, recalling a time when his job hadn’t consisted of pushing paper around.
Then a name on a document caught his eye. He stared at it for a moment, taking in the significance of the paper on which it appeared, before picking up the phone.
‘Sergei. Come in here, please.’
The document was a top copy plus several flimsies, each a different colour to indicate its destination: a requisition docket. It authorised an amount of expenditure to be debited against headquarters overheads. The sum was insignificant; that wasn’t what had caught his eye.
‘What’s this?’ He held it out to Sergei as the man entered.
‘It’s to cover the cost of a funeral wreath, General. We always arrange wreaths for the directorate’s pensioners. In accordance with a scale of allowable values that reflects their rank on retirement, of course.’
‘I know that. When did this man die?’
Sergei looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s not actually dead yet. But I’m assured it’s only a matter of days. He’s in our private wing in the First Municipal Hospital.’ His cheeks coloured as his embarrassment mounted. ‘I have an … arrangement with the doctors there.’
‘An arrangement?’
‘Purchase requisitions take a long time to go through the system, comrade General. I’ve known cases where the funeral was over before the wreath arrived. It makes the directorate look like it hasn’t bothered to pay its respects. So the doctors give me a little advance warning sometimes.’ He broke off. ‘Did – I mean, do – you know this man, sir?’ He peered at the docket. ‘Genrikh Kunaev, major, retired. Is that why you’re asking about him?’
Serov nodded. ‘I knew him a long time ago.’
�
�I see, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you such an unpleasant shock.’
‘It’s of no consequence. We weren’t friends. Far from it. As I say, it was a very long time ago. That’ll be all.’
He let the docket fall back into the tray and folded his hands, watching Sergei retreat.
‘Sergei, the rezidentura travel rosters – are they up to date?’
The man looked pained at the implication that he might have been anything other than efficient. ‘Certainly, comrade General.’
‘Bring me the Third Department’s, please.’
A minute later Sergei put several sheets before him. Each was headed by the name of a capital city: Canberra, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Oslo, Stockholm. They were the location of Soviet embassies in the countries covered by the Third Department.
Serov turned to the London sheet. The entry he anticipated was near the bottom of the page, along with the pertinent information.
Name: Kunaev, Viktor Genrikhovich
Function: Senior Cipher Clerk
Cover assignment: Commercial Attaché’s staff
Travel details: Compassionate leave of absence due to father’s illness. Two weeks requested (to be spent in Moscow)
Serov leaned back in his chair. So the old fool was still alive, if only just. And his brat was coming home.
He picked up the phone again.
‘Sergei. Find Gramin and send him to me. I have a task for him.’
8
The Small Sports Arena in the Lenin Stadium complex could take an audience of about 14,000. Tonight it looked like it would be packed to capacity.
Taking Gramin’s advice, Serov and Galina travelled out there by taxi. Parking in the roads near the complex was forbidden, while space inside the park was to be reserved for official use, which would include Soviet, British and American television recording facilities. All vehicles without permits, even a car like Serov’s, would be impounded.
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