by Hugh Miller
‘I appreciate that, but this is kind of pressing …’
Luther sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Whitlock left the laboratory without another word. He went straight to the Secure Communications Suite and sat down at one of the computers. For a few seconds he was motionless, letting the padded, dimly-lit interior of the room work its soothing effect on him. He closed his eyes and sat back in the chair, feeling the reassuring support on his shoulders.
It had been a bad twenty-four hours. The pressure for once had not been professional — although there was plenty of that — but domestic. His wife had finally moved out. She had gone because his work received more of him than she did, and because she had found another man who was keen to devote himself to her and to the life they would build together. Instead of her absence creating a gap in Whitlock’s life, he was finding that it was more like a disheartening presence, something solid, a wall perhaps, that separated him from the life he would have preferred. On the other hand, he could never have come up to his wife’s expectations, so there was a measure of relief in his gloom.
He opened his eyes and shook himself. He had almost fallen asleep. He tapped a code on the keyboard and a moment later he was connected to the Kremlin Archive, the third biggest database in Europe. The archive, consisting of millions of items of classified matter hijacked by US agents from a KGB hideaway in 1993, was maintained by technical staff of the US Embassy in Rome. The embassy boasted a state-of-the-art computer-communications installation among its other attractions, and in recent months UNACO had been granted unrestricted access to the archive.
Whitlock entered a request to review the picture files, and was asked what kind of pictures. He ticked PERSONNEL: ESPIONAGE. He entered the name Adam Korwin. A pause, then three pictures came up on the screen side by side. The first showed Korwin as a young man, photographed with the onion-domes of St Basil’s in the background. In the second his head had been shaved and he wore a moustache. The third picture showed him as he looked in Clancy Spencer’s snapshot, although the date on this picture was 1989.
Whitlock downloaded the third picture to the printer, and requested that a summary of Korwin’s KGB service record be attached. In a couple of minutes he had a twelve-page dossier, most of it in summary, but impressive enough to put before a techniques-and-procedures review.
Next Whitlock entered a search under the name of Arno Skuttnik. It was a long shot and, as he expected, the archive found no match for that name. One Skuttnik was listed, but his first name was Tibor. Whitlock called for a picture and up came a grainy shot of a young man in a flat cap. The caption said: Tibor Skuttnik, discipline officer to Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Dyel (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) Moscow, 1938: subsequently appointed to Stalin’s private staff-See file under Skuttnik, T.
Whitlock was inclined to leave it there. This was not his man. On the other hand, a look at the file couldn’t hurt. He called it up and a single page appeared onscreen. If non-military medals were any guide, Skuttnik had been a good and loyal servant to Stalin; he had worked in the capacity of an enforcer, personally dealing with people who tried to approach their leader at public gatherings, also inflicting summary punishment on any of the domestic staff who fell short of requirements.
Skuttnik had been rewarded in 1948 with an appointment to the Leningrad Intelligence School, a training centre for spies, where he taught unarmed combat.
In the final paragraph the report became vague. Skuttnik, it said, was believed to have been posted as a sleeper to the United States, but confirmation of this was not contained in the archive; it was only mentioned in letters between other Kremlin employees of the time.
Whitlock thought about that. The fact was, a lot of Russian agents were sent to the United States during the fifties and sixties. It would be unprofessional to read anything significant into the last paragraph of the report.
‘We still don’t know who you were, Arno …’
Then, for the first time, Whitlock looked at the caption at the top of the page. It said: Kremlin Service Record — Tibor Arno Skuttnik.
After a bumpy trip — Sabrina estimated it took twenty minutes — the pickup turned off the rough country track and into a wooded hollow between two hills. She was hoisted from the truck by her abductors and frog-marched again, this time into a building that looked like a miniature temple.
Inside someone had been cooking. Analytical as always, Sabrina identified the smells of boiled rice, overcooked green vegetables and dhal. She also identified the man sitting at the far end of the tall central room. It was something of a shock, but she didn’t let the recognition show. Instead, she went on looking scared.
Her captors marched her up to the throne-like chair where the man sat with one leg slung over the arm rest. He had a coarse, once-handsome face, with pads of fat at the temples and under the chin. His hair had receded until the hairline was halfway across the top of his scalp; to compensate, the remaining hair was long and tied back in a ponytail. He wore western clothes like the other two, although his looked much finer.
‘I am Hafi,’ he announced in English.
Hafi Bal Mardekhar, Sabrina recalled, leader of the Khalq faction. He was known to UNACO as a murdering Pakistani bandit with Afghan affiliations, who randomly terrorized towns and villages in northern India and south Kashmir. Like many self-styled warlords he had long ago swallowed his own propaganda and believed himself to be supremely charismatic and a politically important figure.
‘Do you have a name?’ he demanded.
‘I’m — yes — I’m Susan,’ Sabrina faltered. ‘Susan Duke.’
‘Oh.’ Hafi’s stiff face tried to look mocking. ‘Not Nikita, then? Or Petrushka?’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘You are a Russian infiltrator!’ Hafi shouted. ‘You were trying to mislead us by taking the long route to Pakistan!’
Sabrina fished in her jacket pocket and produced her WHO identification. ‘I work for the World Health Organization. I’m an American.’
‘Paper will take on anything,’ Hafi waved the document away. ‘Besides, I know an infiltrator when I see one.’
‘I promise you, I’m not a Russian,’ Sabrina said, simultaneously thinking what an idiot he was. ‘And anyway,’ she added, ‘what possible reason could Russia have for wanting to infiltrate or invade Pakistan now?’
‘Russia has old scores to settle. Old ambitions to fulfil. Many times they have sent minions to mingle with the people and spread propaganda.’ Hafi leaned forward. ‘They try to establish a base of operations by cunning.’
‘You’ve got me completely wrong, I assure you –’
‘If I thought your masters would listen,’ Hafi interrupted, ‘I would let you go and you could tell them they are wasting their time.’ He smiled in a way that suggested he was trying to look evil. ‘Of course, they wouldn’t listen.’
‘I am a citizen of the United States,’ Sabrina said. ‘I am in India under the terms of an international agreement that protects me from being impeded or molested. I —’
‘You speak good English for a Russian,’ Hafi said. He waved his arm. ‘Take her away.’
She was marched to the back of the tall room, along a short passage and through a narrow doorway to a smaller room, much darker than the other. In the gloom she was aware of other people. There was an unmistakable smell of blood, musty and dried, and an overall odour of decay.
The men pushed her into a corner and went out. The door slammed shut and she heard the key turn.
‘Are you English?’ A woman’s voice whispered.
Sabrina said nothing for the moment. She shut her eyes and counted to a hundred, letting her retinas sensitize and her pupils dilate.
She opened her eyes. The room looked brighter now. There were three other people. One was a man, young and very thin, asleep in a corner. An old woman was huddled on a stained mattress in the opposite corner, her head down and resting on her knees. The
third person, a young woman in a blue sari, sat close to Sabrina.
‘Are you?’ she said. ‘English?’
‘American. How long have you been here? What’s going on?’
‘They brought me here yesterday. I am called Deena. I was at work in Chaudhuri, two hours’ travelling from here. I work in a laundry. I was wheeling a basket of sheets across the yard at the back of the laundry when two men came in, grabbed me and put me in a truck. I was brought here and told nothing. But I know who they are. I know it is Hafi and the Khalq.’
‘You speak very good English,’ Sabrina said.
‘I worked in London for three years. Battersea. My visa was withdrawn when my cousin, who sponsored me, was arrested and convicted of selling cannabis.’
‘You seem very calm about all this, Deena. Aren’t you scared?’
‘I was when they brought me here. Then they put this bowl in the room.’
Sabrina looked. It was a willow pattern soup bowl, half full of chopped leaves. ‘Bhang?’
‘I chew enough to keep from being afraid.’
Sabrina had heard of that. There were people in Latin America who did it all the time, they chewed tiny pieces of marijuana leaf, and left just enough time between chews to maintain a near-normal existence, minus the anxieties.
‘The old woman and the boy took so much they have been asleep all day,’ Deena said.
‘How long have they been here?’
‘Since the day before yesterday, both of them. Hafi brought them when he took over this place. The boy was taken from the place where he worked, a field ten kilometres from here. The woman was asleep on a back porch in Jallapur when they snatched her. They brought her here and for several hours she was kept out in the main part of the building. This is a temple, very special, a private family place of worship.’
‘And the bandits just took it over?’
‘They killed the family, the old woman said. They were out there worshipping, men, women and children, and Hafi simply walked in and shot them. The bodies were kept in this room until it was dark.’
That explained the stink of blood and corruption, Sabrina thought.
‘Then they were taken away and the old woman and the boy were thrown in here.’ Deena leaned closer to Sabrina. ‘Don’t you wonder what they plan to do with us?’
‘I was getting up the courage to ask. Hafi thinks I’m a spy, or he says he does. Does that mean I get treated any worse than anybody else?’
‘Hafi treats all his captives the same,’ Deena said. ‘Everyone in this part of the country knows what to expect when they see him draw up in town in his big red jeep. He wants money. All the money a town can raise.’
‘How are they persuaded to hand it over?’
‘He brings persuasion with him. Always it is one of his captives, and always a person who does not come from the town Hafi wishes to rob. Hafi tells the people, “Look, nobody in your town has been hurt. Not yet. But see what will happen if I do not have the money I demand in one hour’s time.” And he puts the captive in the middle of the road and shoots him or her through the head.’
Sabrina was already framing plans to get out of there. Scope was limited by the certainty that she couldn’t leave these others behind.
‘Do you want a piece of bhang?’ Deena said.
‘No, thanks. What I need is a cup of coffee. I always think better with a cappuccino beside me.’
Two-thirds of the complication was removed an hour later, when the henchmen who abducted Sabrina came into the room and took away the old woman and the young man.
‘They will be robbing two towns,’ Deena said, chewing slowly on a chunk of leaf.
For a time Sabrina was shocked and distracted by the heartlessness of it, the shameful squandering of life. After a while her sense of self-preservation reasserted itself.
‘Deena, do you know how many men are here with Hafi?’
‘Only those two. His gang is very big, so big he calls it a movement. But when he’s out raising money, it is just him and those two.’
‘So you and I are here alone.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Right. Do me a favour.’
‘Mm?’
‘Lay off the leaf. We’ll have work to do.’
9
Dr Arberry sent a Land-Rover to pick up Mike, Ram and Lenny. The driver was Nisar, an old man with thick-lensed spectacles who drove with his face pushed over the wheel, as if he needed to be as close to the windscreen as possible. Nisar drove erratically but he appeared to be comfortable with the narrow, twisting roads. He swung the vehicle around blind bends with the certainty of a man who knew exactly what to expect.
‘Back to first things,’ Lenny said in the rumbling darkness, watching the cones of the headlights cut into the night. He was squeezed between Mike and Ram, holding on to the back of the front seats for support. ‘This was my life at the start of my career.’
‘Who with?’ Ram said.
‘The DEA. Riding around Colombia in jeeps and jalopies at dead of night, watching out for bad guys.’
‘Except you didn’t use headlights,’ Mike said.
‘Right. We had night-vision helmets. Blanketed engines, too. The element of surprise. We ran over more druggies than we arrested.’
‘Around here,’ Ram said, ‘the bandits operating the drug convoys are the people with the hi-tech. The police caught a straggler off the end of a convoy last month and when they searched his saddlebags he had a night scope, laser-sighted pistol, secure-band radio and a Walkman.’
Nisar turned sharply down a gravelled road flanked by tall mature trees draped with moss. A hundred metres along there was an ornamental iron fence with a cultivated lawn behind it. In the distance they could see the house, a replica of a Southern plantation mansion, pure white, with a tall pillared porch and curved wings on either side.
‘I get the impression Dr Arberry is made of money,’ Lenny said. ‘Do you know him, Ram?’
‘We’re acquainted. He’s loaned me books from time to time. He’s direct, balanced, incredibly focused on his work. He even looks right for the part, like Gregory Peck maybe thirty years ago.’
They passed through tall electrically-operated gates and the driver accelerated up the wide, red-chip drive to the front of the floodlit house. He braked as if it was an emergency, throwing his passengers forward. As they scrambled out, a deep, Boston-tinted voice greeted them.
‘Gentlemen. You survived the journey. Magnificent.’
Simon Arberry stepped to the front of the porch. He was tall and lean, with clipped sandy hair that looked nearly blond against his tan. The impression of healthy middle age was enhanced by his white linen suit and pale blue open-necked shirt. Ram was dead right, Mike thought. It was like meeting a fiftyish Gregory Peck.
Ram made the introductions and Arberry led them inside. The hallway resembled the foyer of a good hotel: small black and white chequerboard tiles on the floor, dark green silk and hessian drapes, oak-panelled doors with brass fittings. There was even an ebony reproduction of Praxiteles’ Wrestlers, mounted on a plinth by the door to the drawing room.
‘This is where I fire up my enthusiasms,’ Arberry said, showing them in. ‘It’s also my communications centre.’
The room was big enough to accommodate an ordinary bungalow, chimneys and all. One wall was fitted from floor to ceiling with bookshelves; on the opposite side of the room, on either side of the Adam-style fireplace, fine rosewood tables and cedar shelves held a range of electronic equipment — radio transmitters, receivers, DAT and reel-to-reel recorders and twin CD burners — all apparently on standby. There were also two satellite-tuned TV sets with the sound turned down.
With glasses of dry sherry, poured by an Indian in immaculate English butler’s livery, the visitors listened as Simon Arberry bemoaned the death of his friend, Reverend Alex Young.
‘He called me a visionary,’ Arberry said, ‘but I’ll tell you something, I never had a tenth his insight or hi
s dedication to these people. With anything he could scrape together, any meagre sums of money or threadbare resources, he would conjure a way of benefiting his flock. Time and again I watched him put together improvements to existing resources with his bare hands. And he was eternally involved, he never stood back.’
‘Your own commitment to community health and welfare can’t be played down,’ Ram said. ‘Reverend Young talked a great deal about your schemes, the facilities you’ve set in place, the plans you have …’
‘My own dedication is to meeting God-awful challenges,’ Arberry said. ‘I am to an extent a humanitarian. My need to achieve things lies in the general direction of downtrodden and disadvantaged people. But first and foremost, what I relish is the provocation of an obstacle.’
When the butler announced that dinner was served they crossed the hall to the dining room. It was long and deep-carpeted, with a French crystal chandelier, gold silk window drapes and a table capable of seating thirty. For this occasion the large table had been put against the wall and another, two metres square, was set up in the centre of the room.
‘You’ll have noticed,’ Arberry said as they sat down, ‘that there are few if any Indian touches about my home. That’s because I find it pretentious for a man of an entirely different culture to pretend he’s at home with the styles and traditional trappings of a place he never saw until he was thirty. It’s one thing to love the country, quite another to absorb its natives’ cultural instincts.’
‘Like a guy from California trying to feel at ease in a New York apartment,’ Lenny said.
Arberry laughed. ‘Something like that happened to me, come to think of it. I grew up in Boston, went to Harvard, did most of the Boston things right through my formative years. Then when I graduated med school I got an internship in a San Francisco hospital. The different way of life nearly finished me.’
The food was wheeled in on two trolleys by the butler and an Indian maid in a blue and silver sari.
‘The point I was going to make,’ Arberry said as the dishes were lined up on the sideboard, ‘is that there may be none of the local cultural or decorative touches in the house, but the odour of Indian cooking sure as hell permeates the corridors. I adore the stuff.’