Madrigal

by John Gardner

  The civilian finished reloading, banging the magazine into place. He held his pistol level (hence the row of chipped masonry up the wall). Boysie became conscious of pain in his right cheek. Blood. A piece of flying stone? You did not have to draw any conclusions. Even the Militia men were KGB. The three moved in close. The uniforms on one side, civilian on the other. Boysie thought his lungs were going to burst. Breathing all wrong. Three muzzle eyes directed at his head, three index fingers curved behind the trigger guard. He looked away through the door. A pair of polished shoes, well-pressed trousers, neat overcoat. His eyes travelled upwards. Jesus, this was a big bloke! Wrestler perhaps? The Red Giant from the Salt Mines. ‘My Lords, ladies, and genellmen. In the left corner, ’Orrible Oakes at fourteen stone, and in the right corner, at gawd knows what weight, the Red Giant.’

  Boysie’s eyes reached the face. He really was going to be sick this time. It wasn’t much. One retch on to the dirty carpet. At Special Security HQ the Chief had a blue dossier on the man locking eyes with him; Mostyn’s file was black leather and there was one in the Classified cabinets at Operations Control. Every department must have one. On the first page of those files was a series of photographs. He had seen the physiognomy many times. Read the description and crossed swords, at a distance—a safe distance—with this man.

  ‘You know who I am?’ said Khavichev in good, modulated English. He was smiling.

  Boysie had a go at saying yes. It would not come out, so he tried again. ‘Yes.’ A whisper. God, the back of his mouth tasted vile.

  ‘I suppose I should say something melodramatic, like “so we meet at last”?’ It amused Khavichev.

  ‘So we meet at last,’ said Boysie like a parrot. Then, ‘Look I wasn’t going to—I mean they wanted me to—but—well, just look at the rifle—dummy ammunition. I took out the real stuff. Honestly, Mr. Khavichev, I wasn’t going to—’

  A flash bulb exploded behind Khavichev’s shoulder. There was a photographer in the room, dressed like a movie journalist in a belted raincoat. Khavichev looked at Boysie with distaste.

  ‘We will talk later. A long talk. There is much to discuss.’ He turned and said something to the photographer. Two more flash bulbs. It was going to look great in Pravda. Front-page lead with a banner headline and Boysie grovelling with his hands up, shock tearing out of every wrinkle.

  ‘We will talk later,’ Khavichev repeated, making a signal to someone else in the living room. A trim girl came in carrying a small black bag.

  ‘Roll up your right sleeve,’ she commanded. Her English had an American touch, the figure and face good-looking in a severe sort of way. Institutional. Boysie went on looking—the blue uniform was well fitted.

  ‘Your right sleeve. Quickly.’ The girl was on her knees with the bag open. It was a medical kit. Swabs. Hypodermic. Vials. Boysie did as he was told, pulling his jacket up to the elbow and unfastening the jade cufflinks. Elizabeth had bought him the jade cufflinks, oblong and smooth. Paris? Did she buy them in Paris? He could not remember. But she bought them, no doubt.

  ‘Quickly,’ repeated the girl. To help, the civilian pushed his pistol nearer. Boysie rolled back his shirt. The swab cold on his inner arm below the elbow. The tiny jab. Blackness swallowing him.

  The two Militia men moved their safety catches to ‘safe,’ locked elbows under Boysie’s armpits, and dragged the unconscious, unknowing, framed, unwanted nit past Khavichev out into the living room, where a stretcher waited.

  *

  The room was dark, and Boysie was lying on his side, the right arm cradling his face. No nausea or giddiness, consciousness returning quickly, like an express train coming from the darkness of a tunnel into a misty early evening. His brain was fully active with total recall (guts-drop at the memory of humiliation, photos, the playful attitude of the KGB men.) He did not open his eyes completely, just narrow slits, trying to acclimatise. There was light coming from another room. People talking. Someone near him as well. Boysie tried to swivel his eyes. There was someone sitting there. The urge of curiosity was too much. Boysie shifted on to his back and turned his head. It was a middle-aged, plump woman in a white overall, sitting with hands crossed on her lap. Through the gloom their eyes met. Without a word the woman got up, went over to the door, and spoke a few words, low, in Russian. It was Khavichev’s voice that came back, harsh, angry. She stood aside as the big man came quickly into the room, a great paw reaching for the light switch. The light made Boysie blink. Bright white walls, high-powered light reflecting like a white sun at high noon. Mexico. Spain. A few seconds later it cleared, and his eyes began to adjust. Khavichev was standing over him, storm warnings carved into his rough wooden face. ‘So. You are awake.’

  ‘Yes. Look, I wasn’t—’

  ‘You feel all right?’

  ‘I think so. Yes.’ Boysie wanted to off-load a lot of things.

  ‘Then we can have our talk.’

  ‘I’d like to talk.’

  Khavichev bent low over the couch on which Boysie was lying. There was a sweet smell to the Russian’s breath. Sweet-sickly.

  ‘You will talk, tovarich. A lot of questions.’ His face relaxed almost into a smile. ‘Ptcha. I am getting melodramatic again. I really must give up watching your Western television spies.’ He stopped short and sprang the big intimidating shout coupled with the ‘Kitchener-Wants-You’ point. ‘Why were you set up for us? Why dummy ammunition?’

  ‘I used dummies. I don’t do it in cold blood. I can’t—’

  ‘So you use a remote method instead. Or your bosses do. You know, of course, that Spensky, my Militia man whom you so cleverly hoisted out of the window, is dead. So that’s one more notch to you.’ Khavichev’s lips were pursed hard. ‘You may not know you were being given to us on a plate. Sold out. You may not even know that Iris MacIntosh is dead anyway.’

  ‘But I didn’t—’

  ‘On the other hand, you may know.’

  ‘How? Iris? For Christ’s sake—’ Boysie swung his legs off the couch to face Khavichev. The room floated slightly.

  ‘How? She had a drink sometime before they handed her over. On the way here she became drowsy in the car. She was unconscious when she arrived. She died within an hour.’ Khavichev slid a piece of cheap blue paper from his inside pocket. ‘They have just sent over the postmortem report. The lovely Iris was given a large brandy before coming over the Wall. She does not look so lovely now. There are pictures outside. The brandy was a large-large, missile-sized. A chloral hydrate cocktail. Three hundred grammes of chloral hydrate and about three fluid ounces of cognac.’

  Boysie got the implications with a flood of emotional, sensitory, and motor excitement. Autonomic discharge. The end. Impending doom. Sold out. Death hovered, a tiny lethal helicopter in his brain. If Khavichev was telling the truth, why had the Chief and Mostyn sent him over to shoot up the car? To destroy Iris? In case the chloral hydrate did not work? Or...? Was it a trick on Khavichev’s part? Bewildered. Khavichev sensed his disbelief.

  ‘Some things can be faked, Boysie Oakes.’ Khavichev gave him a hang-dog look. ‘But I can provide you with photographs and samples if you like.’ Those kinds of photos and specimens floated over Boysie’s consciousness. Vividly. Churning. There was a short silence. Khavichev’s eyes did not leave Boysie’s face. Boysie had stretched back on the couch again, feeling as though he were disintegrating. Mind crowded with mixed phrases like, ‘God, I’m dying... Those buggers in Whitehall fixed me... If it’s true, they never intended me to do the kill at all.’ Childhood forced its way into his memory, an automatic escape from reality. Robert Louis Stevenson. Lying in bed. Measles or chicken pox. Reading Stevenson. What? Treasure Island. The words as fresh as yesterday. Total recall. (‘Belay that talk, John Silver,’ he said. ‘This crew has tipped you the Black Spot in full council, as is dooty bound; just you turn it over, as is dooty. bound, and see what’s wrote here. Then you can talk.’) Bleeding pirates, Mostyn and the Chief. Silver Mostyn and Cap’n Flint Chief
. All right, he would spill it. Talk. Stool. Spew it out. Knickers to Mostyn. Suspender belts to the Chief. Doom still weighed heavily as he opened his mouth to speak.

  Khavichev cut in. ‘There is much to talk about.’ Frosty. ‘We have our interrogation pattern like your own people. In the case of you, Boysie Oakes, it is probably going to take time, and there will be much propaganda.’ Then, more softly, ‘Why were you there with dummy ammunition? Why did your friends make sure that we knew about it? You’ve been a naughty boy? Stepped out of alignment? Have you become a risk? Has Jimmy Mostyn found out about you?’

  The questions hit Boysie like great blows above the heart. High-calibre pistol shots at least.

  ‘Dummy ammunition,’ he repeated, an automaton. Then, gathering strength, ‘Yes, they wanted me to come over and get Iris. She still holds classified information. High resistance to wash-outs. Our brainwash boys—the Sheep Dip—couldn’t erase anything.’ He gulped, soreness in the back of the throat. ‘All right, Khavichev, I work for the Department of Special Security. For some time I was their private liquidator, but I’m not made that way. You needn’t believe it, but I can’t do the thing in cold blood. I’m not the boy wonder, the cool killer. I use people.’

  ‘We know all about Charlie Griffin.’ Khavichev smiled, oozing self-satisfaction. The dead complacency on the face of a putrefying suicide corpse. ‘You’ve still done quite a number of things which have troubled us. A regular crown of thorns in our flesh. And you have killed for the British. Only a few hours ago there was my man Spensky.’

  ‘Self-defence. Look, I’ve never had the bleeding guts to do a cold one. And that’s the truth, Mr. Khavichev. The colonial plucking truth. I’m a country boy at heart. Some twit decided I was a dead ringer for the secret-agent act and I fell for it. What the hell, the money was good.’

  Khavichev ignored Boysie’s flare of venom. ‘There was a very specialised operative called Gorilka,’ he continued. ‘My prize man, a Doctor of Law, Philosophy, Medicine, and Languages. You had a hand in him as well. But I believe you. I find your story credible. You are basically a coward.’ The final word stressed with vicious scorn. ‘Also you are despicable. You hold the rank of major in the British Department of Special Security. You have made a lot of mistakes, taken money under false pretences, and, however you may have double-crossed your own Department, have been instrumental in causing many problems to me and my associates. Just take the rout of my Assault One group last year in Switzerland. Another good man went then. Several people went.’

  ‘That was Mostyn, not me. A balls-up from start to finish.’

  ‘If there is one thing at which you are expert, it is balls-ups, Boysie Oakes. As I have already pointed out, despicable.’ Pause to the count of three. ‘Still, most security men are despicable one way or another. It is part of our nauseating job.’

  (‘Isn’t it time you grew up? You’re a rabbit, love...’ Elizabeth’s words floating into his ears through time and space.)

  ‘What I really want to know,’ said Khavichev, ‘is what about the dummies? The dummy ammunition? You came over here yourself, no private substitute. No Mr. Charlie Griffin.’

  ‘I tried to tell you, you mammoth moron—’

  Khavichev did not even bother to raise his voice, but the timbre had the entire menace of The Death of a Thousand Cuts. ‘No one—’ Iron. Lips closing like mantraps at each word. ‘No one, not even the President, speaks to me like that.’ A pause, more dangerous than uncomfortable. ‘You will see.’

  Boysie’s larynx had gone unserviceable.

  Again the question. ‘Why the dummies?’

  Six seconds, feeling like six hours. Then Boysie let out a long, hissing sigh: a tired, clapped-out steam locomotive reaching the final engine shed. What with Elizabeth, the strain of the past few days, the double-cross, all his senses told him he was finished. Capitulation. Stuff the Official Secrets Act. Stick it up Mostyn’s bum. He was done for anyway. The last reel in the serial.

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ He rested his head back on the pillow, closing his eyes against the glare. The first fingertips of a headache were beginning to feel their way upwards towards the cerebellum. ‘I couldn’t contact my usual man,’ he said. Christ, his voice sounded tired. ‘I couldn’t refuse. Big money. Booming great bonus.’

  ‘Your usual man? Charlie Griffin?’

  Nod. ‘So I gave in.’

  ‘It’s taken you long enough to build up your nerve.’

  ‘You’re joking. I still couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘No.’ Confirmation. ‘But what about all that fairground stuff at the Ruhleben range last night?’

  ‘You knew about that?’

  ‘There’s not much we don’t know. We are professionals. I’ll show you your file sometime. That was good shooting last night and on your monthly check-up in Hampshire last week.’ Khavichev allowed himself an unfamiliar smile. ‘You are a good shot. Pity you haven’t the guts to use your talent.’

  ‘Why don’t you shut your—’ Boysie had the sense to bite off the retort.

  ‘Go on talking.’ Kharvichev’s smile lap-dissolved into hard leather. ‘Why the farce at Ruhleben?’

  ‘They wanted to check me out. Get me acclimatised to conditions.’

  ‘No.’ Patiently. Categorical denial. ‘They wanted to—how do the Americans say it?—they wanted to con you. Make you think you were really doing the kill.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Khavichev’s face changed from Jekyll to Hyde.

  ‘Look.’ Boysie pleading. ‘Okay, it was me. I chickened. I brought the dummy ammunition over the Wall with me. For Christ’s sake, you must have found the real stuff—one clip in my pocket and one lot scattered all over the floor after I’d ejected and reloaded with dummies. I was playing it by ear. Going to concoct some story when I got home.’

  Khavichev threw back his head and wheezed. It was a second or so before Boysie realised that the wheeze was a laugh.

  ‘You poor foolish idiot. I’ve seen men set up before, but never like this.’ He turned his head towards the door and shouted in Russian, then looked at Boysie again and chuckled. The noise of a hyena in pain.

  A young Russian orderly came in, saluted Khavichev, and handed over two small white boxes, a slim red one, and a manila envelope neatly labelled in Russian script. Khavichev rested the boxes on his knee. ‘You enjoyed the play? What you saw of it? The Brecht?’

  ‘Great. Like to see the second half.’ Boysie calmer. ‘Your agent Warbler got you a good seat. A box.’

  ‘You saw me?’

  ‘One of my men.’

  Silence. Boysie thinking about The Threepenny Opera...Booth? Why had he kept thinking about Booth? Automatically he turned to Khavichev. ‘You seem to know most things. Do you know an English actor called Booth?’

  ‘English?’ He raised his pupils in thought. ‘There’s a very popular young man called Anthony Booth.’ Musing more than telling. ‘Why? Did one of the Ensemble remind you of him?’

  Boysie’s face puckered into worry lines. ‘No. It was before that. Sitting there in that bloody plush box. I kept thinking of the name Booth.’

  A laugh hawked from Khavichev’s throat. ‘I learn more about you every time you open your mouth.’ The big, hard man spoke with a hint of softness. ‘I am lucky.’ He nodded the whole of his body. Rocking in the chair. ‘Not always easy to keep at the top either. The regime, quite rightly, is merciless. So am I.’ He stopped talking and stared into space, away on some personal worry.

  For the first time Boysie really looked at the man. Tall, shoulders like a nineteenth-century pillory, hands that could fill an omelette pan. Boysie concentrated on the face. Lines of character deeply engraved into the barklike texture. Authority and a dependability. Ruthless, he had said. Obvious. Yet there was the attribute of justice. The feared, merciless Boris Piotr Khavichev took on an avuncular appearance, from the grey hair and strong features right down to his boots, good leather and polished
glass sharp.

  ‘Your mind works in an obvious pattern.’ Khavichev in a consulting-room manner. ‘You were sitting in a box near the stage of a theatre. You were about to shoot an ex-girl friend—I don’t have to explain the love-hate psychology, do I?’

  No reply.

  ‘You were sitting in a box about to perform an assassination. You thought of Booth. Now who was Booth?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s what’s worrying me. I thought I needed a drink at first. We have a gin in England called Booth’s.’

  Khavichev recited, parrot-fashion, ‘On April 14th, 1865, the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, visited Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, to see a performance of a mediocre piece entitled Our American Cousin. He sat in a box overlooking the stage—’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, of course! How stupid can I get. Honestly, Mr. Khavichev—’

  ‘General Khavichev—’

  ‘Sorry, General Khavichev. Know how you feel, they just made me a major—’

  ‘—a man called John Wilks Booth entered the President’s box—’

  ‘Yeah, and shot him behind the left ear—’

  ‘—with a—’

  ‘Derringer.’

  ‘You remember now,’ snapped Khavichev with the spleen of an overwrought schoolmaster.

  ‘Silly of me. Of course. Idiot.’

  Khavichev opened one of the white boxes and set it aside. Leaning forward, concentrating on Boysie. ‘We understand that when you arrived at the apartment overlooking the Friedrichstrasse the rifle was lying by the window, the firing point. Is that correct?’

  Boysie reflected on Khavichev’s English. It was good. The attitude was that of a policeman establishing facts. A normal interrogation. He could have been sitting in West End Central with a pipe-smoking super. Quiet, no brow-beating.

  ‘That is correct?’ asked Khavichev, calm as a BBC news reader.

  ‘Yes. The Mauser 98K.’