by Craig Thomas
Another unit of the SID had begun to investigate the Moscow Military District hierarchy. The excuse was a trumped-up bribery charge against senior officers — or was it misappropriation of military equipment? He could not remember. But he was certain they would discover nothing that related to Group 1917. Again, he felt an urgency envelope him, choking yet electric, spasms to his muscles and brain, urging activity.
He looked up, and Natalie was standing beside him. So unexpected was her appearance, he Was disorientated for a moment. It was from the past, the scene, especially the careful smile, and her arrival was apposite.
Then he said, 'What in hell's name are you doing here?'
Once more he was conscious of the way in which her smile flickered like something working from an interrupted current, then re-established itself. She was determined not to be angered, or put off. He wondered whether that was what penitence was like.
'I came to see you,' she said. 'You didn't ring.'
He was suddenly suspicious.
'How did you know I was here?'
'Mihail Pyotravich told me.'
'Told you — when?'
'Don't interrogate me!' she flashed, and the revelation of her known temper convinced him there was no need for suspicion.
'He doesn't know I'm here,' he said, as if relenting, but falling into that sullen, pouting mood and expression she so detested.
She smoothed her features before he could react to her look, and said, 'He was with — oh, Kapustin, I think, early this morning. He told him.'
'Oh. Well?'
'I'm coming with you — I have a few days before we begin rehearsals for Cosi — Mihail told me, I think, so that I could think of it… If I hadn't, I'm sure he'd have suggested it!' She laughed. It was false, winsome in a play-acting way. But her laughter was one of the things most unnatural about her.
'I'm working!' he snapped, but he sensed his own powerlessness; like the beginnings of a head-cold. She confused his thinking, somehow — overshadowed him. It wasn't sinister — rather he had drawn comfort from it, at one time. Something to do with his childhood, he assumed. Need to be dominated — mother-fixation…
'What the hell — ?' he said, aloud. Her face narrowed, then he added, 'All right. Sit down — but don't get in the way!'
'Very well, Alexei — certainly, Alexei!' she chorused, mimicking her pretence of subordination, of dutiful wifehood, from the early days. He could not prevent the smile, even though he almost choked on the sudden sense of loneliness memory brought him; and despised, for an instant, the dependence he was demonstrating.
She moved the small leather travelling-case to her side, smoothed the long leather coat beneath her, and crossed her long, booted legs. She was desirable, even now, he thought. Yet he said, 'Just don't interfere when I'm working, that's all.'
'I won't. But you won't be working all the time, will you? We will have time to — discuss things?' He would not admit the suggestiveness of her tone.
'I suppose so.'
It was with relief that he saw the approaching figure of Blinn, the Deputy Senior Forensic Officer of the SID; tall, gangling, hang-dog. He looked like that American film actor — what was it? Matthau. Walter Matthau. Yes. He had seen him in a film, a couple of years ago, at the Dom Kino, by virtue of his privileged rank. Behind Blinn were two others. Then minutes before their flight was called. His thoughts turned to Khabarovsk, and seven dead men.
Already — and it was the shortness of the time that terrified him — Folley was finding it increasingly difficult to retain any firm hold on experience. Even though he had not been beaten again since his arrival at the house where they were now keeping him, he was blindfolded, his ears filled with wax, thick gloves on his hands. He was kept in a cellar, he imagined, because he climbed steps when they wanted to talk to him. Already, he was grabbing the stuff of their coats — uniforms, he thought — when they took him, leaning against them, trying to make them talk to him.
He had done the things they had done to him — undergone the white noise, the spreadeagling, the lack of sleep, the hooding. He should — was — able to withstand it. They were only the techniques used on Proves, in the earlier stages of interrogation, and he had been trained to take them — easy ride, they called it in 22 SAS.
But, they weren't here. Didn't want to know where was here. They had walked down familiar corridors, into familiar rooms, before the sessions began. Not like him — not like him at all.
He did not know where he was — just somewhere in the Soviet Union. Which, he realised, was a ludicrous thought, and not at all comforting. But the worry lay deeper than that. He was not disturbed or disorientated by the interrogations. The two officers who had conducted them, using the shit-and-sugar formula, tough and pleasant, had failed to elicit the kind of information they were seeking; and though their interminable questions whirled like frozen sparks in his brain for hours, and he had not slept for what seemed like days, he had not broken. And he did not think he would.
Except for the sapping of resolve that was going on all the time, deep inside him, like the crumbling away of a cliff, or the subsidence of a huge building. Because no one, not even himself, knew where he was; he would already have been disowned by London. Expendable. Waterford's word for him. And he would only have been passing on the message from on high.
It was hard, and harder all the time, to resist the sense of annihilation that crept closer to him, made him curl on the narrow cot in the cellar as if afraid of the dark. He had become afraid of wetting the bed, and he wanted to suck his thumb — or call out for the guard, who wasn't a bad sort.
No, he thought, definitely, and with an effort. It had not become as bad as that. That had been the nightmare last night. Night? The last brief sleep-period, he corrected himself. He walked hooded up from the cellar when they wanted to talk to him, feeling along blind corridors with closed doors and uncarpeted floors, into a room with heavy curtains always drawn. Once they had let him see it. And he had the feeling, the inhibition, that if he had moved to tug the curtains open, they would have shot him.
Only a nightmare. But, he knew they would have heard the noises — probably even now they were feeling the rough stuff of the sheets, seeking the evidence of drying sweat, or urination.
He had ejaculated once — when was that? He had been ashamed of the semen staining the sheet, and his trousers. It was weakness, even if it did not help them. Yes it did, he corrected himself — they knew that under the unhelpful surface, he was escaping.
It was Novetlyn this time. The sugar-man. The modulated voice of an actor or a queer. Insinuating, full of Russian promise… He formed the silly joke with difficulty, and laughed aloud, beneath the hood which was too thick for any light to penetrate. His bruised lip, which was healing slowly, cracked again, and he felt the dribble of warm blood down his chin.
He wanted to cry, wanted to dab at it roughly with a handkerchief. Everything had to be an assertion, have about it a residual toughness. He had to go on believing he was holding out, winning.
He said, 'Let me ask you a question? Which lot are you in?'
'Lot?'
He heard quick footsteps, and flinched as if before a stick, then the hood was pulled roughly over his head. Novetlyn's face was close to his, and he was smiling. Folley blinked in the subdued light, and was grateful. He dabbed at his split lip. Novetlyn sat behind his desk. He lit a cigarette, and laid one on the other side of the table, in front of Folley, ready for him to pick up and smoke when he felt he had resisted long enough to make his point. He smiled encouragingly, waited for the explanation.
'You know what I mean? Your partner, he wears GRU uniform — Colonel, too.' Folley, as if on a treadmill, felt the volition of scorn. 'But you don't. Nice Italian suit — cost a packet in the KGB shop across from the Centre, I'D bet.' He sneered. The grimace made the lip bleed again. He dabbed at it furiously with his grubby handkerchief.
'Ah. Would it help you to know? Yes, perhaps it would, Therefore, I
shall remain a man of mystery to you.' He drew in smoke, blew it towards the ceiling, then said, 'Come, let us talk again. I like talking to you.'
'Piss off!'
'An English expression?'
Folley clenched the handkerchief against his groin, hurting himself with the effort of restraint. It did get to you — the consistent superiority of the interrogator. That when they talked — and the collapse of the will when you were alone.
He stopped his thoughts. He imagined himself, on a road, slowing down — walking. Strolling.
Stopping.
Novetlyn said, 'Ready?'
It was as if he knew, the bastard. Folley, lifting his eyes, saw the smile on Novetlyn's handsome, shaven face. The blue tie, with the large silver pattern; the lightweight suit, as if it were summer. Even the suede shoes were Western.
'You're a bigger shit than the other one!'
'Come — you haven't forgotten his name already?' Novetlyn was evidently pleased with the situation.
The drawn curtains were behind him. A heady pattern of browns and oranges, which disturbed but drew the eye. There was nothing else hi the room on which to focus the gaze. Just the bare desk, and Novetlyn behind it. The carpet was neutral in tone, the wallpaper drab.
Folley picked up the cigarette. Novetlyn, as if he had timed the moment, had left his lighter beside it when he last spoke. Folley tried not to devour the smoke too greedily.
'You see,' Novetlyn said, pressing the long fingers of both hands together in a momentary steeple, 'we didn't have a chance to talk to the man who came ahead of you.' He smiled. 'We don't even know his name. He was clumsy, and got caught, and someone with too much enthusiasm and too little in his head shot him. Not like you — rather a good attempt, we thought. More the professional approach.'
'All London dustmen are trained to use that rifle — and in karate,' Folley said.
'Ah, the sense of humour returns — excellent. No, no. We are sure you are not a dustman — some other agent of disposal?' His English was almost without accent. 'We think SAS — based at Hereford.' He had never mentioned the regiment before. Folley gripped the ball of the handkerchief in his hand, pressing his knuckle into his thigh.
'Who? SAS? They don't send SAS out to do this sort of thing.'
'I'm sure the Sultan of Oman would be disappointed if that were true,' Novetlyn remarked drily. 'Anyway, your unit is not important. We do want to know whether another will come, and then another. You see — it would be as well to be prepared.'
'When are you going to bribe me?'
Novetlyn snapped, 'When you are ready to be bribed! Which is not yet, I think.'
The force of his insight struck Folley like a blow. They knew! They could hear the rumble as his self slid into the total isolation that waited for him like the sea. 'I don't know anything!' he persisted.
'Who sent you? Gaveston in SO- I? The Ministry of Defence? No, I think not. Who, then? How many people are interested in you, and in what you might have learned?'
There was the slightest inflection of urgency. Folley glimpsed others, outside that room, pressing Novetlyn for results. And the man disliked haste. He grasped the tiny hope of a time-limit, regardless of the conclusion.
'Lots of people! So you'd better let me go, hadn't you, before my big brother comes to find me. He's a policeman.'
'Here, everybody's big brother is a policeman — and their little brothers are in the Army,' Novetlyn replied.
'Variety is the spice of life.'
As if he sensed the initiative slipping, Novetlyn frowned, then said, 'No one will come for you.'
'Sod off!' Folley replied, swallowing the gurgle of loneliness that was bilious in his throat. 'You don't know that — you don't know anything? He tried, and failed, to inflect his voice again with an imitation of childish sneering.
'But we will — and you know that we will. If I told you what progress we have made, what regress you have made — in the short time — if I told you what little time you have been here, you would realise that we shall, very soon, know all you know.'
'You've got Colonel Krapalot's script today!'
Novetlyn smiled.
'It isn't even today. I shan't tell him his new nickname — it is appropriate. He's a shit when he's not interrogating, you know.'
'So are you.'
'Very well — back to the cot, and to the foetal position you are increasingly adopting, and no doubt the thumb in the mouth. Don't wet the blanket. Your guard might laugh.'
He pressed the buzzer beneath his desk, to summon the guard.
Khamovkhin slumped in his chair, and poured himself a large whisky. He spilt some of the liquid on his waistcoat, muttered a curse, then ignored it as the dark stain spread. His mind was so exhausted by the day that he did not consider the symbolic properties of the stain.
The helicopter flight over the sixty miles from the centre of Helsinki had been a final strained weariness after the other events of the day — a hammering metal box around him, shadowed by two other helicopters, and a flight path patrolled on the ground and in the air all that day. It had drained him, so that an aide remarked on his health, behind his back, to one of the security men who had surrounded him since this morning.
Now, even the walls of the Lahtilinna — the sixteenth-century castle frequently used for prominent political visitors to Finland, even for meetings by visiting heads of state with the President and Prime Minister — failed sufficiently to enclose him, rid him of the day-long sense of exposure, of helplessness.
The castle overlooked the Vesijaarvi, squatting on a hillside above the lake, three miles outside Lahti itself. A fortress it still was; except to him.
He could barely remember the rapturous applause with which his address to the Finnish Parliament had been greeted. Politically, it had been a fitting climax to a day of success. Lunch with the President, in the company also of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, a tour through the streets — here he had refused, politely but insistently, to undertake a fashionable 'walkabout' — and there had been crowds, enthusiasm more marked than curiosity. Yes, it was good, and seen to be good. Everywhere the cameras, the flash of bulbs, the chatter of commentators.
A little fat old man in a little room. His imagination insisted on that, and on the vulnerability of the body, and the title, and the power. All vulnerable.
A decoded transmission from Andropov lay on the eighteenth-century writing-desk behind him. He had glanced at it, but could not turn past the first sheet, as if the paper burned him. Nothing, and more nothing. But, oppressively closer the threat — a KGB Office blown up somewhere by pretend-dissidents.
A knock at the door. Smile, smile, he thought — then a moment of fear, distrust of his own voice, more whisky to unfreeze the chords.
'Yes?'
'Security report, Comrade First Secretary.'
'Who is it?'
'Captain Ozeroff, sir.'
'Come in.'
Galakhov opened the door, and saw Khamovkhin seated at the writing-table, presenting his back to him. He knew that it was bluff, saw the deep impression of the man's body in the cushion on the armchair. Khamovkhin was frightened, had been all day from the talk of the daytime security team that had accompanied him to Helsinki. He closed the door behind him, and stood to attention. Khamovkhin went on reading something, then turned to him. Galakhov admired the strength that appeared in the square face, the ruddiness of accustomed power.
'Yes, Captain?'
'Your daily security digest, sir.' He proffered the file.
'Thank you.' Khamovkhin indicated a low table before the fireplace, and Galakhov placed the file on it. 'I — may take a walk by the lake later, Captain. Bear that in mind in your — security patrols, would you?'
'Sir.'
'They tell me it's quite beautiful here.'
'Sir — but it's hard to see it that way when you're on duty.'
'Hard for me, too, young man.' Khamovkhin's gaze seemed to penetrate, question, understand — ju
st for an instant. Then there was nothing but an old man's rheumy eyes and tired, baggy folds of skin beneath them. 'Thank you, Captain. You may go.'
'Sir.'
Galakhov smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him. The officer on duty at a desk in the chilly corridor, looked up and said, 'The old boy still jittery?'
'Not so you'd notice. I think he feels safer here.'
'Good.' The man looked at his watch. 'I'm off duty in an hour. See you in the bar — you can tell me all about London. Years since I was there.'
'Sure,' Galakhov replied, walking away down the corridor.
The KGB office in Khabarovsk was a ragged hole in the grey facades along Komsomolskaya Square. A bitter wind blew sleet into Vorontsyev's chilled features, and scattered a lying whiteness over the charred, smashed array of spars and frames that had once been a four-storey shipping office, the second and third floors of which had been the security HQ.
The wind sought through Vorontsyev's heavy sheepskin coat, down its turned-up collar, and the damp of the ground struck through the thick fur boots. He shifted his feet again, to warm them, and the powdered fragments of glass crunched under his steps. There was no longer even a wisp of smoke from the fires the bomb had started to suggest that anything recent had happened. It was old wreckage, the black stumps of teeth in an ancient jaw.
The explosion had torn out the sides of the buildings on either side of the shipping office. He looked up, his eyes squinting against the wind-blown sleet, and saw an office desk leaning drunkenly out over black space. Apparently, a secretary had been sitting there. Flying glass had decapitated her. He had not seen the body.
Alongside him, respectful and silent, stood Inspector Seryshev of the Khabarovsk Police. He was in a uniform overcoat and cap, and his ears were red with cold, like his nose. Occasionally, he murmured deferentially as if afraid to cough, and shifted his booted feet. He was a middle-aged man, careful of his pension and his prospects, and he knew that the younger man was a Major in SID and that it behoved him to stand alongside him for as long as Vorontsyev remained.