by Adam Hall
Two more helicopters landed, huge machines with twin rotors, troop-carriers, and the dark figures of their crews came running from the haze of snow.
Then I saw the generals, recognizably, moving in a group with their bodyguards away from the train and towards the helicopters. They were thirty or forty yards away, their faces not distinct but the cut of their greatcoats clear enough, and their air of purpose. The three leaders were moving slightly ahead, with their bodyguards holding off on each side; it was almost a miniature parade.
I sensed Konarev, tested his aura, let my nerves pick up his vibrations, but the information I was receiving, fine as gossamer, was simply that he wasn't relaxed, wasn't just standing there. He was ready for me if I made a move.
The generals were talking to one of the military pilots, showing him papers, the snow drifting across their dark coats and settling on them as the edge of the storm reached us. The pilot was looking at the papers, turning them to catch the light from the helicopters that was still flooding the scene.
I didn't need the light. I needed darkness. I needed to be able to get clear of this man Konarev and follow the generals: they were asking the pilot to lift them out with the first of the passengers and the injured, what else would they be asking him?
The gun was six inches from my body, Konarev's gun.
That was too close.
The Bureau should do everything to keep them under surveillance.
Noted. But the pilot was giving the generals their papers back and pointing to one of the helicopters with the Air Force insignia on its side, then cupping his hands and shouting to one of the crew. Then he turned back and nodded and the generals began moving towards the helicopter, their bodyguards closing in.
There's an edict taught at Norfolk, and even repeated to senior and experienced shadow executives during refresher courses, on the subject of risk-taking in the field. At a crucial phase of any given mission when the executive is tempted to take a risk that would seem likely to place that mission in hazard, he is expected to bear in mind that his life is to be counted more than the mission itself, on the premise that he may well survive to bring future missions to successful completion and recoup the loss.
To strip this edict of its bureaucratic terminology, we are asked to sink our pride and not to act the bloody fool but to get out with a whole skin if we can, and leave the mission to founder. But it's extraordinarily difficult to put into practice, and we argue the toss about it in the Caff and the briefing rooms, quoting from the records, which show that the executives have so far got away with something like fifty per cent of the decisions made in hot blood and carried the mission with them, sometimes with a bullet in them somewhere but not where it could incapacitate, sometimes with a flesh wound and blood loss but nothing critical. And the reason why this kind of decision-making is so difficult is nothing to do with the risk itself, nothing to do with its technical configuration or the balance of its calculated profit-and-loss. It's to do with personal pride.
I watched the generals.
They were picking their way across the snow, their bodies leaning forward, their shadows thrown by the floodlights as they neared the Air Force helicopter. Other passengers, some of the walking wounded, were following them as the pilot beckoned them on.
Chief lnvestigator Gromov was still working in the vicinity of the train, his officers with him. The man had stopped screaming some time ago: either they'd got him clear of the wreckage or he was unconscious or dead. I watched the injured passengers — one of them Boris Slavsky, blood soaking into the bandage round his head. When eight or nine of them had reached the helicopter I saw the generals and their bodyguards go aboard; then the pilot helped the injured to climb the short iron ladder.
So it wasn't Konarev's gun that was the danger here: it was personal pride.
Above the cabin of the military helicopter the rotor had started naming, and a puff of dark smoke clouded from the exhaust.
The Bureau must do everything…
But the Bureau could do nothing. I, the appointed agent of the Bureau in the field, could do nothing. Perhaps I had ten seconds left to deal with Konarev and get across to the helicopter and go aboard if the pilot would take me, but the risk of this man's gun going off and sounding the alarm was too high, and even if I could reach the chopper the bodyguard who'd given false evidence to the police would recognize me and I'd be back in a trap, finito.
The rotor was spinning now and the whole machine vanished in a vortex of flying snow and then its strobes lifted and traced an arc across the night sky before they were slowly blotted out by the storm as I stood there watching with my life vouchsafed and my pride in rags as Meridian died its death.
Chapter 8: EXECUTION
'Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini… Qui fecit caelum et erram…'
The priest made the sign of the cross again and moved on to the next body, a nun following him, a thick woollen robe over her habit. A voice sounded faintly from nearby, and she went over there. He's coming, she told them, the father is coming: Other priests were working here, other nuns.
They had arrived in the police vans and the ambulances and on the fire trucks, finding what transport they could. The snow-ploughs had got here first, an hour ago, clearing the cinder roadway alongside the track for the other vehicles to follow. Two bulldozers were working at the wreckage aft of Car No. 12, and a crane was lifting debris from the rails. Someone had cried out as one of the carriages was rolled back onto its wheels, and a doctor went over there, taking a nurse with him: there were still people buried under the wreckage.
The snow was heavy now, driving from the east and covering the length of the Rossiya and the passengers still huddled in the compound waiting for transport into Novosibirsk. There were no more helicopters airborne now: two of them had collided soon after takeoff, and one of the snow-ploughs had swung in a half-circle and begun clearing a path for an ambulance.
'Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo…'
The priest and the nun moved on.
I was looking for Tanya.
She'd been working on the wreckage of the train with the rescue crews until half an hour ago, and then I'd lost her. But I must find her again, and stay close. Tanya Rusakova had become important, could perhaps offer me a chance in a thousand. That was my thinking.
I went across to the head of the transport line where the trucks were still coming in to evacuate the able-bodied passengers. She hadn't left here yet, Tanya: I'd watched every truck as the people had piled onto them. I'd watched from a distance, because Chief Investigator Gromov was there with a cadre of his officers, checking the people too as they clambered across the tailboards, looking for me.
I had a scarf across the lower half of my face; many of us did, it was quite the fashion, because of the bitter cold.
'Where's my mummy?'
'What?' I looked down.
'I can't find my mummy!'
A small pinched face with the tears frozen on it, a look in his eyes beyond desperation. I picked him up. 'Don't worry, she's here somewhere.' I carried him across to one of the nuns and left him with her and went back to the head of the transport line, watching from a distance.
I had not been gentle, my good friend, with Konarev. He had got my goat, if you remember. I had needed a diversion of some kind, had been waiting for it, waiting with great patience, and then the helicopters had collided and people had started screaming and the snow-plough had swung round and throttled up with a roar and I brought the handcuffs down across Konarev's wrist and the gun fired once and missed the target and I smashed my head into his face and fell across him when he went down into the snow and used a sword-hand to the carotid artery with enough force to stun and felt for the keys on his belt and tried five of them before I found the right one.
No one was looking in this direction; the only people I could see were half-lost behind the dazzling curtain of snow in the floodlights, so I bent over Konarev and brought down a measured hammer-fist to th
e frontal lobes to produce concussion and got him across my shoulders and took him to the ambulance station where they were putting the injured on board, told them it was a head trauma case.
That had been thirty minutes ago and it was then that I'd started to watch the pickup trucks, looking for Tanya, and by now I was beginning to think I'd missed her, but that idea was unthinkable, because of the last possible chance.
Drowning man.
Shuddup.
Clutching at a straw.
Shuddup and leave me alone.
Then I saw Tanya: she must have gone back to the train to find her suitcase; they were helping her swing it aboard the next truck in line. I turned and walked across the area ahead of it where the snow had been packed down by the vehicles coming in, had to watch my step, it was like a bloody ice rink now, they'd have to start breaking it up with a bulldozer. I went fifty yards and saw the truck coming at a crawl, slewing all over the place, and when it was close enough I clambered over the side and they made room for me. I still had the scarf across my face and I don't think Tanya recognized me, didn't want her to; she was at the rear and I faced forward, getting down behind the cab to keep out of the wind as the truck found better terrain and gunned up with the headlights dazzling against the curtain of snow. They hadn't seen me, Gromov and his men, but they'd go on looking for me and when they finally gave up and made for the city they'd fill the streets with militia patrols to help them. And there was the other thing — I didn't know how long it'd be before Konarev regained consciousness but when he did he'd let out a big squeal and that wouldn't help, I'd have to be very careful, go to ground if I could, find some kind of a bolt-hole.
Ferris wouldn't be waiting for me at the station in Novosibirsk as arranged: he'd have got the news by now and sent off a signal to London: Reports are that Rossiya has crashed. Whereabouts and condition of executive unknown. He'd look for me in the town wherever the transports were going to drop us off and I'd watch for him too, but I didn't think much of our chances in a crowd this size; we'd have to do it the other way, through Signals, try and set up a rendezvous.
'It was a bomb.'
'What?' the scarf was round my ears.
'It was a bomb, back there on the train.'
He was a youngish man, but with his face prematurely weathered by the Siberian winters, his eyes squeezed almost shut against the wind of the truck's passage, his nose leaking mucus.
'Was it?' I said.
'No question. I am a linesman. I work on the track. It doesn't take much, you see, at that speed, at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, for the wheels to jump the rails. We were lucky it wasn't worse.'
'Very lucky,' I said.
'Revolutionaries.' the truck hit some ice and we grabbed each other as it slid and found some cinders and came straight again with a jerk, people calling out behind us. "They should be shot. If I found out who it was, I would shoot them.'
'Yes,' I said.
But I didn't think it had been revolutionaries. The target had been Car No. 12, where the former Hero of the Soviet Union, Velichko, had been earlier, and it could be that the bomb, like the smile, had been for the general.
The city's authorities had commandeered a public gymnasium for the passengers of the Rossiya, those who hadn't already been taken to the hospitals, and women were carrying mattresses and blankets inside, unloading them from trucks with the municipal insignia on them: City of Novosibirsk. The transports just in from the scene of the train disaster were dropping people off in a small square near the gymnasium, and loudspeakers were announcing the immediate and gratis availability of shelter, bedding, food and limited washing facilities for those who preferred not to go to a hotel. The loudspeakers were crackling and cutting out altogether a lot of the time, and upwards of five hundred people — the uninjured survivors of the crash — were crowding around the entrance doors, and it looked as if it were going to be hours before there'd be enough bedding in there for them all.
The blizzard had stopped as the storm moved on to the west, but snow-ploughs were in the streets, and emergency vehicles with chains were moving in behind them. Above the buildings the sky was black and the stars glittering. But it was cold: In winter, Jane had noted for me, the night temps can go down to -30°, so be prepared for closed streets and frozen plumbing.
But the main streets in this area were open, their surfaces rough with sand, and the ploughs were working through the smaller ones, their engines booming among the buildings and their headlights flickering. I was on foot, and had so far made two turns to the right and three to the left: Tanya seemed to know her way and was walking quickly where she could, though her suitcase looked cumbersome for her. I could have brought one or both of my bags from the train — Konarev would have allowed that — but there was obviously going to be the need to travel light.
She turned to the right again and I moved faster until I reached the corner: we were now in Ob Prospekt, named after the river that had turned Novosibirsk into a major inland port. Halfway along she crossed over, dropping her suitcase into a snow-drift and heaving it out again. She looked back for the first time since we'd left the square but I just kept on walking: the distance was adequate and there were other people in the streets: in this time zone, more than three thousand kilometres from Moscow, it was now 9:03, and the lights in most of the hotels were still burning.
The one she was making for was the Hotel Vladekino, a small three-storey red-brick building at the corner of two side-streets, and I went past and came back and gave Tanya five minutes to check in and went up the steps.
'The hotel is closed,' the woman behind the counter said, and watched me with eyes tired of looking at strangers. The lift was still moaning, and as I got my wallet out I heard it stop. Tanya was known here, had been made welcome. In the stairwell I heard the lift doors opening on one of the floors above.
'You're in the best place, mother,' I said, and put a fifty-rouble note onto the counter. 'It's cold enough to freeze a brass monkey out there.' the Russian translation was less coarse, could be used in talking to a woman.
'Are you from the train?' she eased her bulk out of the worn red velvet-covered chair and came to the counter, folding the note and tucking it away.
'No,' I said. I'd used snow to wash the blood off my boot.
'It was blown up. It was terrible. Have you heard?'
'Yes. Terrible.'
'People killed,' she said, and opened the register. The last entry had been made out for Room 32. 'You must fill in the form,' she said, and I picked up the pen that was tied to a big brass paperweight on the counter. 'And I must see your papers. You are from Moscow?'
'Yes.'
'You have the accent.' I couldn't tell from her tone whether it was a compliment or a reproach.
'Is there a phone in the room?' I asked her.
'There are no telephones in the rooms.' A distinct reproach this time, as if I'd said I needed to contact a call-girl.
I completed the registration form and she pushed my papers back across the counter. 'Where do I phone from, mother?'
'In the corner there.' she copied my name into her book and put the room number: 35. It was too close for safe surveillance work because Tanya would recognize me if she saw me, but I didn't ask the woman to give me a different room because it would bring questions and I didn't want that: she'd be one of the people in this town who'd be asked by the police if they knew anything of a man named Shokin, Viktor Sergei, perhaps a few minutes from now, a few hours from now, certainly by the morning. I'd taken the lesser risk, using my cover identity rather than alert her at the outset by saying I'd lost my papers.
'Where is your baggage?'
'They're still looking for it at the airport.'
I'd seen three jetliners lowering across the city since I'd left the Rossiya, and two taking off, so they'd managed to keep at least one of the runways clear in spite of the snow; they must be used to it, had got things worked out.
'I need to make a phone
-call,' I said, 'to London, in the United Kingdom.'
Her eyes widened. 'To where?'
I told her again. 'I'm a journalist, as you know.' It was on my papers. 'I want to file my story on the train disaster — I've heard there were some British passengers on the Rossiya.'
In a moment: 'You speak English?'
'A little.'
It was another shocking breach of security but there was no option: I had to phone London and I had to do it from here because if I went to another hotel to put the call through I'd miss Tanya if she left here, wouldn't know where she'd gone, and she was the only chance I'd got of putting Meridian back on the board in London, and even then I couldn't do it without a safe-house and a director in the field and they were here forme somewhere, Ferris was in this city, or should be, let's hope to God, let us hope, my good friend, to God.
'What number is it?' the woman asked me.
I wrote it down for her on the curling sheaf of old registration forms she used for a notepad. There was no risk this time: the number was protected, untraceable.
'It will take time,' the woman said. 'It's long distance.'
I put another fifty roubles onto the counter and said, 'Tell them it's urgent, mother, give them some of your tongue, you know how to ginger things up. This is a news story and I could be the first with it in London.'
She watched me with her eyebrows raised and her faded blue eyes wide open; she'd got a face like a withered apple, round and red and wrinkled, but she wasn't your favourite aunt, any more than Chief Investigator Gromov had been your favourite uncle: her eyes had the stare of studied innocence, and she could recognize a piggy-bank when she saw one.
'I'll do my best,' she said, and lumbered across the creaking boards of the floor to the telephone in the corner, where a dead plant dangled from a chipped earthenware pot.