Quiller Meridian q-17

by Adam Hall

  'None I fancied,' I told him, and the rheumy blue eye in the mirror had puzzlement in it as he drove off again, he'd always thought a whore was a whore was a whore.

  I phoned the barracks again from a dockside bar and asked for Captain Rusakov.

  'He is not present.'

  She was getting used to me, that woman in uniform at the switchboard for Ordnance Unit Three, getting tired of me, couldn't I take no for an answer or what, and as I got back into the Trabant I felt the onset of premonition and confronted for the first time the fact that it was already too late: Tanya Rusakova had been broken under the light and had told them what her brother had done last night, and they'd sent a van with metal grilles at the windows to pick him up finis, finito.

  'You want another place?' Mikhail asked me.

  'What? Yes. Another place.'

  I would go through the motions, in the mistaken belief that it wasn't already too late; I would follow this path through the labyrinth as if it could lead me somewhere, until the knowledge came to me from the other-world source beyond the senses that I was wasting my time, performing an exercise in futility.

  Running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

  Shuddup.

  The draught from the open window cut across my face and I sat with my gloved hands covering it as Tanya had done when she'd walked from the Hotel Vladekino to the place of execution last night.

  'Can't you shut that window?' I called to Mikhail above the din of the snow chains.

  'It's got to stay open,' he said over his shoulder.' there's a leak in the exhaust manifold, the gasket's gone, we'd both be found with our toes turned up if I shut the window, be a gas chamber in here.' He reached for his little tin again.

  She wouldn't hear of it either, Olga, sitting in watch over her gaggle of sluttish girls in the next place we stopped at. I took it to seven hundred and she wavered then, but I didn't press her because she could chicken out when the time came to go through with it and that would be dangerous.

  'For God's sake,' I told Mikhail,' they're like cows in there.'

  He shifted into gear with a clashing of cogs.' You said you didn't want class. You get what you pay for, this area. Now I can take you to — '

  'I need a phone,' I told him.

  The sun had lodged among the black frieze of cranes along the dockside, their thorns cutting across its red swollen sac as the dark sky deepened; night would come soon now in the late Siberian afternoon, flooding in from the steppes.

  There was a line of booths near a bus-stop, one of them with the cord still intact, and the two kopeks rattled into the almost empty coin-box.

  Mikhail was watching me from the taxi. He'd asked for another fifty roubles to keep the meter going and I'd given it to him. He would be my companion in the coming night, providing me with wheels and shelter and a shut mouth: I'd mentioned to him that the militia seemed busy of late, and he'd said they were always sticking their snotty noses into other people's business, they also were the sons of whores.

  She would be frightened, Tanya, as they worked on her at Militia Headquarters. She would be wondering how she could have ignored my warning, would have realized now that I'd meant what I said, that I knew — and should have been trusted to know — more than she did. It couldn't have been easy for her, to leave that building and make her desperate run for the nearest telephone that would work, that would bring her the voice of her brother and the comfort she hungered for.

  She would be frightened now, under the blinding light. I didn't want to think about that.

  'Ordnance Unit Three.'

  I asked for Captain Rusakov, said it was a matter of urgency. Mikhail had left his engine running; he'd said the starter dog was worn and that it had let him down twice, he couldn't trust it.

  The booth stank of vomit: there'd been a drunk here. I kept the door cracked open with my boot.

  She would be frightened at the thought of what she might say, of what they might make her say, about her brother. Frightened and alone, and God knew how long it would be before I could reach her, if I could reach her at all.

  Have you ever been questioned by the militia?

  No.

  By the KGB, then?

  Yes.

  What did they do to you?

  They beat me up.

  Then you know what I mean, Tanya. The militia are no different, even now. They'll get everything out of you, once they start, and that is why you have to stay with me.

  The glass panels of the booth were filthy, and one of them had words scrawled on it by an angry finger — Gorbachev murdered the Motherland. Beyond it the sun was down, crimsoning the earth's rim as its sac burst at last and spilled its blood across the horizon.

  There was so little time.

  The line clicked.

  'Captain Rusakov speaking.'

  Chapter 14: LIPSTICK

  'Are you alone?'

  In a moment he said, 'I don't understand.'

  'Are you alone in the room?'

  'Yes. Who is this?'

  'Your sister has been arrested.'

  I heard him let out a breath, and then there was another brief silence before he asked me again, 'Who is this?' there was caution in his voice now, and an undertone of shock; in the last few seconds his life had lurched.

  'Write this down,' I told him.' there's a rooming-house with a bar at Pier 9 on the river, the west bank. The bar is called Harbour Light. Wait for me there at — '

  'Where are they holding her?'

  'Listen carefully,' I told him. 'We've got to cover the important things first, in case we're interrupted.' A militia patrol-car had crossed the intersection a minute ago, eastwards towards the river. 'You should know that I am your ally and that I'm going to try getting your sister free tonight. Now I want you to wait for me at a table at the Harbour Light Bar at Pier 9 on the west bank of the Ob at eight o'clock this evening. You should — '

  'Give me your name,' he said.

  Not too bright, this army man, trained to respect discipline, to have his life run for him on rails, didn't care for anonymous phone calls. But he'd at least had the imagination and the necessary passion to set up an assassination and bring it off, a private enough act, he hadn't done that to orders.

  Or had he?

  The thought came at me like a stray bullet and I filed it. That had been the second attempt on the life of General Velichko.

  'Rusakov,' I said, 'if you waste my time you could wreck our chances of getting your sister free. She'll be under interrogation now and may at any moment expose you, under duress, as the assassin of General Gennadi Velichko. Are you prepared to cooperate with me?'

  A huge shape was on the move beyond the filthy window of the booth, and I watched it.

  What I didn't want him to do was panic and put the phone down and run for some kind of cover. He would have got the point by now: it didn't need a lot of intelligence. The instant his sister told the militia who had shot Velichko there'd be a telephone call from the officer commanding Militia Headquarters to the officer commanding the Russian Army garrison with a request that Captain Vadim Rusakov of Ordnance Unit Three be placed under immediate arrest on suspicion of murder pending the arrival of prisoner transport and an officer bearing information.

  If Rusakov ran, I would lose the second key to Meridian.

  The dark shape moved slowly past the gap between the rooming-house and a stevedore's gantry, and its port riding light bloomed like a rose in the river fog. A freighter bringing salmon, perhaps, canned salmon from Kamen' — na — Obi in the south for my friend out there in the taxi.

  'I am going there now,' I heard Rusakov saying.

  'Going where?'

  'To Militia Headquarters.' His tone was strong, adamant.' that's where they must be holding my sister. I will give myself up — '

  'Rusakov — '

  'I will give myself up and tell them she had nothing to do with it!'

  'Rusakov, listen to me. They won't take your word for tha
t. They'll get at the truth and the truth is that she was an accomplice. She — '

  'I must help her! She is my sister!'

  God give me patience. 'If you go there, Rusakov, you will both be held for enquiries and by midnight tonight they'll have got the whole thing out of you and there'll be nothing I can do for Tanya. You will have condemned her.'

  I waited.

  Emergency numbers, it said on a panel by the phone, 01 Fire Service, 02 Militia, 03 Ambulance. It is not necessary to use coins.

  'Why should I believe you?' Rusakov was asking suddenly.

  'Why would I call you and warn you to lie low if I didn't want to help you?'

  Waited again. Time was running out, would go on running out as the minutes and the hours measured the long night's passing and I did what I could, what I must, before it was too late. I wanted to shout at this man, force him to understand what he'd got to do; but that wouldn't work: I had to appeal to his intelligence.

  His voice came again. 'Why should you want to help me?'

  'It would take too long, Rusakov, to tell you. I'm going to give you a last chance, and remember that the longer they keep Tanya there the worse it's going to be for her, and that I alone can hope to get her free. Now write this down.' I went over it again, the name and location of the bar and the time of the rendezvous. 'Go there in civilian dress,' I told him, 'not in uniform. You should — '

  'I am on duty until midnight.'

  'Then request immediate compassionate leave: say that you've just heard that your sister was injured in the crash of the Rossiya and you must visit her at the hospital immediately. Can you do that?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good. You should put on your oldest clothes: the Harbour Light is a seaman's hangout. When I go in there to find you I shall look for a pair of slightly odd gloves lying on the table beside you. Now give me your description.'

  He took a moment to think. 'I shall be wearing a — '

  'Colour of eyes?'

  'What? Green.'

  I took him through it — clean-shaven, height one metre ninety-two, weight one-sixty, medium build, no visible scars. I didn't need all that for the rendezvous in the bar but I might need it later if he didn't show up or panicked and went to ground or made things tricky for me until he was ready to trust me.

  'All right, you'll be wearing?'

  Dark blue duffle coat, dark woollen hat with ear muffs.

  'Don't forget the gloves. Now listen, I don't know if I can make it there by eight o'clock but you must wait and go on waiting unless the bar closes — it could be open all night, with shipping movement going on. Don't leave there and don't go back to the barracks until I've talked to you.' I took a moment to check his thinking: 'Do you know why?'

  He found it difficult to say but he got it right. 'If — if my sister is made to talk, I would be arrested.'

  'Right, at the barracks or in the open street or anywhere you habituate, but you'll be safe enough at the bar. If it closes, book in at the rooming-house next door and use a false name, give them some money instead of your identity; there'll be drug traffic on that river and they'll be used to people wanting privacy.' then I told' him, 'If I haven't reached you by midnight either at the bar or the rooming-house it'll simply mean I can't, and you should then consider getting out of Novosibirsk by ship — they'll be watching the airport and the train stations and the roads.'

  He thought about that but didn't take long. 'I shall remain here and give myself up and try to help my sister.'

  I heard a warning note and thought of telling him to shift the deadline to beyond midnight, but left it. If I hadn't got Tanya free by then it'd be no go.

  'When did you see her last?' Rusakov was asking.

  'This morning. She was trying to contact you when the militia picked her up.' Bite the bullet: 'Rusakov… how do you think she'd stand up to interrogation?'

  I heard him let out a breath again.' she — she had a bad time with the KGB, a few years ago. Since then she's been afraid of getting hurt again.' He should have thought of that before he got her involved in an assassination.' that is why I tried to keep her out of… what happened last night.'

  'So why couldn't you?'

  'She insisted. She's very obstinate. I'd seen his photograph many times but she said that wasn't good enough. She was afraid I would make a mistake.' A beat.' she was also very… determined that we should go through with this thing.'

  I thought that was interesting. 'Rusakov, do you know why those three men came to Novosibirsk?'

  Mikhail shut off the engine of his taxi and silence came in. A tug's klaxon sounded from down the river like a night-bird croaking.

  'No,' Rusakov said, but he'd taken a long time to think about it.

  'Do you know where the remaining two of them are?'

  Mikhail got out of the Trabant, stood stamping his feet, looking towards the phone booth.

  'I think,' Rusakov said, 'I could find out. There's a lot going on.'

  I felt a booster kick in for Meridian.

  'Be there at eight,' I told him, 'and remember — '

  'There must be some way I can help you,' Rusakov said quickly. 'I'll go with you to Militia Headquarters.'

  'That would blow up the whole thing.'

  'You must realize how I feel. I love my sister. I'm not good at waiting, doing nothing, when — '

  'Be at the rendezvous.'

  'If I'm not there,' he said, 'it will mean I changed my mind,' and the line went dead.

  'There's only one more,' Mikhail said, 'in this district. There's always a girl here and there in the bars, of course, if you — '

  'Let's go to the last house.'

  There was another street closed, telephone wires festooned like a spider-web across the snow-drifts and the small dark figures of men working on them, trapped like flies, warning flags hanging limp and a flare burning, black smoke standing in a thick column from the oil barrel; the wind had dropped and the night was quiet except for the rumbling of snow-ploughs across the city.

  The frayed wool at the wrist of Mikhail's right mitten trembled to the vibration of the Trabant as it rocked across the ruts with the ice popping under the tyres.

  'She's very obstinate,' Rusakov had said.' she was also very determined that we should go through with this thing.'

  I'd thought that was interesting because all I'd known of Tanya Rusakova was that she was unskilled in subterfuge — had given General Velichko, for instance, the name of the hotel where she was staying. Her obstinacy had shown itself perhaps when she'd left the safe-house despite my warning, but the same trait, together with her determination, could help to save her now at Militia Headquarters by dragging out the interrogation process until I could move in.

  You don't need to go there now. You 're wasting your time.

  Bloody little organism, starting to panic.

  Of course I'm not wasting my time.

  You should meet Rusakov now, as soon as you can. He thinks he can find the generals. That's your objective.

  Dead wrong: he won't do a thing for me until I can get Tanya out of there.

  You 're rationalizing.

  An icicle as long as a spear dropped from a guttering and crashed onto the roof of a parked car, scattering rainbows in the headlights.

  First get Tanya out, then work on her brother.

  You should be working on him now. You should have told him to meet you right away. He's the key now, not her.

  If I don't get Tanya out he'll try to help her by giving himself up, then I'll lose him and the mission's gone.

  You haven't got a chance of going in there and coming out again, you know that.

  Scares you, doesn't it?

  You're doing what Ferris said you might, it's the death-or-glory thing, go dashing in there like a white knight on horseback and carry the maiden off, you want your fucking head tested.

  You're shit-scared, that's all, I know you of old.

  Walking into a lion's den, you 'll get eaten alive.
r />   Shit-scared.

  Bloody little organism.

  The tyre-chains dragged on the snow and the engine idled.

  'Name's Marina,' Mikhail said, his rheumy eye in the mirror. 'Cunning old cow, you should watch it, keep your wallet in sight, know what I mean?'

  She was sitting in a huge carved Ottoman chair, a woman with three chins and enormous breasts trapped in a rusty black satin decolletage and hips that bulged across the arms of the chair, four rings on her thick fingers, three dirty diamond solitaires and a black tourmaline, her feet squeezed into splitting court shoes on the stained Kazakhstan carpet.

  'I have the best,' she said huskily,' the best in Novosibirsk. The youngest.'

  The heat pressed against my face, sucking the moisture from my eyes and leaving them dry. The smell was the same here as it had been in the other places but with something added, sharp and indefinable, reaching from the lungs into the gut.

  'I have Chinese girls,' Marina said.' thirteen, fourteen years old. You should see them. They are like porcelain. I'll show you.'

  She picked up a brass bell engraved with dragons, and the sound seemed half-muted in the stifling air.

  'You can have two in a bed,' Marina told me, her small eyes like sparks in the thick folds of her flesh. "Three in a bed, as many as you want. What about a boy? You like variety? Or I have whips here, chains. You like that?'

  Perhaps it was stale blood, the sharp iron smell on the air.

  I let her go on talking because I wanted to know what my chances were. Mikhail had said this house was the last one in the district and God knew how far we'd have to drive to find the next.

  A whore came through the red velvet curtains and stood looking at me, her thick white body wrapped in a soiled nightdress and her coarse dyed hair lying across one shoulder, her lips parted to show the tip of her tongue, her eyes narrowed, fear in them, fear of the gross woman in the chair.

  'She can go,' I told Marina. 'I'm not here for that.'

  I told her what I was here for.

  'You must think I 'm crazy,' she said.

  I started at three hundred, implying I would go to five.