A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  She briefed them again. Sometimes they yawned, or scratched, or picked at a spot, and sometimes they listened. She said what the cover for their visit was, and was exact in the duties of driving and talking, and emphasised the point about not attracting attention. Boot might have gained their respect, but she did not. Martin tried to make eye contact with her, blatant, and she’d have liked to poke out his eyes. But she smiled, and told them when she would see them again, and where, and went back to wake Merc.

  One call allowed, two minutes permitted. A poor line. She sounded hoarse and her voice was distant, and desperate.

  He imagined a telephone on a corridor wall, and heard background shouting, and a man’s screams – what an addict did when kept from shooting up – and she said where she was and who held her, and that she was not yet charged, had not faced interrogation, and . . . probably her time was exhausted and the call had been terminated. He had sat up and had waited for her. Nikki always did if she was out late. He had drunk coffee to stay awake, had failed to, and had fallen asleep at the kitchen table. Had woken and gone to Kat’s room and would have joked with her how quiet she had been on her return, not waking him . . . but the bed was empty. She had no boyfriend that he knew of. He had gone back into the kitchen, had waited for her steps on the corridor outside the apartment door . . . had heard the old woman with the cigarette kiosk on the esplanade of the river go out, taking her hacking cough with her. The two girls from the other side of the hallway who lived with their parents and worked in the Pushka Inn hotel on the Moika canal came next, and were laughing loudly; if they had seen him they would have ignored him, rated him beneath their attention and did not know he was worth close to $450,000. And there was the man who drove a trolley bus but had a two-bedroom apartment to himself because his nephew had a good position in Customs at the airport. The building was springing to life, but he had not heard her. Did now. A small voice, attempting to hide fear from him, staccato sentences. He tried to remember what she had said, where she was held: under arrest but not interrogated and not charged.

  Nikki splashed water on his face.

  He snatched up his coat and scarf and his anorak, and the bag with the laptop. He slammed the door after him, chased down the stairs and out into a grey morning with ice sharp and glistening on the pavement. He found her car parked illegally in a restricted zone outside the block that should have been left clear for refuse collection lorries. Most days she took him; only occasionally did he have to go by bus, or trolley. He travelled in the opposite direction to the Big House, where the cell block was in the basement of the building, where natural light did not come . . . He hated them. Hated the world around him. Hated the men and women and children on his staircase, on his floor, and would betray them. All of those who had ignored him, bad-mouthed him, were to be betrayed. He had not told his sister, and if she were not freed then she would linger in those cells, with the whores and the thieves and dissidents. Because of the betrayal, the next day, he had to free her.

  He pushed open the special door. Gone past the guards at the gate and inside the perimeter fence and had skipped past two heavy saloons with chauffeurs and bodyguards, low from the weight of armour plating, had waved his ID and they were too bored to chase after him. Did not knock on the oak panels. Nikki opened the door as a receptionist attempted to block him. He elbowed her aside. His worn trainers sank deep into a pile carpet. The smells were of rich coffee and of small cigars. A low light was on the desk, and at the edge of its orbit was the glint from the gold-plated barrel of a Kalashnikov mounted on the wall, a symbol of a former retreat over the frontier and out of Afghanistan by a veteran. Framed near to the assault rifle was a target of concentric circles drawn prominently over the face of the then enemy, a tribesman, and pocked with crude holes where bullets had punctured it. There was a nude, gilt-framed, on a far wall, provocative and hairy, and unfinished, and the word upstairs was that the woman, at that time his wife, had become ‘friendly’ with the artist as she sat, and rumour said the artist was dead, lost in a flyover or under a piazza’s paving in one of the city’s eastern sectors. There was a safe, open, and folders were visible and thick wads of dollars and euros and roubles, and . . . Security was at the door and behind him.

  The GangMaster was at his desk, shoes off and feet in good socks balanced on its surface. Opposite, on a leather sofa, was a paunchy figure in a civilian suit: a colonel, the roof of the GangMaster. It might have been the day that payments were made – or the opportunity for conversation relevant to the tasking of the hacktivists at the meeting thirty hours away or less. He was a traitor to them. Had they known it, both would have mutilated him, used a hunting knife or electrodes or lit cigarettes or forceps to take a sliver of skin and start to peel, or pliers for his fingernails . . . Neither man showed surprise at his entry, nor annoyance, nor interest, and Security and the receptionist were waved away and the door closed. He was not invited to speak, was greeted with silence.

  The words came in a spurt, blurted out. ‘I am the best you have. I bring more money, more reward, than any other. I am superior to the Roofer and to HookNose and to Gorilla, and all the rest that you use. I deliver. I have a brain and use it, and you do well from my work. Something in return for the way I have enriched you. My sister is everything to me, my whole family. Is talented, a musician, also stupid . . . Mixes with a scumbag gang of dissidents. She is infatuated by them. She is Kat, Yekaterina, she was arrested last night. She has not been charged, is being held, not yet interrogated. I ask for intervention. She is in the FSB house. Please . . . I ask it, please . . . please – because you value me and value my work – use influence . . . I want her at our home. I do what I am asked, I fulfil every task given me . . . She is a very little piece of an idiot organisation, no threat to the state . . . please . . . Thank you.’

  Tears in his eyes, Nikki spun on his heel, ducked his head in respect, left the room and closed the door quietly after him. The guards watched him balefully, as if hoping for an instruction to batter his face, but none came. His laptop bag was hooked over his shoulder and he went up the stairs to go to work . . . and felt a pulsing exhilaration at the scale of his deception, and what he held over them and would do to them. The betrayal would be so sweet, but only after his sister had been freed, and after he had told her of a meeting in the car-park of the supermarket farther west on the highway.

  There was a toilet but it was blocked. Beside the toilet pan was a bucket which Kat used. She sat on the mattress, knees clasped to her chest. She had wrapped the two issued blankets over her shoulders.

  Nobody came, other than the guard, a stout woman with a starched uniform and a face showing neither sympathy or contempt, who carried a small metal tray. On it was a plastic bowl of a thick porridge, kasha, made from millet or barley stirred into boiled water, and bread and bottled water. The guard had not spoken to her, had put the tray down and turned her back. Wrong, not bottled water, water from a tap poured into a used bottle, and a chlorine taste in it. With the chlorine was the scent of the disinfectant round the top of the toilet pan, and on the sides of the bucket. She sat and she thought.

  The first time she had spent a night in the cells, Kat had imagined that news of her arrest would have moved quickly among her group and others who were comrades or had loose affiliation. She had even believed there would have been a cluster outside the main entrance of the Big House, and she had strained – unsuccessfully – to hear the sound of protest chanting, and had imagined reactions similar to those when Pussy Riot were held or when Navalny or Nemtsov was arrested. A delusion, as had been her ambition to play the piano in concert halls . . . She had wanted to protest, to fight, had not wanted a cell and no questioning and no attention, and one feeble phone call. She did not know why her brother had seemed distant from her, had assumed his work was dishonest, hiring himself out like a hotel tart, a kurwa, a shlyukha. She had pleaded for his help, as she had done for money to pay her piano lessons. She had taken one spoonful of the po
rridge, had drunk a little of the water.

  There were voices beyond her cell door, commands and tearful screams, and the spitting of a hose as if a cell floor was being sluiced clean. For fuck’s sake, it was her country. Should have been permitted to protest against corruption, against criminal gain, against what the foreign media called kleptocracy. Films on the TV showed the glamorous centre of St Petersburg and fashion shops on the principal streets, did not broadcast images of the block where she existed, of the druggies and the drunks, of the vagrants . . . Had the right to protest, but sat in a cell and no one came to hear her grievance. Might be for a day, might be for a week. She stood, rocking on the balls of her feet. Sucked in the fetid air, and shouted at the top of her voice.

  ‘Come here, you bastards, pigs, come here – let me out of this fucking cell. I have rights. More rights than the thieves you support. See if I care. You are just serfs, you don’t think, you’re ignorant and without minds, you’re shit – and you do what a czar tells you. Stupid, cowards . . .’

  Kat’s breath ran out. She stopped, lungs emptied, sagged and seemed to hear the echo of her voice as it died in the corridors of the cell block. What she knew: she would not have been heard on any of the eight floors of the building above her. Would not have been heard on the street outside where six lanes of traffic ploughed about their business. The final gesture was to lift up the metal tray with the plastic bowl and metal spoon and the filled bottle, hold it high and hurl it at the door and hear the slight impact and the rolling rattle of the tray on the concrete.

  No one came. No one shouted at her and demanded silence. No one called for her interrogation, even bothered to slide back the peep-hole and examine her. A little moment of brittle amusement for Kat: they could charge her, under Article 319, with insulting a member of the authorities. Could lock her up for that, except that no one seemed to care.

  Tears exploded. Kat was on her hands and knees on the floor, putting the bowl and the bottle and the spoon back on the tray and using her fingers to pick up the spattered porridge, and knew she faced defeat. It had not taken many hours, and the shame gripped her, and she could not help herself.

  ‘It is a small thing, Danik. An unimportant request, but I make it.’

  A colonel had come to the Major’s office and wore a good suit wrapped around a solid belly, and the smell of a cigar was on his breath. No appointment made through their two PAs, but the senior officer had appeared at the door, had smiled and had asked if it were convenient for him to take a few moments of the Major’s time.

  ‘I have not yet questioned her. She is a minor part of a complex investigation.’

  They were wary of him, all of the senior officers from the floor above. He did not come to their parties, was not a recipient of small envelopes, did not have a refuge in the forests around the city, was not a friend – but he was liked in a distant way, and had earned respect.

  ‘I tell you very frankly, Danik, that in the interests of the state she should be freed.’

  ‘She was in association with a known anarchist, also arrested.’

  ‘Done soon, Danik, the release . . . She has a brother.’

  ‘I know of her brother. Not part of a dissident movement, employed by a crime syndicate. Outside my area of responsibility.’

  ‘Inside mine, Danik. The brother has doubtful liaisons . . . but he is also an expert at the accumulation of information that is important to national security.’

  ‘National security? I have that guarantee, in writing?’

  ‘A project involving ourselves and GRU. Sufficient, yes?’

  ‘No charge pending, complete release?’

  ‘Just a window, enough to calm the brother . . . I don’t have to explain to you, Danik, that these are serious times for the nation, and we are hemmed in by enemies, and we must stay vigilant, strong . . . We are in a race for technology and this boy is able at what he does. I anticipate you will not disappoint me.’

  And a sweet smile. They did not stamp on his feet. It would be about a roof. A building needed a roof to protect its interior from bad weather. A criminal gang needed a roof to safeguard its activities from the attention of law enforcement. So simple. A roof was a krysha. A woman who kept a kiosk must have a roof who would ensure her kiosk was not firebombed by a rival. That man, too, must have a roof to ensure that his territory was not invaded. Might be a more powerful criminal conspiracy, might be a middle-ranking officer of the police, or the militia, or the FSB in the Big House. It went on up, far into the clouds. This officer, the colonel, would be the roof for the GangMaster who employed the brother, Yekaterina’s Nikki. Higher up the ladder, deeper in cloud, would be a senior clan leader and a brigadier in the security forces, and then a man who ran enterprises across a whole sector of the city along with a general – and a politician . . . The roofs went to the great buildings of state, and pickings were taken and for various men there was immunity from prosecution. The Major accepted reality when it stared him in the face. He winked as if to a co-conspirator.

  ‘I have a proposition for her, but she will be free by the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Danik – a good compromise.’

  The colonel was on his way out.

  ‘My colleague has a villa close to Sochi. I am sure at Easter it would be vacant. Could be of interest to you and Julia. It would be very comfortable.’

  The Major smiled grimly. He was not dependent on bribes, shook his head.

  As the colonel went through the door, the Major believed he heard him mutter, ‘Pompous little prick’ or similar. But he had plans for the girl, and would put them to her, and would watch her writhe like a pinioned snake.

  ‘Have you somewhere else to be, something else to do?’

  A crisp answer from her. ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Go there, do it.’

  Merc wanted her gone. No pleasantries, just an instruction. He slipped out of the car, did not look at her, did not wave, and went on down a small path that might have been made by picnickers in summer, or fishermen. He heard her car pull away. She had ferried him twice up the length of the road north from Narva, past the big cemetery and up to the spa resort on the Baltic coast where the river went into the sea. Had come down towards the town again and twice stopped to explore that section of river bank, then had climbed back into the car, no explanation given as to what he had seen, satisfactory or not, and they had driven on. Each time he wanted her to stop he had flicked his finger on the dash in front of him. It was a wide, straight road and followed the line of the river, and little traffic was on it . . . He thought the KaPo car had given up on them or had not bothered to stick with the surveillance. He had found a place among the trees where there was a graveyard among tall, straight pines, bright with plastic flowers, and close to it was a memorial to the Russian dead in the ‘liberation’ of Estonia: bigger than life size and showing a powerful young man in a heavy greatcoat and, beside him, a full-faced woman who would have been drafted to the front and they’d have fallen together. There had been another memorial to the Red Army downstream, with more plastic and bright red flowers and wreaths. She had started to talk about a battle, casualties, but he had shushed her, did not want conversation. Merc knew about battles and casualties, and more knowledge of them would not help him. They had come to a freshly painted T-34 Russian battle tank, high on a concrete plinth. The star, symbol of the Red Army, was vivid on the turret, and there were more flowers, fresh ones. Close to the carcass of the thirty-ton tank was the path he had taken.

  She would be back in the late afternoon, with the kit. Nothing more needed to be agreed. It was not Merc’s way to debate what he might do, look for confirmation or criticism. Never had been . . . Like the times on Route Irish, with a VIP civilian onboard and near messing his trousers with nerves, and Merc – ridiculously young to take such decisions on a diplomat’s or construction expert’s life – would seem to sniff the air and either decide to go, or that they would lay off, take an hour’s rain-check. The guy
s with him had believed in the value of his intuition . . . once, because another crew had not listened to his concern, a run had been started, and an armour-reinforced saloon was hit with an RPG round: all dead. The principal lost. Merc’s legend enhanced. She was gone. He was alone. Light rain fell. The temperature was three or four degrees above freezing, less when he went into the water with the cover of darkness round him. Merc sat on his haunches.

  He had a small mono-glass, tidy enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and he scanned with it, and learned the life of the river. An hour passed, and another.

  On the far side of the water, 300 metres away he estimated, was a border marker, striped green and red. Short of it was a reed bed, thick and noisy to penetrate. Upstream from the marker was a high observation platform – he had seen half a dozen of them on the reconnaissance journeys up and down the road. Between the marker and the steel pillars supporting the platform was a gully where the river came into the reed bed and split it, and a grey-feathered heron fished there. The heron was calm and had found a promising feeding place; every few minutes its head would dip and rise, a slithering shape in its beak, then the expert tilt of the throat: Merc might have sworn he saw the bulge go down the neck. The heron told him there was no track on the far side down which a foot patrol came, let alone a jeep.

  The mono-glass showed him song birds on the far side. They quartered the small area of shore he could see in the reeds’ gap. Looked for worms or grubs, would need to feed hard before the snow came and removed their sustenance, but they would have flown off in a panic if a patrol had been close.