The Scorpion Signal

by Adam Hall

  Glass doors, arches, windows and a stairway, everywhere crowded, wrought iron bridges crossing the cathedral form of the building, a bell ringing somewhere, then more shouting as doors crashed open behind me and to my left, keep running and find a door, a man’s hand swinging out and his arm hooking round my throat but I used a fare claw and span clear and hit the door and went through, a woman screaming and a table going over with buttons everywhere, a thousand of them and reels of cotton rolling and a box of scarlet plumes falling and exploding through the air, my hand on a brass handle and the inner door slamming back against shelves as I went through and saw the long narrow window and got there and used a packing case as a springboard and rolled, breaking the iron latch and falling, the woman screaming again.

  It was a corridor and I ran hard for the door at the end, slowing and going through at a quick walk, shutting it behind me. I was back in the main building again with a lot of commotion at the Kujbyseva entrance where I’d come in. I began walking the other way, a little faster when I reached the big central fountain, not too fast, watch it, everyone’s looking the other way and I’m not, I’m on the move, become or remain invisible, inaudible and unfindable, an old woman in black watching me, question it, and now a man, why? Watching my face and I touched it, blood, and got out my handkerchief as someone began shouting, a lot of them looking at me now so I went low and broke and ran again, dodging a group of children, the whistles blowing behind me and a foot darting out and sending me pitching against a man whose lined grey face loomed and stared straight into mine before I span away and went full tilt at the big glass doors at the end, stop thief, a dull rising roar of voices filling the arched building and then the crash as I hit the door on the left and swung through and found the street, slow down, the snow filling the dark sky and the pavement slippery with it, slow down, the sound of sirens on the air again, directionless and echoing from everywhere, a black patrol car slewing in to the kerb with uniformed men getting out of it, uncertain where they should go. I began walking faster because people had started staring at my face again and I kept on using the handkerchief but it was soaked by now and I put it away and broke into a run as far as the corner and saw two militia men and swerved away and found a doorway as they shouted behind me and I knocked someone down, running hard, a room on the left and a girl with her face opening in shock and starting to scream as I kept going and found a corridor empty and ran hard to the end, the word MEN on a door and I went in and the go bloodied face met me in the mirror as I stopped dead, no wonder she’d screamed.

  Water gushing and a rolled paper towel: it was a long gash from the cheekbone to the chin and I could feel glass fragments moving in it as I went to work. Blood on my hands, on my coat: I used more water, swabbing at the astrakhan, listening for sounds outside, a door thudding and someone shouting. I ripped off some more of the towel and made a wad and held it against my face as I went out and climbed three steps and found the street again.

  Slow. Slow down. Get the breathing under control, head down and watching the wet pavement like everyone else, breathe deep and breathe slow and don’t look up, don’t look round. The noise was behind me: a staccato medley of voices, and farther away a siren dying and the slam of a car door. I was on the east side of Red Square now with the walls of the Kremlin opposite. I went that way, crossing the open space with the knowledge that if they found me here there wouldn’t be any cover except for the long queue of people reaching from below Spassky Gate to Lenin’s tomb. I kept walking, my head down and the snow drifting across the ground, beginning to settle.

  Three men walked together towards the line of people, and I moved nearer them to make a group. Others were crossing Red Square towards the walls of the Kremlin, hurrying because of the snow and because the queue was lengthening. One of the sirens was still wailing through the streets behind me, and I could hear a car moving at high speed with its engine racing. I didn’t look back; I walked with the three men in black through the drifting snow. The wad of paper was pressed hard against my face; if I could stop the blood flow I could regain something like a normal image. I didn’t know whether the paper was white or red; it would make a difference when I reached the queue of people. They were facing towards us, all of them, wrapped tight in their fur coats and hats and head-scarves, staring across the square.

  ‘What’s happening over there?’

  ‘Was there an accident?’

  We walked steadily towards them, joining the line near Spassky Gate. It was four deep and I took up my position on the far side, away from the department store..

  ‘Do you have toothache?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What’s happening across the square there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I counted seven police cars, one of them moving slowly round the cathedral and another one turning and accelerating in the opposite direction, but both keeping close to the square.

  ‘Teh! There’s blood on your face. Are you hurt?’

  ‘It’s nothing much. I slipped on the snow.’

  ‘You need medical attention.’

  ‘It will heal.’

  A body of militia men was moving away from the thick of the patrol cars and spreading out along the edge of the square, facing this way. One of the cars had dropped two men off not far from Nikolsky Gate, and they were walking steadily past the museum towards the queue of mourners. They looked closely at everyone they passed. I turned away from the queue but saw a police van slowing to a halt opposite Nabatny Tower; a dozen men got out of it and began forming a group facing this way. I turned back.

  ‘Do you live in Moscow?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘We are from Abramtsevo.’ She was a motherly woman half buried in black shawls, her bright eyes watching me. This is my son, Viktorovich. He would like to live in Moscow, but he can’t get a visa. He’s a sewage engineer, an apprentice.’

  I nodded to him. ‘You must keep trying. You know how it is, when you want something from them.’

  When I looked behind me again I saw the group of police spreading out and moving slowly towards the queue, stopping a man here and there and questioning him. I turned again and looked towards Spassky Gate, where two sentries stood.

  ‘Have you visited the Mausoleum before?’ asked the woman.

  ‘No. I’ve been wanting to see it for a long time.’

  The sentries would certainly see me and probably stop me: they were aware that every male in the square was being scrutinized. The three lines of police and militia men were moving steadily in from the other three sides.

  ‘We have been twice already,’ she said. ‘Every time I see me sepulchre, I have tears.’ She rocked gently, nodding with the whole of her round shawled body. ‘Every day we have fifteen thousand people here to see it But you will know this, since you live in Moscow.’

  The snow was falling thickly now; the sky overhead was storm-dark and the air was heavy. We shuffled forward, watched by the police guards.

  The last time we came,’ the woman said, ‘the queue reached right round to Kutafya Tower! Of course it was summer then.’ She peered up at me with her bright eyes. ‘Do you have influence in Moscow?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But your son should keep on trying. It wears them down in the end.’

  A man and a woman broke from the queue not far away, and a police guard called to them. ‘Return to the line, please I Get back into line!’

  ‘But we can’t wait any longer. My wife has a cold. ‘Very well.’

  We shuffled forward again.

  The militia men were halfway across the square by now, one of them stopping the man to question him while his wife waited, puzzled. When I turned round I saw two of the police unit reach the end of the queue and start moving along it, scrutinizing the men. Ahead of us people were breaking away to put their cameras and parcels into a locker room, coming back to their places and shuffling forward again. The militia men were moving steadily in our direction.


  There wasn’t any way out If I tried running they’d head me off and if I stayed where I was they’d question me: chat have you done to your face? Why is your coat torn like this? Were you in an accident?

  The snow is already thick, in Abramtsevo. The chickens can hardly find the grain.’ She moved forward with her son.

  There was no way out but I had a choice. Schrenk carried a capsule, Croder had said. He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. The small red box was in a pocket on the inside of my waistband and in it was the capsule, cushioned in Silica-Gel desiccant. They might not search me immediately, not for anything small; but they’d see me if I tried to reach it and in any case they’d make a detailed search as soon as we got to Lubyanka and that wasn’t far from here, four minutes in a police car.

  It depended on how much he’d told them. Ignatov. He didn’t know who I was. He was a total stranger and he hadn’t looked at me once in the meeting hall or when I’d followed him to his car, not once. But he’d told them to pick me up.

  We moved forward again and the woman’s son took his camera across to the locker room and came back. The police guards were watching us closely now, their caps jutting and their bone-white faces reflecting the snow.

  Natalya? She might have told Ignatov, he said that if Helmut was in Moscow there were certain friends who’d try to get him out of prison. Natalya, possibly. I didn’t think so; she hadn’t enough guile. Who else, if not Natalya? There was no one who knew me.

  ‘Keep close in line.’ Their eyes moved over our faces.

  We shuffled forward again and climbed the steps between the guards of honour, going inside. It was quiet now except for the movement of feet across the wooden platform. People had stopped talking, and the men were taking off their hats. Guards with fixed bayonets stood watching us as we climbed the steps to the tomb.

  It would depend on what Ignatov had told them. If he’d said I was a dissident trying to provoke others last night in the Star Cafe, a dissident with certain friends who would try getting Schrenk out of prison, I could manage what they would do to me. But if the inconceivable had happened and Ignatov had told them I was an agent from London then they’d take me through the full routine as they’d taken Schrenk, and I didn’t know for certain if I could stand up to it as he’d managed to do, because I wasn’t fresh in the field and the tensions of the last operation were still flickering in the nerves. I could break and if I broke I could blow London, the whole of what I knew.

  There …’ said the woman in front of me, and leaned forward in her black shawls to gaze at the bright glass coffin with the exhibit inside it, either the preserved body or an effigy, it was impossible to tell. She began weeping quietly, but the line wouldn’t stop for anyone and I had to nudge her, as the man behind me was nudging me. We went down the steps and made for the huge rectangle of the doorway, passing between the guards and reaching daylight. The snow fell softly over the square and over the dark moving figures, bringing its silence to the scene. I stayed with a group, talking to the woman and her son; she was still weeping quietly but he took no notice. The nearest policemen were fifty yards away; I could hear their voices under the dark sky.

  ‘When do you expect to get your license,’ I asked Viktorovich, ‘in sewage engineering?’ I steered the two of them to the left, towards the history museum, keeping my head down to talk to the boy and holding the paper wad against the wound with my hand covering most of it, because the blood must have soaked through by this time.

  ‘When they give it to me,’ the boy said. ‘I’ve passed my exams. It’s a question of time.’ He looked around him at the huge museum and the gilded domes. ‘One day I’m going to live here, you know that? But you need a visa, and you can’t get a visa without a job here, and you can’t get a job here without a visa.’ He kicked at the snow, thrusting his bare knuckly hands into his pockets.

  The woman stopped weeping and gave a sigh, fumbling among her shawls for a handkerchief. ‘It was beautiful,’ she rid, ‘beautiful’

  I held her arm, keeping her in a straight line for the museum through the gap between the two policemen. I watched the ground.

  ‘Look at this snow,’ the boy said ‘I forgot to cover the tractor before we left this morning.’

  The policeman on the left was questioning someone: I could hear his voice. It was the other one, on the right, who came suddenly across to us, the leather of his new boots creaking.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘Papers.’

  Chapter 8

  Vader

  Within a minute there were five or six of them round me, forming a circle.

  ‘His face,’ they kept telling each other. The first one had raised his arm and held it like that until a captain came up, the heels of his polished black boots clinking on the hard surface: I think they were iron-capped.

  ‘His face. Captain,’ the first one said.

  ‘What have you done to your face?’ The captain pulled my hand away and stared at the wound.

  ‘I fell against some railings outside my apartment.’

  ‘When?’ His breath steamed against my face.

  ‘An hour ago, when -‘

  ‘An hour ago. Did you have an accident?’

  ‘Yes, I slipped on the snow -‘

  ‘Did you have an accident in your car?’

  Others came up. Behind them I caught a glimpse of the woman in the shawls, staring at me with her bright eyes, shocked.

  ‘When did he have the accident?’ It was another captain.

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘How did he tear his coat?’

  ‘Papers. Show me your papers.’

  I could feel blood trickling on my chin: the wound had opened when the captain had pulled my hand away.

  ‘Kapista Kirov. That tells us nothing.’ They came closer, gathering round like boys who’d found an injured animal.

  More of them came, and one of them said: ‘He is the man I saw running away from the car.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I was there! Of course I’m sure.’

  They all started talking at once.

  Capsule.

  ‘Take him along. Four of you.’

  ‘March!’

  People stood perfectly still in the falling snow, watching us as we walked past them towards the roadway. Three Black Ravens had already pulled up alongside the kerb; their engines were still running. The rear doors of the nearest one swung open with a bang and I got to it when they hustled me inside : it was in my hand by the time I sat down on the padded bench.

  The rear doors slammed and the steel bar was dropped across outside. Four of them sat with me, watching me but not talking.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I told the captain. ‘I fell against some railings. You’re making a mistake.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I went on talking to him, explaining that I wasn’t the man they wanted. He shrugged at intervals. The box was in my hand but I hadn’t decided yet. I couldn’t get the capsule out while I was sitting here: they were watching me the whole time, Dzerzhinsky Square, through the barred windows, and the Children’s World department store. Then, just opposite, Lubyanka.

  I had no information. The choice was simply heads or tails, black or white. Ignatov had known I was an agent and had told them so, or he hadn’t. If he had known, and had told them, then I risked betraying London when they brought the pressure on and my system began overloading. If I wanted to avoid that risk, I would have to take the capsule within the next few seconds, and blow the fuse.

  ‘You can open up!’ the captain called out.

  Hands hit the steel bar upwards against the rear doors.

  Once inside Lubyanka I would be closely watched and meticulously searched, if they were doing their job. They would know there were two critical points at which an active intelligence agent is liable to take his capsule: within minutes of his arrest, and when the interrogation began breaking him. Woodison had done it; so had Racklaw; so had F
ane. The pressure had got too much: not just the pressure of their last arrest and interrogation but of all the other arrests and interrogations they’d been through since they’d first gone eagerly into the field as younger men, brandishing their unbruised innocence. The pressure is accumulative.

  ‘Out!’ the captain told me. Two of the men dropped from me rear of the van and two stayed behind. A dozen more were waiting for me outside, and two patrol cars swung through the heavy gates, pulling up alongside and spilling their crews.

  There was another decision I had to make, within the next few seconds. If I didn’t take the capsule I must get rid of it ‘Was he driving that Pobeda?’

  ‘He says he fell against some railings.’

  ‘Get Orlov here. He was in the van that crashed.’

  ‘Come on, out! March!’

  I dropped to the ground and made my first decision. If I became certain, three days from now, four days, five, that I couldn’t protect London, there was the other way of blowing the fuse.

  ‘Orlov! Is this the man you saw running from the Pobeda?’

  ‘Yes, Captain!’ His face peered into mine. ‘This is the one!’

  Bloody fool, I’d come out of the smash like a bat out of hell and he didn’t have time to take anything in because the van had rolled over. He wanted the kudos.

  ‘Get him inside!’

  There was a drain grid at one side of the steps and I let it drop and waited to hear if it made any sound, metal on metal, that would be audible above the tramp of their boots.

  ‘Captain,’ I said loudly, exasperated, ‘you’re making a mistake.’