They walked for half an hour and Yermakov spoke to several passers-by and their children. They’ll remember this for the rest of their lives, he thought, watching the children fondly as they raced away into the darkness.
They visited the old prison on the banks of the Ushakovka, where Admiral Kolchak had been executed by a firing squad in the headlights of a parked lorry before being pushed through the hole in the ice. Kolchak, Yermakov recalled, had “died like an Englishman” – whatever that meant. The visit to the prison chilled his exuberance.
They also visited the museum containing the materials Princess Trubetskaya wore in exile, Radichev’s letters, convicts’ fetters, bars from the old gaol, whips used on the convicts, a photograph of a prisoner chained to a wheel-barrow. And a tattered Bolshevik flag.
Yermakov pointed at the flag. His eyes were moist. He said to Razin: “It’s been worth while, hasn’t it Comrade Razin?”
Razin said it had.
IN TRANSIT
The thaw in Novosibirsk lasted one day before winter set in. During that day a peasant walking along the banks of the Ob came across the body of a man wrapped in sacking. He phoned the police and, half an hour later, two yawning militia turned up and inspected the body without interest. One of them pointed to the mutilated neck and said: “Looks like a wolf. They’re getting hungry early this year.” They phoned the morgue and an hour later – because there is no hurry in their business – two morticians arrived with their meat-wagon and took the body away. One of the militiamen went through the dead man’s personal effects; he found a thin wallet, a handkcerchief, a ball-point pen, car keys, loose change, a Moscow subway ticket – and an empty shoulder holster. The attitude of all three men changed. The senior of the two militiamen flipped through the contents of the wallet. He found a green card in a transparent plastic envelope, nodded at his colleagues and said: “It’s him.” The second militiaman went to the phone. His colleague said to the morticians: “We’d better make a thorough job of it now.” He went through the dead man’s pockets again and, in the inside pocket of the overcoat, found an envelope with a Moscow address on it. On the other side, written in ballpoint ink, was the number 43. And the name Viktor Pavlov.
SECOND LEG
CHAPTER 1
The guns, ammunition and grenades were stashed in a deserted railway station on a branch-line of the Trans-Siberian 300 kilometres east of Chita, 6,504 kilometres from Moscow. In the prospecting days, when Americans, British, Germans, French and Italians joined the gold rush, it was known as Panhandle and the wooden nameplate, in faded gold script, lay on top of the sacks of fertiliser covering the weapons.
The old ticket office, its wooden counter polished by gold roubles, was still intact and, outside the door, there was a brass bell covered with verdigris as thick as lichen. The platform had rotted but brass faucets from which passengers once drew boiled water were still attached to the outside wall. There were stumps of fencing around the garden and some fragments of fretwork hanging from the eaves.
The rails of the siding were still visible, two ribbons of rust in the snow. They wandered round a pine-wood until they reached the main track of the Trans-Siberian; many years ago the track had been dismantled at the junction; overnight someone had replaced the missing links and oiled the points.
Half way between the station and the main line stood an old black E-723 2-8-0 locomotive with a broken smokestack and a railed platform. Although it was decrepit, someone had been tending to it recently and there was coal on the tender.
Two kilometres from the station in the opposite direction to the main line stood a village which had been deserted during the rout of the White Russians and never repopulated. It contained a ruined church built in honour of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker and the Martyr Saint Queen Alexandria to mark the coronation of the Tsar and his wife; a cemetery, a store which once sold liquor to the prospectors, exiles and settlers who had been persuaded to go east and had done so at the rate of 52,000 a year with cheap rail fares, grants of 30 roubles, gifts of 40 acres of perm-frosted ground; the foundations of an inn and the ruins of a few log cabins.
Between the railway station and the village, hidden from the main line by the belt of pine trees, the rusty track passed over a deep ravine spanned by an iron bridge. On this single-span bridge built into stone-buttresses on either side of the ravine the climax of the Pavlov plan was to be enacted; here, above a wound in a white waste hedged by pine and banked by mountain foothills, between a deserted railway station and its ghost village, the most powerful man in the Soviet Union was to be held to ransom.
First the special carriage carrying Yermakov at the end of the Trans-Siberian express would be uncoupled after a false alarm had stopped the train; then Yermakov and guards would be swiftly and silently incapacitated; the main body of the train would continue on its way leaving behind the last coach which would be shunted along the branch-line by the old E-723 2-8-0 locomotive; Yermakov would be held in the coach on the iron bridge already packed with dynamite until the Zealots’ demands were met. If they weren’t …
It wasn’t an ambitious bridge but it had style with its iron sides like the tips of two giant wheels and ornate buttresses now ravaged; it had been built by Muscovite engineers, Italian stonemasons and convicts and they had managed to create dignity in the desolation. A few hundred yards away stood the crumbled workings of an abandoned gold mine. The mine had an open shaft and it took twenty seconds for a stone to hit water with a distant, silvery splash.
Far beyond the mountains, their haunches scattered with silver birch, lay the Autonomous Republic of Yakutsk and the Arctic. To the south-west lay the borders of Mongolia, the puppet of the Soviet Union, and, to the south-east, the Chinese border.
To the east, along the Amur River, lay the autonomous Jewish region of Birobidzhan, now in its death spasms, Khabarovsk, Vladivostock and the Pacific linked with Europe by the world’s longest continuous train ride.
All around lay the 4,833, 496 square miles of Siberia.
* * *
The Prospector was there with his wolf; he was in charge of the weapons. Shiller, the Penman, had arrived from Moscow flying to Khabarovsk on a TU 114 turbo-prop and back-tracking on a YAK-40. He was in charge of this end of the operation until the arrival of Pavlov the Professional.
There were five other Zealots hiding in the ruins of the village – the Pilot, the Pederast, the Pupil, the Puppet-maker and the Planter who, through Semenov the Policeman, had managed to plant bugs in the K.G.B. headquarters at Chita which would be handling all messages about the kidnap.
The Pupil who was twenty-two, was in charge of the old locomotive. He was one of the Soviet Union’s 3,500,000 railwaymen and the most suspect member of the Zealots because it was a good life being a railwayman in the Soviet Union with free medical service, pensions and recognition of good work. One of his heroes was Boris Demurin.
Nevertheless the Pupil was a Jew although it didn’t show on his passport. He had a twin brother who worked as a laboratory assistant in the Scientific Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery in Moscow. His twin had been an active Zionist who had taken part in the hunger strike at the Central Telegraph Office. He had spent a lot of time at the 108th militia station and sobering-up station No. 9 and had been arrested twice under Article 122 of the Russian Republic Criminal Procedural Code. Finally he had stolen some spirit from the laboratory and set fire to himself in Gorky Street. The Pupil had got to him too late and his hands were a mass of s’car tissue from his efforts to beat out the flames.
The rest of the Zealots were not necessarily present for their professional capabilities. The Pilot flew An-12’s for Aeroflot, the Puppet-maker made marionettes for a travelling show in Leningrad, the Pederast operated outside the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and was a skilled assassin.
By the time the operation swung into action at 20.34 on the eighth day of the journey – the day after the train left Irkutsk – the Zealots would number 13.
CHAPTER 2
Stanley Wagstaff was arrested as Train No. 2 was crossing the Primorski Mountains on its way to Sliudianka. It was nine o’clock in the evening and Stanley was standing in the corridor because he was interested in this stretch of track which had block signals and the steepest gradient anywhere on the railway; the line had been built in 1956 to avoid flood waters caused by the damming of the Angara.
He had notebook and pencil in his hand but he wasn’t writing much because it was dark outside and snow was plastering the windows. He didn’t mind because it felt good just standing there, feeling the smooth motion of the train; and, in any case, he had enough facts and figures in his notebook for three lectures in Manchester. His journey, he thought, would merit a few paragraphs in the Manchester Evening News.
The two K.G.B. men were very polite. One took the notebook, the other searched him. They asked him to accompany them to a compartment in the special coach. Larissa Prestina was sitting in the compartment which was more like a cell. She looked very smug.
Stanley felt he should say: “I demand to see a lawyer.” He almost laughed. He wasn’t frightened – it was all part of the adventure and now he was worth more than just a few paragraphs in the Evening News; in fact, Stanley thought, I’ll probably get national coverage.
He nodded at Larissa Prestina and asked: “What’s this all about?”
The two K.G.B. men sat opposite Stanley. The bunks had been removed from the compartment and it was furnished with a dark-green, metal table and four chairs. Between the two officers stood a table lamp with a brilliant glare. The third-degree, Stanley thought.
The officer with the Mongolian features said: “It has come to our notice through information laid by Comrade Larissa Prestina that you have been making notes of classified material relating to the deployment of Soviet troops.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stanley said. He took a packet of Mannikins from his pocket and offered them round. The boyish-faced officer took one and slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. When will they start torturing me? Stanley wondered.
Larissa Prestina said: “Oh yes you do. I saw you take out your pad and make notes when we passed a train loaded with guns. What’s more” – her voice broke with long-suppressed fury – “you have spent the entire journey indulging in anti-Soviet propaganda and mocking the achievements of our glorious leaders.”
“Bollocks,” said Stanley Wagstaff.
The Mongolian K.G.B. man opened the notebook and perused it for a few moments. Finally he said: “It won’t take our code-breakers in Moscow long to solve this.”
“The best of British to them,” Stanley Wagstaff said.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to understand what you say.”
“Then scrape the wax out of your ears.” How long will it take before I break under interrogation? he wondered. He had heard that they put electrodes on your testicles until you told them everything they wanted to know in one long, drawn-out scream. The snag was he hadn’t got anything to tell them so the scream might be very long. The last entry, he remembered, was a list of condemned 2-10-0’s of the Ea class standing in a railway graveyard.
Larissa Prestina turned to the two officers. “Are you going to let this pig talk to you like that?”
“Calm yourself, Comrade. We must be sure of our facts. Your wallet please.” Stanley handed over his pigskin wallet bearing a picture of Blackpool Tower.
They laid the contents on the table. Driving licence with one endorsement for speeding in Salford, a photograph of his wife eating ice-cream on Scarborough sea-front, the membership card of his train-spotter’s club, a photograph of Stephenson’s “Locomotion” on Darlington station, some flamboyant Soviet postage stamps, coupons for buying food and drink and ten one-rouble notes.
The K.G.B. men glanced at each other unhappily.
“We’d better tell Comrade Razin,” one of them said in Russian.
“Comrade Razin said he mustn’t be disturbed unless it’s something to do with the security of the train.”
They stared hard at Stanley Wagstaff: he didn’t look much of a threat. And relations with Yury Razin had become delicate since he had realised they were communicating information to Yermakov. You would have thought that if you were co-operating with the most powerful man in the Soviet Union you were safe: the two officers were sufficiently experienced to know that this was far from the truth where Razin was concerned.
“Just the same, we’ll have to tell him,” one of them said. “He’d go crazy if we arrested a spy without telling him.”
“Supposing he isn’t a spy. That would be the end of us. This Wagstaff is the sort of shit who would make trouble. An international incident,” he said, stuffing Stanley’s papers back into his wallet.
“Of course he’s a spy,” Larissa Prestina said loudly. “Why else would he make notes of troop movements?”
“He says he’s a train-spotter.”
“A clever front,” Larissa Prestina said.
“I’m hungry,” Stanley said, knowing they would deprive him of food and water.
One of the officers went away, returning five minutes later with black bread, red caviar, a rosy Kasakh apple and a bottle of beer. He put the tray in front of Stanley and said: “Please eat. If there’s anything more we can get you let us know.”
Larissa Prestina sniffed.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to keep you here for a while,” the officer went on. “Let us know if there’s, anything you want.”
They all left, locking the door from the outside.
* * *
The train rolled on smoothly through the night, reaching Ulan-Ude, where the Trans-Mongolian Railway branches off for Ulan-Bator and Peking, and beginning its descent through the Yablonovy Mountains to Chita where the aristrocratic wives of the Decembrists once made their homes in Ladies Street.
The train was full of dreams except in one or two pockets of resistance. In the hard-class carriages men in pyjamas played cards through the night while Yakuti women from the north wearing furs and fine reindeer-skin boots, sipped Cognac and chewed cuts of ham, their Eskimo faces flushed with excitement.
Once there was a burst of cheering as the old chess-master, who had broken his journey at Novosibirsk and Irkutsk to play and lose several games, beat a young scientist planning Siberia’s future at Akademgorodok. He was young and brilliant, moving quickly, slapping his pieces down on the board. Contemptuously, he accepted a sacrifice and lost the game in thirty-eight moves. He stared baffled at the board for some time before challenging the old man to a return game. But the old man, his eyes rheumy and his face like parchment, announced his retirement. He fell asleep smiling and died without waking from a heart attack.
In the kitchen of the dining car the Ukranian train-driver made love to the brown-uniformed waitress on a table beside a bowl of caviar; but it wasn’t wholly successful because, with the cooks due in five minutes, he had to move quickly; and, when it was over, the waitress compared him unfavourably with southern lovers.
In the special coach Yermakov took two sleeping pills; but they had no effect. After sweating and moving restlessly for another hour he took a third, finally falling into a deep-black sleep.
Harry Bridges also had difficulty in sleeping. With his talent for being at the right time at the right place he had seen Stanley Wagstaff taken away.
“What are you going to do?” Libby Chandler had asked at the time.
“What can I do?”
“You were action man himself in Irkutsk.”
“I told you I didn’t tell Razin anything.”
“I’ll do something for Stanley if you won’t.”
“What the hell can you do? Half the K.G.B. are on this train.”
“At least I can see him. He must be scared out of his wits, poor little man.”
“You can try,” Bridges told her. “They’ll probably put you off at the next station.”
“At least I�
�ll have tried. Or,” she said thoughtfully, “I could round up all the Westerners on the train. Send a delegation along to demand his release.” Annette Meakin took over. “Or we could even get him out by force.”
“They’re used to people trying force. In case you didn’t know, they’ve got a machine-gun mounted at the end of the special coach.”
“They wouldn’t dare to use it.”
“Want to bet?” Bridges asked.
“You know something,” Libby said, looking up at him from her berth “you’re contemptible,”
Bridges said: “I know it. It takes courage.”
“Whatever happens I suppose you won’t put any of this in your paper?”
“I might – British spy arrested on the Trans-Siberian.”
“Stanley Wagstaff a spy?”
“Who knows,” Bridges said. “Stranger things have happened.”
“You don’t honestly believe that?”
“No,” Bridges admitted.
Libby said: “Can you please turn the other way. I’m going to get dressed and do something to help him.”
Bridges sighed. “All right, I’ll try and do something tomorrow. God knows what.”
“You could see Razin. You seem to be on good terms with him.”
“I’ll see him,” Bridges told her. “He might let me see Wagstaff.”
The door opened and Larissa Prestina came in. She said to Bridges: “Please, could you go in the corridor while I undress.”
It was dark in the compartment but Bridges went outside and waited. When he returned Libby Chandler was saying: “You reported him to the K.G.B., didn’t you?”
“I did my duty,” Larissa Prestina said. “He was making notes about troop movements.”
“He was making notes about trains,” Libby said. “And you know it.”
“We shall see. The police have taken his camera and the film will be developed in Khabarovsk.”
The Yermakov Transfer Page 17