by John Sweeney
His nose twitched. That smell, he’d worked out, it was fat cooking in a frying pan, cooking on such a high flame it was spitting.
ARKHANGELSK-TO-MOSCOW SLEEPER
A pig of a journey through the blackness of the Russian night, kids waking up and crying when the train lurched to a halt; too many halts, too many drunks. In the dead hours, sometime after four o’clock, long before dawn, the train came to a dead stop, somewhere, nowhere. Tired but sleepless, Gennady got out of his bunk, slung a jacket around his shoulders and went to the end of the carriage. He opened the door and stood looking out at the snow falling on nothingness. He shivered, because of the cold, because death had touched his own flesh and blood.
Gennady cursed himself for being a fool, having wasted days and nights lost in a fog of alcohol, mourning his loss. What was so stupid was that he didn’t know for sure what had happened to his daughter. Had the phone call been some wretched joke? He doubted that and sensed, somehow, that whoever had called him had taken a great risk to do so. The army had taught Gennady to be unsentimental about life, things, family, friends, because sooner or later they might very well end up blown to bits or run over in some stupid accident. But Iryna . . . lifeless?
They weren’t so very close, but they talked on the phone, saw each other for Orthodox Christmas, toasted her mother who had gone on before. Iryna nagged him about writing his book and he’d done it for her, for history too, and now she’d gone.
Iryna worked for some fancy tax inspectorate in Moscow. She had always been an honest girl and the state needed tax officers, sure, but these days the tax people were little more than gangsters. She hardly ever told him much about it but he’d sensed from her tone that she wasn’t so happy at work.
Missing? Yes. But dead? Gennady couldn’t quite believe that his little Iryna, with her cheeky smile and funny ways of saying things, had become ashes. Hardest to bear was that she had gone first. She had a whole life ahead of her: marriage, for what that was worth, kids, the works. He had nothing to look forward to. Why hadn’t they taken him instead? Whoever they were.
When he had sobered up, he knew he’d have to go to Moscow. He couldn’t work out a damn thing over the phone. Money counted in Russia today; nothing else. He had $20,000 in fresh hundred-dollar bills – none of that North Korean counterfeit shit he’d read about – in a shoebox under his bed, money he’d hoarded for his grandkids, not that that would happen now. He’d placed the shoebox in a rucksack, along with some old clothes, his service Tokarev and three full clips of bullets. He could have flown, but it was cheaper and somehow more Soviet to take the train.
His pension had been worth money when he’d left the army but it had been vastly diminished by the hyperinflation of the early nineties. His work in the archive had kept him afloat but he had never been a rich man, never interested in money for its own sake. He had been a true Communist, a man who had believed in and fought – as best he could, properly and fairly by the rules of war – for an idea and a state that had turned out to be a load of rubbish. But the state that succeeded it was no better. No, it was turning out to be far, far worse.
He had a pal in Arkhangelsk, Andrei Andreiovich, a professor of particle physics, no less, who’d been a dissident under Brezhnev. No Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov, but the police would lock up Andrei from time to time for no good reason. Andrei thought Gennady was a deluded old fool about Communism – and he might be right about that – but Andrei had said something to him recently that troubled him. It was this: ‘Under Brezhnev and the other geriatrics who followed him, the police would rough us, would give us a bad time. But in those days we had hope. Now, there is no hope. We’ve got “freedom” but we’ve lost all hope of change.’ Andrei’s voice had grown quiet. ‘And something else no one dares talk about. In the old days you got locked up. If you were unlucky, they would send you to a psychiatric ward. These days that doesn’t happen so often. But people die, with no explanation. Under the new guy, the one who looks like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, more of my friends’ – he meant dissidents – ‘have ended up dead than got locked up by Brezhnev and co.’
Gennady had shaken his head, not quite believing the old fool. But Andrei was right about the hopelessness. You’d see these fat cats drive by in their sleek Audis and Mercedes, escorted by the police, blue lights flashing, and you’d think: Is this progress? Is this democracy?
The train shuddered into life and began to pick up speed. Gennady had a half-bottle of vodka stuffed in his jacket. He took it out, unscrewed the lid, knocked back a shot and lobbed the bottle, still three-quarters full, into the Russian night. Better be sober where he was going. He shuffled back to his bunk and pretended to sleep.
LONDON
Time slowed down, all but came to a stop. Hands cuffed behind his back, head muzzled in the gas mask, pressure waves bursting against his eardrums, again and again. Human jelly, quivering, Joe floated this way and that, his brain clotted with fear.
It began to rain glass, crackling and splintering. A gunshot reverberated inside his head, cleaner, less percussive than the explosions. Through his feet he sensed something falling close by, then more explosions, and then they stopped and through his blast-damaged ears fresh voices could be heard, muffled by the mask. He couldn’t make them out, couldn’t decipher what was going on.
Nothing but an animal, tethered, immobile; his face locked inside a cage of plastic, eyeless, sightless; existing only in a world of pain, waiting for the next blow, waiting for pain.
Quite tenderly, he was lifted up onto his feet. Cold air brushed against his face and then the mask was ripped off and he drank in gulps of oxygen. His eyes shimmered and sparked, then slowly a great dark beetle in front of him came into focus.
The beetle ripped off his own gas mask and he heard a thick Scouse accent say: ‘What were they doing? Having a fry-up?’
‘Who are you?’ Joe grunted, his tongue thick in his mouth.
‘I’m your fairy godmother. You can buy me a cupcake later, but for now we’re getting out of here.’
The beetle wound a blanket around him like a grandmother wrapping up a small boy at the beach against the cold. Other beetle-men carrying great black sub-machine guns emerged into focus, hazed out and swam into focus again. Shards of glass bickered under his naked feet. He looked up to see a jagged hole in a skylight, through which the beetle-men must have come, and in doing so he tripped on something, a thickset, bald, pale man with a scarlet dot between his eyes – one of the twins who had followed Reilly and him that day in Richmond Park. The other twin was lying next to him on the floor, face down, hands tied behind his back with plastic handcuffs, wriggling, his eyes red with tears, staring at his brother, saying something softly, again and again.
Another of the undead lay with his face towards Joe, the pupils of his eyes dark black, burning with a pitiless intensity. Was that his torturer?
The beetle ushered Joe down a marble staircase. His feet felt cold on the stone; the handrail was of the smoothest onyx. The staircase coiled around on itself – alcoves populated with a strange mix of Orthodox icons, eighteenth-century portraits in oil of grand figures in fur, and modern art – down to a hall dominated by a circular wall of mirrors reflecting a marble statue of a naked man, sightless, with both arms missing. At the feet of the statue sat two dog bowls, one for water, one for food.
The beetle opened a shiny black door and they were out on the streets of London; a square, somewhere in Belgravia. Nearby, the flag of some exotic foreign power flapped feebly in the night. Joe, hugging the blanket to his body, stood on the step and drank in great draughts of London air: dirty, diesel-speckled, free.
Behind him he could hear a commotion, a woman shouting, screaming abuse, and a man replying, much more quietly, the register of his voice conveying menace. A dark-blue Jaguar came to a halt beside them.
‘Get in,’ said the beetle, and the car door closed behind Joe with a soft, expensive thunk. After a few beats, more doors opened and closed.
A middle-aged man with a sour expression, his moustache thick and bristly, claimed the front seat. Wearing a rumpled tweed jacket, white shirt, regimental tie and salmon pink corduroy trousers, he was heavy without being fat, tough without overdoing it. He turned to the driver and said, ‘Go.’
The Jaguar slid through the London streets, heading west, but it was the woman now sitting next to him that had Joe’s attention: Wolf Eyes, the woman he’d first met at the vet’s, what seemed a lifetime ago. Streetlights strobed through the car’s windows, casting her first light, then dark, light, dark. Her perfume, which, only a few minutes before, he had experienced as a blindfolded prisoner, filled the car. Close up, she was not just extraordinarily beautiful, but bewitchingly so. And yet he was intensely angry with her for what she had done.
‘Three people dead.’
The wolf eyes stared at him, cold, unblinking.
Joe struggled to get the words out: ‘What’s . . . what’s wrong with you? Who are you and why all of this? Why did you kill those people?’
She swung in her seat and hit him with the edge of her hand, against the side of his mouth. He tried to grab her wrist but she twisted free from him and then elbowed him in the crotch, hard. He brought his right arm up, slammed it against her windpipe and grabbed hold of one of her arms, but she somehow managed to writhe in her seat and kick him repeatedly in the mouth, bloodying his lip. Enraged, Joe scooped up her flailing limbs and used his weight to ram her, just as he had done with Mr Chong.
The Jag screeched to a halt and the door opened.
‘Let her go,’ said the sour-faced man.
Joe loosened his grip and Wolf Eyes twisted free, then kicked him in the side of the head.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ cried Joe.
Two beetles came running from a green van that had parked behind them, grabbed Joe and manhandled him out. One hit Joe on the side of his neck with a stunning karate chop, felling him to the asphalt, stomach down, while the other jammed his wrists behind his back and put a pair of plastic cuffs on him. Together they bundled him into the back of the van, as the sour-faced man looked on, his expression sourer than before.
‘What the fuck is this?’ pleaded Joe.
‘Are you done?’ asked the sour-faced man.
‘That bitch, she stole my dog, she’s a killer, she’s one of them. And you’re putting the cuffs on me.’
‘And who do you think called us? She saved your life, and you, Paddy, are too thick to realise it.’
‘Wha—’
Before Joe could finish the word, one of the beetles wrapped black tape around his mouth, silencing him. Then the van door was slammed shut.
MOSCOW
Moscow was Moscow, as friendly and welcome as a steel trap to a northerner from the sticks like Gennady. He dropped off his rucksack, containing most of his dollars and the Tokarev, at a safety deposit box, just in case. He didn’t fancy getting mugged in the big city. In his wallet, he had addresses for Iryna’s workplace, the Tax Inspectorate office, and her flat, out beyond the Second Ring Road. It made sense for him to try the office address – in the centre of town, not so far from the Lubyanka – first. To save money Gennady took the Metro, and then by force of habit he went out of his way to Revolution Square, to rub the nose of the brass dog, worn shiny and pink by many hands. It brought good luck, so they said, and hell, he’d been doing it since he first came to Moscow more than half a century ago.
Iryna’s office was in a very posh street, sandwiched between a Japanese sushi restaurant and a shop selling handbags that cost more than his general’s annual pension. It might have been discreet, were it not for the police guard with muscles for brains visible through the fifteen-feet-tall windows in the lobby.
Gennady pressed a buzzer and a glass door swished open as if it were a sodding spaceship. The police guard registered his presence for a second, decided he was a nobody and went back to grazing on his mobile phone. Behind the desk sat a woman receptionist who might have been sexy, Gennady reflected, had she not had the mind of a duck. He explained his purpose, that his daughter, Iryna Dozhd, had gone missing, or, at least, she wasn’t answering her phone. This was where she worked. He needed to talk to Iryna’s boss, one of her colleagues. Perhaps there had been some misunderstanding.
‘What number should I call?’ asked Duck Mind.
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
She repeated her question. Gennady gave her Iryna’s number. She tried it for a very long time and then put down the phone. ‘It’s not answering.’
‘Yes, that’s why I want to talk to her boss.’
‘What’s the name?’
‘That’s the thing. I don’t know.’
‘If you can’t give me a name or a number, there’s nothing I can do.’
‘Ask someone who might know. And do that now.’ There was an edge of iron to his voice that distracted the police guard enough for him to look up from his mobile. Gennady stared right back.
Two men walked through the swishing door: one Russian – a fixer, a go-between by the look of him, connected but not so important – the other different. To Gennady, he smelt foreign – a reflection so crudely and chauvinistically Soviet that its naughtiness amused him. The foreigner had a wolfman’s five o’clock shadow, signature sunglasses riding high on his forehead, and his cashmere coat draped over his shoulders. Too high and mighty he was, to be bothered to put his arms in the sleeves. At his arrival, Duck Mind melted a little at the edges and started flirting with him. The fixer and the foreigner wrote their names and business in a big black logbook, and she was about to pick up the phone and call someone when Gennady leaned over the desk and killed the call.
‘Excuse me,’ shrieked Duck Mind. Out of the side of one eye, Gennady observed the police guard put away his phone and saw his hand hover towards his revolver holster.
‘There’s a queue, miss, and I’m first. Lift up the phone. Ask someone, ask anyone, where is Iryna Dozhd.’
‘The difference, I think, is that we have an appointment. We are expected.’ The foreigner spoke adequate Russian; the accent sounded Italian.
‘Lorenzo Calvano, cosmetic surgeon, Genoa,’ said Gennady.
‘How do you know my name and business? It has nothing to do with you.’
Gennady offered the stranger his finest, least sardonic smile. ‘I can read upside down, Signor Calvano. And your business becomes my business if you push in front of the queue. I’m trying to find out what’s happened to my daughter. This is supposed to be a tax office. Can’t see why the taxman needs a cosmetic surgeon. Vanity isn’t tax deductible, is it?’
He turned to the receptionist. ‘Now, lift up the phone and ask them to locate someone who worked with Iryna Dozhd. Nothing happens until you do that.’
The click of a safety catch being taken off sounded behind him. He turned his head slowly to see the police guard holding his pistol in his right hand, aiming directly at Gennady’s chest; in his left he was muttering into his mobile phone. Within seconds, seven more police officers arrived, their guns trained on Gennady. Three of them pinioned his arms and neck, so he was rendered immobile.
Calvano said to Gennady, ‘You need to get a better tax adviser.’
‘Screw you, pimp,’ replied Gennady, who paid for his lack of respect with a punch to his abdomen from the police guard. He groaned in pain as the Italian and his adviser walked past the desk and headed over to the lift, smiling at him; the general, always a fighter, mouthed ‘screw you’ at them. They were going up. Gennady was going down.
They cuffed him and bundled him into the back of a police van, none too gently. He ended up in the local police station tank, too proud and too pig-headed to tell the charging sergeant: ‘Do you know who I am?’
They threw him in a cell with five other men, a noxious stink coming from the communal toilet in the corner. His cellmates were a big bald thug with a swastika on his neck and a black leather jacket with ‘Night Wolves’ stencilled on the back, who eyeballed him instantly
and malevolently; an old-before-his-time drunk, coughing so unremittingly it was very likely he had TB; a street tough with a knife scar slashed across his face like a second smile; a middle-aged man in a business suit; and a giant of a man who stared at the floor, lost to the world.
The giant intrigued him. He was so tall. Gennady once had a soul mate in the army in Afghanistan who could have explained why. Viktor Vladimirovich – or VV – had been a MASH surgeon, amputating this, amputating that. In quiet times, and there had been some of those in the beginning, the medic and the general would talk long into the night. They had bonded because, on the front line, neither drank alcohol: Gennady because he couldn’t respond to a dukhi attack if drunk; the surgeon because he couldn’t hack two legs off a hapless nineteen-year-old while drunk, or if he did and botched it because he was drunk, he couldn’t look the kid in the eye in the morning.
One night, the two friends found themselves unexpectedly holed up in a small fort where, the Afghans said, Winston Churchill had once stayed on a scouting mission over the border from British India in 1897. That day, there had been yet another shoot-out with the dukhi on the Kabul–Jalalabad road – eight Russians dead, twenty injured, seven amputations. VV sat down with Gennady and the two sipped tea in the light of magnesium flares, shot up into the darkness to keep the dukhi at bay.
‘At medical university in Moscow,’ said VV, ‘there was this lecturer in endocrinology, a woman. So hot. I can’t believe I didn’t do that, become an endocrinologist, be a civilian, instead of staying in the army and becoming a butcher in this dump.’
Gennady shook his head slowly. VV was, everyone knew, the best battlefield surgeon in the entire Soviet Army in Afghanistan, utterly fearless and fastidiously professional. He treated injured dukhi, too, and the word was that if you stuck close to VV you’d be safe. He prided himself on the smoothness and roundness of his amputations. A jagged edge to an amputation meant a lifetime of pain because the prosthesis would generate agony; if VV did the chop, you were OK, which was another reason why he didn’t drink.