Cold

by John Sweeney

  ‘What is endocrinology?’ asked Gennady. He’d left school at sixteen to join the army but made a virtue of never bullshitting, of always being open about something he didn’t know, didn’t understand.

  ‘Endocrinology, General, is the science of when your hormones screw up.’

  VV explained that the pituitary gland, bang in the middle of the head, between the ears, controlled growth. ‘If you suffer a benign tumour of the pituitary, you could become a giant or a dwarf. With giants, the hormones released to the brain cause you to grow out of control. You become an acromegalic, from the Greek for “large extremities”. You end up with big bones, big jaw, big forehead, giant legs and arms, poor sight, dull brain function. A big guy, then, but poorly sighted and maybe a bit dim,’ as Gennady remembered VV had put it.

  ‘Is this new? Because of all the oil we’ve been burning, the plastics and all that shit?’

  VV shook his head. ‘The first acromegalic recorded in history is David’s enemy, Goliath, in the Bible. Big, giant, short-sighted. David came up to his side and killed him with a slingshot. David wasn’t a hero. He was fighting someone with bad hormones.’

  Gennady, who cared about the loss of his men more deeply than he could admit to anyone, laughed out loud for the first time in a week.

  ‘When I get out of this shithole, General, I promise you I will go round the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa too, and I’ll find every juvenile victim of hormone imbalance. It’s simple surgery, you drill up the nose—’

  ‘Don’t make me sick, VV, please,’ pleaded Gennady.

  ‘ . . . and zap the tumour and then they become normal – or normal-ish – again.’

  VV was killed the next week when the mujahedin fired a SAM missile, supplied by the Americans, into a helicopter-ambulance covered with red crosses. Word got back to the general that the dukhi commander responsible regretted VV’s death, that the guy who fired the missile was illiterate and that they knew VV had been a good and honourable doctor. The recollection of this irony amused Gennady, got to the sardonic, world-weary side of his nature, and he allowed himself a slow smile.

  ‘What you laughing at, grandpa?’ said the Night Wolf, none too friendly.

  Gennady said nothing.

  ‘You laughing at me? Do you think I’m funny?’

  The drunk rasped out a series of coughs while Gennady shook his head.

  ‘Answer my question, grandpa. What’s so funny?’

  The giant looked up at the cause of the disturbance and Gennady, ignoring the Night Wolf, addressed him directly.

  ‘A friend of mine, a surgeon, the best surgeon in the army in Afghanistan, he’s dead now, God rest his soul, he got killed – he wanted to become an endo . . . an andokrun . . .’

  ‘An endocrinologist,’ completed the giant.

  ‘You’re an acrylic—’

  ‘I’m an acromegalic,’ said the giant.

  ‘My friend, VV, had he lived, he would have treated people like you.’

  ‘I am sorry he died,’ said the giant, and then added, ‘I think I know you.’

  ‘Come on, grandpa, out with it,’ said the Night Wolf. ‘What was so funny?’

  ‘Listen, Mr Wolf, you shut up,’ said the giant. ‘This guy, don’t you recognise him? He used to be on TV in the old days. He was the best general we ever had in Afghanistan.’ The others, who had been staring straight ahead, keen to avoid any conflict involving the Night Wolf, began to consider Gennady.

  ‘Major General Gennady Semionovich Dozhd, Hero of the Soviet Union, hero of Jalalabad,’ said the business guy in the suit, as if answering a question in court.

  The giant slammed his metal teacup against the bars of the cage.

  ‘Hey morons! Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve locked up a sodding Hero of the Soviet Union!’ The others took up the cry, too. Soon the whole basement of the police station was ringing with the chant: ‘Free the Hero! Free the Hero!’

  A police inspector came down to the cells with two officers. A thin, elongated man, too skeletal for his baggy uniform, with a pockmarked face, the inspector had brought with him a manila folder containing Gennady’s paperwork.

  ‘Says here you’re a librarian?’

  ‘That was my last job, yes.’

  ‘Nothing here about you being a Hero of the Soviet Union, still less a retired general.’

  ‘No one asked,’ said Gennady.

  ‘We’ve seen him on the telly in the old days, taking the salute at Red Square,’ said the giant.

  ‘He was the youngest general in Afghanistan!’ cried another.

  ‘He fought the dukhi when you were giving out parking tickets,’ came a voice from the back.

  The rest of the crew in the cells roared their support.

  The inspector called for the turnkey to unlock the cell, and Gennady walked out to the cheers of the others. He turned, bowed and mouthed ‘Thank you’.

  The inspector led Gennady out of the lock-up area to the ground floor, just in front of the main door. He mumbled something, half an apology, with a certain embarrassment. Gennady was two steps from the front door and freedom, when a fresh-faced police officer, barely out of his teens, hurried down a staircase clutching a piece of paper.

  ‘Sir, sir, this is fresh from the teleprinter, sir. It’s from the Ministry calling on all police stations to hold this prisoner, sir – retired General Dozhd.’

  The inspector read the paper, scrunched it into a ball and threw it on the ground.

  ‘Cadet officer, the teleprinter is broken. Please get it fixed. Dismissed.’

  The inspector half shoved Gennady out through the front door, and as he did so he whispered, ‘General, my brother-in-law was one of the twenty you got back from the dukhi in exchange for the American. Everybody knew about it. The Cheka is after you, General. You’d better get a move on. Walk, but walk fast.’

  Gennady jogged down the steps, hailed a taxi, got in the cab and vanished into the blur of the Moscow traffic. Sitting back in his seat, he gave a long breath out, trying to exhale the stink of the holding cell from his lungs, and stared through the window as sleet began to fall.

  Was he being followed? He didn’t think so. He paid the taxi driver at the nearest Metro and took the orange line to Babushkinskaya station, named after a polar aviator, far out on the north-eastern rim of the great city. Outside, he walked three miles to the featureless block of flats Iryna had called home, punched the call buttons at random until someone opened the main door, then took the elevator to the eleventh floor.

  Iryna had given him a spare key to her flat, not that he’d ever been down to Moscow in the three years she had been posted there. He inserted the key, turned it and the door swung open. What he found disturbed him more than anything else he’d come across so far, more than the anonymous telephone call in the middle of the night, the truculent receptionist at her workplace, or his arrest and release against official instruction by a relative of one of his Afgantsy.

  The flat had been entirely stripped bare. It was as if Iryna Dozhd had never existed.

  SOUTHERN ENGLAND

  Clop-clip-clopping, jingles of heavy bridles, carriage wheels clattering on cobbles. Horses neighed, commands shouted, this way and that. Two centuries back in time, maybe more. Shutters of pale oak failed to keep out the winter sun, its light dappling the room within.

  Joe, half comatose, felt his body ache, his muscles stiff, unrested, his arms numb. He was halfway through figuring this out when he became aware that someone else was in the room. Groggily, he twisted around on the sofa where’d he spent the night and sat up, realising that his hands were still cuffed behind his back, his mouth still taped shut.

  Wolf Eyes stared at him.

  ‘Erhhhg,’ Joe murmured from behind the gag.

  The room was a self-contained flat with a tiny kitchen area. She opened and closed some drawers and came back with a large steak knife, some kitchen towels and a bottle of vinegar. She knelt before him, put down the paper towels
and held the knife low in her hands. A look of wolfish amusement entered her eyes.

  ‘Erhhhg,’ repeated Joe.

  ‘So, English, you are at my mercy.’ The knife tip waggled from side to side, an inch from his groin.

  ‘Erhhhhhhhhhhhhg,’ grunted Joe from behind the gag.

  She smiled to herself and, to a shudder of relief from Joe, put down the knife. His face was a patchwork of small cuts from the broken glass the night before, the left side of his mouth bloodied from where she had kicked him. She unscrewed the vinegar bottle’s top and upended it onto one of the paper towels, then started to dab Joe’s cuts.

  ‘Erhhhhhhhhhhhhg!’ Gagged, Joe couldn’t scream, but he did his best to convey that what she was doing was hurting him.

  ‘Don’t be a crybaby, English.’

  Joe repeated himself.

  Eventually, she was done. She got hold of the edge of the tape gagging him and pulled it tentatively, paused reflectively, then ripped the tape off, taking with it a fair chunk of Joe’s beard.

  ‘Ow! That hurt. Now you can cut the plastic handcuffs, please.’

  She sat down on a chair opposite him, saying nothing.

  ‘The Brit . . .’ said Joe. ‘He said you saved my life.’

  She carried on saying nothing.

  ‘So I owe you an apology,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Silence.

  ‘But you still haven’t told me what’s happening, why you stole my dog, what on earth your crazy boyfriend is doing, why those people had to die.’

  More silence.

  ‘Come on, for God’s sake, give me something, please.’ He fought to control the rage within him, to get the words out, to keep himself coherent. ‘You and the creepy twins, you stalk me, then my dog vanishes. OK, so it’s not the end of the world, a dog is only a dog. I go to a tribunal and I’m about to be sacked when the fucking world ends and three people are shot dead. Then your sadist boyfriend and his goons kidnap me, torture me, asking where’s my dog. Good question. I don’t know. What’s going on? They killed so many to find a dog? Haven’t you people heard of Battersea Dogs Home?’

  She sat there, monolith-still.

  ‘Christ! I don’t even know your name.’

  Those wolf eyes studied him, untrusting, animal.

  ‘Please?’ His anger fell away, his voice becoming soft, gentle.

  Her head slumped, thick dark hair covering her face. She turned away, looked back, and to his astonishment, he realised that the she-wolf was crying.

  Her words, when they came, were from a well of sorrow so deep it frightened him: ‘Listen, English, it’s just a stupid game. He kills people, so what? It’s nothing to him. If I tell you, he’ll kill you. Then he’ll kill me. He’s going to kill us. We’re both dead. You do understand that, don’t you? We’re just little people and he works for money and power. The people he answers to, if they want to, they can do anything. And they want something you have.’

  ‘But what is it? I’m a special needs teacher in a miserable bit of London for God’s sake. What can they possibly want from me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  ‘Well, what do you know?’

  ‘My name is Ekaterina Koremedova. Katya. I am sorry for those people but I didn’t kill anybody. Your English soldiers, they killed one of the twins, Ivan. He wasn’t such a bad man. Now his brother, Oleg . . . if he finds you, he will kill you.’

  ‘They’re not my English soldiers. I’m Irish. And the twin, Ivan, he worked for a killer.’

  ‘That is true. I am sorry for the people that died, sorry for him, too. I am sorry that your life has ended up in this way.’ The melancholy in her voice was unfathomable.

  Outside, a man’s voice barked.

  ‘I must know what happened,’ Joe said. ‘Why those people had to die.’

  She dropped her head. ‘I don’t know. But if I did, I could not tell you.’

  ‘Can you tell me his name? The man who tortured me.’

  ‘Reikhman.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I am sick of him, sick of his cruelty. I begged the English to let me come with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  The wolf eyes swivelled around the room and then returned to him. Coolly, steadily, she considered him, then spoke: ‘I think you’re the only man who’s ever said no to him.’

  ‘That’s only because I didn’t, couldn’t answer his fucking questions.’

  She tilted her head, acknowledging the point. ‘Still, it’s a start.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that’s the reason.’

  ‘I can’t tell you why.’

  ‘If you’re not going to tell me the truth,’ said Joe, ‘go back to him.’

  ‘Then he’ll kill me. And you, when he finds you. He is pitiless.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘Run.’

  He shifted his position so that she could see his handcuffs. ‘I can barely walk. We can’t run. Come on, you know more than this. Christ, I am a fool, and I’m thick, no one’s doubting that, but you’ve got to tell me more.’

  She shook her head and lapsed into silence.

  ‘Please, Katya, please.’

  ‘Don’t ask me that again, English.’

  ‘For crying out loud! I’m Irish. My name is Joe Tiplady.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything, Tiplady. If you ask me again, I’ll kill myself.’ And about that, he believed her.

  A double-knock sounded at the door and it swung open to reveal the sour-faced man.

  ‘Good morning everybody, I hope you slept well.’

  ‘And who exactly are you?’ asked Joe.

  ‘My name’s Lightfoot, George Lightfoot.’ A deep voice, upper class, English, surface restraint fighting deep-down bloody-mindedness. As in: We’ve been around since the Plantagenets. Do as I say. Something about his tone infuriated Joe.

  ‘Is that your real name?’ asked Joe.

  ‘No. Is your real name Joseph Peter Dalglish Tiplady?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were your parents thinking of?’

  ‘Fuck you. What’s happening? Where are we? Why were the people in the law office shot? Who are you and what are you trying to do?’

  ‘Too many questions.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘Her Majesty’s Government.’

  ‘Do you mean MI6?’

  ‘I was in the Household Cav.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘No. Answering questions isn’t part of the service we provide.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  Silence.

  ‘This woman, she stole my dog, she . . .’ For some reason, Joe couldn’t bring himself to describe what she’d done to him the previous night, before they’d burst in through the roof. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Lightfoot, pulling up a chair and sitting down. ‘Do you?’

  ‘If you don’t know,’ said Joe, ‘then what are we doing here? Wherever we are.’

  ‘Oh, I am most terribly sorry. Would you like to go back to the nice Russian gentleman who was about to deep fat fry your balls?’

  Joe was about to say something when Katya cut across him: ‘Thank you very much for all that you’ve done for us.’

  ‘Thank you, miss.’

  ‘Why am I still handcuffed?’ asked Joe, needled, needling.

  ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise that was the case.’ Lightfoot whipped out a Swiss Army knife and cut the plastic cuffs.

  ‘Am I free to leave?’ asked Joe, not quite masking the petulance in his voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  Joe stood up, rubbed his wrists, working some blood back into them, walked over to the door and opened it.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, poised by the door, half in, half out.

  ‘You are free to leave,’ said Lightfoot. ‘But . . .’


  ‘But what?’

  ‘May I speak frankly?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Joe. Lightfoot had a certain quality – arrogance, insouciance – that summed up everything about the English ruling class Joe’s upbringing had warned him against.

  ‘You’re free to leave, Mr Tiplady,’ said Lightfoot, ‘but in reality that means you’re free to die. If you walk out of here, they’ll kill you.’

  ‘Joe’ – that was the first time she had used his first name and it pleased him – ‘don’t go. Listen to him. Please.’

  Something pitiable, now, in those wolf eyes. He mustn’t leave her, the eyes said. Joe stepped inside, closed the door and sat down on the sofa, as proudly as he could.

  ‘So,’ Lightfoot continued, ‘you already know this, but you’re still in great danger. Someone powerful, powerful enough to kill three people in the centre of London and not give a damn about it, wants you. They seem desperate to get their hands on you. You’re not out of trouble yet. We’re very unhappy with our Russian friends but we don’t want to go to war with them. That’s off the table.’

  ‘Is he locked up?’ asked Katya.

  ‘Reikhman is a fully accredited Russian diplomat. After consultation with the powers that be, we decided that it was in the national interest to release him.’

  Katya started to weep.

  ‘So he can kill again?’ said Joe.

  ‘We can’t, for the moment, establish a prima facie connection between the murders at the law office and the people who detained you. The killer was a sniper, and a very, very good one at that. But not Reikhman. He was, at the critical time, at a reception at the House of Lords. He has eight witnesses, including a marquess, a duke and the Bishop of Gloucester. If you go home, you may be in grave danger. You both understand that, don’t you?’

  She nodded; Joe made a slight inclination of his head.

  ‘For the moment you are guests of Her Majesty’s Government while we work out what to do with you. If I understand it, neither of you are or have ever been British citizens.’