by Craig Thomas
Of course, Dmitri knew. She had known for months. She had learned to live with that terror; it had been like a mad dog in the back garden, gradually tamed and thus ignored. He would not give her away and therefore lose her-not yet, at least, and perhaps not ever.
To go back, she thought bitterly, pouring the heated coffee into a thick brown mug. Just to go back.
The futile recrimination wailed like a lost child in her head. Baranovich, and before that, her husband. Suicide because he had lost his academic post - samizdat copies of banned writings in his locked drawer at the university -
She had had to live with the knowledge that he had killed himself to protect her. She had known nothing until the KGB told her, after she had found him dead in the bath, afloat in red water. Samizdats, meetings, planned protests, anti-Soviet activities. A dangerous criminal, the loving, gentle, innocent husband? It was impossible to believe; impossible, later, not to realise that he had the courage to face them, to undergo imprisonment. He had killed himself to protect her, to free her from the stigma of being the wife of a prisoner, a zek in the Gulag -
Gradually, very, very gradually, she had returned to life and to her career from that dark tunnel where he had left her. And then Baranovich, corrupted forcibly from his idealistic work - his wheelchair - to build a warplane more destructive than anything ever known…
That had been the breaking-point. Not her husband's suicide but the destruction of Baranovitch's project. She had made her first contact with an American diplomat-agent at the next embassy cocktail party she attended.
And then Dmitri, and Dmitri working to protect that damned, infernal aircraft project, and Dmitri discovering her double-life -
And now hunting the American. It was fate. She could not disbelieve it. It was a time of ill-omen -
If only they would let her go, if only she could go back. Her head cried like a lost child - if only…
The coffee scalded her mouth as she sipped it, then spilled onto her dressing-gown as the telephone startled her. She put down the mug, staring at her quivering hands. Then she snatched at the receiver hanging on the kitchen wall, as if to protect her sleeping son from its intrusion.
'Yes?' she said breathlessly.
'Burgoyne, is that you?' a voice asked in English.
'What-?' she breathed. 'I-I'm afraid I don't understand…' She spoke very deliberately in Russian.
'But I do,' the voice said. It sounded English - but if it was, then why not an American accent? She felt panic mount in her, filling her throat.
'Who is this, please?' she asked as calmly as she could.
'Listen carefully, Burgoyne - my name is Edgecliffe, British Embassy. This line is secure at my end, and I know yours is not tapped - I also know that Colonel Priabin left the apartment ten minutes ago. You're alone, except for your son…' The details were as palpably nauseating as hands pawing her, caressing her body beneath the dressing-gown.
'What do you want?' Now, at last, she spoke in English.
'Your help. Please listen carefully. You may confirm my identity and instructions with your Case Officer, if you wish. When I have finished. You've been loaned to us, Burgoyne, by your present employers, to do a special job.'
'What-?'
'Colonel Priabin, no doubt, has been summoned to the Centre to take charge of some part of the search for the escaped American pilot - we want your help to find him before your lover does…' There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. 'We're a little limited as far as resources are concerned - we need your help.'
'Go to hell!' Suddenly, she was frighteningly angry, hardly able to speak, so full was her throat, so tense her whole body. 'Go to hell, whoever you are!'
'Listen to me, Burgoyne.' the Englishman snapped. 'I don't have time to play games. You'll do as you're told. Otherwise, well, you know what might happen to you - enough of that, however. It will be up to you to get our American friend out of Moscow, once we've located him. I'll have papers for the two of you, travel permits, everything - and a full scenario in a matter of hours. All you have to do is be ready to move when I tell you.'
He fell silent, and into that quiet Anna dropped the small pebble of her voice. 'And what if - if Colonel Priabin catches him?'
'Then we won't require your services. You can carry on with your life as before.'
'But what do I tell him - what about my son - ?'
'I'm sure you can discover a sick relative somewhere if you try hard enough. You have many friends, I'm told. Send your son to stay with one of them. Or with your father, perhaps?'
'Just like that-?'
'Everything is just like that, I'm afraid. You don't have a choice. None at all. You must comply with our wishes - I'm sure you realise that. I won't even bother to assure you that if the KGB recapture the American they will get back their aircraft - the one you loathe so much. Even though that is true, it isn't necessary to persuade you, Burgoyne, because you must do as we say and you are intelligent enough to realise it.'
'But - how? How?' Anna asked.
'The details have yet to be decided. Simply prepare yourself for a journey, perhaps by train. Be ready to move as soon as it becomes necessary.'
'I can't -' she wailed.
'You must. And, who knows? With your connection with Colonel Priabin, our American might be safer with you than anyone else we might have been loaned - mm? Goodbye for the present, Burgoyne. I'll be in touch - soon.'
The line clicked, then purred. Anna sat for some moments, staring into the receiver, as if the man who owned the voice might emerge from it, oozing smokily out like an appearing jinn. One hot, angry, frightened tear fell on her upturned wrist. Then she lifted her head to the pine-panelled ceiling of the kitchen, and howled like an animal in pain.
It was the absence of pedestrians that worried him most. In the small hours, he might have expected the streets to have emptied, but there had been no crowds and little traffic from the time he had vanished into the dark canyons between the endless blocks of apartments. It had taken him more than two hours to work his way back into the centre of Moscow via side-streets and alleys and lanes and waste ground. And all the time he did so, he knew he was moving slowly but certainly into the mouths of the trawling net the KGB and the police had cast for him.
Sirens, prowling cars, foot patrols, even helicopters. From the Mira Prospekt he had moved east, then north, then west, using the deeper darkness of open spaces, sports complexes, recreation parks, climbing their frosty railings, resting in the deep shadow of trees; fighting his rising panic and sense of isolation like two attackers in the darkness. He passed through Dzerzhinsky Park which contained the Ostankino television tower; the park surrounding the army museum; the zoo park. He kept away from the streets as much as he could; avoided streetlights.
The shops of the Kalinin Prospekt were lit like fishtanks. Above the windows, ranks of unlit offices marched towards Tchaikovsky Street and the American Embassy. Gant knew, though he suppressed the knowledge, that it would be guarded - barred to him. But he needed a destination, an objective. It was the only one he could enlarge in his mind and store with the comforts of safety, help, food, sleep. During his two hours of walking and skulking and scuttling across lit spaces and shrinking into doorways and behind trees, the embassy had become furnished and warmed in his imagination. There was no need to imagine anything after its doors opened. When the door closed behind him, he would be safe. It would be over.
He stared down the Kalinin Prospekt as if studying a minefield. Two foot patrols, two parked police cars, another cruising slowly towards him from the direction of the Kalinin Bridge. It would be a gauntlet he would not survive. He turned right, into the sparsely-lit Malaya Molchanovka Street. Ranks of tall offices and department stores retreated towards the Tchaikovsky Street and the bridge on his left. The street was empty, except for the quick darting shape of a cat crossing the road. Gant hurried, hands thrust into the pockets of the short coat, the cap he had found in one of those pockets pulle
d down over his eyes. He had long abandoned the white coat. His heels were raw from the rubbing of the too-big shoes, and the pain in his calf where the dog had bitten him had resurfaced now that the effect of the drugs and sedatives had disappeared. He stamped out the memory of the frozen lake and the Lynx helicopter only yards from him, waiting to save him.
He heard music coming from a still-lit window as he passed a low apartment block opposite the rear of a cinema. A child cried somewhere, startled from sleep. A car turned the corner from the Kalinin Prospekt behind him, and he forced himself not to run but to turn into the entrance of another apartment block. The outer door was not locked. He pushed his way inside. The foyer smelt of cabbage and greasy cooking. He flattened against the wall and waited.
The car drifted slowly along the street. For a moment, a spotlight played on the entrance, washing over the walls of the foyer. Then it was gone. Quivering, he returned to the street. The police car had turned off. He hurried on, head down, breath smoking around him, feet hurting, leg stiffening.
He reached the corner of Tchaikovsky Street. It was wide and at first glance almost empty. It formed part of the Sadovaya Ring of boulevards around the inner city. It was lined on each broad pavement by trees. A red-and-white striped tent, unexpectedly, occupied one kerb. Flashing yellow lights, a taped-off section, the noise of a compressor. Road works of some kind. He crossed the Kalinin Prospekt, seeing the same foot patrols and parked cars, and began to move cautiously down the boulevard, keeping to the shadows of the trees. The street lighting was good here; betraying. His eyes sought each shadow, trying to dissolve it.
A parked car; he paused. The embassy was number nineteen, less than a hundred yards away, a post-war, ugly building. He could clearly see its facade, safe behind railings and the emblem of the eagle, illuminated by the yellowish street lighting. Just the single car…
He repressed the leap of optimism. He must not believe in the single car and its two occupants he could see as shadows through the rear window. He had to look -
Road works. Six men, two leaning on shovels, one leaning on a pneumatic drill, three others using pick-axes in slow, rhythmical movements. He waited, turning his attention to the windows of the buildings, especially the second and third floors. There were smaller, brightly painted houses jammed incongruously between the Stalinist-style apartment blocks, frowned upon by the concrete towers. Gant studied the windows. A car passed, but did not stop, did not even slow down. He looked at his watch, a nervous, hardly-aware reaction. Most of the curtains were drawn, most of the lights were off. One or two of the windows were open, even in the cold weather. He watched until his eyes were confused with dots and with dancing, unfocused images of windows, but he saw nothing to make him suspicious.
Excitement began to mount through his chilled body. There would be a marine behind the gates. Once he opened his mouth… he needed only one word, his name… the startled marine would open the gates and he would be safe…
Against belief, it seemed the guard was minimal. Perhaps they expected him to try the British Embassy - ?
He forced himself to study the windows again. Nothing. After ten minutes, nothing. Parked cars too far down the boulevard, only the one near the gates. And the road works -
He looked at the six workmen. The drill was working now, so were the two men with shovels. The other three, the men wielding the pick-axes, had stopped to rest under the spindly legs of the spotlights they had erected. The noise of the drill violated the silence of the street. Each of the three resting men faced in a different direction as he leaned on his pick-handle. Each head moved rhythmically slowly, traversing an area of the Tchaikovsky Street.
The red-and-white striped tent was twenty yards from the embassy gates. The six men were not workmen. The roadworks were a fake.
Gant swallowed bile and backed away from the shelter of the tree. He had passed a telephone box. In shadow, he hurried back towards it, entering and slamming its door behind him. Immediately, his tension and fear clouded the glass. He fumbled for coins - there were coins in the pockets of the jeans - and dialled the number of the embassy. It sprang out of his memory without effort, a signal of his necessity. He withdrew his finger from the dial and waited. The telephone clicked, then the noise became a loud, continuous tone. He joggled the rest and dialled once more. The same loud, unceasing noise sounded in his ears.
The lines to the embassy had been cut off at the switchboard. There was no way to reach them.
He clenched his fist and banged it gently but intensely against the small mirror above the coinbox. He swallowed, and shook his head. Illusions of safety dissipated. Then, furiously, he dialled another number, and waited, holding his breath.
The ringing tone -
They'd left the lines to the British Embassy - he would be able to talk to them, he would -
'Come on, come on…'
The operator on the embassy switchboard - a night-duty man - answered. Asked his name, his business… there seemed a note of expectant caution. Gant felt relief fill him, the words hurried into incoherence even before he began speaking -
Then he heard the clicks, three of them.
He stood there, mouth open, not daring to speak. The man on the switchboard insisted, his voice more demanding and, at the same time, more suspicious. Gant heard the man breathing as he waited for a reply. He understood the clicks, and wondered whether the switchboard operator had heard them - must have heard them…
The line was tapped. They'd left it open, hoping he would call. A tracer was probably at work now, seeking him.
'Caller?' Gant did not reply. He stared at the mouthpiece. Distantly, he heard the operator say: 'I'm sorry, caller…'
Then the connection was broken. The operator had circumvented the tracer both of them knew had been put on the call. Gant continued to stare at the receiver, then slammed it onto the rest, heaving open the door of the box almost blindly.
He looked down the wide boulevard. Red-and-white striped tent, six men, one parked car. He would never make it. He knew he did not dare to make the attempt.
He felt the wetness in his eyes and rubbed angrily at them. He jammed his hands in his pockets, hunching his body until its shivering stilled. Then he turned his back on the American Embassy.
Gant did not see the shadowy figure slip from beneath one of the trees on the opposite side of the Tchaikovsky Street and hurry after him.
EIGHT: The Strangers
The noise of her anguish had woken Maxim. The eleven-year-old had come into the kitchen, startled and half-awake, rubbing his eyes, his mouth already working with anticipated fears for his mother. Instantly, as quickly as sniffing back her tears and dragging the sleeve of her dressing-gown across her eyes, she had transformed herself once more into the figure he expected and needed. Even his immediate enquiries had been halfhearted. Being allowed to sit with her, drinking fruit juice, had been in itself a comfort, a reassertion of normality. He had gone back to bed satisfied.
Once she was alone in the kitchen, Anna buried her terror in activity. She called her Case Officer at the embassy, and he confirmed her sentence. The image of punishment had occurred to her with bitter humour. When the line suddenly went dead, the humour vanished and she felt chilled and isolated. She had put down the telephone, forcing herself not to consider the implications, not to consider her own danger. Instead, she began to build her fabric of deception. It would have to be an old aunt in Kazan - she didn't even have a telephone, though she lived in comfort, so Dmitri couldn't check on her story, nor could the ministry or her superiors . . .
She ticked off the benefits on her fingers.
Then, Maxim -
Her father, naturally; the boy's grandfather. The father who had assiduously promoted her career and had protected her from censure and suspicion after her husband's suicide. Her father, who had once risen to the position of first secretary of the party organisation of the Moscow Oblast region, and had thus been a member of the Party Central Committee. H
is retirement to a dacha outside Moscow had been honourable, luxurious. He still had the weight, the contacts and friendships to protect Maxim if something went wrong.
She swallowed. Maxim would enjoy a few days in the woods outside the city. The old man had taken up wildlife photography as a hobby. He had even bought Maxim a small Japanese camera for his birthday.
Maxim would enjoy -
She was sobbing. The camera had become inextricably linked in her mind with the Dynamo First-Class football boots that had been Dmitri's present. The two presents, their images so clear in her rnind, pained her.
She sniffed loudly after a time, and shook her head as if to clear it of memory and association. Blonde hair flicked over her brow. She tugged it away from her forehead.
If it worked - if, if, if, if - she might be away for only a couple of days, perhaps three at the most. If she helped the American successfully, did what they wanted her to do, then she would be back with presents and an explanation that her aunt was a little better and she could stay away no longer…
If-
If not, she would have preserved her son from the shipwreck. Her father had protected her; now he could do the same for her son, his grandson. His task would be simple. Narrow and bigoted though his political and social ideas were - a surviving splinter of the Stalinist period who cut and bruised at every encounter with her newer, more liberal ideas - he had always been a kindly, though authoritative father; and an indulgent, fond grandparent. Maxim liked him, they would get on.
'No…' she whispered slowly, intensely. It was as if she were already giving her son away. Not if she could help it - not if she could win.