Death's Foot Forward

by George B Mair

  Grant was amused, since the Russian visit had been his first real holiday for over eighteen months and he had planned it only to see Maya. There was nothing on his conscience, though Sokolnikov was still sceptical. ‘Tell me the truth. Why did you come here?’

  ‘To meet Maya Koren,’ said Grant frankly. ‘We had been introduced in France.’

  ‘Yet you tried to persuade her to escape to the West, as you put it.’

  ‘Well now,’ asked Grant softly, ‘what makes you say that?’

  The Russian leaned forward confidentially. ‘Don’t let’s lie to one another. I learned lip reading long ago, and can do it in two languages.’

  Grant did not doubt him for a moment. In Russia all things are possible and for the secret police lip reading could be almost routine, like using a tape recorder . . . or firing a gun. ‘Then you also know that she wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘Fortunately, yes,’ said the Russian curtly, ‘or else she would now be in real trouble. But it seems that you don’t care for what you’ve seen of Russian life.’

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go away? A comfortable jet leaves Sheremetyevo airport in a few hours and you might be happier back in France or England.’

  Grant shook his head. ‘I’ve got a ticket for the Maly theatre tomorrow night and I want to visit Zagorsk in the afternoon. In fact I might even return next year, I’d like to see Red Square in the late spring just after the snows have gone.’

  The Russian’s personality had subtly changed. ‘So we can expect you back again?’

  ‘If you’ve no objections.’

  ‘My dear doctor,’ said Sokolnikov quietly, ‘everyone is welcome in the Soviet Union. Provided, of course, that they keep within the law. Honest men never get into difficulties.’

  Grant suddenly felt tired, sick of all the hypocritical smiles and veiled threats. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said abruptly. ‘Sorry not to take your advice.’

  Sokolnikov watched him impersonally. ‘I’ve tried to be kind to you, Doctor Grant, though your attitude now makes me think that you really are up to something. But I won’t interfere in any way. You can stay or go home as you please and you’ll get a visa for the asking next year. Just remember that if you break the law you’ll be punished. Is that understood?’

  Grant pushed back his chair and walked away, nodding to the unshaven waiter who was standing close by. He was at the door when another blow crashed across his right forearm and he almost stumbled with pain. Sokolnikov was beside him. ‘I said that next time I might break it. I asked you a question and you walked off without replying, so now I’ll ask it again. Is that understood?’

  Grant tried to lift his hand, but the pain was excruciating and when he flexed his elbow a shooting sensation tingled his fingers. Taking a deep breath he tried to control his temper, and then, using his sound hand, buttoned his jacket to make a sling.

  ‘That makes you look like Napoleon,’ smiled the Russian. ‘And Moscow also taught him a lesson. But answer my question and then you can go to a doctor.’

  Grant glanced swiftly round the room. No one seemed interested. The head waiter was counting meal coupons and a bearded porter gossiping with one of those fat chambermaids who haunt the corridors of every Soviet hotel. He guessed that a bone had been cracked, but was more worried as to why he had been singled out for special attention. ‘I get you all right, Sokolnikov.’

  ‘Good,’ smiled the Russian, ‘it is just a pity you didn’t say so at the proper time. But would you like me to take you to hospital?’

  ‘No.’ Grant had come to hate this smug smiling fat face more than anything else in life and only the self-discipline of years prevented him crashing his fist into the mouthful of ugly steel teeth which leered at him in the half-lit corridor.

  ‘Manners, Doctor Grant,’ whispered the Russian. ‘Why not say “no thank you”?’ As the men stared at one another the Russian slowly raised his right hand, pointing to a band of worked brass which fitted snugly against his wrist. It was about two inches broad, heavily studded with blunt knobs and separated from the skin by a pad of sorbo rubber. ‘This is almost a precision instrument, and I think your radius has been cracked, so why not say “thank you” before I use it again?’

  ‘Thank you, General,’ said Grant thickly. ‘And maybe some time I’ll get the chance to thank you properly.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ The Russian sounded politely interested, but he had stepped forward and was gently pushing Grant towards the landing and staircase. ‘You know, I think you ought to be shown a few things before you leave us, things which are not normally arranged by Intourist, and then, of course, we must patch up your arm.’

  Two young men suddenly joined them whilst Sokolnikov led the way down towards the Victorian style marble statues in the foyer below. A Zim car was waiting outside. ‘After you,’ said the Russian politely. ‘But you know this should be very interesting for a man of your violent tastes. I hear you’ve visited Sing-Sing and San Quentin. Well tonight you will add to your collection, because we are going to let you see Lubianka, which, of course, is the prison where various Tsars killed revolutionaries who annoyed them and where Stalin also killed those right wing elements who annoyed him. In fact, thousands of people have died violently in Lubianka. But today it is part of our Department of Internal Security, although much is still a prison, and naturally we still have the big courtyards where shootings used to take place.’

  ‘Used to take place?’

  ‘Well we haven’t shot many people in recent years because it hasn’t been so necessary. But you’ll see what I mean shortly.’

  The car was rushing up Gorky Street dead in the centre of the road between two white lines reserved for certain official cars. Which was another sign that Sokolnikov really mattered, thought Grant as he watched his self-complacent tormentor puffing away at a stumpy brown cigarette, the first since they had met. A few moments later it swung left, zig-zagged through side streets and then turned into a dark road beside the jail, headlamps reflecting against the heavy stonework of thick walls and lighting up shadows around iron gates which still looked like the entrance to a mediaeval fortress as a policeman on duty at a side door sprang to attention.

  ‘This way,’ snapped Sokolnikov, walking swiftly along a bare corridor and up a short flight of stairs to his office.

  The place was thickly carpeted. An oval Empire table occupied the middle of the room and pictures of Lenin decorated the wall. A bust of Lenin stood upon an onyx pedestal in one corner and several deep arm-chairs were grouped around a window which overlooked a large courtyard lightened only by the reflection from surrounding windows. The room was stuffy from lack of ventilation, but a samovar was steaming on a small side table and the glasses which so many Russians use for tea were sitting on a silver tray.

  There were two telephones, one black and the other red. One wall was covered with filing cabinets, and five stiff-backed chairs upholstered with crimson leather had been placed around the centre table with a sheet of typed paper in front of each. The agenda for some meeting, thought Grant, and half smiled as he spotted the usual lace curtains with an aspidistra at each window. The room could almost have been the office of an early English Victorian magnate.

  The two young men pointed to a chair, and when he had sat down withdrew to either side of the door whilst Sokolnikov himself poured out tea, handed a glass to Grant and then walked over to a card index. ‘Here we are. Grant, David. American mother. English father. British subject. Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine, Edinburgh University 1947. Diploma Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, London 1949.’

  He spoke rapidly in Russian to one of the youths and then pointed to the card. ‘It can do no harm to tell you that although your precise significance in the scheme of things still remains uncertain we think that you may be a spy. But your relations with the World Health Organisation and N.A.T.O. are complicated and since you have acquired almost a dual nationality we don�
��t yet know who pays you. For the moment, therefore, you are only considered worth watching as being potentially dangerous, and I am even prepared to admit that until now you don’t seem to have crossed the Soviet Union in anything which matters. But,’ he added grimly, ‘after tonight it will do no harm to take a long hard look at you in order to make certain.’

  Grant put down his glass. ‘How about Maya Koren?’ he asked. ‘Does my friendship with her come under the heading of crossing the Soviet Union?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sokolnikov quietly, ‘it does. For you that girl is dangerous. You see my own wife died some months ago and I have now decided to marry Maya Koren myself, so naturally I don’t want her disturbed, especially by people who belong to a different world. Do I make myself clear?’

  Chapter Two – Death under flood-light

  Grant’s arm was one numb ache but his mind was working with lightning speed, and as he watched Sokolnikov sipping tea it was impossible to guess what might happen. ‘Is her consent taken for granted?’

  The Russian’s reply was standard. As a People’s Artiste she would do her duty when the time came.

  ‘Some sort of blackmail, I suppose.’

  The Russian nodded. ‘Yes. You probably know that her father belonged to an Anglo-Soviet Mission early in the War and had an affair with a Russian girl. He married her in the British Embassy, a formality not recognised by Soviet Law, so from our point of view she is a bastard, but that alone doesn’t matter much really, though it could mean a great deal to Maya Koren if the Soviet people ever discover that her father had plotted against the Soviet Union when he found that his wife was not going to be allowed out of the country, or that he was eventually shot as a spy in 1947 when he made a return visit to Moscow in the hope of persuading Molotov to grant an exit permit.’

  ‘And, of course, he wasn’t a spy at all.’

  Sokolnikov smiled. ‘Stalin never worried much about technical details like that, but these so-called Soviet brides had roused world attention and sentimentalists were clamouring for him to let them join their alleged husbands in England or America. So he was exasperated, and Maya Koren’s father arrived at a time when he was particularly exasperated. He was therefore removed. It was quite typical of Stalin. But court records still prove that he was a spy, and if they were made public the girl could be broken. She would lose her status as People’s Artiste and be lucky not to end in a camp for re-educating deviationists.’

  ‘So you brought me here just to tell me all this?’ Grant’s voice was sceptical.

  Sokolnikov carefully replaced his tiny glass on the tray and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief of what seemed to be high grade linen, another sign that he did his shopping in places other than the State Stores. ‘No. I brought you here because I suddenly decided that you are . . . up to something . . . as you say in England.’

  Grant’s manner was very bland. ‘Then you are wrong.’

  Sokolnikov opened a sheaf of papers. ‘Perhaps. But your record is peculiar. We find that on leaving school the Royal Air Force sent you to the United States for training as a bomber pilot. . . . Then you became one of two survivors in an unexplained crash just when you were due your wings and were taken to hospital with a spinal injury. It must have been serious, because you were later repatriated and invalided out of the services at a time when every man was worth his weight in gold. It seems that you then attended orthopaedic specialists for several years, but that being a semi-cripple had awakened an interest in medicine. At any rate you became a medical student, and your parents chose Edinburgh because your father was then working in the north and your mother anxious to protect you from London air raids.

  ‘By 1947 you were again fit, and shortly afterwards collected your various diplomas before going to Central Europe as a young doctor working for the Save the Children Fund. Routine duties then took you into various refugee camps, and there, I suspect, you began to show that flair for special activities requiring initiative which seems, in the end, to have brought you to the attention of the authorities, because within two years you were on the staff of the World Health Organisation and serving in the Middle East until your transfer to Korea, at which point you became one of our favourite mystery men.

  ‘You began to drift more into American circles, made powerful contacts and created good impressions. But although the headlines are very easy to discover, a man in my place must ask himself “impressions of what”? A tie-up with Interpol and the mass arrests of opium smugglers, with young Doctor Grant alleging that Communist influences in the North were attempting to destroy morale throughout southern Korea by smuggling the drug through in quantity. Then a period of man-hunting when you tracked down two separate guerilla leaders said to have been building up a fifth column behind the Southern lines. One of them was killed and we think you did it. But it also seems that this sort of life began to go to your head, as you say in English, because from then on you appear to have become of more value to Interpol than to the W.H.O. who nominally employed you and because by cunningly using conventional medical activities as a front you worried your way throughout the next few years into Cambodia, Malaya and Formosa, where, once again we find you close to the Americans.

  ‘There follows a transfer from the World Health Organisation to U.N.O. where your movements become increasingly obscure, but from knowledge of your associates you must have climbed far and high. You might well have been groomed for stardom. But into what sort of a star? My report suggests that you have been singled out for use as a strong arm thug available to Washington and Whitehall alike when there was a particularly nasty piece of work to be done. And, of course, your medical qualifications make a first-class front to almost anything.

  ‘Obviously you were a natural choice when the Congo volcano erupted and your record in Katanga is still a mystery to us here but it is quite probable that you did cross the Soviet Union during that campaign. However, we could prove nothing, so you got the benefit of the doubt. Until now, that is,’ he added, ‘and as from today you get the benefit of nothing except experience. And another point,’ added Sokolnikov slowly. ‘When one comes to think of it there is something very odd about your more recent posting to Paris and to N.A.T.O. On the staff there since 1961, I see. And again the old story. Officially you are still a doctor. This time an expert in physical medicine: Deputy-Adviser in Medical Aspects of Physical Survival: DAMPS as they call it, and a more non-committal description of a posting I have yet to find. It means nothing. Obviously we are all interested in problems of physical survival. I would like to know what exactly you do for N.A.T.O.’

  Grant was glad that his dossier was incomplete in essentials. If Sokolnikov had known the truth about his job in Katanga or of his work for N.A.T.O. he might have been more awkward. ‘I never thought I was so important.’

  ‘But now you do know,’ said Sokolnikov, ‘so that is why I am curious about this Moscow visit. Men of your calibre rarely do anything without reason and I don’t think that Maya Koren was a big enough reason to bring you here. You had better tell me more.’

  Grant shook his head. ‘There is nothing to add and your own report confirms that.’

  ‘But unfortunately for you, Doctor, you were in Moscow for five days before we picked you up, and the big question is what happened during that time.’

  The red telephone rang as he was speaking and Grant listened to the flood of garbled conversation wishing that Russian was numbered amongst his languages. Sokolnikov’s expression gave nothing away, but when he eventually hung up he turned to one of the guards and rapped out a curt order.

  ‘That was a message to say that nothing suspicious has been found in your room, so to that extent you are still in the clear. But now we’re going to have a doctor along to examine you properly. Meanwhile we can talk about anything you please. Choose your subject.’

  Grant decided to take him literally. ‘Let’s talk about your own secrets. What do you think I’ve found?’

  ‘David Grant,’ said the R
ussian, ‘you must consider me very stupid, but I’ll also call your bluff on this one. The secrets which matter today are not blueprints or plans of a campaign. They can often be written on a scrap of paper. As you, more than many men must know, this is the age of science.’

  ‘A recipe for fuel?’ queried Grant. ‘The formulae for driving a space ship to Venus? That sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes. Or the secret of solid fuels, the mysteries of chemical behaviour at extremely low temperatures. You might have stumbled on almost anything. It could go into a capsule. You may have swallowed it. It may be concealed on your person. In fact, we’ll have to examine you very thoroughly indeed before I can be satisfied.’

  Grant detested contact with people. Excepting beautiful women, he thought sourly. But he also knew when to avoid trouble and the room was warm, so if they wanted him to strip he would start any time.

  The Russian smiled. ‘We’ll wait until the surgeon is ready and then whilst she is going over your body some of my own men can deal with your possessions.’

  Grant carefully emptied his pockets, a well-worn wallet stuffed with dollars and roubles, a few sterling notes and a thousand or two Swiss francs, his Moroccan leather cigar case and a Parker 61 fountain-pen. Carefully he laid them on a small side table and then added his tie clip, a pair of cuff-links crested with his monogram and the dark blue cummerbund which he had worn for dinner that evening. ‘I value these things,’ he said, ‘so try to see that they aren’t damaged.’ And then he added his signet ring, the most important item of the lot.

  Sokolnikov was very suave indeed. ‘We must also hope that you are not damaged either.’

  A low-pitched buzzer began to growl, and forcing himself to appear indifferent Grant removed his jacket and pants as the search party arrived, carefully folding them up, hanging the trousers over the back of a chair and draping the jacket on top. He then loosened his bow tie, unbuttoned his shirt and put them on the table.