Death's Foot Forward

by George B Mair

  ‘And why the gun?’ Sokolnikov was beating a restless tattoo with his forefinger against the surface of the table.

  ‘Really, General,’ said Grant sarcastically. ‘Haven’t you heard that drug addicts are dangerous. The gun was a reasonable precaution under the circumstances.’

  ‘And am I to understand that for over a year this man has been giving vital information about his work to girls who were in the pay of your British Secret Service?’

  ‘You are,’ agreed Grant. ‘And that is why I came over last autumn. Our local man was short of drugs and I restocked his cupboards.’

  The Russian walked abruptly across the room and looked at Gusev, now sprawling back in his chair and snoring with his mouth open. Deliberately he kicked him on the shin and slapped him across the mouth. Gusev opened his eyes and stared blearily round the room. His hand fumbled with his lips and he moaned with pain as he clumsily lifted his leg and flexed his knee. Sokolnikov spoke to him quietly in Russian but even Grant could sense the venom in his voice as he asked question after question from the dazed man.

  Gusev’s speech was slurred and the General was slowly driven into a frenzy of rage as the man grinned stupidly at him and muttered words which made no sense. After a long five minutes he returned to the table and eased himself on to the edge. ‘How long will he stay like that?’

  ‘For a few hours,’ said Grant. ‘If you hadn’t arrived I would have been away by now.’

  ‘With that capsule in your pocket?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And with Maya Koren by your side?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grant. ‘And suppose you tell me where she is.’

  The Russian studied his finger-tips. ‘In the old days Tsars used one of the Kremlin’s twenty towers as a torture chamber. In fact Konstantino-Yeleninskaya Tower became a specialised state prison, but the tortures which went on inside were so exquisite that it became known as Pytoshnaya or Torture House and I have brought it up-to-date. Now I use it for storing special archives and dealing with special prisoners. Maya Koren is in one of its cells.’

  ‘Shall I see her?’

  ‘More than that,’ said the Russian, ‘you will die with her. But only after you have given me the names of your contacts in Russia and the girls who corrupted this man Gusev.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ snapped Grant. ‘Maya knows nothing about these people and I won’t talk.’

  ‘No?’ Sokolnikov’s manner had become very brisk. ‘I think you will talk, and talk quickly.’ He turned to one of the plain-clothes men and gave him a stream of instructions in Russian. ‘Watch this,’ he continued, as the man walked forward to Gusev and thrust the point of his gun against the doctor’s throat angling the barrel towards the back of his head.

  ‘You see,’ said Sokolnikov smoothly. ‘The bullet will enter at the base of the skull and leave at the top of his head. Death will be instantaneous but rather bloody.’

  Gusev was dozing again, his head lolling back on a cushion and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he snored out his last few breaths.

  ‘Now,’ ordered Sokolnikov. There was a muffled thud whilst the silencer stifled the reverberations of a single shot and Gusev’s face dissolved into a crimson stain as blood drenched his chest and hair, pouring in a stream over his forehead whilst a yawning hole appeared below his chin.

  The General looked curiously at Grant. ‘If you give me all the information which I require I can promise you that you will die just as swiftly, and the girl, too.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Sokolnikov glanced at his watch. ‘Everything should be ready now. You will understand in a moment when we go across to the Torture House. Pytoshnaya Tower has seen several interesting dramas but I have prepared something which is quite extra special and I assure you that you will certainly talk.’

  ‘How do we get there?’ asked Grant.

  ‘By walking. And let me give you a word of advice,’ continued the General. ‘If you make an attempt to escape you will not be killed, but you will be wounded in the most painful places and suffer even more when we reach Pytoshnaya, which is only a few hundred metres away. And by the way of further punishment your friend, Maya Koren, will then be raped by each of the guards. So if you wish to spare her that indignity you had better behave yourself.’

  ‘And Gusev?’ asked Grant, looking towards the body of Russia’s top bacteriologist.

  ‘You will hear about that in due course,’ said Sokolnikov. ‘Scandal will be unavoidable but I’ll work out details in Pytoshnaya. The Torture House is very useful to me. It is built high upon the walls and used exclusively by my own department. Once inside it I can do anything I like and be answerable to nobody, because even the Polit-bureau understands the need for a place where dirty linen can be washed by a reliable man without questions being asked. And tonight,’ he added grimly, ‘the linen is very dirty indeed.’

  Chapter Fifteen – There are no second chances for either of you . . .

  General Sokolnikov led the way downstairs closely followed by Grant, sandwiched at gun-point between four plain-clothes members of the G.R.U. It was bitterly cold outside and moonlight twinkled bleakly against frozen snow clinging to the Kremlin’s onion domes and mediaeval turrets. The blare of harsh music echoed from the direction of Red Square and a flag drooped mournfully over the green dome above the House of the Council of Ministers. Pytoshnaya Tower was on the Kremlin’s north-east wall, towards the river and just across from Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It had been well named the Torture House, and as Sokolnikov strode through the low dark entrance gate Grant braced himself against the atmosphere of horror which seemed to have soaked into its bleak passages. A flight of worn stone steps curved upwards to a brown-painted box of a room with low ceiling and shuttered window. Metal rings had been let into the floor and there was a chain against two of the walls where prisoners had once rotted to death in the old days. A single tube of fluorescent lighting lay flush with the ceiling and its cold violet glare gave his jailors the parchment-pasty look of living corpses.

  The guards took up position at each corner, their black service weapons pointing without a tremor towards the thick wooden door as Sokolnikov relaxed into a lug chair drawn up near the window, leaving Grant alone in the centre of the room. ‘You are not the only one who can be a quick worker, Doctor, and in a moment or two I’m going to teach you a lesson in speed which is likely to be the last thing you will ever learn in this world. But first I think we should bring up my other prisoner.’

  He pulled a bell-rope hanging from the ceiling and Grant could hear its dinging reverberations below. Echoes were still vibrating when there was a clang of boots against stone and the precise rhythm of marching feet as two uniformed men strutted up from the cells grasping Maya by the arms and almost dragging her behind them. The girl was very pale but there was a crimson spot of colour high on each cheek and one stocking had been ripped up to the knee.

  When she saw Grant she stopped dead and her voice faltered. ‘David! . . .’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Sokolnikov curtly. ‘This time you will speak only in reply to my questions and if either of you disobeys, the other one will be given ten lashes with a knout.’ As he spoke he opened a cupboard below the window and lifted an ancient cat o’ nine tails, its leather thongs rising from a short wooden handle and ending in triangles of twisting rusting metal. ‘A nice weapon this,’ he continued suavely, ‘it is said to have been made by Ivan the Terrible but I can tell you for a fact that these metal tips have edges like a razor. So be advised and talk only when I say so.’

  Laying the knout across his knee he gave a series of crisp orders to one of the plain-clothes men and smiled as he watched Maya clench her lips and stare helplessly towards Grant, who was standing in the centre of the room and aimlessly shuffling his feet against one of the iron rings embedded in its stone floor. ‘I like reading adventure stories, Doctor, and I always enjoy when they have a situation like this. But most authors are te
rribly unrealistic and as a rule the hero emerges safe and sound at the end because the villain wastes such a lot of time talking. So assuming from your point of view that I am the villain I shall try to be sensible and avoid that mistake. But in order to bring you up-to-date I must explain two important points. When Maya Koren bluffed my men into thinking that I was dead drunk last night you both forgot that a man in my position couldn’t possibly cancel work for a whole day simply because he happened to have become engaged to marry. My men knew that very well, however, and although they were quite prepared to accept that I might need the morning to recover they became worried when I failed to report in the afternoon. So naturally two officers were sent down to see what was happening. Fortunately I was half awake by then and able to tell them enough to raise the alarm. Doctors were called in and I was taken to hospital leaving a party of able men to receive you on your return. But, of course, the girl arrived alone, so acting on my orders she was immediately removed to Pytoshnaya Tower here and this is the first time we have met since morning.

  ‘But the second point is elementary. Your arrival at the Kremlin was, to say the least of it, conspicuous, and according to regulations was immediately reported to my office. Investigations have since proved that you disappeared somewhere near the Armoury whilst the girl created a diversion by entertaining the guards with improper stories and a few imitations of court etiquette in the days of Catherine the Great. So the first thing I want to know is this. Where did you hide and how did you reach Gusev’s house so easily?’

  Grant looked anxiously at Maya, but the girl’s nerve was holding out and she had squatted down on the floor at the feet of her guards, her legs drawn up under her and with her skirt pulled tight over her knees. ‘I hid inside a toilet used by the staff,’ he said curtly.

  Sokolnikov nodded and two soldiers laid their guns on the floor before walking across to the girl and dragging her to her feet whilst one of them held her in a full Nelson and the other ripped her dress off.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ shouted Grant desperately. ‘I’ll tell you the truth.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Sokolnikov. ‘There are no second chances for either of you. The girl will be stripped and tied to the floor. That is what these rings have been used for ever since the room was built.’

  The man tore off every shred of clothing until she was left stark naked, and then as she twisted helplessly one of them gripped her round the ankles and threw her to the ground. She fought like a wild cat, her nails streaking down the face of the podgy officer lying astride her body before he had tied each wrist with leather thongs to the floor-rings, and her feet kicking the other in the crutch as he wrestled with her legs and left her helplessly anchored to the stones, a writhing human cross grotesque under the fluorescent lighting.

  ‘That is your punishment for lying, Grant. Next time you lie she will be flogged. You could not have been in that staff toilet for the simple reason that the place is always kept locked and its key is in charge of the senior attendant. Where did you hide?’

  ‘In a state-coach,’ drawled Grant, forcing himself to control his blazing temper. ‘I can show you it if you like. One of those drawn by horses. There is a luggage space behind the passengers’ seat. And after the cleaners had finished work I slipped out and walked across to Gusev’s office like any normal official.’

  ‘I see.’ Sokolnikov was staring at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. That could be done. I’ll accept your story. So now the names of your associates in Moscow.’

  Grant glanced at the floor. Maya was lying still, her fingers clenched and her teeth biting fiercely against her lip. He could see a red flare where the leather ropes were chafing her wrists and scratches where buttons on the policeman’s clothes had scraped the skin of her body during their struggle. The guards were standing alert, their guns covering his thighs and belly whilst Sokolnikov relaxed at ease on the chair, his plump fingers fondling the knout and lazily caressing its cutting thongs. ‘I have a list of names,’ he stalled, ‘but I don’t speak or read Russian easily and although it is unusual to carry things like that I’ve had to make an exception here because it is impossible to remember them.’ He was afraid to look Sokolnikov in the eye, scared of the man’s uncanny knack of sifting truth from fiction. He had begun to see the first glimmerings of a way out and had to force himself to prepare the stage with one half of his mind whilst the other, the scared half, matched its wits against the detached sadism of the Russian.

  ‘Where is the list?’

  ‘In Gusev’s office,’ said Grant slowly. He was faint with standing and the look on Maya’s face had raised his temper to boiling point. A little more and he would do something stupid. For God’s sake, he thought, control yourself. Say the right thing, damn you. You’ve bluffed it so far, see it through. Bluff it. You’re as good a bastard as he is. Think of the girl. Pull yourself together damn you. Damn you Grant. You think you’re so bloody good. Show it then you swine. A stream of obscenities swirled through his mind as the room went black and he found himself beginning to black out.

  Desperately he tried to regain his balance, and then, as he was swaying on his feet a guard gripped him roughly by the arm at an order from Sokolnikov. ‘Put your head between your knees. Lie down if you like.’

  Somehow he found himself on the floor beside Maya. She was watching him eagerly and as she stretched out an arm the tip of her fingers brushed past his wrist. His head was clearing, the swirling black spots faded away and the room coming into focus again. Sokolnikov was standing over him, staring down suspiciously, but saying nothing as he counted twenty slowly to himself and then cautiously stood up. ‘Sorry, General. Give me a minute and then we can talk.’ His brain had begun to function again. Almost he felt it drop into gear and surge ahead of him, probing the situation and planning the getaway.

  The Russian had returned to his chair by the window and was lighting a cigarette. ‘Not more than a minute, Doctor, I promise you. Where is the list?’

  Grant made his voice sound heavy and tired. His natural drawl became more slovenly than ever and he had difficulty in forming his words. ‘It’s in Gusev’s house. There’s a bag under the hall table. Got a collection of fancy hotel lab . . . lab . . . labels stuck on. But there are a lot of tricks to it. Got to be h-h-handled carefully. Don’t touch the snecks or it’ll blow the place up. I use it to carry secret stuff.’

  The Russian turned again to the cupboard under the window and drew out a short thick iron instrument. ‘This is another of Ivan the Terrible’s little toys. An old-fashioned thumb screw. And if I find that there is no bag in the hall or that you have been up to any trickery I’ll crush every finger and toe on Maya Koren’s body.’

  ‘The bag is there,’ said Grant flatly. ‘And it is as safe as when I left it so long as nobody tries to open the thing. But a time bomb has been built inside and I’ve fused it to detonate on opening. Anyone can carry it across without coming to harm.’

  ‘And you understand the consequences if anything goes wrong?’

  ‘Sure.’ He was suddenly tired. Sick of everything. Ready to end it even if Maya had to suffer too. How in the heck could he get her out of the room? ‘Look,’ he added suddenly. ‘Let the girl get up. Give her some clothes. Send her to Gusev’s house with a soldier and let Maya carry the bag back. Will that convince you?’

  The Russian laughed aloud. ‘I’ll believe you. Maya Koren will carry it and Josef here will be her escort.’

  ‘And may I explain to her just how to handle the thing?’ Grant was relaxed now. It was heads or tails.

  ‘Yes. Provided you say nothing ambiguous to make me suspect trickery.’

  ‘What sort of trickery could there be,’ muttered Grant sullenly. ‘The best we can hope for is a sudden death. I’m not likely to do anything to annoy you.’

  ‘Then say what has to be said. But be very careful. I don’t trust you a centimetre.’

  ‘Maya.’ Grant’s voice was very gentle, and he smiled as the girl opened her eyes an
d looked up towards him. ‘I left a small attaché case under the hall table on the left-hand side of Professor Gusev’s entrance hall. General Sokolnikov is going to allow you to dress and then you must go across to collect it. On no account try to open the bag. Just lift it by the handle and carry it normally. A soldier will accompany you and you do nothing foolish. And don’t be frightened. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘What exactly did you mean by that?’ interrupted Sokolnikov furiously. ‘That is open to two meanings. What trick have you got up your sleeve?’

  ‘None,’ said Grant heavily. ‘I just mean that the bag won’t explode or cause her any harm so long as she does as I say. In other words that everything will be all right.’

  ‘Very well.’ The General turned to two of the men and rapped out a series of orders. One of them started to untie the girl whilst the other walked smartly out of the room, returning a few minutes later with a bundle of coarse clothing. ‘Not your usual sort of things,’ said Sokolnikov viciously, ‘but put them on and then go and get the bag. If you attempt to escape the Doctor will be flogged to death.’

  Flushing slightly Maya sorted out the rough garments and dressed herself, a soiled woollen singlet and knee-length flannel bloomers, a coarse petticoat and thick blouse, a head scarf and a shoddy overcoat, ribbed home-made stockings and a pair of heavy peasant boots.

  ‘Before you go,’ said Sokolnikov unexpectedly, ‘I think I’ll explain what is going to happen if you are lucky and behave yourself.’ He fumbled in a briefcase and drew out an envelope. ‘Here are some pictures which may interest you.’ He held each of them up to the light in turn, a series of obscene photographs of a couple making love. A telephoto lens had been used and detail was perfect, yet none of them showed the whole face of either man or woman. Only enough, as Maya had explained, to suggest identity. The man’s hair was exactly like Grant’s and his head in half profile from the back would have deceived anyone who didn’t know him well. The girl wore her hair in the style which Maya used and in which she had appeared in Paris and on programmes at Bolshoi. There was the same tilted chin and high cheekbones and even the mole on her left shoulder appeared on the picture. It was a superb fake-up. And enough to damn them utterly. ‘If you co-operate properly you will be mercifully shot and your bodies discovered tomorrow morning somewhere along the riverside,’ said Sokolnikov. ‘These pictures will be later found in Doctor Grant’s luggage and it will be proved that you had a lover’s quarrel, that Grant shot the famous ballerina dead and then threw her body into the water before committing suicide himself. Naturally the story will make international headlines and somehow or other a few of these pictures will leak into the American press. It will eventually be established that Doctor David Grant was a British Intelligence agent and we will then paint the picture of a handsome capitalist spy not only intriguing against the Soviet Union but also seducing its most popular young ballerina. The effect upon Soviet public opinion will be tremendous, especially after Koren’s astonishing performance last night, and our whole propaganda machine will use it to prove the decadence of the West.’