Grant held up his hand like a small boy at school and Sokolnikov looked at him in surprise. ‘What are you doing?’
‘May I speak?’
The Russian grinned. ‘So you remember. Speak only with permission. Very good. What do you want to say?’
‘If that is what we can expect from co-operating what will happen if something goes wrong?’
‘I was coming to that. The girl would then be flogged to death and afterwards cremated. She would simply disappear. And then you would be flogged until you wished that you had died with her. Afterwards, when you had recovered you would be shot in Lubianka exactly as I promised a few months ago. And I can tell you that I would prefer to keep that promise. In fact I’m only prepared to break it because of the story which can be built up out of a more artistic type of death.’
Grant smiled tautly. ‘You’ve got everything worked out, General. Get me the bag and I’ll earn our right to a quick bullet. That knout gives me the creeps.’
As Maya stood listening by the door Grant carefully rubbed the lobe of his ear. Her ear-ring was still in his pocket and he saw her quick glance of understanding as she walked off, shuffling downstairs in her clumsy boots with the squat, deadpan guard two paces behind, his gun covering the small of her back.
‘Tell me,’ said Grant, as the door closed on the room, ‘how can you, an educated man, seriously think of treating us like this? It is barbaric.’
‘Of course, it is,’ agreed Sokolnikov, ‘but this is a barbaric world. Only the fittest can survive and if you choose to mix up with underground politics you ought to know better than whine about it. I knew you were up to something last autumn and I took a chance. It was clear to anyone that a man of your calibre didn’t visit Moscow simply to flirt with a girl friend. Of course, you were up to something and it was worth while running a slight risk in order to be given the chance of catching you with your pants down, as the Americans say. And my campaign worked very well. You did risk a return visit and have been caught red-handed. Gusev’s death will be laid at your door. The photographs will blast your reputation everywhere, and indirectly damage the reputation of your department . . . M.I.5 or whatever else it may be. We shall raise the old red herring about Maya Koren’s birth and remind people of how her father was shot as a British spy. And that will help to teach some of our people here that they must constantly be on the alert for traitors even in the most unlikely places. Then again you came into Russia on a normal tourist visa so we shall be able to add yourself to the list of other tourists who have been jailed for spying during the last few years and that will justify any actions my government may take in tightening up regulations affecting visitors.’
He smiled contentedly and lit one more cigarette. ‘You really are the goose which lays the gold eggs, Doctor. The best story, in fact, for several years. Better even than the U.2 business. By the time our propaganda department has finished we will have made your name world-famous as a murderer, as a spy, as a suicide and as a seducer of young girls. Your government will have been tainted and the U.S.S.R. will have a first-class excuse for showing its teeth in several directions.’
‘May I have my pipe?’
‘No,’ said Sokolnikov, ‘you may not. Unless you wish one of my cigarettes. You may still feel it worth while to create some sort of diversion, and trick cigars or pipes are an old dodge which people like myself don’t fall for.’
‘Then I’ll have one of yours.’
The Russian opened his packet and threw one across the room. ‘One of my men will give you a light.’
A guard flicked open a lighter and held out the flame as Grant took the brown cardboard holder between his lips. ‘Reminds me of Gusev’s bugs,’ he said, looking at it curiously.
‘What do you mean?’ Sokolnikov’s eyes were bright with suspicion.
‘Same colour,’ explained Grant. ‘The spores of space-sickness are stored in glass ampoules. They look like brown dust. Same colour as the cigarette paper. He was holding one of them when you came into the room. Don’t you remember?’
The Russian stared at him mercilessly. ‘You’re up to something. What are you hinting?’
‘That there is a capsule lying beside Gusev’s body and that if it gets accidentally broken you’ll have an epidemic in the Kremlin.’
‘Then I shall take steps to recover it after we have dealt with you and Koren.’
‘And then, of course,’ added Grant slowly, ‘there are the others which I have hidden away. You may find them more difficult to get hold of.’
‘Bluff,’ said the General. ‘You have had no opportunity to hide anything,’ and then hesitated. ‘Or have you?’ Slowly he rose to his feet and lifted the knout. ‘Have you?’
Grant looked at him straight on the bridge of the nose. Every second had become precious. The thing had to be done before Maya came back. ‘Yes,’ he drawled insolently. ‘I have. And to prove it I’ve even got some hidden on my body now. The others were dropped in the snow as we walked across, but the chances are that someone will step on them before morning and after that you’ll have to face a full-scale local epidemic. Or else immunise everyone in the place.’
‘Where are these ampoules?’ The General was white with temper and his fingers twitched restlessly on the handle of the whip. ‘I’ll give you three seconds, and if you don’t tell me I swear the girl will be raped, flogged to death and thrown down a sewer. I mean it. Where . . . are . . . these . . . ampoules?’
Grant cringed back. His voice was suddenly husky and he raised his arm as though to protect his face. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken.’
‘But you did. Hand then over.’
Grant looked at him helplessly. ‘They are in the heels of my boots.’
‘Then take them off and hand them over. At once, do you hear?’ Sokolnikov was almost jumping with rage.
Swiftly Grant sat down on the floor and unzipped his boots. ‘There you are,’ he muttered sullenly. ‘You hold the thing firm with one hand and turn the heel with the other. It needs a good deal of force.’
The knout had dropped to the floor as Sokolnikov lifted the seal-skin boot and clutching it between his knees grasped the thick heavy heel with his right hand.
‘Turn it to the right,’ muttered Grant sullenly. ‘The heel then comes off and you’ll find it is hollow inside. There should be three ampoules in each of them.’
Sokolnikov viciously wrenched at the boot and Grant watched the heel pivot on its axis as a faint tinkle of breaking glass showed that its glass capsule loaded with maximally concentrated nerve gas had been ruptured. Sighing slightly he allowed himself to sag to the floor and lay there watching. The three guards were still alert, their guns directed towards the door and eyeing Sokolnikov who was sitting, rigid, in his chair, his lips quivering slightly and a fleck of saliva gathering at the corner. His fingers were moving clumsily and he seemed to breathe in short gasping movements which strained his neck. His eyes were widely open and he was gazing viciously across the room trying to speak.
A gun crashed to the floor as a guard slithered back against the wall and toppled beside it.
Cautiously Grant glanced at the other two men. Their hands were gripping their weapons so tightly that the knuckles were blenched. Their faces had suffused crimson and they seemed frozen to cataleptic stupor. Swiftly he stood up, lifted the boot from Sokolnikov’s grip and turned the heel back to normal before zipping it on again. He was stepping into the other when a second guard crashed to the floor, banging his head against the stone and opening a gash across his temple. Sokolnikov was still crouched forward in his chair staring steadily towards Grant and struggling impotently, as Grant had done on that first day in the vivisection unit, and Grant knew that for the Russian the room would be filled with crashing lights darting against his body, that his legs would be laden with the weight of cement and that even his brain would now have begun to cloud. He tilted the man’s head back and looked into his eyes. ‘I think you can still understand me, General. You
won’t be shooting anyone tonight. Maybe not any more, because no one knows the effect of a gas concentration like this. The chances are that you’ll die.’
Moving with the efficiency of well thought out precision he hauled off the man’s uniformed greatcoat and hat and put it on. They were both too small for comfort, but good enough for a crude disguise. Sokolnikov’s wallet with passes and other documents was in an inside pocket. Quickly he thrust it into his own jacket and then turned to the briefcase. The photographs were inside. But, better still, a slim cellophane packet showed the negatives. Buttoning up his greatcoat he tilted the peaked cap over one eye, thrust the briefcase under his arm and lifted a gun. The make was unfamiliar but it was a repeater weapon with a full magazine. Sauntering downstairs he heard voices below and estimated his chances. There was still no sign of Maya returning and he could see through the outside door across a hundred metres of snow. It would be ideal if he could paralyse everyone in the place and then close the doors. Leaving briefcase and gun on a window-ledge beside the entrance door he half turned the heel of his other boot until he could feel the mechanism contact glass. A further flick and the capsule would break. Softly he tiptoed along a short corridor and stopped within sight of a lighted room. The door was ajar. Gritting his teeth he flicked the heel round and walked forward, lifting his foot up towards them as he stopped near the opening where he knew that the stream of vapour would drift unnoticed until it had done its work. He had guessed that more than six voices had been talking but first one stopped, and then another until, in less than twenty seconds, the place was silent. He bent down and clicked the heel into normal position and then looked into the bleak, grey-painted guard-room. Seven men were lying unconscious on the floor.
Running upstairs again he lifted his briefcase and gun, walked outside and closed the door, posting himself in the shadow of the entrance porch. From a distance he would pass for a Kremlin guard and the snub-nosed gun was a silent passport to safety.
He recognised that just on ten minutes had passed since Maya had left the room when he saw two figures walk across the open ground towards the Torture House. The woman shuffled heavily over the snow, the man behind her holding his gun at the hip but as they reached the porch the soldier saluted briskly at the sight of an officer. Maya was beside the door and the man separated from her by less than two paces when Grant struck him cleanly under the jaw, a measured blow packing energy which would have felled a heavyweight. Maya looked round in astonishment, and as she suddenly recognised Grant’s smiling face she burst into tears.
‘For God’s sake shut up,’ he whispered. ‘We aren’t out of this lot yet. Stand back from the door.’ Opening it he dragged the unconscious policeman inside, pulled him downstairs into the gas zone and left him in the corridor.
Outside again the coast was still clear apart from two figures strolling in the distance towards the lights near Spasskaya Tower. ‘How’s it going, Maya?’ he asked.
She looked at him pathetically. ‘What happened, David? For pity’s sake tell me what’s going on.’
He glanced quickly round. The place was still quiet. ‘Hold on to that bag. We’ve got to move like bloody lightning. But first Gusev’s place. Was anyone there?’
She shook her head. ‘Deserted. Even the door was unlocked.’
‘Did anyone stop you on the way?’
‘No.’ She shivered slightly. ‘We passed some soldiers but they just laughed. People don’t ask the K.V.D. or G.R.U. questions.’
‘Right,’ he snarled. ‘We’re going back again. I want a tube of stuff in Gusev’s upstairs room and then we’re going into his office to whip his records. But this time I’m going to be your guard and if anyone interferes may God help him.’
Chapter Sixteen – Doctor Grant must disappear . . .
Grant never forgot the tension of that stolid march across the heart of Moscow’s Kremlin from the Torture House to Gusev’s offices. A platoon of young soldiers led by a Red Army sergeant passed them near the Bell Tower, but when they came into view Maya broke into whining Russian, cringing down and glancing over her shoulder at Grant’s gun. Two of the men scowled angrily, but did not interfere, and as they approached the Council of Ministers a group of bespectacled secretaries looked round only to turn their backs at once and stroll purposefully away. Minding your own business seemed to be everyone’s motto, thought Grant grimly, as he waddled towards Gusev’s door, now lighted brilliantly by reflections from nearby windows.
The place was still empty inside, but he motioned Maya to silence and whispered close to her ear. ‘They can hear every word that’s said. I’m going off to collect something. Stay here and then we’re going through that door together.’ The black door leading to the laboratories hung like an evil question mark and Grant remembered the glint of triumph on Gusev’s face as he had glanced at it. The same faint hum still whined through the house and God alone knew what devilry had been rigged up beyond it.
He kissed the girl swiftly on either cheek and then padded softly upstairs, the Magnum loose in its holster and his hand poised over the end of his micro-rocket Parker 61. Gusev was lolling back as they had left him, a pool of blood congealing on the floor and the ampoule of space-sickness spores lying on his lap. His eyes were glazed and staring towards the open panel. Thrusting the ampoule into his handkerchief pocket Grant rushed back to Maya. ‘Got to get something out of the attaché case now,’ he whispered. ‘And then we’re going to have a look at that door.’
Cautiously he manipulated the snecks, snipped on the safety device and again opened the secret compartment. Three syringes were left. From below them he slipped out a square pack rather larger than a set of playing cards. ‘Our latest fire-bomb,’ he muttered, ‘and now let’s get going.’
The black door opened normally and beyond it a short narrow corridor led to a flight of stairs giving to the basement. The humming noise was louder now and quivering along the passage like the throb of a dynamo as together they studied every square inch of wall and floor. The chances were that some sort of electronic system of rays had been installed which could give the alarm as soon as they were broken. Or even when they were switched off, unless there was a code system to reassure the monitoring officer. And if there was a switch the key would be in Gusev’s pocket. His mind was operating by instinct, all the subconscious reasoning of days and hours clicking automatically into focus. Three things remained. To break into the laboratories, lift Gusev’s records and make a getaway. His jaw was set like granite as he thrust Maya into a corner. ‘Stay here,’ he whispered. ‘Back in half a minute.’ Upstairs again he thrust his fingers through the curtain of sticky blood which covered Gusev’s clothing and ran through his pockets. His key-chain was attached to a trouser button. One of the keys was painted crimson and shaped like a long sardine tin-opener. It was as good a guess as any. Indeed their only bet. He unclipped the lot and returned downstairs at the double. And now the switch. They wasted five minutes looking for it in the hall, probing for a half-inch slit which would take the key. ‘Right,’ he whispered grimly, ‘back through the door. May be at the other side.’
But another ten minutes and more slipped away as they systematically explored every fraction of cream wall leading to the staircase, and again they stopped, baffled. The hum was louder now, throbbing up from below with the persistent rhythm of muffled drums. ‘To hell with it,’ he muttered, and turned furiously to Maya. ‘Stay here, sweetie. I’m going down myself. But if anything happens run up to Gusev’s room. First door on the left at the top. There’s a gap in the panelling which takes you into an old passage. Wait for me as long as you can, but if trouble breaks close the door and see where the passage takes you. As good a chance as any other left to us. And keep your faith in that ear-ring. It’s done us proud to date.’
Kissing her again on the lips he lifted the briefcase and fire-bomb, leaping down the stairs in four long bounds. He was half-way to the bottom when the throbbing hum ceased and the dinging clang of alarm bells
broke the silence. He knew that time could now be measured only in seconds. Two doors faced him, one panelled in glass and leading into a lab laid out with gleaming glass cabinets, the other a thick wooden effort with a special lock. He fumbled for his keys and the second one opened it. Two walls were covered with filing drawers and reference books but it was utterly impossible to remove any of them and even with Maya to translate it would have taken hours of work to find the ones which mattered. Cursing softly he rushed out and into the laboratory where thousands of tiny glass containers lay, row upon row, in special boxes beside a fantastic assortment of equipment. They were filled with the same brown powder as the one in his pocket. ‘Two rooms and one bomb,’ he cursed viciously. ‘One with records and the other with bugs. What the hell did one do now?’ The alarm bells were almost deafening him. Lifting the alpha napalm 706 box he threw it into the centre of the lab. Bugs mattered more than records. The thing burst with a sheet of white flame which singed his clothes as he stopped the lab doors open, hoping that the flames would burn the jamb and spread to the records office.
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