‘But sex was never that fantastic. I mean, she’d do anything, but it was rather like being in bed with a racehorse, all nervous twitching and long thrashing limbs. Going through the motions. I often suspected her of faking it.’
I did not contribute my own reminiscences, even though I listened with an eager, almost pornographic, interest to his. My view was exactly the reverse. Causing a sensation by walking into a room with her was not what I had valued. On the contrary, it was sex which had sustained us. It was like a drug, one that I was not willing to give up.
‘This isn’t a very sophisticated lock,’ I said. ‘But it’s still too strong for us to break by force. Quite apart from the question of noise.’
‘If it’s the lock you’re thinking of, I might be able to help you.’ He came over to join me, testing the handle cautiously. ‘What I need is…’ He looked round the room. ‘Something small, pointed, metal, like a key.’
‘In the desk?’ I suggested. But the drawers yielded only a grainy dust. You don’t sit and write in a sauna. I remembered the coat hangers. We took a couple out of the wardrobe and Anatoli twisted the hooks, but the wire was too thick to enter the keyhole.
I patted the pockets of my jacket. I had a fountain pen, my passport and wallet, three cards summarising that afternoon’s papers, held by a paper clip.
‘Is this any good?’
‘It may do.’ He unwound it, snapping it in two. ‘Do my skills surprise you?’ he asked. He was showing off, childishly.
‘I haven’t seen them yet,’ I said dryly.
‘But you will. I’m not just a banker, you know I’m an ex-KGB man.’
‘Are you? I thought you were a diplomat.’
‘They’re often the same thing. That is, not all diplomats are KGB men and not all KGB men are diplomats, but there is a substantial overlap. I was never on the operational side, but before you go abroad you have to do some basic training.’ He was on his knees again, squinting at the door handle through his swollen lids. *We spent whole days on locks and combinations. Very complex things, locks. You have to have a three-dimensional sort of mind. The technology has developed a long way, but not here, I think. A skilled thief could open this door in less than sixty seconds; it’ll take me a bit longer. It was my thing. I had a theory that if you were good with women, you’d be good at locks. You have to have a sense of the whole body, you see, a feeling for the effect you’re having on someone else.’
He tried the door handle again to check the way it turned and then inserted one, hooked, end of the paper clip into the bottom of the key hole, pulling it to the left. With his other hand he inserted the other half, gently pushing it to and fro.
‘I thought they had now decided it was basic chemical compatibility and nothing to do with skill.’
‘No, no, it’s an art. But going back to Julian, you don’t agree? Cold. English. Don’t you find? But you’re English too. You must suit one another.’ He laughed at my lack of response. I was wondering when I would ever get him to concentrate on what was important.
‘The theory,’ he said, ‘is that you keep moving the pins with the instrument, one after the other, until they are in exactly the right position and release the cylinder, so that it will turn. You just keep at it, gently, gently, until they all fall into place.’
By now I felt that verbosity and a tendency to premature self-congratulation were the chief weaknesses of Julian’s lover. However, since I was in no position to take his home-made tool from him and use it more effectively, I had to listen to him.
The opening of the door came quietly. He was still talking to himself, ‘Gently, gently. Now, now, now,’ and the pin in his left hand revolved clockwise. He turned the handle; the door and the jamb disengaged and I saw the line between them widen. Anatoli, with more patience than I would have expected, eased it back into place.
‘We’re free,’ he said.
I was already up and putting on my coat. I thrust the leather jacket that had been my gag at Anatoli.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ I said. ‘At least give me some idea of the lay out of the place.’
‘The dacha is U-shaped, two storeys in the centre, single-storeyed wings. The sauna, where we are, is at the end of the right arm of the U. We’re at the back of the house. Outside there’s a steep slope down to the river with the jetty I mentioned. The stables are over to the left.’
‘What’s at the front?’
‘There’s a short drive, a wooden gate, two metres high, and a fence the same height all along the road. It’s floodlit. There’s a guard on the gate twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Well, that’s pretty conclusive,’ I said. “We’ll have to go over the river. What about dogs?’
‘They’re kept in a pen near the gate, German shepherds. I don’t think they run free at night when Dyadya is here. Too much risk of savaging a drunken guest who has gone out to roll in the snow after his sauna.’
‘So they’ll only let them loose if they realise we’ve got away. OK, are you ready? I’ll go first.’
I opened the door very slowly, listening acutely, then slipped out. Our shadows lay before us as the light from our prison illuminated a long corridor of dark wood, the floor covered with a cotton rug. There were several doors on the right hand and one facing us at the end. We moved off in silence towards the door. One of the rooms that we passed was open and I caught a glimpse of a tray of vodka bottles and glasses. It was probably the earlier occupants of the sauna who had left the outer door unlocked, for it yielded immediately to my hand.
The cold struck us on our exposed faces. I could feel its icy rasp on the back of my throat as I drew the fresh air into my lungs. In a few minutes ice shards had begun to form inside my nose. I licked my lips instinctively and the film of saliva froze on my skin.
In front of us a snow-covered slope led down to a broad track cutting through the landscape: the river, imprisoned by ice. The black trunks of the trees stood out clearly and their shapes were repeated in their shadows on the snow. The moon lay in the sky like a wedge of lemon on a plate, its curving rim solid, the central matter grainy, and it shone with an unnatural fierceness, its light reflecting from the snow to give a diurnal clarity. We stood, listening, and I cast my eyes around to pick up the features that Anatoli had mentioned. The wind moved the heavily laden branches of the nearest tree and they scratched against one another with a grating sound. My idea was simply to get to the stables, take a horse, ride away. It could hardly be expected to succeed.
‘Let’s hope the dogs are shut up,’ Anatoli said. We set off on the traverse of the garden, taking a route from tree to tree, rather than plunging directly across the open snowy expanse.
I could now see our goal a hundred metres away, on other side of the garden, a group of low, utilitarian buildings well separated from the house. We arrived without seeing anyone and crept around the side of the main outbuilding, a barn made of corrugated iron. It was new and well constructed and, when we rounded the corner into a yard, I saw that to get into it was not likely to be easy. No one nowadays left a valuable stud unprotected. Great sliding metal doors closed the entrance. I tried to push them apart, revealing that they were indeed as firmly secured as they appeared to be. I leaned against the cold metal and then recoiled, as if I had been burnt.
‘Is there any other way in?’ I asked.
‘You can usually rely on two things in Russia, inefficiency and corruption,’ Anatoli replied. He led the way around the building and approached a small door. He depressed the door handle, expecting to open it with a flourish. It did not move.
‘But not this time,’ he said with disappointment.
‘It all looks pretty efficient to me.’
‘So what now?’
‘We could go and lock ourselves in again.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Then we’ll have to walk,’ I said with determination. ‘We’ll cross the river to the road and find a house or a car. It can’t be that f
ar. Do you think you can make it?’
‘We need more clothing,’ Anatoli objected. ‘It’s true it’s not far, but it’ll take us hours. It’s certainly lower than minus twenty tonight and we won’t survive without hats and gloves. You’ve no idea how quickly you can be paralysed with cold. And we haven’t even any vodka.’
He was right. I was wearing ordinary brogues and my feet were already aching, the blood retreating from the body’s extremities under the assault of the cold. ‘What can we do?’
‘I suppose we could try the guard’s lodge. If there’s only one of them in there we could jump him.’
We trudged back into the farmyard and, keeping to the line of the buildings, we followed a tractor track leading up the slope towards the house. We passed the last of the sheds and saw ahead a portacabin ablaze with light, throwing its yellow reflections onto the snow.
At the same moment we heard the dogs barking, several of them at once. While I stopped to distinguish from exactly which direction the noise was coming, to determine whether they were loose or tied up, Anatoli moved forward rapidly towards the cabin. He reached the door, bending down so that his head would not appear above the level of the window. He did not wait to explain or consult. As I came up to him, he straightened up and opened the door.
My reaction had nothing to do with fear or self-protection. A blast of heated air swelled out to engulf us and we both instinctively entered into the warmth, closing the door behind us. There was no resistance to overcome. The only occupant of the room sat at the desk with his head on his arms. The evidence of an empty bottle of vodka and two small glasses explained why our approach had gone unremarked.
Anatoli slapped the guard on the back in gratitude. ‘Some luck at last,’ he said. The sleeper groaned, but did not regain consciousness. ‘I told you, you can always hope for inefficiency or corruption. I should have said you can rely on vodka. I could do with some myself.’ He picked up the bottle and inverted it to his lips. ‘Only a drop left.’ I made him sit down on the floor so that from the outside only one figure would be seen. From the rack beside the door I handed him a huge sheepskin coat, a shapka, scarf, gloves. He looked at my leather-soles. ‘You’ll have to have the boots. Get them off him.’
I crawled under the table and unlaced the thick boots, crepe-soled like a caterpillar tractor, releasing an unwashed odour into the room. The guard shifted in his chair, but did not wake from his stupor. My own feet were dramatically painful as the blood crept back into them. I could hardly prevent myself from groaning as I put the guard’s socks on them and pushed them into the fetid cavities of his boots.
In the meantime, Anatoli had been opening cupboards and found another hat and some more gloves. He was shrugging on the sheepskin when he noticed a tall metal door and opened it to expose racks of keys.
‘Real luck now. What have we here? We want car keys, a four wheel drive would be the best. The Uzbek has a very nice Nissan Patrol for shooting. That would take us along the river bank in comfort.’ For the next few minutes he was silent, running his fingers along the display. It was soon evident from the irritable sounds he was making that there were no car keys. He picked out one ring and held it while he finished reading the rest of the labels.
‘This is the best we can do. It’s the stables. So we either walk or ride out of here. Walking takes longer, but is less obvious. Riding is likely to catch the attention, but it’s quicker and the odds on escaping if you’re seen are better.’
‘So we’ll ride,’ I said.
Armed against the cold, our movements were now more sure. We strode back towards the stables and Anatoli tried the keys on the padlock of the sliding doors. It swung open and we levered up the iron bar. We stepped in through the small door cut into the big ones. Inside, the agreeable smell of horseflesh warmed the dark air. The vast space was divided into she lines of loose boxes by three alleys. The sound of the door produced a movement in the stalls nearest to us. There was a light snickering of greeting, or warning.
‘Just make sure you don’t chose a stallion,’ I advised.
I had been in Anatoli’s company long enough to guess that he would enjoy riding away on the Uzbek’s prize Turkoman horse. He laughed, but when he led his horse out of one of the nearest loose boxes I was relieved to see that he had chosen a gelding. For myself, I found a mare. She was not large and I was too tall for her, but she looked tough enough to bear my weight and I preferred a docile mount to one with pretensions to flamboyance.
We had reached the point of overconfidence. We saddled up inside the barn with curious horses putting their heads over the doors of their stalls to see what was happening. I held both our mounts while Anatoli rolled open one of the sliding doors to let us out. The metal grated and shrieked on its rollers and the dogs began to bark again.
I was leading the horses out when I saw a man running around the corner of the barn. He was speaking into a radio. We shouted simultaneously, both of us at Anatoli, who, with his back turned, was propping the metal bar which secured the doors against the wall. Still holding the bar he swung round and one end caught the guard in the belly as he ran towards us, toppling him backwards into the snow. Without a second’s hesitation, Anatoli took advantage of his accidental supremacy, smashing the bar into his forehead.
I succeeded in mounting my mare, still holding onto Anatoli’s gelding, which was moving restlessly.
‘Get on,’ I shouted to him. ‘He’d already radioed for help.’ He ignored me and disappeared into the barn where I could hear him opening doors and shouting at the horses. One ambled out, snuffing the snow, standing cautiously on the threshold, followed by others.
The guard lay with outflung arms and gaping mouth; I could see cerebral matter bubbling through the crushed skull. Rivulets of blood flowed down his face, finding the shortest route to the snow.
I urged my mount forward, still holding Anatoli’s horse, which was now laying its ears in an angry manner. As the two horses revolved, I saw men moving in the darkness of the front garden at the top of the slope.
‘Come out, Anatoli,’ I shouted. He emerged, preceded by at least a dozen horses. He moved among them, slapping their rumps, shouting at them, until he reached me.
‘What have you been doing?’
He had his back to me and I only heard the word, ‘Diversion…’
Whatever it was, he had certainly frightened the horses. From within the barn came anxious neighing and the hammering of hooves on the concrete floor. I could hear shouts of the guards in the garden and beyond them the baying of the dogs.
Fortunately, I had had time, while Anatoli was within, to settle myself on my mare, even though I was hampered by the angry, circling movements of the gelding. The stirrups of the saddle that I had put on her were too short but I did not have time to adjust them. All I had to do, I thought, was to stay on my horse. I had chosen the mare well. She was fit and the atmosphere of hysteria that Anatoli had generated gave her the will to run for freedom. I led off down the slope towards the river. This time we abandoned caution and galloped across the open central expanse of the snow-covered garden, the loose horses with us. There were three of them abreast of me, and several more just behind. I could hear their breath and the sound of their hooves on the snow, the iron shoes breaking the crusted surface. The dogs’ barking had taken on a new note. The sounds were wider spread, suggesting they had been released from their cage.
For the first few minutes as we rode down the slope to the frozen river, I was chiefly concerned not to fall off. I had lost one stirrup immediately in the plunging and seething of our start. I lay along the mare’s neck, groping desperately for it with my huge booted foot. Only when I had at last found it could I raise myself from clutching the mane to a more upright position just as Anatoli came up from behind to join me. We were at the river bank. The drop to the frozen water was about three feet. I saw a place where the edge was broken and urged my horse down it. Anatoli followed cautiously. Some of the loose horses behind
us, unguided, leapt over the edge, slithering as they landed, only gripped by the thick layers of snow. I heard the groaning of the ice beneath us and shouted to Anatoli, ‘Keep going, keep going.’ A horse, galloping in front of me, crashed to the ground. Looking down as the mare, driven by terror, jumped the thrashing limbs, I realised it had been shot.
And so we streamed across the Moscow river in a herd of horses, scrambling up the bank on the other side. Their momentum was carrying them onwards and I could see them still careering ahead of us. Others recovering from the terror and mass impetus that had ejected them from the stables were trotting in a bewildered fashion up-river.
I reached the opposite bank before Anatoli and turned to look back. I could see small shapes of dogs descending the garden slope and gesticulating figures by the stables. In the centre of the scene was a little pulse of orange light.
34
I walked into the hotel at nine thirty in the morning, my suit crumpled and filthy, still wearing the guard’s rubber-soled boots, unshaven. However, as sartorial standards in Moscow are not high, I did not feel particularly out of place and I was not challenged by the security men on the entrance. It was only sixteen hours since I had left. It felt like a rupture of weeks.
It was early for Julian to be awake and I half-expected to find her deeply asleep as a physical manifestation of her lack of concern. In fact, she was in her dressing-gown eating breakfast when I entered our room. She looked me over, leaning sideways to be kissed.
‘From your appearance,’ she said, ‘I would say that you’ve spent the night in the sauna.’
‘I have.’
‘I thought that’s what must have happened. I’ve never experienced it, but I’ve heard stories of the banya from Anatoli and Igor. You sit around draped in a towel, sweating like a pig, talking about sex, drinking vodka and eating herring. Then you rush outside into the snow, beating one another with birch twigs. Is that it?’
The Art of Deception Page 24
