The Sinkiang Executive q-8

by Adam Hall

  Behind me the whole convoy of trucks had begun moving off, their lights swinging across the slope of the embankment in a sparkling wash as they accelerated nose to tail, their rear lamps farming a ruby chain that lost size and definition as they rolled towards the signal-box. Nearer and half-concealed by the structure of the bridge the flares were burning low. The deadline was close but there was nothing I could do so I turned again to face the south-west and for the first time saw a gleam of light below the horizon and heard the constant tremble of sound that was coming into the land.

  The signal was behind me, a hundred yards down the track, and I didn’t need to watch it because I’d hear the levers if they moved, and the weight of the arm coming down. The rumbling of the army transports had died away, with the tramp of the soldiers’ boots along the track. Time was taking over and the last few minutes were running out: the flares were burning low and when they finally guttered there would be only the signal left to stop the tram. But if the military reported the line clear then the signal would change and the train would go through and I’d stand here watching it as it carried Gorodok to the trap.

  Over the minutes the earth began shaking under my feet and I saw the great length of the train cutting into the snowscape, its lights brightening until I could make out the separate carriages. When I turned round I saw that two of the flares had burned out and a third was guttering, but the signal was still at red and for a moment I watched it, and then looked back at the train as it began slowing.

  It was already nearing the bridge and I heard the steam shutting down and the brake-shoes clamping against the wheels as a short blast came from the whistle. Ten seconds later the locomotive passed me and I turned my back on the wave of air and smoke as it swept the surface snow from the bridge and whirled it away in clouds. I couldn’t see the signal any more but the brakes were still on and the carriages passing so slowly now that I could see people’s faces in the dim yellowish light. The guard’s van was across the bridge and I stayed in cover, seeing one of the army trucks coming back along the service road, its headlamps dipping and lifting over the bumps. The signal was still at red and a minute later the train rolled to a stop, with faces coming to the windows to peer at the flares.

  A guard swung down from the rear van, bringing a lantern, and from farther along the train a man called to him. In the headlights of an army truck I could see one of the locomotive crew coming down from the foot plate He went forward along the track, looking around him and then turning back as an officer shouted to him. I couldn’t hear what was said.

  I began looking for Gorodok.

  Two more transports were moving back in this direction, their headlights making a glare below the embankment, and I moved deeper into the cover of the bridge. Two people were dropping from the train about half-way along, to stand looking around them. There were only three flares still burning now, and the signal was still at red. More passengers were getting down to see what was happening: from Tashkent to Yelingrad is a thousand miles and there are only two stops, at Frunze and Alma Ata; passengers are glad enough to get out and stretch their legs, even at the risk of freezing. A score of people were wandering along the edge of the track, clumping their feet in the snow and pointing to the military convoy below them.

  I moved to the other side of the bridge: Gorodok would have a better chance to break for cover there, unless he decided to mingle with the passengers and soldiers before melting into the half-dark. I could see a dozen people on this side, two of them walking at a distance from the train before a guard called them back.

  There was nothing I could do for the courier: I couldn’t recognize him and I couldn’t break cover to go and meet him. The rdv was for the south end of the Litsky Bridge and this was where he had to come. A group of passengers had started walking alongside the train, three or four of them stooping to make snowballs and throwing them at the others: they looked like a party of young people, and a guard was going along to bring them back. Two soldiers were on this side now, with an officer, and the guard went up and spoke to him, gesturing at the passengers who were wandering about.

  I watched for Gorodok, for one man on the move by himself.

  There was no one.

  It was the guard at the rear who saw the signal change to green, and he at once blew his whistle, climbing to the step of the van and swinging his lantern. Shouting started along the train and another whistle blew. Some of the groups broke up and began hurrying in a single line alongside the carriages and it was then that I saw a man move away from the people on the service-road side of the train and duck below it, coming out on the other side and beginning to hurry. Someone shouted — one of the soldiers, I thought at first — but he didn’t stop or turn round. A transport still had its lights on and there was a glare below the train, with silhouettes and shadows intermingling, so that I couldn’t see clearly what was going on.

  Farther to the right of the bridge was a mass of low scrub, humped under the snow, and the man seemed to be heading for it now as he passed a group of passengers and veered to his left, breaking into a trot. There was another shout but I couldn’t tell where it came from: the guards were trying to get everyone back on board and their whistles were still blowing. The last flare had gone out and the signal was still at green.

  The man broke away now and began running harder, stumbling through the snow and falling once, then getting up and going on until the first shot cracked and the whole scene froze, with people standing perfectly still, their heads turned to watch the running man. The shot had only checked him and he was going hard now with his legs splaying out as he tried to keep his footing on the snow, his coat open and napping and his hands out in case he went down. When the second shot came I saw who was firing: a man in a dark coat hanging on to a rail at the side of the train, aiming his pistol high and shouting to Gorodok before he fired again.

  Two other men were breaking away from the train and going in pursuit, shouting for the fugitive to stop, but they hadn’t gone very far before I saw a rifle swing up and bang out a shot aimed low at Gorodok — and now I could see what was happening, and what was going to happen: the civilian in the dark coat was either an escort or a surveillance agent and he knew who the running man was. The soldier was some peasant trained to handle firearms and he’d decided to get himself a tin medal and feel the thrill of taking a life, and when a second soldier brought his rifle up and loosed off a round it was because he was excited: there were officials shouting and the hunt was up and they couldn’t get their prey and the military was here and must not be found unequal to its proud duty, so forth, and there was nothing anyone could do about it now because it was like a fire taking hold as three more soldiers jostled into line and went down on one knee and brought their rifles to the aim and put out a fusillade of shots and reloaded, taking their time.

  Smith, Jones, Robinson, Brown, his name didn’t matter: he was a man running in the night, one of the countless men who must one day, for their own reasons, run from what they have done or from what they have been or from the life they have made for themselves, and made badly, so that eventually it will turn on them and hound them to their death.

  Another fusillade and he pitched over with his coat flapping like a wing and one hand going up as if he wanted to signal something to us all as he fell and the snow covered him.

  Chapter Fifteen: KIRINSKI

  The little man stood at the top of the monument with snow on his head and his mouth in a shout and his fist raised, for a moment bearing aloft the great red disc of the sun as it travelled through the noon, low in the south. The early fog still lay across the city, half covering the nearer buildings and making them look insubstantial, as if the little man were shouting that the show was over and the scenery must go.

  There was nobody else in the park.

  Ten minutes ago a dog had come racing through the lean dark trunks of the trees, following some scent and then losing it and looking around in frustration before it pissed against a
tree and trotted along the soot-black railings and disappeared, a clown too late for an audience. A clock chimed, then another, their notes muffled in the chill. The scene was a steel engraving, snow-white and frost-grey and silvered by the light in the sky, with only the deep red sun for colour. Everything was frozen: the trees were made of ice and looked as if they’d snap off if you shook them.

  He came punctually and I moved my head to watch the three entrances to the park where the open gates made gaps I in the railings and the hedge. The streets were hidden except in these three places; I couldn’t see any vehicles out there, or anyone walking. Twice in the last half hour I’d heard a bus go past on the other side of the long north fence, the second one stopping not far from where I was standing now. This was a few minutes before he’d come into the park, his black fur hat set straight on his head and his hands dug into the pockets of his short paramilitary jacket. He walked fast, leaning backwards slightly with his black knee-boots kicking up the snow, his thin pointed face turning to left and right as if, like the dog, he’d lost his way.

  Nearing the monument he stopped to look up at Lenin for a moment and then marched on again, taking a paper bag from his pocket and tossing crumbs around him, stopping again to watch the birds as they came down, dipping and wheeling from the stark black boughs. I’d seen quite a few dead sparrows on the snow when I’d come here; it was below freezing again today and there was no food for them.

  I was standing between the hedge and the dark green hut where the gardeners kept their tools, and I’d come here from cover to cover and with great care, because there were windows overlooking the place. It had taken me nearly an hour and I was satisfied, having covered the last fifty yards through a tunnel formed between the hedge and the north fence. For the man to see me he must come quite close; for me to see him I only had to look through the leaves. He might not, of course, be Kirinski.

  Just before midnight I had telephoned Chechevitsin, telling him that the inspector of mines had met with a fatal accident on his way to the engineers’ symposium, and unfortunately had not been able to study the material. This morning I had gone to the library to photocopy the Kirinski material and then to the consignee at Central Station and left the films there, taking thirty minutes to survey and effect security. The whole place had become a red alert area and I could not live peaceably among the good citizens of Yelingrad for weeks or longer if I had to: the opposition had been on to Gorodok and I’d come close to walking straight into a trap at the station and I could walk into one now when I left cover unless I was very careful The only bit of luck we’d had was last night out there in the snow: the KGB people would have brought that courier in alive for interrogation if it hadn’t been for those young clods in the army; it was typical soldier mentality — they’d pop one off at a bloody mouse if they saw one, just to feel that sexy hairspring flexing under the trigger, bang and you’re dead. But they’d stopped the rot because no one would get a word out of Gorodok now.

  Two girls came into the park from the opposite end and walked arm in arm along the curving path with their heads down and their hands tucked into their sleeves. As they came along the railings I could hear their voices in the still winter air: one of them had been reprimanded by the factory manager for not reporting a jammed lathe a week ago … the same as Misha when she… but a serious matter if… her father to intercede… managers take them… fading away and I checked the man feeding the birds and then went a short distance along the fence and used a crack in the boards and saw them crossing the street and going into a cafe just past the first corner, fair enough, the park was a short cut for them.

  When I came back I saw that he’d crumpled the paper bag into a ball and dropped it into the wire basket that sagged from its rusted support near the monument. Some of the birds flew up as he passed close to them, then settled again to squabble murderously over the crumbs. He was walking quickly round the frozen surface of the pond with that odd backward-leaning gait of his, and soon he passed the monument again and came towards the hut, keeping to the path between the wire hoops and for the first time looking at his watch. His face was raw with the cold and his eyes were watering as they glanced restlessly across the hedgerow and the open gates. His thin jutting nose moved like a pointer, and several times he seemed about to leave the park, but each time decided to stay.

  Even his smallest movements had an intensity that gave them a false significance: when he pulled his raw red hand from its pocket to blow his nose I could have believed he was bringing out a gun instead of a handkerchief. He was so close now that I went into deeper cover, losing sight of him; but I could hear him moving, his boots kicking at the snow and his breath coming sharply as if the cold air was painful to inhale. He had stopped now, and there was a short silence until he began stamping his feet and letting out his breath in brief little puffs, until I had the feeling I was listening to an animal in the wilds of the countryside. I thought I heard a sound coming from his throat, a kind of low tuneless humming, but wasn’t sure; it could have been just that he found breathing painful at this temperature. The first clock chimed the quarter and he moved off again at once, his boots thudding along the path; and I went back to the gap in the hedge to watch him. He was impatient now, but stayed close to the monument, standing for a time underneath it and moving away to a distant point and looking back at it. It was nearly an hour before he gave up and left the park.

  By this time my feet were numb and I slipped twice on the snow as I left cover and took up the tag at long distance. He walked quickly, passing two bars where he could have used a phone. Five people passed him and he spoke to none of them. Soon after leaving the park he crossed the street and made north for one block, walking past the Trabant that I’d left parked between an army staff car and a van with plain sides. A minute later he turned suddenly and went into a small restaurant with steamy windows and a chipped sign picturing a pig hanging above the doorway.

  The heat hit me as I followed him in and took the stool next to him at the counter.

  “A bowl of solyanka,” he told the woman.

  “The same for me,” I said, and waited until she’d gone to the hatchway before I spoke again. “I suppose you thought I wasn’t coming.”

  His whole body jerked as he swung his head to look at me.

  “She told you I’d be alone,” he said softly and fiercely, his boot scraping on the rung of the stool as he twisted farther round to study me. His teeth were chattering as he blew into his hands but his eyes locked their gaze on me, angry and apprehensive.

  “No,” I said, “she didn’t. And if she had, d’you think I’d believe her?”

  He took a long breath and sagged suddenly, as if the anxiety of the past hour had been too much. But even now the tension in him remained, an inner shaking of nerves that he couldn’t stop.

  Tell me your name,” he said suddenly, looking down. God knows why he asked me that; perhaps it occurred to him that this was just a crazy coincidence and I wasn’t the man he was meant to meet.

  “Rashidov,” I told him.

  Another breath went out of him. “Kirinski.”

  “Turned out rather cold today,” I said because the fat woman was back with our bowls of soup, putting them down and brushing her wispy hair away from her face where it was sticking to the sweat: this place was more like a sauna bath than an eating-house.

  We spooned our soup without talking. There was a phone at the end of the counter and I pushed my bowl away before he did and excused myself and went through the curtains at the rear and into the first cubicle, standing on the seat and finding a gap between the curtain rail and the bedraggled Christmas decorations that gave me a narrow field of vision that took in the top of his head. I let him have three minutes but he didn’t leave the stool so I went back and got some money out and put it on to the counter and said we were going.

  After the heat of the restaurant the air was like cold water thrown in our faces and his teeth began chattering again as I took him
half-way down the block and opened up the Trabant and got started, driving north and parallel with the Gromyko Prospekt for half a mile and turning across the waste ground alongside the railway lines with the mirror perfectly clear the whole way. There was a rubbish dump in the far corner and I turned the car and backed up and stopped with the rear against the fence and a good view through the windscreen.

  “This stuff,” I said and reached under the seat, ‘ought to be kept somewhere safe. Where the hell did they train you?”

  He swung his sharp head at me. “Who do you work for?”

  “That’s none of your bloody business.” I was sorting it out, putting some of it back into the envelope: I was going to hang on to the gammas and the Monome-Dinome tables because I might conceivably pick up some kind of signal in somebody else’s hands before he could warn his base. The cypher drafts were no use but everything else looked interesting, even some of the airfield dispositions with the Chinese hieroglyphs because those bastards in London weren’t going to spring me and I’d have to try anything that came along.

  “Have you got a pencil?” I asked him and he felt for one in his jacket and I hit the end of the barrel so fast that it almost broke his wrist because he cried out and went dead white and had to double up so as not to be sick while I opened the Walther and dropped the magazine out and threw it under the seat and lobbed the gun into the back of the car and spread out the top map in the Russian material and got out my felt pen.