The Kremlin Device

by Chris Ryan

  I ran up the steps of the barrack block in some trepidation, but again I was in luck. The guys had eaten supper early and gone out again to run a night exercise. Only the two scalies were in residence. I had a word with them, and said I'd be back later.

  Then it was just a matter of collecting basic essentials from the caving kit: wire ladder, head-torch and bolt cutters, plus a towel, sweater and spare padlocks from my own locker.

  In fifteen minutes we were heading back into town, down the all-too-familiar Shosse Entusiastov, past the scene of the fatal ambush. As we went by, I twisted to my left in an attempt to pinpoint the spot. Yes there was the wooden hut the Mafia had used as a decoy GAl station.

  Going against the flow of traffic, we reached the centre of Moscow in thirty-five minutes. Sergei must have been curious about what I was doing, but he had the sense or the good manners not to enquire. I asked him to head for Sofleskaya Quay, and got him to drop me a hundred metres short of the churchyard gateway, at a point where an alleyway ran back between two houses.

  "Half an hour, back here," I said.

  "Is good." He peered at his watch.

  "Now seven-thirty. Back eight o'clock?"

  "Tochno. See you then."

  I was confident he'd return, because so far I'd paid him nothing, and I liked him the more for not having demanded the first instalment of his fee at half-time.

  I walked a few steps down the alleyway and waited till I heard the car move off. Then I came back on to the embankment and hurried to the gateway.

  Now, early in the evening, lights were on all over the convent building. Scarcely had I entered the yard when two women came walking towards me; but they passed without giving me a look, and a couple of seconds later I was safe in the pitch blackness of the old stable.

  The bolt-cutters gave me sickening thoughts of Toad, but they did their work in a trice. I lifted the cover of the shaft, secured the top wires of the caving ladder round the hinges, and threw the rest of it down. Because of the wires, I couldn't close the cover while I was underground, but that was a risk I had to take.

  Down in the tunnel the smell was exactly as I remembered it:

  damp, slime, decay. Of course I was scared but in my experience the best way to hold fear at bay is to keep moving, so I hurried forward towards the river, anxious to discover if the water level was up or down. It was up. It was within three or four inches of the arched roof. Jesus! I should have brought a mask and dry-suit.

  Too late now. At the top of the slope I stripped off my clothes and left them in a heap on top of my shoes. Then, with the headlamp back on and the bolt-cutters in my right hand, I waded into the black flood.

  The water was cold as ice. I gasped as it reached my crotch, but strode forward hard in an attempt to keep my blood moving.

  Quickly my whole body became submersed. I made paddling movements with my hands to speed my progress. Soon I was up to my neck, then up to my chin. Down came the roof, down, down. I reached the point at which, with the top of my head touching the bricks, my mouth was under water and my nose just entering it. From now on the only way I could breathe was by tilting my head back and turning my face upwards in the narrow airspace. To do that I had to push the headlamp on to the back of my head so that it didn't foul the roof.

  I took a deep breath, ducked under and drove forward, five steps, ten. Desperate for oxygen, I came up in that peculiar attitude, hit the roof with the headlamp, pushed it back, gasped in a breath and inadvertently got half a mouthful of filthy liquid.

  When I choked explosively, all the grot flew upwards and came back down in my face. The setback left me gasping. For a few seconds I fought panic. Keep still! I told myself. Get yourself together.

  With my mouth shut, I took in some air through my nose.

  Then to my dismay I realised that in going for the headlamp I'd dropped the shears. I felt around with my bare feet. No contact.

  Had I moved forward a short distance while struggling for air? I shuffled back a few inches and felt around again. Still nothing.

  The cold was getting to me. I could feel my legs starting to go numb. If you piss about here any longer, you're going to get cramp and bloody drown yourself, I thought. Leave the damned things. You can manage without them.

  I waded on. Then, after one more stop for air, the water level began to drop. My head came clear: once again I could walk and breathe normally.

  I came out of the flood shuddering, adjusted the lamp with shaking hands, and ran naked the last few yards to the site.

  Everything was as we'd left it. Scrabbling with chilled fingers, I dug away some of the spoil under which we'd buried Apple, until I came to the co-ax cables leading down from the SCR. I remembered how carefully Toad had connected them up, tightening nuts with his special spanners. Now I took hold of one in both hands and gave a big wrench. The cable held. I cleared more of it, right down to its junction with the black case, and heaved again, so hard that the whole device shifted, and pieces of spoil tumbled down the front of the heap.

  Again I was on the verge of panic. Nothing on earth would persuade me to go back and search for the bolt-cutters again.

  One last effort: a colossal jerk, and away the cable came, so suddenly that I hurtled back into the far wall of the tunnel, grazing my right shoulder.

  I stood shaking, more from fright now than from cold. At least the effort of struggling with the cable had warmed me up.

  "Right, you fucker," I said out loud to the bomb.

  "That's you knackered."

  Into the water again. This time the same breathing technique got me through without swallowing any sludge. By sod's law, I expected to tread on the bolt-cutters, now that I no longer needed them, but I missed them again. Back at my clothes, I looked at my watch and found I had ten minutes to make the rendezvous. I towelled off furiously, got dressed, stuffed the sodden towel into my day-sack and hauled myself up the ladder, pausing with my head out the top of the shaft to make sure that everything was clear. Finally I slipped two new padlocks into position, wrapped the old ones in the towel, and crept out of the courtyard into the street.

  The wide embankment was clear of cars and pedestrians. I nipped across the road, threw the old locks into the river, and hurried back to the far pavement. I was still walking towards the mouth of the alleyway when Sergei's car came towards me; but by then I was a safe distance from the church.

  All the way back to Balashika I was uncomfortably aware that I stank like a sewer rat. But Sergei made no comment, and when I paid him off at the barrack gate I gave him twenty dollars over the odds, so that he went off in high good humour.

  My own schedule was tight, but possible. The lads were still out on their night exercise, so there was no need for explanations. My first date with Anna had gone down the tubes;

  but under our new arrangement she had agreed to pick me up at 8:45, 50 I just had time for a shower. One hell of a shower it had.

  to be, too. I washed my hair twice to get rid of the smell, and as I scoured myself all over, I felt my spirits lifting.

  The worst part of the evening was over. What lay ahead I wasn't sure, but at least there was a promise of some action and excitement.

  Comfortable in clean clothes, I again left word with the scalies and headed for the guardroom. I'd asked Anna not to drive in,

  in case any of the lads saw her and started taking the piss, and I found her sitting outside at the wheel of her little blue Fiat. As I climbed into the passenger seat I got a kiss on the cheek and a waft of heady scent not the cheap rubbish that the slappers at the hotel had been doused in, but something sophisticated and Western. In the dim light I couldn't see exactly what she was wearing, except that it was a trouser suit. She had a big fur coat thrown back off her shoulders, over the seat.

  "Great to see you!" I went.

  "Great of you to come. Where are we going?"

  "A restaurant called the Taiga." She turned and gave me a peculiar look, not quite mocking, but definitely
amused.

  "That's not your kind of tiger, by the way." She spelled the word out and said, "It means the forest in Siberia, the wild forest. The restaurant's only a small place. No tourists ever go there. But it has proper Russian food."

  "Sounds good," I said.

  "In fact, it sounds tremendous. I haven't eaten all day."

  "Well," she said, as she zipped through the gears, 'tell me the story.

  "Sasha must have told you already."

  "He has. But I want to hear your version."

  "You will. But I won't bore you with it yet. Wait till we get there. I need a drink to get me going."

  "All right. It's not far."

  Once again we sped down that damned road, then cut away through the northern edge of the city. I complimented her on the car, on her driving, on her clothes (even though I couldn't see them) anything to avoid plunging into the saga, because I was afraid that once I'd started, everything would come out.

  My mind was whirling as Anna pulled up in a scruffy sidestreet.

  "Here we are," she announced.

  A small, red sign proclaiming TAIGA glowed faintly above a battered wooden door. If you hadn't known what the place was you'd never have given it a second glance. But inside it was like a forest growing in a cave: real tree-trunks, some birch, some pine, divided up little cubicles from each other, and the ceiling was a riot of branches. The air was warm and full of a wonderfully rich, meaty smell.

  The waiters were dressed in forest green. From the way one of them sprang forward to take Anna's coat, I saw that she was a star guest. Another man showed us straight to a table in a corner cubicle: he ushered Anna into her chair and held a brief conversation as he poured out two glasses of vodka from a bottle already sitting in an ice-bucket on the table. That was apparently all the ordering she needed to do: no question of menu or wine list.

  She raised her glass and said, "Pc yekhali!"

  "What's that?"

  "It means "Bottoms up" when you're drinking vodka. It's what Gagarin said when he was about to go into space "Let's get moving."

  "Pc yekhali, then." I clinked my glass on hers, and we both drank. Now I saw that her suit was made of turquoise shot-silk, and that she was wearing a pearl necklace. For the first time since I'd met her, she'd put on visible make-up not much, but enough to accentuate her good features. She had darkened her eyebrows slightly, which made her eyes look bigger, and a touch of lipstick made her mouth seem more generous. She'd washed her hair, too, and done it so that it stood up in a shiny black curve above her forehead.

  "Have some caviar," she said.

  "It's the best thing with vodka."

  She took the lid off a white pot cradled in a bed of ice, revealing a nest of shiny black eggs underneath. At that moment a waiter arrived with a dish of hot toast wrapped in a napkin.

  "Please!" she said.

  "Dig in. Is that the right expression?"

  "Spot on!" I dug deep with a teaspoon, and heaped caviar on to the toast the best mouthful I'd ever eaten. More vodka, more caviar. She too seemed hungry, eating and drinking level with me. I don't usually pay much attention to food, but the salty fish eggs and ice-cold spirit were such a combination that for a few minutes I really had to concentrate on my taste buds.

  "Don't overdo it," Anna said presently, again with that amused glint in her eyes.

  "There are other things coming Siberian specialities

  "Why all this Siberia suddenly?"

  "That's where I come from."

  "Really!" I looked at her with new interest.

  "Tell me."

  She began to talk, quite fast, about how she'd been born in a village called Charysh, three thousand kilometres east of Moscow, in the Altai mountains a primitive community, without electricity in those days, and most of the houses made of wood. Her family had been dirt-poor, but her father was the local schoolmaster, and when Anna had showed intellectual promise at the age of nine, he'd sent her to live with an aunt and uncle in the capital so that she could get a better education.

  The waiter brought us hot plates and a bowl from which steam rose in clouds, but Anna was so immersed in her narrative that she didn't immediately notice. Then, breaking out of her reverie, she said, "Look! Pilmeni dumplings with spiced meat. And this is special cabbage, cooked with walnuts."

  She helped herself and started to eat, but in a vague manner, not focusing on the delicious food. Her mind was out in the mountains and forests, and on she went, talking, talking, as she recalled how the River Charysh froze over in winter, so thick that army trucks could drive across it, and how, when the snow came, it would blanket the land a metre deep for four or five months on end.

  Red wine had appeared on the table. I drank some, and kept eating. The little dumplings were irresistible. I lost count of the number I put away as I listened to her stories, fascinated to see a different, softer, more vulnerable person emerging from the tough chrysalis which was all I'd known so far.

  Soothing taped music was playing, no more than a gentle background drone. But suddenly, as a new song started, Anna gave a twitch and cried, "Oh! This one I love." With a flick of the hand she bade one of the waiters turn up the volume, and the sound swelled into that of a male-voice choir, with a single, clear tenor reaching high above a groundswell of sonorous basses.

  To my amazement, I saw her eyes fill with tears. For my benefit she began to translate the story, speaking low and fast as each haunting phrase of the song came to an end.

  "A man is running through the taiga .. . He follows the tracks of wild animals... A storm is blowing... His way is long.. . Hide him in your breast, dark taiga .. . Far away he has left his native land, his mother, his wife and children .. . He will die in a foreign land and be buried there.. . His wife will find someone else .. . But his mother will never find another son.

  By the end, the tears were rolling down her cheeks. I reached over and covered her hand with mine. She looked up, smiled and gave a great shudder. Then she brought out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

  "I'm sorry. The song is very sad."

  "I could hear that."

  "It reminds me of many things."

  "Anna," I said instinctively.

  "Why have you never married?"

  The question seemed to jerk her back to the present. She raised her eyebrows and said, "Married? I am married. My son is ten years old."

  I stared at her in amazement.

  "You never told me.

  "Why should I?" She looked amused again.

  "That's nothing to do with my professional career.

  "No, but.. . Where is your husband?"

  "In Petersburg. He manages a bank there. We drifted apart years back."

  "And your son?"

  "Mitya? He's at school here in Moscow. He lives mostly with his aunt, my sister."

  "Where's he tonight?"

  "Who?"

  "Mitya."

  "With his aunt."

  "And your husband?"

  "In the north."

  She was looking at me steadily.

  "Geordie," she said.

  "I've sent a message to your people at Balashika to say you'll be there in the morning. You're coming back to my apartment, to spend the night with me.

  "Fantastic!" I took a deep breath. These revelations seemed to be the cue for me to open up. God knows what it was that made me decide to confess. Now that I'd disconnected Apple, there was no need or logical reason to reveal anything. Yet I knew in my heart that I had to do it. Otherwise, my conscience would never let me rest. It wasn't as if I'd reached this conclusion under the influence of alcohol: all this I'd worked out earlier, when I was stone-cold sober.

  "Listen," I said, looking round our little cubicle.

  "I don't suppose the KGB have got this place bugged."

  "Of course not!" She grinned mischievously.

  "You're probably the first foreigner that's ever come here. It wouldn't be worth their while."

  "Then I've got some
thing to tell you.

  In the next few minutes I went overboard. I dived in headlong and told her all I knew about Apple and Orange. My mind was moving at incredible speed. I was vaguely aware of waiters removing plates and bringing tea, but I ignored them and rattled on, spilling secrets left and right. Even as I talked, I knew I was betraying my mates, the Regiment, my country, and that I was probably bringing my career in the army to a rapid end. But the accumulation of guilt had become too great to bear, and the act of freeing myself from it brought a feeling of fantastic liberation.

  I finished on a high, amazed at my seW but exhilarated.

  Throughout my performance Anna had watched me as if half hypnotised She kept absolutely still, with her eyes fixed on me;

  yet after a while I realised that she was registering neither surprise nor anger. As before, her predominant expression was one of faint amusement.

  When finally I came to a halt, she said, "You need some cognac," and signalled to the waiter, who brought two small glasses and a bottle.

  "Armenian brandy," Anna announced.

  "Your famous Prime Minister used to say it was the best."

  "Tony Blair?"

  "Don't be ridiculous! Winston Churchill. Cheers!"

  We clinked glasses, and I drained mine straight down.

  "Aren't you furious with me?" I asked.

  "Why should I be?"

  "For having double-crossed you all this time."

  "You weren't being very clever about it."

  "You mean you knew what we were doing?"

  "Not exactly. But we knew you had some secret agenda."

  "How?"

  "Every time you went to the Embassy you were followed."

  "Jesus! But not into the churchyard?"

  She shook her head.

  "We lost you there."

  "What about that time we went up to the university and we got chased?"

  "Those were some of our people."

  "Were they hurt?"

  "One was killed."

  "I'm sorry.

  I poured myself some more brandy.

  "But when the bomb was lifted that wasn't you?"

  "No that was the Mafia all right. But Geordie the Americans will realise that Apple isn't responding to signals. In fact, they must already know something's wrong. What if you get an order tomorrow, telling you to go down and check the device?"