Call for Simon Shard

by Philip McCutchan

  “Never mind, I shall tell you the facts.” Bulnakov looked smug, teasing, anticipatory. “We were responsible for this.”

  Shard gave a jerk, stared. “You, Colonel Bulnakov?”

  “We. Our man wrote the number on the letter — after the others had gone. After Comrade Gorukin had died — ”

  “But for — ”

  “A moment.” Bulnakov held up a hand. “I — ”

  “Please, Colonel Bulnakov!” Shard was totally astonished, wondering what craziness this could be. “Why? What was the point? Why deliberately involve Hedge? Did Tuball know this, or didn’t he?”

  Bulnakov smiled. “I cannot answer — yet — for the man Tuball. His intelligence was no doubt good since it was oiled by much, much money. But if on this occasion it told him about what we had done, then he would not, I think, have been happy, since our interest in him would have been finally confirmed. As to Hedge…by Hedge you mean, or anyway I mean, your British Security Service. Yes, I understand your puzzlement, Mr. Shard. Also your puzzlement over the leaving of the drugs. I will try to resolve this by saying…we Russians are chess players, Mr. Shard. This is perhaps a truism, but is worth stressing at this moment. Chess players. One move leads with inevitability to another, and the good chess player — ”

  “Sees the ahead moves?”

  Bulnakov nodded. “To the end of the game, Mr. Shard, to the end of the game! It also helps when one knows one’s opponent, as we know your Hedge. It was so easy to forecast his reaction, his total concern with his reputation.” He shook his head with a curious air of regret. “So often you British, you appoint fools to the high places, vain and foolish men. There is still so much nonsense! If the face, the voice, the clothes, the manner — if these fit, what matters the brain? But to go back: we could assess the moves with a fair degree of accuracy — and we wanted Tuball. We wanted him without having to ask too hard, or too officially, without disturbing the even tenor of diplomacy, of international relationships — without the risk of refusal! Ours was a good way. Broadly, all went as planned here in Moscow. Even the drugs — these were planted on the body, also by our man, as an insurance that your Hedge would be even more anxious, and that the murder — and I repeat it was murder — would not be written off by your police as a simple death that could be quickly forgotten. Mr. Shard, you should learn to play chess. And to know your opponent.” Suddenly, Bulnakov leaned forward, staring at Shard with narrowed eyes. “And your friend.”

  “Friend?”

  “Hedge.”

  “Why Hedge — in this context?”

  “Did I not speak of his total concern with his own reputation, Mr. Shard?”

  “Yes, you did.” Shard’s tone was grim.

  “Now look, Colonel Bulnakov. All your talk about chess…I follow your reasoning, but — ”

  “But would not Hedge, too, have followed it — this is what you mean, is it not, Mr. Shard?”

  “Yes — ”

  “To some extent perhaps he did, Mr. Shard. Perhaps he did! He followed it to the extent of not trusting you, at all events. Perhaps he followed it to the extent of sending you on this mission, rather than use an experienced agent — a point which perhaps you are intelligent enough to have considered already?”

  Shard’s colour deepened a little, but he gave no answer.

  Bulnakov shook his head sadly. “An experienced agent would not have gone, Mr. Shard! An experienced agent would have very greatly discomfited your Hedge in his refusal, in his self-protective questions leading to a refusal. Hedge knew this, so you were chosen. Mr. Shard, you have been, as you would say, let down with a bump.”

  Shard reacted to the tone. “Is there — something else?”

  Again Bulnakov leaned forward. “Only a few seconds before you reached this room, Mr. Shard, I received a report. This report was from the men who had just opened the canister. Mr. Shard, there was no body. Only ballast. This makes us very angry.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  “So what happens now?”

  Shard spoke through a peep-hole to P. V. Krosky. From Bulnakov’s room he had been taken by armed guards to a lift, but not the lift he had used on arrival. A very different lift: one divided into two narrow sections, one for himself, one for the escort. Shard was completely enclosed between steel walls, could not tell which floor he was taken out at. Coming out, he was confronted by P. V. Krosky, plus guards again. He was marched along a corridor. As he was marched along a red light began flashing ahead and he was pushed face first into a recess just before a corner of the corridor, while another little procession passed invisibly the other way. There was a sound of groaning, of someone in much pain, but no footfalls were heard on the thick carpeting. Once the other party had passed by, Shard, cold with a nameless fear, was brought from the recess and marched on.

  He was put in a cell with a padded leather door. The cell was tiny: a metal box, steel-shuttered. No window but a very bright electric light in a recess in the ceiling, behind thick glass. A heavy metal bed, no mattress, one thin blanket, very dirty and smelly. No heating beyond that coming from a short length of steam pipe projecting from one wall. The cold was therefore bitter, terrible. Air came to him through a forced-draught system, a noisy business with a continual background hum. P. V. Krosky answered his question.

  “You will stay here, Comrade Shard.”

  “For God’s sake…how long? Till that corpse turns up again?”

  “I cannot say. Perhaps not so long.”

  “Where will I go from here?”

  “This also I cannot say. Try not to be too worried.” Metal slid across the peephole and P. V. Krosky vanished. No sound of her going away — not on that deadening carpet. He sat on the bed, shivering with the intense cold, his head in his hands. The future didn’t exist anymore: did they ever let anyone go free from the Lubyanka? Charges were easily brought: anything they liked could fit.

  Then a long term of imprisonment, either here or in Siberia or somewhere equally appalling. And Beth? Beth needed him, but he’d be lost to her for years if not for ever. If ever he did get back…maybe he would kill Hedge. A satisfactory thought, one to cling to. Yet even Hedge couldn’t be quite such a bastard. Bulnakov? Putting his own case across — natural, to be expected, but not necessarily to be believed. Hedge — never mind those earlier thoughts — wouldn’t go that far. In Shard’s mind, to sink a man without trace when that man worked for you, you had to be a traitor.

  He wondered what was happening to Tuball: pre-trial interrogation? Tuball, at any rate, had asked for all he got. At the thought of his own interrogation, yet to come — Bulnakov had been only the preliminary — Shard exuded a cold sweat. He had seen men crack; he had often enough been the sledgehammer. But interrogations in Britain, while tough, were not physical tests of survival. The fact that Shard had no specifically useful information to be dug out would only increase the suffering.

  The narrow cell was too small for exercise, indeed for almost any movement except standing and sitting. Shard, when next the peep-hole was opened up from outside, was badly cramped and claustrophobic. The eye that looked through was spectacled, the voice was female: Comrade Krosky again.

  “You are to come with me, Comrade Shard.”

  The door opened: two guards stood there in the corridor, with guns. At one side, Krosky. Shard came out, caught Krosky’s cold look. Maybe she was to be the interrogator: women could be sadistic too. And Krosky looked a bitch.

  No word was said: the way was indicated and Shard turned left behind the armed Russians. Along the corridor, down once again in the lift. Out to a waiting car — out of the Lubyanka, not into Dzerzhinsky Square but into a night-dark side street. In the car, two men, driver and guard. Shard was gestured at gunpoint into the back. He was followed by P. V. Krosky and the two armed men. Krosky’s face inhibited questions. They drove right out of Moscow, heading through snow, into open country eventually. It was a long drive, at least in terms of time: progress, in such conditions, was not
great. They were still on the road when dawn broke, and from the sun Shard realised they were heading west.

  They came to a town.

  For the first time P. V. Krosky broke silence: “Ghatsk,” she said, then looked as though she regretted giving even that much away. Shard fancied she was somewhat on edge: just an impression, and he couldn’t have said why she of all people should be nervy. Nothing else was said and the car went on, slowly, taking a left turn when they were into the town, then a right. In this street they drove through a gateway, an archway, into a square yard, and the car stopped by a door leading into a large house, old and dirty and with crumbling stonework. Shard was ordered out. Under the cover of P. V. Krosky’s own gun, he entered the house, which was dark, cold and silent, with a curious graveyard sort of feel about it. The two armed men from the Lubyanka accompanied them in, and the car with its original occupants drove off.

  P. V. Krosky indicated a door leading off the hall in which they were standing. Shard was reminded of the house near Needingworth, where he had flushed Tuball. This one was as old, as quiet. He went into a room with heavily shuttered windows, with the guards behind him. In this room an oil lamp was burning: a house obviously occupied, though Shard had seen no sign of occupants: P. V. Krosky had used her own key to gain admittance on arrival. The oil lamp was another reminder of the Needingworth house. The room was comfortably furnished in an old-fashioned way: big heavy armchairs, a sofa, a mahogany table to one side. Bookcases lined the walls, and there were pictures, watercolours mostly. Cupboards like gun cupboards were on either side of a big fireplace in which a cheerfully flickering coal fire burnt. Like a gentleman’s study, in an English country house of fifty years before. Warm, homely, lived-in, leisured, with a background of erudition.

  Very curious!

  Shard felt a new surge of alarm. There was too much comfort here: the Russians had their own methods, and they were not always strong-arm at the start. He looked at P. V. Krosky, whose gun was pointed at his stomach: she was probably a first-class shot, and this place wasn’t quite suitable for a break-out attempt in any case. Krosky looked back at him; then away from him towards the waiting armed guards, to whom she gave, in Russian, what was evidently an order to leave them. The men saluted, and withdrew, closing the door behind them. The gun in Comrade Krosky’s hand was very steady. “You drink whisky, Comrade Shard?” she asked surprisingly.

  He stared. “I’ve been known to. Why?”

  “Behind you there is some. You will see a sideboard.”

  He stayed still: he was a policeman, and used to seeing traps — not always too late! “You get it. You’ve got the gun.”

  “I shall not shoot you, Comrade Shard.”

  “Not for moving…for attempting to escape?”

  She shook her head. “No. This I promise.”

  “But why”

  She said, her eyes grossly magnified behind the spectacle lenses, “You are to be well treated. I have myself secured this.”

  “Why?”

  “I have been in the West, Comrade. Britain, America, France. The image of my country is bad still — in many minds. Those who think like I do wish to change this, to show that we are civilised, that we can ask questions, and obtain the answers without cruelty. You will have observed, perhaps, that Comrade Colonel Bulnakov behaved very properly.”

  “His cell didn’t. Do you call that good treatment?”

  “It is in the past.” P. V. Krosky shrugged it off. “Now you are here — ”

  “When do I go back to the Lubyanka — or Siberia?” He set his teeth. “Or — let’s face it — worse?”

  “I have said we are civilised. You must give us time to show this.” She looked at her watch. “Within two hours, so I expect, we shall be joined by Comrade Tuball.”

  “Tuball! Isn’t he due for arraignment before the Supreme Soviet or whatever it is you do — ”

  “Perhaps.” She shrugged. “First, when Tuball comes, we shall chat — ”

  “Ah — I get it now. Pearls of wisdom, let fall unknowingly into your shell-like ears, Comrade Krosky! For my part, I rather think not.”

  “You are willing that your Hedge should do this to you, and you not hit back, Comrade Shard?”

  “Whatever Hedge does…two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  P. V. Krosky smiled. “So British! But we shall see. Please get the whisky now.”

  This time, he did so. He found, in the sideboard, a bottle of John Haig with the seal intact. A soda siphon. He looked round. “You, Comrade Krosky?”

  “No.”

  Shard poured himself a stiff one, took it at a gulp, poured another. It helped quite a lot, he felt steadied. There were cigarettes near the whisky bottle, and, unasked, he took one and bent and lit it at the fire, using a spill from a bone holder on the chimney-piece. He sucked smoke down, greedily, luxuriously.

  “Sit.”

  He sat; so did P. V. Krosky. She sat on one side of the fireplace, he on the other. Very domestic, the squire and his lady, but the lady held the gun. Shard tried to draw her out, taking advantage of what seemed to be her mood of talkativeness, but he failed. Comrade Krosky withdrew into a silent world of watching, and waiting for Tuball. After half an hour Shard sought and was given permission for another whisky. Comrade Krosky still refused a glass: maybe from reasons of virtue, or maybe because she might relax her guard under the influence.

  Two more hours and Tuball came. He was thrust in by the guards from the Lubyanka, roughly: Shard had had better treatment, and the knowledge intrigued him. Tuball’s face and eyes were puffy, and there was a long raised mark on one cheek, as though the flesh had been lashed or rasped or burnt. He was shaking with fear, and the dullness of his eyes showed a total lack of surprise at finding Shard in the room. He cringed, however, from Comrade Krosky: Shard wondered what the woman had done to Tuball, while he, Shard, had been locked in his cell back in Moscow.

  In silence, P. V. Krosky looked at Tuball: looked in a different way from the way she looked at Shard. Shard was the favoured boy: Tuball, she clearly hated. Her face had closed right up, all spectacles and sharp long nose, a magnified glitter set above a goad. Nevertheless, she was trying kindness, politeness, and civilised procedures — even on a killer. Hate apart, she had the earnest look of a woman meaning to stick, like the proverbial cobbler, to her new, and very possibly temporary, last.

  “Sit,” she said to Tuball. This time, with two men to watch, she didn’t dismiss the armed guards: they stayed with their backs to the door, watching Shard and Tuball, eyes flickering from one to the other, guns ready, no chances. P. V. Krosky talked to Tuball in a coldly controlled voice. She talked about killing; about death caused world-wide by Tuball: not about the murders committed by his own hand or by his proxy, but about the deaths caused by his trade in heroin. Shard, with his own personal interest, listened in fascination. It was a strange scene, in that comfortable Russian room, with the fire, and the whisky, and the cigarettes, and P. V. Krosky’s rather monotonous voice digging deep into Tuball’s soul, laying it bare if not clean.

  “So much misery, so much degradation. Is money so important, in your political West?”

  “Yes.” Tuball’s voice was low, beaten. “It’s the system. Without money, you’re nothing.”

  “It has replaced class?”

  “With something worse.” This was Shard, breaking in. “To that extent, I take Tuball’s point.”

  “But no farther, Comrade Shard?”

  “No farther! This is personal. I lost a brother, you see.”

  “Because of drugs?”

  “Yes. Ultimately — heroin.”

  “Because of Tuball?”

  Shard said, “No. Not directly. Oh, it could have been, of course. It could have come from Tuball’s bloody little empire, some of it. I try not to think about that, Comrade Krosky.”

  “Because you are an honest man, and just, and conscientious?”

  He smiled. “Am I that?”

  �
�I think you are. You would disdain bias and injustice. So do we in Russia.

  We have a strong sense of justice — fitting justice. I also am involved personally.”

  At first, such was the calm, controlled monotony of P. V. Krosky’s voice, a voice that used no highlighting at all, Shard missed the significance of her last remark. Then, seeing the way Tuball suddenly looked at her, looked with fresh fear in his haunted face, Shard felt a heightening of tension. He asked, “Involved…in what way, Comrade Krosky?”

  “The same as you. You lost a brother, I a sister. Not from drugs directly, but from an act of Tuball’s.”

  “The one he killed here in Russia?”

  “No, no! You have every excuse for not realising. There is no resemblance. I am the ugly duckling, you see! But my name…I married Krosky, Comrade Shard — but I was born Gorukin.”

  *

  Tanya’s sister: Shard’s mind went to that poor, half burned, ice-packed corpse in the canister, now empty. A very personal interest! Tuball’s reaction had been to jump to his feet, propelled by new fear to something desperate, but he hadn’t moved a step towards P. V. Krosky before the guards were on him. A blow at the base of the neck, a rifle-butt in the kidney region and another in the mouth, disposed for the time being of Tuball. Bleeding and unconscious, he was dragged from the room on Comrade Krosky’s order. When he had gone, and they were alone again, Shard saw tears in P. V. Krosky’s eyes, a startling and unexpected sight.

  “You were fond of your sister, Comrade Krosky.”

  “And you of your brother.”

  Shard nodded.

  “I am, perhaps, not as conscientious as you, Comrade Shard.” There was some subtle intent, some obscure meaning in her words: Shard caught the inflexion, full of inference.

  He looked at her narrowly and said, “You’ll have to explain — words of one syllable and all that. I’m not going to stick my neck out — not in Russia!”

  “Yes, I understand. I shall do the talking. It is my responsibility. I shall ask for your co-operation. I shall trust you.”