by Hugh McLeave
“Russia’s a strange place, general. A broken idol might just set all those people moving who have never lost their faith.”
“Wishful thinking,” Agarov murmured. “Like the rest of your little drama.” He rose, glancing at his watch. “I like my own scenario better. I think you’ll come round to our way of thinking, scrap this nonsensical story and accept a part in the one I’ve written.”
“In two days it isn’t possible.”
“Perhaps I can help you.” Agarov made for the door, but turned as though he had suddenly remembered something. “By the way, since you’re on the sick list, we’re permitting you the special privilege of a visit. You’d better make the most of it.”
When Agarov had gone, I took stock of the room. Above my bed, a panel bristled with electric plug sockets and bayonet sockets for oxygen. That, the intravenous drip in my arm and the steel-framed bed told me I had the rare honor of a private room in Lubyanka hospital.
Since I also had a wash-basin and a lavatory bowl, I assumed it was part of the staff ward and nothing to do with the unfortunate men and women in the dungeons and prison cells. My eye traced out the walls and ceilings; if they were eavesdropping, they did not seem to have equipped the place with a spy TV camera. A carafe of water and glass stood on the bedside table, and though thirsty, I did not touch it. They might have drugged it. And the drip going into my arm. Agarov said I had been here two days and who knew what drugs they had fed me during that time, or what I had divulged in my coma.
Lifting the adhesive tape, I pulled out the catheter needle, dropping it into the carafe to drip while staunching the bleeding vein with my finger. I got up and padded across to the wash-basin, returning with the soap which I used to plug the catheter needle. I poured away half the drip bottle solution and all the carafe water, replacing it with tap water.
From the window I could look down into the deep courtyard well about eighty feet below. A few cars were parked there. I was on the top floor of the building just under the flat roof which sometimes did duty as an exercise yard for certain political prisoners. I taped the blocked needle on to my arm and got back into bed.
I had no watch, but the sun had climbed since I opened my eyes, so it must be morning. Anyway, half an hour later, I heard what sounded like the Spassky Tower carillon then ten o’clock chiming. I felt light-headed and slightly dizzy, probably because I had eaten nothing solid for a week. However, just after eleven o’clock rang out, an orderly brought in a tray with pea-soup, potatoes and mince and ice-cream. He was obviously a KGB man, for he checked the drip bottle and took the carafe away to refill it. Left on my own, I ate slowly, taking more than an hour for that small meal, masticating and tasting every mouthful carefully in case it had the bitter tang of barbiturate or some other drug.
It puzzled me that Agarov was showing so much concern for my welfare. I still refused the tea and coffee which they could too easily dope. When the orderly had collected the tray, I tip-toed over to try the door. It was locked. For half an hour, I searched the room for hidden devices, peering in the clothes locker, under the table and washbasin and behind the instrument board over my bed. I found nothing, but I assured myself that had they bugged the room, Agarov with his long experience would have discovered the devices.
Although I intended to keep awake, I must have dozed off, for I opened my eyes when someone shook me, gently. For a moment I thought I was dreaming when I recognized the tall, slender figure bending over me then bringing her face over to kiss me on the lips.
It was Larissa.
“So, they caught you,” I mumbled.
“The day after we parted company.” She spoke in a whisper, slow-voiced. I made her move her chair round the bed so that the light fell on her. Her face looked tired, taut; her violet eyes had retracted into her skull. I guessed they had given her the same treatment as myself, some female Makurin route-marching her round a solitary cell, then half-drowning her. People only a heart-beat from death perhaps have that remote look Larissa gave me. But that expression stamped her face with another sort of attraction, another character for me. I put out my hand and she grasped it. Hers felt cold, fragile. And yet I felt stronger holding it.
“Alan, you look half-dead.”
“A week in Lubyanka’s no holiday.” I tried to grin.
She put a finger to her mouth then pointed to the panel, the light, the steel cupboard. I whispered I had looked and found nothing. She bent forward to kiss me and whisper, “They may be watching from across the courtyard and I’m sure they’ve planted microphones somewhere. Watch what you say.” When she moved back, she said in her normal voice, “Why didn’t you go to the embassy and get out by claiming diplomatic immunity?”
“And leave you and the others to the mercy of the KGB. They’d have put you away for life.”
“No,” she said. “I think General Agarov would be prepared to exercise leniency if we pleaded guilty.”
“Pleaded guilty to what?”
“Espionage,” she said. “General Agarov says he does not wish to try us for breaking into the mausoleum, for this would create a scandal throughout the Communist world.”
“Not only the Communist world.”
Larissa ignored the comment. “But he has to persuade you to sign a confession that you were spying for the British and recruiting all the others to spy.”
“What does that mean—all the others have been forced to sign these phony confessions?”
She nodded. “Raya has signed, and Anastas and Vanya. I have been shown their confessions.”
“You can forget about Vanya. He was their stooge, and he may even be a full member of the KGB.” She listened while I explained how I had tricked Agarov into revealing Vanya’s role. A smile played over her face before it turned solemn, as though my disclosure about Vanya’s treachery had answered questions that had troubled her. “And you, Larissa,” I went on. “Have you signed a confession saying I organized a spy ring inside the Soviet Union, recruited you and persuaded you and the five others to spy for the British?”
“Alan, you must understand…”
“It’s dawning slowly on me after all this time,” I said, bitterly.
“But Alan, we’ve been promised we’ll all get very light sentences.”
“Ten years instead of twenty, is that it?”
She shook her head. “General Agarov says no more than five years in a camp not too far away from Moscow.”
“And your beloved Sasha—have you forgotten him?”
“That’s why I signed the confession,” she said. “Sasha will be brought to Potma where they have some medical facilities, and they’ve promised he will receive medical treatment.” She dropped her voice. “They even say his sentence might be cut.”
“Everybody’s suddenly turning so generous I’m beginning to wonder why places like Lubyanka get such a bad name,” I murmured. “Still, you get cynical in a hole like this, and I’m even beginning to wonder why they allowed you to play the part of the sick-room visitor. They couldn’t have wanted you to persuade me to make a few promises as well, could they?”
Larissa gazed at me. Not with that old look she gave when she realized she could turn and twist and manipulate me whichever way she wanted. Her violet eyes had almost a sly, calculating glint, as though like Agarov and others, she was trying to fathom how much I knew and what I was scheming. “General Agarov thought I might be able to…” She paused, groping for the right expression.
I filled in the blank. “To persuade me to confess I was the master spy, is that it?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything, Alan.” Her voice had grown stronger, more assured. “It would be just a piece of paper nobody would see. Just so that you would never be able to publish what really happened, and show all the pictures we took.”
I leaned across the bed and slapped her on the face with all the energy I possessed. My voice went up in an involuntary shout. “They warned me you were no good,” I yelled. “Raya said you were a whore, and Shapirov proved you
were a whore and I didn’t believe them. Now I know you’re a prostitute who’ll sell herself to anybody, even Agarov. What else did that KGB hangman get out of you? A night or two in bed, like me?”
“Don’t, please Alan, don’t.” She had buried her head in the bed cover and was sobbing like a child. “I love you…you must know I love you.”
“But not as much as your boyfriend, Bukov.”
She raised her tear-streaked face and gazed at me. I am certain she was not feigning the hurt and sorrow in her eyes. “So, they told you about Sasha; that he was not my brother?” she said.
I shook my head. “No, I guessed he wasn’t the night you took me to the Shapirovs. Why did I still go along with you and the others? I suppose…well, because I was fond of you, and I thought you were fond of me.”
“But I am, Alan,” she sobbed. “Only, I met Sasha long before you and I couldn’t leave him there to rot, you understand that.” I kept a straight face, betraying none of my own feelings. She wiped her eyes. “If I hadn’t loved you so much, I would have done what I did with Shapirov…sold myself to you. Don’t you see that?
Yes, I saw the paradox and had for some time. But I wasn’t going to admit this to Larissa, for neither she nor anybody else must think I had weakened. Sign their paper and we were all lost. I glared at her.
“Shapirov and Kolya are both dead because of your scheme. And now you want me to sacrifice myself by signing a fake confession for your own selfish ends, to make you and your boyfriend happy. Well, go back and tell your friend, Agarov, that he can whistle for his confession. I’m signing nothing.”
Larissa dried her eyes. She rose and flicked a glance at me then came round to position herself between me and the windows and whoever might have a camera trained on us. “Alan, will you at least kiss me goodbye?” she pleaded. Bending over me, she kissed me on the lips then put her face close to mine. I heard her whisper, so softly.
“Agarov is going to have you killed,” she said.
“When?”
“Maybe tonight.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who told you?”
“I heard his mujhik colonel telling him it was the only way to stop you before you caused a scandal that would finish them both.”
Larissa kissed me, grasping my hands in both of hers and squeezing. “Alan, I love you,” she whispered. “I love you.”
And she was gone, leaving the impression of her cold hands on mine and her tears on my cheek.
Chapter 20
When I considered what Larissa had revealed, it seemed perfectly logical. On his last visit, Agarov had never once attempted to arm-twist me into signing a confession, and I wondered why. Now, I could guess. He probably had a confession, beautifully written and signed by some KGB forger with the signature that I had so conveniently provided with my own confession.
All he needed was my dead body, disposed of painlessly and in such a way that no-one would ever question my suicide. A neat plot. I had been charged with spying and creating a spy-ring, had signed a confession and couldn’t face the idea of a trial and a long prison term; so, I had swallowed a handful of pills, or cut my throat, or hanged myself with the sick-room curtains.
Even my London solicitor might swallow that story; in any case, he would be persuaded by Simmonds or some other Whitehall bigwig to forget the whole thing in the interest of international relations.
Speaking of impending hanging, Dr. Johnson said it concentrated the mind wonderfully. I can vouch for the truth of his statement. I lay there going over all the possibilities that Agarov might have envisaged. Obviously, he would arrange for the murder to be done in the dead of night when hardly anyone was stirring and even the prison staff and inmates were asleep.
Since Makurin had suggested the idea, he would probably act as executioner. Anyway, that sadistic ogre would get a big kick out of watching me die. He would be the only man in the know, since Agarov would not wish to trust anybody else with the secret. So, just one witness. No guards on the door. No-one around.
How would Makurin do it? I knew how he would like to do it, by wrapping those mujhik hands round my neck and squeezing the life out of me. But that would leave marks. They wouldn’t use drugs or poison for those could be traced after death and would arouse suspicion of murder. Nor, paradoxically, would they use techniques that left no evidence. They had prussic-acid pistols which produced the effects of a heart attack and left no trace of the poison; they could gag, choke or smother me to death, another way that defied detection.
But who would believe that a man of twenty-eight in splendid health would suddenly stop breathing, especially in a baleful hole like Lubyanka? No, they’d have to enlist my help to kill me. How? They might leave me a fistful of barbiturates, or a razor blade, but they’d be blamed for inciting me to bomb myself into oblivion or cut my throat. It would have to be something much more credible. Probably my pyjama cord, or the curtain torn into strips and fashioned into a noose, then a repetition of Kolya’s suicide.
Makurin would probably start by garroting me, slowly, to keep his hand in, then string me up, still alive with my feet and hands tied, using the instrument panel above my bed, or the steel cupboard. Don’t think I contemplated the circumstances of my own assassination without fear, or even panic. In fact, my spinal chord and column were full of water at the thought. However, like Shapirov I was determined to take my executioner with me.
Five o’clock chimed from the Spassky Tower. I knew nothing of their routine, but they would probably feed me just after six. I must drink nothing they gave me, and eat little in case they had drugged my food and drink. Were they watching through the veiled curtains from the other side of the block, twenty yards away? I took no chances, rolling out of bed on their blind side and crawling to the wash-basin, carafe in hand. I filled it and crawled back to drink half the water. I emptied half the drip bottle on my next trip.
My meal must have come from the KGB canteen, for I had rollmop herring (maybe to make me thirsty) then a piece of chicken that I probed all over before swallowing in minute mouthfuls. I ignored the ice-cream but ate their apple. A small drip-pot of coffee arrived. While the KGB orderly filled the carafe and replaced the drip bottle, I crawled across the floor to empty the coffee pot, leaving a few dregs in the cup for the form.
By the time I had finished it was after seven. Between then and nine, two orderlies made my bed while I pretended to drowse on the chair. At nine, they returned to look round, draw the curtains and lock the door. I was feigning sleep. Quarter of an hour after hearing the lift take them down to the hospital ward or the canteen, the main light went out leaving only a blue night-light above my bed.
Before it grew completely dark, I had to make a reconnaissance. Creeping to the window, I edged the curtain back. Two or three cars still sat in the courtyard and, as I watched, one left by the side gate that must give on to Dzerzhinsky Street. A few minutes later, another emerged from the basement garage and followed the first one. Across the courtyard, the offices seemed a Chinese copy of my side. I sited the window exactly opposite and estimated the distance to the lift shaft. About ten yards, I reckoned. I noticed a good three-quarters of the offices lay in darkness.
Moving to the door, I tried the handle. Locked. Makurin would have to use a key, and that I would hear. Also the lift, if he came up that way. I needed a weapon and a hiding-place. Nothing on the iron bed I could remove, so I must make do with the drip bottle. To hide myself, I could choose either under the bed, or on the inside or blind side of the steel locker.
I didn’t know when Makurin would strike and didn’t want to crouch all night under the bed or inside the cabinet. So, I compromised, deciding to stay awake on a chair a couple of yards from the locker. However, I explored the cabinet and found two things, an old cotton jacket probably discarded by some orderly, and a pair of hospital slippers which I put on my feet. I arranged the pillow and one blanket on the bed so that, in the bluish glow, they
might be mistaken for a sleeping figure. I tore one of the sheets into long strips and hid these in the bed.
Then, with a blanket round me, I installed myself on the one chair near the locker with my eyes on the door and my ears straining for any sound in the corridor. I must have been more exhausted than I realized, for I suddenly had to pick myself off the floor with the chair. I cursed myself for dozing off. Half an hour later, midnight rang out from Red Square. I had slept for two hours: I dashed cold water on my face and wondered if they had doped that chicken.
For three interminable hours I forced myself to stay awake, fighting off tiredness by sponging my face and neck with cold water, rubbing my ears and scaring myself by imagining Makurin coming up in the lift.
It was just after three o’clock when I did hear the hum of the lift. Pushing my blanket under the bedclothes, I took post behind the steel cabinet. My mouth had dried up, and my heart banged in my chest as I strained to catch footsteps in the corridor.
He must have been light on his feet, for I had convinced myself it was a false alarm when I heard a key slide into the lock, then the fluid click of the handle turning.
“Don’t move too quickly,” I ordered myself. “Wait until he’s over the bed, then clobber him.” I caught the glimmer of the corridor lighting as the door opened then closed. I held my breath.
I was still holding my breath as the crouching figure passed within five feet of where I stood. But he did not go to the bed. Instead, he made for the window nearest the bed, disappearing behind the curtains. I heard the click of a window catch then the hiss as the window was hoisted.
So, that was it. I had thought of every form of liquidation except the simplest, the most effective and the most difficult for the investigator. Defenestration. This thug was going to sling me, headfirst, out of that window and watch the life splat out of me eighty feet below. For a moment, I had an impulse to tip-toe forward, lift the feet protruding under the curtains and heave this man into the void.
