by Hugh McLeave
But I had no time. Now he had emerged from the curtain and was now creeping towards that hump on the bed. His hand went up and I saw he had a short truncheon in it. As he got to the bed and made to bring it down, I shot across the room, raised the drip bottle over his head and brought it down with all my strength.
Yet, as soon as it struck, I knew I hadn’t knocked him cold, for the bottle glanced off his hat and the side of his head. It hurt him, though, for he grunted with pain before swinging round to grapple with me. He had the advantage of height and the heavy coat he wore which deadened the blows I aimed with the bottle. A searing pain went through my cheekbone and face as he hit me with his truncheon.
At that instant, I decided I would have to settle this man quickly or I would be lying, broken, in that courtyard. I recoiled a yard or two, put my head down and ran full-tilt at him, boring into his stomach. He still caught me on the shoulder with a roundhouse swipe of his truncheon before my momentum threw him off-balance and he went back against the wall. His breath burst from him in a long aaahhh!
Yet, going down, he grabbed at my hair and though I left a lock in his hand I, too, hit the ground. Falling, I grabbed one of his ankles and twisted with everything I had. He yelped in pain as he rolled across the floor and against the bed. But when I came to wrench him round, he drew back with his free foot and landed a kick in my face, filling my mouth with blood and forcing me to release my hold.
That gave him his chance and he was on me before I could recover. His gloved hands met round my neck and he pinioned me to the floor with his full weight as he started to squeeze. I could do nothing. My face and head seemed to be pumped full of air and swelling with every second while my eyes were about to explode with the pressure. I kicked and struggled but nothing budged him. Not even my attempt to force his head back and break his stranglehold with my hands did anything to ease the crushing hold on my throat. I realized I was too weak to wrest myself free from this man, so I did the only thing I could think of. I stopped kicking and struggling and went limp.
It fooled him. Thinking I had lost consciousness, he released his hands from my neck, scrambled to his feet and went to pick me up and heave me out the window. As he rose, I put both hands round one of his ankles and yanked with all my remaining strength. He pirouetted like a ballerina then crashed with all his weight on the floor, striking his head on the iron bed-frame.
Yet, he still had fight.
When I got to him and seized the carafe from the bedside table, he put up his hands to parry the blow. This time, I made no mistake, landing with the full carafe on the crown of his head. He groaned and rolled over, unconscious, his legs askew.
I tugged him clear of the bed and pulled off his hat, and stared at the Eurasian face of Agarov, slack and senseless. I tore off his coat, turned him over and bound his hands with a strip of bed-sheet. Searching his pockets, I found his passkey, his pistol, a regulation automatic weapon with seven bullets, his cigarette case and lighter, his Party card, KGB pass and driving license. I bound his long legs before going to wash the blood off my face and sluice water through my mouth to clear the blood. I shut the window in case it was noticed. I tried on Agarov’s coat which was six inches too long but concealed my hospital pyjamas and was better than nothing. Tip-toeing to the door, I opened it. Nothing moved in the corridor and I slipped along to site the lift which, as I guessed, was ten yards away.
When I returned, Agarov was moaning. I sloshed water on his face and within a couple of minutes, he had opened his eyes. “So, you meant to make me commit suicide by defenestration, general,” I said. Agarov merely scowled, though his oblique eyes fastened on the pistol which I was pointing his way. “Can you tell me what’s to prevent me from hoisting you over to the window, pushing you halfway out, cutting your hands and feet free and letting you drop the six stories?”
“You would be adding murder to your other crimes.”
“Murder? Who knows you’re here at this hour? Once I let you go and shut the window, what would anybody think? You’d taken the lift to the sixth floor, mounted to the flat roof and dived from there. And of course, they’d whisper that poor Agarov couldn’t face disgrace and social liquidation for failing to stifle the Lenin Mausoleum plot.” I was playing with the pistol, watching his reaction. Worry filmed his eyes. “But you don’t imagine I would stoop to a shabby KGB trick like that, do you?”
“What is your intention, Mr. Churchill?”
“I’m going to use you as my exit visa from Lubyanka.”
“You’ll never make me do that.”
“We’ll see.” He watched as I fashioned a gag out of a strip of sheet. I thrust this into his mouth and bound it in place with another strip. I lit one of his expensive cigarettes and placed its glowing tip on the flesh of his chest which I bared. Sweat beaded on his brow and tracked down his long face; his eyes had screwed into slits with the pain. “Now, what do you think?” He shook his head. I held the cigarette against his skin a few seconds longer, but still he shook his head.
“All right, let’s try it on your eyes,” I murmured. Now, I discerned anxiety in those green eyes. I grabbed him by his sparse hair and held his head steady while I brought the cigarette tip close enough to burn the lashes of his right eye which he shut tight. I let the tip rest lightly on the soft, sensitive eyelid. Agarov jerked his head and body back as though I had stabbed him in the heart.
It’s a peculiar thing, fear. Once it takes hold, it can run through somebody like a powder fuse, spreading panic and detonating into terror. I know. I had experienced that sensation myself, underwater. And I had seen its aftermath in Larissa’s face and eyes.
When I removed the cigarette from the eyelid, those green slant eyes opened to gape at me, incredulously, and their pupils had expanded with fear. They traveled from my face to my right hand in which I now held the catheter needle from the drip bottle. “Your prize thug, Makurin, blinded the priest before he throttled him,” I said. “They say it’s almost unbearable, having a needle thrust slowly through the eyeball.”
A hoarse cry came from deep down in his throat, and he began to whimper through the gag.
“If you’re trying to say they’ll kill me, they’ll do that anyway,” I went on. “And who’s to know you’re blinded in both eyes when they pick you off the courtyard and keep your suicide to themselves.”
As I grabbed his hair, the whimpering grew louder and he began to shake his head from side to side. I undid the gag. “You’re a madman,” he gasped.
“A week with people like you in Lubyanka often does that,”
I said. “Now, are you going to do what I tell you?”
When he hesitated, I made to put the gag back in his mouth. Suddenly, he nodded.
“Where did you leave your car?” I asked.
“In the basement garage.”
“Which way do you leave?”
“By the side entrance, into Dzerzhinsky Street.”
This I had already guessed. “Does the lift go to the basement?” He nodded. “Is there a guard on the basement and street entrance?”
“Not in the basement,” he muttered. “There are two guards on the street entrance.”
“Your car number?”
He gave me that and explained he had left the keys in it. His eyes tracked every move I made as I donned his coat and picked up the pistol, snapping open the safety catch; step by step, I outlined what I intended to do. “One step out of place, one move too many and I let you have six of these shots, and the last one is for myself. And don’t think I’m bluffing, general.”
I put the pistol in my pocket then untied his feet. Before undoing his hands, I used a strip of sheet to bind one hand to the bedrail. I ripped a hole in the pocket lining of Agarov’s jacket then fastened another strip tightly round his other hand. I cut his wrist bonds, leaving one hand free. This hand I thrust into his jacket pocket and secured it by passing the strip of sheet round his groin and tying the ends. Now, he had only one free hand, his right;
and I would stay on his left.
He had chosen his execution hour well, for nothing moved in the corridor when we left the room and walked to the lift. As we dropped through the six floors before the basement, I held my breath in case someone stopped the lift on the way. At the bottom, I held the lift and took stock of the dimly-lit basement.
Six cars sat there, including the Zil Agarov had described as his. That meant perhaps five KGB officers might surprise us. First, I used Agarov’s lighter to burn through his left-hand bond then motioned him towards the car with the pistol while I put the lift out of action by jamming the wad of sheeting between the doors. I searched the door and fascia pockets for hidden weapons before allowing Agarov to take the driver’s seat. To stop him from slipping across the bench seat and surprising me, I had him fasten his seat belt.
“Don’t forget, if those gates don’t open or you make a wrong move, I shall kill you,” I said as I got into the back of the Zil, wedging myself between the front and back seats and covering myself with a car rug. I jammed the pistol into the seat back and against Agarov’s spine to back up the threat. “Drive slowly,” I ordered.
We had almost reached the ramp leading to the courtyard when a figure came down the stairs at a run. He held up a hand to halt us then stood outside the left-hand door saluting.
“What do I do?” Agarov whispered.
“Ask what he wants.”
Agarov wound down the window. “Yes, what is it?” he barked.
“General, I phoned your home for your orders.”
“Yes, go on.
“One of the prisoners has retracted her confession.”
“Which one?”
“The prisoner called Fotyeva.”
“Harasho, leave it till tomorrow.” Agarov thrust the Zil into gear, the KGB officer saluted and we moved up the ramp.
So, Larissa had torn up her phony story about spying, a brave act when she realized they would keep on torturing her until she gave way, or died. She must have felt remorse after our session in the sick room. Her courage and loyalty lit a warm glow in my chest.
But this also caused me to lose concentration. Only when we were crossing the courtyard did I remember the lift. I had jammed it, and that KGB officer had been forced to use the stairs, thinking the lift had broken down; he’d obviously spot the wad of sheeting jamming the door and wonder who had done that and why; he’d keep wondering about Agarov’s attitude and he might even run after us; he’d certainly check where Agarov had been, probably find my room empty and draw the right deductions.
“Get a move on, Agarov,” I whispered. From where I lay I could see nothing in front, but noticed him flash his lights to the guards. I heard the bolts slide back. “Spaseebo,” Agarov called and in a moment we were in Dzerzhinsky Street.
“Where now?” Agarov said.
“Left round the square and down Nogina Square to the river then along the embankment and across Kameny Bridge. And don’t worry about breaking the speed limit in a KGB car.”
He probably knew where I was pointing him, but he said nothing. At that hour of the morning, hardly a single vehicle moved in the center of Moscow, and we ignored the odd red light. I was now sitting up in the back seat following our progress along the embankment. I directed Agarov along the riverside drive facing the Kremlin, but we had to double back on our tracks to the part of the embankment where the British Embassy sat.
At the moment we caught sight of it, I noticed the Zil coming along from the other end of the road, and looking back I saw its twin behind us. Agarov’s man had done what I feared; he had verified I was missing and had taken the short-cut across Red Square, normally banned to traffic, to back-stop his general. Agarov had also seen the two cars.
“It looks as though you have lost the game, Mr. Churchill,” he said over his shoulder.
“In that case, we’ve both lost, general.” I rammed the pistol barrel against his smooth neck. “Unless you can convince your minions you have vital state business in the British Embassy and send them on their way, we both stand to get killed. I shall certainly kill you, so they’ll have to kill me. And they’ll never know what has hit them when the scandal over Lenin breaks in London, Washington, Paris, Bonn and even here in Moscow.”
I ordered him to slow down, but I kept talking, fast, as though my life depended on it.
“As far as I’m concerned, nobody will bother much. But you, you’ve got a wife and two teenage sons, and they won’t thank you for the posthumous Order of the Red Banner, will they? And they may not even get that when those pictures of Lenin appear and they blame you and pillory your family.” In the back mirror, I could see Agarov’s eyes narrow as he turned all this over in his mind. As for myself, I was sweating blood and my hand was shaking so much that I could hardly hold the gun still. This man had decided to save his head back in Lubyanka; now he had to think about salvaging his reputation. “To take you into the British Embassy will finish my career,” he muttered.
“If you follow my instructions, they’ll promote you to marshal for preserving the sacred name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, especially when they see the films I send you.” I drew a deep breath as we approached the embassy gate and the two KGB cars closed in. “Anyway, you can always stop me from leaving the Soviet Union if things don’t go as I planned.”
Agarov was thinking about that, too. Suddenly, he seemed to make up his mind. Without any preliminaries, he drove up to the embassy gate, bringing the nose of his car to within inches of it and placing us between the two militiamen on duty. Half a dozen KGB officers had already spilled out of the two Zils which bracketed us.
Agarov pressed the bell on the embassy gate before turning to the man who had accosted us in the basement of Lubyanka. “What the hell are you doing here, Rachenko?” he barked.
Rachenko pointed to me, in the back of the Zil. “But I thought, general…” he stuttered.
“Whatever you thought in that dim head of yours, you were wrong,” Agarov said. “Now get those two cars out of here before you start an international incident and I have to court-martial you. Seeing the man hesitate, Agarov grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him towards the rear car. “Get moving before this gate opens,” he snapped.
As I watched the KGB men regain their cars and drive off, I let my lungs empty and refill several times, slowly, until my heart stopped racketing. It took another eternal minute for the embassy porter to come down and open the gate, complaining we had woken him up.
***
Jock Frazer could hardly credit his eyesight when he arrived an hour later to see General Agarov sitting in his office. They knew each other, having met in this and other embassies in Moscow. I took Jock outside to brief him about what had happened since my phone call the morning I knocked on the door of Lubyanka. Jock told me that two days afterwards, the embassy had contacted the Soviet police to report that I had disappeared; but they learned nothing, not even that I had been arrested for drunkenness on the building site.
But two days ago, both Reuters and the Associated Press had been tipped off by their informants (presumably primed by the KGB) that I had been charged with forming a spy-ring and recruiting five Soviet citizens. They had left out Vanya, the traitor. According to Frazer, nobody had confirmed this story.
“Simmonds, your boss, is spitting blood and bile, he’s so mad,” he whispered.
“My resignation will calm him down.”
We went down to the basement and humped up the suitcase containing the Lenin dummy and the two flags from the mausoleum crypt. Agarov’s face was a study when we snapped the case open, unwrapped the flags to exhibit the hands, limbs and torso of the Lenin waxwork; even in a hardened case like him, the Pavlovian conditioning to revere, even idolize this figure over long years, surfaced through his impassive KGB mask. I saw something like respect or awe there. I pushed the case across the desk towards him.
“It’s all yours, plus the film I smuggled out, plus a written and witnessed document that I shall divul
ge nothing of what really happened if you agree to release your five prisoners, the two Jewish hi-jackers and the four men in the gulags.”
“You know I cannot agree to this without consulting my chiefs.”
“You have another day—until midnight on May 12.”
“What happens then?” Frazer put in.
“The film and photos I told you about and the account I typed here to explain them will go to half a dozen newspapers and international news agencies—and nobody will ever again believe that the Lenin across the river is really Lenin.” I pointed to the dummy in the suitcase. “That’s what they’ll think he is—a waxwork model.”
“And if we agree to this blackmail…”Agarov said.
“I phone my solicitor to stop publication. And the moment those eleven people are out of the Soviet Union, your London embassy can collect and hand over all the evidence which you can destroy.”
“Can you promise there will be no publicity about the release of these men and women?”
“All they want to do is get out and lead a normal life—and you know better than anybody they’re not criminals. But if you like, Mr. Frazer can get an undertaking from each of them that they will say nothing before you issue their visas. Anyway. none of the gulag men know anything about the Lenin conspiracy and the attempt to free them.”
Agarov lit one of his special cigarettes, clamping the holder between his teeth and staring out of the window, across the Moscow River to the Kremlin. We could almost probe his thoughts as he analyzed the various moves. How would his KGB and Politburo bosses react to this trade-off? Would they blame him for failing to prevent the mausoleum raid and its aftermath? Or congratulate him for his diplomacy and for stifling an international scandal?
“And if I am asked why I came here with you?” he said, fixing me with those slats of eyes.
“You had no alternative if you were to prevent the madman, Churchill, from committing sacrilege on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by releasing the film he had stolen and the text he had fabricated.” I threw something else into the argument. “You will have to release the Shapirovs anyway. If the Western media find they are imprisoned, the whole story of Fanya Roid will come out and create another sensation.”
