by John Meaney
They exited through the metal side door and banged it shut. Outside, the truck started up. Soon they were gone.
The cavernous hangar was silent.
An hour later the truck returned. I'd been shadowboxing in the hangar's centre, light retzev moves to loosen up and to suppress my hunger. Time to get out of sight. There were canvas sheets at the side of the cabin, part of the accumulated junk. From under the canvas, I could observe Zadok – if it was him – or bale out if I had the wrong Andropovitch. But the truck's engine went silent outside.
Move fast.
The cabin roof was my familiar refuge, so I hooked my fingers around the vertical girder and scrambled up, then rolled sideways onto the roof. Down below, the lock turned in the side door. Someone entered, carrying a red metal cylinder that was about the size of a fire extinguisher. Groaning, he squatted down, let the heavy cylinder roll clunk onto the floor, and then he stood up.
Zadok.
He turned away, headed back to the door and exited. I flattened myself on the cabin roof, because he'd left the door open, so he was coming back. Some thirty seconds later, there was the sound of his breathing, and a dull clang as he placed a second cylinder on the concrete floor. Then he left again, this time locking the door, and then the truck engine revved. He was driving off.
What the hell...?
I climbed down, walked to the cylinders, and squatted. A horrible nausea swirled through me.
No one could do this.
The world was sick, but not like this. It was impossible. And I'd been so sure that Zadok was going to use a bloody rifle. How wrong could I be? But there were letters on the cylinder, and they read HCN.
Hydrogen cyanide.
It's a simple molecule formed of three common elements, but most of us remember the brand name of Zyklon B, squirted into the long cabins of Auschwitz, the concrete basements in Treblinka, exterminating human beings as if they were vermin. Zadok's plan, if I guessed correctly, was darkly brilliant: to plant this stuff on board the plane, with a radio trigger or timer – not yet attached – to release the gas during the return flight. On their way back from Moscow, the bodyguards would be relaxing, thinking their job was over and the great man was safe, not facing imminent, ironic death.
Impossible.
The evidence felt cold to my touch.
And then the doorlock turned.
Shock had blanked out my hearing and peripheral vision. Zadok was back. I should have taken Ignatieff at his word and snuffed out Zadok with his own rifle, but it was too late for that. Time to hide once more.
Anger is for amateurs.
Ducking around the side of the cabin, I became quiet, thinking about Brummie Greenmore and how he would handle this. Best to observe without being noticed, wait until Zadok had planted the cylinders on board the presidential plane, then sneak inside and disable them. Stay silent and unseen. Be a ghost. Then Zadok would be left to worry about his failure; and perhaps he might undergo a tragic accident, if Pinchas asked Ignatieff nicely.
In Zadok's hand was a small device that might be a barometric switch, which made sense. It would trigger the gas release when the cabin pressure dropped. He bent down to fasten it to a cylinder—
Something's wrong.
—and stopped, sniffing the air.
I pissed behind the cabin.
Civilized men would be unaware, but the reptilian brain knows how to survive. Laughable, but my scent was in the air and he was tracking me, and when I rolled to the edge of the cabin roof our eyes met.
Shit shit shit.
I dropped to the hangar floor and came up uncoiling, straight for Zadok. His lips drew back, baring teeth, and I did likewise, because this was primeval and nothing mattered but the—
Gun.
—weapon rising in his grasp, but I angled to the side, hammering down, then hit his neck with my forearm, but he was already rolling away. My grip caught his sleeve and my kick took him in the ribs – got him – weakening his grip, so I could wrench and twist, pulling it away. An amateur would have panicked, but Zadok raked at my eyes and I fell back. The gun spun and clattered to the floor, gone forever. One of us had seconds to live. Zadok grunted, his knee crashing into me. My elbow took part of the impact, and I used the rebound, whipping the same elbow into his ribs, then my knee, hard, but the bastard wouldn't fall – he's inhuman – yet so was I, because I had to be.
Something smacked into my temple and the world pulsed yellow. I was falling but I grabbed, saw blood on Zadok's face as I twisted, falling on top of him. Pain seared inside my groin, sick and spreading. My testicles were in his grip and I could not scream. Instead, I slammed down with the heel of my hand.
Die.
Slammed once more, bouncing his head against the concrete floor.
Die now.
And I smashed him again and again and again while fear and pain coursed through me, preventing me from realizing that he was unmoving, without reaction, until finally the message soaked through to my reptilian brain and I could disengage, rolling off Zadok's body and lying on my back, crying.
The corpse beside me was not pretty.
Finally, I wiped my tears and blood, and stood, fighting the sick waves of pain from my groin. At my feet lay the Zadok-thing, cold meat on the concrete floor.
No movement. It would already have begun to break down and decay, that lump of biochemical stuff, the thing that had been a man.
SIXTEEN:
SHEREMETYEVO, December 1962
After a time, human thought returned. There was only one hiding place. I tackled the heaviest task first, dragging the corpse with its smashed head across the concrete floor. It scraped, but there was nothing left for it to feel pain with. Working hard, I forced the body into the space behind the cabin.
Then the red cylinders. I lugged each in turn, hefting them into the hiding space, on top of the corpse's face. It didn't seem to mind. Afterwards, I used the dirty canvas to rub the floor, smearing it with oil but hiding the blood: anything to help cover the smell. Then I threw the canvas behind the cabin, burying Zadok and the murderous cylinders.
Finally, I hauled myself back up to the top of the cabin, my refuge, and fell shivering into sleep.
My dream was of an endless night in Leningrad. Of running with Fern across the Iraqi desert. And of things that had never occurred: Fern's wedding, but I was the groom, and the bridesmaids were rotting corpses dressed in pale gowns, and every one of them was Zadok.
The air was freezing when I awoke. My tendons were screaming in silence.
During the morning, the engineers remarked on Andropovitch's – Zadok's – failure to turn up for work. But when the soldiers arrived, no one said anything. I slipped down the back of the cabin, pulling a canvas sheet over me. By the time the Alpha Team conducted their search – it was thorough this morning – I was concealed low down, on top of Zadok's corpse, with the gas cylinders digging into my ribs.
It was the only place.
At eleven a.m. excited murmurs grew among the engineers. President Einstein had landed. After some time, a tow-truck's whining coincided with a loud rattling as they pulled open the main hangar doors. I listened, cramped in my hiding place, as they towed the plane inside. There was a discussion between the Alpha Team's officer and the plane's pilot, and then a clattering of footsteps: people leaving the hangar. Someone locked the main doors from the outside, then the side door. Vehicles took everyone away.
No one remained inside the hangar. But the Alpha Team were stationed outside, forming an unbreakable perimeter.
The cramp was terrible. It was hard not to cry out when I finally moved.
It took a long time to clamber from the tight space, then to haul out the corpse. Pain shot through my lower back. I used a fireman's carry, lugging the carcass – the thing that had been Zadok – to the foot of the steps. Then, one rung at a time, I climbed to the top, to the open aircraft door.
They wouldn't leave it open.
Well they had, so I
couldn't worry about it as I bumped Zadok's corpse against the doorway, tried again, and staggered inside. There was dark-blue carpet, a cabin that looked roomy because there were only six seats instead of forty, and a galley at the rear. That was where I headed, puffing hard. A dead weight is hard to carry, as I'm sure you know.
I rolled the thing onto the floor.
Moving as fast as I could, light-headed, I went back down the steps. The cylinders were heavy but there couldn't be much time, so I stood them both up on end, shoulder-width apart. Then I squatted right down, tipped one cylinder back across each shoulder, and stood up.
Heavy.
Wheezing, I got the cylinders into the plane, then to the galley where the corpse lay sprawled. I leaned the cylinders against the bulkhead, out of sight from the main cabin. Then I dragged the corpse to one side. I was exhausted. I could sleep for—
Voices sounded from outside.
I knew they wouldn't leave it open.
If I'd been the pilot, I wouldn't have wanted to leave the plane at all, and certainly not unlocked. There'd been some kind of discussion – or argument – with the Alpha Team officer.
The voices were speaking Russian.
Oh, Fern. I love you.
Footsteps vibrated. Two men came on board, but I had a sense of others outside, waiting. I remained seated on the deck, my back against the hard galley bulkhead, knowing that I was spent. The men came towards the rear. If they looked...
"You have inspected the galley, Captain?"
"Yes, of course. You are satisfied?" Both speakers were fluent. Perhaps the first was not native Russian.
"Fine. Two of my men will stay on board the President's plane – all time, yes? No, ah, insult."
"No offence taken. My team will remain outside the building and maintain a perimeter."
"Maintain a...?"
"Boundary. Edge. Guarding from outside."
"Oh, I understand. Pardon me."
"Your Russian is excellent. Do you mind if I ask..."
The voices trailed off as the two men moved away. Seconds later, they clanked their way down the metal steps, leaving me alone in the aircraft: just me and a cold corpse and two metal cylinders, the Shoah come back to haunt me.
Later there was movement, and more voices, and my eyes snapped open although surely I could not have been asleep. I rolled to my side, forced myself to stand, with every nerve screaming. Then I stumbled out into the president's cabin, moving like a zombie, knowing I had nothing left inside.
"Intruder!"
Two men whipped up their guns – one Walther, one Beretta – and tightened their fingers.
Fern...
I closed my eyes. Opened them.
And the smaller man lowered his weapon, straightening up from his combat shooter's crouch.
"Fuck me, Wolf. What are you doing here?"
I tried to smile. "Nice to see you, Zeev."
The world swirled as my knees gave way, but I straightened again before Zeev could catch me, because I have some bloody pride, after all.
"Sorry. Haven't eaten."
"Sit down. Avi, cover the door."
I collapsed into the president's chair. Then I began to shake, and I realized there were tears running down my face. When I wiped my hand across my eyes, it came away glistening scarlet. My clothes were stained with blood.
"Th-there's a corpse back there—"
"All right, Wolf, don't talk. We'll get some glucose into you, and some penicillin. Then we'll have a chat."
"F-fuckin' corpse, I'm telling you, and two cylinders and be bloody careful they're filled with gas, the fucker was going to, going to—"
Whether I said anything more, I'm not sure.
Two days later, we taxied out on to the runway.
I was concealed in the galley at the rear, but caught glimpses of the snow-covered airfield outside. Flakes swirled around, some appearing to fall upward, as the plane's nose turned. Then we were in position, and ready to fly. Zeev and Avi were sitting up front, along with the president and the rest of the twelve-strong team who'd stayed with him throughout the visit. None of the agents glanced back in my direction.
The plane began to move.
Unruly wisps of white hair protruded at the edge of the presidential chair. Did the great man have any clue that there was a battered, bedraggled, half-dead rat-person in the galley? And a fully dead one, stuffed inside a food cabinet, along with two sealed cylinders of gas?
We were accelerating hard, with the fuselage shuddering.
Zeev and Avi had used hammers to break the limbs: it was the only way to make the carcass fit. They'd been careful with the duct tape and glue, fixing the red cylinders so the nozzles would never open again.
Mission over.
Apart from the missing uranium, the threat to a major city, probably New York.
I'm so tired.
The runway dropped away beneath the wings, and we were in the air.
Part II
SPRING/SUMMER
SEVENTEEN:
BERLIN, March 1963
Berlin was where I stayed for the next three months, recuperating. Every morning, while it was quiet, I walked on a hard mud path along River Spree, its waters black or silvery, depending. During the third week I began to jog, easing off when pain delineated my lower ribs. And every other day, in the clanking dungeon of Willis Muskelzimmer, baby-light weights were all I could manage, but no one laughed.
Soon my strength regrouped.
By March I was fitter than before. In my new flat on Alt-Moabit, at eight o'clock on a spring morning, I settled into the old armchair – newly acquired – with coffee in hand, having already pounded for twelve miles around the city and woken up with a cool (not chilled) bath. Now the sunlight was white and peaceful, and I was drifting.
In my memory it was campfire that shone against the night, and I was sitting beside a young archaeologist from Pakistan, now with the University of Bonn's Archaeological Institute. His name was Kadir, and he spoke English with an Oxford-by-way-of-Karachi accent. We were speaking about the Koran. Earlier in the day, as he returned from prayer, I'd said: "You don't have to pray this often, do you? I mean, since you're a traveller."
"That's right." Kadir had beamed. "I can combine two prayer sessions into one, if I need to, since I'm away from home. But who can witness the vastness" – he'd gestured at boundless desert, the sapphire sky – "and not want to acknowledge it?"
"Good point."
After sunset, some of the team members packed equipment into crates marked Archäologisches Institut and Eurasien Abteilung. One of the archaeologists was a lithe woman with a silvery scar across one thigh, occasionally revealed by her baggy shorts. Her name was Fern Avni, and she was a potential recruit.
As a science journalist, I was here under my own name, interested in the new carbon-14 dating equipment and the 'seismic sonar' they were testing under field conditions. Kadir was the nearest to an expert they had. So far, no unsuspected desert ruins had materialised.
I shuffled closer to the fire.
"No cloud cover," said Kadir. "That's why the temperature drops so fast. At night it's almost as cold as Moscow"
"The proletarian paradise."
Kadir shook his head. "The populace work hard now for a socialist paradise they'll never see. They believe their descendants will."
"That's noble, I suppose. Someday I'd like to visit Moscow."
"I studied there, and I'm glad I did. I learned how good people are led astray by theories that are not supported by logic."
"You've explained why the desert night is cold, and I agree." The flames were warming my face, but my back was chilled. "But I've done thermodynamics, and I trust the scientific community. Because it doesn't matter who puts forward a theory: anyone can test it. You never take someone's word for it, just because they have some job title."
Kadir nodded, acknowledging the point without being annoyed.
"So we're back to the Koran again," he said.
"You told me it's not like the Bible or the Torah. That there's proof."
"That's because the Koran is its own proof. It's the most perfect literature, like one great poem." Orange highlights flickered across Kadir's face. "Nothing in Arabic literature has come close, not since the days it was written."
I bowed my head. "Thank you. I didn't realize that."
This was important for me to say, because Kadir realized I was sincere in my enquiry into matters he held sacred.
"You're welcome. In fact" – Kadir's tone grew energized – "there's been a challenge in place for fifteen hundred years. A challenge to show that the book is not perfect, the language is not perfect. No one has ever met that challenge."
Fifteen hundred years. I stared out at the nighttime desert. The Baghdad-Basra railway was invisible from here, reachable on foot in emergency. We were close to the site of Ur, one of the first cities that humanity ever built: the beginning of all civilization, fifty-five centuries ago. The thought of all those years scraped across my skin.
After mulling over Kadir's words, I reached over and drew in the sand: E = mc2.
"Think of the knowledge implied here. The use of maths to model reality. The equivalence of energy and matter and what it means for space and time. The advances in human thought."
Kadir shook his head.
"But within itself, the Koran remains perfect."
"Yet..." I stopped. "Can I read it in translation? I mean, does the Koran reveal its perfection only in Arabic?"
"You get some flavour of its truth."
"And you're from Pakistan, right? So Arabic is not your first tongue."
"I struggle with it," Kadir admitted.
"So you take other people's word that the language is perfect. You rely on authority, because the perfection is not self-evident to you. You believe what the experts say, because they have the authority."
