Mazurka

by Campbell Armstrong

  Olsky changed the subject suddenly. “Reconstruction is taking place in our country, Dimitri. We must remember to keep open minds at all times. We must be alert. We must be strong enough to shed a strong light on our shortcomings. Change of this magnitude is always painful. But many people, even those who basically agree but argue that we’re doing things too quickly, are going to have to adapt – or perish.”

  Olsky said the word ‘perish’ softly, almost in an undertone. Volovich thought he’d never heard it pronounced in such a menacing way.

  “Certain people belong in another era,” the General went on. “They’re like dinosaurs. For example, my predecessor, a man of undeniable patriotism, outlived his usefulness. He was quite unable to adapt to new thinking. Is Epishev a dinosaur?”

  Volovich didn’t know what to say. Nor did Olsky appear to expect an answer, because he went on without waiting for one. “We need men who are flexible, Dimitri. Men who can alter their dried-out old attitudes and work for change – as well as their own advancement, of course. Do you see yourself as such a person?”

  Their own advancement, Volovich thought. He liked the phrase. “I try to keep an open mind, General.”

  “That’s all we ask.” Olsky flipped the switch on the panel and told the driver to stop the car. There were small sailboats floating on the surface of the reservoir. Volovich remembered there was an aquatic sports club nearby.

  “To the best of your knowledge, Dimitri, is Epishev still in the country?”

  Volovich made a little gesture with his skinny fingers. Since he’d already said he didn’t know where Viktor was, what more was he supposed to add? “He didn’t say anything to me about going abroad, General.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  Volovich felt this question eddy around him like a treacherous little whirlpool. “Perhaps a week ago.”

  “A week.” Olsky appeared to think this over. His look was inscrutable, though, an impression exaggerated somehow by the formidable shaved head. “So far as you’re aware, Dimitri, does Epishev have any contact these days with General Greshko?”

  Another tough one. Something delicate hung in the balance here. Volovich hesitated. “I don’t believe so,” he chose to say.

  Olsky smiled. “Thank you, Dimitri. I’ve enjoyed our little talk. Would it be inconvenient if I dropped you here?”

  Volovich wondered how many miles it was back to his apartment and whether a bus or a metro ran that way. It had been years since he’d travelled by public transportation. “It’s no inconvenience, General,” he said. After all, what could he have answered? It’s a fucking nuisance, Comrade Chairman?

  He opened the door, stepped on to the pavement. He watched the big black car vanish down the street. He had a sense of unfinished business, realising that his lie wouldn’t hold up for long if General Olsky decided to scrutinise it. If General Olsky fine-tuned his microscope and placed Volovich’s statement on an examination slide, the lie, fragile tissue as it was, wouldn’t hold up at all.

  When the car was on the Volokolamsk Highway, General Olsky opened the smoked-glass panel that segregated him from his driver, Colonel Chebrikov, and leaned forward.

  “He’s the same man,” the Colonel said, without turning his face.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Completely, General. Lieutenant Volovich visited General Greshko in Zavidovo last night, accompanied by Colonel Epishev. The meeting lasted about an hour.”

  Olsky sat back in his seat again, staring out at the streets, mulling over Volovich’s lies. Here he had the bits and pieces of a puzzle, like one of those twisted metal problems you were supposed to solve by separating the parts. Volovich and his Colonel, the enigmatic Viktor Epishev, visit Greshko late at night. Within three hours of that meeting, Viktor Epishev goes to see a man called Yevenko, a criminal, in Moscow. Yevenko, the Printer, is instructed to make a passport bearing Epishev’s likeness though not his name. The passport is West German, the bearer’s name Grunwald. Epishev takes the false passport, leaves.

  “Do you believe the Printer’s story?” Olsky asked.

  Chebrikov said, “The man’s in a tight spot, General. He needs all the leverage he can get. Currency crime isn’t a joke. He’s facing twenty years hard labour, perhaps even the firing-squad. Besides, he did have those photographs. And the stamp.”

  Olsky shut his eyes, remembering how he’d gone to the Printer’s place of business only an hour ago, a grubby basement room in a very old building, a windowless space that smelled of strong chemicals and dyes. There, Yevenko, a dirty little man with ink-stained fingers and the blackest nails Olsky had ever seen, had produced copies of passport pictures he said he’d taken of Colonel Epishev very early that day. He’d forged the German passport, put Epishev’s photograph inside, then embossed it with the official passport stamp of the Federal Republic of Germany – which he then also produced with a flourish, flashing it under Stefan Olsky’s nose, as if to prove something beyond all doubt.

  Yevenko’s place was a treasure-house of stolen artifacts. Official stamps from various countries, blank passports from such places as Turkey and West Germany and Malta, three blank identification cards from Interpol, one from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, and another from the Irish Garda. A man could visit Yevenko and walk out within ten minutes with a new identity and even a job in a foreign police force.

  “So where did this mysterious Grunwald go?” Olsky asked.

  “We’re working on an answer to that one, General.”

  Olsky opened his eyes. “What does Volovich remind you of, Colonel?”

  Chebrikov was quiet for a time. Then he said, “A fish.”

  “I thought he was a little more wormlike, personally.”

  “An eel, then,” said the Colonel.

  “Close enough. Now take me home.” Stefan Olsky closed the smoked-glass window, enjoying the sense of isolation he had in the back of the limousine. It was a place where a man might be alone to think. He wasn’t allowed such a luxury because his telephone rang and he reached for it at once, hearing the voice of the Major in charge of all KGB computer operations.

  “I believe we’ve discovered what you’re looking for, Comrade Chairman,” the Major said.

  Olsky thanked the man, hung up the receiver, then informed his driver that his destination had changed.

  London

  It was almost dark, and the rain had stopped, and the wind in the square had died finally. Frank Pagan made a phone call to Tommy Witherspoon, who was not in his office. A plummy voice informed Pagan that Mr Witherspoon, in an emergency, might be found in his club on Piccadilly. The voice added a reminder that this was Sunday, the day of Mr Witherspoon’s rest, and any interruption of the man would have to be thoroughly justified.

  Pagan put the receiver down. He looked inside the bedroom where Kristina Vaska lay on the bed, her back turned to him, a blanket pulled halfway over her body. Earlier, complaining of fatigue, she’d gone to lie down. Pagan wasn’t sure if she was sleeping. He stepped quietly inside the bedroom. She turned her face towards him, blinking in the square of light that fell from the living-room. A woman in my bed, Pagan thought. Somebody I hardly know, somebody attractive to me. It was a novel consideration.

  He sat on the edge of the mattress. “I have to go out for a while.”

  “Do you want me to stay here?” she asked.

  “I don’t want you to disappear on me.”

  “I don’t like the idea of being alone, Frank. What if Epishev decides to come back?”

  Pagan doubted that the Russian would return. By this time, Epishev might have concluded that Pagan’s apartment was the last place of all to visit, that if Kristina Vaska had recognised him then Pagan would have taken precautions. Perhaps Epishev even imagined that policemen were cunningly concealed in the neighbourhood, ready for a reappearance.

  “I’ll arrange for somebody to keep an eye on you,” Pagan said. He reached under the bed and took his gun from the
shoebox. He stuck it inside a holster, which he strapped to his body so that the gun hung at the base of his spine. “But I really don’t think he’s going to be careless enough to come here again.”

  She still looked doubtful. He picked up the bedside phone, punched out the number of the local police station and asked for a certain Sergeant Crowley. When the Sergeant came on the line, Pagan used his intimidating Special Branch voice to ask that a patrol car be placed outside his home. Crowley had an ordinary cop’s attitude toward Special Branch, which was the resentment of a commoner for the aristocracy. So far as Crowley, a decent if plodding man, was concerned, the princes of Special Branch thought the sun shone out of their bloody royal arses. But he agreed to Pagan’s request anyway.

  Pagan put the receiver down. “That takes care of that.”

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked.

  “An hour or two.” Pagan gazed down at her. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead impulsively. She didn’t seem at all surprised by the gesture. She caught his hand and held it and looked up into his eyes. There was something troubled in her expression, a guarded quality.

  It was wrong here, he thought. This was the room the dead had claimed, and it was damned hard to wrest ownership from a corpse. He stepped away from the bed, releasing himself from her hand.

  “Hurry back,” she said.

  He crossed the living-room floor and stood at the window until he saw the patrol car appear. It parked in the street below. He returned to the bedroom. “When I leave, slide the deadbolt in place.”

  “Be careful, Frank.” She sat upright, brushed hair away from her forehead. She looked just then as lovely as he’d ever seen her, and he was held in place a moment by a sudden enchantment about which there was a frailty, a sense of illusion, as if she might simply vanish were he to go any closer to her. Pagan, unexpectedly touched by his own reaction, stepped out of the flat.

  When he reached the foot of the stairs he heard the sound of the deadbolt being slammed firmly into place. He went cautiously out to the street, glancing at the police car, and the faces of the two young cops, as he walked to his Camaro. The dark square across the way, the lit windows of houses, the still trees – all this familiarity, changed by his consciousness of a man called Epishev, pressed uneasily against him.

  Tommy Witherspoon had a slow, disdainful laugh, a hor hor hor sound Pagan associated with wealth. If it were possible for somebody to laugh down his nose, Tommy Witherspoon was that person. He wore a black blazer and white slacks and an old school tie Pagan was proud not to recognise. Tommy belonged in his club, you could see that. He merged with the antique wood and the soft lamps and the ancient portraits of past members that hung from the walls and the indefinable ambience of old money and yesterday’s empires.

  “I mention Epishev and you get hysterical,” Pagan said, uncomfortable in this whole milieu, which reeked to him of privileges that, in most cases, hadn’t been earned, but rather bestowed, passed down from father to son along the infallible circuitry of blood.

  Tommy Witherspoon was drinking madeira. His lips were stained, which indicated he’d been imbibing most of the day. Half-drunk like this, he was even more haughty and less charming than he’d been during Pagan’s last encounter with him in Green Park. Alcohol brought out all his worst traits – loftiness of manner and a bristling unshakable self-confidence.

  Witherspoon said, “I laugh, Pagan. But there’s some slight pity in the sound.”

  “Pity?”

  “If your man is really Epishev, as you lay claim, then I’m sorry for you, old chap. He’s a tough cookie, if I may venture an Americanism. I wouldn’t like to have Eppie poking around in my neck of the woods.”

  Eppie, Pagan thought. Tommy Witherspoon’s way of talking suggested he was this close to where all the skeletons were buried. Keeping secrets along Whitehall, striding discreet corridors all day long, did something to a man. It made him smug, and pompous, and insufferably patronising.

  “Just tell me what you know, Tommy. I absorb it, get up, shuffle off into the night. Dead simple.”

  Witherspoon sipped his madeira and frowned. When he spoke he did so off-handedly, like a man accustomed to believing that his utterances were pure pearls and all his listeners swine. “There are those who say, Pagan, that Uncle Viktor is a creation of the Central Committee. Some argue that if he didn’t exist in actuality, the Central Committee would have invented him. A man with Epishev’s set of mind, which one may accurately call neanderthal, could well have been created by the inner members of the former Politburo. If they wanted to bring forth a model of Communist man, a sort of Marxenstein, if you catch my drift, they might have hammered together dear old Uncle, who has bought lock, stock and bloody barrel the whole Marxist-Leninist waffle. With jam on it.”

  Witherspoon leaned across the small round table. Pagan noticed how he propped an elbow into a faint ring of wine left by the base of his glass. Two old dodderers, relics of Empire, moved past the table, muttering something mean-spirited about women.

  Witherspoon said, “Uncle has been kicking around for a good many years, usually performing dirty tasks assigned to him by the soon to be late, if not lamented, General Greshko.”

  “I read somewhere that Greshko had retired,” Pagan remarked, remembering a couple of newspaper articles that had appeared in recent months about the General, who had been something of a survivor, guiding the KGB through several Soviet regimes. Pragmatic, cunning, one of the old guard – these were the words and phrases that had been applied to Greshko.

  “Retirement is a euphemism, in Soviet fashion, for being ousted. Epishev was well and truly Greshko’s boy. Greshko played the pipes and Uncle danced to any tune going. Some of the melodies were more than a little unpleasant, Pagan.”

  “Such as?”

  Witherspoon caught the waiter’s eye and had his glass refilled. “Greshko assigned him the task of rooting out and silencing, usually for all eternity, anyone who raised his or her voice against the system. I understand Uncle carried out his tasks with the zeal of the true believer. Murder, blackmail, deportations to labour camps without possibility of parole – Uncle used everything in his copious bag of tricks to silence the small voices of dissent. He was very very good at this. He’s responsible, one way or another, for thousands of deaths. As for imprisonments, well, the figures are beyond computation.”

  “A butcher,” Pagan said.

  “Ah, the endearing simplicity of the policeman’s mind. My dear Pagan, you can’t just hang one of your banal little labels on the fellow. Butchery is only a part of Epishev’s repertoire. As I understand it,” – and Witherspoon gave the impression that his understanding was the only correct one – “Epishev is something of a chameleon. He blends with backgrounds. He changes colours. He’s apparently not without charm, albeit of a deadly nature. He’s the sort of chap who smiles apologetically as he tightens the garotte round your adam’s apple. More than a butcher, Pagan. He has much blood on his hands, undeniableee, but he has a system of very hard beliefs that justify anything he does. And when did you last hear of a butcher slaughtering a cow because the animal didn’t happen to share the butcher’s philosophy?”

  Pagan didn’t enjoy being talked down to by Tommy Witherspoon. He was being made to feel like a kid learning the alphabet by staring at letters on wooden cubes. “What’s his situation since Greshko was put out to pasture?”

  “Who can say? Uncle Viktor belongs in the old camp, Pagan. Whether he can survive the new regime is anybody’s guess. Maybe the new boys will want to sweep him under the rug because he’s a leftover from the past, and therefore embarrassing. But if he’s running around our green and pleasant land, as you say, then presumably he still has a function to carry out.”

  Pagan gazed across the large room. The long windows were dark. On Piccadilly streetlamps were lit.

  “I must say, though, I find it awfully hard to believe Epishev’s here.”

  “You mean you find it hard to b
elieve you didn’t know about it, Tommy.”

  Witherspoon fixed Pagan with an inebriated grin that was very cold. “I really can’t see anybody sending him overseas unless it was Greshko. If the organ-grinders of the KGB wanted somebody to do some dirty work in London, I have the feeling they’d have sent a younger chap, somebody completely unknown to us.”

  “Is it possible Greshko did send him? Is it possible Epishev came here on business that wasn’t officially sanctioned by the present leadership of the KGB?”

  Witherspoon looked suddenly befuddled, half-gone in an alcoholic haze. “Anything’s possible, Pagan. Greshko had a vast power base, and that doesn’t just simply disintegrate in a matter of a few months. A great many people over there aren’t enamoured of the new boys in the Kremlin, don’t forget. But the general impression I keep getting is that resistance to the new chaps isn’t terribly well-organised, more a kind of choral moaning than anything else. But I can’t imagine Epishev aligning himself with a dying old man like Greshko.”

  “If Greshko didn’t send him, and if Epishev’s an embarrassment to the KGB these days, then who gave him orders to come here? Did he make the trip of his own free will?”

  “As I keep trying to intimate, Pagan, Soviet intentions are frequently too murky for our Western minds to fathom. Especially, it would seem, the mind of a policeman. Cops are fine when it comes to handing out speeding tickets, I daresay, but let them loose in the big world of political subtleties and they’re quite at a loss.”

  Pagan stood up. He wondered how much more of Tommy he could take without doing something utterly uncivilised. “Is there a photograph of him?” he asked.

  Witherspoon laughed until his eyes watered. “Lord, no. A photograph of Epishev! I know people in the field who’d give a year’s salary for a likeness of Uncle Viktor! A photograph of Epishev! Really, Pagan. What do you think this is? Do you think the KGB supplies us with pics and bios of its top people? Dear oh dear oh dear.”