Olsky stood in silence for a time. He had cards to play, but he wanted his timing to be correct. He was prepared to let Greshko rant for a while. He watched globules of white saliva appear on the old man’s lips. Then Greshko yielded to a prolonged fit of coughing, doubling over in his wheelchair, wiping his sleeve across his lips. His skeleton seemed to rattle. Olsky, noticing how crystalline mucus clung to the material of the old man’s sweater, turned his face away for a moment. The paroxysm passed and Greshko, white-faced, was silent.
Olsky wandered some feet from the wheelchair. With his back to Greshko, he said, “A man called Yevenko was arrested yesterday, General.”
Greshko, whose chest felt raw, his lungs on fire, closed his eyes. He had the impression of a thousand wasps buzzing through his brain. Yevenko, he thought.
“More commonly known as the Printer,” Olsky said. “A criminal type whose speciality is forged papers, passports, and even the occasional rouble. He was arrested on suspicion of currency irregularities. It was a routine kind of arrest, but it had an interesting aspect to it. The Printer, it seems, had a story to tell about recently being called upon to make a West German passport for a man known as Grunwald.”
Greshko was sarcastic. “Fascinating. Tell me more.”
“Grunwald, according to the Printer, is in reality our comrade Epishev.”
“Really,” Greshko remarked. He showed absolutely no emotion on his face. “And you take the word of this criminal?”
“He was in a tight spot. He was ready to barter. People like him usually tell the truth when they face the prospect of lengthy incarceration.”
Greshko wheeled his chair a couple of feet. “Let’s suppose for just a moment this criminal is telling the truth – although, as you may be aware, General, criminals rarely do. Viktor might have needed a forged passport in the normal line of duty. He works in some very grey areas, after all. He infiltrates underground groups, he may need false ID, a cover of some kind.”
“It’s possible.” Olsky paused. “I’m reliably informed that the man using this passport left the Soviet Union on an Aeroflot flight to East Berlin. He then caught a connecting flight to London.”
“London? Why would Viktor travel to London?” Greshko asked. “This is all very thin, General. What evidence do you have that the man called Grunwald is Epishev in any case?”
Olsky said, “The photograph in the forged passport was Epishev’s. The Printer assured us of that.”
“And you believed him?” Greshko infused scepticism into his voice, the tone of the experienced old master contemptuous of the apprentice’s naivety.
Olsky didn’t reply to this question. “Did you send Viktor to London, Vladimir?”
“Why would I send him there? Why would I send him anywhere, for God’s sake? Besides, I couldn’t send him abroad, he’d need clearance from a superior officer.”
Olsky, who knew Epishev had the authority to go in and out of the Soviet Union at will, a clearance given him by Greshko years ago, glanced through the trees for a time. There was something just a little pathetic in backing Greshko into a corner. Something almost sad, although that was an emotion Olsky couldn’t afford to feel. He wondered why he wasn’t savouring this moment. “Comrade General, when I visited you before I mentioned missing computer data relating to a man called Aleksis Romanenko.”
Greshko, like some old parrot, cocked his head and listened. What now? What links was this upstart Olsky trying to make?
Olsky said, “I mentioned that the data had been deliberately removed. But in this particular instance we had a stroke of quite extraordinary good fortune.”
“Good fortune?” Greshko asked. There was a lump, like stone, in his throat.
“Indeed. We were able to reproduce the missing data from some back-ups that a clerk took the precaution to make.”
“Back-ups?” Greshko asked. He hadn’t thought of this possibility. He hadn’t imagined any clerk conscientious enough to make a goddam duplicate of the data.
Olsky went on, “It’s fascinating material. It appears Romanenko had well-developed ties with a subversive organisation both inside and outside the Soviet Union known as the Brotherhood of the Forest. I must make the assumption, Vladimir, that since this data existed when you were Chairman of the organs, you must have known of it.”
“I never heard of it. It means nothing to me.” Greshko leaned forward in his chair. The damned pain went through him again, making it difficult to concentrate. His eyes watered and he gasped quietly. Back-ups. Duplicates. He wondered which wretched clerk was responsible for such a thing. It was his own damned fault because he’d never really understood the intricate ways of the new computer system, he’d always been puzzled by it and overawed, and like any man terrorised by a new technology he’d failed to grasp its potential.
“Come,” Olsky said. “A traitor like Romanenko, a man in a high position – and you never knew about him? You with your omniscient knowledge of the organs? Really, General. How can I believe you?”
Greshko spoke quietly, giving the distinct impression of a man surprised by nothing. “Obviously some useless clerk, some slipshod moron, forgot to bring the material to my attention. Or perhaps during the changeover to the present computer system, the data was overlooked.”
Olsky laughed quietly in disbelief. “But you never overlooked anything, General, did you? And surely you didn’t employ morons?”
Greshko listened to the woodpecker again. Rap rap rap. The sharp beak of the creature might have been poking at the timbers of his own brain just then. He became silent in the manner of a man who has unexpectedly just lost a piece in a game of chess, a knight trapped and seized, a bishop ruthlessly snared.
Olsky said, “On the day Romanenko was shot, Epishev came to visit you. Early next morning he vanished using a fake passport. He went to London. Why the sudden rush to visit England? An overwhelming yearning to see Westminister Abbey, General? Or is there some other reason he needs to be there in the wake of Romanenko’s murder? And now here’s a brand new element – the former Chairman of the KGB, the all-seeing General Greshko, admits he knew nothing of Romanenko’s subversion! And asks me to believe this story.” Olsky raised a finger to his lips and spoke in a mock whisper filled with comic astonishment. “Or could it be that General Greshko had a good reason of his own to leave Aleksis Romanenko in position as a high Party official? Is that it?”
Greshko waved a hand in the air. “You’re full of hot air, Olsky. It’s a wonder you aren’t floating away over the damned trees.”
“I ask myself. Was General Greshko involved with Romanenko in a subversive scheme? Is it that simple? Is this a deeper echo of the sounds of conspiracy I keep hearing?”
“I’d be very careful if I were you, Stefan.”
Greshko saw the Yakut woman come out of the house and approach the wheelchair. She was carrying a tray of medication. He was relieved to see her.
Olsky looked at the nurse as she came striding across the grass. Then he tapped the face of his wristwatch, as if he’d just remembered an appointment. “I’ll keep in touch, of course, Vladimir. I know you’re interested in the outcome of my investigations.” And then he turned and moved toward the parked Zil, sliding through the fence and deftly avoiding the bramble bush that had snagged him before. Greshko watched him step into the large car, then heard the sound of the engine turning over.
“Pill time, General,” the nurse said.
Greshko observed the car as it vanished between trees, leaving only a vibration behind. He felt the nurse stick a capsule into his mouth. He swallowed it, listening to the Zil until it became indistinguishable from the drone of insects. Back-ups, he thought. The need for duplicates that sometimes obsessed the petty clerical mind. So be it. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and concentrated, tracking things through his mind, wondering what his next step would be if he were General Smartass Olsky. What would you do next, Stefan? The answer came back at once. I would put the squeeze on Volovich. I’d
twist Volovich like a damp rag until he told me everything he knows. The question was how much Volovich knew. He hadn’t been told the precise extent of the Brotherhood’s plan, but he certainly knew enough to cause enormous trouble.
Greshko glared into the sun as if he might stare it down. Back-ups and duplicates, by God! Well, he had a back-up of his own which, like a palmed card, he’d play when the time was ripe. And that ripeness, he felt, was upon him.
He smiled at the nurse and she regarded him in a wary manner. “Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“You want something. That’s when you smile, General. When you need me.”
Greshko shrugged, turning his face from the sun, which was the colour now of a blood orange. “Perhaps,” was his response to the Yakut woman.
Tallinn, Estonia
Colonel Yevgenni Uvarov disembarked from the launch in Tallinn harbour just after daylight and walked until he reached the Mermaid monument, where he sat on an empty bench beside a clump of shrubbery. He pretended to be interested in the monument, gazing up at the winged woman that stood atop a stone structure, but he couldn’t concentrate on it. He read on a plaque that the statue had been erected in memory of the crew of the Russalka, which sank in the Gulf of Finland in 1893, but every so often he’d turn and look away, back across the shore to the harbour, where the tall stacks and funnels of ships looked dense and tangled in the dawn sky.
He was unable to still the nervousness he felt. He got up, walked round the green wooden bench, scanned the shoreline, fidgeted. Since he’d taken the phonecall last night on Saaremaa Island he’d been living as if at some distance from himself. He hadn’t slept. The idea of sleep was foreign to him. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, not even a simple cup of tea. He’d risen in that strangely chill dark just before sunrise and gone down to the fast launch that went back and forth between the island and Tallinn, ferrying mail and supplies, and he’d stepped on board and nobody had asked him any questions even though he’d waited for the captain of the vessel to approach him for ID papers or an official pass. He calculated he could be gone for only six or seven hours before he was missed from the radar base – although in reality his absence might be noticed at any time, especially if there were some unforeseen emergency. But he thought he’d covered himself as well as he possibly could, by informing his adjutant – perhaps the laziest man in the whole command – that he had to travel on unspecified official business to Kuressaare on the southern part of the island.
He stared at the sea, waited, wondered if he’d done the right thing by coming here, or if he’d just walked into a trap that would cost him his life. He could imagine it – discovery, the disgrace of a court-martial, public humiliation, a death sentence. And what would happen to his wife and children then? Branded, destined to a terrible life, a world in which doors would be dosed to them.
Uvarov returned to the bench, sat, waited, smoked a cigarette. The man on the telephone had mentioned Aleksis’s name and the importance of meeting – but he hadn’t identified himself, and now Uvarov, whose heart would not stop kicking against his ribs, wished he’d never met the man known as Aleksis, that he’d never accepted the US passports and the enormous sum of money, but Aleksis had been persuasive, and convincing, and finally impossible to refuse, with his enchanting pictures of life in a free world, a future for the children, a place where a man might advance through his own merits – Aleksis had painted a portrait of a desirable place that Uvarov’s wife Valentina lusted after. Freedom, Yevgenni. A new life. To bring up our children as we choose, Yevgenni. The risks are worth it.
Uvarov heard the sound of a car door slam nearby. He stared at the statue, couldn’t sit still. He heard footsteps on the cobblestones and he raised his face just as a man came into view.
The voice on the telephone had said, I read Sovietskaya Estonia. I always carry a copy with me.
Uvarov saw Sovietskaya Estonia folded under the man’s arm, looked away at once, sucked the sea air into his lungs, felt his eyes smart and begin to water. The man came to the bench, sat down, tapped Uvarov’s wrist with the rolled-up newspaper. The Colonel felt a fist close inside his stomach as he looked at the newcomer – who was perhaps in his late forties and wore a thick moustache that covered his upper lip. He was dressed in the uniform of a Major in the KGB, a fact that caused Uvarov to grip the bench tightly.
“Don’t believe everything you see, Colonel,” the man said. “The uniform is borrowed.”
Uvarov pressed his palm to his mouth. The man smiled and reassuringly touched the back of Uvarov’s hand. “You don’t look so good, Colonel. Let’s walk some colour back into your face.”
Uvarov rose. The man took him by the arm and they strolled round the monument in the direction of Kadriorg Park. The sun, low over the harbour, cast all manner of strange shadows between the anchored ships.
“Learn to relax, Yevgenni.”
Uvarov stopped moving. He stood under a tree, lit another cigarette, tried very hard to smile. Relax, he thought. Tell me how. Show me!
“Call me Marcus.”
“Marcus,” Uvarov said.
“You suspect a trap. Ask yourself this, my friend. If this were a trap, would I appear in this particular uniform? I’d be in civilian clothes, trying to put you at your ease, wouldn’t I? I’d be trying to lull you, no?”
Uvarov made a feeble gesture and the man named Marcus, whose expression was one of weary strength, smiled. “You all suspect you’re about to be arrested. Each and every one of you feels the same when I make contact.”
Uvarov looked back in the direction of the harbour. A pall of black smoke rose from the funnel of a ship, spiralling slowly upward like a funereal scarf. Each and every one of us, he thought. “How many are involved?” he asked.
“In the armed services of the Soviet Union, less than a score, perhaps less than a dozen,” Marcus answered in an enigmatic way. “Outside the services, the number is impossible to estimate. Patriots come and go, Yevgenni. One day you can count thousands, another day hundreds. Mercenaries on the other hand tend to remain stable.”
“You’re vague,” Uvarov said. He didn’t like to think of himself as a mercenary. He was going through this nightmare for his family’s sake, not because he wanted to accumulate riches in the West.
“I need to be.” Marcus looked toward the dark smoke now. He had a face that was pocked and pitted, the result of some childhood disease. It gave him a seasoned appearance, a toughness.
“Why are you making contact? Where is Aleksis?” Uvarov asked.
“Aleksis’s part is over, my friend.”
Uvarov clutched the man’s wrist. “My family –”
“In wonderful health, Yevgenni.”
“You’re sure?”
Marcus stroked his moustache. “They long to be with you. They long for freedom.”
Uvarov felt his anxiety fade, but only a little. He took a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and blew his nose because the mention of his family had choked him and he felt like crying. Marcus, in a gesture of kindness, placed a hand on Uvarov’s shoulder.
“Soon, Yevgenni. Very soon,” Marcus said. “Now listen to me carefully. I could not give you your final instructions over the telephone, for obvious reasons. As soon as you have performed the function Aleksis hired you for, a small launch will be waiting for you at the jetty that services your installation. It will look like any ordinary military launch except for this one fact – the vessel will not be flying a flag. It will wait for exactly five minutes, no longer. When you get on board, you’ll be taken to Hango in Finland.”
“And my family?”
“Your family will be in Helsinki many hours before you arrive in Hango. They’ll be safe. I promise you.”
“They’re travelling alone?”
“Of course. But they have passports. They’ll leave Russia through Leningrad.”
Somehow Uvarov had expected different arrangements, that he’d be going with his wife and
children when the time came, but that was fantasy. Obviously, if he wanted to join his family he’d have to go through with Aleksis’s task – otherwise, he’d be stranded in Soviet territory while his family was safe in Finland.
“What if something goes wrong?” he asked.
Marcus crossed his fingers and held his hand in front of Uvarov’s face. “If we perform our tasks efficiently, nothing can possibly go wrong.”
“If is the strangest word in the language,” Uvarov said.
Marcus moved a couple of feet away. “Keep your nerve. Don’t lose it.”
Uvarov wanted to detain Marcus now, because he found comfort in the notion of a fellow conspirator. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“In Helsinki, my friend. Your wife and children. And a further fifty thousand American dollars.” The man known as Marcus walked between the trees and didn’t look back.
Uvarov watched him go. If, the Colonel thought. If everything went according to plan. If all the nameless conspirators Marcus had mentioned played their roles and adhered to the timetable. If. How many other Army personnel were involved apart from himself? Less than twenty, perhaps less than a dozen, according to Marcus. A small number of men. The smaller the number, the less chance of something going wrong.
Uvarov was slightly cheered by this thought.
The man called Marcus walked to the place where he’d parked his car, an inconspicuous black Moskvich. He took a dark overcoat from the back seat and wore it over the KGB uniform, then he sat behind the wheel. Marcus, whose real name was Anton Sepp, formerly a sergeant in the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, looked back at the figure of Yevgenni Uvarov as he drove away from Tallinn harbour. Then he headed through the streets of the city, passing along Toompea Street in the medieval part of Tallinn, where a network of narrow alleys ran between crooked houses. Already there were a few early tourists moving listlessly, the ubiquitous Japanese with their cameras, a couple of Americans – you could always tell the Americans from the cut of their clothes and the slightly condescending looks on their faces as they studied quaintness – and a few Finns who came for riotous weekends of vodka drinking. The tourists would rummage in the souvenir and craft shops or they’d walk to the foreign currency stores on Tehnika or Gagarini Streets. They’d wander the museums and at night, sated by history, they’d sit through a Western-style cabaret of forced cheerfulness in the basement of the Viru Hotel.
Mazurka Page 26
