Mazurka

by Campbell Armstrong

  The third Russian plane zoomed above him and attacked him with cannon. The F-16 trembled and vibrated in the storm of fire but didn’t receive a hit.

  Andres, still believing in luck, still believing that the angels were on his side, rolled back into his dive on the Palace of Congresses as the remaining MIG-29, the Fulcrum, fired down on him from above. Let him catch me, Andres thought. Let the fucker do his worst. He’d already brought two of them down and he wasn’t about to be stopped by some goddam Ivanovich shooting at him. He was about two miles from his target now and he had his hand poised over the bomb button, and when the bombs fell upon the Palace they’d explode after a fifteen-second delay.

  At one thousand feet two SA-11 missiles, fired from a site three miles beyond Moscow, came screaming towards him, disintegrating the fuselage of the F-16 and turning the aircraft into a mass of fiery debris that splintered in the sky and fell, like the tail of the most glorious firework that had ever lit the air above Moscow. Andres Kiss, harnessed to his seat, helmeted, still saying the closing lines of the Lord’s Prayer, his hand reaching for the bomb button, felt nothing save a very brief moment of burning discomfort before he was falling and falling, along with the flaming remains of his aeroplane, into an empty soccer stadium a mere two miles from the Palace of Congresses.

  Zavidovo, the Soviet Union

  It was almost midnight when Dimitri Volovich arrived at Greshko’s cottage in Zavidovo. The Yakut nurse opened the door for him. Without waiting for any response from her, he stepped inside. “I’ll need a glass of water,” he said.

  “Of course.” The nurse fetched him the glass. He didn’t drink from it. Instead, he pushed open the door to Greshko’s bedroom.

  Curtains had been drawn against the windows. The only source of illumination was a tiny reading lamp affixed to the wall above Greshko’s pillows, but this was barely more than a pinpoint of electricity.

  Greshko, who had been lying with his eyes shut, opened them when he heard Volovich enter the room. Because of the bad light, he could barely make out the Lieutenant’s face. He propped himself up on his elbows, rubbed his eyes. He saw a glass of water in Dimitri’s right hand.

  “Come closer, Dimitri.”

  Volovich did so. Obedience to the old man, he thought, was a hard habit to break. But General Olsky said it had to be broken. It was the only way.

  Greshko frowned. There was something here that wasn’t quite right, something askew. Perhaps it was the flat tone in Volovich’s voice, an edge, barely noticeable, which sounded abrasive.

  He sat upright now, expecting pain, which had gone through him all day long like a blade, but surprisingly there was none. When there was no pain he imagined he’d held death in abeyance once again, that he’d overcome his oldest adversary – but why did he feel no sense of exaltation, no joy, no triumph?

  Volovich approached the bed. Greshko stared at the glass of water. “You have a message from Viktor?”

  Volovich sat on the edge of the bed, crossing his legs. “No message, General.”

  “No message?”

  “None.”

  Greshko gestured toward the stereo. “Put some music on, Dimitri.”

  Volovich shook his head. In this small act of disobedience, Greshko suddenly saw the limits of his power. So this was it. After all these years, this was the moment. Losing wasn’t the thing that troubled him, because a gamble was a gamble after all. It was the way they’d changed the rules of the game that irritated him. He imagined Olsky and Nikolai Bragin, a cosy little chat, a handshake, a secretive smile. Perhaps even Birthmark Billy had been involved. Of course he should have foreseen such collusion against him, he should have known that the rules would be altered – but what was life if you didn’t take bloody risks? A toss of the dice, a turn of the cards. But the dice had been loaded, the cards unfairly marked.

  “How did they get to you, Dimitri?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Money? No, I doubt that. Threats, then. They threatened you.”

  Volovich nodded.

  Greshko smiled. “And if you kill me, you’ll be protected.”

  “Yes.”

  Greshko uttered a hoarse laugh. “And you believe this? You believe your protectors are honourable men, Dimitri? You believe they’ll let you keep your job, your perks, your nice uniform?”

  “I have no choice.”

  “How is it to be?” Greshko asked. “Does the General commit suicide while depressed over his incurable physical condition?”

  “No suicide.”

  Greshko watched Dimitri Volovich raise the glass of water.

  “Something to drink, is that it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Volovich said.

  “Ah,” Greshko said. “A heart attack. Cardiac arrest. Weakened by his long illness, the General succumbed peacefully at midnight.”

  Volovich removed his wallet, opened it, shook a small capsule out. He cracked the plastic casing, dropped white powder into the water, and swirled the glass around in his hand.

  “Mix it well,” Greshko said.

  Volovich looked at the clouded water. He held the glass to Greshko’s lips. The old man didn’t drink immediately. He smiled over the rim of the glass.

  “Drink,” Volovich said.

  Greshko sipped the liquid. It tasted slightly bitter. He felt it burn at the back of his throat, but then the sensation passed.

  “I wish Olsky had administered this himself,” Greshko said. “But he’s such a gutless little shit. He wouldn’t have the courage to come here.”

  Greshko closed his eyes, smiled. Then, through the fluttering of his eyelids, he saw Dimitri Volovich, who appeared to be floating a very long way off. Fading. Darkness. Sweat. It was like falling through water whose temperature increased the deeper you sank. He raised a hand in the air, a weightless thing of skin and bone. This sense of life closing down, of blinds being drawn, wasn’t so bad except for the terrible heat that had begun to burn inside him.

  “And what becomes of Russia, my dear Volovich?” Greshko asked.

  He lay very still. Dimitri Volovich stood up and left the bedroom. He told the Yakut nurse that the old man was sleeping, and then he stepped outside into the darkness, hearing the trees rustle and night creatures foraging in the forest, sounds that filled him, for some reason, with an odd sense of fear.

  Epilogue

  Sussex, England

  Frank Pagan stretched out in a deckchair and stared up into the sunlight of the early afternoon. It was one of those brilliant mid-September days that condescend to visit England infrequently, warm and yet with a hint of the autumn still to come, that glorious time before the leaves change and drift in a brittle dance to the ground, and the landscape turns melancholy. He enjoyed the feel of sunlight on his eyelids, the drone of insects, the sound of a cricket-bat colliding with a leather ball, a timeless click, placid and unthreatening and peculiarly English.

  He looked across the playing-field at the white-suited figures who stood motionless on the rich grass. It was one of those games you didn’t have to pay attention to, because very little ever happened. Occasionally a batsman was out, and occasionally some daring soul would swing his bat at the ball and send it flying over the boundary, but attention wasn’t a necessary condition of enjoyment. Serenity was the soul of all village-green cricket games. Peace and detachment, idleness, a glass or two of beer, a suggestion of unimportant pageantry. He edged himself up in his striped deckchair and watched the bowler approach the wicket and make his delivery, and he followed the leisurely flight of the red ball as it spun towards the batsman. The ball went harmlessly past the batsman, and the wickets, into the enormous gloves of the wicket-keeper.

  Pagan reached for his beer, which had turned warm under the sun, and he sipped it slowly. He stared beyond the playing-field to the oak trees on the other side, where the scoreboard was located, and a small ramshackle pavilion stood. The score, to Pagan, was utterly irrelevant. There were some animated old men in chairs
around the pavilion, and here and there an interested youngster, but in general the event was observed with nonchalance and the kind of patience required by any cricket spectator. Nothing mattered here. Nothing that happened here would change the course of the world in any way. And he liked that sensation. He liked the notion of being removed from anything that was hectic, and he liked the peacefulness of doing absolutely nothing.

  And watching cricket. And drinking flat beer. And not thinking about Kristina Vaska, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from since the events at Grand Central Station. He owed her his life, he understood that much. And he was grateful. But he had the feeling that other possibilities had slipped away, that other conceivable futures had cancelled themselves, and this thought – try valiantly as he might to ignore it – left him depressed.

  He looked along the row of deckchairs that stretched on either side of him, shielding his eyes from the sun and seeing Martin Burr – who carried two glasses of beer – come towards him from the striped marquee where beverages were sold. Pagan had come here at Burr’s invitation, an invitation he’d accepted gladly because for the six days since he’d returned from the United States he’d done very little but make a report and linger aimlessly in his apartment. He cleaned the place up, but that took only a day and a half. He shuffled pictures on the wall, made some minor changes, moved furniture around, dusted his record albums, and that took another day. Coming down here to Martin Burr’s little corner of the world was a break from the dreariness of London.

  Burr looked out at the cricket players. A batsman had just been declared out and there was a smattering of subdued applause from the pavilion area. The Commissioner made an adjustment to his eyepatch and turned towards Pagan.

  “I have some news that may interest you, Frank.”

  Pagan didn’t want to hear what it was. He wanted to lose himself in laziness and detachment. He wanted to believe that Burr had invited him down here for rest and relaxation, that the Commissioner had no ulterior motive. Life had to be simple, for God’s sake.

  “I mention it in passing, Frank,” Burr said. “If you’re interested in loose ends.”

  Pagan looked at the Commissioner. Martin Burr sipped his beer, leaving a ring of foam on his upper lip, which he made no attempt to wipe away.

  “It’s from Witherspoon. Thought you might be curious, that’s all,” and Martin Burr looked rather sly all at once.

  “All right. I’m curious.”

  Burr leaned a little closer. There was something mysterious about the Commissioner, Pagan decided, as if this cricket game were just a front, an excuse, for something else. He wasn’t sure what.

  “We keep getting news about revolts all over the place. In Latvia. Lithuania. Estonia. It seems that armed bands rose up and were quickly put down again. There’s nothing very firm, you understand. Some eyewitness accounts, some diplomatic reports. A couple of telegrams purporting to be from the Movement for Baltic Independence were received in Paris and Stockholm. And the BBC monitored a speech on Estonian radio about the fight for freedom, but the speaker was cut off in the middle of it. That’s all. The Soviets are officially saying nothing, of course. But it appears that these rebellions were timed to coincide with the attack of that plane. One massive display of defiance and courage. One huge cry for independence.”

  “Which didn’t quite make it,” Pagan said. It would have been quite a symphony, he thought. Quite an arrangement, everything succeeding at the same time. He remembered Aleksis and he thought of the bravery, the effort, the sheer damned ambition of Romanenko and Mikhail Kiss. He thought of their commitment, that zealous attachment to their cause that overwhelmed everything else in their lives – even such things as simple loyalty to an old comrade like Norbert Vaska. Commitment and vengeance. And betrayal. There was a level on which Frank Pagan admired that kind of courage even if he didn’t agree with its ultimate chaotic aim, a bloody war all across the Baltic nations, a war that could have only one outcome. But finally he felt a certain ambivalence toward the Brotherhood and if there was a sensation he hated in himself, that was the one.

  “Damned good effort, though.” Burr was quiet. “The Americans are saying the pilot was a complete schizophrenic. History of mental illness. To be expected.”

  Pagan nodded. “Of course.” He was remembering Mikhail Kiss and the big house in Glen Cove and the empty rooms. He wondered if Andres’s trophies were still in place, his certificates still hanging on the walls.

  Burr watched the game a moment. “Perhaps even more mysterious is the way Epishev has simply vanished from the face of the earth. My feeling is that the Russians are playing that one really close to their chests. They probably took him out and shot him for his role in this subversive drama.” Burr sipped his beer. “Tommy also says there’s an unpublicised shake-up going on in air-defence personnel, which is to be expected, of course. According to his sources, about a score of officers have been arrested already and more are expected. Most of them were in possession of large sums of American money and false passports. Presumably these came courtesy of that Brotherhood of yours, Frank, which must have spread more than a few dollars around the place.”

  Martin Burr set his glass in his lap. He was silent for a time. “And General Greshko is dead. A timely sort of death, wouldn’t you say – given the role he’s supposed to have played in this failed revolution. Heart-attack. Naturally, it would be. Unless it was a car crash. Prominent Soviets usually only succumb to those things.”

  Pagan smiled. Burr drained his beer and added, “One of the last chaps to see him was one of our own, a fellow called McLaren at the Embassy. Greshko told him the most outrageous story of financial skulduggery and sedition on the part of the new Chairman of the KGB. There were documents too.”

  “Documents?”

  “Apparently. The PM doesn’t want them bruited about. Can’t embarrass our Soviet friends. We’re allies these days. Expect you’ve heard that, Frank. We’re like that with the Bolsheviks.” Martin Burr closed his index and middle fingers together, then belched in a restrained way. “As for your fat man – well, no trace, absolutely no trace at all. He just doesn’t exist, it seems. A spooky thought, Frank. Somewhere in the hidden government of the United States, in one of those subterranean outfits that really run the show over in America, there lurk figures prepared to plan the future direction of the human race, without regard to reality. Makes you think, Frank.”

  Pagan watched him for a time because he couldn’t escape the uncomfortable sensation that Burr was withholding something else, a topic he didn’t want to mention, words he couldn’t quite get right. He had the look of a man rehearsing in his head. Pagan knew it would come out eventually. It always did where the Commissioner was concerned.

  “Lovely day,” Burr said.

  The weather. But that wasn’t what was on Martin Burr’s mind, Pagan was certain. Burr stood up, prodded the ground with his cane, surveyed the field of play a moment.

  “I feel like something to eat,” Burr said. “A sandwich perhaps.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Pagan remarked.

  “Walk with me anyway, Frank. Keep me company.”

  Pagan rose from the deckchair and followed Martin Burr in the direction of the marquee, making his way past people who dozed in chairs, or who lay indolently in the grass, past toddlers and young lovers, and others who were simply sunning themselves on this rare day. The marquee, pitched on the edge of the green, was a colourful affair of red and white striped canvas. Pagan could see people milling around inside, cluttered at the drinks table or buying sandwiches and pork pies.

  He followed Burr into the large tent. The light here was muted, filtered through heavy canvas. He had an impression of beer kegs and sandwiches under glass trays and a muddiness underfoot where beer had been spilled. He had another impression too, and he couldn’t quite define it, but for no good reason a slight sense of expectation went through him, as if this were the place where Martin Burr intended to reveal the thing he’d s
o obviously been reluctant to mention. He walked behind Burr to the food table and the Commissioner, after surveying an unappetising array of tomato and cucumber sandwiches, turned with a serious look on his face.

  “I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about this, Frank,” he said.

  “Feel about what?”

  The Commissioner gestured to the far side of the marquee. For a second, Pagan hesitated, didn’t follow the Commissioner’s direction. He stood very still, not wanting to look, and yet knowing beyond any doubt what he’d see when he did turn his face. He felt strange, just a little disoriented, and all the sounds inside the tent became magnified in his head and echoed there.

  “You may consider it unfair of me,” Burr said. “Or you may think it’s presumption on my part to interfere in your life, Frank. But there you are. I was tired of seeing you moon about. I think you need to give the girl and yourself a break.”

  Frank Pagan turned his face slowly.

  She was wearing a plain lemon dress and a wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow over her features. She was looking directly at him and there was the slightest suggestion of a smile on her lips, but he couldn’t be sure of that. She was motionless, and lovely, and he felt odd, out of touch with himself, all the pulses in his body unsynchronised. And then his attention was drawn to the figure who stood just behind her, a man of indeterminate age, slightly stooped but clear-eyed, a man who held himself erect as if only with enormous effort.

  Even if he’d never seen the man’s photograph before, Pagan would have known that it was Norbert Vaska.

  Pagan didn’t move. He heard Martin Burr say, “She’s on her way back to the States, Frank.” Burr paused. “Just came to collect her father in Berlin. And I thought, why not? I’m not, you understand, playing bloody Cupid.”

  Pagan returned his gaze to Kristina Vaska, wanting to go towards her but not moving even though every urge in his body commanded him to cross the space that separated him from her.