No tape-recorder's spools turned. No microphone carried Yuri Bikov's words. No note was taken.
'You may trust me, Viktor. I will protect you from the thugs with truncheons, electrodes, drugs, from all the shit people. They would not understand, to them pain is an end. I want to understand and then I want to help. Your friends have abandoned you—but you are fortunate because you have a new friend—you have me. I know so little of you, Viktor, but you will help me to know you better. I want to learn about you.'
The bright flame of the candle kept company with them. First Bikov would talk, then he would listen. He would create an atmosphere that he could tap into, then milk. When younger, when he had started to recognize his own skills, he had watched the work of other interrogators in Counterintelligence (Military). He had learned their style, then had pitched his own in a directly opposite fashion. Most regarded themselves as an elite and had showered themselves with superiority—most took an attitude that they were the chosen representatives of the highest power, and the suspect was barely worth the time and effort given him.
Imagine an empty bucket and a tap against a wall, and a day of stultifying heat. The need of the interrogator was to have the bucket filled, if he were to drink and cool himself. The tap must be turned, the water must flow and fill it. If the water does not lap at the top of the bucket the interrogator has failed. Hitting the tap with a pickaxe handle would not fill the bucket; the tap's handle must be turned, and gently. Once, in the dog-end days in Afghanistan, in the camp at Herat where the sand blew and the flies bit, when Bikov had been a junior lieutenant, he had watched a fellow officer, same rank, hammer the face of a mujahidin to a pulp with an iron bar. When the suspect was unconscious, incapable of giving information, Bikov had told the officer he should have been a plumber, not an officer: 'If you had chosen employment as a plumber, not as a soldier, and you had cut your finger with a knife you could have beaten your knife with a hammer, and been satisfied.' The officer had not understood him.
'You are a senior officer, Viktor, a man of stature, and I respect you. If a man of your intelligence, your insight, has a grievance then it should be listened to. But fools don't listen. How many times, Viktor, have you voiced concerns, anxieties, worries, and how many times have you been ignored because the system does not have the legitimacy or the confidence to allow itself to be criticized? Don't answer…the system is rotten. To me you can speak with freedom.'
In Chechnya, his first tour, the bandits had crossed a minefield to attack a camp south of Grozny, had planted explosives and had run back through the minefield, but in the attack's confusion one had been captured by the paratroops based at the camp. Their commander had tied a rope to the ankle of the prisoner and he had been prodded at bayonet point back into the minefield. The paratroops, in hot pursuit, had followed the rope's length behind him, believing he would take them through the mines. The prisoner had killed himself, and the two paratroops who held the end of the rope. Bikov had arrived at the camp two hours later, and had told the commander he was an 'idiot'.
By the candle's light he could see Viktor's face, and his prey could see his. But the light of the candle did not reach to the bare walls of the room, or to its ceiling. He denied his prey the chance to turn his head to a bookcase and memorize the titles on the shelves, to stare at the pattern on a chair or the scratches on a hard seat; there were no window bars for him to gaze at or a heap of files on a desk in which Viktor could escape the questions that would come. They were together, the two of them, alone. There was no evidence—Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Bikov worked towards a confession from Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko. He had time and he had patience, and the confession, when it came, would end the life of his prey.
'We are here to sort out your difficulties, Viktor, as friends do, true friends. I respect you, and I believe you will come to respect me. Together we break down the difficulties, you and I.'
He spoke quietly. If Viktor were to hear him he would have to strain and concentrate, and that was good. He saw Viktor's head tilt and twist, but there was nothing for his eyes to reach towards, only the darkness, and that was the best. The old shabby clothes, an artisan's, and the boots with the dried mud of Chechnya still on them, the stubble on his face and the tangle in his hair were the superficial signs that he was not superior, not in authority, to the man separated from him by the candle's sharp flame. Viktor, if Viktor looked at him and studied him, would read the openness and honesty of his face. Everything was planned, prepared. Bikov did not think it would be easy—the prey he stalked had lived a deception for many years and would have survived black-dog days of despair and also the days of elation when he would have believed himself untouchable. Only a man of steeled character could have come through the bad days and the good. He was ready to land the first blow: his soft-spoken words would hit harder than a crowbar, or a pickaxe handle, or a lead-tipped truncheon.
'We should start at the beginning, Viktor, with family. Myself, I have no family. My father divorced my mother twenty-two years ago, I was fourteen. I have not seen my father from that day. My mother is in Gorno-Altaysk, an awful place. I think she is still there, but I don't write, I don't know. I was married, and divorced, before I was twenty five; there is a daughter but I have no contact to know if she is the star at school or is indifferent or is poor with her books. Money goes from my bank to them, but you…you were the pride of your father, Viktor, and the joy of your mother. You had family.' He hit home. The candle's light showed Viktor jolted.
Back to the hole in the hull's lining.
The wind had turned, the clouds blackened, the swell lessened.
A launch had come out. Mowbray was entombed behind the sheet of metal plate. He heard the voices, a cocktail of accents in English the Russian from the launch, the Greek master and the German engineer. The dispute was over the position of the Princess Rose. Did they not realize they were anchored inside a prohibited-entry zone? But only by three nautical miles. Were they in need of assistance from a tug out of Kaliningrad? The problem of the engine would be fixed by midnight, and the cost of a tug was too great. What exactly was the problem with the engine? Age, and there had been laughter. The voices had gone. Mowbray knew that the harbour master's office in Kaliningrad would have contacted the authority in Gdansk and would have been told that the shitty little rust tub had left Polish waters with a recent history of engine problems.
Once more he was released from his prison—this time the rat hadn't visited. The signal was now in London: 'Havoc to VBX. In place, all ready. Out.' They'd be chewing on it, half frightened out of their wits at what they had unleashed, and that brought a limited sardonic smile to Mowbray's mouth. Through the porthole, misted now because of the thickening cloud, was the treeline where his Dogs were, where nothing moved.
'Your father was a hero.'
If he looked at the ceiling, which he could not see, or the walls that were beyond the candle's throw of light, if he stared down at his shoes that had no laces and counted the eyes, if he did not answer he admitted guilt.
'I hardly knew him.' Viktor's voice was as frail as the candle's flame.
'You were seventeen years old, Viktor, when he died—I think you would have known he was a hero. A fit, strong man, a pilot of the highest quality, then struck down in his prime, doing his duty—he gave his life for the shit, corrupt, criminal-ridden, rotten State. I doubt he ever complained—heroes don't. How do you remember your father?'
He hesitated and the voice mesmerized him. His friend, Rupert Mowbray, had told him he should never lie when questioned. A good interrogator—and if he were questioned it would be by the best stored facts given him in his memory and passed on from them, then returned to them an hour later, or a day later, when the lie's statement was forgotten. A lie confirmed guilt. The lies in his mind were for the matters of importance. What documents had he removed and taken to Poland? None. Had he left the hotel where the delegation stayed in Gdansk to go to meet his handlers? Never. Where w
ere the dead drops or the brush contacts? They did not exist. Was he a spy, a traitor, who betrayed his country? No. Those were the lies of importance, but he was not asked those questions. He had expected to be on a cell's floor with the boots pounding him, then to be dragged to a room where a light dazzled him, then to be hustled to a plane for the flight to Moscow. Instead he had been told his father was a hero.
'I remember little of him.'
'I remember my father, Viktor—not with love because I hated him. Your father was an exceptional, extraordinary man. A good father, a good husband, and a respected test pilot at the experimental range at Totskoye. He flew into a nuclear cloud. Did you know that, Viktor?'
'My mother told me.'
'I think, Viktor—but it is difficult for a man to put himself in the mind of another—that I would have felt a bitterness if my father, if I had loved him, had been ordered to fly into a nuclear cloud, with all those risks, and had carried out his orders.'
'I do my duty as an officer as my father did his duty.'
'A good answer, Viktor…but I do not believe it. For some wasted experimentation your father flew through a nuclear cloud. It killed him. What was the value of it? Nil. His life was given away so that scientists could examine data. Was the data ever of real use? I doubt it…I would have felt bitter.'
'It hurt…yes, it hurt,' Viktor murmured.
No expression crossed the face of Bikov, across the flame from him. He felt a great tiredness and a hunger, and he knew he was lulled. If he looked past the shoulder of Bikov, or away from him, only the darkness bounced back at him. If there were pain, torture, shouting, he could have fought it. The man opposite gave him nothing to fight. He recognized the danger but did not know how to confront its sweet reasonableness…the switch.
'Are you German, Viktor?'
He was shaken. 'Why?'
'Am I impertinent? I don't wish to be. I don't stereotype, but you have German features. You are the image of your father, from the pictures I have seen, fair and tall…and I have seen also photographs of his parents. They were farmers who had settled in Kaliningrad, but they had come from the east, from the steppes of Kazakh, they were Asiatic. But their son is not sallow, he is blond. He is not short, as they were, he is tall. Explain it to me, Viktor, please.'
He should not lie, Rupert Mowbray had warned him of the risk of falsehoods, unless the questions involved his life and his death. He could not know if Bikov trawled with a net or knew of the hours that he had spent in the archive of the orphanage, and if Bikov had examined the old records of the nuns.
'Is it important?'
'I think so, if I am to know you.'
He saw the humanity…designed to win trust. He saw the warmth of the man. For four years he had trusted nobody, had confided in no man, and his loneliness had savaged him.
'My grandmother was German.'
'And your grandfather?' The lips barely moved but the question probed.
'My true grandfather was Russian.'
'Your father's birthplace, Viktor, is given as Kaliningrad. You have come home.'
'It is where my grandmother lived.'
'And your father was born, Viktor, in January 1946, and if your grandmother had gone full term then the conception would have been in April 1945, the month that the Red Army arrived in Kaliningrad. Was it love, Viktor?'
'What do you mean?'
The voice purred, the face bled sympathy. 'Love, you know—a young soldier and a young girl, from the different sides of the greatest conflict the world had seen, rejecting the politics and finding romance in the ruins of a wonderful city. Romeo and Juliet. Was it?'
'My grandmother was gang-raped. She was probably unconscious when my natural grandfather dropped his trousers.'
A frown of concern cut his forehead and the candle's light caught the sympathy. 'I'm so sorry…I didn't know.'
'She bore my father, whom she left on the step of the orphanage before hanging herself. She lies in an unmarked grave.' He could hear the shake in his own voice. Bikov leaned to hear him. 'It was not a love story.'
'I feel for you, Viktor. I lift a veil and I had no right to…'
The windsock had dropped.
Over the telephone from the concrete bunker below the targets, the messages came back. 'No hits' or 'Outer only'. Igor Vasiliev, the twenty-one-year-old conscript, had built a reputation on the range. The new inducted arrivals, 2 Platoon of the 4th company of the 81st regiment of naval infantry, had been firing for the first time with assault rifles, and when they had finished the instructors had held them back in the failing light, and had held up Vasiliev as an example they should strive towards. Boys, barely out of the schools' classrooms, were gathered in a half-circle behind him, and they had never seen a weapon as sleek and powerful as the NSV 12.7mm heavy machine-gun. Many times he had fired with spectators pressed close to him, but never before had he fired so poorly.
The fifth time that the calls had come back, 'No hits' and 'Outer only', the instructors called away the platoon, marched them to their lorries, and glowered back at him, as if he had wasted their time.
After they'd gone, and he was alone, he fired again. He lay behind the breech block, legs apart, and the belt was fed from the top of an ammunition box. It was the position he always took. The earmuffs were clamped tight over his scalp. He squeezed the trigger with the same rhythm as every time…but as he fired and felt the shudder of the stock against his shoulder, heard the deadened crack of the firing, he could not concentrate. What he loved, the heavy machine-gun, took second place in his mind.
He had seen Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko wrestled to submission, handcuffed, taken into custody. He was a simple young man, without education, and as he shot he struggled to look back on what he knew of his protector, and to find a reason for the arrest. His hold on the weapon wavered and he snatched at the trigger bar: he could not hold the crosshairs of the sight that was calibrated to the maximum effective range of 2000 metres. If there was a fault-line shown him, Vasiliev did not see it. All that remained in his mind, distracting him, was a vague feeling that the captain had been detached from the life of the base and was different from other officers. Five shots in the burst. Talking to the conscript about the beauty of the castle across the frontier. Five more shots. Never mentioning the politics of Putin and the new understandings with the old enemy. Five more. Nothing of the shortages of fuel and food, equipment and training days. Five. The captain was like no other officer: he had gone into the sea to save him and had brought him back his machine-gun.
The belt was finished. The message came back, laconic and bored, 'No hits.'
Vasiliev chewed gum.
They said on the telephone that it was five o'clock, that their duty of target-spotting was finished. He asked them to leave on the sunken lights that lit the targets after dark: he had 120 more rounds to shoot. He hoped in the dusk he would regain his concentration. He eased back from the weapon, did the discipline, slipped the catch to safety. His teeth ground on the gum. He heard the distant sound of the jeep coming. He did not know whether his failures were from his hold on the stock or from his calculations of the changed wind's deflection or from the bedding into the sand-mud of the tripod's legs.
The jeep reached him. The target-spotters laughed at him.
'You're shooting like shit, Vasiliev. You couldn't hit a barn door at a hundred metres. What's your officer going to say when he hears you're fucking crap?'
They drove away. His jaw was set as he threaded the next short belt. Away ahead of him, in the gathering gloom, he could see the faintly lit white targets.
'In Gomo-Altaysk, Viktor, where I was a child, there is not a single building of historic interest. Not one. It's a dump. You know, there is more that's interesting in Grozny, believe me. In Gorno-Altaysk there is a bus station, a post office near to Kommunistichesky Prospekt, a little museum, which is a reconstructed Pazyryk burial site, and one lousy hotel. There is nothing more in Gorno-Altaysk. It's a pile of dog
shit.'
There had been tension in his prey's shoulders when he had led him through the deaths of his father and grandmother; now he saw the grin. Bikov smiled back, felt the lines crack his cheeks. The candle was more than a quarter burned down, and the windows must have been ill-fitting because a draught caught the flame. Other than their voices, and the rain's beat on the covered windows, there was no sound in the room. He had instructed that the rooms underneath and above should be cleared. Bikov laughed out loud.
'Maybe there is a cinema now, to show films of Putin leading heroic police charges against the mafiya…maybe. What is the main sport in Gorno-Altaysk? Planning how to leave, checking the bus timetables. There is nothing of substance there unless you go into the forests and shoot bears, nothing. You, Viktor, are lucky.'
A cautious hesitation. 'How?'
'Because of your interests, your hobbies. I have nothing. I live out of a bag. There is no room in the bag for such interests.'
'What do you mean?'
He laughed again. 'Medieval archaeology, the interest that takes you to Poland for visits to the castle at Malbork. How did that start?'
'When I was a cadet at the Frunze Naval College we sailed…'
'That is Leningrad?'
'Yes. We sailed on the fisheries research ship, the Ekvator, to Gydnia, and we were taken by bus to Malbork.'
'The castle captivated you?'
'It is magnificent.'
'Tell me.'
Bikov listened. His head was cocked as if he was fascinated by what he was told. The High Castle and the Middle Castle, the Amber Collection, the Grand Master's Palace and the Porcelain Collection, the Great Refectory, the Golden Gate, the Seven-pillared Hall and the Vestibule of the Infirmary. When he had heard enough, he interrupted.
'And I am told, Viktor, that the cathedral at Frombork, nearby, is a masterpiece of architecture from the same period—and the ruins of the Teutonic Knights' castle at Torun are a treasure chest for the archaeologist, and the Great Mill of Gdansk where the first bricks were laid in 1350. Your interests gave you much to see when you had the pass to travel to Poland. You were…'
Gerald Seymour Page 30
