Back at the door, his voice was curt: 'Listen for the radio. I'll be some little time…yes, running away. God watch you, Alice, God watch over the both of you.'
She lay on her side. The kitchen door was opened, then pulled shut, and she was alone with the silence.
Alice had known it was the last chance when the men had gone to the zoo park to lift Viktor out, and it had been another last chance when they had gone ashore and had been at the rendezvous point, but he had not shown. It was the third 'last chance' that had taken the men across the canal and into the base. She knew he was held, she knew the Princess Rose must sail by dawn: she understood that the third last chance was feeble. She could not believe she would see Viktor again. She felt a sense of personal shame because she had taunted Gabriel Locke, accused him of 'running away'.
The taunt at Locke had been her own act of self-defence. She would go back to Vauxhall Bridge Cross, where she would bury herself in her work and she would apply, after a fortnight's decent interval, for a posting away. She would be in Buenos Aires or Bogotá, or any bloody place, and one morning the Station Chief would call her into his office, and she would be passed a sheet of paper with a brief, unemotional message for her to read: 'Inform Alice North that Moscow sources report execution of Ferret last week following in camera trial.' She would read it, then feed it into the shredder, and she would be asked if she wanted to take the rest of the day off, and she would decline that offer. She would go back to her desk and busy herself with the low-level material from an Argentine police informant or a Colombian interior-ministry official, or an agent from any bloody place.
She touched her forehead and her fingers seemed to search for evidence that Gabriel Locke, who had said from the start that it would fail, had kissed her, but she found only her dry, furrowed skin. Wherever they posted her she would never forget Viktor. He was the only love of her life. Her fingers hovered on the amber stone at her neck.
Alice shook herself, pushed herself up, wiped her eyes, and rolled her legs off the bed. She smoothed her hair, then walked through the darkness and into the kitchen. A red light would flash on the communications console when a signal came through from the team—no light flashed. She did not know why Locke had kissed her forehead, and she could not escape the shame of having taunted him. She sat down heavily at the kitchen table and began her vigil.
The third time…
'I think that is everything, Viktor. You've done us proud, but then you always do. There's enormous admiration in London for what you achieve for us, and huge gratitude. In all honesty, Viktor, I can tell you that you are regarded as our supreme asset. I don't know when we'll meet again, Viktor, but it's been my privilege to work with you. Go carefully. Goodnight, both of you. Mowbray had smiled at them and gone towards the bathroom as if to wash his hands of what they did in the rest of the night. They had known, she and Viktor, that it might be the last time. After the loving…walking on the frosted, crunching, crisp grass at the Westerplatte memorial, arms tight around each other…him telling her to be brave, her telling him that they would be together, one day, forever. The last kiss. The love had lasted.
The driver brought the final armful of branches. They were dry, had been sheltered from the rain by the canopy of the pines, and with the armful was a newspaper from the car. The headlights from the dunes splayed over the beach. Jerry the Pole watched as Chelbia knelt in his smart suit and packed the sheets of newspaper deep among the branches. There was a flash of gold. The flame gushed from Chelbia's lighter, the paper took and the branches caught. The fire crackled.
Jerry the Pole stood back. Roman, the fisherman, lifted fish from the bucket, some still quivering limply, and his knife ripped through the bases of their stomachs. His fingers casually flicked the guts on to the sand, and gulls screamed at the edge of the darkness. Jerry the Pole shivered but did not go near to the fire. Roman passed Chelbia a cod, still bleeding, then a mackerel and two plaice. Chelbia dropped the fish into the flames and chortled as they sizzled, spat. He looked up at Jerry the Pole.
'Do I do this at home? Do I hell! At home I eat at the Arlenkino or the restaurant in the Hotel Kaliningrad or at the Casino Universal, I pay through my nose. I pay for everybody. I go out to eat and it costs me five hundred American dollars. Here I eat for nothing, and what I eat I will enjoy…fresh, grilled fish…the best. Come closer.'
A command. Jerry the Pole edged nearer to the fire.
'Closer.'
An order. Jerry the Pole would not disobey. At the café where his Mercedes was parked he had said that he would be on the beach. Neither the bastard Locke nor Miss North had gone to the café for him, or a message would have been sent. The café would now have been closed three, four hours. They would have had to come looking for him. He didn't care if they had to search for him. His pension was what mattered to him, and it was ignored. It was now past two o'clock, he should have been back at the car, curled up and asleep. Chelbia had asked him to stay, and he thought Chelbia was not a man whose request was wisely ignored.
He could feel the fire's warmth, and he stared down at the bubbling skins of the fish. Chelbia reached up and took his hand. Jerry the Pole felt himself pulled down and was too frightened to resist. Chelbia's face was close and smiling. He could not have broken the man's grip on his hand.
'I have enjoyed the fishing, and I will enjoy eating the fish. That was my good fortune when I came to find you. You…you work for the Secret Intelligence Service of Britain.'
'What is it you ask?' His hand was taken closer to the flames, the cooking fish, and the embers. 'I don't know why you say…'
'What are the names of the Secret Intelligence men you drive?'
'That's not true.' A flame played on the skin of his hand, scorched it, and the fish fat spattered on his skin.
'I want their names.'
'I can't…' The pain pierced the brain. The grip was now on his wrist and his hand was driven down into the flames and the reddened embers. 'Can't, can't…'
'Their names.'
'Rupert Mowbray—chief—and—' He saw his own skin curl, pop, and the agony rivered up his arm. He owed them nothing. The flames licked his hand, and there was acrid smoke seeping up from his shirt cuff and his coat. They had denied his pension. 'And Gabriel Locke is the junior, and there is Miss Alice North.'
'Why are they here?'
'To lift out, to take out—' His hand's skin had been white in the cold, then had pinked above the flames and the embers, now was blackening. 'Take out an officer from the base.'
'Which officer?'
'A captain, I think.' It was acute, stabs of pure needle-sharp pain. 'I think his name, I heard it, was—Archenko. Viktor Archenko. I think—'
'Archenko?'
He heard, through the pain and the scent of his own flesh burning, a sort of wonderment in Chelbia's voice, an astonishment. 'It is Archenko.'
His wrist was freed.
'A man I could do business with, mutually profitable business. Thank you, my friend, thank you.'
Chelbia dragged him up. Without his support Jerry the Pole would have collapsed. Chelbia manoeuvred him across the sand and into the spray of the surf. His hand was forced down into the water and the cold dulled the pain. Chelbia dried Jerry the Pole's hand with his own handkerchief, silk and monogrammed.
'What are you going to do?' he whimpered.
They came back over the sand. Chelbia said, 'I think the fish will soon be ready. I tell you, my friend, in five years only one man has confronted me, shown no fear of me—he is the best of men, a lion. I am going to eat the fish I have caught, and you will join me. I invite you to be my guest.'
Jerry the Pole clutched his hand and cringed. 'Thank you.'
'You have had, Viktor, three visits to Gdansk. Each was an overnight visit. On the three visits your delegation was supervised by a locally based political officer of the FSB, but a junior man. Inside the delegation you were the senior serving officer, and you would have behaved like a senior off
icer. You would not have stood at the bar half the night, you would have made excuses and said you were going to bed, perhaps to study papers for the next day's meetings. I have a plan, Viktor, of the Hotel Mercure. There is a fire staircase. I have a map also, Viktor, of Gdansk, and I estimate it would take an athletic man such as yourself about fifteen minutes of brisk walking to cross the inner city. Each night you were in Gdansk, Viktor, you left the hotel—yes or no?'
'No.'
'You went to the Excelsior Hotel and you were debriefed there by your handlers—yes or no?'
'No.'
If he looked into the small, wavering light of the flame he faced the voice and felt its persuasive softness. It lulled him. The voice merged with his hunger and his tiredness. He was slipping.
'They were magic hours for you with your handlers—yes or no?'
'No.'
'Each time you went and met your handlers it was like a liberation for you—yes or no?'
He clung to Alice. She was blurred. He reached for her.
'No.'
'I want to tell you, Viktor, why I think the night hours spent with your handlers would have been like a liberation to you, and were magic hours. You were flattered, you were made to believe you were a man of the highest importance, the centre of their world. It would have been a narcotic to you, because the spy is the man who is most alone in all the world. You soaked up the flattery. To them you were a hero, valued and trusted. Each wretched little piece of paper that you handed over they would have held in their hands as if it were priceless. They would have hung on your words, Viktor. You were the most important man in their lives, yes or no?'
Clarity came to her face, then slipped away. He held her against his shoulder, and the candle's warmth ebbed from her cheek through his shirt and reached his skin. He shivered hard, could not help himself. He knew he must hold on to her or he would sink.
'No.'
'And you told them of the deaths of your father and your grandmother—yes or no?'
'No.'
'Did they give you a woman, Viktor? They usually do. Dangerous to bring a whore into the hotel for one hour, a poor security procedure. Was there a secretary or a stenographer who was made available, Viktor? A woman—yes or no?'
He lay with Alice, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. If she left him he was gone, was alone in the darkness.
'No.'
'Viktor, do I seem stupid to you? Do I? We trust each other. We share our food, we share the cold, we share this room, we do not tell lies to each other. Am I stupid? A British woman stayed in the hotel where you were debriefed, the same woman each time on the matching dates that you were in Gdansk. A good fuck, Viktor—yes or no?'
He felt her arms loosening their hold on him. It was as if the skin of her hands, arms and body was greased, and she seemed to slip from the grip of his fingers.
'I don't think, Viktor, that they paid you. You are not a man interested in money. We are the same. What we own would go into a single suitcase. There is no sign in your room of luxury, of indulgence. I do not believe that money was involved…they would have liked that, Viktor. The Secret Intelligence Service of Britain is like the FSB—both loath to give out money. It has to go to committees, has to be authorized, then there is dispute over the scale and frequency of the payments. You were right not to demand money. You did not demand money because it would have demeaned your vengeance. You were pure, Viktor. It would have been important to you to be pure. And if you had demanded money you might have found that your cash value did not match the sweet flatteries they offered. A woman is cheap. Did she tell you that she loved you, Viktor—yes or no?'
He groped for Alice. She slipped from him. She was moving back and the candle's light made her a shadow. He reached for her but her arms were folded across her chest and she did not reach back for him. Without her he was lost. Every time, when he was in crisis, she was crystal-clear water in his mind and he could feel the touch of her, and her words soothed the fear. Now she drifted from him.
'But more important, Viktor, was your own safety. Spies do not retire, do not, one day, walk away and close down that segment of their lives. They are hooked, Viktor, they are as vulnerable as any addict with a syringe on the Moskovsky in Kaliningrad. The spy
... Chapter Sixteen
Q. What part of Russia has been a 'historical military flashpoint' since the thirteenth century?
A. Kaliningrad.
He had heard the two chimes of the clock set above the entrance to the headquarters building. Bikov moved for the kill.
His voice was silky quiet. The last of the candle burned.
'I think, Viktor, in your place I would have done what you have. You had motive from what was done to your father and your grandmother—I would have done it. You had the opportunity for the necessary tradecraft, the castle at Malbork and the three visits to Gdansk, and I cannot fault your procedures. Most important, Viktor, you had access. That is where we are different.'
He studied each movement of his prey's body. He knew it was close.
'Take me, Viktor, a humble half-colonel enduring the routine of FSB life. I might have had the motive, but I have nothing to offer that will wound. I am only a functionary, a bureaucrat and a pusher of paper. I have no skills, no information that is wanted. Nothing that is "secret" crosses my desk. My life is tedious…not yours.
Stamped fit. He could not identify what he had missed. It annoyed him. He slithered towards the kill.
'Where is he now? In his club? In a bar, or at home? Does he give a fuck about you, Viktor? Can you see him here now? Can you?'
The tears had returned, and the wretch's body shook. In the puzzle a round hole remained, but the last piece was square. He concentrated to drive the irritation, the annoyance, from his mind. He spoke across the candle's final flicker of light.
'You are lucky to have me as a friend, Viktor, because your handler has abandoned you. I am your true friend, your last one.'
He heard the choked weeping. It was the first time in an interrogation that he had missed a kernel point, and he did not know what it was, only that it eluded him.
Roman listened, and he thought of his daughter and his son and what this man could do for them.
'It's very simple,' Chelbia said. 'What I have learned, in import/export, always follow the simple way. What excites me—until I came to this beach I had no idea of what is now open to us. The unexpected is often the most exciting. Yes?'
Roman nodded. Chelbia ate fish with his fingers. Roman thought it incredible that a man who wore a suit that had cost as much as he earned in a year should sit on the rain-sodden sand beside a fire and eat with his fingers. If either of his own children had eaten like that, or himself, stuffing food into their mouths, they would have felt his wife's slap on the back of the head. The Russian ate like a pig, and talked.
'So, simple…I bring the packages to the harbour in Kaliningrad. A fishing-boat from Kaliningrad takes the package out to sea, then has a problem and drifts into the restricted area. It is only a fishing boat—who cares? Maybe I have to buy a man in the harbour office, but that is cheap. The fishing-boat goes close to the international boundary. He puts the package into the sea. It is weighted but it has a float…Everything is arranged. Roman puts to sea. Roman is separated from the other fishermen, but only by two hundred metres, and he finds the float. He picks up the package, and then he is back with the other fishermen. He lands with the package. Do you know, it costs me a thousand American dollars a week to put packages across the frontier on the Mamonovo to Braniewo road? And it will cost more because the Poles are, every day, more difficult. Later we shall talk, Roman, about what payment you will receive for lifting the packages from the sea…'
Roman watched. The Pole, Jerzy Kwasniewski from Berlin but once from Krynica Morska, could not eat because of his burned hand. When Chelbia had eaten all of the meat off a cod and a plaice, he lifted a mackerel from the glowing fire—and didn't flinch. He pulled off the head and t
hrew it away to the gulls, then stripped the meat from the bones and fed Jerzy Kwasniewski as if he were a chick in a nest. He put little pieces into the man's mouth, and smiled at him. Many times Roman had burned his hands—from upset hurricane lights, from the oxyacetylene cutters—and he knew the pain. He had winced as Chelbia had put the hand into the fire, but he had not intervened. Half of the mackerel went into Jerzy Kwasniewski's mouth, then Chelbia took the rest for himself, and spoke through mouthfuls of fish. He stopped only to spit out bones. He lifted up one of the shoes, drying by the fire, and examined it closely.
'When I want to know whether a man lives comfortably, or whether times are hard for him, I look at his shoes. Not his suit, not his coat. A man can get a new suit and a new coat off a dead man's back, from a charity shop. But it is rare to find shoes that fit comfortably when they have been worn by another man. I look at your shoes. They have been polished, but that tells me nothing. What is important, they are falling apart. An old man needs good shoes, and you do not have them. You have worked for the Secret Intelligence Service of Britain, now you drive for them, but they show little respect for you. If they gave you respect you would have the money to buy good shoes. Once a month you will drive from Berlin and you will meet with my good friend, Roman, and you will collect a package from him—four or five kilos in weight, the same size as a big bag of cooking flour—and you will deliver it to Berlin. You will be paid, and then you will buy new shoes.'
Roman remembered. Chelbia wiped his hand on his handkerchief, then smeared it across Jerzy Kwasniewski's mouth, then pocketed it. Chelbia reached out and took Jerzy Kwasniewski's scorched hand, then Roman's. All their hands were together. The deal was done. For money…
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