I promised to think about it.
“When are you going to live a proper life, that’s the question,” Dima observed gently, pouring us another.
It was daylight by the time I got home. I put my change from Dima on the kitchen table, then undressed.
My fear now was of the dark.
The situation I had got myself into had a certain wry humour about it. Here I was, by chance, still alive, while still being stalked as per plan, and with no idea how to stop being. Make a clean breast of it all to Dima? Get him to pay off Kostya and put an end to it. Then it would come out how I had been fooling him about my wife’s having a lover, him and Kostya, making pawns of them both. No, I must either find some other way, or let it drag on, just living from one day to the next. Not an attractive prospect, now I was valuing each day of life so.
It was getting dark. I wanted to go and collect Lena from Kreshchatik Street, but wanting even more to live, I sat waiting for her to ring.
Half an hour later she did, saying she was coming and would I meet her from the metro. Yes, I said, and only when the receiver was back on its rest, did I consider the implication of what I had promised. My sense of self-preservation was obviously in abeyance. So much so that while dressing I had no qualms about going out into the night where, lurking behind the next tree or around the next corner, might be a man in a black leather jacket.
I did, however, experience a thrill of fear walking to the bus stop, ear cocked suspiciously at the most ordinary of night sounds. The two hundred metres from my block to the bus stop sapped me of energy and left me sweating, as if I’d been running flat out. The ten minutes by bus to the metro let me regain my breath.
Walking back to the flat from the bus stop hand in hand with Lena, I felt more confident. Being in company made it less frightening.
We spent the night making love, only breaking off to lie in the dark and talk, or, just as comforting, stay pressed together, not talking.
“Would you marry me?” Lena asked out of the blue with a note of irony.
“I think I’d rather adopt you.”
She laughed. “Then you’d get put in prison.”
Her laughter in the dark was sweet and reassuring.
Towards morning, as she lay peacefully asleep, curled up like a child, I wondered why it should be that with her beside me I felt self-assurance return. Maybe because I saw her as guardian angel, or guardian angel-cum-bodyguard, protecting me with her goodness, creating a kind of invisible, protective layer around me – as much a biosphere to me as I was to her.
“Bodyguard angel,” I murmured with a smile, which she was.
I reached out to her, and sleepy protests notwithstanding, drew her to me, and fell asleep, feeling wholly and utterly safe.
16
THAT AFTERNOON, WHEN alone again, I gave serious thought to my security, fuelling it with the purchase of an Advertiser, in which, under SERVICES and among any number of plumbers and parquet floor specialists, I found two security firms, and dialled the first.
“TOPSEC, can I help you?” came a pleasant female voice.
“I could need a bodyguard. What do I have to do?”
“Come and draw up an agreement.”
“What do you charge?”
“Tariffs vary, depending on the degree of service, from $50 up.”
“$50 a month?”
“$50 a day.”
Thanking her, I rang off. At that price, ten days was the most I could afford, and then what?
Settling myself in a chair, I scanned the adverts, a soothing occupation creating an impression of normality: here a builder of dachas and houses, there a breeder of coypus, there a grower of roses, and under LONELY HEARTS, good nonsmokers and teetotallers seeking others of their ilk – a world one would gladly dwell in for ever.
Then, amongst those desirous of buying what they did not have or selling what they did, I lighted on something quite out of the bourgeois mould: “Highly dangerous missions undertaken for appropriate fee.” No telephone number, just an address: Irpen, 87, Soviet Street.
Next morning, standing in a filthy coach stripped by vandals of its seats, I took the electric line to Irpen. I quickly found Soviet Street, and ten minutes later arrived at a gate bearing the number 87. The house, approached through a long-neglected garden, was old and similarly neglected. I knocked at a sheet-iron reinforced door.
For a while, no response. Some glass object fell, rolled over a wooden floor. Footsteps followed.
“Yes?” said a husky voice.
“I’ve come about the advert.”
An unshaven, puffy-faced man in his early forties opened, took a deep breath of the fresh air, and came alive.
“Come in,” he said, and shutting the door behind me, I followed him.
The room had lace runners on every surface, a photograph of an elderly couple on the wall, and a musty smell.
“So?” he said, seating himself at the table which was covered with a lace-edged cloth.
“Tolya,” I said, extending my hand.
“Vanya,” he responded. “So?”
Stifling a certain irritation, I got down to business. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”
Grunt of disbelief.
Feeling more stupidly placed than I was already, I got up to go.
“What’s up?” he asked in surprise. “I’m listening.”
“You talk and I’ll listen,” I suggested, thoroughly piqued.
“What about?”
“You. What you do.”
“Officer rank, Afghan war. As to what, anything: guard consignments, bring in German cars, rough up as required …”
The husky voice was in keeping with his appearance and scanty attire – striped vest, tracksuit trousers with the Dynamo stripe.
“So, how about it?”
“I’m on,” he said, suddenly serious and businesslike.
“How much?”
“$500, if no insurance,” he said sizing me up.
“Bit steep.”
“$400, then.”
“$350,” I persisted, hardened by haggling with those lid thumbed lifts from.
“Done,” he said. “Shoot.”
A former business partner out to settle old scores, I explained, skipping pre-history and giving Valya’s description of him.
“Expects to find you in the café, right? OK. Do I get an advance?”
I shook my head.
Smoothing a bristly cheek, he seemed not to mind.
Five minutes later, lean face even leaner, scratching an armpit, and gazing at the ceiling, he said, “No problem.”
“Meaning?”
“We lure him to the bait.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s you he’s after, so we get him as he comes.”
I saw the logic, but wasn’t struck.
“Look, if he’s sitting concealed somewhere, it’s not me he’ll go for – I don’t exist – but you.”
“And what if he gets me?”
“He won’t, not while I’m there. I’ve a plan. Tomorrow show me the café, and we’ll fix things on the spot.”
We agreed to meet in Podol the next day at 11.00.
17
VANYA TURNED UP on the dot of 11.00, a different man, clean shaven, in jeans and quilted anorak.
“So?” he said, and to Fraternal Street we went.
The café had only just opened. Would we like a vodka? Valya asked. The coffee machine would be ten minutes heating up.
“Not when working,” Vanya said.
I sat at my corner table. Vanya had a look at the other room.
“Y-e-e-s,” he said, joining me. Then with a “Won’t be a tick”, got up and went out.
Valya disappeared into the back. The coffee machine did its heating almost soundlessly. The street door was shut. I tried, in my solitude, to breathe more or less soundlessly.
The door banged open, and a horse-faced man in grubby beige jacket and black knitted hat looked in.
I shrank into my corner.
“Valya, need more vodka?” he bawled.
“Still got some. Could do with a case of Amaretto,” she said, appearing from the rear regions.
The man nodded and left.
“Double strength?” Valya asked, having checked the machine.
“Please.”
“How about your friend?”
“No idea.”
“I’ll wait till he comes.”
I took my coffee to a table.
The silence was unnerving.
Something was missing, something as essential as hydrogen to water’s oxygen.
“Valya,” I called, using her name for the first time ever, “How about some music?”
“Shufutinsky?”
“Is he all you’ve got?”
She went through her tapes.
“There’s Allegrova, Alyona Apina, Kirkorov, Gadyukin Brothers …”
Liking Apina’s freckles as seen on TV, I opted for her.
“Only not too loud.”
“Damn all to eat you gave me, but promised me the world …” Apina sang. I relaxed. The coffee did wonders.
Again the door banged open, but less alarmingly. It was Vanya.
“Like a coffee?”
“No, let’s go.”
I followed him to a courtyard adjoining the café, a rundown area with the remains of a Zhiguli and a rubbish collection hut, backed by the walls of a three-storeyed building, now a chaos of beams and rubble.
“Every day now, from five till closing time, what we do is sit in that café at different tables,” said Vanya. “When he arrives, you come out for a piss behind this hut. He follows, I follow him. OK?”
“Fine.”
“And have the dollars to settle up on the spot, so as that’s the last we see of each other.”
I still wasn’t struck, but there was obviously no sense in arguing. He was in command, and seemed to know better than I what to do.
“Starting from when?” I asked.
“Today. The less I see of that electric line the better. Café at five, then.”
*
I had a bath, ate, put my feet up, and thought about the evening. The notion of playing worm on hook to catch a big fish was demeaning.
Time dragged.
At four, when I set off, it was almost dark.
My usual place being taken, I sat with my double strength nearer the counter.
Vanya, for all his “not when working”, was sitting with a glass and a bottle of beer by the door.
No Kostya.
My second double strength left a bitter taste. To dispel which I switched to melon-flavoured vodka. Time became winged.
Just short of 7.00, Valya shooed customers out.
Vanya and I were the last to leave.
“Head for the metro,” he whispered.
My steps rang out in the darkness, belying all efforts to walk quietly. A left turn along the white wall of the Mogila Academy, and fifty metres ahead, Contract Square, bright with street lamps and headlights.
“Same place, five tomorrow,” said Vanya, overtaking and darting into the metro.
18
THE THIRD EVENING found me bored with playing bait. The very sight of coffee brought a bitter taste to my mouth, so, waiting and noting who came in, I opted for something stronger and more relaxing. Two possible Kostyas presented themselves, and I’d once been on the point of slipping out, until, buying a bottle of vodka, the suspect retired to the inner room, only to be escorted out half an hour later by two proletarian types just as drunk as he.
At 6.40 a third leather-jacketed young man appeared, paused in the doorway and looked round, before going up to the counter.
Two women sitting opposite got up and went out. I looked across to where Vanya was sitting with his beer. Vanya looked back, drumming his fingers on the table.
Song and tape came to an end, and in the silence that followed I heard rain. Which, having no umbrella, was the last thing I needed!
“Would you drink up, please,” Valya called, before setting Shufutinsky going.
The new arrival sat down opposite me, and putting his coffee on the table before him, playfully revolved the cup by its handle. His leather jacket was completely dry. Evidently the rain had only just started.
Suddenly a hard stare in my direction, and I was no longer in any doubt that this was Kostya.
“Got the time?” he asked.
“Five to seven.”
With a nod of thanks, he returned his gaze to his cup.
Had he not deliberately sat himself at my table, I would not have been so terrified, and my legs so a-tremble.
Some insects, it occurred to me, feigned death in the face of danger. But much good would that do me.
Again he was staring, now tight-lipped.
Thinking of what? Or simply attuning himself to what lay ahead?
A point came when I knew that if I did not get to my feet now, I never would.
Must go for a pee, must go for a pee! I kept telling myself, struggling to break free from paralysing fear.
When I did at last get to my feet, I saw a jerk of his hand slop the coffee he was about to gulp.
Trying not to rush, I walked from the café into the rain, and ten metres later turned into the courtyard picked by Vanya.
The rain made it impossible to tell whether or not I was being followed. In the courtyard I was at bay, in total darkness, noisily treading something underfoot.
Relying more on memory than my eyes, I got to the rubbish collection hut and froze. Then, cautious, hesitant footsteps.
With my blood running cold, I edged around to the back of the hut, and again stopped dead, mindful of the money I had about me, uncertain whom I had the more to fear: Kostya, or my advance-waiving bodyguard.
Over bricks and bottles I somehow scrambled to the doorway of the derelict house, slipped inside, and squatted down, breathing hard.
Again, a crunching of glass, then, over and above the gentler swish of rain, long minutes of silence.
Something hit the ground with a thud, then again silence.
“Hi!” called Vanya, flashing a torch. “Let’s be having you!”
He lit the way for me, and when I got to him, shone his torch on the prone figure of Kostya.
“Care to settle?”
He checked the amount, and turning the body over, retrieved the hunting knife driven to its hilt in Kostya’s breast, wiped it on a rag, and concealed it about his person. Unzipping Kostya’s jacket, he took from his waistband a silenced automatic.
“So now,” he declared, concealing it as swiftly as the knife, “it’s back to square one, and over to you.”
His departing footsteps were soon drowned by a fresh downpour.
When at last I made a move, it was, without knowing why, to stoop and transfer the contents of Kostya’s pockets to my own.
Back at the flat, I shed my drenched clothing in the passage, and took a hot bath.
My aim was to cleanse myself of the past and the whole of what had just occurred. But I hadn’t the strength. Either I had reverted to drunkenness, or I was sickening for flu. My head throbbed. I just managed to dry myself and flop into bed.
19
IT WAS GETTING on for midday when I awoke. My head felt as if I was indeed sickening for flu, but I appeared to have no temperature. With an effort I got up and into a tracksuit.
Lying in the passage where I had dumped them, were my muddy, still-wet clothing and jacket. Running a bath, I threw socks, sweater, jeans and jacket in – after first emptying its pockets onto the kitchen table – adding a half packet of soap powder for good measure.
Waiting for the kettle to boil, and later over my tea, I examined the contents of Kostya’s wallet: $50, kupon notes, photograph of wife, sick and weary looking as if newly delivered of the tiny baby in her arms. There was also a folded envelope addressed to Konstantin Shustenko, Flat 325, 22, Victory Avenue, Kiev, postmarked Moscow and bearing an ill
egible scrawl in lieu of address of sender, which I laid aside unread. So that was who Kostya was. Not that it made any difference.
Echoing strangely in my head, the ringing of the telephone. I lifted the receiver.
“At last!” cried Lena. “Hi! I’ve been ringing for days. Where’ve you been?”
“Away.”
“Like me to come over?”
“Yes, except I’ve got a cold or something …”
“I don’t mind, if you don’t. Be there in an hour.”
Returning to the kitchen, I put Kostya’s belongings into a carrier bag and the bag into the cupboard.
She took less than an hour.
“Look,” I warned, “what if it is flu?”
Attempting to cure whatever it was by love, she caught it herself, and we lay at death’s door together, coughing and taking our temperatures. Being ill together was better than being ill alone, especially as Lena managed to get us something to eat and brew tea and honey. A week, and we felt better.
“My people’ll be ringing round the mortuaries for me,” she confessed one evening.
“Give them a call.”
Reluctantly she did.
“Hi! It’s me. Still alive. See you,” she said and rang off. She then volunteered to pop round to the food store, we having eaten everything there was.
We dined, just short of midnight. Meat with wine.
We slept in each other’s arms for warmth.
A gale set the windows rattling. I dreamt of blizzards.
20
“ILLNESS OVER, SO that’s it,” said Lena after breakfast. She dressed, packed her diminutive leather rucksack, said she’d ring, and sallied forth, pausing on the landing to blow me a kiss.
A Matter of Death and Life Page 4
