Ghosts - 05

by Mark Dawson

  He boarded the westbound train.

  He took the ushanka and pulled it onto his head, untying the ear flaps from the crown and straightening them all the way out, enough to obscure his face. He looked down at his feet, yet glanced at the platform through the corner of his eye as the train jerked and bumped into motion. He saw the agent, confused and lost, caught between the eastbound and westbound trains, unsure which one he needed to be on. Had he changed trains or had he stayed where he was? The train slid away, Milton looking down again to hide his face as the agent passed before his window, and then they were back into the tunnel and accelerating in the direction from which he had arrived.

  Milton sat in the seat, running his fingers over the rough, threadbare upholstery. He looked up and down the train and, satisfied that he was not being followed, settled back to read the advertisements that offered cures for indigestion and hair loss and sexual dysfunction that were neatly arranged beneath the line of the ceiling. He could have been on a train in London, or anywhere else in the world. His eyes drifted down to the woman sitting opposite him and, for a moment, their eyes held. She was dressed in form-fitting blue jeans, ankle length fur trimmed boots and a winter coat with brass buttons that might have looked good from a distance but, up close, looked like it was made out of cheap fabric and probably came from a Chinese or Korean sweatshop. The girl was definitely checking him out. Had she pegged him as a foreigner? Probably. He wasn’t dressed to blend in, and the hat looked like something a tourist would wear, not a native Muscovite. It didn’t matter. He gave her a careful smile; she smiled back, a little aloof, in that way that Russian girls have, and then he angled his head back to the advertisements and ignored her.

  He rode the train for a single stop and alighted at Pushkinskaya. He scanned the platform, saw nothing that gave him cause for concern, and navigated the burrowlike tunnels until he found the escalator to the street. There was revolutionary art on the walls of the escalator shaft, striking images of farmhands and soldiers and housewives with doughty forearms that would put wrestlers to shame. It was lit by a row of impressive chandeliers and folk music was playing over the tannoy. He pushed through the heavy glass Metro doors and emerged into the freezing cold of Pushkin Square.

  He was on Strastnoy Bulvar, the old road that ran around the Kremlin with dark reaches of park between the lanes. There were snow-covered lawns, benches and statues of famous writers and revolutionaries. A big office block dominated the multi-laned junction, fifteen-foot high letters that spelled out NOKIA anchored to the roof. Neon glared against the snow and the ice. He turned to the south, crossed the gridlocked road and made his way along Tverskoy Boulevard. Four-by-fours crawled up and down the road, white sheets of ice stubbornly resisting the grit, tyres crunching across compacted snow, snow chains rattling, the headlights casting yellow fingers across the dirty white. It was bitterly cold––a digital thermometer in the windows of a chemist showed fifteen degrees below zero––and Milton quickly wished he had a more substantial coat. The freezing air settled across the exposed skin of his face, painful within moments. He wouldn’t be able to stay out in this weather for long.

  He extended his arm to hail a taxi. Three passed by without stopping until a fourth saw him shivering on the sidewalk and glided into the kerb, the dented fender crunching up against the wall of piled snow. The driver was from the Ukraine; there was a flag on the dashboard next to a miniature religious icon. He stank of vodka and there was a bottle wedged into the space between the two front seats. Milton had taken rides with plenty of drunken taxi drivers in Eastern Europe and the fact that he had not been killed––so far––was enough for him to be sanguine about it. On the other hand, he had always felt a little unsure about trusting a man who advertised his religion so prominently. He preferred his driver to put his faith in simple things, like the rules of the road, rather than trusting everything to God. Milton fastened his seat belt quietly, avoiding the implicit criticism of the man’s driving that he would have signalled had he made it obvious. He gave the address and settled into the seat as the car picked up speed, the driver ignoring the treacherous conditions as the speedometer ticked up to fifty. They were swallowed by the tunnel that cut beneath the Novy Arbat, and then emerged to speed past the Gogol statue. The driver was honest enough and, rather than taking the circuitous route that many would have chosen, picked a direct route to the Kropotkinskaya Metro station.

  He gave the driver fifty roubles and another twenty on top and stepped out into the cold. The car had been pleasant in comparison to the arctic blast that greeted him again, quickly chasing away the warmth that he had managed to nurture. The dark curve of the river was laid out beyond the road. The area had been taken over by floating restaurants over the past decade and Milton had eaten here on many occasions. Gorky Park was on the other side of the river although it was invisible tonight, hidden behind the shifting, dense curtain of snow. He half fancied that he could see the neon-tinged outline of the Krimsky Bridge. Beyond that, although he couldn’t make it out, would be the ostentatious floodlit statue of Peter the Great that the Russians had thrown up in the middle of the river. And beyond that, on the other side, was the famous Red October chocolate factory. Milton might even have felt a twinge of nostalgic for the old place if it wasn’t for the cold that had already made a mockery of his hopelessly inadequate coat.

  The Armenian supermarket was two hundred yards from the entrance to the Metro. It was on the ground floor of a four storey building with apartments arranged on the three floors above it. It was years since he had last visited but it was all just the same: more goods on the shelves than there had been before, perhaps, but everything was just a little down at heel, a little dusty and dowdy, all a little out of date. The aisles were lit by harsh yellow strip lights that hung from the ceiling on metal chains. The shoppers shuffled between the shelves, the brutal cold knocking the stuffing from them, the melted snow leaving puddles on the linoleum floor. Milton made his way down the middle of the shop and opened the door to the storeroom at the rear. There were trays of produce stacked on pallets, the cellophane wrappers cut away with knives, spoiled goods thrown into a pile near the loading bay.

  The office was at the other end of the storeroom and he knocked twice, waiting for permission to enter.

  “Yes,” the voice said in harshly accented Russian.

  Milton pushed the door and stepped into the small room beyond. There was a desk with a computer, two filing cabinets and a slit-like window that opened onto the trash infested alleyway at the rear of the supermarket. The room was lit by a single naked bulb. An old FM radio stood on one of the cabinets, tuned to a news channel, the voice of the announcer obscured by the regular bursts and burbles of interference. There was a chair before the desk and sitting in it was a woman who looked to be in her late sixties. She was short and stout with a heavily wrinkled face and a bowl of grey hair that was shot through with streaks of silver. She was dressed practically: sensible black shoes with a decent tread, thick stockings and a worn woollen skirt and sweater that had been chosen for comfort rather than style. She had kind, wise, sad eyes.

  “John?”

  “Mamotchka,” he said, smiling. It meant ‘mother’ in Russian. Her given name was Anya Dostovalov but mother was what he had called the old woman for years.

  “My God,” she said, pushing herself out of the chair and crossing the room to enfold him in an embrace. She smelled the same as he remembered: the floral perfume was a trigger that always threw him back to the times he had spent in the East. She put her arms on his shoulders and held him back a little so that she could get a better look at his face. He smiled into her eyes and dipped his head so that she could kiss him on both cheeks. “My God,” she repeated, shaking her head. “I did not think I ever see you again.”

  “Mamotchka,” he chided, unable to prevent the smile that twitched the sides of his mouth. “You didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you?”

  “I hear what happen. W
hat happen in London.”

  “You probably heard their version of it.”

  “You must tell me. I hear stories, many stories, you are right, but you must tell what really happened. We will have cup of tea, yes?”

  “Something warm would be good.”

  “And have you eaten, Vanya?”

  John was translated as Ivan in Russian, and Vanya was the affectionate diminutive that replaced Ivan. She had used that for him for all the time that they had known each other.

  “I haven’t.”

  “Then we must go upstairs. To apartment. I cook for you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  ANYA SPOKE to the two members of staff on the checkout desk, telling them that they would be locking up tonight without her, opened a door and led him up a narrow flight of stairs to the first floor. The doors to a half dozen apartments faced onto a spare and ascetic lobby; snow was melting on the boots that had been left on mats outside. Anya took the key that she wore on a thin chain around her neck and unlocked her door. Milton remembered the apartment beyond: parquet floor, a faded and moth-eaten rug and a small chandelier that looked grand but, upon closer inspection, was dusty and dirty and broken in several places. Mamotchka took off her shoes and Milton did the same, following her further into the apartment.

  There was a bedroom with a single bed, plus a pine wardrobe and dressing table set that was scattered with cosmetics and scents. The tiny bathroom was next and then, at the end of the corridor, a sitting room with a small kitchen arranged at one end. The kitchen was equipped with an old-fashioned stove, a tiny fridge and a stovetop kettle. The sitting room had yet more of the parquet floor, softened by another rug. There was a mushroom-shaped water stain that had spread across the ceiling, peeling the plaster away and a bookshelf with communist-era travelogues and histories. The windows looked down onto the snow choked streets below. The central heating, which was still regulated by the city government, was brutally hot.

  “Now, John,” she said, gesturing towards the sofa. “Sit. I prepare food and tea.”

  Milton sat and watched as she went about her business. He had known Anya Dostovalov for almost a decade and she had been an asset of British intelligence for far longer than that. Her role had always been as a ‘cut-out.’ She would stand between a spy and his or her source so that, were her role to be uncovered, she would only be able to identify the sender and the recipient of information. She acted as insulation for the network that MI6 had built, protecting its agents from exposure. The role was critically important and exposed her to considerable risk; once Milton had grown to know and respect her he was loathe to put her in harm’s way. Her response had always been to politely yet firmly brush his concerns away. She had been doing this for years, she would say. She knew what she was doing.

  First, she brought over a teapot, a samovar filled with hot water and two cups, and prepared the tea. She had brewed it strong and poured small shots into the cups, topping them up with boiling water from the samovar. Milton sipped his, the taste sharp and bitter and not particularly pleasant to his palate, but the warmth was welcome in his belly. Anya Dostovalov took her own tea to the kitchen and worked with quick and silent efficiency, emptying out the contents of the tiny fridge and assembling a small buffet for them both: slivers of fish and hunks of pork, pieces of bitter Russian chocolate, a collection of warm blinis, sour cream, the sweet cheese that the Russians fried in little rolls and saucers of jam that Milton knew you were supposed to eat with the tea. When she was finished she brought it over on a wooden tray and set it down on the low coffee table.

  “You still remember how to find shop,” she said as she sat down.

  “Of course. I’m not likely to forget, am I?”

  “You were not followed?”

  “Please,” he smiled. “You know me better than that.”

  “I am sorry, Vanya,” she said. “I have reason to be careful.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The… how do you say? The climate is difficult. Everyone knew KGB was bad but SVR is just the same.” She smiled. “And I am too old for gulag.”

  “You’re not old, Mamotchka.”

  “Bless you, Vanya, but I am seventy-three. Old woman now.”

  “There’s no need to worry. I was followed but I lost them on the Metro. They don’t know where I am.”

  He sipped the fragrant tea, feeling its warmth in his belly. She waited patiently as he finished the cup and then poured him another.

  “So, dear one. What has happened to you?”

  He told her. He told her about the assignment in the French Alps and the two Iraqi scientists that he had assassinated and about the little boy who had hidden in the footwell of the car that he had sprayed with bullets, and about the gendarme who had been unlucky enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He told her how he had lost himself in the boy’s brown eyes and how he had seen an unbroken line that connected all his victims all the way back to another little boy he had seen in the desert years ago. He told her how he had decided there and then that he couldn’t justify his life’s work any longer, that he had been haunted by the ghosts of the men and women he had dispatched, how they had stormed his dreams so that he had only been able to escape them by drinking so much that he obliterated all sense of his self. He told her about what had happened in East London, how he had ruined the lives of the people he had been trying to help, about how he had fled to South America and worked his way north, trying to do the right thing where he could, but moving on before he could become settled, before he could make attachments that he knew he would eventually have to break. He told her about Cuidad Juárez and Santa Muerta, about how the Group had located him and how he had escaped. He told her about San Francisco and all the dead girls and, as he did, he saw, again, that whatever he did and wherever he went, he could not escape Death. It followed in his wake, dogged and relentless and impossible to shake.

  “Guilt always comes to men in your work,” she said when he was finished.

  “I lasted longer than most.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m not sure what that says about me.”

  She smiled, a sad smile. “You are good man, Vanya.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “You would not have that option even if you did. I am told Control is furious.”

  “I’m sure he is. I put a bullet into the knee of the man he sent after me.”

  “Yes, Number Twelve. His new little pet. I heard.”

  “You still have your ears open?”

  “I hear most things eventually. You know me.”

  “That’s what I was hoping. I need your help. Information.”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  He finished his last mouthful of blini and put the plate down on the table.

  “Do you know a colonel Shcherbatov?”

  A wry half-smile. “Pascha? I do. A little.”

  “I’m meeting him tomorrow.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure. What do you know?”

  “I know that he is secretive man. He has been intelligence officer for many years. Trained with the 401st KGB School in Okhta, near St. Petersburg. Leningrad, as then, and worked for Second Chief Directorate on counterintelligence and then First Chief Directorate. He monitored foreigners in Leningrad and was sent to East Germany before Wall came down. He came back to Moscow, survived coup and was given senior role in new KGB. He has been there ever since.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He is old-fashioned. Traditional. Still views West as enemy. He is not popular among his comrades. His views are unpopular. Government wants good relations with west. Money from oil is worth more than principles. Pascha Shcherbatov does not share this view—old Cold Warrior. I hear suggestion that Kremlin would not be upset if he were to retire.”

  “Then why didn’t they get rid of him?”

  “A man like Pascha learn many secrets, Vanya. He work in intelligence for m
any years. Do not think his attention has always been focussed across Russia’s borders. He is not kind of man who makes fuss of himself but apparatchiks are not stupid. They know not to be afraid of barking dog. Pascha is silent dog. You should be afraid of silent dog. Do you understand what I mean, Vanya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what he wants?”

  “No,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  “Treat him very carefully, Vanya. He is dangerous. Not to be trusted. Whatever he wants from you, it will not be good.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  MILTON SLEPT at the apartment that night, setting an alarm for four in the morning. He rose quietly from the couch in the hope that he might not disturb Anya Dostovalov but she was already awake and, upon hearing that he had risen too, she bustled into the front room and made busy preparing breakfast. She prepared large mugs of Sbiten, the honey beverage laced with cloves, cinnamon and ginger, and gave one to him. She made fresh blinis and served them with sour cream. Milton didn’t know when he would be eating again and so he had five of them, washing them down with another mug of Sbiten. He hugged her before opening the door, telling her that he would see her again soon even as he knew that was unlikely, unlatched the door and stepped out into the hallway beyond.

  The snow had fallen heavily overnight and walking had become even more difficult. There were huge mounds of wind blown snow across the sidewalk and, where it had been cleared away, hidden expanses of black ice. The municipal workers were out even at this early hour, preparing the city for the day ahead. They were dressed in orange overalls with thick parka jackets over the top and drove prehistoric trucks, shovelling snow into piles and treating patches of ice with caustic chemicals that dissolved it with a worrying hiss and fizz. In the street outside the supermarket they had piled all the snow on one side, burying the cars that had been foolishly left there. They hacked at the thickest patches of ice with pickaxes and shovels with an abominable screeching that reminded Milton of nails being dragged down a blackboard. He had to wait fifteen minutes for a taxi; the cold quickly robbed him of the warmth he had managed to absorb from the apartment’s baking central heating and he was shivering when he finally slipped into the back seat and asked to be taken to the Ritz-Carlton.