Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  This end of the tunnel was shorter than the way we’d come with Sharef. After only a few minutes’ stumbling walk in the candlelight, up slightly rising ground, we saw a heavy door ahead. The girl used a key and opened it. At first the darkness was thick but as bitter cold struck through I saw the loom of snow: we had emerged into the open. So far as I could see the surroundings had the look of something like a builder’s yard, with snow-covered ladders lying stacked, and snow hummocks that could be covering wheelbarrows or such. The girl had snuffed out the candle before we emerged but the snow itself gave a kind of luminosity and as we skirted what looked like an office block I saw a car waiting in the street beyond. As we approached the driver lifted a hand to the girl, who lifted a hand in return.

  “Now I leave you,” she said to me. “I wish you good fortune, Comrade.”

  I thanked her, took her hand for a moment, then she turned away, back to the tunnel entry. The car driver gestured us to get in the back, which we did. The car was a Lada, not very big, which couldn’t be said of the chauffeur. She was immense, with beefy shoulders and a large square face and breasts that reached over the steering-wheel and rose and fell over her hands as she turned it. She didn’t say a word; just drove and concentrated, but she didn’t drive far. In fact only round one corner, into another street where warehouses loomed through the snow, grim and dark and at this hour deserted. The street itself, however, was not deserted. Ahead of us, just around the corner, a figure lurched about, a drunk by the look of him. Our driver slowed and took avoiding action but the snow was hard-packed beneath the powdery surface, no doubt as a result of heavy lorries during the working day, and she skidded, and as she skidded the man lurched again and fell slap in front of us and the Ladybird was unable to avoid him. There was a bump and a scream and then silence.

  The driver looked round and backed, the square face impassive. This was no time for the niceties; world peace took precedence over an injured, possibly a dead, drunk. But that was when our luck ran right out: around the corner as we backed away from the body came a police car with headlights beaming. At first its driver didn’t see the body, and swung over to pass us; then it checked, turned in for the kerb just past the body, and its roof light came on. As it stopped, an armed policeman got out. Then another. They came towards us, menacingly, one to each front window. I couldn’t follow all that was said but got the impression the Ladybird driver wasn’t arguing the toss, just stating the fact that what had happened had been unavoidable. Felicity and I stayed silent, hoping, but we both knew it was all up. Soon the police would demand our identification.

  They did, and I had hard feelings about all drunks.

  *

  We’d had no time to co-ordinate a story. Some while earlier I had agreed false names with Felicity in case of need but I found I had little hope that these would hold up when we were taken, all three of us, to some sort of police district headquarters, not at this stage the Lubyanka itself on Dzerzhinsky Square. We were questioned separately. This was more than a road traffic accident. My interrogator was a squat man, dead Senyavin-shaped but with a mongoloid face and big hands that kept on clenching and unclenching as though he had ideas of strangulation being the best treatment for Brits. He spoke fair English.

  “You say you are English tourist.”

  “Yes.”

  “The woman also, the young one.”

  “Yes.”

  “With Russian guns,” he said smugly.

  “Ah yes.” It couldn’t be denied that this was a poser. There had been no chance of disposing of the machine-pistols. I had to improvise and I did so, keeping a straight face: we had discovered them, I said, abandoned in a back alley and had intended keeping them as souvenirs. I had no idea what Felicity might be saying but had absolutely no faith in my own improvisation, and neither had the interrogator.

  “Yes. So many weapons in back alleys in Moscow,” he said, full of sarcasm. “Now they are being checked for fingerprints.” After that he left the subject alone – I supposed those guns spoke for themselves. He asked, “The other woman, the old one?”

  I shrugged. “Just a driver. That’s all I know.”

  “You have no identification, no authority to travel.”

  “I lost it,” I said briefly.

  “And the young British woman?”

  “And the young lady,” I said. I added, “Hers was with mine.”

  “Yes. Now the vehicle, the Lada. This was not arranged by Intourist.”

  “No,” I said. I yawned involuntarily: I was dead tired; and the bandaged wound in my arm was playing me up too. “A hitch – a lift. A passing motorist … we’d got lost. We stopped her and asked for directions.”

  The squat Mongol glared at me and asked where we had been going and I said the airport.

  “To go back to England?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without passports.”

  I said I would have contacted the British Embassy, and asked the man to do just that for me right now. He waved the request aside: there would be no British Embassy, he said. And the airport was nowhere near where we had been picked up. I repeated, with a sigh, that we had got lost.

  “Very lost,” he said with a smirk. He went away then; I think he was just a menial in police circles, but a menial who had landed something big and meant to pass it on before he put big copper’s feet all over a set of tracks and found himself up the creek with his superiors. I was left alone for a long while, locked into the cell where I’d been put, sitting on a wooden plank set into the wall about two feet from the floor. Several times I heard a woman cry out. Felicity or the Ladybird? Or maybe some other woman who’d been picked up. Despondency had settled like a cloud. When they came for me again I was once more joined up with Felicity and the Ladybird. They showed no marks of violence so had probably been treated correctly just as I had been. So far. We were put into a police van under the guns of two guards and the rear door was locked on us and we lurched away slowly over the snow. The van was desperately cold and the guards were warmly wrapped: Felicity and I were not. Our anoraks had been removed and had not been returned. The massive Ladybird woman was all right; she looked as though she was wearing a sheep. None of us spoke during that journey. We just stared at the blank sides and lurched about uncomfortably with the van’s movement. At journey’s end we were driven into what I saw, when we were ordered out, was a courtyard behind a tall, grim building with tiny windows set in rows, the back of the KGB headquarters, the place of interrogation in depth, the place of silent, thickly-carpeted corridors and individual cells so small that a man could not lie down, the place of terror and hopelessness. By now a dim dawn was in the sky and the snow had stopped falling, though plenty lay on the ground. There was a cold wind that ate through to the bone and swirled the lying snow up in small blizzards, piling it against the bloodstained Lubyanka walls.

  Under the guns we were herded towards a doorway. Felicity slipped and fell; she was dragged roughly to her feet by one of the armed policemen, and pushed on again.

  We went through the doorway, out of that bitter wind. We entered a square lobby with a man peering through a grille, and an open door on the far side that gave access to a long passage with many other doors leading off it. As we were taken past the grille I saw the man’s face disappear and be replaced by that of another man. That man I recognised instantly: the doctor from way back who had stayed behind when we were put in the car with Senyavin and Grulke.

  13

  The doctor’s face had vanished quickly, but our eyes had met and he knew I had recognised him for what that was worth. Once again we were taken to individual cells. But I had a feeling we were not going to remain long in the Lubyanka. The doctor was there for a purpose and that purpose wasn’t interrogation. I believed the doctor needed me again and that, to my mind, could mean one thing only: Greenfly was about to go. The official leadership had lost out. The missiles were set to fly. Or anyway, that first of many was.

  And somehow
the Greenfly boys meant to make use of me.

  I thought of that British nuclear submarine on its patrol. I thought of the consternation in the control-room when the interception signal went out, the feeling of helplessness as things started happening around the captain, who would be powerless to interfere with something being directed from outside. Was that how it would come? Or would the whole thing appear normal aboard the submarine, the orders coming through from the Prime Minister – appearing to do so, that was – all the checks answered correctly, the only surprise being that world events had marched so fast since they had left the Faslane base at the start of a routine patrol?

  I wasn’t left for long this time before I was sent for.

  *

  I was taken along a corridor and up in the customary lift into which I was locked with my armed guard in a separate but adjacent compartment. Then along another carpeted corridor and into a small room almost filled by a large desk set in front of a window looking out over snowbound Moscow, a depressing enough scene at the best of times.

  My interrogator was an ascetic-looking man in his middle forties, thin, precise, dapper. He had a charming smile and an excellent command of English. And he addressed me as Commander Shaw: of course, he would know all about me from that doctor behind the grille. Having greeted me, he gestured to the armed guard to withdraw and that surprised me even though the door would be guarded from the outside and if I was foolish enough to start anything the guard would be right back in. I was surprised simply because in my experience there is always a strong-arm man present at interrogations.

  As matters turned out, I wasn’t there to be interrogated. I was there to be informed.

  “I understand you are in possession of certain facts, Commander Shaw.”

  I said nothing; just met his eye and held it. He smiled his friendly smile. “Come now. There are things you’ll want to know. Don’t be shy of asking.”

  “All right,” I said. “How do you know I’m in possession of any facts at all?”

  “Certain persons,” he said, and smiled again. “There has been questioning, persuasions, and answers. I’m sure you understand.”

  I sat silent, thinking. This ascetic Russian could be playing me like a fish: getting me to incrimate Olga Menshikova or Sharef, or dead Comrade Katrina. I wasn’t going to assist him in his work of person-destruction.

  He went on casually, “You must understand this, we know a great deal about you and your mission, Commander Shaw. There were dead men along the railway track, by the bridge workings. There was a burned-out car on a lonely road. There are the Ladybirds.” He smiled once again. “You may unseal your lips, my friend. You can do no-one any harm now.”

  That was when I asked the question direct. “Are you part of Greenfly?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Right here, inside – ?”

  “We have many friends in high places and low ones. The real patriots – ”

  “And the Soviet leadership, your President?”

  “They are hamstrung. We hold the cards. The Soviet Union will be on the march shortly. The march for world power, irresistible. When the first missile lands, the leadership will be forced to respond. Do I need to explain further, Commander Shaw?”

  I sat staring at him, staring beyond him to the snow-covered roofs and towers, but I saw none of that. What I saw was the horror of nuclear war, the mushroom clouds, the cindered bodies, the total destruction of crops, of medical aid, of communications, of water supplies, of electricity, of an entire life-system. All for the glorification of Greenfly. I wondered what sort of leadership they would set up, what sort of Politburo would emerge to take over from the old guard, as it would have become, in the Kremlin. Not that it would matter to the rest of the shattered world … but the Russians themselves would face a pretty bleak future with mad scientists in total charge of all the Soviets. And what this man had said had to be right: when that first British missile landed on Soviet soil, the Kremlin would be able to do nothing but respond with all their nuclear strength, right along the West’s borders with communism, and behind them the armoured columns would roll through West Germany, and France, and Holland, the whole continent over-run, and then the air armadas, the hordes of paratroops dropping onto British soil when the fall-out had cleared away. The United States and Canada, those vast land masses, would hold out for longer but they wouldn’t in the end withstand the Soviet terror. The Russian submarine fleet would see to that, blasting away its missiles from positions off both the Atlantic and the Pacific seaboards. I knew that in recent years that fleet had been vastly extended both in numbers and in range. It could make rings round the combined British-US submarine services.

  That assured, happy smile again. “I see you do understand,” the man said. “This will be, as you would say in your country, game, set and match.”

  I answered with another stupid saying. “There’s many a slip. So far as I can see, you’re relying on magic. I call that a pretty poor crutch.”

  “Not magic,” he said, shaking his head. “But you shall see for yourself very soon now.” He got to his feet; he was a tall man and he blocked my view of the snow, like some evil shadow coming between me and sanity. “When we leave here, we shall be joined by Dr Kholov. We leave at once.”

  “Before you’re rumbled by anyone still loyal to the official leadership, to the Kremlin? You’re taking a chance, aren’t you? On me, for one?”

  He shook his head. “No. If you make a disturbance you will not be believed, you will be considered insane – an Englishman, accusing Soviet citizens … but of course there will be a sanction. Just in case you are really insane enough.”

  I might have known: Felicity. I didn’t ask where she was; I saw no point in confirming to this assured man that he had a much valued hostage. For his part, he didn’t volunteer any further information.

  *

  On the move again: this time in an official KGB car, a staff car, roomy and comfortable. The driver and an armed guard in front; Dr Kholov and me in the back, plus another armed thug and my late interrogator whose name, I gathered, was Siezin. We drove out of Moscow, heading west. There was another car behind us, also a staff car. We drove for a long way, right through the rest of the day. As night came down we were still driving; I had an idea we were going back to the house where I’d been put under the drug, but I was wrong. We continued driving until past midnight, the up-front guard taking turns at the wheel while the driver took his place with the weaponry. On the snowy roads we couldn’t make it fast; but Siezin didn’t seem worried. I supposed the timing was his own and Kholov’s, the only stipulation being that they should go into action before the British submarine returned to base from its patrol, and of course they would be in possession of enough supposedly top secret information to know the timings of the routine patrols. So many moles, so many spies. It had reached the stage today when you couldn’t trust anybody. Yesterday’s decency and loyalties had all gone now: there was no pride left, no pride in country or job. It was a grab for saleable information, a grab in the interest of some political ism, anything to hit against the state where it wasn’t wholly financial. I thought of Radley-Bewick, tainted with that brush, falsely, so that he could become a plant, or a sponge sucking in information from the unsuspecting. That was dirty too – I couldn’t deny it. But the Russians were much better at it than the British.

  We slowed somewhere in the outskirts of a town – from the signs I saw that it was a place called Lyubytino – and drove off the road through a gateway, stopping behind a sizeable house standing in its own grounds. Ourselves apart, there were no signs of life.

  I was ordered out. I climbed out stiffly. The second car pulled in behind us but its passengers stayed put. Siezin brought out a key, went to a door and unlocked it. I was told to follow him in and, with a gun in my back, was pushed into a small room like a cell, with a bed and a barred window. No light: when the door was slammed on me and I could no longer see the light in the passage,
I was in total darkness. I hadn’t been able to see who was in the second car, and I wondered if Felicity had been one of the passengers. After a short time food and water was brought. I ate and drank in darkness. Then natural urges asserted themselves and I banged on the door. There was no answer. Relief came when my foot clanged against something under the bed. A po. I made use of it and shoved it back under cover. Life was far from comfortable. Like Queen Victoria I lay back on the bed and thought of England.

  Eventually I slept, but it was a disturbing sleep, filled with nightmares which woke me sweating after a while and then I couldn’t get back to sleep again. My mind was going round in circles: something was nagging at me, something I couldn’t pin down – I think I was still in a nightmare of sorts, a half-awake nightmare. I thought about Olga Menshikova and the old retainer. Dead now most probably – the Ladybirds, the true patriots, in disarray. How deep, how far did the Greenfly faction go? It was inconceivable that the men in the Kremlin didn’t know what was going on so close beneath their noses – unless Greenfly had got a total grip on affairs, the official leadership being retained for the time being merely as a front. That, in fact, was what it had to be. The West had naturally to be lulled; to keep the softer-line brass intact could be one way of making sure of that. When it was all over, the purges would begin.

  And me, and Felicity? We were helpless, no use to anyone. The whole thing had gone sour from the start, from the very moment that original Ladybird had made the stupid, doomed attempt to cross the frontier by Braunlage. And from then on I hadn’t been too clever myself. Too trusting? I didn’t think so; you had to trust someone and those I’d trusted had kept faith to the point where agony had taken over, and my presence inside Russia had been their destruction.