A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  ‘What do you want. Major — a reduction for a party booking?

  We don’t have any girls to accommodate her, by the way ‘

  Sonya and Marfa glowered at each other.

  ‘Why, Major — why?’ Teplov moaned, complaining to an invisible and higher authority. Sonya appeared violently pleased at Vorontsyev’s injured helplessness.

  ‘Because there’s nowhere else-‘ he began, but Dmitri interrupted.

  ‘I told them it was surveillance, Alexei.’

  Vorontsyev shook his head. ‘Misha won’t have swallowed that

  — will you, Misha?’ Teplov appeared to wish he had been able to digest the fiction; devoutly so. ‘It’s Turgenev, Misha. He and Bakunin are after us.’ Fear, cunning, hopelessness pursued each other across Teplov’s thin features, animating the corpselike skin. He shrugged. ‘See, Dmitri? Misha knows it’s too dangerous to tell anyone. They’d bump him off, too.’

  ‘You are a shitV Sonya bellowed, striking Vorontsyev across the face, causing him to stagger against Dmitri, cry out with renewed pain. Sonya announced at once: ‘Get him upstairs, into a bed. Come on, you stupid policewoman, help me!’

  She walked Vorontsyev to the staircase, and began half-lifting him up each step. Three of Teplov’s girls watched Sonya and Marfa, prepared either to giggle or commiserate.

  ‘Where’s Lock?’ Vorontsyev called back to Dmitri, climbing the stairs behind them together with Teplov.

  ‘Along the corridor — nice room. Lubin’s with him.’

  Sonya knocked loudly on the door, demanding it be opened.

  Lubin’s bright look faded as he saw Vorontsyev, who snapped:

  ‘I’m not dying — just need a rest. Painkillers …’ he added in a mumbling voice to Marfa.

  Lock’s face was appalled. Vorontsyev was thrust onto a bed by Sonya’s large, strong hands. The pillows were scented, clean, utterly soft, enveloping, and the big bed was welcoming, so welcoming and embracing …

  … blinked awake.

  ‘What-?’ He attempted to move, then squealed with pain.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’

  ‘Before you ask, Alexei, you’ve been asleep for less than five minutes,’ he heard Dmitri announce. ‘Sonya’s brought coffee.

  There’ll be sandwiches …’

  They helped him into a sitting position.

  The room was cheaply opulent, an image from a collection of titillating studies of brothels of the last century. Sonya’s idea of style, taste, sophistication. But it was warm, clean, subtly lit and the scents were pleasant. Mirrors heavily gilded, the bed a four-poster, the carpet imitating Persian or Afghan rugs. Red flock wallpaper, of course. Dmitri’s daughter’s rabbit was chewing on green leaves, hunched in its cage on a nineteenth-century German sideboard with a bulbous, serpentine front. He felt safe, strangely.

  He looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘Where’s Goludin?’

  ‘Dead, Alexei — that’s why I warned you to get out of the hospital.’

  ‘Oh my God — tell me the rest of it/ he said, feeling utterly weary; no longer safe.

  ‘Yes, be ready to move them when I give the order,’ Turgenev repeated, wrinkling his features into an expression of distaste that mocked him from the bedroom mirror. Panshin in his damned jazz club was the personification of corruption in miniature; he was sleazy, squalid. ‘Yes, check for surveillance, if you have any sense. And try not to sound too relieved — you should have no trouble from the police.’ He paused, then pressed the console beside the bed, accepting the incoming call he had kepi waiting. ‘Yes?’

  He stared at the ceiling as he resumed his position against the pillows, avoiding the mirror.

  ‘Bakunin ‘

  ‘Yes? Is it over?’

  ‘Gorov and the American — got away.’ The voice was an abashed, anxious murmur.

  ‘You incompetent bloody fool, Bakunin,’ Turgenev’s voice strained for control. His hand, truer to his mood, clenched and unclenched on the counterpane. ‘What happened?’ He listened.

  ‘Then find them. What of Vorontsyev — you what?’ Perspiration sprang from his hairline. The pillows enveloped rather than embraced. The armpits of his silk pyjamas seemed clammy.

  Events in Novyy Urengoy could not possess such self-volition, could not possibly orbit beyond his control. He was quivering with rage. It was as if everything was denying his authority.

  ‘Yes?’ he snapped, every emotion concealed by the fiction of busy irritation. Finally: ‘Then they are hiding somewhere — they are together. Find them and finish them. Make sure you’re successful this time.’

  He put down the receiver and rubbed his temples as soothingly as a masseuse might have done. His head ached, as if he had entered a cold place from a warm room. The blizzard murmured beyond the double-glazing and the heavy drapes. He was deeply enraged. Challenged by a handful of petty, ignorant men who had decided upon self-destruction, on useless heroics. Nevertheless, successfully defied, every moment they remained alive. He inspected his fingers as if they had dabbled in dirt. Inferior, weak, unreliable individuals — Panshin, Bakunin, Vorontsyev and his crew … all no more than dogshit on one of his shoes, but now walked into the house, onto priceless rugs, offensive and unignorable.

  Angrily, he got up from the bed and crossed to the bathroom in search of aspirin.

  ‘I know there are five of us. Lock, I know that-‘ Vorontsyev’s exasperation made his voice high, strained. ‘I know Turgenev as well as you do, only not under such elegant and sophisticated circumstances! I understand better than you do how easily he could rid himself of us.’ His anger faded and he lay back against the pillows. But Lock would not let him rest.

  Then what exactly can we do to even things up a little? You know the town, the quality of the opposition. What do we do?

  We can’t stay here forever.’

  ‘I know that, too,’ Vorontsyev sighed, waving his good hand feebly. The painkillers made him feel tired, made clear thinking difficult. ‘It’s still a question of survival, not revenge, Lock however much you want it to be the other way around.’ He paused. Lock’s intent gaze disconcerted him; he could see the American had little interest in survival, none in escape.

  Lock had come for Turgenev and his new and untrusted companions were mechanisms whose only purpose was to place him in a position from which he could destroy his enemy.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ he said, ‘what you want. We can’t help you with it, no one can. There’s no way you can get close to Turgenev.’

  Lock glowered at him, and said: ‘Then I’ll find the way for myself. Thanks for your help.’ He looked meaningfully at Dmitri, then stood up.

  ‘Sit down, Lock … there is one way. It won’t come out neatly, you killing Turgenev at high noon on the main street—’ He grinned and the mocking laughter in his chest was punished by the searing pain of his ribs. He coughed. ‘Forget the drugs for the moment.’ Dmitri appeared betrayed, let down. ‘It’s the scientists we should concentrate on.’

  ‘Why?’ Lock asked bluntly.

  Vorontsyev gestured at the scattered papers on the bed and the other furniture, at Lubin and Marfa crouched on the floor, sorting the files Lubin had snatched from headquarters on Dmitri’s orders.

  ‘There’s everything in those files we have on the heroin. Even on Turgenev — our suspicions, all suspicions, are in the heads in this room. But there’s no proof and there never will be. He kills people, remember, to keep his secrets.’ He shivered. ‘You were once CIA, you claim … OK. There are CIA people in Georgia, protecting Shevardnadze, in Moscow around Yeltsin, the FBI is all over Moscow and Petersburg advising the local militia, gathering material on the mafia to help clean them up in America, let alone in Russia ‘

  ‘I know all that!’ Lock protested.

  ‘Then use what you know!’ Vorontsyev snarled. ‘Instead of imagining you’re in a cowboy movie, thinkV He coughed again.

  Marfa’s empathetic wince made him angrier. ‘If we can nai
l down some proof, some actual evidence, regarding the trade in nuclear physicists and technicians with Iran or any other Moslem country, the CIA and the FBI will crawl all over Novyy Urengoy! Can’t you bloody well see that. Lock? That it’s not a one-man crusade against the forces of darkness? We need to find one of those very valuable human commodities, just one, and get him away from here.’

  ‘To Moscow?’ Dmitri asked in surprise.

  ‘Anywhere, now we’ve got Lock to help us. He speaks American, he’s State Department’

  ‘ ‘I’m wanted for murder,’ Lock said quietly.

  ‘A little local difficulty. Give them this and you’ll give them Turgenev. You’ll get a citation! shake hands with your President.

  Be on the front cover of Time, I shouldn’t wonder!’

  He waved his good arm and lay back once more, exhausted.

  Lock continued to study his face, even when the Russian closed his eyes. Unexpectedly, he felt less alienated and alone in the room, less aware of four pairs of strangers’ eyes watching him. He rubbed his hands through his hair, aware, in an unwelcoming way, of the worm of survival wriggling in the pit of his stomach. And of Turgenev, remote and enfortressed and secure, and the smallness of their numbers, their utter powerlessness.

  The shuffling of papers from the two younger ones kneeling on the carpet, the quiet scrape of pencils and of Dmitri scratching himself. Vorontsyev’s breathing and the ticking of an ornate, last-century clock on the marble mantelpiece …

  ‘OK — all right,’ he announced eventually. ‘I agree with your analysis. Washington — and maybe Moscow — would move heaven and earth to stop top Russian scientists being smuggled out. Drugs-‘ He swallowed angrily. ‘Drugs are passe, yesterday’s problem. Too ordinary to get excited about.’

  ‘You really agree the Yankees will want to know?’ Dmitri interjected, rubbing his loose jowls, looking tired, almost drunk.

  He got up and poured himself some more coffee from the percolator Sonya had replenished. ‘Well, Mr Lock?’

  Lock looked at his watch. It was after one. The blizzard roared around the old house, rattling the ill-fitting windowframes. He had a sense of urgency, but lack of sleep and agreement with Vorontsyev distanced it, made it comfortable like the rabbit in its cage. He shook himself.

  ‘Yes, I do — how much time do we have?’ he asked, turning back to Vorontsyev.

  ‘As long as we stay hidden,’ Dmitri muttered.

  They had heard the creak and growl of half-track vehicles passing the house; the GRU had to be turning the whole town on its head in an effort to find them.

  ‘That long?’ Lock replied cynically. ‘OK, Major — what now?’

  Vorontsyev opened his grey eyes, then leaned forward, hand pressed against his ribs, and said to Lubin:

  ‘Anything — anything at all?’

  ‘We’ve been over and over the stuff here, racked our brains, sir. Just can’t narrow it down’

  ‘They have to be somewhere!’

  ‘Obviously, Lock. Turgenev owns the whole town, or most of it. What he doesn’t own he has in his other pocket. They could be anywhere — not the hotels, though. That’s how we stumbled on them in the first place. Not out at his place either, that would be stupid of him. Somewhere close, somewhere safe.’

  ‘Panshin’s club — Panshin’s apartment?’ Dmitri asked.

  ‘Who’s Panshin?’

  ‘The jazz club.’ Lock nodded. ‘He’s into the heroin business, we’re certain of that now. That’s a recent venture. He could be dragooned into this, too …? I’m not sure.’

  ‘They’re as locked in as we are, anyway,’ Dmitri observed.

  ‘They won’t be going anywhere in this — and it’s set to last another two days at least. If we can stay alive, we might have forty-eight hours!’ He smiled pessimistically.

  Vorontsyev shook his head carefully. Lubin was afraid and Marfa was rubbing her upper arms vigorously as if cold.

  ‘You see, Lock? We’re really as desperate as you,’ Vorontsyev murmured. ‘OK, Panshin for one — where else?’

  Turgenev has offices all over town,’ Marfa offered, Lubin nodding in agreement as he sifted a sheaf of papers. ‘Companies he owns or part-owns. Warehouses — even out at the airport he’s got cargo hangars. Shops, industrial units.’

  Vorontsyev laughed, puzzling Lock.

  ‘You see, Lock, it’s the geological record of a capitalist,’ he explained. ‘Even Tsar Peter had to start somewhere, in quite a small way. Importing luxury items, especially food and booze.

  Then fashion for a time, wasn’t it, Dmitri?’ Gorov nodded, himself smiling in recollection. ‘Import-export. Just like today, only smaller. Different cargoes, different profits. Gradually, he acquired gas leases, and the money to exploit them. Then more quickly, he grew and grew.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘So, we have dozens of small to medium companies, all with offices, still connected to Turgenev, little bits of his empire all over town. Give Mr Lock the list Let him choose which one we hit first!’

  ‘That’ll just draw attention to us!’ Lubin protested.

  ‘Sorry, youngster.’

  Lock took the handwritten sheet, glancing down the considerable list of companies. Turgenev’s recent past, his last six or seven years. Toes in the water, no more than that. Food importing, frocks, drink, just as Vorontsyev described. He looked up.

  ‘He was creating a dozen covers, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I imagine so. Every means he could to gain constant access to the airport, to flights in and out.’

  ‘And these companies are still in business — legitimately?’

  Vorontsyev looked at Marfa, who nodded.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Then he won’t use any of them, will he? Not for this, not at this moment in time.’ He handed the sheet abruptly to Marfa, who scowled at his condescension. ‘Find one that isn’t trading any longer, one with large enough premises. That’s where they’ll be.’

  ‘Sir?’ Marfa asked.

  Vorontsyev nodded.

  ‘Humour Mr Lock, Marfa,’ he said, carefully excluding all excitement from his voice.

  The dress shop was on 9th Street, three blocks from the elegance and triple mark-up of K Street. Its grille-protected windows were dark and empty, like a number of the shops on either side of it.

  Small, dingy emporia that seemed to have been early casualties of the rising tide of affluence in Novyy Urengoy, patronised now by the dependents of rig workers, the unemployed and old, the disabled and the remaining locals. The car, slewed onto the opposite pavement, was alone in the snow-filled street. The few sodium lamps merely tinted the bfizzard.

  Vorontsyev imagined rather than saw the flicker of torchlight behind the dark blank of the shop window, the cloudy pupil of glass left free of ice and driven snow. The car’s heater protested loudly at its forced labour, and Lubin was reflectively silent in the driver’s seat. Lock had tried to insist he stay at Teplov’s, but he had outmanoeuvred the American, leaving Marfa on the pretence that Sonya wasn’t to be trusted not to call someone to inform on their whereabouts. Dmitri and Lock had entered the empty shop. There was an apartment, cramped and uninhabited, it appeared, above the shop and owned by the earliest manifestation of a Turgenev properly company. Turgenev had bobbed on down the street on the surge of money brought into the town, to own the leases and a claim on the profits of a dozen of the smartest, most expensive boutiques and stores, bars and nightclubs. Yet he had kept this place untenanted, unearning, when he might as easily have sold it to one of the Iranians or Turks or Pakistanis who supplied their own communities — at least rented it to one. Vorontsyev felt a tickle of excitement in his chest, like the beginnings of a cough. Lock was smart; more into the covert than he was, the secretly criminal, the world of mirrors and disguises. Places where things didn 7 happen. He and his people had watched only the inhabited places, the movements and motives of crowds.

  He saw a torch flash light against the upstairs window, then sens
ed that a curtain was drawn across the glass. He lit a cigarette and listened to the storm and Lubin’s efforts to control his breathing. The boy was all right — just.

  Ten minutes later, he saw Dmitri and Lock emerge from the narrow alleyway leading to the rear of the shop and lump their way across the treacherous street. The snowploughs hadn’t cleared it for hours and traffic had consequently avoided it.

  The blizzard whirled snow in on him as Dmitri opened the door and clambered into the front passenger seat. Then Lock repeated the shower as he slid in beside Voromsyev. The American was grinning.

  ‘It’s a place waiting for someone to arrive!’ Lock exhaled, self-satisfaction wreathing his chilled features. ‘Tell him, Dmitri, tell the man!’

  ‘Nothing there — the place is empty,’ Dmitri began, turning round in his seat. Vorontsyev felt his own impatient excitement mount. ‘Hasn’t been used for much at all, by the look of it, for some time. Dust everywhere in the upstairs flat. But, food, a couple of fan heaters, drink. The electricity supply’s on, so is the gas. Camp beds stacked at the back of the shop, too.’

  Vorontsyev gripped Lock’s arm.

  ‘You could smell cigarette smoke, Major — I swear it. Maybe four, even five people, judging by the supplies and the camp beds. We just have to stake this out!’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Alexei, it doesn’t matter — they must be coming here!’ Dmitri insisted. ‘As Lock says, all we have to do is to wait for them to arrive.’

  ‘Who? Bakunin and a division of armour? We can’t sit around on the street in daylight, Dmitri!’

  ‘Maybe they’ll come tonight?’ Lock suggested seductively.

  ‘Any minute now — uh? Think about it.’

  Both Dmitri and the American were reckless at the ease with which they had uncovered the safe house — for it had to be that

  — and he felt almost shamed at his own cautious reluctance; as if he refused to join in some childish game that might prove dangerous. Nevertheless, he continued shaking his head.

  ‘An hour — no more. One hour. Lubin, move the car down the street.’

  The engine clattered noisily as Lubin pressed the accelerator.