by Adam Hall
'Go on,' I told him.
'While he was working in the Foreign Office, Sakkas, who had access to the ultra-classified files, blew his cover because of a woman and was sent down for life on a charge of high treason – this was four years ago. During the final months of the Soviet empire he escaped from special confinement by killing two guards – quietly with a piano-wire garotte – and commandeering a fishing vessel on the south coast. The owner's body was washed up at Dover three days later with a harpoon still in its throat.'
I thought I heard shots in the distance, couldn't be sure: the walls of the church were massive stone.
Croder's head was tilted: perhaps he'd heard the same thing. 'Reaching Moscow,' he said, 'with assistance from a special Soviet escort en route, Sakkas was immediately awarded the Order of Lenin for his services in London and given the rank of colonel in the KGB. A month later he was offered the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, and the Order "For Personal Valour" – presumably for so expertly dispatching the two prison guards at Wormwood Scrubs and the owner of the fishing-boat. These bonus honours he refused: in some ways your Vasyl Sakkas is a modest man; or to put it another way he doesn't like too much limelight. With the regime on its way out at the time he may have decided that the Order of Lenin and the other gongs wouldn't mean a great deal to him in the future.'
Croder turned and sat down on the bench below the effigy of St Marius, resting his claw on his knees and looking up at me with his eyes shadowed by the glow of the votive candles. 'Sakkas then submerged for a year or two, then resurfaced as a Russian entrepreneur. We got wind of this from a Moscow sleeper who was doing some work for the ministry of the interior on the mafiya situation, with permission of course from London. We informed Scotland Yard as to Sakkas' whereabouts and opened a file on him ourselves. From the same sleeper we were told that he has so far put away fourteen major rivals and three informers, six of them bound together and burned alive in a stolen BMW in a forest outside the city. There was also a criminal court judge shot down on the steps of his own courthouse only a week ago; he was to try the case of a Sakkas aide brought up on a charge of rape. Sakkas doesn't make personal kills himself any more; he uses hit men. His bodyguard is said to number thirty-two young former athletes, most of them out of the karate dojos and two of them former Olympic bronze medallists in gymnastics.'
'Has he got a mistress?' It wasn't a non sequitur: Croder had said that Sakkas – Secker – had got his cover blown in London by a woman.
'He is fond of ballerinas.'
'Does he keep them to himself, or show them off?'
'I'm briefed that he's rather private about his women, as he is with the rest of his life-style.'
'Does he maintain contact with London?'
'Only as far as his entrepreneurship is concerned; he ships priceless ikons and Faberge jewellery there through his Aeroflot network, using the pilots.'
'The dossier's quite extensive.'
'Legge has your copy, if you decide to take this on.'
He'd said it lightly; it had sounded like an aside. It wasn't.
'Have you given it a name yet?' A code-name for the mission.
'Balalaika.'
At this stage it wasn't important; I didn't know why I'd asked. I knew later, a few minutes later.
'So why aren't the Russian police and security services targeting Sakkas, along with the other top mafiya kicks?' I swung away, took a turn, feeling restless, came back and looked down at the Chief of Signals. He sat perched in the half-light like a hooded crow. 'Or are they?'
I caught the slightest hesitation in him, a pause before he spoke. He'd noted the restlessness, and would know what it meant. Blast his eyes.
'The Interior Ministry's Organized Crime Section has been sending in some of its special investigators, of course. The RAOCs have also -'
'RAOCs?' I hadn't been in Moscow since it was the capital of the Soviet Union.
'Our own acronym for the regional administrations for fighting organized crime.'
'Bureau speak?'
'No, it's a straight translation from the Russian.'
Perhaps he wondered why I wanted to know. It was because I was beginning to want to know everything. 'Go on,' I said.
'The RAOCs have also been sending their people in, but the odds against success are suicidally high, because of the corruption at all levels of government. A large number of civil servants are in the pay of the organizatsiya – the mainstream mafiya – and some of them are actually in close touch, so that any incorrupt agents who try to infiltrate the opposition are immediately recognized by their own colleagues and marked down for the hit squads. Part of the problem is that every legitimate agent is to a varying extent terrified of the job.'
'Terrified of people like Sakkas.'
'Of Sakkas particularly.'
Something flashed through the mind: I suddenly wanted to meet him, Sakkas. Then it was gone but it left a trace, like a trail of smoke on a screen. It was in the same instant that I knew why I'd asked if the Bureau had got a name for the mission yet: I'd wanted everything brought together – their suddenly pitching me into Moscow, the impact of finding the Chief of Signals here, his hesitant and almost diffident briefing. And there it was: Balalaika.
It was also the name for something that hits the nerves of every shadow executive when he hears it.
'That's the only effective method of operation,' I said. 'Correct?'
Croder nodded. 'Yes. Infiltration.'
Hits the nerves because to infiltrate the opposition – any kind of opposition – exposes you more and more the deeper you go in, so that by the time you reach the centre of the web you daren't even move in case it sends out vibrations. Have you ever seen a spider working on a trapped fly? Most people have. It makes its rush, binds the wings until they stop buzzing and then stabs with its jaws, taking its time now, sucking out the vital fluids first, relishing in them.
You've infiltrated before.
Oh, sure. But what the fuck are you trying to push me into?
Sweat gathering: I could feel it. Worse, Croder would see it. Not on my skin. In my eyes. The first admission of commitment to Balalaika.
I took another turn, needing urgently to shake the idea out of my mind. It was too early yet to put my life on the line, if that was what I was going to do. The man with the bald head at the other end of the nave made clanking sounds with his silver candlesticks, trying to be careful not to knock them against each other, perhaps, but not quite managing his veined and sallow hands, his arthritic fingers, vexed with himself because these sacred ornaments were thus far flawless, burnished and gleaming, a glory to God; how satisfactory, how safe to live a life wherein the worst of your concerns is centred on the flawlessness of candlesticks, or isn't that a kind of living death, a perpetuation of all those years of trivia, what do you think, my good friend, what is your honest opinion, now face him again, Croder, pop the question, the next one, the obvious one, the one the bastard is waiting for, perched there on the bench, on my shoulder blades, like a hooded crow.
'If I say no, who will you try next?'
Croder got up, pushed his right hand into the pocket of his coat, let the steel claw dangle. 'No one.'
I thought about this. He'd asked everyone else? And been turned down? Every time? 'Who else have you tried?'
'Fern.'
'And?'
'He said his Russian wasn't perfect.'
'Fern's Russian?' I regretted it immediately, wished I hadn't said it. Croder knew it was a lie, too, but cold feet were cold feet and I've had them myself – pay attention to them and you stand the chance of a longer life. 'Who else?' I asked Croder again.
'Teaseman.'
'And?' Making me drag it out of him.
'He said it sounded like certain death.'
Honest enough. 'Who else?'
'No one.'
'Why won't you try someone else, if I say no?'
The black snow whirled past the
coloured windows behind his head.
'There isn't anyone else,' he said.
'Pelt? Sortese? Vine?'
'There isn't anyone else capable.'
'So I'm your last shot.' Not a question but he answered it.
'Yes. You've got to understand -'
'So you've come down to the only psychopath you can think of who might say yes to your bloody suicide run.'
'You've got to understand that I find myself in an invidious position. I have virtual instructions from the prime minister' – he turned this way, that, the energy coming off him, palpable, his aura burning with it – 'to go for Sakkas and bring him down, and in my living memory the Bureau has never refused a mission coming directly from its commander-in-chief.'
His guard down now and I admired that: other men would have sheltered behind their authority. 'So you accepted it,' I said. 'This one.'
Look, anybody can make a mistake, even the Chief of Signals. Faced with virtual orders from the head of state he'd refused to believe he couldn't find a shadow to take this one on, and when the door of No. 10 had closed behind him he'd been committed.
'Yes. I accepted it.' He swung towards me. 'Should I have?'
'Oh for Christ's sake, I can't tell you the answer to that yet; it's too soon.'
'Take your time. Take all the time you need.'
And enough rope.
'This is why you're here personally,' I asked him, 'in Moscow?'
'Of course.'
'I don't quite see why it's so bloody obvious. You could have signalled me personally in Paris. Or sent an emissary.'
Standing close, face to face suddenly. 'You're making it very hard for me.'
'I've no intention. I'm just looking for the bottom line, that's all.'
He swung away again. 'The bottom line is perfectly clear if you choose to read it.'
So I read it, took a minute, but I think I got it right. Even Croder wasn't prepared to send a man to his almost certain death over a signals line. It had got to be done face to face, if at all. And he was forcing himself to the issue on the thinnest possible chance: that before my almost certain death I could get close enough to the target for the mission – Vasyl Sakkas – to bring him down. And you can interpret that how you please: put him out of business, run him out of Russia, destroy his network or conceivably arrange to have him found spread-eagled among the stinking bric-a-brac of a rubbish dump or floating in the Moscow River or sitting like a cinder at the melted wheel of a Mercedes 206 in Sokolniki Park: the Bureau too has its hit men, though I am not one of them. But even if I could pull this thing off, the risk would increase a thousand-fold in the final act because of the kill-overkill syndrome.
'Look,' I told Croder, 'if I take on Balalaika, what toys am I going to get?'
Again it was a second before he answered. I don't think he'd been quite ready to believe I'd even consider this one. 'I would be your control,' he said.
I felt the reaction. When you're offered the Chief of Signals as your control it's like being handed the Holy Grail on a gilded platter even before you can wipe your feet on the red carpet.
'On a twenty-four-hour watch,' I heard him saying, 'throughout every phase of the mission.' He wasn't turning away from me now, stood birdlike in the shadows, the candles touching his eyes with brightness.
This too impressed me. They've got cubicles next to the signals room where the controls can catch some sleep if a mission starts running hot and they have to keep close to the board. But I could remember Croder mounting a round-the-clock stint only once in the whole of my time with the Bureau, and that was when Flack was stuck in a trap within a mile of the Kremlin with the proceeds of a document snatch that had to reach the Ministry of Defence in London before the PM could raise the president of the United States on the red telephone to say whether or not he was prepared to send troops in with the UN forces if an air strike against Iran was ordered first. Croder had lit a fuse under Flack's support group and got the documents out and faxed within three hours and brought Flack home with not much more than a touch of shell-shock. Croder is that good.
More toys, I'm never satisfied. 'Who can I have as my director in the field?'
'Whom would you like?'
'Ferris.'
In a moment: 'Ferris is directing Rickshaw in Beijing. But if -'
'Who's the executive?'
'Tully.'
One of the higher-echelon shadows, or he wouldn't have been given Ferris. 'Where are they,' I asked Croder, 'with Rickshaw?'
'Approaching the end-phase.'
'Does it look sticky?'
'Not at present, though in the end-phase anything can happen, of course.'
Conscience pricked. 'I'd give a lot for Ferris, but -'
'You need give nothing.' He was looking down, Croder, saw the problem, was trying to assess my thinking. To take a major DIF away from a top shadow moving into the end-phase of a mission was probably unheard-of in the annals of the Bureau. But the trade-off was obvious: if the Chief of Signals was prepared to order it, it meant that he wanted me to have every single advantage he could give me for Balalaika because it was that dangerous. How much, then, was I ready to listen to my conscience? How willing was I to go into this one with someone directing me in the field who lacked Ferris' experience, brilliance, intuition, and ability to get me home with a few bones left, to pull me out of God knew what bloodied stew of an end-phase where Balalaika could leave me foundering?
I have little stomach, my good friend, for the last-ditch eleventh-hour death-or-glory gotterdammerung favoured by some of the shadows – Kruger, Blake, Cosgrove. Bold fellows, but they carry within them the death-watch beetle, quietly burrowing.
'If you took Ferris off Rickshaw,' Iasked Croder, 'who would replace him?'
'That is hardly your business.'
Perfectly true. I was being offered a director in the field of my own choosing and I could take him or leave him. I wasn't invited to play any part in decision-making at the highest control level.
'Then if I agreed to work this one,' I said, 'I'd need Ferris.'
Croder's head came up. 'You would have him.'
'I'm not saying -'
'You would have him,' Croder nodded quickly, 'if you in fact decided to accept the mission. It doesn't commit you.'
Croder has – has always had – his scruples. Tonight he was ready to give me anything I asked for as an incentive to get me into Balalaika, but he was going to stop short of coercion.
'What about -' I stopped short as the distant thudding of an assault rifle started hammering at the walls of the church – distant but closer, a lot closer than the last shots we'd heard. We waited for it to finish: I would have put it at a three-second burst, quite long enough to bring about what was intended.
'At this point,' Croder said, 'let me tell you that if you reach final briefing with Legge, he'll impress it upon you that these people in Moscow are not your cosy Sicilian brotherhood. These people kill those of their protectees who refuse to pay, simply as an example. But they also kill policemen, government agents, bankers, judges, whoever gets in their way. I mention this advisedly.'
The smell of cordite out there somewhere lacing the snow, blood creeping from the red-running eggshell skull, a hand flung out to clutch at the last vestiges of life, the fingers already uncurling, empty.
I suppose I'd been silent for a moment, because I heard Croder saying, 'I'm ready for questions, if you have any.'
'All right. What about expenses? If I had to infiltrate a milieu as affluent as the mafiya I'd need credibility.'
'The figure suggested – I have this directly from the prime minister – is one million US dollars in hard currency, immediately available from Barclay's Bank in Moscow.'
'And if that isn't adequate?'
'You'd be able to call upon whatever further funds you needed.'
'Fair enough. Now tell me about this man Legge.'
'Legge has been in Moscow for nearly ten years. He headed the leading su
pport group for Cossack, Sabre Dance and Roulette. In his last operation – this was post-Yeltsin – he got the executive out of a remote detention camp run by a clandestine cell of former KGB officers by commandeering three armoured cars and a mortar unit from a Russian Army garrison in Tashkent. Prisoners were not taken.'
'Real pro. How big is his group?'
'He runs fourteen men under constant training, and can recruit more from sleepers and agents-in-place if needed.'
'He ever indulge in free-lancer bullshit?' A support chief who commandeered armoured cars from the host services could be tricky to handle.
'I don't quite follow.'
'I mean, he takes orders?'
'From those he respects. I rather think you qualify.'
One of the candles guttered, and smoke spiralled upwards across the statue of St Marius.
I hadn't got any more questions.
Took a turn, watched the man down there polishing his sacred artefacts, felt an instant of brotherhood, listened again to the thudding of the rifle and saw again the fingers slowly uncurling, thought of Moira – how long would the rose take to shed the first petal? – thought of Daisy in the Caff, good luck, she always said, knowing when we were going out, knowing sometimes more than the superannuated cardinals in Administration, knowing sometimes when a shadow wouldn't come home. Thought of life's continuance against great odds, turned back to Croder.
'Look,' I said, 'I'll take it as far as I can.' I heard the echo of my voice from a niche in the chapel. 'That's all I can offer.'
Croder's eyes were bright. 'That's all I can ask.'
The hot wax of the candle drowned the wick at last, and the tendril of smoke vanished into the shadows. I nodded and turned away, going out of the church through the small side door and into the drifting snow.
2: DAZZLE
'Suite twenty-nine,' Legge told me as we pulled up outside the Hotel Moskva International. 'You're checked in as Dmitri Berinov. Here's the key. I'm going to park the car, then I'll see you there – three knocks, one long, two short, before I ring the bell.'
