Quiller Balalaika

by Adam Hall

  'By tomorrow night it'll be at the base of the crane on the Simonovskaya dock at Wharf thirty-nine. I'll be there at ten o'clock.'

  Vishinsky looked at one of the men at the table. 'Viktor?'

  'Sure, patron. No problem.'

  I looked at him, scanning his face and noting the broken nose, the heavy black eyebrows, the stubble. The hair wasn't important: tomorrow night he'd be wearing his fur hat.

  'This is Viktor Stroykin,' Vishinsky said. 'He is my chief lieutenant.' The man looked up at me, his eyes indifferent, and we nodded.

  'I'll be alone,' I told him. 'And so will you.'

  In a moment he glanced across at Vishinsky, who looked at me.

  'Unlike yourself,' Vishinsky said, 'we use bodyguards.'

  'All the same, I want him to go there alone.'

  'Why?' The dead stare was back.

  'I prefer it like that.'

  'You prefer it.'

  'That's right.'

  Silence again.

  'I too have my preferences, Berinov. There will be four bodyguards accompanying my lieutenant tomorrow night.'

  'In that case,' I said, 'the deal is off.' I turned to the door, and one of the guards closed in on me, presumably in case Vishinsky didn't want me to leave.

  'Berinov.'

  I turned back.

  'You're being very difficult.'

  'I'm sorry you think so.'

  'And rather suspect. Why do you want my lieutenant to go to the rendezvous alone?'

  'Because we'll need to be discreet, and I don't want an army of minions hanging around. Take it or leave it, deal or no deal, your choice.'

  We locked eyes, and the silence became absolute, gathering tension until one of the men at the table felt the need to cough, but stifled it. Vishinsky went on waiting for me to break, and it took a long time for him to understand that I wasn't going to. Finally he turned to Stroykin.

  'No bodyguards. Is that understood?'

  5: DIAMOND

  The night air was sharp after the warmth of the Baccarat Club, and the caked snow was brittle underfoot as I walked to the Mercedes. The nearest place I'd found to park was half a block away, but if there'd been anywhere closer I wouldn't have used it. Half a block was the right distance. I took the alley again; its walls were lit faintly by a shred of moonlit cloud drifting across the rooftops.

  A group of teenagers straggled past the far end, singing drunk by the sound of things, a girl giving little squeals of laughter. Then there was some hooting from a pair of expensive horns, and a flood of light swept across the snow and there was the crunch of tyres sliding. I suppose the teenagers had decided to cross the street without looking. After a while there was silence again.

  I didn't know yet whether I had any kind of access to the opposition, but I thought I would know in a few minutes from now. Ferris would be at the Hotel Romanov by this time, according to his fax and providing the plane hadn't been delayed, or crashed. It would feel satisfactory, when I met him for the initial briefing, if I could tell him we had access. Ferris is one of the really brilliant directors in the field and I would choose him – had chosen him last night – above all others, despite my aversion to some of his little ways: there is the rumour, now established in the unwritten archives of the Bureau, that he strangles mice to entertain himself when he's got nothing more interesting to do. He likes, it is said, to see them dance.

  The snow, packed into ice along the alley, broke under my feet, and once I staggered, putting a hand out for support, and a cat went flowing along the top of the wall, black in the moonlight. As I kept on going I listened to the echo of my footsteps, and stopped a couple of times to listen instead to the silence, looking back along the alley. I didn't expect anyone to close up on me here: I would have heard them and they would know that.

  They'd made a detour, the only choice they'd had, moving faster than I could have done on the packed snow. They were waiting for me in the street, two of them in their smart white workout suits with the cougar in gold on the left side of the chest.

  They would have guns on them but hadn't drawn them, hadn't seen any need, with these odds and their training. They stood bouncing on their feet, hands hanging loose, crowding me against the wall as I reached the pavement.

  'The diamonds,' one of them said.

  I used a shin-rake to double him forward and dropped him with a heel-palm under the jaw, feeling it break. The other man was very fast and already had his gun out but I had time to use a sword-hand to the wrist. It gave him a lot of pain but that wouldn't be enough so I used another one across his carotid nerve to stun him as the gun dropped from his hand and I caught it and emptied the chamber and sent it skittering along the pavement and into the gutter. Then I took the other man's gun from its holster and did the same thing with it before I dragged him into the alley and left him there, coming back for his partner and propping them side by side against the wall.

  The one with-the broken jaw was whimpering a lot and I left him to it; he'd be pretty inarticulate if he tried to talk. I worked on his friend instead, slapping his face to bring him out of the stupor. He was taking his time, so I kicked some of the snow loose and packed it against his forehead, holding it there until he started moaning, I suppose because of the wrist.

  'Where is the Cougar's base?' I asked him.

  His eyes came open, glinting in the faint light. 'Fuck you,' he said weakly.

  Centre-knuckle to the median nerve and he jerked to the pain. 'Where is Vishinsky's base?'

  He tried to straighten up and get his eyes focused and I let him: I wanted him to be able to reason. But he didn't answer me so I pushed one finger into the trigeminal nerve and he choked off a scream.

  'Vishinsky's base,' I said. 'Where is it?'

  He began lolling his head but there was no reason for him to do that – he was just faking syncope – so I went for the trigeminal again and he screamed and I repeated the question and this time got an answer, and I didn't think he was lying because he was in too much pain to think about tricks.

  'Hotel,' he said, or it sounded like that.

  'What?'

  'Stay at hotel -'

  'Which one?'

  'Stay at -'

  'Which hotel? I'll give you five seconds – come on!'

  One, two, three -

  'Hotel Nikolas.'

  'All right. Do you know Vasyl Sakkas?'

  His eyes came open wider. 'Sakkas?'

  'Yes. Have you ever met him?'

  'No.'

  'But you've heard of him?'

  'Everyone has heard of Sakkas.'

  'Where is his base?'

  'I don't know. Nobody knows. He moves all over the place.'

  I hadn't expected anything from the last question but I thought I'd have a try. Croder had told me the same thing, but Sakkas must have a centre of operations somewhere and it must be here in Moscow. I would be asking a thousand people in this city where it was, and one day someone would tell me.

  'What's your name?' I asked the bodyguard.

  'Rogov.'

  'Listen, Rogov. If you ever see me again, keep your distance or I'll kill you with my bare hands. And that goes for your friend.'

  I left them propped there against the wall, going into the street again and finding the Mercedes and getting in, Nikolas Hotel, 936 Tokmakov Prospekt, access of a sort and useful enough to consider the night not wasted.

  I phoned the Hotel Romanov from the car and got Ferris on the line and asked him for a rendezvous.

  6: MOTORCADE

  Ferris had said 10:30 and it was only a twenty-minute run so I took my time, trying out the S420 as I drove it away, getting used to the controls and instrument panel and pushing some of the buttons and folding the outside mirrors back and dropping the head rests and activating the headlamp washer jets. I suppose most of this stuff had been put into the design to give the dealers something to sing about in the showrooms, but if I ever had to drive this car through an ambush or a blizzard or do any
fancy footwork with it the extras would give me a distinct edge on the opposition.

  Found the button for the traction control and gunned up and got normal wheelspin until the chains dug through the snow and we moved off, not a lot of acceleration with a car this heavy but you can't have everything – the thick storm windows and door panels would absorb or deflect oblique fire and that could raise the chances of survival if things began running hot.

  I shut all the whistles and bells down and slowed to a steady pace and turned north towards the ring road, checking the time al 10:15. Dried blood inside one of the fingers of my right glove was sticking to the knuckle, the one I'd used on Rogov's nerve points, and I eased it clear, watching the BMW in the mirror and making a square circuit when it didn't go away, but this was just for practice because the Mercedes was completely clean: it hadn't been within sight of the two bodyguards when I'd driven away and there hadn't been enough action to draw attention to me personally.

  By 10:29 I was making my first, pass through the rendezvous zone near the Borovickaja metro station under a clear night sky with less than full-contrast shadow from the first-quarter moon. The taxi moved in soon after 10:30, and I took up the tail along Vozdvizenka and when it made a right turn and stopped I left the Mercedes with the offside wheels on the pavement and locked it and watched the alarm flasher shut down and then walked through the dry snow to the taxi and got in.

  'How was Beijing?' I asked Ferris.

  'Terrible smog, horrible food.'

  'It's not what I meant.'

  'I know.' He told the driver, 'This is Berinov, the executive.' The man looked round, just enough to show some of his face underneath the big fur hat. 'Charlie Tolz,' Ferris said, 'one of our sleepers.' Tolz faced his front again. 'Let's just keep moving, Charlie, anywhere you like. And you can leave the radio on.'

  Rachmaninov, the Prelude in G. 'How's Rickshaw?' Iasked Ferris, spelling it out this time. In the presence of a Bureau sleeper there's total security.

  Ferris looked down at the folders on his lap, his thin, sensitive face catching light from a passing car. 'It could go either way.'

  'Shit,' I said.

  'Don't worry, they've sent a perfectly capable replacement in.

  'Who?'

  'That's not important. The important thing is to get you debriefed before the heating in this thing chokes us to death.' He switched on his tape recorder. 'We're running.'

  I wanted to ask him about Tully – how did Tully feel about getting his DIF suddenly replaced in the end-phase of a mission that 'could go either way'? But Ferris wouldn't say any more than he had already even if I asked him, so I shifted round a bit on the seat and started debriefing. 'I've made contact,' I began, 'with a woman called Mitzi Piatilova who officially works for the RAOC branch office in my area. She also tries to make tentative connections with the mob, because she likes money. She could be useful.' I filled in the details, her night work at the club, her thoughts on Zhirinovsky as a potential dictator, so forth. 'I've also -'

  'Spell her name.'

  I spelled it for him. Debriefing always sounds stilted when we do it on a recorder: the tape's going to be reviewed and examined and picked apart by half a dozen Bureau analysts in London and then put into a computer that's going to leave our every word carved in stone, and we're aware of this. 'I've also made contact,' I went on, 'with a medium-weight mafiyosa named Vishinsky. I muscled my way in to talk to him – he was playing poker at the Baccarat Club – and pitched him the story that Ihad some sable for sale and told him the deal could make him half a million US dollars. He liked it, but when I showed him the diamonds to prove -'

  'The diamonds?'

  'Legge gave me some for bartering chips. When I showed them to Vishinsky to prove I was a pro in good standing he took the hook and decided that two million pounds sterling was better than half a million dollars and sent a couple of his bodyguards after me when I left the club. They -'

  'For the stones?'

  'Yes. It was the only way I could isolate them for working on. One of them gave me the location of Vishinsky's headquarters.'

  'Really,' Ferris said, his pale eyes watching me in the shifting light from the street. He wasn't showing any excitement, but he should have been.

  'Of course, he could have been lying.'

  'You know,' Ferris said, 'when someone is lying under duress.'

  'All right, then he wasn't.'

  Watching me. 'This looks like access.'

  'No need to get excited.'

  Ferris hit the stop and ran back and cleared the last bit and replayed and took it as far as 'access'.

  'Anything more?'

  'I don't think so. Obviously I've blown my image the first day out. Vishinsky's going to keep watch for me.'

  'It was worth it, for the access.'

  Charlie had been watching the mirrors a lot in the last few minutes and now he made a couple of left turns and a couple of rights and there were no more lights behind us. Ferris dropped the folders onto my knees. 'Moscow information, mainly, that Legge wouldn't have access to. And your complete legend. I picked it up from the embassy when I flew in.'

  I looked at him. 'How much does the embassy know?'

  'Nothing. This one is very hot indeed.' Ferris shifted on the seat now to look at me, stretching his long thin legs. 'Let me tell you exactly how hot.' When he spoke again his voice was muted. 'Mr Croder is out on a limb.'

  It was like saying that God had blundered.

  'I got some vibrations,' I said, 'when he briefed me last night.'

  'That doesn't surprise me. The thing is, he's not only committed himself to Balalaika, but if you can't bring it home he's not going to send anyone else into the field.'

  He waited. I said, 'He'd shut the whole thing down?'

  'The whole thing. I assume that from the vibrations you picked up you also realized that not only did he commit himself – and the Bureau – when he was with the prime minister, but he had to face the necessity of sending in an executive with, shall we say, none too sanguine a chance of staying alive. You'll forgive my disarming candour.'

  We were following the river now, north along Kremnevskaja, and I watched a garbage truck stuck in a snowdrift and trying to barge its way out like a trumpeting elephant, half lost in a cloud of diesel gas.

  'I know all that,' I said in a moment. I felt I was moving – being pulled – towards something I wasn't going to like, wouldn't know how to handle.

  'But you haven't thought about it,' Ferris said, his voice sounding a little way off as my thoughts focused inward. 'And you've got to do that, before we go any further.'

  I needed time, and took it. 'I'm not quite sure what you mean. Before we push the mission any further?'

  'Yes.'

  I wished he'd take his pale, unblinking eyes off me; I could feel them as I watched the river running past us, a coal-black glitter with the reflection of the lamps afloat on the surface.

  'Brief me,' I said.

  'It's not like that.' Ferris waited, but I didn't say anything, still needed more time. 'This is nothing I can brief you on.'

  'Oh for Christ's sake, how much has he told you? Croder?'

  'Not much. I've only talked to him through signals, scrambled in Beijing.'

  'And?'

  'He simply told me you'd accepted Balalaika and had asked for me to direct you in the field.'

  'So where did you pick up this – this other stuff?'

  'From London.'

  'On the phone?'

  'Yes. I sensed' – he lifted his pale hands, dropped them – 'certain undercurrents.'

  And this is Ferris for you. At birth he was furnished with antennae, as sensitive as an insect's. It's why I always try to get him when there's a new mission on the board: he can show you the way through the labyrinth without even looking at the map.

  'Who did you talk to,' I asked him, 'in London?'

  'Who would you think?'

  'Holmes?'

  'Of course.'


  Had to be Holmes, yes, you could ask him things you couldn't ask anyone else, because you knew he wouldn't let it go any further; it would stop right there, locked in the security of his totally impregnable mind.

  'And what did Holmes tell you?'

  'He never really tells you anything, does he? You have to read between the cyphers.' Ferris turned his head to watch the river for a while, and I left him to think, wasn't easy. Then he turned back and said, 'I probably know the Chief of Signals rather better than you do, since the directors in the field are in closer touch with the controls. He comes across as Machiavelli on ice, doesn't he, hard as a diamond cut in the rough and all that. But deep under the shell he has a conscience, and it's bugging him now.'

  'You're talking about Croder.'

  'Chief of Signals. But the problem here is that he started going too fast, gathered too much momentum when he came away from 10 Downing Street that night, and the result was that he suddenly found himself committing an executive to a probable early death. He -'

  'I committed myself. He gave me every chance to say no.'

  'Oh, I'm quite sure. But he was offering you something he knew you couldn't resist.' A beat, his eyes on me. 'Wasn't he?'

  'Look, it's not the first time I've agreed to a suicide run.'

  'Would you have committed yourself to Balalaika for Shatner? Or Flockhart?'

  Two of the controls. 'I don't know.'

  'You've got to face yourself. Then you will.'

  Jesus, I'd come to this rendezvous for debriefing and here I was on a psychiatrist's couch. Ferris had never been like this before at the outset of a mission. Nothing had been like this before.

  When I'd given it enough thought I said, 'No. I wouldn't have done this one for any other control.'

  'Thank you. But you'll do it for Mr Croder. That too is his problem. He's very much aware of your loyalty and your respect. You're not alone – he can make people do things for him they wouldn't do for anyone else.'

  'That's their decision. Our decision. Christ, you're right, it's too bloody hot in here.' I tried to wind the window down but the handle broke off so Ferris tried his, and the draft came cutting against our faces.