by Adam Hall
'Stop right there or I'll fire!'
Bullshit, you'll fire the moment you can see a clear target but I'm not leaving shelter and if you try getting round on my blind side I can turn my shield much faster than you can move and you know that. Keep up the rhythm, keep up the rhythm under this appalling weight, the muscles running with liquid fire now and the lungs gaping under the ribs as the sweat poured on my face and I began counting – one and forward again, come on you bastard, two and forward again and stop that awful bubbling noise, three and forward again and then Uri made his mistake and as he sprang to the side and swung the gun up I hurled the cadaver down and across the barrel with the last of my strength and the shots hammered into the trees and I moved in for the kill with my muscles light, released from their burden, and before Uri had time to bring the gun up for the final burst I was into him with a series of three interconnected strikes, driving the nose bone upwards into the brain and coming down with a claw hand to blind him if there were still sight left and then thrusting a half-fist into the throat, its force rising from the heel through the hip and into the shoulder as I felt the trachial sinews flex and snap as he reeled and fell with my body on top of him, blood springing in the glare of the lights, the snow cool against my face as I bit into it, the parched husk of my mouth receiving its bounty as suddenly the night came down in waves, washing over the spirit, let us rest, my brother, let us lie for a while in this vale of sweet oblivion.
16: LIFELINE
I signalled Ferris just before ten the next morning to debrief. He didn't pick up until the seventh ring and it worried me: he'd said that if there was no answer it would mean he'd been recalled from the field.
I needed him here.
'Yes?'
'Debrief?' He would have the scrambler on.
'Where?'
'We don't need to meet,' I said.
'Why not?' Debriefing isn't done much over the telephone.
'You'd be at risk.'
In a moment, 'You know the score.'
'Yes. All right, two men down.'
'Self-defence?'
'Yes.'
'What happened?'
'They drove me into the forest last night.'
Another pause. 'Who were they?'
'Sakkas' men.'
Hence the risk to Ferris if we met anywhere in broad daylight. He's uncanny, Natalya had told me, talking of Sakkas. Conceivably one or more of the Cougar's gym team could see me somewhere in the streets and move in; with Sakkas the risk was much higher: he could have landed in Moscow by now and the moment he heard that two of his men were missing he'd send out half his army to investigate. Last night's snatch had been reported to his communications base and even my cover name was in their computer.
'You've made contact with the target?'
'No.'
I could hear the snow ploughs working down in the streets. They'd been there since first thing, making their rounds. Overhead the sky was dull pewter, brooding, like a winter twilight two hours before noon.
'Do you expect to?' Ferris asked me.
Feeling his way carefully, his yellow eyes slightly oblique as he listened. I would have liked a rendezvous, yes, if it weren't for the risk. At this of all times I wanted Ferris here in Moscow, keeping the lifeline secure while I was away. During the remnants of the night I'd woken several times as my dreams, sometimes spinning like a vortex, sometimes leading me to consider in a waking state a plan of action, had left me with some decision-making by first light, and this had been done.
'No,' I said. Did I expect to make contact with the target?
'Have you made any progress?'
'No.' I knew the question had come from London. Progress, it was all they could bloody well think about. If I made any progress I'd tell them, wouldn't I? Head felt like a drum this morning, taut, vibrating, not terribly surprising, I suppose. I hoped it would feel normal again soon: I had to be operational as soon as I could manage it, you get trapped on the street by bad luck and you're feeling like a zombie and it's finito, I don't need to tell you that.
'Have you any leads?' I was letting Ferris put the questions: this was debriefing.
'Yes.'
'How promising are they?'
'Not very.'
'But you'll follow them up?'
'Yes.'
'We should really have a rendezvous.'
'No, I want to get on with things.'
In a moment, 'What can I report to London?'
I'd given this some thought, because inevitably he would ask.
'Nothing.'
'But you're committed to following up your leads?'
'Mentally. I'll need to work things out.'
In a moment Ferris said carefully, 'I could give it to Control personally, for his ears only. It needn't go on the board.' Didn't want to get the signals room in an uproar.
Sometimes an executive in the field will go native if he's pushed far enough by the mission, imagine his whole career will depend on one last trick and believe he can snatch success out of the red-hot coals, and then Control will start screaming at him through the mast at Cheltenham, trying to bring him down before he blows the whole of the mission into Christendom.
I wasn't going to do that.
'Look,' I said, 'I've decided on a slightly tricky move and it might come off and it might not. If it does, I'm going to give you the target for the mission and bring Balalaika home. If it doesn't, you won't hear from me again. Try telling Croder that, but stand well back.'
'By the sound of things,' Ferris said in a moment, 'he wouldn't allow it.'
'Damn right.'
'And nor should I.'
'You've got no choice.'
Rumbling of the ploughs below like the roaring of a riptide, ominous, getting on my nerves. When you're committed to moving right into a red sector with your eyes wide open you're prey to the visitation of auguries and portents. Ignore.
'You should know,' I heard Ferris saying, 'that I was ordered back to London at five o'clock this morning. I was packing when you signalled.'
In a moment I said, 'I need you here.' Waited.
'I'd like to stay on, if only to rake the ashes for what I can find.'
I'd never heard him be so graphic. He was worried, that was all. Ferris was worried. Then help me, God. 'It could be interesting,' I said.
'Unfortunately I've got instructions from Control.'
'Twist his arm.'
'On what grounds? When you've got nothing to report.'
'Perfectly true.' It doesn't help, either, while you're listening to the roaring of the riptide, to hear that your director in the field is striking camp.
'Just give me one good argument,' Ferris said. 'Just one.'
It was tempting to make a rendezvous and give him the whole picture, but it wouldn't work. He'd tell me I hadn't got a chance of pulling this one off, that for the first time I was letting the mission run me totally out of control: I was groggy from getting clear of two red sectors and couldn't be expected to think rationally, and the thing to do was to let him take me home while I was still alive, fight again another day, so forth, and all this in his most silken tones, stroking my ego and gently calming it down, getting inside my defences as only he could do, without leaving an entry wound.
'I haven't got any argument you could use to Control,' I said at last. 'Go home.'
'I'm afraid those are already my instructions.'
'No regrets, then. But do something before you leave. Get Legge to pick up the Mercedes.' I told him where I'd left it. 'If it's not there, then the opposition's commandeered it.'
'How did you get back from the forest?'
'In their car. They didn't want it any more.'
The thought was cheap, sour, and Ferris heard the note.
'Are you operational?' he asked me.
'Actually no. That doctor, by the way – where can I find him?'
'What's the problem?'
'I pulled the stitches, that's all.'
'He's
near the UK embassy.' He gave me the address. 'I'll meet you there.' Didn't want to leave his executive less than operational in the field, would try very hard, if I let him see me, to get me home.
'You'd be wasting your time,' I told him. 'Give my love to Blighty.' I shut down the signal, and in the silence of the room heard the lifeline snap.
Mitzi Piatilova came out of the RAOC office alone again, taking a chance crossing the icy street and tossing her head back and laughing as a driver yelled at her.
I followed her into the fast food cafe and got behind her in the queue and whispered, 'This is on me. Go for the caviar.'
She turned, recognized me, couldn't think of my name.
'Dmitri,' I said.
'Well, hi! What are you doing here?'
'I hoped I could join you.'
'Sure!' Remembered the thousand dollars she'd earned the last time.
At the table she dropped her coat onto a chair and pulled her black sweater tight, her eyes bright in the haze of tobacco smoke. 'Did your friend get off that charge? What was his name?'
I looked around. 'Boris. Yes. Thanks to the Cougar.'
Her eyes went deep. 'When was this?'
'On Monday. Four days ago.'
'You know he's in hospital, do you?'
'Vishinsky?'
'Yes.'
'I hadn't heard.'
'The police had a call on Tuesday and went into his hotel and found his suite looking like a slaughter house.'
'That's the mob for you.'
'I guess. So how's business?'
'Very good. Except that someone's getting in my way.'
She stilled, looked down, up again. 'You need something done about him?'
'Yes and no. But I'm not looking for a hit.'
'Why not?'
'It doesn't always have to be the answer. I'm a businessman at heart.'
'So what do you need from me?'
I told her.
17: GULANKA
'Where is your police escort?'
I grunted, shaking my head, pointing to my ears, then to my mouth.
The receiving officer gave a frown, squeezing the whole of his enormous face into it, as mystified as if I'd let forth with a torrent of Italian.
'What do you mean, you clod?' In a cloud of vodka.
I shook my head again, pointing.
He stared at me, then stared down at my papers again, his hands shaking, the split in his thumbnail impacted with grime.
The train stood waiting, a black, rusting barrier against the west, the rails beneath it shining, the mounds of trash between them covered with snow, an acrid reek of excrement drifting from where the contents of a lavatory had been dumped. Overhead the sky was dark, swollen with more snow to come, the only light in it electric, charged with unspent force.
The clock on the platform wall showed noon.
The officer shook my papers out again with a huge raw hand, a forefinger stabbing at the name near the top. Berinov, Dmitri Stanislav. Then he thumped me in the chest. 'You?'
I nodded. I'd asked Mitzi to have the papers made out bearing the forged signatures of a magistrate and a clerk of the court, plus the official stamps and frankings. I'd filled in my own name later, in capitals. The charge on which Berinov, Dmitri Stanislav had been convicted was specified as murder.
'Where is your escort?' the officer asked me again, pointing to one of the policemen standing against the train with his rifle slung.
I looked confused. I'd chosen the deaf-and-dumb act to avoid too many questions. This was nothing more than a cattle drive going on, which I'd expected, but bureaucracy would nevertheless be in charge of things, and papers were papers. He was extraordinarily worried, this huge red-headed man, that I hadn't been correctly presented to him by an escort detailed by the bailiff of the court. It was like watching table manners in a buffalo.
'Clod!' He picked up his pen and dipped it into the encrusted inkwell, scratching his signature at the bottom of the sheet. His desk was a packing crate, once having contained – according to the stencilling – sewer fittings from No. 3 Sanitation Equipment Factory, Smolensk. 'Over there!'
I tapped the papers and looked enquiring.
'What? No, I keep these. Over there!'
Two of the police guards came forward to lead me across to the huddle of prisoners near the front of the train, and I heard the metallic echo of the last of so many doors slamming behind me. I'd listened to them all morning, the first time when I'd left the hotel in the railway worker's clothes Legge had originally provided, complete with a heavy moth-eaten astrakhan hat and hogskin boots, the coat cut out of thick woollen felt, proof against even a Siberian wind-chill. The second time I'd heard a door slam was when I'd got into the taxi, telling the driver to take me to Gorkogo Station in the south-east of the city. The third time was of course when I'd arrived here and sat for half an hour on one of the benches outside, going over the whole thing again and reviewing the few, ineffective alternatives and coming up with the same answer, always the same answer: this was the only chance I'd got of bringing Balalaika home.
Then I'd picked up my duffel bag and walked into the station and that door had slammed too, and the nerves had flickered like iced lightning through the system as I reached the point of no return.
'Got a cigarette?'
A thin man beside me as we stood packed together, tears on his face from the cold, a five-day stubble.
'I don't smoke.'
He turned away.
Gulanka, it said on the weathered board near the rear of the train, the letters scoured by time and the whipping slipstream.
Once he's in there, Mitzi had told me, you won't see him again. No one ever gets out of Gulanka.
Wire mesh, half a mile of it, stretched like a shimmering net across the rocks, bearing a frieze of curved blades glinting like scimitars in the glare of the floodlights, beyond them a cliff, a massif of sheer rock rising to a thousand feet against the arctic night sky, gates swinging open on shrieking hinges, their timbers shaking as the huge locomotive rumbled between them, steam clouding under the lights, and now an outcry from a pack of dogs straining at the leashes of the handlers, their wolvine shapes rearing alongside the carriages, the guards behind them in ranks, rifles slung, and finally whistles blowing, an outbreak of shouted orders, doors slamming back.
We marched – were marched – at the double, our packs of belongings bumping, our boots slipping on the frozen ground, our steaming breath whipped away by the wind coming off the Arctic Ocean.
On each side, mounds of split rock, bare facets of it showing through snow drifts; mining rigs, tools, cranes, crates, trolleys on a single line heaped with shining ore, a timber yard stacked with beams, poles, props, weather-boarding; and then the huts, running in blocks halfway to the massif, their windows dark.
'Over there!'
Boots shuffled, shoulders bumped against the walls; the noisy heaving of lungs as we stood getting our breath back after the running march.
'Don't bunch! One at a time, can't you fucking listen?' Another flash from the camera on the other side of the office.
A man dropped, hitting his head against the corner of a desk, his fur hat coming off to show wisps of greying hair. 'Get him out of here!'
'You, next!' He fished for my papers as I stood forward. 'Berinov, Dmitri Stanislav – is that you?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, officer!'
'Yes, officer.'
His eyes bulbous in the shadow of his peaked cap, the veins broken into a bloodied web across his face, a bottle of vodka on his desk, half empty. 'What work did you do?'
'I was a shipping clerk, officer.'
'So you can read and write?'
'Yes, officer.'
My papers were shaking between his hands as he went on scanning them. 'What else? What other work did you do?'
'A little merchandising.'
His head jerked up. 'You were in the mob?'
'On the fringe.'
'You
make much money?'
'I was comfortable.'
A sudden roar of laughter, spittle shining on his stubbled chin. 'Were you now! Then you'll find a slight fucking difference here, my friend. How much did you bring with you?'
'The regulation amount.'
'You sure?'
'Yes, officer.' We'd been body-searched twice, coming through.
He looked down again. 'We've got no use for a clerk here right now. If we need another one I'll send for you.' He scrawled something in red across the papers. 'Meantime, see how you like the mines.'
'Can I ask a question?'
'You can try.'
'There's a friend of mine here, Marius Antanov. Can you tell me which hut he's in?'
'That's none of your business. It's confidential information, and we respect privacy in this place, you understand that? No names, no pack drill. Now get over there.'
'You! Come on, then!'
A guard pushed me between ragged yellow tapes. 'Hold still!'
The camera flashed.
'All right, get over there. Boris! One more for Hut nine – you got room?'
'No, but I'll take him. He can sleep on the floor.'
My watch had stopped, but I judged it to be three or four hours after midnight. Sleep had been difficult: for the first time in five days the floor was no longer rocking. Rumbling through the Urals and then north and east across the steppes and into the mountains of the Siberian Uplands, our main concern had been to keep from freezing: there'd been a dozen cases of frostbite as we'd been herded through the inspection rooms. On the train, to fall sleep had been dangerous unless your body temperature was adequate; survival depended on a minimum of circulation.
This hadn't changed very much: a draught was still slicing across the floor from under the door to the urinals outside, but I'd found some newspaper and blocked at least half of it. The silence was also hard to get used to after the noise of the train, and I lay awake for another hour, listening to the distant voice of warning that hadn't given me any peace since we'd arrived at the camp.
