Young Bond

by Steve Cole

  Then Karachan gave a ghastly, choked-off cry as the end of Anya’s cane thumped down into his windpipe. He released James, thrashing like a salmon speared in mid-stream. Only when his struggles ceased did Anya raise her stick and continue down the staircase to the ground floor, leaving James in a heap.

  ‘Anya, wait . . .’ He rolled back to his feet, weary as hell, but with the old dogged determination to outlive his enemies. He staggered down the stairs. The front door stood open, but Anya was making for an exit at the back of the hall; going for help from her housemates in the courtyard perhaps.

  James started after her. ‘You can’t stay,’ he panted. ‘Come with me!’

  ‘With you?’ Anya spun round to face him and the look in her eyes was one of such hate-filled conviction that James actually shrank from it. ‘I only saved you so the secret police get you in one piece.’ She hobbled away to the back door. ‘I have witnesses, and we’ll tell the authorities everything.’

  As Anya pushed through, James saw the path to the courtyard beyond. She limped quickly towards the rear of the building, through the white smoke gusting from the upper windows, shouting in Russian. At least all the other occupants of the house had been outside when the fire broke out. Sitting on the benches, so still and quiet . . .

  ‘Oh, no,’ James breathed, and again set off in pursuit.

  When he caught up with Anya, she was standing before the benches like an actor addressing her audience, all eyes upon her. But these eyes weren’t turned from the whirling smoke, or fixed on her in concern. They were dead jellies in sunken sockets: corpse eyes. James saw that the old man with the poker now wore a bloodied cheesewire around his neck like a grisly necklace; he saw a pouchy, blonde-haired woman gazing up at the stars, darkness dripping from the incision above her collarbone.

  All of them. James looked away, stunned and sickened. Murdered. To stop them talking? To wipe away all trace of Ivan Kalashnikov and those who knew him?

  Slowly Anya turned to James. ‘You did not do this . . .’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ James said brusquely. ‘You must know now, you’ll be next. We have to get away from here.’

  Without a word she pushed past him, bolting from the courtyard back towards the front of the house and the street beyond; her limp wasn’t holding her back now: she moved with a powerful, muscular grace. James thought for a moment that perhaps he should let her go. She was right – look at the hell he’d unleashed on her life. But he knew too that there were others crowding close who could bring worse . . .

  He broke into a run and gave chase. Do I really think I can protect her, James thought, or am I just hoping she knows whatever her papa knows – and that she’ll share it with me?

  How far was he prepared to go for the truth?

  James pushed the questions aside, quickened his step. He caught up with Anya in the middle of the road, facing down a fire engine that was racing over the asphalt, clanging bells shattering the calm of the summer evening.

  At the same moment he saw Karachan stumble out of the old house with Mimic. They’d recovered too soon for James’s liking; he still felt exhausted, his lungs turned inside out by coughing.

  Anya had seen the killers too, and started to shake – from the look on her face, more with anger than fear. James linked his arm through hers and pulled her firmly away. The gathering crowd spared her a little shock and sympathy, then turned back to the show as the firemen connected their hose to a hydrant and unleashed a stream of water on the building’s upper storeys. Mimic and Karachan were accosted by special constables, fresh on the scene, who knew nothing of the events that had taken place. But instead of arresting the murderer and his accomplice they simply steered them clear of the smoke to the side of the road.

  ‘Anya,’ James said as he marched her away, ‘is there anywhere safe you can stay tonight?’

  She didn’t look at him, shaking as she walked. He took her silence for a ‘no’.

  ‘I was staying at the National Hotel,’ he went on, ‘but after what happened this morning I don’t think I can go back . . .’ Mimic had impersonated Elmhirst’s voice to lure James into danger, therefore Mimic had clearly come across the SIS officer: had he killed Elmhirst to stop him getting to the information they thought James had in his head, the means to solve Andrew Bond’s riddle?

  ‘You ask if I have somewhere safe to stay . . .’ Anya’s walk was becoming robotic, her limp growing more pronounced. ‘My papa has been killed. The people who lived with us, who hated and resented us, were killed with him. The men who did this . . . they are monsters without mercy.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘I have no one now. Nothing. Nowhere is safe. They must kill me too.’

  James held her arm. ‘I know you’re in shock, know that after what you’ve seen—’

  ‘Perhaps if I make it easy for them to catch me,’ she broke in, ‘it will be quick.’

  ‘Perhaps if you make it hard for them, you’ll stay alive.’ James looked at her. ‘You want to die? You want these killers to go unpunished?’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘You can get even!’

  Anya looked at him, disconsolate. ‘This is your way?’

  James wiped dirty hands through his sweat-soaked hair. ‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’

  ‘And this is good?’

  ‘It’s better than anything else.’ But as James looked past her down the street, fear knifed its warning down his spine. Through the smoke, he glimpsed two figures coming their way: he supposed the police must have finished with Mimic and Karachan. ‘Now we’ve got to run like hell.’

  ‘But my leg—’

  ‘Like hell.’

  James snatched her hand and ran off, grateful that she was at least allowing him to pull her along. He turned left at a junction, past the pink-and-white frontage and grey-slate domes of a Russian church, and led the way west along Pogorelskiy Lane. They ran past a line of buildings with ground-level windows but no doors that he could see, as if they had sunk into their own foundations.

  Anya’s limp was growing ever more pronounced and her breathing shakier. We’re too damned slow, James thought. If we can’t outrun them, we’ll just have to give them the slip.

  A bare concrete courtyard led from the pereulok onto a smaller half-demolished alleyway, where workmen’s huts sprouted from the pavement like canvas mushrooms. James pushed Anya inside one of them, and in the musty gloom they listened. The sound of pelting footsteps was approaching already. James looked around the hut for anything he could use as a weapon, but there was nothing beyond a small table and three dirty mugs. He held his breath, fists clenching, as the footfalls sounded louder, closer.

  James wiped cold, dirty sweat from his neck. They know we’re here!

  16

  A Walk in the Park

  FOR WANT OF a better plan, James readied himself to pick up the table, like a lion tamer warding off a lion. Surely at any moment Karachan and Mimic would both barge in and . . .

  No. The rush of footsteps went past, and the canvas at the entrance to the hut flapped as if tugged by the slipstream.

  ‘Back the way we came,’ James whispered. ‘Fast as you can.’

  Anya nodded mutely.

  A nightmare game of hide-and-seek began. James led Anya back to the lane they’d left, but Karachan and Mimic doubled back too, searching under cars and trucks parked at the side of the road. James began to look at his map, but Anya shook her head impatiently and took hold of his wrist, leading him down a small side alley onto a bigger street. Still panting for breath, wary and alert, James broke into a jogtrot alongside her; he wanted to push on faster but her limp seemed to be growing worse.

  At the end of the street, overhead cables hung like industrial bunting, and a queue of people waited by a sign on a pole. ‘Trolleybus!’ James panted, pointing out the sight to Anya. The electric hum and whoop of an imminent arrival put hope into his heart. ‘If we can get aboard . . .’

  They ran down the urban canyon t
o the line of people filing aboard the red-and-cream crate. Looking behind as he joined the end of the line, James could see no signs of pursuit. But I was wrong about that before, he thought. I could be again.

  He paid their fares, but there was standing room only. The trolleybus didn’t move for some time, and James had nightmare visions of Mimic and Karachan climbing aboard, trapping them in the scrum of passengers. Mimic . . . His powers of impersonation were eerily accurate. When he’d spoken as La Velada, she might have been in the room.

  Except I’d know if she was, he thought, by the chill.

  Finally the vehicle jerked and hummed away, the collector pole on its roof drawing power from the overhead cables, pushing the wheels round. James waited for the thing to pick up speed, but soon realized with dismay that this slow trundle was as good as it got. ‘Karachan and Mimic could walk faster than we’re going.’

  ‘That will make them less likely to believe you would be on board,’ Anya said without emotion.

  ‘I suppose so.’ James nodded. ‘Does this trolleybus take us near Gorky Park?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a Metro stop on the far side, isn’t there?’ James recalled. ‘Takes us to the top of Gorky Street, not far from the National Hotel. There’s space to hide, crowds to blend in with. It will be harder for anyone to make a move.’

  ‘Harder for them to kill us, you mean.’

  ‘Or to catch us for questioning first.’

  Evening was well advanced by the time James and Anya disembarked from the trolleybus on Krymsky Val street and made their way into Gorky Park. Anxious almost to the point of exhaustion, James looked around for signs that they were being trailed. He wore the backpack on his front so he’d be harder to spot from behind.

  ‘I think we have “lost” them.’ She spoke distantly, like a distracted mother indulging a fanciful son’s game. ‘Moscow is big. We are small.’

  James looked at her sideways. ‘Thank you for agreeing to stay with me.’

  ‘These men killed everyone in my life for what they might know. They will kill me also, if they can.’ She looked back at him. ‘I stay with you until we talk. If I can tell you things my father did not, you will leave me alone for good, and I will leave Moscow and be free. We both get what we want.’

  James shook his head. ‘You sound so calm. After all you’ve just been through—’

  ‘This day is good, perhaps.’ Anya sniffed and straightened. ‘The ordeal is over now.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The slow death of many years was ended tonight.’ She sounded so matter-of-fact as she turned her sad blue eyes on him. ‘After all the things Papa did to me, do you think it is proper that I should grieve?’

  James felt uneasy. ‘Then you know about what he did—?’

  ‘That he slammed the door of a motor car on my leg? That he crippled his own daughter to avoid having the death of strangers on his conscience?’ Anya nodded, emotionless. ‘Yes. He thought he kept the secret, but when he came back from the secret police . . . he began to call out in his sleep, each and every night. I learned just what he did, through the floorboards. Each night a new raving. The others in the house heard some of it too. They came to fear him.’

  James frowned. ‘Fear him?’

  ‘Or to fear what he might rave of them in his sleep, if he was taken again.’ She looked down, brushed grass from her cotton trousers. ‘Well. They do not fear now. And if they go to heaven, I hope St Peter will allot them more space than the state’s nine square metres.’

  James noticed the absence of all emotion; was it shock, or something more ingrained – a way to cope? Whatever the case, right now he couldn’t afford to antagonize her. For all her deadpan rationalizing, Anya had no reason to stay with him and several good reasons to run. He wanted to put her at ease, reassure her that he could bring more to her life than carnage.

  Reassure himself.

  He tilted his head to one side. ‘Nine square metres, you say . . .?’

  ‘That is the permitted living space in Moscow today. As people arrive from the countryside to work in the factories, or build the new Metro stations, the population here has risen too fast.’

  James thought back to the many Primus stoves in the kitchen. ‘Your papa mentioned that.’

  ‘It was once a house for Papa and me alone. When they turned it into kommunalki – communal apartments – it was a sign that Papa had fallen from favour. In the kommunalki everyone is thrown together: strangers from different backgrounds, different generations.’ Her sudden smile was broad and bitter. ‘It helps with the housing shortage, but better still, it means that neighbours spy on each other. They pass on every morsel to the house committees that take the rent, in the hope that Stalin’s rats will bite and take away the “wrongdoers”. Get rid of someone in your kommunalki and there is more space to share around.’ She paused. ‘I am sure there are many good citizens who cheer for what you did today. When my home has been cleared, so many more can move in.’

  James flinched, stopped walking and looked at her. ‘Please believe that I’m sorry, Anya. I didn’t know I was being followed, and had no idea what I’d find at your address. My father knew what your papa risked by sharing his secrets, and was determined to protect his identity by encoding his notes . . .’ Briefly he filled Anya in on the chain of events since the discovery of the backpack and its contents.

  ‘It is good, then,’ Anya said slowly, ‘that these men come after you.’

  He shot her a glance. ‘So they can kill me, you mean?’

  ‘It means their project can still be stopped. And if it can be stopped . . . if many lives can be spared . . .’ Anya tapped her fist against her injured leg. ‘Perhaps this is a little bit more worth it?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ James smiled faintly, nodded. ‘Your papa ruined your dreams and your life, and yet you still looked after him. Why?’

  ‘He was still Papa.’ Anya blinked. ‘The love and the hate, James, they lie inside and fight. Fight so hard they wear out, so that in the end you feel nothing, and it is better. Better just to get on with things.’ She shrugged and looked away. ‘This is what I have learned.’

  ‘I learned to be tough when my parents died,’ James told her as they set off again. ‘But I’d give anything for just five minutes more with them.’

  ‘Then you are stupid.’ Anya snorted softly. ‘When the five minutes were up, your parents would be dead again and your pain worse.’

  ‘Perhaps pain is what tells us we’re alive.’

  ‘You think so?’ Anya’s smile finally reached her blue eyes. ‘You would make a good Russian.’

  As they walked on, making for the park entrance, James looked around at the busy crowds. At home, the newspapers all screamed about the dangers of Soviet Russia, the implacable enemy. Articles warned of the ‘red menace’, of the threat that the Russian people posed to the British way of life, encouraging their readers to think of them as a solid, homogeneous mass, as steely and dour as their ruler. But in truth, they were just the same as any people, a mix of contrasts, good and bad, worried for their families, loving their children. It was their leaders who were dangerous.

  The leaders, and their instruments.

  Anya stopped suddenly. ‘You need to rest?’ James asked her.

  She didn’t reply, just stared at a children’s dance display, where two women in their early twenties were panting and perspiring as they called out instructions over the tinny blare of a gramophone.

  He tried again. ‘Do you still dance at all?’

  Anya turned to him, and James had never seen such scorn in a single look. He glanced away – and then quickly dragged Anya down to the ground, peering through the legs of the people around them.

  ‘What is it?’ Anya kept her eyes fixed on the display.

  ‘Eleven o’clock. Karachan again.’

  ‘He has seen us?’

  ‘Not yet. But I doubt he’s alone.’ James looked at her. ‘How far are we from the main ent
rance?’

  ‘It is the other side of the parachute tower.’

  James looked over. Peeping above the sculpted parkland was the rim of what looked like a helter-skelter, lit up like a lighthouse now as the skies geared up for the slow summer sunset. The cheers and squeals of spectators, and of those jumping from the tower to drift down beneath huge canvas parasols, carried through the deepening gloom.

  Why can’t we always have parachutes when we need to jump? thought James.

  Abruptly, Karachan straightened, made a strange kind of high-pitched bird call – a signal of some kind, a direction or a warning – and then stalked away towards some large tents on the other side of the field.

  ‘Time to go,’ James whispered.

  They moved slowly, drifting in time with the crowds. James found himself muttering directions and footsteps taken as if this was a game of Which Way Now? and his father was watching his progress. He walked hunched over, pretending he’d dropped something and was half-heartedly looking for it; Anya did the same. Please God, let us make it, James thought. She allowed him to take her arm and lead her onwards. With every step he expected a shout of recognition, or the hand of the enemy to fall on his shoulder.

  ‘Perhaps we should split up,’ James murmured. ‘We might be less conspicuous.’

  ‘This is less conspicuous.’ Anya slipped her arm around his back, pressed her head against his shoulder, slowed her steps. ‘We walk like sweethearts taking the air. Not strangers thrown together by crisis. Not running afraid. We are lovers on a summer night.’

  Surprised, James moved his left arm about her. Able to lean into him now, she could disguise her limp; it was a good cover, he had to admit.

  ‘Clever,’ he whispered.

  She said nothing.

  Even after they’d made it out of the Maxim Gorky Park of Culture and Rest, they stayed close together, and James brooded over the night’s trials and terrors. Elmhirst or no Elmhirst, he knew he had to follow the rest of his father’s clues, find whatever was hidden here in Moscow. Because whatever Andrew Bond and Kalashnikov had worked to suppress, their deaths had changed nothing.