Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

  He began simply enough: by writing down everything that had been in the Code Red field report from Tripoli and adding other material from his reading of the Western press and his trawl of the Eighth Department files, Then he reviewed the Oligarchy document again, noting every implication of it that had occurred to him since it had come into his possession. The links between these and the Tripoli information were crucial and he spent many hours on them.

  Laying out the likely British and American responses was the most difficult part of the process. Nor were they all he had to predict; he needed also to anticipate how Gorbachev would see them. Where options were balanced he either had to have a plan for each of them or find a way of nudging the decision towards the one he preferred.

  When he needed to escape from the room he walked through the forest of pines and aspens, where the silence was broken only by the slither of snow from branches. The lake at the centre of the estate was frozen now into solid swirls from which great rocks protruded; steam rose from its surface when the sun broke through the clouds, as if the waters that fed it still flowed and churned, casting up spray.

  If he happened upon any of the estate’s workers on these solitary expeditions they would move rapidly away or continue quietly with their work until he’d gone past. They never spoke to him. They feared the man from Moscow.

  After four days and most of three nights he became sure that something was starting to emerge, like a statue from a slab of rough stone. For twenty-four hours he closed in on it. On the last evening he pushed the room’s furniture against the walls and began sifting through the sheets of notes, spreading some across the floor and rewriting others. Hour by hour he chipped at the idea, clarifying it until it was right. He fell asleep sometime before dawn for a couple of hours, sprawled across the papers, and was woken when Sinsky, without waiting to be ordered this time, brought him breakfast. He ate mechanically and resumed working. By late morning he was sufficiently satisfied to begin disposing of his superfluous working sheets, crumpling them one by one into balls that he consigned to the flames of the fire.

  He spent the afternoon looking again for gaps in his planning and ways around them. By four thirty he was as ready as any man could be. He collected his papers together, ordered Sinsky to set the room to rights, and went off at last to his suite to sleep, bath and dress.

  He had to be fresh for the most important meeting of his life.

  *

  He had given a series of orders to Sinsky. While Serov slept, the man rode down to the airfield on a snowplough, bringing with him on its running boards three other burly farm workers. They stopped short just before the locked gates of the steel fence surrounding the field. After waiting for the others to jump down, Sinsky lowered the plough’s scoop and accelerated the plough to the gates, crashing through and leaving them swinging from their mountings. The others finished the job by detaching the mangled gates with powerful cutters and tossing them well out of the way.

  In the airfield Sinsky cut a few trial furrows through the waist-high snow until he had located the concrete of the east–west lane. He guided the plough up and down this strip, clearing the snow to either side. Afterwards he drove along at walking pace while the others unloaded some large lanterns from the snowplough’s trailer and set them at intervals on each side of the runway. At the runway’s end he cleared a wide apron area on the hard earth beside the concrete.

  At eight that evening Sinsky emerged from the farm again. This time he was behind the wheel of a silver Mercedes 500 SEL and wore respectable dark clothes. Not far behind him a four-wheel-drive Niva followed, with the three other men aboard. They were also respectably dressed. Short-barrelled machine guns lay in their laps.

  At the airfield the two vehicles followed the clearway that the plough had cut earlier. Fresh snow had dusted it over since then but it remained perfectly passable.

  The Mercedes pulled to a halt on the cleared apron at the runway’s edge, engine and heater still running. The Niva paused for its passengers to step out, then followed as they walked the runway, switching on the flashing lanterns. Then they rode back to wait beside the Mercedes.

  *

  In Moscow Galina was also waiting. She had waited all week for her courage to muster, now it was there and she was waiting for the chance to put it to use.

  She stood in a small park opposite Serov’s apartment block. It was the closest she had ever come to his place. Near her was a blue and white hut selling ice cream. She hated the stuff but others consumed it by the bucketful, whatever the season or the temperature. Tonight there was a steady stream of customers from the housing blocks on the street. They’d take the ice cream back to their apartments, invariably overheated because fuel was almost free, and gobble it down while watching television.

  The problem that vexed her was how to get into Serov’s building. Keys alone weren’t enough. There was a door guard in the lobby and he was stopping everyone that he didn’t recognise.

  Then the big car drew up and the four whores got out. Top-class whores, to have business in that building, but whores all the same.

  They were about to enter when one of them spotted the ice-cream hut. The four of them came giggling across the road and bought a huge tub.

  Galina stepped from the shadows and sashayed back over the road behind them. Only when they were past the guard and safely in the lift did the girls become aware that she had attached herself to them. They realised what she was up to but didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Busking a little, honey?’ was all one of them said.

  At the apartment Galina found that she’d been right about the first two keys: they were door keys. No one disturbed her as she opened the door and quickly stepped inside. She closed it at once and waited a few seconds before flicking on the light switch.

  The alarm bell right above her head screamed into life.

  For a moment she was paralysed. She thought it was something to do with the light switch, so she flicked it off again. The noise continued. Then she realised: it was an alarm with a time delay, sufficient to allow the resident to get to it and switch it off. That would explain one of the other two keys, but to use it she had to find the control box. The racket was deafening. Any second now the door guard or a neighbour would arrive to investigate. The people who lived here were wealthy enough to care a great deal about security; no one would ignore a noise like that.

  She turned the light on again and looked around, wishing she had some idea what she was looking for. She was on the point of giving up and fleeing when she saw the cupboard at the end of the hallway. She raced to it and tore the door open. A green metal box was mounted on the wall. Wires ran from it like tentacles; a stainless steel key rose glinted up at her in the hallway light.

  Her fingers fumbled with the keys. She found the one that fitted and the clanging stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She heaved a deep sigh and listened, still down on her knees by the cupboard.

  Minutes passed, in which there was no sound but the thudding of her own heart.

  When she did rise to her feet, however, her search didn’t get under way at once. For as she moved from room to room, she was stunned by what she found. Only in dreams or foreign films had she seen anywhere like this.

  The apartment was large, but so was her own by Moscow standards. It was the contents and style of this place that stunned her. She saw richly patterned Uzbek rugs, Scandinavian hardwood furniture, English soft furnishings. The rooms were full of paintings and fine ornaments. There seemed to be an expensive Japanese television set in every room, and audio equipment that she’d never even heard of. Books everywhere. It was like walking into the pages of one of the Western magazines he brought her.

  Most of all, there was him: a pack of cigars on a table, clothes in the wardrobe, his foreign brands of soaps, cologne and shaving tackle in the bathroom.

  When she had gawped enough she retraced her steps and began again to walk slowly through each room. This time she had only one object
in mind: the safe to which she was convinced the fourth key belonged. She lifted the corners of pictures, she peered behind cabinets and curtains. Eventually, she began tugging at the shelves of the bookcases.

  It was her sharp eyesight, not any movement of the perfectly carpentered shelves, that told her when she’d found what she was looking for. Hairline joins in two of the uprights were the giveaway, not matched in the other sections. She ran her fingertips over, under and around the shelves until she found the stud that released the section and swung it out.

  So absorbed had she been in her earlier exploration of the apartment that her nervousness had gradually melted away. Now, with the safe before her, it returned in force. She fought it down, telling herself that she was strong, and tried the fourth key.

  It fitted.

  *

  Yegor Ligachev peered unhappily at the darkness outside the small window by his elbow. He was a politician, not an Arctic explorer.

  ‘Where in God’s name is this place, Georgi?’

  Darkness was all he’d seen for the whole flight; darkness and the howling blizzard through which they were now flying. The plane had been losing height for two or three minutes and it surprised him that still there was no sign of civilisation to be seen. Not a light, nothing. The warning symbols over his seat were flashing as well, confirming that a landing was imminent. Yet he could see nothing worth coming down for.

  He groaned inwardly. He was a fool to have given in to Zavarov. They were both too old for stupid games.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked again.

  Across the aisle of the marshal’s well-appointed aircraft, Zavarov snapped the ashtray lid shut on his cigarette. He avoided Ligachev’s gaze and blew a last lungful of smoke up towards the air vent.

  ‘We’re there, Yegor,’ he said laconically. ‘That’s where we are. Fasten your seat belt.’

  Ligachev shook his head wearily. ‘I must be insane.’

  ‘What’s insane about giving me just twenty-four hours of your time?’ Zavarov brushed ash off his sleeve. ‘I went all the way to Afghanistan to oblige you.’

  Ligachev glared back at him as he did up the seat belt. ‘Whatever you’re up to, and whatever you’re trying to get me into, it can’t be right if it needs all this secrecy. I’ve come with you this far for old time’s sake, Georgi, but there’s a limit.’

  Before he could say more his breath was suddenly knocked from him. The aircraft had set down on a runway with a bone-jarring crunch. What runway?

  ‘Sorry, Yegor,’ he heard Zavarov call, the words almost drowned by the screech of rubber on concrete that seemed to be coming from right beneath their seats. ‘I meant to warn you. It’s a short airstrip – my pilot has to come down hard.’

  As if to bear this out, there was a mighty roar as the pilot hit reverse thrust. Ligachev felt himself being thrown forward against the seat belt. Their speed began to fall sharply and he steadied himself back up again, staring again through the window. At least now he could see flashing lights that edged the runway; but beyond them there was still nothing but blackness. It was the same when he looked through the windows on the other side of the plane. No tower, no other aircraft, no buildings, no ground staff. Nothing.

  ‘A short airstrip, Georgi?’ he repeated. ‘It’s not even a damned airfield.’

  ‘It was once. Relax.’

  He wasn’t surprised when no one was waiting to meet them off the aircraft. The icy gale lashed hail against his face and snatched the very breath from his lips. Too old, he thought again; old and cold. He felt Zavarov grab his elbow and hurry him away from the plane. He squinted up through the hail and now saw that they were rushing towards two sets of headlights fifty or sixty metres away. But it wasn’t the weather for questions or arguments. He went where the marshal steered him.

  A moment later he found himself inside a spacious, well-heated car that smelt wonderfully of leather and newness. Zavarov slid in beside him, shut the door with a quiet clunk and said something softly to the driver.

  As they glided away from the runway between walls of snow, Ligachev lifted his chin from his scarf and gratefully gulped in the warm air that filled the car. Gradually he felt his circulation return; and with it his curiosity.

  ‘Who is this friend of yours?’ he asked, not for the first time.

  ‘I told you. Someone like me who worries about what’s happening to his country.’ Zavarov turned his head to look at him. ‘Someone like you used to be, Yegor. A patriot.’

  ‘You never stop, do you?’

  ‘I can’t afford to.’

  ‘Your friend better be worth all this trouble.’

  Zavarov patted his arm. ‘He is. He certainly is.’

  They wound uphill on lanes recently cleared of snow through a dense forest, its trees picked out like spectres in the headlights. Shadows doubled and merged in the beams of the other vehicle that had followed them from the airfield.

  After some minutes Ligachev became aware that they were passing through a guard post, suggesting that they were entering an enclosed estate of some sort. He caught a glimpse of raised barriers and the silhouettes of armed men. Whoever this friend of Zavarov’s was, he had himself well set up. At least as well as any Politburo member.

  They continued climbing and then the ground began to level. Ligachev became conscious of a strange jumble of yelping and baying noises, high pitched and eerie. He realised that it had been building for some time but now it seemed to be right beside them. He peered out through the window again. Zavarov showed no interest, watching him instead.

  On each side of the car were long wooden sheds, wholly encased in wire mesh and open to the frost and weather. They were raised off the ground on stilts a metre or so high. Boxes or containers sat beneath them. It was from the sheds that the noises were coming. As the headlamp beams swept over one of the units Ligachev caught a glimpse of the animals inside. Now he recognised the noises. Even in the luxurious car their sharp smell reached him, drawn in by the powerful heater.

  ‘Foxes,’ he said to Zavarov. ‘This is a fox farm?’

  ‘Enterprise Number 573, Minsk District.’

  ‘Minsk? We’re in Byelorussia?’

  The marshal was smiling at him. ‘The pelts belong to the Minsk and District Trade Administration. They’re not as sought after as, say, sable, but they enjoy a solid enough market. Most are worn by our own people but many are auctioned in Leningrad and from there go all over the world. People pay good money for them. The money belongs to the state. This little farm, Yegor, is part of one of our nation’s greatest sources of foreign exchange.’

  ‘Stop sounding like a textbook, Georgi.’

  ‘You don’t like my economics lecture? Mikhail Sergeyevich would. He’s very big on economics. You told me so yourself.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘The money from the pelts belongs to the state. But a fox does a lot of pissing before it becomes just a pelt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It pisses. The state doesn’t care. Perfume counterfeiters do. So we add a few preservatives and sell it to some of the biggest operations in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest. We ship it through Riga to London and Stockholm. When the pack ice closes in we entrain it to Hamburg instead. Foreign exchange, Yegor. Which the state doesn’t want.’

  ‘My God!’ hissed Ligachev, hardly able to believe his ears. ‘You have a nerve to bring me here! Right into one of your crooked schemes.’

  Zavarov laughed. ‘You’ve arrived, Yegor.’

  *

  Letters in the safe. Not many, only seven or eight. Each still in its original envelope, then all of them had been slipped together inside a larger envelope.

  On the floor Galina had arranged everything in exactly the order she’d found them in the safe, so that she’d know how to put them back again. A death certificate. Some bits and pieces of her mother’s jewellery. Her identification papers.

  The surprising thing was that, unlike the apartment, the safe contained no
thing of him. Apart from those things of Katarina’s, it was a business-only affair; mostly cash and some small jeweller’s sacks of diamonds. Perhaps the diamonds were real, perhaps not; he had uses for both.

  Now she took the letters a little distance away, as if she knew that they merited a separateness from the wares of his trade, and sat down on the carpet to examine them.

  All were addressed to her mother. All were dated before her own birth. Her fingers trembled as she took one at random and opened it.

  It was full of love. She bit on her lip as she read it. There was loneliness too. And at the end, a signature. The ink was browning and fading with age, but it was still legible.

  It wasn’t the kind of name she expected. Not Russian.

  *

  Ligachev had failed to notice their approach to the large house. They climbed out, Zavarov still chuckling, and followed the hulking driver to a room at the back of the ground floor. Ligachev made straight for the roaring fire at the far end, set in a wide fireplace such as he associated with old mansions. He unbuttoned his coat and stood warming his tired bones, silently cursing Zavarov. Then he heard a door open and close behind him.

  When he turned he saw a tall, well-dressed man waiting at the other end of the room. He was smoking a thin cheroot. Zavarov muttered some greeting, but the man’s eyes remained on him, Ligachev. As the man approached, his features seemed familiar.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ligachev demanded brusquely. He found the man’s steady gaze and confident manner uncomfortable. The stranger smiled and continued looking him straight in the eye.

  ‘Who the blazes are you?’ Ligachev said again.

  The newcomer stretched out a hand.

  ‘Nikolai Vasiliyevich Serov. But let’s not stand on ceremony, comrade. Let’s be plain. I’m the man who can make you the next General Secretary of the Soviet Union.’

  PART TWO

  15

  London, late January

  Home Secretary William Clarke slammed the door after him as he strode out of the Cabinet Room in Number Ten. It was one of a set of double doors and its twin shuddered with the impact. The private secretary, whose office was across the hall, looked up at the noise and stared at him in surprise.