Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

  *

  At the other end of the phone a few minutes later Knight’s words seemed to devastate Gaunt. For a moment he actually wondered if they’d been cut off, then he heard Gaunt’s laboured breathing and the creak of a chair.

  ‘Horace?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Gaunt allowed himself one softly whispered swearword. ‘The PM will be apoplectic. Bloody Spetznaz. After the sweeping-up we’re meant to have done. God, we could do with knowing more. But if this man Kunaev has cleared out the blasted rezidentura files as he says, then I fail to see how we can send him back to find out more.’

  ‘He’d never have gone anyway. He’s made his break and that’s that.’

  ‘We’d have changed his mind for him. We have the wife and child as collateral. You still stick by what you said earlier, Edmund – he’s the genuine article, not a Trojan horse?’

  ‘I’m as convinced as I can be.’

  ‘Sumner there with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d better get moving to find these gorillas. Damn quick too. Boost the conference security.’

  ‘I take it there’s no question of calling the whole thing off?’

  ‘None whatever. The PM would never accept the loss of face.’

  ‘Where are the delegates today?’

  ‘Those that spring to mind as targets will be at Chequers this evening for a reception. Lesser dignitaries are being left to their own devices. Edmund, see what else you can get out of this chap. Any morsel would help.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll get onto the PM. We’ll put the Met on alert. We’ll want them to draft in men from other forces. We need house searches and rounding up everybody who might know or have heard something.’

  The line clicked and echoed as he hung up.

  Knight punched out Clarke’s number again. But again there was only a voice he didn’t know, a different one this time. He hung up without saying anything and left the study.

  He heard the broadcast as he was crossing the hall to go back to the debrief. In the kitchen Anna had been listening to a play on the radio. At first he thought it was part of the performance: the actors’ voices faded and another voice cut in. He stopped at the living-room door with his hand on the handle, and listened.

  ‘We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special newsflash.’

  The announcer’s voice had the unmistakable timbre that the BBC reserved for deaths and disasters. He pictured listeners the length and breadth of the country looking up from newspapers, standing with half-filled kettles, hushing children.

  ‘The death late last night has just been announced of the Home Secretary, the Right Honourable William Clarke, MP. The announcement was made from Downing Street by the prime minister’s press secretary just a few minutes ago. Mr Clarke is understood to have died in a car accident in which his driver was also killed. No other vehicle was involved. The prime minister is reported to be deeply shocked and has paid tribute to Mr Clarke as “a politician of real ability and integrity who will be sadly missed”. The Queen has sent a personal message of sympathy to Mr Clarke’s family, and tributes have come from Opposition leaders and senior politicians of all parties. For further information we now go to …’

  A giddiness came over Knight. He leant against the living-room door for support and had to push himself upright by means of the door handle. He waited for the moment to pass before he could make his way back into the study, where he flopped down in the high-backed chair and stared blindly out of the window.

  Then he rewound the answerphone tape and listened again to Clarke’s message. Then again. And again. He played it five or six times before he called Sumner out of the living room and shared the news with him.

  He made no mention of the answerphone message.

  23

  Moscow

  The lane and street were both called Kropotkin and they crossed at right angles. The little group of French Communist Party officials stood in a tight knot at the intersection, their smiles as bright as the cold afternoon sunshine, and listened with interest to their guide. She said they were in one of the city’s most characterful quarters, where the old nobility had built their fine homes in the previous century. Some of the mansions, as they’d seen, had been returned to the people and now housed art galleries, the Academy of Arts, or had been turned into museums to the honour of Tolstoy and Pushkin.

  ‘Let us continue,’ she said. ‘You will see why Kropotkin called this area our little Faubourg Saint-Germain.’

  Laughing at her joke, they climbed aboard their waiting coach and headed for Smolenskiy Boulevard, where they turned north in the direction of Arbat Street.

  Serov watched them go. The building whose rear courtyard he strode into a minute later was neither fine or noble. It stood on the corner of Kropotkin Street and Zuboviskiy Boulevard, a grey stone monstrosity whose brass plate by the main entrance on Zubovskiy announced it as the Institute of Industrial Law. That was a lie. It was the Serbskiy Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. Officially it was run by the Ministry of Health. But that was another lie. The Serbskiy belonged to the KGB.

  *

  Professor Ogarkin grabbed a paper tissue from the box on his desk and blew his nose loudly.

  ‘The girl shouldn’t even be here, comrade General, as you well know,’ he mumbled nasally.

  Serov turned from the window where he’d been watching an ambulance arrive in the yard three floors below.

  ‘Don’t I look after you well enough?’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Ogarkin’s fingers scrabbled for another tissue but the box was empty. He picked it up and peered into it, prodding the end of his nose with the used tissue and sniffing disconsolately.

  There was a fresh box on the shelf where Serov was leaning. He tossed it onto the desk. Ogarkin tore it open and blew his nose again.

  ‘I’m thinking of the risks you’re making us both take. This is Section Four you’ve got her in, that’s the thing. It’s meant for politicals only. The young woman, your … ward –’ He said it with some circumspection. ‘She’s hardly what you’d call a political, is she? A dissident?’

  Serov moved to the desk and leant across it. ‘And you, my fine comrade Professor, are hardly what I’d call a doctor. What’s more, the Commissariat of Psychiatric Medicine would say the same if they knew about the little games you used to play with the deranged schoolgirls the Ministry of Education sent you.’

  Ogarkin coloured. ‘That was years ago.’ He grabbed yet another tissue and put it to his nose, his eyes watching Serov over it.

  Serov straightened up from the desk and went back to the window. ‘The past is never that far behind us,’ he said quietly.

  He watched as two male nurses dragged a man from the ambulance and began frogmarching him toward the building. He was straitjacketed and screaming hysterically. Eventually one of the nurses slammed an elbow into his face. It was impersonally done, with professional coolness; the man slumped over and stopped screaming.

  Serov turned back to Ogarkin.

  ‘Professor, it might say “Ministry of Health” on the nameplate by your front door, but don’t forget who your real bosses are. It’s the KGB that pays your salary – not to mention providing this elegant building and its distinguished offices.’ The dingy walls and worn linoleum hardly fitted his description, but that was neither here nor there.

  ‘Most of all,’ he added, bending over Ogarkin again, ‘On a more personal level, don’t forget who sets up your discreet weekend trips down to Batumi every summer. You like your Black Sea cruises, don’t you? With all those nice little stewardesses. You certainly wouldn’t want that to stop. Or anyone to learn about it.’

  Ogarkin slumped in his threadbare chair, his head down. Serov’s coat had fallen open as he leant over the desk and the butt of a pistol had been clearly visible inside it.

  Serov studied him in silence for a moment longer before pulling a tissue from the box and shoving it into his face.

  ‘Now wipe up and take m
e to see her,’ he said. ‘Let’s check how the great professor’s most important patient is doing.’

  *

  The room was about three metres square. It could have been a prison cell but for the heavily padded walls. There was an iron bunk bolted in one corner, two chairs and a table, also bolted in position, and a barred window. Galina was sitting on the bunk, her legs folded below her. Her green eyes stared fixedly at the far wall.

  ‘She needn’t be in there,’ Ogarkin whispered. He was holding open a hatch in the door while Serov peered through. ‘Every morning after breakfast we take her to the lounge area. Not the one used by the other detainees, of course – we take her to the one that the nurses and orderlies use. We talk to her or leaf through picture books – anything to try and get some response from her. But it’s always the same. She stays there for about an hour, then wanders back here and waits for her nurse to open the door. In the afternoon, when it’s time for her therapy sessions, she comes with me willingly enough. But frankly, the sessions are getting us nowhere. She hasn’t spoken a word since she arrived. And she just wants to come straight back here afterwards.’

  Serov straightened up from the door. ‘What therapy are you using?’

  Orgarkin snuffled into a tissue and put his watery eyes to the hatch. ‘On that point, comrade General, it would help me if I knew what had caused this regression. I could design her treatment with greater confidence. As things are at present I’m working in the dark. After her mother’s death she was bad enough. But this is far worse.’ He looked up into Serov’s face. ‘If only I knew what brought this about. Something triggered it. Don’t you have any idea what it might have been?’

  Serov pushed the professor’s hand roughly away from the hatch. It clanged shut.

  ‘The trouble with you, Ogarkin,’ he said, ‘is that you’re more used to inducing psychiatric symptoms than curing them. Open this door.’

  ‘It’s not locked,’ the professor said quietly, and swung the door open. ‘It’s her who closes it, not us.’

  Serov stared through the open doorway but didn’t move.

  ‘She likes to paint and draw,’ he told Ogarkin. ‘You’d know that if you were worth anything as a doctor. Fix her up with some paints and so on, an easel and brushes, sketch pads, pencils, canvas – those kinds of things.’

  Ogarkin nodded. ‘It’s worth a try.’ He turned to leave, but Serov’s arm suddenly reached out, blocking his path.

  ‘One more thing.’

  ‘What?’

  Serov turned to face him. ‘If you so much as touch her while she’s here,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll rip you wide open.’

  He went into the padded room and drew the door softly closed behind him.

  *

  On his way to the car afterwards, an old man caught his arm on Ostozhenka Street.

  ‘A few kopeks, comrade. For bread. Only for bread.’

  There were laws against begging and the police enforced them rigidly. The penalty was automatic imprisonment, often in a camp. The official logic was straightforward: no one was poor, everyone had work, therefore beggars were parasites and enemies of the people. But there were always some who were desperate enough to take their chances.

  ‘A few kopeks.’

  Serov turned and the old man’s eyes met his own. They stared at each other for a moment. Then the beggar’s fingers slowly released their hold. Whatever he found in Serov’s eyes, it was enough to force his own gaze away. He hunched deeper into his filthy coat and shuffled off.

  Serov continued to his car and drove away.

  *

  There was an old song and Galina couldn’t remember all the words. She hummed it softly over and over. She’d been humming it for weeks now; sometimes it seemed like she’d been humming it all her life. It was there first thing in the morning and she fell asleep at night with it still going around and around inside her head.

  There was something about footprints through the snow. She could remember that. And a little boy. He couldn’t keep up and he was crying.

  The footprints are so deep, Mama.

  The gaps between are long, Papa; too long for me.

  I fall behind.

  I stumble.

  Wolves are howling – can you hear them?

  I want to sit here but they come and take me into other rooms. They talk to me but I’m not interested. I come back here because what I want to do is to finish remembering the rest of the song.

  And now here you are at last, dear Nikolai, come to visit me. Have you brought the rest of the song?

  There’s snow on your boots, if that means anything. Snow on your boots but your hands are warm. They touch me. Your breath is on my ear; it carried words but none of them fits the song. All I can do is to stay here, watching, listening and waiting until the words come.

  Now you’re leaving. I disappoint you. But you disappoint me too. You brought no song.

  There are shadows on the snow, Mama.

  Two shadows side by side, Papa; two shadows waiting.

  I fell behind.

  I stumbled.

  The wolves have stopped their howling.

  Ogarkin slid the hatch open again and looked in. She was still staring blankly at the wall. She seemed to him like a doll that a bored child had abandoned and tossed carelessly into a corner.

  He went quietly into the cell and stood before her. Her blonde hair was swept back and slightly tousled. The green eyes were like cool jade. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. So young and vulnerable.

  ‘Galina?’ he whispered. She blinked but made no other response. He reached down and touched her hair. It was soft and cool but when he pressed his fingers into it he felt the warmth of her skull.

  He ran his hand down to the nape of her neck and stroked the top of her shoulder inside her blouse, then let his fingers find their way up to her cheek. It was soft and unblemished. He felt the down over her cheekbones and traced her eyebrow with a fingertip. Still she made no move away from him.

  He stepped closer, so that her face was only a couple of centimetres from him and he became dizzy just at the thought of her closeness. When he looked down he saw that some stray strands of her hair were even brushing against his trousers. He heard the uneven rasp of his own breathing and saw his chest heaving under the white coat.

  ‘Galina?’ he said again. ‘Won’t you tell me what’s the matter?’

  No answer. He took a tissue from his pocket and wiped his damp nose. His hand returned to her head; he touched the lobe of her ear, her neck again, the delicate ridge of her jaw.

  Then he remembered Serov’s warning.

  He drew his hand back sharply from the girl’s head, turned on his heel and left the room.

  24

  London

  Before they sent the bald man over, they’d made him polish his English pronunciation and colloquialisms until he sounded like a native. They fixed him up with a four-day crash course and he’d worked with the linguistics advisers from eight in the morning until nine at night. In what was optimistically called his leisure time he’d played videocassettes of English television plays and films: because how the English used their lips and facial expressions was as important as the sounds themselves.

  When he took the flat in Cricklewood he was just another working man living wherever the work took him. He had identification and references: driving licence and banker’s card, a letter from a firm of builders in Hendon saying that he was a new foreman just joining them, and a letter from the landlord of the last place he’d rented, saying that he was a good payer and a clean tenant.

  That Saturday afternoon he strolled up to the Broadway, to a busy hardware shop where he bought a few tools and bits and pieces. When he got back to Olive Road he had a cup of coffee and looked over some maps with the thin-faced man.

  Afterwards they spent an hour welding steel brackets inside the Sherpa’s loading bay. They cut an opaque plastic shower curtain to size and rigged it up behind the seats
so that the van’s contents couldn’t be seen through the front windows. They blanked out the rear windows by taping surplus strips of curtain over them.

  When they were done, there were still a couple of hours before it would be time to set out; they passed it poring over the maps again.

  *

  Oxfordshire

  That evening a cold snap set in. The barometer fell below freezing. The flat fields around Kidlington took on a dusting of frost and on the Cherwell the water voles retreated deep within their burrows.

  After prayers Ibraham Abukhder set out on his jog, alone as usual. His fellow students in the air training school were either gathered around the television in the residential quarters’ communal lounge or exploring the nearby pubs.

  He followed his regular route south from the school, past the shops and the repair garage. All of them were closed now until Monday; but, as ever, an assortment of vehicles was parked on the garage forecourt or in its side alley, awaiting service or repair. Ibraham automatically checked off the models: a Granada, an old Morris Minor, an Opel, a white Sherpa van.

  He cut left down the quiet road that formed the second side of his triangular route and focused his thoughts on his body’s performance. His legs felt good and strong, no signs of flagging yet. His breathing was still steady and unforced, his heart wasn’t hammering. The old ankle injury twinged a little but that was just a reminder, not a real warning of trouble.

  He was within a few strides of the bench when he looked up and saw that someone was sitting there. The unexpected presence made him start; he wasn’t expecting a messenger tonight. He slowed to a walk in order to make the figure out.

  In the darkness and scarcely helped by the dim street lamp thirty metres away, he could only make out at first that it was a man. As he drew closer he saw that he was stocky and bald-headed. Ibraham had never seen him before. This man had never been sent before. But by the time he realised this, it was too late.