Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

  ‘Boyar!’ he roared above the shriek of the engines. It was a demand, not a question.

  Some intuition made Knight look over at Gaunt.

  The call came again. ‘Where are you, Boyar?’ In Russian.

  Gaunt returned Knight’s stare, unblinking.

  ‘Boyar!’

  Knight took a step forward.

  ‘Come get your daughter, Boyar!’

  *

  Not in the air now. Not flying. She was being walked across a great open space of some kind. Cold; she was cold. No snow here, but she was still cold. Where had her warm cocoon of blankets gone? Glaring lights that hurt her eyes when she tried to open them. Flashing lights too. On and off, on and off.

  People everywhere. If she squinted through her lashes she could see them better against the lights. Men in uniforms, with caps. But some who were dressed in ordinary clothes.

  Who was that bearded man? Beneath the beard a face from somewhere. A face that she remembered trying to remember many times before but always it had melted into Nikolai’s before she could fit it where it belonged. Dear Nikolai. But he wasn’t dear Nikolai any more and anyway his face was broken now. Just chickenwire and torn clay. Whoosh! Split with the cleaver.

  One blow.

  *

  It wasn’t just the aircraft that bothered Viktor. It was the people too. That man Knight was here. Why? What had this to do with him? They were only being moved, Anna and Andrei and he. Weren’t they? Why had Sumner ignored him when he’d asked who the sleeper was? And over there, not far from Knight, was another man that Viktor didn’t even recognise. He was no policeman and, judging from his bearing, was no security officer either.

  Quickly! his mind screamed again.

  ‘Come on, Viktor,’ Sumner said. ‘We don’t want to lose any time.’ There was far more anxiety in his tone than a few minutes’ delay should have occasioned.

  Something else. If the aircraft was for them, who were the man and woman who had disembarked from it? And didn’t the policemen and the others seem more like a reception committee for them than a guard for Viktor and Anna and Andrei? Look at how they were facing. They were watching the aircraft and that man and woman; why were they doing that if their purpose really was to watch over him and his little family?

  And what was it that was going on out there anyway, between the people who’d got out of the plane and the others?

  *

  The demand was repeated. ‘Come get your daughter, Boyar!’

  Knight closed the distance between them and looked down at her. The face he hadn’t seen for so long. He looked at her with eagerness. But with foreboding as well. Why was she slumped like that? Why did there have to be that nurse?

  He stared. It was Galina and yet not her. A broken face. Whole, unmarked; but broken. Broken inside. Like a doll whose vacant eyes would rattle in her hollow head if you shook her.

  What had the bastards done to her?

  He raised his gaze to the other face, that of the man who’d brought her. A squat lump of a face with a flat nose. Under it, a sardonic smile. Magpie-bright eyes that watched him with detached interest. Somewhere he’d seen it before. Moscow?

  ‘Fuck your mother,’ Knight told the Soviet, very quietly and deliberately, in the man’s own language.

  The eyes widened and the smile became a low, rasping chuckle.

  ‘My mother, comrade?’ the Soviet echoed. ‘No – not my mother!’ He looked down at Galina and laughed some more.

  Knight stretched out his arms to take her from him, but the man drew back sharply.

  ‘You owe first,’ he growled. The chuckling had stopped.

  Suddenly a hoarse cry behind Knight made him swing around; a man’s demented scream fought against the roar of the jet engines.

  ‘Anna! Anna! Stop! Come back! Andrei!’

  Then everything happened at once. Galina’s limp body thudded into Knight. He spun around to catch her and was in time to see the Soviet, who’d flung her at him, lunging at a small boy who had dashed within reach. It was the Kunaev child. A gun had appeared in the Soviet’s fist; he pulled the boy to him and rammed the end of the barrel against his skull. Knight heard the crack as it connected; the boy cried out in pain and fear.

  Somewhere close by, Anna Kunaev launched into a piercing scream of pure terror. Further in the distance, her husband’s cry had become a howl of agony. A babble of voices had broken out; a clatter of confused footsteps. And one distinctive sound that stabbed fear into Knight’s heart: the slap of a dozen palms on a dozen leather holsters.

  ‘Stop!’ the Soviet bellowed, in English.

  Instantly, astonishingly, everyone complied. Viktor. Even Anna. There was a dreadful stillness, as if they were all frozen in time.

  ‘No guns!’ shouted the Soviet.

  Knight glanced around and saw the policemen’s hands drop by their sides.

  ‘Up!’ The Soviet gestured briefly with his free hand, then locked it back in place on the boy’s throat.

  The policemen raised their hands clear from their sides as they’d been told, away from the holsters. Knight noted that the man closest to him, like several others, had got as far as undoing the flap of his holster; now it sat wide open, the butt of his pistol protruding.

  ‘Kunaevs – get into airplane!’ The Soviet looked directly at Anna and repeated the order in Russian.

  Anna tore free from the grasp of the security officers and hurried forward, turning to search for her husband. Then she bent towards her child and said something reassuring to him. He was beside himself with fear and stretched his arms out to her; the Soviet smacked them down and the boy burst into more tears, wailing with despair and incomprehension.

  Knight had Galina in his arms but it was the boy at whom he stared, that small boy with a gun pointed at his head, who wanted his mother.

  For a lifetime Knight stared at him.

  *

  Ah, how she hurt! Why had she been thrown like a piece of garbage so that she ached like this?

  The lights were behind her now. She was looking up at that strange-familiar bearded face. And over there, look: a little boy. Footprints through the snow? Look down, look down. No snow, no snow, just black tarmac. But a little boy. He was real. And he was crying. Perhaps he couldn’t keep up.

  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.

  They had, too; the wolves had stopped. There had been howling, but now there was only the lost boy.

  ‘Mama!’ he cried.

  Two shadows side by side; they melted into one, parted again. Two faces. Nikolai’s and this man’s. That signature on Mama’s letters. Shadows on the snow.

  Snow? No snow. Spring, then; perhaps it was spring now.

  A picture in a gallery. A woman before a log cabin, a woman naked in defiance of the snowflakes, welcoming her little girl with warm love, asking her where she’d been. A living woman, not wet rags beneath the iron wheels on the metal tracks and then a rotting thing beneath the snow in a cemetery where the crosses marched all the way to the horizon.

  ‘Mama!’

  Once, she had cried like that. Yes, her cry reverberating in a long gallery.

  Oh! The man hit him. That man with the gun hit the boy. The man who’d brought her here. The man who’d taken her to that house; who’d injected her.

  ‘Mama!’

  ‘Nyet!’

  The scream was hers. It came unbidden and it shocked her with its force, it tore from her like an exorcised demon and it left her throat raw and throbbing. But she’d stop the man hurting the lost boy. She would. She’d stop him.

  *

  The scream set Knight’s ears ringing. Before he knew what had happened, Galina had wrenched herself from his arms and was rushing at the Soviet.

  Knight’s response was pure reflex. He saw the man’s mouth drop open
in surprise. The gun shifted from the boy’s head and wavered in Galina’s direction for an instant. But he wouldn’t pull the trigger; in that millionth of a second Knight knew he just wouldn’t pull the trigger.

  The policeman’s 9mm Browning was already in his own hand and the safety catch was off, his feet were planted apart and his knees flexed, his left hand rose to steady his aim, wait, wait, for God’s sake wait until Galina was out of his line of fire; and then the kick along his arms told him that the bullet had gone.

  Half of the Soviet’s head vaporised into the night, like a burst melon. His bulging eyes still stared. But not at Knight; at empty space where Galina had been. Until he crumpled like a felled ox. One leg flapped uselessly against the tarmac for a moment, then was still. He hadn’t even seen where death had come from.

  Knight lowered the gun, its smoke stinging his eyes, then stepped forward, over the Soviet’s body, and lifted Galina to her feet.

  All over.

  Anna Kunaev enfolded her small boy in her arms and, sobbing, carried him back to her husband and safety.

  48

  Serov heard the single shot. At that still hour of the night he couldn’t fail. He stepped out of the Ferrari and stood in the sleeping suburban road with its neat semi-detached homes, and listened.

  There were no more shots.

  When he drove back to the gates of the aerodrome, all was as quiet as it had been earlier. Then, while he sat there, an ambulance came speeding along the road, its flasher going but its siren silenced. The gates opened to admit it and closed again.

  Serov sat on.

  After another few minutes the gates reopened and two police motorcycles emerged. This time the gates stayed open. The motorcyclists stationed themselves on either side of the gates and on opposite sides of the road, setting their bikes to block each traffic lane. Each man turned off his engine as he propped the motorcycle up on its stand, dismounted, and held up a hand to halt what little traffic there was. Then they remounted the bikes; one of them spoke briefly into his radio mike.

  A Jaguar emerged, with Gaunt in the back seat. It swept past Serov’s Ferrari and towards London.

  Seconds behind it the other two motorcycles sped through the gates, followed closely by the van with the black windows. Neither the van nor its outriders stopped as they hit the road, roaring off the way they’d come on their arrival.

  The first two motorcyclists restarted their machines and raced off after them, leaving the handful of stopped cars to sort themselves out.

  Again Serov sat on. Again the gates remained open.

  Then Knight’s car appeared. Unlike the van, it had to stop for the road. Not for long, for the small jam had cleared easily enough.

  Long enough, however, for Serov to see Knight’s passenger.

  He waited until Knight’s car had disappeared, then set off back to London. Behind him, the aerodrome gates remained open: for the ambulance. A medium-sized jet aircraft lifted into the night sky and climbed towards the stars. It was all a matter of indifference to Serov. He’d seen what he’d come to see. What he’d never wanted to see.

  *

  ‘Bourbon.’

  ‘On the rocks, sir?’

  ‘Plain bourbon. A large one.’

  He pushed the hotel room card towards the barman and signed the chit, adding a generous tip to keep the man interested.

  When he swung around on his stool the woman was still watching him. He lifted the glass to his lips and calmly returned her stare.

  She was about thirty-five, well dressed or they wouldn’t have let her into the casino, tall, with a broad, full mouth and her hair flicked back off her face to accentuate it. That mouth was her best feature and she knew it.

  ‘You know what the lady in the corner’s drinking?’ he asked the barman.

  ‘I do, sir.’ The barman was drying glasses. He looked up to meet Serov’s gaze. He seemed to consider for a moment whether or not to say any more.

  ‘But it’s not necessary,’ he finally added and held a glass to the light.

  ‘What’s not necessary?’

  ‘Buying her a drink, sir. If what you’re looking for is an introduction. She’s not that kind of lady.’

  ‘So what kind of lady is she?’

  ‘You know, sir.’

  Serov knocked back the bourbon and slid the glass over the counter: the barman caught it just as it tipped over the edge.

  ‘Another,’ Serov told him. ‘Large. No ice. And one for the lady.’

  When he took the drinks over and sat down beside her she told him her fee. It was high but he’d stopped being shocked at London prices for anything.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  She picked up her handbag and began to rise. He laid his hand on her arm.

  ‘I’m not in a hurry.’ He pushed the drink towards her.

  She looked earnestly at him. ‘We stay here and the meter’s still ticking.’

  ‘So it ticks.’

  ‘You want to talk?’

  ‘No. Drink your drink.’

  She made it last but he had two more, nodding at the barman to bring him scurrying over each time. Then he took her into the main part of the casino and they strolled around a few tables, not playing any but just watching the cards, the wheel, the hands, the eyes. Some of the men were bold enough to wink a discreet greeting to her. One or two of them nodded at him as well, marking his admittance to their private society.

  Later, in his suite, she earned her money well. He paid her more than she asked.

  ‘Anytime,’ she said, pleased by his generosity. ‘You know where to find me.’

  Another cold dawn was stretching across the sky as he stood by the wide window and dropped another cigar butt into a full ashtray that spilt ash over its table. He saw his eyes in the glass top and they were dark. Darker than bourbon and sleeplessness could cause.

  So he lit another cigar from the burning butt and let the years roll back, like jagged skin from a wound.

  *

  The summer went and so did Boyar. The leaves fell, scurrying where the wind blew them and lining the pavements of Moscow with gold and amber.

  Then came the dark eternity of winter: steel skies that pressed down on the city like a lid.

  Until at last the snow retreated and the first flowers reappeared. The parks grew green again and the birds sang from dawn to dusk.

  The year’s cycle was complete.

  She was twenty now, the girl with the long blonde hair, from the tenement street where the whores lived and the trains thundered past below. And when Nikolai Serov walked up to her in Sokolniki Park that summer, her green eyes made his breath catch in his throat.

  ‘I see you every day,’ he said.

  The eyes were quizzical. Amused. Perhaps even sceptical. But not nervous.

  ‘And every night,’ he added softly.

  That made her laugh.

  ‘How every night?’ She rocked the pram gently back and forth; the baby slept on peacefully. ‘Okay, I come here every afternoon. For Galya. But never at night. Galya keeps me safe at home at night. How can you see me every night?’

  ‘I dream,’ he told her.

  *

  It was a courtship. The only one he had in his whole life. Every day he met her. Sometimes in Sokolniki, sometimes in Gorky Park, sometimes on the embankment under the Kremlin’s two Nameless Towers, or by the Moskva swimming pool, or sometimes in the Alexandrovskiy Gardens. It was a week before he touched her hand, two weeks before they kissed.

  ‘My Eduard was a poet,’ she said when she was ready to talk about the fictitious father she’d conjured up for her child. ‘He used to go to the demonstrations in Mayakovskiy Square. Things got rough. The lucky ones got arrested. The militia kicked Eduard to death. By then I was carrying Galya. I didn’t want an abortion. I wanted him or at least a part of him. That part is my little Galina.’

  These were her lies. But she told them the same way she did everything else: beautifully.

 
‘You’ve been very brave,’ he said.

  ‘Are you a poet, Nikolai?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You might be. With my help.’

  He waited two months before he took her to bed. Never had he waited so long for any woman. He never looked at another while he was waiting for her, not even a whore.

  She was shy to start with, then she fell upon him.

  Izmaylovo no longer existed by then. When Khrushchev was pensioned off, its time was over too: an experiment that was too subtle for the new Neanderthals. Old Genrikh Kunaev was sent off to moulder in a harmless teaching post somewhere and the rest of the staff were scattered.

  Katarina stuck to her story of her Eduard; Serov never challenged it.

  But twice every year, he knew, Boyar returned to Moscow to watch his child grow. Always around the time of her birthday, in June, and again in the winter. Like those crazy old English Druids marking the solstices, he and Katarina kept faith. Even when Galina was a teenager, Katya still took her out to Sokolniki. By then their trips had grown into a mother-and-daughter tradition that couldn’t be broken: an established ritual that cloaked one that was even older.

  Serov had them watched. Too dangerous for him to do it himself; it was a job for Gramin. For the first few years Boyar and she would talk for an hour or so. But as Galina grew, they must have realised that was becoming impossible; a toddler could ask questions, report and remember. From then on, the Englishman kept his distance from them, made no contact, just watched, followed them and, when he could, eavesdropped on their conversations and laughter. It was that or stay away completely.

  Thus he watched them and Gramin watched him. And Serov kept their secret from the world. And his from Katarina. Just as she kept hers from him.

  The Englishman was breaking every rule in the book, of course: starting with Galina’s existence in the first place. As far as Yasyenevo was concerned, had his masters there known, they’d have given him a simple choice: the first plane back to England, never to return, or a bullet in the back of the head. The experiment at Izmaylovo and its two sister academies was over, but that was no excuse for jeopardising the investment. Serov knew that it lay in his power to put an end to Boyar’s visits. But he never did.