by Craig Thomas
It was as if his ribs protested; Vorontsyev drew a sharp breath of pain.
'What?'
'Yes, my boy. Today. This morning, she called to see me at the Ministry. A private interview.'
'What for?' Vorontsyev winced with suspicion.
'She — asked me, to arrange an interview. She wants to talk to you.'
'About what? She's never needed my permission before for the things she does!'
Gorochenko's face darkened. He said, 'Don't sulk, Alexei! Listen to me. Your calling there the other night — it disturbed her. And I think she felt humiliated. And even sorry that it had to happen.' He spread his hands for silence. 'I'm not saying she's changed, or that she wants to begin again. Just that she wants to see you.' He patted Vorontsyev's thigh again. 'I want to help you — not her, but you, Alexei. You believe that, don't you?'
Vorontsyev fought back something akin to tears. He felt young, brittle as glass, foolish. And he did want her back. He had always known that, as Gorochenko knew it. He knew he would agree to it, agree that they meet. He nodded.
'I believe it.'
'Then I'll say no more. You can think it over. Then let me know. I said I would — let her know what you decide. A meeting with no promises, on either side.'
'Very well,' Vorontsyev said stiffly, sitting upright, starched by the emotion beginning to move in him. He poured two more vodkas with a perceptibly shaking hand, then said, 'You look tired, father. You are working too hard.'
'May be, my boy.' He played with the thick white moustache, his homage to Stalin as he called it, and smiled. He drew on the cigarette, coughed, and added, 'That cunning old bastard, Feodor, sniffs treason — as usual!' His eyes seemed suddenly to focus on Vorontsyev's face.
'Treason?'
'Don't worry. I'm not digging. Merely telling. The last meeting of the full Politburo. A performance of exceptional merit from our First Secretary. Plots against him, against all of us — inspired by the West, naturally. And he was hot on the trail! Quite like the old days.'
'You — discount the idea?'
'Not necessarily.' He barked with sharp laughter, and in the sound he was a powerful man, and unafraid. Wisely cynical, wordly-wise. 'But I have heard the whole thing before. I think it comes with age, like prostate trouble or sciatica.' He laughed again. Then he said suddenly, 'Who tried to kill you, Alexei?'
'I–I don't know,' Vorontsyev said, seeing the hard anger in his adoptive father's eyes. The old man looked at him for a long time, then, seemingly satisfied, he nodded and looked at his watch.
'I must go, Alexei. I have an important meeting.' He stood up. 'You — take good care of yourself,' he added gruffly. 'Understand?'
'Yes, father.' The words were so sombre, so charged with parental domination, that Vorontsyev felt as if the old man were rehearsing him in his school learning, or overlooking his mathematics. Or perhaps in the days of his student arrogance, arguing with him.
Gorochenko said, as if divining something, 'To try to kill an SID man means it is serious. Whatever it is — take care of yourself. You know what it would do to me if anything happened to you — eh?' Vorontsyev nodded again. 'And — think about that other matter. Natalia. I don't like things as they are…' A hint of inflexible command in the voice, then: 'Try to allow yourself to see her. Try to solve things, eh?'
'I–I'll try.'
When he had seen the old man out, he had no desire to return to the study. Faces on the wall or relegated to the frayed carpet. He wanted — yes, wanted, he admitted, to think about his wife.
Folley was in little condition to register tangible scenes. Only the sense of personal movement, the grip of mittened hands on his arms, and being bundled into the back of a small, cramped vehicle, roofed with tarpaulin; he registered the change of environment with painful concentration. The aching body adopted unsuccessfully the hard outlines of the cold metal. Lights. He could remember lights, and the din of tracked vehicles waiting to move. Moving.
He tried to notice, to absorb and retain impressions. A litmus imagination. But it was difficult, because of the gouts of pain from the broken ribs, the bruised flesh, still overwhelmed him. He slipped in and out of awareness, as if hiding from something. Yet someone might ask him to remember; so he tried.
It was snowing — the snow blowing into his hanging face, or flung as noisily as gravel against the tarpaulin. Two men in the seats in front.
The swollen tongue rasping thickly against the broken craters of teeth. Real, that.
The jolting of the journey — he raised himself to look out from the flap of the tarpaulin, once; saw a succession of tanks winding down a slope of the road behind him. And at the speed of his vehicle, they were not being left behind. Racing, almost, in that weather. A ridge in the road jolted him down again, and he passed out. After that, he did not attempt to look out again. Snow, bunding like a curtain — orange haloes of headlights, from somewhere behind. That was all.
He had no distinct awareness of time, or direction. And little idea of his context within the Russian column as it moved back towards the border. He believed he had told them nothing — but as the shocks of pain went on, all he wished was that the journey would end, or the vehicle stop for a little; he could not remember the interrogation clearly at all. Did not remember its object.
Only the movement, then; after an undetermined time, it was only the next jolt, the next protest of the body, that concerned him. The minute changes of position, finding un-bruised parts of himself that might cushion the shocks as the vehicle careered down the road to Rontaluumi; no longer just a vehicle, napping tarpaulin or screaming, chained wheels or plastic seating thrust against his cheek — his whole world, now.
He had, in fact, passed out once more when the column began to pass through the border wire east of the village; his own vehicle, driven by Lieutenant Shapkin of the GRU, was near the lead, behind the advance Motor Recce Company, because orders had been received from Leningrad that the Englishman be returned to Russian soil as soon as possible. Pnin, the General in command of the Ivalo strike force, 'Finland Station Six', had obeyed each of his instructions, relayed from Praporovich in Leningrad; even the one concerning Folley. By the morning, which would come late and dark with the convenient storm, the only Russians remaining on Finnish soil would be a covering party left in the deserted village.
Folley was unconscious for most of the helicopter journey to Leningrad. The brief and violent storm had abated sufficiently to allow a helicopter to set out from the deep forest that now concealed 'Finland Station Six' on their own side of the border. Folley had slept in stillness for a few hours, in a wooden hut, of which he had perceived little — shape of planking, and the heat from the stove. Then, when they hauled him to consciousness, in darkness still, the snow thick against the windows, he had cried out once, as if robbed, and passed out.
Galakhov waited until the Finnair flight to Helsinki was called, and his target had begun to stir in his seat in the Departure Lounge in the Queen's Terminal, before making his approach. He required the distraction of time slipping away to cover any suspicion by the target. He was dressed in the uniform of an Embassy chauffeur; a disguise which would excuse his unknown face but supplement the fiction that he was KGB. The tall man had taken away the suitcase and his travelling clothes, then returned. Both of his contacts were seated elsewhere in the lounge, waiting to follow him and the target.
Ozeroff, GRU Military Attache at the Soviet Embassy in London, drafted by special order of the Chairman of the KGB to security duties in Helsinki, was just gathering up his topcoat and suitcase when a chauffeur snapped to attention in front of him, and saluted.
'Sir — ' the young man began, when Ozeroff snapped, 'You bloody young fool, what do you mean by drawing attention to me like that V 'Sorry, sir,' the young man muttered, shuffling his feet, rigid stance collapsing into nerves. 'Urgent communique from Moscow Centre, sir — I was told to catch you before you left. There's a reply expected — '
'Dam
mit!' Ozeroff glanced in the direction of the overhead loudspeakers, then at the departure board. 'Important, you say?'
'Sir.'
'Very well, give it to me.' He motioned towards the briefcase in the chauffeur's grasp.
'Not here, sir — ' the young man said respectfully.
'Very well — where?' He looked about him. 'Hell, the toilets, then. Follow me.'
Galakhov picked up, despite the movements of many passengers, the movement of the two contacts — the 'dustmen', as he had called them, much to their annoyance. Ozeroff, the whole operation, was in his hands at this moment, and he enjoyed that. He scuttled behind the striding Ozeroff, only a few years his senior but stiff with military service and self-importance. His appointment to the security staff surrounding Khamovkhin had been made because of his fanatical loyalty to the regime, and to the KGB, for whom he worked, despite his titular appointment to Military Intelligence. Galakhov watched his bearing carefully, on two levels — to imitate, and to overcome.
Easy to kill, even without the gun that had already been removed from the cubicle by the dark man.
Ozeroff swung open the door of the washroom, letting it swing back towards the ignored Galakhov. Galakhov stopped it gently, and pushed it open as if protecting the sensitivity of his hands. Then Ozeroff was facing him, ignoring the two men washing — one of them using an electric razor, its buzz like a warning — his hand held out for an envelope that Galakhov fished for inside the briefcase. One of the men moved to the roller towel, and began to rub at his face — an Arab, puffing with cold, humming as if nervous, as if picking up some hidden tension. The shaver, check shirt and well-tailored jeans, who might have been American, or European, ignored everything except his reflection in the mirror. Galakhov backed a little towards the door of one of the cubicles. None of them appeared to be occupied — yes, one near the Arab was closed. He motioned with the envelope, and Ozeroff, conscious only of delay, and of possible changes of plan, took the envelope and passed inside, beginning to close the door. Galakhov saw the Arab about to turn, saw the shaver pause to inspect the side of his jaw, rub at it — and pushed into the cubicle with Ozeroff.
The GRU officer leaned back against the cistern, even as his eyebrows raised in surprise. Galakhov put his finger to his lips, and proffered a notebook and pencil and mouthed the words: 'Your reply, sir.' Ozeroff nodded, and tried to move away from physical contact with the chauffeur. And, as Galakhov had known he would, he half-turned in the secrecy of childhood or examinations, away from the intruder upon his privacy. Galakhov listened. The humming Arab passed the door, which he reached behind him to lock silently, and the noise of the battery shaver started up again, long louder strokes as the man worked at the last rough places.
Galakhov raised his hands above his head, pulling at the strap of his watch, stretching out the thin wire until he clasped it with both gloved hands — the gloves were padded, to protect the fingers — and then Ozeroff was beginning to turn, having been puzzled by the forged letter Loop, pull. He was slightly to one side of the man so that he could not exert the knee in the back, and would have to choke him. The letter fluttered to the floor, and slid under the door of the cubicle, and Ozeroff's hands were trying to scratch at the biting wire around his throat. Galakhov could see the eyes, the way they asked questions still even as they protruded more and more — the mottled skin turning a satisfactory purple, the hands scrabbling, tearing the skin on the neck, the body and legs doing nothing, nothing They never did, never did, he thought. Too much concen tration on the attacked area, no rationality when a man is being choked to death. Ozeroff reached out one hand to the wall, obscuring a scrawled bit of graffiti, as if steadying himself. Already Galakhov was taking the weight of the body as it began to slump, while tightening the wire still further. Feet of Ozeroff trying to maintain balance, instead of lashing out.
All the time, for every moment, Galakhov could hear the noise of the battery shaver. Ozeroff made no noise, pressed rigid between Galakhov and the wall, no scrabbling, no breath. When Galakhov released the wire — he felt Ozeroff's body slump further, and saw the eyes roll up under the lids — he began to whistle tunelessly, as if in embarrassment at being overheard by the man shaving. The shaver paused for a moment, then continued to buzz. Galakhov leaned forward, and guided Ozeroff's limp arm with his elbow.
The toilet flushed.
Galakhov released the body, caught it against the wall with his hip and stomach, and lowered it on to the seat. Then he leaned back against the wall, feeling hot, stifled. He did not look at Ozeroff's face, but listened. The buzz of the shaver had stopped. No one else had come into the washroom. He looked at his watch as he rewound the wire. In another two minutes, his two 'dustmen' would arrive to take away the remains.
'Hey — in there.' American!
'Y- yes? What is it?'
'You dropped a letter, or something?'
'Yes — yes I have.'
'In Russian?'
'Yes.' All the time, Galakhov had spoken with a more pronounced accent than he normally used when speaking English. 'Business — I am from Finland.' He looked into Ozeroff's dead face, and smiled.
'Sure. None of my business. Here — '
The letter appeared at his feet, pushed under the door. Next to the notebook and pencil that he had dropped — Galakhov realised he hadn't heard them fall.
'Thank you — thank you very much.'
The washroom door swung shut behind the American. Galakhov relaxed, staring at the high ceiling of the room, ignoring the body slumped on the seat. Then the door of the occupied toilet swung open. Water flushing, then hands being washed, then the click of the roller towel — the washroom door opening, sighing shut, then opening again, the footsteps of two men.
Water running.
'All clear,' he heard in the tall man's excellent English.
He opened the door, saw the man dressed in white overalls, and took the suitcase that was handed to him. He changed in the next cubicle, listening to the noises of Ozeroff's body being bundled into the linen basket on wheels, covered with dirty linen. The other man changed the roller towels.
The men were gone before he finished changing, taking the suitcase with the chauffeur's uniform when he passed it out to them, leaving another suitcase, Ozeroff's, for him to employ in his cover.
Galakhov made the final flight call for his Finnair jet to Helsinki. It was the evening of the i8th.
PART TWO
MAIN FORCE
18th to the 22nd of……19
'A civil war is inevitable. We have only to organise it as painlessly as possible.'
— Trotsky
Six: Things Fall Apart
He was left now, on the A40, the driving, persistent sleet obscuring vision and inducing lethargy, with nothing more than a desire to stop. Only when the small delivery van stopped would he begin to think of a drink, or food. He and the tall man had finished the flask of coffee — and he knew he could not drink anything more from the silver hip-flask without falling asleep.
The M40 had been bad enough — lunatic drivers overtaking, spraying the windscreen, and the sluggish wipers, with slush; out the A40 was worse. He and the tall man and the body of Ozeroff seemed to have been imprisoned in the delivery van for an endless time. He was irritated, and careless, with the fatigue of long having completed his task, and not being able to relax from it. They had not even stopped at a pub; something stupid, even superstitious — pushing their luck — about leaving Ozeroff in the car park while they drank whisky by a fire. He shrugged, amazed at his own surrender to the conditions of this aftermath. After all, the signal had gone off to Kutuzov direct; all they had to do was to lose this body for the space of less than a week. By that time, it would all be over — and they would be out of the country, anyway. Stupid.
Kutuzov, of course. Old Magnet-man — Svengali. If he said it was important — vital — then you did it, no matter how gritty your eyes were, or how your stomach protested.
He
glanced at his companion, heaped uncomfortably in the narrow seat, and trying to doze. Then he stretched his eyes wide, and concentrated on the flying sleet, the fuzzy headlights, the sudden slow rush of other lights out of the darkness.
He saw the other lights, realised that they were high up, as on a truck, and swerved. He was aware, in the few seconds remaining to him, of a noise as Ozeroff lurched like something resurrected in the back of the van, and his companion stirring as he was jolted awake, mumbling through a dry, sticky mouth for him to take more care. He was aware, too, quite certainly, that he was going to die, and that the betraying Ozeroff was lying in mock state in the back of the van — and he hoped the local police were very stupid men.
Then the car-transporter, having strayed across the white line because the driver was tired, and hurried, flipped the van over on its back, as a child might turn a tortoise upside-down with the aid of a stick. The van, apparently that of a towel service firm, ended up in the ditch at the side of the A40 just outside Wheatley, after somersaulting twice. The back doors burst open, sliding out, almost as in a farce, the body of Ozeroff, feet first, on to the roadside verge. The driver was crushed against the wheel — the passenger flung through the windscreen. The driver of the transporter, uninjured, was sick when he inspected the wreck and the three bodies. Then he called the Oxford police from the nearest telephone box.
Kenneth Aubrey was chilled, angry, and fascinated. Traffic on the A40 had been reduced to a single lane, and a canvas screen erected to shield the accident from the inquisitive. Behind this, spotlamps glowed in the sleet, shining down on the sodden bundles, side by side now, and covered with grey blankets, themselves sodden wet; policemen directed the moribund queues of cars coming home from pubs and parties, or analysed the events of the accident. Aubrey alone, perhaps, now that he had been introduced to the three bodies, remained still, and contemplative.
