Quiller Meridian q-17

by Adam Hall

  One of the beatniks began talking back again but his pals told him to shut up and hauled him with them down the aisle and through the glass-panelled door at the end. The man went back to his table and sat down.

  I finished my boiled chicken and pirozhki and ordered some borscht to fill the time here; I wanted to see more of the three well-dressed men and their bodyguards, and also of the man who was sitting alone at the far end of the car, and of the young woman in the silver-grey fur hat, also alone, who was sitting nearer my own table.

  I stayed in the dining car until almost eleven o'clock, and was one of the last to leave. Then I did some work and decided to turn in, but met the copper-haired Galina and talked to her for a while, not about the people I'd seen in the dining car. there was no hurry for anything on this trip: the Rossiya was now heading into the limitless wastes of Siberia and the winter snows, and there would be time for everything.

  Across the gangway in our compartment, Slavsky had begun snoring a little in his bunk. the tumbler covering the massive water beaker on the little folding table was vibrating, sending out a thin and intermittent ringing in the night. There were no longer any voices along the corridor, but a dark figure moved across the narrow gaps in the curtains outside the compartment and stopped, and I watched its outline in the dimmed bluish light out there. I couldn't see whether its back was turned — some insomniac watching the night sky through the outside window — or whether it was facing in this direction.

  An eye, applied to the gap in the curtains, would probably catch enough back-light from the glass on the window to show itself, glinting. I couldn't see anything like that, but couldn't be sure I wasn't being watched. This was why the interior of a night train comes at the bottom of the list of secure environments: you even have to sleep, virtually, in public. I could have rigged a makeshift screen out of spare sheets across the windows looking onto the corridor, but it would have attracted attention from the train crews outside and Slavsky would have needed an explanation, and I hadn't got one that would have sounded plausible. I was travelling under light cover, and had to blend in as a typical passenger.

  The figure was still there, and I watched its outline, knowing that if someone was watching me he would pick up the glint from my own eyes quite clearly, since the only light-source was in the corridor. He would know I was watching him back.

  I didn't know — nobody knew, except Zymyanin — what they'd done to Hornby before they took his head off. we don't always use stealth when we make a hit; silence isn't necessary on all occasions. And we don't always need to go close or make contact: I choose not to bears arms, but that's unusual in this trade, you could say unheard-of. It was night and most people were alseep, and the sound of the train was a constant background; the man out there would only need to fit a silencer and press it to the glass of the window and fire the gun and walk away. If Zymyanin had brought me into a trap, that was all he would have to do to spring it.

  The glass on the beaker rang from the vibration of the train, making its thin night-music. Slavsky had stopped snoring, and turned in his bunk, and the rustle of the stiff linen sheet made a sound like the hiss of a drawn breath, and touched my nerves.

  He could have been told to stay out of contact with London and draw me into a trap.

  That is also possible.

  Even though I had narrowed my eyes, he would catch the light on their conjunctivae, the man out there. The range was short and he could see the target: the point between my eyes, and behind it the brain. He would need only one shot, and couldn't miss.

  I watched the outline through the gap in the curtains, waiting for it to move, for only a part of it to move: the gun-hand.

  Chapter 5: TANYA

  The man was standing near the lavatory at the end of the second carriage along, waiting to go in, I suppose, watching the first light of the morning on the snows. One of the cleaners passed us, lugging a box of rags, and then I went up to the man and stood behind him.

  'Longshot,' I said close to his ear.

  He wouldn't know Meridian, hadn't contacted London. But he'd known Longshot, had seen it crash.

  He didn't turn his head. He was the man I'd been watching last night in the dining car, the one who was sitting alone. He was Zymyanin. I saw the reflection of his face in the window, sharp-boned, the mouth tight, as in his photographs.

  'I need more,' he said in a moment, still not turning, watching my own reflection.

  'Bureau.'

  'More,' he said softly.

  'Zymyanin.'

  He turned his head now, and looked at me. His eyes were wary, but not afraid, even though he knew I'd caught up with him. I would think these eyes had never been afraid, only alert, wary like this, watching for a way out if he thought he needed one, wherever he was. I knew that look, had felt it in my own eyes. Here was a brother ferret.

  'Are you replacing him?' he asked me. Hornby.

  'No,' I said.' they've taken that one off the books. I'm just here to talk to you, that's all.'

  He didn't say anything.

  A bolt banged back and the door of the lavatory opened and a man came out, one of the bodyguards I'd seen in the dining car last night. I turned my head away until he was halfway along the corridor. 'Do you want to go in there?' I asked Zymyanin.

  'What? No. It can wait.' the smell of urine and disinfectant came drifting across.

  I touched his arm and we moved farther away, past the two cleaning women who were bent over a stain on the carpet, rubbing at it with a block of dark yellow soap.

  'I've got nothing to tell you,' Zymyanin said, and I heard anger in his voice, though he kept it very soft.' You people have got a mole sniffing around, surely you know that. I — '

  'Russian,' I said. He'd switched to English, was fluent, but it didn't tally with my cover.' there's no mole.' they don't exist in the Bureau, can't exist, the security checks are like X-rays in that place, they've got to be, we're not the Foreign Office. 'It was just incompetence.' And inexperience, Hornby's. He'd let a word drop somewhere, full of excitement, it's happened before. I'd picked up the vibes from Turner, his DIF in Bucharest, when I'd been with him in the Hotel Constanta. He'd been holding himself back, sick about Hornby's death but wanting to blame him for what had happened, had stopped himself. I'd admired him for that.

  The train rocked across points, and buildings swung past the windows, blocks of darkness lumped together on the snow, some with lights showing, pale in the dawn.

  'Incompetence,' Zymyanin was saying, 'all right, it was incompetence, he got to the RDV early, you understand that? Early.' I understood, yes, it's one of the cardinal errors, a potentially lethal mistake. 'And what guarantee have I got that I can trust you?' he wanted to know. 'How do I know how competent you are? How do I know you haven't brought half a dozen opposition hit men onto this fucking train because of your incompetence?'

  Had a bad scare, he'd had a bad scare, this man, in Bucharest, no fright in his eyes but it was still down there in the gut, I quite understood. I'd been thinking he was a potential danger to me, and he'd been thinking I would be a danger to him if we forced him into i rendezvous, and now we'd done that. It couldn't have been him, last night, standing outside my compartment: if he'd known I was in there he would have run to the far end of the train.

  'I know exactly what you mean,' I said. It was no good telling him I was a senior executive; we've had one or two senior executives found in some foreign clime with their brains raked out of their skulls and the capsules still in their pockets. I had to remember it was only two nights ago when this man came close to getting blown into Christendom like Hornby.

  'This isn't a rendezvous,' Zymyanin said, watching me, his eyes bright with nerves. 'I didn't ask for one and I don't want one, is that understood? I don't want you to come anywhere near me again. I want you to keep out of my way, right out of my way.'

  Someone else went into the lav down there and slammed the door, hit the bolt.

  'It must be wine!' o
ne of the cleaners was saying, her voice shrill with vexation, a pink knee showing through the hole in her black stocking as she knelt on the floor with her bar of soap. 'It must be red wine again, look, it's not coming out!'

  Some drunk,' the other woman said, 'a drunk did this!'

  I'd have to talk him round somehow, Zymyanin, get his confidence back. But I didn't trust him at the moment, and he didn't trust me. Now that he'd seen my face he'd remember seeing me last night m the dining car, then a stranger. He would be wondering why I hadn't followed him out of there when he left, and revealed myself then instead of waiting until now. He'd know I'd realized what he'd been doing in the dining car.

  'Who are they?' I asked him.

  He'd been keeping observation on the three men.

  My question didn't surprise him. He would have been expecting it. sooner or later: I was here to get the information he had for us, and it obviously concerned the men he'd been watching, would be watching again.

  In a moment he said,' they are former General Kovalenko and General Velichko of the Army High Command and Special Purpose Militia Detachments respectively, and former General Chudin of the KGB.'

  However well a spook is trained and however experienced, he sometimes finds it irresistible to tell what he knows to someone he's at least expected to trust, if what he knows is of great importance.

  'And they're now in the Podpolia?' I asked him. The Underground.

  'Of course,' he said impatiently.

  He was impatient with himself, not with me. He'd revealed his flaw, and knew it, I didn't say anything, waited for him to tell me other things now that he'd started.

  'This is so dangerous,' he said, and looked along the corridor again.

  'I agree. Who's in your compartment with you?'

  'Three Ukrainians, metal workers, they never leave there, they've brought enough food for the whole trip, play cards all the time.'

  'I've only got one in with me,' I told him. 'I'll find out when he's going to stretch his legs, and let you know. We can talk in there.' It was a risk: I hadn't wanted him to know my compartment; but he could find out if he wanted to — I'd got no cover — and in any case he seemed ready to talk now and I had to catch him while he was in the mood.

  'Listen,' he said on an impulse, 'you must have recognized me last night in the dining car — you must have been given a photograph — so why didn't you follow me out of there when I left?'

  I thought of lying, but if I lied he'd know it and I'd lose what trust he'd got in me, if he had any at all.

  'I had my reasons,' I said.

  He let his eyes stay on me, not showing anything but his nerves, trying to see what was in mine, seeing nothing. I think it angered him. 'Listen, if you want a rendezvous it'll have to be somewhere off the train when we stop for a break.'

  There are two breaks a day, Jane had put in her notes for me, when you can stretch your legs and breathe some air, unless the train's running so late that they can't manage it.

  There wasn't any point in trying to rush Zymyanin; it'd have to be drawn out.

  'When did you first pick them up?' I asked him.

  He might be in more danger than I knew, than he was ready to tell me. I'd have to get what I could, as soon as I could.

  'I can't tell you that. At least not yet. We — '

  'You were going to tell our contact hi Bucharest.'

  'No.'

  'Then what were you going to tell him?'

  He swung his narrow head up to look at me, a sprig of his dark unwashed hair bobbing as he turned. 'I was going to tell him only that those people would be on this train. I — '

  'You didn't need a physical rendezvous for that,' I said. 'You could have just signalled London.'

  He looked away again, staring through the window, picking at his short ragged nails. A factory of some sort swung by, its chimneys pouring a long dark cloud across the snow-covered roofs of the buildings. 'Listen,' he said,' this is all I can tell you for now. The Bureau should do everything — everything — to keep those people under surveillance. That's why I'm here, of course, but I'm also here because there's a cell in Moscow — ' his head swung up again to look at me — 'a completely unacknowledged, unofficial cell whose purpose is to seek, find and expose the active members of the Podpolia wherever they may be. Many are known, of course, and the KGB is watching them closely. But some are not known, and those we are looking for. That is also why I am here.'

  There were voices behind me but I didn't turn round just watched Zymyanin's face, his eyes, as he looked along the corridor. They were men's voices, speaking in Russian, growing louder as they came past. Zymyanin showed nothing, turned his head to stare through the window again.

  '… And last week he moved into a new apartment. Shall I tell you about it?'

  'No. It'll make me sick.'

  'Of course it'll make you sick! In his new apartment he has to share one bathtub with thirty other people, and his kitchen is an electric hot-plate that never gets hot enough to boil water! I thought Yeltsin was going to make a few little changes here and there, didn't you, for God's sake?'

  Snow had begun whirling past the windows; we were running into another storm.

  'That is all I can tell you,' Zymyanin said, 'for the moment.' He turned away and took a few steps, turned back, his nerves still bright in his eyes. 'When I've got something more, I'll contact you. In the meantime, keep your distance.'

  He turned and walked on and in a moment the door of the lavatory banged and the bolt went home.

  Later in the morning I got out the briefing Jane had given me and went through it and reinforced the mnemonics and folded the three sheets and took them along to the first provodnik's station I could find unattended and pushed them deep under the trash in the waste bin and heard someone coming and got a cup from the shelf and filled it from the samovar.

  "That is for me to do.' The provodnik's tone shrill and indignant. 'I can't leave this place for half a minute without someone coming in here and meddling!'

  I told her she made the finest tea in all Russia and said I would tell my grandchildren about it in the years to come, so forth, and she took a pinch of it as a compliment and told me to be off with my wily charm, I should be peddling butter in the black market.

  Most of the stuff Jane had given me was standard tourist information, and I spread out the maps in my compartment and looked them over; they showed the route and schedules of the Rossiya and vignettes of Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, with the major streets named.

  A group of youths trooped past the open door and I went out and stopped them, picking two of the brightest looking and giving them twenty roubles to split and telling them what I wanted. Then I looked for Galina and found her blasting a pallid and red-eyed girl in a torn smock — the bulkheads in Car No. 5 were filthy and this was the third time the passengers had complained and who would take the blame when the reports were sent in? She, Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya would take the blame, who else, since she was the supervisor for Cars No. 5,6 and 7?

  When the girl had gone I looked into the small bright still-enraged black eyes of Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya and asked her how everything else was and did she think the snowstorm would cause any problems, and learned that this was a bad day for her because her ingrowing toenail was beginning to give trouble just like the doctor had told her it would, but it would mean an operation, only a minor one but the thought of it terrified her. Then I offered her a hundred roubles and explained that since I was a journalist, as she knew, my whole livelihood depended on sniffing out stories, and perhaps she could help me in this.

  "The three men,' I said, 'for instance, who were in the dining car last night. They looked important.'

  She braced her large body against the bulkhead as the train rocked, and took out a packet of cigarettes. 'You smoke?'

  'I'm trying to quit.'

  She lit one with a match from a monogrammed book with the winged wheel on it and blew out smoke a
nd looked at me with her eyes no longer enraged but sharp now, bright with conspiracy.'

  'They used to be somebody. Now they are nobody. They used to fly everywhere. Now they take the train.' she gave me their names and former ranks, and they tallied with what Zymyanin had told me. 'It's rumoured that two of them — the army officers — were arrested and tried for supporting the coup, but were acquitted.' A shrug of the big padded shoulders. 'Who knows? Who knows who is who, these days, or who they were or what they were doing? Half the army and the KGB has gone underground, as you know, even though they're still marching about for all to see.' She dropped ash circumspectly into a tin tray with the ubiquitous emblem on it, and opened a steam valve on the samovar. The heating system for this coach had broken down soon after breakfast this morning, and the warmth was welcome in here. 'You wish me to make discreet enquiries about those men?'

  The faintest of smiles touched her heavily-lipsticked mouth, softening her looks, even though she would smile like this as she buried the knife deep between my shoulderblades if she saw in me an enemy, or even thought she saw. This was my impression.

  'Very discreet,' I said. 'Very discreet enquiries, yes.

  I asked her other things, and when people came past us or asked for some tea we talked about the snowstorm and the shocking price of everything now that demokratizatsiya was rife in the land.

  Before I left her she said,' Of course, I shall have to satisfy others, you must understand.' Her eyes glittered in the folds of flesh, squinting at me through the smoke from her cigarette.

  'No others,' I said. 'No others, Galina Ludmila. This is very strictly between you and me. Is that clear?'

  A shrug. 'Very well.'

  I pulled out another hundred, which was what she was after anyway.

  'No others,' she said.

  There was no one of interest at lunch in the dining car when I passed through it and later came back. The generals weren't there, or Zymyanin.

  In the afternoon the Rossiya drew its great and massive length into a village station, and most of the passengers dropped from it and stood in the flurries of snow that came blowing under the red-painted wooden canopy that hung over the platform. It wasn't a scheduled stop, I was told: we were being given a break, the first and last of the day because we were running late. I saw Slavsky doing his knee-bends — he'd been trying it on the train but couldn't keep his balance — and a party of Chinese went jogging through the snow outside the station, their little flags jerking on top of their rucksacks while the petits rats on their way to the Academy of Dance in Novosibirsk went prancing off in the other direction with their pony-tails flying and their laughter echoing under the canopy like the cries of birds. A drunk was throwing up at the end of the platform and I turned and walked the other way, keeping up what pace I could among the crowd and trying to find some fresh air to breathe, not easy, because most people were smoking with fierce concentration to make the best of the break.