‘He wants the body, capo? He wants him dead?’ Andreas didn’t bother to hide his confusion.
‘On the contrary,’ the briefest smile. ‘He’s expecting to start work on him this evening.’
*
It was early afternoon by the time Moncrieff at last heard a stir of movement outside the caravan. Every hour or so, he’d shown himself at the open door, stretched, taken a look round, made himself visible. To his slight surprise, nothing had happened. The Watchers are elsewhere, he told himself. Either that, or they’re waiting for the cover of darkness before making their move. The latter, strictly in terms of tradecraft, would make perfect sense. Even with a silencer, a handgun in broad daylight might attract attention. The calm of the woods disturbed. A sudden eruption of birds from the trees. Movement around the caravan. Tell-tale clues that all was far from well.
Now, though, they appeared to be having second thoughts. Brave, he thought, and perhaps a tad reckless. He’d made a nest for himself on the floor of the caravan, an arrangement of blankets, a coverlet, and three cushions that enabled him to stretch out his legs with a degree of comfort. From here, he had a perfect view of the door and, as the footsteps came closer, he tried to imagine what these final few moments of his life would really be like. A bullet in the head, he thought, would be infinitely preferable to lungfuls of cold water and the urgent press of the ropes the Gestapo at the Prinz-Albert-Strasse had used to strap him to the tilting board. He half closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the figure framed against the afternoon light, the raised arm, the black nozzle of the handgun. What were the NKVD using these days? Tulas? Tokarevs? In any event, it barely mattered. At this range, they couldn’t miss.
Bella, he thought again. Did she ever spare a thought for where he might be? What he might be thinking? Might she somehow survive the camps, and the endless hours of forced labour, and the unimaginable cold of a Siberian winter? And if she did, what would be left of her precious Revolution, once the Germans had laid hands on Moscow? Darkness, he thought. Better soon, better now, than later.
The footsteps had come to a halt. He caught the scrape of a key in the door, metal against metal, and a murmur of surprise to find the caravan unlocked. Then the body of the caravan rocked as someone mounted the stairs and pushed the door open.
Moncrieff was up on one elbow now, already confused. Did the Watchers have a key?
‘Tam? Are you all right?’
Not one figure at the door but two. Gerri was one of them, but the question had come from the other woman. Ursula Barton had never had much of a dress sense and today was no exception.
She looked down at him, unpegging the front of her duffel coat.
‘Tam?’ she said again. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
*
The embalmer’s name was Dmytro. It was Schultz’s suggestion that he might need an assistant, and Bella said she was happy to volunteer. Contrary to Schultz’s orders, he’d arrived at the museum at the wheel of his own car, a rusting Gaz, the survivor, he said proudly, of countless Kyiv winters. Bella helped him carry a box of chemicals and a pump down to the sub-basement. Schultz had organised an electrical supply from the ground floor but the socket at the end could only take a single plug which meant relying, once again, on candles. Bella was glad. She’d never seen an embalmer at work before and it was hard to imagine the procedure being anything but brutal. Better the softness of candlelight, she thought. Glivenko wouldn’t feel a thing but she most certainly would.
In the event, she was wrong. Schultz had laid hands on an entire box of candles and she used four to circle his prone body while Dmytro made his preparations. His years teaching at the university had obviously accustomed him to an audience and he was only too happy to talk Bella through the procedure.
‘He’s very clean,’ he was examining Glivenko with some care.
‘I washed him earlier.’
‘You did a good job. He had a fall of some sort?’ He’d found the gash on the back of Glivenko’s head.
‘From the fifth floor.’
‘Someone got rid of him?’
‘No.’
Dmytro shot Bella a look, then his fingers were exploring the top of Glivenko’s spinal cord.
‘He was lucky,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a high break, second vertebra down. It would have snapped his neck just like that,’ he clicked his fingers. ‘Gravity can be kind, believe me.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning his lights went out. Bang. Gone. I helped out in the hospital last week. High explosives can be unforgiving.’
Bella nodded. The news that Glivenko would have known nothing about his own death was an undeniable comfort.
Dmytro had positioned the pump beside Glivenko’s thigh.
‘Here it is, the femoral vein.’ Dmytro was making a tiny incision. ‘The mixture goes in here. The pump does the rest.’
‘Mixture?’
‘Five chemicals. You’re sitting an exam tomorrow? You want their names?’ he laughed. ‘Now we need to drain the dead blood.’
He was standing beside Glivenko’s head. Bella fetched him a stool that Schultz had provided. Comfortable, he took Bella’s hand and placed it gently against the side of the little Russian’s neck.
‘Here—’ he said. ‘This is an artery and we’re in luck because it’s in excellent condition. All we need is a drain tube and a bucket.’ He sat back. ‘Bucket?’
This time Bella had to go back upstairs. Dead blood? Technically, she imagined this ex-pathologist was probably right. The moment Ilya’s life had come to an end was the moment everything began to decay, but the phrase lay unhappily beside everything else she knew about The Pianist. His physical vigour. The sharpness of his wit. His irrepressible good humour. The sheer generosity of his spirit. That single gold tooth in his smile. None of these things belonged in the same sentence as ‘dead blood’.
By the time she returned with the bucket, Dmytro had connected the pump to the thin tube that now snaked into Glivenko’s thigh. With an adjustment to the drain tube, and the bucket perfectly aligned, he told Bella to start the pump.
‘It’s the little red switch,’ he said. ‘I always tell my students it’s the closest we’ve come to making a human heart and it’s always the girls who laugh.’
‘Not me, I’m afraid,’ Bella had started the pump and was looking hard at Glivenko. For a moment or two, neither of them said a word. Then Bella felt the lightest pressure on her arm, a gesture – she thought later – of comfort.
‘It won’t bring the poor chap back, I’m afraid. If that’s what you’re hoping.’
By late afternoon, Dmytro was done. He fashioned a line of stitches to keep Glivenko’s jaw in place and inserted tiny caps beneath his eyelids to keep them closed, before stepping back to admire his handiwork.
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘I’ve never done this by candlelight before. Quite Egyptian, don’t you think?’
Bella had been washing Glivenko’s body for a second time. The smears of blood around the two carefully sutured entry wounds had now gone. She wiped her hands on a towel, aware of Dmytro watching her.
‘You knew him well?’
‘We spent a couple of weeks together. Difficult weeks. He was a great help. I liked him very much.’
‘And now?’ Dmytro nodded down at the body.
‘He looks peaceful,’ she hesitated. ‘How long will he last?’
‘A couple of years, maybe. It all depends on the humidity. Bacteria have no manners. They eat every last gram of us, even when we take steps like these.’
Bella nodded. The last couple of hours had been richly educational. Life is dangerous, she thought. No one survives it.
*
Schultz telephoned SS headquarters in the early evening. Kalb’s delight at the contents of the article appeared to be unfeigned. He’d telephoned the editor of the Novoe Ukrainskoe Slovo personally and despatched the article with instructions to give it maximum prominence in tomorrow’s paper. He
was grateful for Schultz’s gesture in sharing the limelight and added that his superiors in Berlin would be suitably impressed. As a small gesture in return, he had a gift for Larissa in recognition of the fine job she’d done.
‘Bring it along,’ Schultz was playing with a pencil.
‘One other thing, Kamerad. It’s Berlin again, Herr Himmler himself. The Reichsminister-SS wants a look at the situation in the Yar. I mentioned your photographs. Might you be able to spare a couple?’
‘And this is for?’
‘Reichsminister-SS Himmler. As I have just told you.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Why does he need a bloody photograph?’
‘I see.’ The noise Schultz heard on the line might have been a chuckle. ‘He’s looked at the numbers, Schultz. And he thinks we’ve done an exemplary job.’
Schultz gazed at the phone a moment, speechless. Then he heard the snap of the pencil breaking between his own fingers. Kalb hadn’t finished.
‘And Glivenko?’ he queried.
Schultz leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. Then he bent to the phone again.
‘He’s ready for collection,’ he grunted. ‘Any time.’
*
Kalb arrived at the museum after dark. Andreas met him in the lobby and gave him an envelope Schultz had prepared containing a selection of aerial photographs. In return, Kalb’s aide handed over what looked like a bulky manuscript.
‘And Glivenko?’
‘I’m afraid it might take four of you.’ Andreas looked briefly apologetic.
‘He’s being difficult?’
‘A little, yes.’
Kalb barked an order to his aide who disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, he was back with two uniformed SS men.
‘Follow me, please, Herr Standartenführer.’
Andreas led the way to the stairs that descended to the basement. En route, he was aware of Kalb’s interest in the pictures on the wall. He paused briefly by a photograph of a huge demonstration in Leningrad.
‘They were going to blow all this history up,’ Kalb said. ‘It’s their history, their doing. Doesn’t that tell you everything about the bloody Communists?’
In the basement, Kalb paused, expecting to find Glivenko.
‘So where is he?’
‘Down below, Herr Standartenführer. You know the SD. We take no chances.’
Kalb nodded. He said he understood. Andreas opened the door to the final flight of wooden steps that led to the sub-basement. Schultz was waiting at the bottom, blocking his view.
‘Heil Hitler!’ Schultz acknowledged the salute with a cursory nod, and then stood aside.
About to gesture his men forward to seize the prisoner and carry him upstairs, Kalb found himself looking at a body in a coffin. Schultz was happy to make the introductions.
‘Captain Ilya Glivenko,’ he said. ‘Soviet 37th Army. The uniform, I’m afraid, doesn’t reflect his rank but it was the best we could do. The coffin, on the other hand, is an exact replica of Lenin’s. It was featured in a gallery upstairs.’ He smiled at Kalb. ‘Wholly appropriate, don’t you think?’
29
WEDNESDAY 1 OCTOBER 1941
Ursula Barton drove Moncrieff back to London. It wasn’t until they were turning into the road where she lived that the silence of the last two hours was broken.
‘I’m staying here the night?’
‘You are, Tam.’
‘There’s no need, you know.’
‘I’m afraid there is. For both our sakes.’
She parked outside a double-bay semi, studied him for a moment, and then led the way to the house. The wooden gate badly needed attention. Paint was flaking from the front door. In the three years he’d worked in ‘B’ Section, Moncrieff had never been here and at first sight it didn’t seem to marry with the slightly forbidding neatness of her office.
She settled him in the living room at the front.
‘Malt? I’ve made a small investment. A Talisker single malt. I thought it might cheer you up.’
She disappeared without waiting for an answer and returned with a brand new bottle and two glasses. Moncrieff had been looking round: shelf after shelf of books, and an untidy stack of records beside the gramophone. A worn carpet, cratered with burn marks around the open fire. A photograph on the mantlepiece off a little girl standing on a bridge, holding the hand of a plumpish woman who already looked middle-aged.
‘Is that you?’
Barton was uncapping the bottle. ‘Yes. Hausach. It’s a little village on the edge of the Black Forest. I don’t think my mother ever quite got over having a child. Most days I ended up thinking I’d probably arrived in the post.’
‘Your father?’
‘Killed on the Somme. His name was Franck. We had a strange life, my mother and I. Even when I try hard, I can remember nothing but silence.’
Moncrieff nodded. He was grateful for the malt. He took a sip, and then another.
‘So what were you doing down in Hampshire?’ he asked.
‘I was worried. I’d been checking by phone every day and I knew things weren’t going well. Groenbaum said you were being stubborn, wouldn’t really co-operate, wouldn’t relax. He said he was doing his best, but he suspected he was fighting the tide. I got the feeling you were falling apart in some way. The word he used was disintegration. Then he phoned up this morning and said you’d gone completely, just walked out, disappeared. That left me no choice. I had to come down.’
Moncrieff nodded, staring down at his glass. Disintegration, he thought. Perfect.
‘He also said you were becoming tetchy, even aggressive. Is that fair?’
‘I’ve no idea. If you want the truth, I think the man’s a fake.’
‘Really?’ The ghost of a smile came and went.
‘Yes.’ Moncrieff described the hours he’d spent lofting golf balls across the valley after Groenbaum’s attempts to hypnotise him. ‘It’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’d have been better off spending your money on a crate of this.’ He tipped the glass to his lips and swallowed what remained.
‘He also said you were mumbling about the Watchers,’ Barton hadn’t moved.
‘That’s a lie,’ Moncrieff said hotly. ‘I never breathed a word about any bloody Watchers.’
‘Not face-to-face, that’s true. The bedroom you slept in is rigged with microphones. Groenbaum claims it’s all part of the protocol.’ A thin smile. ‘Eavesdropping on your darkest thoughts? Does that sound credible?’
‘It does,’ Moncrieff reached for the bottle. ‘Bastard.’
Barton watched him pour himself two fingers. She hadn’t touched her own drink.
‘So, do they exist?’ she said at length. ‘These Watchers?’
‘I thought so, yes.’
‘Thought? Past tense?’
Moncrieff shrugged. Said he didn’t know, didn’t care.
‘But who are they, Tam? I need an answer. It’s the least you owe me. Groenbaum thinks you’ve changed, even over the brief time he’s known you, and to be honest I have to agree. You used to be so calm, so measured. Now, to be frank, you’re a mess. None of this is pleasant, Tam, least of all – I suspect – for you. Tell me what’s really been happening in that head of yours.’
‘Scopolamine,’ Moncrieff held her gaze.
‘What on earth’s that?’
Moncrieff repeated the word, spelled it out, told her to write it down. The Mayans or the Incas, or some bloody tribe had used it. It came from a jungle plant, he said. First it robbed you of your memory, then it turned you into someone else. Hence its nickname, the Devil’s Breath. Moncrieff was tempted to apologise, to say sorry for his rudeness, to blame it on the drug, but it simply wasn’t in him.
‘And the Watchers?’ Barton queried.
‘They were the ones who gave me the stuff in the first place.’
Barton nodded. The Russians, she said, had always been in love with poisons. When a bullet in the back of the neck felt too crud
e, poison was the way they settled quarrels, paid off debts, got rid of enemies of the People. Mostly, they confected various brews of their own but in this case they’d obviously lifted a page or two from someone else’s script. Either way, the results were the same. A whole week gone missing, and a man she greatly admired waking up a stranger to himself.
‘And the Watchers came down to get you? Finish the job? That’s the impression I got from Groenbaum.’
‘That’s what I thought, yes.’
‘But why would they do that?’
Moncrieff lay back in the armchair, staring up at patches on the ceiling where the distemper hadn’t quite covered. He felt exhausted, wiped out, lost again.
‘You know why,’ he said at last.
‘I do?’
‘Of course. You came down to Beaulieu. You played the psychiatrist. You dug that lost bloody day out of me. Following the man. Keeping him under surveillance. Tracking him halfway across bloody London. And then his neat little trap at the end.’
‘Philby,’ she murmured.
‘Of course.’
‘You think he’s behind the Watchers? You’re telling me he’d sent them down to kill you? Was that what you were doing in that caravan? Waiting for them to finish the job?’
‘Yes,’ Moncrieff knew it sounded absurd, but it was true. ‘And there’s something else, too. They needn’t have bothered.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I’d got their message.’
‘The photo you left on the pillow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bella Menzies?’
‘Yes.’
Barton nodded. At last she reached for her glass. ‘That’s what you told me in the car when we took you to Groenbaum,’ she said. ‘You were alarmingly honest. You said you had to think about Bella. Every life has a price, you told me, and it wasn’t going to be hers. That’s why you were refusing to help me. And that’s why this thing can’t go any further.’
Kyiv (Spoils of War) Page 30
