The Scorpion Signal

by Adam Hall

  Ignatov stood looking towards the river, the way we’d just come. He might be watching the lights over there, or the stream of south-bound traffic, or the tail end of the Pobeda and its number plate: I couldn’t see at this distance. When the queue moved up to the pumps he got back into the Syrena and kept his place, and when the queue moved again and he was alongside the end pump he got out again and stood watching the traffic.

  I went on listening. The cold air was numbing to the ears after the warmth of the scarf, and the cheek wound was sensitive. It was seven minutes since he’d come out of the telephone box and his tank had been filled and he was paying the attendant. I could still hear nothing unusual in the traffic’s sound. It didn’t mean they weren’t on their way: with the snow on the streets they’d take longer to get here and there’d be no particular hurry because if he’d given them the location they’d close in from a dozen directions and block my way out.

  When he got back into his car I would have to make the decision but the organism was feverish with apprehension: ±e adrenals were releasing epinephrine and constricting the blood vessels and the liver was releasing glucose for the motor energy; the skeletal muscles were firming and strengthening and the pulse was strong and fast. But it might not be enough to save me if I made the wrong decision-He was getting back into his car.

  I went on listening and heard no change in the traffic sound. The last thing I did before going back to the Pobeda was to feel my waistband under my coat to make sure the small rectangular tin was still there.

  Ignatov waited for a slot in the traffic stream and found one and sped up and I followed, watching the mirror and the side streets and the reflections in the windows and bodywork of the cars ahead of me, watching for the first sign of a flashing light. The Mercedes came into the mirror twice before Ignatov led me eastwards again, alongside the park; then I lost it for a while The sweating had stopped but I was chilled with it, and my mouth tasted bitter. The organism was having to deal with the superfluous adrenalin and the muscles were fretting for action. There wasn’t going to be any: he’d phoned somebody else.

  Who?

  His wife or a friend or a woman, anyone, it could be anyone, telling them he was going to be a little late tonight because of the snow. Ignore.

  At 5.47 he slowed and took a side street and slowed again and I held back until he turned sharply into the entrance of an underground car park. It was alongside an apartment block and I drove straight past to make a check and then came back and stopped and doused the lights and got out and started walking fast over the snow. Halfway along the street I heard an engine then and a door open as I reached the black mouth of the entrance and went down the ramp, breaking into a run across the dry concrete because it wouldn’t matter if he heard me coming.

  The place was cavernous, with concrete columns standing at intervals, their pattern merging into the darkness. The slam of a car door came but the echoes bounced the sound from wall to wall and I couldn’t locate it. Then a flashlight came on and its beam swung and focused on my eyes, blinding me. I began walking into the beam but it went out and I stopped dead, waiting for the dazzling after-image to clear. I think he was some fifty feet ahead of me, midway between two of the columns; I heard movement but it wasn’t distinct enough so get a fix on.

  I waited ten seconds, but there was only silence now.

  ‘Ignatov,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  He didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if he had a gun: it was pitch dark in this area and the click of a safety catch wouldn’t necessarily carry this distance. If he had a gun and wanted to hold me off, he would have to put his flashlight on again to take aim. If he decided I was too dangerous then he would simply fire, but he’d have to use the flashlight even to do that, because the entrance was no longer behind me and I wasn’t showing a silhouette.

  I stood listening, perfectly still except for my head. I was turning my head to the left, until my right ear was facing Ignatov’s last estimated position; the right ear feeds aural input to the left hemisphere of the brain where the logical analysis of crude sound is made. I picked up nothing at all After thirty seconds something drove past the entrance along the street, and the sound came into the cavernous dark and set up diminishing vibrations: the acoustics were strange in here, with the concrete columns breaking up the sound patterns and reflecting their remnants.

  I thought some kind of movement had been made, when the sound had come down from the street I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Ignatov. We need to talk.’

  My own voice sounded odd, its echoes overlapping. I went forward, using tai-chi steps, long and infinitely slow, keeping my feet slightly tilted to avoid the sound of flat contact, sole 10 floor. I took ten paces and stopped. I thought he was somewhere between where I stood now and forty feet away: a few minutes ago I’d estimated his distance from me as fifty feet and I’d just moved thirty, allowing for a margin of error of twenty and doubling it Then he moved and I heard him and span into the fighting-horse stance and waited.

  Total silence. I went on waiting. I thought I was close to him now, perhaps very close. In the far distance I could see the rectangular patch of light made by the street lamps above ground, but there was no light here. If I could move to one side and work round him in a half circle I could bring his silhouette in line between me and the entrance; but he might be trying to do that himself, and might be succeeding: at any time now the shot would come, if he were going to shoot My scalp was drawn tight and I could feel the slight lifting at the hair on my head. Ignatov could be within an inch of me now, and might detect me first I didn’t know what kind of training he had, whether he knew how to strike lethally, working by touch alone.

  It was difficult to move now with any safety: the dark itself felt hazardous. A degree of sensory deprivation was setting in, and my nerves heard movement where there was none. A few seconds ago I had heard the faintest rustling to my left, and I had moved one hand out in the hope of making contact and identifying his attitude and striking before he could. But he wasn’t there. It wasn’t any good listening for his breathing : he’d be controlling it, as I was controlling mine.

  I moved again, with the underwater slowness of tai-chi, and took two paces before I felt something touching my elbow.

  It was to my left. If it was Ignatov standing beside me he would make his move at once so I threw up a guard and used a very short controlled knife-edge with the left foot and struck solid, bruising it. Flat of my left hand - yes, a concrete column. I hit the floor immediately, doubling in silence, in case he was close enough to use the sounds I’d made as a bearing.

  I began thinking he must have gone. He wore rubber-soled shoes: there’d been no footsteps just before he’d switched on the flashlight. He could have gone far enough, during the passage of the vehicle in the street, to move out of earshot. But that was dangerous thinking. I got up slowly, watching the rectangle of light in the distance in case he moved across it.

  Silence.

  I took two paces, slowly, undulating, and stopped. Then I heard him draw breath suddenly beside me because of the shock of proximity — I’d come up on him in the total darkness and a grunt sounded as he stifled a shout and I clawed with my left hand to find the shape of the target and felt softness, the curled wool of his coat, all I needed. He struck out with the flashlight and it grazed my head before I brought him down with a crescent sweep and caught him before he hit the ground. He didn’t learn anything from this: he thought there was still a chance and tried to unbalance me and I stopped him with a low-power sword-hand against the carotid.

  ‘Don’t do anything,’ I told him. ‘We need to talk.’

  He didn’t say anything. I found the flashlight and switched it on, lighting his face. He was still in shock and his head was lolling, so I helped him upright and he stood swaying a little, dazzled by the light. I moved it down, out of his eyes, but he still didn’t seem to understand the position because he jerked suddenly and hooked for my face wit
h his stubby fingers, putting a lot of force into it and getting close before I blocked with a jodan and centre-knuckled the medial nerve with enough depth to paralyse.

  ‘Ignatov,’ I said, ‘don’t do that.’

  He was quiet again, sagging against me for a time with the local paralysis affecting his system through the nervous meridians. When I was sure he understood the position I raised the flashlight to shine full on his face and looked round.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Bracken said from the shadows. ‘I’ve never seen him before. He’s not in my cell. He’s not the Judas.’

  Chapter 13

  Shadow

  Then who was?

  He was very difficult to work with: he kept trying to get away and I had to trip him and catch him before he could hit the ground or the concrete column that was somewhere near us. If I didn’t catch him each time he was going to hurt himself because he had absolutely no idea how to fall.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ I asked him again.

  He wouldn’t answer, and that was another thing that made it difficult I had to ask him everything two or three times and then work on a nerve until he got the message. But even then I didn’t know when he was lying. I’ve never met anybody so difficult.

  ‘What did you tell them, when you went into that phone box?’

  ‘It was to tell my wife I would be late.’

  ‘Not that time. I mean two days ago, on Wednesday. You phoned the police and they tried to pick me up. What did you tell them?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them anything. I -‘

  ‘Oh come on, Ignatov! Used a centre-knuckle on the medial: he hated that. ‘What did you tell them.?

  I was getting annoyed because someone might come in here and make things awkward. Bracken had gone, five minutes ago: all he’d needed was a dose look at Ignatov, and it was too dangerous for him to stay where the action was because he was ostensibly a member of the British Embassy staff and they could throw him out of the country if he came under any kind of suspicion.

  Ignatov wasn’t answering.

  ‘You’d never seen me before in your life and you went into a phone box and called the police and they came right away so what did you tell them?’

  ‘It was not me.’

  ‘What do you mean it wasn’t you? Come on!’

  ‘I did what I was ordered.’ He crouched over, hugging his arm because it had needed another jab to get that much out of him. But it sounded interesting. Who had ordered him? The Judas?

  ‘Ignatov,’ I said, ‘I want you to understand the position. I can do a lot of things to you that would make you give me the answers I want, but it could cripple you for life and I don’t see any point, do you?’ He was still bent over, trying to get some of the feeling back into his left arm. I’d been leaving his right arm alone for the moment in case I wanted him to drive me anywhere: I didn’t know what was going to happen yet. ‘I’m going to get the answers out of you in any case, so why damage yourself?’ He was breathing much too hard for a man of maybe thirty-five or forty, though he was a bit overweight and of course he was nervous. It’s harder to make them understand when they haven’t had any training because they’ve never learned what you can do to them. ‘Have you my children, Ignatov?’

  ‘Three, yes, three children.’ He said it quickly because this was where his heart was, in his family.

  ‘All right, do you want them to have to push you about in a wheelchair? You want them to help feed you? Listen to what I’m saying. Use your imagination. A wheelchair.’

  Something went past along the street and a faint rhomboid of light swept across the columns and faded out. I didn’t want anyone to come in here until I’d got what I needed from him ‘So we’ll start again. Who ordered you to get me picked up in the street?’

  I gave him five seconds and then covered him in fast light blows with a lot of control and the focus on the nerve centres so that he didn’t even know what was happening. Then I had to wait until he could stand upright again.

  ‘That was nothing, Ignatov. I didn’t touch your face and I didn’t touch your groin. I’m going to work on those next. Who ordered you?’

  He whispered a name but I didn’t catch it because his system was in shock.

  Who? Say it again. ‘Zubarev.’

  ‘What was that? Zubarev?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded and went on nodding like one of those dolls with a weight in its head. ‘Yes.’

  Some more light came and this time it got very bright and the concrete columns stood out, row after row of them as the car came down the ramp and turned and parked with its nose against the wall, the light spreading and dimming and then going out. I put one arm round Ignatov’s throat and left it there while we waited. He got the message this time and didn’t try to do anything about it A flashlight beam came on at the far end of the garage and I watched it bobbing towards the iron staircase in the corner, but it was promised, one of them was saying, it was promised, very cut up because her boss had said they could have two tickets for the circus if they reached their work goal for the month and he’d broken his promise and now they’d have to spend the evening playing dominoes with the Borisenkos next door, a bloody shame but at least they’d shown me the public telephone in the corner by the staircase, I hadn’t seen it before.

  ‘Give me your wallet,’ I told Ignatov, and he reached inside his coat and I watched his hand when it came out. ‘Hold this torch.’ Normal papers plus Party membership card, plus identification as an official driver to the Politburo and a special traffic pass into the Kremlin and ‘certain designated areas in the City of Moscow as specified in the 1979 Amendment to the Control of Vehicular Movement. Nothing else in the way of privilege documents but that one would probably rate a salute from a militia man, yes.

  No little book with names in, no sign of any Zubarev.

  We’re going to make a phone call,’ I told him. It was like trying to move a bear: he didn’t know which way to walk. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing, but that wasn’t my fault, he shouldn’t have blasted me off the street like that ‘We’re going to call Zubarev,’ I said.

  Didn’t know his number.

  ‘Oh yes you do,’ I told him, and whipped a very light reverse sword-hand against the larynx. ‘Tell him you’re coming to see him., and if he objects, tell him it’s very urgent. Insist on it Do you understand?’

  He stood trying to get his breath and I had to wait for a minute because I wanted him to sound reasonably normal on the phone. I only had one kopeck on me, with a lot of bigger change. ‘Have you got a kopeck?’ I asked him.

  He found one, moving slowly, and I watched his hand again when it came out. ‘He only lets me go there,’ he said with a slight wheeze, ‘at prearranged times.’

  ‘We’re going to prearrange it’ I put the two kopecks into the slot. ‘Ignatov, you gave me a lot of trouble. I don’t mind what I have to do to you. Remember the wheelchair.’ I gave him the phone.

  In the close bright light of the torch I watched his face, and his eyes. He was staring at the printed board behind the telephone as if he were reading its instructions, but he wasn’t He was staring at the possibility of saying something to Zubarev that would warn him, and at the possibility of hurling himself at me and throttling me before I could do anything about it. This was natural enough but I waited for him to turn his head and look at my eyes, and in my eyes I let him see without any shadow of doubt that I was the angel of death. He looked away and dialled the number, which I noted and committed to memory.

  He asked for a woman first and I reacted and moved my hand in a threat and he whispered that Zubarev never came to the telephone himself.

  ‘Misha,’ he said with slow care, watching me, ‘this is Pyotr. I am coming to see him. Tell him that.’

  I heard her voice: young, strong, husky, positive. She would tell him, she was saying. Was he coming right away?

  ‘Yes. I am coming now.’ I prodded him and he said: ‘Tell him it is v
ery urgent, Misha. Tell him I must come.’

  There was nothing wrong? she wanted to know.

  In the light of the torch his flat featureless face struggled with the question, and he managed to get a note of reassurance into his voice. ‘There is nothing wrong, no. But I must come.’

  She said she would tell him. Neither of them had mentioned his name. He looked at me and I nodded and he hooked the receiver back. Light swept suddenly across the columns and I turned my back to the entrance as a car came down the ramp and swung at right angles and stopped. I moved Ignatov away from the staircase and talked to him as we walked across to his car, passing a half-seen man and saying good evening to him. When he’d started up the iron staircase I told Ignatov to get into his car on the passenger’s side and then I took his scarf and tied his wrists to his ankles and shut the door on him and went round to the driver’s side. He hadn’t seen me tagging him from the Kremlin and he didn’t know the number of the Pobeda but he’d see it if we used my car instead of his, and once he’d seen the number plate he could blast me off the street again the minute he got to a telephone.

  He sat awkwardly beside me with his knees drawn up to his chin, his squat body swaying as I turned the car through the columns and pulled up near the entrance and reached across him and opened his door for a moment. ‘Ignatov,’ I told him, ‘if you try to attract attention in the street by shouting out or falling against the steering wheel you might alert a militia man or a police patrol. If you did that, I’d have to leave you behind, and I’d do that by opening your door like this and giving you a push.’ I used a fair amount of force so that he rocked half off his seat, then I grabbed him and pulled him back and he sat with his breath hissing out. ‘You’d hit your head on the road because you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I understand.’

  ‘What are the names of your children?’