In the thrill of the chase he forgot his bad night, but the Stalinesque blocks of Kutuzov Prospekt, arrayed like a scowling bevy of hefty colonels, provided a depressing setback. A reek of melting asphalt and vehicle exhaust contributed to the impression of entrapment, but as he searched for the right block, his confidence returned.
“Where are you off to?” demanded an elderly caretaker, ex-army, if the combat suit was anything to go by, seated behind a glass partition in the hall.
“Ivin, Flat 62. I’m expected.”
The caretaker indicated the lift.
It was clean, quiet and provided with a mirror.
One day there’d be a lift where he lived, though it would soon be squalid. This one had air freshening.
The faint sound resulting from pressing the bell suggested double doors of unusual solidity. He waited a minute, then rang again, and once more.
He returned to the hall intending to ask the caretaker if he’d seen Ivin, but the caretaker had gone, leaving his book open on the table.
He’d left his mobile in Kiev, not expecting it to work in Moscow, and it took some time to find a phone. When he did, it required tokens, and it took another fifteen minutes to find a newspaper kiosk that sold them.
“No one is available to take your call,” said an answering machine when at last he rang Ivin’s number. “Leave your name and number, and we’ll call you back.”
He rang the other two Kievites again, but still no answer.
Returning to the hotel, he rested until seven, then rang all three numbers, but to no avail.
At the buffet on the second floor he paid fifteen thousand roubles for a salami sandwich and salad.
Waking at around 3 a.m., he had another go at telephoning, but might just as well not have.
Next morning, he packed his bag, announced he was leaving and put down five hundred and twenty thousand roubles.
The receptionist consulted her register, then gave him his passport and four hundred thousand roubles’ change.
“Your bill’s been paid,” she said. “There’s just the one hundred and twenty thousand registration fee.”
“How do you mean?”
“Paid. End of story.”
“Who by?”
“No idea. I’ve only just come on. You can pay again, if you like …”
A mistake. It must be. He didn’t know anyone in Moscow. And yet someone must be the poorer for that amount.
Leaving his bag in a station locker, he bought another ten tokens and wandered the city telephoning until the last of them was swallowed by Ivin’s answerphone.
At 20.00 he went back to the station, bought the Moscow papers, retrieved his bag, had a coffee, and made for his platform.
The blonde conductress finished wiping the boarding handrail before taking his ticket.
“Viktor Slutsky?” inquired a tall, fair-haired man pleasantly, looking into the compartment where Viktor was sitting next to a grimey window, too weary to change into his track suit.
“Yes?”
“Going already? And without getting your interview? Come, I’ve a car outside.”
“But this is the train my ticket’s for.”
“Here’s another for tomorrow. Single sleeper. Bring your bag. It’s an hour’s drive, then supper …”
The Volga was of a type he’d never seen, black, with darkened windows. Tall Fair Hair sat in front with the driver. He sat alone in the back.
23
When Nik woke at 10.00, the television was showing a film. There was no sign of Sakhno.
Feeling hungry, he went down to the hotel restaurant.
“The chef goes off at 10.00,” explained a smartly-dressed elderly man sitting alone over a mug of beer. “But I can heat you something in the microwave.”
The simplicity and the homely warmth of the place were disarming. He opted for Frankfurter and chips and a mug of beer, and had scarcely sat down at a table when the man brought his order, wished him guten Appetit, and went back to his own beer.
Nik found himself thinking of Tanya and Volodya, made unhappy by his telegram. Still, there was nothing he could do, and they would have to grin and bear it just as he had. As in the Soviet past, bright new futures were elusive. Which didn’t mean that they wouldn’t come, only that some cost was involved. And in these infant days of Slav capitalism, anything good – bright future included – was extremely pricey. Free, gratis and for nothing was a concept of the past.
At getting on for midnight and after another beer, Nik went to his room, looked out of the window, wondering, not for the first time though now somewhat more relaxedly, where the hell his companion had got to.
24
Viktor sat with Tall Fair Hair, Refat, as he now knew him, and Yura, their tubby driver, at a richly spread table on the summer veranda of a fine dacha.
“Wine or vodka?” Yura asked, assuming the role of cupbearer.
“Wine, please.”
“Juice for me,” Refat confirmed, adding, for Viktor’s benefit, “I’m sorry to say.”
Yura served tomato salad, sausage and cured fillet of sturgeon.
“Dig in,” said Refat. “There’s a hot course to follow. We can sup to the song of the nightingales, and at dawn’s first rays, we can sleep.”
The mystery of the hotel bill now seemed solved, but it left Viktor the unhappy feeling of having been bought. And for what?
“Cheer up!” said Yura. “You could now be in your filthy carriage having a torch shone in your face and being asked for your passport. So let’s drink! To friendship!”
Refat clinked his glass with the others.
“It was Ivin you came to talk to, wasn’t it?” Refat asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Show him the photos, Yura.”
They were of three men lying face upwards on a blood-soaked carpet, one of them the man seen by Viktor with Widow Bronitsky at the cemetery.
“Is that him?” Viktor asked.
“Surprised you didn’t recognize him.”
“A good moment to drink to his memory,” said Yura, pouring vodka for himself and wine for Viktor. “Death catches up eventually, however hard you run.”
“What questions did you have for him?” Refat asked.
“How did you know it was him I’d come to see?”
“He rang from Kiev saying he’d been photographed at the cemetery and was afraid they were out to kill him. I assume it is Bronitsky’s death that you’re investigating?”
“Yes,” said Viktor, “but I didn’t see any photographs being taken, and I was there at the cemetery.”
“He’d intended to stay on a few days after the funeral. Instead he flew straight back home, where his wife found him, when she returned from visiting a friend.”
“Who was it answered when I phoned?”
“One of us.”
Refat sipped his apple juice.
“Look,” he went on, “you, understandably, are cagey. But we’re both of us Russians. This splitting into different countries is politics. We, you and I, are working on the same case. We, too, want to know what happened to Bronitsky. It wasn’t, as you may think, wicked Moscow that did him in after the Staff HQ trouble. Not one of us here had the slightest interest in seeing him dead. I can support that with facts, only you’d have to keep them to yourself. Though the Russo-Ukrainian treaty concerning inter-Security-Service co-operation provides sufficient justification for our present meeting.
“You can take these photos with you for your report, and you can put down the extra day to Major Krylov – that’s Yura here – of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. An exchange of questions and answers is all I’m after.”
“Fine,” said Viktor, overcome with curiosity.
“So why the sudden interest in Ivin?”
“Three days ago I discovered he’d been staying at the Moskva on the key dates. I have reason to believe that he and Bronitsky ate at the buffet there the evening Bronitsky died.”
&nb
sp; “Spot on,” said Refat. “Good work. But why complicate things for yourself?”
“How do you mean?”
“By having an office at District.”
“Why not? It’s mine.”
Refat forced a smile.
“To go back to Bronitsky. Was it you who prevented the body’s being flown to Voronezh?”
Refat seemed both to know too much and yet to put wrong questions. Viktor poured himself wine and drank.
“You have, you say, proof of Moscow’s non-involvement.”
“We’ll leave it,” said Refat, as Yura entered bearing a pan, from which, with a flourish, he served them each with three cylindrical pancakes.
“Mustn’t let them get cold.”
Cutting into his pancake, Viktor found that it was filled with red caviar.
“Yes,” said Refat, “it was us, Ivin, Bronitsky and me, eating together in the fourth-floor buffet on May 20th.
“For your ears only, Bronitsky in his Staff HQ days was a good friend to us, and as Presidential Adviser even more so. He’d have prevented that second delivery of Ukrainian tanks to Pakistan, but for the fact that the ship had sailed …
“The flat above Ivin’s was to be Bronitsky’s new home in a couple of weeks, and we were discussing his future. He left about midnight – I having phoned for a taxi – intending to look in on a colleague in Bastion Street.
“We traced this colleague, but too late. Accidental death. Geyser gas leak exploded by lighted match was the official verdict. In fact, he was killed by a home-made bomb.
“I believe he was the organizer of all this, if not the actual killer. The balloon part would have called for extra help, and may not have been his handiwork at all. Who knows? Anyway, he’s dead and buried. One more funeral, and we can close the file.”
“Whose?”
“The bomber’s … It’s the classic variant: cut the first two links and there’s no causal chain.”
“And the balloon?”
“If we ever got who did that they’d probably be small-time, acting, they’d say, on the instructions of the chap who got blown up. But let’s eat.”
Viktor helped himself to more pancakes. Clearly Refat took him for Security – the remark about his having an office with the militia was proof of that – and the extent to which he was confiding in him was flattering. The explosion in Bastion Street, which was on Viktor’s patch, was news indeed.
“Keen shot?” Refat asked.
“Yes.”
“Come and see our range.”
They followed a lighted path to a tunnel-like underground range a short distance from the house.
Refat produced long-barrelled small-bore pistols, and they fired at targets lit for two seconds only. Refat scored well. Viktor, who had not stuck to apple juice, less well.
“Back to the table, or off to bed?” Refat demanded.
“Back to the table.”
“Now for your questions,” said Refat, as Viktor was helping himself to tomato salad.
“Why were you bringing the body to Russia?”
“We weren’t. It wasn’t us. The logic of it escapes me completely. Unless the idea was to implicate Moscow. What sort of plane was it?”
“An AN-26 of Belarusian Airlines.”
“And the cargo?”
“I don’t know. Crates, cartons.”
“And weren’t interested?”
“It was the body I was interested in. You can find out from Voronezh what the cargo was.”
Refat grinned.
“According to Voronezh customs, combine harvester spares for Sunrise Agricultural Suppliers, who paid the duty and collected. Only there’s no such firm. Did what you saw look like harvester spares?”
“No.”
“If you get anything further on that flight, do please let us in on it. You’ll find us grateful. We’re as keen as you are to get to the bottom of this business.”
When Viktor woke it was midday, and brilliantly sunny.
Downstairs he found Refat sitting reading the paper. They drank coffee together, then went up to Viktor’s room.
“You’d better have this,” Refat said, producing Viktor’s automatic and holster from the bedside cupboard. “We took charge of it at the hotel before the chambermaids went through your bag.” Bending to the drawer, Refat brought out a second Tula Tokarev. “And accept this one as a souvenir and mark of friendship.”
Viktor looked puzzled.
“Why do I need two?”
“It’s what’s called a ‘backfirer’.”
Extracting the magazine, he showed that the rounds were inserted nose to rear.
“What’s the point?”
“It was an old favourite with Stalin. Your would-be killer becomes a suicide case. We did a weapon-switch on some thugs recently, and are now four the fewer. It’s vital, of course, not to get them mixed. See, the modification’s stamped with three 9s instead of one.
“Now take it easy, put your feet up, see if you can think of any more questions, and when it’s time to eat, we’ll shout. Oh, and if you’d like to pop down for the papers. I’ve finished with them.”
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE – NEITHER PEACE NOR WAR? ran the eye-catching Izvestiya headline. It was a question, it appeared, of determining the frontier, or, more exactly, of the two sides being able to agree where it ran.
25
Woken by shouting in the street below, Nik rushed to the open window in time to catch “Pidory nemyetskiye!” – “Rotten German sods!” – delivered in a familiar voice, and saw Sakhno standing at the hotel entrance haranguing two men – one of them his obliging waiter of the evening before, now clearly the manager – and, dominating the entrance, a long, black limousine.
By the time Nik got to the front entrance, Sakhno and the vehicle had disappeared.
As Nik stood looking this way and that, hoping to God Sakhno hadn’t been arrested, he suddenly came around the corner of the hotel, puffy-faced, red-eyed, carrying a well-filled plastic bag in one hand, and a Walkman in the other.
“What’s up?” he asked, seeing Nik was barefooted.
“Your shouting. You woke me!”
“Let’s get to the room. I’ve had an arseful of these bloody Germans! Up on their hind legs, not a word of Russian between them! You’d think they’d won the war!”
“Wouldn’t they let you in?”
“They will now,” Sakhno said, throwing back the thick glass door.
The elderly manager watched with a frown.
“Why all the fuss?” Nik asked, when they reached their room.
“They were the fuss! Didn’t like the car.”
“What car?”
“The limo I bought yesterday. They had some beef about its blocking the entrance. Instead of being grateful for having it parked there. It’s a damned sight smarter than this hole.”
“Is this the car that was there when you were effing and blinding?”
“Yes, not one of their titchy VWs, and now at the back blocking the car park exit. So they can laugh that one off!”
He put the Walkman on the window-ledge and the carrier bag on the floor beside his bed.
“Where did you get the money?”
“The envelope. Four thousand DM was what they wanted for the car – I got it for two thousand eight hundred.”
“Where did you spend the night?”
“In the car. Lost my way. This morning I found the station and came on from there.”
Whatever next? Nik wondered. A plane hijack? With Sakhno out of funds anything was possible.
“Can you lend me two hundred?”
“Reading my thoughts?”
“Should have made it five hundred, perhaps.”
Nik handed over four fifties from his wallet, cheered by the thought that Sakhno seemed equal to anything.
“I’ll show you the town. It’s not a bad place. We’ll follow our noses, you having first treated me to breakfast.”
“Treat yourself. Breakfast’
s downstairs and included in the room price.”
Alone in the dining room, they stretched self-service to include preparing their sandwiches for the day.
“Some country this,” Sakhno conceded, tucking in. “Pity they don’t learn Russian at school.”
The car, all five metres of it, looked fine from a distance, but on closer inspection showed signs of extensive body work and efficient re-spraying. A surprising feature was that it had seats only for the driver and a passenger, and a rear door opening onto a vast load space level with the top of the two seats.
“Well?”
“Fine, except for passenger space. You could put in extra seating.”
“Sort of thing the Germans are good at. Just a question of money. Hop in.”
“Stop at the entrance. I’ll tell the old boy we’ll be back by 2.00, in case anyone wants us.”
Nik stepped from the car with a curious sense of pride. He was a different person, with a different past, a limousine and personal chauffeur. In the foyer he was brought speedily back to earth.
“You park that hearse outside my hotel again, and you and your chum are out on your ear!” the elderly manager announced grimly.
26
On his way home from the station, Viktor left a note for Ratko saying he would be in at lunchtime.
It was misty, and after the heat of Moscow, mild with a light breeze.
His night in a single sleeper had left him fresh and ready for work, border guards and customs having let him sleep, seeing the militia warrant card left ready with his passport. His bag with the two automatics had been under his bunk.
Ira, all smiles and kisses, prompted the suspicion that something was up.
In the living room Yana was asleep in her cot. On the table, expensive flowers, a bottle of Crimean muscat, and a telegram.
Some relative must have turned up, or be on their way, and would have to be met. Resigned, he reached for the telegram, and to his amazement read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARLING = DELAYED EXTRA DAY = HOME TOMORROW MORNING = LOVE VIKTOR.
Ira flung her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Yesterday would have been better, but all’s ready for tonight. Have a good trip?”
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