Sacrifice

by Graham Masterton

  Charles meanwhile had bent over, seized the first man’s tie, and dragged him up to a sitting position. The man was boggle-eyed, gasping, and scarcely able to breathe.

  ‘Let’s talk about that wage-packet, shall we?’ Charles demanded. ‘Let’s talk about who pays it.’

  The man said something strangled in Russian.

  ‘What?’ Charles snapped, tugging his necktie violently from side to side. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ya nyi panyimayu.’

  ‘You don’t understand? Do you understand “punch in the nose”?’

  ‘Oo myinya dornata. Oo myinya bol’v spinyeh.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Charles. ‘Serves you right for threatening ladies and old gentlemen.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Juanita. ‘What’s that he’s talking, Japanese?’

  ‘Russian,’ said Charles. ‘He says his back hurts.’

  ‘Is he a spy or something?’ asked Roger.

  Charles made a face. ‘Nothing so romantic. A hired thug; and not a very good one at that.’

  The man in the double-knit suit stared at Roger in horror and disbelief. Roger bared his teeth at him, and the man tried to shuffle away, crabwise, across the floor, until Charles tugged him back.

  ‘Who pays you? Kto?’

  ‘Ya nyi panyimayu.’

  ‘Vi gavarityi pa anglyski?’

  ‘Niet. Ya panyimayu nichyevo.’

  Charles released the man’s tie, and said to Roger, ‘Do you mind breaking his nose for me?’

  Roger didn’t hesitate. He grasped the man’s hair at the back, and punched him relentlessly in the nose. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the man fell back on the floor howling and kicking his legs.

  ‘You’re a hard man, Charles,’ said Roger, fluttering his eyelashes at him.

  ‘So they tell me. Can I use your phone?’

  ‘Did I ever deny you anything?’

  Charles gently patted his cheek. ‘Not that I can remember, Roger.’

  He stood behind the dusty curtains and phoned Jeppe. ‘Jeppe, you’re right. There’s something going down here, and it’s definitely Russian. I went to see Klarlund & Christensen, and I was followed on the way back. Two of them, a genuine couple of KGB boneheads. Well, I went to 7th Heaven, and Roger sorted them out for me. Nothing serious. A broken nose and a couple of throbbing nuts. Not including the psychological shock of being beaten up by the prettiest woman this side of Kattegat.’ Roger gave him a little finger-wave when he overheard this; Charles finger-waved back.

  Jeppe said, ‘What did you find out at Klarlund’s?’

  ‘Not much. But Nicholas Reed had an IBM terminal in his office; and it’s conceivable that Klarlund’s personnel files are all stored in their data bank. If you can find me a bagman who can access other people’s computers, then the chances are that I can get you what you want.’

  Jeppe was silent for a while. Charles said, ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, still here. I was just thinking, that’s all. It has to be somebody totally reliable. Jens Jørgensen is probably the best; but he’s got friends in the Ministry. We’re better off as far as security is concerned with Otto Glistrup.’

  ‘I remember Otto. The world’s most boring man.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  Charles turned around. The two KGB men were sitting side by side on the floor, with Roger standing over them swinging the baseball bat he always had ready in case any of his customers became too enthused by his act. ‘Do you want me to hit them again?’ asked Roger. The KGB man in the double-knit suit looked up in horror, his face and his shirtfront a dark splash of blood. The man in the brown leather jacket was still rocking backwards and forwards in pain.

  ‘What am I going to do with these two apes?’ Charles asked Jeppe.

  ‘I don’t think you have any choice,’ Jeppe replied. ‘You’re going to have to let them go. If you call in the Politi, they’re going to want to know why they were following you, and what’s been going on. Then, sooner or later, it’ll all get back to the Ministry, and that’ll be the end of me.’

  Charles said, ‘Okay, if you say so. But you’re going to have to get me a gun. I can’t come rushing up here looking for Roger, every time they start following me around.’

  ‘I’ll get you one,’ said Jeppe. ‘Anything special?’

  ‘I’ll leave it to you. But something big, that goes boom when you fire it.’

  They arranged to meet at ten o’clock that evening by the ferris wheel in the Tivoli gardens. Jeppe meanwhile would see if he could find Otto Glistrup. Charles hung up the phone, and said to Roger, ‘Let’s have some of that warm schnapps. You two, ukhadityi, get lost.’

  Miserably, the two men limped out of the club, and made their way slowly back down the stairs to the street. Roger was re-glueing one of his eyelashes in his compact mirror, while Juanita went to find the bottle of schnapps. ‘It’s behind all those dirty knickers somewhere,’ called Roger airily.

  ‘Well,’ said Charles, after Juanita had poured out the drinks, ‘how can I thank you?’

  ‘You could take me dancing. How about the Kakadu?’

  Charles smiled. ‘I don’t think so. It’s not that I mind going dancing with you. It’s just that I don’t dance so good these days. How about I buy you dinner next week? I’ll call you.’

  Roger finished fixing his eyelash, and said, ‘You’re an angel, Charles. You always were.’

  When Charles got back to his flat, Agneta was waiting for him, and there was a savoury aroma of hönse kasserolle. She was wearing a white low-necked T-shirt without a bra, and a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt pedal-pushers, in red. As soon as he unlocked the front door, she came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Charles? Why are you so late? I’ve been worried.’

  He kissed her forehead. ‘I met some friends.’

  ‘There’s blood on your jacket. What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m okay. Nothing’s happened. It’s not my blood. Say, something smells good.’

  He went into the kitchen to find himself a beer. Agneta followed him, and said, ‘You haven’t been getting involved in work again, have you?’

  ‘Me? Work? You’ve got to be kidding.’ He tugged the ring-pull on a can of Special Brew, and poured it into a tall glass.

  Agneta said, ‘Don’t lie to me, Charles. Not to me. You’re working again. I know it.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m helping Jeppe a little, that’s all.’

  She came up close to him, and touched his face with her fingertips, as genty as if she were touching glass. Her eyes were very green and he found that he couldn’t look at them without turning away. ‘So, it’s Jeppe,’ she said. ‘I always said that man would be the death of you.’

  Charles didn’t know what to tell her. He felt guilty, because he had long ago promised Agneta that he would never get himself involved with intelligence work again. But he also felt a familiar tightening in his heart, an exhilarating, alarming feeling that he was once again a player in that vast invisible game without rules; that game of deception and bluff and sudden extraordinary’ danger; that game without which the world could never be safe, and never be peaceful, no matter how uneasy the peace might be.

  Seven

  It was a dazzlingly bright afternoon at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport when the British Airways 747B taxied in to the terminal. John Bishop had slept for most of the flight: he had been up until two o’clock in the morning finishing off the programming for Tovarish!, which Michael was planning to unveil for the first time this week.

  Michael had been unable to sleep. He had tried to read a copy of Newsweek, then the first three pages of the Jeffrey Archer novel which Margaret had bought for him. But he kept thinking about Wallings, and the guidance complex out at the Central Airport, at which he was supposed to ‘take a shufti’. He looked across at John, lying back in his seat with his mouth open and his horn-rimmed spectacles perched sideways, a 28-year-old schoolboy with an overwhelming passion for computers and fishing and very
little else, except occasional forays to the theatre with a strident girlfriend called Sonya who bred golden retrievers and habitually wore Wellington boots, even when she was cooking supper. Michael often wondered whether John was still, a virgin. It wouldn’t have surprised him. His conversation was confined almost exclusively to floppy disks and dry flies.

  ‘John,’ Michael nudged him. ‘John, we’ve arrived.’

  John opened his eyes and stared at him. ‘By George,’ he said, ‘I was having a dream about my old woodwork master.’

  ‘You are the only person in the entire cosmos who still says “by George”,’ said Michael.

  John adjusted his spectacles, and squinched up his eyes to look out of the window. ‘Well, now, look at that. The Soviet Union. Looks modern enough, doesn’t it? Quite a few cars around.’

  They were slowly disembarked by a smiling British Airways stewardess. ‘Goodbye, sir, hope you enjoyed your flight.’

  ‘Slept,’ said John. Then they were ushered through to the immigration hall, where they waited for half an hour to have their little blue visa books checked by a uniformed soldier with a green band around his cap. The soldier said, ‘You are coming for the Toys Exhibition? Yes?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Michael, half-afraid that he would blurt out something about the guidance complex, too. ‘We’re toymakers.’

  ‘Ha!’ said the soldier, handing back their visas, and smiling. ‘Father Christmuss!’

  They were directed through to customs. A customs officer with shining brilliantined hair said, ‘Sigareti? Sigari? Tabak?’

  ‘Don’t smoke,’ said John. ‘Makes you cough, and that frightens the fish.’

  The customs officer stared at him coldly, as if he suspected him of trying to smuggle some kind of subversive Western lunacy into the Soviet Union. ‘Books, papers, political material?’ he asked, without taking his eyes off John.

  It was then that they were approached by a smart uniformed Intourist girl with cheeks as Slavic as a squirrel’s and an energetic striding walk. She was carrying a clipboard, and as she came up she checked the clipboard and said loudly, ‘Mr Bee Shop? Mr Townee Ent? Welcome to the Soviet Union! All your baggage and your freight will be cleared for you.’ She said something in Russian to the customs official, who replied, ‘Pryikrashna, fine,’ and wiped his brilliantined head with the palm of his hand, and sniffed.

  ‘You can come with me now,’ said the Intourist girl, leading the way briskly through Terminal 11, which was echoing and bright. There was a pungent smell of Russian tobacco and disinfectant. On either side, there were souvenir shops, their glass shelves crowded with red and yellow matryoshka dolls and Ukrainian embroidered blouses and enamelled Palekh boxes.

  ‘You have a guide arranged for you, her name is Miss Konstantinova,’ the Intourist girl told them in the same loud, unmodulated voice. ‘You are booked into the Hotel Rossiya, de-luxe class, and Miss Konstantinova will drive you there. She has already arranged all the formalities of your car rental, except that you will have to produce your driving licence, and sign your Ingosstrakh insurance form, if you require insurance.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Michael. ‘The VIP treatment.’

  ‘Yes, correct, VIP,’ said the Intourist girl, without smiling. She took them to the Intourist office, decorated with large coloured posters of the Kremlin and Zagorsk. ‘Please sit down; we will not keep you waiting for long.’ She picked up a phone, and had a lengthy conversation in Russian that seemed to involve endless repetition of the name ‘Rufina’.

  It was twenty minutes before Miss Konstantinova appeared. She came into the office, a small dark-haired girl in a white blouse and a grey skirt, and said, ‘zdrastvuytye. Kak pozhivayete?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Michael, ‘I’m afraid my Russian is confined to “da” and “nyet” and “gde uborniye”.’

  Miss Konstantinova smiled. ‘I am pulling at your leg,’ she said. ‘That is, good day and how are you in Russian. You will have to learn how to say it for yourself. Moscow is a city of manners.’

  ‘Oh, well, then. Kak pozhi-whatever-it-is to you,’ Michael replied, inclining his head. ‘This is Mr Bishop. I’m Mr Townsend.’

  They shook hands. ‘Your car is waiting’, said Miss Konstantinova. ‘I have had your luggage stowed for you in the boot. Please follow.’

  ‘This is all very efficient of you,’ Michael remarked, as Miss Konstantinova led them through the terminal.

  ‘Well, Igrushek 2000 is a very important exhibition,’ Miss Konstantinova replied. ‘We are trying to make your visit here as comfortable as we can.’

  She turned and smiled at him, and for the first time Michael saw how pretty she was. Her hair was drawn sharply back from a classically-featured Russian face, high cheekbones, slanting brown eyes, and a short straight nose, as well as the kind of slightly-pouting provocative lips that looked as if they were on the very edge of blowing a kiss. Her blouse was plain, but obviously expensive, and her grey skirt was well-tailored over her narrow hips. Michael was surprised to recognize the perfume: Madame Rochas. Intourist guides must be well paid, or well rewarded.

  ‘Can I change some money?’ asked John, struggling along behind with two large vinyl bags from Millet’s and an armful of computer magazines.

  ‘You will have no difficulty doing that at your hotel,’ Miss Konstantinova told him. ‘Just be sure to take with you your passport and your currency-control certificate. And, please remember, it is illegal to deal privately in currency.’

  ‘We’re very law-abiding,’ said Michael.

  ‘Of course,’ nodded Miss Konstantinova. ‘I was not suggesting thiefage on your part.’

  She led them outside. The sun was bright, although there was a fresh north-eastern wind blowing. They crossed the terminal forecourt until they reached a car park, where a white Volga 22 with blue nylon seats was waiting for them. Miss Konstantinova helped them in, and then settled herself in the driving-seat. ‘You would do well to watch how I drive. The regulations may be unfamiliar to you. But, it is only twenty miles to the city centre. So please relax.’

  The transmission whinnied like a tank as Miss Konstantinova drove them away from the airport, and headed southeast along the broad straight highway of Leningradsky Prospekt towards Moscow.

  ‘You didn’t bring jeans, did you?’ Miss Konstantinova asked Michael.

  ‘Jeans? No. I thought about it, but there wasn’t room in my suitcase.’

  Miss Konstantinova nodded. ‘These days, you should bring Adidas training shoes. All of Moscow youth is wild for Adidas training shoes. When they want to say something is wonderful, they even have a word for it, Adidasovsky!’

  ‘I’ve got some Hush Puppies,’ said John, from the back seat. ‘They’re rather worn out, though.’

  ‘Ushapupis?’ asked Miss Konstantinova, frowning, then laughed.

  Eventually, through the clear and gilded afternoon, Moscow arose in front of them, far more majestically and more strangely than Michael had ever imagined. First, the concrete walls of the Dinamo Stadium, then, as they drove towards the centre, the grey Stalinesque spires of the Hotel Ukraina to the south, and the towers of Moscow University (‘that is where 32,000 young people study,’ Miss Konstantinova informed them, ‘and there are more than 45,000 halls and rooms and laboratories,’); and at last the golden onion-domes of the Kremlin Palace, the red-brick heights of Spassky Tower, with its famous gilded clock, and the bizarre turbaned turrets of St Basil’s Cathedral.

  Miss Konstantinova drove them across the cobbles of Red Square, past the huge GUM department store, and at last to the banks of the Moskva River, where it curved around in front of the Hotel Rossiya. Michael was rather disappointed to discover that the Rossiya was a flat-fronted modern hotel, without the towers and spires and revolutionary stars with which the Hotel Ukraina was decorated. But Miss Konstantinova told him that they were better off here. ‘In the Hotel Ukraina, the lifts do not work so well, and there is no stairs. You can spend some hours gett
ing in and out.’ Michael climbed out of the car, and looked down towards the river, shining brilliantly now in the four o’clock sun, so that the pleasure-boats which plied their way under the concrete bridges were silhouetted black.

  Although it was May, there was a keenness to the wind that made Michael shiver. Miss Konstantinova came across and stood next to him, and said, ‘This is your first time here, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘I feel very far away from home, if you don’t think that’s rude of me.’

  ‘Of course not. I understand.’

  John came over, and accidentally dropped a sheaf of computer magazines on to the pavement. ‘I could do with a cup of tea.’

  ‘Let me help you register,’ said Miss Konstantinova. ‘Come with me, I will show you. You will have to give the desk-clerk your passport, also your Intourist vouchers for accommodation. Then he will give you your propoosk.’

  They entered the hotel. The lobby was as wide as a playing-field, and carpeted in declarative red. Miss Konstantinova led them over to the wide marble-topped desk, and helped them to fill in their registration forms. The nodding desk-clerk gave them each a propoosk, which turned out to be a pass with their name and their room-number on it. Guests were not given keys. Instead, they had to present their propoosk to the woman attendant on their floor, and she, the dezhurnaya, the keeper of all the keys, would admit them to their rooms.

  Miss Konstantinova said, with a detached little smile, ‘Your dezhurnaya will do much for you, Mr Townsend. She will call taxis, make tea, take messages; but she also has the right to enter your room with force if she believes that you are committing a moral offence.’

  ‘You mean like sleeping with no pyjamas on?’ asked Michael, and felt rather flirtatious and sophisticated for having said so.

  Miss Konstantinova, however, appeared to take him literally. ‘Sleeping without pyjamas is not considered a moral offence. But having a woman in your room who is not your married wife, well, that is a different matter. But this will not be the case, I am sure.’