Sacrifice

by Graham Masterton

  Charles backed his way around the room, until he reached the window. He groped behind him, feeling for the latch. Krov’ iz Nosu’s wire went twing, twing, twing. Krov’ iz Nosu’s face remained impassive; as burned as a side of beef, merciless. The sort of face to which it would be impossible to appeal for clemency.

  Charles said, ‘I don’t know anything about this. Honest. This is nothing to do with me. I’m the janitor. I only work here. Can I carry on cleaning up, please? Pozhalusta?’

  The huge disfigured Russian said nothing, but knocked aside a chair, and continued to bear down on Charles with his steel wire flexing, and an expression on his face that could almost have been interpreted as a smile.

  ‘Pozhalusta,’ he repeated, in a breathy voice. In Russian, the word for ‘please’ could also mean ‘you’re welcome’.

  Charles eased open the window-latch. Thank God for Danish efficiency. In an American building, the latch would have probably been locked, or seized-up, or painted over. He hoped to God that he could remember the karate move known as ‘the diving cormorant’.

  Krov’ iz Nosu paused for a moment, building up power like an electrical sub-station. Then he rushed at Charles, stretching his steel wire out wide, just to make certain that if he didn’t catch Charles’ neck, or his chest, he would at least snag it around his arm. Charles thought wildly: diving cormorant, here goes.

  Charles dived heavily into the floor as if he were diving into a swimming-pool. As he did so, he caught Krov’ iz Nosu’s left ankle, and heaved it up and over as forcefully as he could manage. Krov’ iz Nosu tripped, stumbled, reached out to save himself, and hit the tilting window. The window, unlatched, swung open, and Krov’ iz Nosu tumbled halfway out of it; grappling at the outside sill to prevent himself from falling into the street, three storeys below. Charles scrambled immediately on to his feet, and seized Krov’ iz Nosu’s ankles, wrenching them upwards to force him to lose his balance.

  There was a tussle between them of wolf-like grunts and high-pitched shouts and cries of stress. Charles gripped both, of Krov’ iz Nosu’s big hairy ankles and shook them violently. Then he pushed them forward inch by inch until the Russian was right on the edge of losing his balance. But Krov’ iz Nosu kicked at him, and began to lever himself back into the room. Charles could see his face, glaring and yellow and burned, staring at him upside-down through the window-pane.

  With a sudden surge of energy fuelled by fear, Charles pushed at Krov’ iz Nosu’s legs again; and abruptly the Russian was gone. No warning; no cry. Just a rush of air from the streets below; a pause; and then a faint thud.

  Charles stood up straight, his chest bruised from his inelegant ‘cormorant-dive’, sweating in sheets. He leaned out of the open window, but it was too dark to see anything. Krov’ iz Nosu had gone, and that was all that he cared about. Gone, broken, and dead.

  Charles knelt down beside Otto, feeling Otto’s chilled blood soaking into the knee of his trousers.

  ‘Otto,’ he said. ‘I’m calling the ambulance, okay?’

  Otto said nothing; but Charles could tell that he was still alive. He kept gasping; in high, shocked gasps. Charles went to the phone and dialled 0041, the number of Copenhagen’s emergency medical service. While he was waiting for an answer, he lit a cigarette, one-handed.

  At last, a calm woman’s voice said, ‘Emergency medical service?’ Charles told her, ‘Get me an ambulance, please, as quick as you can. Klarlund & Christensen, right next door to Den Permanente. You can’t miss it, no, there’s a crashed car right in the front of it. We’re up on the third floor.’

  The woman was about to ask him for more details, but he put down the phone, and then he tugged off his tie, and crawled on his hands and knees across the floor to rejoin Otto. ‘Otto, the ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine.’ Otto was shaking and whining, and Charles could tell from experience that he was going into deep shock. He remembered a 19-year-old boy in Korea, a young infantryman with his groin blown open by a Communist grenade. The same shuddering, the same whining. Charles wound his tie around Otto’s upper arm, and thought to himself, maybe it’s the same war, too.

  He used a steel ruler from Nicholas Reed’s desk to tighten a tourniquet around Otto’s arm. There was so much blood splattered everywhere that he couldn’t tell if he had managed to staunch the pumping artery or not. He wiped his hands on the carpet but his fingers still stuck together. He was shocked himself, he was beginning to feel cold, and the bruises that he had sustained in his struggle with Krov’ a Kysheknyik were aching dully.

  He went back to the desk and picked up the phone. Coughing, he dialled Jeppe’s number. The phone rang for a long time before anybody answered it. ‘Jeppe?’ he said.

  A deep, harsh woman’s voice answered.

  ‘Nobody of that name here. You must have a wrong number.’

  ‘That’s 16 14 06?’

  ‘That’s correct. But there is nobody named Jeppe here.’

  Charles wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. ‘Are you certain about that? Jeppe Rifbjerg?’

  ‘Quite certain. Now, please, goodnight.’

  Charles put down the phone. He drew tightly at the last inch of his cigarette, then crushed it out. He looked across at Otto, huddled on the floor, and hoped very much that he wasn’t beginning to feel frightened. The game hadn’t often frightened him, in the past; especially when it was nothing more than intelligence-gathering, deceptions and feints and bribes. But this was something different. In this, he could detect that frozen dark wind of Communist restlessness that had come before Hungary, and before Czechoslovakia. In his mind, he could imagine looking eastwards through the night, and seeing spread out before him the vast helmeted armies of the Soviet Union, pale-faced and grim. Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars.

  He heard a door close, somewhere else in the building. He heard footsteps, too calm and too unhurried for ambulance men. He listened, and his ear could detect that faintest of sounds that a human body makes as it moves quietly through the night. Cautiously, he stepped over Otto, and into the corridor. There was no doubt about it. He had done as much as he could for Otto. It was time to leave.

  He made his way quickly to the staircase. He heard a sharply-accented voice calling, ‘Lyosha?’ He froze, with his hand on the staircase door. Lyosha was the Russian diminutive for Aleksei; and Krov’ iz Nosu’s real name was Aleksei Novikov. Or had been. Now, with any luck, he was dead baranina.

  ‘Lyosha?’ called the voice again. Charles opened the door to the staircase and cautiously descended. He felt very old and sweaty; Otto’s blood was drying on his hands and on the knees of his trousers. In the distance, he could hear an ambulance siren. He paused for breath at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, listening, but there was no more sound from the third floor.

  ‘Dear God in heaven,’ he whispered under his breath.

  And where in hell was Jeppe?

  Ten

  She called him at six. He opened his eyes, frowned, reached for the phone, and said, ‘Yes?’ Then he twisted around and looked at the bed beside him, and realized that at some time during the night, she must have got up and left him.

  ‘Michael? This is Rufina.’

  ‘Where are you? I thought you were here.’

  ‘I am downstairs in the lobby. I have had my breakfast already. I have to go out this morning to BI1HX – vay day en kha. We have a numerous party of French engineers to show around the blast-furnace exhibition.’

  ‘Will you be long?’ Michael picked up his watch and checked the time.

  ‘I will be back by eleven-thirty to take you out to the Toys Exhibition. So, you should not worry. You and John could do some shopping perhaps at TSUM, or one of the Beryozka shops. You will not have many more chances to buy souvenirs.’

  ‘All right,’ said Michael. He didn’t know what else to say to her. He certainly didn’t want to say ‘I love you.’ But it had been a night of slow concentrated love-making, during which
he had experienced feelings and sensations which for many people would have been the nearest they had ever got to being in love. He was certainly infatuated with her, whatever John had to say about him being naïve.

  He showered, dressed in a plain white Van Heusen shirt and grey trousers, and called John. They went down to breakfast together, not saying much. Their dezhurnaya grinned at them with one front tooth missing, and said, ‘Zdrastvuytye,’ and they chorused ‘zdrastvuytye,’ in return.

  John took off his spectacles and polished them with his handkerchief as they went down in the creaking lift. ‘Rufina not joining us?’ he asked diffidently.

  ‘She’s gone off to vay day en kha. The exhibition of economic achievement of the USSR. Apparently she has some French people to take around.’

  ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t meet some Charles Aznavour type, and give you the elbow.’

  ‘John, there’s no need to be so bloody sour about it.’

  John put his spectacles back on, and sniffed.

  Michael said, ‘We’ve got three hours free. Perhaps we should try out the Metro.’

  ‘I’ve still got some work to do on that Chicken-and-Egg game.’

  ‘You can do that later. Come on, John, we’re only here for nine more days.’

  The lift reached the lobby, and the doors slid open. John said, ‘Did you call Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘All right, is she?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  John said, as they sat down at the breakfast table, and the waiter brought them the breakfast menu, ‘Expect she’s looking forward to having you home.’

  Michael said, with a despairing laugh, ‘Drop it, will you? I want a business partner, not a travelling conscience.’

  John was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘All right. I’m sorry. I just like Margaret, that’s all. And I like you, too.’

  ‘You like Rufina, that’s your trouble.’

  John sat back in his chair and looked out over the river. It was a dull overcast day, with clouds like heavy grey quilts pressing down on the distant spires of Novodevichy Convent and Moscow University. ‘She reminds me of my music teacher,’ he said, abstractedly, as if that explained everything.

  After they had paid for their breakfast with their Intourist vouchers, and received a small saucerful of kopeks in change, they went upstairs for their jackets and raincoats, and then ventured out. A damp warm wind was blowing from the south-west; it felt more like early October than May. They crossed Red Square, and entered the Metro at Sverdlova Square station. They were nudged forward through the turnstiles by a long line of shuffling Russians. Michael inserted 5 kopeks, the standard fare for any distance, and at last struggled through. John got the tail of his coat caught in the turnstile, and had to be tugged free by a friendly woman twice his size.

  The Metro station was crowded, echoing, and decorated like a glittering palace, with chandeliers and gilded plasterwork on the arched ceilings. The floor gleamed; the bronze handrails were highly polished, and there was no litter anywhere. They descended an express escalator that seemed to plunge them down forever into the bowels of Mother Russia. As they waited to reach the platforms, a teenage boy with Cliff Richard glasses tapped Michael on the shoulder, and asked him, ‘Any Adidas, man?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Michael, shaking his head.

  ‘Rokmusik kazety? T-shirt?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Where are you going, man? Want somebody to guide you? I speak excellent translation. You want perevodchik?’

  ‘I think we can find our own way, thanks.’

  ‘Okay, that’s cool,’ said the boy.

  They made their way on to the Metro platform. John said, ‘Where are we going, anyway?’

  ‘We’re just looking around,’ said Michael. He frowned at the Metro map, and was appreciative that the Cyrillic characters for ‘Airport’ were no more daunting than АЗРОПОРТ. The first train rushed into the station, destination Rechnoy Vokzal. Michael nudged John forward, and they pushed their way into the car, and found a seat. The tall teenage boy stood opposite them, and winked when they glanced his way. Michael discreetly looked around at his fellow-passengers, and thought that he had never seen such a collection of cheap, shapeless clothes in one underground car in his life; although their wearers seemed cheerful enough, and one man opposite was telling a joke that had his two lady companions screaming with laughter.

  John said, ‘Sounds hilarious, whatever it is.’ The train approached Gorkovskaya, and he checked his watch, and said, ‘Come on, I think we’ve seen enough of this. Let’s go and do some shopping. Didn’t Rufina say something about Kalinin Avenue?’

  ‘We’re going the opposite way,’ said Michael.

  ‘Well, I hate to be a nuisance, but I’d really like to know why.’

  ‘There’s something we have to do.’

  ‘What? What do you mean, there’s something we have to do? You’re not running errands for Rufina, are you?’

  Michael said, ‘Let’s wait until we get where we’re going; then I’ll tell you.’

  John said, furiously, ‘I’m not waiting for anything. I’m getting out at the next station.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Do you want to bet?’

  Almost as he spoke, the train slammed noisily into Gorkovskaya. Michael snatched at John’s arm, but to the undisguised curiosity of the passengers all around them, John shook himself free, and stalked out of the car doors. ‘John!’ Michael barked. But John ignored him, and before Michael could go after him, he had been absorbed into the crowds, the train doors had dosed with a hiss, and the train began to move away. Michael turned around in a last effort to see where John had gone, and briefly glimpsed the back of his old corduroy jacket. He also saw the teenage boy in the Cliff Richard glasses, following John towards the exit. As the train sped along the platform, the teenage boy looked around at Michael, caught his eye for a second and smiled. A strange, flat, knowing smile.

  Michael found himself joggling through the deep tunnels of the Moscow Metro in a car crowded with staring, Slavic faces. He didn’t know how far down he was: the actual depth of the Metro was a military secret. But he began to feel severely claustrophobic, with shoulders pressing close up to him on either side, and unblinking faces staring at him as if he were peculiar, or mad. He said, out loud, ‘Anglyiski,’ and smiled, and nodded; but the faces remained unmoved, unsmiling; and unrelentingly curious. Every breath that Michael took in smelled of sweat, and stale Balkan tobacco, and some other odour that was distinctively Russian. He had tried to analyze it, and had come up time and time again with the same possible ingredients: cardboard, pickled herrings, and furniture polish.

  The Metro ran quickly through the stations which only three days before, Wallings had listed on the fingers of one hand. Mayakovskaya, Byelorusskaya, Dinamo, and at last АЗРОПОРТ. Michael stood up, and waited for the doors to open. He realized that he didn’t have to do this: that he could just as easily pretend that Rufina had never left him alone, and that he had never had the opportunity to come out here. Yet a strange compulsion made him step out of the train; not the least part of which was a sense of loyalty to his country. The larger part, of course, was fear.

  He stepped out of the car. The doors closed behind him. There was a rush of noise as the train streamed down the tunnel again, towards Sokol. He was about to make his way towards the exit ВЫХОП when a flat-faced man in a short bronze raincoat and a grey wide-brimmed hat came up and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Mr Townsend?’

  ‘What of it?’ asked Michael. Another man was approaching him from the far end of the platform, dressed in a brown pinstriped suit with flapping trousers.

  ‘Izvinite, Mr Townsend, excuse me, but we have been told to take you straight away to the Toy Exhibition, in case you are late. Is Mr Bishop not with you?’

  ‘I’d like to know what this is all about,’ Michael retorted. ‘I only came al
ong here for the Metro ride. It’s five minutes past nine, if you care to take a look at that clock over there, and I don’t have to show up at the Toy Exhibition until eleven o’clock at the very earliest.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it seems that you are required there. Would you come along with us, please?’

  It didn’t seem to Michael that he had much choice. He reluctantly allowed the two men to escort him through the exit, up the escalator, and out on to Leningradsky Prospekt. A fine drizzle had begun to fall, and Michael was glad of his raincoat. The wide street was slicked with wet.

  ‘Mr Bishop is back at the Hotel Rossiya?’ asked one of the men, wiping rain from his face with his hand.

  ‘Mr Bishop could be anywhere. He came with me on the Metro as far as Gorkovskaya, then he got off.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘Of course not; but there was nothing I could do to stop him.’

  A black Volga 21 drew into the curbside, its tappets clattering, and the man in the bronze raincoat opened the rear door for Michael, and said, ‘Please to get in.’

  ‘Can you tell me what’s going on first?’

  ‘Please. It will be better for all of us if there is no fuss. And the sooner we can drive back to Gorkovskaya, the more chance there is of finding Mr Bishop.’

  Michael reluctantly climbed into the car. The man in the bronze raincoat sat heavily next to him, while the man in the brown pinstriped suit got into the front, and buckled up his seatbelt. The car was being driven by a swarthy man with greasy hair. Michael couldn’t see the driver’s face, but he could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. Hooded, watchful. My God, thought Michael, I’ve been taken in by the KGB. They probably knew why I was going out to Kholinka airfield all along.