‘I hope you’re going to pay for this call,’ said the barman.
‘Give me another drink,’ Charles told him.
There was a clicking on the line, and then a deep man’s voice said, ‘Give your name, please.’
‘Charles Krogh. I’m calling from Copenhagen, Denmark.’
‘Yes, from the Københavner bar, on Gothergade.’
Charles said, ‘Fast trace. I’m impressed. At least you take care of yourselves.’
‘What’s on your mind, Mr Krogh?’
‘I’ve just received a message that was left for me here by Nicholas Reed, when he was at the Hvidsten Inn, in Jutland.’
‘What was the message?’
‘Lamprey, that’s all.’
‘You know something about Nicholas?’
Charles blew out smoke. ‘I know who systemized him. I was checking up on his background with Jeppe Rifbjerg. Now Rifbjerg’s gone vacant, and the same guys who systemized Nicholas are trying to do the same to me.’
There was a pause. The long-distance wire sang a mournful, warbling song. At length the man said, ‘It was you who tried that bag job on Klarlund & Christensen?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, we need to have a word with you, Mr Krogh. Stay where you are for a short while; I’ll send somebody to contact you.’
‘Just answer me one question,’ said Charles.
‘If I can.’
‘Just tell me how heavy this is, on a scale of one to ten.’
‘We’re not sure. We have our suspicions. We may be receiving some valuable new information very shortly.’
‘But, heavy?’
‘Yes, Mr Krogh. Heavy.’
Charles put down the phone, took DKr 25 out of his pocket, and tossed them on to the bar. The barman scooped them up, and nodded in appreciation.
‘I always pay my way,’ said Charles. ‘Now, what about another drink, on the house?’
Fourteen
Michael was dozing on the sofa when Lev shook him by the shoulder and said, ‘Mr Townsend? We have news of your friend.’
Michael opened his eyes. For a split-second, he couldn’t imagine where he was. His mouth felt dry, and the rough fabric of the sofa had imprinted a red pattern across his cheek. He sat up slowly, and coughed. The apartment was stale with cigarette smoke and sweat. Underarm deodorant was not considered an essential in the Soviet Union, and it was usually impossible to buy it at the local aptyeka.
Lev said, ‘One of our people has just called us to say that your friend is at the KGB office on Kazakova Ulitsa, and that apparently he is being questioned. Miss Konstantinova is there, too.’ He checked his cheap steel wristwatch. ‘They are to be driven at four o’clock to Zagorsk, just as we expected.’
Michael said, ‘You’re still sure that there’s nothing I can do?’
Lev sat down beside him, and laid a hand on his arm. He had short, stubby fingers, with broad, close-cut nails. ‘Mr Townsend, there may be; but there is always an element of danger. The safest thing for you to do is stay in hiding, at least as long as it takes for us to get you out of Russia.’
‘It’s just that I feel responsible,’ said Michael. ‘It was my idea for us to come and exhibit here in Moscow. Now the whole thing’s gone wrong; John’s been virtually kidnapped. I’m stuck here; not to mention all the stock and prototypes we’ve lost.’
Lev said, ‘We have been considering the possibility of rescuing your friend before he reaches Zagorsk.’
‘Rescuing him? How?’
‘Well, there is some considerable risk involved, for all of us. But he will be driven there in a KGB car, probably with one or two militsia outriders, but no more protection than that. After all, what would be the point?’
‘You’re not suggesting an ambush?’ asked Michael.
‘We have discussed it.’
‘Can you do such a thing, in the Soviet Union? I mean, could you possibly get away with it?’
‘My dear Mr Townsend, the Soviet Union is vast. There are miles of road on which you can drive for hours without seeing anybody at all. The road to Zagorsk, in places, is no exception. We were discussing the possibility of attacking your friend’s car just south of Tekstil’sciki; and then making our escape not west, as the KGB and the militsia would expect us to do, but east, to Scolkovo, and then doubling back during the night.’
Michael said, ‘Do you think I could have a cup of coffee?’
‘There’s some tea in the samovar in the kitchen. I think that you will find it quite fresh.’
Michael eased himself up from the sofa and walked through to the cluttered kitchen. A blonde-haired girl in baggy jeans and a check shirt was spooning tvorog cheese out of a dish, and a man was leaning against the door smoking and talking to her very earnestly, as if he were trying to persuade her to go to bed with him, or change her political opinions.
Michael rinsed a glass under the tap and poured himself a cup of tea. It was tepid, but all he needed was something to wash out his mouth with.
‘You could get us both out of the country?’ he asked Lev.
‘If you are both prepared to assume the risks.’
‘And what about the risks to you?’
Lev shrugged. ‘We accept those risks as part of being members of Lamprey. Also, we would very much like to talk to Rufina Konstantinova.’
‘I see,’ said Michael. He walked back into the living-room. ‘And after you’ve talked to her, what then?’
‘Does that really concern you?’
‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘As a matter of fact, it does.’
Lev looked at him with pale, penetrating eyes. ‘You’re not in love with her, are you?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’
‘Well, perhaps not. As long as your holiday romance doesn’t jeopardize you or any of my people.’
Lev said something in Russian to the girl in the kitchen, something very long and involved that seemed to include endless repetition of the word avtomobilya. The girl nodded, and nodded, although when Lev had finished she came back with an equally lengthy and involved reply that sounded frankly argumentative.
At last. Lev said, ‘We think the risks may be pretty good. In other words, if we ambush the KGB car quickly and unexpectedly, and leave them no time for consideration, we may get away with it. But, of course, you will have to come with us, since we will take you straight to the Finnish border as soon as we have retrieved your friend; or even if we fail to retrieve him.’
‘Supposing the police track you down?’
‘My dear Mr Townsend, you talk as if this kind of thing is not happening in the USSR all the time. There have been scores of attacks on KGB agents in the past twenty or thirty years, sometimes by foreign hit-men, quite often by the Soviet dissident movement. You don’t seriously believe that a regime as repressive as that of the Politburo could have survived for so long unscathed?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Michael. He sipped more tea. Then he said to Lev, ‘Do you have any idea what’s going on? Why the British are allowing the Russians to keep people like John?’
‘Well, we have some theories,’ Lev told him. ‘The least provocative theory is that the British are anxious to improve trade links with the USSR, because of the gradual break-up of the Common Market, and that they are offering some of their best scientific talent as bait.’
‘Do you believe that?’ asked Michael.
‘Not myself, no. I believe that something far more serious is happening. I believe that we are witnessing the first moves in a major re-alignment of world politics, the first major realignment since the Russian Revolution. You see, priorities change, international economic needs flow like great currents beneath the surface of diplomacy. Nations alter and grow in the same way that people do. The old East-West confrontation has been outdated since the late 1950s, and a radical change is long overdue. Dulles and Krushchev have been buried for years, my friend. We are now living in an age of computers; politicia
ns are almost irrelevant. So here is the world. How would a computer divide up the world, for the maximum benefit of all? Not the way in which the French and the English tried to divide it in the 19th century; not the way in which Hitler and Stalin tried to divide it; not the way it was divided at Yalta. A computer would divide it according to today’s practical needs. A computer would divide it according to today’s anxieties and today’s fears. Differently, you see, from the way it was done in years gone by. And that is what I believe is happening: the re-division of the world; the changing of international boundaries and alignments. The world can no longer bear the pressure of a cold war. It has become too expensive, too burdensome both on men and resources, for the sake of protecting political systems that are decades out of date. At what period in world history have two opposing regimes remained so statically and so unbendingly at loggerheads with each other, building up great arsenals of weapons against each other, and yet never actually fighting each other, face to face? So much has changed, so many things have altered. Morals, technology, world events. No, my friend, a major change is about to take place, something that will shake the very earth, and the taking of your friend is part of it.’
Michael said nothing at first. He went to the window, and looked down on the narrow gap between this block of apartments, and the next. Old post-war apartment-blocks, grey and unprepossessing, Moscow at its saddest. You could see the same kind of building in London, and New York. Blocks put up in a time of optimism and determination, when the memory of the war was still fresh, and everybody was convinced that it would never happen again. Michael thought: they might just as well have tried to wish away cancer. Was it for this that I went every day to my primary school in South Croydon, in my cropped haircut and grey flannel shorts? Was it for this that I studied and played and cried, and religiously read every copy of the Eagle, and never missed a single episode of Journey Into Space on the radio? He suddenly missed Margaret and Duncan, and wished bitterly that he had never thought of coming to Russia.
Lev laid a hand on his shoulder, as if he understood through mental osmosis what Michael was thinking.
‘We have no choice, my friend. We are like grains of sand in the hour-glass, you and me.’ He pronounced it with a hard ‘h’ – ‘hower-glass’. ‘When the’ hour-glass is turned upside-down, we have no alternative but to tumble through with all of the other grains of sand.’
Michael nodded. ‘Can you show me how to use one of those guns?’
‘The AKM?’ Lev asked him, surprised. ‘Such a thing is not for you, my friend.’
‘Can you show me how to use it?’
‘Of course; it is simple enough. It was designed for use by untutored people.’
Lev said something in Russian to the young man who was sitting on the sofa smoking a filter-tipped cigarette. The young man reached behind him and hefted the automatic rifle in his hand, tossing it over to Lev, who caught it, and then handed it to Michael. The rifle was unexpectedly heavy; it weighed over nine pounds, and it smelled of grease.
‘The lever on the side controls the rate of fire,’ said Lev. ‘Up, and it won’t fire at all. In the centre, and it fires automatic. Down, and it fires single-shot. This catch here, at the front of the trigger-guard, releases the magazine. All you have to know, apart from that, is that the barrel points towards the enemy, and the wooden end points towards us.’
The young man on the sofa laughed, his cigarette waggling between his lips.
There seemed to be endless complicated arrangements to be made; that morning. Lev spent almost an hour on the telephone. But Michael had learned from the short time that he had already spent with the dissident intelligence group who called themselves Lamprey that not one of them ventured out of the apartment for any reason at all without elaborate checks being made that the street was empty of suspicious observers; that their drivers were going to turn up on time; and that every possible contingency had been covered, from the sudden appearance of tails to the non-appearance of friendly agents. They lived in the constant expectation of discovery, and sudden death. To Michael, who had never had to worry about anything worse than an overdraft, their attitude was astonishingly pragmatic, and yet understandable, too. He hadn’t been in Moscow for more than a few days; but already he had become conscious of the oppressive restrictions of the state: the absence of Western newspapers from the newstands; the interminable waiting at stores and restaurants; the requirement that every foreign visitor who drove out of Moscow was to file a route-plan with Intourist, at the risk of being sent back to the city; the law that forbade foreign visitors from spending the night in the home of a Soviet citizen. In itself, each prohibition seemed petty. Taken together, they amounted to a massive and suffocating infringement of personal rights.
By two o’clock, Lev and his companions were ready to leave. Their driver would pick them up outside the apartment at 2:07 precisely. The girl in the checked shirt was coming with them, as well as the young man who had been sprawling on the sofa smoking cigarettes. Their firepower amounted to two AKM’s, one of them carried by Michael, two revolvers, and an RPG7 anti-tank gun, which the young man carried into the street wrapped up in a blanket, with the head of a floormop protruding from its muzzle, so that it looked as if he were carrying an invalid child in his arms. A Moskvich saloon drew over to the side of the road as they emerged from the apartment building, and in a matter of seconds they had all climbed in, slammed the doors, and stowed their weapons in the backs of the two front seats, which had been sliced open and then stuck back again with Velcro. The car was small and cramped, but Michael recognized the suppressed burble of an engine that had been successfully tweaked. He had once done the same with an old Morris Minor, and until it had finally shaken itself to pieces on the Reigate bypass, it had bellowed around the roads of Surrey like a BRM.
He suddenly realized that he was tremendously excited: that he enjoyed sitting here with Lev and his companions, driving through Moscow in a hotted-up car loaded with guns. It was conspiratorial, and boyishly thrilling.
‘We have to be very careful of the state police,’ said Lev. ‘They have patrol posts all the way along the major highways, and if they see us, they are very likely to stop us. If that happens, we must ask you to say nothing at all. Leave everything to us. They will only have to suspect that you are a foreigner and we will all be in serious and immediate trouble.’
They drove north along Mira Prospekt, and out through Moscow’s suburbs. It was a dazzling, gilded afternoon. Off to the west, Michael could see the silvery needles of aeroplanes arriving and taking off from Sheremetyevo airport, and for a moment his adventure lost some of its lustre. He thought of Margaret. She was probably worried sick by now. He just hoped she didn’t get any trouble from British intelligence. He was beginning to understand that all that Smiley’s People stuff was no exaggeration; in fact, if anything, it was underplayed. Intelligence services served governments and governments had no thought for the well-being of awkward individuals. Intelligence services were the unacceptable face of bureaucracy.
The Mira Prospekt took them past Sokol’niki Park, and then close to ВПНХ, the huge exhibition of Soviet economic achievements, to which Rufina had been diverted by Lamprey’s false telephone-call. From the avenue, they could see the Monument Kosmosa, the sweeping concrete spire which commemorates Soviet triumphs in space. Then the highway turned north-east, towards Zagorsk, and towards their rendezvous with the KGB at Tekstil’sciki. ‘Now you are having your guided tour at last,’ Lev remarked wryly. ‘It’s quite a pity you won’t get to see Zagorsk. The Cathedral of the Assumption is quite spectacular; and they make wonderful toys in Zagorsk. You have a son, don’t you? He would have liked a toy from Zagorsk.’
‘As long as he gets his father back, I don’t think he’s going to be too concerned about toys,’ said Michael.
The girl checked her watch. ‘We should be well ahead of the KGB car. As long as we don’t have any trouble, we should have plenty of time to prepare an
ambush.’
They crossed the Jauza river. The countryside reminded Michael of parts of Worcestershire, oddly empty and abandoned. Crows rose in a speckled storm from a distant field, and circled around and around in the sunlight. The sky was almost white.
‘Police,’ said the driver, glancing in his rear-view mirror.
Michael was about to turn around to look, but the girl clutched his thigh, and said, ‘Act normal, please. Say nothing. Smile.’
The yellow and blue highway patrol car overtook them and flagged them in to the side of the road. The driver obediently pulled in, and switched off his engine. They all sat in the car expectantly as two armed officers climbed out of the patrol car, and came walking back towards them. The driver wound down his window.
‘Zdrastvuytye,’ the driver smiled, as the officer bent down to see who was sitting in the car. ‘Mi pravil’no yedem v Zagorsk?’
The officer’s face was expressionless, mealy-textured, like a loaf of wholemeal bread, with raisins for eyes.
‘Mahi prava? Tekhpasport avtomobilya?’ demanded the officer, dryly.
The driver opened the glove-box, which banged down flat on a broken hinge, and rummaged around for his driver’s licence and his registration documents.
In Russian, the officer said, ‘I want to see all of your identity papers.’
As Lev handed his papers through the open window, the officer said, ‘What is the purpose of your journey?’
‘We’re visiting my mother,’ said Lev. ‘She’s been sick lately. Ryevmatyizm.’
‘All of these people are visiting your mother with you?’ asked the officer. He kept Lev’s papers and held out his hand for the young man’s documents.
‘They are my friends. They all love my mother, almost as much as I do.’
‘What is your mother’s name?’
‘Yevdokia Safanova. She lives at 9, Rubleva Andreia ulitsa. Second floor at the back, next to Mrs Rotmistrova.’ Lev had a way of speaking to officials as if he were a harmless Russian idiot. The police officer sniffed, and wiped at his nose with the back of his glove.
Sacrifice Page 21
