‘And you?’ he asked Michael. ‘Where are your papers?’
Michael didn’t understand him, although he had a fair idea of what he was being asked for. He simply smiled, and shrugged. The police officer flicked his fingers impatiently, and said, ‘Come on, show me your papers.’
Michael shrugged again. The police officer immediately stepped back, and took out his pistol. He said something in Russian, and pointed to the road beside the car.
Lev said, ‘He’s telling us all to get out, and stand up against the side of the car.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Michael asked him, his throat tight.
‘You’ll see.’
All five of them climbed stiffly out of the small car and stood beside it. The police officer waved his pistol at them, and said, ‘Hands up. That’s right. And keep them up.’
Lev turned around and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a green ticket?’ A ‘green ticket’ was a three-rouble note, which Russian motorists habitually slipped into their licences when stopped by the highway patrol for a road check. A ‘red ticket’ was a five-rouble note, which occasionally took care of speeding or parking problems.
The officer ignored him, and called to his colleague, ‘Get me a check on this vehicle, and all of these people. You—’ he said sharply to Michael, ‘—what’s your name?’
Michael smiled, and shook his head.
‘He’s not too well,’ put in Lev, and then confidentially, ‘Galava problems.’ He meant that Michael was not quite right in the head.
The officer said, ‘Wait,’ as if he were undecided what to do next.
‘A red ticket?’ Lev asked.
The officer said to his colleague, ‘Hurry up. And don’t forget to ask them what time Khomyakov’s meeting us tonight.’
Michael kept his hands up above his head. He glanced at Lev for reassurance but Lev didn’t seem to be concerned at their predicament at all. He was looking out across the nearby field and whistling. Crickets chirruped in the rough grass beside the highway: there wasn’t another car to be seen for miles. Michael was about to say, ‘There isn’t—’ when the early-afternoon tranquility was punctuated by two light pneumatic sneezes, like somebody pumping up a bicycle tyre. Michael turned around in perplexity, just in time to see both highway patrolmen buckle at the knees and collapse on to the pavement.
The girl in the checked shirt was already tucking a silenced Beretta automatic back into a light nylon holster under her arm. Lev said, ‘Quickly, now,’ and he and the young man ran across to the patrolmen, gathered them up under their arms, and dragged them with their boot-heels scraping on the concrete back to their patrol car. Both dead men were heaved back into the front seats of the car, and their seat-belts fastened to keep them in place. Lev deftly re-holstered the first officer’s revolver, and straightened his jacket.
Michael was fascinated by the speed and silent efficiency with which Lev and his colleagues worked. They might have rehearsed it, like Swan Lake at the Kirov ballet. They started up the patrol car’s engine, then released the handbrake and steered it off the edge of the road, right into a narrow ditch, where it came to rest with a grinding crunch, and its engine stalled. The girl handed Lev her scarf, which he deftly fed into the patrol car’s filler-cap, until only a corner of it was protruding. He lit the corner of the scarf with his cigarette-lighter, and then immediately came running back to the Moskvich.
‘That’s it, let’s go. Sorry for the inconvenience.’
The Moskvich’s tuned-up engine let out a blaring roar as they squealed away from the side of the road, and sped northeastwards again. Lev lit a cigarette, and sneezed. Behind them, there was a sudden pump, and Michael turned around to see the highway patrol car blazing fiercely in the ditch, and a column of oily smoke already rising into the white afternoon.
‘That won’t put off the KGB, will it?’ asked Michael. ‘I mean, they won’t change their route if they see that wreck by the side of the road?’
Lev shook his head. ‘The highway patrol are notoriously bad drivers, my friend. Crashed police cars are quite commonplace. A few glasses of vodka for lunch, a boring afternoon with no motorists to harass, a race along the highway just for the hell of it, 190 kph. All of a sudden they lose control and – what do English people say? – they have had their ships.’
‘Chips,’ Michael corrected him.
‘Chips,’ Lev repeated, with dogmatic relish. He was very proud of his English.
The girl smiled at Michael but Michael couldn’t think of any Russian phrase that might be appropriate to the occasion, even though Rufina Konstantinova had taught him many words of love. What was the Russian for ‘do you enjoy shooting policemen?’ Or, ‘your gun has a splendid silencer, where did you get it?’
The smoke from the burning patrol car had scarcely disappeared behind them when Lev said, ‘Here, this will do. Pull off the road and park the car behind those trees.’
Without reducing speed, the driver turned the Moskvich off the side of the highway, and they jounced over pebbles and ruts and rocks, their suspension banging loudly, until they were completely out of sight of the road behind a scraggly stand of firs. Without hesitation, Lev and his companions tore away the Velcro which kept the backs of the seats in place, and took out their weapons. Lev handed Michael his AKM and two magazines of ammunition. He made no comment, except, ‘Don’t shoot unless I tell you, and don’t shoot unless you have to.’ Michael nodded, and swallowed.
They waited for a long time, lying flat in the grass, with the sky gradually darkening over their heads as a Maytime storm came in from the west. The grass rustled and blew; the crickets sang; Michael sneezed two or three times because of his hay-fever. They watched a few private cars whirr north and south, and a convoy of Army trucks. Otherwise, the afternoon was peaceful, with butterflies blowing through the trees, and the wind singing songs of Poland and Scandinavia.
Lev, watching the highway with binoculars, at last said, ‘Here they come.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked Michael. Without a word, Lev passed him the glasses, and he squinted south-westwards, until the wavering horizon of the road came into view, and on the road there were two motor cycle militsia, with glaring headlights, and a black Volga-22, following close behind.
‘KGB, no doubt about it,’ said Lev. ‘Anton, are you ready?’
Anton had already shouldered the RPG7 anti-tank launcher, and loaded it with a 40mm bomb. The bomb weighed 2V4 kilograms, and could penetrate armour to a depth of 320mm, over a foot. Lev said to Michael, ‘Switch your gun to rapid-fire. Even if you don’t hit anything, you should frighten them.’
The KGB car with its motorcycle escort came closer and closer, until Michael was sweating. They must fire soon, otherwise the car would have passed them by. But just as Michael began to think that the ambush hadn’t worked. Lev raised his hand, paused, and then dropped it again, and there was a sudden teeming rattle of automatic gunfire.
Both motorcycle policemen went down instantly, as if they had ridden straight into an outstretched wire. They tumbled over and over like acrobats, their arms and their legs flailing, while their bikes slid roaring across the road on either side of them, in showers of sparks. The Volga-22 tried to swerve in between them, but then there was the sharp whoompphh of the RPG7 launcher, and the front of the car exploded in a strangely surrealistic arrangement of twisted metal and broken glass. The car lurched and slithered to a stop, and the two KGB agents who were sitting in the front seats immediately clambered out with their hands held on top of their heads. ‘Don’t shoot!’ But there was another quick burst of machinegun fire, and they dropped to the road beside their motorcycle escort. The whole attack took fewer than fifteen seconds, and then there was silence. Lev stood up, and walked towards the wrecked car with his AKM held up high in front of him. Michael followed, with his own gun raised: although he hadn’t fired a single shot.
‘You see, it simply takes organization,’ said Lev, turning over one of t
he KGB men with the toe of his shoe.
Michael looked down at the puffy, staring face. A young man of 28 or 29, he guessed, with a scrap of toilet paper stuck to his cheek where he had cut himself shaving that morning. His blood ran across the road to join that of the others, a crimson jigsaw.
Michael said, ‘You astonish me. I never could have used this gun at all: not once.’
‘There was no need. A gun should’never be used unless necessity demands it.’
‘No,’ said Michael. He looked across at the Volga. Under his breath, he said, ‘Shit.’
The young girl opened the rear door of the car. ‘Get out,’ she said, in English. Awkwardly, John climbed out of the back seat. He was handcuffed by his right wrist to Rufina, who climbed out just as awkwardly after him. ‘Michael?’ blinked John. He seemed to have lost his glasses. Perhaps they had taken them away from him. ‘Michael, is that you?’
Michael touched Lev’s arm, as a gesture of thanks and reassurance. Then he slung the AKM over his left shoulder, and walked forward quickly so that John could see that he was there. John squinted at him myopically, and then reached out to clasp his hand. Rufina seemed completely dazed. She stared at Michael, and then at Lev, and then across the road at the sprawling bodies of the militsia and the KGB men.
‘What’s this?’ asked John. ‘Michael Townsend’s private army? I can’t believe it. Did you actually fire that thing?’
Michael shook his head. ‘These people are friends. They tried to stop the KGB from laying their hands on us yesterday morning, but they didn’t quite make it in time. Lev, this is John Bishop. John, this is Lev.’
‘We must be quick now,’ said Lev. To Rufina, he said, ‘Where is the key to these handcuffs? Do you have it?’
Rufina, still pale, whispered, ‘No,’ and then pointed to the young KGB man lying on the road. Lev’s two companions had already dragged the bodies of the motorcyclists into the bushes, and were now wheeling their damaged bikes across the verge.
Lev rummaged through the KGB man’s pockets, and at last found a bunch of keys.
‘Which one?’ he demanded, but Rufina could only shake her head.
‘Damn it,’ said Lev. ‘Come on, we don’t have any more time.’
They hurried back to the Moskvich. John said, ‘I can’t believe this is real.’
‘It’s real,’ Michael told him. He glanced at Rufina, but Rufina said nothing.
All the weapons were dismantled and stowed into the car. The young man and the girl were going to leave them here, and walk two miles across country to a small collective, where a motorcycle would be waiting for them. Lev sat in the front with the driver, John and Michael sat in the back, with Rufina between them. They swerved out of the bushes, bounced back on to the road again, skidding around the wreck of the KGB car, and heading south-west, the way they had first come. They would only drive a few miles down the highway, however, before they turned off eastwards towards Scolkovo.
‘I never thought this kind of thing could happen in Russia,’ said John. ‘In fact, I never thought it could happen at all.’
‘Lev will tell you,’ said Michael.
Lev turned around in his seat and nodded towards Rufina. ‘Not in front of madam here.’
A truck whinnied past in the opposite direction, towards Zagorsk, the first vehicle they had seen in ten minutes. Up ahead of them, the smoke from the highway patrol car still smudged the sky, and Michael could make out a cluster of police cars and fire-trucks.
‘It was you who burned that car?’ Rufina asked.
‘We were short of logs, my dear,’ Lev told her, sarcastically.
‘Well, they will catch you,’ said Rufina.
‘Maybe,’ said Lev. ‘We didn’t come out here on a picnic.’
‘Michael,’ said Rufina, ‘you don’t know how dangerous this is! If you don’t give yourself up straight away, the authorities will have you shot! Being an accessory to murder is a capital offence in the Soviet Union. But if you persuade these people to surrender to the police, I promise you that I will testify on your behalf.’
Michael looked at Lev. Lev, made a face, and said, ‘Persuasive, isn’t she?’
‘Michael—’ Rufina repeated, but Lev snapped, ‘That’s enough from you, thank you, devushka.’
John said, ‘Perhaps we can get these handcuffs off now.’ Lev tossed the keys over to Michael, who sorted through them, trying out anything that looked as if it were small enough.
‘They took me to an office somewhere, and made me sit in a waiting-room for about three hours,’ said John. ‘Then some chap came in and told me that I was under arrest for bringing subversive literature into the Soviet Union and that they were going to have to question me. I asked to speak to the British ambassador, but they said I couldn’t. They said he knew about me already, and that he had accepted that I had to be interrogated. I asked to call you, but they said they had no record of anybody called Townsend, and that I’d better start getting used to the idea that I was going to have to stay in the Soviet Union for quite a long time.’
‘You see?’ Lev nodded.
They turned on to the Scolkovo road and began to speed eastwards. Behind them, a Mi-4 helicopter clattered northwards, following the Zagorsk highway, quickly followed by another.
‘They’ve found out about the ambush,’ said Lev. ‘Any minute now we’re going to have to turn off the road and hide for a while.’
‘This is insane,’ said Rufina.
‘We are known for our insanity,’ Lev told her. ‘You will find out just how insane we can be when we come to question you.’
Rufina said nothing more, but sat back and waited while Michael tried yet another key for the handcuffs. At last, the lock clicked, and the hasp sprang out of the circlet. John lifted his wrist, and rubbed it.
Lev said, ‘Lock Miss Konstantinova’s hands together. I don’t want her to get any ideas in her head about getting away.’ He smiled at Rufina with tobacco-stained teeth. Then he said, ‘I should congratulate you, Michael. She is a very pretty girl. Not like the usual dragons who work for the KGB.’
John said, so quietly that they could scarcely hear him, ‘They broke my glasses. That was one of the first things they did.’ Then he sat with his chin in his hand, staring out of the car window at a landscape that was blurred by both shortsightedness and tears.
Fifteen
Yeremenko was about to go to the mess to meet B.Y. Serpuchov, the political Commissar of the Western Strategic Direction, when Colonel Chuykov came running along the corridor, his polished boots clattering like a horse at the gallop.
‘Well, comrade colonel, you’re in a hurry,’ he remarked.
‘I have to see you confidentially,’ Chuykov panted. He was sweating, and he had obviously run a long way. It suddenly occurred to Yeremenko that Chuykov was supposed to be in Haldensleben with Golovanov; and that only a few minutes before he had looked up from his desk as a Mi-14 had come roaring over the headquarters in an unusually low pass.
‘Something’s wrong?’ asked Yeremenko.
‘Please, sir. I was specifically told that I should pass this intelligence on to you personally, and in private.’
‘Very well,’ said Yeremenko. He looked at his watch. He was already five minutes late for his meeting, and he knew that by now Serpuchov would be growing distinctly irritable. Serpuchov considered that anyone who treated him discourteously was ipso facto being discourteous to the Party. Yeremenko opened the door of the office marked Duty Officer, and waved Chuykov inside. ‘Well,’ he said switching on the fluorescent lights, ‘is something wrong with Marshal Golovanov? His heart?’
Chuykov said, breathlessly, ‘No, sir; not his heart, sir.’
‘Then…?’ asked Yeremenko, encouragingly.
‘He’s disappeared, sir. The GRU officers at Haldensleben think that he may have been abducted.’
Yeremenko stared at him. ‘Golovanov? Abducted? Golovanov is a marshal! Golovanov is a Hero of the Soviet Union! How could
he possibly have been abducted? Nobody abducts men like Golovanov! This is preposterous! I refuse to believe it. He’s probably – I don’t know – shacked up somewhere with that girl of his.’
‘I’m afraid it’s true, sir. I flew straight back from Haldensleben as soon as I could. Major Grechko is helping to co-ordinate the search with the KGB and the GRU, as well as the German police.’
Yeremenko sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Damn,’ he said, out loud. But then he almost smiled. ‘It was that Inge, wasn’t it? I suppose there’s no sign of her.’
Chuykov unhappily shook his head.
‘Well, in that case,’ said Yeremenko, ‘I suppose that we are all to blame for the marshal’s disappearance. Every one of us who was prepared to see Marshal Golovanov make a fool of himself with a girl like Inge. Oh, what a tremendous laugh, hm, colonel? – to see him go bug-eyed for a girl who wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he hadn’t been a marshal, and she hadn’t been an intelligence officer for the KGB! And now of course we have to eat our laughter. She doesn’t work for the KGB at all; unless she tried to protect Marshal Golovanov and was killed, and I very much doubt that.’
‘But if she’s not working for the KGB, sir—?’
‘I don’t know. She’s not working for the Americans, at least I wouldn’t have thought so. She certainly doesn’t belong to the usual espionage community. They are like an exclusive club, that won’t let anybody in unless they have all the right credentials. I don’t know, colonel. But of course, we must find out.’
Colonel Chuykov said, hoarsely, ‘What about Operation Byliny, sir?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, sir, if he has been abducted… the people who abducted him are very likely going to try to make him talk. That’s if they haven’t killed him already.’
‘You’re trying to suggest that Operation Byliny may no longer be secure?’
Chuykov said, ‘It would be unfair of me to suggest that, sir. After all, I am sure that Marshal Golovanov has a very strong will, and can manage to resist most methods of interrogation. His father did, although he died from his injuries.’
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