The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 36

Blackmail is surprisingly difficult to pull off. The art lies in convincing the target that whatever harm they do themselves–for, by definition, you are compelling them rather than coaxing them into obedience–is less than the harm which will be caused by the revelation of the secrets in your power. More often than not the blackmailer overplays their hand, and nothing is achieved except grief. A light touch and, more importantly, an understanding of when to back away is vital to achieve success.

I’ve employed plenty of dirty tricks to achieve my goals; employing them against people I like is harder. Professor Gulakov was a man I liked. I liked him from the moment he answered his door with a polite smile of enquiry, a grizzle-chinned man in a thick brown jumper, to the moment he offered me thin boiled coffee in a china cup no thicker than a fingernail and invited me to sit down in a room laden with scrounged, begged and borrowed books. In another life I might have enjoyed his company, shared thoughts on science and its possibilities, hypothesised and debated with him. But I was here with a very precise purpose, and he was my means to achieve it.

“Professor,” I said, “I am looking for a man by the name of Vitali Karpenko. Can you find him for me?”

“I don’t know this man,” he replied. “Why do you want to see him?”

“A relative of his died recently. I was instructed by his lawyer to find Karpenko. There is a matter of some money.”

“Of course, I’d help you if I can…”

“I’m told Karpenko is a scientist.”

“I don’t know all the scientists in Russia!” He laughed, uneasily swirling the coffee around his cup.

“But you could find out.”

“Well I… I could make some enquiries.”

“Discreetly. As I said, there is a question of some money, and his relative did not die within Russia.” Gulakov’s face twitched–he was beginning to sense where this might lead. “I understand,” I went on calmly, “that you have dealings with scientists outside the Soviet Union?”

His hand stopped still, but the coffee kept tumbling around inside his cup, whipping up the granules from the bottom. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t.”

“A professor in MIT, do you not correspond with him?” My smile was fixed, but I couldn’t quite meet Gulakov’s gaze, my eyes transfixed by the coffee in his cup. “There’s no harm in that,” I added brightly, “no harm at all. Science should be beyond the boundaries of politics, should it not? I merely suggest that a man of your influence and ability should have no trouble–discreetly–finding this Vitali Karpenko, if you wanted to. The family would be very appreciative.”

My work done, I shifted the subject at once and for another half an hour talked about Einstein and Bohr, and the question of the neutron bomb, though in truth Gulakov made little more than empty noises to my speech, and then I left him alone in silence to consider his next move.

Gulakov didn’t call for three days.

On the fourth the phone rang in the Cronus Club, and he was there and frightened.

“Kostya Prekovsky?” he asked. “It’s the professor. I may have something for you.”

He was talking slowly–a little too slowly–and there was a clicking on the line like the amplified rattle of an insect’s skin.

“Can you meet me in twenty minutes? At mine?”

“I can’t get to yours in twenty,” I lied. “Can you make it to Avtovo Metro?”

His silence–a little too long. Then, “Half an hour?”

“I’ll see you there, Professor.”

I was reaching for my coat even before the receiver was down. “Olga!” I sang out, voice echoing round the hard, empty corridors of the Cronus Club. “Do you keep a gun anywhere on the premises?”

I had never fully understood the hypocrisy of the Soviet metro systems, for it seemed that the world above and the world below ground were from different universes, let alone different times. The Leningrad Metro had been open less than a year, extensions already planned, and the stations on its one gleaming line were palaces of crystal decadence. Twisting columns and mosaics which, at their best, were triumphs of modern art and, at their worst, gaudy declarations of vanity and ego, lined the tiled platforms like palace viewing galleries. It was a system where the clock didn’t count down to the next train, but up from the last, daring the passenger to believe that, in this perfect world, you would never have to wait more than three minutes for anything.

It was also, in terms of any pursuers who might be out there, something of an unknown factor. The system presented problems to local agents in that, in the few months since it had been open, it seemed unlikely they would have developed a method of operating in it, and crowds have always been a friend to anonymity. So, for that matter, has Russia’s need for large warm hats and bulky clothes worn tight against the winter. Short of a society where religion obligated modesty, a Russian winter could do wonders for thwarting facial recognition.

I arrived early, and so did they. They were easy to recognise, men in dark coats who didn’t board the train when it came. They were uncomfortable, shifty spots of gloom beneath the brilliant bright walls, aware that when it came to discretion they weren’t handling themselves particularly well. One was trying to read a copy of Pravda, the other stared at the one-line Metro map with the intensity of a snake trying to work out if it could swallow a goat. On my second pass through the station I also detected the woman, who was doing far better. She’d brought a baby in a pram, a prop the merits of which I was divided on, and her air of dedication towards the infant put the distracted quality of the other two watchers to shame. I caught the train out of Avtovo, rode it a couple of stops, then caught the opposite direction back. I repeated this pattern twice, overshooting Avtovo the first time, looking for the professor. When he turned up, he was the most nervous of them all. Standing awkwardly by a wall, shifting from one foot to the other, he looked as if he wanted to pace but wasn’t sure if pacing was appropriate. He held a book under one arm, cover out. It was The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory by W. Heisenberg. Thinking about it retrospectively, I can’t help but wonder if the book was an attempt by the professor to warn me that he was being observed. It was certainly a curious choice of reading matter being so prominently displayed, and perhaps he hoped the incongruity, as much as anything else, would alert me to something being amiss. Whatever the case, the fact remained that the professor was under observation but probably had the knowledge I needed. As I rode through Avtovo and beyond, I considered my next move. Attempting to acquire information from him now would be dangerous to say the least; but then, if I failed to make the meeting, there was every possibility that he would be whisked away and my best chance at finding Karpenko gone. It isn’t always easy for ouroborans to make bold decisions, spoilt as we are by the luxury of time, but this seemed too good an opportunity to miss, and the consequence of not acting on it too dangerous. I headed back to Avtovo station, and as the train began to pull into the platform, pulled my hat down over my eyes and shouted, “Stop, thief!”

There was no thief to stop, but speed in a crowd can often compensate for this particular problem. I barrelled through the shoulders of the people on the train, elbowing them aside with no regard for age or disposition, until, as the train slowed to a halt and the people turned to stare, I raised my head and shouted, “He’s got a gun!” To make my point, I drew my own and fired it once into the wall of the carriage. The doors opened, and the stampede began.

There were certain disadvantages to my technique, not least being that the point of origin of the surge of people was a clear indicator of where I was. However, this was to a degree countered by the chaos that reigned on the platform and by the herd mentality of the people around as they perceived the carriage emptying, heard the cry of “A gun, a gun!” and made their own, potentially unwise, decisions. I like to think I contributed in my own way to the chaos, stumbling into the crowd with my head down and giving an occasional cry of “Oh God, help us” or words to that effect. The finer details of what I said were hardly inspiring, but in that heightened state no one really cared. I was pushed, shoved and stumbled upon, my fellow travellers knocking me aside as thoughtlessly as I had ruined their day, and I went with them, the surge of the crowd sweeping me past the bewildered-looking professor, who pressed himself into the wall for refuge, only to give a surprised whimper as, stumbling through the crowd, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him after me.

All stations have bottlenecks, and while the crowd wished to run, there wasn’t the space to do it, so as we pressed and piled for the exit I pushed my body close to Gulakov, pushed my gun into his belly and hissed, “I know they’re here. Tell me where I can find Karpenko.”

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m sorry!”

“Karpenko!”

“Pietrok-112! He’s in Pietrok-112!”

I let go of his arm and plunged back into the flow of people. There didn’t seem much point saying anything more. The three watchers on the platform were shouting, moving among us, pulling hats from faces, hollering at commuters to stop, to stay calm. I could see the woman had now a gun in her hand, the pram abandoned, and was shouting at everyone to stand still and present their papers. At the top of the stairs to the outside world more voices were being raised, police, some in uniform, some not, pouring down towards the human weight that wished to go up. However good their security services, the transport system hadn’t yet got the message. I heard the rattle of wheels on metal and as the first watcher came near me, a long-faced man in a fur-lined coat, I turned, face an open picture of panic, wailed, “He’s got a gun! Oh my God!” and nutted him as hard as I could in the nose, grabbing the gun in his hand and twisting his wrist hard towards the ceiling. I heard a shot, felt the bite of the metal moving beneath my fingers, and someone next to me screamed, a woman, clutching her leg, before I twisted the pistol free and kicked the watcher squarely between the legs. He fell inelegantly to the floor, and as the crowd parted around us like a flower I turned towards the approaching train, slipped the gun into my pocket and ran for the opening doors.

I had never been a fugitive in Russia before.

The feeling was exhilarating at first, until the discomfort of the settling night and the damp cold eating through my boots reminded me that exhilaration held nothing over reliable hygiene and warm sheets. My Kostya Prekovsky papers were now an even greater liability to me than no papers at all–no papers would at least cause bureaucratic delay, whereas the Prekovsky name was instant, guaranteed incarceration or death. I threw them into the slow black waters of the canal, bought a new hat and coat, and in a second-hand bookshop beneath the glowing lights of a doctor’s surgery flicked through an atlas of the Soviet Union, looking for Pietrok-112. I couldn’t see it. I considered going to the Cronus Club, but the grief that I would bring upon Olga and her ilk seemed uncivilised in light of her hospitality, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the professor’s enquiries alone which had led to the appearance of security forces at Avtovo. Instead, I found Pietrok-111 and Pietrok-113 in the atlas, two tiny markers on an empty stretch of nowhere in the north of the country, and considering this as likely a place to start as anywhere, waited until the last tram had slipped into silence, and headed to Finland Station to recover my escape papers. I had left two sets of documents in an empty signal box by the railway tracks, where a man, hopefully in a fur hat, had once spent his days switching points, and where now mice hid from the worst of the winter’s cold. The first document declared that I was one Mikhail Kamin, party member and industrial adviser, a position high enough to accord me respect without necessarily inviting security checks. The second was a Finnish passport, stamped already with an entry visa, which I attached to the back of my calf with surgical tape and rubber bands. I then spent a chilly night in the signal box, listening to the mice scurrying below, around and, in one particularly adventurous case, over me, and waiting for sunrise and the journey north.