Quiller Balalaika

5: DIAMOND

The night air was sharp after the warmth of the Baccarat Club, and the caked snow was brittle underfoot as I walked to the Mercedes. The nearest place I'd found to park was half a block away, but if there'd been anywhere closer I wouldn't have used it. Half a block was the right distance. I took the alley again; its walls were lit faintly by a shred of moonlit cloud drifting across the rooftops.

A group of teenagers straggled past the far end, singing drunk by the sound of things, a girl giving little squeals of laughter. Then there was some hooting from a pair of expensive horns, and a flood of light swept across the snow and there was the crunch of tyres sliding. I suppose the teenagers had decided to cross the street without looking. After a while there was silence again.

I didn't know yet whether I had any kind of access to the opposition, but I thought I would know in a few minutes from now. Ferris would be at the Hotel Romanov by this time, according to his fax and providing the plane hadn't been delayed, or crashed. It would feel satisfactory, when I met him for the initial briefing, if I could tell him we had access. Ferris is one of the really brilliant directors in the field and I would choose him – had chosen him last night – above all others, despite my aversion to some of his little ways: there is the rumour, now established in the unwritten archives of the Bureau, that he strangles mice to entertain himself when he's got nothing more interesting to do. He likes, it is said, to see them dance.

The snow, packed into ice along the alley, broke under my feet, and once I staggered, putting a hand out for support, and a cat went flowing along the top of the wall, black in the moonlight. As I kept on going I listened to the echo of my footsteps, and stopped a couple of times to listen instead to the silence, looking back along the alley. I didn't expect anyone to close up on me here: I would have heard them and they would know that.

They'd made a detour, the only choice they'd had, moving faster than I could have done on the packed snow. They were waiting for me in the street, two of them in their smart white workout suits with the cougar in gold on the left side of the chest.

They would have guns on them but hadn't drawn them, hadn't seen any need, with these odds and their training. They stood bouncing on their feet, hands hanging loose, crowding me against the wall as I reached the pavement.

'The diamonds,' one of them said.

I used a shin-rake to double him forward and dropped him with a heel-palm under the jaw, feeling it break. The other man was very fast and already had his gun out but I had time to use a sword-hand to the wrist. It gave him a lot of pain but that wouldn't be enough so I used another one across his carotid nerve to stun him as the gun dropped from his hand and I caught it and emptied the chamber and sent it skittering along the pavement and into the gutter. Then I took the other man's gun from its holster and did the same thing with it before I dragged him into the alley and left him there, coming back for his partner and propping them side by side against the wall.

The one with-the broken jaw was whimpering a lot and I left him to it; he'd be pretty inarticulate if he tried to talk. I worked on his friend instead, slapping his face to bring him out of the stupor. He was taking his time, so I kicked some of the snow loose and packed it against his forehead, holding it there until he started moaning, I suppose because of the wrist.

'Where is the Cougar's base?' I asked him.

His eyes came open, glinting in the faint light. 'Fuck you,' he said weakly.

Centre-knuckle to the median nerve and he jerked to the pain. 'Where is Vishinsky's base?'

He tried to straighten up and get his eyes focused and I let him: I wanted him to be able to reason. But he didn't answer me so I pushed one finger into the trigeminal nerve and he choked off a scream.

'Vishinsky's base,' I said. 'Where is it?'

He began lolling his head but there was no reason for him to do that – he was just faking syncope – so I went for the trigeminal again and he screamed and I repeated the question and this time got an answer, and I didn't think he was lying because he was in too much pain to think about tricks.

'Hotel,' he said, or it sounded like that.

'What?'

'Stay at hotel -'

'Which one?'

'Stay at -'

'Which hotel? I'll give you five seconds – come on!'

One, two, three -

'Hotel Nikolas.'

'All right. Do you know Vasyl Sakkas?'

His eyes came open wider. 'Sakkas?'

'Yes. Have you ever met him?'

'No.'

'But you've heard of him?'

'Everyone has heard of Sakkas.'

'Where is his base?'

'I don't know. Nobody knows. He moves all over the place.'

I hadn't expected anything from the last question but I thought I'd have a try. Croder had told me the same thing, but Sakkas must have a centre of operations somewhere and it must be here in Moscow. I would be asking a thousand people in this city where it was, and one day someone would tell me.

'What's your name?' I asked the bodyguard.

'Rogov.'

'Listen, Rogov. If you ever see me again, keep your distance or I'll kill you with my bare hands. And that goes for your friend.'

I left them propped there against the wall, going into the street again and finding the Mercedes and getting in, Nikolas Hotel, 936 Tokmakov Prospekt, access of a sort and useful enough to consider the night not wasted.

I phoned the Hotel Romanov from the car and got Ferris on the line and asked him for a rendezvous.