Quiller Meridian

Chapter 15: VIOLETS

'You are giving yourself up?'

'No.'

The colonel looked at me, his head going down a degree and his eyes remaining on my own. The light wasn't too bad in here; this wasn't an interrogation room, just a holding cell by the look of it, with a small barred window and a steel door with a look-through panel in it. The door wasn't closed; there was still quite a bit of bustle going on out there, militia tramping about, phones ringing; I heard my cover name several times: Viktor Shokin was quite a catch.

'Then why are you here?' the colonel asked me.

He had an intelligent face, unsurprisingly in terms of his rank, and didn't seem to think I was playing the fool when I'd told him I wasn't giving myself up. If he'd thought I was playing the fool he would have given immediate orders to have me beaten into a different frame of mind.

'You've got a woman here,' I told him, 'Tanya Rusakova. Is that correct?'

He went on watching me while he thought it over. He was a big man, bigger still in his greatcoat, and had the kind of eyes that would be able to watch a war-trained Doberman tearing a fugitive to pieces, for instance, without showing anything, except possibly a hint of amusement.

'Yes,' he said at last. "That is correct'

'I want her released, Colonel.'

I left it at that for the moment. I wanted to feed information into him slowly, so that I could catch and weigh his reactions, because this was the man who was going to decide, at some hour of this long and perilous night, whether he was going to let me walk out of here or hand me over to Homicide Investigation and start the machinery of justice rolling over me.

Someone in the passage outside was asking where Colonel Belyak was, and in a moment a junior officer was standing in the doorway, glancing at me and away again.

'Telephone, Colonel. In your office.'

'Who is it?'

'OIC Catering, sir.'

'Take a message. Are you monitoring my telephones?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then go on taking messages and don't come to me with anything unless it sounds urgent. Are those not the orders passed on to you?'

'Yes, sir. I'm — '

'Catering is not urgent, you clod. Get out.'

Everyone brought themselves an inch straighter — the junior officer and the two guards at the door and the sergeant who stood behind and to the left of Colonel Belyak. The sergeant was a short square man with a pock-marked corpse-coloured face, its eyes lost in hollows, its nose broken and its jaw skewed. He hadn't spoken since I'd been brought in here ten minutes ago. He watched Colonel Belyak when he asked me questions, and watched me when I answered them. He would be the one, this sergeant, who would be ordered to beat me up if I looked like playing the fool, or refused to give the information the Colonel was looking for, or in any way tried bitching him about.

'So you want the woman released.' Belyak watched me steadily with the polished black stones in his face.

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Because she's innocent of any wrongdoing. She was set up.'

'Explain that for me.'

'She was set up as bait in the assassination of General Gennadi Velichko.'

He brought his head down a degree and left his eyes on mine, a mannerism I was beginning to understand. I'd caught his attention.

'Continue,' he said. His voice had the tonelessness of a surgeon's asking for another scalpel.

I must have moved on the chair, because it creaked. It was a straight-backed kitchen chair and I'd noticed stains on it when the Colonel had told me to sit down. I've seen chairs like this one before, stained and gone in the joints; professional interrogators all over the world use the same tricks, and one of them is to sit the detainee down so that he has to look up at the other people, which makes him nervous, and so that he's conveniently positioned if they decide to make him still more nervous by smashing him backwards onto the floor, chair and all. They use the back of their fist or their boot or whatever they choose, and although I know how to stop that kind of thing right in its tracks I never do, unless there's a chance of turning the odds and getting clear.

Tonight there was no question of that: I'd come here of my own free will.

'I'm not going to tell you very much at this stage, Colonel Belyak. First the woman has to be released. We shall need Chief Investigator Gromov here, won't we, for his authority.'

'He is on his way,' the Colonel said 'How long will it take him to get here?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because we've got to hurry.'

Colonel Belyak lifted his head slightly, still watching me; I'd seen him do that before when I'd told him something he didn't intend to take.

'We have all night, Mr Shokin.' He used Gospodin, as Chief Inspector Gromov had done on the train when he'd questioned me; its closest equivalent in the West was 'Mr'. Tovarishch was out now in Russia, a quaint Leninist trapping. 'We have as long as I decide we shall have,' the Colonel said.

He was standing with his feet apart, the polish on his jackboots glinting in the light from the bare electric bulb overhead, his shadow huge against the wall. His hands were behind him, and there was nothing in them; they'd been empty when he'd come in here. There was nothing in the sergeant's hands either; he was a man who liked the feel of bone on flesh when he went to work, a former pugilist with the gloves off now and real toys to play with.

'I want you to realize,' I told the Colonel,' that you're going to be very pleased indeed with the information I shall be giving you eventually, once Gospozha Rusakova has been released. I'm not setting any kind of deadline, you see; it's just a fact of life: we can't afford to waste any time.'

Not in fact true. Certainly I was setting a deadline, because I had to keep up the pressure. If I gave these people all the time they wanted they'd simply put me through intensive interrogation and I'd come out days later with not much more than pulp where the flesh had been, with a torn urethra and clouded conjunctivae and the kidneys contused and pouring blood into the urine and my sight gone and my brain out of synch and Meridian blown to hell.

There was also the risk of Tanya Rusakova's brother losing patience. I'm no good at waiting, doing nothing, he'd said on the telephone. If I'm not there — at the rendezvous — it will mean I changed my mind.

He could wreck everything I was trying to do.

'If there were any deadlines to be set,' Colonel Belyak was saying,' I would set them myself.'

'Of course.'

He was touchy and I'd have to watch it. I had begun paying out a thread so fine that one wrong word could break it.

'Tell me what you know,' the Colonel said, 'about the assassination of General Velichko.'

There was the sound of snow-chains locking across concrete outside the building and the slamming of doors, so I took a chance and left the question unanswered, turning my head as the tramping of boots loudened and voices began echoing along the passage and Chief Investigator Gromov came in, shouldering his way between the guards and nodding briefly to the Colonel and staring down at me with his hands dug into the pockets of his coat.

'So we have you.'

Cold air was still coming in from the passage, laced with exhaust gas.

'Not quite that,' I said.

'What, then?'

I missed the patience in his caramel-brown eyes that I'd seen on the Rossiya. He'd had all the time he needed, then, but now he was more energized: he'd thrown a net across the city of Novosibirsk and here suddenly was the minnow, squirming, and he wanted facts and he wanted them fast.

'I decided to come here of my own free will,' I told him, 'to obtain the immediate release of Tanya Rusakova. She did nothing wrong, intentionally, and I want her out of here.' I spoke carefully, articulating; it wasn't a time for misunderstandings. 'I will then deliver into your hands — if it's not too late — the man who shot Zymyanin on board the Rossiya the night before last, who also set a bomb in one of the compartments with the intention of killing General Velichko, General Chudin and General Kovalenko, and — having failed — shot General Velichko to death last night in the street'

The cell was very quiet. There were telephones ringing in the offices along the passage, and boots sounded constantly over the bare boards.

'Shut that door,' Colonel Belyak told one of the militiamen, 'and stay on guard outside.' He swung his head to look at Gromov, wanting to tap into his thinking, but Gromov had his eyes on me.

'In the case of Zymyanin,' he said, 'you had witnesses against you on the train.'

'They were lying. But please remember that I just told you I can deliver the actual perpetrator if there is time.' I gave it a beat. 'When I last talked to him — ' I checked my watch — ' forty-two minutes ago, he was making plans to set another bomb.'

Colonel Belyak was first. 'Where?'

'I can't tell you. He thinks he knows where the other two generals are, and he still means to kill them.'

'Do you know where they are?' Gromov asked quickly.

'No. I asked him but he refused to tell me.'

Belyak: 'Who is this man?'

I looked at my watch again. 'With respect, gentlemen, you will have to use your heads. I can't give you this man if we stay here talking. Nor can you hope to stop another tragedy like the one on the Rossiya, with further loss of innocent lives. The responsibility is yours.'

Silence came in again. It was warm in here with so many bodies, and the sweat was beginning to run on me. The thread was still intact, but I'd have to go on playing it out in the hope of drawing them with me, and there'd be a lot of strain.

'Why should we release this woman?' the Colonel asked.

'Because she's done nothing. She — '

'That's beside the point. Why do you want her released?'

'She's been traumatized by the whole thing and — '

'The "whole thing"?'

'Velichko's death.' He was right: I'd stopped choosing my words and we couldn't afford misunderstandings. 'You may consider it beside the point that you're holding an innocent person here and putting her through further suffering but I do not. The release of Tanya Rusakova is my only condition, but if you don't meet it I won't deliver the agent into your hands. But of course he could have left his base by now.'

They didn't react, wouldn't be hurried. If I finally got them with me, one of them would look at his watch. It hadn't happened yet.

'Are you in love with this woman?' Gromov asked me.

'No.'

'She's remarkably attractive.'

'Yes. I wish I had time in my life to fall in love with every attractive woman I meet'

I'd been listening for her voice in the building: she couldn't be far from here because she'd be in a cell too and this was the detention area. All other things being equal, a woman's voice carries more clearly than a man's. I'd heard nothing.

Gromov looked at the Colonel. 'Is this man your prisoner or mine?'

'He's mine at this point but I'm willing to hand him over. I don't want him.'

Wasting time.

'Yes,' I told Belyak, 'you do.'

He watched me with his black polished stones.

'Explain.'

'The agent is a former militia officer, major's rank. He was sacked for persistent drunkenness and killing three men on the firing range by culpable negligence. Since then he's been taking on clandestine operations, one of which has so far included the death of Zymyanin on board the Rossiya and the bombing of the train and the shooting of General Velichko here in Novosibirsk. If you don't pull him in as soon as you can, your head's going to be on the block and the people of Russia are going to lose a great deal of faith in their militia, whose job it is to protect the peace. The people of Russia are in a touchy mood these days.'

Another vehicle pulled up in the forecourt of the building and I felt the thread in my hand grow taut as the door banged open and boots clattered along the passage. I'm here to demand the release of my sister, Tanya Amelia Rusakova, and to make a foil confession in the death of General Gennadi Velichko.

I waited.

'Why have you decided to betray this agent?' Colonel Belyak asked.

'I've been considering it ever since he bombed the train. He took innocent lives. It's not my way. He needs stopping now, or God knows what he'll do.'

Boots tramping. I'm no good at waiting, doing nothing.

The gallant Captain Rusakov.

'All right,' Gromov said. 'Tell us where we can pick up this man.'

'I'll have to take you to him.'

'Why?'

'He's violent. If you put him in a trap he'll try to shoot his way out.'

Boots tramping, passing the door, not stopping.

'Others have tried that too,' the Colonel said.

'Look,' I told him, 'you can go in there with as many men as you like but you'll end up with a messy operation and get half of them killed unnecessarily. Or you can take me with you and I'll talk to him first and set him up for you and there'll be no bloodshed; I can promise an elegant, copybook operation, which I would think is more your style.'

I waited again, watching the Colonel and the Chief Investigator in turn, seeing first one and then the other start looking at his watch, seeing it again and again in my mind, but only there.

A cell door slammed shut along the passage and the boots sounded again.

Belyak opened his mouth but Gromov was first — 'What is your connection with this agent?'

'We were collaborators.'

'In what?'

'The same clandestine operation.'

'Its purpose?'

'To sabotage the Podpolia.'

That got a reaction, as I'd known it would. The hardline communist underground was known to exist and the Russian and Commonwealth police, militia and MPS were known to be smoking out its leaders, but some of its leaders were firmly ensconced in the Russian and Commonwealth police, militia and MPS, which made things difficult. I'd glanced from Gromov to Belyak when I'd said what I had, but couldn't catch anything: they were both trained to remain deadpan whatever was in their minds.

Gromov or Belyak could well be a member of the Podpolia, unknown to the other, but it didn't make any difference: each of them had a job to do and he'd get a great deal of kudos within his department if he could pull in the man who had bombed the Rossiya, whether he was in the underground or against it. The charge against him would be one of mass murder.

'You believe, then,' Gromov said,' that General Velichko was in -

'Yes.'

'And you would furnish me with a full accounting of both your own actions and your collaborator's, once he is taken?'

'A full accounting, in the expectation of leniency for myself.'

The Colonel looked across at Gromov again.' We should confer,' he said.

'I agree.'

Then Belyak looked at his watch.

'I'm glad to see, Colonel,' I told him,' that you're aware of the passage of time. It's critical, as I've warned you.'

Gromov opened the door of the cell and the Colonel followed him out and the door banged shut again, the look-through panel vibrating in its runners. The militia sergeant had come to attention when his colonel had gone out; now he was standing at ease. He'd been sorry, I knew, to hear I was ready to give a full accounting of my actions; he would have preferred orders to tear it out of me, word by word as the blood came running. I thought of talking to him, asking how the sweet peas were coming along, but he wouldn't have answered me: I was a dog brought in here from the streets, and he didn't talk to dogs. It would have been pleasant to stand up and stretch my legs, and have him order me to sit down again, and refuse, and give him the excuse to drive his fist into my diaphragm, so that I could parry the blow to the left and open him up and go in with some fast centre-knuckle jabs to paralyse the major nerves and finish up with a back-fist to stun the pineal gland and take him gently onto the floor. It would have relieved the tension in me and I could have used that, but of course it wouldn't have done any good because when they came back, the Colonel and the Chief Investigator, they'd have thought I'd been losing my temper, and wouldn't have trusted me anymore.

They'd been gone three minutes. I was sitting with my legs crossed and my left hand on my right thigh with the fingers spread out so that I could look down at my watch and check the time without moving. Three minutes was too long. One minute was too long, because we had two deadlines running: at any time at all, Captain Rusakov's patience could break and he could come storming into the building, or his sister could talk under interrogation and give the lie to everything I'd been telling these people, and in either case my fragile thread would finally snap, finito.

Four minutes, and the sweat came springing, itching on the scalp.

'You do much quilting, Sarge?'

'Keep your mouth shut.'

'Yes, Sarge.'

Five. Five minutes.

There was only one real chance of pulling this thing off and I started running it through my mind, over and over, to keep the nerves under control: they were crying out for action and in the quiet confines of this bloody cell there was the itch in me to provoke this sergeant and melt him down and that was dangerous.

The only chance of pulling this thing off lay in the fact that I'd given Colonel Belyak and Chief Investigator Gromov an offer they'd find difficult to refuse. They'd nothing to lose.

Six minutes. I could smell the sergeant. Feet, most of it, filthy socks, typical of the breed, they're not the ultra-sensitive among us, these paid professional body-busters, I've known some, I tell you I've known some and I've left stains on their kitchen chairs and all I'm looking for is any excuse to plug this bastard's nervous system into some really high-voltage centre-knuckle techniques and — For Christ's sake watch it or you 'll blow the whole thing.

Perfectly right.

Seven minutes.

They'd nothing to lose. They could let Tanya Rusakova walk out of this building and through those rusting iron gates and across the square and they could get her back in five minutes, deploy patrols and cover the environment: they'd be quite sure of that, wrong but sure, unworried. And they could escort me to the place where I would direct them and surround it with half a regiment of armed militia before they let me in there, nothing to lose, they could pull me out again and slam me back into the patrol car or shoot me down if I resisted, whatever they chose to do, nothing to lose.

If they agreed to the deal at all, that would be their reason.

Eight minutes, and the sweat reached my chin and I brushed it off and the sergeant caught the movement and I saw him tense, the scarred leather-skinned hands lifting a fraction and the fingers forming claws ready to grab me and send me spinning backwards on the chair, you try that, you stinking bastard and I 'll — steady, for the sake of God, you'll blow Meridian.

I want her out of here, that's all. She's had enough.

Nine. Nine minutes.

Are you in love with this woman?

No.

She's remarkably attractive.

Yes indeed, that is indeed so, you look into those green and shimmering eyes and watch the soft and subtle play of that perfect 1 % mouth as she speaks and you're moved, you can't help it, moved as a man, as a male of her species, this is the way it is with Tanya Rusakova.

But that isn't why I came, why I want her out of this bloody place.

She's innocent, you said, and she's had enough.

Well yes, but the main thing is that if they keep her locked up here long enough that gallant brother of hers is going to bare his breast for the bullet and I'll lose the only key I've got left for Meridian.

So you'd have come here, then, for anyone? A man? You'd have risked all this for anyone?

Keep your bloody questions to yourself.

Touchy, aren't we?

Shuddup.

Ten. Ten minutes.

Voices outside the cell. No louder, no nearer, just voices.

I could hear the sergeant's breathing, smell his breath, the taint of tobacco on his breath. He was standing with his arms hanging like an ape's and his feet astride, something on his boot, on his left boot, something he'd spilled, he'd been slopping soup around or this was perhaps vomit, another man's, a man in a stained kitchen chair, or it was something else, you couldn't hope to tell what sordid business had soiled this uniformed whoreson's boot.

You stink, you know that, you stink like a pig -

Steady, lad, steady.

Yes I know. I know.

'That's a nice cologne you use, Sarge, is it violets or — '

'Shut your fucking mouth.'

'Sorry, Sarge.'

Then the voices outside stopped and the door opened and they came in, Colonel Belyak and Chief Investigator Gromov, and looked down at me.