Quiller Meridian

Chapter 16: DOG-PACK

We were set out like men on a chessboard in front of Militia Headquarters, our shadows slanting across the wet concrete from the big wrought-iron lamps over the gates, Gromov and two aides standing beside one of the patrol jeeps, Belyak positioned near a prisoner transport van drawn up at the front of the building. Its engine had been running but now it had been switched off, and it was quiet here in the forecourt, with only the drumming of a snow-plough in the far distance. It was very cold.

An icicle dropped from the eaves, flashing in the light and then hitting the ground with the music of breaking glass. A voice sounded over the radio of one of the patrol cars standing outside the railings, and a militiaman answered, and the night was quiet again. But there was the sweet-and-sour smell of carbon monoxide on the air: there was an engine running somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the building. That was to be expected.

Chief Investigator Gromov rolled his shoulders inside his greatcoat again, as I'd seen him do before. I suppose the coat was a bad fit, or he was just trying to keep warm. He would have been awake for most of last night, supervising the city wide manhunt for Viktor Shokin, and would be tired now.

The three-quarter moon clung to the heights of the southern sky, bone-white and mottled, its light casting prismatic colours across the snow-covered roofs. A horned owl was calling from the bare trees of the park, with the note of a bamboo flute.

She came out of the building, Tanya Rusakova, walking alone, not looking around her yet, taking care with the steps, her boots grating on the sand that had been thrown down over the hard-packed snow. Then she reached the bottom and walked a little way into the courtyard, looking around her now, confused, her face drawn and her eyes wary; then she saw me and came on again, and I took a few steps to meet her. This was what I had asked for, that she should have no escort out of the building and that I should be the only one to speak to her.

Her eyes had surprise in them now; the last time she'd seen me was in the safe-house, and she couldn't understand why I was still apparently a free man, surrounded by uniforms but at a distance.

'Why are they letting me go?' Her breath clouded on the lamplit air.

I asked her quietly, 'What did you tell them?'

She tensed, remembering the past hours, I suppose. 'Nothing about you, or my brother.'

She's very obstinate, her brother had said. Perhaps it was that.

'Walk through those gates,' I told her,' and into the park. A man will meet you there and look after you. He'll tell you his name is Georgi. Do everything he says. The militia will try to bring you back, so be careful this time.'

I stood drowning for a moment in the shimmering green as she went on watching me, still confused. 'You are not coming too?'

'No. Remember what I said, Tanya, and be careful.' I turned and walked a little way towards the building and then turned again and watched her going through the big iron gates. She looked back once, her face pale in the wash of the two big lamps, then walked on again across the churned snow of the roadway and into the trees of the park.

Somewhere on the other side of the building I could hear a vehicle of some sort moving off through the gears; it was probably the one that had been sending the smell of carbon monoxide across the courtyard.

'Colonel Belyak. Get that vehicle stopped.'

He swung a look at me but did nothing.

'Stop that patrol car or the deal is off, you understand?'

He left the black stones of his eyes on me for a little while and then made a quick gesture to the driver of the prisoner transport van, and we heard the squelch of his transmitter. Belyak turned, pacing away with his head down, hands behind him, pacing back. In the distance I heard the patrol car halt and the sound of its engine die away. I didn't believe Belyak could have ordered something so crude; we'd made a deal purportedly among gentlemen, the only kind that would work. Perhaps some minion had thought of trying it on, and Belyak had done nothing to stop him, seeing it as a test for me, to find out how much confidence I had, how I'd respond to the challenge.

'Colonel Belyak. Did you give the orders for that?'

He stopped pacing and looked up at me from under his big round cap, said nothing for a moment and then, 'Let's get on. We're wasting time.'

I looked at my watch. 'Ten minutes, remember? That was all I asked for and you agreed.'

He moved away from me impatiently, crunching across the snow to talk to Chief Investigator Gromov. No one else moved and there was no more sound of engines or anything else, no sound of a shot.

One of the uniformed militiamen was stamping his feet, over by the black iron railings. He was nursing an assault rifle: they all were, slung low and at the ready. A dozen of them were positioned outside the gates, all of them facing the courtyard, facing the prisoner, Viktor Shokin.

The night was quiet still except for the snow-plough in the distance. Six minutes had passed and there was still no sound of a shot. That was what I was waiting for, hoping against.

Seven minutes and the radio in one of the patrol vehicles opened up and I went across there straightaway to listen through the driver's open window.

49 to base, this is 49.

Come in.

I'm stuck on the ice at St Petersburg ulica and Boronov Prospekt.

Base told him they were sending help and the call was shut down. It hadn't been anything to do with this driver here; the radio was on open network. I'd checked the call as a routine, and it was all I could do. If Colonel Belyak or Chief Investigator Gromov had set up a multi-vehicle tracking operation on the little park to keep Tanya Rusakova monitored, there'd be no signals on the air: they would have ordered radio silence.

Nine minutes and another big icicle came away from the eaves of the building, lancing through the lamplight and splintering against the bottom step. It had touched the nerves a little because if the sound of a shot came from across the park it would be a signal that the support man couldn't get Tanya as far as the first car, couldn't get her clear, and if that happened there'd be no further options. If these people weren't prepared to let the woman prisoner go free in exchange for what I could do for them I couldn't force the issue.

I heard the horned owl call again from the trees, the ushastaya sova, its notes soft and echoeless; the snow-plough had stopped working over there in the distance, and the winter silence grew vast across the city.

There had been no shot.

Colonel Belyak turned to face me.

'Ten minutes — are you satisfied?'

'Stop,' I told the militiaman at the wheel.

The safe-house was two blocks from here, eastwards towards the river.

Belyak spoke to the driver from beside me on the rear seat.

'Give the signal for deployment.'

The man opened up his radio.

I'd counted seven unmarked patrol cars on the way here from Militia Headquarters, some of them tailing us and the others keeping abreast along streets running parallel to our route. I hadn't given directions when we'd started out: this too had been finally agreed. Belyak had raised objections at first but I'd waited for him to sweat it out because the situation was quite clear: if I'd given him the location of the safe-house he could have left Tanya in her cell and put me back into mine and sent in a platoon and evacuated the building and taken it by storm.

'It's the concrete block of apartments straight ahead of us,' I told him, 'two blocks down.'

'We will wait,' he said.

We'd agreed that I would take him to within two blocks of the safe-house and give him time to deploy his forces in a ring at that distance from the building before I went in.

'Microphone,' he told the driver, and the man passed it back.' Commander to all units. Keep your engines as quiet as you can. No lights.'

He smelled of cigars, the colonel, cigars and boot-polish; he was an easier man to handle than Chief Investigator Gromov; Belyak was paramilitary, trained within the narrow perspectives of the soldier. He'd be less likely to spring a surprise than Gromov, a subtler and an older man, more of a chess-player than a tin drum major. Gromov was in his own car but his radio would be linked with the Colonel's network and he'd be listening to the moves.

Static came on the air.

21 to station 6 and halted.

Colonel Belyak sat with his bulk in the corner between the seat and the door, the microphone in his hand. He wasn't worried about my attempting an escape: this area was already a super-trap and if I'd wanted to escape I wouldn't have set it up for my self, and so far I'd got him to believe in that.

34 to station 7 and halted.

Engines sounded everywhere in the quiet of the streets, a background murmur. Normal traffic had been stopped, and there were no lights moving anywhere, only the blacked-out shapes of the patrol cars. Dogs loped past us, singly and in packs, hollow-flanked and with their heads down, scenting; this wasn't far from the big No. 3 Meat Market, closed because there was no meat but still attractive because of its smell.

19 to station 12 and halted.

The time on the dashboard clock was 7:13.

The colonel flipped the mike open. 'What units are still moving?'

There was only static and some faint Morse we were picking up from another band.

'If any unit is not yet deployed, report immediately.'

Static.

Belyak looked at me. 'You are ready?'

'Yes.'

He got out of the car with me, bringing a walkie-talkie with the antenna extended, and I took him to within a block of the safe-house.

'It looks,' I told him, 'as if he's still there. It's the fifth room along on the third floor.' the chink of yellowish light showed clearly enough through the gap in the curtains. I looked at my watch. 'Do you have 7:21?'

'I do.'

'You're giving me fifteen minutes. That was agreed?'

'It was.'

'Then you can send your men in at 7:36 if I haven't brought him out. If I can get him under control before then, you'll see the light in that window go out and you can expect both of us to leave the building by the main entrance. You won't need to order any rush: I'll have a gun at his back.'

I couldn't see the Colonel's eyes in the shadow of his cap, knew only that they were watching me.

'Very well. And whether you bring this man out or not, you understand that you will remain my prisoner. That also was agreed.'

'Yes, I understand.'

I turned away and began walking, and heard the sound of boots over the snow as my two escorts began tailing me at a distance. There would be others, as I moved closer to the building, and once I was through the entrance door they would close in from all sides with their assault rifles covering every exit and every window.

The edges of the snow-ruts broke under my boots as I kept on walking. From somewhere over to my left I heard a radio come to life, and faint voices; then it was quiet again.

He had done well, Belyak. I could only see two of the patrol cars from where I was now and their crews were inside them, keeping a low profile, but there'd be upwards of thirty vehicles forming the peripheral ring at two blocks' distance, because it would take at least that number to seal off the area effectively. When we'd left Militia Headquarters I'd counted five personnel carriers, and there could be others here, so that the actual number of armed bodies within and around the ring was probably in the region of two hundred. If I tried to break and run at any time, at any time at all, I would have as much chance as a rat in a dog-pack.

It was 7:23 when I reached the building and kicked the worst of the snow off my boots and went through the entrance door and heard it swing shut behind me.