Quiller Meridian

Chapter 3: ROSSIYA

'I broke K-15,' she said, and tilted the frying pan to get the butter over the eggs.

'Oh, Jesus,' I said, 'and you were trying to impress me by walking like a duck.'

'Thought I'd kind of steal up on you.'

K-15 was a hands-on but much-used Soviet code that the people in Codes and Cyphers at the Bureau had been trying to break for three years. I knew it had been done but I'd thought it was in London.

'Another egg?' Jane asked.

'If you can spare one.'

'No problem,' she said. 'Blackmarket.'

I didn't know when I was going to eat again. There'd been two signals from Control earlier this morning but Zymyanin still hadn't made contact. It was just gone eight, and the clothing shop wouldn't open until nine. 'Even if then,' Jane had said. 'We might have to bash at the back door.'

'You worked on it at the embassy here?' I asked her. On K-15.

'Yes. I'd be an infant prodigy in maths, if I were an infant. When I was six I used to finish Dad's crossword puzzles for him when he was at the office, made him furious. And they were in The Times.'

At the scrubbed pinewood table she said, 'Ketchup? I also created Mystere.' she watched me for my reaction.

'Did you, now.'

Mystere was also a hands-on code, non-computerized, and C and C had brought in a man from the Foreign Office to try breaking it. He hadn't managed it so far but when he did we'd destroy it, because if he could break it so could the Soviets, or someone else.

'I got it from my typewriter,' Jane said.' Or that started me off. I use a Canon AP810-III, and I was changing the ribbon when I noticed the characters on the old one. It's a wide ribbon and they're not in a single-line row, it prints three characters vertically, shifts — wait a minute — ' she reached for her pad and got a pencil — ' it prints three characters vertically downwards, then shifts one space to the right and prints upwards again, three — ' she glanced up at me — ' am I being an infant prodigy all over you?'

'I've worked on codes,' I said. 'I'm interested.'

'All right. Three down, then shift, three up, shift, three down again, like this. And if you read it like that, it makes sense, but we always read in a single line from left to right, and that looked like gibberish, and it suddenly struck me — I was looking at a code.' she put the pencil down and bit on some toast and munched it. 'But if we, say, typed the words, oh, I dunno, "if you like", the «y» comes at the bottom of the first vertical and the «o» comes at the bottom of the next one, and there aren't too many ordinary words beginning with «yo» except for «you» — and you start getting the drift. So at the top and bottom of every vertical I inserted a blind character to break the rhythm, and that was much nicer.' she sat back and looked at me. 'Had enough?'

'No.'

' Glutton for punishment. So I 'm reading three horizontal lines of code and I'm not picking up clues from the verticals because of the blinds. At that stage it would have taken a bright teenager maybe half an hour to break, so I threw in a reverse-direction read-out and put it on the standard grid and went for three-character alphabetical substitutes and froze it. Mystere!' she shook her pony-tail. 'God, don't tell the man in London.' Her eyes were suddenly deep, their colour darkening. 'Or anyone.'

'I'm offended,' I said.

'Sorry.' she drew a breath, let it out. 'I want that one to run for ever.'

'It probably will.'

'I shouldn't think so. I mean, basically it's terribly simple. But it touched my funny-bone to think of all those typists out there — it's probably the same with any typewriter, not just a Canon — using the basis for Mystere when they're ordering another consignment of paperclips or whatever. More toast?'

'No, I've finished. Are you working on anything new, at the — ' then the phone rang and I went over to it while Jane cleared the table.

'We've found Zymyanin.' It wasn't Medlock's voice; this was the man on the day shift, and I recognized him because he'd been on the board for Solitaire, name was Carey. 'He's still in Moscow.'

'He made contact?'

'No. We had him traced — he went to his base in Lenin Prospekt.'

'He's worked with us before?'

In a moment, 'He's Bureau, but rather a lone wolf.' He didn't query the fact that I hadn't been briefed on Zymyanin, didn't want to tread on any toes. 'We've got a watch on him, and when he moves, we'll let you know. We think he's frightened, you see.'

'Yes.' It was possible that Jane didn't know Zymyanin, and couldn't have briefed me. Croder would have assumed I could trust him to know that the Soviet was reliable. But it made me uneasy: I didn't much care for lone wolves in a sensitive field like Moscow.

'But he should come round, in good time. If he doesn't ask for a rendezvous you'll have to make your own way. We'll keep you posted as to his movements. Don't leave the phone.'

I told him I'd got to go and find some clothes.

'Okay, but there's an answering machine, right?'

'Yes.'

'Keep as close as you can, though, in case he suddenly takes off somewhere.'

I said I'd do that.

'Any questions?' Carey asked me.

'No, but you can look after a couple of things for me. Was Hornby married?'

'Yes.'

'Send some flowers, will you?'

'How much for?'

'Oh, twenty pounds.'

'Name on the card?'

'Put anything. She doesn't know me.'

'Will do.'

'And tell Accounts we owe the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture for a sack of Grade A rye grain, 150 lbs.'

There'd be a squeal from that acidic old bitch in the counting house because she's always touchy about passing anonymous funds into Moscow without any explanation, but the rule is that if we damage any property we've got to report it and it's got to be paid for, and in any case this was nothing, the last thing I'd stuck Accounts for was a smashed Mercedes.

'Anything else?' Carey asked me. I said no and we shut down.

This was at 8:44.

It was mid-afternoon when London came through with instructions.

Medlock was back at the board.

'Zymyanin has booked out on the Rossiya to Vladivostok. Please stand by for Chief of Signals.'

Jane had been typing a report for the embassy, and stopped, leaving the room quiet. The sky in the high narrow window was already darkening toward nightfall even at this hour. The snow had eased off soon after we'd got back from the clothing shop.

I heard Croder's voice on the line.

'Your instructions are to board the train and try to make contact with him.'

With Zymyanin. I asked Croder: 'He signalled you?'

'No. We had his movements monitored. We think he finally decided against making a second rendezvous. Zymyanin is not normally a nervous man, but it seems he was frightened off by the Bucharest debacle.'

It didn't surprise me. You don't need to be nervous to get clear from a blown rendezvous with no intention of trying your luck again: it's simply a logical precaution. This trade's chancy enough without begging for an early grave. But what I didn't like was the idea of forcing Zymyanin into a rendezvous he hadn't asked for, because there were a lot of risks and some of them could be lethal, and if it had been anyone but Croder giving me these instructions I would have turned them down. I've taken lethal risks all my life with the Bureau — it's built into the business — but I always need to know in each particular case whether it's worth it.

'What's the situation?' I asked him.

'The situation is that we still think Zymyanin has something of major importance to give us, if we can persuade him. I don't need to tell you, of course, that he may be very difficult to handle by now.'

Yes indeed. It looked as if the Soviet had got clear of the Bucharest thing and was simply unwilling to take any more risks, but that was an assumption, and assumptions are always dangerous.

'You mean," I said, 'he might not have got away clean.'

'Quite so. He may have been tracked from Bucharest to Moscow.'

Tracked by the people who'd killed Hornby.

'He could in effect be still on the run.'

'That is possible.'

I watched the sky darkening in the window.' He could have been caught,' I said, 'caught and turned and given new instructions. Is that what you mean by "difficult to handle"?'

'Something along those lines.'

He's got a dry, thin voice, Croder. It's more like the sound of a paper shredder, and if you listen very carefully — as you should, if you are talking to the Chief of Signals — you can almost hear those little bright blades in there cutting the words out for you, the sibilants sharp and clear.

Something along those lines. I wasn't going to let him get away with that. I wanted him to know I was quite aware of what he was asking me to do. 'He could,' I said — Zymyanin — 'have been told to stay out of contact with London and try and draw me into a trap.'

In a moment,' that is also possible.'

There was a sharp ringing sound in the room; I think Jane had gone into the little kitchenette and had dropped a spoon or something. I didn't like the way it touched my nerves. Vladivostok was nine or ten thousand kilometres from Moscow on the Sea of Japan, and it would take seven or eight days to get there, straight through the heart of Siberia. In terms of security a moving train comes right at the bottom of the scale: call it a super-trap.

Croder was waiting. 'The thing is,' I asked him, 'is it worth the risk?'

Zymyanin was said to be Bureau, but at most he was an agent-in-place or a roving watchdog; he wouldn't know much about London and if the opposition had in fact caught him and put him under the light and burned everything out of him they wouldn't have finished up with anything major. If they did the same thing with a senior shadow executive he'd blow Big Ben into the Thames if he couldn't get to the capsule fast enough.

It's a built-in risk factor and well-recognized at the Bureau: the longer an executive runs and the more he knows, the more valuable he is to the opposition. Nobody likes this but there's nothing we can do about it except take out insurance, and the only insurance you can take out is not to send him into the field again.

Croder's voice came. 'I was expecting your question.' Whether it was worth the risk, this time around. 'Yes, we believe it's worth it'

I didn't ask why. Croder gives no easy answers: he thinks them out, and he must have been thinking this one out ever since Longs hot had crashed all over the signals board in London and sent people running for cover. He had also been getting input from Bureau agents-in-place in Moscow on the general intelligence background there, and he had finally put Zymyanin into the overall picture and come up with his findings: that it was worth risking the life of a senior shadow and worth risking that shadow's getting seized and interrogated and thrown onto the trash heap with nothing left in his skull but the burned-out circuits of his brain.

So it was a risk, but a calculated risk, and those I will accept. Without them, no executive can function.

'All right,' I told Croder, and he asked me to stay on the line for briefing.

I looked round for Jane. 'I'm taking the Rossiya to Vladivostok.'

She came back into the room. 'What time?'

'I don't know.'

A voice on the line said, 'Are you there?'

'Yes.' It wasn't Holmes this time.

'Have you been on that train before?'

I said I hadn't.

'All right, the one the subject is on will be leaving Yaroslavl station in Moscow at about 18:00 hours, local time.' the effect of the long distance plus the scrambler units made him sound like a robot. 'I can't be more accurate than that, because those trains are usually late and this one ran into a snowstorm soon after it left St Petersburg. If it in fact leaves at 18:00 hours we'll be running things rather tight, so we're calling on the embassy for help.'

We don't normally do that. Any of our overseas missions can end up messy in the extreme, with bodies lying around and the host-country police and secret services asking a lot of questions, and the embassy regards the Bureau understandably as a stinking fish. But they've got to give us assistance if we ask for it, because we answer directly to the prime minister.

I blocked the mouthpiece and told Jane, '18:00 hours.'

She nodded and got her notepad and sat on the floor cross-legged by the long carved stool.

'We're going to fax you,' the man in Briefing said,' three mug shots of Vladimir Zymyanin to the embassy right away. We're going to ask them to send a courier to Yaroslavl station and get you a ticket for Vladivostok, hopefully soft class if there's one available. That's a two-berther. If we — '

'I want you to make certain,' I told him,' that I go soft class. Understood?'

'We'll do our very best'

'No,' I said, 'I want you to make certain, for security reasons.'

'Very well.'

They could do it if they tried. If the train was full and there wasn't a berth available they'd have to buy someone off and a soft class passenger would ask for more cash, but they'd have to pay it. It wasn't a question of comfort — although eight days on a train would be a sight more bearable with only one companion — it was a question of routine mission security: I'd be operating under light cover and three passengers would be less easy to convince than one.

'There's an embassy car on its way to you now,' the man on the line said, 'with the complete travel package: visa, maps, vouchers, cash. Questions?'

'Where do I find my director, for debriefing?'

'We're putting him into Novosibirsk, where the train makes a stop. Look for him near the main booking-office. You're mutually recognizable, I understand.'

'Yes.'

'Further questions?'

'No. Just put me back with Signals.'

Medlock picked up the line and I asked for Croder.

In a moment: 'COS.'

'No support,' I told him, 'unless I ask for it.'

'I've ordered none. I know you prefer that.'

'Thank you.'

We shut down. He was being distinctly cooperative, Croder. I usually have to fight Control and the DIF over the deployment of support groups, because they think the shadow's safer with a whole bloody platoon in the field, but it doesn't work that way — it works the other way.

Jane got off the floor as I came away from the telephone.

"There's a list of do's and don'ts,' she said, 'on the pad here for you to read. I've been on that train.' she fetched her windcheater and shrugged her small thin body into it. 'I 'm going down to warm up the car and bring it round. We need to pick up some other things but we can do that at the station — food, toilet roll, rubber ball, stuff like that.' she found her black fur gloves. 'Stay here and get your gear together and be ready to leave.' At the door she turned with a swing of her pony-tail, her eyes dark and intent.' they're running it bloody close, but we'll manage.'

Snow had drifted among the streets but there was no more coming down. The sky was oppressive, bruise-blue and swollen among the spires and minarets and rectangular termite nests of the housing complexes. Jane was watching the mirrors — from habit, I thought — as we turned along Kirov ulica past the Ministry of Works. She'd had field training, wasn't just a codes and cyphers specialist at the embassy. I felt safe in her hands, don't always, with strangers.

There was a traffic jam outside the enormous redbrick station and when we left the car we were immediately among a crowd of milling people, most of them staggering under the load of blankets and clothing and a week's supply of food. A man in a Royal Navy dufflecoat broke from the crowd and brush-passed a package to Jane and melted again. He would have been from the embassy.

'I'll see you at the end of the platform,' Jane said, and gave me the package.' the train's in — it's that one, the second along. But we've got a bit of time because they're still loading stuff into the dining galleys. I'll go and do the shopping.'

I made my way through the huge cavernous hall to the nearest lavatory, edging among Caucasians, Indians, Mongols, a lot of Chinese — the Rossiya was going to end its run in Beijing — their faces jaundiced in the sulphurous light of the massive chandeliers that hung below the roof in the sooty haze. There was an unoccupied stall and I stood with my back to the door — the lock was broken — and studied the three mug shots of Vladimir Zymyanin, turning them to catch the light from the flickering tubes in the ceiling and learning the bony, compact face with its tight mouth and its blank uncompromising eyes, the jaw thrust forward a little and suggesting belligerence, the face of a man not to be found off his guard, who would not hesitate for a second if in the course of his business he deemed it necessary to kill — necessary or expedient, to save time or to save trouble, even a little time, a little trouble. I knew his kind, as well I should: he was one of us, and of this I would have to beware.

I don't need to tell you, of course, that he may be very difficult to handle by now.

Croder, shredding his words carefully into the telephone.

I put the photographs away and went back through the crowded hall, not missing a face as I made for the end of the platform.

Jane was already there. 'You'll have to make room for this. The food on the train's not uneatable, providing you feel like boiled chicken twice a day for eight days.'

She stuffed the bulging plastic bag into the zipped case we'd bought this morning. I thought I saw him, Zymyanin, turning away from the ticket gate and going down the platform, but wasn't certain.

He could have been caught and turned and given new instructions. Is that what you mean by 'difficult to handle'?

Something along those lines.

Whistles had begun shrilling faintly from the front end of the train, and others sounded, getting nearer. Women with coats over their white aprons were still heaving crates and containers into the dining galleys, and gusts of steam came clouding from some of the windows.

'They've got the samovars up to scratch,' Jane said. 'It'd be a good idea if you went aboard now. You've got everything and you won't be lonely — six hundred people, this one's full.' she stood looking up at me, her black fur gloves held together in front of her like a muff, her small face white and pinched in the cold.

'First class,' I said.

'What?'

'You did a first class job.'

'Oh. Thank you.' she looked down, then up again, her eyes going dark. 'Good luck and everything.'

She turned and walked as far as the end of the platform and didn't look back. I picked up my bags and went along to Car No. 7.

Six hundred people, and one of them Zymyanin.

He could have been told to stay out of contact with London and draw me into a trap.

That is also possible.

The provodnik clipped my ticket and I slung my bags aboard and climbed into the train.