Quiller Meridian

Chapter 7: PRIDE

'What was the town back there? Where the train stopped?'

'If you talk,' the officer said, 'you may incriminate yourself.' His name was Konarev: that was what Chief lnvestigator Gromov had called him. He was my guard, and he had the key to my handcuffs; it was on the bunch dangling from his polished black belt. His gun was in its holster; I couldn't see whether it had a safety-catch. He was in his thirties, his leathery face still pocked with the ancient scars of adolescent acne; he'd sliced his chin this morning, or perhaps yesterday morning, with his razor. His eyes were hard, so hard that they had surely never softened even when he'd met his first love, or his last love, or his wife, whatever. If the question ever arose of his having to shoot, he would shoot to kill.

There were two other officers in here; they were sitting on one of the benches going through sheafs of paper, the first statements made by the passengers, conceivably. Two security guards were in the corridor, both wearing bolstered guns. The train was moving at optimum cruising speed, or close, by the feel of things.

It was 4:17 by my wristwatch, the Kanovia watch that Jane had bought for me, a Russian model. Everywhere else on the Rossiya the clocks would be showing seventeen minutes past noon, Moscow time. They would be showing Moscow time when the train rolled into Beijing.

The time wasn't critical but I noted it, because it could become critical later in the day, in the night. Everything, in this situation, could be considered critical in the extreme. If there were going to be a chance of regaining my liberty, it would probably be the result of my having noticed something, perhaps something very small. Officer Konarev had a slight cold, for instance, and his reaction time would be a few degrees slower if he had to move quickly.

'Do you live in the town where we stopped,' I asked him, 'or in Novosibirsk?'

'If you talk, you may incriminate yourself.'. He blew his nose again. I appreciated his official consideration, couldn't fault it.

We were in a compartment not far from the locomotive. The bunks had been ripped out and the bulkheads were partially repainted. I think there'd been a fire in here: there were areas of discoloured and bubbling paintwork, and the lingering smell of burning. There was no heating; either it was broken down or the cleaning staff had turned it off, wanting to cool down after their labours in the rest of the train, where the heating was tropical. This was a staff carriage, and the banging of buckets and the light cries of the women's voices above the rumbling of the train were a constant background.

I'd put on my padded jacket over the track suit. The gloves were in the pockets. There'd been a penknife in one of the track suit pockets but they'd taken it away, also the cheap plastic-handled knife that Jane had packed for me in the food bag. The rest of my baggage was in here with me: two officers — one of them Gromov's thin and pale-eyed assistant — had searched it in front of me. A man in a blue coat and trilby hat had come in with a small attache-case and opened it up and taken my fingerprints, giving me a small sealed alcohol swab to clean my fingers with afterwards.

I had no alibi.

The sky out there must have some light left in it to the west, in the track of the train; perhaps the sun had found a hole in the overcast on its way to the horizon; it was leaving a pale unnatural light across the snows that I could see to the north through the window, making them seem like frosted glass faintly lit from beneath. Above it the sky was just as unreal, not quite dark but with no light in it, an awesome shroud across the evening, thrown by the coming of night. It looked inhospitable out there, not a place where one would think of going, of setting out alone, not in the ordinary way; but then of course one must on occasion leave room for the extraordinary, mustn't one, when the devil drives.

No alibi at all.

Slavsky had gazed wide-eyed at Chief Investigator Gromov, a dry nervous hand adjusting his glasses, and said no, he didn't hear me leave our compartment after 10:30 last night when he'd gone to sleep, leave it or come back to it or leave it again, nothing, he'd heard nothing, he slept soundly, always, and was used to the noise of the train. It wouldn't have mattered much what he'd said, because the general's bodyguard and Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya had both sworn to having seen me near the scene of the homicide and having heard a shot.

I had been outbid. She hadn't had much time for the generals, Galina. They had power, once. Now they have no power. But they think they have. Their ways are devious. But they still possessed the power of money, and it had talked, it had said that she'd seen me there last night where the dead passenger was found.

With the generals' bodyguard there'd been no money involved. The underground faction, the Podpolia, had put Hornby out of the way in Bucharest and they had put Zymyanin out of the way on this train and they had driven me into a trap that I wouldn't get out of. and whatever I said against them, whatever I knew about them couldn't do them injury: it would be taken as an attempt to clear myself. They'd needed a scapegoat, someone for hanging, to draw attention away from themselves over the shooting of Zymyanin. and one of them had seen me talking to him in the corridor within hours of their killing him, and I had become a suitable candidate And Galina was dead wrong. The generals, the clandestine and omnipresent Podpolia, had power besides money, immense power in the land. This had been the thrust of Zymyanin's mission, itself clandestine: to attack that power. I'm also here because there's a cell in Moscow, a completely unacknowledged, unofficial cell whose purpose is to seek, find and expose the active members of the Podpolia wherever they may be.

'Are you married?' I asked Konarev, my guard. 'Have you got children?'

He told me I could incriminate myself.

But they'll usually start talking about their children, give them long enough. Of course he might not have any, or even a wife, could well be devoted exclusively to his police work. I watched the other two for a moment, at work on their papers, and then the noise started, a distant but enormous whoomph like a heavy-calibre shell bursting, and then just the rumbling of the train for a second, two seconds, before the big steel couplings began banging and the carriages started shunting and the iron buckets in the cleaners' quarters went wild and I saw Konarev do a half-turn, caught off his balance, and hit the wall with his hands going up to save himself as I pitched sideways and crashed into him and he got his gun out very fast and pushed me away while the other two policemen hit the long plate-glass window and bounced off it with their papers whirling upwards and then drifting like leaves as the red came, the huge red glare spreading across the snows through the windows of the corridor outside.

The women were screaming, and one of their buckets came rolling past our compartment door as the whole train went on shunting and Konarev and the other two found their feet and I got off the floor with a certain amount of caution because of the gun — he was still holding it on me but with both hands now: I think he'd knocked his head when he'd crashed against the wall and was feeling a bit dizzy, didn't want me to take advantage and try something fancy, but that was out of the question because the Rossiya was rolling like a ship in heavy seas and nothing looked certain: it had been doing a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour before the explosion had happened and there was a fire raging back there, half a dozen carriages away or perhaps closer than that: all I could see was the bright orange glare across the snowfields and its light flickering on the faces of the two security guards in the corridor as they picked themselves up and stared into the compartment with their mouths open.

The floor shifted again under our feet and we landed against the forward bulkhead as the train went on decelerating in massive jerks — obviously the carriage back there had blown up and jumped the rails and pulled the adjacent ones with it, and the locomotive was under the brakes as it dragged the train behind it like an injured snake through the snows. One of the women went staggering past in the corridor with blood running from her face, perhaps in shock and moving instinctively away from the fire.

"Don't move!' Konarev shouted above the noise and I noted this too: as well as having the beginnings of a cold he was more nervous man I'd thought him to be, didn't want me to get too close while hell was breaking loose like this. I'd lurched into him, that was all, couldn't help it, and there was nothing I could do in any case — bring the link between the handcuffs down across the gun, yes, but I'd only get shot in the leg when his trigger finger reacted. And he wasn't the only armed man here, there were four others, and he didn't seem to realize I hadn't the slightest chance of getting away.

The train was still shuddering, the carriages shunting as the speed came down more progressively now as small buildings began swinging past the windows, dachas, I think, and a pall of smoke started rolling across the snow with its shadow meeting it. The last time I'd looked at my watch it had shown 4:48 and the city of Novosibirsk would have been a hundred kilometres to the east; I would now put it at something like thirty, perhaps less, and that was why we were running through scattered buildings on the outskirts, though none of them had lights in the windows.

A lot of noise as something smashed behind us, closer than the explosion; it sounded like the whole side of a carriage being ripped away, could have turned over, snapped the couplings. The speed was right down now: we were crawling, and smoke began blowing through the corridors. The two police officers went out there and one of them shouted Oh my God and they started running aft to help people and the security guards followed them as the shunting got a lot worse for half a minute and then we stopped and Konarev and I hit the bulkhead again and I kept my distance as best I could because he might pull off a shot by mistake: his finger was inside that bloody trigger guard.

'Don't move!' he said again and I shook my head and stayed exactly where I was, my back to the bulkhead and pain moving in on the nerves now there was time for the organism to pay attention: the left shoulder had taken the worst of the impact when I'd hit the bulkhead the first time. There was an iron bracket sticking out of the wall where the bunk had been ripped away for replacement and I must have torn my thigh on it, because there was blood creeping down my leg, I could feel it, but it didn't worry me because it wouldn't stop me running if I had to, if I could, it's the only thing we think about when we're in a trap — if we can get out of it can we run?

People were coming past the doorway now, more security guards and provodniks, some of them with blood on their hands or their faces, one with her uniform ripped off at the shoulder. The smoke was thicker along the corridor and a man went past with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth and Konarev looked at me and jerked his gun and said — 'Out!'

It was very cold.

We were standing, Konarev and I, a hundred yards from the train. He was behind me and had prodded me with his gun as a reminder that in spite of everything that was going on I was still a prisoner under guard.

The security people and the provodniks and some of the cleaners were bringing the dead and the injured out of the train onto the snow, making a temporary first-aid station while people still inside were pulling sheets and blankets and pillows off the bunks and passing them down to the others. The carriage that had blown up — the twelfth back from the locomotive — was still on fire, and small figures in the distance, black against the snow, were forming a chain brigade with water buckets and waiting until they could get close enough to use them. Smoke still lay in a dark swirling shroud to the north of the train, and above the distant snows the sky hung black and enveloping, part of it rust-red from the glow of the burning carriage.

A kind of silence had moved in now that the train was standing still, and voices carried through the freezing air, mostly those of the rescue crews. The train staff was shouting instructions and information as they herded the passengers across to the comfort station they were setting up — no one was allowed to go back into the train even to fetch their belongings, since it was possible there might be further explosions. A radio message had gone to the army barracks, hospital staffs and emergency services in Novosibirsk, and medical rescue helicopters were already known to be airborne. There would shortly be enough blankets available from the train to provide warmth for every passenger, and a soup kitchen was being set up.

Something was on my mind.

'Are you injured?' Konarev asked me.

'What?' He was looking down at my fur-lined boot: the blood had reached there now. 'No.'

When I looked up again and across at the train I realized it was Galina, the large woman I'd been watching as she helped with the rescue work, her back braced to lift the smashed bulkhead that had come down across a passenger's legs while someone pulled him clear; she would be good at that, Galina, the morals of a toad but with a streak of crude humanity in her that was brought out by crisis, but it didn't excuse her, the bitch. I was standing here with these handcuffs on because of her odious greed — and I could have raised the bidding if only she'd asked me, given her double what she'd been paid by the generals, wouldn't she like to know that?

Something was on my mind and I knew what it was now. The burning carriage was the twelfth back from the locomotive, and that was the one where the generals and their bodyguards had been before Galina had moved them, at their request. I'm relocating them from Car No. 12 to Car No. 4. They say they 're too near one of the lavatories.

Two provodniks were swinging one of the huge copper samovars down from the train, smoke curling from the furnace underneath.

Others were bringing wooden trays of cups, following the path of the samovar across to the comfort centre, the sweat bright on their faces in the light of the fire.

Children were crying, their voices thin and piping, shreds of sound in the night, their cries torn from them, from their pain.

Would Zymyanin do this to children?

Oh, yes. He'd been a man with a cause. When you set explosives you know you won't be there when they go off; it gives you the same feeling of remoteness a bomber pilot has when he watches the patchwork streets of the enemy city come into the sights: he too is a man with a cause and the cause is his country and that is enough.

But I didn't think it had been Zymyanin. His business had been intelligence, not terrorism or political assassination. It had been someone else, and they wouldn't have wanted to take the risk of getting killed if the whole train ran amok, and if they'd been on the train they would have known that the generals had moved out of Car No. 12.

Someone screamed and went on screaming as part of the wreckage collapsed, and two or three people went over there from the rescue squads but there was too much to do and not enough hands.

'For Christ's sake,' I said to Konarev, 'can't we make ourselves useful instead of just standing here? You can leave these things on me.'

'No.' It was the first time he'd said anything except to warn me that I could incriminate myself if I talked. 'Stay where you are.'

'Look,' I said, 'you can keep your fucking gun on me while I'm working, what more do you want?'

'No.'

Bastard.

He was nervous because I was on a capital charge and he'd be entirely responsible if I got away from him; Chief Investigator Gromov and his team were helping with the rescue work: I'd seen two of them carrying a body in a sheet over to the place where they'd set up a morgue — Zymyanin's, possibly.

The screaming went on and I turned my back, it was all I could do, and Konarev told me to stay where I was and I told him to fuck himself and I added that in front of the whole court I was going to let it be known that while people were trapped in that wreckage and dying for the want of help he'd been content just to stand here and do nothing, nothing, but he just went back to his broken record, I could incriminate myself, bastard.

You could turn your back on the train but there was nowhere you could look where there weren't people injured or in shock or crying or standing with their arms round someone else and trying to comfort them. I'd seen Tanya twice, Tanya Rusakova, she'd been helping one of the stretcher bearers, and then I'd seen her working with some other passengers, pulling wreckage clear where someone was calling for help.

I hadn't seen the generals.

The Bureau should do everything to keep them under surveillance, Zymyanin had said.

Then I would have to do that. Get rid of this bloody peasant and look for the generals and keep them in sight wherever they went; it had been all Zymyanin had left for me as a focus for the mission. I looked into Konarev's flat square face and saw the nerves in his eyes, listened to that man screaming over there, the one who was trapped.

'Haven't you got any bloody humanity?'

It would have been dangerous, I think, if he'd warned me again about incriminating myself, because that would have blown all my fuses and I would have incriminated myself all over the stupid bastard and he would have ripped off a shot and that would have brought people running, people in uniform, end of mission, finis.

He didn't say anything, watched me with his eyes flickering slightly, worried about me, he should be, I can tell you he bloody well should be.

Then people began looking upwards as the first flakes of snow came drifting out of the dark belly of the storm. The Rossiya had been running into it when the bomb had gone off and the train had come to a halt, but the storm itself was moving westwards across the city and into the open steppes, and the snowflakes were big ones, eddying out of the silence of the sky. Then in the distance I saw the faint flashing of strobes as the first helicopters came in low, guided by the glow of the fire where the Rossiya was lying crippled.

Gypsies had wandered in from their camp nearer the town and stood watching the scene, then" dogs barking in excitement. Two of the security guards passed us, going to talk to them, possibly to ask if they could bring some of their tents here to give people shelter. Someone was trying to break into one of the darkened dachas, shouldering the door until the lock broke with a bang. They were summer places, shuttered for the long winter season; none of them had lights in the windows.

The strobes glittered in the east, much nearer now and lower still, and the beam of a floodlight came fanning across the scene from the wading helicopter.

People called out to one another, and some of the children waved.

I would have to do something soon now, if I could do anything at all: time was becoming critical. Investigator Gromov would bring his team away from the train as soon as the reinforcements arrived, and I would again become the centre of their attention, and when that happened there'd be nothing I could do, nothing at all.

The chopping of rotors came in and the shadows shifted across the scene, swinging as the floodlight turned and the helicopter put down in a whirling flurry of snow. Two more landed — three — and the snow became blinding until the rotors came to a stop.

I could kill Konarev but there was no case for that: it couldn't be justified as self-defence. I could overpower him but there was the risk of his gun going off and if that happened it would bring down Meridian in the instant because I wouldn't have any chance left of finding the generals and keeping them under surveillance.

Another helicopter put down near the compound where most of the passengers were huddled against the cold, and the snow whirled upwards, blotting them out of sight. Two of the machines were military, with the insignia of the Russian Air Force on their sides; the other two carried a red cross.

Konarev was watching them, and I looked at him, at the angle of his head and the set of his body, left hand hooked into his belt, right hand with the revolver in it, finger inside the trigger guard. There was no safety-catch: it was ready to fire. I would have to use both arms together for whatever action I could take because of the handcuffs, and that would make things more difficult, but not impossible. I was just running the whole thing through my mind, that was all: I probably had another few minutes before I actually needed to do something, if the risk was worth it.

I didn't think it was. Gromov and his team were less than a hundred yards away, still working with the rescue parties and close enough to hear a shot. They'd turn and start running across here and they'd be within optimum target range within fifty yards and when they saw me trying to get clear they'd shoot and they'd shoot to kill.

Two more helicopters landed, huge machines with twin rotors, troop-carriers, and the dark figures of their crews came running from the haze of snow.

Then I saw the generals, recognizably, moving in a group with their bodyguards away from the train and towards the helicopters. They were thirty or forty yards away, their faces not distinct but the cut of their greatcoats clear enough, and their air of purpose. The three leaders were moving slightly ahead, with their bodyguards holding off on each side; it was almost a miniature parade.

I sensed Konarev, tested his aura, let my nerves pick up his vibrations, but the information I was receiving, fine as gossamer, was simply that he wasn't relaxed, wasn't just standing there. He was ready for me if I made a move.

The generals were talking to one of the military pilots, showing him papers, the snow drifting across their dark coats and settling on them as the edge of the storm reached us. The pilot was looking at the papers, turning them to catch the light from the helicopters that was still flooding the scene.

I didn't need the light. I needed darkness. I needed to be able to get clear of this man Konarev and follow the generals: they were asking the pilot to lift them out with the first of the passengers and the injured, what else would they be asking him?

The gun was six inches from my body, Konarev's gun.

That was too close.

The Bureau should do everything to keep them under surveillance.

Noted. But the pilot was giving the generals their papers back and pointing to one of the helicopters with the Air Force insignia on its side, then cupping his hands and shouting to one of the crew. Then he turned back and nodded and the generals began moving towards the helicopter, their bodyguards closing in.

There's an edict taught at Norfolk, and even repeated to senior and experienced shadow executives during refresher courses, on the subject of risk-taking in the field. At a crucial phase of any given mission when the executive is tempted to take a risk that would seem likely to place that mission in hazard, he is expected to bear in mind that his life is to be counted more than the mission itself, on the premise that he may well survive to bring future missions to successful completion and recoup the loss.

To strip this edict of its bureaucratic terminology, we are asked to sink our pride and not to act the bloody fool but to get out with a whole skin if we can, and leave the mission to founder. But it's extraordinarily difficult to put into practice, and we argue the toss about it in the Caff and the briefing rooms, quoting from the records, which show that the executives have so far got away with something like fifty per cent of the decisions made in hot blood and carried the mission with them, sometimes with a bullet in them somewhere but not where it could incapacitate, sometimes with a flesh wound and blood loss but nothing critical. And the reason why this kind of decision-making is so difficult is nothing to do with the risk itself, nothing to do with its technical configuration or the balance of its calculated profit-and-loss. It's to do with personal pride.

I watched the generals.

They were picking their way across the snow, their bodies leaning forward, their shadows thrown by the floodlights as they neared the Air Force helicopter. Other passengers, some of the walking wounded, were following them as the pilot beckoned them on.

Chief lnvestigator Gromov was still working in the vicinity of the train, his officers with him. The man had stopped screaming some time ago: either they'd got him clear of the wreckage or he was unconscious or dead. I watched the injured passengers — one of them Boris Slavsky, blood soaking into the bandage round his head. When eight or nine of them had reached the helicopter I saw the generals and their bodyguards go aboard; then the pilot helped the injured to climb the short iron ladder.

So it wasn't Konarev's gun that was the danger here: it was personal pride.

Above the cabin of the military helicopter the rotor had started naming, and a puff of dark smoke clouded from the exhaust.

The Bureau must do everything…

But the Bureau could do nothing. I, the appointed agent of the Bureau in the field, could do nothing. Perhaps I had ten seconds left to deal with Konarev and get across to the helicopter and go aboard if the pilot would take me, but the risk of this man's gun going off and sounding the alarm was too high, and even if I could reach the chopper the bodyguard who'd given false evidence to the police would recognize me and I'd be back in a trap, finito.

The rotor was spinning now and the whole machine vanished in a vortex of flying snow and then its strobes lifted and traced an arc across the night sky before they were slowly blotted out by the storm as I stood there watching with my life vouchsafed and my pride in rags as Meridian died its death.