Quiller Meridian

Chapter 9: FUGUE

'The airport,' I told the driver, and he set his meter going.

Tanya Rusakova sat with her head back against the upholstery and her eyes closed. Her face was so pale that even her lips had no colour. One of her legs was straight out in front of her, the fur-lined boot against the back of the driver's seat; the other was bent at the knee. She was sitting sideways a little: I'd noticed it in the dining car on the train.

'Why are we going there?' she asked me, her mouth moving as if it were numbed. I only just heard her: the taxi was running on chains, making a lot of noise as we hit the ruts of piled snow and bounced out again.

'Trust me,' I said.

I didn't think she did. I wasn't even sure she understood the danger she was in. When the general had pitched down onto the snow she'd turned away and started running, and that was when the militia patrol had swung round the corner, its headlights flooding across her. It hadn't been responding to the scene, couldn't have been, unless they'd been tipped off, given the location of the rendezvous and told that something might happen there. But I doubted that. Even if Velichko's companions had suspected anything they would only have warned him; they wouldn't have exposed the assignation — he would have killed them for that.

He has a reputation as a lady's man, Galina had told me, Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya, that perfidious bitch.

Tanya was saying something, too quietly for me to make it out.

'What?'

'I am not leaving Novosibirsk.'

'Don't worry,' I said, 'we're not flying anywhere.'

With our voices at this pitch the driver couldn't hear anything; in any case I thought I heard him singing to himself, just below the noise of the chains, not a care in the world, I'd caught a whiff of his breath when we'd got in.

There were no lights in the mirror, not yet. Two more patrol cars had passed us going the other way, flying their colours. I didn't want to know what our chances were of getting clear tonight: Chief Investigator Gromov would have heard by now that I'd made it as far as the city and he would have concentrated the hunt with the Vladekino Hotel as its epicentre. A second hunt would have been mounted with its focus on the rendezvous point where General Velichko had lain slumped against the wall only three or four blocks away. I'd told our driver the airport simply because it was a good hour's run on a night like this and we needed distance, as much as we could get. I also needed a telephone.

She had run into an alley, Tanya, and I'd intercepted her at the other end; she'd just been running blindly, not away from the militia, I thought, but away from the man lying back there with his face on the ruddled snow, away from what had suddenly happened in her life; this was my impression. She'd struggled when I'd held her and tried to make her understand that she was in the most appalling danger and that I wanted to help her, help get her away.

She hadn't listened, until I'd told her she had to go with me for her brother's sake.

She had listened then.

Once, when we were slipping and lurching across the snow, we'd passed the end of the street where the hotel was, the Vladekino, and seen three or four militia patrol cars outside with their lights flashing. So one of the crews had gone into the hotel earlier to look at the register, and seen the name Shokin, Viktor Sergei there on the page, and got on his radio.

The taxi had been outside another hotel, the first in the rank, and Tanya had got in without protest.

The traffic was light at this hour, 11:14 by the clock on the dashboard, but there were snow-ploughs still churning through the streets, and produce trucks running late because of the storm.

Tanya was saying something, and I leaned closer. 'I'm sorry?'

'How did you know I have a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'A provodnik told me.'

'How would a provodnik know?'

'They know everything.' Galina had telephoned Moscow from the train.

She still hadn't opened her eyes. She was trembling: I'd heard it in her voice. I pushed myself forward on the seat and spoke to the driver.

'Have you got a drop or two of vodka on board?'

He swung his head round with a look of great surprise. 'I'd get arrested!'

'Look, we've been freezing to death out there trying to find a taxi, and my wife's starting a cold. Come on, be a hero, ten roubles a shot.'

He reached for the glove compartment and fished out a plastic flask from among all the camouflage and passed it to me. I got the cap off and wiped the neck on the end of my scarf, best I could do, and nudged Tanya to get her eyes open.

'No,' she said, 'I don't want any.'

'This is medicinal — you're in shock.'

She took the flask in her gloved hands and tossed some of the stuff back and choked on it but I made her have another go; then I gave the flask back to the driver and he put it away.

'There's no more flights tonight,' he said. 'I suppose you realize that'

'Yes. We work at the airport. We thought we'd have a night on the town and then the car broke down.'

In a moment Tanya spoke again. 'You said I was in danger. Why?'

The lights changed and we slid to a stop halfway across the intersection, and when we got the green and the chains started thrashing again I moved my head close to Tanya's.

'You're in danger because that militia patrol back there caught you in its headlights and when they found that man lying there they would have started looking for a woman walking alone in the streets, walking or running or trying to hide. Your name is in the registration book at the Vladekino Hotel, where you saw those other militia patrols crowding around outside, and the concierge would have told them you'd left there fifteen minutes before — because they'd have asked her a lot of questions and that would have been one of the answers, and by this time they'll have made the connection between the young woman leaving the hotel on foot and the young woman seen running from the scene of a shooting only a few blocks away. You also made a statement to the investigators on the train, and that too will be on record. Did you tell them you've got a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'Yes.' then she saw the problem and said defensively,' I had to.

They asked me if I had any relatives, so what else could I say? If you lie to those people they can find out and then you're in trouble.'

I didn't say anything.

The driver was singing again, and the sound of his voice against the demented percussion of the snow chains lent eeriness to the night.

'Why are you helping me like this?' Tanya asked me. She hadn't closed her eyes again after drinking the vodka; she was sitting straighter now. watching me, the green shimmer dulled by the shock that was still going through her. But a bit of colour had come into her cheeks, and the trembling had stopped.

'Because I need information.' there were lights flashing ahead of us and I watched them. 'I need information about General Velichko and the other two.'

In a moment she said, 'Is this for a story?'

'A what? No.'

'You told me you're a journalist.'

A whole circus of militia patrols along there, half a mile away, some kind of road block. I didn't tell the driver to take a side street because he'd wonder why, and if anyone along there saw us running for cover they'd send out a patrol to cut us off and ask questions and the only papers I had on me were in the name of Shokin, Viktor Sergei.

'Yes,' I told Tanya, 'I'm an investigative journalist with political interests.'

'I don't know very much,' she said, 'about the generals.'

But enough to want one of them killed. 'What was Velichko talking about,' I asked her, 'when you had dinner with him on the train?'

'He was telling me,' she said with contempt, 'about his heroic deeds in the war with Afghanistan.'

'Nothing else?'

'No.' I heard something in her voice, and when I looked at her I saw she was frightened because of the lights up there.

'Don't worry,' I told her,' there's probably been an accident.' there were still three stationary patrol cars ahead of us and I leaned forward and got a hundred-rouble note from my wallet and held it out to the driver. 'I should have asked you before — this is the smallest I've got, do you have enough change?'

He broke off his singing and turned his head. 'Not for a hundred, no.'

'Well look, hang on to this and we'll work something out later.'

He hesitated, then took the note. 'If you say so.'

I sat back again. It had been simple routine: we might need him as a friend. 'Is that a road block up there?'

'Looks like it. They're always cluttering up the streets one way or another, don't give us no peace, we're fair game, see, taxi drivers, when they want to pick on someone.'

I felt Tanya's hand on me. 'Can't we turn off somewhere?'

'No. It's too late for that.'

Her eyes were still frightened, and there was something I'd been trying not to think about: this woman had exposed herself to tremendous risk when she'd set up the general for assassination, but she might have got away with it if my name hadn't been next to hers in the hotel registry. The militia would still be on the watch for the woman they'd seen in the headlights but she might have been able to get back to the hotel and go quietly to bed: the concierge wouldn't have faced a barrage of questions if Viktor Shokin, wanted for murder, hadn't followed Tanya Rusakova to the Vladekino.

They were a quarter of a mile away now, the flashing lights, and the driver began slowing. I leaned forward again and spoke into his ear. 'What's your name, my friend?'

'Nikki.'

'Listen, Nikki. She's not my wife, as a matter of fact. This is a pickup, and I could get into a lot of trouble, you know what I mean?' He was holding his head turned to listen, and gave a nod. 'So what about just keeping mum, Nikki, if those buggers ask you any questions? I mean forget about our car breaking down and everything — all you know is that we got into this cab and I just asked you to drive us around a little, how does that sound?'

He began slapping the rim of the wheel softly with his gloved hand, and said in a moment, 'Nothing about going to the airport?'

'Nothing about that.' He was still slowing, his head turned a little but his eyes on the street and the flashing lights. I told him again: 'We just got in and I asked you to drive us around a little. Nothing else.' He gave it some more thought, but there wasn't time for that. 'And you keep the change, Nikki, all right?'

He jerked his head round another inch and then nodded.

'Fair enough.'

There were things he still didn't understand, but those were the ones I'd paid for.

'You're a good friend, Nikki,' I told him, and sat back again and looked at Tanya, gave her the briefing:' this is the story — yours, mine and the driver's.' I went through it twice and she said she understood.

Then I saw the flashing baton ahead of us and we began sliding across the packed snow as the militiaman directed Nikki into a side street, shouting something about a detour, and I saw a whole mess of telephone posts and wires blocking the street behind him with the snow piled in a massive drift after the storm, and when I looked at Tanya she was sitting with her head back against the upholstery and her eyes closed and tears of relief streaming on her face as we throttled up again and the flickering light from the patrol cars faded against the buildings.

'Can I look at your phone book?'

He was still half-asleep, a boy in a rumpled uniform, the collar unbuttoned. I'd woken him when we'd come into the hotel. It was a mile from the airport, as far as it was safe to go.

I found the number and gave the boy some money and asked him to let me use the phone on his desk. Tanya was sitting in the corner of the foyer watching me, and I wondered what would happen if I turned my back for a moment, whether she'd slip out of the hotel and go her own way even though I'd told her that she was in danger, that I wanted to help her, that she had to stay with me for her brother's sake. She hadn't asked me what I'd meant by that, but she would. The number wasn't ringing: there was just a click, then silence.

I dialled for an operator.

'This number is private?' she asked me.

'No. It's the Hotel Karasevo.'

He's at the Hotel Karasevo, Matthews had told me when I'd phoned London this evening. Ask for T. K. Trencher.

Ferris.

There are times when you can get through half a mission, more than that, even the whole thing, without needing to call on your director in the field for help. This wasn't one of them. There was a meter running, like my good friend Nikki's out there in the cab, ticking away the time: it couldn't be long before we opened the wrong door, Tanya and I, turned the wrong comer and ran straight into the militia. We had to get off the streets. 'Did you say the Hotel Karasevo?'

The woman sounded as if I'd woken her up at the switchboard, as I'd woken the boy here: it was past midnight now.

'Yes.'

I watched the street through the windows, saw Nikki sitting there in his cab with his head back and his mouth moving, presumably in song. If I could pick up another taxi I'd tell him he was free, that we'd decided to put up here for the night. Fresh horses, break the scent.

'The lines are down,' the operator said. 'You cannot call the Hotel Karasevo.' she sounded pleased.

'Try again,' I told her.

Shocked silence, and then,'The lines are down, didn't you hear me? The snow has brought down the lines in that area.'

'How long has the hotel been cut off? This is Colonel Mashakov, Novosibirsk Militia Headquarters.'

There was another silence.' there has been no communication by telephone, Colonel, since seven o'clock this evening. I regret that the Novosibirsk Telecommunications Utility was unable to disperse the snowstorm, Colonel, before it could damage our system. But we shall try harder in future, in the name of the new demokratizatsiya!'

The boy behind the desk had buttoned the collar of his uniform and pushed his fingers through his hair, was watching Tanya from the corner of his eye, seeing a plaything for his manly lusts.

'To your knowledge,' I said to the woman on the telephone, 'are there men working on the lines?'

She used her silences with skill, measuring them for their effect.' But you may be assured, Colonel, that we have men working on the lines. We do not expect, at the Novosibirsk Telecommunications Utility, the lines to restore themselves unaided to their former efficiency.'

I put the phone down and spoke to the boy in uniform, tearing him from his licentious dreams. 'Can I get a taxi from here?'

It took him a moment to work up interest in anything so mundane.

'It's late,' he said, 'but I can try.'

I put a twenty-rouble note onto the desk and went over to Tanya. I couldn't tell what it was she had in her eyes as she looked up at me from the black vinyl settee: nothing I could read as trust. Those tears in the taxi had been of more than relief, I thought now; a few might even have been for the general: from the little I'd learned about her I didn't think she'd been involved in an assassination before, or even seen a man killed. She'd stopped trembling, but mentally she could still be in shock.

'There are militia patrols out in strength tonight,' I told her quietly, 'as you know. If they come in here, and there's time, you simply leave the foyer, take that passage over there. If there's no time to do that, don't come near me: I'm a total stranger.' I heard the boy talking on the phone behind me; it sounded as if he'd managed to find a taxi.' that goes,' I told Tanya, 'for whenever we're in an open space like this. Keep your distance from me if you see any militia. How are you feeling?'

She didn't seem to know what I meant. It hadn't been a stupid question: she was feeling terrible, of course, but I wanted an answer of some kind, whatever kind, to find out at least something of what was going on in her mind.

In a moment she asked me in a dead tone,'Do you ever have nightmares?'

'All the time.'

'That is how I am feeling.'

The boy called from the desk, 'I can get you a taxi. You want one?'

'When can he get here?'

'Five minutes.'

'Yes, I want him.'

The boy was watching the cab outside, Nikki's, as he spoke on the phone, the obvious question in his mind: we already had a taxi, so why did we want another one? It was the sort of thing he'd remember, but there was nothing I could do about it: we were going to leave a trail, Tanya and I, wherever we went tonight until I could raise Ferris and tell him we needed shelter.

It was tempting of course to go there, to the Hotel Karasevo, and call him from the foyer and tell him to get us off the streets. But unless your director in the field actually asks you to visit him at his base you can't go there, because you can never be certain you' re not being surveilled, that you might not be leading the opposition or the host country's police or intelligence agents to your director's base, and that base is sacrosanct. The DIF can only run you from a position of total impregnability: he is the anchorman, the signals centre, your only link with London and with the support in the field. Expose your DIF to the opposition and you'll cut your lifeline, and even if you can manage to limp home from the wreckage of a crashed mission you'd be advised not to do that, because if you've blown your DIF they'll flay you alive at the Bureau before they throw you into the street.

'He's on his way,' the boy called from the desk, and I went outside and told Nikki we'd decided to stay here for the night and wouldn't need him anymore. He made a token gesture of getting me what change he had, but I sent him away.

Tanya had got up from the settee when I went in again, and was standing with her back to the boy at the desk. 'I want to phone my brother,' she said in an undertone.

I took her across to the far corner of the foyer. 'For his sake you've got to remember that for the moment you're a danger to him. How long had you planned to stay in Novosibirsk?'

'Only for a few days. I have to get back to my job.'

The lights of a vehicle swung across the windows. 'When had you planned to see your brother next?'

'He just said "when the smoke had cleared".'

She spoke as if she were drugged, or disinterested. Sooner or later she was going to break: there was too much going on inside her and she was keeping it under too much control. The vehicle stopped outside the hotel: I could hear the tyre-chains grinding under locked wheels as it slid to a halt.

'There's your taxi,' the boy called from the desk. 'You were lucky to get it.'

I gave Tanya my arm as we went down the steps, the ice crackling under our boots. She held my arm lightly, without trust, still afraid of me, of what I could do to her, do to her brother, because I was a witness to what had happened tonight.

'You are safer with me,' I told her carefully,' than with anyone else in the city.' It wasn't saying much, God alone knew, but it was still true, for what it was worth.

She didn't answer, glanced at me as we got into the taxi, that was all, didn't believe me.

It was a diesel, this one, shaking and rattling across the ruts and the patches of ice, the driver working hard to keep the thing more or less straight. I'd given him the name of a hotel I'd seen on the way here, the Great Iberian, a red-brick hulk with no lights in the windows, only the sign hanging above the doors with its capital S missing, almost certainly closed at this hour, possibly derelict, it didn't make any difference, there was nowhere we could stay tonight until I could raise Ferris, nowhere in this whole bloody city. Taking these cabs was bad enough: they'd be canvassing every driver all through the night, giving them my name and the description they'd have got from Chief Investigator Gromov, also advising that I might be with a woman companion, one Tanya Rusakova. I didn't think our good friend Nikki would hold his peace because I'd been generous to him; it had been worth trying, that was all.

'It's closed for the night,' our driver said, 'I suppose you know that?'

The big wrought-iron S was hanging from a railing; I suppose someone had picked it up and put it there, wonder it hadn't brained them. I looked at the meter and paid him.' I know the concierge,' I said. 'He's my brother-in-law.'

Chips of ice flew against our legs as he gunned the engine, spinning the wheels until they found traction; the night reeked of diesel gas. I got Tanya to hold on to me for a while as we started walking, partly to persuade her that I was all right to touch, to trust; but she let go as we turned a corner and the wind came against us, and walked with her gloves against her face. The sky was black, the starfields strewn across it, the three-quarter moon casting stark shadows across the snow. The air was freezing.

She didn't ask me where we were going. She didn't speak.

There were snow-ploughs still working, their din filling the night between the buildings, the drifts breaking into waves as the huge blades bit into them. We passed three abandoned cars and a truck, one of them skewed against a wall with its windows shattered and a wing torn away. Sometimes a taxi went by, but there was no other traffic until a militia patrol swung out of an intersection in the distance and I pulled Tanya into a doorway before its lights reached us. It was there, after the patrol had gone past us without slowing, that she finally broke, and I stood holding her as the sobbing began, her body shaking with it, her tears streaming, jewelling the fur collar of her coat in the moonlight, all the fear and the misery and the loneliness coming out of her over the minutes until at last the force of her anguish broke through the protective shell of my reserves and reached the heart.