The Bearpit

9

Determined against any provable association with Panchenko, whom internal, record-keeping security would have had to vet before admission to his office, Kazin decreed their contact be made outside the Directorate building. And insisted, too, that for such a meeting Panchenko wear civilian clothes. There was too much braid and colour in the uniform: too much chance of being remembered by someone. Kazin had not considered the circumstances of where and why it might be remembered. Desperately he was trying to be as protectively careful as he could. In everything. He still knew so little!

Kazin selected the Marx Prospekt because normally it was busily congested, wanting his to be one car unnoticed among so many. Ironically, adding to his frustration, there was not much traffic because the evening rush was unaccountably light. He drove slowly and in the ordinary lane, tonight keeping away from the restricted central path reserved for government officials. Usually Kazin enjoyed the privilege, disregarding speed limits or traffic signals, always confident of the permanently placed militia stopping any traffic to ensure his unhindered progress.

He slowed further approaching the Lenina metro station, isolating the waiting Panchenko well before he reached him. The man’s military bearing was obvious without the identifying uniform. He was wearing a grey suit and carrying a dark-coloured topcoat, maybe grey again or blue, and appeared discomfited, as if he were without any clothes at all, shifting from one foot to the other and gazing around, embarrassed. Or perhaps, corrected Kazin immediately, it had nothing at all to do with his unaccustomed dress. Perhaps the man was simply frightened, as Kazin was.

Panchenko saw him while the car was still some yards away. Kazin pulled against the kerb without the need positively to stop, just brake sufficiently for Panchenko to open the door and get in: the door was still not fully closed when Kazin moved off again.

‘I thought this was best,’ said Kazin. It was difficult to remain apparently calm: the questions and demands churned in Kazin’s mind. To avoid unsettling the other man it was vitally important not to sound as desperate as he was. Certainly important for Panchenko never to suspect that Kazin might be trying to distance himself by this unrecorded – but more important, absolutely deniable – meeting.

‘Yes,’ accepted Panchenko shortly. He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, using the movement of wiping his nose to cover clearing his forehead, and Kazin knew the security man was sweating.

‘There were no problems at the metro?’ Kazin did not really know what he meant by the question: he was simply holding back, refusing to hurry. He was perspiring too, and glad he could grip the wheel so that the unsteadiness did not show in his hands.

‘There are big problems,’ announced Panchenko.

This was how the conversation had to begin and to continue, with Panchenko and not himself showing the anxiety. Kazin said: ‘Tell me. Everything.’

‘Humiliated,’ complained Panchenko, almost petulantly. ‘The fucker humiliated me.’

Kazin pulled off the Marx Prospekt on to Kalinina to gain a quieter thoroughfare where he would not have to concentrate so much upon the traffic about him. This was not how he expected the account to come from the other man, but the outburst was important. It was precisely the way the security chief had to feel about Vasili Dmitrevich Malik. Kazin said: ‘I need everything from the very beginning: everything in its proper sequence.’

After compiling two official reports with the hostile interview in between, a chronological recall was easy for Panchenko. Kazin turned off Kalinina to an even lesser used road, putting the Kremlin monolith actually behind them. More questions crowded in upon those he already wanted to ask but he rigidly maintained the private control, saying nothing, knowing it would be wrong to break the narrative. This fury the man had to release, as a safety valve: he could be stoked again if hatred were necessary for anything further.

‘See!’ demanded Panchenko. ‘Humiliated! Like I said, the fucker humiliated me!’

‘Oh, he did,’ agreed Kazin, jabbing the exposed nerve. ‘He most certainly did: you’ve an enemy there, Lev Konstantinovich. A very bad enemy.’

‘And he’s got an enemy in me,’ said Panchenko, with exaggerated, almost childlike bombast. ‘He doesn’t know how bad.’

Good, thought Kazin, recognizing the attitude; very good. He said: ‘Tell me what really happened. Then we’ll decide the problems.’

‘I had no time to prepare: the time I needed to make plans,’ began Panchenko, the defence as rehearsed as the earlier account. ‘You said there would be time to set everything up carefully…’

‘I know that,’ encouraged Kazin reassuringly. ‘There’s no criticism.’

‘I was bewildered by the call to Gofkovskoye Shosse. More so because it was Malik, not you. When you told me to kill him, as we’d planned, I discovered Agayans had left the building and that the car was logged to his apartment, on Gogolevskiy…’

‘So that much of your account is completely accurate?’ interrupted Kazin. It was vital to know what could be relied upon and defended and what could not.

‘Yes,’ confirmed Panchenko. ‘The assembly of the squad, too. Although they were not the people I would have taken with me if I’d had the time properly to choose… we met at Verdandskovo: that’s accurate, too. A major – Chernov – a corporal and two rankers. And Agayans did answer the door in his nightclothes.’

‘Nine o’clock and he was in bed?’ queried Kazin, remembering the doctors’ reports of sleeplessness.

‘There were a lot of pills on the side table in the bedroom. He saw me looking and said the doctors had recommended he try to sleep earlier, using them. Complained it wasn’t working.’

‘Did you tell Malik this? Put it in either report?’

‘Of course not!’ said Panchenko irritably. ‘The story of my being in the bedroom has got to be that I surprised him in the act of suicide, hasn’t it!’

Who the hell did Panchenko think he was, addressing him like that! Kazin controlled any reaction. Wrong to focus upon the wrong person. Malik was the target: always had been. Why, agonized Kazin, had he done what he did that October day in Stalingrad! Why hadn’t he let the bastard bleed to death! He’d thought Olga was sure by then, as sure as he had been of her. Kazin supposed he’d done it to prove just how much he loved her. Poor Olga: poor darling, confused, uncertain Olga. Sidestepping both his recollections and Panchenko’s petulant anger, Kazin said: ‘We’ve moved ahead.’

‘And he appeared surprised, too,’ continued Panchenko. ‘Almost like he regarded it as some sort of joke. I couldn’t understand until later. Then I remembered his slow reaction in the bedroom. And the pills. He’d already taken his tranquillizers…’ Panchenko sniggered to himself and Kazin looked curiously across the car at the man. Panchenko went on: ‘It must have been the tranquillizers. They were what made everything that much easier.’

‘Something else only you and I know?’ demanded Kazin. He was driving parallel with the river now, only vaguely aware of the direction in which they were travelling.

‘Who else could be told!’ demanded Panchenko, still showing irritation. ‘I didn’t know anything about pills at the beginning, of course. So I was apprehensive: I knew those initial moments were the greatest risk. When he might say something involving you…’

‘And he didn’t!’ seized Kazin. It was the most important question of all, the cause of the fear lumping inside him like a weight, pulling him down.

‘No,’ confirmed Panchenko and just as Kazin was about carelessly to release a sigh of relief he added: ‘Not then.’

‘Not then!’

‘He started to talk so to cut him off I spoke over him. The official approach, about there being an order for his arrest. It deflected him because he asked what the offence was…’ Panchenko hesitated and said: ‘There’s a difficulty here.’

‘What?’ demanded Kazin.

‘When Malik reached me at Gofkovskoye he said it was about Afghanistan: that’s how I was able to warn you. When Agayans asked about the offence, I had to say that I did not know. If I’d said Afghanistan he would definitely have used your name,’ said the colonel.

‘I appreciate the caution,’ said Kazin. ‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘I’ve had to say that in the report to Malik because the squad were witness to the entire conversation. And tell him the same during that damned interrogation,’ said Panchenko. ‘But Malik will surely remember he told me?’

Kazin turned over the Moskva bridge to double back upon himself on the far side of the river, considering the question. ‘So what?’ he demanded after several minutes. ‘He told you in a telephone call, you told Agayans you didn’t know. It would have been easy enough for you to have forgotten.’

‘Would you have forgotten, in the same circumstances?’

‘Certainly that alone isn’t sufficient to cause any deeper investigation,’ said Kazin, avoiding the question.

‘Let’s hope the other things aren’t.’

‘What other things?’

‘When I got to the apartment I still hadn’t worked out how I was going to be able to do it. Agayans being in his nightclothes made it easy, because it meant he would have to change. And it was he who suggested it. I’ve told Malik and put in the report that he showed fear and was subservient: but I don’t think that was his attitude at all. I think it was the tranquillizers again. He couldn’t think properly…’

‘To our benefit, surely!’ broke in Kazin again.

‘I hope so,’ said Panchenko. ‘I hope, if they’re questioned, that the others don’t say he was drugged.’

Kazin supposed the other man’s nitpicking doubts were understandable but he didn’t regard that as a serious risk, any more than the man not having initially mentioned Afghanistan. Initially, recalled Kazin. Urgently he said: ‘So he asked to get dressed?’

‘I saw it as the opportunity – exactly – that I wanted. As he set out towards the corridor leading into the bedroom I went with him. But at the beginning of the corridor he stopped. And that was when he asked again what it was all about and I said Afghanistan. He came out of his lethargy at that. Said it was nonsense and that you could sort it out: that it could all be settled by a telephone call. He was angry. He turned back into the room – there was a telephone on a table near the entrance – and that’s when I saw what was happening…’

‘What!’ demanded Kazin. He hadn’t intended it but the question came out as a shout.

That fucking major, Chernov! He’d started to follow,’ recounted Panchenko. ‘For a few seconds I didn’t know what to do. Agayans was already going back into the room. I stopped him and told him to call from the bedroom: said there should be privacy. He nodded, seeming to agree. So he went on down the corridor and I stopped Chernov and walked back with him to the others. I didn’t know what the hell to say! I improvised and set out the supposed travelling arrangements back to headquarters. Then I told them to stay where they were and wait for me and caught up as quickly as possible with Agayans. He hadn’t started to change. He was by the side of the bed, confused. The telephone was on the same table as the pills. I stopped just inside the door: it was then that he told me what the pills were for. He said he’d better call you and he supposed you would be home. I was moving around the bed: he had his back to me, concentrating on the telephone. It seemed difficult for him: he turned, I think to ask me something. Maybe your home number. I don’t know. That was when he saw the gun in my hand. He yelled out, like he was suddenly waking up. Which I guess he was…’

‘… What did he yell?’

‘No!’ replied Panchenko. ‘That’s what he said. No! He came towards me, as if he were going to try to fight me and I shot him: it blew him back, over the table and on to the bed. The others were coming: running. I heard them. I was still leaning over him, pressing his hand around the gun when they came in. I don’t think they saw what I did: I think the bed hid me.’

‘Think!’ demanded Kazin, isolating the uncertainty. ‘You don’t know!’ Kazin drew the car against the side of the road, into the darkness of a park. Illogically he wondered which park it was and couldn’t decide and irritably dismissed it as the intrusion it was. ‘I’ve got to know everything about that moment. About his shouting and your firing and their coming into the room.’

Panchenko thought, annoyed, that this meeting was practically a repeat of the humiliating encounter with Malik. He said: ‘Agayans had closed but not locked the door. I opened it quietly and I know he did not hear me come in. He was half turned away from me, oblivious to anything behind him. I didn’t completely close it, just left it ajar: having got in without his hearing I didn’t want to alert him by the slightest noise. When I saw him by the table I thought he appeared uncertain whether or not to take any more pills. It was at that moment he heard me move. As I started from the door area there was a sound – a floorboard, I don’t know – and he turned and he saw me. He didn’t seem alarmed, not at that actual moment…’

‘The gun?’ intervened Kazin. ‘Weren’t you holding the gun?’

Panchenko hesitated, not immediately responding. Then he said: ‘That’s the biggest problem.’

Kazin was twisted in his seat, looking directly across the vehicle at the other man. He saw Panchenko’s head go forward, practically an admission of defeat.

‘I had no time to prepare,’ said the man, mounting a defence before an attack. ‘I intended getting an untraceable weapon: something from the militia evidence store on Pushkinskaya. But when Malik called, I couldn’t…’

‘What did you use!’

‘My own.’

‘Your own! You were at a weapons training area! There had to be guns everywhere!’

‘There aren’t!’ protested Panchenko in immediate rejection. ‘The security at Gofkovskoye is absolute: everything checked and double-checked and recorded and attributed. Don’t you think I saw the irony: was exasperated, surrounded with every sort of weapon and unable to use any of them, knowing a forensic examination would show up the source at once!’

Kazin was impatient with the explanation. He said: ‘You put Agayans’ hand around the butt, to get the fingerprints recorded. So where now is your gun, identifiably issued against your name?’

‘I’ve got it back,’ disclosed Panchenko. ‘When they burst into the room I said I couldn’t stop him shooting himself and that they were to call an ambulance. Having put the damned thing in the man’s hand I took it out again, in front of them. Went through an absurd charade of putting a pencil in the muzzle to keep the prints intact and actually delivered it myself to our forensic section. Let them do their tests and got it back, yesterday: I’m responsible for security there, as well.’

‘How?’

‘Last night. Late. Used my own key.’

‘What if they’ve checked the registration number?’

‘They haven’t,’ insisted Panchenko. ‘I opened the file drawer and read everything they’d done so far. There was just a ballistics test and the confirmation that the prints upon the butt were those of Agayans. At the moment, apart from Malik’s intervention, this is still being treated as a suicide witnessed by me: not a crime that needs any deep investigation.’

‘What’s the explanation for the gun disappearing if Malik presses the investigation?’

‘Not ours to provide,’ said Panchenko easily. ‘Forensic sign a receipt for exhibits: theirs is the responsibility for loss. And I shall be the person called in to investigate.’ The man’s head came up and Kazin revised his impression of defeat: now Panchenko’s movement appeared almost triumphant.

‘I think you’re safe there,’ conceded Kazin. ‘Nothing could link it with you.’

‘Us,’ corrected Panchenko pointedly. ‘Link it with us.’

Kazin had wondered how long it would be in coming. The anger fired through him but he gave no outward sign: now was most definitely not the time to confront the man and put him in his place with the reminder of his previous crimes. ‘Us,’ Kazin agreed. Then he said: ‘What happened when the others came into the bedroom?’

‘I’m sure the bed concealed what I was doing; it had to be the most natural thing in the world to be kneeling over the body of a prisoner who had just killed himself!’ said Panchenko, with the renewed confidence of his explanation for retrieving the gun. ‘And there was a lot of confusion, jostling, in the doorway.’

‘What about Agayans’ shout?’

For the first time Panchenko looked across the car and in the uncertain light Kazin was conscious of the man nodding his head in acknowledgement of another weakness being isolated. Panchenko said: ‘I had to improvise again here, of course. Agayans wouldn’t be shouting “No!” if he were killing himself.’

‘But the rest of the squad would surely have heard it?’

‘Unquestionably,’ accepted Panchenko. ‘But the corridor has an angled bend. And I’d pushed-to the bedroom door. I gambled on what they heard being blurred, indistinct. As they came in I said: “I shouted to him not to do it but I couldn’t get to him in time.”’

‘And they accepted it was you?’

‘There was no challenge,’ replied Panchenko. ‘The instinct of men trained militarily is to accept the explanation of a superior officer.’

‘Which leaves the uncertainty of whether or not Chernov was aware of any conversation between you and Agayans at the beginning of the corridor,’ reminded Kazin.

‘I tried to allow for that, too,’ said Panchenko. ‘I let Malik extend the interrogation while I tried to work out how to cover Chernov hearing what was said. It was the best I could think of at the time: I said when he realized I was coming to the bedroom with him Agayans insisted on getting dressed in privacy.’

‘And Malik accepted that?’

‘No,’ conceded Panchenko. ‘He accused me of bad policing. But that’s all it is: bad policing. Agayans and I talked softly. We’ve got to take the chance of Chernov realizing a conversation took place but not hearing Afghanistan being mentioned…’ The hesitation was intentional. ‘Or your name.’

Kazin understood the pause. Like he understood the security colonel using the plural ‘we’. He let both go, like the earlier threat. He said: ‘What have you done?’

‘I had Chernov submit a report. Insisted it should be complete.’

‘And?’

‘He makes no reference at all to the corridor conversation. And attributes the shout in the bedroom to me.’

‘The rest of the squad?’

‘The same.’

Not bad, admitted Kazin. Far better, in fact, than he had expected from the earlier panicked telephone call from the man. Kazin said: ‘Anything else that might be challenged?’

Panchenko considered the question and said: ‘Malik kept making demands about timekeeping. I had to say I only went to Agayans’ bedroom when I became concerned about the amount of time he had been in there. So I had to create a time gap greater than really occurred. I said it was ten minutes from the time Agayans left the room, before I went in: it wasn’t more than a minute or two.

Searching for the dangers, Kazin said: ‘There’s one thing missing. How did Malik discover what was going on in Afghanistan, to be able to stop it, as he did?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Panchenko.

‘Wasn’t there any indication at all where his information came from?’

‘Nothing.’

A brilliant intelligence officer, remembered Kazin: that had been the assessment of Malik when they had graduated together from the training academy while his had only been commended. He said: ‘What about the son in Afghanistan, Yuri Vasilivich? Did Malik mention him?’

‘Not once.’

Still too much he didn’t know, thought Kazin irritably. He said: ‘There’s to be an inquiry, at Malik’s demand.’

‘I’ve already received a witness summons.’

Like I have, thought Kazin. He said: ‘I want a tight rein kept on the others who formed the squad with you that night. They’re to inform you if they are questioned: particularly if they’re questioned by Malik.’

‘It is regulations anyway that they do so.’

‘Reinforce it,’ insisted Kazin. ‘The only danger is what Chernov might have overheard.’

‘I don’t see how I can avoid being accused of negligence by the inquiry,’ said Panchenko.

Kazin sought for a reassuring response but couldn’t think of one. So he said: ‘No, neither do I.’

‘It will not be good, so soon after promotion.’

‘Better than accusations of other things,’ said Kazin at last.

Panchenko met threat with threat. ‘You’ll support me? It’s important I know you’ll support me.’

With no alternative Kazin said: ‘Of course I’ll support you.’

‘I’m glad,’ continued Panchenko, maintaining the pressure, ‘After all any problem for me will be a problem for you, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ conceded Kazin, mouth a tight line. ‘It can’t be otherwise.’

Kazin recognized that with Panchenko he had created a potentially difficult problem for himself. Kazin revised, too, his earlier impression of sweated uncertainty in the man. At times as they talked Kazin believed he’d detected in the colonel an almost overconfident belief – conceit even – that there was some sort of equal partnership between them. For the moment it was an impression for Panchenko to be allowed. But some way would have to be found of dispensing with the man. Kazin said: ‘Maintain tonight’s account and I do not foresee any difficulty for us. Reprimand, perhaps. But that’s all.’

‘I would rather not be reprimanded at all: not be summoned before an inquiry at all.’

Neither would I, thought Kazin. He felt a burn of frustration at the awareness that his already weak position was being further eroded while Malik’s was strengthening. He’d tried to mount his attack too soon, without proper thought. To the colonel he said: ‘Beware of Vasili Dmitrevich Malik. He’s a bad enemy to have.’

‘So am I,’ said Panchenko, bombastic as before.

And as such you will always be taunted and goaded, thought Kazin. Determined upon every precaution, he said: ‘Post everyone in that squad as far away from Moscow as possible. And as soon as it’s practicable to do so.’

There had been no indication in the recall messages to Kabul exactly what Yuri was expected to do upon his return to Moscow: where he was to live, for instance. Uncertainly, he called his father from Sheremet’yevo airport and was surprised by the apparent eagerness with which the older man greeted him, ordering him at once to Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

In the taxi Yuri gazed out over the flat plain that spreads like a voluminous skirt before Moscow, conscious of how unfamiliar everything looked to him, although he had been away for less than a year. There was an occasional wooden house – sometimes two or three clustered together – but the view was predominantly of trees, birch and fir mostly. It hadn’t occurred to him until now but there didn’t seem to be any trees in Afghanistan. How long, he wondered, would this respite last?

His father responded at once when he sounded the apartment bell. The old man said: ‘I’m glad you’re safely here, Yuri Vasilivich.’

Yuri’s airport surprise returned. ‘What is it?’ he said.

The witnesses’ list he had obtained that morning of people who had been summoned to appear before the inquiry removed any doubt from Malik’s mind of Kazin’s involvement. Malik said: ‘I think an attempt has been made to bring me down… maybe bring both of us down.’

Yuri couldn’t recognize the sensation he immediately experienced, a feeling he’d never known before. Was this what fear felt like?