The Scorpion Signal

13: SHADOW

Then who was?

He was very difficult to work with: he kept trying to get away and I had to trip him and catch him before he could hit the ground or the concrete column that was somewhere near us. If I didn't catch him each time he was going to hurt himself because he had absolutely no idea how to fall.

'What did you tell them?' I asked him again.

He wouldn't answer, and that was another thing that made it difficult. I had to ask him everything two or three times and then work on a nerve until he got the message. But even then I didn't know when he was lying. I've never met anybody so difficult.

'What did you tell them, when you went into that phone box?'

'It was to tell my wife I would be late.'

'Not that time. I mean two days ago, on Wednesday. You phoned the police and they tried to pick me up. What did you tell them?'

'I didn't tell them anything. I — '

'Oh come on, Ignatov!' Used a centre-knuckle on the medial: he hated that. 'What did you tell them?'

I was getting annoyed because someone might come in here and make things awkward. Bracken had gone, five minutes ago: all he'd needed was a close look at Ignatov, and it was too dangerous for him to stay where the action was because he was ostensibly a member of the British Embassy staff and they could throw him out of the country if he came under any kind of suspicion.

Ignatov wasn't answering.

'You'd never seen me before in your life and you went into a phone box and called the police and they came right away so what did you tell them?'

'It was not me.'

'What do you mean it wasn't you? Come on !'

'I did what I was ordered.' He crouched over, hugging his arm because it had needed another jab to get that much out of him. But it sounded interesting. Who had ordered him? The Judas?

'Ignatov,' I said, 'I want you to understand the position. I can do a lot of things to you that would make you give me the answers I want, but it could cripple you for life and I don't see any point, do you?' He was still bent over, trying to get some of the feeling back into his left arm. I'd been leaving his right arm alone for the moment in case I wanted him to drive me anywhere: I didn't know what was going to happen yet. 'I'm going to get the answers out of you in any case, so why damage yourself?' He was breathing much too hard for a man of maybe thirty-five or forty, though he was a bit overweight and of course he was nervous. It's harder to make them understand when they haven't had any training because they've never learned what you can do to them. 'Have you any children, Ignatov?'

'Three, yes, three children.' He said it quickly because this was where his heart was, in his family.

'All right, do you want them to have to push you about in a wheelchair? You want them to help feed you? Listen to what I'm saying. Use your imagination. A wheelchair.'

Something went past along the street and a faint rhomboid of light swept across the columns and faded out. I didn't want anyone to come in here until I'd got what I needed from him.

'So we'll start again. Who ordered you to get me picked up in the street?'

I gave him five seconds and then covered him in fast light blows with a lot of control and the focus on the nerve centres so that he didn't even know what was happening. Then I had to wait until he could stand upright again.

'That was nothing, Ignatov. I didn't touch your face and I didn't touch your groin. I'm going to work on those next. Who ordered you?'

He whispered a name but I didn't catch it because his system was in shock.

'Who? Say it again.'

'Zubarev.'

'What was that? Zubarev?'

'Yes.' He nodded and went on nodding like one of those dolls with a weight in its head. 'Yes.'

Some more light came and this time it got very bright and the concrete columns stood out, row after row of them as the car came down the ramp and turned and parked with its nose against the wall, the light spreading and dimming and then going out. I put one arm round Ignatov's throat and left it there while we waited. He got the message this time and didn't try to do anything about it. A flashlight beam came on at the far end of the garage and I watched it bobbing towards the iron staircase in the corner, but it was promised, one of them was saying, it was promised, very cut up because her boss had said they could have two tickets for the circus if they reached their work goal for the month and he'd broken his promise and now they'd have to spend the evening playing dominoes with the Borisenkos next door, a bloody shame but at least they'd shown me the public telephone in the corner of the staircase, I hadn't seen it before.

'Give me your wallet,' I told Ignatov, and he reached inside his coat and I watched his hand when it came out. 'Hold this torch.' Normal papers plus Party membership card, plus identification as an official driver to the Politburo and a special traffic pass into the Kremlin and 'certain designated areas in the City of Moscow' as specified in the 1979 Amendment to the Control of Vehicular Movement. Nothing else in the way of privilege documents but that one would probably rate a salute from a militia man, yes.

No little book with names in, no sign of any Zubarev.

'We're going to make a phone call,' I told him. It was like trying to move a bear: he didn't know which way to walk. He wasn't used to this sort of thing, but that wasn't my fault, he shouldn't have blasted me off the street like that. 'We're going to call Zubarev,' I said.

Didn't know his number.

'Oh yes you do,' I told him, and whipped a very light reverse sword-hand against the larynx. 'Tell him you're coming to see him, and if he objects, tell him it's very urgent. Insist on it. Do you understand?'

He stood trying to get his breath and I had to wait for a minute because I wanted him to sound reasonably normal on the phone. I only had one kopeck on me, with a lot of bigger change. 'Have you got a kopeck?' I asked him.

He found one, moving slowly, and I watched his hand again when it came out. 'He only lets me go there,' he said with a slight wheeze, 'at prearranged times.'

'We're going to prearrange it.' I put two kopecks into the slot. 'Ignatov, you gave me a lot of trouble. I don't mind what I have to do to you. Remember the wheelchair.' I gave him the phone.

In the close bright light of the torch I watched his face, and his eyes. He was staring at the printed board behind the telephone as if he were reading its instructions, but he wasn't. He was staring at the possibility of saying something to Zubarev that would warn him, and at the possibility of hurling himself at me and throttling me before I could do anything about it. This was natural enough but I waited for him to turn his head and look at my eyes, and in my eyes I let him see without any shadow of doubt that I was the angel of death. He looked away and dialled the number, which I noted and committed to memory.

He asked for a woman first and I reacted and moved my hand in a threat and he whispered that Zubarev never came to the telephone himself.

'Misha,' he said with slow care, watching me, 'this is Pyotr. I am coming to see him. Tell him that.'

I heard her voice: young, strong, husky, positive. She would tell him, she was saying. Was he coming right away?

'Yes. I am coming now.' I prodded him and he said: 'Tell him it is very urgent, Misha. Tell him I must come.'

There was nothing wrong? she wanted to know.

In the light of the torch his flat featureless face struggled with the question, and he managed to get a note of reassurance into his voice. 'There is nothing wrong, no. But I must come.'

She said she would tell him. Neither of them had mentioned his name. He looked at me and I nodded and he hooked the receiver back. Light swept suddenly across the columns and I turned my back to the entrance as a car came down the ramp and swung at right angles and stopped. I moved Ignatov away from the staircase and talked to him as we walked across to his car, passing a half-seen man and saying good evening to him. When he'd started up the iron staircase I told Ignatov to get into his car on the passenger's side and then I took his scarf and tied his wrists to his ankles and shut the door on him and went round to the driver's side. He hadn't seen me tagging him from the Kremlin and he didn't know the number of the Pobeda but he'd see it if we used my car instead of his, and once he'd seen the number plate he could blast me off the street again the minute he got to a telephone.

He sat awkwardly beside me with his knees drawn up to his chin, his squat body swaying as I turned the car through the columns and pulled up near the entrance and reached across him and opened his door for a moment. 'Ignatov,' I told him, 'if you try to attract attention in the street by shouting out or falling against the steering wheel you might alert a militia man or a police patrol. If you did that, I'd have to leave you behind, and I'd do that by opening your door like this and giving you a push.' I used a fair amount of force so that he rocked half off his seat, then I grabbed him and pulled him back and he sat with his breath hissing out. 'You'd hit your head on the road because you wouldn't be able to save yourself, you understand?'

'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

'What are the names of your children?'

'Yuri, Irina and Tania.' His head swung to look at me because the question had surprised him.

'You want to see them again,' I said and pulled his door shut and drove up the ramp into the street. 'You must take care of yourself.'

'Yes,' he said, and I heard emotion in his voice, 'I understand.'

I turned into the street without slowing down too much and he rolled against the door with a thump and rolled back: I wanted him to know how extraordinarily helpless the human body can be without the use of hands or feet.

The evening rush hour was nearly over and the first set of lights was green. 'He's at the Pavilion,' I said to Ignatov, 'is that right?'

'Yes.'

I drove north-west along Soldatskaja ulica, feeling the onset of depression. Of all the questions in my head I thought I had the answer to one, and I didn't like it. Ignatov was a professional driver and would have been trained to watch his mirror when he was at the wheel of those big black shiny Zils because the members of the elite Politburo must not be followed about. But he hadn't discovered my tag on the way from Spassky Gate this evening: he had seen the Pobeda several times but hadn't realized it was following him specifically. Certainly I'd taken pains to do the job efficiently, but then I'd taken similar pains two days ago, and he'd known I was there behind him, and there on purpose. It had been daylight then, and this evening it had been dark; but this city was bright by night and visibility was good. So there was an additional factor involved, which had led him to discover the first tag and not the second.

I thought I knew what it was. I had probably known for a long time, right at the back of the mind where we put things we don't want to look at. But it would have to be brought into the light, and looked at; and that was going to be painful. I would almost rather be going to Lubyanka again, in good heart and filled with the fierce animal instinct to fight and survive, than to this place filled with depression and unable to do anything about it. Depression is unreachable, the slow death of the spirit.

'What's your wife's name?' I asked Ignatov. The lights changed to red at an intersection and I put out a hand as he swayed forward again: I'd had to do it several times to stop him hitting his face on the windscreen.

'Galya,' he said, and looked at me, wondering why I had asked, and perhaps hearing something in my voice: the depression.

'What does she do?'

'She teaches the ballet, at the Centre for the Arts.'

The lights went green and he swayed back on his seat.

'Does she teach your children?'

We were almost there, but I wanted this journey to last a long time, and I wanted to talk to this man about his wife and his children and the ballet lessons.

'She teaches our two girls,' he said, his voice wary, suspecting some kind of trap.

'Irina and Tania.'

'Yes,' he said, surprised that I'd remembered. But like most people, I remember most things, and especially those things I'd rather forget.

'I suppose Yuri thinks it'd be sissy for him to learn, does he?'

'Yes, that's perfectly right!' As if I'd discovered a profound truth. But the wariness was still in his voice, the fear that I was building up this little edifice of human intimacy only so that I could knock it down. He didn't have the trust in innocence those children had had in the park.

He was silent, but I saw he was watching my reflection in the windscreen. I think he was beyond trying to do anything to help himself now, or to stop my going to see Zubarev. I'd found his weakness, or his strength, whichever you want to call it. But this didn't mean he wouldn't kill me if I gave him the chance and if he believed he had to, for his children's sake. Or of course for his own.

The lights were green for us at the turning into Baumanskaja and I didn't have to stop, though I would have liked to stop, and turn back, and never meet Zubarev.

The Pavillon block was on our left now and I turned past it and found the car park at the rear, where I'd explored the environment on foot two days ago. The snow was thick here, with the tracks of vehicles making ruts that tugged at the wheel as I drove through the entrance. The building was quite large, with a blank wall facing us and the headlights throwing the shadows of the parked cars against it. A man was walking towards us from the building, going across to his car, and our headlights held him frozen for an instant before I switched them off. He looked transfixed, like a wild creature caught in the dazzle of lights along a country road, and his shadow was enormous on the wall behind him, grotesque and distorted, with one thin shoulder held low like a broken wing and his body twisted to one side.

'Is that Zubarev?' I asked the man beside me.

'Yes.'

I watched as the figure moved on again, hobbling towards the car.