Trial Run

5

He seemed to be in no hurry to explain. We sat in complete darkness listening to the irregular ticking of metal as the engine cooled to zero in the Moscow night. In time, as my eyes adjusted, I could see dark high buildings on each side, and some iron railings ahead, with bushes behind them.

‘Where are we?’ I said.

He didn’t answer.

‘Look...’ I said.

He interrupted. ‘When we get out of the car, do not talk. Follow me, but say nothing. There are always people standing in the shadows... if they hear you speak English, they will be suspicious. They’ll report our visit.’

He opened the car door and stood up outside. He seemed to take it for granted that I should trust him, and I saw no particular reason not to. I stood up after him and closed the door quietly, as he had done, and followed where he led.

We walked towards the railings, which proved to contain a gate. Ian Young opened it with a click of iron, and it swung on unoiled hinges with desolate little squeaks, falling shut behind us with a positive clink. Beyond it, a curving path led away between straggly bare-branched bushes, the dim light showing that in this forlorn public garden the snow lay greyly unmelted, covering everything thinly, like years of undisturbed dust.

There were a few seats beside the path, and glimpses of flat areas which might in summer be grass; but in late November the melancholy of such places could seep into the soul like fungus.

Ian Young walked purposefully onward, neither hurrying nor moving with caution: a man on a normal errand, not arousing suspicion.

At the far side of the garden we reached more railings and another gate. Again the opening click, the squeaks, the closing clink. Ian Young turned without pause to the right and set off along the slushy pavement.

In silence, I followed.

Lights from windows overhead revealed us to be in a residential road of large old buildings with alleys and small courtyards in between. Into one of these yards, cobbled and dark, Ian Young abruptly turned.

Again I went with him, unspeaking.

Scaffolding climbed the sides of the buildings there, and heaps of rubble cluttered the ground. We picked our way over broken bricks and metal tubing and scattered planks, going, as far as I could see, nowhere.

There was, however, a destination. To reach it, we had to step through the scaffolding and over an open ditch which looked like the preliminary earthworks of new drains: and on the far side of the mud and slush there was a heavy wooden door in a dark archway. Ian Young pushed the door, which seemed to have no fastening, and it opened with the easy grind of constant use.

Inside, out of the wind, there was a dimmish light in a bare grey entrance. Gritty concrete underfoot, no paint, no decoration of any kind on the greyish concrete walls. There was a flight of concrete steps leading upwards, and, beside them, a small lift in an ancient-looking cage.

Ian Young pulled open the outer and inner folding metal gates of the lift, and we stepped inside. He closed the gates, pushed the fourth floor button, and forbade me, with his eye, to utter a word.

We emerged from the lift on to a bare landing; wooden-floored, not concrete. There were two closed doors, wooden, long ago varnished, one at each end of the rectangular space. Ian Young stepped to the left, and pressed the button of a bell.

The hallway was very quiet. One could not hear the sound of ringing when he pushed the button, as he did again, in a short-short-long rhythm. There were no voices murmuring behind the doors. No feet on the stairs. No feeling of nearby warmth and life. The lobby to limbo, I thought fancifully; and the door quietly opened.

A tall woman stood there, looking out with the lack of expression which I by now regarded as normal. She peered at Ian Young, and then, more lingeringly, at me. Her eyes travelled back again, enquiringly.

Ian Young nodded.

The woman stepped to one side, tacitly inviting us in. Ian Young went steadfastly over the threshold, and it was far too late for me to decide that on the other side of the door was where I had no wish to be. It swung shut behind me, and the woman slid a bolt.

Still no one spoke. Ian Young took off his coat and hat, and gestured for me to do the same. The woman hung them carefully on pegs in a row that already accommodated a good many similar garments.

She put a hand on Ian Young’s arm and led the way along the passage of what seemed to be a private flat. Another closed wooden door was opened, and we went into a moderately-sized living-room.

There were five men there, standing up. Five pairs of eyes focused steadily on my face, five blank expressions covering who knew what thoughts.

They were all dressed tidly and much alike in shirts, jackets, trousers and indoor shoes, but they varied greatly in age and build. One of them, the slimmest, of about my own age, held himself rigid, as if facing an ordeal. The others were simply wary, standing like wild deer scenting the wind.

A man of about fifty, grey-haired and wearing glasses, stepped forward to greet Ian Young and give him a token hug.

He talked to him in Russian, and introduced him to the other four men in a mumble of long names I couldn’t begin to catch. They nodded to him, each in tum. A little of the tension went out of the proceedings and small movements occurred in the herd.

‘Evgeny Sergeevich,’ Ian Young said. ‘This is Randall Drew.’

The fiftyish man slowly extended his hand, which I shook. He was neither welcoming nor hostile, and in no hurry to commit himself either way. More dignity than power, I thought: and he was inspecting me with intensity, as if wishing to peer into my soul. He saw instead, I supposed, merely a thinnish, grey-eyed, dark-haired man in glasses, giving his own impression of a stone wall.

To me, Ian Young at last spoke. ‘This is our host, Evgeny Sergeevich Titov. And our hostess, his wife, Olga Ivanovna.’ He made a small semi-formal bow to the woman who had let us in. She gave him a steady look, and it seemed to me that the firmness of her features came from iron reserves within.

‘Good evening,’ I said, and she replied seriously in English, ‘Good evening.’

The rigid young man, still tautly strung, said something urgently in Russian.

Ian Young turned to me. ‘He is asking if we were followed. You can answer. Were we followed?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you think so?’

‘No one followed us through the garden. The gates make an unmistakable noise. No one came through them after us.’

Ian Young turned away from me and spoke to the group in Russian. They listened to him with their eyes on me, and when he had finished they stirred, and began to move apart from each other, and to sit down. Only the rigid one remained standing, ready for flight.

‘I have told them they can trust you,’ Ian Young said. ‘If I am wrong, I will kill you.’

His eyes were cool and steady, looking unwaveringly into mine. I listened to his words, which in other contexts would have been unbelievable and embarrassing, and I saw that he quite simply meant what he said.

‘Very well,’ I said.

A flicker of something I couldn’t read moved in his mind.

‘Please sit down,’ Olga Ivanovna said, indicating a deep chair with arms on the far side of the room. ‘Please sit down there.’ She spoke the English words with a strong Russian accent, but that she knew any English at all put me to shame.

I walked across and sat where she pointed, knowing that they had discussed and planned that I should be placed there, from where I couldn’t escape unless they chose to let me go. The deep chair embraced me softly like a bolstered prison. I looked up and found Ian Young near me, looking down. I half closed my eyes, and faintly smiled.

‘What do you expect?’ he said.

‘To learn why we are here.’

‘You are not afraid.’ Half a statement, half a question.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They are.’

He glanced swiftly at the six Russians and then looked back, with concentration, at me.

‘You are not the usual run of bloody fool,’ he said.

The rigid young man, still also on his feet, said something impatiently to Ian Young. He nodded, looked from me to the rigid man and back again, took a visible breath, and entrusted me with a lot of dangerous knowledge.

‘This is Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov,’ he said.

The rigid young man raised his chin as if the name itself were an honour.

Ian Young said, ‘Boris Dmitrevich rode in the Russian team at the International Horse Trials in England in September.’

It was a piece of information which had me starting automatically to my feet, but even the beginnings of the springing motion reawoke the alarm in all the watchers. Boris Dmitrevich took an actual step backwards.

I relaxed into the chair and looked as mild as possible, and the atmosphere of precarious trust crept gingerly back.

‘Please tell him,’ I said, ‘that I am absolutely delighted to meet him.’

The same could obviously not be said for Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov, but I was there from their choice, not my own. I reckoned if they hadn’t wanted to see me pretty badly, they wouldn’t have put themselves at what they clearly felt was considerable risk.

Olga Ivanova brought a hard wooden chair and placed it facing me, about four feet away. She then fetched another and placed it near me, at right angles. Ian Young took this seat next to me, and Boris Dmitrevich the one opposite.

While this was going on, I took a look round the room, which had bookshelves over much of the wall space and cupboards over the rest. The single large window was obscured by solid wooden cream-painted shutters, fastened by a flat metal bar through slots. The floor was of bare wooden boards, dark stained, unpolished and clean. Furniture consisted of a table, an old sofa covered with a rug, several hard chairs, and the one deep comfortable one in which I sat. All the furniture, except for the two chairs repositioned for Boris Dmitrevich and Ian Young, was ranged round the walls against the bookshelves and cupboards, leaving the centre free. There were no softeners: no curtains, cushions, or indoor plants. Nothing extravagant, frivolous, or wasteful. Everything of ancient and sensible worth, giving an overall impression of shabbiness stemming from long use but not underlying poverty. A room belonging to people who chose to have it that way, not who could not afford anything different.

Ian Young carried on a short conversation with Boris Dmitrevich in impenetrable Russian, and then did a spot of translation, looking more worried than I liked.

‘Boris wants to warn us,’ he said, ‘that what you are dealing with is not some tomfool scandal but something to do with killing people.’

‘With what?’

He nodded. ‘That’s what he said.’ He turned his head back to Boris, and they talked some more. It appeared, from the expressions all around me, that what Boris was saying was no news to anyone except Ian Young and myself.

Boris was built like a true horseman, of middle height, with strong shoulders and well-coordinated movements. He was good-looking, with straight black hair and ears very flat to his head. He spoke earnestly to Ian Young, his dark eyes flicking my way every few seconds as if to check that he could still risk my hearing what he had to tell.

‘Boris says,’ Ian Young said, the shock showing, ‘that the German, Hans Kramer, was murdered.’

‘No,’ I said confidently. ‘There was an autopsy. Natural causes.’

Ian shook his head. ‘Boris says that someone has found a way of causing people to drop down dead from heart attacks. He says that the death of Hans Kramer was...’ He turned back briefly to Boris to consult, and then back to me, ‘...the death of Hans Kramer was a sort of demonstration.’

It seemed ridiculous. ‘A demonstration of what?’

A longer chat ensued. Ian Young shook his head and argued. Boris began to make fierce chopping motions with his hands, and spots of colour appeared on his cheeks. I gathered that his information had at this point entered the realms of guesswork, and that Ian Young didn’t believe what was being said. Time to take a pull back to the facts.

‘Look,’ I said, interrupting the agitated flow. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. I’ll ask some questions, and you get me the answers. OK?’

‘Yes,’ Ian Young said, subsiding. ‘Carry on.’

‘Ask him how he travelled to England, and where he went, and where he stayed, and how his team fared in the finals.’

‘But,’ he said, puzzled, ‘what has that to do with Hans Kramer?’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘But I know how the Russians travelled and where they stayed and how they fared, and I just want to do my own private bit of checking that Boris is who he says he is; and also if he talks about unloaded things like that he will calm down again and we can then get the beliefs without the passion.’

He blinked. ‘My God,’ he said.

‘Ask him.’

‘Yes.’ He turned to Boris and delivered the question.

Boris answered impatiently that they travelled by motor horse box across Europe to The Hague, and from there by sea to England, still with the horse boxes, and drove on to Burghley, where they stayed in quarters especially reserved for them.

‘How many horses, and how many men?’ I said.

Boris said six horses, and stumbled over the number of people. I suggested that this was because the Russians had paid for only seven ‘human’ tickets but had actually taken ten or more men... Make it a joke, I said to Ian Young: not an insult.

He made it enough of a joke for Boris and everyone else almost to laugh, which handily released much tension all round and steadied the temperature.

‘They want to know how you know,’ Ian said.

‘The shipping agent told me. Tickets were bought for six riders and a chef d’équipe, but three or four grooms travelled among the legs of the horses. The shipping agents were amused, not angry.’

Ian relayed the answer and got another round of appreciative noises in the throat. Boris gave a more detailed account of the Russian team’s performance in the trials than I had memorised, and by the end I had no doubt that he was genuine. He had also recovered his temper and lost his rigidity, and I reckoned we might go carefully back to the minefield.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now ask him if he knew Hans Kramer personally. If he ever spoke to him face to face, and if so in what language.’

The question at once stiffened up the sinews, but the reply looked only moderately nervous.

Ian Young translated. ‘Yes, he did talk to Hans Kramer. They spoke German, though Boris says he knows only a little German. He had met Hans Kramer before, when they both rode in the same trials, and they were friendly together.’

‘Ask him what they talked about,’ I said.

The answer came easily, predictably, with shrugs. ‘Horses. The trials. The Olympics. The weather.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Anything to do with backgammon, gambling clubs, homosexuals or transvestites?’

I saw by the collective indrawn breaths of disapproval round about that if Boris had been discussing such things he had better not say so. His own positive negative, however, looked real enough.

‘Does he know Johnny Farringford?’ I said.

It appeared that Boris knew who Johnny was, and had seen him ride, but had not spoken to him.

‘Did he see Hans Kramer and Johnny Farringford together?’

Boris had not noticed one way or the other.

‘Was he there on the spot when Hans Kramer died?’

Boris’s unemotional response told me the answer before Ian translated.

‘No, he wasn’t. He had finished his cross-country section before Hans Kramer set out. He saw Hans Kramer being weighed... is that right?’ Ian Young looked doubtful.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The horses have to carry minimum weights, to make it a fairer test. There is a weighing machine on the course, to weigh the riders with their saddles just before they set off, and also as soon as they come back. The same as in racing.’

Boris, it appeared, had had to wait while Hans Kramer was weighed out, before himself weighing in. He had wished Hans Kramer good luck. ‘Alles Gute.’ The irony of it lugubriously pleased the listening friends.

‘Please ask Boris why he thinks Hans Kramer was murdered.’ I said the words deliberately flatly, and Ian Young relayed them the same way, but they reproduced in Boris the old high alarm.

‘Did he hear anyone say so?’ I asked decisively, to cut off the emotion.

‘Yes.’

‘Who said so?’.

Boris did not know the man who said so.

‘Did he say it to Boris face to face?’

No. Boris had overheard it.

I could see why Ian Young had doubted the whole story.

‘Ask in what language this man spoke.’

In Russian, Boris said, but he was not a Russian.

‘Does he mean that the man spoke Russian with a foreign accent?’

That was right.

‘What accent?’ I said patiently. ‘From what country?’

Boris didn’t know.

‘Where was Boris when he overheard this man?’

It seemed a pretty harmless question to me, but it brought an abrupt intense stillness into the room.

Evgeny Sergeevich Titov finally stirred and said something lengthily to Ian.

‘They want you to understand that Boris should not have been where he was. That if he tells you, you will hold his future in your power.’

‘I see,’ I said.

There was a pause.

Ian said, ‘I think they’re waiting for you to swear you will never reveal where he was.’

‘Perhaps he had better just tell me what he heard,’ I said.

There was a brief consultation among all of them, but they must have decided before I came that I would have to know.

Evgeny Sergeevich did the talking. Boris, he said, had been on a train, going to London. It was absolutely against orders. If he had been discovered, he would have been sent home immediately in disgrace. He would never be considered for the Olympic team, and he might even have faced imprisonment, as he was carrying letters and other papers to Russians who had defected to the West. The papers were not political, Evgeny said earnestly, but just personal messages and photographs from the defectors’ families still in Russia, and a few small writings for publication in literary magazines. Not State secrets, but highly illegal. There would have been much trouble for many people, not just for Boris, if he had been stopped and searched. So that when he heard someone speaking Russian on the train he had been very frightened, and his first urgent priority had been to keep out of sight himself, not to see who had been speaking. He had crept out of the carriage he was in, and walked forward as far as he could through the train. When it reached London, he left it fast, and was met by friends at the barrier.

‘I understand all that,’ I said, when Ian Young finished translating. ‘Tell them I won’t tell.’

Encouraged, Boris came to the nub.

‘There were two men,’ Ian Young relayed. ‘Because of the noise of the train, Boris could only hear one of them.’

‘Right. Go on.’

Boris spoke into a breath-held attentive silence. Ian Young listened with his former scepticism once again showing.

‘He says,’ he said, ‘that he overheard a man say “It was a perfect demonstration. You could kill half the Olympic riders the same way, if that’s what you want. But it will cost you.” Then the other man said something inaudible, and the voice Boris could hear said “I have another client”. The other man spoke, and then the man Boris could hear said, “Kramer took ninety seconds.” ’

Bloody hell, I thought. Shimmering scarlet hell.

Boris crept away at that point, Ian said. Boris was too worried about being discovered himself for the meaning of what he had heard to sink in. And in any case it was not until the next day that he learned of Kramer’s death. When he did hear, he was shattered. Before that, he had thought the ninety seconds was something to do with timing on the Event course.’

‘Ask him to repeat what he heard the man say,’ I said.

The exchanges took place.

‘Did Boris use exactly the same words as the first time?’ I said.

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘But you don’t believe him?’

‘He half heard something perfectly innocent and the rest’s imagination.’

‘But he believes it,’ I said. ‘He got angry when you argued. He certainly believes that’s what he heard.’

I thought it over, all too aware of seven pairs of eyes directed unwaveringly at my face.

‘Please ask Mr Titov,’ I said, ‘why he has persuaded Boris to tell us all this. I might guess, but I would like him to confirm it.’

Evgeny, sitting on a wooden chair in front of a bookcase, answered with responsibility visibly bowing his shoulders. Lines ridged his forehead. His eyes were sombre.

Ian said, ‘He has been very worried since Boris came home from England and told him what he had heard. There was the possibility that Boris was mistaken, and also the possibility that he was not. If he did really hear what he thought he heard, there might be another murder at the Olympics. Or more than one. As a good Russian, Evgeny was anxious that nothing should harm his country in the eyes of the world. It wouldn’t do for competitors to be murdered on Russian soil. A way had to be found of warning someone who could get an investigation made, but Evgeny knew no one in England or Germany to write to, even if you could entrust such a letter to the mail. He couldn’t explain how he had come by such knowledge, because Boris’s whole life would be spoiled, and yet he couldn’t see anyone believing the story without Boris’s own testimony, so he was up a creek without a paddle.’

‘Or words to that effect?’

‘You got it.’

‘Ask if they know anyone called Alyosha who is even remotely concerned with the Russian team, or the trials, or the Olympics, or Hans Kramer, or anything.’

There was a general unhurried discussion, and the answer was no.

‘Is Boris related to Evgeny?’ I said.

The question was asked and answered.

‘No. Boris just values Evgeny’s advice... Evgeny consulted the others.’

I looked thoughtfully at Ian. His face, as always, gave away as much as a slab of granite, and I found it disconcerting to have no clue at all to what he was thinking.

‘You yourself knew Mr Titov before this evening, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘And you’d been here before?’

‘Yes, two or three times. Olga Ivanova works in Cultural Relations, and she’s a good friend. But I have to be careful. I’m not allowed to be here.’

‘Complicated,’ I agreed.

‘Evgeny rang me this afternoon and said you were in Moscow, and would I bring you here this evening. I said I would if I could, after you’d been to the Embassy.’

The speed of communications had me gasping. ‘Just how did Evgeny know I was in Moscow?’

‘Nikolai Alexandrovich happened to tell Boris...’

‘Who?’

‘Nikolai Alexandrovich Kropotkin. The chef d’équipe. You have an appointment with him tomorrow morning.’

‘For Christ’s sake...’

‘Kropotkin told Boris, Boris told Evgeny, Evgeny rang me, and I had heard from Oliver Waterman that you would be round for a drink.’

‘So simple,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘And if Evgeny knew you, why didn’t he tell you all this weeks ago?’

Ian Young gave me a cool stare and relayed the question.

‘Evgeny says it was because Boris wouldn’t talk to me.’

‘Well, go on,’ I said, as he stopped. ‘Why did Boris decide he would talk to me?’

Ian shrugged, and asked, and translated Boris’s reply.

‘Because you are a rider. A man who knows horses. Boris trusts you because you are a comrade.’