Bearpit (44 page)

‘Not exactly the intelligence test of the decade, is it?' she said. ‘You're going away on an assignment tomorrow and if you're not back within a week I'm to collect the package from here and post it to the
Times.'

‘Right,' said Yuri. It was incomplete and bewildering and he had no idea if the newspaper would make any use of it arriving anonymously. But if anything happened to him this time in Moscow and they did publish, it might just conceivably cause Kazin and Panchenko harm.

‘Why not just give it to them now?'

‘It would be too soon.'

‘Remember what I said, that first night?'

‘What?' he asked.

That you were mysterious,' she reminded him. ‘And you are. I still don't know a damned thing about you, with one important exception: how I feel about you.'

The safe-deposit box also contained the still unread letters between his father and mother, Yuri realized. It was preposterous – insanity – to go on with Caroline like this. He would end it shortly, he promised himself. But not quite yet. He needed her now.

Kazin was surprised that Vladislav Belov had not volunteered the open commitment he had once shown, particularly now that the control of the First Chief Directorate was undisputed and beyond challenge. The man was a fool, like Panchenko was a fool although for different reasons. Kazin decided he didn't need supporters or sycophants any more. His position
was
beyond dispute: he was unassailable.

Kazin gazed across his desk at Belov and said: ‘The New York courier is being recalled?' One of Kazin's new edicts, since his sole appointment, had been that he was advised of all agent movements.

‘Yes,' said Belov. Why so much interest in Yuri Malik?

‘Why?'

‘Some time ago we obtained partial copies of a new IBM computer design: he is bringing back the remainder.' It was the man's function in the United States, scarcely requiring a personal explanation, surely?

The idea was a sudden one. Kazin said: ‘Are you satisfied with his performance in New York?'

‘Completely,' said the chief of the American division. ‘He's carried out everything asked of him and in addition successfully identified the head of the publicity division to which he's attached as a homosexual. We are instigating a blackmail entrapment.'

‘I am unsure he was not prematurely promoted,' declared Kazin. A decision of his father's, after the inquiry embarrassment: proper that it should be rescinded, then. And Kazin was having second thoughts of trying to manipulate the man's embarrassing discovery by the Americans. A feint, in the attack of his own personal chess game. The game – the pleasure of the torment – would be far better if the man were withdrawn here to Moscow, to be prodded and goaded. Making the decision, Kazin said: ‘See him yourself when he gets here. Tell him he is being reassigned: that he is to settle whatever is outstanding in America and prepare to return permanently.'

‘To do what?' asked Belov. The permanent recall was ridiculous, an order with no logical reason or purpose.

The man's attitude was dangerously near contempt, discerned Kazin. Perhaps someone else who needed reassigning, into oblivion. Savouring his power as if he could actually taste it, Kazin said: ‘Whatever I decide.' He would have to devote more thought than he had to that hurriedly conceived idea at the graveside. Definitely too rushed: he'd do better next time.

It was as if Kazin were paranoic about the son of the former joint Chief Deputy, thought Belov. He said: ‘The last batch of CIA identification is going to be the most embarrassing. We've got the names of forty headquarters officers at Langley: every division chief and most of their deputies.'

‘And the chaos has only just started,' mused Kazin.

‘The Foreign Ministry have confirmed Washington's application for a diplomatic visa for Wilson Drew,' disclosed Belov.

‘Maintaining Kapalet's control?'

‘Obviously.'

‘Through whom we can go on feeding them what we like, for years,' said Kazin, reflective still. ‘This really has been the most brilliantly devised and executed disinformation coup!'

The megalomaniac appeared sincerely to believe he was its architect instead of its on-the-sidelines approver, Belov realized, incredulous. Kazin
had
to be mentally unstable: there wasn't any other explanation.

36

Yuri routed himself through Spain and Germany, so it was a long flight, but up to the last hour before the Moscow touchdown he had not properly worked out how he could advance into the necessary destructive indictment the information he carried in the briefcase at his side. Or even into the unquestionably more necessary protective one. And then he remembered rust-coloured vodka and body odour and a contemptuous disregard for authority and coupled it to the militia investigator's insistence upon the importance of back-street repair shops in discovering who had killed his father. And decided, in rare assurance these days, that he had nothing to lose.

Yuri walked slowly along the line of waiting taxis, peering in and ignoring the inviting gestures, finding the man he wanted five vehicles from the front. He got into the car, ignoring the hornblasts of protest from the others ahead, which the driver did as well. The lead taxi protested the loudest and as he passed Yuri's driver thrust up a single middle finger and said: ‘Fuck you.' As they negotiated the exit loops from Sheremet'yevo the man said: ‘Come far?'

Yuri was too impatient to endure a full repeat of the sales pitch of the previous journey so he leaned forward against the seat in front, the fifty-dollar note folded upward and almost directly in front of the man.

The driver said: ‘What's that?'

‘What's it look like?'

‘Fifty American dollars.'

‘That's what it is.'

‘Piss off,' dismissed the man. ‘Is that how you get promotion in Gorbachov's anti-corruption militia? By entrapment! Amateur: fucking amateur.'

‘Last time you offered me girls and vodka and said I wouldn't get a better rate anywhere for my dollars,' reminded Yuri.

He was conscious of the man's attention in the rear-view mirror and moved, to make himself more visible.

‘Who are you?' demanded the driver.

Yuri didn't reply to that question, either. He let the note drop and said: ‘It's yours.'

‘You haven't asked the rate.'

‘I don't want to know the rate.'

‘You're not making sense.'

‘I want help: the sort of help I think you can give me.'

‘You notice I'm not touching that money? Don't know it's there,' said the man. ‘You've got to get up much earlier in the morning to trick me, asshole. You know what I think I'm going to do? I think I'm going to stop here and throw you out of the cab. That's what I think I'm going to do.'

As close as he had to be, Yuri saw that the collar of the driver's coat was even blacker than before from his greased hair and the miasma of tobacco appeared stronger, too. As the car began to slow and move to the side of the highway, Yuri took another fifty-dollar note from his pocket and held it up, like the previous one. ‘You know whose portrait that is?' he said. ‘That's Ulysses S. Grant.'

The man looked from Yuri to the money and back to Yuri again. He said: ‘I asked you who you were.'

‘And I said I wanted help.'

The driver's eyes went back to the money, briefly, and he said: ‘What sort of help?'

‘Garages which repair cars that have been in accidents that can't be reported. For unaccounted money.'

‘You …?' began the man and then stopped, looking back at the airport and shaking his head. He said: ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

Yuri let the fifty-dollar note drop beside the first and said: ‘I'm talking about money.'

‘Who told you?'

‘About what?'

‘Me.'

‘This isn't a trap.'

‘Convince me.'

‘Look closely.'

The tobacco breath was disgusting as the man turned fully to him. ‘So?'

‘Recognize me?'

‘No.'

‘Try harder.'

‘Why should I?'

‘For the hundred dollars beside you.'

‘I don't know anything about a hundred dollars beside me.'

‘You weren't so careful last time. You wanted to deal in anything American that I wanted to sell or barter.'

‘I don't remember any last time: there wasn't one.'

‘You wanted to sell vodka and to buy dollars and anything American that I had,' repeated Yuri.

‘I've never seen you before.'

‘You took me to the KGB building on the ring road.'

‘I did not.'

‘I could have reported you then to the anti-corruption militia,' said Yuri, remembering how strong the temptation had been and glad he had not succumbed to it. ‘I didn't. If I had done and you'd been intercepted how would you have explained the vodka? And all the cash you were carrying as a money black marketeer?'

‘There wasn't another time,' insisted the man.

The denial was weak and Yuri knew the man had at last remembered him. He said: ‘I didn't do it then. I am not going to do it now. Not unless I have to.'

‘What's that mean, unless you have to?'

‘It means there's two ways,' said Yuri. ‘One way makes you money. The other way makes you unhappy: subject to stop and search and harassment, whenever, however.'

‘I'm supposed to be frightened?'

The bravado was weaker than the denial. Yuri said: ‘What would a search squad find right now, where you live?'

‘Two hundred dollars,' capitulated the driver.

‘If it's worth it.'

‘Now.'

‘Later, when we find the garage.'

‘There are a lot: the anti-corruption campaign is a joke.'

‘Keep the meter running, all the time.' The man's physical presence could be an advantage.

‘You looking for engine damage? Engineers?'

Yuri hesitated. ‘Bodywork,' he said.

‘What happened?'

‘No need for you to know.'

There appeared to be a lot, as the man said. Because it was on the way into Moscow from the airport they stopped at Khimki and after there near the Dynamo sports stadium and crossed to the northern river terminal, where they unsuccessfully checked two places from which the driver, who by now had identified himself as Leonid (‘like Brezhnev: he enjoyed living well, too') said stolen cars were sold as well as unrecorded repairs carried out. At every garage there was a wall of rejecting hostility towards him and Yuri quickly realized just how much he needed the man with him. The pattern developed of the questions being put through the driver rather than directly from him. Yuri became hopeful at a service station on the road to Krasnogorsk when a paint-sprayer remembered a 1984 Lada and was just as quickly disappointed when he said the colour had been green.

‘Sure you want to go on?' asked Leonid as they turned off the ring road to appraoch the centre of Moscow.

‘Quite sure.'

‘You see what's on the clock?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘This must be pretty important to you.'

‘It is.'

There were four more garages and two more wrongly coloured Ladas before the taxi pulled into Begovaya Street. It appeared to be a three-man business, one of the owners the sprayer himself, anonymous behind a protective mask, his overalls multi-coloured from previous jobs. From the attitude Yuri guessed he knew Leonid personally: instead of answering the first question the man nodded in Yuri's direction and said: ‘He OK?'

‘Yes,' said the driver.

‘How OK is OK?'

Yuri didn't understand until the driver said: ‘Of course he'll pay; he's with me, isn't he?'

‘A 1984 Lada?' queried the garageman. He had lifted the visor of his mask but it was still not possible to see what he really looked like.

‘Around October fourteenth,' prompted Yuri.

‘Fifteenth,' said the man at once.

He'd got this far before, thought Yuri, curbing the optimism.

‘What was the damage?' asked Leonid.

‘Scraped nearside wing,' said the man. ‘And the light assembly was smashed.'

‘What colour?'

‘Fawn. Managed a good match.'

A feeling of satisfaction engulfed Yuri. Abandoning their established system and taking over from the driver, he said: ‘Remember anything about the man?'

‘He was a soldier,' declared the sprayer at once.

‘A soldier!' demanded Yuri. ‘You mean he wore uniform?'

The man shook his head. ‘The way he walked; held himself. Always tell a military man.'

The fit was there, decided Yuri. He said: ‘What else about him? Anything at all?'

Instead of replying, the sprayer said to Leonid: ‘You sure this is all right?'

‘Dollars,' promised Leonid.

‘How much?'

‘Twenty,' opened Yuri.

‘Fifty,' bargained the man.

The ultimate satisfaction would be charging it to KGB expenses, Yuri decided as he handed the money over: ‘payment for essential information' perhaps. He said: ‘So what else about him?'

‘Nothing about the man: just that he had a positive military bearing.'

Yuri felt a flare of irritation, imagining he had been tricked into parting with money upon the promise of something more, and then recognized the qualification in the reply. He said: ‘What else, if it wasn't about the man?'

‘You sure this isn't official?'

‘You often get paid in American dollars by the police?'

The man hesitated and then went into the cubby-hole office in one corner of the paint shop, re-emerging at once with a ledger-sized book. ‘Wouldn't have mattered if it had been official,' he said, offering it already opened at a page.