The Case of the General's Thumb (13 page)

At reception he was given his key and an envelope. “Good to see you. Have news. Refat, Room 602”, said the note it contained.

“Not locked,” Refat called in response to his cautious knock.

Wearing a smart, well-tailored navy-blue suit, he shook hands warmly, ushering Viktor into a room the mirror image of Viktor's own.

“Weren't expecting to see me here, were you? But I thought I might see you. I'm glad we've met up. Have some juice.”

He fetched a carton of apple juice from the fridge. There were glasses on the table.

“Since when this interest in money-laundering?”

“Since yesterday.”

“So a couple more days won't hurt, and might even be good for your general education. Do you speak Polish?”

“No.”

“Pity, but don't worry. Hang on a minute.”

Going to the phone, he dialled a number.

“Wojciech, come and join us … You'll like Wojciech,” he said, returning to his chair. “He's the decent sort of Pole. Likes a drink. Hasn't got my liver.”

There was a tap at the door.

“Not locked.”

It was a short, slim man of about forty who entered, wearing jeans and a light jacket over a black T-shirt.

“Got the photos?” Refat asked, introductions completed.

Taking an envelope from an inside pocket, Wojciech passed Viktor some photos. None of the faces was familiar, and one in a photo of three men at a café table had been blotted out.

“Our man in Poland,” explained Refat. “Ukrainian Security requested assistance for ‘two visitors from Ukraine', including the provision of passports. Most interesting, though, was that these two were shadowed to the German frontier by two other Ukrainians who kept phoning back to Kiev.”

Wojciech now took up the story.

“They were armed – hence our interest – and the expectation was that they were going to knock the other two off before the German frontier. Instead they turned back. So far we've a score of five CIS corpses, all carrying forged passports. One we identified before burial, the rest we buried all the same. But supplying graves gets tedious!”

“I like your turn of phrase,” said Viktor.

Wojciech laughed.

“ ‘Live with the wolves, howl with the wolves,' as you Russians say!”

“Enough said,” laughed Refat. “But to be serious. We have, as
they say, reason to suppose a connection between these two and the Bronitsky balloon flight. We're trying to locate them, but Germany's a big country. If they've gone to earth, that's probably it. But if they're looking for something or somebody, they'll pop up sooner or later.”

“What could they be after?” Viktor asked.

“Ask that of whoever sent them. These two maybe,” Refat said, pointing to a photo of a hefty fifty-year-old with cropped blond hair and a slightly younger, stocky man with toothbrush moustache. “Anyway, see what you make of them.”

“Oughtn't we to go out somewhere?” Viktor suggested.

“You and Wojciech, yes, but better not in company with me,” said Refat.

Agreeing to meet the next day at 5.00, in Refat's room, Viktor and Wojciech set out in quest of “real Irish ale”.

After the trip to Trier, Nik woke at 3.00 in the afternoon, and finding Sakhno still snoring helped himself to yoghurt from the fridge and put the kettle on. It was then he noticed, just inside the door, a brown leather case which had not been there earlier. On the point of releasing the old-fashioned catches, he suddenly thought better of it.

“That case by the door – is it yours?” he demanded, rousing Sakhno to some semblance of wakefulness.

Springing out of bed, Sakhno came and squatted down beside it.

“Could be a bomb. ‘No more fish, thank you very much! Love, Trier.' Stand well back in case it is.”

With a resounding click Sakhno released the first catch, then the second, then gently laid the case on the floor.

“Bloody ages since I handled a bomb, and it's still a bore.”

Gingerly he lifted the lid.

“Well?”

Grinning broadly, Sakhno produced the barrel and butt of a rifle, a night sight and a silencer.

“No money. So they're buggering us about! But here's a box. Ammunition! So what's this lot for, Nik?”

“I'm sure the man will phone and tell us.”

“He'd better, the bastard!” snarled Sakhno, dumping the parts back in the case. “And it's time you got dressed and went shopping! I have been driving all night! Food, drink and lettuce for my tortoise is what we need. Cos lettuce, if they've got it.”

The phone rang.

“Consignment to hand?” asked the man. “Right, tonight it's the same place, after dark. Friend Sakhno shins up a suitable tree and picks off the dogs. On your way back, ring 546-33 from Trier, and tell the answerphone, ‘You've some questions to answer'. In Russian, of course. OK?”

“We're low on cash.”

“Who isn't? Check your post box when you get back.”

“Should have said we had a tortoise to feed!” said Sakhno as Nik replaced the receiver. They're happier with animals than they are with humans.”

“Who are?”

“The whole damned crowd. How about money?”

“In our box when we get back.”

“Bloody nice of them!”

Filling up with petrol on the outskirts of Euskirchen, they took the now familiar road to Trier. Hearing an ambulance siren, Sakhno braked and gave way, but so, too, did the ambulance, signalling vigorously that Sakhno had priority.

“Superstitious clots,” muttered Sakhno, driving on.

A setting sun reddened the sky, and although a good hour of daylight remained, the street lights were already on.

At the Trier McDonald's, where they broke for a Big Mac, Nik glanced at one of the newspapers provided for customers and, under R
USSIAN
L
EAD IN
M
ONSCHAU
M
URDER
, read, with growing unease:

“Any gen?” asked Sakhno.

“Nothing special.”

Sakhno halted, listened, but there was no sound from the villa.

“Sure there are dogs?”

“Yes.”

Two hundred metres along the wall and set some five metres back from it, they found a favourably placed oak tree.

Sakhno listened, then briskly assembled the rifle. Taking aim, he pressed a button on the sight, at which a tiny red circle of light
appeared on the bark of the tree. Having hauled himself up, he reached down for the rifle.

“See anything?” Nik called.

“Not yet,” responded Sakhno, now high above him.

A long silence followed, broken only by forest rustlings and the distant cry of some night bird.

“Ah, here we are!”

Crack!

“Missed!”

And over the next half hour or so, the crack was repeated.

“Four enough?” Sakhno called.

“I'd say so.”

“Coming down.”

Sakhno disassembled the rifle, and they made off.

Beyond the wall a door banged, someone shouted.

Sakhno put his foot down and kept it there all the way to Trier, where Nik dialled the number he had been given and left his message.

Viktor came back from the Plaza thoroughly disgruntled. Snubbed as de trop by the Ukrainian commercial attaché, ignored by Swede and German, after vodka and crab salad he got to his feet, and according his indifferent fellow diners a courteous nod, departed, regretting his order for a chop à l'argentine.

On the way to his hotel, he ventured into an ethnic eatery, where, attracting no more attention than the two Negroes and an Arab also present, he enjoyed a microwaved savoury bacon baguette, price three pounds. A bit further on, he came to the pub where he and Wojciech had enjoyed a pint of Murphy's.

Returning to his room, he undressed, and resisting the temptations
of the mini-bar, said by Wojciech to be exorbitantly priced, retired to bed and watched TV.

He was woken by a tapping at the door.

“Not locked,” he called.

It was Vika.

“Sorry, but the Swede turned amorous. I've only just escaped. Can I lie low here for a bit? Is that the bathroom?”

By the time she emerged he'd got back into his clothes.

“Anything to drink?”

“Try the mini-bar.”

She helped herself to Campari and apple juice.

“How about you? Cognac?”

“Why not?”

“You must forgive me,” she said with an awkward smile. “Work sometimes involves doing what we'd rather not. Still, better than staying stuck in Kiev.”

“What's wrong with Kiev?” he was minded to ask, but didn't.

“I found it just as dull as you did,” she continued. “Occasions like that are a bore, but needs must … It would be wonderful to stay on here without all that. Or go on to Paris.”

Her voice now had something dreamy and romantic about it. He had only to play good listener, but the prospect of seeing her home in an unknown city troubled him.

They watched TV, making further inroads on the mini-bar.

At last Vika got up, as if to visit the bathroom, but was there a long time. Over the TV music, he could hear the shower running.

She returned wrapped in a big towel.

“It's late, and I didn't want you to see me home …” she said, slipping into the bed. “Turn off the telly.”

He undressed in the dark. Warm hands welcomed him.

“Don't worry. I'm married too!” she whispered.

Nik surfaced at 12.30 to a room flooded with bright autumn sunlight, showered and, thinking back over the events of the night, went down to their post box.

A thousand marks. Not a fortune, but enough to be going on with, and setting off for their neighbourhood stores, he returned with two bottles of red, one of Smirnoff, and a quantity of beer.

Sakhno was exercising at the window.

“All's well,” said Nik, “there's cash, and I've stocked up with drink.”

“To celebrate the shooting season! Good! And for our tortoise?”

Nik felt, and looked, foolish.

“A fine animal lover you are! Back you go. Lettuce. Fresh lettuce. Maybe a cucumber – and what wine did you say?”

“Two of red.”

“Get another. And one of those round loaves. We'll charge another mine to departed friends.”

The hot German sun made him think of Saratov and its heat. If it came to spending a winter there, as Tanya and Volodya might, they'd have the tiny stove, fashioned by Tanya's metal-worker grandfather. A month's delay at least, he'd said in the telegram for Ivan Lvovich to send, meaning to the end of summer. Now it was autumn, already. Maybe he should write from here. He couldn't explain, only say he was sorry, and they must be patient just a bit longer. Things were, after all, moving to a conclusion. After which, he'd be back in Kiev and could send for them.

Sakhno sniffed Nik's round, small loaf as if it were poisoned.

“Caraway seed!”

“All there was, except for plastic-wrapped sliced.”

“God, what they do to bread! Still, let's have some knives and forks,” Sakhno said shaking his head, and then, stripping away the outer leaves of the lettuce, called, “Nina, Nina!”

“So you've christened her?”

“I have.”

“How do you know it's a she?”

“Shape of tail,” Sakhno declared authoritatively, watching Nina crawl purposefully towards the sunlit lettuce.

Sakhno opened the vodka, filled two glasses and fetched sausage from the fridge.

“The dogs! May they rest in peace!”

They clinked glasses and drank.

“Actually,” said Nik, “we don't clink glasses at a wake.”

“We're not at a wake,” said Sakhno, still busy with his mine, “we're relaxing.”

Next day, while Sakhno was out sunning Nina on the grass, the phone rang.

“Well?”

“It went OK. Four dogs.”

“And you phoned? Splendid. Ring you tomorrow.”

Replacing the receiver, Nik wondered what their unseen controllers would make of the newspaper report concerning Pogodinsky.

“Quick!” panted an alarmed Sakhno appearing at the door. “She's run away!”

“Who has?”

“Nina! I was just sitting there, and suddenly, she was gone!”

They raced down the stairs and out into the courtyard.

“She was here.”

“She can't have gone far.”

Twice they circled the block and were searching under the ornamental shrubs at the base of street lamps, when a little old lady leaned from a window and asked what they were up to.

“We've lost our tortoise,” said Nik.

Shutting the window, the old lady came out, and almost at once found Nina behind a litter bin beside the bench Sakhno had been taking his ease on.

While Nik thanked the old lady, Sakhno took Nina up to the flat.

“You must come in for a cup of tea some time,” she said. “I don't see much of my son. He's in the police.”