The Case of the General's Thumb (16 page)

“Which is?”

“That Sakhno and his companion were being shadowed to prevent their doubling back to Ukraine. Sakhno will have been
given the chop in Germany, and by now his companion too. Professional requirement. It's ninety-nine per cent certain that both pairs are, were, directly linked with the Bronitsky business.”

“Where are the other two now?”

“Portnov's disappeared. Unconfirmed reports say to Russia. Kylimnik is currently Assistant Military Attaché at our Embassy in Paris.”

“Since when?”

“The last two weeks.”

“So do I go to Paris?”

“You may well have to. Give me a couple of days. I'll float the idea. But watch it. If he's big time, this Kylimnik, you won't even make the plane. If he isn't, he'll get run over in Paris.”

“But if he doesn't, and I don't go under a train on the metro?”

“In that case, no security leak. Get it? So give me time. No packing, no talk of Eiffel Towers! Not yet. Suss out Border Troops HQ, that's the next job.

“So for the next few days, you take the duty car, park, at noon precisely, at the Cavalry Street–Vladimir Street junction, observe comings and goings for the next thirty minutes, then buzz off.”

“Looking for what?”

“Just keeping an eye on the door.”

Viktor collected an unstamped envelope and some junk mail from their post box, and took the new lift up to their flat. Ira and Yana were already in bed. Quietly, he shut himself into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

The envelope contained the message, “In Kiev tomorrow. Meet you 10 p.m., Hydropark metro station, Lisova line platform. Refat.”

A curious rendezvous, and not one he was mentally prepared for. He had, since their London agreement to pool information, learnt things which, if communicated, would show him to be the source of the leak. Still, without Refat and his photos, Georgiy would not have made his identifications. So, purely and simply for the good of
the investigation, and in the hope of some return … Albeit with a nasty premonition of one day finding himself written off for collaborating with “the Russian enemy”.

The Georgiy-inspired watch on Border Troops HQ produced little of note beyond that, of the men passing in and out, none were in uniform, whereas at the Zolotovorotsky Lane entrance Georgiy had expressed no interest in, all were, their parked cars being of a poorer order.

Returning to District, he learnt that a drunken caretaker claimed, belatedly, to have seen a young man shove Widow Bronitsky into the path of an old white Mercedes, but that, interrogated further, he had been unable to remember either the make or colour of the vehicle.

Leaving the duty Zhiguli at Arsenal, Viktor took the metro to Hydropark, and at 9.57 was the only one to alight there. A train came in from the opposite direction, opened and closed its doors, and continued on its way.

“Greetings,” came a familiar voice, and there, from nowhere, was Refat, in elegant, knee-length raincoat and carrying an umbrella.

Keeping to unlit paths, they made their way into Hydropark, and Viktor told Refat who was who in the photographs, and of the fate of Widow Bronitsky.

“What about the son you saw in England?”

“I didn't. He'd been collected by the Embassy and put on a plane, his mother having been involved in an accident.”

“As indeed she was, but later.”

“So you know.”

“No, not entirely. How could we? Is that the lot?”

“Yes.”

“My contribution is the fourth man. We'll know for certain in a couple of days, but if we're right, he's a military interpreter. Left
Dushanbe for Kiev on the say-so of a certain Kiev colonel, sending wife and son to relatives in Saratov – while he got settled and looked for a flat – their effects having been sent to Kiev in advance. Wife and son sit expecting to hear. Two months pass, then out of the blue comes a letter from someone here saying our interpreter's left money with him for safe keeping, and as he hasn't returned, what should he do with it?”

“Is there any way of establishing if that's him?”

“A man's gone to Saratov with the photographs. If it is the husband, there'll be the problem of keeping the wife and the son quiet for a bit. Red Cross Missing Person inquiries are the last thing we want. It would be good to get hold of the colonel who enticed him into coming to Kiev.”

The eerie silence of Hydropark was broken by a sudden patter of rain on foliage invisible in the dark. Refat opened his umbrella over them both.

Seeing a figure stretched on a bench, Viktor stopped abruptly.

“Drunk or dead,” said Refat. “Come on.”

But Viktor still stood as if in a different world.

Refat came and bent over the man.

“Drunk,” he said straightening. “Roughed up and robbed. Come on, he won't die of cold.”

They went on deeper into the park, which, at that hour, had all the air of a sinister forest.

“I've got a couple more days here,” said Refat as they headed back towards the lights. “If there's any news, you'll get a letter.”

Well into a second bottle of Absolut, Nik sat by the window gazing out at the rain.

He began, for the first time, to feel genuine pity for Sakhno, whose pregnant fiancée had been knocked down and killed by a car. Whether or not by accident, was no longer of such consequence as the fact of death itself.

He'd given no thought to what had caused the fire that had killed Tanya and Volodya, accepting it as an accident. Grandfather's little stove was old, but perfectly safe if properly tended.

He and Sakhno were in the same boat. No longer anybody's now their nearest and dearest were dead. Like lost dogs.

Lost, despite still having masters and food. There was no sense to anything – going on included.

This promise “to get him back” – back where? Dushanbe? Saratov? Kiev? Home? He had no home.

Collapsing onto his bed, he slept until woken by the phone.

“Your pal not back?”

“No. When do I get away?”

“You must wait, you can't just leave him.”

“He's not coming back.”

“He's got nowhere else to go. Just hang on. When he does come, give him two of the tablets, and get your things together.”

So that was it!

“Still there? I've put today's paper in your post box. You'll see the score. Ring when he's had the tablets, and we'll come and get you.”

Nina's water dish was empty. Nik refilled it, cleared away the old lettuce and uneaten cucumber, and put down fresh.

He no longer wanted Sakhno to come back. Not to be given tablets and die.

The fridge was empty apart from three cans of beer. He had just two hundred DM left.

At the local shop he bought two tins of haricot soup, bread and sausage, and on his way back to the flat collected the newspaper from their post box.

M
AFIA
W
AR
H
ITS
K
OBLENZ
S
TREETS
ran the headline.

Nik reached for the bottle of Absolut. No, Sakhno would not be back now.

Viktor's second watch on the entrance of Border Troops HQ proved more rewarding than the first. No sooner had he taken up position than a man in a leather jacket tapped on his window.

“Waiting for somebody?”

“Yes,” said Viktor, lowering it.

A little later he noticed movement at a first floor window. The curtain moved aside and two men looked out, one of them very like the man in the leather jacket.

In the course of the next half hour he was subjected to three inspections from the same window.

Zanozin was still on a ventilator and in a coma.

“How is he?” Viktor asked Mrs Zanozin, depositing a carrier bag
containing sausage, cheese and a carton of apple juice on the bedside table.

“No change, the doctor says. And if after three days there's still no change, that's it. This ward's only got the one ventilator.”

“Have something to eat,” he said passing her the bag.

She thanked him warmly.

“If he'd been a State Deputy or a General, my poor Misha, they'd have whisked him off to Germany or Austria and saved his life, so one of the nurses said.”

That evening Georgiy rang.

“What news of our HQ?”

“They're beginning to keep an eye on me.”

“Splendid! Tomorrow could be interesting. I'll ring. Oh, and you'll find those photos back in your safe.”

No plodding through rain, no slipping under a partition for Georgiy!

Viktor's third watch passed uneventfully, but driving away from Border Troops HQ, he was tailgated and twice rammed by a green 4 × 4, as if to force him into the path of oncoming traffic. Point made, the 4 × 4 dropped back.

Back at District Viktor sat, not in the best of moods, watching the sun gain ascendency over cloud, when Refat rang.

“How far to Koncha-on-the-Lakes?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“So off you go. House 28 – no street name – Tarnavsky, Valentin. He's the one who wrote to Saratov. Show him the photos, see if he gives us our fourth man.”

“Bit of a comedown after the Mazda, eh?” remarked the guard as Viktor made for the duty Zhiguli.

“It goes.”

All the way to Koncha-on-the-Lakes he was tailed by a cherry-red Samara, which, when he stopped in the writers' village, drove on past.

Tarnavsky, at 2.00 in the afternoon, had clearly only just got out of bed. The kitchen where they sat had no clock, and the whole place had an air of time suspended.

“You wrote to a lady in Saratov about a sum of money left with you by her husband,” Viktor began.

“I did. Are you from her?”

“I'm not.” Viktor produced his envelope of photographs. “But I'd like you to look at these and tell me if one of the men is him.”

“Yes, that's Nik,” he said pointing him out. “Nice chap.”

Having elicited from Tarnavsky as much as he could remember, Viktor rose to go.

“This money, what do I do with it?”

“If you give me your number, I'll ring.”

The cherry-red Samara tailed him all the way back to Kiev. He noted its registration number. At least it had the decency not to ram him.

The next two days were a protracted nightmare. His money was nearly finished and so, it seemed, was his life. The phone rang and he let it ring, at first not wanting to answer, but later not able to. Five empty bottles of Absolut littered the floor beneath the table. Staggering in a haze to the table, he seemed to see Tanya and Volodya waving, calling.

After two more glasses, he took a sheet of paper and wrote: “They want you dead. Hop it. Koblenz cops onto the hearse. Ditch it. Best of luck, Nik.”

He poured the last of his vodka into a cup, added two of Ivan Lvovich's tablets, watched them effervesce, then gulped the mixture down.

Viktor's fourth watch on Border Troops HQ passed uneventfully except for the arrival in the last few minutes of a stretch Chrysler. Two close-cropped giants got out and looked around before opening the rear door for a thin man in a long, tight-fitting overcoat who went quickly into the HQ building. Viktor wrote down the registration number, then saw that he was himself under observation from the second floor.

He pressed the starter, circled the flower bed in front of the main entrance, and was heading for the T-junction with Vladimir Street when an enormous lorry came bouncing over the cobbles towards him. He braked, intending to reverse out of trouble, but in the panic of the moment engaged first gear.

When at last he opened his eyes, he saw Ratko.

“I thought I heard my wife.”

“I met her coming out as I came in,” said Ratko. “Don't worry – you're only here for a couple of days. You were bloody lucky, the doctor says. And the safety belt helped. Damn all left of the car, though.”

“How about Zanozin?”

“Off the ventilator. Breathing normally.”

“What's the score with me?”

“Broken leg. Concussion. Soon be your old self and back on the waiting list. You'll have your three-roomer in time for your daughter's wedding.”

Viktor smiled.

“That's an old one! What happened to the lorry?”

“Nothing much. Made of tougher stuff than your car. Brakes failed. Driver messed his face up going through the screen. We'll mess it up a bit more when he's better! Driving in the city centre with deficient brakes!”

Ratko went his way, leaving a bag of oranges and Viktor with his right leg in plaster and strung up in the air.

Nik spent the night vomiting, suffering attacks of diarrhoea, and longing for death that seemed so slow in coming. But it was not until dawn that he finally collapsed senseless onto the floor beside his bed.

The door latch clicked, followed by footsteps, not so much heard as felt through the floor, then two blurry silhouettes stood over him.

“Always knew you were the dotty one,” came Sakhno's voice. “Hanging or shooting's better than poisoning, and more reliable – especially when the poison's a super-fast laxative! Here, drink this.”

It was the last beer from the fridge, and it did something to assuage the Sahara-like aridity of his mouth. Cups of tea completed the cure, he was able to sit up, become aware of the young blonde female with Sakhno, and the fact that they were conversing in deaf-and-dumb language.