The Case of the General's Thumb (2 page)

“Sorry,” Nik said wearily. “It couldn't go in the container – containers get the full treatment – and I didn't want to ditch it.”

“Anyway, thank you, Nik. We've been lucky.”

He poured beer.

“Lovely thing. It'll go well with my wall carpet. I'm sorry, too. Still a bit on edge. Worried we might be under observation. But happily, Security's up to its eyes. Some clever sod's used an advertising balloon to dump a corpse on their roof. Twenty surveillance cameras and not one looking skywards! Balloon hanging. Something of a novelty. And some corpse! Retired general, Presidential Defence Adviser.”

“Why knock off an old chap like him?”

“Old chap be damned! Forty-seven. Early retirement. State Security, then Min. of Def. – where one year's desk counts as three of actual service. So it's him we have to thank for smoothing our arrival!”

They clinked glasses.

“Now for the crayfish.”

Half an hour later Ivan Lvovich left, saying Nik should have a good rest, and he'd be back in a day or two.

Nik drank another beer, took a shower, and drawing the curtain of the tiny window, lay on the wide bed, and to the rhythmical swaying of a train, fell asleep.

25th May 1997

It was a fine, starry night, and Viktor Slutsky made short work of the long, lonely walk from the metro station to his high-rise block of flats. In contrast to most tenants of the month-old block, he walked without fear, brand-new warrant card in his pocket, Tula Tokarev automatic holstered under his arm. He'd had, to date, no occasion to produce either, on duty, or walking this tortuous kilometre of building sites. The curious logic of starting to build at a point furthest from the metro eluded him. But at least he, Ira and their three-month-old daughter were no longer cooped up in a hostel.

Now, up to the eighth floor, and supper. The lift had yet to be installed, a fact for which tenants, except perhaps the elderly couple on the twelfth floor, were physically the fitter. Pause to accustom his eyes to the dark.

Hearing his key in the lock, petite, peroxided, teenager-like Ira looked out into the corridor, carrying their daughter.

“Remembered the butter?”

His cheerful smile vanished.

“Plain potatoes for you then,” she said calmly. “And when fat's what you need, being so thin.”

“Is there any?”

“There's lard, in the freezer.”

“Let's have that.”

Ira returned Yana to her pram, and they sat down at the kitchen table.

Viktor ate in silence. Lard and potatoes, he reflected, might be the more palatable for frying, though this was not the right moment to say so.

“Come on, out with it,” Ira prompted, seeing Viktor still wearing the ghost of a smile.

“I've been given a case.”

“When's the ration hand-out?”

“That's all you care about,” sighed Viktor. “Actually, there's butter tomorrow, a whole kilo.”

“What else?”

“The usual: buckwheat, condensed milk, tinned herring …”

For a while they ate in silence, then with a dog-like look of devotion she asked guiltily, “What sort of case?”

“Murder.”

“God! Isn't that dangerous?”

“It's terrific. Perks, promotion, pay increase …”

“Who's been murdered?”

“Don't know. Only heard this evening. I'm getting the file tomorrow …”

Looking at him with a mixture of love and pity, she wondered how anyone so weak, insignificant yet adorable, could possibly be given a real murder to investigate. Film sleuths were always tough, boozy, beefy.

“Put the kettle on while I feed her,” she said, as Yana's wailing penetrated from the living room.

“How many cases have you got?” Major Leonid Ivanovich Ratko, known affectionately as Ratty, asked Viktor next morning.

“Twenty-seven.”

“Anything serious?”

“Seven lift muggings, four flat burglaries, one trading-stall arson. The rest's small stuff.”

“Five Militia Academy cadets arrive tomorrow, so you pass that lot to them, having selected one to assist you.”

A major still at fifty, a major Ratko would remain till the day he died, being of those who give not a damn for their futures, and vaunt as much in scruffiness and scant use of the razor. Whether promotion to lieutenant colonel would have reformed him was hard to say. The odds were against it. At Ratko's age old habits died hard.

“Here's the file, have a look, then come back,” he said wearily, indicating the door.

Back in his tiny office with its cracked and draughty window, Viktor eyed the two vacant desks opposite. The occupant of one was under investigation and not likely to return; the other was away on detachment. Peace and quiet, then, in which to concentrate.

First came photographs of a corpse whose neck bore the telltale marks of hanging, and as he proceeded to read he remembered his pal Dima Rakin, now of Special Branch F., who had looked in yesterday to see Ratko, saying something about a retired general taking a fatal balloon flight.

“Get the picture?” asked Ratko, having knocked and entered.

“Not yet, Chief.”

Taking a chair from one of the other desks, Ratko sat opposite Viktor.

“Any questions?”

“I've not read to the end.”

“None so far, then. Well, that's odd, because I've got some.”

“For me?”

“For whoever kicked this one our way … Got a kettle? Make tea, and we'll talk.”

But it was the Major who talked, eyes fixed on Viktor.

“One: it's too fresh a case to write off as a dead ender. Two: seeing it's a Government corpse, it's logically a job for some big nob and a whole team of investigators. But no, we get it. Our patch was where he took off from, so OK, regardless of where he came down. Nothing in the papers. No obituary. So there's a clampdown.”

Viktor nodded agreement.

“Why the order to give you the case?”

“Me?”

“You personally, the chap on the phone said … So we've got connections, have we? But they're what you need to keep clear of this sort of thing.”

“Maybe Dima's something to do with it. He's always popping in.”

“He's your pal – ask him. At least find out how best to tackle it. Right, I've sat here long enough. Read to the end, then come and see me.”

Viktor was alone again, fanciful ideas as to the whys and wherefores of being assigned the ballooning general cruelly shattered. His mood was now one of gloom. Disinclined to read, he spread the photographs on the desk, leant back, and gazed out at a grey, diagonally cracked glass rectangle of city.

Awakening to the caress of warm sunlight on his face, Nik might have been back in Granny's little chalet near Zhitomir, where his bed was under a window.

He showered, shaved, and investigating the fridge, found it thoughtfully stocked with cheese, sausage, vegetables, and three eggs, enough for a decent omelette.

He wondered how Tanya and Volodya were getting on and what they were eating. He'd left them a thousand of the six thousand dollars he'd received for the flat, telling them to go easy, as they'd need money for here.

After breakfast he dressed, went out, and walked until he came to a gate, at which a soldier was asleep on a chair. He was unarmed. Ukraine, in contrast to Tadzhikistan, was a land at peace. He'd done well to come.

Exploring further, Nik found himself looking down on a meandering willow-bordered river with ducks. He went down some steps to where there were boats moored, then followed the towpath, revelling in the keen morning air.

“Any luck?” he asked quietly, coming upon a fisherman.

“Some, but it's slow work.”

Feeling a need to talk, Nik inquired if he was from these parts.

“I live just up there. You on holiday?”

“Since yesterday. Are there any shops?”

“You've got a food store on site, and there's a couple of shops in Koncha-Zaspa, twenty minutes from here. You're not from Kiev then?”

“Tadzhikistan. Left my family in Saratov, and come on ahead to find a flat. What are prices like?”

“In Kiev, upwards of ten thousand dollars for a one-roomer.”

Nik was aghast.

“Against six thousand dollars for a three-roomer in Dushanbe …”

The fisherman looked sympathetic.

“You didn't check beforehand?”

Nik said nothing, suddenly remembering that he'd no local currency, just the dollars for the flat, and must ask Ivan Lvovich about the promised removal expenses.

“As the fish are no longer biting, how about coffee at my place?” said the fisherman.

Nik watched him reel in, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The idea of cheap accommodation had been central to his plans for their future in a new country, and here was a complete stranger upsetting all that and inviting him to coffee.

“Not to worry, affordable,” had been Ivan Lvovich's response when he'd asked about prices. Affordable, but not to him.

“You coming?” the fisherman inquired, standing with his rod and a can containing his catch.

“Thanks, I'd like to.”

They went up a steep track, through a gate, and on past a massive, old two-storey house.

“My mother-in-law's place,” said the fisherman. “And that,” indicating the fine three-storeyed brick-built house ahead of them, “is what I built. With help from my son and some locals.”

“So you're a builder.”

“Writer. It's a writers' colony here. Like Peredelkino outside Moscow.”

The entrance led straight into a vast kitchen. A long pine table stood before a long, old-fashioned high-backed leather sofa.

Nik ran his hand over the table's polished surface.

“Made that too,” said the fisherman over his shoulder, lighting the stove, and setting the coffee mill whirring.

At that moment a woman in only a nightdress started down the stairs, went back, then reappeared, now wearing a housecoat.

“Svetlana, my wife,” said the fisherman. “I'm Valentin.”

“I'm Nik.”

“I asked Nik back for coffee,” Valentin explained. “He's from Dushanbe.”

“I'll have some too,” said Svetlana. She was tall, graceful, wide-eyed and vaguely aristocratic, very different from Nik's earthy, countrified Tanya.

“We were late to bed,” Valentin explained. “We had friends from Kiev and sat up drinking till two. Which always means I wake at five, and there's nothing for it but to go fishing.”

“Caught anything?” Svetlana asked.

“Seven roach.”

Nik found an agitated Ivan Lvovich waiting outside the chalet.

“Thought something had happened,” he complained. “You couldn't possibly have slept through my knocking!”

“Back in a day or two, you said.” Nik reminded him, getting out the key.

“Yes, but situations can change, and fast. You go and sit down, I'll put on the kettle.”

Nik dutifully went and sat down in the sitting room.

“Found a bug behind my kitchen radiator,” Ivan Lvovich continued, joining him. “Someone's digging. You haven't, I trust, been fraternizing with the natives.”

“No,” Nik lied.

“See that you don't. Things are moving, and we must get our skates on. No more recuperating.”

He went to attend to the kettle, and when he returned with the tea his hands were shaking slightly.

“To be honest, we had not intended to brief you straightaway,” he said. “At least, not fully. Now we must. Our former KGB is facing reforms which aren't to some people's liking. But what matters is, that we have the President's go-ahead.

“Top priority is the setting up of a Ukrainian Federal Bureau along the lines of the FBI. What's needed are two services in place of the one, so as to ensure greater control over the loyalty and accountability to the government of both.

“Official moves in this direction have been killed off by Parliament. Not to their advantage, they say. Heads would roll. You see, at present, Ukrainian Security has the monopoly of incriminating evidence to exploit as it sees fit, regarding its interests as identical with the State's. But a monopoly shared is a monopoly impaired – hence the antagonism.

“So what's the problem?” Ivan Lvovich continued. “Simply that we do not have the funds for setting up a Federal Bureau. Funny, if it weren't so serious! I'm Security old style. What I see being recruited nowadays is garbage. Straight in off the street. No principles. Out, at best, to make a career; at worst, to use Security for cover. Our Federal Bureau, when achieved, will be to Ukrainian Security what the KGB once was to the militia – more above board, and dedicated to the State's interests. Would, I ask you, anyone in the old days have got away with trying to kill the Prime Minister? Or gunning down a deputy at the airport and calmly driving off?”

Raising his cup to his lips, he blew on it before taking a gulp.

“All this goes no further, and for reasons other than your being duty-bound to secrecy. It's bigger than us. It's dangerous, potentially fatal, stuff. It's State's interests über alles now, human frailty included. Sentimentality, emotion, they're out. Absolute devotion to duty, instant, unswerving obedience, they're what's needed. As in any security service.

“As to funding: Russia, as you're probably aware, has appropriated all Soviet property abroad, acting as self-styled lawful heir of the Great and Indivisible. But that other Great and Indivisible, the KGB, was possessed of even more property and investments abroad which have never been heard about. KGB colleagues of mine from former Soviet republics tried to raise the matter officially. I didn't even make it to their funerals. I was advised against going. It's a delicate subject which no-one at State level will touch, even though Ukrainian Security's fair share of the proceeds is conservatively estimated at not less than a billion dollars.