The Case of the General's Thumb (6 page)

“Over to you, then.”

Three hours later, Nik was woken by the train grinding to a halt. The lights came on, and there were shouts of “Passport control!”

His, Nik saw with surprise, examining it for the first time, was of the new Russian Federation variety.

“Got yours?” he asked, shaking Sakhno, who, unlike him, had undressed and was using his denim suit as a pillow.

Sakhno rummaged, and throwing a dog-eared Soviet passport onto the table, went back to sleep. Nik opened it.
Family Status
– blank.
Place of birth: Donyetsk, 12 September, 1964
, overstamped in violet
Ukraine
.

A hawk-nosed, green-uniformed blonde checked their photos against their faces, and moved on without a word. She was followed by a tubby, trim-moustached customs man.

“Luggage?”

“Haven't any.”

“Stand up.”

He pulled out the drawer under Nik's bunk. An ancient newspaper and two cockroaches frozen into immobility by the sudden exposure to light were all it contained.

“Cash? Currency?”

“A little.”

“This bloke with you?”

“We're both for Sarny.”

“Belarusian roubles?”

“A million.”

“Right,” he said, and went his way.

By Sarny, Nik was so deeply asleep that the conductress had a job to wake him.

“That's what drinking does,” she said. “We're here. You've got five minutes.”

He woke Sakhno, and no sooner were they out on the deserted platform than the train moved off.

“What's the time?” Sakhno asked.

“Ten to six.”

“Bloody hell!”

They flopped down on the wooden seats in the waiting room.

Sakhno yawned.

“Where now?”

“A night here, then on to Brest and Poland.”

Sakhno went back to sleep.

Not feeling sleepy, Viktor sat in the kitchen with the light out and a cup of tea at his elbow. He now had the menus of three restaurants – the Kozak, the Mlyn and the Moskva – where Bronitsky could have ordered red caviar pancakes. Zanozin had excelled himself. Tomorrow he would pay them a visit.

Nik and Sakhno put up at the small hotel outside the station, slept till four, then toured the few shops Sarny had to offer. The two old-style commission shops were a stark reminder of the Soviet past, and in one of these, with Sakhno looking on in frank disbelief, Nik bought two battered suitcases using their Belarusian toy money.

“What the devil are they for?” Sakhno asked. “But skip that. How about that explanation you promised?”

“When we've got the tickets, we'll go somewhere for a meal.”

“Fine,” said Sakhno, who was ravenous.

Walking back to the hotel with three hours to go before the train, Nik insisted on buying toothbrushes and toothpaste.

“Why bother with the bloody hotel?” Sakhno demanded, halting abruptly.

“To collect our passports. Look, I'll do that, you wait here.”

“Left the key?” the girl asked looking languidly up from her book.

“Yes.”

“Hang on. Kla-a-va!”

A sleepy-looking old woman poked her head out of a door.

“Check 35 still has its towels and drinking glasses.”

Ten minutes later she slapped down their passports, and with a “Do come again!” returned to her book.

Seeing no sign of Sakhno, Nik broke into a cold sweat. Casting around, he spotted a blue-painted hut with a board saying Bar, and in its gloomy interior found Sakhno addressing a glass.

“What are you having?” he asked.

“Got any money?”

“They take dollars. And they've got port.” Sakhno turned to the barman, “One large port, and play this,” he said, pulling a cassette from his pocket, and as he made his way back to the table, booming heartbeats filled the bar.

“Bloody tape's blank!” called the barman, replacing it with an old Afghan War number.

Sakhno hauled himself to his feet, eyes flashing fire.

“Take it easy, let's finish our drinks,” Nik urged, and to his surprise, Sakhno slumped back onto his seat, clearly drunk or the worse for his recent experience.

“Get him out of here,” said the barman, as Nik collected the cassette.

“Got anything to eat?”

“Snickers.”

“Give me four.”

“You promised to explain,” Sakhno grumbled.

“I will when you're more yourself. Just now, we've a train to catch. Bring the cases.”

Reluctantly, Sakhno got up, pocketed the cassette, picked up the cases, and made unsteadily for the door.

Viktor's round of the restaurants proved unproductive.

The Kozak waiters were reluctant to say anything beyond a “No, don't remember”, almost before looking at his photograph of Bronitsky.

At the Mlyn, the manager checked his receipts for May 20th and shook his head. According to a waitress, only two tables had been taken: one by prostitutes celebrating a birthday, the other by men celebrating something else. There'd been no order for caviar pancakes.

The manager and waiters at the Moskva were more welcoming. No one recognized Bronitsky, but that, as someone said, meant nothing, given that there had been a banquet for forty that evening, and people at other tables. Caviar pancakes had indeed been ordered by the banquet party, but in celebration of a wedding anniversary, and that ruled out Bronitsky.

Viktor went early to the funeral, intending to present the widow with white arum lilies, observe the mourners, meet the son, and Ivin, from whom to learn something of Bronitsky, the Defence Consultant – a dismissive “Bronitsky's death has got damn all to do with his place of work!” from Georgiy notwithstanding.

“Meaning what?” he'd demanded, but Georgiy had rung off.

Stuck in a tailback at the turn off for Pechersk, he wondered what the hell was he really supposed to be doing.

Who was he, this Georgiy? Security? That would be logical, but then why all this communication by phone? And why with him, a mere lieutenant concerned with petty street crime? Security had its own special agents. The militia didn't. Too easily bribed. As he might have been, if given special status!

At the next set of lights, he gave up pondering the imponderable, turned his thoughts to the day ahead, and visualizing a fine bronze-handled
coffin, switched to the solemn mood appropriate to joining the mourners of one who had departed, or more accurately, flown, this life.

Parking well away from the entrance of the Bronitsky residence, he took from the back seat his tribute of arum lilies.

The door was opened by Widow Bronitsky, all in black, wearing a brooch of black malachite, and weeping as if only just apprised of her husband's demise. The flat was a hive of female activity. An electric mixer could be heard grinding away. Mince was being wrapped in cabbage leaves for the indispensable funeral rissoles.

Exchanging bows with an elderly man – introductions not being the custom at funerals – Viktor settled himself in a corner of the sitting room.

The elderly man, whose shoes bore muddy signs of a journey, sidled over to the armchair next to his.

“Would you be a colleague of Vadim's, if you don't mind my asking?”

“I've had more to do with his widow,” Viktor said, conscious of the ambiguity.

“Colleague of Yelena's, then,” he said. “I'm his Dad. Ex-miner. Donyetsk region. His Mum couldn't come. She's paralysed. Looks like they're late with the body.”

He directed his gaze to the large wall clock framed in polished wood.

“Better see what's happening in the kitchen,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Has the son flown back?” Viktor asked.

“Son?” His face took on a haggard look. “It costs a bit to fly from England. No, he hasn't.”

The bus with the body arrived at the entrance half an hour late. A splendid coffin of what looked like mahogany was carried from it and placed on two stools.

Viktor stood slightly apart, observing. There were not all that many mourners – perhaps fifty in all – and the cortège was
surprisingly modest: two spick-and-span coaches, a black Volga, and a few Zhigulis.

The coffin was returned to its bus, the cortège moved off, and Viktor made for his Mazda, surprised at there being no religious ceremony.

A half-hour crawl brought them to the Baykov Cemetery, where they were joined by a few other mourners bearing flowers and wreaths.

With the grave filled, the mound formed, and the labourers off the scene, there was a passing round of plastic mugs of vodka and meat pirozhki. Viktor accepted a glass, which he surreptitiously poured away. As well as Bronitsky senior, two earnest-looking men in expensive suits and several women were in attendance on the widow, who, a little later, made her way from mourner to mourner inviting them to the wake.

Again Viktor followed behind, but now at a faster pace.

Seated at the funeral board, Viktor looked about for the two men who had been standing with the widow, but they were nowhere to be seen.

After a few vodkas, people quietly took themselves off. Bronitsky senior alone seemed set to sit on over his cabbage rissoles, chops, sandwiches and roast chicken. Viktor felt sorry for him. It was as if he, the old Donyetsk miner, had died, not his son.

When no more than a handful were left at table, Viktor asked gently after Ivin.

For a moment Widow Bronitsky seemed at a loss.

“Gone to his hotel. He's got a train to catch.”

“Which hotel is that?”

“The Moskva.”

Ivin had returned his keys an hour earlier, Viktor was told at reception, but since he'd paid for a second night, he might well be back.

“You have, I take it, a record of everyone who has stayed here.”

“Of course.”

Returning with chocolates from the foyer kiosk, he asked whether a Maksim Ivin had stayed in the second half of May.

The receptionist consulted a ledger.

“Yes,” she said at last, “18th to the 21st.”

“Single room?”

“Double, but he was alone.”

Nik expended his surplus of Belarusian currency on the luxury of a sleeper for two. Sakhno, having persuaded Nik to stock up with three of vodka and three of wine, was travelling recumbent. The allowance for travellers crossing into Poland being one bottle of wine, one of spirits per person, or of three bottles per person for two travelling together, Sakhno had made the best choice. And now, having discarded an empty vodka bottle under the table and deposited two passports – his dog-eared one and another of Soviet foreign-travel vintage – on it, he was in his bunk snoring and twisting from side to side. Nik examined the red-covered newcomer. Valid for three more months, it had Czechoslovak, then simply Czech, visas adorning almost every page, the last for ten days in April. At that moment a young border guard entered in quest of passports and tourist vouchers.

Ten minutes later, the coaches were uncoupled and lifted on jacks for the bogies to be removed, rolled away and replaced by bogies of Western gauge.

Nik lay on his bunk trying without much success to calculate just how far Brest was from Dushanbe, then fell to thinking of his wife and son, and the great, slow-moving expanse of the Volga at Saratov. Till now the frontiers between him, Tanya and Volodya had been of the homely, knowable variety, but in less than an hour, it
would be different. Belarus, the whole Soviet Union that once was, like everything else, would be behind him. From then on there would be the anticipation of returning. But where to? Saratov? Kiev? In Saratov he had his nearest and dearest; in Kiev the promise of a flat. Once he had a flat, they could come, he'd meet them at the station, take them home in a taxi. But in what sort of a block? How many floors? On which would theirs be? Third would be best. A third-floor flat with a room for Volodya was what he'd ask for. Now the boy had left school, he'd need a room of his own to bring friends and girls back to …

The carriage began its noisy descent, connected with the new bogies, then rocked this way and that until finally reunited with them.

Fifteen minutes later the border guard returned their passports. The train slipped from the floodlit glare westwards into the night, and Sakhno slept on.

Waking to his companion's snoring and a Polish dawn, Nik saw that their passports had been dealt with while they slept, and was grateful for the consideration shown.

Fields, villages flashed by to the accompaniment of Sakhno's snores, and the further they travelled, the bigger and better the houses became.

Suddenly, eyes still tight shut, Sakhno reached under the table, setting the empty vodka bottle rolling before locating his carrier of provisions for the journey. From this he took a length of smoked sausage, consumed a considerable portion, skin and all, deposited the remainder on the table beside the passports, and was soon asleep and snoring again.

After returning the sausage to its carrier bag to prevent its falling to the floor, Nik dressed, stowed his bedding away, and sat by the window, entranced by the fleeting scene, and drinking the two cups of tea brought by the conductress.

In Warsaw, where they stopped for twenty minutes, Sakhno woke, shook his head and listened to the loudspeaker announcements.

“What are they saying?”

“It's Polish.”

“Fat lot of use you are,” Sakhno grinned.

As they travelled on, Sakhno proposed opening a second bottle of vodka, but when Nik demurred, didn't argue.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Poznan.”

“What the hell is it you want me for?”

“A job. Do it, collect your share, and that's it.”

“And that's why you got me out from under back there?”

“Exactly.”

“Right,” was the surprisingly limp response, followed, with a grin, by “I daresay I'll survive, if others don't”.