Quiller Meridian Page 5

  Zymyanin’s own life could be in hazard as the Rossiya plunged headlong through the night, and if I made contact with him it could be lethal. A thousand roubles in Galina’s bank account to buy her secret services could prove a profitable investment, and to hell with that carping old crone in the counting house. We play our little games, we, the brave and diligent ferrets in the field, with wit and sinew as our weapons when we can, but if base money can provide the means of our salvation as we burrow through the dark and treacherous labyrinths then we will use it. We’re not proud, my good friend, we are not proud: we find we live longer if we are practical.

  On my way through the corridors tonight I stopped to talk to any of the staff who had the time, though not many did: one of them, a weary — eyed girl with calloused hands and stained overalls with the seam torn at the shoulder, told me that the coach attendants, security guards, waiters, cooks and cleaners worked for nine days at a stretch on the run from Moscow to Beijing, then took a week off in Moscow or Vladivostok, in turn.

  ‘But the pay is good,’ she said, pulling a lock of damp hair away from her eyes. ‘I earn 150 roubles a month, with free keep.’

  ‘That’s quite good,’ I said. It was terrible. ‘But so you should.’

  She dragged chips of wood from the rocking floor of the galley and pushed them into the furnace below the huge copper samovar. ‘Yes, and then one day I shall be a provodnik, in a uniform.’

  I spent more than an hour in the dining car, because of the three men there, and watched the waiters tussling with a pack of beatniks who were trying to hog a table for a game of cards, swigging their beer from the bottle and making up a dirty song about the revolution — I’d seen them before, along the corridors.

  The three men were in their fifties, their faces sharp — boned and weathered, their dark woollen suits well — cut and their shoes polished. Four other men, younger and quiet — faced, observant, seemed to be in the same party, although they were sitting at different tables, two of them on each side of the table where the older men were. One of them, the quietest, with the totally expressionless eyes of a wolf, dining car and surveilling for more than an hour and then moving on, using other passengers — Caucasian, and in groups when I could find them — as mobile cover, wandering with them along the rocking corridors and meeting with bands of gypsies, some Americans with the Stars and Stripes sewn proudly onto their jeans, a French army colonel in full uniform, a gang of Russian hooligans shouting the odds about the coming revolution, gaggles of winsome little ballet students on their way to the Academy of Dance in Novosibirsk, a Scottish Highlander in a Campbell clan kilt and a party of singing drunks.

  I had also met our senior provodnik again, Galina, the muscled redhead, and chatted with her for a while before she signed off her shift, putting reasonably direct questions about working conditions on the train and especially the rate of pay, and expressing mild shock at its inadequacy considering the daunting responsibilities of her job. There was no excuse for crossing her palm with silver at this stage, but expectations were carefully stirred.

  It wasn’t that I felt the need for extra comforts of any sort, but for a recruitable agent — in — place with an unbreakable cover who could ferret out information for me that might indirectly further my progress in the mission or even protect my life — because there was a second possible scenario in my mind: Zymyanin might be perfectly reliable, a good agent understandably scared off by the Bucharest thing and unwilling to risk another rendezvous, in which case he was no danger to me. But if the opposition had tried to kill him off along with Hornby in that freight yard, they might have followed him onto the train, to try again.

  Zymyanin’s own life could be in hazard as the Rossiya plunged headlong through the night, and if I made contact with him it could be lethal. A thousand roubles in Galina’s bank account to buy her secret services could prove a profitable investment, and to hell with that carping old crone in the counting house. We play our little games, we, the brave and diligent ferrets in the field, with wit and sinew as our weapons when we can, but if base money can provide the means of our salvation as we burrow through the dark and treacherous labyrinths then we will use it. We’re not proud, my good friend, we are not proud: we find we live longer if we are practical.

  On my way through the corridors tonight I stopped to talk to any of the staff who had the time, though not many did: one of them, a weary — eyed girl with calloused hands and stained overalls with the seam torn at the shoulder, told me that the coach attendants, security guards, waiters, cooks and cleaners worked for nine days at a stretch on the run from Moscow to Beijing, then took a week off in Moscow or Vladivostok, in turn.

  ‘But the pay is good,’ she said, pulling a lock of damp hair away from her eyes. ‘I earn 150 roubles a month, with free keep.’

  ‘That’s quite good,’ I said. It was terrible. ‘But so you should.’

  She dragged chips of wood from the rocking floor of the galley and pushed them into the furnace below the huge copper samovar. ‘Yes, and then one day I shall be a provodnik, in a uniform.’

  I spent more than an hour in the dining car, because of the three men there, and watched the waiters tussling with a pack of beatniks who were trying to hog a table for a game of cards, swigging their beer from the bottle and making up a dirty song about the revolution — I’d seen them before, along the corridors.

  The three men were in their fifties, their faces sharp — boned and weathered, their dark woollen suits well — cut and their shoes polished. Four other men, younger and quiet — faced, observant, seemed to be in the same party, although they were sitting at different tables, two of them on each side of the table where the older men were. One of them, the quietest, with the totally expressionless eyes of a wolf, He could have been told to stay out of contact with London and draw me into a trap.

  That is also possible.

  Even though I had narrowed my eyes, he would catch the light on their conjunctivae, the man out there. The range was short and he could see the target: the point between my eyes, and behind it the brain. He would need only one shot, and couldn’t miss.

  I watched the outline through the gap in the curtains, waiting for it to move, for only a part of it to move: the gun — hand.

  Chapter 5

  TANYA

  The man was standing near the lavatory at the end of the second carriage along, waiting to go in, I suppose, watching the first light of the morning on the snows. One of the cleaners passed us, lugging a box of rags, and then I went up to the man and stood behind him.

  ‘Longshot,’ I said close to his ear.

  He wouldn’t know Meridian, hadn’t contacted London. But he’d known Longshot, had seen it crash.

  He didn’t turn his head. He was the man I’d been watching last night in the dining car, the one who was sitting alone. He was Zymyanin. I saw the reflection of his face in the window, sharp — boned, the mouth tight, as in his photographs.

  ‘I need more,’ he said in a moment, still not turning, watching my own reflection.

  ‘Bureau.’

  ‘More,’ he said softly.

  ‘Zymyanin.’

  He turned his head now, and looked at me. His eyes were wary, but not afraid, even though he knew I’d caught up with him. I would think these eyes had never been afraid, only alert, wary like this, watching for a way out if he thought he needed one, wherever he was. I knew that look, had felt it in my own eyes. Here was a brother ferret.

  ‘Are you replacing him?’ he asked me. Hornby.

  ‘No,’ I said.’ they’ve taken that one off the books. I’m just here to talk to you, that’s all.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  A bolt banged back and the door of the lavatory opened and a man came out, one of the bodyguards I’d seen in the dining car last night. I turned my head away until he was halfway along the corridor. ‘Do you want to go in there?’ I asked Zymyanin.

  ‘What? No. It can wait.’ the smell of urin
e and disinfectant came drifting across.

  I touched his arm and we moved farther away, past the two cleaning women who were bent over a stain on the carpet, rubbing at it with a block of dark yellow soap.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you,’ Zymyanin said, and I heard anger in his voice, though he kept it very soft.’ You people have got a mole sniffing around, surely you know that. I —’

  ‘Russian,’ I said. He’d switched to English, was fluent, but it didn’t tally with my cover.’ there’s no mole.’ they don’t exist in the Bureau, can’t exist, the security checks are like X — rays in that place, they’ve got to be, we’re not the Foreign Office. ‘It was just incompetence.’ And inexperience, Hornby’s. He’d let a word drop somewhere, full of excitement, it’s happened before. I’d picked up the vibes from Turner, his DIF in Bucharest, when I’d been with him in the Hotel Constanta. He’d been holding himself back, sick about Hornby’s death but wanting to blame him for what had happened, had stopped himself. I’d admired him for that.

  The train rocked across points, and buildings swung past the windows, blocks of darkness lumped together on the snow, some with lights showing, pale in the dawn.

  ‘Incompetence,’ Zymyanin was saying, ‘all right, it was incompetence, he got to the RDV early, you understand that? Early.’ I understood, yes, it’s one of the cardinal errors, a potentially lethal mistake. ‘And what guarantee have I got that I can trust you?’ he wanted to know. ‘How do I know how competent you are? How do I know you haven’t brought half a dozen opposition hit men onto this fucking train because of your incompetence?’

  Had a bad scare, he’d had a bad scare, this man, in Bucharest, no fright in his eyes but it was still down there in the gut, I quite understood. I’d been thinking he was a potential danger to me, and he’d been thinking I would be a danger to him if we forced him into a rendezvous, and now we’d done that. It couldn’t have been him, last night, standing outside my compartment: if he’d known I was in there he would have run to the far end of the train.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ I said. It was no good telling him I was a senior executive; we’ve had one or two senior executives found in some foreign clime with their brains raked out of their skulls and the capsules still in their pockets. I had to remember it was only two nights ago when this man came close to getting blown into Christendom like Hornby.

  ‘This isn’t a rendezvous,’ Zymyanin said, watching me, his eyes bright with nerves. ‘I didn’t ask for one and I don’t want one, is that understood? I don’t want you to come anywhere near me again. I want you to keep out of my way, right out of my way.’

  Someone else went into the lav down there and slammed the door, hit the bolt.

  ‘It must be wine!’ one of the cleaners was saying, her voice shrill with vexation, a pink knee showing through the hole in her black stocking as she knelt on the floor with her bar of soap. ‘It must be red wine again, look, it’s not coming out!’

  Some drunk,’ the other woman said, ‘a drunk did this!’

  I’d have to talk him round somehow, Zymyanin, get his confidence back. But I didn’t trust him at the moment, and he didn’t trust me. Now that he’d seen my face he’d remember seeing me last night m the dining car, then a stranger. He would be wondering why I hadn’t followed him out of there when he left, and revealed myself then instead of waiting until now. He’d know I’d realized what he’d been doing in the dining car.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked him.

  He’d been keeping observation on the three men.

  My question didn’t surprise him. He would have been expecting it. sooner or later: I was here to get the information he had for us, and it obviously concerned the men he’d been watching, would be watching again.

  In a moment he said,’ they are former General Kovalenko and General Velichko of the Army High Command and Special Purpose Militia Detachments respectively, and former General Chudin of the KGB.’

  However well a spook is trained and however experienced, he sometimes finds it irresistible to tell what he knows to someone he’s at least expected to trust, if what he knows is of great importance.

  ‘And they’re now in the Podpolia?’ I asked him. The Underground.

  ‘Of course,’ he said impatiently.

  He was impatient with himself, not with me. He’d revealed his flaw, and knew it, I didn’t say anything, waited for him to tell me other things now that he’d started.

  ‘This is so dangerous,’ he said, and looked along the corridor again.

  ‘I agree. Who’s in your compartment with you?’

  ‘Three Ukrainians, metalworkers, they never leave there, they’ve brought enough food for the whole trip, play cards all the time.’

  ‘I’ve only got one in with me,’ I told him. ‘I’ll find out when he’s going to stretch his legs, and let you know. We can talk in there.’ It was a risk: I hadn’t wanted him to know my compartment; but he could find out if he wanted to — I’d got no cover — and in any case he seemed ready to talk now and I had to catch him while he was in the mood.

  ‘Listen,’ he said on an impulse, ‘you must have recognized me last night in the dining car — you must have been given a photograph — so why didn’t you follow me out of there when I left?’

  I thought of lying, but if I lied he’d know it and I’d lose what trust he’d got in me, if he had any at all.

  ‘I had my reasons,’ I said.

  He let his eyes stay on me, not showing anything but his nerves, trying to see what was in mine, seeing nothing. I think it angered him. ‘Listen, if you want a rendezvous it’ll have to be somewhere off the train when we stop for a break.’

  There are two breaks a day, Jane had put in her notes for me, when you can stretch your legs and breathe some air, unless the train’s running so late that they can’t manage it.

  There wasn’t any point in trying to rush Zymyanin; it’d have to be drawn out.

  ‘When did you first pick them up?’ I asked him.

  He might be in more danger than I knew, than he was ready to tell me. I’d have to get what I could, as soon as I could.

  ‘I can’t tell you that. At least not yet. We —’

  ‘You were going to tell our contact hi Bucharest.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what were you going to tell him?’

  He swung his narrow head up to look at me, a sprig of his dark unwashed hair bobbing as he turned. ‘I was going to tell him only that those people would be on this train. I —’

  ‘You didn’t need a physical rendezvous for that,’ I said. ‘You could have just signalled London.’

  He looked away again, staring through the window, picking at his short ragged nails. A factory of some sort swung by, its chimneys pouring a long dark cloud across the snow — covered roofs of the buildings. ‘Listen,’ he said,’ this is all I can tell you for now. The Bureau should do everything — everything — to keep those people under surveillance. That’s why I’m here, of course, but I’m also here because there’s a cell in Moscow —’ his head swung up again to look at me — ‘a completely unacknowledged, unofficial cell whose purpose is to seek, find and expose the active members of the Podpolia wherever they may be. Many are known, of course, and the KGB is watching them closely. But some are not known, and those we are looking for. That is also why I am here.’

  There were voices behind me but I didn’t turn round just watched Zymyanin’s face, his eyes, as he looked along the corridor. They were men’s voices, speaking in Russian, growing louder as they came past. Zymyanin showed nothing, turned his head to stare through the window again.

  ‘… And last week he moved into a new apartment. Shall I tell you about it?’

  ‘No. It’ll make me sick.’

  ‘Of course it’ll make you sick! In his new apartment he has to share one bathtub with thirty other people, and his kitchen is an electric hot — plate that never gets hot enough to boil water! I thought Yeltsin was going to make a f
ew little changes here and there, didn’t you, for God’s sake?’

  Snow had begun whirling past the windows; we were running into another storm.

  ‘That is all I can tell you,’ Zymyanin said, ‘for the moment.’ He turned away and took a few steps, turned back, his nerves still bright in his eyes. ‘When I’ve got something more, I’ll contact you. In the meantime, keep your distance.’

  He turned and walked on and in a moment the door of the lavatory banged and the bolt went home.

  Later in the morning I got out the briefing Jane had given me and went through it and reinforced the mnemonics and folded the three sheets and took them along to the first provodnik’s station I could find unattended and pushed them deep under the trash in the waste bin and heard someone coming and got a cup from the shelf and filled it from the samovar.

  “That is for me to do.’ The provodnik’s tone shrill and indignant. ‘I can’t leave this place for half a minute without someone coming in here and meddling!’

  I told her she made the finest tea in all Russia and said I would tell my grandchildren about it in the years to come, so forth, and she took a pinch of it as a compliment and told me to be off with my wily charm, I should be peddling butter in the black market.

  Most of the stuff Jane had given me was standard tourist information, and I spread out the maps in my compartment and looked them over; they showed the route and schedules of the Rossiya and vignettes of Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, with the major streets named.

  A group of youths trooped past the open door and I went out and stopped them, picking two of the brightest looking and giving them twenty roubles to split and telling them what I wanted. Then I looked for Galina and found her blasting a pallid and red — eyed girl in a torn smock — the bulkheads in Car No. 5 were filthy and this was the third time the passengers had complained and who would take the blame when the reports were sent in? She, Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya would take the blame, who else, since she was the supervisor for Cars No. 5,6 and 7?