Quiller Meridian q-17 Read online

  I saw nothing of Zymyanin or the generals, but the young woman in the silver-grey fur hat was walking alone through the snow, her fur-lined boots crunching along the cinder pathway. It was evening when I next saw her. Slavsky liked the compartment door to be open when we weren't sleeping or changing our clothes, and I didn't argue because I wasn't there for most of the time. One of the youths showed himself in the doorway and jerked his head and I followed him along the corridors to the dining car. The other youth was standing in the queue behind the young woman, and gave me his place.

  There was only one table for two, at the far end, and I joined her there, even though there were other places and she seemed to want to be alone. We sat opposite each other, she was facing the bulkhead, while I could see down the aisle beyond her. It was a small table, and it would have been difficult for us to sit in silence during the meal, but even so, I think she would have preferred that.

  'Tanya Rusakova, I believe.' I leaned towards her a little as I said it. 'I hope I'm not wrong.'

  Then her eyes were on me for the first time, a shimmering and iridescent green, widening in surprise.

  'Yes.'

  'Shokin,' I said, 'Viktor Shokin. You won't remember me.but I think we live on the same street — Grafskij Prospekt? I've seen you there sometimes. And I passed through your office the other day. You' re at the Ministry of Transport, Motor Division?'

  'Yes. I'm sorry, but I — '

  'You were busy at your desk. I came in for a new driving licence, that was all.'

  'I see.' she wished I hadn't recognized her, wished I weren't here.

  When the waitress came we tried to get her to bring us anything except boiled chicken, but it didn't work: it was all they'd been given, she said wearily, when the caterers had loaded the galleys in Moscow.

  'You're going right through to Beijing?' I asked Tanya while we were waiting.

  'No.' she hadn't smiled yet, even as a social gesture, perhaps found it difficult, even impossible, because of her state of nerves and the overwhelming hatred she felt for General Velichko.

  'Vladivostok, then,' I said, making it an amusing guessing game. She didn't answer, looked everywhere but at me. 'I'm a journalist, you see, and we're always asking questions, aren't we? I'm afraid the media hasn't got a terribly good reputation for the preservation of privacy. I'm going to Beijing. Have you been there?'

  'No.' she was studying the menu, using it as a refuge.

  'General Velichko is going there,' I said and she swung her head up and stared at me, more than surprised, shocked. That was my impression.

  'I don't know him.'

  She'd said it too fast, with her mouth too tight, and those fine sensual nostrils had flared and the light in her eyes was still burning, the hot light of the hatred I'd seen when she'd been looking at him, AD AM HALL at General Velichko, here in the dining car last night, her eyes looking down most of the time but on occasion drawn to him as he sat five tables down the aisle.

  He'd been the only one of the three facing her; the other two had been sitting side by side with their backs to her. That was why I could be quite sure they'd been for Velichko, no one else, those sudden looks she'd given him, precipitate, spontaneous, and so very dangerous, though she'd been unaware of that. I would have felt afraid for her if I hadn't also seen, last night, that she could dissemble, Tanya Rusakova, when she wanted to — had given the good general the faintest of smiles as she'd left her table and walked past him along the aisle, what you would call the suggestion of a come-on.

  She wasn't a tart. There were a few of them on the train but she wasn't one of them. She wasn't an actress, even though that smile for the general, however tenuous, had taken talent to produce, considering what she really felt for him. She was, as Galina had found out for me, a government clerk in the Motor Division of the Ministry of Transport, living alone on Grafskij Prospekt, thirty-two, unmarried. Her destination was Novosibirsk, not Beijing or Vladivostok, as I'd known. Her brother, an army captain, was stationed there.

  General Velichko was also going to Novosibirsk, and I'd known that too, and that was why I'd thought it very interesting, that look of shock in the flashing green eyes when I'd said just now, General Velichko is going there too. I'd been looking for a reaction and I'd got it, and it had been more extreme than I'd expected Most of it was because I'd suddenly spoken the very name of the man who inspired so much hatred in her, but it must have been partly because of the deliberate dropping of disinformation. I'd been prepared for her to say, no, he's not going to Beijing, something like that, but it hadn't happened. She didn't want to talk about that man, not a word, had been tempted, surely, to get up and find another table if she could, or leave the dining car and this damned journalist with his damned questions.

  Was she worried that I might be right, that she'd been mistaken, hat General Velichko wasn't in fact going to leave the train long Before Beijing, at Novosibirsk? How important was it to her?

  Plates, suddenly, dumped onto the table in front of us, and the unappetizing smell of boiled chicken, none too fresh. Thank you, we said. She'd been quick, the waitress, even though the car was almost full and the other girls were flying around with trays and dishes and jugs of beer, the fat uniformed supervisor watching hem, hands on her hips. I wished our food had taken longer; I wanted as much time with Tanya Rusakova as I could get.

  Zymyanin had wanted to know why I hadn't followed him out of here last night, since I must have recognized him. It was because I'd wanted to stay until the young woman with the silver-grey fur hat left her table, in case I could learn something. The Bureau should do everything, Zymyanin had said, to keep those men under surveillance. Apart from that, he'd given me almost nothing. That could have been because he didn't know anything yet, anything major.

  Perhaps this woman did.

  They were there tonight, the men I called the generals, six tables along the aisle. Did she know, Tanya? Did she want to look round to see if they were there, if he were there, Velichko? They weren't talking; they hadn't been talking last night; they sat with their food, eating it as a necessity, looking up from the table very seldom, when someone went past them along the aisle; they were the sort of men who'd want to know what company they kept, but here they didn't show concern: they had their bodyguards.

  I didn't think Zymyanin had noticed Tanya Rusakova last night, except as a woman, as any man would — look at the eyes, the cheekbones, the infinitely attractive mouth — but he'd been concentrating, with his oblique and casual glances across the dining car, on the three men, and hadn't caught, I believe, the expression in Tanya's eyes when she'd looked at Velichko.

  'I'm going to spend a night,' I said, 'in Novosibirsk.' this chicken really was bloody awful, God knew what they'd done to it down there in the galley, wiped it all over the floor, conceivably; she was taking her time, perhaps wouldn't say anything at all.

  'Yes?' she didn't lookup. She was wondering how to ask me the question that was burning to get out: Why had I mentioned General Velichko, quite out of the blue?

  'Just to break the journey,' I said. 'I wouldn't think there'd be much to do, in a place like Novosibirsk. Would you?' The Rossiya blew its whistle just then and the sound came with "' the shock effect of a scream in the night and she almost flinched, and I wanted to comfort her in some acceptable way, put my hand over hers just for an instant; she wasn't having much fun, Tanya Rusakova, sitting here with her nerves like an open wound, sensitive to loud noises, to the sudden mention of a name.

  'There's an opera house,' she said.

  'Oh, really?'

  Then she covered it, too late. 'So I believe.'

  An attempt to disassociate herself from the city of Novosibirsk, to be noted.

  'Are you fond of the opera?'

  'I quite like it, yes. Prince Igor.' she put her knife and fork together, her chicken unfinished, and got her grey leather bag, giving me a glance in passing with nothing in her eyes except perhaps distrust. 'Goodnight,' she said, and s
lipped gracefully between the bench and the table.

  'It — ' was a pleasure, but I broke off, starting to rise and then stopping at once but not before she noticed it. I caught a look of surprise. It was so easy to forget and it could be so dangerous. Behave like a Russian, be like a Russian, think like a Russian…

  She walked down the aisle, and I watched — I watched very carefully — the man sitting six tables along, heavy-faced, broad-shouldered, impressively-tailored. He glanced up as Tanya Rusakova passed him, and by his expression I could see that there had once again been a smile for the general.

  Chapter 6: SHOT

  They have asked for a new compartment.' Galina stood watching tic. 'I'm relocating them from Car No. 12 to Car No. 4. They say they're too near one of the lavatories.'

  The dark was coming down on our second day out from Moscow; the Rossiya had ploughed through nearly two thousand kilometres of steppes and the Ural mountain range and now we were running through forests of birch and pine and cedar standing draped in snow under the endless leaden skies. We were due in Novosibirsk tomorrow.

  Galina had shown herself in the doorway of our compartment a few minutes ago, glancing across Slavsky — who was reading as always — and giving me the slightest movement of her head. I had followed her to the provodnik's station.

  'They object to the smell,' she said, simmering.'so what would they expect? Look what the passengers do in there all day, are they rose gardens? Would our friends perhaps prefer the smell of roses? So would I!'

  'But you've agreed to move them?'

  She lit a cigarette, its black tobacco glowing as the flame of the match went out. It smelled of forest fires. 'I have decided to accommodate them, yes,' she said.' there are three compartments in Car No. 4, nearer the locomotive, occupied by Chinese tourists.' Her small eyes kindled sparks of light. 'Certain favours were exchanged, as you will understand. Our friends are not ungenerous, and the Chinese are indigent, being Chinese. Thus there is no problem.'

  She had started yesterday to talk of the generals as' our friends', without my prompting. She would train well, if she ever wanted to enter the shadowed nether-world of covert operations.

  'You're moving their entourage,' I asked her, 'as well?'

  'But of course.' she watched me steadily, squinting in the smoke from her cigarette.' I thought you should be informed.'

  'Yes. Do you think their reason for wanting to move was genuine?'

  A shrug. 'With men of their kind, who knows what is genuine, and what spurious? They had power, once. Now they have no power. But they think they have. Their ways are devious.'

  I drank some tea with her as the train plunged into nightfall through the dizzying snow that drove past the windows, piling against the frames. She told me that she had chosen to supervise the switching of compartments personally, and would report to me of anything she observed or overheard.

  In the evening I shared a table in the dining car with Boris Slavsky, and listened to his views on the future of the CIS, if — as he said — it could be considered to have one. He spoke well, marshalling his facts, but my attention was less with him than with General Velichko and his companion, Tanya Rusakova, smiling and attentive, at the table for two we'd been sitting at last night.

  Galina searched me out an hour before I turned in; she had nothing to report except that during the changing around of the compartments she'd learned that the former General Velichko had been made a Hero of the Soviet Union for gallantry in Afghanistan, and then was stripped of his rank and honours following the coup.

  I didn't see her again until soon after dawn the next morning, when she came to our compartment bringing tea for us, and the news that one of the passengers in Car No. 9, Nikolai Vladimir Zymyanin, had been found shot dead.

  He was lying on his back with his face to the ceiling, and there were powder burns around the blood-filled entry wound in the right temple. Flecks of blackening flesh and splinters of bone were scattered across the floor from the exit wound: the bullet had gone straight through his skull. The gun was also on the floor, not far from the open drain, a short-barrelled heavy-calibre revolver, perhaps army surplus.

  'He shouldn't be in here,' one of the security officers said to Galina. He was looking at me. We were in the lavatory for Car No. 9, and the security people had got the provodniks to rig up a makeshift curtain of sheets around the door to give them more room and keep people out; there was a piece torn from a cardboard box pinned onto one of the sheets with instructions chalked on it: Out of order. Use lavatory in Car No. 8 or 10.

  'He is an important journalist,' Galina told the officer, 'from Moscow. He is known for his crime reports in all the papers.' They were young, the security officers, and her tone was perfectly pitched: she spoke not as someone in uniform with responsibilities on this train but as a stern and implacable mother, the ultimate authority.

  I squatted down, and the reek of the disinfectant burned inside my nostrils. I was looking for signs of torture on the face and hands and wrists, burn marks, the red pinpoint of a needle puncture anywhere. It had been set up as a suicide, but that wasn't in character, and Zymyanin had been left-handed and the entry wound was in the right temple. What I needed to know was whether he'd been put underpressure, very great pressure to talk before they shot him, and whether to expect the same kind of thing if in fact they'd broken him and he'd blown my cover. But there weren't any marks, and the conjunctivae of the eyes that stared at the ceiling showed no damage.

  I made notes, for the look of things — Jane had put a shorthand pad into the briefing bag — but I didn't ask any questions. Now that I'd seen what I'd come here to see I wanted to slip back into low profile and disassociate myself from the dead man.

  I thanked Galina and pushed the curtain aside and started back along the corridors. The snowstorm had moved south, and a wintry sun was hanging above the pines on the eastern horizon like a Chinese lantern.

  He'd died scared, Zymyanin. The Bucharest thing had shaken him, and more than he'd shown, though he'd shown a little: there'd been a note of panic in his voice when we'd been talking about Hornby's fatal incompetence: And what guarantee have I got that lean trust you? 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?

  That hadn't happened. I'd been totally clean when I'd come aboard the Rossiya in Moscow; there'd been no one surveilling me on the night flight, no one tracking me from the airport when I'd got into Jane's car: I'd made absolutely certain of that, had needed to make absolutely certain, because if the shadow executive for Meridian had landed for briefing in Moscow with even the smell of the Longshot thing on his shoes we would have gone into the mission compromised and endangered at the outset.

  I hadn't brought any opposition hit men onto the train, but Zymyanin had. He must have done. I hadn't contaminated him, but he could have contaminated me in his last hours. Not his fault: That is all I can tell you for the moment. When I have something more, I'll contact you. In the meantime, keep your distance. I would slip Galina another hundred when I saw her again, tell her to play down the fact that I'd wanted to view the body. It had been a risk I'd had to take, a calculated risk; there'd been no choice.

  I sat down to some eggs in the dining car when the first calls for breakfast came; I wasn't hungry but wanted to take in protein. There was only one topic of conversation among the other passengers, and they spoke in low voices.

  'You mean he'd been lying there all night long?'

  'But surely someone would have heard the shot!'

  'Poor man, and we were all sleeping peacefully. I don't think I can manage any more, Julia, do you mind if I leave you here?'

  I went back to my compartment soon after eight o'clock and found Boris Slavsky with sheets of writing paper laid out on his bunk like cards in a game of patience. He looked up at me, his eyes wide behind the thick lenses.

  'What have they found out?'

 
; He meant the security people.

  'Nothing, as far as I know.' I hadn't told him I'd been to look at the body.

  'They still think it was suicide?'

  'I don't know. I haven't asked them.'

  He went back to his papers. He was a professor of biology, he'd told me, at the Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok, south of Novosibirsk.

  Just before ten an announcement was made over the public address system. This is the chief of security. We shall be stopping briefly in half an hour from now, at thirty minutes past ten o'clock. Nobody will be permitted to leave the train, and passengers are instructed to keep away from the doors. I will repeat: no passengers will be permitted to leave the train.

  I was reminded again that if anything went wrong with the mission, if I needed continued freedom of movement to keep it on track and make progress, I might be forced to do it in the confines of these narrow corridors, and might find that when I'd boarded this train in Moscow I had walked into a trap. The only way out of it, even if I could reach an unattended door, was across the limitless wastes of Siberia.