He got up and poured himself some more coffee from the percolator Sonya had replenished. ‘Well, Mr Lock?’
Lock looked at his watch. It was after one. The blizzard roared around the old house, rattling the ill-fitting windowframes. He had a sense of urgency, but lack of sleep and agreement with Vorontsyev distanced it, made it comfortable like the rabbit in its cage. He shook himself.
‘Yes, I do — how much time do we have?’ he asked, turning back to Vorontsyev.
‘As long as we stay hidden,’ Dmitri muttered.
They had heard the creak and growl of half-track vehicles passing the house; the GRU had to be turning the whole town on its head in an effort to find them.
‘That long?’ Lock replied cynically. ‘OK, Major — what now?’
Vorontsyev opened his grey eyes, then leaned forward, hand pressed against his ribs, and said to Lubin:
‘Anything — anything at all?’
‘We’ve been over and over the stuff here, racked our brains, sir. Just can’t narrow it down’
‘They have to be somewhere!’
‘Obviously, Lock. Turgenev owns the whole town, or most of it. What he doesn’t own he has in his other pocket. They could be anywhere — not the hotels, though. That’s how we stumbled on them in the first place. Not out at his place either, that would be stupid of him. Somewhere close, somewhere safe.’
‘Panshin’s club — Panshin’s apartment?’ Dmitri asked.
‘Who’s Panshin?’
‘The jazz club.’ Lock nodded. ‘He’s into the heroin business, we’re certain of that now. That’s a recent venture. He could be dragooned into this, too …? I’m not sure.’
‘They’re as locked in as we are, anyway,’ Dmitri observed.
‘They won’t be going anywhere in this — and it’s set to last another two days at least. If we can stay alive, we might have forty-eight hours!’ He smiled pessimistically.
Vorontsyev shook his head carefully. Lubin was afraid and Marfa was rubbing her upper arms vigorously as if cold.
‘You see, Lock? We’re really as desperate as you,’ Vorontsyev murmured. ‘OK, Panshin for one — where else?’
Turgenev has offices all over town,’ Marfa offered, Lubin nodding in agreement as he sifted a sheaf of papers. ‘Companies he owns or part-owns. Warehouses — even out at the airport he’s got cargo hangars. Shops, industrial units.’
Vorontsyev laughed, puzzling Lock.
‘You see, Lock, it’s the geological record of a capitalist,’ he explained. ‘Even Tsar Peter had to start somewhere, in quite a small way. Importing luxury items, especially food and booze.
Then fashion for a time, wasn’t it, Dmitri?’ Gorov nodded, himself smiling in recollection. ‘Import-export. Just like today, only smaller. Different cargoes, different profits. Gradually, he acquired gas leases, and the money to exploit them. Then more quickly, he grew and grew.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘So, we have dozens of small to medium companies, all with offices, still connected to Turgenev, little bits of his empire all over town. Give Mr Lock the list Let him choose which one we hit first!’
‘That’ll just draw attention to us!’ Lubin protested.
‘Sorry, youngster.’
Lock took the handwritten sheet, glancing down the considerable list of companies. Turgenev’s recent past, his last six or seven years. Toes in the water, no more than that. Food importing, frocks, drink, just as Vorontsyev described. He looked up.
‘He was creating a dozen covers, wasn’t he?’
‘I imagine so. Every means he could to gain constant access to the airport, to flights in and out.’
‘And these companies are still in business — legitimately?’
Vorontsyev looked at Marfa, who nodded.
‘Apparently.’
‘Then he won’t use any of them, will he? Not for this, not at this moment in time.’ He handed the sheet abruptly to Marfa, who scowled at his condescension. ‘Find one that isn’t trading any longer, one with large enough premises. That’s where they’ll be.’
‘Sir?’ Marfa asked.
Vorontsyev nodded.
‘Humour Mr Lock, Marfa,’ he said, carefully excluding all excitement from his voice.
The dress shop was on 9th Street, three blocks from the elegance and triple mark-up of K Street. Its grille-protected windows were dark and empty, like a number of the shops on either side of it.
Small, dingy emporia that seemed to have been early casualties of the rising tide of affluence in Novyy Urengoy, patronised now by the dependents of rig workers, the unemployed and old, the disabled and the remaining locals. The car, slewed onto the opposite pavement, was alone in the snow-filled street. The few sodium lamps merely tinted the bfizzard.
Vorontsyev imagined rather than saw the flicker of torchlight behind the dark blank of the shop window, the cloudy pupil of glass left free of ice and driven snow. The car’s heater protested loudly at its forced labour, and Lubin was reflectively silent in the driver’s seat. Lock had tried to insist he stay at Teplov’s, but he had outmanoeuvred the American, leaving Marfa on the pretence that Sonya wasn’t to be trusted not to call someone to inform on their whereabouts. Dmitri and Lock had entered the empty shop. There was an apartment, cramped and uninhabited, it appeared, above the shop and owned by the earliest manifestation of a Turgenev properly company. Turgenev had bobbed on down the street on the surge of money brought into the town, to own the leases and a claim on the profits of a dozen of the smartest, most expensive boutiques and stores, bars and nightclubs. Yet he had kept this place untenanted, unearning, when he might as easily have sold it to one of the Iranians or Turks or Pakistanis who supplied their own communities — at least rented it to one. Vorontsyev felt a tickle of excitement in his chest, like the beginnings of a cough. Lock was smart; more into the covert than he was, the secretly criminal, the world of mirrors and disguises. Places where things didn 7 happen. He and his people had watched only the inhabited places, the movements and motives of crowds.
He saw a torch flash light against the upstairs window, then sensed that a curtain was drawn across the glass. He lit a cigarette and listened to the storm and Lubin’s efforts to control his breathing. The boy was all right — just.
Ten minutes later, he saw Dmitri and Lock emerge from the narrow alleyway leading to the rear of the shop and lump their way across the treacherous street. The snowploughs hadn’t cleared it for hours and traffic had consequently avoided it.
The blizzard whirled snow in on him as Dmitri opened the door and clambered into the front passenger seat. Then Lock repeated the shower as he slid in beside Voromsyev. The American was grinning.
‘It’s a place waiting for someone to arrive!’ Lock exhaled, self-satisfaction wreathing his chilled features. ‘Tell him, Dmitri, tell the man!’
‘Nothing there — the place is empty,’ Dmitri began, turning round in his seat. Vorontsyev felt his own impatient excitement mount. ‘Hasn’t been used for much at all, by the look of it, for some time. Dust everywhere in the upstairs flat. But, food, a couple of fan heaters, drink. The electricity supply’s on, so is the gas. Camp beds stacked at the back of the shop, too.’
Vorontsyev gripped Lock’s arm.
‘You could smell cigarette smoke, Major — I swear it. Maybe four, even five people, judging by the supplies and the camp beds. We just have to stake this out!’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Alexei, it doesn’t matter — they must be coming here!’ Dmitri insisted. ‘As Lock says, all we have to do is to wait for them to arrive.’
‘Who? Bakunin and a division of armour? We can’t sit around on the street in daylight, Dmitri!’