Gaz watched the trooper on the slope. He was alert, half-kneeling. If he had been a country boy then he would have wondered where the animals had come from, who had charge of them – a herd of quality would not have been without a minder, and he listened and he stared around and above him. The cold ran on Gaz’s neck, had the chill of winter ice. The officer looked up and would have seen the chaotic flight of the goats and the one militiaman on the slope.
Gaz held hard on the girl.
He started to speak to the kids, quietly, in Russian.
“Perhaps it is mistaken identity. Perhaps you have the wrong individual. I am Lavrenti Volkov. I am FSB. I do not know who you are but can guarantee that our lives have not crossed. This other man, I have no idea who he is. You have no argument with me, and I have none with you.”
He controlled his voice. Tried to capture a calmness. Held his breathing steady, did not pant or stammer. Spoke slowly as if the matter was simple, just a misunderstanding.
“You can choose one or two directions. One and you will be involved in the murder of a member of state security. From such involvement there is no escape. If you were fortunate you would be ‘shot while escaping’ but that would only be after the most rigorous interrogation but there is also the certainty of going to a penal camp high in the Circle, a harsh regime camp. You are young and would probably endure your middle years and if you have no fortune you might enter your old age. You would never leave, and from the moment your trial process ends you would see each other never again. Don’t go that way.”
Most of the time he spoke, his gaze was towards the kids, simple scumbags. The filth of the gutters. But he also spoke towards the sofa and the old man, where the stench was. The pathetic creature nodded his head fervently at what Lavrenti said, and would join them in the gaol for criminal collaboration. Only rarely did he face the window and the outline of the man’s back, his shoulders and his head, and the pistol now held loosely in the man’s right fist, and the lever was in place for safety but it was armed. He did not understand why he was there, why he had been chosen, and was confused, but had to exercise control, and had to divide.
“The alternative is good for you. I walk from here. I take this foreign adventurer into custody. You are fifteen-minute heroes. Both of you have shown true loyalty towards the state. You can be named and applauded, you can stay anonymous, but you will be granted the extreme generosity of FSB. I imagine a large sum of money will be pushed into your laps. I promise that such action will be well rewarded. Enough for a new car, enough for a new apartment. I cannot imagine you would take the wrong turn.”
Their feet would not touch the cell block floor. Beaten and already bloodied, they would be dragged to the top of the stairwell, pitched down and caught, then pushed into the cells and the doors slammed. Would shout, if they had any energy left, of promises made, and would hear only retreating feet and fading laughter.
“Why a foreign agency has come after me, I do not know. I am employed to protect the Federation from its enemies, but work inside the territory of the state. I have done nothing to hurt you, you have no justification in hurting me. I am a major in FSB, I do not beg. You should free me. Immediately. I offer you the guarantee of the state’s gratitude and in return you free me, you help me take this man to an appropriate location, I suggest the one on Lenin Prospekt, and you will receive the congratulations of my superiors. What do you say?”
He thought he had done well. Reckoned the force of his argument would bend the resolution of an idiot. The man at the window never shifted, stared out, took no part in it.
The girl said, “He’s going to kill you. Going to shoot you. Don’t know why he has not already done it.”
“Why? What have I done?” He could see that the boy slouched, shrugged, seemed indifferent, and that the girl had a tight waist and a flat chest and pretty hair and a sweet smile. Faced the foreigner and made no more pretence that the blindfold still obscured his view. In English, as it had been taught him. “And you, what have I done? I am a junior officer in FSB. How are you affected by me? I have done nothing.”
The answer, as quiet as the rustle of old leaves in a gentle wind, smacked the breath from his chest. “You should recall your visit to a village…”
“… You should remember, Major, your visit to the village of Deir al-Siyarqi.”
He saw the officer flinch. Gaz had turned, only for a moment. He thought that his response to ‘I have done nothing’ devastated more than the blow to the face with the pistol butt, and more than the kneeing by the girl. Gaz had not understood what he had said, but the tone was a mixture of authority and wheedling reason. Would have been the predictable line of making a deal, getting real, being everybody’s friend, and it was all a mistake. What Gaz would have expected. The girl must have answered sharply, behind the cover of her sweet face, because the confidence had drained and the argument had been louder then had spilled into English. First the officer’s head went down and his chin hit his chest, then his head came up and his lips narrowed and, somewhere deep behind the slack blindfold, his eyes would have flickered.
Gaz said, “There was a village. I came because of what was done there.”
Far below him, out in the harbour channel, Gaz saw the fishing boat. She made slow speed and a launch sailed alongside her. The good guys on board, kind men and decent and the sort he’d have known in the unit, would have talked and fidgeted and rustled up excuses and might have delayed the sailing for an hour or so, but had hit the buffer of bureaucracy, and they were on their way. If they lost the attention of the present escort, further up the inlet and beyond the Severomorsk submarine base, Gaz assumed they would try to use the one back-stop procedure that had been talked of. Discussing it in the below-deck cabin it had seemed fanciful, and thinking of it now it seemed ridiculous. They were good enough guys, all of them, for him to assume they would try to fulfil the procedure. It was a fine-looking craft and the water it traversed was calm and it made a useful bow wave. He thought well of the small crew, imagined they’d be gutted that he was not on board… remembered the words of Robbie Burns mouthed when the milking parlour pump went down, or the pin sheared on the field grass topper. Best laid plans o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley. And the men crewing a small fishing boat would have understood that. Best plans going awry. He might see them again… and might not. He held the pistol. He saw that the kids had made no move towards the officer, that he was still trussed securely to the chair. He had not wasted his time at the window, and did not waste it further as the boat went north up the inlet.
“It is about the village, only the village.”
“Rubbish, shit talk.”
“About the village.”
“Not there, never heard that name.”
“The village of Deir al-Siyarqi. I think you will remember the day you were there.”
“Never heard of such a place. You cannot prove I was there. Show me evidence.”
“I saw you there, Major Volkov. I am a witness.”
“You lie… you could not have seen me because I was never there, have never heard of such a place. I was liaison, I stayed in a barracks. I played no part in operations, and…”
“A witness, Major Volkov, to an atrocity.”
Like a darkness had come into the room. All eyes were on him. He struggled to break the bags that tied him to the chair, and failed. Wriggled and contorted, and what Gaz could see of his face was flushed where blood ran, and he tried to kick out with his feet but all he achieved was to topple the chair so that he slid onto the floor. No one helped him. The old man stayed back now as if realising, though not understanding the language, that the major’s claim to power had slipped away, and the kids did not move as he thrashed against the chair. Gaz understood them both: Timofey was boot-faced and showed no feeling and would have been considering what he had involved himself with, and the girl had a look of malevolence and smiled through it as though this was entertainment, high grade.