‘All I want is to make it safely to our destination. I am worried about Edwards’ condition. We need him alive to retain the maximum credibility of our mission. Our message will be devalued if his name is not on it also.’
‘Bollocks.’ Holding the bottle high, Gross jiggled it and then put it to his ear to try to determine how much remained of its contents. ‘The old windbag was devalued years ago, when all his arse-holing chums at university were exposed in the British Sunday press. From what I read it’d seem that when those cap and gowned queers weren’t trying to spawn another commie cell they were frantically trying to spawn each other. Between planting agents with bogus degrees in the British civil service and buggering the piles out of their students I wonder they ever had time to give lectures.’
‘Well we still cannot stay here, it might not be healthy.’
‘That at least makes more sense than the crap you came out with before.’ With all the force he could muster, Gross threw the empty bottle through & small window in the chalet door. ‘Come on Kane, stop bloody heaving. Your tits wobble every time you do it and I’m going to spunk in my pants if you don’t stop.’
Wheezing snores came from the back of the Range Rover. Webb listened before starting the engine.
‘Does he sound congested to you? There are some marks on his face, do you think he might have swallowed some?’
‘If he has then it won’t matter how soon we get help for the daft old sod, he’s had it.’ Gross sought among the bottles on the floor for a full one. ‘Back in the seventies I did a stint on an industrial injuries tribunal, dealt with a few cases of accidents in chemical plants. Get any of that muck inside you and it rots your insides, especially if it goes into your lungs. Infection sets in and you drown in your own pus.’
Everything else Sherry Kane had been able to cope with, Gross being violently ill, his filthy stories; but the picture that last information conjured was too much, and she barely got her head out of the window in time.
The notes Webb had made before starting out told him to expect sunrise at a few minutes after seven. It was nearer nine o’clock before they became aware of a perceptible lightening of the sky ahead, and that was muted by the suspended dust through which the orb of the sun only faintly showed.
For Sherry it would have been better if it had waited a further hour before shedding its weak light on the ravaged land. They drove into a small town that only needed a wave of a wand to restore it to bustling life again.
Whatever had struck the inhabitants had struck very fast, without hint of warning. There was nothing to suggest that any warning had been broadcast, any precautions taken or panic started.
A bus and a few trucks partially obstructed the main street. Some had coasted to a gentle stop, but several had been in collisions, with each other, with shop fronts, with trees. The Range Rover had frequently to be driven onto the pavement to negotiate the enforced slalom course. In every cab they passed they saw the same sight.
Draped over steering wheels, sprawled across passenger seats were the vehicles’ drivers. Most were miraculously preserved inside their glass and steel mausoleums, others, where windows were down, were decomposed to varying repulsive degrees.
And there was worse. No vegetation had grown to hide what lay in the streets and playgrounds. The yards of the schools were thick with the skeletal remains of children, rows of larger bones and skulls outside a bakery marked where a food queue had succumbed. Still strapped in a pushchair, mummified and eyeless, the tiny frame of a baby.
‘I don’t want to see any more. Tell me when it’s gone.’ Putting her face in her hands Sherry could try to pretend that the town of the dead did not exist, but she knew it was there still, she could hear bones crunching under the wheels, could feel the bumping as they rode over skulls that collapsed under the vehicle’s weight.
Only slowly did it register that a hand had come over the seat back, on over her shoulder and after a consoling pat in pretence of administering comfort was trying to find a way inside her shirt.
For a while she made no move to stop its groping progress as it rubbed and pinched and squeezed the contours of her chest, then still in the same trance-like state of shock she reached for it, lifted it gently to her lips, and sank her teeth into it.
Gross’s screamed obscenity drowned the loud hiss of escaping air as a razor-sharp shard of hip bone pierced a tire.
FROM MI6 THROUGH CIA LONDON.
FOR DISTRIBUTION TO ALL SECTIONS:
STATE DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON. TOP COPY FOR PRESIDENT.
ROZENKOV. YURI NIKOLAI. COLONEL. KGB.
JOINED COMMUNIST YOUTH MOVEMENT 1939.
PARTY MEMBER 1942.
VOLUNTEERED FOR ARMY SPRING 1943.
SELECTED FOR NKVD AFTER COMPLETION OF BASIC TRAINING AT CAMP 1094. PROMOTED TO JUNIOR SERGEANT IN JANUARY 1945. MEMBER OF THE RAIDING PARTY SENT INTO BERLIN TO SECURE THE FILES AT GESTAPO HQ BEFORE THEY COULD BE DESTROYED.
DECORATED TWICE FOR VALOR.
AFTER THE WAR WORKED ON THE EIGHT FLOOR OF KGB HEADQUARTERS AT 2, DZHERZHINSKIY SQUARE, IN THE OFFICE DEALING WITH THE TRANSLATION AND EVALUATION OF CAPTURED DOCUMENTS.
PROMOTED TO SERGEANT 1952 ON JOINING 3RD. BATTALION, FIRST DZHERZHINSKIY MOTORIZED DIVISION, RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GUARDING OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS IN MOSCOW. WAS ON LEAVE WHEN THE ATTEMPTED COUP BY BERIA FAILED IN 1953.
SURVIVED THE PURGES OF THE UNIT.
1956/7 WAS ATTACHED TO THE RUSSIAN LIAISON STAFF WITH THE EAST GERMAN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (HVA) WITH THE RANK OF SERGEANT-MAJOR. ASSISTED WITH THE RUNNING OF AN INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE NETWORK IN WEST GERMANY, USING EX-NAZI’S COOPERATING UNDER THREAT OF EXPOSURE. SPRING 1958 WENT TO OFFICER TRAINING ACADEMY AT KLEV AND FROM THERE TO THE KGB ‘FINISHING SCHOOL’ (CORRECT DESIGNATION UNKNOWN) AT GAGZINKA.
POSTED TO THE ADMINISTRATION SECTION OF THE STAFF OF THE POLITICAL DIRECTORATE WITH THE RANK OF LIEUTENANT IN SEPTEMBER 1961.
1968 APPEARED IN CUBA WITH THE RANK OF CAPTAIN, AND WORKING UNDER AMBASSADOR ALEKSANDRE ALEKSEYEVICH SOLDATOV MASTERMINDED THE PURGE OF THE CUBAN SECRET POLICE OF ELEMENTS NOT SLAVISHLY LOYAL TO THE MOSCOW LINE.
APPOINTED SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE INTERROGATION TRAINING WING OF THE KGB SCHOOL IN ‘69.
ATTENDED STAFF COURSE AT LENINGRAD DURING 72/73.
PROMOTED MAJOR IN 1974 AND GIVEN COMMAND OF A KGB SPETSNAZNACHENIYA (SPECIAL DESIGNATION) UNIT WITH UNDEFINED DUTIES, BELIEVED TO BE AN EXECUTION, ASSASSINATION AND ‘DIRTY JOBS’ SQUAD OF PICKED OFFICERS AND NCOS.
IT IS REPORTED THAT UNDER HIS GUIDANCE THE TECHNIQUE OF ASSASSINATION BY STAGED MOTOR ACCIDENTS WAS PERFECTED. AMONG VICTIMS OF THE METHOD HE DEVISED ARE THOUGHT TO BE THE DISSENT IRINA KAPLUN, EDITOR OF AN UNDERGROUND NEWSPAPER IN ESTONIA AND THE EXILE ANDREI AMALRICK, A SOVIET HISTORIAN, IN SPAIN. ROZENKOV WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSULTED WHEN THE SAME METHOD WAS USED TO ELIMINATE PYOTR MASHEROV, COMMUNIST PARTY CHIEF OF BYELORUSSIA AND A POLITBURO CANDIDATE MEMBER, WHEN HE WAS SUSPECTED OF PLANNING A GRAB FOR POWER IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES.
APART FROM A BRIEF APPEARANCE IN EARLY ‘82 WHEN HE WAS IDENTIFIED AS ONE OF THE COLONELS FOLLOWING THE COFFIN OF KREMLIN IDEOLOGIST MIKHAIL SUSLOV, HE FELL FROM SIGHT, REAPPEARING IN NOVEMBER 1982 AS GOVERNOR OF THE LUBYANKA PRISON AND INTERROGATION CENTRE. HE HAS HELD THE POSITION, WITH ONE ABSENCE TO ATTEND A FURTHER STAFF COURSE UNTIL HIS RECENT APPOINTMENT AS HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF THE FIRST CHIEF DIRECTORATE OF THE KGB.
IT IS BELIEVED THAT HE IS NOT YET CONFIRMED IN THE POST, USUALLY HELD BY A GENERAL, AND AT PRESENT RETAINS THE RANK OF COLONEL. FULL EVALUATION FOLLOWS. SUMMARY.
ROZENKOV IS AN EXPERIENCED CAREER KGB OFFICER OF PROVEN ABILITY. IT CAN BE EXPECTED THAT UNDER HIS COMMAND THE DEPARTMENT WILL BE HIGHLY ACTIVE.