Quiller Balalaika

'RAOCs?' I hadn't been in Moscow since it was the capital of the Soviet Union.

'Our own acronym for the regional administrations for fighting organized crime.'

'Bureau speak?'

'No, it's a straight translation from the Russian.'

Perhaps he wondered why I wanted to know. It was because I was beginning to want to know everything. 'Go on,' I said.

'The RAOCs have also been sending their people in, but the odds against success are suicidally high, because of the corruption at all levels of government. A large number of civil servants are in the pay of the organizatsiya – the mainstream mafiya – and some of them are actually in close touch, so that any incorrupt agents who try to infiltrate the opposition are immediately recognized by their own colleagues and marked down for the hit squads. Part of the problem is that every legitimate agent is to a varying extent terrified of the job.'

'Terrified of people like Sakkas.'

'Of Sakkas particularly.'

Something flashed through the mind: I suddenly wanted to meet him, Sakkas. Then it was gone but it left a trace, like a trail of smoke on a screen. It was in the same instant that I knew why I'd asked if the Bureau had got a name for the mission yet: I'd wanted everything brought together – their suddenly pitching me into Moscow, the impact of finding the Chief of Signals here, his hesitant and almost diffident briefing. And there it was: Balalaika.

It was also the name for something that hits the nerves of every shadow executive when he hears it.

'That's the only effective method of operation,' I said. 'Correct?'

Croder nodded. 'Yes. Infiltration.'

Hits the nerves because to infiltrate the opposition – any kind of opposition – exposes you more and more the deeper you go in, so that by the time you reach the centre of the web you daren't even move in case it sends out vibrations. Have you ever seen a spider working on a trapped fly? Most people have. It makes its rush, binds the wings until they stop buzzing and then stabs with its jaws, taking its time now, sucking out the vital fluids first, relishing in them.

You've infiltrated before.

Oh, sure. But what the fuck are you trying to push me into?

Sweat gathering: I could feel it. Worse, Croder would see it. Not on my skin. In my eyes. The first admission of commitment to Balalaika.

I took another turn, needing urgently to shake the idea out of my mind. It was too early yet to put my life on the line, if that was what I was going to do. The man with the bald head at the other end of the nave made clanking sounds with his silver candlesticks, trying to be careful not to knock them against each other, perhaps, but not quite managing his veined and sallow hands, his arthritic fingers, vexed with himself because these sacred ornaments were thus far flawless, burnished and gleaming, a glory to God; how satisfactory, how safe to live a life wherein the worst of your concerns is centred on the flawlessness of candlesticks, or isn't that a kind of living death, a perpetuation of all those years of trivia, what do you think, my good friend, what is your honest opinion, now face him again, Croder, pop the question, the next one, the obvious one, the one the bastard is waiting for, perched there on the bench, on my shoulder blades, like a hooded crow.

'If I say no, who will you try next?'

Croder got up, pushed his right hand into the pocket of his coat, let the steel claw dangle. 'No one.'

I thought about this. He'd asked everyone else? And been turned down? Every time? 'Who else have you tried?'

'Fern.'

'And?'

'He said his Russian wasn't perfect.'

'Fern's Russian?' I regretted it immediately, wished I hadn't said it. Croder knew it was a lie, too, but cold feet were cold feet and I've had them myself – pay attention to them and you stand the chance of a longer life. 'Who else?' I asked Croder again.

'Teaseman.'

'And?' Making me drag it out of him.

'He said it sounded like certain death.'

Honest enough. 'Who else?'

'No one.'

'Why won't you try someone else, if I say no?'

The black snow whirled past the coloured windows behind his head.

'There isn't anyone else,' he said.

'Pelt? Sortese? Vine?'

'There isn't anyone else capable.'

'So I'm your last shot.' Not a question but he answered it.

'Yes. You've got to understand -'

'So you've come down to the only psychopath you can think of who might say yes to your bloody suicide run.'

'You've got to understand that I find myself in an invidious position. I have virtual instructions from the prime minister' – he turned this way, that, the energy coming off him, palpable, his aura burning with it – 'to go for Sakkas and bring him down, and in my living memory the Bureau has never refused a mission coming directly from its commander-in-chief.'

His guard down now and I admired that: other men would have sheltered behind their authority. 'So you accepted it,' I said. 'This one.'

Look, anybody can make a mistake, even the Chief of Signals. Faced with virtual orders from the head of state he'd refused to believe he couldn't find a shadow to take this one on, and when the door of No. 10 had closed behind him he'd been committed.

'Yes. I accepted it.' He swung towards me. 'Should I have?'

'Oh for Christ's sake, I can't tell you the answer to that yet; it's too soon.'

'Take your time. Take all the time you need.'

And enough rope.

'This is why you're here personally,' I asked him, 'in Moscow?'

'Of course.'

'I don't quite see why it's so bloody obvious. You could have signalled me personally in Paris. Or sent an emissary.'

Standing close, face to face suddenly. 'You're making it very hard for me.'

'I've no intention. I'm just looking for the bottom line, that's all.'

He swung away again. 'The bottom line is perfectly clear if you choose to read it.'

So I read it, took a minute, but I think I got it right. Even Croder wasn't prepared to send a man to his almost certain death over a signals line. It had got to be done face to face, if at all. And he was forcing himself to the issue on the thinnest possible chance: that before my almost certain death I could get close enough to the target for the mission – Vasyl Sakkas – to bring him down. And you can interpret that how you please: put him out of business, run him out of Russia, destroy his network or conceivably arrange to have him found spread-eagled among the stinking bric-a-brac of a rubbish dump or floating in the Moscow River or sitting like a cinder at the melted wheel of a Mercedes 206 in Sokolniki Park: the Bureau too has its hit men, though I am not one of them. But even if I could pull this thing off, the risk would increase a thousand-fold in the final act because of the kill-overkill syndrome.