We were safe here but I didn't want to wait for daylight, to do anything dramatic, not with Tanya Rusakova in my care. Drama is the last resort when you' re in the labyrinths, the desperate sauve qui peut that nine times out often will leave you dead on the field. And above all, I've told the bright-eyed and eager novitiates at Norfolk, above all avoid drama, it's a one-way street and as often as not a dead end. Derring — do won't get you anywhere, you've got to think your way out.
Easily said, yes, but what else can you tell them? When they're out there at last with the hags of hell at their heels they'll do whatever they have to, we all know that.
'Are you hungry?' I asked Tanya.
'No.'
Her stomach was empty — the last time she'd eaten must have been on the Rossiya — but she couldn't even think about food, and that was understandable.
'You could sleep,' I said, 'if you wanted to.' she'd have our coats for a mattress on the bench. 'I'll be here.'
'No.'
That too was understandable; the phantoms of the delta waves would be worse than the ones who were haunting her now, and she'd have no control over them.
'You told me I had to go with you,' she said in a moment, 'for my brother's sake. I don't know what that means.'
'It means that if you get arrested by the militia you'll give him away.'
Her eyes flayed me. 'I would never do that.'
'Have you ever been questioned by the militia?'
She hesitated. 'No.'
But she knew what I was talking about. 'By the KGB, then?'
'Yes.'
'What did they do to you?'
She took a breath, looking down.' they beat me up.'
'Because of your father?'
'Yes. I protested in public, after they'd shot him.'
'Then you know what I mean, Tanya. The militia are no different, even now. They'll get everything out of you, once they start, and that is why you have to stay with me.'
She didn't answer, still didn't believe she would give her brother away, even though she was sitting here with one leg straight and the other crooked and had scars on her body, must have, after what they'd done to her.
The big entrance door came open at intervals and I watched the people coming in, some of them injured and with blood visible on them, most of them sickly, shielding their eyes against the glare of the lights in here. Two doctors, one of them a woman, had come through the archway from the emergency unit where the ambulance had driven up, and were checking the people in the long straggling queue. At three o'clock I tried the phone again and drew blank, and soon after that I saw the woman doctor examining the white-faced infant at last and heard her say to the nurses behind the admissions desk, 'But how long has she been here? This baby is dead.'
The mother screamed once, twice, and then began moaning as they hurried her through the archway and a murmur of shock broke out among the people in the queue.
I began trying the phone at thirty-minute intervals but at half-past four there was still nothing on the line to the Hotel Karasevo but a faint crackling and I thought Jesus I'd better start trying to raise London, see if the long-distance lines were down too.
Soon after five in the morning I pushed the two kopeks into the slot again and drew blank and went through the archway to look for a lavatory and when I came back the entrance doors were both wide open and the place was full of militiamen and Tanya was gone.
Chapter 11: SLEEP
'We're waiting for Dr Kalugin,' I said.
I'd passed a door with his name on it.
'He'll be another hour,' the nurse said, 'at least another hour, with all these accidents coming in.' Her hair had come loose from her white cap and her eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue.
'Never mind,' I said, 'we'll wait.'
'Olga!' a voice called, and she left us, saying we could go into the examination room if we liked.
There was no one in there. I left the door open, needing to hear distant voices, catch what they were saying, learn who they were and if they were coming closer, get out of here if there were time.
'What were they doing in there?' I asked Tanya. The militia.
She leaned her haunches against the examination table, folding her arms, hugging herself, locked in with other thoughts. 'I'm not sure,' she said. 'I didn't stay long enough to hear; but I think there'd been a bus accident and they'd followed the injured in there to take statements.'
'Don't worry, then.' I'd unnerved her, telling her they'd force her to expose her brother if she were arrested; but I'd had to do it because it was true, and if the worst happened she'd never forgive herself. It had also given her a healthy fear of a militia uniform: she'd followed the instructions I'd given her earlier out there in the waiting-room: If even one of them comes in here, go down that corridor and wait for me at the other end. Get out of his sight.
There'd been five or six of them when I'd come back into the waiting-room, peaked caps, greatcoats and black polished boots, belts, night sticks, holsters and guns, five or six of them in the waiting-room and hundreds more outside in the streets, right across the city, a minefield on the move.
I switched off the tubular lights to lower the stress on our nerves by a degree. 'It wouldn't hurt,' I told Tanya,' to lie down for a while.'
'No. Anything can happen.' she was watching my face, listening to the voices of the militiamen at the far end of the corridor, to the unmistakable tone of their authority. Then she surprised me: 'Wasn't it terrible, about the baby?'
'What? Yes. Terrible.'
I went to look for a telephone and found one near the emergency rooms and got out my two kopeks again and dialled and stood waiting, the sharpness of ether on the air and the ring of a scalpel in a metal dish, the moaning of someone in pain and then the click on the line and a woman's voice and I asked to speak to T. K. Trencher.
In a moment, 'Yes?'
'Executive.'
'What can I do for you?'
'Get me off the streets.'
His name was Roach and he was a small man with a round pink face and baby-blue eyes that never looked at you or at anything for more than a second or two, his attention constantly on the move and his hands never still, their short pink fingers playing with each other, the nails ragged and bitten, a mass of nerves, I would have thought, and not therefore reliable, but Ferris had told me he was first class — he'd worked with him before, in Moscow.
'More blankets in the cupboard there,' he said,' if you need them. The usual toilet things but not much soap — I didn't know you were coming,' his eyes taking Tanya in again but fleetingly, just a quick snapshot, nothing personal, 'lots of tinned stuff in the kitchen, though, you'll be all right for grub. There's no heating or light because of the storm, no hot water, but if you feel like braving the shower turn it on slow or it'll blow you out of the bathroom. Anything else?'
'I don't think so.'
'I'll be on my way.'
I went into the passage with him and saw the door to the fire-escape near the stair head and tried the handle to make sure it wasn't locked; then I went down the stairs with him and asked him where the nearest telephone was.
'It's in the building, the end of that corridor. You got enough coins?'