Quiller Meridian

'Rusakov,' I said, 'if you waste my time you could wreck our chances of getting your sister free. She'll be under interrogation now and may at any moment expose you, under duress, as the assassin of General Gennadi Velichko. Are you prepared to cooperate with me?'

A huge shape was on the move beyond the filthy window of the booth, and I watched it.

What I didn't want him to do was panic and put the phone down and run for some kind of cover. He would have got the point by now: it didn't need a lot of intelligence. The instant his sister told the militia who had shot Velichko there'd be a telephone call from the officer commanding Militia Headquarters to the officer commanding the Russian Army garrison with a request that Captain Vadim Rusakov of Ordnance Unit Three be placed under immediate arrest on suspicion of murder pending the arrival of prisoner transport and an officer bearing information.

If Rusakov ran, I would lose the second key to Meridian.

The dark shape moved slowly past the gap between the rooming-house and a stevedore's gantry, and its port riding light bloomed like a rose in the river fog. A freighter bringing salmon, perhaps, canned salmon from Kamen' — na — Obi in the south for my friend out there in the taxi.

'I am going there now,' I heard Rusakov saying.

'Going where?'

'To Militia Headquarters.' His tone was strong, adamant.' that's where they must be holding my sister. I will give myself up — '

'Rusakov — '

'I will give myself up and tell them she had nothing to do with it!'

'Rusakov, listen to me. They won't take your word for that. They'll get at the truth and the truth is that she was an accomplice. She — '

'I must help her! She is my sister!'

God give me patience. 'If you go there, Rusakov, you will both be held for enquiries and by midnight tonight they'll have got the whole thing out of you and there'll be nothing I can do for Tanya. You will have condemned her.'

I waited.

Emergency numbers, it said on a panel by the phone, 01 Fire Service, 02 Militia, 03 Ambulance. It is not necessary to use coins.

'Why should I believe you?' Rusakov was asking suddenly.

'Why would I call you and warn you to lie low if I didn't want to help you?'

Waited again. Time was running out, would go on running out as the minutes and the hours measured the long night's passing and I did what I could, what I must, before it was too late. I wanted to shout at this man, force him to understand what he'd got to do; but that wouldn't work: I had to appeal to his intelligence.

His voice came again. 'Why should you want to help me?'

'It would take too long, Rusakov, to tell you. I'm going to give you a last chance, and remember that the longer they keep Tanya there the worse it's going to be for her, and that I alone can hope to get her free. Now write this down.' I went over it again, the name and location of the bar and the time of the rendezvous. 'Go there in civilian dress,' I told him, 'not in uniform. You should — '

'I am on duty until midnight.'

'Then request immediate compassionate leave: say that you've just heard that your sister was injured in the crash of the Rossiya and you must visit her at the hospital immediately. Can you do that?'

'Yes.'

'Good. You should put on your oldest clothes: the Harbour Light is a seaman's hangout. When I go in there to find you I shall look for a pair of slightly odd gloves lying on the table beside you. Now give me your description.'

He took a moment to think. 'I shall be wearing a — '

'Colour of eyes?'

'What? Green.'

I took him through it — clean-shaven, height one metre ninety-two, weight one-sixty, medium build, no visible scars. I didn't need all that for the rendezvous in the bar but I might need it later if he didn't show up or panicked and went to ground or made things tricky for me until he was ready to trust me.

'All right, you'll be wearing?'

Dark blue duffle coat, dark woollen hat with ear muffs.

'Don't forget the gloves. Now listen, I don't know if I can make it there by eight o'clock but you must wait and go on waiting unless the bar closes — it could be open all night, with shipping movement going on. Don't leave there and don't go back to the barracks until I've talked to you.' I took a moment to check his thinking: 'Do you know why?'

He found it difficult to say but he got it right. 'If — if my sister is made to talk, I would be arrested.'

'Right, at the barracks or in the open street or anywhere you habituate, but you'll be safe enough at the bar. If it closes, book in at the rooming-house next door and use a false name, give them some money instead of your identity; there'll be drug traffic on that river and they'll be used to people wanting privacy.' then I told' him, 'If I haven't reached you by midnight either at the bar or the rooming-house it'll simply mean I can't, and you should then consider getting out of Novosibirsk by ship — they'll be watching the airport and the train stations and the roads.'

He thought about that but didn't take long. 'I shall remain here and give myself up and try to help my sister.'

I heard a warning note and thought of telling him to shift the deadline to beyond midnight, but left it. If I hadn't got Tanya free by then it'd be no go.

'When did you see her last?' Rusakov was asking.

'This morning. She was trying to contact you when the militia picked her up.' Bite the bullet: 'Rusakov… how do you think she'd stand up to interrogation?'

I heard him let out a breath again.' she — she had a bad time with the KGB, a few years ago. Since then she's been afraid of getting hurt again.' He should have thought of that before he got her involved in an assassination.' that is why I tried to keep her out of… what happened last night.'

'So why couldn't you?'

'She insisted. She's very obstinate. I'd seen his photograph many times but she said that wasn't good enough. She was afraid I would make a mistake.' A beat.' she was also very… determined that we should go through with this thing.'

I thought that was interesting. 'Rusakov, do you know why those three men came to Novosibirsk?'

Mikhail shut off the engine of his taxi and silence came in. A tug's klaxon sounded from down the river like a night-bird croaking.

'No,' Rusakov said, but he'd taken a long time to think about it.

'Do you know where the remaining two of them are?'

Mikhail got out of the Trabant, stood stamping his feet, looking towards the phone booth.

'I think,' Rusakov said, 'I could find out. There's a lot going on.'

I felt a booster kick in for Meridian.

'Be there at eight,' I told him, 'and remember — '

'There must be some way I can help you,' Rusakov said quickly. 'I'll go with you to Militia Headquarters.'

'That would blow up the whole thing.'

'You must realize how I feel. I love my sister. I'm not good at waiting, doing nothing, when — '

'Be at the rendezvous.'

'If I'm not there,' he said, 'it will mean I changed my mind,' and the line went dead.

'There's only one more,' Mikhail said, 'in this district. There's always a girl here and there in the bars, of course, if you — '

'Let's go to the last house.'

There was another street closed, telephone wires festooned like a spider-web across the snow-drifts and the small dark figures of men working on them, trapped like flies, warning flags hanging limp and a flare burning, black smoke standing in a thick column from the oil barrel; the wind had dropped and the night was quiet except for the rumbling of snow-ploughs across the city.

The frayed wool at the wrist of Mikhail's right mitten trembled to the vibration of the Trabant as it rocked across the ruts with the ice popping under the tyres.