I turned down the wick of the lamp and looked around for a bit of rope and took the militia uniform and boots on deck, burying the standard-issue Malysh "Little Boy" automatic pistol inside the clothes and weighting the whole bundle with a rock I'd marked down when I'd crossed from the Skoda to the ship. Then I crouched at the quayside watching the bubbles break surface under the light of the moon.
At 9:461 signalled Ferris.
'Location?'
'The Harbour Light.'
I'd taken fifteen minutes to check the environment when I'd arrived here, but it was simply an exercise in security: any danger would come from inside the bar.
'Have you met Rusakov?' Ferris asked me.
'Not yet. I've just got here.' then I said,' there's a man gone. Dmitri Alexandrovich Yermakov. He was tracking me.' I told him what had happened. 'He's down as a pipe-fitter on his papers. He couldn't have been operating solo. I'd say he was in the Podpolia. 'Two men came from the quay, hands buried in the pockets of their padded coats, boots clumping across the snow. 'I'm surprised you're still there,' I told Ferris.
'I'm taking all precautions.'
The two men hit the door of the bar open and bundled in. This phone booth was outside, at the end of the wall where the door was. There weren't any windows on this side.
Taking all precautions, well, all right, but God knew where Roach had picked up that tracker — it could have been outside the Hotel Karasevo, where Ferris was. I didn't want him blown from under me.
'We lost Roach,' I heard him saying.
Merde.
'I thought we might have,' I said.
'They trapped him and there was a shoot-out.'
Those shifting eyes, yes, and the nervous fingers, trigger-sensitive. We don't often get a shoot-out because weaponry isn't normally part of our stock-in-trade; we prefer silence and shadow, the soft-shoe retreat. But Roach would have carried a gun, yes, I could believe that, had spent his life looking over his shoulder, had found sleep difficult, until now.
'As long as you think you're safe there,' I told Ferris, meaning for Christ's sake don't blow the nerve-centre for Meridian and wishing instantly I hadn't said it, because when the executive starts worrying about the safety of his director in the field it can only mean he's starting to feel mission-pressure.
'Relax,' Ferris said quietly on the line.
'Did I say something?'
'Not really.'
Someone had used his finger across the grime on the glass panel of the booth, Fuck Yeltsin, 'Many kind thanks,' I said to Ferris, 'for the plum cake.'
'Nothing too good.'
I made the effort and asked, 'Where is Tanya Rusakova?' It had taken an effort because I was worried about her too, didn't want to hear him say we'd lost her again.
Relax, yes.
'I've put her in a room on the same floor here, only three doors along, two people on watch. 'He'd heard the effort I'd had to make.
He hears everything, Ferris, if the line's good enough; he can hear you taking too deep a breath to quiet the nerves; he can hear goose flesh rising under your sleeve.
'I need to talk to her,' I told him.
'I know. She's waiting here now.'
He'd known I'd have to debrief Tanya before I talked to her brother, to find out what she'd said in Militia Headquarters, what his situation was now, and Ferris had brought her into his room to wait for my call, saving a few minutes' delay as I stood here in a telephone booth with glass panels and no identification papers on me that I could show anyone, now that is direction in the field.
'Hello?'
Her voice soft, her green eyes shimmering behind the notice that said you didn't have to put coins into the receptacle when summoning the fire brigade, ambulance or militia.
'Are you comfortable?'
We say strange things, when not knowing what to say.
'Yes. And filled with remorse, and gratitude.'
Been rehearsing it. 'Tanya,' I said, 'what did you tell the militia? As briefly as you can, just the essentials.'
She went straight into it, had been briefed by Ferris. 'They asked me why I had come to Novosibirsk, and I told them it was to see my brother, as I always did when I had leave. I knew they would telephone Moscow to ask about me, and would find I had a brother here. I said I met General Velichko by chance on the Rossiya, and he proposed an assignation when we arrived in the city. He seemed quite a gentleman, and said he would like to please me by «arranging» early promotion for my brother.'
She was surprising me, Tanya Rusakova. It would have taken courage, in that interrogation cell at Militia Headquarters, to admit that she'd made plans to meet a man who was later shot dead against a wall. But she'd had no choice: she couldn't have explained, otherwise, why she'd booked in at the Hotel Vladekino and then left there soon afterwards, under the eyes of the concierge.
'I told them that when I met General Velichko at the appointed place, I was shocked and horrified to see a man force him from his car and shoot him down. I ran away, terrified, but the man caught up with me and threw me into another car, where I was blindfolded. He took me to a house, and kept me there. Of course I realized he was protecting himself — I'd seen what he had done and could recognize him again.'
I was listening with much attention. She'd taken things right to the brink, because she'd known she'd have to. She'd invented the simplest way to explain her known movements on that night.
'Are you still there?'
'Yes,' I said, 'go on.'
'I told them that the man had kept me tied to a bed all night, but the next morning when he was away from the house I managed to escape. And then, when I was safe again in the street, I was stopped by a militiaman, and arrested because of my papers.'
There was silence on the line, so I said, 'And they asked you to give a description of the assassin.'
'Of course. I said he was short, but very strong, with greying hair and a scar underneath his left ear. He spoke with an Estonian accent.'
'And they tried to break your story.'
'But yes. They tried very hard.'
And hadn't succeeded, because for a few days it would have remained unbreakable, until they'd taken their investigations to the point where they could destroy it, word for word, and get to the truth. Did you bear any kind of grudge against General Gennadi Velichko? Were you aware that he was the head of the regional state security office in Krasnogvardeiskaya at the time when your father, Boris Vladimir Rusakov, was rumoured to have been executed without formality? Didn't you in fact request five days' immediate leave on medical grounds due to uterine cramps at the time when General Velichko was about to visit Novosibirsk?
I didn't know what exact questions would have been asked, but that would have been their tenor, and she wouldn't have had any answers that would have kept her out of the penal servitude camps for life on a charge of being an accessory to premeditated murder.
'You did well, Tanya,' I said.
'I wanted very much to keep your name out of it all.'
'I'm indebted to you.'
'No. But perhaps it made up a little.'
Made up for her leaving the safe-house and getting herself arrested.
'Of course. Tanya, stay near the phone for twenty minutes.'
The door of the bar swung open and crashed back against the wall and a man came out with his hands covering his head, two others after him and catching him up, landing a kick and sending him sprawling, setting on him as he lay on the ground, 'Fucking Jew… You come here again and you 'll finish up in the river, cock-sucking Jew-boy…'