Quiller Meridian

'She'll be all right,' I said.'She's in good hands.' We walked back to the bar.

'She wouldn't tell me where she is.'

'No, that wouldn't be a good thing. The line could have been bugged, you see.'

'Then you will tell me.'

'I'd rather you didn't ask. She's safe there, that's all you need to know, and it shouldn't be all that long before you can see her.' I gave it a beat. 'It depends on how much you're willing to help me.'

He pulled open the door of the bar and stood back, boots neatly together. 'As much as I am able, of course.' But there was a note of wariness in it. He didn't like my not trusting him with his sister's location, didn't like to think she was in a place where the lines might be bugged.

Back at the table we ordered bowls of gruel and some bread, and I listened to Rusakov until it arrived, because I wanted as much of his background as I could get without asking questions, and his attitudes towards the present-day regime in Russia. But first he had to unload some of his guilt.

'I should never have involved her in such a thing. She alerted me that he was coming to Novosibirsk, fine, I should have taken the matter from there, and told her to remain in Moscow.'

'It wouldn't have been easy,' I said, 'to get that man to an appointed place without Tanya's help, and to have him identified on the spot.'

'I should have thought of another way.'

One of the dogs let out a yelp, been kicked, I suppose. 'She wanted to be there, Vadim. She had a lot of rage in her.'

He levelled his gaze at me for a moment. 'I didn't think of that.'

'They're not meant to have any rage, are they, it might frighten the males of the species. But it's there, all right.'

He talked about his father, showed me the photograph of a man in a badly-fitting black suit, some kind of decoration in the lapel, the same penetrating gaze aimed at the camera, no smile. 'He was an individualist, so they shot him. I am an individualist, but no one will be shooting me because I now live in the society for whose ideals he gave his life.'

It wasn't the first time he'd said that. He'd rehearsed it until he'd got it right, perhaps because he knew his father would have approved of the formality. There was more room for pride now in Vadim Rusakov's heart, since he'd spent his rage in the rattle of shot last night when General Gennadi Velichko had slid onto the snow with his back leaving streaks of blood on the wall behind him.

'This new society,' I asked Rusakov when the food arrived, 'is it going smoothly, here in Novosibirsk?'

He looked surprised, then said, 'Of course, you only arrived here yesterday. Yes, the new society is going smoothly, on the surface. A few growls here and there, a few complaints, but no food riots, no looting of shops, no angry mobs yelling outside the government offices.' He lined up the yellow plastic salt-cellar with the bottle of sauce, doing it carefully. 'But under the surface there is a great deal of tension, you know, among the people.'

'And among the soldiers?'

'Among the soldiers the tension is deeper, since soldiers are not allowed to think. But it is there.' His eyes suddenly on mine,' there have been cases of unexplained deaths. I have investigated some of them. The dead were all devoted democrats, rabid, one could say, sick and fed up with the way the army has gone down and down under the Communists, until drugs, drunkenness and desertions have become the order of the day, reflecting the awareness of the military that they've lost the respect of the people in the streets.' Spreading one hand, 'Of course, the new democracy has brought new problems. The army is now forced to grow its own vegetables and milk its own goats, since food is scarce.'

'These deaths,' I said. 'Who's doing the killing?'

'You cannot guess?'

"The Podpolia?'

'But of course the Podpolia.' He lowered his voice. "There are the two factions at my barracks, just as there are in the streets — those who are ready to tighten their belts and support Yeltsin and his programme, and the core of die-hard Communists who want the old order back.'

'How strong are they?'

'They are not strong in numbers, but they are there, working in secrecy.'

I'd got enough background, and broke some bread and started on the gruel. It was still hot, salty and had a flavour I didn't recognize, didn't particularly like. Dogs were at a premium this winter in Novosibirsk, if they had any flesh on them; I avoided the lumps of meat. 'Vadim, 'I said, 'your sister told the militia only that she came to Novosibirsk to see you, as she always does when she gets leave. They can't ask her any more questions now, but they'll be pushing on with their enquiries, especially in Moscow. They hadn't known, when she was at their headquarters, that her father — and your father — was ordered shot by General Velichko four years ago, or they certainly wouldn't have released her at my request. As soon as — '

'At your request…' he said slowly, his eyes boring into me. 'You have the power to «request» such a thing from the militia?'

I broke more bread, leaving the gruel. 'I haven't the power to request anything of anyone, but I wanted your sister out of there, so I had to devise the means. My next concern is yourself. As soon as they dig up the information that you and Tanya bore a grudge against General Velichko, they'll ask the army to arrest you and hand you over. This could happen when you go back to your unit; the military police may well be waiting for you outside your quarters.'

His eyes deepened, hardened. 'I see.' then he said, 'And Tanya?' I liked him for that.

'She's in the safest possible hands, don't let it worry you.'

I assumed I could say that, for the moment. But someone had killed Roach, the support man, and Roach might have gone too close to the Hotel Karasevo, nerve-centre for Meridian, and at any given time Ferris himself, its director in the field, could need a safe-house, and urgently. It might have happened before in the annals of the Bureau, that the DIF of some mission had got blown, but it's never happened when I've been in the field. The DIF is sacrosanct, untouchable, he has to be. He holds the lifeline for his executive.

'You are in,' Rusakov was saying, 'some kind of — ' he spread his hand — 'intelligence branch? The MPS?'

'Not the MPS. I operate pretty well on my own, and you should know that. If you find yourself in trouble, I've no authority of any kind to pull you out of it.' I looked across at the door of the bar as a man came in.' You should also know, Vadim, that at this moment I'm the subject of an intense manhunt by the militia, the police and the KGB — or the MPS, as we're now meant to call them.'

His eyes deepened again; I'd seen the same thing in Tanya.

'So,' he said with a brief nod.

The man looked all right, merchant seaman's rig and cap, bundling across to the bar, freezing, desperate for a rum grog. I looked at Rusakov again. 'I think I told you,didn't I, that I saw your action of last night as a matter of summary justice, when Tanya told me what Velichko had done to you both.' I was kneading a small piece of the dark, heavy bread, moulding it into a disc with a point on each side, like a spinning top. 'Your quarrel,' I said, 'was with General Velichko, and not — can I assume? — with the other two, Generals Chudin and Kovalenko. But do you happen to know if they're still here in Novosibirsk?'

I felt time slowing down.

How long have we got? I'd asked Ferris in that rat-infested shed where we'd made our rendezvous. Have I got any kind of a deadline?

He'd thought it out, taken his time. Yes, we have a deadline. It's zero.

The generals had been Zymyanin's target for information. That was what he'd told me before he was killed. They'd arrived in Novosibirsk and gone to ground and we had to find them, take up from where Zymyanin had left off. That was still the focus of Meridian: Zymyanin had believed that the generals had information of a kind that would trigger the alarm bells throughout the intelligence organizations of both hemispheres. We needed that information.