Quiller Meridian

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…'

The Pamyat brigade. Goodbye Stalin, hello Hitler, le plus ca change, so forth.

'When shall I see you again?' Tanya asked me.

'I don't really know,' I said. She'd turned over sometimes, during the morning at the safe-house, and lain with her face against me, not moving away, moving closer. She didn't wear perfume, but I remembered her scent. 'As soon as I can manage,' I told her. 'Put our friend back on the line, would you?'

The two men were crunching across the snow towards the bar, one of them with blood on his wrist.

When Ferris came on the line I just told him that if Rusakov was in the bar I'd call back in twenty minutes and let him talk to his sister for a moment.' I've got to have his trust, and her voice will give him proof that I've got her into safe hands.'

'We'll stand by for you,' Ferris said, and then, 'I've been doing a bit of research, by the way, on your rogue agent. There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin who spoke out rather too loudly against some of the die-hard generals, and they put him into a psychiatric ward when no one was looking. After six months he escaped, and from raw intelligence data going into London he might be your agent.'

'Why?'

'Three reasons. It's believed he came out of the psychiatric ward with some of his marbles gone, two of the generals who put him in there were Kovalenko and Chudin, and he'd served in Afghanistan as a mine-sweeping engineer.'

'Knows explosives.'

'Yes.'

'Another case of revenge, then, if he blew that train up. Attempted revenge.'

'We've had reports of hundreds like that, following the coup. Old scores to be settled. They're still working on it for me in London, and if I get anything more I'll pass it on.'

'That name again — Talyzin?'

'Yes.' He spelled it for me. Then, 'Control has also been in signals with me, asking for a progress report.'

Bloody Croder. 'So what did you give him?'

There was nothing. There was nothing to give Control.

'I just said that progress is being made.'

It's the stock diplomatic answer the director in the field sometimes uses when London asks what's happening and there's nothing positive to offer. The shadow can be crawling on his stomach out of a wrecked support car with his clothes on fire and the host country's security forces moving in on him with war-trained Dobermans and if Control wants a report he'll be told that progress is being made, if only by the fact that the poor bloody ferret has managed to crawl another six inches with his smashed leg as the heat of the flames reaches his skull and his brain begins going into short circuit as a prelude to the big goodbye, I don't mean to dramatize, but that is exactly what happened to Siddons when he bought it in Beirut, while his DIF was reporting progress to that bastard Loman in London.