Compared with which of course my situation was decidedly cushy, I was only holed up in a phone booth in Siberia watching that poor bugger out there struggling to get up before he froze to death, but all the same I didn't take kindly to Croder, Chief of bloody Signals, asking for a progress report from a director in the field who was notorious for refusing to call up London when there was nothing to tell them, believing it quite rightly to be a waste of time.
'May he get the pox,' I told Ferris and shut down the signal and dialled the ambulance service and told them there was a man outside the Harbour Light Bar on the west bank of the Ob needing attention. Then I forced open the door of the booth against the rust on the hinges and went across to the Jew and helped him onto his feet and told him there was an ambulance coming with any luck.
Pulled open the door of the place and got hit by the reek of black tobacco smoke and straight spirits and human sweat, the air hot against my face after the freezing temperature outside. When my eyes adjusted to the smoke haze I saw a man sitting alone in a corner on the far side of the room from the bar, a pair of gloves on the table, different shades of brown. He saw me come in but I looked past him and went over to the end of the long teakwood counter and ordered a vodka straight up, pulling out a stool and settling down to check everybody in the place, one by one.
I took fifteen minutes, not hurrying, because I didn't know Captain Vadim Rusakov any better than he knew me and even though he'd shot that general down he could still be working undercover for the Podpolia or Pamyat, the extreme nationalist right, and could have brought people in here to look me over. Or he could have picked up ticks in the army barracks and brought them here without knowing it, and I just wanted to talk to him alone, wasn't in the mood for a party.
Bloody London.
Rusakov was the only hope I'd got of putting Meridian back on track and bringing it home. But he might know nothing, nothing at all.
Six or seven tarts, two of them Chinese, they brought them here regularly from Beijing and Vladivostok on the Rossiya, one of the taxi-drivers had told me. The other women were jealous of them, of their slight and flawless looks, blowing smoke over them from their lipstick-reddened cigarettes to loud laughter from the men.
A huddle of Russian naval officers round an illegal crap game, three sailors drinking themselves under a table near the door, one of them with a trouser-leg soaked. A lone militiaman in uniform, too far gone to be on duty unless someone had slipped him a mickey for a giggle. Two dogs, one of them with a broken leg, snuffling and tearing at something unholy under one of the tables.
I poured the shot of vodka down the leg of the bar stool and put the glass back on the counter and left the change and made my way close to the walls until I came up on the table where the odd gloves were lying and pulled out the chair opposite Captain Rusakov and sat down and saw the chalk moving across the board for Meridian in the basement in Whitehall, Executive reports possible breakthrough, is now in contact with valuable informer.
Not really. There's just a chance, that's all, the last we've got. But remember, we're making progress.
Chapter 20: VADIM
'I saw you come in,' Rusakov said, 'some time ago. Why didn't you come straight over here?'
'You get served quicker, at the bar.'
He gave a slow blink, perhaps of patience, then went on watching me with a gaze as steady as a beam of light. He had green eyes, like his sister, but you didn't notice that so much as the concentration in them. He'd be good at interrogation, Rusakov, may have done a bit of that.
'Where is Tanya?' he asked me.
'Want to talk to her?'
His eyes lit. 'Yes.'
I took him outside and along to the phone booth and dialled the number for the Hotel Karasevo with my back to Rusakov and got Ferris on the line and asked for Tanya. Then I waited outside the booth, watching the lights of the ambulance dimming in the distance through the river fog.
Ferris allowed them a minute or not much more; he would have briefed her not to tell her brother where she was, since it was the nerve-centre for Meridian, and the longer she spoke to him the more easily she might let something slip.
When he came out of the booth Rusakov stood in front of me with his feet together, advanced one pace, gave me a bear hug, retreated one pace and stood at ease.
'You gave her freedom,' he said.' I cannot express my gratitude.'
He'd put on a seaman's clothes, as I'd asked him to, but there was no disguising Captain Vadim Rusakov of the Russian Army.
'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.'