Smell of furniture polish, leather, ancient fabric, wood smoke.
The first three doors I'd tried had been locked; the fourth had taken me into a boiler room, and this short passage had led from it to the huge rotunda.
Two galleries circled it on the first and second floors, the higher one set back from the lower by its own width, their beams and pilasters deep red mahogany. The windows of the rotunda were mullioned, its doors gilded like the ornate balustrades of the galleries above. The lower walls were silk-panelled, and boxed silk canopies overhung the doors. Logs burned in a huge open hearth.
In the centre of the rotunda, at a ring of tables below three brilliant crystal chandeliers, sat a group of Chinese military officers, most of them wearing the epaulettes of high rank, and when the main doors of the building were banged open they got to their feet. As the two Russian generals came down the steps with their aides and bodyguards, a Chinese officer, grey-haired and with a general's flashes on his lapels, left the group at the tables and went to greet the Russians, who returned his salute. An interpreter from each party came forward and stood waiting.
Slamming of metal doors and thudding of boots as the rearguard of the generals' convoy halted outside. Shouts: orders to deploy.
In the centre of the rotunda, introductions were being managed with the aid of the interpreters: much formality, punctilious bows. I recognized the aides and the bodyguards who had been with the generals on board the Rossiya.
I was aware of the short passage behind me, the one that had led me here. I was aware of the shadows above the two galleries that circled the dome. I listened for sounds, for soft, alien sounds, alien to the voices of the international delegates in the centre, the clicking of boots and the scrape of chairs, for sounds nearer than that, closer to where I watched.
Because he was here in the building too, the rogue agent.
Talyzin — was that his name?
There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin, Ferris had told me. From raw intelligence data going into London, he could be your rogue agent.
The SAAB 504 had been outside, buried among the trees, when I'd rounded the building trying the doors. I had looked for it, or I wouldn't have noticed it. It had arrived here only minutes before I did, it must have. The agent hadn't been waiting there on the hill road to launch an attack on the generals. He hadn't been waiting to follow them here — or wherever they might have gone. All he'd wanted to know was when they would leave the camp, and the moment he'd seen the transports gathering and the figures of the two generals framed in the field-glasses he had left the hill road and driven here first, ahead of them.
He'd known that when they left the camp they'd be coming here.
And so I was aware of the passage behind me, and listened for alien sounds.
'… Marshal Jia Chongwu… Major-general Yang Zhen… Lieutenant-general Zou Xinxiong…'
More introductions: salutes, bows and handshakes, no smiles — the atmosphere was heavy with significance. These people weren't gathered here to exchange courtesies; they were here to work.
'Colonel Rui Zhong… Colonel Wang Yongchang…'
Their voices carried clearly under the immense dome of the rotunda, and the scraping of chairs as they sat down would have pushed the needle of an audiometer into the high sector. I would have to listen very carefully if I were to pickup any sounds the rogue agent might make.
Security guards had taken up station on the ground floor, all military, all of lower rank. Three men in plain clothes were moving along the walls, not going anywhere, just stirring their feet as they watched the assembly in the centre. They would also be security, not civilian but MPS, former KGB officers, or possibly GRU.
The tables in the centre were not uniform, had been pulled out of the rooms and office's leading off from the rotunda. As a courtesy the most ornate pigeonhole desk had been offered to the leader of the Chinese delegation, and he was sitting behind it now, flanked by an aide and an interpreter. The desk was mahogany like the walls here, and overlaid with gold scrollwork at the corners. It was massive, an important piece.
Preliminaries were still going on, and I went back along the passage and took the corridor that followed the curve of the rotunda. Doors were set in the wall at intervals, some of them open to reveal offices; I took care when I passed them, but he wouldn't be in any of these rooms, Talyzin: he would be watching the assembly in the rotunda, and watching it from one of the galleries, remote from the security guards below. I believed he would have the assault rifle with him, the one he'd used against the Skoda I'd been driving. But even if he'd left the rifle in the SAAB outside he would still be armed.
The staircase I'd been looking for was simple, with a thin iron banister, curving upwards behind the main wall of the rotunda; it was used for service, presumably, for cleaners and maintenance crews. I'd seen the main staircase to the galleries when I'd arrived here: an ornate affair leading directly from the well of the chamber. Talyzin wouldn't have used that one; he would have used this.
I tested every stair as I climbed, putting my feet on one end, against the wall. Voices came from below, fainter now but still intelligible.
'We have just learned that Marshal Trushin should be arriving very soon — his plane was delayed by bad weather. He is replacing General Velichko, and will receive a transcript of the preamble as soon as he reaches here.'
I tested another stair.
'I am asked by my colleagues — ' first in Mandarin, then translated' — to offer our sincere condolences on the loss of the late General Velichko in such tragic circumstances. We feel personally bereft of a valiant comrade in arms.'
I thought that was interesting, because it was in line with the show of formality I'd seen before, the salutes and the bows and the.handshakes. Despite the military uniforms, these were the studied courtesies of statecraft. It told me something. It told me a very great deal more than I wanted to think about at this particular moment.
A stair creaked under my weight and I froze. I didn't think the sound could have carried as far as the gallery above, but I was moving into that deadly zone where a slight indiscretion, a lapse in attention to even the smallest degree, could be terminal. This was the final phase of Meridian and I'd broken into it before I'd realized, and if I could send anything useful to London I'd be doing it within the next few hours: that, or lacking discretion, lacking attention, I could go down without feeling anything much, just the instant inferno as the bullet hit the brain and blew the circuits and brought down the dark.
The nerves edgy, that was all, because those bloody things had come intimately close as they'd smashed the windscreen and ripped into the car.
'Your sympathies are appreciated, gentlemen.' the voice of the Chinese interpreter, full of throaty aspirates, took it up as soon as he got the drift. 'But fortunately, we are certain that Marshal Trushin — a Hero of the Soviet Union — will be able to help us further our cause with a degree of courage, energy and foresight equal to that of our late comrade.'