Our cause… Yes indeed, our cause… I would have given a great many roubles, a great many yuan, for a tape recorder here with me now. I could of course raise Frome on the radio and give him a short, urgent debriefing for onward transmission to the signals board in London through the support base in Novosibirsk: Russian and Chinese — repeat Chinese — military talks taking place Novosibirsk, subject a joint cause. But I'd have to go down the stairs again and into one of the rooms below to do that, and it was vital that I found Talyzin first and in some way got him compromised, made safe, so that I could concentrate on taking in the information I was here to get.
The Bureau should do everything to keep those people under surveillance. Zymyanin. Had he known there was to be a clandestine meeting in Novosibirsk, of great significance?
Talyzin had known. He'd known the generals were coming here.
He'd been here before.
I reached the fourth stair from the top, my eyes level with the floor of the first gallery, the scalp tightening. The gallery was in deep shadow, thrown by the chandeliers below; I could make out the shapes of tables here and there, of chairs; above them, catching the light, leather-bound volumes lined the walls. If Talyzin were here he would be here to watch the assembly down there, and to watch it he would have to sit or stand near the balustrade, where his face would also catch the light.
I couldn't see him.
It was necessary then to move higher, to climb the last three stairs, expose my head, shoulders, the heart area, moving slowly, watching for him, tracing the curve of the gallery full-circle.
'… And it is our conviction that the opportunity for us to assume joint command of all those territories hitherto known as the Soviet Union is immediately available to us, and that such an opportunity is not likely to occur again within the foreseeable future. The people of Russia and the so-called independent states are in a mood of imminent rebellion, thanks to the catastrophic breakdown in the economy. It is therefore the first step in our overall enterprise to oust the present government in Russia and the so-called independent states by inciting rebellion in Moscow and the major cities and demonstrating to the people that we alone have the power to put bread into their cupboards and shoes on their feet, to reinstate peace and stability and usher in a secure and promising future for their children — and their grandchildren. Our troops and our tank? will act demonstrably as the allies and the saviours of the people, thus ensuring their loyal support as we gather the reins of power.'
The two voices, Russian and Chinese, echoed among the shadowed reaches of the dome. I could see the complete circle of the lower gallery now, and if Talyzin were there he must be well back from the balustrade, watching, perhaps, through its polished redwood uprights.
Crawl. Crawl, then, to the next curve of the staircase, crawl in the shadow, silent and dark-garbed, moving a centimetre at a time past the ornate archway, a thing unseen, a creature of the shades, crepuscular, a night-crawler of harm to none, yet with the hairs lifted at the nape of its neck and its arms goosefleshed, its ears alert for the bang of the gun and the whine of the homing shot Crawl.
'… We consider our opportunity propitious in the extreme. The belated attempts of the government of the United States to buy the allegiance of our peoples at a time when they find themselves in need of the very basics of human life have brought the capitalistic empire-mongers to their knees economically, and their naive decision to reduce arms-production in the imagined light of global rapprochement makes the way ahead for us the easier…'
Faint light slanted across the first four or five stairs, and I crawled up them with the deliberation of a sloth, getting onto my feet in the higher shadows. I lost some of the generals' preamble between the first and second galleries but it came in again as I neared the top of the staircase.
'We fully understand the uneasiness of our Chinese neighbours in view of the possibility that Russia and her satellites might one day embrace capitalism and as a result cede their nationhoods to the West, leaving China as the last bastion of Communism on the globe, isolated and beleaguered, out-voiced and outnumbered in the halls of international debate, an island of a thousand million people in a hostile sea…'
Then their voices began coming out of silence, and I moved my head, trying to lift it off the stair, nerve-light flashing, an awareness of time passing, the pain of a splinter driven into my hand when I'd slumped, losing focus again.
'… And that together, as one ideologically homogeneous federation, we would claim no less than one fifth of the earth's total territory and comprise no less than one fourth of its population, a potential work force of one thousand three hundred million people dedicated to the socialist cause…"
I got onto my feet, the flat of my hands against the wall, stood there for a minute or two, feeling my way back to full consciousness before I began climbing again.
'… In the future. On the one hand the Russians will enjoy free and unencumbered access to the whole of the eastern seaboard of China from Korea to Vietnam, bringing Hong Kong and the Philippines within closer reach, while on the other hand the Chinese will enjoy direct access to the borders of Western Europe — including Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, once the independent states and the Balkans have been brought into the protection of the Federation. The opening up of new channels for international trade and the physical presence of the forces of the Federation in areas at present under the control of the West will be on a scale of unprecedented global significance…'
I reached the higher gallery, sighting along it through half its circle as the voices echoed from the dome of the rotunda. I still couldn't concentrate on this preamble of theirs but it occurred to m: that this wasn't normally the language of military men, however high their ranking: they were delivering this ground-breaking address of aims and intentions with a phraseology sufficiently rounded and structured to bear repetition through those generations of children and grandchildren, to be handed down through history with the weight and solemnity of the Magna Carta and the American constitution.
Easy to see it as an expression of mass megalomania, but in the still recent affairs of man the scions of a dozen nations had amicably established the most powerful union of states on earth. Nothing in the flux and turmoil of human enterprise could ever be termed inconceivable.
Not mine, thank God, to ponder. This was for London, if I could manage to get it through, for the presidents and their ambassadors and their ministers of defence.
If I could get it through.
I saw nothing here on the half-circle of the gallery I could observe, and when I moved, with infinite caution, to the point where I could see the whole of it, there was still nothing that I could make out as a face and shoulders, of a sloped barrel, nothing.
I hadn't expected him to be here. I'd expected him to be on the lower gallery, and when I'd checked that one I'd had to check this, in case I'd been wrong. But he was nowhere.
Nowhere in the entire building, perhaps.
The nerves caught this thought in a closed loop, reacting even before I'd had enough time to assess the conclusion — the pulse was accelerating and the blood leaving the surface as the survival mechanism tripped in."
Given the possibility that it had been Talyzin who had bombed the Rossiya, I might expect him to go for the two generals surviving Velichko in the same way and by the same method. He'd known where they were going when they left the camp: they were coming here. He'd been here before, then, and if that were the case then he wouldn't be here now, inside the building, he'd be somewhere outside, wouldn't he, concealed in the SAAB, waiting with his hand on the remote control as the generals and their aides and interpreters sat together in the well of the rotunda around the ornate redwood desk with the gold scrollwork at the comers.