The guards at the gatehouse phone him in through the gate, as they do every morning. He glances at them lazily, indifferent small blue eyes blank and pale behind pale-straw eyelashes. He goes to his room, picks up a towel and heads for the pool.
6
The streets of Anaklion on the Karima coast were wide and shaded by trees. Many of the houses were modern, every fifth building a guest house or hotel. Women at the roadside and in the squares sold figs and watermelons and clouded-purple grapes. Warm air off the sea disturbed the palms and casuarina trees.
Konnie, Lom and Elena took the funicular up to the Park of Culture and Rest. Gravel paths between long plots of enamel-bright flowers. Statues of dogs and soldiers. Wrought-iron benches for the weary and the convalescent. At the Tea-Garden-Restaurant Palmovye Derevya they took a table some way from the other customers, at the edge of the cliff, shaded by waxy dark green leaves against the low morning sun. A hundred feet sheer below them youths swam in the river, and across the gorge balconied houses recuperated: quiet lawns, striped awnings.
A waiter materialised at their table. Tight high-waisted trousers, a pouch at his hip for coin.
‘Tea,’ said Konnie. ‘With lemon. For four. And some pastries.’ Her long fine hair was burnished copper in the flickering splashes of sunlight between leaves. Her eyes flashed green at the waiter. A hint of a conspiratorial smile. ‘You decide which ones.’ A beautiful young woman with friends, on vacation. A husband or boyfriend would join them soon.
They’d arrived the night before. Lom used the last of Kistler’s roubles for rooms at the guest house Black Cypress. Maksim hadn’t appeared at breakfast.
‘He went up the mountain before dawn,’ said Konnie. ‘He wanted to have a look for himself.’
Lom said nothing. Since they had left Mirgorod, Maksim had changed subtly. His face cleared. No longer pent-up and clouded with frustration, he was self-contained, competent and direct. Back in the military again, he was a man at his best with a mission. A simple purpose. Lom liked him. He’d started to trust him too.
‘We can do this,’ said Maksim when he arrived. ‘It is possible. There is a way. But it’s all about timing. Everything has to work precisely right. Absolute discipline.’
‘OK,’ said Lom. ‘Go on.’
Maksim glanced at him. The two men had never quite resolved the unspoken question of who was in charge.
‘The dacha is a fortress,’ Maksim began. ‘A compound surrounded by steep hills. The only way in is a tunnel through the mountain. There’s a gate at the entrance from the road: wooden but three inches thick and reinforced with iron. There’s a gatehouse–always two guards, with binoculars and a view for miles down the mountain. They’d see any vehicle coming ten minutes before it reached them. The gate is kept closed and barred from within. It’s opened at a signal from the gatehouse, when they’re expecting company. But nobody comes and nobody goes, except the domestics make a shopping trip once a week. A couple of guards go with them.’
‘And inside?’ said Lom.
‘VKBD security. Plus Rond is there, and he’s got Parallel Sector personnel with him. And Rizhin has his own personal security. Two bodyguards. Part of the family. Very dangerous. Say, twenty in all.’
‘Not so much,’ said Lom.
‘There’s a militia company in the town, an armoured train five miles away, a cruiser in the bay. They think they’re safe enough.’
‘Patrols in the hills?’
‘No information,’ said Maksim. ‘But assume so. Yes.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ said Lom.
‘We must have the gate open at eleven tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock exactly, to the second. No sooner and no later. Kistler will be coming out in a car.’
‘A car?’ said Konnie.
‘Rizhin’s personal limousine. It’s the most powerful and heavily armoured they have. Bullet-proof glass in the windows. Thick steel panels underneath too. Hell, even the tyres are bullet-proof.’
‘And all we have to do,’ said Lom, ‘is open the gate tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’ said Konnie.
Maksim’s face clouded. ‘It can’t be unbarred from outside, so we’ll need explosives.’
Konnie looked around at the Park of Culture and Rest, at the teenage boys and girls in the river and stretched out on flat slabs of rock, lazy under the sun.
‘Where do you get explosives in a place like this?’ she said.
‘Every construction project here has to start with blasting rock,’ said Maksim. ‘There’s got to be a supply somewhere. A builder’s merchant. An engineering yard.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Lom. ‘You can leave the gate to me. I’ll take care of it. And the guards in the gatehouse too.’
Maksim looked at him doubtfully.
‘How?’ he said.
Lom hesitated. Maksim’s expression was soldierly. Sceptical. He couldn’t begin to explain. Explaining would make it worse.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Lom. ‘Please. I know what I’m doing. Leave it to me. If you can get Kistler to the gate at eleven, it’ll be open.’
Maksim bridled.
‘I must know what you intend,’ he said. ‘I will not lead my people blind. Lives depend on me.’
Lom shrugged. ‘Stay here then. I’m grateful for what you’ve done, and from here I will go on alone.’
‘Maksim,’ said Elena Cornelius quietly, ‘I think we should trust Vissarion. He has brought us this far. Without him we would be nowhere. We owe the chance we have to him.’
‘Chance!’ Maksim began, but thought better of it. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be at the gatehouse with you.’
‘Good,’ said Lom. ‘Thank you.’
He took a long draught of hot sweet tea and considered the plan. It was terrible. A really shit plan. But it would be fine.
Just keep blundering on. Plough through the obstacles as they come. Way too late to back off now.
7
Weary after weeks of frustrating travel–delays over paperwork, failed and diverted trains, fuel shortages, their carriage attacked by a hungry mob–the Philosophy League arrived at the Wieland Station. Penniless–all their money spent on unexpected expenses along the way–but back in Mirgorod at last.
They’d hoped for more of a reception. Forshin had wired ahead to Pinocharsky to warn him of their arrival. They’d expected journalists and prepared the lines they would take: Forshin had the text of a speech in his pocket, and Brutskoi had written an article for the Lamp, a manifesto of sorts, a call to intellectual arms. But there was no one to meet them. The League stood together in a disgruntled huddle on the platform, surrounded by their suitcases and chests of books, their luggage much battered and repaired. They all looked to Forshin for answers.
‘Well?’ said Yudifa Yudifovna. ‘So what are we to do?’
Eligiya Kamilova stood somewhat apart from the rest with Yeva and Galina Cornelius. The girls were restless and unhappy.
‘Do we have to stay with these people any more?’ said Yeva. ‘Can’t we go home now?’
Home? thought Kamilova. What is home?
‘Ha!’ said Forshin, visibly relieved. ‘Here’s Pinocharsky at last.’ He waved. ‘Pinocharsky! I say, Pinocharsky! Here!’