Eugene didn’t try to run, and he certainly didn’t go for a weapon. He was pale, shaking, tears rolling down his cheek, a growing wet patch on the front of his oversized trousers, piss running down his leg.
“Please…” he managed.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Gulag muttered.
“Tell me the truth, Eugene,” Vadim said quietly.
“I am!” he howled. “They don’t tell me anything! I’m not good at this! I’m scared all the time! I don’t know who’s watching me! I live in fear constantly!” He sank to his knees in the puddle of his own piss. Princess looked disgusted, and Gulag shook his head. “I just want this to be over!” he sobbed. If it was an act, it was a damn good one; but it was the piss that convinced Vadim. He couldn’t conceive of any man willingly pissing himself.
“Do you have equipment for detecting electronic surveillance?” Vadim asked, and Eugene nodded. Vadim pointed at Farm Boy. “You’re going to show this man where it is and then you’re going to show him where you believe all the listening devices are hidden.” Eugene nodded again, utterly miserable.
THEY HAD EUGENE point out the listening devices and put the television on, before tying and gagging him and putting him in the bath. Then Farm Boy conducted another sweep with the bug detecting tools and found more listening devices.
“We have a decision to make,” Vadim told them. They were all crouched, close together, speaking in a low voice in case Farm Boy had missed any of the bugs. “Do we do their bidding or not?”
The Fräulein frowned. Vadim suspected that she did not approve of the breakdown in military protocol.
“What are our alternatives?” New Boy asked carefully.
“We defect,” Vadim said. They were all staring at him now, even Skull and Gulag.
“Even I’m not a traitor,” Gulag spat.
“I believe we have been betrayed,” Vadim said. “This feels like we’re being set up, somehow.”
“With all due respect,” the Fräulein said, “are you sure you don’t just have misgivings about the end result of the mission?”
Farm Boy was frowning. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“We have to be picking up an NBC weapon,” Skull pointed out. Mongol drew back a little, and Gulag laughed humourlessly.
“He’s right,” Vadim said. “I suspect our job will be to pick such a weapon up, perhaps a suitcase bomb of some kind, and deliver it to a target. I think we’re so heavily armed because we’ll have to fight our way to the objective.”
“Then why no body armour? No med kit?” Mongol asked.
It was a good question, and Vadim didn’t have a good answer.
“Perhaps we’ll be moving too fast for a med kit?” Farm Boy suggested, though he didn’t sound like he really believed it.
“Too fast for body armour?” New Boy asked.
“It’s the Red Army,” Gulag said. “It’s probably a logistics mistake.” Except Vadim was pretty sure that the KGB had packed their gear. These weren’t the kind of mistakes they made.
“So?” Vadim asked.
“What do you want to do, boss?” the Fräulein asked.
“I will act on whatever you decide.”
“I have family back home,” Mongol said. “I can’t defect if there’s even the slightest chance I can get home.” Vadim could tell Mongol didn’t like his chances of getting back.
“I owe the USSR nothing, I say we defect,” Skull said. Suddenly everyone was staring at the sniper.
“I’m no traitor,” New Boy managed. Princess glared at him.
“I say we do the job,” she said. Then it went quiet.
“Fräulein?” Vadim asked.
“I am with you, whatever is chosen.”
“This is your decision,” Vadim told her.
“And I have made it,” she told him evenly. Vadim turned to look at Farm Boy. The big Georgian was deep in thought. Gulag was watching his friend.
“I think…” Farm Boy finally said, “that it is not a good thing to turn your back on your loyalties” – he glanced over at Skull – “however they are imposed.” Skull nodded. “I think we should follow our orders.” All of them turned to look at Gulag, who in turn was staring at Vadim.
“You know we’re all dead anyway, right? Smoking, radioactive corpses?” he asked. Vadim nodded. Gulag glanced over at Farm Boy. “Fuck it, I’m in.”
“You can go your own way,” Vadim told Skull. The sniper just narrowed his eyes, offended at the suggestion he would leave the squad in the lurch.
CHAPTER FIVE
1500 Eastern Standard Time (EST), 16th November 1987
Grand Central Station, New York City
VADIM PUSHED HIS way through the door and into the cavernous edifice of Grand Central Station, New Boy beside him. Gulag and Farm Boy were a little way behind, far enough that the four didn’t look as though they were together. At the other side of the concourse, the Fräulein and Princess, Mongol and Skull would be doing the same thing.
Looking around surreptitiously, he made his way down the grimy marble stairs into the main concourse, hefting his luggage, which carried much of his weaponry. There was no doubt it was a grand building, but it had seen better days; it reminded him a little of Leningrad in that respect. The domed ceiling high overhead was encrusted with soot. The dirty marble floor was covered in rubbish, which haggard-looking janitors pushed around with a brush. Ticket booths ran down one wall. A display board above them showed arrivals from places that Vadim had only heard of during intelligence briefings. A dirty, once-grand four-faced clock sat atop an information booth. Tawdry adverts covered the walls, offering a technicolor capitalist utopia for just the right amount of money. All of which seemed at odds with the hundreds of Americans crowding into the huge edifice, their heads down, moving with purpose as though performing some complex dance.
A raised walkway ran around the main concourse: Vadim caught a glimpse of the Fräulein pulling her wheeled suitcase around the long walkway, but he couldn’t see the others. The idea was that the snipers and machine-gunners would act as fire support from an elevated position if things went wrong, while Vadim’s team retrieved the package.
Vadim reached the bottom of the stairs, put his own wheeled suitcase down onto the grimy marble floor and looked around. New Boy joined him.
“Anything wrong?” New Boy asked quietly. Vadim was aware of Gulag and Farm Boy surreptitiously moving into covering positions on the stairs behind him. There wasn’t anything wrong – not that Vadim could see – but something didn’t seem right. He looked around at the commuters scurrying back and forth, on their way to and from work, going home, on their way to visit friends and relatives, families with children. It was hard to think of them as enemies, but he couldn’t see the American authorities wanting to start a gunfight in the midst of them. Vadim shook his head and headed down the chandelier-lit slope between the stairs into the lower concourse.
WHERE THE MAIN concourse had been cavernous, the lower concourse seemed cave-like, perhaps thanks to the lack of natural light. Or perhaps he just felt trapped because this was a poor place for a fight. The sloping ceiling felt much lower than it actually was, and people buffeted him as they ran for the platforms on either side of the concourse; the air smelled of fried food, overflowing garbage bins and too many people, and it felt like every single transit cop was watching them as they passed.
The luggage storage area was in an alcove set back from the lower concourse. There were ten long rows of lockers. Vadim checked the key that Eugene had given him. They had discussed killing the spy, but decided to let him live in case he proved useful later on.