Darcy stumbled down through the narrow poplars, shouted no at the following dog and heard the widow call its name. He pushed its felt snout from the car door, set the gun on the passenger seat. He slammed the door and closed his eyes for an elevated second as he turned the cold ignition and it started, the rattle of the engine, the crunch of tyres reversing. He glanced back and saw the maid standing under the eaves like a shadow and prayed she’d not called for help, that somehow they believed he was Nikolai Chuprakov’s lover, and forgave him.
The snow fell in a sudden sheet as he drove through the columned entrance, from a place with a climate of its own, and the last thing he saw in the rear-view mirror was the whippet, perched like a statue in the lantern light behind him, the old man and widow gone. Now he felt engulfed in darkness, the taste in his mouth almost sulfuric; perhaps they’d have helped him, hidden him, but why? He couldn’t trust a look in an old man’s eyes.
He’d sneaked cars down driveways since he was nine, but then he’d felt an exhilaration, now he gripped the wheel to stop his own shaking, jumped through a gear and switched on the lights to blind the sentry who raised his hand. Through the snow and the thrash of the wipers, Darcy was the general with the general’s gun, leaving for the night, but then he saw the guard in the mirror, outside his box in the blanketed street, pointing, and Darcy accelerated.
Darcy started ripping buttons from the general’s coat, throwing them out into the snow with no horrid exaltation, just disgust; and Darcy couldn’t know if he’d ever forgive himself but the shaking wasn’t stopping and he didn’t turn back to search for Aurelio, or for evidence of Fin. He drove on towards the city.
A siren, but it was a train, the gates of a level crossing lowered quickly before him. He looked back at a van behind him, prayed it wasn’t police, imprisoning him, he gazed ahead into the hoot and rattle, the blur of endless hammers and sickles emblazoned on carriages, symbols of cutting and bludgeoning, in rhythm. He touched the burn on his neck, scabbed now, and he tore at it, the pain like a tranquiliser, ripping the crusted edge as a whoosh of windswept snow blasted the car from the last carriage passing and he stared at oncoming cars at the crossing—two green sedans in tandem, militiamen, and as he jolted the Lada over the tracks, Svetlana turned from the second car and caught him there, and as they passed they watched each other but Svetlana’s eyes said nothing to him but go. And he wished he could tell her to look for Aurelio but the city was somewhere ahead, the river to his left, and he wove through the night, his vision blurred with fear and vodka.
He dabbed his neck with the collar of the coat with fingers already tainted with blood, and thought of axes pounding through the bathroom door, searching for spare keys, the widow calling her father, the head of Special Forces. He thought he saw the beacons of the Siminov Monastery above him, lights that hit the pistol on the seat, his fingerprints all over it, his eyes that stung like nettles, straining as far as they could; he twitched and slowed at a claxon sound, an ambulance blaring, coming towards him, but he pressed the Lada forward, passing cars that pulled over, a snow plough, a military truck, if he could just keep the river to his left, but he felt as if the road was veering away. The outlines of buildings clustering, closing in, he wondered if he could find the metro station at Taganskaya, abandon the car, but he knew how to get to Kropotkinskaya by road—follow the river to the Chayka Pool—the weather so thick, his head aching, he dabbed his neck and pressed his elbow against the velvet coat and sensed the slide of plastic, the sacred telegram, how the Turk had almost reached him, crouched and then been felled. Darcy pictured KGB men, done with the Armenians, waiting for him at the embassy gates.
He looked over at the gun, uncertain how to shoot it, then up at a stop light that burned red and the gun flew from the seat to the floor as he braked and his heart rose up, the car was sliding, bunting a black metal barrier. He swung into the skid so the Lada caught traction and Darcy turned left; then he saw what he knew was the lustreless sweep of the river. Out behind him everything refracted, camouflaged in snow, but there was the embankment approaching, the high sloping stones, and his hopes high with it. He couldn’t yet see the lit panorama of the Kremlin, but he knew where he was, the unyielding stone towers, the Armoury Palace and the endless facade of the walls and cathedrals, all of them above him, places with names he remembered. The Ivan the Great belltower and the Presidium.
In the wake of a bus he looked up at the school-age eyes peering scattershot out a back window, children in a winter like this, and he didn’t feel Russian, crushed by loss and steeled by it, he felt desperately alone. He reached down for the gun but grasped cigarettes. Aurelio’s. But there would be no Aurelio. There would be stray dogs in winter, a general congealing in steam. There would be shaven-headed boys being raped in the gulags or cast out into snow.
He turned at the swimming pool onto Kropotkinskaya Prospekt, but a car turned behind him, and all he could do was stare in the rear-view mirror as he slowed for number thirteen. The other car crept past and no obvious convoy of KGB vehicles waited, the quiet felt suspicious, the guard hut lonely as an outhouse in the guttering light. He reached down for the pistol and rested it in his lap, under his new coat, pulling in beside the sentry box, and he felt how easy it would be to use a gun, after cutting at eyes with a knife; you could turn a gun on yourself if you had to.
No one inside the gates, in the snow-blurred shadows, the pitch-dark mansion. A torch shining in the window and Darcy held the roll of notes from his pocket and closed his eyes as he wound the window down into the light on his face and the sleet that spat on his cheeks—the blunt, oval face and same spare chin that denied him the last time. Darcy handed over what remained of the roll of money and looked straight ahead.
Ulli Breffny, he said, clasping the wheel so his hands didn’t tremble, willing himself through, letting go and holding on. Another car passing, the guard picking up a receiver concealed under the counter and phoning, mumbling in Russian, a call he hadn’t made last time, and Darcy felt the gun in his lap, about to point it up, to be sure it was the right call and then, ahead of him, the iron-barred entrance began its drag through the slush, and a pair of rusted arms lifted like they were about to embrace; Darcy drove in almost convulsively, more wary still than elated, faint, as he held for the sound of the creaking gates to lock him in, the hinges like a child screaming.
Australian Embassy, Kropotkinskaya Prospekt 13
Sunday, 10.25 pm
Darcy looked up in disbelief, craned his head to see if anyone waited, if a striding figure would emerge to welcome him, but the butter-coloured mansion sat in an unnatural dark. Then he saw a woman at the top of a low-lit set of stairs, coiffed like an air hostess, her head covered in a plastic rain scarf. She walked down the slick narrow steps and Darcy watched her, hardly dared breathe or swallow. As she approached, he pocketed the pistol and opened his window, quelling his instinct to rush.
I’m Ulli de Breffny, she said through the snow. A de before the Breffny, a strawberry-blondeness to her hair, eyebrows carefully pencilled, and Darcy felt his spirit returning. Darcy Bright, he said. He fumbled his collar up over the bloodied sore and tried to get out but his legs seemed weak beneath him like he’d been crippled. He wanted to drape himself over her for safety, but she was formal, touching his shoulder as if she understood. She shepherded him to the stairway with a certain urgency. Darcy looked over at her. Thank you, he said. Is this still Soviet soil?