‘An area of Moscow.’
‘What’s there?’
‘Your home.’
‘My what!’
‘Your home,’ repeated the Russian.
‘But I thought…’ said Willick, foolishly twisting in his seat, as if the luxury building beyond the gated courtyard would still be visible, like Coney Island had been that day when they drove away.
The man beside him laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he said. ‘Gorbachov himself doesn’t live in a place like that!’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Willick, weak-voiced.
‘We wanted you comfortable to perform a particular function, which you did,’ said Belov.
‘And now?’
‘You are being allocated an apartment of your own in a block at Karacharovo,’ disclosed Belov. ‘That in itself is a concession: housing is not easy in Moscow. Each day be ready at 8.30. A car will call for you: there are a lot of questions we need answering, upon the information you provided over the years.’
It was crumbling again, like it always did, thought the American desperately. ‘What happens after I’ve answered all your questions?’ he asked.
‘You will be allowed to attend school to learn Russian.’
‘How will I live? Money, I mean,’ said Willick.
‘A job will be found when you are considered qualified. There’ll be a pension, for what you’ve done in the past. And a salary when you start working. You really will be treated extremely well.’
The apartment was in an isolated block on what looked like the beginning of a new housing estate. A lot of side roads were unpaved, puddled and rutted, and a second block stood half finished, girders and metal rods sticking up like a giant rib cage. No one was working on it and the impression was of desolation. They had to balance on planking because the outside pavement was not completed and the area hollowed out for it was one huge, water-filled ditch. The elevator shaft was an empty, unprotected hole, but Willick’s flat was fortunately only on the second floor. Belov handed him a key, for the American to admit himself. In contrast to its outside appearance everything inside the apartment seemed old and worn. The scrap of carpet was threadbare and the seats of two chairs either side of a small dining table were greased by previous use. The kitchen led directly off. The stove was slimed and black and there were several rings grimed around the sink. There were further rings around the bath and the toilet and the similarly stained mirror over the handbasin was cracked so that it reflected a distorted image. The bedroom had a mirrored dresser, a small wardrobe and a narrow single bed, covered in thin, grey linen.
Willick turned, face twisted in disgust, and said: ‘I can’t live here!’
‘Where else can you go?’ asked Belov.
The grinning son of a bitch at the other place would have known what was going to happen, Willick guessed.
The meeting was at Wilson Drew’s request, in response to the panic from Washington, and he chose Le Due. As always Kapalet watched the American enter and waited a sufficiently safe time before entering off the Boulevard Raspail.
‘Washington is wetting its pants,’ announced Drew.
‘They’ve got good reason,’ goaded Kapalet.
‘I need a hell of a lot of help,’ pleaded Drew.
‘That’s not going to be as easy as it has been,’ warned the Russian.
‘Why not?’ asked Drew, immediately worried.
‘I’m being recalled to Moscow,’ announced Kapalet.
34
The chances of his being detected were appalling. On the Interstate there had at least been other concealing vehicles but on the country roads Yuri was utterly exposed. The one car separating him from the Buick carrying Petr turned off after only a mile and Yuri decelerated, letting the distance increase between them, protected only by the rise and fall of the road and its too occasional bends. Because it was ingrained from his training he’d precisely started to check the distance as he’d driven away from the schooclass="underline" so far two and three eighths of a mile. It seemed like a hundred. The wheel was slippery in his hands and the perspiration stuck the shirt to his back. Streets and road signs registered, because they could be important: Meadow and Little Pitch and New Pitch and Heron Pond and Marsh Pond. Far to his right the treeline was abruptly broken by the defoliation he’d detected earlier, a brief baldness, and Yuri added that to the attempted landmarks. Webster Road and Cranbery Pond and Scharmerhorn Hill. Four miles exactly from the school. The humps and dips in the road were becoming more frequent: still not enough cover. They seemed to be climbing. He’d have to stop soon, abandon this attempt: exchange the car overnight, a different model and a different colour and try to evolve another system of pursuit, the following day.
And then the car in front turned. It was abrupt, with no signalled warning, and Yuri braked hurriedly, jerked forward against the wheel by the suddenness of the manoeuvre. And because he was closer against the windscreen he saw the helicopter. It was hovering some way to his left but as he watched it began a series of gradually expanding circles in the middle of one of which it pulled away in his direction. Yuri’s instant fear was that it was coming towards him but sharply it turned upon itself and from its position Yuri guessed it had isolated the car he had been following, minutes earlier, and was flying some sort of aerial escort. It stopped practically at once, hovering again, and Yuri memorized a clump of trees darker than the forest around them.
Hurriedly Yuri put the car back in gear, knowing he had to move before the machine resumed its circling and expanded the survey sufficiently to isolate him on the road. It only took him minutes to reach where the other car had turned; Yuri had hoped for a driveway but it was not. It was a minor dirt raod and at the speed he passed Yuri was unable to see any name sign. It wasn’t necessary: he wouldn’t have any difficulty finding it again. And he would locate it again, he thought, the decision hardening in his mind. He still needed to understand why Kazin had given him the assignment, but having got this close Yuri determined to complete it absolutely.
Yuri’s intention had been to drive back to Torrington for what he wanted but he saw the signpost to Thomaston giving a closer mileage, so instead he headed there. A part of his KGB instruction he’d never imagined he would need, reflected Yuri. But perhaps the most vivid to recall, and not just because of its savagery. It had been the nearest he’d come to failing any of the tests: how near only he knew. The parachute drop had been twenty miles from Bryansk, which was one of the few map references he had been given, because that was the city he had to reach undetected in an exercise which purported him to be a denounced agent pursued by a hostile enemy. And his pursuers had been hostile, spetsnaz commandos whose own fail-or-be-dismissed exercise had been to prevent his reaching the sanctuary of the city. To achieve which they were permitted to employ every and any method they chose. There had been a hunt from behind and a cordon ahead and the bullets and the booby traps had been real, not faked. Yuri had not intended the commando to be maimed in one of his own traps, after he intentionally triggered an alarm: merely to create a diversion sufficiently distracting for him to get past the country road barrier. The mine had been specifically placed to prevent that being possible. Had the man not stumbled on it himself, Yuri would have trodden upon it and been crippled, if not killed. Later, at the KGB academy in Moscow, he heard rumours that deaths were very frequent during such exercises.
In Thomaston he protectively spread the purchases, buying the waterproof rucksack and hiking boots from the obvious sports store but obtaining the other things – the thick socks, jeans, anorak, torch, sports shirt, woollen hat and binoculars – from various shops. He parked the car in a multi-storey park on a deserted level where he was able quickly to change, packing his suit in the rucksack, and left by the least conspicuous side entrance.