‘We’re here,’ Kolya whispered, pointing at a cross on the page. ‘And they’re there.’ He pointed at another cross in the centre of a square box.
‘That’s a chamber about fifteen metres by ten. Two side rooms. Here and here. Not where this fellow told us, though. But Mole knows these tunnels as well as any man knows the streets above. I suppose the fellow thought he could lead us into a trap – more fool him.’
He drew two small boxes to the side and below the larger box to signify the side rooms. Three lines ran from the chamber on the rough map, and Korolev decided these must be the tunnels that led into and out of it. One of the lines led directly to the cross that Kolya had pointed out as their current location and the Thief now ran his pencil along it.
‘This is the passage ahead. If you stay here, Mole will take the rest of us through the side passages and we’ll have them trussed up nicely. Give us ten minutes to get into position and then come along the passage shooting and shouting while we hit them from behind… Or pick them off as they run,’ he added, after a moment of contemplation.
‘So we do all the work,’ Korolev asked, incredulous, ‘while you pick off the survivors?’
Kolya smiled and put a hand on the barrel of Korolev’s machine gun.
‘Would you hang around in a tunnel if two pepper grinders were coming along it spitting lead?’
‘No, but I might leave them a farewell present of a grenade without its pin.’
‘You’ve a better plan?’
‘We all hit at once – hard and fast. Get in as close as we can before we start shooting and then cut down anything that moves. Excepting each other, of course.’
Kolya nodded his agreement, and handed him a small torch from his pocket.
‘Make sure you know who you’re shooting at. I’ll leave Mishka with you. I know you two don’t love each other, but if anyone comes along the tunnel Mishka’s the fellow you want waiting with a knife in his hand.’
Korolev grunted, thinking that was just as good a reason not to have Mishka with you. Still, now that he thought of it, they could always send the rat in first when it came to the shooting.
‘You have a watch?’ Kolya asked, tapping the strap of his own.
‘Yes,’ Korolev answered, feeling slightly offended. He was a detective, after all. Where would he be without a watch?
‘Mole?’ Kolya went on.
The older man nodded.
‘Let’s set our watches now for half-past eight. In fifteen minutes we go in. Unless something happens sooner, of course. In which case we don’t wait for an invitation, right?’
‘Agreed,’ Korolev said, doing his best to make it clear that he wasn’t being ordered about here.
Whispered instructions proceeded down the line of men and then, with surprising stealth, a procession of burly gangsters squeezed past him – only the faintest of sounds coming from men not inches away. He counted them as they passed. Ten. Twelve including himself and Slivka.
‘Nervous, copper?’
Thirteen, Korolev remembered, regretting that there wouldn’t be more of Mishka to hide behind when they sent him down the tunnel first.
In a whisper not much louder than a breath, Korolev told them the plan. He looked at his watch.
‘In five minutes, we start to move. Very slowly. Mishka, you go first – if we meet someone on the way, you give him the directions to heaven.’
‘With pleasure, jefe.’
There wasn’t anything more to be said and so they sat there, on their haunches, in the pitch black, listening to the sound of the water dripping from the roof not far away, and Korolev found himself rubbing gently at the trigger guard of the machine gun as he counted off the seconds until it was time for them to make their move. At one stage there came a noise that sounded like the scuttle of small pebbles, but where he couldn’t tell, and he felt his hand clench around the gun before reassuring himself that it had probably been just a rock fall. He listened with a concentration that made his ears hurt, but there was nothing else. Then, shielding the torch’s bulb in his hand so that his bones were outlined in the ghostly red light that shone through his fingers, he checked his watch.
‘Time to move,’ he whispered and the click of the torch’s switch as he slid it off was joined by the noise of safety catches being moved to the appropriate position and rounds being chambered. Despite their painstaking care, the sounds seemed unnaturally loud and he felt the familiar electric surge through his body that always came with the approach of danger. Swallowing to relieve his dry mouth, he followed Mishka down the tunnel, each step as careful as a tightrope walker’s.
Step after careful step and breath after controlled breath they advanced. Then from up ahead came the sound of a companionable laugh – the kind a man might give in response to a familiar joke. Korolev’s entire body froze in mid-step before he allowed it, very slowly, to move forward and come to a more comfortable rest.
Without a word, Mishka moved forward and Korolev followed, sensing rather than hearing Slivka coming behind him. The laugh sounded once again. Deeper this time and more drawn out. Was it a different man? Older perhaps? Korolev kept moving, wondering how far away the men were. Now there was a glimmer of light up ahead, at first only a vague colouring of the darkness but growing stronger as he advanced, and it revealed the Thief’s silhouette, twenty paces ahead of them, moving with the smooth stealth of a cat approaching an unwary bird, a knife in one hand while his other slipped the heavy revolver he was carrying into the back of his belt. Korolev upped his pace – he wanted to be close at hand when the gangster did whatever he was going to do.
They were near enough now to hear the murmur of conversation and other incidental sounds as well – the scrape of a heavy wooden object along stone, the squeal of a nail being levered out of its tight wooden resting place. Now that Korolev was able to make out, even if only faintly, the walls and roof of the passage they were following, he increased his pace – just as Mishka disappeared around a corner up ahead. Korolev, arriving at the same point not more than a handful of heartbeats later, found the Thief holding a black-haired youngster in his arms, Mishka’s free hand guiding the gushing blood from a slit throat onto the dead man’s clothing at the same time as he lowered the body gently to the floor.
They were now in a small chamber lit by a sputtering candle, on two sides of which benches had been carved out of the stone itself. A rifle, shining with newness, leant against the bench on which the sentry had been sitting, or more likely sleeping, until Mishka had brought his life to a close.
‘Help me with this, can you?’ a voice said from beyond the far entrance.
‘Let me finish this first,’ another answered, and Korolev was half-convinced that he could hear the invisible men breathing hard as they set about whatever work was occupying them. Mishka grinned at him, his teeth golden in the candlelight, as he wiped his bloody hand clean on the dead sentry’s arm. Was it Korolev’s imagination or did the wide eyes of the corpse show surprise that he was lying prone on a cold stone floor, his throat a bloody gash?
Korolev looked at his watch. They were early by two minutes and close enough, it seemed to him, to hear the men next door wheezing away like steam engines. He glanced over at Slivka’s grave expression – a contrast to Mishka’s, who was looking at the two of them with a smile on his face, as if he were sitting in the front row at the cinema. If the situation were different, Korolev would have had the greatest of pleasure in throttling him, but instead he held up two fingers to indicate how long was left. He pointed his weapon at the doorway, and was pleased to see Slivka follow suit. Mishka, winking at Korolev as he did so, pulled his long-barrelled hand cannon from his belt.
And all would no doubt have proceeded in an orderly fashion if there hadn’t come the sound of approaching feet from the tunnel along which Korolev and the others had so painstakingly advanced. Even Mishka lost his jaunty grin when the noise became unmistakable – at least half a dozen men cutting off their retreat. Korolev looked at Mishka, wondering if the approaching footsteps might be friends. Mishka shrugged his shoulders. Could they be Chekists? No, NKVD men would have approached slowly and stealthily. These fellows were bowling along as if they were out for an evening walk and Korolev wouldn’t be surprised if they were carrying weapons not dissimilar to the nice shiny rifle the dead sentry had been cuddling.