‘My friend, you don’t make it easy for me.’
‘Beat my ear, why don’t you? And warn me of the right turning at Trubcevsk, and the road for Pogar. I’m listening.’
Molenkov breathed hard. ‘A half-share of a million American dollars, what’s it for?’
No answer.
Again, Molenkov tried. ‘What will I do with a half-share of a million American dollars? Is it for a tin under the bed? Is it for an apartment in Cannes or Nice, or on the Black Sea? Is it for hoarding or spending?’
Yashkin kept to the centre of a straight and narrow road, lips pursed, forehead knotted, but did not respond.
‘I am now sustained by anger,’ Molenkov said, ‘bred by what was done to me. Dismissal. My pension paid only erratically. My status taken. Cold to freezing in the winter because of the cost of fuel, hungry throughout the year because I have to scavenge in the street market for the cheapest food. All around me is corruption, an anarchy of criminality, the disease of Aids and the affliction of narcotics … and so, my friend, what will I do with a half-share of a million American dollars?’
Past sodden fields, and a river about to burst its banks, past dripping forestry, the horizon short, misted by low cloud.
‘We talk about it, make jokes, and dream of the apartment in Sochi or above the Mediterranean, and the wealth that comes from the sale of it … My friend, would you leave Sarov? Your wife wants her remaining years to be spent close to the monastery, to be in the quiet company of St Seraphim. She’ll want to sweep the floors there and bring flowers, meditate on the story of his sainthood, when the thieves beat and crippled him, when he argued before the court that mercy be shown them. She would wish to be in Sarov to celebrate the day of his birth and the anniversary of his canonization. Not important to you or me, my friend, but she won’t go with you. Will you abandon her? Will you take the money, drive back to Sarov and put the money in a tin? Spend it slowly for fear of attention being attracted to new-found and unsubstantiated wealth? I ask you, what’s it for?’
Yashkin said, ‘I think we’re close to the turning. The next village is Trubchevsk, and I think the road to Pogar will be off the main street.’
‘Can’t you answer me?’ With growing desperation, Molenkov hurled the question at Yashkin. ‘Or won’t you?’
Yashkin said, in a flat monotone, ‘It’s important we don’t miss the turning at Trubchevsk or we’ll have to go many kilometres off our route.’
Molenkov said, ‘Tell me, because I want to hear again, how you took the thing out.’
He was told. The detail never changed. A dozen times in the two months since Viktor, the friend of his dead son, had come to Sarov, Yashkin had told him the story. All bullshit, bluff and the authority of rank, the creaking cart, the grunts of conscripts and the salutes of the sentries. He had to laugh.
Molenkov said, ‘Today, surely, it wouldn’t be possible to get one out.’
Yashkin said, ‘Then there was a window, and it was wide open. I assume now that it’s closed. Then, as I did, you could walk through it.’
That day, at that hour, an American general of the Strategic Command was the guest of a Russian general of the 12th Directorate. His tour was of the storage zones and silos at the Federal Nuclear Centre outside Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod oblast. The American regarded himself as a trusted friend of the Russian and had escorted his opposite number to missile installations in the Midwest of the United States. As military men of experience, they talked a similar language. A coffee break had been called, and an opportunity for a comfort stop. The American used the time to speak quietly into the portable Dictaphone he carried, the better to remember his thoughts when it came to writing up a report that would be studied by a congressional committee.
It was a whisper. ‘I believe old suspicions and anxieties about security at Sarov are now groundless … I have seen, in an action exercise, Special Forces troops who are now deployed on the base perimeters, and they were working with gunship choppers. They are élite troops, well motivated and well paid … Old stories of scientific personnel taking to the streets in demonstrations and, in effect, striking on the grounds of non-payment of wages are surely a matter of the past. I have been shown sections of outer and inner fencing around the storage zones, which are fitted with high-technology security sensors donated by the US and identical to those in place at our Los Alamos installation, New Mex, and I am assured that minor thefts of equipment and material are now blocked. One silo for nuclear warheads in storage was opened for me. It was behind two steel-reinforced doors, which were sufficient to withstand any conventional or nuclear bomb blast. I am informed that the military of the 12th Directorate have a good handle on the personnel in sensitive positions, and they’re thoroughly vetted. Conclusions on the visit here: Sarov is in the hands of serious, high-quality people. I do not believe leakage is possible, and it is denied with emphasis that any such leakage of warheads or materials took place in the past.’
‘This is it. Go right. This is the Trubchevsk turning,’ Molenkov said.
Yashkin thanked him. His friend had said the previous day that he promised to try not to talk of the thing, but might not honour his promise … and in the centre of that community, where no signpost stood, he swung the wheel and turned right.
Could the man not stop talking?
Molenkov asked, ‘Where, friend, will it be hardest?’
Yashkin answered, ‘At the border. We cross it tomorrow. Molenkov, do you talk to hear your own voice when you’re frightened, or because of the profundity of your opinion? Tomorrow we face a challenging difficulty. Tomorrow we cross the border. Don’t ask me what’s at the border on our side or on the Belarus side because I don’t know. I have no knowledge of the equipment there. If there’s equipment for detection I don’t know how sophisticated or sensitive it is. Please, my friend, can we just drive?’
‘After the border we have five hundred more kilometres to go. How will you feel then?’
‘Excellent. We’re going to the river where we’ll meet your Viktor’s employer. I think him to be a man, at his trade, of ability.’
‘He’s criminal scum, no more or less. However, he’ll be carrying a million American dollars.’
‘My knowledge of such people — obviously limited — tells me he’ll be careful, and all the people with him. The border is the difficulty, not people who are careful with their security. Molenkov, please, give me some fucking quiet. Such people understand security in a way that I never — and I don’t hesitate to admit it — did.’
Viktor had him by the throat, but that was Viktor’s second movement.
Mikhail had given the signal, and Viktor’s first movement had been to a wrist, then to the straps and his fingers had wrestled the buckle into place. Mikhail had fastened the other wrist to the chair arm. He had long missed Viktor, his old friend and fighting companion. It had been a bad day when Viktor was ordered to London.
He had the chain-saw started. Fumes in his nostrils. It had taken four pulls to wake the engine and he had revved it so that the chain raced on the cogs. Now the saw was near the Englishman’s feet, but out of reach of his kicks. It idled and spluttered. Mostly the chain-saw was for show, and he didn’t like using it because of the blood it threw into his face, but he had used it when he thought it necessary in Perm, Moscow and in Berlin.
Mikhail held the cordless drill, and worked his index finger on its trigger.
The drill made less mess.
With questioning, lowering over the man, sometimes shouting and sometimes hissing the questions, he had attempted to create fear — had failed. He sensed now that he had little time. In Perm, in the first months since he had gone to work for Reuven Weissberg — Viktor with him — it had been hammered into his mind that he must create fear. Without fear he was nowhere, no roofs sold, no customers coming and no rivals backing off. He was paid well to make fear. He had little time, knew that because Josef Goldmann was whimpering like a fucking kid, and Reuven Weissberg had shifted twice in his chair as if bored that the questioning had led to no admissions. Sweat streamed on the man’s forehead. He had done interrogations, enough of them, in his work with State Security and had rarely felt the need to raise his voice. Now, because failure faced him, he screamed the questions as he held the drill, racing, close to the kneecap. Mikhail had never in his life gone to an Orthodox church, had never sunk to his knees, had never offered up a prayer, and he did not believe in angels. He did not believe this goddam man, but sensed the threat of him.