‘What did we learn?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Luke Davies answered. ‘Don’t know. I mean, we’ve accessed a big player’s home, but inside it’s what I imagine a functionary’s apartment would be in fifty Russian cities. There’s nothing. No wealth, no opulence, extravagance. So, what’s the motive for criminality, doing the big deal that Lawson blathers about? I suppose she’s central, but I don’t know why. All I can say is that she had white hair when she was in that forest, and she would have been about twenty.’
‘Could a scarring emotional experience turn your hair white?’
‘I suppose so, but I don’t know.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it. We go and find them.’
Katie nodded. She did the mobile call, reached Lawson. Did he want a run-down? He did not. She didn’t bother to express her opinion that Luke Davies had been bloody double-time brilliant in gaining entry, and that she had achieved the hoary old one of needing the toilet and had won him half a minute alone in the kitchen. She didn’t think Lawson would have jumped for joy. They should drive to Warsaw.
She took the wheel, and he did the maps.
The sign said it was still two kilometres to the Customs point.
Right to the last, before accepting the inevitable and joining the crawl of the queue, they had debated whether a diversion north or south, and an attempt to use side-roads, was worthwhile. Had decided, with grim reluctance, that the M13 was the only possible route. Molenkov’s finger traced the frontier line on the map across his knees, and he’d bent low over the unfolded sheets to see the detail better. He had muttered of an absence of roads, too many rivers that would not have bridges and would be so swollen as to make ridiculous the thought of fording them, forests that were great blocks on the map.
Earlier there were two, three opportunities when they might have turned off the M13 and gone south, towards Klimovo, or to the north and on a side road to Svatsk, or tried for a larger loop and gone far north and west to Krasnaja Gora, but Molenkov had pulled a long, mock-despairing face when they had come close to the signs and Yashkin had driven on. They had reached the queues. At first they had progressed in little darted movements. Then it had been a crawl but continuous. Now they were halted.
Molenkov’s cough was hacking. Yashkin checked the windows. They were, of course, closed tight against the rain but something of the foulness around the Polonez seeped in. The lorries belched fumes from their exhausts. Yashkin thought they were surrounded by a fog of polluting gases. The taste was in his mouth and dried his throat, seeming to scratch rather than tickle it.
Did the Belarus authorities have modern detection equipment to scan the vehicles crossing to their territory? Did they have the devices that would read radiation traces? He had not thought so, and Molenkov had not known. Because of rivers and forests it was decided, after the debate, that the chance must be taken: fucking Belarus, with an economy still back in medieval or at best Tsarist times, would not have the equipment to recognize the signature of a plutonium pit in the heart of a Zhukov weapon.
Another anxiety, now more pressing, intruded on the mind of Yashkin. It would not have reared itself if they had driven fast and directly to the twin Customs points. What he would have called, all those years before when he had worked, the ‘human factor’. The pompous official, the man who revelled in the power given him, the arsehole consumed by self-esteem, the bastard who sauntered to a vehicle, peered through its windows, examined passports and driving licence, then demanded a search of the interior. That worry had been a pimple head, a mosquito’s bite, but the irritation was now scratched and had become an open sore.
He drove the car forward, braked again, saw tail-lights in the queues ahead, watched the drift of the fumes across the windscreen. He told Molenkov that the anxiety for the equipment should have been secondary to the worry over the human factor of an official demanding to search the Polonez.
‘I mean, it’s hardly hidden, only covered. Well, tell me — you’d know, my friend, because you could act the part of a zampolit and be pompous, an arsehole and arrogant. You were the small bureaucrat official with no status beyond that given you by the uniform.’
His friend was grinning. Between the violence of the coughing, Molenkov gave a black chuckle. ‘Can’t you see yourself, Yashkin? Weren’t you such an official?’
Hands raised, Yashkin accepted his point. ‘What do we do?’
A little frown from Molenkov, an index finger tapping his chin as he thought. The pursing of lips because a decision was reached. ‘It’s the uniform.’
‘No riddles. Speak clearly.’
‘You said it yourself, idiot, the uniform is his status. The official withers to insignificance when he doesn’t wear a uniform.’
‘But when he sees us he’s in the uniform. Russian Customs or Belarus Customs, they have a uniform. We can’t expect him to be naked when we reach him.’
Molenkov said, ‘We brought our uniforms. We didn’t know for what purpose. We use medals and uniforms. I talk and you’re silent. We both wear uniforms.’
They went forward again, stopped again.
Yashkin eased his foot off the brake pedal. ‘Full uniform?’
‘Full uniform and medals, the medals over the ribbons.’
‘Good.’ Yashkin chuckled, then switched off the engine. It guttered. ‘I was stupid not to realize that a minor bureaucrat, a political officer, would understand the limited mentality of a Customs arsehole.’
They climbed out, stood and stretched. The fumes made Molenkov’s coughing worse. The side door was opened, and each took out his uniform, then searched his bag for his medals. They carried the uniforms and medals to the verge and climbed a couple of metres up a shallow bank. They stood in the rain among the dead grass of winter and stripped. They gave a show, heard shouts of mock-abuse and derisory whistles. Engines roared and noxious fumes spurted from the exhaust pipes. Molenkov was convulsed with coughing. Horns bellowed. The vehicles edged forward but those behind the Polonez couldn’t move.
‘Do I look the part?’ Molenkov demanded of his friend.
‘Yes,’ Yashkin responded. ‘You’re the perfect example of a minor official.’
Molenkov punched him. He was grinning, but the blow made Yashkin gasp. The shouts, yells, whistles and the noise from the horns burgeoned. They picked up their clothing, took time to fold the items roughly, then skipped through the moving lorries and went back to the Polenez. Yashkin started up and cruised the space left empty in front of them. When he reached down to change gear he could hear, satisfyingly, the tinkle of the medals. The fit of his tunic disappointed him. It hung on his chest now as a loose cloak would, and it was the same with Molenkov’s but he wouldn’t tell his friend.
Molenkov said, ‘Do you remember the power of that uniform?’
Yashkin paused, but only briefly. ‘The year before I was dismissed an NCO was brought to me. He had been caught at the wire of Zone Twelve and was about to carry three typewriters through a hole he’d made in the wire. Not radioactive material, not the blueprint of the layout of a warhead, but three fucking typewriters. He was so frightened of me — of my uniform — that he messed his trousers. I told him to take the typewriters back to Zone Twelve, after he had changed his trousers, and gave him extra night duties on the north perimeter where it was always coldest. He thanked me for my clemency and was blubbering his gratitude, weeping like a kid. He would have been on his knees had it not been for the escort holding him up. That was the power of my uniform.’