‘Age, my friend, the ravage of age. I can’t name all the Belarus-brewed beers, only two of three. One escapes.’
He would have expected Molenkov to give him a finger of derision, to laugh at him or curse the irrelevance of his memory difficulty, but he saw, instead, Molenkov sag to a crouch, his mouth wide open as if to shout, his fists raised. The blow, from behind, felled Yashkin.
He was clubbed. The impact point was between the back of his neck and the centre of his left shoulder-blade. The breath sang from his throat. He gasped, but had no voice. His legs were kicked from under him. He collapsed, sprawled on the darkened pavement. Two men came past him.
He could barely distinguish them. They closed on Molenkov. Yashkin had no strength and less will to fight. Didn’t think, had he wanted to, that he could have struggled to his feet and gone to his friend’s aid.
Molenkov fought them.
His eyes welled, but he was able to blink hard enough to keep back tears, but the pain was a cruel ache that spread down his arm, up his neck and along his back. Maybe in Molenkov there were faint stirrings of the memory of an unarmed combat course in his early days as an officer recruit in State Security. Maybe, before going to the arsehole spying role of political officer, Molenkov had been on a gymnasium mat and shown how to throw men around, near break their arms, legs, whatever. Yashkin could only watch, couldn’t intervene.
They laughed. The two bastards laughed.
They stood away from Molenkov for a moment, and their laughter — more a fucking giggle — rang out on the street. Molenkov confronted them, dared them to advance on him, but the crouch posture made it seem he was about to crap and his hands were raised, like they did in bad movies. They laughed one last time, then went in on Molenkov. Punches broke through his guard, and the short cosh swung down. Molenkov slumped, and the boots went in. Still he fought them. They were over him, fucking hyenas, and his legs thrashed at them. He must have bitten one because there was a stifled scream, then an obscenity, then a shower of blows. Yashkin thought it brave of Molenkov, and didn’t know whether he would have dared to do the same. They were bent over his friend, and Yashkin saw the wallet held up. Then one broke away, came to him and knelt over him.
Now Yashkin knew he would not resist, not imitate his friend. He was curled up, and his head was hidden by his hands but he could see through his fingers. Hands came into his coat, searched, pried, and found the fold-over wallet his wife, ‘Mother’, had given him as a May Day present thirty-one years earlier. It was taken, and the man stood. The smell of his breath, beer and nicotine, faded, but he saw a guy with a leather jacket, black, a tattoo on the neck, and a shaven head that the rain danced on.
He realized, and it came hard, that they were not any more a colonel and a major of State Security. They were two old men who did not have the wit to protect themselves in a strange city — fucking Pinsk. Their wallets were opened, the cash was taken out with the credit cards — not that they would be of any use in Pinsk — and the bastards took the time, had the arrogance, to count the money. Even divided it.
Their emptied wallets were dropped on the pavement.
The bastards did not run to get clear; they walked. They did not look back, as if they had left behind them nothing that might threaten.
He did what he was capable of. He crawled to his friend. He took Molenkov’s head in his hands and listened to the moan of breath sucked between swollen, bloodied lips.
Molenkov slurred, ‘What did you say “optimism” was?’
Yashkin said, ‘I said, quoting Leibniz, “Whatever is, is right.”
Molenkov staggered to his feet, and Yashkin supported him. The one-time zampolit said, ‘I have a few coins in my pocket, enough for the toilet cleaner, but all my banknotes were in my wallet.’
‘I have some coins in my pocket, and my wallet is empty.’
‘What else is near to empty, my friend, if not quite?’
‘I don’t know.’
Each now held the other upright, breathing hard, seeking to control pain. What was worse than pain — Yashkin’s view — was the humiliation of what had happened.
Molenkov tried to crack a smile, which hurt and his teeth ground together. He mumbled, ‘It will be hard to be optimistic — “Whatever is, is right” — but we need money to fill the fuel tank, and we’re against the red, very near to it. We have no money to buy fuel. Maybe enough for bread, but not for fuel.’
He sagged. Molenkov would have gone down again, on to the pavement, had Yashkin not held him. Yashkin took him back up the street and, near to one of the old churches, found a bench. He could see the car from there. Molenkov slept first, snored through his weeping, thickened lips, and Yashkin knew he would follow him.
He remembered it … He rejoiced. Yashkin remembered that the third brand of beer brewed in Belarus had the Alevaria label but Molenkov slept and snored and he didn’t wake him.
He heard a whistle, then his name was called.
Carrick did not know how long he had sat in darkness with his back against the tree, but the stiffness was locked in his hips and knees, and his balance almost betrayed him as he stood. He had to grasp the tree trunk to stop himself sliding down and away.
The whistle, then the call, had come faintly, but both were foreign sounds, recognizable against the constant rumbling murmur of the river. The clouds had broken. A moon flitted in the gaps and then there was light on the water. The rain came in spasmodic bursts and he was drenched from sitting against the tree above the Bug. He thought that if he lost his footing and went into it — if he went under — he would be lost. He might panic, open his mouth and swallow a stomach and lungful of water, might have his head hit by a submerged branch and be stunned, might be so disoriented that he swam for the centre of the river where the currents were fiercest and not for the bank where he might catch a root or a rock in his fist. If he went in, chances were that he was gone.
He started out along the bank, headed for where the whistle had come from. Deep in thought, Carrick had wiled away time. The harness was tight on his skin and the vest under his shirt, sweater and coat, while the box pinched the flesh at the small of his back when he moved.
In the darkness, he groped back towards Reuven Weissberg. Almost careered into him. Was a yard from him when the moon’s light hit his shoulders and lit his face.
‘What do I do, Johnny?’
‘Tell me, sir.’
‘They come to the far side.’
‘You meet them on the far side, sir?’
‘Meet them, then take back what they bring. Lift it across the river … I had not thought of the flood. I was going to use a rope between trees on their side and our side. I had not considered the flood. What do I do?’
Alone against the tree, while dusk had gone to evening and dullness to black, he had thought of the command in the warehouse that Mikhail back off, of the kiss on the cheeks beside the Vistula under the walls of the Stare Miasto, of the trust given him and the weapon handed to him … had thought of the friendship.
For a moment Carrick pondered. He filled his lungs, and didn’t realize that the scales tipped further. There had been a week on the Brecon mountains in a tent bivouac, way up north from Merthyr, and there had been one of those shite courses for leadership evaluation. Carrick’s platoon had been tasked to do the humping for the officer candidates, and a river was in spate. The winning team had had an officer — not the usual Rupert idiot — who had called the best solution, the only time he had spoken. Carrick remembered.