Whatever. Soon after the gantry was made, the Pollandore was consigned to the lowest basement of the Lodka, its existence denied and redacted from the files. Through the centuries that followed, the Vlast periodically tried to destroy it. The Pollandore survived fire and furnace, explosives, the assault of war mudjhiks. Subtler methods were attempted: corrosives, vacuums, the agonisingly slow insertion of invisibly fine needle-points. Nothing affected it. Nothing at all.
The only thing they didn’t do was take it out to the deepest trenches of the ocean and sink it. They would not do that. If they could not destroy it, the Vlast preferred to know where it was.
And the Pollandore went on turning on its own axis.
Being other.
Being something else.
But now inside the Pollandore planetary currents are stirring. Masses are shifting.
It watches and waits.
Its time is close.
19
It was almost three in the afternoon when Lom and Maroussia reached the street where Vishnik had his apartment. Where Raku Andreievich, formerly Professor Prince Raku ter-Fallin Mozhno Shirin-Vilichov Vishnik, one-time historian of Mirgorod and city photographer, had lived among his books and paintings. Where he had died, slowly and painfully, under the interrogation of Chazia’s police.
They surveyed the building from the shadow of a shuttered droshki kiosk on the corner. There was no sign of militia surveillance. The dvornik was at his station outside, slumped in his folding wooden chair, chin buried in a dirty brown muffler, nursing a tin mug in gloved hands. The subsiding flood water had left a smashed-up handcart with no wheels lying canted against the canal-side bollards. A couple of boys were kicking at it, trying to break it up for firewood, but they didn’t have the weight to make an impact. After a while they gave up and dragged the whole thing away. The dvornik’s small black eyes watched them resentfully. He looked like he’d been pulled up out of the canal mud himself and left outside collecting snow.
‘He can’t stay there all day,’ said Maroussia. ‘He has to move sometime. Everyone has to piss.’
‘We haven’t got time for this,’ said Lom. ‘Come on.’
The eyes of a dozen other dvorniks followed them from their chairs and lobbies. Informers every one, watchers and listeners, recording comings and goings in their black notebooks. The dvornik at Vishnik’s building recognised them. His little berry-black eyes widened even more when Lom pulled his hand partly out of his pocket to show him the grip of the Sepora .44.
‘This is pointing right at your belly. We’re coming inside.’
The dvornik threw a panicked glance sideways.
‘Make one sign to them,’ said Lom, ‘and I’ll shoot your bollocks off. Or you can let us in. It’s a fair offer. A trade.’
The dvornik didn’t move. He shook his head.
‘You’ll kill me inside.’
‘Maybe,’ said Lom. ‘Only if you piss me off.’
The man still didn’t move. Pig-stubborn, or too scared to think. Probably both. A couple more seconds and the watchers would know something was wrong.
‘He won’t shoot you,’ said Maroussia. ‘Really he won’t. We’ve come to see inside Professor Vishnik’s apartment, not to kill you. We only need a few minutes. Then we’ll be gone.’
The dvornik’s raisin eyes squinted up at her. He nodded, stood up slowly and went ahead of them up the steps and into the building. Lom followed close behind. When they were inside, Maroussia pushed the heavy outer door shut. Latched it. Pushed the bolts home, top and bottom.
The dvornik turned to face them, blocking the hallway.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t—’
Lom shoved him in the shoulder. Hard. He stumbled back.
‘Get the key,’ Lom said. ‘Number 4. Hurry.’
The dvornik went behind the counter into his little office. Lom followed him, the Sepora clear of his coat. The office was in a filthy state: the rug sodden, the linoleum floor still wet from the flood. A greasy leather armchair slumped in the corner, oozing and ruined. The whole place reeked of canal. The dvornik rummaged about in a box under the counter and brought out a labelled key. Held it out to Lom.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Second floor.’
‘Bring it. Take the stairs, not the lift.’
‘We can’t. The lift’s still out. The flood… the electrics…’
‘I said the stairs, arsehole. You first.’
On the way up Lom saw the gouges in the plaster where he’d fired at Safran and his men when they came for him. The wreckage the grenade had made of the landing. It seemed for ever ago. As the dvornik put the key in the lock, Lom had a premonition that Vishnik’s body would still be there, still tied to the couch, eyes open, wounds crusted and gaping. Left by Chazia’s interrogation team to rot and seep and dry out where he had died.
But the body was gone, though the couch still stood where it had been dragged into the centre of the room. It was covered in dried blood. And other stuff. The leakage of death.
The room had been thoroughly, violently searched. The filing cabinets were open and empty. Desk drawers pulled out, their contents spilled, the desk smashed open. Faded brick-red curtains pulled off the wall along with the rail that held them. Bookshelves emptied and torn from the wall, the books scattered across the floor. All the strange, inconsequential objects that Vishnik had collected in his solitary city walks–the red lacquer tea caddy, the pieces of wood and brick, the discarded tickets and printed notices, the shards of pottery and glass–swept into a heap in the corner. The paintings that had filled every gap on the wall ripped from smashed frames. Vishnik’s lonely absence hung in the air, bereft, accusing and sad.
‘I haven’t had time…’ the dvornik said.
‘What?’
‘The floods… I’ve been too busy. The room has to be re-let, but I can’t—’
‘Sit there,’ said Lom. ‘On the couch. Don’t move and don’t speak. I may just shoot you anyway.’
In a corner of the room there was a small heap of women’s clothes and a threadbare carpet bag. Maroussia pounced on them
‘My things!’
She started to stuff them back into the bag. When she had finished, she knelt among Vishnik’s scattered books, sifting through them, riffling the pages.
‘There’s nothing here,’ said Lom. ‘If there was, they’ve taken it.’
Maroussia shook her head.
‘There must be something. He told me. They didn’t get it. That’s what he said. They didn’t get it. Even they are human and stupid.’
‘But they searched again,’ said Lom. ‘More thoroughly. After he was dead.’
‘They looked all over,’ said the dvornik. ‘The halls. The stairwell. The bathroom. They pulled the cistern off the wall.’
‘You shut up,’ said Lom.
‘He just wants us out of here quickly,’ said Maroussia. ‘We need to search. We don’t have another option.’