‘I must be going,’ their companion said, and he placed some money on the table. He shook hands with the Colonel and the boy formally and collected his box. A driver in an MVD uniform came up the terrace steps and approached — not Heltai but the girls. They laughed, picked up their bags and followed the driver down to the limousine. Their Hungarian acquaintance watched them and then with a brief goodbye left. Petya last saw him walking bare-footed along the hotel terrace, still guarding his precious cake. The girls had reached the car, and the younger one looked back and blew a kiss in Petya’s direction.
‘What does that man do?’ he asked Uncle Kolya.
The Colonel pulled coins from a small purse he kept in his pocket. Then he suggested they leave.
‘But what does he do?’ the boy pressed him.
‘He tortures people,’ said Uncle Kolya.
CHAPTER TEN
Ivan Pavlovitch Scherbatsky was living at his parents’ apartment in Kavrov, which was a miserable place unless you liked factories. On the strength of Tomsky’s invitation, Kirov decided he would pay Scherbatsky a call. There was a lull in the Gusev case: the only development that promised a lead was the discovery that the labels on Viktor Gusev’s stock of antibiotics, both those retrieved from the rubbish at Butyrka and the consignment handed over by MVD, showed a break in the series of codes. One interpretation was that Viktor had sold part of his stock before the police raid. Kirov asked Bogdanov to check the Moscow regional hospitals for any deaths similar to that of Viktor Gusev. In the meantime there was Scherbatsky.
He spoke to Tomsky again, but the Washington bagman, having paid off whatever debt he owed Scherbatsky, didn’t want to take any more risks — after all Scherbatsky was under arrest. All he had to give was a new version of the Chinese watch story.
According to Tomsky, a year or maybe two years before, because of his American experience Scherbatsky had been asked to carry a bag of tricks from San Francisco to Taiwan and pass it over to the Illegal Resident, an old man name of Harry Korn or Kornilov, depending on accounts. It was a joke among the KGB foreign sections that Taiwan was a black hole: nothing went in or came out except once a year a report and a request for money. This was because there was no diplomatic cover for a large station and because no European could get anywhere with the Chinese. It was a shoe-string operation and Harry Korn was pathetically glad if anyone stopped to say hello to him and there was no holding him back when Scherbatsky dropped by in person. Harry wined him and dined him and took him on a tour of Taipei’s renowned barbers shops where Scherbatsky had his hair well and truly clipped. And at the end of it all Harry gave his friend a watch which he picked up at a street market in Wanhua but swore was the genuine article. This was the famous Chinese Rolex.
Tomsky didn’t guarantee that a word of this was true.
Scherbatsky’s parents occupied an old-style apartment in a pre-Revolution villa on the outskirts of the town. It was a handsome place with a ragged garden set behind a broken wall and it might have been turned to something better, but around its original isolated position the planners had built a couple of iron foundries, and across the pot-holed surface of Raspletin Street stood an electrical repair shop with a yard full of old Biyusa refrigerators and Raketa vacuum cleaners, which they were cannibalising for parts. In the garden a man was working among the stumps of hewn-down birches, clearing brambles and elder saplings to dig a patch of winter vegetables. Kirov approached him and asked for the Scherbatsky apartment.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘A friend.’
‘Is that so?’ The gardener let his spade fall and wiped the clay from his hands on the seat of his pants. He was a tall man with striking fair hair and blue eyes that gave his face, fitted with the regular features and rat-trap mouth, the empty look of a doll. ‘You’ll be Kirov,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m Scherbatsky. Were you stopped on your way here?’
‘No. Are you watched?’
‘On and off. I’m here on my promise to behave myself. The local boys are lazy sods, but if the GAI post back at the junction noted the Moscow plates on your car they’ll probably send someone to look you over. Tell them whatever you like; the morons will believe you. Let’s go inside and have a drink.’
Scherbatsky left his tools to lie among the turned earth and picked his way by a path of shattered paving stones to the house. A swarm of children poured out of the door and scattered across the garden.
‘This is an old-fashioned place,’ Scherbatsky said. Part of the large dim hallway had been curtained off, and behind the curtain someone was cooking. ‘We share the kitchen with two other families, the bathroom too. I guess I should have found my parents a better apartment, but,’ he shrugged, ‘on the road to success, who thinks about the past? In any case they like it here. The children. Me, I don’t like children.’
‘Is your wife with you?’
‘My wife,’ Scherbatsky repeated flatly. ‘No. I told her to get a divorce. In these cases it’s safer to get a divorce. It’s the least I can do for the bitch.’
He opened a door off the first floor landing. It took them into what had once been a large room, since clumsily divided so that the central light hung from a point near the wall and had been rigged with flex and tape to give some light from the middle of the room over the mass of furniture.
‘Take a seat,’ Scherbatsky invited. He hunted for a bottle, found one and poured a couple of measures. ‘Make yourself at home — sorry about the mess. Know what it’s like — too many people, falling over…’ he turned around with a grin of sociability plastered over his face. It fell as his eyes registered Kirov’s cool patience. ‘Look, take a bloody seat, will you? Sorry —’ he caught himself, ‘sorry — nerves.’ He sat down on an overstuffed chair and gestured towards another one that stood crammed between an ancient radio and the wall. His lips glided over the rim of his glass and left its contents untasted. He put the glass down and regarded it guiltily. ‘It’s easy to drink yourself stupid. Stuck here. Anything like this ever happen to you?’
‘Once,’ Kirov answered, remembering the lonely months after his return from Washington bringing the returning defector Oleg Ouspensky. Limbo time. Unreal days spent nursing Ouspensky in his fool’s paradise of freedom for the benefit of Western media before they buried him under the icy ground as happened in those days when they did things differently. ‘Once,’ he said, but didn’t elaborate. He said it coldly, meaning he was fresh out of sympathy for anyone in the same boat. He had decided to make Scherbatsky work for his sympathy: it was the interrogator’s treasure, to be expended sparingly.
‘I suppose,’ Scherbatsky began at last, ‘that you want to know why I’ve asked you here. He wasn’t bothered about a reply. ‘I know about Viktor Gusev.’
Kirov had expected many things, but not that. Scherbatsky worked for the American desk and had no business with the Gusev case, shouldn’t even know the name Viktor Gusev. Then the connection came to him.
‘Through your cousin.’
It was Scherbatsky’s turn for surprise. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Your cousin worked for a construction combine. Gusev worked for the city authorities. He handled budgets for construction work on the water system. It fits that they would meet.’
‘OK,’ Scherbatsky grunted circumspectly. ‘Well, that’s what I have to offer — information on Gusev. Interested?’
‘Perhaps. In return for what?’