From the left of the line one man moved. Kirov studied the others and sensed reluctance.
‘Your orders don’t include killing me,’ he said.
The other man considered the point then answered, ‘Back off. Give us that idiot back and we’ll call it quits.’
‘What security do I have?’
‘Like you said, my orders don’t include killing you. Not for the time being. Now back off.’
‘He’s bluffing,’ said Bogdanov.
‘My orders say nothing about you,’ the newcomer answered. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can be dead meat.’
‘He’s bluffing,’ Bogdanov repeated.
‘Let their man go.’
‘Boss?’
‘He’s a know-nothing, not worth keeping.’
Bogdanov moved back from the groaning form. Two of the others came forward and seized their companion by the heels. They dragged him backwards, then a third man took hold of the shoulders. They heaved the body upright and retreated through the trees.
Bogdanov watched them, then put a hand to his head where he had been hit. ‘I feel terrible,’ he said almost cheerfully. He stepped groggily aside and was sick into the moonlight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Kirov was ten years old his mother took him to a circus. It wasn’t in Moscow but in Sverdlovsk where his grandparents lived. He stayed there for several months. It was some time after the arrest and disappearance of his father, and although his presumed murderer, Beria, had by then fallen, there was still some tension because of the ambiguity of the elder Kirov’s history. In fact, for a while, Uncle Kolya himself vanished only to emerge months later, pale, thin and taciturn.
He went to the circus with his mother, his grandmother, Nadezhda Viktorevna, and one of her ancient friends, a crone with steel teeth and a moustache like Uncle Stalin. The party sat in the dense, perspiring crowd, watching the sawdust ring, and passed a bottle of soda water and a piece of dry sausage, which went from hand to hand like contraband. They sat complaining of their neighbours and the people in front whose heads were too large, and they saw what they could of the acts.
Now, years later, the memory returned a second time as he drove to Kavrov, to the house in Raspletin Street where Scherbatsky, owner of the famous Chinese watch, was holed up with his parents. Scherbatsky, the only person who knew that he would be paying a visit to Viktor Gusev’s dacha.
That day at the circus two clowns came into the ring. They wore the Italian costume of glittering silver jackets and breeches, white stockings and black pumps, and their faces were made up as white as chalk. They carried a box the size of a man, its sides hinged and the whole thing collapsed together like a flat board for carrying purposes.
So, with much fooling and gestures to the crowd and little courtesies to each other, the two clowns proceeded to unfold and erect the box. The band played and the drums and cymbals punctuated the high points. In essence the thing seemed simple — to put up the box. But as they opened it up, first one clown and then the other would find himself inside the box then outside as a flip or fold of one side of the contraption changed its shape. That, of course, was the joke. Although the two clowns were supposed to be constructing the box together, each was in fact trying to trap the other inside it.
‘What is it called?’ Kirov asked his mother.
She turned and asked his grandmother who duly asked her friend and the answer was passed down the same line.
‘It’s a Chinese Box,’ said his mother.
‘Thank you,’ Kirov answered and he returned his eyes to the two clowns, this time with understanding. For he knew that such was the nature of the Chinese Box that it was impossible to say who was inside the box and who outside.
The horde of children still played in the unkempt garden of the house at Raspletin Street. The repair shop over the road still moved its stock of cannibalised spare parts. There was no answer at the Scherbatsky apartment and the neighbours played hard at being out. Kirov went down to the basement and rooted out the old man who acted as dvornik for the building.
The old man claimed to know nothing except that four men in two cars had turned up the previous day and the Scherbatskys, parents and son, had left with the callers. The old people had appeared nervous, but the younger Scherbatsky, who in the dvornik’s long memory had always been a cocky kid, had made no fuss at all. On the contrary, he seemed pleased. Pleased or relieved? asked Kirov, but the distinction was lost on the old man. What was he carrying? Nothing. Nothing? A bag. Be precise — a grip, a document-case, a shopping bag? A small suitcase. And the parents? Nothing — well, maybe the old lady carried her knitting. So one small suitcase between the three? That was it, for sure.
Kirov took the old man’s keys and opened the apartment. The single room had an undisturbed appearance, tidier than Kirov remembered it. Holiday-tidy was the thought that came to him, in the way that his grandmother had left her own apartment neat and clothed in a mysterious millpond stillness whenever she left it for any length of time, locking the door of the shrine behind her with a grunt and a bob of obeisance to the household gods. And Scherbatsky’s mother had done the same, or so he supposed, running his finger over the furniture to check the absence of dust, searching the corners for a trace of dirty crockery or unwashed laundry, all absent. The family had been prepared to meet their visitors, taking with them only one suitcase and leaving behind the bulk of their clothes, Scherbatsky’s as well as his parents. What was the deal? A couple of nights away — or as long as it takes, but with all comforts found? Had Scherbatsky expected his visitors when he asked Kirov to help him?
Kirov searched more thoroughly, finding the drawer where Scherbatsky kept his shirts and underwear, shoving his hands into the pockets of the other man’s suits and turning them out. He checked the cupboards, the tins, the ornaments; found the family nest egg of rouble banknotes, greasy and tied with twine, and the box with the campaign medals won by Scherbatsky’s father. He checked the bed and the mattress, the couch made up for the son, the needlework basket and the box-refrigerator that sat under the radio. They all spoke of tidiness and preparation, and said that the family expected to return and had therefore taken nothing in the way of excess: one suitcase and some knitting to amuse the mother. The only unaccounted-for item, which was the more strange for its uselessness and triviality, was a Chinese watch that didn’t work.
Back at the office Bogdanov tried to grab his attention on the subject of Ostrowsky. ‘You remember Ostrowsky — jeweller — daughter died at the Botkin hospital? I’ve got him staked out. Tumanov is running a Sluzhba team, but I can’t keep them for ever. If I don’t take them home to their mothers I’ll have to marry them.’
Kirov promised to get around to the game-plan for playing Ostrowsky.
‘No joy with Scherbatsky?’ Bogdanov hazarded a guess. ‘He wouldn’t tell you who was playing games at Viktor’s place?’
‘Scherbatsky’s been taken in. The apartment was empty.’
‘Taken in as in “arrested”, or something else?’
‘I don’t know. He had visitors — maybe MVD, maybe Radek’s man, Petruk.’
‘I know how you feeclass="underline" with all this liaison stuff it’s difficult to be sure who’s running the show. I’ll make some enquiries. If Scherbatsky is in detention, he should soon show up.’
Tomsky was surprised to receive his call and tried to get Kirov off the line. The American desk was in a panic trying to produce a briefing that would explain the latest unpredictable vagary of American foreign policy. ‘I’ve got everybody on my back. What do you want?’