‘Someone is frightening her.’
‘Uh huh? Well, you should bring her in and open her head up. Or don’t we do things like that any more? Remind me.’
Instead Kirov said, ‘I was wrong about Scherbatsky.’
‘How?’
‘He wasn’t responsible for giving away Gusev’s dacha.’
‘She told you that?’
‘She gave Antipov the location.’
‘That figures: I told you the guy who sold the shepherdess to Yuri the Bazaar was MVD. He must have been working for Antipov.’ Bogdanov gave a grunt that said I told you so. ‘And did she have anything else for you?’
‘She gave me a name for the man in the film.’
Bogdanov pushed back his seat and looked up. ‘Anyone we know?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Zagranichny.’
‘Never heard of him. Any connection with our business or is that just one more thing we don’t know? Don’t answer. Anything more? Address? First name? Please tell me you got a description, or am I supposed to go around asking every suspect to show me his dick?’
‘Try the hotels. Viktor lured Zagranichny into his trap by pimping for him. So if he needed Viktor to supply him with girls, the probability is that he came from out of town.’
‘OK, I’ll buy that. What else?’
‘The second factory, the one that GRU say was built here based on the Bulgarian plant; have you managed to trace it?’
‘Maybe — I’m still waiting for confirmation.’ Bogdanov turned to his papers and drew out a slip. ‘I’ve got someone working on the problem. He’s running through a list of pharmaceuticals produced in Soviet plants and looking for analogues to those produced in Bulgaria. Once he’s found his analogues, he can check which factory has the total product-slate that best resembles Bulpharma. So far he’s got one possibility, but he’s looking for others. I’ll know tomorrow.’
‘Who’s the present candidate?’
‘Pharmprodsoyuz Number One — it’s an outfit based in Tbilisi; we have a file on it but nothing suspicious. The plant meets its targets regular as clockwork and its products hardly ever show on the black market, which suggests that any that do are just the result of petty theft, probably from hospitals and pharmacies. The plant management is clean.’ Bogdanov paused. Sometimes he got the look of an old dog. Kirov remembered a dog that Uncle Kolya kept for years at his dacha. It used to roll its yellow eyes and give a painful stare as if it had some ancient wisdom to deliver but there was no language to express it. Instead it would sigh with a snore through the soft flaps of its nostrils and then scratch itself. Bogdanov said, ‘Radek stuck his nose in here. If you have nothing to do tomorrow he invites you to go skiing with him. It’s a while since you split a bottle together and he’s feeling guilty — I’m quoting him — and friends ought to stick together and…’
‘Why did you change the subject?’
This time Bogdanov did scratch himself. He said, ‘We’d make more progress if Grishin gave some push to get the American’s file out of GRU or whoever is blocking it. Craig helped build the second plant, so he must know where it is. But,’ he added with something like concern, ‘these days Grishin is scarcely showing his face. While you were away there was a long session of the Rehabilitation Committee. Grishin was seen sitting for hours, waiting to be called in. The secretaries are smiling behind his back and there’s a smell of blood in the air. Me, I don’t understand what the Committee has to work on. I thought everybody had been rehabilitated except Trotsky?’
‘And?’
‘And? … And?’ Bogdanov had the old dog look again. Mute. Then with an effort he said, ‘What the hell is going on in the world, that in this place of all places we’re starting to get frightened?’
‘Frightened?’ Kirov asked. ‘Is that what’s happening?’
‘Isn’t it?’ the other man answered. He placed his pen on the table, giving up all pretence of taking notes. The chair swung round so that he faced Kirov straight on, his back to the window and its view of the sky and the grey courtyard, the snow on the ledges and a melancholy crow flapping around after some meagre pickings let fall from the windows. His gestures said, Look at me — I’m an old man. His sparse bones were scattered about the chair like dirty underwear, grey and seamed.
‘OK, boss, however you like it. We’re not scared. Everything’s fine. We know exactly what’s going on and we don’t have a care in the world.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Serebryanny Bor — the Silver Woods. The last time that Kirov had been there was with Lara. They took the river bus from Gorky Park. It was the spring thaw and the boat on its two-hour journey nudged through the broken ice floes to the laughter and wonder of the passengers. They picnicked on the beach and hired a pedal boat. The temperature was in the seventies and crowds of Muscovites sunned themselves while the foreigners from the embassy dachas watched them, the sunbathers and the ice floes, and concluded that the Russians were crazy.
Now it was winter. Kirov drove to the island by Marshal Zhukov Avenue. Radek, by arrangement, was waiting for him. Around the ski-centre a crowd of adolescents milled about in a snow fight, breaking the brittle stillness of the day with their shrieks and laughter. The long queue to hire skis showed the same bumping good humour; kids running about talking to friends; passing food and drink down the line; throwing snowballs at anyone who took their fancy. Returning skiers, whose skis would be released to the later arrivals, were greeted with cheers and enquiries as to the state of the pistes.
Radek stood apart from the crowd, drinking something warm from a small flask. On the ground beside him were two pairs of skis and a light backpack. He was wearing a fancy ski-suit and goggles and his smile was relaxed and indulgent. He waved in Kirov’s direction and said warmly, ‘Hi! Glad you could make it. I was worried — well, like I say, glad you made it.’
Kirov looked about. ‘There’s just you?’
‘Why not? We don’t get much chance to talk. I thought —’ Radek hesitated almost shyly. ‘We don’t get much chance to talk,’ he repeated. ‘We should do. You me — we’re on the same side, right? We used to be good friends.’
Kirov couldn’t remember that last part. But friendship was often an uneven arrangement. He remembered Radek only as a caterpillar who had unaccountably changed into a butterfly, a grey-suited apparatchik who had discovered that these days style counted and he could wander around the Ukraine with his gang of Hollywood Stars in flashy clothes and fringed boots, busting meat suppliers like a Wild West marshal.
‘I suppose Lara is the problem,’ Radek interpreted. ‘Look, I’m sorry about what happened at the party. I tried to rub your nose in it — I guess I was drunk.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘You mean that? It’s just that these days — well, we’ve got to stick together. No one else is looking after our interests, am I right?’
‘Let’s ski.’
‘Ski? Oh, sure — ski.’
Kirov fixed his skis while Radek stowed his flask and slipped the backpack onto his shoulders. ‘I know these trails,’ he said. ‘Stick with me, Petya, and we can get away from the crowd.’ He pushed off and was soon fifty yards ahead and calling for Kirov to follow.
For ten minutes they stuck to the tracks running between alleys of birch and pine that shed snow as they passed. Radek kept ahead, not slackening until they were clear of the other skiers. Then he paused for breath, allowing Kirov to catch up, and offered a drink. They stood in a clearing where a forest road cut the ski-track. On all sides the trees stood dark and spare and the views disappeared into silvered shadows.