He fought his way forward. The crowd was good-tempered but resisted any attempt by those at the rear to get close to their hero. At the front the marshals were holding people back from the dais. Across ten rows Kirov caught a glimpse of Bakradze in a press of Pamyat officials and journalists making his way towards an exit door. Kirov shouldered his way harder, ignoring the objections, and followed.
When he reached the exit, Bakradze was already gone. Kirov pushed against the opening-bar and found himself in a short corridor with a storeroom on one side and an office on the other. He checked them and found both empty. He returned to the corridor and tested the external door at the far end. It yielded and he was outside in the cold night air.
The door gave onto an alleyway cluttered by trash cans and broken crates. The alley opened into a loading bay and then onto a patch of snow-covered ground criss-crossed by footpaths. A couple of cars were parked on the empty lot, otherwise at first sight there was no one. He looked around for any sign of Bogdanov but saw none.
His eyes were still unadjusted to the darkness and the sudden cold after the overheated hall smacked his face. He stood shivering with his back to a wall and listened while his eyes allowed for the change. Between the dull sounds of traffic he heard footsteps cracking the frozen earth. Darkness stood above the pale glimmer of snow. No moon. The clouds, reflecting the lights of the city, were darkly yellow and sick with snow. A heavy night and sharp as a guillotine blade, it rustled and creaked with cold and somewhere voices murmured.
Standing on one of the paths a pair of lovers talked. The man faced the woman, holding her a body’s width away, his two hands clamped on her arms. Kirov could see them now. The man was talking, shaking the woman to punctuate his points. She was resisting and unresisting: her limp body registering her dissent. Not lovers. From the left a set of bright headlamps threw the scene suddenly into relief. A car came spinning over the ice onto the empty lot. Bakradze turned from the woman and his face was caught frozen in the light.
‘Hold him!’ Kirov yelled as Bogdanov threw open the door of the car. He set off at a run. The lawyer had released the woman and was hesitating over which direction to take. The woman had no uncertainties. She had turned and was running frantically towards a cluster of buildings at the further edge of the open ground. Kirov chased her.
She wore flat shoes and fear lent her speed as she sprinted across the snow. Kirov followed, trying to close the fifty-metre gap between them. She stuck to the paths. Kirov struck an angle across the unbroken snow but stumbled into a tangle of potholes and junk and she gained on him. Then she reached a wall.
Who are you? Her head was wrapped in a scarf, but her shape and movements were familiar. For a second she faced him and he glimpsed small features and a pale skin. He shouted, ‘Nadia!’ But the face was not hers; it lacked the intensity, the mystery. Instead a fierce little face examined him briefly, and then the woman clambered over the wall with Kirov only metres away. And she was gone.
He followed, but it cost him time. His quarry had found some convenient grip on the brickwork that he missed in the darkness. When he finally found himself on the other side in a small yard, it was empty. The ground was cleared of snow and there were no discernible footprints other than at the base of the wall. Kirov searched the confines of the yard but the woman was gone. He found a gate and went through it, finding himself on a familiar street and next to him a building he knew. It was the women’s hostel where Nadia Mazurova lived. Yet the woman had not been Nadia but a stranger; or rather someone whose ill-formed image haunted a corner of his memory. Where had he seen her before? He tried to grasp the recollection but it evaded him like the woman herself and he was left with his anger and bewilderment.
He returned to the disused lot to look for Bogdanov.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The car was still parked with the engine running and the headlights blazing. Bakradze was spread-eagled over the front with a cut to the head and Bogdanov’s gun jammed in the small of his back. Seeing Kirov approach, the lawyer offered a plaintive, ‘Pyotr Andreevitch!’ Kirov told him to shut up and get into the car. He took over the driving, leaving the other two men in the rear seat.
They left Lyublino and headed north. Bakradze passed the long silence in nursing his head; Bogdanov put his hands through cat’s-cradle exercises and jabbed his hostage in the guts if he showed signs of recovering his aplomb.
‘Stop him, can’t you?’ Bakradze complained.
‘Promise to be good,’ said Bogdanov.
‘Whatever you like.’
‘Say it! “I want to be good.” I want to hear the words.’
‘Jesus! OK — OK — I will be good. All right? Damn it, you’ve hurt me! Pyotr Andreevitch, what’s this about? What have I done?’
There was no answer.
‘The Pamyat meeting? Is that it? The KGB are investigating Pamyat?’ Bakradze tried a laugh to establish if they were still friends. ‘This is all a mistake! I was supposed to be there! The Department is conducting its own investigation of that gang of Fascists. You don’t think I was there on my own account, do you?’
‘I was watching you,’ said Bogdanov. ‘Every time Valentinov opened his mouth you were eating his words.’
‘It has nothing to do with Pamyat,’ Kirov answered.
‘He’s telling you to shut your face,’ Bogdanov explained helpfully.
They drove a while longer. Bakradze grew restless. He tried another approach. ‘Does Radek know about this? He’s running your show while Grishin is sick, isn’t he?’ This amused Bogdanov.
‘I think he’s trying to frighten us, boss. Going to tell the grown-ups about us, are you? Get our wrists slapped? Nasty KGB is carrying on like in the Bad Old Days, using violence and all the other things we don’t do any more. I’m upset.’
‘I just wanted to know.’
‘Ah! We’re only making small talk? The weather — shall we talk about the weather, hnnh?’ Bogdanov took hold of Bakradze’s wrist and gave it an affectionate squeeze.
They crossed the Ring Road, still heading north. Bakradze asked where they were going.
‘Electric Corner,’ answered Bogdanov.
‘Why there? There’s nothing except a rubbish dump.’
‘And what else are you? You think your shiny suit gives you a bit of class?’ Bogdanov had let slip one of his obscure hatreds.
Kirov intervened soothingly. ‘It’s somewhere quiet where we can talk.’
‘Talk? What’s to talk about? I don’t know what you want.’
‘Then keep quiet!’ Bogdanov snapped, and pushed his fist into the other man’s abdomen again.
By Electric Corner a glow of flames broke the dark horizon. Bonfires were dotted over the broad expanse of the dump. The bomshi who inhabited the place and the nearby woods between police raids had built them. Kirov swung the car off the highway and onto the approach road, then followed the frozen tracks made by the garbage trucks through a silent avenue of cardboard shanties and fires encircled by empty-eyed tramps. He pulled up in a broad, beaten turning spot and switched off the engine and the lights. The car and its occupants rested silently in the middle of a ring of fires from which the tramps had now disappeared. Kirov turned to his unwilling passenger. It was time to begin.