I checked what I had in the way of armaments. It wasn’t great. I had a small submachine gun, courtesy of the big guy with the pool cue. Set against a truckload of armed soldiers, it was little more than a peashooter. But peashooters don’t come with an extended magazine of thirty-two 9mm shells. Somehow that fact didn’t surprise me. The bigger magazine is popular among gang-bangers because it looks both cool and scary; even a lousy shot with his head high on booze, mescaline or whatever, merely has to point and pull the trigger and the full load will discharge in a few-second ‘squirt’. The shots will go all over the scenery but that’s half the joy for anyone using it; you’re guaranteed to hit something, even if it’s only a cow in the next county.
In short, it wasn’t the best weapon for what I had in mind, but at least this one had a selector for firing single shots.
Obluskva was towards the east of the city close to the rail yards and bordered by an area of old industrial warehouses and factories blackened by years of smoke and the processing of metal. In the rail yard itself, the usual jungle of tracks, overhead wires and poles, stacks of storage containers huddled together, back-dropped by lines of freight cars of every description, with fuel tankers, gravel silos and piles of lumber waiting for shipment.
Through a haze in the distance stood the spectral outlines of three high-rise buildings, and I prayed that Number 24d Obluskva wasn’t one of them. Finding and getting to a specific person in tall buildings is not something you can accomplish quickly. It needs a team to cover all the levels, the elevators don’t always work and the network of stairways, familiar only to residents, are death traps for the unwary.
And for a single intruder, once in, there’s no easy way out.
I was in luck. Before I got to the high-rises I hit a highway cutting through the district from north to south, and beyond it found a rambling series of potholed streets and tracks dotted with small single-level houses surrounded by scrappy fencing and untamed vegetation.
The car bottomed out with a crash of the muffler as I hit a dip in the surface and I slowed down. Having the suspension fall apart on me now would be a disaster. I checked the house numbers, one eye on the rear-view mirror in case the troops had managed to force their way out of the airport and were close on my tail.
Ramshackle fences seemed the norm, surrounding ancient wooden sheds with corrugated roofs, patches of untended, weed-infested ground, cars on blocks and all the detritus of an area left to moulder and die. It was a stark contrast; everywhere else I’d seen made Donetsk seem like a modern city, landscaped and pleasant with parks, lakes, wide roads and boulevards. Yet here was like a forgotten zone, where life could have been unchanged from a hundred years ago.
Number 24 was different. It was part of a long, two-storey apartment block, its flaking walls painted a deep yellow, with small balconies and a high wall at each end around what I guessed were communal gardens. The building stood out in more ways than mere size; it was an island of a different style of living, perhaps forgotten from some previous city plan long overtaken by the nearby high-rises across the highway. I pulled up outside and hit the ground running, and went through the front door, which was unlocked. Each of the apartments had a letter suffixed to the street number. I found a, b and c but no 24d.
I banged on 24c. It took a while but eventually opened to reveal an elderly lady with wrinkled skin and white hair, blinking gnomishly at me through a narrow gap.
‘What do you want?’ She had a voice like dry paper rustling and smelled of vinegar.
‘Twenty-four d,’ I said to her. ‘I have a delivery.’
She shook her head and began to close the door, so I put my foot in the way. ‘Please. It’s important.’
She stared at me for a moment and I wondered what I would have to do to get a break. Then she stuck a gnarled finger through the gap and pointed down the corridor at a blank door with a small glass pane at head height. ‘See Yaroslav,’ she muttered. ‘Yaroslav.’ Then she slammed the door on my foot with surprising force until I withdrew it.
I hoofed along to the blank door and knocked with authority. Whoever the hell Yaroslav was, and I was guessing he was the building superintendent, I hoped he had better social skills than the old biddy. If not, I was probably going to have to beat it out of him.
The man who came to the door was as fat as he was tall, and wore a battered beret with a greasy rim. He didn’t look happy to see me, but I guessed that was his default position for callers.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for twenty-four d,’ I told him. ‘Delivery.’
He looked immediately wary and his eyes went walkabout. ‘There is no twenty-four d.’ He started to close the door and I pushed it against his substantial belly until he gave way. The smell coming out of his apartment was ripe and nasty, and I figured he must have been boiling live chickens in there.
‘There is no twenty-four d,’ he hissed. ‘Go away.’
‘There is and if you don’t tell me, I’ll report you to the city authorities.’ For good measure I flicked back my jacket to show the butt of the submachine gun. His eyes went walkabout again and his chin began to quiver. ‘I don’t mean twenty-four d any harm,’ I added. ‘I just need to speak to him.’
He nodded and pointed towards the back of the building. ‘There’s a narrow door at the end of the passage. No number. He’s in there.’
I left him to his chickens and went in search of the narrow door. It looked little more than a cleaner’s cupboard, but I was no architect. I pounded on the door hard enough to make the frame rattle, and hoped the neighbours wouldn’t care to investigate and the resident inside would be too shocked to hear that he was about to be picked up by security troops to protest.
The door eventually swung open and a skeletal, academic type in glasses stood looking at me. His face was parchment coloured and an aura of sickness hung around him like a cloak. He was dressed in a worn dressing gown and slippers, and holding a bright yellow handkerchief to his nose, the veins in his wrist standing out like snakes.
‘I don’t know your name,’ I told him, ‘but you should know that the security forces know about your connection to Travis. They’re on the way here right now. You’ve got to leave.’
He looked about as shocked as a man could do, and his face lost even more colour. I figured he’d been expecting this for some time but it was still a shock. Like anybody who lives a double life, you never know when discovery will come knocking at your door. He’d probably figured I was from the security police. ‘Who are you? Why do you tell me this? I don’t know a man called Travis.’ His voice was throaty with cold, but cultured and precise, and I wondered if, when he wasn’t being a cut-out for the CIA, he was a schoolteacher.
‘Did I say Travis was a man?’
He looked as if he could have bitten his tongue and was probably praying I wasn’t a member of the security police who’d just caught him out.
‘You were asked to escort Travis from Donetsk to an address in Pavlohrad.’ I spoke softly but fast, keeping up the pressure. We didn’t have time to stand here playing word games. ‘Once there you were to hand him over and he would be taken to another address further on. That’s all you were told. Now, do you want to stay here to be arrested or not?’
That got to him. He made up his mind and backed away into what was really little more than a large cupboard with a curtain across a small bed, a small camping gas stove and a corner washbasin. No wonder Yaroslav was reluctant to admit to his presence; Number 24d was a sub-tenant, undoubtedly here against building regulations, but a welcome back-pocket source of income as long as nobody spoiled the game.
While 24d did what he had to, I went back out and checked the street. This area was isolated from the buzz of the larger city, and other than a few birds in the trees dotting the neighbourhood and the distant sound of a piano playing upstairs, the silence was a relief. If the black hats arrived, I’d hear them coming.