Quiller Balalaika

The chimney was harder the second time, with no rope. I needed it, you see, for the pulley system. To bring Marius up. It's not in the guidebooks, hauling a dead weight up a chimney with a hemp rope and three approximations to carabiners hammered out of old steel in a labour-camp forge. I would not recommend it, no, as a technique. The wind slapping now against my face, the arm and shoulder muscles singing, then burning, glad of those days swinging the axe at the seam of nickel in the mine, the extra hours in the gym. Wondering how the precious contents of Marius' skull would survive the upward passage against the unforgiving rock. I might strain at the hemp rope till my hands bled onto my boots and the blood froze there, blending with the flakes of snow, hearing the thud of his back against the granite wall over the shriek of the wind, then letting the piton take the weight while I took three sharp breaths, four, and heaved again, but if Marius couldn't remember everything about Sakkas' business empire then Balalaika would die, though he might live.

I could have told him all that but I didn't.

'I thought about being there,' was all I said. Alex would have understood.

We were three days moving south towards the city, hunched and rocking under a tarpaulin, the only shelter we had from the wind chill, getting through the last of the rations we'd brought from the camp.

We had no money but a guard at the station in Moscow showed mercy and threw down two kopeks and told me to get my friend to a hospitaclass="underline" the bandage was black by now with dried blood.

I left Marius propped on a bench while I went to telephone Legge.

'Did they recall the DIF to London?'

He recognized my voice. 'Yes.'

'I want him back here.'

In a moment, rather formally: 'I'll try it and get him for you.'

'I also want Croder here.'

Another brief silence. The ferret in the field doesn't move a Chief of Signals around like a pawn on a chess board.

'I'll have to go through the DIF for that, of course.'

'Listen,' I told him, 'these are your direct instructions: tell Croder I want them both out here by the first available plane. Tell him I'm bringing home Balalaika, but he's got to be here to take it over – it's too big for anyone else to handle.'

'I'll do what I can but -'

'Get them. And listen, I'm sending a woman to you. Antanova, the dancer. Get her to London under protective escort as soon as she shows up, but not through the airport – she'll be hunted. Tell our people to keep her safe until further instructions. Is that clear?'

'Yes.'

'Meanwhile, I want the DIF here, and the COE, both of them. I'll be watching for their plane.'

I shut down the signal.

There were just three of us in here sitting in baroque armchairs like members of a London club. Now in an atmosphere of dust and shadows and brass blackened with age – this was the old British Embassy, now derelict, the rendezvous Legge had chosen for us.

Croder and Ferris had flown in an hour ago, courtesy of a clear runway. It would soon be dawn.

'Let's cut straight to the chase,' I said. 'Here's the deal. I'm bringing the mission home and it's all yours. You've got Balalaika in your lap. I can give you the names of seventeen leading members of the Duma who either help control the Moscow mafiya or who are deeply in its pay. Nine of them, incidentally, are at this moment planning a militarized coup d 'etat through the former GRU designed to bring down Boris Yeltsin. I can give you the whole of Sakkas' organization and modus operandi from Saint Petersberg through Moscow to Vladivostok and even from there through Beijing, Tokyo and New York.'

I got up and walked around a bit, disturbing the dust as I toyed with the tassle of one of the big velvet curtains.

In a moment Croder's voice came from the shadows. 'And the deal?'

I turned and looked at him. 'I want Sakkas hit.'

I saw Ferris look up but he said nothing. 'We can't do that,' Croder said flatly.

'That's a bloody shame,' I told him, 'because that's the deal.'

'There's no provision in the constitution of the Bureau to take human life. You know that.'

'Then you don't get Balalaika.'

Croder's claw hand hit the arm of his chair as he got up to face me. 'Why do you want him hit?'

'What else would you do with him?'

'Get him to London and slam him into jail for a start.'

'You'd never keep him there.'

'In solitary confinement during the investigation.'

I swung away, swung back. 'With a strong guard?'

'As you can imagine.'

'There isn't any jailer who wouldn't accept a million pounds sterling from such an eminent prisoner and clear out to Monte Carlo. An inside escape job would cost him ten or twenty million. Last year his income was two billion US dollars. Or he'd kill his way out as he did before if he had to. There is no way youcan keep that man in captivity, and once he's free he's going to start all over again back in Moscow, and I am damned if I'm going to let all the work or the effort I've put in come to nothing. And think how nice it will be to go to the Prime Minister and say you've pulled out the plum after all.' This time I turned my back on him, looking up at a faded portrait of George VI, cracked with age.

Then Croder astonished me. 'If you want a hit made on Sakkas, you'll have to do it yourself.'

I swung back to look at him. 'There's no provision in my constitution for taking human life either. I've only done it twice and each time it was to avenge a woman. But I'd set it up.'

'Difficult.' Ferris' quiet voice came from the armchair for the first time. 'And terribly dangerous.'

'This trade isn't tiddlywinks.'

'You'd have to isolate him.'

'I think I can do that.'

Croder spoke. 'We haven't got a hit man in Moscow. Or anywhere.'

'Three of Legge's men are trained snipers. One simple shot from a rooftop is all we need.'

'I couldn't condone it.'

'I understand that, just let it happen. And do the soul-searching afterwards. Or do you want me to dump Balalaika in the Moskva River?'

It was still the pitch dark of a winter morning when I left the derelict embassy. There was only one phone call left to make. I'd called Natalya the night before at the theatre to tell her Marius was free.

'He can't be,' she'd said in a rush of breath.