Quiller Balalaika

Got to the point at last, had taken his bloody time. So there it was: while the PM was proposing and authorizing and implementing the transfer of relatively vast sums from the taxpayer's pocket to the Russian economy to keep Yeltsin in power, one British Moscow-based national was busy undermining the process for his own personal gain; a red rag, yes, I could see that, to a man like the prime minister, whose notorious sense of fair play had so far crippled most of his political ambitions.

'Do we know him?' I asked Croder. The Bureau knows a lot of people, some of them on the run, some of them wanted by the police, a few of them useful to us, since in our trade we see blackmail and threats of exposure as valuable tools.

'We know of him,' Croder said. 'His name is Basil Secker, and he uses the Russian alias of Vasyl Sakkas.'

'He passes for a Muscovite?'

'Yes.'

'Fluent, then?'

'Perfectly.'

This time he waited for more questions. The thing is he was being so bloody slow, and now that I knew the potential target for the mission I was getting impatient, smelling the blood, glimpsing the shadows, hearing the distant footsteps. Not that I was committed yet: Croder had spelled it out clearly enough – he didn't think he had a mission I would accept. And that could well be true.

'Go on,' I told him.

'While he was working in the Foreign Office, Sakkas, who had access to the ultra-classified files, blew his cover because of a woman and was sent down for life on a charge of high treason – this was four years ago. During the final months of the Soviet empire he escaped from special confinement by killing two guards – quietly with a piano-wire garotte – and commandeering a fishing vessel on the south coast. The owner's body was washed up at Dover three days later with a harpoon still in its throat.'

I thought I heard shots in the distance, couldn't be sure: the walls of the church were massive stone.

Croder's head was tilted: perhaps he'd heard the same thing. 'Reaching Moscow,' he said, 'with assistance from a special Soviet escort en route, Sakkas was immediately awarded the Order of Lenin for his services in London and given the rank of colonel in the KGB. A month later he was offered the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, and the Order "For Personal Valour" – presumably for so expertly dispatching the two prison guards at Wormwood Scrubs and the owner of the fishing-boat. These bonus honours he refused: in some ways your Vasyl Sakkas is a modest man; or to put it another way he doesn't like too much limelight. With the regime on its way out at the time he may have decided that the Order of Lenin and the other gongs wouldn't mean a great deal to him in the future.'

Croder turned and sat down on the bench below the effigy of St Marius, resting his claw on his knees and looking up at me with his eyes shadowed by the glow of the votive candles. 'Sakkas then submerged for a year or two, then resurfaced as a Russian entrepreneur. We got wind of this from a Moscow sleeper who was doing some work for the ministry of the interior on the mafiya situation, with permission of course from London. We informed Scotland Yard as to Sakkas' whereabouts and opened a file on him ourselves. From the same sleeper we were told that he has so far put away fourteen major rivals and three informers, six of them bound together and burned alive in a stolen BMW in a forest outside the city. There was also a criminal court judge shot down on the steps of his own courthouse only a week ago; he was to try the case of a Sakkas aide brought up on a charge of rape. Sakkas doesn't make personal kills himself any more; he uses hit men. His bodyguard is said to number thirty-two young former athletes, most of them out of the karate dojos and two of them former Olympic bronze medallists in gymnastics.'

'Has he got a mistress?' It wasn't a non sequitur: Croder had said that Sakkas – Secker – had got his cover blown in London by a woman.

'He is fond of ballerinas.'

'Does he keep them to himself, or show them off?'

'I'm briefed that he's rather private about his women, as he is with the rest of his life-style.'

'Does he maintain contact with London?'

'Only as far as his entrepreneurship is concerned; he ships priceless ikons and Faberge jewellery there through his Aeroflot network, using the pilots.'

'The dossier's quite extensive.'

'Legge has your copy, if you decide to take this on.'

He'd said it lightly; it had sounded like an aside. It wasn't.

'Have you given it a name yet?' A code-name for the mission.

'Balalaika.'

At this stage it wasn't important; I didn't know why I'd asked. I knew later, a few minutes later.

'So why aren't the Russian police and security services targeting Sakkas, along with the other top mafiya kicks?' I swung away, took a turn, feeling restless, came back and looked down at the Chief of Signals. He sat perched in the half-light like a hooded crow. 'Or are they?'

I caught the slightest hesitation in him, a pause before he spoke. He'd noted the restlessness, and would know what it meant. Blast his eyes.

'The Interior Ministry's Organized Crime Section has been sending in some of its special investigators, of course. The RAOCs have also -'

'RAOCs?' I hadn't been in Moscow since it was the capital of the Soviet Union.

'Our own acronym for the regional administrations for fighting organized crime.'

'Bureau speak?'

'No, it's a straight translation from the Russian.'

Perhaps he wondered why I wanted to know. It was because I was beginning to want to know everything. 'Go on,' I said.

'The RAOCs have also been sending their people in, but the odds against success are suicidally high, because of the corruption at all levels of government. A large number of civil servants are in the pay of the organizatsiya – the mainstream mafiya – and some of them are actually in close touch, so that any incorrupt agents who try to infiltrate the opposition are immediately recognized by their own colleagues and marked down for the hit squads. Part of the problem is that every legitimate agent is to a varying extent terrified of the job.'

'Terrified of people like Sakkas.'

'Of Sakkas particularly.'

Something flashed through the mind: I suddenly wanted to meet him, Sakkas. Then it was gone but it left a trace, like a trail of smoke on a screen. It was in the same instant that I knew why I'd asked if the Bureau had got a name for the mission yet: I'd wanted everything brought together – their suddenly pitching me into Moscow, the impact of finding the Chief of Signals here, his hesitant and almost diffident briefing. And there it was: Balalaika.

It was also the name for something that hits the nerves of every shadow executive when he hears it.

'That's the only effective method of operation,' I said. 'Correct?'

Croder nodded. 'Yes. Infiltration.'

Hits the nerves because to infiltrate the opposition – any kind of opposition – exposes you more and more the deeper you go in, so that by the time you reach the centre of the web you daren't even move in case it sends out vibrations. Have you ever seen a spider working on a trapped fly? Most people have. It makes its rush, binds the wings until they stop buzzing and then stabs with its jaws, taking its time now, sucking out the vital fluids first, relishing in them.

You've infiltrated before.