'You want another place?' Mikhail asked me.
'What? Yes. Another place.'
I would go through the motions, in the mistaken belief that it wasn't already too late; I would follow this path through the labyrinth as if it could lead me somewhere, until the knowledge came to me from the other-world source beyond the senses that I was wasting my time, performing an exercise in futility.
Running around like a chicken with your head cut off.
Shuddup.
The draught from the open window cut across my face and I sat with my gloved hands covering it as Tanya had done when she'd walked from the Hotel Vladekino to the place of execution last night.
'Can't you shut that window?' I called to Mikhail above the din of the snow chains.
'It's got to stay open,' he said over his shoulder.' there's a leak in the exhaust manifold, the gasket's gone, we'd both be found with our toes turned up if I shut the window, be a gas chamber in here.' He reached for his little tin again.
She wouldn't hear of it either, Olga, sitting in watch over her gaggle of sluttish girls in the next place we stopped at. I took it to seven hundred and she wavered then, but I didn't press her because she could chicken out when the time came to go through with it and that would be dangerous.
'For God's sake,' I told Mikhail,' they're like cows in there.'
He shifted into gear with a clashing of cogs.' You said you didn't want class. You get what you pay for, this area. Now I can take you to — '
'I need a phone,' I told him.
The sun had lodged among the black frieze of cranes along the dockside, their thorns cutting across its red swollen sac as the dark sky deepened; night would come soon now in the late Siberian afternoon, flooding in from the steppes.
There was a line of booths near a bus-stop, one of them with the cord still intact, and the two kopeks rattled into the almost empty coin-box.
Mikhail was watching me from the taxi. He'd asked for another fifty roubles to keep the meter going and I'd given it to him. He would be my companion in the coming night, providing me with wheels and shelter and a shut mouth: I'd mentioned to him that the militia seemed busy of late, and he'd said they were always sticking their snotty noses into other people's business, they also were the sons of whores.
She would be frightened, Tanya, as they worked on her at Militia Headquarters. She would be wondering how she could have ignored my warning, would have realized now that I'd meant what I said, that I knew — and should have been trusted to know — more than she did. It couldn't have been easy for her, to leave that building and make her desperate run for the nearest telephone that would work, that would bring her the voice of her brother and the comfort she hungered for.
She would be frightened now, under the blinding light. I didn't want to think about that.
'Ordnance Unit Three.'
I asked for Captain Rusakov, said it was a matter of urgency. Mikhail had left his engine running; he'd said the starter dog was worn and that it had let him down twice, he couldn't trust it.
The booth stank of vomit: there'd been a drunk here. I kept the door cracked open with my boot.
She would be frightened at the thought of what she might say, of what they might make her say, about her brother. Frightened and alone, and God knew how long it would be before I could reach her, if I could reach her at all.
Have you ever been questioned by the militia?
No.
By the KGB, then?
Yes.
What did they do to you?
They beat me up.
Then you know what I mean, Tanya. The militia are no different, even now. They'll get everything out of you, once they start, and that is why you have to stay with me.
The glass panels of the booth were filthy, and one of them had words scrawled on it by an angry finger — Gorbachev murdered the Motherland. Beyond it the sun was down, crimsoning the earth's rim as its sac burst at last and spilled its blood across the horizon.
There was so little time.
The line clicked.
'Captain Rusakov speaking.'
Chapter 14: LIPSTICK
'Are you alone?'
In a moment he said, 'I don't understand.'
'Are you alone in the room?'
'Yes. Who is this?'
'Your sister has been arrested.'
I heard him let out a breath, and then there was another brief silence before he asked me again, 'Who is this?' there was caution in his voice now, and an undertone of shock; in the last few seconds his life had lurched.
'Write this down,' I told him.' there's a rooming-house with a bar at Pier 9 on the river, the west bank. The bar is called Harbour Light. Wait for me there at — '
'Where are they holding her?'
'Listen carefully,' I told him. 'We've got to cover the important things first, in case we're interrupted.' A militia patrol-car had crossed the intersection a minute ago, eastwards towards the river. 'You should know that I am your ally and that I'm going to try getting your sister free tonight. Now I want you to wait for me at a table at the Harbour Light Bar at Pier 9 on the west bank of the Ob at eight o'clock this evening. You should — '
'Give me your name,' he said.
Not too bright, this army man, trained to respect discipline, to have his life run for him on rails, didn't care for anonymous phone calls. But he'd at least had the imagination and the necessary passion to set up an assassination and bring it off, a private enough act, he hadn't done that to orders.
Or had he?
The thought came at me like a stray bullet and I filed it. That had been the second attempt on the life of General Velichko.
'Rusakov,' I said, 'if you waste my time you could wreck our chances of getting your sister free. She'll be under interrogation now and may at any moment expose you, under duress, as the assassin of General Gennadi Velichko. Are you prepared to cooperate with me?'
A huge shape was on the move beyond the filthy window of the booth, and I watched it.
What I didn't want him to do was panic and put the phone down and run for some kind of cover. He would have got the point by now: it didn't need a lot of intelligence. The instant his sister told the militia who had shot Velichko there'd be a telephone call from the officer commanding Militia Headquarters to the officer commanding the Russian Army garrison with a request that Captain Vadim Rusakov of Ordnance Unit Three be placed under immediate arrest on suspicion of murder pending the arrival of prisoner transport and an officer bearing information.
If Rusakov ran, I would lose the second key to Meridian.
The dark shape moved slowly past the gap between the rooming-house and a stevedore's gantry, and its port riding light bloomed like a rose in the river fog. A freighter bringing salmon, perhaps, canned salmon from Kamen' — na — Obi in the south for my friend out there in the taxi.
'I am going there now,' I heard Rusakov saying.
'Going where?'
'To Militia Headquarters.' His tone was strong, adamant.' that's where they must be holding my sister. I will give myself up — '
'Rusakov — '
'I will give myself up and tell them she had nothing to do with it!'
'Rusakov, listen to me. They won't take your word for that. They'll get at the truth and the truth is that she was an accomplice. She — '
'I must help her! She is my sister!'
God give me patience. 'If you go there, Rusakov, you will both be held for enquiries and by midnight tonight they'll have got the whole thing out of you and there'll be nothing I can do for Tanya. You will have condemned her.'