I was in a janitor's room at the end of the main corridor on the ground floor when they hit the entrance doors open and filled the place with the clatter of boots.
I gave them time.
There was a picture on the wall of the room where I was waiting, a faded photograph of former President Gorbachev of the USSR being greeted at the airport in Novosibirsk by girls in white skirts belled out around them as their leader presented a huge bouquet of flowers. One little girl, among the youngest, stood watching the presentation with a contemplative finger up her nose, which I thought gave the whole scene a unique charm.
'Plekhanov, take the stairs!'
By the sound of their boots the corridor was filling up and I could hear doors opening and a woman's shrill voice and then a man's, demanding to know what was going on, and I waited until the first wave had passed the janitor's room and then went out and joined the tail of the advance group and started hammering on doors, telling people it was the militia, open up.
The vanguard of the group on the ground floor was spilling at right angles into a passage leading to the yard outside: I'd checked the layout of the building after Roach had left us here this morning.
'Kuibyshev, take your men into the yard and stake out the perimeter and leave two men guarding that door!'
I went out with the main group and took up station by the gate.
The whole street on the far side of the building was a blaze of light as the militia vehicles were brought in from the surrounding streets by radio to complete the total containment of the area, and through the ground-floor windows I could make out the civilian residents of the apartment block being lined up for questioning.
'Open this gate!'
People banging at it from the other side. I didn't do anything; we'd need a sergeant to order it done.
Glass smashed somewhere and I looked up and saw what looked like a struggle going on in a room on the second floor: a man was trying to get out onto the fire-escape and they weren't letting him. Let me go, so forth — I suppose that if you turned any given apartment block in this city upside down and shook it you'd find the odd drug dealer or black market capitano with evidence he couldn't get rid of at short notice. I haven't done anything, so forth, and I felt a touch of queasiness in the stomach because when I was growing op I'd seen flies on a web and had watched them buzzing and buzzing as the spider darted from its lair and the delicious chill of horror had trickled down my schoolboy spine.
'Sergeant in charge, open this fucking gate, come on!'
The NCO heard the order this time and gave a shout and two of us went for the wooden bar and swung it back and got the gate open and I stood clear as a body of men came plunging through and split up and started climbing the fire-escapes against the wall of the building while I went through the gate and turned and held my revolver at the ready. Two men were bringing the civilian down, going against the stream; I suppose it was the quickest way out of die building with all that fuss going on inside, and when they'd got him as far as the gate I turned again and took up the rearguard in case he managed to break loose.
We took him to one of the vehicles half a block away; I think it was the prisoner transport van that had come with us from Militia Headquarters earlier. There was less light here and I left the escort party and took up station at the end of an alley, facing the street to watch for anyone attempting to escape; but the focus of action was still down there at the apartment block and nobody was looking in my direction so I turned and walked into the alley, the boots a bit on the loose side even though I'd pulled the laces tight; it's important in this trade that our feet are comfortable because sometimes we need to run and run flat out and if we' re not fast enough we can lose the whole thing.
That had been at 7:41 and it was now 8:20 and they wouldn't give it much more than an hour down there, Gromov and Belyak, and there was something I'd have to remember: there'd only been one way I could have got out of that place and as soon as they gave their minds to it they'd put Shokin, Viktor back on the A.P. bulletin board described as possibly wearing militia uniform.
They were there again, the lights.
The support man was driving cautiously and I liked that You could wipe out the front end of whatever you were driving on streets like this if you didn't watch it, clouds of steam and rusty water pouring onto the ice and the timing-gear pushed through the cylinder block, and in these boots I didn't feel like walking.
And that was the second time.
I edged the throttle down a fraction to pull up on the Trabant in front of me and watched the mirror. It was the second time the car behind had gone through a red light, oh quite possibly, yes, with so little traffic on the streets after the storm there wasn't much attention being paid to the lights, just slow down a bit and take a good look and off you go again if there are no police around; on the other hand it's the first intimation you get when a tracker comes up on your taiclass="underline" he can't afford to stay too close and go through the intersections I with you but he can't afford to lose ground to a red light and watch you sail away.
All I could see from the profile of the vehicle behind me was that it was a private car, not a van or a truck or anything with emergency lights on the roof, unlit or otherwise.
But you said you weren't worried about lights in the mirror.
I wasn't.
You gave us all that bullshit about watching mirrors with the ritualistic devotion of a priest, just because you thought it sounded good, and now -
Bloody well shuddup.
There was no way that anyone could have tracked us last night from the Velichko killing-site to the hospital without my knowing, but I used the throttle again and fought the ruts and pulled alongside the Trabant and signalled the driver to stop. His offside wing caught the side of my door as he slewed on the snow but it wasn't more than a bump, and then we were stationary side by side and our windows were down and we started talking.
'I've got some lights in the mirror,' I told him.
They were still there in the distance, but the car had stopped.
The support man was watching me, a stubbly face with unsurprisable eyes under a black leather ski-cap. 'Was he there before I intercepted?'
'He could have been.' there'd been more traffic, earlier.
'He's not mine,' the support man said. 'I got there clean.' there was a note of censure in the tone, as if he'd just noticed I hadn't washed.
'Where's the safe-house?' I asked him.
'You peeling off?'
'I might have to.'
Our engines idled, echoing from the wall alongside.
'Two kilometres east of here, and you're on the river. It's the wreck of a coaster, single mast with four deck hatches and the starboard bow stove in, the M. V. Natasha, but you can't make out the name very well. She's on the west bank, three berths down — that's south — from No. 7 Granary, Novosibirsk, black clapperboard with the Russian flag painted over the main doors, recently done.'
He waited, watching me, his eyes in the shadow of his cap.
'Vessels on either side of the wreck?'
'Another coaster, north, and a dredger with a list on it. Place is a graveyard.'
The lights were still in the mirror.
'All right. Stay where you are, and if I'm wrong I'll be back and we can keep going. Give me half an hour.'
'You need help?'
'No.'
It had better be done solo.
I knew what had happened, now, and the chill of the night air was creeping through the skin and reaching the nerves, because it might not just be a case of throwing off the tracker and resuming operations without him. Meridian had been compromised, and even Ferris could be in hazard. It was perfectly true that no one could have tracked us through this city last night, that we'd been absolutely clean when Roach had picked us up at the hospital. But the lights back there were still in the mirror, and now I knew why.