There was another trace, maybe the best way, Drew realized. He said: ‘When was it happening?’
There wasn’t a positive date,’ said Kapalet. ‘He said the move almost coincided with his transfer.’
‘When did Shelenkov arrive here in Paris?’
‘June thirtieth.’
‘We’ve got him!’ said Drew triumphantly. ‘All we’ve got to do is sift all the Agency movements, a month before and a month after June thirtieth.’
‘One more thing,’ said the Russian. ‘Shelenkov said where the man was going could be as useful as where he had been.’
‘Where he was going was as useful as where he had been?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Sorry I ran off at the mouth there just now, Sergei. I was out of order.’
‘No offence,’ said Kapalet. ‘Be good to get this thing resolved, won’t it?’
‘You wouldn’t believe how good,’ said the American.
29
Militia Post 20 was on a corner, with the majority of the building extending along Petrovka Street, a gloomy, grime-windowed, barrack-like construction. The entrance hall was bisected from wall to wall by a separating barrier, elevated in its middle. Behind it sat an officer whose rank Yuri could not identify from his shoulder designations. On either side of him were men in civilian clothes, clerks hunched over ledgers. Yuri expected it to be a noisy, bustling place but it was strangely quiet: although he had never entered one, Yuri thought the atmosphere had to be something like a church. On the wall behind the division was a large photograph of Mikhail Gorbachov: it was an early, pre glasnost picture upon which the birthmark on the leader’s forehead had been brushed out by the printer, unlike today’s photographs. There was a large noticeboard with very little on it along the wall to Yuri’s right. To the left were unmarked doors to three offices. There was a smell, although different from that at Mytishchi: here it seemed to be an odour of chalk, which he didn’t understand, and dust and bodies, which he did.
Yuri had not determined his approach before he entered and was still undecided as he walked to the barrier. Once there, he had to look up, because of its height. The uniformed man continued reading something unseen behind a ledge and the clerks went on writing. Why was some sort of intimidation so important to so many people? With the word in mind and remembering the effect upon the woman at Mytishchi, Yuri announced: ‘Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.’
The clerks wrote on and it was several moments before the officer looked up. ‘So?’ he said.
‘So I want information.’
‘I thought the KGB already knew everything.’
Yuri refused to pander to the man’s pretension. He said: ‘Vasili Dmitrevich Malik.’
Close now, Yuri realized that the man to whom he was talking was contributing heavily to the body smell of the building. The officer’s slight straightening in his chair was the only perceptible change in his attitude. He said: ‘Criminal division handled that.’
Yuri did not know what the differentiation signified. He said: ‘They are not here?’
‘Of course they are here.’
‘Where?’
The desk officer gestured vaguely behind him, to the rear of the building.
‘Who?’ demanded Yuri.
‘Investigator Bogaty.’
Yuri moved to speak, about to make it a polite question. Instead, responding to the hostility, he said: ‘Tell him I am here.’
The man did not move at once and briefly Yuri thought he was going to refuse. Then he lifted what must have been an internal telephone, leaning back to talk behind a cupped hand, so that Yuri was unable to hear all that was said. He managed to detect the identification of the KGB. The man replaced the instrument and gestured behind him but positively to the left this time. ‘You’re to go back. Room 12b.’ He seemed disappointed the meeting had been granted.
Yuri pushed through the swing gate, picking up the numbering halfway along the open corridor. He hoped the deskman’s attitude was not indicative of a general feeling about the KGB within the militia headquarters. At 12b Yuri knocked politely, and heard at once a muffled ‘Enter’, which he did.
It was a pristine, almost antiseptically clean office: there was even an antiseptic smell which Yuri saw came from a deodorizer device on top of a filing cabinet, arranged against two other filing cabinets in absolute symmetry, every drawer closed. There were two windows at which the blinds had been half pulled precisely to a matching level and a desk the top of which shone. On it were seried In and Out trays, both empty, with a telephone directly in line and an unmarked blotter measurably in its very centre. Behind sat an overweight man neatly encompassed in a well-cut suit with a colour-coordinated tie and a white shirt as pristinely clean as everything else around its wearer.
‘Investigator Bogaty?’
‘At last!’ Bogaty said.
The reply confused Yuri: it could only have taken seconds – two minutes at the outside – for him to have walked from the front hall desk! He said: ‘I have come about Vasili Dmitrevich Malik.’
‘After nine days, five hours and thirty-five minutes!’ said Bogaty, with a policeman’s contempt of a neglected investigation.
‘I do not understand,’ said Yuri, who didn’t.
‘It’s taken nine days, five hours and thirty-five minutes for the KGB – for Colonel Panchenko – to say please. And then he couldn’t do it himself,’ said the investigator.
Yuri understood the reply little better than he had anything else, but he didn’t think comprehension was immediately important. For an unknown reason he had an apparently angry man talking by name of someone he believed to be connected with the death of his father. He said: ‘I am sorry, if it has caused you difficulties.’
‘Hardly me,’ said Bogaty. ‘Have you been put in charge of the investigation?’
Yuri searched desperately for a reply he could regard as safe and couldn’t find one. So he said: ‘Not exactly.’
‘You know it’s too late, don’t you?’
What was the response to that! Yuri said: ‘I hope not.’
‘You haven’t checked the garages, have you?’
A negative question invites a negative reply, thought Yuri, remembering the interrogation lectures. ‘No,’ he said.
‘So it’s too late!’ insisted the detective. ‘I told him! That night, when it happened, I told Panchenko to check the garages, before there was time to get the damage repaired.’
Stoke the apparent outrage, decided Yuri: let the man boil over so he could pick up a lead to what this was all about. He said: ‘I don’t know anything of this.’
‘If you people can’t do the job you’re supposed to do, why don’t you leave it to others who can?’ demanded Bogaty.
‘What would you have done?’ asked Yuri. Lecture me, patronize me, be contemptuous, he thought.
‘Gone through all the garages, particularly the back-street, cash-in-the-hand junk houses,’ said Bogaty. ‘There aren’t any I don’t know. Hassled them until I found a circa 1984 Lada with a smashed light and a crumpled wing…’ Bogaty breathed heavily to a halt. ‘A week,’ he resumed. ‘That’s all it would have taken me. A week. Now you don’t stand a chance. Not a chance in hell.’
What exactly was the man complaining about? A botched inquiry, obviously. But how could he know whether any inquiry had been botched or not? Despite the bewilderment, details were registering with him: a 1984 Lada, with a smashed headlight and a damaged wing. Yuri decided to pique the man’s obvious pride. He said: ‘It certainly seems we should have sought your help sooner.’
Bogaty did not reply at once. Instead he opened an unseen drawer to the right of his desk, extracted a manila folder which he threw towards Yuri, without disarranging the carefully positioned blotter, and said: ‘What good do you imagine this is going to be so late?’
Now it was Yuri who did not respond at once, realization at last crowding in upon him. The folder was a metre away, close enough for him to reach out and touch. And how much he wanted to touch it: snatch it up and devour everything that was inside! But he didn’t. Forcing the calmness into his voice, he said: ‘What’s it say?’