'I suppose Yuri thinks it'd be sissy for him to learn, does he?'
'Yes, that's perfectly right!' As if I'd discovered a profound truth. But the wariness was still in his voice, the fear that I was building up this little edifice of human intimacy only so that I could knock it down. He didn't have the trust in innocence those children had had in the park.
He was silent, but I saw he was watching my reflection in the windscreen. I think he was beyond trying to do anything to help himself now, or to stop my going to see Zubarev. I'd found his weakness, or his strength, whichever you want to call it. But this didn't mean he wouldn't kill me if I gave him the chance and if he believed he had to, for his children's sake. Or of course for his own.
The lights were green for us at the turning into Baumanskaja and I didn't have to stop, though I would have liked to stop, and turn back, and never meet Zubarev.
The Pavillon block was on our left now and I turned past it and found the car park at the rear, where I'd explored the environment on foot two days ago. The snow was thick here, with the tracks of vehicles making ruts that tugged at the wheel as I drove through the entrance. The building was quite large, with a blank wall facing us and the headlights throwing the shadows of the parked cars against it. A man was walking towards us from the building, going across to his car, and our headlights held him frozen for an instant before I switched them off. He looked transfixed, like a wild creature caught in the dazzle of lights along a country road, and his shadow was enormous on the wall behind him, grotesque and distorted, with one thin shoulder held low like a broken wing and his body twisted to one side.
'Is that Zubarev?' I asked the man beside me.
'Yes.'
I watched as the figure moved on again, hobbling towards the car.
14: DEADLOCK
He looked up at me from the driving-seat.
'Oh,' he said, 'it's you.'
I'd gone across to his car quite quickly, to stop him driving away.
He watched me steadily for a moment, his pale eyes narrowed and his small gnome's head slightly on one side. Even sitting down his body was twisted, with the left shoulder held low and noticeably still. He was trying to think what it would be best to do, and I couldn't have helped him even if I'd wanted to. I'd only just got here in time: I think he'd panicked suddenly while he was waiting for us to arrive, and decided to get out in case Ignatov brought someone with him: an example of the type of intuition we develop in the field as a natural aid to survival.
But he couldn't just drive off, now that he'd seen me. There was a question of pride involved. The most he could do would be to pretend he was just popping out for some cigarettes; but he didn't bother. We both knew the position.
'What about a little drinkie?' he said with a sudden lopsided smile.
'All right.'
I stepped back to let him get out of the car. He did it clumsily, though he tried not to let anything show, and I looked away in time to save him embarrassment. Perhaps this was why Ignatov had been impressed by my talk of a wheelchair: he'd seen what it looked like to be half crippled.
Dr Steinberg hadn't told me his patient was as bad as this: he'd just said he 'tended to hobble'.
He slammed the door of his car. 'Is that Ignatov you've got over there?'
'Yes. I'll go and get him.'
Schrenk peered across at the humped shape in the Syrena. 'Got him trussed up, have you?' He gave a dry snigger. 'Leave him there, he'll be all right.'
Oh no you don't.
'He'll get bored out here,' I said, 'with no one to talk to.' I went back to the Syrena and got out my pocket knife and cut through the scarf: the knots were there for life. I said quietly to Ignatov: 'Don't do anything silly, will you? Remember you want to see the children again, and Galya.'
'Yes. I understand.' He shook the stiffness out of his legs and came with me towards the building.
'Evening, Pyotr,' Schrenk said in Russian. 'Where did you find our friend?' Another dry little laugh, totally without humour.
Ignatov said nothing, but stared at the ground as the three of us walked across the rutted snow. Schrenk slipped a couple of times and I remembered I mustn't help him, even if he actually fell. I knew him that well.
Other things were coming back to me in flashes of memory: a plastic chess set on the corner table of the Caff, where he used to challenge people, waiting there like a spider; a girl with black hair and smoky eyes and an intimate way of laughing, seaweed draped over one naked shoulder on the beach at Brighton; a black Jensen Interceptor with an anti-radar unit, deafening jazz records, an ashtray made out of a piston and stuffed with butts, and the way his fingers moved over the bomb that time, stroking it like a baby rabbit. Shapiro. Schrenk.
Signal Bracken. I have the objective.
Not yet.
We went slowly over the snow. I could feel Ignatov's concern that Schrenk might slip and lose his balance and break an arm: he kept close to him, his head turned, looking down. I could also feel Ignatov's awareness that he mustn't help him, if he felclass="underline" he had tried to help him before, and been told never to do that, never to do it again. I felt these infinitesimal vibrations flowing between us and carrying their intelligence. Things were sensitive tonight.
I felt Schrenk's rage.
'How's London?'
We always ask that.
'Dockers on strike,' I told him.
He laughed again, whinnying softly.
Perhaps when people laughed to cover panic or fright or rage the sound was in some way inhibited, leaving nothing to show but a rictus.
'Good old London,' he said, and led us to the heavy metal door in the middle of the building.
His room was on the ground floor at the rear, either because it was the best he could find or because he couldn't manage the stairs and didn't want to get trapped in the lift; or perhaps this was the best he could afford, the London funding having been cut off when he'd left Moscow for Hanover.
Consideration: Steinberg hadn't said his patient was as bad as this. Had they worked him over again, after they'd picked him up in Hanover? I didn't think so. It hadn't been the KGB.
We all stopped, not far along the passage. The number on the door was 15A. Ignatov had seemed to hold back a little on our way from the car park, and I'd let him know I had noticed it and didn't like it. Ignatov had to stay with me until I was ready to let him go: if I'd left him out there he would have got help from the next good citizen to come into the car park and he would have said it was a prank on the part of some hooligans to leave him tied up like this and he would have gone straight to a telephone and blown me.
Leave him there, Schrenk had told me, he'll be all right.
Oh no you don't.
He opened the door of his room. It hadn't been locked.
'Hello sweetheart,' he said in Russian, 'I didn't go after all — I met an old friend of mine.'
She was a plump peasant girl, sturdy and vital and with her skin still glowing from the country air, a girl recently come to the big city to fulfil her dreams of concrete towers and grinding underground trains.
'This is Misha,' Schrenk said. She gave me both her hands, warm and damp from the kitchen, bobbing and saying she was pleased to meet any friend of Viktor's.
'Konstantin,' I said, 'Konstantin Pavlovich:
She bobbed again and then kissed Schrenk on the cheek to show me she adored him, while his bright eye watched me over her shoulder, daring me to judge him for shacking up with a girl like this, reminding me of other times, between missions, when the field executives amused themselves by comparing one another's fortunes: Christ, old boy, that was an absolute stunner you were with last night! And where did she get the Bentley? It occurred to me, in this moment of contemplation as Schrenk's eye stared into mine, that nothing in a girl could be much more stunning than adoration.