‘So,’ Ian said slowly, seeing the point, ‘when Boris overheard what he did on the train from Burghley to London, he was listening to Malcolm... who was selling his goods to his friends.’
‘It seemed possible,’ I said. ‘In fact, it seemed extremely likely. And on that same sheet of paper, probably while still waiting for the time-table people to answer, because they take ages sometimes, Malcolm pencilled in Johnny Farringford as a star possibility for Alyosha. I don’t know how well he knew Johnny, but he didn’t like him. He referred to him as a shit.’
‘But why on earth should he give such an incriminating piece of paper to anyone else?’ Stephen said. ‘He was really stupid.’
I shook my head. ‘It was only by the merest chance that it reached me and meant anything. To him, it was only a doodle. He scrawled over it. It was just a piece of rubbish to be thrown away... or given to someone who wanted some scrap paper for making notes.’
‘How’s your cough?’ Stephen said.
‘Bloody awful. Let’s have some lunch.’
Because there were three of us, we sat at a different table, the next one along from the Wilkinsons and Frank.
Ian eyed Frank benignly and asked me quietly if the status in that area was still quo.
‘Does he know I know?’ I said. ‘No, he doesn’t. Does he know you know? Who can tell?’
‘Does he know I know you know they know she knows you know?’ Stephen said.
Mrs Wilkinson leaned across the gap. ‘Are you going home on Tuesday, like us?’ she said. ‘Dad and I wont be sorry to be back, will we, Dad?’
Dad looked as if he couldn’t wait.
‘I hope so.’ I said.
Natasha brought the soaring eyebrows and a fixed smile and said I hadn’t kept my promise to tell her where I was going.
Nothing, it seemed, had changed; except that it was Stephen who ate my meat.
After lunch the three of us went up to my room for Ian and Stephen to collect the coats and hats they had left there just before, and while we were debating when next to telephone and next to meet, there was a sharp knock on the door.
‘Christ, not again.’ Ian said, instinctively putting a hand to his bruised head.
I went to the door and said, ‘Who is it?’
No reply.
Stephen came and said, ‘Who is it?’ in Russian.
There was this time an answer, but to Stephen it seemed unwelcome.
‘He said the Major-General sent him.’
I let down the drawbridge. Outside in the corridor stood two large men with stolid faces, flat uniformed caps, and long greatcoats. From the look on Stephen’s face, I guessed that the posse had come for the outlaw.
One of them handed me a stuck-down envelope addressed to Randall Drew. Inside there was an extremely brief hand-written note, saying simply, ‘Accompany my officers,’ and below that, ‘Major-General.’
Stephen, looking round-eyed and a little pale, said, ‘I’ll wait here. We’ll both wait here.’
‘No... You’d better go. I’ll telephone.’
‘If you don’t,’ he said, ‘first thing in the morning, I take the goods to Oliver Waterman. Is that right?’
‘Uhuh.’
I pulled hat and coat from the wardrobe and put them on. The two large unsmiling men unsmilingly waited. We all walked along in a cluster of five, and went down in the lift without saying very much.
During our progress through the foyer there was a certain amount of drawing aside of skirts, and several frightened glances. The bulk and intent of my two escorts was unmistakable. No one wanted to be involved in my disaster.
They had come in a large black official car, with a uniformed driver. They gestured to me to sit in the back. I had a parting view of Ian and Stephen’s strained-looking faces as they stood side by side on the pavement, and then the car set off and made unerringly for Derzhinsky Square.
The long façade of the Lubianka loomed along one side of it, looking like a friendly insurance-company building if one didn’t know better. The car however swept past its huge sides and pulled up in front of the big building next door, which was pale blue with white painted scrolls, and would on any other day have looked rather pretty.
My escorts opened the car door for me to get out, and walked beside me into the building. Inside, Lubianka or not, it was clearly no jolly children’s home. We marched at a sturdy pace down wide institutional corridors, and came to a halt outside an unmarked door. One of my escorts knocked, opened the door, and stood aside for me to go in. With a dry mouth and galloping pulse, I went.
It was a comfortable, old-fashioned office, with a lot of dark polished wood and glass-fronted cupboards. A desk. A table. Three or four chairs. And by the window, holding back a dark curtain to look out at the snowy street, the Major-General.
He turned, and walked towards me, and held out his hand. I was so relieved that I automatically gave him my right one in return, and tried not to wince when he grasped it. I wondered if he knew he’d just given me one of the most shaking half hours of my life.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have something to show you.’
He led me through a second door in the back wall of the office, into a narrower secondary corridor. After a few yards we came to a door which opened on to a staircase, leading down. We descended to the next floor, and went along another, grittier corridor.
We stopped at a totally smooth metal door. The Major-General pressed a button in the wall beside it, and the door swung open. He went into the room in front of me, and beckoned to me to follow.
I stepped into a square, bare room, brightly lit.
There were two armed policemen standing guard in there, and two other men, sitting on stools, with their arms fastened behind their backs.
If I was surprised to see them, it was nothing to their reaction on seeing me. One of them spat, and the other said something which seemed to shake even the K.G.B.
‘These are the men?’ the Major-General said.
‘Yes.’
I looked into the faces remembered from the Aragvi restaurant. Into the eyes remembered from Gorky Street and under the bridge. Into the souls that had killed Hans Kramer and Malcolm Herrick.
One seemed slightly older, and had a drooping moustache. His lips were a little retracted, showing a gleam of teeth clenched in a travestry of a grin; and even in this place he exuded a bitter hostility.
The other had taut skin over sharp bones, and the large eye-sockets of so many fanatics. Across the eyebrow and down the side of his face there was a scarlet cut, and there was a split swelling on his lower lip.
‘Which of them killed Herrick?’ said the Major-General.
‘The one with the moustache.’
‘He says his wrist is broken,’ the Major-General remarked conversationally. ‘They were waiting at the airport. We had no trouble finding them. They speak very little English, by the way.’
‘Who are they?’ I said.
‘They are journalists.’ He sounded surprised at this discovery. ‘Tarek Zanetti,’ pointing to the man with the moustache, ‘and Mehmet Sarai, with the cut.’
Their names meant nothing to me, even if they were the ones they were born with, which might be doubtful.
‘They have been living in the same compound as Herrick,” the Major-General said. ‘He could have seen them easily every day.
‘Do they belong to something like the Red Brigades?’ I asked.
‘Something new. we think, he said. ‘A breakaway group. But we have yet to make more than the most preliminary interrogation. Immediately they arrived here, I sent for you. However, I will show you something. When we searched the bags they were attempting to leave with, we found this.’ He took a letter out of his pocket, and gave it to me. I unfolded it, but it was typewritten in a language I didn’t know even by sight.