Russian Roulette (7 page)

It seemed an extreme way to go about getting a few grammes of steel, but there it was … worth millions to an industrial consortium, who would not want to know the details of how it was obtained, as long as they got the precious end product.

The same old thoughts tramped in a heavy-footed circle through Simon's mind as he sat morosely in his chair. He always came back to the same starting point – who was trying to eliminate him and what could he do about it?

Too late, he bemoaned his stupidity and stubbornness in not cutting his losses in Helsinki and flying home from there … especially as he'd had another chance after the attack, when he could have stayed in hospital and salved his pride as the ship sailed without him – his shocked state must have turned his brain, he thought, looking back.

Now he was stuck for ten days in a hostile country, virtually imprisoned with someone bent on murdering him.

There was no way out; he could hardly go and pour out his heart to Gilbert and ask for an air flight straight home from Moscow. Gilbert Bynge? … in his present suspicious mood, he began to wonder about Gilbert. A courier for years on the Russian route, every opportunity to go to and fro across the frontiers. He spoke perfect Russian, had been at the game for years … what
about
Gilbert? Far from trusting him to get Simon out of this jam, should he put him well up the list of suspects?

Bynge certainly had the physique to have done that nasty bit of work on the Helsinki quayside – thin but tall, and with youth on his side. Apart from Fragonard, there were no other likely candidates, apart from the dipsomaniac Irishman, Michael Shaw, the vicar and the old ladies. And of course, Liz … she was a big girl, but …

Simon shrugged off the thought as soon as it entered his mind – apart from his emotions, hadn't she been the one who had helped drag him out of the water?

‘Ah, to blazes with it!' he snarled suddenly and jumped up, wincing at the pain in his neck. He went to the window and threw open the double-layered casement, a protection against the Moscow winters. He had to lean well out over the wide sill to see anything.

Immediately below him was the cliff-like wall of the hotel, falling four storeys to the ground below. His room was at the back of the Metropol almost at the northern corner. To his left was a busy shopping street leading away from Sverdlov Square. The rumble of traffic, the crowded pavements, the ice cream stalls and the shops could have been almost any city in Europe.

Below and to his right was a high curved wall of ancient red brick, with a curious Oriental battlement along the top. From previous readings of his guidebook, he recognized this as part of the Chinese Wall, a remnant of the old city fortifications. It ran now from some stable-like buildings a few yards away to meet the hotel wall just below Liz Treasure's room, separating the street from the rough ground that formed the Metropol's backyard.

His inspection of the outer world complete, he pulled his head in and closed the windows. The next half-hour passed in unpacking his two cases into the cavernous wardrobe and in risking life and limb with bath taps and flush. They at least took his mind off things for a time, but afterwards the worries came back in full spate.

Ought he to sit tight and do nothing, or should he try to finish off the job on the principle of being hung for a sheep instead of a lamb?

His mental ferment was interrupted by a tap at the door. He had locked it against the murderous Mr. ‘X' when Gilbert left and now he hurried to the half-inch gap down the side of the worn woodwork.

‘Who's there?'

‘Me … Liz, you idiot. What's the idea of barricading yourself in?' The handle rattled impatiently as he dropped his hand to the key.

Elizabeth Treasure had also bathed and changed and now stood there looking ravishing in a simple, but slinky white dress.

‘You're taking me down to lunch,' she said. It was a statement, not an invitation or request. ‘They eat here until teatime, I'm told, so we're not too late.'

Simon looked at his watch and saw with astonishment that it was almost two thirty. Liz had walked past him into the room. He pushed the door shut and followed her, slipping his arms around her waist and kissing the back of her neck. She neither repulsed him nor responded, but stood staring at the communicating door.

‘That's Gilbert's little joke,' said Simon.

‘If you've any ideas, then forget them,' she said crisply, ‘There's a damned great wardrobe against my side!'

Then, to Simon's relief, she actually giggled. Recovering her poise immediately, she dropped her handbag and gloves onto the bed, Turning, she slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him with open-lipped enthusiasm for a full half-minute.

Surprised, but gratified beyond measure, Simon responded avidly. When his hands had slipped down her shoulders to what she evidently considered the Plimsoll line of propriety, she pulled away and went to the mirror. Her very pale lipstick had survived any major damage, so she calmly walked to the bed and picked up her belongings.

‘Ready?' she said.

Two hours later, Simon was back in his room, lying on the bed in his underpants. His neck was still sore, but he felt better all round.

The lunch had been lengthy, due to the traditional lethargy of the waiters, but he had enjoyed every minute. Liz had played footsie and rubbed her knee against his for most of the time. Although she was outwardly as impassive as ever, he at last felt that things were moving in the right direction. The fatal lure of sex, which can turn a man's mind away from even the basic rules of survival, had made him forget any ideas of scampering back to London.

After lunch, which had lasted until nearly four o'clock, Gilbert had shepherded the rest of the tour off on a walk around the Kremlin and Red Square, only a few yards from the Metropol. Only Simon and the red-faced Irishman had opted out, the latter without any attempt at excuse, though Simon untruthfully pleaded the after-effects of his ‘accident'. In reality, he wanted more time in which to think and perhaps act.

Before lying down to do the thinking part, he had prowled around the room, rather shamefacedly looking for hidden microphones. He looked everywhere and found only a complete absence of dust. The only mysterious object was a current fixture list for Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, hidden at the back of a drawer!

Flat on the bed, he thought over the past day and some confidence crept back into his soul, born mainly of the complete normality of things since leaving the ship.

His self-congratulation over, he came down to the task of deciding about Gustav Pabst, the renegade engineer at the automobile works. Should he try to contact him, or was it too risky in the circumstances? Simon was still convinced, almost intuitively, that the Soviet authorities were so far uninvolved in the conspiracy. Naively, he thought that they had had no reason yet to take any notice of him. So as long as he could keep clear of Mr ‘X', he should be reasonably safe. There was another two thousand pounds at stake – the fact that Kramer was dead was irrelevant, as the American had arranged for Simon to contact someone else on his return to London. Presumably Harry Lee had only been one cog in a large and efficient American machine, so if Simon could deliver the goods, the cash would be there just the same.

With his hands behind his head, he stared at the high ceiling and made his decision. For some reason – perhaps not unconnected with Liz Treasure – he had calmed down a lot since the morning and was more prepared to take a chance.

I was shot at a damn sight more in Cyprus, for less money in a year than I'll get for a couple of hours effort here
, he reasoned, trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.

He swung himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, and decided to have a shot at it.

Now that he had made up his mind, he settled down to devise a plan of action for ‘Operation Tool Steel.'

Chapter Five

The same afternoon, whilst the British party were marching around the Kremlin behind an attractive Intourist guide, Alexei Pudovkin was in his office in Petrovka.

He sat in his partitioned box, jacket on the back of his chair, earnestly studying a long telegram from Leningrad. Periodically, he looked up to curse the central heating, which for some reason could not be turned off, though the sun was streaming through the dusty windows.

If Ilyichev had been cryptically brief in his first cable, he had made up for it in the second, which was almost a letter.

Alexei skimmed through it once, then settled down for a more thorough study. He had a bottle of mineral water to sustain him and he sipped this slowly as he digested the new information from the Hero City. Halfway through, there was a perfunctory rap on his door and Vasily Moiseyenko breezed in, laden with papers.

‘The stuff from visa office,
tovarishch
… nothing of any help, as far as I can see.'

‘Sit down – have some water.'

Pudovkin didn't look up, but pushed the bottle across. The young lieutenant perched himself on the corner of the desk – the only other chair was piled high with papers from other cases, swept off Pudovkin's desk to make way for the ‘Great New Case'. He waited in silence for about a minute, then his patience expired.

‘That from Ilyichev?' Alexei grunted.

‘Anything good in it?'

‘Tell you in a minute – just shut up, will you?'

Vasily grinned … the scrawny old bear was always like this when he was happy with some work. If he was polite and talkative, it usually meant that he was bored.

Eventually, the older man threw the message form down and creaked his back up to a more erect position.

‘Want to know what's in it, eh, Vasily Sergeivich?'

‘Bursting! … what's it all about?'

Pudovkin took another swig of water with exasperating slowness.

‘This man Smith … Simon Smith …' he began.

‘Looked like a proper ladies' man to me.'

Alexei glared at his assistant. ‘Who's telling this, eh? … this man Smith goes ashore yesterday when the ship calls at Helsinki and is brought back in an ambulance at the last moment.'

He looked at the cable again ‘One of the women in the party – a woman called Treasure – found him floating unconscious in the harbour. He later told the ship's doctor that he slipped on the wet cobbles, hit his neck on the railings and can't remember any more. The Finnish authorities only know that he was fished out of the water half-drowned.'

He stopped for some mineral water.

‘The important thing is the ship's surgeon said that he had marks on his neck typical of those of strangulation!'

Moiseyenko tut-tutted, his face gleaming with anticipation. ‘Attempted murder!' he said gleefully.

Pudovkin shrugged, a gesture which made him look like a lean old vulture.

‘Perhaps so – but there's more. The doctor and the chief officer searched his cabin, after reporting to the captain of the ship – Smith was away in the sick berth – they found an automatic pistol hidden under his mattress.'

Vasily's bland round face opened up in surprise. ‘What's the game – trying to start a counter-revolution?'

Alexei smiled crookedly. ‘The ship reported it to Leningrad Marine Radio, they put him through to the militia … whether the KGB got in on the act as well, I don't know – I certainly don't propose to tell them.'

He sniffed and carried on. ‘After a night in the sickbay, Smith rapidly improved and insisted on going back to his cabin to pack. After he left the ship this morning, they searched again and found the gun still in the same place.'

Vasily frowned. ‘So has he committed any offence – yet?'

‘As far as I see – no. He didn't bring the gun into the country and although the ship is legally Russian soil, passengers are not challenged about contraband until they actually land.'

‘Why bring it so far and then leave it?'

‘You're full of blasted questions today … d'you think I'm a fortune-teller or something? … all I can think is that he got scared of having attention drawn to him over the Helsinki brawl and decided not to risk smuggling the pistol.'

‘So what is he – a spy?'

Pudovkin rocked back on his chair as far as the cramped space would allow.

‘Again, I don't know. He may even be one of ours, I suppose – the Cheka never let their right hand know what the left is doing.'

Moiseyenko was serious and silent at the mention of the ‘others'.

‘If you think that, Alexei Alexandrovich, why not turn it over to the grey men from Dzerzhinsky Square?'
⁴

Pudovkin shook his head doggedly. ‘
You're
changing your tune, lad – I thought you wanted to hang on to the job … and until Fat Father upstairs says otherwise, we carry on.'

He had a last swig of mineral water. ‘And I've got a feeling about this one, Vasily – let's just play it by ear, eh?'

Simon sat in his room, biting his fingernails in indecision. Every fibre in his aching body cried out to either finish the job or get the hell out of the Soviet Union.

He went to the window and stared out over the canyon which separated his room from the big children's store across the street. He smoothed a hand wearily over his springy well-groomed hair and wondered how to go about contacting Pabst. Telephone and telegram were too risky, so the only thing left was to go and see the man.

With almost a convulsion of decision, he swung around to the wardrobe and took out his light raincoat. Hurrying now, as if not to give himself time to change his mind, he fled to the door and strode away down the corridor.

In the lift, he said nothing to the impassive old woman who operated it, but merely jerked a thumb downwards.

As the slow box lumbered down, the fear of being watched flooded back into his mind. Although he was still blissfully unaware of the Militia's interest in him, he was still worried about his murderous competitor. The last thing he wanted was to lead ‘Mr X' straight to Gustav Pabst, to say nothing of the risk of being waylaid again in some back street. By the time the gates opened on the ground floor, he had a plan of sorts ready in his mind.