Russian Roulette (8 page)

Instead of making for the steps down into the hotel foyer, he left the lift and casually turned left into the short passage that led to the restaurant. He walked into the huge dining room and kept on along the side wall in the direction of the glass doors that led to the kitchens. As he reached them, he was gratified to see a worn wooden swing-door just inside the glass, on the opposite wall to the serving area. There were a few late patrons about, but no staff. Without the hesitation that gives away a timid trespasser, Simon boldly pushed open the glass doors, turned right and marched straight through the wooden one.

His gamble had paid off. He found himself in a gloomy corridor piled with crates and boxes of vegetables. It was the store department and should have a rear goods entrance somewhere.

In the distance, he saw figures moving about. As an impromptu camouflage, he picked up the nearest box and with this clasped to his chest, strode briskly down the long passage towards a gleam of daylight from an open door. He nodded as he passed the storemen, but they hardly spared him a glance. In a few seconds, he was out of the building, blinking in the daylight of the backyard. The cobbled area had a high wall in which were set big gates, now standing wide open. He dumped his box on the back of a parked lorry and walked out into a lane, where he found himself looking at the traffic of 25th of October Street.

Remembering his much-studied street map, he turned right and soon was at Sverdlov Square Metro station.

He bought a five kopek ticket at the automatic machines and read that it would take him anywhere on the Metro system.

In the ornate marble palace below, he boarded the first train that came, changed at the next station and repeated this at the next. On both occasions, he was certain that no one had followed him, so he studied his pocket chart of the Metro system and caught a train for the terminus of the south-eastern line, the Avtozavodskayastation. It was a long ride and he sat in the spotless carriage, half-empty just before the rush hour, and marvelled at the superb construction of the Moscow Underground. Free from the grime, the advertisements and the squalor of the London system, it had an almost cathedral-like atmosphere – the crystal chandeliers of some stations, the rows of statues in others seemed more like a religious or cultural monument than a transport utility.

It was getting on for four thirty when he came up to street level again. He made his way as quickly as his poor knowledge of the suburbs allowed. Most of the people about seemed to be old women and children going home from school. He asked several old ladies and eventually found his way to Borovitskaya Avenue. It looked exactly the same as a hundred other streets in the locality, great rectangular blocks of yellow-grey apartment buildings lining wide tree-lined boulevards. Trams ran up the side of the roads and at intervals the flats were interrupted by shopping areas and cinemas.

Finding the right block and then the section of the block was almost as hard as discovering the street, but eventually he arrived at a ground-floor doorway with ‘Fourth Entrance' written over it. Still memorising the address given to him in the Happy Dragon, he climbed the stairs to the third floor. The bleak concrete and plaster contrasted strongly with the deep carpeting of his own London flat and he went faster as if to speed his return to those more luxurious surroundings.

On the sixth landing, there was a glass door with one pane broken. He saw a bell push at the edge, but tried the door first. It opened and he went in to the smell of cooking.

The sound of a child wailing led him to a row of doors along one side of a passage. Through one of them, he saw two women working at a row of gas stoves in a large communal kitchen. He was just going to rap on the door panel when a voice behind scared him almost to death.

‘What do you want,
grazhdanin
?'
⁵

A young woman stood watching him. She held a small girl in her arms, the child's head wrapped in a towel, with strands of wet dark hair stuck around her wide eyes.

Simon recovered his poise and replied in his best Russian. He hoped the woman would take his accent to be German, like Pabst's.

‘Ah, I was trying to find the apartment of my friend Gustav Pabst – I think he lives in Number 12.'

The woman's suspicious face relaxed –
perhaps she thought me a prowler or thief
, thought Simon.

‘He's still at work … at the Likachev factory,' she said.

Simon's heart sank – it was gone five o'clock now; he'd hoped that Pabst might have finished on a four p.m. shift. ‘What time will he be home, citizeness?'

‘Usually about eighteen thirty – his wife comes at the same time, she works in the canteen there.'

The young woman was very pretty, Simon realized suddenly. The libertine in him was unquenchable, even in times of stress like this. He shrugged the thought away. ‘I can't wait … perhaps I could leave a note under his door.'

The child began to wail and her mother bumped her down on to her feet.

‘Go and see grandmother – go on!'

She stood up, her figure straining against her blouse. Simon tore his gaze away.

‘It's his day off tomorrow – he'll be home then,' she volunteered.

Simon shook his head ‘Thanks, I'll have to leave a note – it's too far to come again.'

The woman pointed out the door to Number 12, further down the corridor, then ran into the kitchen to scold her daughter.

Simon walked to Pabst's door and saw a noticeboard just outside. It held a ragged cluster of pamphlets and notices exhorting the inhabitants to this and that extra effort for the State. He pulled down one which invited them to become voluntary bricklayers at a new sports stadium and used the back of it to write a short anonymous note to Pabst. He asked him to come to a certain rendezvous the next morning or, if that was impossible, at the same time the following day, bringing his ‘goods' with him.

Simon printed it in German, doing his best to disguise the lettering as much as possible. Slipping it under the door, he made his way out, smiling at the young woman with undisguised approval as he passed the kitchen door.

The homecoming workers were crowding the streets and the Metro on the return journey. Relief at not being followed was tempered by the limited success of his mission. If the East German failed to keep his date the following day, Simon would have to decide whether to risk another delay until the alternative rendezvous on Wednesday … if he didn't show up then, that was it as far as Simon was concerned; he had stuck his neck out far enough. As he went up the steps of the Metropol, he decided that if Pabst didn't come up to scratch, his neck would suffer an acute relapse. With luck, he could be airborne on his way to Heathrow by Wednesday evening, and the tool steel could go to the devil.

⁴
Headquarters of the KGB.-

⁵
Citizen

Chapter Six

Dinner that evening was an enjoyable meal, as far as Simon Smith was concerned. His efforts to contact Pabst had at least given him the feeling that he was doing something, and he felt the better for it.

The fifth floor members of the Trans-Europa party gravitated to the same table. The two old ladies went across to join some even more senile friends, so the group came to consist of Elizabeth, Simon, Gilbert, the benign, if inarticulate, priest, an already intoxicated Michael Shaw, the portly Fragonard and one of the Intourist guides, a pretty dark girl whom Gilbert had produced from the hotel bureau, with his international flair for obtaining attractive companions.

The dining room, looking to Simon like a Victorian airship hangar lined with potted plants and be-flagged tables, was crowded. It was filled with the buzz of conversation and the excellent music from a six-piece orchestra. As the meal was again a prolonged affair, there was plenty of time for dancing between the courses. The cultural thaw was not so pronounced in the centre of Moscow as on the
Yuri Dolgorukiy
and the beat and twist numbers were watered down to sedate foxtrots and waltzes, but Gilbert, the Intourist girl and Liz and Simon enjoyed themselves well enough. Even the rotund and un-sinister-looking Jules Fragonard took the floor with Elizabeth – the only static ones were the rather overawed reverend and Michael Shaw, who could probably not even stand, let alone dance.

He sat with a benign, glazed smile on his face, steadily working his way through a bottle of Hungarian
Barack Pálinka
. He would answer direct questions in monosyllables, but otherwise was a social blank.

While Liz was away dancing with the little Swiss chap, Simon studied the red-headed Irishman with curious interest. No one knew much about him except that he was ‘arty' … what this meant, Simon wasn't sure. He knew that someone had mentioned that he was a writer, but whether of newspaper advertisements or poetry, he knew not. ‘Another Dublin Yeats, perhaps,' he murmured to himself, then aloud, to the bearded man, ‘This a pure holiday or are you getting atmosphere for a novel?'

Two red-rimmed eyes swivelled across at him and a crack appeared in the tangled red beard to show a loose-lipped grin. ‘No bloody holiday, son!' came the enigmatic answer, borne on a blast of liquor fumes.

‘Heard you were a writer,' persisted Simon; the vicar looked at them benevolently, almost pathetically eager to be ‘one of the boys'.

Michael Shaw made a revolting, derisive noise in his throat. ‘Writer, my ass! … I make a few bob by prostituting the English language once a week for the Fleet Street slave masters – my
real
job is drinking.'

This was a long speech for him and he subsided into his glass almost immediately. Simon gave up, and turned to watch the seductive figure of Liz Treasure swaying back through the crowd towards him. She was another enigma in her own way – he had tried hard to fathom out the ‘Mrs' angle, but still she evaded telling him whether she was widowed, divorced, or just married. He knew she kept a smart boutique in Chelsea, in partnership with a friend, but that was about as far as his knowledge went … apart from her admitting to being twenty-five. Another odd thing about her was that blasted suitcase. On three separate occasions, he had helped her with her luggage and each time she had become quite annoyed when he had tried to carry her older brown valise – in the airport at Leningrad, when he had accidently tripped over it, she had become almost incoherent with temper.
A funny girl
, he thought –
but, oh, what a shape
! He hissed through his teeth as he watched her, as if letting off the excess pressure that the sight of her engendered in him.

By ten thirty, the party began to break up. They had all eaten and drunk too much, even the vicar, who left first. He was followed shortly after by Monsieur Fragonard, who made effusive apologies and kissed Liz's hand with too much relish for Simon's liking.

Shaw fell asleep across the table and was still there when Simon managed to prise Liz away at about eleven o'clock. Gilbert and the Russian girl were dancing the last waltz as they left.

The ‘widow', as he had hopefully come to think of Liz, was reluctant to leave but was in a slightly giggly state, and could not hold out against Simon's persuasion for long.

He had felt distinctly fuzzy himself for some time, but had got a second wind after missing a couple of rounds of vodka and, with an air of grim purpose, piloted her to the lift.

The old lady in black – presumably a different one from the morning, but they all looked alike – took them up with an impassive, averted face, as he held Liz tightly around the shoulders whilst she put her arms around his waist. Such open amorousness was distinctly uncultured in the Soviet Union and they got another severe look from the grim old woman who handed them their keys at the floor desk when they left the lift.

They began the marathon walk around the corridors. Around the first bend, Liz leant heavily against him, singing a little song. At the next corner, he put his arm around her and when they entered the home straight, she pulled off her high-heeled sandals and swung them gaily as they weaved their way irregularly towards Rooms 513 and 514.

Without any pretence at subtlety, Simon stuck his key in his own door and almost bundled her inside, kicking it shut behind him. She said nothing as he aimed her at the bed, and in fact waltzed toward it, flopping down on her back and throwing her shoes up in the air with a tipsy laugh.

I hope to hell she isn't going to pass out on me
, he prayed, as he slid down alongside her and began to kiss her lips with a fervour that was part passion and part relief that no one had tried to murder him that evening.

A creature of extreme moods, she responded avidly. They devoured each other for a few moments, then she pulled his head down on to the wide expanse of smooth skin exposed by her fairly low-cut dress. She kissed and nibbled his ear, giggling occasionally, and sometimes whispering something to him.

He took no notice at first – some of it was semi-erotic endearments, but there was something else – mixed up with giggles and over-dramatic emphasis. ‘Mmmmm – darling Simon, I've been beastly to you, poor dear. Nearly got drowned and I was so
nasty
to you.'

She nuzzled him again, and he was so overcome with sensual abandon that the words just buzzed through his head without his mind taking a grip on them. ‘Mmm, you're going to help me, aren't you, darling Simon … I'm not just a silly old tourist, I'm here on deadly secret business …'

She bit his ear violently and went off into peals of laughter.

He dropped abruptly from the clouds to wonder what the silly beautiful bitch was talking about, then a fresh attack of writhing and wide-lipped kissing drove all other thoughts but sex from his mind.

And then came the knock on the door.

At about the time the dinner party was breaking up in the Metropol, Alexei Pudovkin again sat hunched over his desk in Petrovka. He had a telephone to his ear. Vasily Moiseyenko, a cardboard-stemmed cigarette hanging from his lips, sat as usual on the desk, his legs swinging as he watched the old man's lined face.