As Vera awoke for a second she thought herself back in the hospital; it was the middle of the night, her room was in darkness, and the events of the past few days had so confused her that even during the day she sometimes suffered a sense of disorientation, of loss of Self. Then she sat up in bed and remembered. She was in her own bed in Clapham, home and safe.
She put on the light.
Sitting in her bedside chair was a squat young man dressed in black from head to foot. Every muscle, every nerve in Vera’s body instinctively combined to force her back against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chin, arms folded across her breasts, mouth open to scream… But suddenly there was an impediment, a ghastly, suffocating gag which took the pent-up fear and smothered it unborn.
Seeing the terror on the woman’s face Sikarov grinned. Everything was going well. Lazily he bent down to untie his shoes, which had begun to pinch. A sour, sweaty smell rose to Vera Bradfield’s nostrils, making her stomach churn. This was her nightmare. A burglar. A raid on an empty house while she was safely away, that she could just about contemplate. But this was different. This was a man, and he was here, in front of her. A man who stank and had an evil look about him. Oh God, oh God, oh God…
‘Get back into the bed. It’s cold. I don’t want you to be cold.’
A foreigner. One of the semi-vagrants she saw so many of these days. Christ, just let him not want her. Vera snuggled back under the bedclothes, pulling the blanket up to her chin. She was shivering and he noticed it; she felt him notice.
‘You cannot make a noise, I am going to give you paper and pencil. Here.’ Sikarov rolled up his sleeve to reveal a roll of paper around his forearm, together with a pencil. ‘Now you are going to write on it the address of the man you call Vanya or Bucharensky.’
A tiny part of Vera relaxed. So it wasn’t rape, not even theft. Then the fear closed down again, numbing and total. They were on the track of Vanya at last. And from the look of the intruder it was obvious that they meant to kill him. The man in the bedroom reeked of death.
Vera shook her head and turned to face the wall.
Sikarov’s eyes gleamed with lascivious anticipation of pleasure. They had warned him that she would not be easy.
‘You will tell me,’ he said. ‘I give you one more chance to do it with dignity. Where is Bucharensky?’
Again the shake of the head, but Sikarov could see the trembling bedclothes which told their own story.
‘What nonsense has he told you? That he is in danger? That we want to hurt him? What rubbish. You are old enough to see through that kind of tale. We want to help him. He is sick. He needs medical help. Surely you realised that when he came here? Wasn’t it obvious?’
The bedclothes had stopped shaking.
‘But he doesn’t understand that. Won’t you help him by telling me where he is?’
Vera turned away from the wall and violently shook her head. Sikarov sighed, and reached out for her. She fought him off until, in a fit of rage, he stunned her with his fist. When she came to her hands and feet were bound to the four corners of the bed.
‘For you,’ murmured Sikarov, ‘the night is only just beginning. Nod your head when you are tired.’
She proved tougher than anticipated. Several times she fainted and he had to revive her with douches of cold water. He became steadily more impatient, his methods cruder. Still she would not break. Sikarov wiped the sweat from his forehead. There were limits to what he could do in a London bedroom, it was not as if the resources of the Lubianka cellars were at his disposal. Blood began to mingle with water and urine on the sodden sheets. Somewhere deep inside Sikarov a tide of sexual desire was beginning to draw inwards, concentrating all his energies. Again and again he fought it down, only to feel it rise again within him.
‘Don’t come back to Moscow.’ Michaelov’s words echoed in his brain. Concentrate!
It was all right, she had nodded. Sikarov ripped away the gag. For several minutes all she could do was pant and gasp. Saliva was running down her chin, and for one terrible second Sikarov wondered if he had driven her over the edge.
‘I don’t know where he is. If I did… I would tell you. But I don’t.’
Sikarov breathed deeply, trying to instill a degree of control. ‘Tell me.’ His voice sounded murderous. ‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know.’
Sikarov watched with interest as a figure detached itself from his body. This figure carried a pistol by the barrel. It walked across to the bed where the naked woman lay, legs apart, and with slow, leisurely swings of its arm began to club her about the head until eventually she stopped groaning, her head no longer tried to evade the pistol, her legs twitched once in a muscular convulsion, and she lay still. Sikarov saw it all as if in a dream, until the figure climbed back into his body and made it whole again. Then he awoke. The room, the gun, the soaking bed, they had all disappeared. There was only the woman. She filled the whole of his consciousness, he could see nothing else. But he could feel. There’s no point in hanging on, a voice was saying, no point because it’s too late, isn’t it. It’s too late.
Sikarov climbed on to the bed and knelt between the woman’s bloodsoaked thighs. His hand went to the zip and when the gun got in the way he dropped it on the floor. Then his trousers were round his knees, the erection sprang free, and Sikarov’s lips curled back into the familiar snarl as his hand set to work.
The two-seater van was indistinguishable from many others parked on the south London streets that night, except perhaps in the care which the driver had taken to ensure that he did not breach any of the numerous regulations and byelaws concerning stationary vehicles. The interior of this particular van, however, was unusual. Down one side was arranged a truncated mattress on which a man was uncomfortably dozing, his legs pulled up almost to the low roof. On the other side a second man wearing a pair of headphones crouched with his back to the first. Every so often he reached out to twiddle knobs on the radio-receiver in front of him. For the past half-hour he had been showing signs of increasing restlessness.
‘Better wake up, Ted.’
‘Wha’? Wassup? Oh fuck.’
The man on the mattress struggled upright, only to bang his head on the van’s metal ceiling.
‘I can’t figure it out. There’s been some weird noises in there for about half an hour now. Like… struggling. You know what I mean?’
Ted was unscrewing the top of a vacuum flask.
‘No.’
‘As if she was having a fight with someone.’
‘Lover, maybe.’
‘Well he didn’t go in the front door, did he? We’d have seen.’
Ted took a sip from the plastic cup while he thought about that.
‘Dream. Could be having a nightmare.’
‘What? For all that time and never waking up? Do us a favour, will you. I shouldn’t…’
The radio-operator’s hand moved to the set, his face suddenly tense.
‘Listen, Ted, where did they put that transmitter when she was in hospital? In which room?’
‘Lounge.’
‘The telephone’s ringing. If she doesn’t come out of the bedroom to answer it, she’s in trouble.’
Ted swallowed the last of his cup of tea and, pulling aside a piece of sacking, looked out of the tiny rear window.
‘Raining, sod it. I’d better get my coat on.’
‘Right. Hallo. The phone’s stopped. Seven rings. No answer.’
Ted came to kneel by his colleague, shouldering his mac as he did so.
‘Better ring up LS, Phil. We need a car.’
‘You do it. I’m listening for a while.’
Ted picked up the radiophone and spoke urgently to London Station. Phil was vaguely aware of what he was saying while he strained to interpret the silence which had once again fallen in Vera’s flat.
‘Can’t do a tail… yeah… two exits, he might go either way… twenty minutes, Christ, can’t you do better than that…?’
Ted replaced the handset.
‘They’re on their way. Twenty bloody minutes, Christ…’
‘The phone’s ringing again.’
Sikarov was dressed and ready to leave. The Bradfield woman had been a bad mistake. He shook his head glumly, mindful of the old Russian proverb which said: ‘A woman isn’t a jug; she won’t break if you hit her’. Well, Vera Bradfield had broken all right.
The important thing now was to do a first-class job on Bucharensky. That way Michaelov’s wrath could perhaps be bought off.
Then the phone rang. Seven times.
Sikarov looked at his watch. Nobody rang at that time of night. Wrong number. Unless…
He paused. He ought to leave. But suppose that nocturnal caller was someone who had to be very careful how he contacted Vera Bradfield. Someone who phoned in the small hours and let the phone ring only seven times before cancelling the call, and moving to another phone-box in another area, as he, Sikarov, had done many times before.
Seven rings. The old code. Sikarov sat down on Vera’s bedside chair. There was an easy way to test his theory. Sometime in the next 20 minutes Bucharensky – if it was Bucharensky – would call again. This time the phone would ring five times. And then, when nobody answered, he would know that his contact had been blown and fade away into the night…
Sikarov shook his head. Not Bucharensky. Not with this contact. When there was no answer to the second call he would come to see what was wrong. Sikarov knew how Bucharensky’s mind worked. He always disobeyed the rules in one vital respect… he telephoned from a box which was too close to the contact. That was what had gone wrong in Paris. Sikarov grinned. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. This time he knew that if Bucharensky rang a second time, he would be at the house within minutes after replacing the receiver.
Time passed very slowly while Sikarov waited for that second call. Something told him that it was bound to come, almost as if the five rings were already programmed into the wires which separated Bucharensky from the house. He withdrew the Luger from the waistband of his trousers and checked the mechanism. All was well. There would be no chance for a second shot.
When the phone rang again Sikarov took a sharp intake of breath and held it. Ring-ring. One. Ring-ring. Two. Ringring… Ring-ring… Ring-ring… Five… and no more.
Sikarov stood up and moved quickly into the hall, leaving the bedside light on to guide him. The living-room? No, too obvious. The kitchen? Bucharensky would come that way.
The cellar.
The door at the back of the hall gave directly on to a steep flight of steps. Sikarov went down a little way and pulled the door to, leaving a small gap through which he could hear whatever went on above.
The minutes dragged by. Every so often Sikarov hummed gently to himself, to keep his hearing alert. He knew that unless you did that you began to hear imaginary noises and the last thing he wanted was to emerge from his hiding-place too soon.
When nothing had happened after 20 minutes Sikarov began to worry. This wasn’t the Bucharensky he remembered. Perhaps he had been wrong about the phone call. But then, who else would use the Leningrad Response in the middle of the night, in order to make contact with a woman called Vera Bradfield? Sikarov forced himself to remain silent and tried to shore up his rapidly slipping patience.
Occasionally his thoughts strayed to what Bucharensky would find upstairs and his lips parted in a wet smile. Traitors were special, that was what he had told Michaelov. They were singled out for special treatment.
Then at last he heard the click of the latch on the kitchen door, and he knew the waiting was over.
In his mind Sikarov began to follow Bucharensky’s cautious movements. First he would discover the circle which Sikarov had cut into the glass-panelled door, and use it to insert a hand and make his own entry. Then he would stand for a while in the kitchen, taking the flat’s pulse, as the instructors called it. Next… ah yes! Sikarov’s ears had not deceived him. Bucharensky was moving out of the kitchen, passing within inches of the cellar-door, to the threshold of the bedroom. Any minute now…
The quiet footsteps overhead, audible only to someone with Sikarov’s superfine hearing, stopped. There was a moment of silence during which he stared up at the ceiling of the tiny cellar, lips faintly parted. Then the man upstairs turned and broke into a run. Sikarov heard him pound through the kitchen and out the way he had come, reckless as to whether he made a noise. Sikarov waited a few seconds, then vaulted up the stairs and out of the back door, into the yard.
Ahead of him he could hear Bucharensky noisily clearing a succession of garden walls in his progress towards the end of the terrace, and the road. Sikarov smiled. Good. That should be easy enough to follow. He set off in pursuit.
He had no intention of putting a quick end to the affair.
Bucharenksy’s nerve had broken, so much was obvious. He would run back to his ‘secure’ base and bolt the door behind him, seeking the illusory warmth and comfort of that unnatural womb in which to rest and recover. Sikarov would follow. It would be a simple matter to destroy the wretched Bucharensky in his present unmanned state, before ransacking his lair at leisure. The death was what mattered: those were Michaelov’s express orders. But before leaving Moscow Sikarov had heard rumours, some of them very interesting. There was talk of a sensitive project-plan, and Michaelov himself had spoken of papers. If Sikarov could find the project-plan which Bucharensky was supposed to have stolen, that would be an added bonus – quite sufficient to neutralise any unpleasantness which might otherwise have resulted from the woman’s death.
Bucharensky had reached the last garden wall which bounded the house at the end of the terrace from the street. For a second his crouched figure was outlined against the orange glow of the street-lamp; then he was gone. Sikarov raced after him. As he cleared the final hurdle and landed on the pavement, a shadow unmoulded itself from the darkness 50 yards away, and joined the hunt. Ted was cold and tired and still half-asleep, but from his position on the pavement between the end of the terrace opposite Vera’s and the monitoring van he had seen Kyril jump the wall. When Sikarov followed and set off in pursuit, Ted took a deep breath and broke into a trot.
Kyril was running as if to win the 100-metre sprint. The sound of his own heart’s blood throbbing in his ears kept him from remembering. As he ran his footsteps rat-tatted the same grim tune.
Sik-a-rov, Sik-a-rov, Sik-a-rov…
They were in Paris, working the old tandem game. The girl was pretty, rich and damn near nymphomaniac; the prize, a minister, was rare, almost unobtainable. Sikarov had been sent along to add weight, do the heavy stuff at the end. He was regarded as an expert, then, a top professional, and Gaczyna had yet to produce a better marksman. Only later did Kyril discover that there had been other occasions, other corpses…
Sik-a-rov, Sik-a-rov. Now there was grass beneath his feet. The common.
A Leningrad Response had brought up nothing. Something about the empty, hollow dialling-tone spelled danger. Kyril had taken a taxi instead of following the rules and proceeding on foot. He had opened the door of the ‘nest’ with his passkey. And there was Sikarov, his trousers round his ankles, masturbating over the bloody thing which lay on the bed, its head unrecognisable as belonging to a human being.
Ve-ra, Ve-ra, Ve-ra.
The strange sound in Kyril’s ears was the heartbroken moan of a man at the end of his tether, a child who cries to ease the pain, its rhythmic ululation keeping time with the throbbing hurt.
His last view of Sikarov had been from the glass-walled corridor of the terminal at Orly, three men walking out to the Aeroflot Ilyushin after all the other passengers had boarded, two of them a pace behind the third, hands in pockets, collars upturned. Goodbye, Sikarov, he had thought then. For you, this is the end of the line…
He had reached the foot of Queenstown Road. If he did not stop soon he felt his heart would burst. Perhaps it was better that way.
Sik-a-rov, Ve-ra, Sik-a-rov, Ve-ra…
The traitor had never meant much to Kyril, until now. Suddenly he was face to face with an enemy, and the deadly game had become personal. No longer was Kyril merely trying to do his duty to the Homeland. His enemy had chosen Sikarov deliberately, ordered him to destroy Vera as a warning, as the first instalment of punishment. Now at last his way forward was clear. He would butcher Sikarov, that was the first thing. And then he would seek out this traitor, as Stanov had commanded. He would exact vengeance.
Kyril opened his front door, slammed it behind him and fell on his knees, hands clasped to his forehead. He was sobbing.
The crisis quickly came and passed. He allowed himself the luxury of release for a moment, no more, before dragging himself upright and dusting off his clothes. His body was exhausted but his brain was functioning. Revenge. Never before had he contemplated such dangerous luxury, the poison asp concealed beneath the figs’ sweetness. He must plan carefully if he were to combine it with Stanov’s plan. Escape. That was the first thing. He must break away from the house, go underground…
Kyril lifted his head, straining to listen. Was that a noise he had heard in the street? Surely it was his overheated imagination? He breathed deeply. His heart was almost back to normal, the throbbing in his ears had reduced to a low murmur. He must think. Think!
Suddenly he was back in Athens, in the hotel room again, listening so hard and for so long that his hearing had begun to fail. Kyril shook himself angrily.
Suppose Sikarov had been in Vera’s flat all the time, and had followed him; suppose that it was Sikarov out there…
Kyril held himself perfectly still. The thought struck him cold. For the past half-hour he had been in the grip of an emotion so terrible that he had ceased to take even the most elementary of precautions. If Sikarov was in the flat, or even nearby, it would have been a simple thing to follow the raging maniac who raced across the common to Queenstown Road, never once looking back.
But then… why was he still alive? Why had Sikarov not finished him with a single shot? Kyril leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
Of course. The project-plan. Sociable Plover. Sikarov had orders to retrieve it. That was only logical. If Sikarov was indeed outside… if, if, if!
Kyril went slowly up the stairs, feeling his way to the door of the living-room and round the crude trapdoor which he had cut in the floorboards, now supported by only a few millimetres of sawn-through wood.
After a moment’s hesitation he decided to put on the light. That could not make matters any worse. As he lit a cigarette his eye lingered on the half-empty bottle of vodka which lay by his mattress. Yes. It was wrong, but he so desperately craved something to fill the void which Sikarov had created inside him.
A man kneeling… blood everywhere… Vera. Kyril upturned the bottle and swallowed greedily. The neat spirit had no immediate effect other than to kindle a weak, warm feeling in his guts. He took another swig and replaced the stopper. The red haze which separated him from the outside world was beginning to dissolve.
It was necessary to make plans. Sikarov had to be flushed out.
Kyril went over to the window and listened. Suddenly he was sure.
The killer was out there. He had come to the house like a moth drawn to a flame, and like a moth he would come closer and closer until at last the flame killed him. But Kyril had to sit and wait. He could not escape. He could not even go out. All he could do was sit here, in this upstairs room, alone, in the dark… and wait.
You will be utterly alone, that was what Stanov had told him at their last meeting. Until this moment Kyril had never understood the full depth of those words. Mention of Stanov reminded him that the Chairman of the KGB could not escape responsibility for Vera’s death. Everything done by his agents was done in his name. Had Stanov foreseen this night, wondered Kyril? Did he realise the part which Vera was destined to play in unmasking the traitor? Was that one reason – perhaps the main reason – for choosing Ivan Yevseevich Bucharensky?
The time passed slowly. Kyril chain-smoked until he felt sick. Every so often he would go to stand by the window to listen and wonder if the tiny noise outside was real or a figment of his imagination. To keep himself awake he played mental games, always pushing to one side the dark thoughts which insisted on forcing their way into his tired brain, thoughts of a half-naked man kneeling over a dead woman…
At last he could stand it no longer. He stubbed out the cigarette which he had lighted only seconds before, and stood up. Sikarov’s life was worth a few risks. He was going out.
As soon as Sikarov rounded the corner and saw the house sheltering under its high embankment he had a sudden premonition of danger. It was a loaded gun, that house. Someone had primed it and oiled it, spun the chambers, inserted the bullets, cocked it. Now it was pointing at Sikarov, ready to go off.
The first glance was enough to tell him to avoid a frontal approach. But the wall at the side was too high and too smooth for a man to scale without assistance, and Sikarov was alone. The embankment, perhaps? He returned to the other side of the bridge, where only a fence separated the road from the earth wall. That was better. It did not take him long to clamber over the fence and struggle up the embankment. Eight pairs of tracks lay between him and the far side of the permanent way, each with its sinister, gleaming third rail to carry the current. If he could only cross those tracks he would be on top of the embankment on the other side, overlooking the house which he had seen Kyril enter.
Sikarov hesitated. It was very late; the current was probably off. He would be bound to hear a train long before it came close enough to harm him. But for some reason he could not make himself embark on the short journey which led to his target.
Kyril had been inside the house for some time now. He would have had a chance to recover his self-control, perhaps even to put two and two together. Kyril would remember the incident in Paris; was it not his report which had so nearly finished Sikarov’s career? He would realise the danger he was in, and he most certainly was not the kind of man to underestimate an adversary.
With every step that Sikarov took across those tracks, he would be advancing into danger. He was already regretting his decision not to finish off Kyril in Vera Bradfield’s flat. But the longer he left it, the better prepared Kyril would be.
That decided him. He began his cautious journey, lifting his feet carefully over the third rail of the first set of tracks so that not so much as a trouser-leg would brush the dull grey steel.
He was about halfway across when he saw the figure silhouetted against the sky, and dropped to a crouch.
About twenty metres away someone was standing on the lip of the embankment, motionless. While Sikarov was trying to identify this apparition he heard a goods train start up somewhere close by. Clank-clank-clank… so the current wasn’t off. Sikarov stared uneasily at the rail by his feet, only to look up sharply as the figure on the embankment moved. It was coming slowly towards him.
Sikarov drew his gun. At the feel of the metal on his skin he underwent a subtle change: his mind and body slotted together in the first stage of an instinctive technique. It was like pulling on an old, comfortable glove.
With half his mind he registered that the approaching train was diesel-powered, after all: he could hear the harsh idling of its engine. From the left, nearby…
The figure opposite had crossed the first set of rails and now stood motionless again. Sikarov fancied that the man – by now he knew it was a man – was peering into the darkness, across the tracks, in his direction.
The train approached with a squeal of brakes. As Sikarov raised his gun the diesel crossed his aim and he swore out loud. The goods train had slowed almost to walking-pace for a signal.
He could no longer see the figure opposite. He lay down between a pair of rails and strove to see underneath the train, but the low-slung trucks effectively impeded his vision.
The train was picking up speed again, its badly connected couplings giving out a cacophony of metallic grunts. Sikarov raised his gun to the level of the third, live, rail and prepared to fire.
But the last truck passed across his sightline to reveal only empty space where the other man had been standing a moment ago. Sikarov lifted his head cautiously and looked to right and left. Nothing. The mysterious figure had completely vanished.
He raised himself on one knee, taking his time about it. Nothing moved. By now the goods train, travelling fast, was disappearing into the distance, its red tail-light no bigger than the glow from a cigarette-end. Sikarov waited until the sound of the trucks had died away to silence while he considered his next move.
There were several possibilities. The man on the embankment might have boarded the train and been wafted away on one of the trucks, but that seemed unlikely. Assuming the man to be Bucharensky, it meant he had left his base unguarded. Or, he might have used the train as a shield while he slipped down the embankment into the back garden of one of the houses adjoining his own. Sikarov didn’t think so. The man had seen him, he was sure of that. The most likely thing for him to do was retreat down the embankment the way he had come… and wait.
Sikarov licked his lips. He had to make a move. Once the news of Bradfield’s death filtered back to Dzerzhinsky Square his own future would hang by a thread. Everything depended on his finishing Bucharensky, and quickly. There was only one answer. He had to go forward.
Sikarov stood up very slowly. Everything was quiet. Quelling the first signs of noticeable panic he forced himself to cross the next pair of tracks.
It took him five minutes to reach the far edge of the embankment, every move a slow, painful mixture of doubts and fears.
Safely across at last, he dropped to one knee and took a long look at the back of No. 703. He was almost level with its roof, and from his vantage point he could see a number of possible entrances. A light showed in an upstairs room. That must be where Bucharensky was holed up. Sikarov had noted the separate front doors: obviously there were two flats, one up and one down. His lips jerked back in their customary snarl. That was another problem. Somebody underneath might hear. Perhaps Bucharensky wasn’t such a fool, after all, burying himself in the middle of London, surrounded by people.
There was no sign of Bucharensky anywhere. Where was he?
The downstairs flat gave Sikarov another idea. There would be no special defences there. It would be easy to force a door, gain access to the building, and then… yes, that was the plan. Get in downstairs, silence the occupants. Gain.
Sikarov lay down alongside the set of rails nearest to the house and thought about his plan for a long time. It wasn’t perfect, but for the moment he couldn’t think of anything better. He looked at the face of his luminous watch. Almost four, too much time wasted already.
He tested the Luger’s mechanism and left the safety-catch off. Then he crawled along the tracks until he was almost at the bridge over the road, in the shadow of the high wall which bounded Kyril’s back yard.
A long, last look revealed no movement, and he could hear nothing. Sikarov swallowed. His lips were dry and his heart had begun to beat much faster than usual. But there could be no going back now.
Using the wall for cover he slid down the embankment. At the bottom he forced himself to remain still while he counted up to a hundred, faintly marvelling at the discovery that he was still alive. Nothing moved, no one gave the alarm. His progress down the bank had been noiseless and by good luck he had landed in a flowerbed instead of on the concrete slab which began just a few inches away.
On the other side of the wall a car cruised slowly along Queenstown Road. Sikarov waited until it had passed and silence had descended once more. That car could have represented a golden opportunity for him to move up to the back of the house, but even so he wasn’t going to hurry. In London there was always a covering noise, even at this time of night, if you only waited long enough. Sikarov lurked in the shadows at the foot of the earthbank, surveying the house inch by inch. Apart from the lighted window on the first floor its huge, black mass was indistinguishable from the night which surrounded it.
A quarter of an hour went by. Time to make a move. For several minutes Sikarov had been aware of a distant plane, beginning its long circle of the capital before the descent to glideslope. As it passed overhead Sikarov slipped into the shadows of the house itself.
Another ten minutes went by while the sound of the plane droned into the west. Nothing changed. Sikarov craned up, trying to see where he stood in relation to the lighted window on the first floor. But the light no longer burned. Someone had extinguished it. His hand touched the drainpipe; it came away wet. He frowned, and reached out to grasp the pipe more firmly. This time his fingers found a barb and he jerked his hand away. Something slimy coated his hand. Paint. Sikarov nodded slowly in grudging appreciation. So much for that idea. It would have to be the back door, then.
It was unlocked. Every nerve in Sikarov’s body screamed danger. He pushed at the door and stood quickly aside, half expecting a trap. The kitchen was dark and silent. Sikarov reached inside and gingerly felt his way round the frame. There was nothing unusual. He hesitated. Was this the way Kyril had come? Perhaps the owners were merely forgetful, after all it took a brave burglar to cross the railway tracks or scale the high wall.
He stepped over the threshold, sniffing as he did so. The house seemed safe, down here at least. He felt his way round the room to the internal door and through it, into the scullery. A smell of old tobacco, that was all.
Sikarov weighed his next move. Without light he was in continual danger of tripping over furniture, but he dare not risk the wall-switch. He pulled out a tiny torch and sent the thin beam dancing round the room. Empty. Ah, a door… where did that lead to?
Sikarov advanced slowly towards the hall, his head cocked to listen for the slightest noise. In the hall he paused. A sound, from the next room. Or was it above? He looked up sharply, directing the beam to the ceiling. No. In the next room.
The door was ajar. Sikarov pushed it open very gently. It made no noise. He was in the front room; he could tell without the light because the windows were a slightly paler shade of charcoal than the surrounding darkness. The noise was coming from here.
Sikarov froze. Breathing. Somewhere, close by, another person was breathing. He tensed his muscles, ready to fling himself in any direction, out of danger.
The breathing continued at the same, even rate. Sikarov moistened his lips. Then it came to him. He was in a bedroom. The breather was asleep.
Very gently, so as not to disturb the sleeper, Sikarov fitted the silencer on to the barrel of his gun. It would take only a second. A flash from the torch, to direct his fire, and the bullets would follow instantaneously. Sikarov turned until he sensed himself to be facing the unseen sleeper, and raised the gun in his right hand. In his left he carried the torch. He extended his arms in front of him and gently brought his hands together. Any second now…
In the room above, someone moved. Sikarov held his position. Even the slightest movement could give him away. The muscular strain began to tell. He could not hold out his arms for much longer. His hands had begun to shake.
Upstairs, all went quiet again. Sikarov lowered his arms, feeling the sudden ache as the blood flowed back to the wrists. He took a dozen slow, deep breaths, and raised his hands together for the second time. Now they were level. Inhale.
The beam of light lanced out to illuminate Trumper’s sleeping form on the bed and in the same second Sikarov fired twice, the shots coming so close together that they sounded like one. Instinctively Sikarov raised his eyes to the ceiling. Nothing happened. No one moved.
Sikarov lowered his arms. There must be another room somewhere, surely? He padded back into the hall, only to wheel round at the sound of other breathing. No, not breathing. Hissing. A low, even sound, not unlike the very distant sough of the sea. Ignore it, he told himself. Move.
He found the other room. It contained a bed but no one was in it. His nose twitched. There was a funny smell in here. He backed away, into the hall. The smell seemed to follow him.
Keeping his back to the wall, Sikarov retreated silently to the scullery. The smell did not diminish; rather it seemed to be growing stronger. The hissing, what was that?
Gas.
Involuntarily Sikarov shuddered. Somebody had turned on the gas-tap. All the while he had been in the house, someone else was there too, noiselessly following him. And he had turned on the gas…
What kind of gas? Domestic gas? Coal… natural…? Was the gas they used in England poisonous? Was it volatile? But wait a minute, who said it was mains gas? Suppose it came from a cylinder…
Sikarov, unwisely, opened his mouth, and at once started to cough. Stuffing a handkerchief into his mouth he headed blindly towards the kitchen, and safety. There was the door leading to the back yard. Another couple of paces and he would be out of this hellhole, another step…
He heard nothing until the last moment. Then someone took a blunt instrument and with neat, surgical precision applied it to the length of his skull; for a fleeting second Sikarov thought he could feel the skin unpeeling itself from his head; then he fell forward into the darkness and disconnected.
When he awoke and his eyes came into focus the first thing he saw was the gaping hole in the floor, and he understood. The man he had seen on the embankment was Bucharensky. He waited until he was sure Sikarov would follow before retreating back to the house and sealing off the upper flat, whence he could direct a stream of gas into the downstairs room. When Sikarov turned to run he dropped through the hole to follow him. That was clever.
Sikarov turned his head to one side and retched phlegm on to the bare floor.
The light was on. Bucharensky stood leaning against the far wall by the window, smoking. When he saw Sikarov vomit he picked up a basin from by his feet and came over. The douche of cold water hit Sikarov in the face. A lot of it went down inside his collar.
He began to register details. He was sitting in an uncomfortable chair constructed of solid wood. When he tried to move, straps restrained his arms and legs. They were very tight: bands of white flesh showed on either side of the leather.
He looked down. He was naked from below the waist. His genitals hung through a hole in the seat. Something was twisted round them, something that stung when he struggled…
‘When I last saw you…’
Kyril spoke dreamily, like a man under the influence of drugs. To Sikarov it seemed as if he had passed on to an altogether different plane of existence, bloodless and remote.
‘…you were walking out to a plane. In Paris. Do you remember Paris?’
Kyril took a long drag on the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. His eyes were closed. Sikarov said nothing.
‘I remember Paris, Sikarov. Every detail.’
There was a long silence. Kyril’s eyes remained closed, as if concentrating on some scene being played out behind his eyelids. Sikarov’s tongue had gummed itself to the roof of his mouth.
‘I thought to myself then: that’s it. The finish. Siberia or the Lubianka cellars. We are not animals, I told myself. Within the ranks of the KGB there is no place for excrement like that.’
Kyril’s eyes opened and Sikarov saw that the pupils were unnaturally dilated.
‘But oh Sikarov…’
Kyril’s head tilted so that at last his burning eyes rested on Sikarov’s body.
‘…how I underestimated our masters then.’
He moved away from the wall, arms folded across his chest, and slowly advanced towards the chair. Sikarov tried to shrink away, found he couldn’t move, and knew a second of black horror which almost threatened to shut down his conscious mind.
‘…I had forgotten that for the true killer, for the psychopath… there is always a role. Nemesis. Sikarov. Someone has sent you to be my Nemesis.’
Kyril sat down on his mattress in front of the chair and brought his legs up like a Buddha. Now he was staring directly into Sikarov’s eyes and the prisoner found he could not turn his face away: it was as though invisible steel bars ran between the two men, forcing them to endure each other’s souls.
‘You have this choice. You can die quickly, and painlessly, from a bullet. Or you can die from…’
Kyril lifted a hand, the movement slow and clumsy like a deep-sea diver’s, and gestured vaguely at the chair.
‘…that.’
There was another long silence. Sikarov knew that very soon now the contents of his bowels were going to flood all over the floor.
‘Who sent you, Sikarov? That’s all you have to do to buy yourself an easy death. Tell me the answer to just one question. Who… sent… you?’
Sikarov said nothing. A slow smile spread across Kyril’s lips.
‘Let me tell you about that… thing… you are sitting in…’
Kyril unfolded his legs and stretched them out in front of him, like a man who wants to make sure he is comfortable before embarking on a long story.
‘It’s oak. Fastened to the floor. As you realise, you can’t move. Wrapped round your… equipment… is what we used to call “the adulterer’s knot”. You’ve heard of that, have you? I hadn’t heard of it. When I was a boy…’
Kyril stood up to light another cigarette and moved away from Sikarov.
‘…We lived in a village just west of the Urals. The oldest man in the village was a cossack… he must have been ninety if he was a day.’
Kyril halted and looked at the wall, his face set once more in its smooth, dreamy expression.
‘Do you know anything about the cossacks? They’re a strange crew. This old man, one day my friends and I were discussing the local harlot. Married, she was. I suppose we got a bit high-spirited, you know how boys do…’
Kyril was in no particular hurry now. The memory of his childhood was very close, very real.
‘The old cossack, he said… “where I come from, they’d put you louts in an adulterer’s knot”. “Where do you come from, grandad?” we answered, although we knew. He’d come from western Siberia… Surgut. Do you know Surgut?’
As if mesmerised Sikarov very slowly shook his head. ‘But then we got curious… and one of us, I forget who, asked him about this knot. And he showed us. It’s for when one cossack finds that another has stolen his woman. You take thin wire… not so thin that it breaks when fire touches it…’ Sikarov flinched. Kyril saw, and allowed another long silence to develop.
‘…And you tie it, so… if you look down you’ll see… in such a way that, as it heats, the knot contracts upon itself, eating through anything that gets in its way…’
Sikarov’s face had turned perfectly white, even to the lips. ‘I’ve had to improvise a little. Do you know what this is? It’s called a bunsen burner. You fix it to a gas pipe, so…’ Kyril plugged the rubber tube over a gas-tap let into the skirting-board.
‘Then you turn on the gas and… you see?’
Kyril flicked his lighter, and watched the flame reflected in Sikarov’s dull eyes as it moved towards the burner. A wing of yellow leapt into the air; Kyril adjusted the stem until all the yellow had drained away, leaving in its place a thin, purple column of naked heat.
‘Behind you, the wire is attached to a hook in the wall, like the one you see holding it in front of you. As the wire turns red it cuts first through the upper edge of the penis, while underneath it severs the little neck of skin which connects the scrotum… you understand the principle?’
Kyril put down the bunsen burner in front of Sikarov, where he could see it, and sat back on his haunches. For a moment there was silence. Then Sikarov moaned, and his bowels opened. The stench which filled the room was indescribable, but Kyril betrayed no emotion.
‘I ask you again. Who sent you?’
The pause seemed to go on for a very long time. Sikarov’s fists clenched and unclenched, his eyes fluttered open and shut. Kyril tried to imagine what was going on in his brain, what loyalties were asserting themselves, or finally being put to rest. How would I react, he asked himself, what would I do?
Sikarov’s eyes opened wide. ‘No.’
Kyril reached for the burner, and applied it to the wire. Both men watched, fascinated, as it began to glow. Then the red started to travel along the wire towards the chair. Kyril placed the burner directly under the wire, and waited.
He had not known what to expect. But the reality was frightful.
If an impressionist artist wanted to illustrate the meaning, the concept, of ‘Scream’, he would have painted Sikarov. The man’s body slammed forward against the straps, his spine arched, his head went back until the horrible, glazed eyes were staring at the ceiling. All ten fingers stuck out rigidly. The lips curled back in a terrible rictus, laying bare the gums.
The stench began, a new smell to add to the old. Burning flesh. Seared meat.
And the scream. Explosively loud, expelled from Sikarov’s body as if by an overpowering force, a high-pitched wail that spoke of death and things beyond death, a scream that suddenly rippled with syllables…
‘Meee-ay, Meee-ay…’
Kyril snatched away the burner. ‘Michaelov?’
Sikarov’s scream faded to a low, background moan. His head lolled on his chest. Kyril dared not look down his body to see what the fire had done.
Was there a name buried in that awful scream? Mee…? It could have been Michaelov, it had to be Michaelov…
Kyril went to kneel by Sikarov’s body. The man was slipping into unconsciousness. Kyril took him by the chin and hauled him upright in the chair.
‘Who sent you?’
Sikarov’s head rolled backwards, the eyes staring and blank.
Somewhere, as from a great distance, Kyril heard Stanov’s own words to him, weeks before. You will be alone. When the lessons stopped, in the place where there were no more lectures and trade-craft failed, every agent was alone. In a sense. But not like this. Officers of the KGB, even the professional killers of the A2 Institute, went with the support of their fellows, in the knowledge that they could call on them in need.
Only Kyril, only he had been truly alone.
He picked up the Luger which had fallen out of the assassin’s pocket when Kyril stripped him and used it to blow away the side of Sikarov’s ugly head.