Death Is My Comrade (15 page)

“Where's the truck?” I asked Leonid.

“Meeting,” he panted. “Meeting, ees all. I do not bargain for militia, for shooting.”

“Where's the truck?”

He sighed. “Around corner. Sergei will love this.”

We sprinted around the corner. I heard a whistle, much closer now. At right angles to Pushechnaya Street was a narrow, cobbled lane. We plunged into its welcome darkness, our footfalls clattering on the cobbles. Ahead I saw the taillights of a small truck.

Thirty yards. Twenty. I could hear the idle of the truck's engine. It had a canvas-covered body. The tailgate was up.

Footsteps pounded on the cobbles behind us. A voice shouted.

Leonid reached the truck first, scampered up and over the tailgate. Mikhail followed a second later. Mike Rodin got one foot on the stirrup under the right taillight. Hands grabbed his shoulders. He went up and over.

When I reached the truck, Galina began to struggle again. She pressed down against my shoulder, clawed at my back. I got my hands on her hips, lifted her away from me, and hurled her bodily into the truck bed.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It works in Moscow too. I sat down on the cobbles.

Maybe Sergei thought we were all aboard. Or maybe the whistles and the shouted commands had scared him. As I got up, the truck started with a lurch. I took three running strides after it, breathing its exhaust fumes. Sergei clashed gears. The truck rounded a corner, tires squealing.

Four militiamen, all armed, formed a half-circle around me. The fifth knelt to fire a volley after the truck, but by then it was gone.

Chapter Seventeen

T
he building brooded over a low hill not far from the center of Moscow. They took me there in the police van that arrived five minutes later. The street might have been Lubianka Street; the hill, Lubianka Hill; the squat, fortress-like building, Lubianka Prison. I don't know. Nobody told me.

Three of them kept me company in the rear of the van. One was the militiaman I'd hit with the machine pistol. He held a handkerchief to his face. He stared at me steadily, his eyes like chips of stone.

The van rolled through a gate, the gate clanged shut behind us, and we came to a stop in the courtyard of the building that might have been Lubianka Prison. The wire-mesh rear doors of the van opened. One of the militiamen climbed down. The second motioned to me with his machine pistol. The one with the handkerchief stood behind me. As I started to climb down, something struck my back. I landed on my hands and knees on the cobblestones. The militiaman with the handkerchief came down cat-quick and kicked me, his heavy boot catching the right side of my rib cage. I rolled over. One of the other militiamen said something. I got back to my feet and they marched me inside the building.

Two of them waited with me in a damp, stone-walled room on the lower floor of the building. There was a single small window, high up, with three vertical bars. There were three chairs, and a wooden table with a telephone on it. A large portrait of Lenin hung above the table.

They examined my passport and visa there, and did not return them. The phone rang and one of them answered it. He spoke briefly and gravely, then hung up and left the room with my papers.

“Hold it,” I said, not very earnestly. I took a step after him. The other one motioned me to a chair with his machine pistol. I sat down.

Time dragged itself by like a gut-shot animal.

At one o'clock I went to the window and looked out at darkness, wondering how soon it would be light. There was very little night in Moscow in June. At twenty after one the phone rang again. My guard picked it up, said “Da” three times and hung up. At one-thirty I heard footsteps outside.

The door opened. The man who opened it filled the doorway, head not quite brushing the ceiling, shoulders just missing the doorjamb on either side. He was Boris. He stepped aside. Comrade Plekhanov shuffled apologetically into the room. He was wearing a blue serge suit this time, as ill-fitting as the gray one. He had my passport in one hand and a file folder in the other. He sat down behind the table. He looked like an apologetic basset hound.

Boris, standing with his back to the door, looked like the door.

“Mr. Drum,” Comrade Plekhanov said, “what am I going to do with you?”

“You can start by giving me back my passport,” I suggested hopefully.

Plekhanov ignored that. “What did you want with Galina Rodzianko? Did you wish to see her father? In Zagorsk? Is that where the others went? I assume one of them was Mr. Williams.”

I said nothing.

“Mr. Drum, why did you come to Moscow?”

“Ugolok Ameriki,” I said. “Two in a jeep.”

Plekhanov sighed. “What is it you want with Vasili Rodzianko? An interview?”

“I'm no reporter.”

“Foreign reporters have not been able to see him. He lives in seclusion at Zagorsk. Perhaps one of your American newspapers thought a private detective, a stubborn, capable man, could succeed where reporters have failed.”

“Why not?” I said.

For the first and only time, Plekhanov's eyes got hard. “Because you put two Moscow militiamen in the hospital, Drum. One has a broken collar bone. The other will need a dozen stitches in his face. This—for an interview?”

He didn't expect an answer, and I gave him none.

“The police will pick up your Mr. Williams in Zagorsk,” he said. “At Rodzianko's dacha. Then what?”

“It looks like we don't get the interview.”

“Don't be flip with me, Mr. Drum,” Plekhanov admonished me apologetically. “Please don't be flip.” He opened the manila file folder on the table and said: “Drum, Chester. Citizenship: U.S.A. Born thirty-two years ago in Baltimore, Maryland. Three years in the United States Army. You received a battlefield commission and a Distinguished Service Cross. After that, college. And two years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Married once, not now. No known relatives. Four years ago you cancelled the effectiveness of a Communist intelligence network in the United States. Three years ago you tangled with our agents in Saudi Arabia. Also three years ago, you caused us some trouble in Berlin. Last year you were instrumental in the, shall we say, neutralization of one of our best overseas couriers, a Scandinavian named Laxness.”

“Laxness,” I said, “was a paid professional killer.”

“Call him what you wish.” Plekhanov shut the folder of my dossier. “I say you are Laxness' opposite number in the United States. I say you are an agent on a secret mission for your country.” The apologetic smile flitted across his face fleetingly, was gone. “I say, in the light of your past record and what has happened tonight, we have every right to haul you before a People's Court for trial and punishment.”

I took a deep breath. It could have been bluff or I could have been treading on very thin ice. Plekhanov's dossier had surprised me. I said: “Okay, go ahead. It will look great in
Pravda
and
Izvestia
for home consumption, but what about the foreign press, Comrade Plekhanov? I'm an employee of the American Exhibit in Moscow.”

“You are an American secret agent!” Plekhanov shouted, and then immediately looked contrite.

“Even assuming I am, what difference does that make? I'm still an employee of Ugolok Ameriki. Haul me before a People's Court and what do you think will happen to your cultural exchange program? You couldn't get the Fiji Islanders to set up shop in Moscow.”

Plekhanov said placatingly: “Tell me what your mission was and you are free to leave Moscow on the next plane.”

“I'm Chief of Security at Ugolok Ameriki.”

“Name, rank and serial number,” Plekhanov said chidingly. He leaned forward across the table. He was sweating. “We all make mistakes, Mr. Drum. You made one tonight. I have been in government service myself for many years. I have made mistakes. You see I still have my career. Protect yourself. That is my advice, Mr. Drum. Because when they detain Mr. Williams at Zagorsk, I don't think he will be as strong as you.”

I reached into my pocket. Boris started across the room ponderously, but all I did was take out a pack of cigarettes and light one. Slowly and casually, but thinking: you led with your chin out three feet on a celery stalk of a neck, didn't you? You walked right into it like a kid with a zip-gun trying to stop a tank. Because if they pick up Rodin in Zagorsk and Galina tells them who he claims to be, as Galina certainly will, it's all finished. So why play it close to the vest here? Why look for a hard time?

But Plekhanov was worried. Which meant he didn't know yet what our mission was.

“Perhaps Boris could make you talk, Mr. Drum?” Plekhanov asked mildly.

I looked at the hulking giant. My mouth was suddenly dry. “He could try.”

Plekhanov glanced at Boris, at me, at the portrait of Lenin—maybe for inspiration. “You are a stubborn man, Mr. Drum. Fortunately for you, we have no Star Chamber here. A pity, because Boris is an expert at persuasion. But would I be wrong in assuming that if Boris attempted persuasion you would become more stubborn than ever?”

As it turned out, that was a loaded question. Schooled in dialectics, Plekhanov would phrase it exactly that way. And I gave the wrong answer. “You wouldn't be wrong.”

Plekhanov nodded slowly, then tossed my passport across the table at me. He spoke to Boris in Russian. Boris balled a melon-sized fist and blinked his tiny eyes.

“Very well, Mr. Drum,” Plekhanov said wearily. “You're free to go.” He gave me a sad, apologetic look and scribbled out a pass that would get me past the guards. Boris opened the door for me. He wore a black chauffeur's uniform and a black visored cap. I'm six-one, but my eyes were on a level with his tree trunk of a neck when I passed him. He had a faintly acrid smell, like swamp water.

The interview had ended abruptly and unexpectedly, and I emerged from it in pretty good shape, though I couldn't figure out why. I went out like cock-of-the-walk past three sets of armed guards. The gate clanged shut behind me, and I stood for a moment on the hill that might have been Lubianka Hill, in front of the fortress of a building that might have been Lubianka Prison. Then I tore up my pass and watched the pieces flutter to the sidewalk, and started walking.

In that way at least the Russian Secret Police were like cops anywhere in the world. They'd taken me in under guard in a police van. They were through with me. I could find my way back to the Metropole on foot or on a broomstick, on all fours or in a jet plane; it was all the same to them.

Chapter Eighteen

A
lambent green false dawn had brightened the northern and eastern sky by the time I reached Gorky Street, using the red stars over the Kremlin wall as my guidepost.

At this hour, Moscow's streets were almost deserted. I passed a few drunks, two men staggering arm in arm and stopping to make lewd gestures at a white-smocked dumpy woman sweeping her way past the corner of Gorky and Pushkin Streets with her besom of twigs, another man swaying before the window of a photographer's shop, looking in, an old man sitting on the curb and vomiting onto his own lap.

I had spotted the marquee of the Metropole, four blocks ahead of me, when I realized I was being followed. I had stopped under a lamppost to light a cigarette. I heard a quick tattoo of footsteps behind me, then nothing. Looking back, I saw a shadow flatten itself against the storefronts along Gorky Street, half a block behind me. I started walking again. A drunk? Hiding from what? Moscow's sidewalks were given over to vodka hangovers at this hour. I stopped suddenly, flipping the cigarette away. The same brisk, businesslike footsteps sounded behind me, then silence. But the footsteps were too purposeful for a drunk's, and their cadence matched mine.

Three blocks. I lengthened my stride. The sidewalk between me and the Metropole, except for the sentry boxes and the pairs of militiamen lounging in front of them, was now deserted. Three cross streets, a half-dozen lampposts, a half-dozen sentry boxes.

I reached the first street. Crossed it. A sentry box held down the far side. The false dawn had faded. A half hour or so and it would be light. Right now it was night-dark again.

A figure detached itself from the sentry box—a uniformed militiaman with the butt of his machine pistol under his right arm.
“Ktaw vee takoy!”
he barked at me, holding his left hand out. He wanted to see my identification papers. The footsteps were coming up fast behind us now. The militiaman was trying his hardest not to smirk. He was enjoying himself. A phone, I thought. There'd be a phone in the sentry box. He'd been told to stop me. Calls to a dozen or so sentry boxes around the Metropole, and they'd have me.

Calls from where? Lubianka Street?

When the footsteps were almost on top of us, the militiaman asked for my papers again. I remembered Plekhanov's words.
Fortunately for you, we have no Star Chamber here. A pity, because Boris is an expert at persuasion.

I whirled suddenly, expecting to see Boris climbing the curb behind me. I saw a uniformed militiaman, could just make out the bandage hiding the right side of his face. He was either the one I'd slugged with the machine pistol or someone bandaged the way that one would have been bandaged.

It was about as subtle as a charge of TNT. First the expected anger.
You put two Moscow militiamen in the hospital, Drum.
Then the build-up to a false sense of security.
Fortunately for you, we have no Star Chamber here.
Then one of the militiamen I'd put in the hospital, or his double, shows up following me. On a dark street corner in the predawn darkness with his sentry-box buddy barring my way with a machine pistol.

I knew then I was in for a beating. Plekhanov's final question, the dialectic question, came back to me, and I even knew why I was in for a beating. Not particularly subtle, but TNT doesn't have to be subtle to be effective.