The Blind Run (12 page)

He looked with contempt at Sampson, belatedly conscious of the argument that had erupted between Sampson and the front seat passenger, a bulky, bull-shouldered man twisted round to face them both. Charlie hadn’t recognised the row being in Russian, engrossed in his own thoughts, but he isolated the language now. But didn’t understand it. He’d had a passing ability, a long time ago; but this was too fast; Sampson appeared as fluent as the man whose natural language it was. Not that Charlie needed to understand, even with the driver joining in with matching anger. The demanding gestures from the front seat passenger were indication enough, beckoning insistence on being given the gun, matching with Sampson’s head-shaking refusal to surrender it. It was the driver who resolved the row, pulling the car into the side of the road, stopping the engine and turning to shout ‘Out!’ in English.

For several moments there was complete silence in the vehicle. Then Charlie said, ‘For Christ’s sake, give him the bloody thing. You’ve caused enough trouble with it already. We’re just asking to be caught, stuck here like this!’

If he got to Russia and managed to achieve what Wilson wanted, the deal might just stick. But not if they got picked up now. If, if, if, thought Charlie; every consideration was ruled by a doubtful if.

Reluctantly, actually halting the movement in the middle of making it, Sampson offered the Russian the gun. In the sudden illumination of an outside street lamp Charlie saw it was a Smith and Wesson. Sampson handed it over butt first, so that the Russian took it with the barrel directed towards Sampson.

‘Why not shoot the stupid bastard!’ said Charlie, bitterly.

As the car started again the Russian in the passenger seat said, ‘Why the gun? Everything was already difficult, before this.’

‘Ask him, not me,’ said Charlie. He was glad the conversation had reverted to English.

Sampson looked despisingly across the car at Charlie and then said to the Russian. ‘Because it was necessary. And you damned well know it. If I hadn’t been able to silence the policeman as I did we’d have been caught, which would have been an embarrassment to Russia. And worst, the vehicle would have been linked to the escape and to the Soviet embassy and been an even greater embarrassment. I didn’t want to kill the damned man. It was his misfortune to be in the wrong place. I didn’t have any alternative and every one of you knows it. Just as I know you were bluffing back there. You wouldn’t have forced me out of the car.’

‘Maybe it was a good thing for everyone that the challenge wasn’t put to the test,’ said the Russian, appearing unimpressed at Sampson’s bombast.

Charlie turned away from the ridiculous dispute. Through the car window he saw a direction sign to Tower Hamlets. They were travelling east. Where, he wondered. The London streets about which he’d reminisced all the long days and nights in the cell were eerily deserted, the actual City of London always quieter than the rest of the capital. He thought he heard the wail of a police siren and tensed but didn’t detect it again, so guessed he must have been mistaken. How long would it be before they found the man crumpled back there by the prison wall?

From inside the car he heard Sampson say, ‘Where are the clothes? Surely you thought of clothes?’

The arrogant sod was trying the position of command even here, Charlie recognised. From the front the passenger handed back two grips.

‘Me first,’ insisted Sampson, twisting and turning in the confined rear space. After he had changed and stuffed the prison uniform into the grip Charlie switched, aware of the good quality of the clothing as he put it on and aware, too, that the pockets had things in them, as they would have done if they were normally worn suits. What he thought was grey worsted and definitely a well laundered white shirt. The shoes pinched but with his feet Charlie was used to that. He left them half on and half off, for comfort.

‘There,’ said the Russian, in front, an order.

Obediently the driver stopped and the other man stuffed the refilled hold-alls into a refuse bin at the pavement edge, carefully ensuring the covering flap came back concealingly into position.

‘We are returning from a dinner, in London,’ dictated the Russian, as the car moved again. ‘There are counterfoils of the tickets in your left hand jacket pocket. Tombola tickets, too …’ He smiled back at them, holding up a crystal decanter with a ticket still attached. ‘I was the lucky one.’

Very good, decided Charlie, realising as he did so that they were clearing London. Any road block would be hurried, particularly out of the capital. Photographs certainly wouldn’t be available, not this quickly. It was the sort of cover story that might get them through, if the need arose. The ever present if, he thought once more.

‘It’s fortunate we made the departure arrangements that we did,’ said the man in front. ‘Let’s hope they’ll still be possible.’ Heavily he added to Sampson, ‘And this car is not traceable to our embassy in London.’

Charlie was caught by the disclaimer as the man came to him. ‘You are called Muffin?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Charlie.

‘I am Letsov.’

Charlie frowned at the introduction. There shouldn’t have been identities if the man were attached to London. The frown deepened, in self-irritation. It had taken him too long to realise that the Russians would never have risked anyone actually from the embassy. He looked with renewed interest at the two in front. They were called
spetnaz
he remembered; an élite and highly secret commando group within the KGB, the equivalent, he supposed, of the British SAS or the American Special Forces. Moscow must regard Sampson as very important indeed to go to all this trouble. The other Englishman appeared relaxed and comfortable in the opposite corner, hand casually looped through an assistance strap near the door, as if he were actually being chauffeured back from some mundane, late night outing.

To Letsov, Charlie said, ‘We’re getting out tonight?’

‘Of course,’ said the Russian, as if he were surprised at the question.

Outside Charlie caught brief sight of a signpost to Braintree. ‘And you’re coming all the way?’

‘No further reason to stay,’ said Letsov, confirming Charlie’s guess at their being
spetnaz.

The driver said something that Charlie didn’t catch, in Russian, and he didn’t hear Letsov’s reply, either, but from the way the man stared through both the front and the rear windows at the remark Charlie guessed it was a reference to there being no obvious police presence.

‘Thank you,’ said Charlie, to Letsov. ‘For all this.’

The Russian shrugged. ‘There were orders,’ he said.

‘Which I initiated,’ Sampson reminded.

Fuck you, thought Charlie.

They even risked the motorway when it came, travelling almost completely along its full length before a warning from Letsov at a sign that took them off on an obviously reconnoitred route through minor roads. There were two darkened, sleeping villages and then a bigger place, a small town, which they entered without Charlie being aware of any name. They parked once more to an obviously prepared plan, in a covered, multi-storey car park. Letsov turned back towards them, hefted the decanter and said, ‘It seems my luck is holding.’

Almost at once, the smile went. ‘The car was a cover. It isn’t any longer,’ he warned.

Reluctantly Charlie put his feet fully into the shoes, feeling his ankle as he did so. There wasn’t any swelling from his clumsy landing and he was glad: he didn’t want any indication of weakness in front of Sampson. Or the other two men, either.

As they emerged on to the deserted street Charlie saw, about fifty yards in the opposite direction from which Letsov led them, the tell-tale blue sign of the police station. They really meant to rub it in, thought Charlie.

Letsov and the driver led familiarly but cautiously, almost at once leaving the main road for smaller, bordering ones. Charlie smelled the smell of sea and heard an early shrill of seagulls. Dawn was tentatively on the horizon when they reached the estuary, already forming the buildings in black and grey outlines. Boats, too. It was hardly a proper marina, more a parking place for weekend sailors avid for the pastime without the money truly to enjoy it. Charlie guessed the boats, if he could have seen them more clearly, would be run down, like the mooring.

Their boat was at the end of a small slipway, isolated from the other craft and cowled in a protective covering which the two Russians expertly and silently unclipped and stowed, gesturing Sampson and Charlie into the cramped cabin. The odour was of damp and leaked fuel and in the light which Letsov snapped on, behind curtained windows, Charlie saw most of the inside varnish had peeled whitely away from the timbers.

There was another hold-all on a single bunk to the left. Letsov opened it and tossed heavy blue Guernsey sweaters at them and said, ‘Now we’re enthusiastic amateur sailors, leaving early. But you two stay below until we’ve cleared.’

Charlie and Sampson swopped the jackets for the sweaters and sat unspeaking on either side of the cabin. Above Charlie heard the muted, careful sounds of the other men preparing their departure. They must have left only one securing line at the end because directly the engine fired, over loudly in the morning stillness, they cast off, without waiting for it to warm up. They proceeded down river at the lowest throttle but from the note Charlie guessed that unlike the rest of the boat the engine wasn’t old or disused. At full throttle it would probably have torn itself from its mountings.

‘So everyone shit themselves for nothing,’ sneered Sampson, triumphantly from across the cabin. ‘We made it.’

Charlie said nothing.

After about half an hour there was a change in the motion of the boat, as it encountered the sea-swell. The engine increased its note and the smell of diesel permeated the cabin.

‘How much longer before we can go on deck?’ demanded Sampson, of no one.

Charlie looked at the man and realised he was suffering seasickness and was glad. ‘Be slop-out time back at the nick,’ he said, wanting to encourage it. ‘All that smell of piss.’

‘Shut up, for Christ’s sake,’ said Sampson.

Charlie did, not to spare Sampson but because the baiting was pointless and if he made the bastard sick for the rest of his life it wouldn’t be retribution for what he’d done.

It was another hour before Letsov opened the hatch and by then Sampson was heaving. The man fled to the stern of the boat, retching into the wake and momentarily Charlie thought how easy it would have been to have seized his legs and tipped him over the gunwale. The temptation receded as quickly as it came. They could loop easily, to pick him up. Pointless, like encouraging the sickness.

It was fully light now, a dull, grey day with the clouds stubbornly against the sea, as if they didn’t want night to go. Far to port Charlie detected a duck line of fishing boats heading back to harbour and wondered which one it would be. He stepped up, into the cockpit. The car driver retained his role, as helmsman. Letsov stood with a chart spread between them, minutely focussing a radio. Charlie became aware that the man was concentrating upon a heavy wrist watch and at some clearly pre-arranged time pressed a relay button on the set. It would be short burst transmission, Charlie knew, expertly: a full message electronically reduced to a meaningless blip to any accidental interception, decipherable only to those properly listening for it.

‘We were lucky,’ said Letsov, speaking to Charlie but looking beyond, to the still retching Sampson. ‘I guess it took a long time to find the body.’

‘He didn’t have to die,’ insisted Charlie.

Letsov came fully to him, smiling wearily. ‘I know of you; of your street experience,’ said the Russian. ‘And I agree. The policeman could have been immobilised.’ He looked back to Sampson. ‘He never worked the streets. Always liaison or administration. A good agent to have in place but a bad one to be trapped with.’

There was a low shout, from the helmsman behind them and as they turned Charlie saw the outline of a vessel forming on the horizon. As they got closer he discerned the oddly shaped radar bubble and the stiff-haired antennae of what the Russians called trawlers and the rest of the world spy ships. Letsov depressed the transmission button once again, positive identification Charlie supposed and then turned as Sampson forced himself to join them, whey-faced.

‘How long to reach Russia, in that?’ he asked, strained-voiced.

‘Murmansk,’ said Letsov. ‘A couple of days.’

Sampson made a grunting sound of despair.

The helmsman manoeuvred the motor-boat into the lee of the larger vessel. They exchanged loose link-lines, which meant they had to jump for the rope ladder thrown down from the trawler. Charlie went first, easily, looking back hopefully to Sampson. At first it looked as if the man might actually baulk at jumping across the narrow channel of heaving sea but then he did, misholding at the first attempt and hanging one handed for a brief moment between the two vessels before snatching out a second time, getting a grip, and hauling himself upwards. He stood shaking at the rail-break, almost appearing unaware of where he was. Around them seamen bustled, going through what was still a well planned exercise. There were shouted, relayed messages from the bridge wing to the sailors to the two still in the boat and then Charlie saw charges being handed down. It took minutes to place them and then the two who had rescued them made the crossing and climbed aboard. At once the trawler cast off and moved away. Letsov remained at the rail. When they were about fifty yards away, Letsov said, with professional pride and without consulting his watch to get the time ‘Now!’ and precisely on cue the explosion came, in a dull crump, tearing the bottom completely from the cabin cruiser. It jumped, surprised, in the water then sank at once.

‘Welcome,’ said a voice behind them and Charlie turned to face the captain. ‘Welcome,’ the man said again. ‘To a new life.’

Christ, thought Charlie.

With the murder of the policeman it had not achieved the humiliating propaganda success that had been intended and Berenkov knew it, just as he knew their personal friendship would not prevent Kalenin delivering the necessary and deserved rebuke.