The Dark Chronicles (87 page)

We reached the car and I scrambled with the key to unlock the boot. It was tiny. Sarah glanced at me for a moment, then climbed in, rolling herself up into the foetal position.

‘Okay?’

She nodded, her chin against her knee.

‘Hold tight,’ I said.

I shut the door and ran around to the driver’s seat. The temperature was around freezing, so I tried a brief burst of the starter without the accelerator, ready to catch it as soon as it took. It didn’t. I waited a couple of seconds, drumming my hand against the wheel, and tried again. Nothing. A mushroom cloud forming, all because this country couldn’t make cars that started. I gave it another go, craning my neck as I did to look up at the balcony. Gunfire was still coming from inside the flat, but God knew how long it would be before they came running for us. And… yes.
Bingo
.

I pulled out and roared down the street as fast as the thing would go, the treads of one of the front tyres squealing. I pressed the button on the radio and picked up the
militsiya
frequency, but the exchange was about a couple of drunkards who were causing trouble near the GUM store, not us. Presumably, the lieutenant at Maclean’s building had finally wondered where we’d got to and called in, and the KGB also knew of his association with Anton. Maclean had grown complacent, careless or both, and had failed to realize he was under surveillance wherever he went, by both the British and the Russians.

The message might not have gone out yet, but this car would be compromised before too long because Yuri would soon figure out why we’d been at Anton’s. The question was whether we could reach the first roadblock before he realized it and got a message to his men to look for anyone in a yellow Moskvitch with this registration. I hoped that the fact they’d stumbled in on two senior British diplomats holding one of their agents and a dissident at gunpoint would give them enough to disentangle for a while.

It had certainly given me a few things to disentangle: Colin Templeton a traitor? It couldn’t be, surely. I told myself to leave it to one side for the time being, and think about it later… if there was a later.

A lifetime of training had taught me to keep my eye on an objective until the job was done, and to suppress feelings of panic, but this was different. We’d escaped Osborne and Yuri, but we were still a hell of a long way from the U-boat. In fact, we were around 700 miles from it in a shitty little Soviet car, with one of us in the boot and only one set of papers. Panic surged through me. The papers. I felt for the pocket of my jacket. Yes, they were still there.

I began heading west, keeping my speed at a reasonable limit so that I didn’t attract any attention, and my eyes peeled for patrol cars and black Volgas. The rain had stopped, but mist was forming and visibility was poor. Dark clouds were pressing down on the city, but I noted them with satisfaction: it usually didn’t get too cold when it was overcast, and the radiator in the car was bust. There was quite a lot of traffic around, and coupled with the mist it was making it heavy going. The street signs were all in Cyrillic, of course, and although my Russian was fluent, my brain was struggling to adjust to it, exacerbated by the shock of seeing Osborne and the pain still throbbing in my hand.

I had to figure out where to head now, and reduce the objective to a series of concrete moves and counter-moves. Counter-moves, because figuring out what the opposition was planning would be crucial if we were going to stay alive much longer. What would I
do now in Yuri’s shoes? From the brief flash of uniforms I’d seen in the flat, there had been both GRU and KGB officers there, so I suspected he and Andropov had had it out already, and had now agreed to join forces for both their sakes and to cooperate to their utmost to get us back. If they didn’t recapture us, both their heads would be on the block. The Volgas and the men in the flat would be just the tip of the iceberg: I knew the
militsiya
had already been scrambled, and we could expect large numbers of GRU and KGB men to have been deployed, as well as the railway police, civilian police volunteers and customs and border guards. If I were stopped for speeding now, it would be the end of the line.

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and braced my shoulders, trying to suppress the fear. What if I couldn’t locate the canisters, or find a way to show them to the Russians? What if I did and they simply didn’t care, or didn’t believe me regardless? What if I were too late? Brezhnev could have cracked under the pressure. The missiles could already be in the air.

There was something emerging in the mist by the side of the road and I peered through the window anxiously. A figure appeared, and I saw flashing lights and a red star on a white helmet.

Roadblock.

*

I removed Anton’s spectacles from my jacket and put them on. It was a miracle he’d managed to take a photograph of me at all, because his lenses were so strong that within seconds my eyes began to throb and it became hard to see anything. I peered over my nose and saw that they had stretched several
militsiya
cars across the road in two rows to block it. The line of traffic was building up quickly as a result, because every time they let a car through they reversed one of the patrol cars in the first row a little way, let them through, closed the gap and then did the same in the second row. That meant they were taking a couple of minutes to clear each car. And it meant that they were being very thorough indeed.

The question was whether or not they knew about Anton. Bessmertny’s wristwatch read ten past noon. It could be that Yuri and his men were still trying to sort out what had happened in the flat – or it could be that they had got on the radio and told these chaps to look for someone in Anton’s car.

The car in front of me cleared through the set-up, and I was waved forward. One of the men knocked on my window and I rolled it down.

‘Passport, comrade,’ he said. They all looked the same – like schoolboys playing dress-up. This one had cut his chin shaving this morning, or perhaps it was a pimple he’d picked at. I handed him the passport and he took it and opened it.

‘Move your head closer to me,’ he said, and I did, feeling the heat of spotlights. He squinted at me, and then back down at the passport.

‘What is your destination?’ he asked. He had a pistol on his hip, one hand placed on it.

‘Leningrad, officer.’

‘A fine city. And what is the purpose of your visit there?’

There was a faint clunking sound from behind me, and I prayed he hadn’t heard it in the surrounding din. I pushed Anton’s spectacles up my nose – the frames were too large for me and kept slipping down – and tried not to look flustered.

‘I’m visiting family,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘But it says here that you were born in Moscow. What family?’

The strength of the glasses was making me dizzy, and I could feel my pores opening and the sweat starting to bead.

‘My second cousin,’ I said. ‘He moved there last year, and he wants to show me his new flat and introduce me to some of his colleagues.’

‘What does he do?’

‘The same as me – he’s a physicist.’

He flicked through the pages, but I couldn’t make out his expression
through the lenses. I felt I might faint but I couldn’t risk closing my eyes. If I looked over the glasses, he might think I was condescending to him so I stared straight ahead, not focusing, trying to shut off the message from my brain to my retinas so they weren’t affected so much. Sirens were circling behind me, and then I heard a burst of static from one of the nearby cars, and a message being delivered through a transmitter. Was it Yuri or Sasha, telling them to stop a yellow Moskvitch with the following registration? I strained my ears but couldn’t hear. Then one of the car doors slammed and I saw another officer approach and tap my man on the shoulder.

He turned, and the officer whispered something in his ear.

There was no way I could make it through two lines of cars. And at the first sign of any attempt, they would shoot.

The officers stepped back from the car. Oh, Christ. Were they about to try the boot?

The first officer stepped forward again, and leaned into my window.

‘Please proceed,’ he said, handing me my passport. ‘My colleagues here will signal the way.’

The traffic from the roadblock began to thin out, and once I’d passed the fork for Kiev and was sure nobody was on my tail, I took some gravel lanes through a thicket of woods, then pulled over and helped Sarah climb out of the boot.

‘How are you?’ I said.

She grimaced, stretching her arms and legs. ‘I’ve been better. I take it we’re through, then?’

‘For the time being.’ She climbed into the passenger seat and I told her what had happened at the roadblock.

‘So they got some sort of a message?’ she said. ‘I wonder what it was.’

‘Good point.’ I put the
militsiya
channel back on. There was some beeping and static, but then a message came on, which appeared to be on a loop. We listened to it in silence as I steered us back onto the motorway and headed towards Leningrad.

‘Comrades, this is Colonel-General Shchelokov, and I have been asked by our General-Secretary, as Minister of Internal Affairs, to relay the following information to you on behalf of the Supreme Soviet. You were alerted earlier today that enemies of the state, two English spies, had escaped from our custody in Moscow, and were at large. They are, I regret to say, still at large, and must be apprehended at all costs. They are a menace to our society, and intend to cause the Soviet Union great harm. Be warned that they are also highly trained special forces operatives, and will stop at nothing, including murder.

‘Within the last few minutes, men within the Moscow
militsiya
discovered the body of one of their colleagues, Sergeant Grigor Ivanovich Bessmertny, who was left to die by these fugitives while on the run. His family has been informed, and a funeral is being arranged. It is now, I think, incumbent on all of us to honour the memory of Grigor Ivanovich Bessmertny, and bring his murderers to justice. After this message will follow a description of the fugitives, and other information that I hope will lead to their swift arrest, detention and trial. I offer my sincerest condolences to the family of Sergeant Bessmertny, and pay tribute to his gallantry and service. I call on you all, as my men and as his comrade, to hunt down his killers immediately.’

‘Christ,’ said Sarah softly. I sensed there was also reproach in her voice, but I didn’t regret what I’d done, even if it were true that he had died. He would have done the same – or shot me – had the situations been reversed.

‘Listen,’ I said, as the descriptions came on. They were mostly accurate, if perhaps a little unfair, except for one detail. ‘Did you hear that? They think I’m wearing Bessmertny’s uniform.’

‘So? That’s hardly going to bother them if they find us, is it? Your disguise isn’t exactly foolproof.’

‘That’s not my point. Their wheels aren’t turning fast enough. They’ve brought out a big gun, Shchelokov, to rile up the blood of the hounds. But that recording has to be at least an hour old. There was no mention of this car, or Anton, or what we’re wearing now. That’s why we made it through the roadblock. No doubt they’ll record another message soon enough, but they’re behind us for the time being. I don’t think they know where we’re headed yet.’

I turned to face her, and noticed that her smile was painted on.

‘You need to get some sleep,’ I said.

‘I’d love to,’ she smiled, ‘but you keep talking.’

I shook off my jacket and handed it to her, and she tucked it under her chin and leaned against the window as I drove. When I looked over again a few minutes later, she was sleeping.

The traffic became sparser still, and I drove as hard as I could
towards the border, my hands gripping the wheel until they turned numb. We passed cranes and television towers, restaurants and factories – the great dreary expanse of the Soviet Union. The road became rougher, and despite the low cloud cover, the temperature had dropped.

I started thinking about my life up to this point: what I had done, and what had brought me here. Or rather
who
, because it was mainly Anna who had brought me here: there was a straight line between our conversations in that Red Cross clinic in Germany in 1945 and this car in 1969. She hadn’t dragged me here, though; I’d come along willingly. I had always chided her for being an idealist – but she had always known that I was one, too.

‘You like to discuss specific events, Paul, but you avoid any discussion of principles. Don’t you feel that society would be better if we were all equal – no more rich and poor?’

‘And milk and honey flowing throughout the land? Of course. But it’s a dream.’

‘Everything is a dream if you do nothing about it. What have you been fighting for these last years? Wasn’t it for a better world?’

‘A world free of Nazism, yes.’

‘Is that all you have learned? So now we simply return to what was before – the same old ways, the same old systems?’

‘Yes. There was nothing wrong with them.’

‘I don’t think many people would agree with you, Paul. I think the last five years have brought everything into focus. Yes, Nazism was a great evil, and conveniently enough for your country many millions of my countrymen have died extinguishing it. But we cannot now be satisfied with simply living in a world that is not evil. Many of us want to live in a world that is fair, a world that has a chance of keeping peace between all men, instead of waging war on each other every few decades because one nation wants more of the cake than another. I never wanted to live in a country ruled by the Germans. But I don’t want to be ruled by the Americans or the British, either…’

I had let myself be persuaded because, despite my token resistance, I’d been dissatisfied that the war had ended with no clear resolution. It did indeed seem as though we were about to return
to the old ways again, as though nothing had changed in the intervening bloodbath.