Mazurka Read online

  A year ago. How much had changed in that short time, he thought. He yawned because he’d slept badly. He always slept badly these days. He stood up, walked around the room, observed the operators at their screens. Then he went outside.

  He could hear the slow Baltic tide that came and went upon the beach beyond the wire perimeter. A few gulls, scavenging the shoreline, flapped in the dawn light. This depressing island, thick with military installations, rocket-bases and airfields and anti-ballistic missile interceptors, was another factor in his sense of general disappointment. Now and then an opportunity arose for brief leave on the mainland, which meant perhaps a twelve-hour visit to Tallinn – certainly never enough time to travel to where his family lived. Whenever he returned from Tallinn, a pleasant medieval city, a place with a sense of life and colour, it took days before he could suppress his restlessness and discontent.

  He raised his face to the sky. Overhead, six MIG-27s flew in formation, breaking the cloud cover and then vanishing in the direction of the mainland. An impressive display, he thought. A show of force and strength. Suddenly Uvarov felt small and insignificant and the task he’d agree to do struck him as overwhelming. He wouldn’t go through with it, he couldn’t, he didn’t have the nerve. But then he wasn’t alone in the undertaking, there were others involved, officers like himself who were ready to act at the appointed time – or so he’d been told by the man he’d met several times in Tallinn. What if it was a lie, a kind of sadistic ploy to test his loyalty? What if the man in Tallinn was some kind of inspector of internal affairs whose job it was to detect the potentially disloyal, the weak, those who had no commitment to the system?

  Uvarov felt a tightness in his heart. He moved back in the direction of the low, grey-stone building, passing once again under the radar scanners. He sometimes had the feeling he was doomed to spend his whole life in this wretched place, forever commanding the men who endlessly studied the green screens and waited for the sky to reveal signs of danger. It was an awful prospect, one he couldn’t tolerate.

  He opened the door, crossed the room, returned to his desk. He sat down, studied the reports of NATO activities that had been recorded in yesterday’s logs, the usual harmless catalogue of flights, the practice bombs dropped beyond Russian territorial waters, the idle strafing of the Baltic, nothing out of the ordinary. Then he pushed his chair back from his desk and thought of the photograph in the drawer – which reminded him of the very thing he didn’t want to think about, the brown envelope concealed under the floorboards of his family’s apartment in Moscow, the package that contained three US passports and fifty thousand American dollars in small bills that had been given to him by the man in Tallinn, the man he knew only as Aleksis.

  6

  London

  The surprise Martin Burr had mentioned turned out to be depressing and sickening. Frank Pagan stood motionless in the doorway of Kiviranna’s cell while the Commissioner hobbled around inside the small chamber, his cane making quiet ticking sounds on the floor.

  Burr said, “Have to hand it to him. He was an ingenious bugger.”

  Pagan crossed the threshold, thinking how the cell was too small to contain three men, even if one of them was dead. Jacob Kiviranna lay across his bunk. The mattress had been removed and was propped up against the wall. A long length of wire, one end of which lay close to Kiviranna’s lips, was attached to the light-fixture in the ceiling. The bulb had been unscrewed and lay on the floor. Kiviranna’s eyes were closed and there were black burn marks around his lips and nostrils. Urine soaked the blanket he’d wrapped himself in. The cell, poorly-ventilated, smelled of scorched flesh.

  “He unhooked the bedsprings from the frame, patiently straightened out a length of wire, stuck one end into his mouth then the other into the electric socket,” Burr said, and peered up at the wire that dangled from the ceiling.

  Pagan looked down at the corpse, then turned away, went out into the corridor. Martin Burr followed. Pagan peered the length of the corridor for a time, saying nothing, trying to imagine Jake placing the wire between his lips, laying it over his moist tongue, then standing up on the bed-frame to unscrew the lightbulb and twist the free end of the wire into the socket. He felt a fleeting nausea. Suicide always struck him the same way – a sheer bloody waste. What had prompted it, what madness, what fears had come to Jake in the darkness of the cell and driven him to such an act?

  Both men were quiet for a moment before Burr said, “Let’s go back up to my office. We’ll have a glass of something, then look at what young Oates has produced.”

  Frank Pagan hesitated a second before he followed Martin Burr in the direction of the lifts. He was thinking how tidy it all seemed now. Too tidy. Both assassin and victim were dead, which – if Jake had been telling the truth – left only an enigmatic accomplice in the United States, somebody who might already have disappeared into the shadows from which he’d first namelessly emerged. Somebody who, if Ted Gunther failed to turn anything up, might always remain an anonymous mystery.

  Pagan stepped inside the lift, beset by an unexpected sense of anger at Jacob Kiviranna. He closed his eyes as the cage climbed in the shaft. Whatever answers Jake might personally have been able to provide were forever lost now.

  It seemed more stuffy than usual in Burr’s uncluttered office. Pagan picked up the sheet of paper the Commissioner had laid on the desk. For a second all he saw as he stared at it was the sight of Kiviranna, an after-image dishearteningly impressed upon his retina. He drained the shot of Drambuie Burr had poured for him, then set the glass down. He knew you were supposed to savour the stuff, but he wasn’t exactly in a sipping frame of mind.

  “Poetry, Frank. Why would Romanenko carry around a piece of poetry inside a sealed envelope? I can understand a man travelling with a volume of poems, let’s say, if he wants to while away some boring hours on a trip or if he needs to read himself to sleep. But what I don’t understand is sealing a few lines of the stuff inside an envelope.”

  Pagan studied the sheet of paper that was covered with Danus Oates’s cramped, scholarly handwriting. Here and there words had been crossed out and alternatives written carefully in the margin, indicating how Oates must have struggled over an exact translation. He’d also provided alternative words in parentheses.

  But the day will (tomorrow?) soon be breaking/When all the torches will be burning/Throwing flames in widening circles/Which will free (untie? lit: cut the cord of) the arm embedded/In the mighty chains of rock./Kalev will be coming home/To bring happiness (contentment/freedom?) to the people/Of a new Estonia.

  He placed the sheet on the Commissioner’s desk. He didn’t consider himself a judge of poetry, but he thought he knew enough to recognise bad verse when he saw it. “I assume something’s been lost in the translation,” he said.

  “I agree it’s somewhat overstated, but it sounds to me like a patriotic poem, and that kind of thing has a tendency to be bloated,” the Commissioner said, plucking at the edge of his eyepatch. “The point is, who the hell is Kalev? And why was Romanenko carrying this particular poem around, Frank? It looks as if he’d had it in his case for half a bloody century too. The paper’s practically falling to pieces. And here’s another odd thing – Oates tells me it was written in a language I’d never heard of before, something called Livonian, which is almost extinct. According to Oates, it’s related to modern Estonian, and to some elements of Latvian.”

  Pagan looked at the poem again. He had difficulty concentrating. “It could be a message Romanenko intended to deliver before he was killed. Maybe he was supposed to make contact with somebody in Edinburgh, somebody who’d understand the significance of those lines. Why carry something around in an envelope if you don’t mean to deliver it?”

  “A possibility,” the Commissioner remarked.

  “It could also be a code of some kind.”

  “I thought about that. If it’s a code, where does one start? Codes are a bit out of our province.”

  Frank P
agan had a moment in which he felt sleep flutter somewhere at the back of his head. “What else did Danus Oates translate?” he asked.

  The Commissioner indicated a small stack of papers at the side of the desk. “That poem’s the only unusual thing. There’s some technical stuff as well as correspondence between Romanenko and a man called George Newby, the director of a microchip company in Basingstoke that was apparently tendering a bid for Romanenko’s business.”

  Pagan said, “If Romanenko was supposed to meet somebody in Edinburgh, who was he? And what exactly did this individual do when Romanenko didn’t show up? Did he just shrug his shoulders and walk away? The more I think about Aleksis, the more he slips between my fingers.”

  He set the poem down on the desk, although he continued to stare at it. Kalev, he thought. It was the kind of name given to extraterrestrial characters in the comic books of his youth. Kalev! Emperor of Saturn! Master of Cosmic Wisdom! Pagan could have used a little of that cosmic wisdom himself right then. He took his eyes away from the poem because staring wasn’t bringing him any answers.

  The Commissioner rolled his walnut cane back and forth on the surface of his desk. “To make matters somewhat more intricate, there’s an impatient little sod called Malik from the Soviet Embassy waiting downstairs for me. He’s come to collect the briefcase. According to the Foreign Office, the case and its contents go back to the Russians. Immediately. I’ve been stalling Malik as best I could until I talked to you about this enigmatic poem. But if I don’t return the material sharply, Malik’s going to lodge an official protest with the Foreign Secretary, which would be a bore.”

  Pagan stood up and walked around the windowless room. “Do you intend to return the poem?” he asked.

  The Commissioner smiled. It was the expression of a man who was no stranger to mischief. “My feeling is that the Russians have got enough on their plate without having to worry about a bit of bad verse. And if anybody ever asks, we’ve never even heard of the bloody poem.”

  Pagan saw something enjoyably conspiratorial in his superior’s face. It was an aspect of the Commissioner’s personality he liked – this sneaky way he had of taking risks, of defying authorities even higher than himself.

  Pagan carefully placed Oates’s translation of the poem, and the brittle original, back in the envelope, and stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket. The Commissioner swept Danus Oates’s other translations into a drawer, picked up a telephone, said something to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  After a minute, Malik entered the room. He was a short man with enormous eyebrows and a face that suggested a rocky promontory. Pagan observed that the Russian, who wore a lightweight Aquascutum overcoat of a decidedly bourgeois nature, had a certain self-righteous expression on his face. He was the offended party, the victim of the tactics of capitalist law-enforcement officers, and consequently of monstrous capitalism itself, and nothing was going to change that. If need be, he’d play this injured role to the hilt. His eyebrows quivered as he spotted the briefcase.

  “Are you ready to hand it over?” he demanded. His English was excellent.

  “We’ve come to our senses at long last,” Pagan said.

  Malik stared at Frank Pagan, obviously unsure of Pagan’s tone, which was sarcastic. The Commissioner said, “What Frank Pagan means is that you can take the briefcase. It’s all yours, Mr Malik.”

  Unceremoniously, Malik grabbed the case and held it against his chest. “Your methods leave much to be desired, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s not enough that you fail to protect the life of a high Soviet official – you then confiscate the property of the Soviet Union, which you keep in your possession, without good reason, for twelve hours.”

  The Commissioner made a soothing noise, although it was clear to Pagan that his heart wasn’t in it. He was going through the motions of commiseration. Pagan leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

  Malik patted the case. “We are also going to make an official request to interrogate the killer of Romanenko. This will be done through the proper channels, of course.”

  Both Pagan and Martin Burr were silent. Then Burr said, “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  “You’re going to refuse the request?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” the Commissioner replied.

  “And why is that?”

  Martin Burr explained. Malik shook his head in disbelief. He said, “First you allow Romanenko to be assassinated. Then you make it possible for the criminal to escape justice by committing suicide. What kind of organisation are you running?”

  “I resent your tone,” Burr said. “We hardly made it possible, as you put it, for Kiviranna to take his own life.”

  “A suicide,” Malik remarked. “How utterly convenient for you. Now the killer is no longer around to answer questions that might be embarrassing to you. Are you certain he took his own life?”

  “What are you suggesting?” Burr asked. His face had turned the colour of a plum.

  “His death spares you the need for a public trial, Commissioner. It spares you the awkwardness of putting the man in the witness-box, where he becomes the perfect symbol of your inadequacy to secure the life of a Soviet official. Who knows? Perhaps you even encouraged the unfortunate man’s demise.”

  “You’re an outrageous twit,” Burr said, and thrust the tip of his cane into the rug, a wonderful little gesture of restrained savagery. His sense of fair play had been insulted but what else could he have expected from a Bolshevik anyway? They had their own rules and sometimes they defied the understanding of a decent men.

  Malik moved toward the door. He clutched the briefcase at his side. “Goodnight, Commissioner.”

  The Commissioner harumphed. If the Russian was going to flaunt good sense, then he, Martin Burr, was most assuredly not going to observe good manners. So far as he was concerned, the Bolshevik didn’t deserve common courtesies.

  The door closed behind Malik.

  “Little shit,” Burr said. “Have you ever heard such balderdash in your life? The sheer gall of the man is appalling.”

  The Commissioner sat down and sighed. He looked rather depressed all at once. “What have we really got, Frank, when all is said and done?”

  “We’ve still got Kalev.”

  “Whoever he is,” Martin Burr remarked dismally.

  Pagan was thinking of Kristina Vaska. He was thinking how he wanted to hear the rest of her narrative.

  “I may have a way of finding out,” he said.

  The Commissioner stared at his desk lamp. “Let’s hope so, Frank. I hate being in the dark.”

  Frank Pagan agreed. The dark, with all its secrets, all its inaccessible corners, was not his place of choice. He thought about Aleksis–drunk, laughing, joking, dancing with a reluctant partner, an embarrassed English rose, in the subdued bar of the Savoy, a man of mirth and boundless energies. But it was clear now that there had been other sides to the man as well – secretive, submerged, hidden from view. And whatever they were they’d led to his own murder, a suicide, and the arrival of a woman, with an unfinished story, in Pagan’s apartment.

  Aleksis, Pagan thought, you may have been an insignificant Communist Party leader in some minor Soviet colony – but what were you really up to?

  Zavidovo, the Soviet Union

  Vladimir Greshko heard the sound of a car and turned his face to the window of his bedroom, seeing the first yellow light of dawn press upon the glass. He was always a little surprised to have lived through another night. Death, with all its dark finality, had been much on his mind during the last couple of weeks. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. What would a man do with eternity anyhow, except scheme against his fellows? To form Marxist action committees and provoke Revolution in heaven? To convert angels to Engels and replace God with Communism?

  He raised his face, rearranged his pillows, covered the plastic tube with the edge of his bedsheet. The obscene sucking sound of the device filled him with disgust. />
  He saw the bedroom door open. The Yakut nurse stepped in, nervously wiping her tiny hands in the folds of her white uniform. Behind her stood General Olsky. Olsky – of all people! The sight of the new Chairman of the KGB quickened Greshko’s tired blood. He wondered what had brought Stefan Olsky all the way from Moscow to this godforsaken place.

  Olsky wore a dark pinstriped suit. Greshko considered him a pencil-pusher, a clerk, a man without an ounce of flair in his soul, a colourless bureaucrat so typical of the new breed. He was Birthmark Billy’s protégé and therefore a member of the Politburo’s inner sanctum. When Greshko had run the organs of State Security, Olsky had been a mere Deputy in the Third Directorate. His rise, engineered by the General Secretary, had been spectacular. At the age of forty-one he was the youngest man in Soviet history to be Chairman of the KGB, which was another source of resentment for Greshko, who hadn’t assumed control himself until his sixty-first birthday.

  “You look well,” Stefan Olsky said.

  Greshko said nothing for a moment. He seethed whenever he imagined Olsky occupying his office, sitting in his chair. He knew Olsky had had the office redecorated, that all the old paintings had been returned to storage and replaced by charts – charts, sweet Christ! – that the old phone system had been renovated and the six phones Greshko had enjoyed supplanted by a single device that allowed Olsky to hold what were known as ‘conference’ calls. Every day new changes. Every day something else swept away.

  “I look as well as a dying man can,” Greshko said. “You’re trying to be kind, Stefan.”

  Stefan Olsky approached the bed. This was his first visit to Greshko’s cottage, and he’d heard about the old man’s condition, but he hadn’t been prepared for the smell that hung in this room – this commingling of human waste and disinfectant, this deathly odour.