Mazurka (24 page)

There was a full moon outside, and the radar antennae were superimposed strangely against it, as if they were odd cracks that had developed on the moon's surface. Uvarov walked to the shoreline, took the paper out of his pocket, threw it into the tide. He gazed for some time across the silvery water, thinking of his wife and children. He saw a Kirov guided missile cruiser, a floating palace of lights, about a half mile from the shore.

He walked back in the direction of the control centre that housed the radar screens and the computers. Two of the computers were inoperative, and had been for days, despite the arrival of a maintenance crew from Moscow, argumentative men who'd tinkered without success, squabbling among themselves, blaming one another for the failure. At any given time two of the four computers failed to function because of flaws in their basic designs – they were bad copies of Japanese originals. They were scheduled to be phased out, and replaced, but the programme was already five weeks late.

Uvarov entered the centre smelling the dead, stale air of the place, absorbing the green screens, the uniformed men who sat before them. Nothing was happening on the waters of the Baltic. He spoke to a couple of the technicians, pleasantries, little else. In recent months he'd tended to remain aloof. He saw no future in forming friendships.

He walked to his metal desk, sat down. He pretended to work, to study papers, but in reality he was examining a computer manual which had been circulated by the Defence Ministry. It had been printed in a limited edition, and access was restricted to men above the rank of Colonel. The manual detailed the interfacing between the computers at this installation and those located at other Air Defence posts in the Baltic sector of the Soviet Union and in Moscow itself. He read for a while, then closed the manual, placing it for safekeeping in the drawer with his family's photograph.

The timing had to be unerring. He rose from his desk, walked along the banks of consoles, hands clasped behind his back. He paused when he reached the wall. Where a window might have been located, there hung a large portrait of Lenin. Uvarov felt an odd sense of constriction, of being caged in an airless space. The surface of his skin was hot, and there was a dull ache behind his eyes.

Nerves. Nothing more than nerves. He was living so very close to the edge these days that physical reactions were not entirely surprising. He glanced at the face of Lenin, then walked back the way he'd come. The radar screens were lifeless. Everything here was lifeless. Uvarov suddenly longed to hear his children laughing, or the sound of his wife playing her piano.

He reached his desk, leaned against it, folded his arms over his chest. On the wall some yards away was the Orders Board. He turned toward it, gazing at a variety of instructions, orders, revised orders, revisions to those revisions, procedures. They came in batches every day from Moscow, and they were all signed by the same man – the Commander in Chief of Soviet Air Defences, Deputy Minister S. F. Tikunov.

Uvarov breathed very deeply, tried to relax. The sheer magnitude of what he was involved in made his heart pound and his pulses go berserk. A week ago he'd asked the physician for something to help him sleep, but the doctor had been unwilling to prescribe drugs and Uvarov didn't press the matter. Why have
insomniac
on your record? It would be perceived eventually by somebody in records as a weakness and then it might result in a whole battery of those psychiatric tests everybody had become so fond of lately. And Uvarov had neither the time nor the inclination to be the subject of any kind of inquiry.

The telephone rang on his desk and he was startled for a second by the intensity of the sound. It pierced him. He reached for the receiver and held it to his ear. From the amount of static on the line he knew the call was long distance.

A man's voice said, “Colonel Uvarov?”

Uvarov said, “Speaking.”

The voice responded, “Aleksis told me to contact you.”

10

Moscow

After Lieutenant Dimitri Volovich parked and locked his car and removed the windshield-wipers as a precaution against theft, he looked the length of the quiet street, which was located between the Riga Railway Terminal and the Sadovoye Ring. It was a pleasant street and Volovich's apartment building was new, built from brown brick and flanked by spindles of newly-planted trees. The sixty apartments were allotted to people with
blat
, the influence necessary to live a life of comfort within the Soviet Union.

As a middle-ranking officer of the KGB, one with many years of faithful if unenterprising service, Volovich was entitled to a few perquisites. The two-roomed flat, with its 13.2 square metres of living space – a little more than the average decreed by the State – was one of them. His automobile, a black Zhiguli, was another. In Soviet terms, he was a man of some means. He was also a person with no particular ambitions beyond loyalty to the organs of State Security, which from a practical point of view meant loyalty to his immediate superior, Viktor Epishev. But it was this allegiance that troubled him as he moved towards the entrance to the building. And it troubled him less in terms of any conspiracy against the State, but more at the level of his own survival. His life, he had to admit, wasn't such a bad one. And he wanted to keep it.

As he was about to step inside the building, he was aware of a long dark car approaching the kerb. It was a Zil with tinted windows and imported whitewall tyres. Volovich stared at the whitewalls. He knew whose car this was. The rear door opened and he moved towards it even as he fought panic down, like something hard in his throat.

“Come in,” a voice said from the back of the car.

Volovich stumbled into the dark interior. He couldn't make out any details in the dimness of the big car save for the shadowy outline of somebody who sat tucked in the corner. He knew who it was in any case, and he was overwhelmed.

“Close the door, Dimitri.”

Volovich did so. The car, whose driver was invisible beyond a panel of smoked glass, drove away immediately.

“In all Moscow, what is your favourite drive, Dimitri?”

Volovich licked his lips. He couldn't think. He stared at the shadowy figure and said, “I've always enjoyed the ride to Arkhangelskoye Park, sir.”

I'm not guilty of anything
, he thought.
Keep telling yourself that
. He breathed deeply and quietly, conscious of the way General Olsky was observing him. The General reached forward to flip a switch set into a panel in the door.

“Driver,” he said. “Take us to Arkhangelskoye Park. Go by way of Petrovo-Dalniye.”

Volovich gazed out through the tinted windows. He saw the Sovietskaya Hotel and the Dynamo Stadium, almost as if he were viewing them through eyes that weren't his own. He was trying hard not to display any kind of uneasiness or fear, but it was difficult. He was conscious of the Aeroflot Hotel, then the Metro station at Alabyan Street, but these impressions belonged in another world. Volovich's world, which had dwindled abruptly, was confined to this car and the man who sat on the seat next to him.

General Olsky said, “It's an ugly building. I always think so.”

Volovich stared at the Gidroproekt skyscraper, which was lit even though nightfall wasn't complete. He had no opinion one way or the other, but he agreed with Olsky in any case. The Zil was travelling along an underpass, beyond which was the road to Arkhangelskoye.

“It's good to have an opportunity to talk to you, Dimitri,” he said. “Sometimes a man in my position loses touch with the rank and file, you understand.”

Volovich craved a drink. Water, vodka, anything. The surface of his tongue was like the skin of a peach.

“How long have you worked with Colonel Epishev?” the General asked.

Volovich was filled with sudden dread. Olsky wouldn't have mentioned Viktor's name unless he was leading towards something disastrous.

“Twenty years, more or less.”

“You're very close to him, I assume.”

Volovich sat very still. He wondered how he looked to Olsky, whether his panic was visible somehow, whether he'd given himself away – a line of sweat on his upper lip, a nervous tic somewhere. He wasn't sure. “We work together,” he managed to say.

“I have a question,” the General said.

There was a long pause. Volovich looked through the window. He understood the car was in the vicinity of the Khimki Reservoir, but suddenly he'd lost his bearings.

“Where is Epishev?” the General asked.

It was the question Volovich had expected and feared. He said, “Unfortunately, General, he doesn't always keep me informed of his whereabouts.”

“Nobody seems to know where he's gone. It's very odd. I know my predecessor gave Epishev certain freedoms, and I understand they were close … a little like teacher and pupil. But the fact remains, I have no way of accounting for Epishev's absence. He's not in his office, he's not at his home, he left no information with his secretary.”

Volovich remembered stories he'd heard about the General's wife, rumours of her sexual prowess when she'd been a ballerina. He'd seen the woman once, waiting for her husband inside a parked limousine. A woman of stunning beauty. “I wish I could help, General,” he said.

Olsky changed the subject suddenly. “Reconstruction is taking place in our country, Dimitri. We must remember to keep open minds at all times. We must be alert. We must be strong enough to shed a strong light on our shortcomings. Change of this magnitude is always painful. But many people, even those who basically agree but argue that we're doing things too quickly, are going to have to adapt – or perish.”

Olsky said the word ‘perish' softly, almost in an undertone. Volovich thought he'd never heard it pronounced in such a menacing way.

“Certain people belong in another era,” the General went on. “They're like dinosaurs. For example, my predecessor, a man of undeniable patriotism, outlived his usefulness. He was quite unable to adapt to new thinking. Is Epishev a dinosaur?”

Volovich didn't know what to say. Nor did Olsky appear to expect an answer, because he went on without waiting for one. “We need men who are flexible, Dimitri. Men who can alter their dried-out old attitudes and work for change – as well as their own advancement, of course. Do you see yourself as such a person?”

Their own advancement, Volovich thought. He liked the phrase. “I try to keep an open mind, General.”

“That's all we ask.” Olsky flipped the switch on the panel and told the driver to stop the car. There were small sailboats floating on the surface of the reservoir. Volovich remembered there was an aquatic sports club nearby.

“To the best of your knowledge, Dimitri, is Epishev still in the country?”

Volovich made a little gesture with his skinny fingers. Since he'd already said he didn't know where Viktor was, what more was he supposed to add? “He didn't say anything to me about going abroad, General.”

“When did you see him last?”

Volovich felt this question eddy around him like a treacherous little whirlpool. “Perhaps a week ago.”

“A week.” Olsky appeared to think this over. His look was inscrutable, though, an impression exaggerated somehow by the formidable shaved head. “So far as you're aware, Dimitri, does Epishev have any contact these days with General Greshko?”

Another tough one. Something delicate hung in the balance here. Volovich hesitated. “I don't believe so,” he chose to say.

Olsky smiled. “Thank you, Dimitri. I've enjoyed our little talk. Would it be inconvenient if I dropped you here?”

Volovich wondered how many miles it was back to his apartment and whether a bus or a metro ran that way. It had been years since he'd travelled by public transportation. “It's no inconvenience, General,” he said. After all, what could he have answered?
It's a fucking nuisance, Comrade Chairman?

He opened the door, stepped on to the pavement. He watched the big black car vanish down the street. He had a sense of unfinished business, realising that his lie wouldn't hold up for long if General Olsky decided to scrutinise it. If General Olsky fine-tuned his microscope and placed Volovich's statement on an examination slide, the lie, fragile tissue as it was, wouldn't hold up
at all
.

When the car was on the Volokolamsk Highway, General Olsky opened the smoked-glass panel that segregated him from his driver, Colonel Chebrikov, and leaned forward.

“He's the same man,” the Colonel said, without turning his face.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Completely, General. Lieutenant Volovich visited General Greshko in Zavidovo last night, accompanied by Colonel Epishev. The meeting lasted about an hour.”

Olsky sat back in his seat again, staring out at the streets, mulling over Volovich's lies. Here he had the bits and pieces of a puzzle, like one of those twisted metal problems you were supposed to solve by separating the parts. Volovich and his Colonel, the enigmatic Viktor Epishev, visit Greshko late at night. Within three hours of that meeting, Viktor Epishev goes to see a man called Yevenko, a criminal, in Moscow. Yevenko, the Printer, is instructed to make a passport bearing Epishev's likeness though not his name. The passport is West German, the bearer's name Grunwald. Epishev takes the false passport, leaves.

“Do you believe the Printer's story?” Olsky asked.

Chebrikov said, “The man's in a tight spot, General. He needs all the leverage he can get. Currency crime isn't a joke. He's facing twenty years hard labour, perhaps even the firing-squad. Besides, he did have those photographs. And the stamp.”

Olsky shut his eyes, remembering how he'd gone to the Printer's place of business only an hour ago, a grubby basement room in a very old building, a windowless space that smelled of strong chemicals and dyes. There, Yevenko, a dirty little man with ink-stained fingers and the blackest nails Olsky had ever seen, had produced copies of passport pictures he said he'd taken of Colonel Epishev very early that day. He'd forged the German passport, put Epishev's photograph inside, then embossed it with the official passport stamp of the Federal Republic of Germany – which he then also produced with a flourish, flashing it under Stefan Olsky's nose, as if to prove something beyond all doubt.