Adam Hall - Quiller Balalaika

Waited.

'I told him I wasn't going to do another fucking guard duty for him till he'd paid me for the last time.'

'Maybe he's out of cash.'

' Shit, then that's his problem, not mine.'

The clump of their boots on the pathway, the sound fading.

Inside the organism the pulse rate higher, throbbing at the temples, and I gave it a couple of minutes to come down. It wasn't the idea of having to answer a few questions that worried me, or the handcuffs, or the thought of the rawhide whip. This was the worry: if I left here tonight without finding Antanov in the files there'd never be another chance.

Time, then, is distinctly of the essence. I cannot afford to be caught in here before I've finished. Hold one thing and one thing only within the third eye.

Marius Antanov is the key to Balalaika. Hut nineteen. Abel, Aker, Avonik.

In half an hour I spun the dynamo wheel, running it along the edge of the wooden counter for three minutes, switching on the lamp again, finding it brighter.

At 01:17 1 was among the boxes piled against the wall, taking the top one down, remembering the angle at which it had been set there.

INCIDENTS, 1994 to 1996. Escape attempts: details. Death due to escape attempts: Inside camp. Details. Outside camp (wolves). Punishments Awarded for 1) Disobedience,

2) Breach of lights out, 3) Attacks on other inmates, 4) Attacks on guards. Details. Punishments: 1) Snow-clearing for 20 hours with 2 15-minute breaks, hard rations. 2) Flagellation (12 Strokes). 3) Shackles, head shaven, 6 days. 4) Solitary confinement, 3 to 30 days.

The wind moaned under the door.

At 01:48: hut fifteen. Blank. At 02:13 : hut seventeen. Blank. At 02:39 : hut nineteen. Blank. At 03:21 : hut twenty-two. The last one.

Berechov, Bulgarin, no 'A's. No Antanov down as Present, no Antanov down as Absent, Missing or Deceased.

What actually happened – Natalya – was that the Ministry of the Interior sent a squad to arrest my brother as he was coming out of a cafe on the Ring one night. The next day there were charges brought and he was summarily convicted of murdering a judge and sentenced to a life term at Gulanka.

I hadn't misheard her. Gulanka was one of the three most notorious penal settlements in Siberia, allocated specifically for life terms with no remote possibility of release.

So had Antanov been sent somewhere else? To one of the other two?

Mother of God.

I should have checked.

I should have asked Mitzi Piatilova to confirm it for me at her office. If I'd had a director in the field I would have had the time to think, to make careful plans, to structure the moves. But I'd got off the blocks too bloody fast, wanting to make a breakthrough and signal London and get Ferris back to help me put smoke out and head Sakkas off before he could send his army in, tie up the whole mission and bring Balalaika home to the cheering of the crowds and the dancing in the streets before it was too late to do anything as a lone-wolf executive with no local direction and no support group and no signals, no instructions through Cheltenham, running a mission with its head cut off, finis, finito, the end of the line.

Mea culpa.

Moaning under the door, the high wind from the Arctic sweeping the ice and tumbling the silvered crests across the ocean under the lowering moon, to reach the coast and the land and the massif out there, hurling a wave of snow across the camp and with such force now that the flakes hit the window audibly as I stood motionless, of what import is the life, of what import is the fate of this one puny creature trapped in the maelstrom of such a night, pinned by his predicament and unable even to move as he comes to know, is brought to know the truth, to hear the death knell of his grandiose ambitions?

Not much.

Yet we must strive, must we riot, my good friend, to play the game and at whatever cost? What else can we do when we're thrown the bloody ball?

Gulanka. She had said Gulanka, and quite clearly.

So if they'd sent Marius Antanov to one of the other camps it had been done without her knowledge, perhaps deliberately, so that he would never receive her letters, her parcels of comfort, her love, her encouragement. That would be something a man like Sakkas would think of, would arrange. Or there'd simply been some official decision reached behind the scenes: Gulanka was already running beyond its specified capacity, Igor had told me yesterday, and the crowding had brought complaints from some of the staff. And again, Natalya Antanova hadn't known, hadn't been informed by the authorities – why should she be? Her brother had been thrown on the trash heap in northern Siberia and was of no further account.

So face the facts.

To find which camp Antanov had actually been sent to I would have to get out of this one first and reach Moscow and see Mitzi and start all over again. Easy to say. You want to know the only way to get out of Gulanka? Igor, his big knife whittling at the prop. Get yourself a bit of rope and sling it over a beam and kick the box away.

The hut flexed to the wind, and somewhere on the roof a loose patch of tarred fabric flapped, fretting at the nerves as I stood motionless still, thinking, letting the subconscious play in what peace it could find while I held patient, waiting for the final readout.

Conscious business: watch the window; the sentries would be back in this area before long now, or possibly new ones, after an unscheduled changing of the guard because of the blizzard. Rehearse again what I would say if anyone came in here, embellish on it. Remember that whatever the risk of standing for any length of time outside to lock the door again with the makeshift key, take it: it must be found locked, in case I ran foul of a sentry on my way back to the hut and they started putting two and two together in the morning.

Patient, be patient, let the infinitely subtle processes of the subconscious consult the higher self and look for answers, while in the forebrain the thoughts circled under the garish light of logic… Even if I tried to get out of this place there were the guards, the guns, the dogs, the wire, the wolves… there's a big pack out there, thirty or forty of 'em with a huge dominant male. You think the wire's something to get through? Try getting through the wolves. And even if I could -

Readout.

Not a breakthrough, but let's look it over. Conceivably, yes, Marius Antanov could have been sent to Gulanka under an alias, perhaps to sever his link with Sakkas. So I should now search the files again for a name I didn't even know?

No. Look at the photographs.

And start now: there are six or seven hundred of them. 03:32.

And don't just look at them: study them carefully. She had an elfin face, Natalya, finely sculpted and delicate. I wouldn't expect to find that in her brother, though there could be the same bone structure, the same overall slightness of feature. Or his genes could be paternal-dominant or he could even be a throwback to an earlier generation and look totally different, his face square, heavily set.

03:35. Three hundred of the photographs scrutinized, two noted as possibles.

04:49. The storm buffeted the hut, screaming now through the overhead cables outside.

Six hundred faces, with two more possibles, and forget the sinking of the heart as the cold hard facts nagged at the mind: it was a total shot in the dark to think that Antanov was here in the camp under a different name, and if he were, the chances of his looking anything like his sister were slight in the extreme; you can tell people more easily by their walk, the way they turn their head, the movement of their hands, their speech patterns; the camera is notoriously inaccurate, limited by the light factor and only two dimensions.