Brian Garfield - Kolchak's gold

The room was windowless and not more than twelve feet square. It contained an old desk, four straight wooden chairs and a row of shelves on which stood dusty bound volumes of postal and railway regulations. “My office,” Bukov explained. “I rarely use it. I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep on the floor. There’s no heat but we’re in the center of the building, it won’t freeze here. You’ll have to rough it.”

“For how long?”

“Until we can make the arrangements.”

“I feel like such a bloody fool,” I whispered.

“No need to keep your voice down. Litvinov is stone deaf and there’s no one else on this floor. The railway department uses most of it for storage of records. But one word of caution-don’t let Litvinov see you, he’s the sort of old woman who loves to inform.”

“Is it risky living in the same building with someone like that?”

“Quite the contrary. He’s a good cover.”

There was a door in the wall behind the desk. He went to it and opened it. There was a cupboard the size of an ordinary clothes closet with shelves across it at two-foot intervals. The upper shelves held rows of green metal file-card boxes; the lower two shelves were empty. Bukov knelt and pulled the lowest shelf out. It slid away easily in his hand. He pointed at the back of the cupboard.

“If you hear someone approaching, slide through. The rear wall is a door on spring hinges. You’ll find yourself under the eaves. It will be very cold but they won’t find it if you remember to slip the shelf back into place behind you.”

I nodded. It wasn’t the first time he’d used this room as an underground railway station. He’d designed the cupboard for that purpose.

Pudovkin had a heavy voice like lumps of coal rumbling down a metal chute. “You’d better keep your things in that cupboard while you’re here-in case you have to hide them quickly.”

I put the briefcase, hat and coat on the floor of the cupboard and Bukov closed the door on them. “You’ll have to wait until morning to use the lavatory. Can you hold out?”

I said I thought I could. “After Litvinov goes to work you’ll be free to move around during the day.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Will he go to work?”

“Yes.”

Pudovkin said something in dialect; Bukov gave it a moment’s thought. “It might be wise.” He turned to me: “How committed are you?”

“To what?”

“This nineteenth-century romantic gesture of yours. How great is your rage to survive? Greater than your rage to escape?”

“I don’t follow.”

“If they cornered you-would you prefer death or capture?”

I said, “What are you offering me? A cyanide capsule?”

“A pistol. Do you want one?”

“I’m not much good with them.”

“It doesn’t take much marksmanship to put the muzzle in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

I pictured myself sitting in this room for an indeterminate time, counting the walls; I foresaw the increasing waves of depression and anxiety; finally I said, “I think I’d rather take my chances without it.”

“Very well. I’ll bring food and drink.” Momentarily his austere features softened. “Don’t break yourself on the wheel of fear. There are places where the borders are quite porous-with any luck we’ll get you out. We’ve done it with hundreds, we know the drill. Does it matter to you where you break through?”

“I’d assumed you had a limited number of routes-I thought I’d better leave it to you.”

“All right.” He glanced briefly around the room. “I’m sorry you’ll have to be incarcerated here. I know you’d rather be a moving target. It can’t be helped, for the moment. Arrangements must be made-it takes time. Now. What about your linguistic aptitudes?”

I gave him a list of the languages I spoke; he needed that because it limited the identities he could manufacture for me.

I brought out my wallet. “I’m not offering a bribe. But I’ve got some money, in dollars. Can you change them into rubles without too much trouble?”

“Of course-and for a good deal more than you could.” He counted the bills. “Would you like some sort of receipt?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I meant the money for your use. There’ll be expenses getting me out.”

He divided the bills into two stacks and proffered one of them. “You’ll want money after you’re out. You’d better keep this.”

I took it back without arguing. His eyes went beyond me to Pudovkin but it was to me that he was speaking: “When you go, Pudovkin will accompany you partway. You’ll want to get to know each other a bit.”

Instead of leaving the room then, Bukov settled into one of the chairs and crossed his thin silk ankles. Specks of dust twirled in the light. “Please try not to concern yourself with too many details. Under great stress you will naturally find yourself worrying about trivialities but I must ask that you leave everything to us. Our organization has several people in it who know where many bodies are buried-we’ll be able to obtain bumagi for you but you must leave the choice of identity to us. If you balk at anything at the wrong moment it could set us all right back to the wrong side of square one-you understand?”

“I put myself in your hands,” I answered. “I’m very grateful.”

Pudovkin jerked his head up as if he had just had an inspiration. He spoke a name.

Bukov shook his head. “No, I won’t use him. He has a fourteen-year-old daughter, he’s vulnerable. All they need to do is hint that she can’t be protected every minute-she could be raped by bandits. To prevent that, all he’d have to do is expose us. I won’t use him for anything more than innocuous errands.”

“Then who?”

“Don’t worry. You won’t have to carry it all the way.”

“I wasn’t thinking of myself, Vassily.”

“I know you weren’t.” Bukov smiled a bit. “One of these days you may begin to agree that my sense of security is as thorough as your own. I’m not a brash youth any longer, Mikhail.”

I was left out of this; watching the two of them I saw they were very old friends, it was more than a political alliance. Neither of them seemed the sort of man who communicated emotion easily but there was a bond of great warmth between them. Possibly Bukov had begun as the older man’s protege.

Bukov got up to leave us then. On his way to the door he paused. “Perhaps I should mention this-not to terrify you but to make you see things realistically. You can be sure that more than normal pressures have been applied against Sergei Zandor. To lose you would be to risk his position in the KGB chain of command. He has orders to bring you in alive of course-but he may be tempted to exceed those orders. You’ve given him a very bad time. You understand?”

“Yes.” The warning was: do exactly as you’re told and don’t mess things up for us because we could all get killed as a result.

Bukov nodded. Then the two of them left me.

In a little while he returned with a tray of borscht and Beluga caviar-an absurd combination but nourishing enough. He made a list of my clothing sizes.

On his way out he said, “Try to sleep.”

“Yes.”

“I rather approve of you.”

“Do you?”

“How did Nietzsche put it? ‘Audacity is essential to greatness.’ You have the essence of greatness, Harry.”

He went. I prowled the chamber for a while; pulled down a dry tome and read half a page and put it back; finally I rolled my shoes into my jacket to improvise a pillow, switched off the overhead light and lay trembling in the dark with my overcoat for a blanket.

* Director of the KGB in Moscow. These paragraphs (beginning with “I’d accused Karl Ritter …”) again are Bristow’s inserts, afterthoughts to explain his actions.-Ed.