Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

‘Something else only you and I know?’ demanded Kazin. He was driving parallel with the river now, only vaguely aware of the direction in which they were travelling.

‘Who else could be told!’ demanded Panchenko, still showing irritation. ‘I didn’t know anything about pills at the beginning, of course. So I was apprehensive: I knew those initial moments were the greatest risk. When he might say something involving you…’

‘And he didn’t!’ seized Kazin. It was the most important question of all, the cause of the fear lumping inside him like a weight, pulling him down.

‘No,’ confirmed Panchenko and just as Kazin was about carelessly to release a sigh of relief he added: ‘Not then.’

‘Not then!’

‘He started to talk so to cut him off I spoke over him. The official approach, about there being an order for his arrest. It deflected him because he asked what the offence was…’ Panchenko hesitated and said: ‘There’s a difficulty here.’

‘What?’ demanded Kazin.

‘When Malik reached me at Gofkovskoye he said it was about Afghanistan: that’s how I was able to warn you. When Agayans asked about the offence, I had to say that I did not know. If I’d said Afghanistan he would definitely have used your name,’ said the colonel.

‘I appreciate the caution,’ said Kazin. ‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘I’ve had to say that in the report to Malik because the squad were witness to the entire conversation. And tell him the same during that damned interrogation,’ said Panchenko. ‘But Malik will surely remember he told me?’

Kazin turned over the Moskva bridge to double back upon himself on the far side of the river, considering the question. ‘So what?’ he demanded after several minutes. ‘He told you in a telephone call, you told Agayans you didn’t know. It would have been easy enough for you to have forgotten.’

‘Would you have forgotten, in the same circumstances?’

‘Certainly that alone isn’t sufficient to cause any deeper investigation,’ said Kazin, avoiding the question.

‘Let’s hope the other things aren’t.’

‘What other things?’

‘When I got to the apartment I still hadn’t worked out how I was going to be able to do it. Agayans being in his nightclothes made it easy, because it meant he would have to change. And it was he who suggested it. I’ve told Malik and put in the report that he showed fear and was subservient: but I don’t think that was his attitude at all. I think it was the tranquillizers again. He couldn’t think properly…’

‘To our benefit, surely!’ broke in Kazin again.

‘I hope so,’ said Panchenko. ‘I hope, if they’re questioned, that the others don’t say he was drugged.’

Kazin supposed the other man’s nitpicking doubts were understandable but he didn’t regard that as a serious risk, any more than the man not having initially mentioned Afghanistan. Initially, recalled Kazin. Urgently he said: ‘So he asked to get dressed?’

‘I saw it as the opportunity – exactly – that I wanted. As he set out towards the corridor leading into the bedroom I went with him. But at the beginning of the corridor he stopped. And that was when he asked again what it was all about and I said Afghanistan. He came out of his lethargy at that. Said it was nonsense and that you could sort it out: that it could all be settled by a telephone call. He was angry. He turned back into the room – there was a telephone on a table near the entrance – and that’s when I saw what was happening…’

‘What!’ demanded Kazin. He hadn’t intended it but the question came out as a shout.

That fucking major, Chernov! He’d started to follow,’ recounted Panchenko. ‘For a few seconds I didn’t know what to do. Agayans was already going back into the room. I stopped him and told him to call from the bedroom: said there should be privacy. He nodded, seeming to agree. So he went on down the corridor and I stopped Chernov and walked back with him to the others. I didn’t know what the hell to say! I improvised and set out the supposed travelling arrangements back to headquarters. Then I told them to stay where they were and wait for me and caught up as quickly as possible with Agayans. He hadn’t started to change. He was by the side of the bed, confused. The telephone was on the same table as the pills. I stopped just inside the door: it was then that he told me what the pills were for. He said he’d better call you and he supposed you would be home. I was moving around the bed: he had his back to me, concentrating on the telephone. It seemed difficult for him: he turned, I think to ask me something. Maybe your home number. I don’t know. That was when he saw the gun in my hand. He yelled out, like he was suddenly waking up. Which I guess he was…’

‘… What did he yell?’

‘No!’ replied Panchenko. ‘That’s what he said. No! He came towards me, as if he were going to try to fight me and I shot him: it blew him back, over the table and on to the bed. The others were coming: running. I heard them. I was still leaning over him, pressing his hand around the gun when they came in. I don’t think they saw what I did: I think the bed hid me.’

‘Think!’ demanded Kazin, isolating the uncertainty. ‘You don’t know!’ Kazin drew the car against the side of the road, into the darkness of a park. Illogically he wondered which park it was and couldn’t decide and irritably dismissed it as the intrusion it was. ‘I’ve got to know everything about that moment. About his shouting and your firing and their coming into the room.’

Panchenko thought, annoyed, that this meeting was practically a repeat of the humiliating encounter with Malik. He said: ‘Agayans had closed but not locked the door. I opened it quietly and I know he did not hear me come in. He was half turned away from me, oblivious to anything behind him. I didn’t completely close it, just left it ajar: having got in without his hearing I didn’t want to alert him by the slightest noise. When I saw him by the table I thought he appeared uncertain whether or not to take any more pills. It was at that moment he heard me move. As I started from the door area there was a sound – a floorboard, I don’t know – and he turned and he saw me. He didn’t seem alarmed, not at that actual moment…’

‘The gun?’ intervened Kazin. ‘Weren’t you holding the gun?’

Panchenko hesitated, not immediately responding. Then he said: ‘That’s the biggest problem.’

Kazin was twisted in his seat, looking directly across the vehicle at the other man. He saw Panchenko’s head go forward, practically an admission of defeat.

‘I had no time to prepare,’ said the man, mounting a defence before an attack. ‘I intended getting an untraceable weapon: something from the militia evidence store on Pushkinskaya. But when Malik called, I couldn’t…’

‘What did you use!’

‘My own.’

‘Your own! You were at a weapons training area! There had to be guns everywhere!’

‘There aren’t!’ protested Panchenko in immediate rejection. ‘The security at Gofkovskoye is absolute: everything checked and double-checked and recorded and attributed. Don’t you think I saw the irony: was exasperated, surrounded with every sort of weapon and unable to use any of them, knowing a forensic examination would show up the source at once!’

Kazin was impatient with the explanation. He said: ‘You put Agayans’ hand around the butt, to get the fingerprints recorded. So where now is your gun, identifiably issued against your name?’

‘I’ve got it back,’ disclosed Panchenko. ‘When they burst into the room I said I couldn’t stop him shooting himself and that they were to call an ambulance. Having put the damned thing in the man’s hand I took it out again, in front of them. Went through an absurd charade of putting a pencil in the muzzle to keep the prints intact and actually delivered it myself to our forensic section. Let them do their tests and got it back, yesterday: I’m responsible for security there, as well.’