Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

‘Remember what I said, that first night?’

‘What?’ he asked.

That you were mysterious,’ she reminded him. ‘And you are. I still don’t know a damned thing about you, with one important exception: how I feel about you.’

The safe-deposit box also contained the still unread letters between his father and mother, Yuri realized. It was preposterous – insanity – to go on with Caroline like this. He would end it shortly, he promised himself. But not quite yet. He needed her now.

Kazin was surprised that Vladislav Belov had not volunteered the open commitment he had once shown, particularly now that the control of the First Chief Directorate was undisputed and beyond challenge. The man was a fool, like Panchenko was a fool although for different reasons. Kazin decided he didn’t need supporters or sycophants any more. His position was beyond dispute: he was unassailable.

Kazin gazed across his desk at Belov and said: ‘The New York courier is being recalled?’ One of Kazin’s new edicts, since his sole appointment, had been that he was advised of all agent movements.

‘Yes,’ said Belov. Why so much interest in Yuri Malik?

‘Why?’

‘Some time ago we obtained partial copies of a new IBM computer design: he is bringing back the remainder.’ It was the man’s function in the United States, scarcely requiring a personal explanation, surely?

The idea was a sudden one. Kazin said: ‘Are you satisfied with his performance in New York?’

‘Completely,’ said the chief of the American division. ‘He’s carried out everything asked of him and in addition successfully identified the head of the publicity division to which he’s attached as a homosexual. We are instigating a blackmail entrapment.’

‘I am unsure he was not prematurely promoted,’ declared Kazin. A decision of his father’s, after the inquiry embarrassment: proper that it should be rescinded, then. And Kazin was having second thoughts of trying to manipulate the man’s embarrassing discovery by the Americans. A feint, in the attack of his own personal chess game. The game – the pleasure of the torment – would be far better if the man were withdrawn here to Moscow, to be prodded and goaded. Making the decision, Kazin said: ‘See him yourself when he gets here. Tell him he is being reassigned: that he is to settle whatever is outstanding in America and prepare to return permanently.’

‘To do what?’ asked Belov. The permanent recall was ridiculous, an order with no logical reason or purpose.

The man’s attitude was dangerously near contempt, discerned Kazin. Perhaps someone else who needed reassigning, into oblivion. Savouring his power as if he could actually taste it, Kazin said: ‘Whatever I decide.’ He would have to devote more thought than he had to that hurriedly conceived idea at the graveside. Definitely too rushed: he’d do better next time.

It was as if Kazin were paranoic about the son of the former joint Chief Deputy, thought Belov. He said: ‘The last batch of CIA identification is going to be the most embarrassing. We’ve got the names of forty headquarters officers at Langley: every division chief and most of their deputies.’

‘And the chaos has only just started,’ mused Kazin.

‘The Foreign Ministry have confirmed Washington’s application for a diplomatic visa for Wilson Drew,’ disclosed Belov.

‘Maintaining Kapalet’s control?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Through whom we can go on feeding them what we like, for years,’ said Kazin, reflective still. ‘This really has been the most brilliantly devised and executed disinformation coup!’

The megalomaniac appeared sincerely to believe he was its architect instead of its on-the-sidelines approver, Belov realized, incredulous. Kazin had to be mentally unstable: there wasn’t any other explanation.

Yuri routed himself through Spain and Germany, so it was a long flight, but up to the last hour before the Moscow touchdown he had not properly worked out how he could advance into the necessary destructive indictment the information he carried in the briefcase at his side. Or even into the unquestionably more necessary protective one. And then he remembered rust-coloured vodka and body odour and a contemptuous disregard for authority and coupled it to the militia investigator’s insistence upon the importance of back-street repair shops in discovering who had killed his father. And decided, in rare assurance these days, that he had nothing to lose.

Yuri walked slowly along the line of waiting taxis, peering in and ignoring the inviting gestures, finding the man he wanted five vehicles from the front. He got into the car, ignoring the hornblasts of protest from the others ahead, which the driver did as well. The lead taxi protested the loudest and as he passed Yuri’s driver thrust up a single middle finger and said: ‘Fuck you.’ As they negotiated the exit loops from Sheremet’yevo the man said: ‘Come far?’

Yuri was too impatient to endure a full repeat of the sales pitch of the previous journey so he leaned forward against the seat in front, the fifty-dollar note folded upward and almost directly in front of the man.

The driver said: ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s it look like?’

‘Fifty American dollars.’

‘That’s what it is.’

‘Piss off,’ dismissed the man. ‘Is that how you get promotion in Gorbachov’s anti-corruption militia? By entrapment! Amateur: fucking amateur.’

‘Last time you offered me girls and vodka and said I wouldn’t get a better rate anywhere for my dollars,’ reminded Yuri.

He was conscious of the man’s attention in the rear-view mirror and moved, to make himself more visible.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the driver.

Yuri didn’t reply to that question, either. He let the note drop and said: ‘It’s yours.’

‘You haven’t asked the rate.’

‘I don’t want to know the rate.’

‘You’re not making sense.’

‘I want help: the sort of help I think you can give me.’

‘You notice I’m not touching that money? Don’t know it’s there,’ said the man. ‘You’ve got to get up much earlier in the morning to trick me, asshole. You know what I think I’m going to do? I think I’m going to stop here and throw you out of the cab. That’s what I think I’m going to do.’

As close as he had to be, Yuri saw that the collar of the driver’s coat was even blacker than before from his greased hair and the miasma of tobacco appeared stronger, too. As the car began to slow and move to the side of the highway, Yuri took another fifty-dollar note from his pocket and held it up, like the previous one. ‘You know whose portrait that is?’ he said. ‘That’s Ulysses S. Grant.’

The man looked from Yuri to the money and back to Yuri again. He said: ‘I asked you who you were.’

‘And I said I wanted help.’

The driver’s eyes went back to the money, briefly, and he said: ‘What sort of help?’

‘Garages which repair cars that have been in accidents that can’t be reported. For unaccounted money.’

‘You…?’ began the man and then stopped, looking back at the airport and shaking his head. He said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Yuri let the fifty-dollar note drop beside the first and said: ‘I’m talking about money.’

‘Who told you?’

‘About what?’

‘Me.’

‘This isn’t a trap.’

‘Convince me.’

‘Look closely.’

The tobacco breath was disgusting as the man turned fully to him. ‘So?’

‘Recognize me?’

‘No.’

‘Try harder.’

‘Why should I?’

‘For the hundred dollars beside you.’

‘I don’t know anything about a hundred dollars beside me.’