Derek Lambert - The Yermakov Transfer

* * *

By 22.00 hours on the first day, the two K.G.B. officers had searched the next three cars to the special coach attached to the end of the train. They had re-examined the papers of every passenger and attendant, they had removed and replaced panelling, checked luggage and taken two Russians into custody in a compartment like a cell guarded by armed militia. The Russians had committed no real crime; but there were slight irregularities in their papers and the police couldn’t afford to take chances; they would be put off the train at Kirov.

They started on the fourth coach. They took their time, apologising for getting passengers out of their beds, knowing that this was the best time to interrogate and search. They were very thorough and, although they were in civilian clothes, they looked as if they were in uniform – charcoal grey suits with shoulders filled with muscle, light grey ties almost transparent and wide trousers which had become fashionable in the West. One had a schoolboyish face, the other was shorter with slightly Mongolian features.

“Quite trendy,” said a young Englishman on his way to Hong Kong, pointing at their trousers.

“Your papers, please,” said the officer with the schoolboy features. He stared at the young man’s passport photograph. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Who do you think it is? Mark Phillips?”

The other policeman examined the photograph. “It doesn’t look like you.”

Fear edged the young man’s voice. All he had ever read and ridiculed was coming true. “I’ve got my driving licence,” he said. He looked suddenly frail in his Kings Road nightshirt, his long hair falling across his eyes.

The first officer said: “We’re on a train not in a car. When did you have this photograph taken?”

“When I left school.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two years.”

The one with the Mongolian face stared hard at the photograph. Finally he said: “You weren’t quite so trendy – is that the word? – in those days.” He handed the passport back to the young man.

Outside in the corridor the two officers smiled at each other.

Before they entered the next compartment they were overtaken by Colonel Yury Razin who was in charge of the whole security operation. He was a big man, a benevolent family man, a professional survivor who had once been close to Beria and retained his rank even after Stalin and his stooges had been discredited; to maintain his survival record he allowed none of his paternal benevolence to affect his work.

The two junior officers stopped smiling and straightened up. One of them made a small salute.

The colonel was holding the list of names marked with red crosses. “Any luck?”

“Two doubtfuls,” said the shorter of the two. “We wouldn’t have bothered with them normally. Minor irregularities in their papers.”

Colonel Razin nodded. He had soft brown eyes, a big head and a blue chin which he shaved often. During the Stalin era he had been involved in fabricating charges against nine physicians – the infamous “Doctors’ Plot” exposed in Pravda on January 13, 1953. Six of the accused were Jews and they were charged with conspiring not only with American and British agents but with “Zionist spies”. One month after Stalin’s death Moscow Radio announced that the charges against the doctors were false. Colonel Razin, the survivor, who didn’t see himself as anti-Semitic – merely an obedient policeman – helped indict those who had fabricated the plot.

He rubbed the cleft in his chin, which was difficult to shave, and prodded the list. “Leave the next compartment to me.”

The two officers nodded. They didn’t expect an explanation, but they got one.

The colonel said: “This man Pavlov. I know him. He’s given information against Jewish agitators in the past. A brilliant mathematician. Married to Anna Petrovna, heroine of the Soviet Union. Odd to find him on the train today?”

The two officers looked at each other. Finally one of them asked: “Why’s that, sir?”

The other said respectfully: “He’s got authorisation from the very top – from Comrade Baranov – and a letter from the State Committee of Ministers for Science and Technology.”

Razin silenced them. “I know all that. And he’s going to meet his wife in Khabarovsk.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “He and I are old friends. I’ll talk to him.” He blew out a lot of smoke. “But it’s odd just the same.” He didn’t enlighten them any more.

He opened the door and switched on the light.

Pavlov wasn’t surprised to see him: he wouldn’t have been surprised to see anyone. He shaded his eyes and said: “Good evening, Comrade Razin.”

“Good evening,” Razin said. “A pleasant surprise.”

“Pleasant,” Pavlov said. “But surely no surprise?”

The Tartar general glared down from the top bunk. “What now? What the hell’s going on?”

Razin said: “You must excuse me, General. I am only doing my duty. We have a very important guest on board.”

The general’s wife stuck her head out from beneath her husband’s berth. Her hair was in curlers and there was cream on her face. Her chest looked formidable. She said: “You’re surely not suggesting …”

Colonel Razin held up his hand. “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything. You and your husband are well known to us. But there are others in the compartment.”

The general and his wife stared at the breezy stranger and Pavlov knew that a small charade was about to be acted.

Colonel Razin said: “Can I see your papers, please?”

The stranger sighed and reached for his wallet. A smell of embrocation reached Pavlov: the stranger had been working on his cover – but he had forgotten to limp when he first arrived.

Colonel Razin thumbed through the papers while he addressed Pavlov: “I understand you’re meeting your wife in Khabarovsk.”

Pavlov, head on his hand, nodded. “First I have some business in Novosibirsk and Irkutsk.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“I know,” Pavlov said. “I hope to hear the speeches.”

“Do you, Comrade Pavlov? Do you indeed?” He handed the stranger’s papers back to him with a perfunctory “Thank you.” To Pavlov he said: “We must meet and have a drink for old-time’s sake. In the restaurant car, perhaps, at eleven tomorrow morning?”

“That would be fine,” Pavlov said.

“Are you making the whole journey?”

‘I’m leaving the train at Khabarovsk. I presumed you knew that, Colonel.”

Razin looked annoyed: he didn’t like to hear his rank used. Particularly in the presence of a general. Even if his status was superior when the chips were down.

Pavlov asked: “Don’t you want to see my papers?”

“It won’t be necessary. The husband of a Heroine of the Soviet Union shouldn’t suffer the indignity.”

He bowed as if he were in uniform, a Prussian officer’s bow. “Good-night, ladies and gentlemen. Pleasant dreams.”

After he had closed the door the general’s wife asked: “Is it true that your wife’s a heroine … ?” Her voice sounded as if her mouth was full of food.

Pavlov said: “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

He lay quietly listening to the soporific sound of wheels on rails – the 5 ft. gauge! Could anything go wrong before the plan was actually put into action? With the appearance of Colonel Razin one more imponderable had been used. He worried about it for an hour, then fell asleep. By that time it was 1.13 a.m. Moscow time and they were just leaving Kirov at the beginning of the second day of the journey.

* * *

The special coach was a mixture of styles. A functional office, two soft-class sleeping compartments for guards and staff, a K.G.B. control room with radio and receiving equipment for the microphones planted on the train, a cell, a larder and two compartments knocked into a large deluxe sleeper with mahogany panelling, thick pink drapes, a chair made of buttoned red satin, a Chinese carpet, washbasin and mirror with frosted patterns round the edge, a mahogany table and chair, and a bed with pink plush curtains controlled by a gold cord with a tassel.