Pol had paid him a comfortable salary in Swiss francs, transferred monthly to Moscow, plus the promise of a bonus when his year’s contract had expired. That contract still had just over seven months to run; and Pol had thought it would be enough to keep Maddox satisfied, without making him greedy. He’d been wrong.
Pol hated to be wrong. It made him reckless and vengeful: and he just hoped that he had not let his emotions distort his judgement: that his hasty arrangements for the evening would prove satisfactory. But even then, only half the problem would be solved. The other half was Maddox’s damnable lady-friend. For over the last few days there had been certain developments which had convinced Pol that Lennie Maddox was not just greedy and treacherous; he was also stupid. By a stroke of extreme luck, involving the Englishwoman’s infidelity to her lover, Pol had learnt that Maddox had not only been stealing confidential information from him, but that he had discussed at least some of this information with his mistress.
The knowledge that anyone — let alone a pair of cheap Anglo-Saxon chisellers with the morals of alley-cats — should know anything about his private affairs caused Pol not merely embarrassment, but in this case, grave concern.
He sipped his Scotch and felt some of the tension seeping out of his massive frame, when the telephone purred on the desk. A man’s voice, with a thick accent, said in French: ‘Your reservation to Leningrad is being confirmed, Monsieur. I will call you as soon as it is in order.’ Pol thanked him and hung up. His watch now said twenty-two minutes to five. Two minutes slow, by the sign over Karl Marx Prospekt. He would check it by the time-signal at five on the radio.
Six o’clock, he thought. He should know by then — know enough to be safe. He finished his drink, made sure that all the drawers in the filing-cabinet were locked, paused at the desk and flicked through the envelopes that Maddox had been addressing — noting what a slovenly typist he was — then looked again at his watch. The minute-hand in the chunky platinum case seemed scarcely to have moved. Platinum, he thought: that’s what Maddox’s English mistress had been going on about last night — sitting there on his desk and telling him how to corner the platinum market. Impertinent camel! But with any luck she wouldn’t be troubling him anymore.
He returned to the window. It was not in his nature to be pessimistic, but here the timing had to be exact, and yet so many things had been left to chance. Like all the lifts being taken and Maddox having to use the stairs; the possibility of his stopping to buy cigarettes — but then he didn’t smoke, of course. Or running into a friend, or dropping into the bar.
No, he thought. His instructions had been imperative — the message must be delivered at the Metropol before five o’clock.
It was only a few minutes’ walk from the Hotel Intourist to the Metropol, even allowing for the rush-hour traffic. It had stopped snowing, but the ground was treacherous, with the powdered surface trampled into black ice, and banks of sludge piled up at the edge of the gutters where the snowploughs had passed.
Lennie Maddox crossed Pushkin Street and felt the chill of the evening, even through his fur-lined overcoat. He had a funny feeling — a funny itchy feeling in his legs and up the base of his spine that made him want to quicken his steps, break into a run. But it was no feeling of elation. He wanted to get away. Get away from Pol, from Moscow, even from Joyce. It had become a stinking business. And in the end Joyce had betrayed him, just as he had betrayed — or was about to betray — Pol. It was time to cut his losses and get out.
He had reached the corner of the broad Karl Marx Prospekt where it opens into Revolution Square…
Here he joined the crowd waiting for the lights to change. A militiaman stood in the centre of the Prospekt and executed heavy-footed pirouettes, swinging his lighted baton for the traffic to move or stop. A man bumped against Maddox and mumbled something, dropping a box of matches in the snow. He leant down and fumbled for it with his woollen mittens, failed to retrieve it, and lurched out into the street. A car hooted, there was a screech of brakes, the man groped backwards, tripped on the kerb and sat down in the slush. The pedestrian signal-lights changed to green and the crowd began to move round him.
There was a shrill whistle-blast and the militiaman came striding over, yelling furiously. Several of the crowd stopped to watch. The man sat cross-eyed in the snow and made a helpless gesture with his mittened hand. The militiaman seized his arm and tried to yank him to his feet. An old woman in a man’s overcoat waded in and began to shout at the militiaman, who let go of the man’s arm to defend himself against the woman’s fury.
The crowd were now drifting back across the Prospekt. Maddox wished he’d had his camera. The scene would have made a good pic — typical vignette of Moscow life, the sort of thing the posh Sunday papers went in for — Cayle’s paper, for instance. He was thinking about Cayle when the truck hit him.
There was no hoot, no sound of brakes or slither of tyres; it hit him side-on, the high steel bumper scooping him off the ground and flinging him up to where the pointed radiator grille snapped his spine and sent his body hurtling forwards, twisting in mid-air and flopping down on
