'The bedroom — please don't make a sound. Yes, I'll hide you…' She started for the bedroom, eager to propitiate him, as if by so doing she was pleasing the people at the door.
He entered the dim room, banging his shin against the leg of the bed as he took his third step. She opened a cheap fitted wardrobe, a thin sheet of plywood poorly stained — he could perceive its quality as he flicked on the light, then switched it off again almost immediately. The doorbell rang again — three separate summonses.
'Quick, quick!'
He stepped into the wardrobe, his face brushing against an out-of-fashion dress that reeked of tobacco, and the rough material of three skirts on the same hanger. The door squeaked to behind him.
'Pull yourself together or you'll kill us both!' he barked. He heard the sob of fear in her throat. Then he reached into his jacket and unholstered the Stechkin. He pumped a round into the breech, and slipped off the safety.
He heard her open the door, and a man's voice. He leaned against the cheap, thin plywood, listening to the voice as it moved nearer, down the corridor until its quality changed, un-confined in the lounge. It was Kapustin himself.
His mouth was dry, and he sucked spit from his cheeks. He found it difficult to distinguish what was being said, but he could sense the different voices, even apprehend the changes in tone that coloured each voice.
Kapustin had another man with him — there was a murmur of introduction — but only two voices continued the conversation. Kapustin was looking for Gorochenko. There was no mention of himself at the outset, at least.
Strangely, he experienced little fear beyond imagining the physical sensations of a light being switched on, the thin door being pulled back noisily, a man with a gun motioning him out — or opening his eyes and mouth with bleak fear as he saw Vorontsyev's own gun, before it deafened him. Perhaps some residue of office clung to him — he knew the man in the next room, and was a trusted subordinate. It was difficult to consider such familiar concepts in the past tense. Moscow Centre was his place of work; he was not an ordinary Soviet citizen.
The face of his watch glowed as he moved his wrist to inspect the time. Perhaps five minutes had passed. An interrogative colour to Kapustin's voice, and Vorontsyev strained to catch the tone in the woman's reply. It seemed satisfactorily neutral, and he hoped the question had been about himself.
Another ten minutes passed. Filled with awareness of an itch in his left calf, the texture of clothes against the skin of his hands and face, the smell of moth-balls, and the dry mustiness of old flesh; and the reek of stale tobacco in the clothes. He was appalled, gradually, and felt revulsion that he should be confined in the woman's wardrobe. It was as if he had seen her naked, or made love to her, the proximity of scents and odours that were hers.
'Come out.'
He heard the woman's voice, whispering like the rustle of paper, and incautiously he slid back the door. She had not switched on the light, and he said, 'They've gone?'
'Yes.'
'What did they want?1 As he joined her in the lounge, he saw how drained she appeared, the skin taut as stretched hide, grey with wasted health. She seemed unsteady on her feet, and he took her elbow and guided her to the sofa. It sagged as she sat, as if in imitation of the bonelessness of her posture. He thought she might fall sideways at any moment, like a small baby.
'Thank you,' he said. She looked at him vehemently.
'Leave me alone!' she breathed venomously, her hand fiddling with the stuff of her woollen jumper, clutching it into a third breast, releasing it again in creases. She was badly frightened. Kapustin had a quality of quiet menace, and authority to make the threat real 'What did he say to you?'
'I told him nothing!' she cried desperately.
'I know that, Anna.' But, whether Kapustin had believed her or not, he would have posted at least one man somewhere in the foyer of the building, or outside in a car.
Vorontsyev got up and went to the door. Then he looked back at the old woman. She seemed quiet and self-possessed, and only the movement of her lips indicated the furious mental activity as she tried to rid herself of her recent experiences. He knew it would not be long before she was able to do it. He looked at his watch. Almost five. The Museum dosed at five-thirty. He would have to hurry.
He opened the front door of the apartment carefully, and looked out. No one in the corridor. He slipped out. The narrow hall of each floor of the block, much like an hotel corridor, was uncarpeted. Lino squeaked softly under his shoes as he crossed to the window at the nearer end of the ill-lit corridor.
As he had guessed, there was a fire-escape passing the window. Ugly ironwork already frosty in the light of a street lamp a little further down the Kutuzovsky Prospekt. He unlatched the window, and slid it up. It protested, and his head spun round as if he had been shouted at. The corridor was still empty.
He heard a child coughing behind a nearby door. And, even as the cold air flowed on his face, he smelt cabbage cooking. He had not noticed before. He swung one leg over the sill, touching his toe gently on the platform of the fire-escape. Then he stepped out, shutting the window behind him, He paused for a moment, looking down. One or two cars, and a lot of traffic on the Prospekt, already heading out of the city; trolleys and buses mainly, some cars. Congealing on the road which was shining with frost. He could see no one in wait for him, and he clattered down the first flight of steps. Three floors down was the street. Three minutes, if he ran, to the Metro. His feet slipped, and he clutched the icy rail of the fire-escape to steady himself. The clutter of sound rang above the noise of the traffic. He paused, then hurried on, the few moments of swift movement down the steps becoming an imperative, a surge of action like flight.
'Identify yourself!' The order came from below him — a dark shadow, the light behind it, seen through the trellis-work of the last twist of the fire-escape. 'Come down slowly!'
Vorontsyev could not see the gun, but he knew it would be there. It had been too easy. Kapustin had left a man in the foyer, and a man near the fire-escape. He prayed it was no one he knew; not one of his team…
He knelt, firing through the gap between two steps, into the centre of the dark shape. The gun was very loud in the cold air, seeming to halt the traffic. Something plucked away from the rail beside his head in the same moment as there was a little spit of flame from the shadow of the man's coat. Then a purpled face as it caught the light of the street lamp, and the body falling backwards, something metallic skittering away across the frosty concrete of the path. He clattered down the last flight, the Stechkin making separate flat concussions as he held it and the rail in one gloved hand, steadying himself.
He did not bother to inspect the form on the ground, but ran away from it, his feet uncertain, the momentum threatening to spill him on the ground at any moment. He skidded round the side of the flats into the wall of lights and noise of the Kutuzovsky Prospekt. He thought he had heard a summons behind him, but could not be certain. He slipped the gun into the pocket of his coat where he could reach it easily, and weaved his way through the thick flow of traffic. In front of a bus, the lights glaring in his face, then a car screeching as the brakes were applied — suddenly the traffic coming from the opposite direction, and a moment of disorientation. Then three lanes of halted traffic, and he was a minute from the Kievskaia Metro station.
He began to walk, head bowed, fur hat settled firmly on his head, hands in the pockets of his thick overcoat. He was on his way home, an ordinary citizen.
Behind him, the dark stain of the overcoat lumped on the path had decided everything. Now, he was irrevocably determined upon a course of action. He was an outlaw now, a murderer. The single act gleamed in his confusion like a beacon. It did not matter, his moral assessment of the act. This had moulded his mental proportions like the hands of a potter; he had to find Gorochenko, and stop him, and help him escape.
He passed through the barrier, a marble bust of Lenin in a small alcove just beyond it, and descended the escalator to the platform. The station was crowded with home-going workers, and he saw the KGB men, two of them, eyes swivelling hopelessly as they tried to identify and assimilate each face that passed them. They would know that now, for perhaps an hour and a half, they had very little chance of sighting him and making a positive ID.
He stood against the wall on the platform, the crowd washing in front of him, bunching like seaweed moved by a gentle sea, keeping warm, staring at the map of the metro on the opposite wall, reading the paper, talking. They were only, in his eyes, camouflage. Only
The train sighed into the station, strips of bright light from the crowded, fuggy carriages elongating, separating as the carriages slowed. The doors slid open. He glanced swiftly along the platform in both directions.
