'Come with me.' He turned to his companion. 'Check he has left no traces — just in case.' He turned to Vorontsyev. 'Where have you been in the museum?' It was off-hand, yet meticulous.
'The toilet.. ' The man still seated nodded.
'I told you,' he said. Then they had expected him. The remark about his wound was confirmation of a previous theory.
'And the boiler-room.'
'We deliberately did not search,' the big man said, standing now only a foot or so from Vorontsyev's face. His breath smelt of some spicy sausage. 'Why has it taken you so long?'
'I — fell asleep.' Vorontsyev felt ashamed as he made his confession. He watched the big man's face, but there was no sign of amusement.
'Shall we go?' he said. Vorontsyev nodded, and backed out of his way.
The big man opened the door, and walked ahead of Vorontsyev.
'The lift?' Vorontsyev asked, struggling to keep up, his leg hurting with each impact with the tiled floor. Their footsteps echoed now, it seemed.
'Shut off- the power.' Vorontsyev did not believe him, but felt unable to demand. He was to be made to use the painful flights of stairs. He found himself accepting it as some kind of retribution — for his reckless sleep in the boiler-room or the death of Alevtina, he was uncertain.
The attendant who was, effectively, Gorochenko's bodyguard, unarmed though he was, went steadily ahead of him; a taskmaster who proceeded at what seemed the exact pace to wear and pain him without ever being more than half a flight ahead of him.
First floor — the moonlight opening spaces of glass cases, long dusky corridors hardly coloured by the pale light. He knew from somewhere in his memory that the exhibits concerned the popular uprisings through history, and he grimaced with the irony as much as the nagging, reiterated pain in his calf- he noticed that the pain was becoming localised, though a more intense stabbing sort of hurt.
The footsteps strange and intrusive in the silence. Then the next flight of stairs, and Peter the Great's minutiae. Vorontsyev felt like an old man, and coughed as if with asthma. The attendant stopped, looked back and waited patiently until he was only a few steps behind. Then he moved on again.
French standard from 1812. And, almost at the head of the flight of stairs, a life-size dressmaker's dummy in the uniform of Kutuzov as general commanding the Russian forces in the war against Napoleon. It was so sudden, turning at the head of the stairs, lifting his head from his study of each careful step, and the irony was so obvious, his breath was expelled in a noisy rush, as if he had come unexpectedly face to face with Gorochenko.
It was not a lucky guess, it was inevitable that he should be here — in this building of all buildings in Moscow. He said, his words echoing hollowly, 'I wonder my father hasn't borrowed the uniform.'
The guide's footsteps went on without pause, then clicked more heavily as he began to mount other stairs. Vorontsyev groaned at the thought of the continued effort demanded of him, and gripped the stone of the balustrade more urgently.
Captured French colours from the awful, icy retreat from Moscow, scraps of partisan unit flags, swords, carbines. Moonlight glinted from metal, sombrely outlined the stripes and shapes in flags and colours. He felt heavy with effort and the weight of history, which had come alive for him as never before. His journey was allegorical, he could feel that palpably. Perhaps Gorochenko had intended it — a kind of first interrogation was the only parallel he could conceive. A softening-up. Gorochenko saying — he could almost hear the voice — this is what we are going to talk about. This is what is at stake.
He shook his head as if to rid it of the buzzing of a fly. He would not listen. Siren-song. The first bite of the drill on tooth's enamel. He had to steel himself.
At the top of the next flight — pause — stiff clutter of foot steps, his own — then another flight. He began not to attend, to attend rather only to the feet he placed carefully one after the other.
So he came to the last hall, the inevitable last one. 1917. Arms, banners, clothing, like 1812. And, in glass cases, the writings of Lenin and others — just as his corpse was under glass in the Mausoleum. The storming of the Winter Palace — great indistinguishable portraits and crowdscapes on the walls.
Gorochenko had brought him here often, as a boy. He remembered now. And the memory completed some circuit, fulfilled a pattern. Gorochenko was consistent, credible throughout his life — no strange dislocation here. This always had been the shrine.
He sobbed quietly, knowing that the guide would take it as an expression of effort or pain.
The guide unlocked a small door — they were at the end of the last hall, and switched on a light. Another flight of stairs, narrower. He motioned Vorontsyev inside, and now lent him his arm for support. Squeezed together, they mounted the stairs to a narrow wooden corridor, uncarpeted. Here, the guide knocked on another door, one of many set in the long, dim corridor that smelt of must and unseen, stored things. Vorontsyev heard the voice and, as if at the study door of a feared pedagogue, blenched.
'Come in.1
'He panicked,' Aubrey whispered as he crouched next to Buckholz at the head of the stairs, both of them peering round the corner at the open doorway of Khamovkhin's suite — and the heaped-up tangle of flesh and wood where the guard had collided with the table. The pieces of the broken vase looked like stiff petals surrounding the still form. 'I don't know why, but he went at it hammer-and-tongs, when no doubt he expected to kill quickly and quietly, and get out again. In this mood, self-preservation will be high, but he won't be entirely rational. He might kill just because someone's breath smells.'
'So — we line up in a fuckin' parade and wave him to the door?' Buckholz was in a mood to blame everyone, principally himself, and the mood was one he hated.
Khamovkhin appeared in the doorway, then stepped boldly into the corridor. Aubrey heard behind him the rustle of a rifle placed to a shoulder. Acute angle, he thought, almost raising his hand in warning — but Galakhov was already behind the Soviet leader, gun jammed into the spine. Aubrey stood up, and moved slowly out into the corridor. Galakhov saw a rather dishevelled old man in a shirt with its stiff collar detached. Aubrey looked like a plucked bird, except that the eyes were bright and alive, seeking an opportunity.
'Get back!' Galakhov ordered, making Khamovkhin twitch involuntarily as he jabbed him with the rifle.
Aubrey raised his hands innocently. 'Very well, Comrade Galakhov. I saw some evidence of your efficiency as an assassin just outside Oxford — ' Galakhov was puzzled, but he knew what Aubrey was doing with his relaxed, studied, almost hypnotic words. Delay.
'Never mind the talk. Get the stairs cleared. My guest and I are leaving.'
'I am sorry, Mr Aubrey,' Khamovkhin remarked. 'I hope we shall meet again — '
'Get moving!'
Aubrey stood to one side, and Buckholz retreated from the head of the stairs. Galakhov realised that urgency alone would serve him now. He had to increase the tempo, disturb any arrangements and dispositions being made. They were slowing the whole thing down. Again, he futilely cursed the tempo imposed on him by the scene in the hall and the man on the stairs.
He looked down at knots of upturned faces, trellised by gun barrels, as armed men jostled each other on the narrow staircase. None of the guns was pointed at him. Increase the tempo, he told himself again. Whatever they're setting up, you can outrun it.
'Should I say that you won't get away with it?' Aubrey remarked at his side.
'I have a ticket to anywhere in the world,' Galakhov replied, and saw the discomfiture of the Englishman. 'You,' he added to Buckholz, 'can you drive?' Buckholz was silent. The rifle dug into Khamovkhin's spine. Aubrey suddenly felt the atmosphere rise in temperature, until the four of them were standing in the heavy heat of a greenhouse — just the four players, surrounded by silent extras, or an audience. 'Can — you — drive?' Galakhov said precisely, emphasising each word with the gun in Khamovkhin's back.
'Yes,' Buckholz replied sullenly.
'Good. You will drive us away from here.' Galakhov looked from the American's face to that of Aubrey. The Englishman had made his features bland, inexpressive. Galakhov wondered whether he had not made a mistake, leaving behind to organise some counter-measure the more brilliant and ruthless of the two intelligence men. He had no time for second thoughts — he opted for bulk, and physical menace, which meant that Buckholz would be neutralised by having to drive the car. 'Come!'
He pushed Khamovkhin down the first step, and the men fell back in front of them. Turn at the stairs, and
