'Then help is on the way — we'd better get Mr. Orton away from here right away, while they're still in two minds.'
Gant was on edge, ready for sudden movement, for flight… They had been standing in a tight group and the material of the Englishman's coat, so like Gant's own, was pressed against him. The big Russian, Pavel, drew a heavy wooden truncheon from beneath his own dark coat. They were a circle of dark coats, Gant thought irrelevantly, and the Englishman was wearing his hair in the same out-of-date style as he was…
Fenton, the Englishman who had played the part of Orton many times in the last two years cried out in surprise — then the surprise became pain. Pavel brought the heavy club down across the Englishman's forehead — once, twice. Then the Englishman was on the ground, moaning, and the club descended another three sickening times. Even as his stomach revolted, as his mind screamed that he was in a pit of snakes, like the Veterans' Hospital, Gant realised that the big Russian was rendering the Englishman's face unrecognisable.
The police whistle scratched across his awareness, then seemed to accelerate and to slide up the scale, as if it were on record and the turntable had speeded up to make the sound unrecognisable. The KGB man was calling for reinforcements.
'Your papers — quickly!' Pavel snapped, bending over the battered features of the Englishman. The sight of the face seemed to hypnotise Gant. 'Your papers!'
He reached into his breast pocket and handed over his passport, his movement visas, his identification from the Soviet Embassy, in a trance-like state. They were stuffed into Fenton's pockets, and the Englishman's own papers removed. The third man snatched the trilby from Gant's head, and then helped the big Russian to lift the body and roll it the few yards to the edge of the embankment. They released it and it slid into the black ruffled waters of the Moskva. The dark topcoat billowed, and the man's arms became the arms of a crucifix — he floated slowly away, drawn by the current.
'Quickly! Follow us — to the Pavolets Station, the Metro,' Pavel growled in his ear, shaking him out of immobility. Other whistles were answering the summons from the KGB man fifty yards away.
Gant's feet began to move, a hundred miles away beneath him. He stumbled up the steps onto the Gorovskaia Quay, following Pavel and the other Russian. Whistles shrilled behind him, and feet galloped echoingly along the embankment. Pavel and the other man were running ahead of him, drawing away. He saw the flash of white as Pavel turned his face to him.
'Quickly!'he yelled.
Gant began to run, faster, faster, leaving the whistles behind, leaving the floating body…
The short, fat man, and the taller figure who had detached himself from the car in front of the Moskva Hotel, were up to their waists in the chill waters of the Moskva, dragging the body to the embankment. The fat man was grunting and cursing with the effort.
When they had tugged the corpse up onto the flagstones, the fat man bent over it, wracked by coughing, fishing in the breast pocket as he did so. He pulled out a British passport, soggily closed around other papers. The taller man flashed a torch onto the picture of the man with the greasy hair, then at the ruined face at the edge of the circle of torchlight.
'Mm,' the fat man said after a while. 'I warned them at the Centre about this.' There was a note of self- satisfaction in his voice. 'He didn't have any drugs on him at Cheremetievo. It was obvious that he was unable to meet demands. They have killed him, Stechko. His smuggling friends have killed Mr. Alexander Thomas Orton.'
Two
THE JOURNEY
Gant had a hurried impression of a huge facade, ornamental, almost oriental, that was the main-line railway station, and then their pace slowed, they were descending the elevator to the level of the Pavolets Metro station. Gant tried to disguise his breathing from the few incurious Russians and his eyes wandered over the brightly lit, sombre marble walls of the descent. Nothing he had seen in New York, or London, or Paris, was like this. The Pavolets Station was like the grandiose architecture of a museum in which the actual vehicles that rushed with a sigh of air from the dark tunnel holes seemed almost out of place.
The platform was uncrowded, but they remained apart so as to be inconspicuous as they waited for the tram. Pavel stood next to Gant for no more than a moment and deftly slipped a bundle of documents, inside a blue British passport, into Gant's hands.
He murmured, 'Study these before you leave the train. Your name is Michael Grant, almost your own name. You are a tourist staying at the Warsaw Hotel. They are not looking for an Englishman, remember. Just stay calm.'
Pavel wandered further along the platform. Gant glanced at the passport photograph, registered the image of himself there, and took off the trilby and the spectacles and shoved them into the pockets of the overcoat. Then he removed the overcoat, and held it casually over his arm. His dark, formal suit still seemed to betray him; its cut was so obviously foreign. One or two Russians appeared to stare at him.
The train swooped into the bright strip of station and he moved forward, tugging his overcoat back onto his shoulders. He knew he had made a mistake, that the overcoat was more anonymous. He turned in his seat as the train pulled out, and saw Pavel unconcernedly reading a newspaper, his long legs stretched out into the aisle. The other man was not in the same compartment.
Gant began to scrutinise the faces in the compartment. There were only faces of travellers — tired, bored, introverted, eyes avoiding contact with fellow passengers. The faces of the world's subways, he thought. He had seen them a million times before. Yet the feeling of nakedness would not go away. The train sighed into another brightly lit strip of platform, and he saw the name slide past his gaze — Taganskaia. They were heading north-east, away from the centre of Moscow. The doors of the compartment whispered open, and Gant watched those who left, and stared at those who came. No one even so much as glanced in his direction. He felt sweat beading on his forehead, and glanced once more in the direction of Pavel. The big Russian glared silently at him, his whole manner of body and the force of his expression displaying a command to behave normally.
Gant nodded, and attempted to relax. He was moving, but it appeared too much like drifting to comfort him. He did not know where he was going, and he had no idea how far he could trust his companions — except that he had Aubrey's assurance. But Gant could not relax. A man had been murdered in the centre of Moscow, and they were making their getaway on public transport. The whole thing had a faint atmosphere of the ridiculous about it — and, Gant acknowledged, anonymity. Aubrey again.
Aubrey had told him nothing about the manner of his disappearance from Moscow, nor of the manner of his transportation to Bilyarsk. He was luggage, freight, until they reached the factory and the hangar. And that was how, he admitted, he had tried to regard the whole operation — yet, the shock to his system, to his reserves of calm and indifference, administered by the death on the embankment, made it increasingly difficult to remain freight, or luggage. He was scared.
When the train stopped briefly in the Kourskaia Station, he managed not to look out of the window, except in the most bored manner, and he managed not to inspect the passengers boarding the train. When he looked back at Pavel, however, as the doors sighed shut and the train surged forward, the big Russian was looking back down the platform. Gant followed the direction of his gaze. At the gateway to the moving-staircase passengers, who had just descended from the tram, were being questioned by two men in overcoats and hats.
Gant, fear dry in his throat, waited for Pavel to turn his gaze back into the carriage. When he did so, and saw Gant staring at him, he merely nodded, once. Gant understood him. KGB. They were covering their bets. Even if they had not yet begun the massive operation of boarding every metro train, they were already sealing up the bolt- holes. They knew how good an escape route the metro was — they had a map of the system and a timetable, just as Aubrey had done when he planned the escape route. And the murder had been done conveniently near the Pavolets Station.
Swiftly, almost as a distraction, he studied the papers Pavel had given him. When he had finished, he put them away, and his eyes were drawn hypnotically to the window again.
The dark tunnel rushed past the window, and Gant felt the knot of tension harden in his stomach, and tasted
