Russian Roulette (22 page)

Odilov smiled a thin smile.

‘No, Mr Shaw, not tool steel … just ordinary iron filings. We do not bait our traps with the real goods!'

He threw the wrecked watch contemptuously at Shaw's feet.

⁷
Hungarian National Airlines

Chapter Fourteen

Simon later managed to piece together his recollections of the frantic moments that followed.

He remembered Shaw stooping to pick up the broken watch. No one spoke a word as he walked past Odilov to stand in front of Pudovkin.

The next thing Simon knew was that the watch had been flung in his own face and Shaw was shouting ‘That's the man you want!'

Looking back on it, it was obviously only a diversion. At this dramatic gesture, all eyes automatically turned back to Simon to see what his reaction would be – he
was
the original villain of the piece. In that split second, Michael Shaw had hurled himself at the swing-doors and was galloping down the steps into the foyer before either the militia or the KGB men realized what had happened.

There was a hue and a cry like something from an old Keystone Cops film. Moiseyenko and Pomansky were first out of the Bureau – the doors swung back behind them with a crash, impeding Pudovkin and the security men for a second or two. The British party – or what was left of it – straggled out after them, Simon's arrest overshadowed.

Shaw had bolted down the four or five steps from the Intourist Bureau to the foyer, turned sharp left and sped down more steps through the second set of tall glass doors that led to the street. He had only four or five yards lead on Moiseyenko, but, with his massive physique and long legs, he kept that lead over the lieutenant, the youngest and most athletic of his pursuers.

Shaw skidded left again when he gained the pavement and went hammering off down Sverdlov Square in the direction of the Kremlin. There were few people about and those that failed to get out of the way were bowled over like skittles. The Irishman thundered by the petrol station beyond the hotel and carried on past a small ornamental garden. Pomansky had already fallen behind Moiseyenko and was puffing along with the also-rans, though the younger of the KGB agents overtook them and was pulling level with Vasily. The pavement curved towards the right as it approached the Lenin Museum, but at the middle of the curve there was a broad pathway leading through the garden, ending at the glass front of the Sverdlov Square Metro station.

Shaw hurled himself around into the path, extending his lead over Moiseyenko with every gigantic stride.

But now, the loyal citizens of Moscow were taking a hand. A thin stream of people came in the opposite direction, out of the brightly lit entrance of the Metro.

Though most of them shied away from the flailing arms and legs of the fugitive, one youth was willing to ‘have a go'.

Quick-witted and agile, he threw himself sideways away from Shaw, but stuck a leg out in front of the running man. Shaw went flying, catapulting over the boy and landing heavily in the low privet hedge lining the pathway. The young man wisely rolled clear but, in a fraction of a second, Moiseyenko and the first KGB man were upon Shaw before he could begin to get up.

Pudovkin and Pomansky panted up and added their weight to the writhing pile of limbs that was macerating part of the pride and joy of the Moscow City Parks Department.

By the time that Gilbert Bynge and Simon arrived, Shaw was on his feet, gripped firmly by both shoulders and wrists. Moiseyenko and Lev Pomansky had him; the KGB men seemed reluctant to take part in mere police duties.

Odilov joined them in time to set out back to the hotel, everyone breathing heavily with the sudden exertion. Hardly a word had been spoken the whole time – events seemed to speak for themselves.

The usual miraculous appearance of a crowd took place, but melted away much faster than would have the case in a Western city – the apprehension of criminals was a thing of no civic interest, just as court cases were rarely reported in the newspapers.

The straggling group started off down the pathway, silent apart from heavy breathing and a grunted ‘Come on, you!' from Pomansky.

Shaw, his chest heaving, walked reluctantly, his head bent down. The fight seemed to have gone out of him, but he was only foxing – the drama had yet to be completed.

As they drew level with the petrol pumps at the side of the Metropol, he gave a strangled yelp of pain, and stumbled against Moiseyenko.

‘My ankle!' he gasped as his right foot twisted and his weight fell on Vasily's arm.

Almost as a reflex, the two militiamen let him free and looked down at the ‘injured' leg.

Like greased lightning, Shaw was off again. His sheer bulk bulldozed Moiseyenko aside, who cannoned into Odilov, making him stumble in turn. The Irishman was across the pavement and into the road like a flash, but this time he had no chance. One of the security men pulled a heavy automatic from the raincoat pocket where he had been discreetly hiding it against just such an event. He fired at no more than ten feet range and hit Shaw in the thigh, just as he was running between two cars parked at the kerbside.

The heavy bullet seemed to jerk him bodily forwards, then he pitched full length into the open road.

Right under the front wheels of a red Likachev-built motor coach.

Alexei Pudovkin leaned back in his creaky old chair in Petrovka and lit his first Aurora of the day.

Moiseyenko was perched in his usual place on the edge of the desk.

‘Think Shaw was telling the truth?'

Alexei nodded, screwing up his eyes against the smoke as he waved out a match. ‘No point in him saying otherwise. He knew he was dying when we pulled him out from under that autobus – he only had a chance to say “I killed Chenier” before he passed out. That was enough for Odilov – Chenier was the name by which they knew Fragonard for some other espionage job across the Finnish border.'

‘And the fingerprint clinched his involvement, anyway.'

A fragment of a fingerprint, found later on the edge of the trigger-guard of the Chylewski pistol from the ship, had matched one of those taken from Michael Shaw earlier on the day of his death.

‘He'd wiped the gun before planting it on Smith to incriminate him for some reason,' said Pudovkin, ‘but he'd missed that one tiny area.'

‘So we'd have got him eventually,' reflected Vasily. ‘Even if the crowd from The Centre hadn't beaten us to it.'

Alexei nodded and they both silently digested their thoughts for a moment.

‘So we let him go!' Moiseyenko seemed regretful that Simon Smith was now on his way back across Europe instead of being inside Lubyanka.

Alexei gave one of his shrugs. ‘The Prosecutor and the big noises “over the wall” got together, so I understand from Igor Mitin – they decided to tell the British Embassy that Smith would be allowed to leave as a gesture of goodwill between our countries and all that sort of stuff.'

‘On conditions!' barked Vasily.

Alexei flickered his ash into the empty cigarette packet. ‘Aye, our comrade Smith won't get a visa for the Soviet Union again – nor any of the other socialist states, if I know Odilov. He'll “blacklist” him from Berlin to Sofia.'

‘He's too damned lucky, that Smith,' grumbled Moiseyenko, ‘He was up to something on the
Yuri Dolgorukiy
or Shaw would never have planted that gun, nor attacked him in Helsinki – funny that, everyone, even Smith himself, thought it was Fragonard who threw him in the dock.'

Alexei puffed out some smoke toward the ceiling. ‘He was up to something all right – but Fragonard and Shaw were the big fish. The Ministry of the Interior evidently think that, with both of
them
dead, it's not worth pushing a case against Smith; he must have been small fry.'

Moiseyenko scowled. ‘We'll never know the whole truth – nor anything approaching it. Those fellows from Dzerzhinsky Street wouldn't tell their own grandmothers the day of the week!'

He was obviously fishing, and Alexei, feeling expansive under the soothing effect of nicotine, took pity on him.

‘Odilov let fall a few tit-bits – grudgingly enough, but he remembered me from the time one of our militiamen got mixed up in a security job in Krasnogorsk a few years ago.'

He paused for another long pull at his Aurora. ‘Both this Fragonard – or Chenier, if you like – and the man Shaw were after some tool steel. They were both agents for Western industrialists … I don't know the details. I don't think Odilov does either, but he wouldn't admit it. Somehow, they got a German in the Likachev works to agree to smuggle some out. The KGB had wind of this a long while ago, but they wanted to catch him red-handed. They picked him up eventually, after following him to Gorky Park where he obviously had a rendezvous with someone. Odilov put a substitute there at once, but the contact never turned up, or was scared off – the German didn't know him, he'd never met any of the bunch in the Metropol. Odilov kept the substitute working in the factory and watched the flat and sure enough, there was an anonymous phone call. It must have been Shaw, of course – he fixed another rendezvous for handing the stuff over.'

Moiseyenko saw a flaw in this. ‘Why would he risk ringing the man's home, if he had suspected a trap earlier in the day?'

Alexei grunted. ‘I don't know – perhaps he just couldn't get to the rendezvous – or just took the risk.'

‘Or it was a different person!' said Moiseyenko ominously, thinking of Smith safely trundling across Holland by now.

Pudovkin grinned at him and his transparent anger at Simon's escape.

‘Anyway, the message arranged for a wristwatch filled with the stuff to be left behind a certain lavatory cistern in the Hotel Moskva at ten-fifteen that night' went on the detective captain, ‘so the mob from The Centre obliged with a watch filled with iron filings.

They waited to see who collected it – Shaw of course – then followed him back here to arrest him. Now Odilov and his bosses are as mad as hell because they've been cheated out of a nice propaganda-rich trial!'

Vasily chewed his lip thoughtfully. ‘Wonder where he was trying to escape to – Shaw, I mean? Running round the streets of Moscow is a pretty futile way of trying to get out of the USSR. The Embassy wouldn't have touched him with a bargepole, I'm sure.'

Alexei scraped his chair back and stood up. ‘The instincts of the hunted, I suppose – run away and hide. It's almost an animal reflex.'

He took his hat off the filing cabinet. ‘That's what I'm doing now – running away home, off to brave Darya in her den – wonder what mood she's in this evening!'

‘It was a helluva sight easier to get in and out of Russia than it is to get back into Britain,' grumbled Simon, as he held Liz Treasure's arm in the queue.

The boat from the Hook had just arrived at Harwich, bringing on almost the last stage of the long train and boat journey from Moscow.

That forty-eight hours, including a night stop at West Berlin, had been long enough to eliminate most of the immediate effects of the last awful day in the Soviet capital. Now his mind was full of more attractive things, like the eight hundred pounds' profit he had made on Kramer's advance and, of course, the prospect of a London containing Elizabeth Treasure.

She had been at her most attractive on the overland journey. Once the train pulled out of the Byelorusskiy station, she progressively lost her fear of arrest. When Simon had been deported, the day following the deaths, she had at once volunteered to go with him, declaring that she had had enough of Russia. The rest of the Trans-Europa tour stayed on to finish their ten days, while Simon and Liz were quietly pushed out of the country. There were no immediate vacancies on air flights, and rather than wait in Moscow and risk a change of heart by the authorities, Simon offered to go by rail.

Liz still stuck to him and by the time the express had reached Brest-Litovsk to change its axles for the standard gauge beyond the Polish frontier, she was positively vivacious again.

The train was almost empty for the rest of its run from Terespol to Berlin and they made good use of the solitude, to the embarrassment of the little coach conductor.

They spent the next night together in a Berlin hotel, just off the Kurfürstendamm, and Elizabeth's spirits seemed to soar even higher next day as the train neared the Hook of Holland.

The boat did not run to a double cabin for them, but she seemed just as affectionate next morning. They stood now waiting in the Immigration bay and Simon had the frightening feeling that he was slipping into love with her.

He had never seen her look so attractive … it may have been his newly biased eyes, but she looked even lovelier than usual. The suit she wore was chic and flattering – he'd not seen it before. He wondered where she managed to pack all these clothes –
this one certainly didn't come out of a false bottom in the old brown case
, he thought! He looked her up and down again as they shuffled forward in the queue – she really was beautiful. More make-up than usual, perhaps, and that extra bit of grooming that managed to gild the lily even more than on other days – he wondered vainly if it was for his benefit; could this falling in love routine be mutual?

Fearful words like ‘engagement' and even ‘marriage' reared up in the back of his mind – things that he had spent years running from, yet today they didn't seem nearly so painful!

He struggled to hold her arm and carry her cases with the other. His own case was at his feet and he was shuffling it along with them as they moved.

Eventually, they arrived at the desks, where hard-faced officials glowered resentfully at the travellers.

With grudging suspicion, they finally allowed the Britons to set foot once more on their native soil.

After convincing a cold-eyed man that the photo in his passport really was that of Simon Smith, they moved into the Customs Hall and found a space at the low counters to settle their cases.