The Clown Service (20 page)

I knew little about the operation. We just followed orders, believed what we wanted to believe and did as we were told. Krishnin was not a man you questioned.

What we didn’t know was that Operation Black Earth was not officially sanctioned. Instead it was the conclusion of a path Krishnin had followed since the war. He saw it as his master plan, the ultimate strike against the West.

He had been working with a German scientist, Hans Sünner, off and on for years. Like Krishnin, Sünner’s interests lay in combining modern scientific thinking with magical methodology. Most of his work was nonsense. Years later I worked through his notes in the hope of finding salvageable material. I came away with little more than a headache and a profound contempt for a stupid man with a dull mind. Krishnin did not share my opinion. To him Sünner was the guiding light in a number of his later operations and experiments.

A few of us had been working late in the warehouse. I say working; when Krishnin was not there his authority dwindled. The men liked to talk brave when they knew they could
not be heard. They called him the Soviet Satan, Comrade Frankenstein… names I can’t help but wonder if he would have relished. There were five of us in total, hidden away on the upper floor, drinking and playing cards. We didn’t imagine we were ever under any threat from your country’s authorities. I assumed they would assess the work as we had: grotesque but pointless, no threat to anyone. I, in my ignorant way, just picked up on the mood of the others and adopted the same casual air. I was living in a cheap room of my own by that point, a cold and wet little place that I tried to avoid spending time in. The landlady had designs on me. I think she had designs on
everybody
. So, I would hang around with the others, drink their liquor and smoke their cigarettes. Sometimes I would even win a hand or two. That was as good as life could get back then.

Despite our lack of concern we had guarded against being caught unawares. The rear entrance was alarmed. So there we were, half drunk and happy without the shadow of Krishnin, when suddenly the alarm went off.

Leonid was the one who always pulled rank; he had been an officer in the army and never failed to remind us of the fact. The minute the alarm sounded he was whispering orders, demanding we dowse the lights and get ready to either fight or make a break for it, depending on who it was that trying to creep up on us.

We lay in wait at the top of the stairs, listening as two people – Shining and another man, whose name I never learned – broke in through the rear door and began to nose around.

I was actually terrified. I hadn’t seen combat, I just fetched and carried, kept my head down. It had been easy to forget that I was part of a force on enemy soil, a spy who would likely be shot if discovered. I think I had subconsciously adopted the
country as my own even then, a problem I had to deal with many times over my subsequent career.

Once we were sure what we were dealing with, Leonid went first. Shining had been heading up the stairs and Leonid shone his torch on him, pointing his gun at the young man’s head while a couple of the others ran down the stairs past him, to detain his companion.

It was a brief and painless business. Shining’s associate fired a single shot but didn’t manage to hit anybody; I think he was too surprised to aim properly.

I was sent to contact Krishnin – a pointless exercise, I would soon discover, as he was already on his way to the warehouse. I have no idea whether he had been aware of Shining’s interest or was there through dumb luck – I never found out.

At the time I didn’t care. I was happy to leave the building, having no desire to see what was to happen to the two intruders. I was young and naive, but I wasn’t stupid. There was no way they would be leaving the warehouse alive.

Does it sound as if I’m trying to present myself in a positive light? Painting a picture of a reluctant young man caught up in business he had no taste for? Partly that was true, then. My career afterwards was another thing. I have not always been so reluctant in matters of violence; there’s plenty of blood on my hands. After that night there would be a period of chaos and uncertainty, one that I filled with training and preparation. I got out of the country for a while and when I returned I was not the uncertain boy who had left. I still could not claim the fervent ideologies of some of my peers, but I adopted my role with relish and determination. I have, in short, done many bad things for what I hope were the right reasons. That those reasons were
contradictory to your government’s welfare I make no apology for. Both of our governments have torn at each other’s throats over the years. I am what I am.

When I could get no answer from Krishnin on the telephone that day, I was torn. I will admit that I was tempted not to return to the warehouse. It struck me in that moment, in the gentle cold of an English winter, that I was in a position where I might run. Whatever was going to play out in that building would do so with or without me. I was not a deciding factor. Might I not, instead, just walk off into a new life, leave all that behind? Well, it’s obvious which decision I made.

By the time I was back at the warehouse, Krishnin had arrived. I hung back, hoping to observe but remain uninvolved. What a coward I sound. But there, it’s the truth.

Krishnin had got both Shining and the other man tied to chairs and was interrogating them. They were not stupid; they were aware that the moment they gave up their knowledge they would die.

My attention was immediately taken by Shining. He seemed out of place in that room, blood trickling from a wound in his forehead. An academic in a war zone. Perhaps that is what he always was. Though, like me, he learned how to fight soon enough. Perhaps that night was his first lesson.

‘I have no intention of telling you anything,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’

You don’t mean that
, I thought,
or you wouldn’t, if you knew what this man is capable of
.

‘Will you be still saying that,’ Krishnin replied evenly, ‘when your colleague has lost the first of his eyes?’

‘I doubt it will come to that,’ Shining said. ‘We’re not quite as vulnerable as we appear.’

‘Oh, really?’ Krishnin laughed at that and a couple of the other men joined in, sheep as always. ‘And what is your cunning plan of escape?’

‘Well,’ said Shining, ‘if I told you that, it would hardly be very “cunning” would it? But you’ll see soon enough.’

And then I saw the strangest thing.

Afterwards, I would hate myself for my inaction. I could have stopped what followed. I think it was guilt about that which spurred me in my later career and gave me the conviction I had previously lacked.

At the time I was simply confused. You could hardly blame me. Others were a good deal closer than I was, and if
I
could see what was happening, then why couldn’t they? Later, when working through some of our intelligence on Section 37 and its agents, the mystery of that night was solved. The reason nobody else saw the turning point in the situation is because they weren’t looking
directly
at it.

The prisoner whose eyes Krishnin had threatened was being all but ignored. His chair was facing Shining’s but some distance away.

Because of Shining’s statements, and his confidence, all eyes were on
him
. Nobody but me saw the small stranger simply walk up to the other man’s chair, cut the binding ropes with a knife and place a revolver in his hand. Because nobody ever did see Cyril Luckwood, did they? Not unless they were paying very close attention indeed.

What came next was so quick, so unbelievable, that I struggle now to describe it with any degree of accuracy. Perhaps that doesn’t matter, the important thing is the result not the action. Both Luckwood and the man he had just freed brought their
guns to bear and, within a matter of seconds, the battle was over. There had been five men plus Krishnin, men I had known well. Men I had liked. Now there was just Krishnin, the smell of cordite in the air and a good deal of screaming.

There was little I could do; I was not armed. It is with no shame at all, therefore, that I admit that I hung back. I knew that I was as beneath their attention as Luckwood had been. Hidden in the shadows by the front door, I watched transfixed as the little drama concluded.

Shining was released. He took a gun from Luckwood and pointed it at Krishnin. But my employer had one last card to play. He possesses a singular skill – an ability that had kept him alive even when his superiors had all but lost faith in him, and the curse that I truly believe robbed him of his sanity. He began to fade, his body disappearing even as we looked on. In that moment, Shining had to make a choice: allow this man to vanish or take the opportunity presented. There was no time to consider how the disappearance might be possible – thoughts about that would come later.

He pulled the trigger.

I do not blame Shining for taking that course. I am aware that he still questions it, wonders if there had been another option. There was not. This man was clearly a deadly threat and Shining did what he needed to. He shot Krishnin at point blank range, unloaded a .44 cartridge right into the man’s chest even as he faded away completely. In moments, the only thing to show the man had ever been there was a patch of blood on the concrete floor. The body was never – could never – be found. Neither your service nor mine saw any reason to look. Not even Krishnin could survive a bullet wound of that calibre to the chest.

I dare say Shining’s superiors wrote his report off as delusional. Perhaps they assumed Krishnin had attempted to escape via the river, his body lost to the tides. My side simply didn’t care. Krishnin was gone, Operation Black Earth was stalled before it could even take effect. A potentially embarrassing situation was avoided. We were happy.

Me? I ran. Out into the night. Perhaps I never really stopped running until a few years ago.

Tamar knew it was unlikely she would find August, but she had to occupy herself with trying. She was not someone who relished inactivity.

‘You’ll wear out your shoes,’ her mother had once said. ‘Burn them right off your feet. When will you learn just to sit still?’

The answer to that was: never. Something her mother would have grown to accept had she not been killed, like so many, by the aerial bombing during the war.

Tamar had been seven years old when a strafe run wiped out her village. She had her wandering feet to thank for her life. When the bombs fell, she had been up in the mountains, seeing how far she could climb and how far she could see. She had climbed high enough to be knocked off her feet by the slipstream of the planes as they soared past after dropping their cargo. It seemed as if she had been climbing back down ever since.

The next few months had been a mess. Living off the food she could find or steal, running from troops, running from
everybody
… Tamar found herself quite at odds with the world; it had nothing she wanted in it.

Picked up by Azerbaijani troops, she finally lost sight of herself altogether.

In the years that followed she still chose to shut away, a locked chest stuffed with a life nobody would choose to relive. Passed from camp to camp, she had been slave, then lover, then fighter. Eventually, the Azerbaijanis traded her to a group of Russians as part of a weapons’ sale. In her, the head of that Russian cartel found a potent weapon, an angry young woman who would sell sex or deal death, depending entirely on the whims of her new owner.

If she hadn’t met August Shining in the summer of 2006, she would almost certainly have died, by her own hand if need be.
He
had got her out. She had helped him with intelligence; he had found her a passport and a new life.

Seven years later and she still felt she owed him, despite his insistence otherwise. August was still the only thing in her life she chose to love. He couldn’t understand why she hadn’t completely left her old life behind, had begged her to give up the trade in her body that she conducted in her small flat above his office. He had tried to find her other work, even offered her a wage through Section 37. Tamar would not have it.

Her body meant little to her. It was a tool. One that had saved her life on a number of occasions. August assumed she continued to sell it because she felt worthy of nothing else. He assumed it was an act of self-punishment. August was very sweet, but he shouldn’t assume so much. Men always liked to get beneath the skin of women, some were just more obvious about it than others. She knew he meant well, and was just trying to understand, but she didn’t need his understanding, just his friendship.

It was about perception. It was about who retained the dominant position. She did what she did because it allowed her to be financially independent and, if she was perfectly honest, emotionally distant. Her clients were all regulars; from the lonely IT manager who brought her presents (sweet little things, tokens that made him feel like he was in a relationship of the heart not the wallet) to the cold and silent ‘Mr Green’ (she was not stupid enough to think it was his real name) who coupled, grunted, paid and left. It was business. It was controlled. She didn’t take on new clients now, didn’t take risks. She survived. And, in doing so, she kept an eye on the one person in her life that she considered important: August. She was not a woman who took her debts lightly and August was a man in terrible need of looking after. Or had been until now.

Toby. What did she make of
him
? He was a man who needed to get out of his own way. So many people seemed to spend their lives constructing roadblocks to their progress. Maybe August would help Toby just as he had helped her.
If
they found him. If
she
found him. It was not a job she could entrust to someone else.

Tamar found the warehouse by following Toby’s instructions, and took a small moment to appreciate the magic of its invisibility as she walked from the modern world into this dark, forgotten corner of the ’60s.