The Dark Chronicles (74 page)

All of which was easier said than done – I was in a moving car with armed men. In my first few weeks in Moscow I had thought of nothing but escape, and had drawn on old training patterns, obsessively keeping track of how many guards had been assigned to me, when they changed shifts and so on. I’d always been under cover of at least one submachine-gun on the daily walk I was allowed around the fenced pen on the roof, but I had persisted in following every move the guards made, just in case a sliver of an opportunity presented itself. It never had, and I had eventually resigned myself to the fact that I would never be free again. But now there was no choice: I
had
to find a way out.

But what about Sarah? I should, in normal operational circumstances, leave her behind. One man on the run had a small advantage against those seeking him – that of the needle in a haystack. But if we did manage to escape from this car, the two of us together
would be a much easier target to describe, and hunt. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and even if they were, I wasn’t going to leave her to be taken back to a cell. If there were a nuclear attack it would make little odds, but if I managed to stop an attack from happening I couldn’t bear the thought of her being in the Lubyanka. No, she had to come with me.

I scanned the interior of the car, searching for an idea. Armed men sat either side of us, the doors either side of them were locked and beyond the doors stretched Moscow and the vast expanse of the Soviet Union. A feeling of hopelessness rose up in me. I took a breath and smothered it. Now wasn’t the time to give in; now was the time to sharpen all my senses.

Yuri motioned to the driver to take a shortcut and the car took a right turn. I caught a glimpse of a sentry box through the curtains, and realized we were crossing a bridge. We must be approaching the Kremlin. The Lubyanka was very close now.

I glanced across at Sarah. She was staring out of her window, apparently deep in thought. She looked tired, but otherwise in reasonable shape. I wasn’t exactly on top form, but I had made sure to maintain a version of my regimen in my cell, partly to keep my strength up but primarily to occupy my mind. It had mostly consisted of press-ups and running on the spot and, naturally, had been on a much lighter scale than usual: the soup they’d been feeding me hadn’t provided enough protein for anything more. But the result was that my body had become harder and leaner, and I was confident I could at least make a decent go of it.

But could she? Every couple of years, all Service officers had to take refresher training courses, usually at Fort Monckton, near Gosport, so she should know the basics. The courses admittedly tended to be a waste of time: as it was impossible to prepare for every eventuality in the field, most of the focus was on general preparedness, teaching how to remain vigilant and watch for lapses in the opposition’s vigilance, and so on. But now we were in a situation similar to one that I’d been taught at Monckton – I hoped she’d
been taught it, too. The objective had been to jump from a moving car while under close guard. To execute the manoeuvre, which was known as ‘Duck and Dive’, you needed at least one accomplice and could not be guarded by more than two people. We had two in the back and two in the front, but beggars can’t be choosers.

With Duck and Dive, everything is in the timing. When the car slows, the first accomplice distracts one of the opposition. This has to be a distraction that won’t get them shot, obviously, and it has to be believable. The simplest is a loud groan and a slump, imitating a fainting fit. While the first man reacts, the second agent attacks the other guard, shoves open the door and leaps out of the car. To make matters harder, I would have to grab the attaché case from Yuri as well, and hope that in the ensuing confusion Sarah and I would both be able to get out without getting shot. But anything was preferable to what they had in store for us at the Lubyanka. The moment to trigger it would be when the car was slowing but had not yet passed any checkpoints or sentries: after that we’d be trapped inside the walls of the Kremlin.

But how could I communicate all this to Sarah? The last time I’d seen her, she’d lost her hearing. I could check whether or not it had returned by making a noise and seeing if she reacted, but any diversion now would alert the men either side of us and make it harder to execute another one. She was staring down at her hands now. I looked at her, willing her to sense my gaze and look back at me. The car jolted, and in that moment she turned and our eyes met. ‘Duck and dive,’ I mouthed, then turned away.

She had nodded. She’d had the same thought.

With the course of action determined, I should have felt happy. But now I knew we would be risking our necks in a matter of moments, doubts returned. Well, there was no choice about it. Long ago, a cheerful Cockney instructor had told me that you never knew when you might have to call on your training, but when you did, you simply had to buckle down and get on with it.

Having fed myself this rather facile exhortation and swallowed it as best I could, I took a deep breath. The car had turned into Dzerzhinsky Square, and the imposing mustard-yellow block of the Lubyanka loomed in the headlights. At first glance it could have been mistaken for a French château, but for the barred windows on the lower floors. The tallest building in Moscow…

The car slowed on the turn and I braced myself. Not yet, not yet…
now
. I nodded at Sarah and smiled at her as I did, one last time perhaps, something to remember. She let out a groan and slumped into her seat. The guard next to her turned to see what had happened, as did my man, and I jerked my elbow up, catching him squarely on the jaw and sending him flying into the door.

Yuri turned to see what had happened and cursed, and I leapt forward, grabbing at the lapel of his jacket and pulling him closer. His hand flew up and I saw the case slipping from his lap. I yanked harder at his jacket, the top of my head bumping against the roof as I propelled myself between the gap in the two front seats and sprawled awkwardly between Yuri and the driver. In the driver’s mirror I saw Sarah punching her man unceremoniously in his groin.

As his scream filled the small space, the car suddenly swerved, the driver no doubt jarred by the noise, and I took advantage of it and lunged back over to Yuri’s side, my hand grabbing hold of the handle of the attaché case, which I swung up and into his face. The corner caught him under the neck and he screamed, and I wriggled the rest of my legs through the gap in the seats and slammed my free hand against Yuri’s door until it gave way and fell open. Yuri tried to grab hold of my arm, but I punched down blindly and as he fell backwards onto the seat, I managed to scramble over him and shove the door wider, then hurled myself towards the opening, tumbling through it and out onto the street, keeping my head down and my arms wrapped tightly into my chest.

The impact shook my whole body as I hit the tarmac, but training took over and I went into a roll, resisting the temptation to touch
the ground with my free hand, gripping the case as tightly as I could with the other, and then I was up and running, the sound of shouting behind me becoming subsumed by the noise of blaring horns in the traffic, letting the momentum carry my legs in their natural rhythm, my heart pounding so hard I thought my ribcage might burst, searching for cover.

I surged on, keeping my body as low as possible, a rush of wind biting at my ears and cheeks. I desperately wanted to look back to check on Sarah, but I was still numb from the jolt of the landing and to turn now would lose vital moments. I was conscious of sunlight breaking through low clouds, and I squinted against the glare at the morning traffic swarming around the square. A Moskvitch beeped its horn angrily as it sped past, and then I reached the enormous statue of Dzerzhinsky and could see the other side of the pavement, just a few yards away. It was packed with pedestrians, many of them gathered outside a building with enormous arched windows on the corner, and my first thought was that some sort of protest was going on. But then something deep in my consciousness stirred, and I recognized the building from photographs. It was Detsky Mir, ‘Children’s World’, Moscow’s largest toy shop. It had been just after seven o’clock when I’d entered the bunker, and the larger shops in the city opened at eight, so either the place was about to open or it had already done so and people were queuing to enter. It didn’t matter much which – it was a crowd, and that could only be good, so I headed for it.

I took momentary refuge behind a banner festooned with red ribbons and an enormous portrait of Lenin. Now, finally, I could see Sarah: she was in fact ahead of me, and making her way towards the same building. She was limping on one leg and wasn’t going to beat any records, but she’d done it. Somehow, she’d done it. I
took a breath and then leapt the last stretch to the pavement, my chest burning with the effort, and hurtled into the tail-end of the throng, pressing through a bank of woollen coats and getting swept along with the movement, looking to get closer to Sarah and fervently praying that the shop would be open and provide us with more options than the open air.

An elderly
bábushka
turned as I tried to squeeze past her, raising her arms in protest. I glared back with my most officious look, but she yelled something and grabbed hold of my sleeve. Others turned to see what the fuss was about, and as they did a gap appeared in the forest of bodies and I caught a glimpse of the KGB men emerging from the ZiL and running towards us, their guns raised. The Chaika wouldn’t be far behind, and my mind flew to the moment when they would drag us to the building on the other side of the square. I yanked my arm away from the
bábushka
in desperation and pushed forward, moving deeper into the crowd and calling out ‘Make way!’ in Russian, holding the case above my head, until I had reached the entrance. The doors were open, and I forced my way through them.

Beneath a curved glass roof, hundreds of shoppers teemed through the vast central hall. Gaudy, cheap-looking toys lined the walls, vying for attention, while a loudspeaker in the ceiling told parents and children to meet near the entrance if they became separated. A queue of people made three loops around the hall and disappeared up a grand-looking stairwell leading to balcony floors above.

‘Sarah!’ I shouted out. ‘Where are you?’

She had vanished. I headed for the foot of the stairs, and a young woman in the queue saw my frozen look and misinterpreted it. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It moves quite fast.’ But I’d already jostled past her, forcing people out of the way by making more official-sounding noises, not gaining any friends but climbing higher, higher, my feet flying, a few steps further away from the entrance below and hopefully out of sight.

As I neared the halfway point, I suddenly felt dizzy, and my vision filled with spots of dancing light. I steadied myself against the banister for a moment and looked down: in the blur below I saw several men in
ushankas
coming through the entrance, some wearing brown coats – KGB – and some grey ones – GRU. One of the latter suddenly caught sight of me, and our eyes locked. It was Yuri. He turned and shouted an order, his finger raised to point me out.

I shoved myself away from the banister just as the shot glanced off the latticed railings beneath it, sending a plume of metal fragments into the hall below. Everyone started screaming, and I began fighting against a tide of panicked shoppers, most of whom were now trying to flee upstairs. My head was still ringing from the sound of the shot as I pushed through the crush of flailing limbs and echoing cries, and scrambled up the remaining steps to the next floor.

That was when I saw Sarah, just a few feet ahead, her pace starting to flag a little. I ran towards her and she turned and stared at me, her face a mixture of elation and sheer terror.

She grabbed hold of my free hand, and I looked around in panic at the gallery stretching around the hall. It wouldn’t be more than ten or twenty seconds before Yuri’s men reached this floor. We needed to find a rear entrance, and fast. I looked around frantically but could see nothing, so I just picked one of the walkways and started running pell-mell down it, hoping to find another staircase as we went along. After about twenty yards it started to get crowded again, because the shot hadn’t been heard this far in.

As Sarah and I plunged back into the crush of people crowding the counters, a deafening rattle suddenly filled my ears. I ducked instinctively, but then the noise faded and I looked up to see a scruffy-haired boy hurtling past us wielding a plastic machine gun over his head and screaming at the top of his lungs. He ran straight into his mother, who grabbed him by the arm and demanded he place the toy back on the shelves. After some protest, he did and
I watched, transfixed for a moment, before something jogged my brain. I raced over to the display and scanned the selection. It wasn’t Hamleys – most of the items were crude East German plastic models. There was a black pistol that looked to have been modelled on the Tokarev TT, but I rejected it. The biggest box on the shelf showed a Vostok capsule deep in space, the blue seas of Earth far below it as it blasted into glory for the Motherland.

There was a rising commotion at the other end of the room and I guessed Yuri’s men had now reached this floor and had started combing through it. I put the case down, then removed the Vostok from the shelf and ripped open the cardboard box. Sarah watched in confusion as I stamped the mould under my feet until it had broken into dozens of pieces. I leaned down and picked up a thin shard of crude plastic, and she nodded in mute understanding. I picked the case up again and we raced back into the crowd, looking around desperately for a till. I found it a few seconds later, in a section devoted to babies’ clothes: a young salesgirl was clacking away at an abacus behind a large wooden desk.

I ran over to her, shouting at the top of my lungs: ‘
Empty the till! Now!
’

The girl looked up, her face frozen in horror, and shoppers started screaming and vacating the area. Through the crowd I glimpsed some of the GRU and KGB men by the staircase, and they were heading straight towards us. I jumped forward and grabbed the girl around the throat with one arm in a choke hold, then pressed the point of the shard against her collar-bone. She started whimpering and her arms flailed out, releasing the catch on the register.