Part 4 (2/2)
I nodded. ”Thanks.”
She suddenly smiled. ”No worries--it gets a bit boring down here. This is the most exciting thing I've had to do since the piping burst six months ago.”
”Agriculture?”
”Irrigation. We're trying to build a model drip network for...oh, forget it.”
I smiled. ”Got long to go?”
”Six more months. Then somewhere hot, I hope. Africa, or the Middle East.”
”Hope they fly by,” I said. I picked up the bulky rucksack and adjusted the straps. ”Be seeing you.”
”Good luck.”
She came with me, a few paces behind, back to the station and conferred with a short man standing in the shadows. He nodded twice and, without turning, she waved her hand in the air.
Eldershott was still on board. I couldn't acknowledge her--for one person to see me was enough, and her lookout made one too many--and I stepped onto the platform.
”h.e.l.lo!” I called in English, and waved. I wore a smile like a new summer dress. ”Wait!” and the new concierge, a tall, pale man with a thick dark moustache standing by the folding metal stairs leading into the cabin, looked at me in puzzlement, then waved me in when he saw my ticket.
I had the same cabin, as I'd specified to Seago back in Moscow. Marija Zita got on the train at Yaroslavski train station and got off at Ekaterinburg.
And Janet Gordon, English, twenty-eight, with a short blonde bob and comfortable, expensive hiking gear got on in her place. The only person who would have noticed was gone, and though I felt sorry for it, I knew it was necessary. She was gone and all anyone else had seen, if they'd seen anything at all, was Marija Zita.
I had the cabin to myself; the other three seats-c.u.m-beds were reserved and wouldn't be claimed. I could trust Seago with that, at least. I spent an hour familiarising myself with the new ident.i.ty before disposing of the dossier, keeping only the new ident.i.ty doc.u.ments. Then I headed to the dining cart.
He was sitting alone, at the furthest table in the corner of the cabin, eating Solyanka soup. The night outside was monochrome: white strips of land glaring in an inky dark. I took the only free table, sitting on the other side of the cabin from him and two tables down.
There were three Mongolians in heavy coats sitting by the door, smoking and drinking vodka and arguing. Next to them, a group of Western European tourists occupied three of the tables. I could hear German, Swedish and Dutch being spoken simultaneously, which would have been nauseating to follow, so I didn't.
Behind me sat a couple of male backpackers whose gazes I could feel against my back. I'd pegged them down as soon as I'd gone in. Blond, a big build, clean-shaven, they could have been hikers but they looked too clean, too comfortable in their surroundings, and I knew I was going to have to a.s.sess them again, and if they didn't check out, dispose of them.
”Da?”
”Oh, hi,” I said, looking up at the waiter. My voice carried across the car and was noted. ”Could I have a soup? I don't know the name for it, but I had a really lovely soup in Moscow before we left the station, do you know?” Looking at the pockmarked, stoic face hopefully: ”Do you speak English?”
Eldershott hadn't risen to the bait, so I glanced back towards him, a hopeful expression on my face, then rose and went to him. ”Excuse me, do you speak English?” I shook his shoulder, pointed down to his soup. To the waiter: ”This is it!” Still pointing: ”Could you bring me one of these please? How much is it?”
”Odin Solyanka.” He noted it in his pad with a sort of grim determination and walked off.
There is a fine line you walk when you a.s.sume an ident.i.ty. It has to be a.s.sumed completely, worn like a second skin, absorbed and displayed to the world without fault. The moment you slip, the moment you fall out of character, the moment suspicion falls is your last. The operation had s.h.i.+fted since Moscow, a.s.sumed a new shape and a new aspect, and I had s.h.i.+fted with it, going into second gear and putting a new play into motion, and I let Killarney fade into the core and let Janet Gordon, loud and charming and naive, a master's degree in archaeology, never before left England, everything new and wonderful, take over. I needed access to Eldershott, and Janet was desperate for some English conversation to re-live her exciting new experiences.
”What did he say?” I asked Eldershott, still holding him by the shoulder. He looked over at me, eyes narrowed behind unflattering gla.s.ses. It was the first time I'd seen him close and face to face, and I committed him to memory, etching his face, his clothes, his build into my memory.
Eldershott: dark hair and thinning on top, with a bushy moustache that tried to compensate, unsuccessfully, for the high forehead and the weak chin, eyes pale blue and smoky like haze over the North Sea. His fingers were blunt but well-kept, and he had hair growing on his knuckles. He looked at me without expression for a long moment before sighing loudly and saying, ”One Solyanka. Solyanka is the name of the soup.”
”Thank you.”
He shook my hand off his shoulder and returned to his bowl, lifting up a spoon in silent determination, turning his back on me. Hoping I would go away.
I wouldn't.
Check for weapons: none that I could see, and none on the two blond backpackers who were now obviously checking me whilst trying to look as though they weren't.
That changed things. I had to think quickly, trying to figure out where they came from. They could have been Russian, but I had a feeling that, whilst Eldershott's presence in Lubyanka was indeed thanks to the Fourth Directorate, him leaving it wasn't. We went straight from the prison to the station and got on the train, there was no time for anyone to mount an operation and yet here they were, like two concrete blocks cast in the same mould, two big blond twins, and I knew that sooner or later it would come to a standoff between us.
I still didn't know enough and I needed the information; I needed to understand Eldershott and who he was running from.
Or where he was running to.
”Are you English?” I tapped him on the shoulder again--Janet Gordon just trying to be friendly. ”Do you mind if I sit with you? What's that that you're reading?” There was a rhythm to it, a kind of breathless excitement and a propensity for rapid-fire questions that didn't require immediate answers.
”I really don't think....” he began, but I was already in motion, sitting opposite him and waving to the waiter to signal my new location--as if he couldn't tell--all the time keeping up a monologue directed at Eldershott. ”Can I see the book? What is it? Oh, it's old, isn't it! It's so lovely!” the last p.r.o.nounced as two separate words, a long accent on love and a slightly shorter one on the suffix.
As I spoke I picked up the book and examined it, running a finger along the pages to see if anything was laid inside the pages, which there wasn't, and noting the t.i.tle and the name of the author.
Military History since the Coming.
A picture, possibly authentic but more likely a photo-realist later impression, of Allied soldiers dropping their guns on the muddy ground before the Archangel Metatron, as he manifested before them.
”You're a historian?” My food finally arrived and I thanked the waiter with an awkward ”Spasibo” that made Eldershott look at me again, suddenly.
”No,” and, ”Do you speak Russian?” The eyes narrowed again behind the gla.s.ses like clouds forming over a blue-grey sea.
”A little,” I admitted. ”My grandmother's maiden name was Kobach. She often spoke it to me. When I was younger. Do you?”
”What?”
”Speak Russian.”
”I speak quite a few languages,” he said, stating a fact or trying to impress me, it didn't matter; what did was that he had taken the bait now and was talking.
He had taken the bait and it was time to leave him to chew on it for a while, so I ignored him and concentrated on the food.
It came with a plate of the dark, sour bread only the Russians could make so well, and I scooped up a spoon of Solyanka--sausages, ham, onions, olives, there was little that didn't make it into this soup--and I soaked up the sour cream and lemon broth with the rest of the bread and washed it down with water, and when I was done, I signalled the waiter for another.
”Oh, and dva peva!” I called after him.
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