The Executioners Read online

  “I won’t,” Shard promised. They wanted a live Asipov, not a dead one, and the doctor’s tone was grave. “What’s the matter with him?”

  The doctor said, “We don’t know. He’s doped — we don’t know what with. It’s something new — new in this country, at any rate. His mind seems clear enough, but there’s a degree of paralysis of the muscles, plus wasting.”

  “Wasting?”

  “Yes. I don’t understand it unless he’s been under this drug for a long while, which I gather he can’t have been — all that gallivanting around the country with his delegation, he’d have had to be fit and mobile for that, obviously —”

  “So it’s a fast acting drug?”

  The doctor nodded. “I think so, yes. That’s the only answer. In non-technical terms, that is. It’s not so much fast acting really as fast in its effects, which is something different. It’s speeded up the wasting process, that’s what I mean.”

  “And the prognosis?”

  “I really can’t say, not knowing what the drug is. But if the wasting goes on, well, then I wouldn’t say his chances were particularly good.”

  Shard nodded and went into the room. He said he would prefer to be alone with Asipov. The nurse glanced at the doctor, who gave a dubious nod, and she left, as did the doctor. The door was closed; the four-man guard waited outside. Shard sat by the bed and looked down at the Russian. The man’s eyes were flickering about the room and his tongue came out to lick dry-looking lips, and the legs shifted a little, shifted stiffly as though the effort was a large one, beneath the sheet. There was no other movement.

  Shard made himself known. “I’m Detective Chief Superintendent Shard, attached Foreign Office. I know you as Stanislav Asipov of the trade delegation from Moscow. Is that correct?”

  “It is correct,” Asipov said in a weak voice.

  “And you speak some English.”

  “A little.”

  “Then I’m going to ask you some questions,” Shard said. “It’s in your own interest to answer them as fully as you can. I’m here to help. First, do you confirm that you want to ask for asylum here in Britain?”

  “Yes, I wish to stay.”

  “Will you tell me why?”

  “Because there is here a better life.” The voice seemed weaker already; it was an effort to speak at all. Shard felt disinclined to press; his was merely a preliminary investigation, the diplomatic interrogation in depth would be made later by the Foreign Office backroom boys, the ones with special knowledge of the Eastern Bloc and its devious politics and the undercurrents of interplay between East and West. If he pressed too far now, Shard thought, he might send the man over the brink. Nevertheless, there were things he had to establish.

  He said, “Because there is a better life. Is that all, Comrade Asipov?” There was no response and he tried again. “What about your wife, your three children, and your mother in Kharkov? Will you willingly leave them all behind, to face whatever the men in Moscow make them face because of your defection? Will you risk their lives for a better life for yourself … or is there some other reason?”

  The lips moved but he couldn’t hear the voice. He bent closer, straining to catch anything that might emerge. There was beseechment in the eyes. Then there was a knock on the door, a peremptory sound. Shard, cursing to himself, got to his feet and went to the door. He jerked it open.

  “Well?”

  One of the Yard men said, “Message from the FO, Mr Shard. You’re wanted back at once. Urgent. A Mr Hedge. You’re to stop the interrogation.”

  “No reason given?”

  “None, sir.”

  *

  Hedge had been shaken rigid; there had been a call said to be from a member of the staff of the Soviet Embassy. If this was true, whoever was on the line had not been phoning from the Embassy. The call had been from a public call-box. And most worrying of all, the caller had asked for Hedge in person. Hedge had had the call put through and a voice had said, “The man in hospital will die if he is not returned, not handed back. He is drugged … there is an antidote and this antidote is known only to certain persons. You will be contacted again very soon.”

  In a high voice Hedge had asked, “How long before he dies?”

  “You have two days from now,” the caller said, and hung up. Hedge jigged the receiver-rest, uselessly, then banged the thing down and mopped at his face. When Shard reported, Hedge gave him the bare facts.

  “So what do you do now?” Shard asked.

  “It’s out of my hands,” Hedge said, looking on the verge of blind panic. “A Prime Ministerial decision, I would say. What worries me is that the caller — a man, obviously a Russian — used my name. Hedge.” He added this because Hedge was not in fact his real name. Hedge was a pseudonym descriptive of his job, which was to act as a hedge or screen between the Head of Security and lesser men, which included even Scotland Yard. His real name was never spoken, was not even known, something to do with his past service. “There’s been the most appalling leak in security, Shard!”

  “We’ll take that as read, Hedge. The first point is, who was the man? You said he didn’t use the Embassy phone. How do we know he’s genuine? The answer is — we don’t, do we, Hedge?”

  Hedge gave him a blank look. “What are you suggesting, Shard?”

  “This: that we take no notice of that call — until the next one comes. In the meantime —”

  “What if the man dies, simply because we didn’t hand him back to where he belongs? What’s the press going to make of that, what’s Moscow going to make of it?”

  Shard said drily, “Capital, I would say. But we’ve not got that far yet. You said we have two days. We’d better use them, Hedge. Put on the full works to find out what makes Asipov tick. I didn’t get much out of him if anything, but I did get the idea there’s more behind his defection than a simple wish for the capitalist way of life. And the Russians seem very anxious to get him back — right?”

  Hedge nodded, blew out a long breath. “Oh dear, oh dear, what a bother all this is, Shard! I’ll have to let H of S know, of course, and no doubt he’ll decide. In the meantime, we must drop our own interrogation — yours, that is. Policemen can be clumsy — no offence, of course, Shard, nothing personal —”

  “Of course not. I do understand, Hedge.”

  “Yes, good. I’ll get the experts onto him if H of S approves.” Hedge reached out for one of his telephones; the Head of Security was still in his office, a more palatial one even than Hedge’s, a whole suite including a bedroom while Hedge just had a cloakroom with facilities. As his hand touched the internal phone the outside line burred at him, the closed line used by the Yard, the Cabinet Office and Number Ten.

  “Damn,” Hedge said irritably. The caller was Hesseltine, Assistant Commissioner Crime, Hedge’s bête noire. Such a rude man, and impatient, never knew his place.

  “What do you want?” Hedge snapped down the line. “I’m busy, you know —”

  “A moment of your valuable time, Hedge. It’s important, or I think so. A woman’s come in —”

  “What woman?”

  “You’ll see. I’m taking the liberty of having her brought over to you. There’s an Asipov connection. And France comes into the picture. Remember the Foreign Secretary’s visit, Hedge?”

  2

  Waiting for Hesseltine’s mysterious woman to turn up, Hedge made his internal call to the Head of Security. The wheels were set in motion, the wheels that would dig out Stanislav Asipov’s deepest secrets — or would try to. Shard’s guess was that the Russian defector wouldn’t say anything that might add to the burdens about to be placed on his family in Kharkov. Hedge went into the ethics of allowing a man to die: the ethics, that was, from his, Hedge’s, viewpoint.

  “It’s going to be immensely difficult, Shard. I don’t know how we can justify it, really. The blasted press … after all, the man’s a Russian —”

  “Who’s asking for asylum. If he goes back, he’s not going
to be popular. One form of death may be as good as another for all we know.”

  Sagely, Hedge nodded. “Well, yes, there is that.”

  Shard studied the heavy, fleshy face. Hedge was looking better; he was always an easy man to drag from depression, it was simply a case of finding the right phrase, one that he could trot out as his own later on in justification for his baser deeds. For his part Shard saw it as fairly base to let a man die when he didn’t have to, but he could appreciate the importance of getting Asipov to talk … maybe he was getting inured to nastiness, though he hoped he wasn’t. Danger was one thing, dirty tricks another. Largely he detested the Foreign Office and all that, deep down, it stood for. Intrigue, double talk, blatant lies however blandly uttered — though all, of course, for a noble cause, national security. It didn’t do to think too much about it; just get on with the job. And what he had just said to Hedge was absolutely true: Asipov might well face the bleakest of futures if he was handed back to Moscow and death in Britain might be more appealing.

  Miss Fleece came in to say the ACC was waiting.

  “Hesseltine’s come himself?” Hedge looked disagreeable; he reached into a drawer of his desk and brought out a packet of Rennie’s. Two tablets went into his cheeks, to be slowly absorbed in his spittle. “Oh, all right, Miss Fleece. Send him in.”

  Hesseltine entered, accompanied by the woman, whom he introduced as Ernestine Kolnisenko. She didn’t look Russian and she wasn’t, she was English, married to a Russian, now dead. She was a stringy woman with a reddish nose that carried a drip at the end. She looked the picture of misery but there was hope in her eyes that such an important man as Hedge might lift her from her woes. Her voice, which once started was hard to stop, was like her name: earnest.

  She said, “Mr Hesseltine’s been so kind. It’s so good of you to see me. I —”

  “I understand,” Hedge broke in, bringing her to the point, “that you have some connection with … er, current events?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I happened to be at Heathrow this morning, I was seeing a cousin off to America, you see, quite an elderly cousin, a cousin of my mother’s as a matter of fact —”

  “And?”

  “And?” She gawped back at Hedge, apparently thrown off her stroke by being interrupted in full flow.

  Hedge said irritably, “What happened at Heathrow, Mrs — er —”

  “Kolnisenko. Mrs Kolnisenko.” She repeated the name slowly, syllable by syllable, to make sure he got it right.

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  She took a deep breath, gearing herself up. “I saw what happened. Some of it, that is. I saw a man being taken away and some Russians making a fuss about it.” She looked at Shard. “I saw this gentleman too as a matter of fact, I recognised him the moment I walked in here and I said to myself, well, that’s a bit of luck because he’ll be able —”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Well, you see, the point is really, I recognised the man. The other man. The one they were taking away. Stanislav Asipov. I’ll never forget him, never, and anyway I have a good memory for faces. It was Asipov who was responsible for Ivan’s, that’s my late husband’s, death.”

  She stopped there, the drip growing worse. She brought out a handkerchief and blew her nose. Her eyes were very red and there was a haunted look. It appeared she had loved Ivan Kolnisenko; she began to hiccup and Hedge, in a tizzy to get her going again now, rang for Miss Fleece to bring a glass of water. This failed to do the trick and the hiccups continued spasmodically for a while. Through them, the story emerged. Dead Ivan had worked with Asipov for about fifteen years and had worked well; Asipov had grown jealous of the regard in which Ivan Kolnisenko had been held and five years ago had trumped up charges of disloyalty against him, disloyalty to the party, and Ivan’s fate had been sealed. No notice was taken of his protestations of innocence and he had been despatched to Siberia, whence news had come after six months that he had died. Well, Ernestine Kolnisenko said bravely, that was water under the bridge now. It was her son she was bothered about, her son Mikhail, now aged twenty and still in Russia.

  “And you?” Hedge asked keenly. “How long is it since you left Russia, Mrs Kolnisenko?”

  She said, “I left soon after I got the news about Ivan’s death —”

  “They let you leave?”

  “After a bit of bother,” she said. “I was interrogated and that and then suddenly they said I could go. After all, I was British by birth. But I wasn’t allowed to take Mikhail.”

  “That must have been a wrench, surely?”

  She seemed to ponder. “Yes and no,” she said after a while, frowning. “Mikhail was very Russian and he hated anything to do with Britain, not that he’d ever been here, but you know what it’s like when you’re half British but surrounded by Russians, don’t you, and then he never did believe his father was innocent. He thought I’d suborned Ivan, you see, me being British. Well, that I couldn’t take and I wanted so desperately to get back home, home being England with my mother and dad. They were old, you see, and they needed me. So I settled for what I’d been offered and I came back. But now … well, I never did wish any harm to Mikhail, of course I didn’t, he’s my own flesh and blood all said and done, and now I’m so worried I don’t know what to do, really I don’t, Mr Hedge.”

  She stopped again, like a tap, and sat with her hands folded in her lap, gazing hopefully at salvation. Hedge coughed and cleared his throat importantly; he had always liked adulation. He said, “Yes. Yes, I understand, and I shall do all I can to help. Can you be more precise? About your worry, I mean. D’you believe the Russians will in some way connect your son with the man Asipov, who was responsible for his father’s imprisonment?”

  “And death,” she said with emphasis.

  “Oh yes, and death.”

  “No,” she said and, astonishingly, laughed. “Well, I mean! How could they? It just doesn’t tie up.”

  Hedge reddened angrily and fidgeted with his blotter. “What, then?”

  She said, “It’s what the UFO people told me, you see. One of them came over from France —”

  “UFO?” Hedge seemed rocked, as well, Shard thought, he might. There was an air of the ludicrous about Ernestine Kolnisenko without bringing in the Unidentified Flying Objects, if that was indeed what she was referring to. Shard racked his brains for some terrorist organisation that might call themselves the UFO but failed to find one. And it was in fact the Unidentified Flying Objects that the woman had in mind.

  She went on, “They’re hippies really, living in a commune in France. In where was it … the Ardeech, that’s it —”

  “Ardèche?”

  “Yes. They come from all over — here, France, Spain, lots of places including Russia apparently. They believe funny things so this young girl said —”

  “What young girl?” Hedge’s mind was in a whirl by this time; Shard, glancing at Hesseltine, caught the ACC’s sardonic look. He’d heard it all already and was enjoying the sight of Hedge’s face.

  Mrs Kolnisenko said, “Well, she’s known as little fat Annie. That was all she told me, or rather her friend did. There were two of them, you see, her and a boy, I never did get to know his name. French, he was. This little fat Annie was Russian. She had an exit permit as one of some sort of cultural tour, I think, and she’d left the tour and gone hippie. Defected, like. Anyway, the point is, she knew Mikhail … he’d given her my address here before she left Russia, said he wanted to get in touch but couldn’t off his own bat. And that’s what worries me, you see, Mr Hedge.” She leaned forward, red eyes beseeching. “Mikhail’s right out of contact —”

  “With you? Surely that’s —”

  “No,” she said passionately. “I mean yes, with me too, but with life as well. There was a mix-up, you see. According to this little fat Annie, Mikhail was working in a steel foundry in Volgograd … he went on a binge one night — this was last year — got drunk on vodka. Out for four days and didn’t go home. Well
, in the meantime a man of the same name as him, another Mikhail Kolnisenko at the steel works, fell into a vat or something of molten steel — and they thought it was my boy. Then there was this mix-up —”

  Hedge interrupted, “Really I don’t see how they could make such a mistake, Mrs —”

  “It can happen,” she said, still passionate, “in Russia. You’d never believe the inefficiency and the way everything depends on forms. It’s all forms and passes, all bits of paper. Literally, you can’t live without it, without paper proof that you’re alive. Internal passports … look, Mikhail was living with a family in Volgograd, and they were called, not that there were any remains. They were told to bring my boy’s internal passport, which they did. It was stamped deceased and that was that. When the real Mikhail turned up, it was too late. After that — well, without an internal passport you just don’t exist, I daresay you know that.”

  Hedge nodded and tried to get a word in but the woman went on regardless. “You can’t do anything. Can’t withdraw savings, collect parcels and that at the post office, move house, arrange a holiday, even get a job — specially can’t get a job. You do see what I mean, don’t you, Mr Hedge? He might as well be dead. In a sense he is. He’s just not recognised as existing, no-one takes a blind bit of notice, not because they can’t see him standing there when he goes to the bureau to say he’s alive, but because his internal passport says deceased and they have to believe it. I know it sounds daft, but that’s Russia for you. My boy, well, best way of putting it is, he’s sort of … undead. Not dead, but … I mean, there he is, he walks around, you can touch him, talk to him, but without that internal passport —”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I do know —”

  She went on as regardless as before. “Without that, no-one is allowed to believe he exists because officially he doesn’t. It’s not that they don’t know who he is, but they can’t admit it. Little fat Annie, she said he’s become a non-person. That’s what he wanted me to know, you see. I asked myself why … well, it’s obvious he wants help in some way, isn’t it? I’ve been wondering … maybe he’s so fed up with Russia and non-life that he’s going to do something dangerous, something against Russia. Like trying to get out of the country under cover, you know what I mean?” She hesitated. “I was wondering if there was anything you could do, Mr Hedge. He probably expects that. After all, he’s half British.”