Russian Roulette (3 page)

By the evening of departure from Liverpool Street he was resigned, if not actually determined. He decided to at least get on the boat train.

‘I can always just sit tight and enjoy the trip and do nothing,' he had told himself. ‘The slightest sign of trouble and Simon boy will draw back into his shell like a winkle!' He consoled himself with the thought that until he actually took some step towards obtaining the tool steel, he was doing no wrong and was entitled to all the aid and other guff printed on the inside of his passport.

So, on the fateful twelfth of May, he was installed in the Tilbury boat train, nattily decked out in an expensive sports suit, a legacy of the days when his gratuity was intact. His nylon case was in the rack above and sitting there with three inches of patterned sock exposed above his suede shoes, he looked more an off-duty executive than a tremulous spy off on his first assignment.

Though he would not have admitted it to himself, he rather enjoyed the mental image. A young, suave, good-looking chap, lolling nonchalantly in a first-class compartment, unsuccessfully trying to do the
Telegraph
crossword … but
really
secret agent Simon ‘008' Smith!

In every man there is a little James Bond trying to get out, and as long as Simon was able to keep his mind on the pseudo-glamour and push the hideous risk of reality to the background, he was able to enjoy himself.

Much of this churned through his mind as he sat hunched over the bar in the Russian vessel. He was getting more and more fuddled. His capacity for beer after eight years in an officers' mess was enormous, but the unfamiliar vodka earlier on had lost him his grip on sobriety.

Nothing further had happened to resurrect his fears about ‘the job', but the Liz Treasure episode tonight needed drowning in drink. She had first crossed his line of sight when getting off the train at Tilbury. He had at once recognized an unusually attractive prospect and with his practised adroitness, had managed to stumble over her cases on the platform.

With profound, but not overdone, apologies he had contrived to help her through the Customs and onto the ship. Years of experience had taught him not to push things too fast at that stage, but from then on he had manipulated for their paths to cross with great frequency. Though he couldn't manage the same table in the dining room, by the first evening he was buying her a drink in the bar.

For the first two days, things went with a swing, but then stuck when they were becoming most interesting. Though she was one of the most luscious women he had ever known, he soon realized that she either had a thick streak of ice down the middle or had an armour-plated lining to her velvety skin.

From the first, his intentions were entirely dishonourable, but she was able to guard her virtue with a ruthlessness and efficiency that he had never encountered before.

Normally, she did this with a deftness that caused no offence and merely invited him to come back for another try; but she had moods of petulance, and tonight he had been given the brush-off in no uncertain terms.

‘Must have been the liquor on my damned breath,' he grunted, perversely beckoning George to bring him another bottle.

He began to drink with aggressive enthusiasm, but before he was halfway through, another member of the tour lurched into the bar and sat heavily on the next stool. Simon's grade of intoxication became a pale shadow compared to his neighbour's, though Michael Shaw carried it with the ease of long practice.

He was by no means a sociable drinker, and their common bond of drunkenness brought no more conversation than a mumbled ‘Hello there'.

Shaw ordered a double whisky from the smooth barman and when he received it, he subsided into a heavy-breathing reverie, the only outward signs of his bad state being the tremor of his hands and the way his feet kept slipping off the chromium rail beneath his stool.

Simon tried a few rather slurred openings about the weather, the recent party and the prospects of a good holiday, but was met with such a vague and sullen response that he soon gave up. As he finished his drink, he covertly watched the big Irishman from behind the hand that supported his own chin on the bar. Michael Shaw must have been an inch or so above six feet and had shoulders and limbs to go with it. He seemed to be a great athlete badly gone to seed. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed and he was growing a flabby paunch beneath the shapeless sports jacket.

A newcomer to the tour, he had only joined the ship that day, at the Stockholm port of call. Gilbert had mentioned casually that he was expecting a late arrival … and that the newcomer would be a journalist from Dublin, extending his Swedish holiday.
From the looks of Shaw now
, thought Simon,
a holiday in Russia would be a waste of money
– any bar in the world would have satisfied his wants, without him trailing around Europe.

Shaw's foot slipped again and his chin, cupped in a ham-like hand, jerked down as his elbow slithered off the edge of the bar.

Simon heard him curse under his breath – then the bearded Irishman suddenly turned to him. ‘No particular offence, mister, but after seeing the mob on this tour, I just had to be getting myself well-plastered tonight.'

Simon grinned a little too widely and got his apparently enlarged tongue into motion. ‘Don't worry about my feelings … I've got the same bellyache myself – like an outing from a Darby and Joan club, isn't it!'

There was a long silence, while Shaw gulped the rest of his drink and silently gestured the barman to pour another. He made no move to offer one to Simon.

He decided to speak again. ‘I was desperate enough to leave Stockholm – but if I'd known it was going to be like this, I'd have trailed back to Cork – there's more life in any street corner pub there than the whole of the Baltic put together.'

This speech seemed to exhaust his conversational powers. Simon tried a few more openers, but was received by grunts only.

The deep-set brown eyes of the Irishman stared fixedly down at his glass from under the fringe of tangled red hair. Most of his leonine head was covered with red hair of some sort – the untidy beard, wild moustache and overlong hair, which covered his crumpled collar like a mane.

Simon finished his drink and walked with exaggerated steadiness to the door, where he spoilt the effect by tripping over the step. His cabin was on B Deck, Number 45, being up on the port side towards the bow.

He negotiated the steep stairs and narrow companionways with some difficulty, still sober enough to be thankful that the passages were deserted, so that no one could see him banging into the bulkheads. He soon got confused as to his whereabouts. He hazily remembered that his cabin was next to a bathroom and that an illuminated green sign stuck out from above the door. Thankfully, he came across the sign quite easily and groped his way groggily to the adjacent door. Turning the handle, he staggered inside.

The light was on, but he was in no condition to remember whether he had left the switch down when he left.

Then he looked around at the unmade bed, the clothes draped over the backs of chairs and the littered magazines on the floor.

‘Damn … wrong room. Mus' be the wrong bloody deck!'

He stepped out and shut the door, convinced that he had come down too many stairs, to C Deck. Then his bleary eyes looked again at the outside of the door and got the silver numbers into focus.

‘Forty – five! God, it
is
mine!' Fear fought the alcohol, and won. He jerked the door open again and stood swaying in the entrance, looking once more at the disordered cabin.

No doubt about it … he had been ‘worked over' yet again!

¹
West German Intelligence organisation set up by US named after Reinhard Gehlen.

Chapter Two

Simon Smith sat dejectedly in a quayside cafe, watching the rain beat down on Helsinki.

The
Yuri Dolgorukiy
was berthed a quarter of a mile away and the passengers had a few hours to wander ashore on the last stop before Russia.

He had tried to persuade Elizabeth Treasure to come with him after lunch, but she was still in a distant mood, pleading a headache. Just as he was leaving, she relented a little. She said she might meet him, if she felt better, on the town quay at two thirty.

It was now twenty past three, and there was no sign of her. He had wandered from the ship across a small bridge that connected the island where the
Yuri
lay, to the mainland and reached the broad quayside where an open market was just closing up.

He had ambled between the stalls of potted plants and vegetables for a while, then stared over the wharf at the bargaining of the fishermen in their little boats with the local housewives.

It started to drizzle just after two. He carried on up the street from the quay, stopping to buy yesterday's
Express
at a newsagent's. The rain came down more heavily and he had no mackintosh. After sheltering for a dismal fifteen minutes in a tram shelter, he made a dash for a small cafe on the quayside, from where he could keep a lookout for the lovely Mrs Treasure. The time went by and he still sat at a table in the window, drinking hot coffee with the steam gently rising from both his cup and his damp shoulders.

He glowered through the rain-spotted window, cursing everything in general, and Liz and Kramer in particular.

There was no sign of her on the cobbled quay – it was deserted except for a mechanical sweeper sloshing up the market debris.

He pulled the English paper from his side pocket, swearing again as the sodden pages pulped in his hand.

He skimmed through the headlines about some new facet of the economic crisis, then idly went through the smaller items lower down the page. He read one without comprehension – then his heart seemed to bound into his throat and in desperate haste, he devoured the paragraph again.

YARD MAN JOINS HUNT FOR BERKSHIRE KILLER

Detective Superintendent Gordon Young, of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad, yesterday travelled to Abingdon to assist the Berkshire police in their hunt for the killer of American business executive Harry Lee Kramer, who was found shot on Tuesday night. The discovery of his body in a ditch on a lonely country road was fully reported in yesterday's Express As Mr Kramer was known to have been living in London until a few days ago, a police spokesman said it is possible that the body was ‘dumped' in the countryside.

Simon's mind shut down for a moment or two – he was incapable of coherent thinking, so great was the shock. Then he recovered enough to re-read the item again, as if by some magic it would prove to be some awful optical illusion.

But the harsh black print remained on the damp paper in all its fearfulness. Kramer was dead – murdered!

While the rain beat down outside and his coffee grew cold inside, he sat feverishly trying work out the significance of the news. Was this connected with ‘Tool Steel'? Kramer was a professional agent – he must have had a finger in a dozen pies. This murder need be nothing to do with the present affair – but
was
it, nevertheless? Simon had no particular emotions about the actual killing. He had met Kramer for only a few moments and, whilst he wished him no ill, his main interest in the tragedy was for his own skin.

This, together with last night's ransacking of his cabin, was too much.

‘What in God's name are you doing here?' he asked himself fiercely. ‘You could still be flogging second-hand Cortinas at thirty quid a week – not sitting here waiting for a knife in your back or a row of Russian bullet holes across your chest!'

His fingers trembled as he picked up his cup. He drank without noticing that it was cold, and called for another. The first shock of last night's discovery had passed, but now it had been replaced with something worse.

Several times since breakfast, he had decided to call the whole thing off and catch a plane from Helsinki back to London. Now the temptation was even stronger.

He could hardly tell what stopped him getting a taxi back to the ship to pick up his cases and then going off to the airport – it would be so easy; it would be Kramer's money he would travel on. So easy – the sensible, logical thing to do – cut one's losses and clear out before the shooting started!

Simon's fair head drooped as he rested his elbows on the table and ran fingers through his hair in an agony of indecision. He had a little over three hours in which to make up his mind – the ship sailed at seven o'clock.

Indecision was always a torment to him – again his natural avarice for the extra couple of thousand fought against the possible risks. Yet he had a strong, almost unrecognized streak of obstinacy in him. How did he know that there was much risk? Kramer's death might well be nothing at all to do with this affair – and no one had yet died of having their room searched.

He got up abruptly and went out – the rain was easing now and there was no sign of Liz; not that he expected her now, it was getting on for four o'clock.

He stood indecisively for a moment, then turned left along a road at right angles to the quay, leading to the city centre. His feet were still trying to lead him to the nearest airline office, though his brain had vetoed the idea.

After a few yards, his brain won the battle.

‘To hell with them!' he said loudly, to the surprise of three pigeons and one old man.

He turned sharp right into a side street that ran behind, and parallel to, the imposing façade of the quayside buildings. He walked briskly, as if afraid that his feet might betray his new-found purpose in going back to the ship.

A few more yards brought him to the quiet cathedral square, but he had no eyes for the domed basilica at the top of a great flight of steps, or the sedate government buildings that lined the square. He kept his eyes on a small street right opposite. Hunched down against the wet breeze, he hurried on.

It was obvious that if he kept straight ahead, he would come to the waterfront which joined the main quay at right angles, the bridge to the
Dolgorukiy
's berth being at the junction.