Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

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      The street in front of him was beginning to get busier, not busy, just busier, there was still no movement from the house under observation. He looked at his watch. There were two shifts on the operation, six to two and two to ten; he had organised it that way, using his authority to get the early shift, not so that he would be off-duty by mid-afternoon, but because that way he could exercise more control over who made the arrest. Not today, he had thought as they left militia headquarters that morning, not enough contacts noted in the log book for the arrest to be made today, probably tomorrow, certainly the day after. Routine but important, he had seen it from the moment the surveillance had been first planned. Which was why his superiors had chosen it, why it would look good in their statistics. Why he, in turn, would make sure it was a success, why he had arranged it so that it would be he who made the arrest.

      In an upstairs room he saw a curtain move and wondered who would be coming to buy, who, more importantly for the statistics, would be coming to sell. He checked again the name of the black marketeer in the house on Dmitrov.

      Pasha Simenov.

      The letter arrived at eleven.

      Each morning Alexandra waited for it to come. Each morning after she had taken their son to school and settled their daughter in the flat, she waited for the sound of the postman on the landing outside. Each morning she heard him as he put his bag down, knowing that he was only regaining his breath, that he would pick up the bag and walk on.

      She heard the noise on the stairs, the silence as the man paused outside and searched in his bag for the letter that was bound to come, then heard the next noise, the sound of the man lifting his load and continuing his climb to the floors above. The child was looking at her; she sat back at the table, trying to concentrate, disappointed that the letter summoning them to Kolpachny Lane had not come but relieved that they had not yet been rejected again.

      The footsteps came down the stairs and past the flat, quicker, lighter, fading till she could no longer hear them. Alexandra smiled at her daughter and thought of her husband and son, heard the footsteps again, slower, more laboured, the sound of the postman climbing back up the stairs. The man stopping on the landing outside, the first corner of the envelope beneath the door. Thin, she thought, crossing the room, suddenly not knowing what she was doing, it was so thin, just as before. She knew what it meant, opening it, ignoring the time and date of the summons, realising that they had lost again, that they had lost for ever.

      The words were a blur. She put the letter on the table and looked at her daughter, wishing suddenly that she and Yakov had not tried again, had never tried. Not for their sakes, but for their children’s. The girl was still playing. Alexandra picked up the summons again and saw the date and time of the appointment, realising it was for today and knowing that they had delayed the letter so that she and Yakov would miss the appointment, so that she and her husband would give them even more reason to refuse, them again. No time to contact him, she was thinking, no way she could contact him at the hotel in any case. There was just enough time, she was thinking, looking at the clock. If she hurried, if the trams weren’t delayed.

      Five minutes later Alexandra left the flat, her daughter wrapped against the cold, and began the journey. The trams seemed even slower than usual.

      Alexandra reached the building in Kolpachny Lane five minutes before the appointed time and was told to wait till after lunch. She sat in the waiting room and tried to stop her daughter crying; after seventy minutes she was ushered in and instructed to sit in the chair she had sat in last time and the time before, facing the official who had spoken to her the last time and the time before.

      There were two stacks of files on the desk in front of him. He confirmed her name and selected a folder from those on his left, reading through it then checking the details against the information on the summons she had received that morning.

      ‘Why is your husband not with you?’ she knew he was going to ask, knew that it would be a trick, that they had already found out where her husband was, that the faceless men from Petrovka had been waiting for him as he had feared in his dreams.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she would lie, holding her child tight to her, ‘the summons arrived only this morning, he left before it came.’

      ‘And you don’t know where your husband went?’ There would be the first note of an interrogation in his voice.

      Be brave, Alexandra Zubko, she would tell herself, do not let them frighten you. Remember that they have refused you twice, that they have already decided to refuse you a third time.

      ‘It doesn’t matter where my husband is,’ she would wish already that she had not answered the official in such a manner, would know it was too late, ‘the invitation is to me, I am the one you must tell, not my husband.’

      The man began reading from the file, not bothering to look at her, reading the words he would forget the moment she left, the words she would remember for ever.

      Fifteen minutes later Alexandra left the office on Kolpachny Lane and turned for home.

      Not today, Yakov Zubko, she knew now why she had pleaded with her husband that morning, why she had been afraid of the sudden cold, of the winter it would bring, of what else it might visit upon them. For God’s sake not today.

      It was twenty three minutes past one.

      The American family lunched at twelve. Yakov Zubko watched them from the side of the foyer: the mother and father, the two children. They had been at the hotel eight days and he had seen them on the third. Each day after that he had made a point of meeting them, of helping them with their bags, each day after that he had smiled at them. On the fifth day one of them had smiled back. Then and only then had he risked checking their names on the hotel register, noting both their nationality, which he had already guessed, and their date of departure.

      By the time they finished it was twenty-five minutes to two. Yakov Zubko saw them waiting for the official bus and remembered where all the tourists went on their last day in Moscow, began to plan his afternoon so that he could make his approach to them when they returned.

      At fifteen minutes to two the unmarked Zhiguli left its position overlooking Dmitrov and returned to the militia headquarters on Petrovka. By two fifteen the next shift had taken over. Although there had been two visits to the black marketeer that morning, Iamskoy had instructed the militiaman to log only one: a further visit that afternoon was almost certain, two probable, three remote but possible, and a total of five visits on the second day of the surveillance was the point at which the team on duty could close their snare. Routine but important Iamskoy had decided. The following morning, he had therefore decided, he would arrest the suspect Simenov and those who brought their goods to him.

      The flat was quiet. Alexandra looked around it, knowing what she was about to do, sensing that Yakov Zubko would understand. The furniture was sparse and functional; three of the chairs round the table had been bought over the years, but the fourth was a family heirloom, a wedding present from a beloved grandfather, now dead. Carefully, taking care not to damage it, she carried the antique down the stairs, perched it on top of her daughter’s push-chair, and tied it in place with a piece of string. Then she gathered the girl in her arms, and went to collect her son from school.

      He was ten minutes late. When he came out she kissed him then set off, still carrying her daughter, along the route her husband had taken that morning. The walk took twenty minutes, Alexandra managed the child for the first ten before she became too heavy.

      The men outside the shop saw her coming, nudging each other to look at her, scarcely bothering to hide their amusement. СКАЧАТЬ