"Why didn't you come?" he said.
I'm here."
"But sooner," said Stumpf. His face was raw, as if he'd been beaten. "Sooner."
"I had business," Locke returned. "What happened to you?"
"It's true, Locke," the German said, “everything is true."
"What are you talking about?"
"Tetelman told me. Cherrick's babblings. About being exiles. It's true. They mean to drive us out." "We're not in the jungle now," Locke said. "You've got nothing to be afraid of here."
"Oh yes," said Stumpf, that wide eye wider than ever. "Oh yes! I saw him -”
"Who?"
"The elder. From the village. He was here."
"Ridiculous."
"He was here, damn you," Stumpf replied. "He was standing where you're standing. Looking at me through the glass."
"You've been drinking too much."
"It happened to Cherrick, and now it's happening to me. They're making it impossible to live -” Locke snorted. I'm not having any problem," he said.
"They won't let you escape," Stumpf said. "None of us'll escape. Not unless we make amends." "You've got to vacate the room," Locke said, unwilling to countenance any more of this drivel. "I've been told you've got to get out by morning."
"No," said Stumpf. "I can't leave. I can't leave."
"There's nothing to fear."
"The dust," said the German. The dust in the air. It'll cut me up. I got a speck in my eye – just a speck – and the next thing my eye's bleeding as though it'll never stop. I can't hardly lie down, the sheet's like a bed of nails. The soles of my feet feel as if they're going to split. You've got to help me."
"How?" said Locke.
"Pay them for the room. Pay them so I can stay 'til you can get a specialist from Sao Luis. Then go back to the village, Locke. Go back and tell them. I don't want the land. Tell them I don't own it any longer." "I'll go back," said Locke, “but in my good time."
"You must go quickly," said Stumpf. "Tell them to let me be."
Suddenly, the expression on the partially-masked face changed, and Stumpf looked past Locke at some spectacle down the corridor. From his mouth, slack with fear, came the small word, "Please."
Locke, mystified by the man's expression, turned. The corridor was empty, except for the fat moths that were besetting the bulb. "There's nothing there -” he said, turning back to the door of Stumpf s room. The wire-mesh glass of the window bore the distinct imprint of two bloody palms.
"He's here," the German was saying, staring fixedly at the miracle of the bleeding glass. Locke didn't need to ask who. He raised his hand to touch the marks. The handprints, still wet, were on his side of the glass, not on Stumpf's. "My God," he breathed. How could anyone have slipped between him and the door and laid the prints there, sliding away again in the brief moment it had taken him to glance behind him? It defied reason. Again he looked back down the corridor. It was still bereft of visitors. Just the bulb – swinging slightly, as if a breeze of passage had caught it and the moth's wings, whispering. "What's happening?" Locke breathed. Stumpf, entranced by the handprints, touched his fingertips lightly to the glass. On contact, his fingers blossomed blood, trails of which idled down the glass. He didn't remove his fingers, but stared through at Locke with despair in his eye.
"See?" he said, very quietly.
"What are you playing at?" Locke said, his voice similarly hushed. This is some kind of trick." "No."
"You haven't got Cherrick's disease. You can't have. You didn't touch them. We agreed, damn you," he said, more heatedly. "Cherrick touched them, we didn't." Stumpf looked back at Locke with something close to pity on his face. "We were wrong," he said gently. His fingers, which he had now removed from the glass, continued to bleed, dribbling across the backs of his hands and down his arms. "This isn't something you can beat into submission, Locke. It's out of our hands." He raised his bloody fingers, smiling at his own word-play: "See?" he said. The German's sudden, fatalistic calm frightened Locke. He reached for the handle of the door, and jiggled it. The room was locked. The key was on the inside, where Stumpf had paid for it to be.
"Keep out," Stumpf said. "Keep away from me."
His smile had vanished. Locke put his shoulder to the door.
"Keep out, I said," Stumpf shouted, his voice shrill. He backed away from the door as Locke took another lunge at it. Then, seeing that the lock must soon give, he raised a cry of alarm. Locke took no notice, but continued to throw himself at the door. There came the sound of wood beginning to splinter.
Somewhere nearby Locke heard a woman's voice, raised in response to Stumpf's calls. No matter; he'd have his hands on the German before help could come, and then, by Christ, he'd wipe every last vestige of a smile from the bastard's lips. He threw himself against the door with increased fervor; again, and again. The door gave. In the antiseptic cocoon of his room Stumpf felt the first blast of unclean air from the outside world. It was no more than a light breeze that invaded his makeshift sanctuary, but it bore upon its back the debris of the world. Soot and seeds, flakes of skin itched off a thousand scalps, fluff and sand and twists of hair; the bright dust from a moth's wing. Motes so small the human eye only glimpsed them in a shaft of white sunlight; each a tiny, whirling speck quite harmless to most living organisms. But this cloud was lethal to Stumpf; in seconds his body became a field of tiny, seeping wounds.
He screeched, and ran towards the door to slam it closed again, flinging himself into a hail of minute razors, each lacerating him. Pressing against the door to prevent Locke from entering, his wounded hands erupted. He was too late to keep Locke out anyhow. The man had pushed the door wide, and was now stepping through, his every movement setting up further currents of air to cut Stumpf down. He snatched hold of the German's wrist. At his grip the skin opened as if beneath a knife. Behind him, a woman loosed a cry of horror. Locke, realizing that Stumpf was past recanting his laughter, let the man go. Adorned with cuts on every exposed part of his body, and gaining more by the moment, Stumpf stumbled back, blind, and fell beside the bed. The killing air still sliced him as he sank down; with each agonised shudder he woke new eddies and whirlpools to open him up.
Ashen, Locke retreated from where the body lay, and staggered out into the corridor. A gaggle of onlookers blocked it; they parted, however, at his approach, too intimidated by his bulk and by the wild look on his face to challenge him. He retraced his steps through the sickness-perfumed maze, crossing the small courtyard and returning into the main building. He briefly caught sight of Edson Costa hurrying in pursuit, but did not linger for explanations. In the vestibule, which, despite the late hour was busy with victims of one kind or another, his harried gaze alighted on a small boy, perched on his mother's lap. He had injured his belly apparently. His shirt, which was too large for him, was stained with blood; his face with tears. The mother did not look up as Locke moved through the throng. The child did however. He raised his head as if knowing that Locke was about to pass by, and smiled radiantly.
There was nobody Locke knew at Tetelman's store; and all the information he could bully from the hired hands, most of whom were drunk to the point of being unable to stand, was that their masters had gone off into the jungle the previous day. Locke chased the most sober of them and persuaded him with threats to accompany him back to the village as translator. He had no real idea of how he would make his peace with the tribe. He was only certain that he had to argue his innocence. After all, he would plead, it hadn't been he who had fired the killing shot. There had been misunderstandings, to be certain, but he had not harmed the people in any way. How could they, in all conscience, conspire to hurt him? If they should require some penance of him he was not above acceding to their demands. Indeed, might there not be some satisfaction in the act? He had seen so much suffering of late. He wanted to be cleansed of it. Anything they asked, within reason, he would comply with; anything to avoid dying like the others. He'd even give back the land.
I
t was a rough ride, and his morose companion complained often and incoherently. Locke turned a deaf ear. There was no time for loitering. Their noisy progress, the jeep engine complaining at every new acrobatic required of it, brought the jungle alive on every side, a repertoire of wails, whoops and screeches. It was an urgent, hungry place, Locke thought: and for the first time since setting foot on this sub-continent he loathed it with all his heart. There was no room here to make sense of events; the best that could be hoped was that one be allowed a niche to breathe awhile between one squalid flowering and the next.
Half an hour before nightfall, exhausted by the journey, they came to the outskirts of the village. The place had altered not at all in the meagre days since he'd last been here, but the ring of huts was clearly deserted. The doors gaped; the communal fires, always alight, were ashes. There was neither child nor pig to turn an eye towards him as he moved across the compound. When he reached the centre of the ring he stood still, looking about him for some clue as to what had happened there. He found none, however. Fatigue irade him foolhardy. Mustering his fractured strength, he shouted into the hush: "Where are you?"
Two brilliant red macaws, finger-winged, rose screeching from the trees on the far side of the village. A few moments after, a figure emerged from the thicket of balsa and jacaranda. It was not one of the tribe, but Dancy. He paused before stepping fully into sight; then, recognising Locke, a broad smile broke his face, and he advanced into the compound. Behind him, the foliage shook as others made their way through it. Tetelman was there, as were several Norwegians, led by a man called Bjornstrom, whom Locke had encountered briefly at the trading post. His face, beneath a shock of sun-bleached hair, was like cooked lobster.
"My God," said Tetelman, "what are you doing here?"
"I might ask you the same question," Locke replied testily.
Bjornstrom waved down the raised rifles of his three companions and strode forward, bearing a placatory smile. "Mr. Locke," the Norwegian said, extending a leather- gloved hand. "It is good we meet."
Locke looked down at the stained glove with disgust, and Bjornstrom, flashing a self-admonishing look, pulled it off. The hand beneath was pristine.
"My apologies," he said. "We've been working."
"At what?" Locke asked, the acid in his stomach edging its way up into the back of his throat.
Tetelman spat. "Indians," he said.
"Where's the tribe?" Locke said.
Again, Tetelman: "Bjornstrom claims he's got rights to this territory…"
"The tribe," Locke insisted. "Where are they?"
The Norwegian toyed with his glove.
"Did you buy them out, or what?" Locke asked.
"Not exactly," Bjornstrom replied. His English, like his profile, was impeccable.
"Bring him along," Dancy suggested with some enthusiasm. "Let him see for himself."
Bjornstrom nodded. "Why not?" he said. "Don't touch anything, Mr. Locke. And tell your carrier to stay where he is."
Dancy had already about turned, and was heading into the thicket; now Bjornstrom did the same, escorting Locke across the compound towards a corridor hacked through the heavy foliage. Locke could scarcely keep pace; his limbs were more reluctant with every step he took. The ground had been heavily trodden along this track. A litter of leaves and orchid blossoms had been mashed into the sodden soil.
They had dug a pit in a small clearing no more than a hundred yards from the compound. It was not deep, this pit, nor was it very large. The mingled smells of lime and petrol cancelled out any other scent.
Tetelman, who had reached the clearing ahead of Locke, hung back from approaching the lip of the earthworks, but Dancy was not so fastidious. He strode around the far side of the pit and beckoned to Locke to view the contents. The tribe were putrefying already. They lay where they had been thrown, in a jumble of breasts and buttocks and faces and limbs, their bodies tinged here and there with purple and black. Flies built helter-skelters in the air above them.
"An education," Dancy commented.
Locke just looked on as Bjornstrom moved around the other side of the pit to join Dancy.
"All of them?" Locke asked.
The Norwegian nodded. "One fell swoop," he said, pronouncing each word with unsettling precision. "Blankets," said Tetelman, naming the murder weapon.
"But so quickly…" Locke murmured.
"It's very efficient," said Dancy. "And difficult to prove. Even if anybody ever asks."
"Disease is natural," Bjornstrom observed. "Yes? Like the trees."
Locke slowly shook his head, his eyes pricking.
"I hear good things of you," Bjornstrom said to him. "Perhaps we can work together."
Locke didn't even attempt to reply. Others of the Norwegian party had laid down their rifles and were now getting back to work, moving the few bodies still to be pitched amongst their fellows from the forlorn heap beside the pit. Locke could see a child amongst the tangle, and an old man, whom even now the burial party were picking up. The corpse looked jointless as they swung it over the edge of the hole. It tumbled down the shallow incline and came to rest face up, its arms flung up to either side of its head in a gesture of submission, or expulsion. It was the elder of course, whom Cherrick had faced. His palms were still red. There was a neat bullet-hole in his temple. Disease and hopelessness had not been entirely efficient, apparently.
Locke watched while the next of the bodies was thrown into the mass grave, and a third to follow that. Bjornstrom, lingering on the far side of the pit, was lighting a cigarette. He caught Locke's eye.
"So it goes," he said.
From behind Locke, Tetelman spoke.
"We thought you wouldn't come back," he said, per- haps attempting to excuse his alliance with Bjornstrom. "Stumpf is dead," said Locke.
"Well, even less to divide up," Tetelman said, approaching him and laying a hand on his shoulder. Locke didn't reply; he just stared down amongst the bodies, which were now being covered with lime, only slowly registering the warmth that was running down his body from the spot where Tetelman had touched him. Disgusted, the man had removed his hand, and was staring at the growing bloodstain on Locke's shirt.
XXIX: TWILIGHT AT THE TOWERS
The photographs of Mironenko which Ballard had been shown in Munich had proved far from instructive. Only one or two pictured the KGB man full face; and of the others most were blurred and grainy, betraying their furtive origins. Ballard was not overmuch concerned. He knew from long and occasionally bitter experience that the eye was all too ready to be deceived; but there were other faculties – the remnants of senses modern life had rendered obsolete – which he had learned to call into play, enabling him to sniff out the least signs of betrayal. These were the talents he would use when he met with Mironenko. With them, he would root the truth from the man. The truth? Therein lay the conundrum of course, for in this context wasn't sincerity a movable feast? Sergei Zakharovich Mironenko had been a Section Leader in Directorate S of the KGB for eleven years, with access to the most privileged information on the dispersal of Soviet Illegals in the West. In the recent weeks, however, he had made his disenchantment with his present masters, and his consequent desire to defect, known to the British Security Service. In return for the elaborate efforts which would have to be made on his behalf he had volunteered to act as an agent within the KGB for a period of three months, after which time he would be taken into the bosom of democracy and hidden where his vengeful overlords would never find him. It had fallen to Ballard to meet the Russian face to face, in the hope of establishing whether Mironenko's disaffection from his ideology was real or faked. The answer would not be found on Mironenko's lips, Ballard knew, but in some behavioural nuance which only instinct would comprehend. Time was when Ballard would have found the puzzle fascinating; that his every waking thought would have circled on the unraveling ahead. But such commitment had belonged to a man convinced his actions had some significant effect upon the world. He was wiser
now. The agents of East and West went about their secret works year in, year out. They plotted; they connived; occasionally (though rarely) they shed blood. There were debacles and trade-offs and minor tactical victories. But in the end things were much the same as ever.
This city, for instance. Ballard had first come to Berlin in April of 1969. He'd been twenty-nine, fresh from years of intensive training, and ready to live a little. But he had not felt easy here. He found the city charmless; often bleak. It had taken Odell, his colleague for those first two years, to prove that Berlin was worthy of his affections, and once Ballard fell he was lost for life. Now he felt more at home in this divided city than he ever had in London. Its unease, its failed idealism, and – perhaps most acutely of all – its terrible isolation, matched his. He and it, maintaining a presence in a wasteland of dead ambition.
He found Mironenko at the Germalde Galerie, and yes, the photographs had lied. The Russian looked older than his forty-six years, and sicker than he'd appeared in those filched portraits. Neither man made any sign of acknowledgement. They idled through the collection for a full half-hour, with Mironenko showing acute, and apparently genuine, interest in the work on view. Only when both men were satisfied that they were not being watched did the Russian quit the building and lead Ballard into the polite suburbs of Dahlem to a mutually agreed safe house. There, in a small and unheated kitchen, they sat down and talked.
Mironenko's command of English was uncertain, or at least appeared so, though Ballard had the impression that his struggles for sense were as much tactical as grammatical. He might well have presented the same facade in the Russian's situation; it seldom hurt to appear less competent than one was. But despite the difficulties he had in expressing himself, Mironenko's avowals were unequivocal.