2
I didn’t know its number, but I could tell I was at the target house from what I remembered of the bag-fit video footage.
The top of the ten-foot-high wall glistened with broken glass. Not a problem to climb over if we had to, just a little bit time-consuming. And I was right, no number boards for the posh houses up here.
I passed the rusty sheet-steel gates on my left. So far I hadn’t seen any more on this recce than the film had shown me, except some fresh Paperclip and Russian graffiti had been daubed on the gates. The keyhole was a simple three-lever device that Charlie’s bits and pieces would defeat in seconds.
I caught a glimpse of a blue vehicle in the gap between the gates. There were two inches of clearance at the bottom, and a bolt at the base of each was rammed into the ground on the inside. Unless there was another exit, chances were Baz was at home.
The high wall continued for about three or four metres before it turned left at the junction. I followed it, and immediately saw that I still wasn’t going to learn any more about the target than I already knew.
On the other side of the road was a nightclub/ restaurant/bar called the Primorski. The neon was dead, but pictures outside its big black doors showed dancing girls straight out of Las Vegas, feathers in their hair and hardly any other kit on.
The rendered wall gave way after a few metres to bare concrete blocks, before turning once more onto a new road. I didn’t follow it left. A blue-and-white was parked up. I headed right instead, towards the cemetery. In any case, Charlie would be coming up that parallel road and would see exactly what I could from where I stood: that the crumbling buildings were crammed together so tightly, the target might as well be a terraced house with another row behind it.
If we f*cked up and needed to do a runner, the easiest escape route was going to be up onto the high ground, towards the telecoms mast. There was no habitation up there. We might even be able to move along the higher ground under cover of darkness until we got level with the Marriott, and then down to get a taxi for the airport.
I now had to check the cemetery DLB, which was up on the higher ground ahead. We might even be able to see inside the target’s yard from there. I walked past a parade of shops that seemed to sell nothing but shoes. I texted Charlie: Bring binos.
I got back an OK, deleted it, and headed up the road.
The very last shop sold food. I stopped and bought a bottle of water. It was the same stuff as they had in the Marriott minibar and on top of the TV, the pride of Georgia.
At least Charlie had remembered one thing correctly. The cemetery really was no more than ten minutes away, and it was simple to find. All I had to do was follow the old folks hobbling there on their sticks, against the flow of a funeral procession heading home.
Cars that looked more abandoned than parked filled a large open area of hard-packed mud on the opposite side of the road. Maybe they were waiting to fill up at the brand new, jazzily lit petrol station to the right, so freshly opened the concrete forecourt was still white. I entered the cemetery through a knackered iron gate attached to the remains of a broken-down wall and ran the gauntlet of the dozen old women selling flowers and long skinny candles.
The cemetery itself was as busy as a mall, and unlike anything I was used to in the West. Instead of neat lines of headstones, this place was a labyrinth of large family burial areas, each fenced off with wrought iron or low brick walls.
Men and women sat chatting away to each other, cradling flasks of tea or coffee, at tables fixed to the ground close by the graves. One old guy was drunk, even this early in the day, and ranted at one of the stones. I had the feeling he was getting his own back for a lifetime of nagging.
Water taps were sited every twenty metres or so along the central path, and people were either washing out their cups or refilling vases at most of them.
A woman sitting at a table full of candles tried to sell me a few when she saw me empty-handed, but I kept on walking, keeping to the central path. The most luxurious areas, I noticed, were immediately adjacent to the pathway. You obviously paid a premium in this country to keep your shoes clean. Off the pathway, people had to squeeze between other family plots to get to their own. One had a glass-covered oil painting of a dancing clown set into it. A fine, black granular substance was spread on the ground between the plots, and it obviously worked. There wasn’t a weed in sight.
I tried to look like I was doing the same as everyone else, browsing at other people’s tombstones as I made my way slowly to my family plot. I was looking for Tengiz’s final resting place. All Charlie had been told was that it was along the main path. I had no idea if I was looking for a man or a woman, not that it was going to matter. We’d be f*cked either way if the inscription was in Paperclip.
Our luck was holding. I came to a large black marble headstone in a square plot covered with white stone chippings, cordoned off by a newly painted white wrought-iron fence about two feet high. I saw now why Whitewall had chosen it. Engraved portraits of four defiant-looking men stared out at me, with the single English word Tengiz chiselled beneath a whole load of Russian and Paperclip.
There was a black marble two-seater bench with a solid-looking base, and a rusting, galvanized rubbish bin, full of dead flowers, set off the pathway to one side. If it was left there permanently, I’d use it as a marker.
A line of women were sitting by the next plot, knitting and chewing sunflower seeds. They were gobbing off at warp speed, and there was a fair amount of tutting and eyes raised to the clouds as I passed. I wondered if it had anything to do with the jumper.
I checked the rest of the main path just in case there were another five Tengiz plots to choose from, but there weren’t. It was time to see if there was a vantage point up here from where I could look down into the target yard. If there wasn’t, we’d be going in blind.
I spotted a place, right on the edge of the cemetery, where a lone wooden bench faced out over the ghetto. There was a sheer drop of about twenty feet down to the road below; the main gate would be along the road to the left somewhere. To get there, I had to pass rows and rows of quite recently installed headstones, each engraved with a picture of a young man or woman who seemed to have died in 1956. It looked as though, after the fall of communism, the bereaved had at last had a chance to commemorate some of Stalin’s million or so victims.
I reached the bench and sat down. All I had to do now was try and work out which house belonged to Baz.
I called Charlie, who was still shopping for binoculars. ‘I’ve found a possible on the path. We just need to check that the block supporting the slab isn’t solid, otherwise I’ve got the wrong one. If you follow the perimeter left from the main, mate, I’m up on the high ground.’