The Russian opened a drawer and found cigarette papers and a packet of tobacco, embossed with rich brown curly writing. Rolling a prisoner’s pinch into a thin smoke, he asked Lamb, “You here to kill me?”
“I hadn’t given it any thought,” Lamb said. “You deserve killing?”
Katinsky considered. “Lately, not so much,” he said at last. Then, “There’s a shop on Brewer Street. You can get Russian tobacco there. Polish chewing gum. Lithuanian snuff.” He scratched a match, and held the flame to his tightly-rolled cylinder, starting a small fire he swiftly sucked out of existence. “At any given moment, half its customers used to be spooks. You’ve been described to me on many occasions.” Match extinguished, he replaced it in the box. “So, what do you want with me, Jackson Lamb?”
“Little chat about old times, Nicky.”
“There are no old times. Don’t you keep up? Memory Lane’s been paved over. They built a shopping mall on it.”
“You can take the man out of Russia,” Lamb observed, “but he’ll still reckon he’s some kind of tragic fucking poet.”
“You think it’s amusing,” Katinsky said, “but not so long ago a mall was what the queen rode down on her horse, and there was only one of them. Now everywhere you look there’s a mall, and they’ve all got
Lamb said, “I get the feeling making you shut up is gunna be the hard part.”
He waited while Katinsky locked up, then followed him down the stairs and onto the street. Katinsky led Lamb past six pubs before reaching one he approved of. Inside, he stopped to take bearings before heading for a corner, which either meant he was new here, or hoped Lamb would think he was. He wanted red wine. Lamb might have been surprised about this, if he was capable of surprise at another man’s drinking habits.
At the bar he ordered a large scotch for himself, because he wanted to give the impression of being kind of a lush, and also because he wanted a large scotch. Memory Lane stretched in both directions. He deserved a drink. Because his scotch came first he drained it in two swallows while the wine was poured, then ordered another, and carried them back to the table.
“Cicadas,” he said, sliding Katinsky’s wine in front of him.
Katinsky’s reaction was behind the beat. He lifted his glass, swirled it as if it were something to savour and not just crappy house red, and took a sip. Then said, “What?”
“Cicadas. A word you used in your debriefing. At Regent’s Park.”
“Did I?”
“You did. I watched the video.”
Katinsky shrugged. “And? You think I remember everything I said in a debriefing nearly twenty years ago? I’ve spent most of my life trying to forget stuff, Jackson Lamb. And this, this is ancient history. The bear is sleeping. Why poke it with a stick?”
“Good point. So, when’s your passport up for renewal?”
Katinsky gave him a weary look. “Ach. It’s not enough to suck a man dry. You have to come back and grind up the bones.” In an attempt to rehydrate himself, he gulped more wine. It was a big gulp, a drinker’s gulp, requiring him to wipe his chin after. “Ever been debriefed, Jackson Lamb?”
That was such a stupid question, Lamb didn’t even bother.
“As a hostile? That’s how I was treated. They want to know everything I ever heard or saw or did, and after a while I don’t know if they’re looking for reasons to throw me back or reasons to keep me. Like I say. They suck a man dry.”
“Are you trying to tell me you were making stuff up?”
“No, I’m trying to tell you that every scrap of information I ever had, everything I thought was useful, everything I knew wasn’t, everything I didn’t know what it was, I spilled it all. Every last drop. If you’ve watched the video, you know as much as I ever did. Maybe more, because believe me, I have forgotten more than I ever knew.”
“Including cicadas.”
Katinsky said, “Maybe not so much cicadas, no.”
There was no way to measure the distance between Min and the end of his life in that moment. The van slammed its brakes to avoid slamming into Min instead, and the displaced air kissed Min all over, and then he was gone, leaving chaos behind him. In his wake a horn sounded, but what the hell. Near-death experiences were two-a-penny on the city roads, and it would all be forgotten in minutes.
As for now, speed had become its own point and purpose. Min’s legs were pumping easily, his fists were moulded to the handlebars, and with the road disappearing beneath his wheels, the gift of being alive flowed through him like a shot of tequila. The noise he suddenly barked was halfway between a laugh and a shout, and barely human. Pedestrians stared. Few had been lucky enough to see a cyclist going this fast.
