Free Russian Roulette by Bernard Knight

doors that led to the kitchens. As he reached them, he was gratified to see a worn wooden swing-door just inside the glass, on the opposite wall to the serving area. There were a few late patrons about, but no staff. Without the hesitation that gives away a timid trespasser, Simon boldly pushed open the glass doors, turned right and marched straight through the wooden one.
    His gamble had paid off. He found himself in a gloomy corridor piled with crates and boxes of vegetables. It was the store department and should have a rear goods entrance somewhere.
    In the distance, he saw figures moving about. As an impromptu camouflage, he picked up the nearest box and with this clasped to his chest, strode briskly down the long passage towards a gleam of daylight from an open door. He nodded as he passed the storemen, but they hardly spared him a glance. In a few seconds, he was out of the building, blinking in the daylight of the backyard. The cobbled area had a high wall in which were set big gates, now standing wide open. He dumped his box on the back of a parked lorry and walked out into a lane, where he found himself looking at the traffic of 25th of October Street.
    Remembering his much-studied street map, he turned right and soon was at Sverdlov Square Metro station.
    He bought a five kopek ticket at the automatic machines and read that it would take him anywhere on the Metro system.
    In the ornate marble palace below, he boarded the first train that came, changed at the next station and repeated this at the next. On both occasions, he was certain that no one had followed him, so he studied his pocket chart of the Metro system and caught a train for the terminus of the south-eastern line, the Avtozavodskayastation. It was a long ride and he sat in the spotless carriage, half-empty just before the rush hour, and marvelled at the superb construction of the Moscow Underground. Free from the grime, the advertisements and the squalor of the London system, it had an almost cathedral-like atmosphere – the crystal chandeliers of some stations, the rows of statues in others seemed more like a religious or cultural monument than a transport utility.
    It was getting on for four thirty when he came up to street level again. He made his way as quickly as his poor knowledge of the suburbs allowed. Most of the people about seemed to be old women and children going home from school. He asked several old ladies and eventually found his way to Borovitskaya Avenue. It looked exactly the same as a hundred other streets in the locality, great rectangular blocks of yellow-grey apartment buildings lining wide tree-lined boulevards. Trams ran up the side of the roads and at intervals the flats were interrupted by shopping areas and cinemas.
    Finding the right block and then the section of the block was almost as hard as discovering the street, but eventually he arrived at a ground-floor doorway with ‘Fourth Entrance’ written over it. Still memorising the address given to him in the Happy Dragon, he climbed the stairs to the third floor. The bleak concrete and plaster contrasted strongly with the deep carpeting of his own London flat and he went faster as if to speed his return to those more luxurious surroundings.
    On the sixth landing, there was a glass door with one pane broken. He saw a bell push at the edge, but tried the door first. It opened and he went in to the smell of cooking.
    The sound of a child wailing led him to a row of doors along one side of a passage. Through one of them, he saw two women working at a row of gas stoves in a large communal kitchen. He was just going to rap on the door panel when a voice behind scared him almost to death.
    â€˜What do you want, grazhdanin ?’ 5
    A young woman stood watching him. She held a small girl in her arms, the child’s head wrapped in a towel, with strands of wet dark hair stuck around her wide eyes.
    Simon recovered his poise and replied in his best Russian. He hoped