Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  ‘Did the warning work?’

  ‘Of course it did. The Service always comes first. That’s what I’m complaining about. He’ll give her up for them, not for me.’

  If Martineau had given up the Balassi woman, what did Koliakov mean when he said that he shared a mistress with Abrasimov? Perhaps the Soviets didn’t know as much as they thought they did.

  ‘If I imagined that revenge would be sweet, I was wrong. I feel guilty every hour of the day and night. Whenever I see him I want to tell him what I’ve done but the moment for saying anything passed long ago. All I’ve learned is that betrayal is impossible to live with; it eats into your soul until it destroys you.’

  Should he sympathize with Christine, agree how badly Martineau had behaved towards her? Should he step back and disapprove of what she’d done?

  ‘It’s destroying me.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.

  It was clearly a question she had not asked herself. She hesitated before answering. ‘You’re the only person I know who won’t judge me.’

  5

  ‘We’ve been offered the chance to go to Moscow,’ Eva told Dora as she prepared supper. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘To visit or to live?’

  ‘To live.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘An old friend.’

  ‘A Russian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had any Russian friends.’

  ‘This is someone I knew when I was there during the war.’

  ‘An old boyfriend?’

  ‘Someone I knew,’ she answered, hoping she did not sound as defensive as she felt.

  ‘Why should we go and live in Moscow? We’re all right here, aren’t we?’

  ‘You could go to medical school there.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘My friend has great influence. He would be able to get you a place.’

  ‘He’s an old lover, isn’t he?’ Dora smiled at her with all the wisdom of her sixteen years.

  ‘Do you want to go to Moscow?’

  ‘Do you want to go, Mama?’

  ‘Answer my question first.’ How hard it was to remain patient.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  It was an instinctive reaction, given without thought, as if she was saying no to the offer of a cup of tea.

  ‘There may be greater opportunities there.’

  ‘You’ve always told me how much you hated Moscow, so I can’t believe you want me to go. I wouldn’t go without you. You must have some other reason for asking me.’

  ‘Things may get difficult here.’

  Why was she unable to tell Dora the truth? There will be an uprising and people will get killed. Stay, and we risk our lives.

  ‘When will the uprising come? That’s all we talk of at school. It will come, won’t it?’

  She caught the excitement in Dora’s voice and her heart stopped with apprehension. Would the young never learn?

  ‘It’s not a game, Dora. If it happens, it will be serious. People will die.’

  ‘Are you telling me I’d be safer in Moscow?’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘How can you say that? Look at what the Soviets have done to this country. How can you expect me to side with them?’

  ‘Doctors save lives, they don’t take sides.’

  ‘One day I’d have to come back to Budapest, and then what would happen? Everyone would know I had fled at the first hint of danger. What would my friends think of me? What would I think of myself? Of course I don’t want to go.’

  She turned to her daughter and drew her into her arms, holding her close.

  ‘It’s not what your friends might think that matters, it’s what I would have thought if you’d agreed.’

  ‘Then why ask me?’

  She held Dora’s head against her, rocking her gently as she spoke.

  ‘If you’re old enough to be a victim of these terrible times, then you’re old enough to make up your own mind about the future.’

  *

  ‘Your decision is very unwise.’

  He had arrived a few moments after Dora’s departure. He must have known it was the evening of her class’s political instruction and that she would not return before ten.

  ‘It’s what Dora wants and I agree with her.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to believe that you had no influence on this, do you?’

  ‘It was her decision.’

  ‘You can’t have put it to her properly. If you had she would have accepted.’

  ‘How can you say that? You don’t know Dora.’

  ‘She’s as much my daughter as yours.’

  She bit her lip in an effort to keep her temper. ‘Biologically that may be true. But I bore her. I brought her up. I looked after her. You can’t suddenly reappear after all this time and tell me what she might or might not think. She has a mind of her own which you know nothing about.’

  ‘Of course she has,’ he said bitterly. ‘She’s all of sixteen.’

  Was he mocking her, or serious?

  ‘I will put it to her myself,’ Alexei said.

  6

  He must have been crying in his sleep because when Eva woke him, his cheeks were wet and there was a damp patch on the pillow.

  ‘What is it, Bobby? What’s happened?’

  He had no idea why he was weeping. She took his hand and held it against her cheek, murmuring his name.

  ‘I can’t stop myself,’ he said, choking as he spoke the words. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘If there’s a poison inside you,’ she said, ‘you must let it come out.’

  He knew he had been dreaming but he had no recollection of what his dream had been about. He was aware of a feeling of dread, that something awful was about to happen and that his tears were connected with what he feared. Then he remembered. The sights he had seen in his mind were too terrible to reveal to her.

  I dreamed you were dead, he wanted to tell her. I was holding you in my arms, trying to warm your body, bring you back to life.

  She held him against her. ‘I’m here with you. I’m not going away.’

  He felt the living warmth of her body, his head against her breast, her arms round him, protecting him, shielding him from a world he no longer understood.

  7

  The police car drew up outside the embassy shortly before four in the afternoon. A uniformed officer got out. He walked round the car to open the passenger door on the driver’s side. A pale, crumpled figure emerged blinking into the sunlight. He was dressed in a shirt and trousers and he carried a brown paper bag. The officer took him by the arm and guided him towards the front door of the embassy. The duty guard came out to meet them. There was a short exchange. The guard escorted the small man into the embassy building. The police officer returned to his car and was driven off. As he did so, he looked at his watch. The handover of the prisoner had taken no more than ninety seconds.

  *

  The telephone rang in Martineau’s office. ‘Mr Leman’s here, sir. He’s been released,’ Mason said. ‘It’s a bloody miracle, if you ask me.’

  Martineau ran down the stairs, followed by Hart. Randall was already greeting Leman. ‘This is a surprise,’ he said, shaking his hand.

  ‘For both of us.’

  ‘Well, you’re back on friendly soil now,’ Randall said. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

  Leman looked lost, confused, uncertain what he should do. ‘Do you know why I’ve been freed?’

  ‘We’re not completely clear, but we’re getting news that Rakosi’s been recalled to Moscow and the new government has declared an amnesty for all political prisoners. Looks like your lucky day, doesn’t it?’ Randall smiled condescendingly. ‘Hugh, would you see that Mr Leman has everything he needs? I think the Counting Room might be coolest at this time of day, don’t you? I’ll join you in a moment.’

  *

  The Counting Room was dark as the blinds
had been pulled down against the morning sun. Hart let them up and afternoon light flooded the room.

  ‘Is there anything you need?’ he asked ‘You don’t have any cyanide pills, do you?’

  ‘It’s all right. You’re not in prison now.’

  It was the same Leman, no question, the man who’d taught him Russian at Cambridge all those years ago.

  ‘Will they want to question me?’ Leman asked. He was lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘Our people? Sure to.’

  ‘Here or in London?’

  ‘Probably both.’

  ‘They filmed my confession,’ Leman said. ‘I don’t know whether you know that.’

  ‘We’ve seen it. You didn’t imagine the Soviets would keep it under wraps, did you?’

  Leman put his head in his hands. ‘What was the reaction?’

  ‘Hostile.’

  ‘You don’t think I did it voluntarily, do you?’

  ‘Look,’ Hart said, ‘you can’t expect people at home to understand what these bastards are like.’

  ‘They gave me an impossible choice. I had only a few moments to make up my mind. Can you imagine that?’ Leman spoke as if he still could not come to terms with what he had been asked to do.

  ‘Don’t talk about it now. You ought to try to get some rest.’

  ‘If people don’t understand why I did it, there’s no point in going on. I’ve nothing left.’

  Hart saw the full measure of the man’s misery. Now that the need to survive in prison had been removed, all his self-control was slipping away.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he said, suddenly.

  Leman looked up at him. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Cambridge. Years ago. You taught me Russian for a term. Hugh Hart.’

  Leman stared at him, as if he was part of another life that he never expected to revisit. ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it. Hugh Hart.’

  For the first time Leman smiled, as if he was being thawed by the memories of a past they had briefly shared.

  THE SWIMMING POOL IN THE DYNAMO STADIUM, MOSCOW

  September 1940

  She stands on the balcony watching a young girl swimming backstroke, her coach following her progress, a stopwatch in his hand. He keeps pace with her, giving encouragement and instruction. Only a few weeks ago she might have been the swimmer, with Matyas and his shiny-covered black book shouting at her to keep her form, to forget her exhaustion, to give him one last burst, and Alexei standing not far from where she is now, watching her whenever he could.

  This is the first time she has returned to the swimming pool since that terrible night. She knows that if she is to have any kind of life she must face up to what has happened, however distressing.

  ‘Why won’t you see him?’ Julia had asked repeatedly in those first days when she was in hospital. ‘He begs you to change your mind. He’s desperate to see you.’

  She had refused then, and she continues to refuse. Julia does not seem to understand that the woman who belonged to Alexei no longer exists. The young girl, the swimmer from Hungary, who lived in the water like a fish and made Osanova, the great Soviet champion, look ordinary, will never be seen again. That was the woman who loved Alexei, but she died that night a few weeks ago in this pool. The woman who stands here now is different. Nothing Alexei can say will change that.

  The girl is hanging on to the side of the pool, looking up as her coach demonstrates with his arms how she can improve her technique. How far away it all seems, those days when she clung to the side and listened to Matyas; memories through a clouded glass. Someone’s else’s life. Someone else’s identity.

  ‘What about the baby?’ Julia asks. ‘Is that not Alexei’s too?’

  What she meant was, how can you refuse to see the father of your child? At first, the doctors had thought she would lose her baby, but she had willed herself to keep it, talking to it in her mind, giving it an identity (she knew it was a girl and she called it Dora), a name, a purpose in her life. If she had no life of her own, then she would make a new life through her daughter.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Dora is all I have left of myself.’

  She puts her hand on her stomach and feels the movement beneath the skin.

  *

  ‘There is something I must tell you.’

  Julia leans above her and lowers her voice so she cannot be heard by anyone else in the ward.

  It is late August, dose to midnight, near the end of the first year of her enforced exile in Moscow. The heatwave is unrelenting. The tarmac melts. The walk of buildings are hot to the touch. The water from the cold taps runs lukewarm. The city bums. She is standing on the balcony that overlooks the swimming pool in the deserted Dynamo Stadium. Below, the water is still and deep blue. Floating on its surface are what look like burning suns, the reflections of the lights which have been left on, and the treelike shadow of the diving board. The air is humid and stifling, thick with the smell of chlorine.

  Three naked bodies float face down in the swimming pool where she has swum so often, three young men, none of them more than eighteen, their heads shaven because they are conscripts, their arms tattooed. Their hands and feet have been bound tightly and their throats cut, in each case down to the spinal column, a single movement powerfully delivered from behind. No bloody clouds discolour the water around their necks and shoulders because the lives of these three young men bled away elsewhere. It was sometime after they had been killed that their bodies were pushed into the pool. None of them shows any sign of a struggle. Death was unexpected and instantaneous.

  *

  She never saw the bodies. All she knows is what Julia told her. She is certain that the men who raped her are dead, that Alexei killed them, that because they are conscripts no one will care that they are dead. Alexei will never be found guilty, probably he will not be suspected, but she will know, she will know in her heart that the father of her daughter is a murderer. The instinct that made her want him to stay away from her, to have nothing more to do with her, is right. She cannot love a killer, even a man who avenges the terrible thing they did to her.

  ‘He wants to see you,’ Julia said each time she came to visit her. ‘He doesn’t understand why you refuse.’

  ‘Never,’ Eva replied. Never, never, never.

  15

  1

  He was standing at the window, his back to her, looking out on the deserted street. He must have been there for some time because the sheets on his side of the bed were cold. Had he slept at all? Should she try to comfort him? Did he want to be left alone? His silence left her confused, unsure of herself, unsure of him. Did he still want her? He had done nothing, said nothing, to convince her one way or the other. He seemed frightened to approach her.

  The reunion had not been as she had imagined in those lonely moments when she had allowed herself to believe that Joe would come back. The endless waiting in the brightly lit room while he was escorted from his plane to meet his parents; the terrifying presence of the journalists waiting for Joe to appear; the talkative policeman whose efforts at keeping up her spirits only made it worse (‘Don’t worry, miss, we’ll get you away from those hyenas’); the effort of will to resist looking at her watch or counting the seconds, and then Esther opening the door.

  ‘He keeps asking me, is Anna there? That’s all he says, all the time.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll see him when he’s ready.’

  Then suddenly he was there, standing behind his mother, staring at her, a thin pale figure, so familiar and yet so strange.

  ‘Anna.’

  She reached out and took his hand. How cold it was, how dry the skin.

  ‘We should make a move now, miss,’ the policeman’s hand was on her elbow, gently guiding her forward, ‘if we’re going to give them the slip.’

  Throughout those few agonizing moments, Joe had said nothing, only her name and that just once. He had not embraced her, kissed her, taken her in his arms. He had not squeezed her han
d. As she looked at his diminished figure she knew that his experience had destroyed him, broken his spirit in a way she couldn’t imagine. If he was to return to her, she would have to be very patient.

  ‘We ought to go,’ she said, taking charge. ‘I’ve arranged for a car; it’s at the back entrance.’

  As they were driven away, Joe packed tightly in the back between Esther and Manny, Esther held on to his hand tightly and murmured under her breath. Anna was unable to make out if they were prayers of thanks or imprecations against those who had done this terrible thing to her son. Joe did not speak once on their journey. If she was aware of being an intruder in the car, the emotion became overwhelming when they arrived in Strutton Ground. She made her excuses, said she would come back for Joe later, and left.

  *

  At Moore Street, she had given him something to eat, they had talked about nothing in particular and then he had walked around the house, opening drawers, taking out books, examining the evidence of his previous life. His actions described the agony in his mind. He was rediscovering what he had never expected to see again, reconstructing the elements of his life that he had killed off when he was in prison in order to preserve his sanity. She had left him to it and gone to bed, waiting for him in the dark. Much later, he had crawled in beside her. They did not touch as he lay there, silent and wide awake.

  Now he was standing by the window.

  You’ll get cold, she wanted to say. She wanted to remind him who she was, to tell him she loved him, that she wanted to take away his pain, relieve his suffering, anything to break the barriers of his experience and bring herself back into his life. But she knew that if she broke the silence, if she made a single move, she would lose him. He had to be left alone to find himself in the way he chose. This now was her test as much as his.

  She felt miserable and helpless, but she remained still and silent.

  ‘I may have been responsible for a young woman’s death. Can you imagine that?’

  It was all he told her but it was enough. Even a confession could not have told her more. He needed her. She was sure of it now. What he was telling her was that she alone could bring him back from the dead. She got out of bed, took his hand in hers and held it tight, praying that the warmth in her body would spread to his.