The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘Not that.’

  He stared ahead. She sat down on the edge of the chair, the clock in front of her, John’s face distorted through its glass. She went cold, as the truth rose like the sun on the horizon.

  ‘Are you in with the Russians?’ she said. ‘Did you befriend me so they could get to me? Seduce me on their orders?’

  He sat, unmoving, expressionless save for a muscle twitching in his cheek. He opened his lips as if to speak, clammed them shut as he lifted his hands to cover his face. She leaped up, pulling out her cigarettes, throwing five on the floor.

  ‘Take your filthy money back.’ She grabbed the clock, chucking the rest of the packet at him. ‘Keep the rest, too, give it to the Russians. Settle the debt, you cynical bastard.’

  She ran out of the door, down the stairs, onto the street, John’s voice echoing after her. Stop. Betty, please.

  Round the corner, into Bloomsbury Way. John had manipulated her in cold blood. What debt did John owe the Russians? What terror had they injected in him that he would sacrifice her to save his own skin? Or was he just a scheming reptile without a qualm? Or deranged? She should have recognised that the first time they met, with his bouts of frenzied tremors. This Russian could be a figment of his imagination.

  Lieselotte. Her beloved sister, murdered. Why? Why? It happened often enough at the end, she knew that. But every murdered woman was someone’s sister, mother, daughter. Not another body. Had she struggled before she was plunged into darkness? There had always been a sliver of hope that perhaps somehow she had survived, would turn up, Hallo, meine Bettelein, although that hope had grown smaller with every day and year that passed until it was no more than a pinprick on the horizon.

  Betty stopped. She was tired of running. Tired of running from him. She looked at the clock, at its familiar shape, the worn chrome, the chipped II on the Roman numerals of its face. Her sweaty fingers had left greasy prints. Her father had never asked about his clock collection, any more than he’d asked about what happened to his family, or to Germany.

  She was about to set off again when she spotted him.

  Vasily. Walking in the opposite direction, on the other side of the street. There was no mistaking him. She froze, ice sliding down the follicles of her skin. He’d bulked up since she last saw him, his weeping sores now pitted scars. He limped, a stiffness in his leg, as if a muscle or a tendon had been severed, or a bone chipped, once. He passed by, not noticing her. He turned into Bury Place.

  If he suspected she was there, he didn’t show it, his eyes focused forward. She stood on the corner, checking her watch, peering along the street as if waiting for someone. She saw him stop at the door to John’s rooms. Ring the bell. He pulled out something from his jacket and for a moment she thought it could be a gun before he disappeared into the building and she saw it was a bottle.

  She could hear in her mind the thud of his tread as he stumbled up the broken stairwell in Mitte, the scratch of the key in the door. Of course. Strange how memory plays tricks, how it buries a detail so deep that only the right trigger releases it, like the secret compartment in Mutti’s bureau, levers pressed in sequence before the big reveal.

  He’d had the key to their apartment. He and Boris always entered from the service door. But he’d come through the front door. The key could only have been taken from Lieselotte. She kept it on a chain around her neck. Had he taken it from her after she was dead, or before? Or had John taken it, and given it to him? She stared down the street to John’s doorway. Nothing made sense except the terror of those memories, a frozen axe that stilled her nerves. She saw him as he lurched towards her, felt his hands grab her crotch as he lifted her onto the bike.

  He had come for her that morning. Not Lieselotte. Her.

  The Russian was real. It was Vasily, and John was in cahoots with him. John claimed he was protecting her. How could she trust him? He could be playing for time, ready to deliver her. She couldn’t imagine what business they would want with her father. But she could see what business Vasily might want with her.

  Betty was breathless, her heart heavy in her chest, its hefty drum thumping the beat. She swallowed, shut her eyes for a second, organising her thoughts. Dee had made her promise to think very hard about her decision. The embryo inside her was no larger than her little fingernail, a tumbling mass of cells and glands and fluids. She couldn’t forgive John. Ever.

  There was a telephone box in Southampton Row. She opened the door, waited while the stench of piss and cigarettes billowed out, took out the four pennies that she kept for emergency phone calls, and the number from Dee which she’d slipped into her wallet for safekeeping.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  London: September 1958

  Of all the young women he could have met in Berlin, and London, for them to have been sisters beat all odds. Did Anatoly know they were sisters? If he did, that made it more urgent than ever. He couldn’t see now how he could win her trust. She’d rushed away so fast, he hadn’t time to think. He had lost her forever.

  The cigarettes were on the floor. Not quite Judas money, but tainted nonetheless. One had snapped as she’d pulled it out of the packet and lay with its tobacco in flecks around it, golden pollen on his shabby brown linoleum. He scooped it up with his hand, threw it in the fireplace.

  Was there a likeness between the two, something that had drawn him to both? They didn’t look like sisters – different builds, different complexions. Beyond that? He hadn’t had time to know Lieselotte but he’d thought of her as light-headed, a dreamer, a fantasist, perhaps. Betty was serious, committed, ambitious. He knew so little about her, too. Why hadn’t she told him who she was? Why hadn’t she said at the outset, I am German? But then, even now, so many years after the war, emotions ran high. People took a long time to forget, or to forgive. Krauts. Nazis. Hun. Bosche. If he had been in her place, he’d have probably kept quiet too so no one could point a finger, would have done his utmost to speak English without an accent. Not easy for a German to do that, though she’d been a child when she learned. That helped. Besides, who was open at the end of the war, or honest? Whose voices were muffled because there was no vocabulary for horror, whose muted out of guilt or self-protection? All of history was masked, a mass lying. Lying in wait. Hoist up the biggest guns in Nuremberg and let them swing for their sins, but leave the everyday man with no accounting.

  He had nothing to report. Anatoly could whistle in the wind. But John’s job had got a whole lot harder.

  The doorbell clanged, echoing through the hall and stairwell. Perhaps Betty had changed her mind, come back for more information. Bob usually got the outside door, but he must be out. The bell rang again. John went down the stairs, strode across the hall, pulled the lock.

  Anatoly whipped out a bottle of vodka from his inside pocket as John opened the door. He strode past without invitation and began to climb the stairs to John’s flat. He’d never been before, but he knew where he was going.

  John wasn’t used to spirits. He couldn’t read the Cyrillic lettering on the label, but Anatoly said it didn’t matter. This was courtesy of the Soviet embassy. He’d never be able to buy it here. Not this quality. Only in the Soviet Union. Pride of the diplomatic corps. Wheat and rye. Bay and caraway. It made him happy, relaxed.

  ‘You went away in the summer,’ Anatoly said. His English had improved since Berlin and although his accent was thick, his grammar and syntax were correct. ‘Were you on holiday? We couldn’t find you. Were you somewhere nice?’

  John wasn’t sure whether he was bluffing or not. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They hadn’t traced him, he had been safe.

  ‘Yes,’ John said.

  ‘Would you recommend it?’

  ‘That depends on what sort of holiday you like,’ John said. He’d lie if necessary. Claim he walked the pilgrims’ route from Oslo to Trondheim. Four hundred miles. He’d give him a daily account if he wanted. Bore the pants off him. ‘Why are you here?’
>
  Anatoly shifted in his seat, looked at the bookcase. ‘You have a gap in your shelves,’ he said. ‘As if something has been removed.’

  ‘I had some pottery,’ John said, thinking fast. ‘Leach. But I broke it.’ He shrugged, added, ‘Irreparably.’

  ‘A shame. Always a shame if one loses something precious,’ Anatoly said. He raised his glass, a sherry glass, the smallest John could muster. ‘Za vstrechu,’ he said. ‘To our meeting.’ He swallowed it in one go, reached for the bottle. ‘To refresh,’ he said, topping up his and John’s glass. ‘Tell me, how long has it been since we renewed our acquaintance?’

  ‘You know as well as I,’ John said.

  ‘And where have we got to?’

  ‘I cannot do this.’

  ‘You helped us before,’ Anatoly said, lifting his glass again and eyeing the vodka. He rubbed his finger round the rim of the glass until it squealed. ‘Did your handlers know?’ He leaned back, smiled.

  They knew so much and no more. Operation Birdcage. SIS took the photos. John delivered them. Until the day he was given two instructions, one for MI6 and one for himself, and he knew that they knew he was a double agent. He’d panicked. After all, Major Goodfellow had spelled out what would happen to him if the Russians rumbled him. Best to keep them on side, so he gave them the information they wanted, slid his carbon copies between the pages of the Deutsche Volkszeitung alongside the false information from MI6. The Russians returned the copies the following week, and he filed them away in their proper folder in the proper drawer of the proper filing cabinet with no one the wiser. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, and he’d only done it the once. He wished he could say it was for a higher motive, a cause he believed in. It wasn’t important information, he knew. The Russians had been testing him. He’d done it out of fear, and that was no defence.

  Espionage. Was that a capital offence? Did MI6 know? Possibly. They’d pulled him out sharpish after all, packed him off to Nuremberg. They must have had people in Russian intelligence, monitoring what John was sending. What if MI6 didn’t know he’d double-crossed his own side? That was the sort of insider information the GRU would know. And use. The Soviets kept close tabs on them all, sometimes even the ones who’d turned, held at arm’s length, ready to be reined in or reused when the time came. Or left to the wolves. The British did the same. Only in his case, John knew, his father’s name had protected him then. For God’s sake, he hadn’t even come of age, was still a minor in the eyes of the law. He was on his own now, in a place he never wished to revisit. This was a subterranean world of bottom feeders and if he rose to the surface, he’d be fed to the sharks. MI6 wouldn’t come to his rescue, not this time. He thought he had escaped it all, pursuing the quiet life of a nondescript schoolmaster, albeit one with war damage. Nothing that tilted at mental illness, though, just enough to garner sympathy and not the sack.

  ‘We were a little unsubtle before,’ Anatoly said. ‘We didn’t win you to our cause.’

  Murder and blackmail. Not good arguments.

  ‘I take it you have not double-crossed me this time?’ he said. ‘Because if you have, that would be a very foolish move.’

  John shook his head, eyes fixed on his glass.

  ‘We are impressed with your commitment to peace,’ Anatoly went on. ‘Your activities with CND, for instance. The Direct Action Committee.’

  John swallowed hard so his Adam’s apple grated against his collar. He coughed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  ‘Drink up,’ Anatoly said. ‘Clear the throat.’ John raised his glass, sipped. ‘If you sip it,’ Anatoly said, ‘you will get drunk. Did you know that? Alcohol is absorbed quicker through the tongue than the gut. That is why we Russians gulp it. Straight down the hatch, as you British say.’ He lifted the glass, swallowed it in one go, nodded to John to do the same.

  John had always been wary of vodka, a rough spirit of doubtful provenance, but this was an altogether different drink, mellow and refined. He looked at the bottle. There was nothing to indicate its strength, but it packed a punch at least as heavy as whisky or brandy. He liked it, its dry, aromatic taste. John smiled, waited as Anatoly topped the glass again.

  ‘We are a peaceful people,’ Anatoly said. ‘We Soviets. A socialist democracy. A true democracy.’ He leaned back in his chair, pulling out his cigarettes, nodding. ‘There is no such thing as an aggressive democracy.’

  ‘What about Hungary?’ John said. ‘Wasn’t that an act of aggression?’

  Anatoly laughed, dragging on his cigarette, picking tobacco off his lip. ‘What information have you been fed? That was no aggression. We intervened to save our comrades, like a father pulls a child from a burning fire. Who do you think is the greatest threat to peace?’

  Anatoly’s cigarette had burned down, giving off a foul acrid smell with an arc of ash which fell, dusting Anatoly’s trousers. Anatoly brushed it off as John grabbed the ashtray from the mantelpiece, placed it on the arm of Anatoly’s chair.

  ‘Well?’ Anatoly went on. ‘I’ll tell you. The greatest threat to peace comes from the capitalist powers in the West and their ruthless pursuit of cheap labour and ready markets. Of profit. What is imperialism if not capitalism with pomp? What is NATO if not a war machine for the bankers?’

  He stubbed out his cigarette but a strand remained alive, glowing red in the deepening gloom of the room.

  ‘Who has caused more wars since 1917? The socialist states, or the imperialist states?’

  John had no ready answer.

  ‘Let me list a few,’ Anatoly went on, holding up his hand. ‘The Irish War of Independence.’ He bent down his little finger. ‘The Italian invasion of Abyssinia.’ Ring finger. ‘The wars against fascism in Spain, Europe, the world.’ Middle finger. ‘The Korean war.’ Forefinger. ‘Kenya, Malaya, Egypt. The struggle for independence against the imperial invaders.’

  John nodded. He had no sympathy with the British Empire and every sympathy with the underdog, an unfashionable view, he knew, and one he kept to himself at school, especially on Empire Day with all its jingoism and Cadet Corps lads strutting round the playground reliving the Zulu wars.

  ‘Is it any wonder that the Soviet Union sought to defend itself? To surround itself with allies? That is all the Warsaw Pact is, a buffer against the innate aggression of NATO. What is it you say, one for all and all for one?’ Anatoly paused and smiled, swallowing down another glass of vodka, refilling his glass. John stayed still.

  ‘So when the Hungarians wanted to leave the Warsaw Pact, we had a duty to protect them from themselves.’ He paused. ‘What would happen if Britain, say, withdrew from NATO? Do you not think the Americans would object?’

  ‘They wouldn’t invade,’ John said.

  ‘No?’ Anatoly said, holding up his hand again. ‘Look at history, my friend. Past and present. Puerto Rico. Nicaragua. Costa Rica. Guatemala. Paraguay. Shall I go on?’

  ‘They didn’t invade,’ John said.

  ‘True,’ Anatoly said. ‘They used their money to pull strings behind the scenes, to topple any government that was not in their interests. Even in the British Empire.’ He paused. John was out of his depth. ‘British Guiana. Jamaica. The British are supposed to be their allies.’

  John held up his hands. ‘I take your point,’ he said, his words slurring. Another vodka would settle his nerves. He reached forward, lifted the glass. ‘Down the hatch.’

  ‘The only way peace can be secured is to match strength with strength,’ Anatoly said, pulling out another foul cigarette from its packet and lighting it. John could smell the lighter fuel, as if his senses were on fire.

  ‘We don’t like nuclear weapons,’ Anatoly added. ‘No sane person does. But we have to defend ourselves. It’s a war of nerves, a game of chicken, but if the West don’t believe us, then what is the point?’ He smiled. ‘You are very quiet, my friend. I think it is because you have no answer.’

  John looked over Anatoly’s shoulder, at the empty space on the shelf
. It was almost dark, though he resisted turning on the light. He wanted the anonymity of gloom. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘It is simple, comrade.’ John felt his gut twitch. Anatoly was including him in his world. ‘We have the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Perhaps the Americans signed because they are in the weaker position. We can fire a nuclear missile at Washington. Sputnik made that clear. Of course, give them a few months, and they’ll catch up. We could destroy each other. Stalemate. But we would like to develop other missiles, shorter-range, that threaten the United States forces in Europe or Asia, before they attack us…’ He pulled out another cigarette, pointing it at John. ‘You can fire missiles at our cities, and we would like to fire at yours.’ He dragged in the smoke, exhaled. John watched as it unfurled and drifted into the night air.

  He sensed Anatoly lean forward, could tell his position by the light of his cigarette, circling in the gloom.

  ‘We need your expertise to boost our own.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ John said. ‘I’m a schoolteacher. Not a physicist.’

  ‘But you have the ear of a physicist’s daughter, and she is sympathetic to our cause.’

  ‘You seem very sure,’ John said. ‘How do you know that?’

  Anatoly nodded, that same foxy nod he’d given the Russian major at the bridge in Berlin.

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ John said. ‘You know nothing about her except that she wants to rid the world of nuclear weapons.’ He caught Anatoly’s eye, fixed his gaze. ‘And that includes the Soviet Union. If you think she’s a route to her father, you must be mad. She won’t even talk to him.’

  The cigarette tar hissed as Anatoly stubbed it out, and John heard him swallow the last of his vodka.

  ‘She is your conduit. Your only route.’ He stood up, walked over to the window and looked out, before sidling back into his seat.