Russian Hide-and-Seek

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Not one of those bursts, please. At this range, one shot ought to be…’

  ‘We mustn’t inconvenience the servants. A liberal to the last. No, don’t yell for help, or you get a burst in the stomach straight away.

  ‘I swear to you… I don’t know what you’ve done in the past hour, but believe me it’s allowed for, it can’t make any difference.’

  ‘I don’t mind taking the gamble.’

  ‘Alexander, if you surrender now, lay down your arms and give yourself up, the civilian police would do, it needn’t be Vanag’s men…

  ‘Oh, so we’re doing deals, are we?’

  ‘I’ll never bargain with you. This is all so absurd. You and I should be on the same side. Why didn’t you approach me, why didn’t you try to recruit me?’

  ‘You weren’t worth having. As is now plain.’.

  That seemed to go unheard. ‘It’s not too late. Let me join you now. I could be very valuable to you. There are all sorts of-’

  ‘You know, at first I wasn’t sure I could do this, but a touch of your style works wonders. Time well spent. Good-bye, Controller Petrovsky.’

  Alexander’s glance had become remote when he pointed the pistol. There had been no more thunder since the mighty peal and everything was quiet. The Controller fell to his knees and lifted his clasped hands, saying loudly,

  ‘You can’t do it! Your own father! Who gave you life! You must be raving mad! You’ll never forgive yourself! What good will it do? They’ll shoot you for it! You can tell them you couldn’t find me!’ Petrovsky in his turn was running out of things to say, but he battled on. ‘Think of… think of your mother! Think what it would mean to her! To have her son murder her husband in cold blood! You may hate me, though I can’t think why, I’ve always done my best for you, but she in her goodness and…’

  Suddenly Alexander remembered Leo writhing and screaming with pain and fear on the roll of bunting in the store-house that night. He had no intention of giving his father cause to behave in any such way, but the memory was so vivid and distracting that he had begun to wander from his aim when the door burst open to reveal Lomov. Before Alexander could finish turning and raising his pistol at him Lomov shot him through the temple – a single shot. He was dead at once, though the impact of the small low-velocity bullet was slight and it took a moment for his body to finish falling on to the tiger-skin rug that had come from the shore of the Aral Sea.

  Cautiously, Lomov advanced into the room, keeping his pistol trained on Alexander until he was sure he was dead. Then he burst into tears.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Petrovsky, getting shakily to his feet.

  ‘He was my officer,’ Lomov managed to say.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘He brought us. He told us… Forgive me, your honour.’

  Petrovsky put his arm round Lomov’s shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, my boy,’ he said kindly. ‘You did what had to be done. You saved the regiment’s honour. Colonel Tabidze will be proud of you. You’re an excellent soldier, quick-thinking and efficient.’

  From somewhere very far away Lomov heard the deep note of a bell, but he was too distracted to take any notice. He dried his tears.

  By then, others had come to the room, including the butler Anatol, the batman Brevda, Nina, Tatiana, Lyubimov. There was much talk and sound of lamentation. Anatol looked utterly bewildered, Brevda utterly discomposed. Nina went into a corner by herself. Tatiana knelt down and looked into Alexander’s face; someone had already closed his eyes and the wound was not so terrible. Lyubimov talked quietly to Lomov.

  After a minute, Petrovsky drew his wife aside, sending her a look of diffident appeal.

  ‘What is it, Sergei?’

  ‘Don’t say…’ He stopped.

  ‘Say what? Why should it make any difference what I say now, rather than at any other time?’

  When he made no reply, she turned away and went to Nina.

  At last it began to rain.

  21

  Director Vanag sat in the passenger’s seat of a converted Range Rover parked in a field about thirty metres from a thick wood; the trees were mostly eucalyptus, poplar, Douglas fir and other quick-growing species. His regular driver, a flat-faced man with closely-shorn grey hair, sat beside him. They did not speak. In eleven years they never had, except for the passing of instructions and functional information. The recent storms had lowered the temperature and the humidity, and the weather was now more seasonable, mild and sunny with cool breezes. It was seven-twenty in the morning.

  Establishing this by a glance at his wrist-dial, Vanag climbed into the back of the vehicle. The uniform he wore today differed from the usual run in having large patch pockets. He rubbed his hands and looked expectantly towards the wood. The early sunlight sparkled on the many raindrops that hung about the boughs and leaves, making a pleasant picture. Then they started coming, half a dozen wood-pigeons in an irregular line, flying fast, climbing fast. But Vanag was ready for them. He sent three short bursts of 7.55-millimetre steel-jacketed bullets up at them and knocked one down with the second; the bird lifted as if kicked in the breast and fell turning over and over. For his second sweep he had to increase the angle a good deal and missed altogether, but by then a group of mallards, slower and nearer the ground, had turned up from the pond in the wood, and he got two of them.

  The weapon was a replica of a 1 950s Red Fleet anti-aircraft light machine-gun on a ring mounting. A contact who knew of his interest in such matters had picked it up almost complete in a Trieste museum and had it flown home. Vanag had had it stripped down and copied and the copy installed in the back of the Range Rover with a raised chair attached. The thing was ideal for his purposes: easy to handle, reasonably accurate and with a rate of fire too low for the hosing technique possible with more modern weapons, which in his view were not for the sportsman. The ammunition had to be specially made in Birmingham, but that was no problem, any more than raising volunteers to put the birds up for him was a problem.

  He was changing magazines when his eye was caught by a movement at the edge of the wood. It soon resolved itself into a rabbit running from the approach of the beaters. Vanag clipped the fresh magazine into place as quickly as he could and swung the muzzle, but in those few seconds the rabbit had come far enough towards him not to be reachable by the machine-gun even if he depressed it to its limit. Instinct for shelter took the creature under the belly of the Range Rover. There it stayed. He got off the firing-chair, took from its hook the heavy old revolver he kept by him for just such unpredictable crises as this, and jumped to the ground. It was not an easy shot, with the wheels and differential casings to avoid, but the rabbit helped by immediately freezing, and quite soon it had no head. In that short interval he had lost a lot of birds; never mind, plenty more were coming.

  His final bag, apart from the rabbit, was five pigeons, four ducks and a hen pheasant. The last was as much as he usually allowed himself on this shoot; the population was dropping and the birds, with their lumbering flight and low ‘rate of climb, were almost too easy to bring down. This morning’s kill lay not far off; it had taken the better part of a full burst and was almost shorn in two. Like the other carcasses, it would not be moved from where it had fallen; beyond a little veal at times, he touched no meat, and that was an end of it.

  He got back into the front seat and the driver started the engine. They had finished here; they were going where they always went at such times. Where they went was Vanag’s imposing Georgian mansion near Newport Pagnell. There his armourer took the machine-gun and the revolver off for cleaning, his valet helped him to change into a tunic of more conventional cut, a third servant brought him a cup of coffee and a rusk on a silver tray, and his living-in secretary went through the new Harrods’ catalogue with him. By the time he was back in the forecourt the Range Rover had disappeared and the Rolls, gleaming in black and silver, awaited him. It was bullet-proofed, but that was nothing but a pleasing anachronism in deference to hi
s position; he no more expected to be shot at than a ceremonial sentry expects to find himself bayoneting someone. He climbed in; the driver shut the door.

  By eight-twenty-eight he was entering the former town hall, now the offices of the 88th Chief Security Directorate. His first stop was the information screen, but as he had expected there was nothing there that was both new and significant, and he waved away the print-out offered him by a clerk. Next, a call to his office-secretary; nothing there either. Then he took a lift to the second floor. Two armed guards were present on the landing, armed not with bayonets and such but with automatic weapons of the very sort he eschewed in his sporting activities, carried at the ready, too. Another pair stood outside a barred double door. Vanag walked past them and down a narrow corridor to a smaller door, also guarded. Beyond this door a flight of stairs led up on to a narrow stage; he ran nimbly up the stairs and made his way to a lectern near the back. On the reading surface of this he laid a single sheet of notes. The wall behind him carried a large map of the world with the Union in red, allies in blue, unincorporated democratic republics in green and neutralised states in yellow.

  He was standing in a lecture-theatre that held about a hundred and fifty people. The benches were filled with men (a few women, but mostly men) who were unshaven and tousle-headed and even dirtier than usual. Their expressions were frightened and hostile, mostly frightened. In case what hostility there was should take an active form, eight armed guards all told were stationed round the hall and actually pointing their guns at the audience. Their purpose was not to deter any kind of sudden concerted rush at Vanag by indicating that the first dozen or more to move would certainly die, but to make sure that they would all die long before they got their hands on him. He considered that such a rush was most unlikely; nevertheless, he had founded a highly successful career on the principle of always being on the safe side.

  ‘Well, I must say I don’t get a hell of a lot in the way of a sense of achievement when I contemplate you crowd,’ he began without preamble (and without accent) in his clear, high-pitched voice. ‘A bit too much like robbing the blind school for my taste. Shame to take the money, really. But since I want you to understand me I won’t go on in the language of the nation you were prepared to make such sacrifices for. Now I got some of you up here to have a proper look at you. I couldn’t have seen you at all well in the basement. I’m afraid it isn’t very comfortable there, but then you see it isn’t supposed to be. That’s not the idea. Anyway, it means you probably appreciate being up here instead for a short time. I’m sorry it will only be a short time. Even so we have had some rather tedious precautions to take, as you can see. But I thought it was worth it for the sake of getting a proper look at some of you.’

  Director Vanag moved his eyes along the benches before him, no doubt conscientiously doing as he had said. As he did so he began to shake with laughter, then to utter peals of it, hunching his small body and banging with his fist on the lectern. He seemed to be venting an amusement that was quite untouched by malice, like one enjoying the antics of an exceptionally gifted comedian. At least one person in the audience had heard that laughter on a different occasion:

  Theodore. His present feelings were such that the behaviour of the man on the platform left them unchanged, as most things would have done.

  After a not very short time Vanag elaborately pulled himself together, cleared his throat and settled his tunic into position. ‘Here is what we paper-merchants call a situation report,’ he said, consulting his notes. ‘It has been quiet everywhere for over forty-eight hours. In fact in most places it has never been anything else but quiet. Moscow: what was known among you as a change of government did not take place. Now as to England. Bristol: an explosion injured four Security personnel, one of them seriously. Sevenoaks: shots were fired at a high-ranking official and a member of his entourage was slightly wounded. Near Scotton, Yorkshire: two army vehicles were set on fire but there were no casualties. And that is all.

  ‘Except in this district. Since three of the five who founded Group 31 were our men, keeping abreast of subsequent developments has hardly taxed our powers to the utmost, and correspondingly we haven’t in general had more than meagre opportunities of displaying anything more than the barest competence.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘Rather dull, in fact. Nothing to push against. Well now, partly by chance, in this district something that was rather more fun became possible: a little conspiracy, using the term in its technical sense, a tiny scheme, a provocation and a deception rolled into one. A provocation is attractive because it has the effect of raising the stakes in a winning game. You’ll understand the force of that in a minute. Anyway, the deception was successful. We succeeded in passing off on you as a list of our men in your organisation what was in fact a list of your own leadership, whom some of you promptly murdered. The provocation was accepted in full.’

  Until now his hearers had sat in silence, whether intent or indifferent, but now fierce murmurs arose among them. Vanag went on as before,

  ‘That had a sort of elegance about it, though in order to succeed it needed stupidity on your part of a quality that you slightly astonished even me by providing. Oh, if you’re wondering whether I’m telling the truth, ask yourselves why I should lie to you. What do I care what you think about anything?’

  This took a moment to sink in. Then there were shouts and screams, and two figures were borne to the ground almost at once and hidden from view. At the very first move the guards had looked at Vanag, who held the palm of his hand towards them. It was not long before, at another signal, the bodies were dragged out and the prisoners driven back to their seats with some roughness, but without the use of more than an occasional gun-butt.

  Vanag waited till all was quiet before shaking with laughter again, this time in silence. ‘You are an amazing lot,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Supposing that had been the conspiracy? Well, it wasn’t, but it might have been, and what then?’ He paused and seemed to consider. ‘It’s remarkable – no, of course it isn’t in the least remarkable, no more than what anybody with the merest speck of sense might have expected. But then none of you have even that. I was going to say it’s appropriate that your cover activity, that Festival, should have been as total and as miserable a failure as your true purpose. Giving back culture. What a bizarre notion. Especially since nobody had it to give in the first place. Not that some of you didn’t take it seriously. Poor Sevadjian led our fellows a devil of a dance, at the theatre till all hours, dashing off to remote spots in search of actors and so on. Able man in his way. Just no sense. Let it be said in your favour that you didn’t do as disastrously as some of the other Festivals. In the south-east, for instance, at a place called Glyndebourne, they put on an opera or a ballet or something using real wild animals, and everyone made such a row that they ran amok and killed five people. English, naturally. Unfortunate, though.

  ‘Well, that’s about all I have to tell you. I thought you’d like to know the position, and as I said I wanted to have a proper look at some of you.’ He pressed his lips together and twitched a couple of times. ‘I realise I’m very lucky, in that I know what to do. I have something to live by – the values and rules of the institution I’m part of and have been part of for many years. Traditions, if you like. Now some of you may argue that those rules and traditions leave a certain amount to be desired, and there may well be something in that. But for me, for us, for these guards, they’re better than nothing, which is what you’ve got. By “you” I mean not only you who are here, or you and your colleagues downstairs, but everyone in this country who isn’t part of Security: the administration, the bureaucrats and their families, all the units of supervision. The army is a bit of an exception but it hasn’t got enough to do. We have plenty to do, and we can do it well or badly; our behaviour has meaning. You, all of you, can’t do anything, from keeping a secret to washing a dish. You can’t even come up with a decent fortune-teller.’ As he said this he looked at Theodore,
who caught the look. ‘By the way, I know you won’t tell anybody I made those nasty remarks about the administrators and the rest. I’m sure I can trust you. Well, if no one has any questions…

  There was a wordless stir among those on the benches. The guards again looked at Vanag, who again showed them his palm. He said earnestly,

  ‘Do feel quite free to ask anything within reason.’

  ‘Please tell us what will happen to us,’ said a voice.

  ‘How terribly thoughtless of me, of course you want to know that. The trouble is, I can’t really give you an answer. It doesn’t rest with me, you see; it’s a matter for the courts. But if you want, let’s call it an educated guess…?’

  ‘Please,’ said the voice.

  ‘Very well. This is where raising the stakes comes in – it really was intolerably feeble of me to forget that. I’m afraid that by accepting the provocation you’ve done yourselves a grave disservice. The judges are bound to take a serious view of those deaths, deaths of criminals, true, but still Russian deaths. Let’s be specific. I think any form of execution can safely be excluded. Yes, I think so. But the setting of any limit to your confinement – almost equally unlikely. So we seem to be left with the question of what form of confinement it might be. I’m pretty sure it will have to be confinement. I’d rule out exile – for those of you who don’t know, exile is enforced residence in one or another Asian locality. Yes, I’m afraid I can’t honestly see it being exile. Exile is what your more fortunate counterparts in less violent districts will suffer. In my prediction. If you’re very unlucky, if the prosecution press hard for it, it’ll be strict régime – a strict-régime labour camp, where the weakest are the luckiest. But… No, my forecast would be a standard labour camp, not too cold. You’re expected to work, not die. I’m told it’s possible to have some sort of life in such places, rather depending on which one it is. Are there any more questions?’