Bearpit

by Brian Freemantle

  Yuri thought the Margueritas were bland and suspected the tacos would give him heartburn; Caroline said wasn’t everything wonderful and Yuri agreed that it was. After the meal they walked aimlessly through the village and Caroline took him to a bar called the Lion’s Head because it sounded English. She went to the toilet while he ordered and as he did so Yuri realized Soviet security would already have alerted Granov of his failure to return at the expected time. After Levin’s defection they’d be very nervous of unaccountable absences but regulations forbade his making any contact from an insecure telephone. They’d just have to sweat. It would mean an inquiry and an official report the following day but Yuri was not really concerned, sure of a satisfactory explanation. Besides which, he was enjoying himself.

  They left after only one drink, and in the uptown cab to their apartments Yuri wondered if Caroline were as curious as he was at what might happen when they got there. She did not appear to be. She went into the block ahead of him, pumped the courtesy light automatically and said: ‘You won’t have any coffee, having just got back. So it looks like my place.’

  As he entered her apartment Yuri saw that it really was exactly like his, but without the strident colour of the Mexican rugs and bed covering. Instead the focal point of her decoration was a series of blown-up photographs and prints of what he presumed to be advertising promotions with which Caroline had been associated. He couldn’t see any illustration involving walking plants.

  The coffee was excellent and she had French brandy and insisted he take the enveloping easy chair while she settled herself upon the bed, legs screwed up beneath her. She said: ‘I’ve had a great evening.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Yuri. Had it been the test he’d set it out to be? He thought so. Successful, too. Nothing positive, producing guidelines. What then? An attitude, he decided: a feeling of becoming comfortable – at ease and apparently accustomed – in what could have been an uncomfortable situation. And he had been uncomfortable, beyond the nervousness that Caroline’s pick-up had not been as casually accidental as it initially appeared. He was at least quite sure now about that: she was an adoptive New Yorker, nothing more.

  ‘Where are you off to tomorrow?’

  He’d already told her he was leaving the following day so it was an innocent enough question. Prepared, he said: ‘Canada. Life-in-the-Rockies type of article.’

  ‘How long do you expect to be away?’

  Yuri hesitated: innocent enough again. He said: ‘It’s never possible to be sure: as long as it takes.’

  ‘Oh.’ She seemed disappointed.

  ‘Weeks rather than months.’ Why had he said that, making some sort of promise? Tonight had been a test, an experiment, and valuable even though it was officially forbidden. He should not – could not – consider anything more.

  ‘So there’ll be other times?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. No! he thought.

  ‘You think I’m a pushy broad?’

  Broad had certainly been a word taught him by the disillusioned American defector. He said: ‘No, I don’t think you are a pushy broad.’

  ‘Want to know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was trying to impress you, with the coke and the tour of New York. All that stuff.’

  Yuri supposed she had succeeded. He was unsure how to respond. He said: ‘Why?’

  She shrugged, seeming embarrassed at the blurted confession. ‘Don’t know. Nervous I guess.’

  ‘And the coke helped?’

  ‘Didn’t do a lot for me, actually. It was a gift, from a client: sort of thing they do in Madison Avenue and Wall Street. I’ve had it a long time. I wasn’t really sure how to do it.’

  Yuri said: ‘It’s not really important, is it?’

  ‘It’s just …’ She stopped, shrugging once more. ‘There seems to be a way of behaving here,’ she started again. ‘Everything’s brittle and finger-snapping; this minute is the last in my life, to hell with the sixty seconds coming next. I guess I behaved instinctively, imagining you’d be the same …’

  The anxiety flooded back. Needing movement, Yuri put the half-finished coffee on a side table but retained the brandy snifter. Forcing the casualness, he said: ‘And?’

  ‘You’re not,’ she said, simply.

  ‘Really so different?’ Yuri realized, gratefully, that there was no shake in the hand holding the brandy glass.

  ‘Pleasantly so different,’ she said. ‘You’re …’ She halted again, smiling hesitantly up at him. i don’t know how this conversation got started: it’s embarrassing.’

  ‘I want you to go on,’ said Yuri, with more sincerity than she would ever know.

  ‘You’re straight,’ she said. ‘Straight and nice. Not acting at all.’

  The snorted laugh, of apparent modesty, fitted her compliment but it was really a sigh of relief, the amusement that of irony. He had passed the test. Completely. He said: ‘Straight and nice sounds boring.’

  ‘I didn’t find it so …’ She sniggered to what was becoming one of her familiar hesitations. She said: ‘I’m coming on like a pushy broad again, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when to stop.’

  ‘Do you want another drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  They remained looking at each other, eyes held, for several moments unspeaking in a loud silence. Then Caroline smiled and said: ‘Your move.’

  All the much-considered words – like precluded and forbidden and prohibited – crowded in upon Yuri, along with others like madness and stupidity and insanity. He put the brandy glass on the convenient table, edging on to the bed beside her but avoiding any contact, just leaning forward to kiss her and she leaned forward to meet him but also without her body touching his. They stayed that way for a long time, mouth searching mouth, but when he finally reached out she snatched for him eagerly, pulling them together so that they fell back against the bed. Each started to undress the other, clumsy in their eagerness, so they became impatient and they stopped with each other and stripped their own clothes off, unable to wait. He explored her again with his mouth, her nipples hard to his tongue atop those spectacular breasts, and then tasting her wetness and she ate him too. He was too far gone when he entered her but so was she. They climaxed practically at once but he didn’t have to stop and the second time took much longer, settling to a rhythm, and again they came together.

  ‘We forgot the rules,’ she panted.

  ‘Rules?’

  ‘In the age of AIDS we’re supposed to use condoms.’

  ‘You’re safe,’ he said,

  ‘How do you know you are?’

  Yuri laughed with her, taking the remark beyond her intended joke. How safe was he, in this situation? How safe in any situation? The inevitable reflection about Moscow brought another thought, jolting him. Was this how it had been for the grotesquely fat Kazin and a woman he had never known but who had been his mother? Yuri tried for some feeling, the disgust or hatred of which his father felt incapable, but could not manage it either. How could he feel any emotion about people he had never known?

  The following morning he left early, before she got out of bed, promising to call as soon as he returned and careful to stop off at his own supposed apartment to collect a case to carry from the building if she looked out of her upstairs window and saw him in the street. It meant the delay of storing it again in a left-luggage locker but he used Grand Central instead of Penn Station, which was nearer to the UN building.

  He ignored his own official section at the United Nations, going directly to confront Anatoli Granov, who stared bulge-eyed at him but held back from any open demand in surroundings of which they were unsure, waiting until they began the corridor perambulation. Even then the man’s fury – mixed, Yuri was sure, with relief – had to be muted by their being in a public place.

  ‘Where the hell were you?’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘Moscow
want an explanation.’

  Yuri knew that was an exaggeration, an attempt to frighten him: Granov would not have raised any alarm this quickly. He recounted the confrontation with Caroline, stressing her remarks about mysterious strangers and the janitor’s gossip about the leaseholders, conscious as he talked of Granov’s anger deflating.

  ‘She was suspicious?’ demanded the rezident.

  ‘Curious,’ qualified Yuri. ‘Quite obviously it was necessary for me to remain overnight in the apartment.’

  Granov nodded in reluctant agreement. ‘I will recommend to Moscow that we dispose of it: find somewhere else.’

  ‘To do that, because of a passing encounter, would too easily create suspicion,’ argued Yuri at once. Why was the protest so important? It had only been a one-night stand, like all the others.

  ‘You think we should do nothing?’

  ‘Some eventual contact was inevitable,’ said Yuri. ‘To run would be quite wrong.’

  ‘What is she like, this woman?’

  ‘Quite ordinary,’ lied Yuri easily.

  ‘How long were you together?’ pressed the older man.

  ‘Maybe an hour: perhaps a little longer. To have avoided the conversation would have been as suspicious as it would be to close up the apartment,’ said Yuri.

  They were at that part of the corridor overlooking the main entrance. Granov stopped abruptly, jerking his head to look directly at Yuri. He said: ‘You didn’t get involved with her?’

  ‘Involved?’ queried Yuri, quite relaxed under the questioning.

  ‘Sleep with her?’

  Yuri stared directly back at his superior. ‘Even to have considered such a thing would directly contravene all my training!’

  Granov retreated under the imagined outrage. ‘Quite so.’

  ‘I have a question, Comrade Granov.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some of those magazines, showing unclothed women,’ said Yuri, with open-faced innocence. ‘Most decadent, I thought.’

  ‘I considered them essential, to give the impression of typical male occupation,’ said the rezident, flush-faced.

  ‘They’re yours!’ said Yuri, in apparent surprise. ‘Would you have me return them to you?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘What about the ass on the blonde in Hustler!’ said Yuri. ‘Wasn’t she something?’

  The local KGB controller stared at him and abruptly walked away without speaking.

  ‘You’ve been sweating us, Sergei,’ protested the American.

  ‘That’s not true,’ rejected Kapalet, sure of his strength. ‘The only purpose of a meeting is to pass on information: with no information there was no reason for us to meet. It would have been dangerous, in fact.’

  ‘So you’ve got something!’ demanded Drew eagerly.

  They were in the Crazy Horse Saloon, Wilson Drew hunched over the bar, uninterested in the stage, the Russian looking in the opposite direction at the floor show in which a girl with disappointingly small breasts was stimulating herself with an eighteen-inch length of thick rope. Kapalet said: ‘I’m really not sure.’

  ‘What!’ said the American.

  ‘Shelenkov is a difficult sod,’ said Kapalet. ‘Talks in riddles.’

  ‘Just tell me what he says,’ insisted Drew with forced patience. ‘We’ll solve the riddles.’

  ‘Washington is worried, then?’ The information was important to send back to Moscow.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Drew. ‘They’ve established a special committee.’

  Definitely important to relay back to Moscow. Kapalet said: ‘It comes out in bits: nothing connected.’

  ‘Just tell me!’ begged the American.

  The woman on the stage definitely seemed to be screwing herself with that rope. Kapalet said: ‘You know about Semipalatinsk?’

  Drew turned to him, frowning: ‘Your development complex?’

  Kapalet nodded: ‘According to Shelenkov you think you’ve got a source there …’

  ‘Think!’ interrupted Drew, isolating the important word.

  ‘Shelenkov got drunk, three nights ago. Said something about all those crosses over Semipalatinsk on the CIA maps being kisses, to America’s oblivion.’ Reluctantly Kapalet turned momentarily from the girations on the stage, to assess the reaction from the American. It was possible to see the tension stiffen through the CIA officer.

  Drew said: ‘I’m not sure I’m getting this right.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I have, either,’ said Kapalet, turning back to the stage. It wasn’t possible to see the rope at all now. He said: ‘The way it sounded to me was that having established someone within the CIA to disseminate the reports as Moscow wanted, Dzerzhinsky Square installed someone inside Semipalatinsk to leak out whatever disinformation we wanted you to swallow.’

  ‘Holy shit!’ exclaimed Drew. ‘You any idea what that could mean?’

  ‘No,’ said Kapalet, whose limited knowledge anyway made it an honest answer.

  ‘It means that if we’ve been misleading the President about Soviet space technology, Star Wars is just so much wasted money,’ said Drew. He gulped at his drink and said again: ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘I think that’s too positive an assessment, on just those remarks alone,’ said Kapalet.

  Drew shook his head, locked into some inward reflection. ‘What a fuck-up!’ said the American. ‘Jesus H. Christ what a fuck-up!’

  ‘It’s been useful?’ queried Kapalet, not forgetting the need to be paid.

  Drew turned at last away from the bar, using the cover of his open jacket completely to conceal the passing of the money to the Russian. Drew said: ‘What else?’

  ‘That’s all,’ said Kapalet. Feigning the grievance, he said: ‘I would have thought that was pretty good, from your reaction.’

  ‘It’s terrific, Sergei: just terrific,’ placated Drew immediately. ‘You’re doing good, real good.’

  There was a drum-roll crescendo on stage and the person whom Kapalet had for thirty minutes believed to be a woman engaged in self-intercourse with a piece of rope was triumphantly and explicitly revealed to be male.

  ‘It was a man,’ said Kapalet, disappointed.

  Drew looked finally towards the stage. ‘Nothing’s what it seems,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Kapalet.

  18

  The major entered the office with military precision but the respect of authority was there and Malik determined to maintain it, wanting the man nervous. To heighten in Chernov’s mind the importance of the recall and the interview Malik had assigned an official car to bring the man to Dzerzhinsky Square directly from the airport. It also denied any opportunity for prior contact between the man and Panchenko, to prepare an agreed account.

  Malik kept the security officer standing and nodded through the ritual of Chernov formally identifying himself, not actually looking at the man but appearing to study the files and dossiers carefully arranged over the desk, purposely to convey the impression of a detailed and widespread inquiry. When he looked up at last Malik said, intentionally curt: ‘You were part of a squad assembled on 9 September to arrest Comrade Deputy Agayans?’

  ‘I was,’ agreed Chernov. He was a small, clerk-like man.

  ‘Describe to me what happened.’

  ‘With Comrade Colonel Panchenko and others I went to Gogolevskiy Boulevard …’ began the major but at once Malik cut in, stopping him.

  ‘No!’ said Malik. ‘From the beginning: the very beginning. From the time the squad was assembled.’

  Chernov swallowed, pausing in the effort to recollect and when he resumed it was haltingly, which Malik decided was understandable because until ten minutes earlier the man would have had no idea why he had been brought back to Moscow. Malik actually did have Panchenko’s revised report before him, following through it as Chernov talked, accepting there was no important disparity between the two accounts about the beginning of the arrest assignment.

  ‘Nightcl
othes?’ interrupted Malik again, when Chernov reached the point of Agayans opening his apartment door.

  ‘A robe, over pyjamas.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘You are sure of the time?’

  ‘Positive. I checked at the moment of the door opening. It is procedure.’

  Which Panchenko appeared to have ignored, remembered Malik: still not an important disparity. He said: ‘What was Agayans’ demeanour to find himself confronted by a uniformed squad?’

  Again Chernov paused, frowning to find the appropriate words. Then he said: ‘There was hardly any reaction at all. I had never encountered such a response before.’

  ‘He did not even appear surprised?’

  ‘More as if he were dulled,’ said Chernov after a further pause. ‘As if he were uninterested in our being there.’

  Quite a variation from Panchenko’s account, decided Malik. He said: ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Comrade Agayans asked what we wanted and Comrade Colonel Panchenko said we had orders for his arrest, upon your authority.’

  ‘How did Agayans react to that?’

  Chernov shifted with discomfort and said: ‘I thought he was going to laugh.’

  ‘You thought a man about to be arrested was going to laugh!’ echoed Malik.

  ‘I mean no disrespect, Comrade First Deputy,’ said the security man. ‘I was trying honestly to answer your question.’