White Pawn on Red Square

by Hugh McLeave

  “You mean, they’ll think this is the mausoleum figure,” she gasped.

  “Why not?” I replied. “Now, take the rest of the snaps.” She went through the whole process again and fired off a good dozen snaps while I dismembered the dummy. Then, she replaced me while I took some snaps and the rest of the film.

  I could not have guessed how long we spent there—ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. Working flat-out, we had lost all idea of time and place. But when we were finishing, I felt the crypt tremble beneath my feet and wondered if I were imagining things; however, Larissa was looking at me with the same question in her eyes.

  “The rocket-launchers,” I whispered. At the same moment, the muffled roar of the crowd filtered to us even through the thick granite walls. For several minutes, we felt the vibration running through the mausoleum, even though its concrete foundation raft went down a good twenty feet. I knew they had closed the place several years before because of cracks caused by military vehicles on their parade days.

  “It’s the best time to get out,” I said. As soon as those heavy rocket-launchers went through the square, the crowd would surge forward to listen to the usual harangue from the Party leader standing almost directly above us on the mausoleum tribune.

  Quickly, we wrapped the Lenin waxwork in the two banners and hid the lot under the stretcher blankets. When we had finished, I caught Larissa’s arm. “Not a word to any of the others that the crypt was empty. Let them believe we’ve got the real Lenin here and left our dummy in the crypt.”

  “They’ll see it.”

  “Not if we’re careful.”

  “But why keep it from them?”

  “Because if my suspicions are right, one of the other five already knows what really happened down here.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “I’ve no idea.” We picked up the stretcher, “Another thing,” I said, “say nothing about the film we took.”

  I went first, leaving Larissa to put out the lights. Rapping on the door, I waited for Vanya’s all-clear tap before edging it open and slipping through, followed by Larissa who locked it. Everyone had rehearsed his or her part. Raya rolled on to the stretcher, the figure of Lenin beside her. Vanya and I took the stretcher while Larissa and Shapirov dismantled the screens to bring them to the car.

  Already, the crowd was spilling from the grandstand on both sides of the mausoleum, some making homewards and others taking their places to hear Chernenko speak. We had to push against them through the narrow walk by the graveyard alongside the Kremlin Wall. I drew a deep breath when finally we got through the Spassky Gate and there was Anastas at the wheel of the Chaika.

  We settled Raya on one of the bunks and loaded our equipment then Larissa ordered Anastas to head for the hospital but to turn when we cleared the parade area and take us to Voroby Street where we had parked the Moskovich.

  There, without uncovering the waxwork Lenin on the stretcher, Larissa and I transferred it first to the garage then into the suitcases in the car boot.

  “What do we tell them?” Larissa whispered as we packed the car.

  “To scatter for a couple of days and stay away from their homes. Tell them it’s just a precaution, there’ll be a big manhunt when they realize the real Lenin is missing.”

  She called them together in the garage and relayed the message. In three days, if nothing had happened, they would rendezvous at Shapirov’s dacha unless she countered the instruction.

  “We’ve done it:” Raya threw up her hands in jubilation.

  “What’s he like, Little Brother?” Vanya asked.

  “We didn’t have time to look and we don’t have time now,” I put in. “It was dark down there.”

  “You’ll see him later,” Larissa said. “Now get out of here and split up.”

  We watched Vanya and Raya make off along Voroby Street then gave Anastas the all-clear sign; he had the risky job of returning the Chaika and changing the plates. When he had disappeared, I thumbed at the block of flats, asking if we could stay there. Larissa shook her head. We had the garage, but the flat was occupied by one of her friends from Gosizdat. “Sooner or later we’ll all be picked up by the KGB,” she said.

  “Not all of us.” I pointed her back into the garage.

  “You mean, the traitor.”

  “That depends on how much he means to his bosses. They may still want him to go on playing the same game.”

  She thought about that for a moment while I opened the suitcase containing the Lenin dummy and repacked everything carefully, covering the contents with my hospital smock and trousers before changing into the clothes I had worn at the dacha.

  “I can’t understand why they didn’t arrest us before the parade,” Larissa said.

  “I wondered about that, too. Maybe their sekoty could only tell them we were planning to steal Lenin, but not how and when. After all, none of us knew until we got to the dacha what was in your mind, and after that we had no contact with anybody.” I snapped the suitcase shut, locked it and replaced it in the car boot. “There could be another reason. Maybe their man’s too important in the KGB for them to reveal who he is, so they just took the precaution of removing the body to cover up for him.”

  “So, you think they’ll pick us up quickly now.”

  I nodded. “Within a few hours. As soon as the Red Square crowds are out of the way, if not before.”

  “We should have told Shapirov.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’ll go to ground somewhere until he hears from you—if he’s in the clear.”

  “No, it’s not Lev,” she said. “Anybody else but Lev.”

  I choked on my bitter retort and muttered that she had better get out of her nurse’s uniform and into something warmer and less conspicuous. “Have you got somewhere you can stay for one or two nights and somewhere we can rendezvous?”

  “I wondered about the empty church.”

  “No, not that. Nor the dacha. They’ll be watched.”

  “I have one or two friends.” She thought for a minute. “We can meet in the metro at Lenin Stadium tomorrow night. There is an international football match. In the metro there’s a clock and I’ll be waiting there at eight o’clock.” She caught me by the shoulders. “But you, what are you going to do?”

  “Get rid of this somewhere.” I kicked the suitcase.

  “And these?” She brought both cameras and the film cassettes out of the medical bag in the car boot. I unloaded the hand camera spool and she copied me by taking out the cine-camera cassette. I kept two of the three cine reels and handed her the other with the snapshot cassette.

  “If you can get your man to develop these before we meet, it would help,” I said.

  While she changed, I surveyed Voroby Street. Some of the Red Square crowd were walking home and cars were thicker on the street; it might give us that bit of extra cover and increase Larissa’s chance of breaking out of central Moscow without being arrested. I needed a taxi and she insisted on driving me round one of the inner boulevards to Novaya Square rank. She stopped the car in a side-street for me to dismount with my suitcase. As my hand went to the door handle, she caught it.

  “Alan, have you thought? We may never see each other again.”

  “I have thought.”

  “Do you feel badly about everything, and me—I mean as badly as I feel about landing you in this trouble?”

  “I’m a Churchill.” I tried to make my voice sound flippant, but even in my own ears it rang like a dud coin. “Anyway, they haven’t caught us yet.”

  “Alan, kiss me.”

  She held up her face. In the raw light, strained through the misted windows, I could see her wet eyelashes and her trembling lips She drew me into her and kissed me, letting her mouth yield, then grasping and squeezing me with all her strength as though wishing to leave the imprint of her body on mine, even through our thick coats. I felt the salt taste of her tears on my mouth as she broke away.

  “You ha
d better go, or I won’t be able to,” she mumbled.

  When I had lugged the heavy suitcase to the end of the street where the square began, I turned. She was still sitting there. I dared not wave as I saw the spurt of exhaust smoke and the Moskovich take off. Did it end like this, with such a tawdry farewell?

  Chapter 14

  There was no point in looking for a public call-box in Moscow, but in the foyer of the Polytechnic Museum, the porter would have a phone. I entered, dumped my case in front of him with a sigh. “Tovarich,” I said in my most outlandish accent, “I have hoofed it across the city from the Bielorusski station.”

  “On such a day.”

  “I’m lost and I’m looking for Khasakova Street.”

  He gazed at the bulky suitcase. “You’ve a ways to go yet, lad. Half an hour of boot-leather.” He waved a gnarled hand. “Straight along Kirov Street to the square, turn right and you’ll land on Khasakova.”

  “Could I phone my old grandmother and say I’m on the way?”

  At this, he grimaced until I flashed a ruble note. I gave him the British Embassy number and he dialed it, innocently, then handed me the phone. I whispered Jock Frazer’s extension and when he barked down the line, I said in English, “I’m in trouble. Meet me at the embassy gate in quarter of an hour.” I saw the porter’s stare and tempered his astonishment with another ruble then said as I picked up my case, “My grandmother only speaks Lettish.”

  In the square I found a taxi, gave him the British Embassy address and instructions to keep clear of the parade crowds; we went east then south to cross the Moscow River by Kameny Bridge and doubled back along the embankment. Jock was waiting at the gate, chatting to the two duty militiamen. Spotting the cab, he crossed the street to carry my case. Even then, the militiamen eyed me up and down, and I wondered what might have happened had I not made that call.

  “Well, you’d better tell me all about it,” Frazer said when we reached his office.

  “Sorry, Jock, I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? If you’re in trouble in a place like Moscow, we’ve a right to know.” He flipped open a sideboard to produce a dimpled bottle of Scotch and poured two glasses, handing me the more generous one. “Put that behind your breastbone and it’ll help you unload whatever it is. I can tell, it’s a girl, isn’t it?” I handed back the whisky, undrunk, and he stared at me. “Then, it really is serious.”

  “Serious enough for you to run and tell the counselor”— the ambassador had disappeared on diplomatic leave over the May Day ceremonies—“and he would panic and start a long, international wrangle with the people over there.” I pointed across the river to the Kremlin, its golden domes glowing and looking as light as bubbles in the afternoon sun.

  “International wrangle with the Kremlin.” Frazer swallowed his whisky, then forgetting himself in his excitement, swallowed mine, too. His Perth accent was growing broader. “Alan, whit (correct) in the name of Jesus ha’e you been up to?”

  “Promise to keep it to yourself and I’ll tell you.” He hesitated, argued but finally promised. As he listened to a carefully censored version of the story, he kept ramming tobacco into his pipe, lighting it then letting it go cold.

  When I reached that morning’s activity in the Lenin Mausoleum, his plethoric face went scarlet then livid and I thought he might blow a fuse or at least snap his shirt-neck button. All he could stutter at the end was, “Christ Almighty, you’ll dae twenty years for this, or they’ll shove you in one o’ their KGB nuthouses, and they’ll be richt.”

  “Jock, all I’m asking you to do is keep this suitcase for two or three days. You don’t even know what’s in it, and you’ve forgotten what I’ve told you.” I produced the two film reels and the hand-camera cassette. Frazer’s eyes tracked from one object to another like a ping-pong spectator’s, and they blinked nervously as though I were handling a couple of primed grenades. “If I make a package of these, can you get them into the dip bag? I’m addressing them to my solicitor in London.”

  “I don t know, laddie…”

  “Jock, they’re my life policy.”

  Finally, I persuaded him and he went to borrow a typewriter with half a dozen sheets of paper and carbon. Left alone in his office, I drafted a long letter to my solicitor, Andrew Rankin Pattinson, only regretting I could not watch his face as he read it and handled the film. Pattinson had never got nearer crime than defending a few careless-driving offences, and his routine consisted of conveyancing house sales and drawing up wills for genteel ladies like my mother.

  This letter would fill his stomach with sparrows. But I knew that, if the Soviet Embassy or any of its minions tried to lean on Pattinson, he would resist and use the law to help him. I just hoped he would not have to brief a lawyer to come here and defend me, for that would mean I had lost the game.

  Frazer assured me the bulky package would leave that evening with the British Airways flight and would arrive in London at eight-thirty local time. When he realized I had eaten nothing the whole day, he had the embassy cook put together several slices of cold meat, salad, cheese and even half a bottle of wine. “Ay, it might be your last for a while,” he said with no attempt at humor.

  As dusk was collecting under Krimsky Bridge, I left in the boot of Frazer’s car. A few hundred yards from the embassy, he took a risk with his white number-plate by stopping in a side-street and banging twice on his door. I lifted the boot latch and scuttled off like a rat down a drainpipe. Taking my bearings from Stalin’s red Kremlin stars, I walked south into Zamoskvoryech.

  Behind the Martyr’s church, I went more warily. Raya’s third-floor flat lay half-way along Kharkov Street, cleared like other streets near Red Square during the procession. Two cars sat on either side of the road, and long before approaching them I spotted the aerial on the bigger one, a Zil. I slid into a doorway and watched for ten minutes. One man walked from the Zil to meet a colleague from the other car, both wearing the same overcoat and soft hats. KGB officers staking out the place. So Raya was still running free, and could not therefore have acted as their sekoty.

  I could not check on Vanya, never having discovered where he lived. Shapirov, too, had kept his address secret. Anastas lived north of the river and I headed that way, crossing Krimsky Bridge with a crowd who were celebrating May Day, many of them staggering with their vodka-laden breath condensing on the cold air. I chose streets parallel to Gorki, avoiding its restaurants, cinemas and militiamen.

  Nothing was happening around Anastas’s flat. What did that mean? They had nabbed him? Or he was one of them? I strolled on, to the metro under the Bielorussian station. I didn’t know why I should even wonder about Larissa, but something made me change at Komsomolskaya and alight at Sokolniki Park.

  It was thawing in the suburbs, too, and my shoes were shipping slush as I made for the flat. I willed the KGB to be watching it, wondering what I’d do if they weren’t and had to suspect her as well. Coming through a half-lit square, I nearly fell on one of their cars, parked within a clump of spruce trees. Three cigarettes bloomed behind misted windows, and the car pointed towards another sitting within sight of the flat. I backtracked towards Sokolniki, but decided not to risk the same station again.

  It was ten o’clock. The big problem was where to sleep that night. I had no more than a toothbrush and some money on me. At the park gate there was a tea-stall and just before it put up its shutters, I had a glass of tea and a three-tier sandwich and tossed a ten-kopek piece in my change. It landed tails which ruled out Trinity Church as a hiding-place.

  It took another half-hour’s walk and a long search to locate the old block of flats in the Kolkhov Square area. That same beet-soup smell followed me up the six flights of concrete stairs. I rapped softly on the door and had to keep on rapping for ten minutes before it edged open and old Shapirov’s face appeared in the slit. His eyes were full of fear. “Let me in, Gospodin Shapirov,” I whispered. “I am Larissa Fotyeva’s friend.”

  I though
t perhaps they had gone to bed, but no. They were drinking tea and a plateful of home-made cakes lay on the massive table. “You gave us a fright,” the old man quavered.

  “Have you seen Lev?”

  Both shook their heads. They asked what had happened, but I told them nothing, merely begging them to put me up for the night. Mrs. Shapirov nodded, setting the flesh quivering on that quilted face of hers. When I had drunk a glass of tea and eaten two of her cakes, she put down a mattress on the living-room floor, handed me several blankets and bade me goodnight. I must have looked as exhausted as I felt, for I didn’t even bother to undress or use my toothbrush, and I was asleep before I got settled in my make-shift bed.

  ***

  It seemed no more than a few seconds later that someone shook me. When the room fell into place, I noticed a faint light filtering through the closed curtains. Shapirov was bending over me. He had a day’s dark stubble on his face and his eyes had a wild, animal glare in them. “What’s happening?” he said.

  “Somebody must have blabbed.”

  “I thought so.” After the parade, he had recovered his car and driven to his fiat near the zoo. Luckily, he had taken his usual precaution of parking his car a block away and walking home. A couple of Zils were lying in ambush. After dark he had waited his chance then hidden his car in the university car-park; by then the metro had stopped and he had to trudge across the city, avoiding the militia patrols. “Where’s Reeza?”

  “Hiding somewhere. They’re watching her flat, too.” I explained I had checked on Raya and Anastas.

  “I’ll put a bullet in that little bastard if it’s him. Or I’ll garrote him.” Shapirov squeezed an imaginary neck; he got up, went to the window, nudged back the curtain and stared into the street. “We can’t hang around here,” he muttered. “They’ll be here battering on this door as soon as the new shift comes on duty at Lubyanka this morning.” He rounded on me. “Why didn’t Reeza tip me off about what happened down there in the crypt?”