A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  A man in a black trench coat sat down next to him, and the director felt a burst of anger because he’d not seen him till he was on the bench next to him. The man pulled the sides of his coat over his lap and folded his hands. After a few moments he spoke, in a deep voice with a thick Slavic accent.

  “I hope you are not planning to keep me out here all day. It will be raining hard soon.”

  “It will take no time at all. Your first man was a waste of time.”

  The other man shrugged. “I can only give you what I know. If he is not everything you hoped for, then I am sorry you are disappointed. We are disappointed, too. You did not hold up your end of the bargain.”

  “Not my fault. You lost him. I did hold up my end. You promised a second name.” The director wanted to look at the man beside him on the bench but continued looking at the picture of Harold Wilson. The portly woman had scooped up her dog and was walking past them to the near gate onto Guilford Street.

  “We are working on it.” The director could sense his counterpart shaking his head.

  “That’s rubbish. What work is required?”

  “A good deal if it is to be the right one. All you’ve really offered is an ageing spy. One we were prepared to cashier and allow to live a quiet old age. Now we are forced to arrest him and house him somewhere in Siberia. If we find him. We in turn must find the right inside man for you. One who is of diminishing use to us but will be enough to make it look like you are on the job.”

  The director stood up. “This is nonsense.”

  “Sit down,” the Russian ordered. “How do we know you have not gone back on your word? We don’t. In fact, we now have reason to suspect he is here in your country somewhere, no doubt sequestered by you.”

  The director sat down and stared across the park. The low shrubs were beginning to glisten with the rain. What his counterpart said surprised him. Would it be useful to have him continue to believe this?

  “How so?”

  “He was followed to Vladivostok. He likely shipped to Hong Kong and made his way here.”

  The director clamped his mouth shut and took a deep breath. Then he turned to look at the Russian.

  “There is another possibility,” he said, “but I’ll need that second name.”

  Lane paced in her kitchen. Orlova was still in the garden, but she was rinsing her brushes. She poured the water, now a murky green-brown, onto the grass, made a point on the hairs of each brush in succession with her lips, and put them handle-side down in the glass. Lane wanted to talk to Darling, but he was occupied with the case of the hunter. She needed, she decided, to get away to think, to try to understand. She felt badly over her sudden doubts about her guest. Normally she would write through it, make a map, try to fit things on it, but her house was not her own, and the things that were happening were so disparate they had yet to coalesce into a firm narrative.

  The glass with the brushes was sitting on the lawn. Lane had thought the cleaning was a prelude to coming back into the house, but the artist sat on, looking at the painting, turning her head this way and that and glancing up at the house. Decided, Lane went out the kitchen door and down the stairs. She walked around the sheets she had hung out to dry in the morning, taking a handful of cloth in her hand. They were drying nicely. In another month she would have to revert to hanging her washing in the kitchen on the laundry frame above the stove.

  “May one see?” she asked as she walked across the lawn toward her guest.

  “Yes. I cannot decide about one of the lines over here.” She pointed at one side of the paper. “But I think it is all right. You will tell me.” Lane walked behind her and looked at the painting. It was her house, gleaming white in the sunlight, her weeping willow, even a few errant daisies in the foreground. There was still a slight gleam of wet paint above the roof.

  “It is perfect!” Lane exclaimed. Her anxieties as she had paced in the kitchen moments before seemed, in this moment, to be madness. Here was what mattered, surely. An old woman who was an artist in search of her missing brother. Why did it suddenly have to be more complicated?

  “You shall have it,” Countess Orlova said. She stood up and stretched her back. “This is the trouble with being old. You think you are tired and will be more comfortable sitting, only to find your back seizes up and you must stand, which also makes you tired.” Then she smiled. “Is there still some coffee left? I would like some cold, with ice in it.”

  “That sounds perfect. I’ve never thought of that. Let’s do that, and then, do you mind awfully? I have to go back into town to meet with Darling and the vicar again about some details. I’ll ask him again about any progress on a place for you. With any luck some information might have come in about your brother.” Though Lane knew that even with the ongoing murder investigation, if there had been any news, Darling would surely have let them know.

  The old lady waved her hands. “No, no! You go. I will take one of my little walks to loosen up and then have my usual nap. And I can start supper. May I use that beef I saw? I can make a nice soup for us. The nights are becoming colder.”

  “I’ll bring some bread back with me.”

  Having finished her coffee with ice—a fine innovation—Lane took up her handbag and cardigan. “You know, we have a very interesting Russian community here called Doukhobors. They promised to teach me to make that wonderful brown bread of theirs. Perhaps we can go and visit and get hold of some borscht. It will be half a day, but if you are up for it, it is a nice drive.”

  “Those who wrestle with their souls. I remember learning about them. From a time when peasants could only look to heaven for freedom from the burden of their lives.” She smiled. “Brown bread and borscht. It will take me back to my childhood. Now, that I would like.”

  “Good. We can plan on it, then, before you leave.”

  Lane backed the car through the gate and turned it so that she was headed up the road to the turnoff. She glanced in her mirror and could see Madam Orlova standing on the porch under the blue spruce, watching her, her arms at her sides, her black cardigan pulled over her shoulders.

  “My God! How did you get here? I almost don’t recognize you! Come in, come in.”

  Aptekar offered his friend his hand and then collapsed onto a chair by the fire in the sitting room of a modest house on Frances Street. “I know, Sergei Alexandrovich. I am nothing like the man I was the last time we met.”

  “Darya, look! It is our old friend. Can you make tea?” Sergei’s wife was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She came forward, her face clearing as she recognized their visitor, and held out her hands.

  “You poor man! You are so thin! I have soup, and while you eat, I will make up the spare bed.”

  Closing his eyes as Darya bustled off to the kitchen, Aptekar felt his first moments of relief. He would, for a short time at least, be safe here.

  During the meal, Aptekar declined to discuss his situation and instead asked questions about their life in Canada. All in all, he thought, listening to them, they were not doing too badly. Sergei had taken a job at a sawmill along the waterfront and had risen to foreman. A far cry from his pre-war life as an archaeologist working in Novgorod. They, like so many, had fled east, but they had taken refuge in Japan, and as war broke out, made their way to Canada. Darya missed the old country and still struggled with English. She found Vancouver small and provincial.

  “But we are safe, my love.” Sergei reached over to take her hand.

  “Yes, we are safe. Safe to spend every day missing our dead son, safe to remember the life we lived, the home I lost. Yes, perfectly safe.”

  Aptekar shook his head sympathetically, thinking of what his friend must endure daily from his unhappy wife. Well, who was he to judge? His work had helped him to keep his life free from entanglements, and he had been able to ride the
waves of conflict and keep himself useful. There had been one person only, and he had known—even as it was going on—that it would be doomed by history. He had been preparing for the end right from the first glance he’d had of her at the ball her mother had hosted before he went into the Mikhailovskaya Academy in 1898.

  Darya shooed him away when he tried to help her with the dishes. “You go. You men have things to discuss, I’m sure.”

  “It was a lovely meal. You are kind to take me in like this.” He was acutely aware of his borrowed and frayed clothes and his unkempt hair and beard.

  “You are our friend,” Darya said. “And I will say this. At least we can take you in here without fearing for our lives. It is something I don’t miss about the old country. What I remember, it is gone forever.” She shook her head and took the dishes he’d been holding. “Now, run along.”

  Aptekar sat in front of the fire with his friend Sergei. It had been miraculous when he had seen Sergei walking by the courthouse in Vancouver the previous winter. He had lost track of this friend of his youth just after 1919 and was certain he must have died, either in the war or after, at the beginning of the purges. Aptekar had rushed out of the dining room of Hotel Vancouver and onto the street, calling his friend’s name. It had taken a moment for Sergei to recognize him, but they had embraced as only men can who have long thought each other dead.

  “So now, what are you doing here, Stani?”

  “It is a long story.”

  “I will bet that it begins with your luck finally running out, eh? You were with the Soviet consulate as I recall.”

  “It does. I was set to defect. I know. Don’t look at me like that. After all these years, I suddenly want to abandon the mother country. But I am being practical. It is not safe in Russia, no matter what they say. They will think me a throwback, an embarrassment in the new Soviet Russia of dark suits and darker plans.”

  “But what happened?”

  Aptekar had to be careful. His friend would not know the extent of what Aptekar did. He had told Sergei he was attached to the Soviet Consul General. He shrugged.

  “I was going to leave through Yugoslavia, but I was arrested. They seemed to know exactly what I’d be doing. Who knows, the MGB seems to know everything. I had been given a fancy medal at the Kremlin almost on the same day, if you can believe it. Diplomatic service to the country. I don’t know why I was arrested, really. Or why the show of a medal. But these people never take the short and direct road when a long and complicated one is available. One minute you are in, the next minute you are out. But you know this, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Aptekar did not say what he knew to be true: the authorities were afraid of what he knew, and if they found him in Canada, his life would be over.

  “So, what will you do now? Listen, I didn’t want to say this in front of my wife, but you are probably not safe here. A friend called Fedorov who was on the run from the MGB has disappeared. That is not a good sign. He was here under an assumed name. He was calling himself Gusarov. Someone here is watching us. I think there has been some sort of trouble about a defector in Canada, and it has dredged up the muck. Everybody on both sides is watching us now.”

  “It seemed like such an, I don’t know, innocent country when I was here before, officially.” Aptekar shook his head. “I don’t want to impose on you, Sergei, but I need clothes, a little money. There is one person I think can help me. I must get to her. She is the only one I feel I can trust.”

  “Well, thank you very much!” said Sergei in mock outrage.

  “You know what I mean, my oldest friend. I am indebted to you, and I don’t even know if I will ever be able to repay you.”

  “You have repaid me already, by calling me your oldest friend.”

  1898

  Stanimir bowed and then offered his hand. “I am honoured to be invited, sir,” he said.

  “I understand from your uncle that you are off to the academy?”

  “I am. Tomorrow, in fact.” Stanimir could hear the orchestra playing a Polonaise in another room and could smell pipe tobacco. People in the reception room were laughing and greeting each other like long-lost friends. Electric chandeliers sent light flickering off the glasses and silver and created a shimmering tapestry as it picked up the glitter of the jewels of the women moving through the room. He was entranced with the effect. His uncle held doggedly to gas and candles. It was Stanimir’s first ball.

  “Good lad. I hear you are an academic genius. Been abroad. A little soldiering will provide some balance, eh?” The host gave him a pat on the shoulder.

  Stanimir bowed again and prepared to move toward the ballroom. He had seen his friend Sergei pass by with a glass of champagne and wink at him, lifting the glass as if to say, “We can drink all night at someone else’s expense!” His host, who had been about to greet the next guest, turned back to the young recruit.

  “Please introduce yourself to my wife. She is in the black over there, and if you have the courage, try my daughter. She does not like the vapid young men of the upper classes. It will be a challenge for you, eh?”

  Stanimir bowed yet again and made his way toward the woman in black, who was talking with a group of women her own age. If his own mother had lived, she would be this age now, he thought, imagining the lithe and fragile woman who had been his dear mamochka until her death when he was seven. She would be stouter now, but still handsome, as this woman was. He was trying to think of what to say by way of introduction when she glanced over and saw him. She lifted her hand and beckoned him.

  “Ah! You have come. Aptekar’s nephew. You are welcome, Stanimir Vadimovich Aptekar. How is the count?”

  “He is very well, thank you. He sends you his warmest greetings. It was kind of you to invite me, madam.” She must, he thought, have been very beautiful when she was young, though her face was set now along indomitable lines.

  “You are to have a wonderful time. I understand you are for the academy. I hope you will consider spending some of your holidays with us.”

  Stanimir bowed again, beginning now to wish he could stay upright. The new uniform was stiff and demanded an erect posture. He was surprised by the invitation. He knew his uncle had a wide acquaintance among the aristocracy, but he had been so immersed in his studies—and had spent the last two years at school in England—that he had no real notion of the society with which his uncle expected him to conform. He was about to respond when someone behind him accidentally banged into him. He turned, and an older man apologized and continued on to where he saw a friend waving for him.

  It was then that he saw her. She was sitting in a chair by the door into the ballroom, looking as if she were hoping to remain undiscovered there. She was wearing a pale blue gown, and she had one leg crossed over the other, swinging her foot impatiently and watching the proceedings with a haughty look that suggested she would rather be nearly anywhere else. She was beautiful in a way he had never imagined a girl could be. A fine oval face, dark eyes, and a look of lively intelligence. She had a fan in her hands, but unlike the other girls on show, she did not use it for its intended purpose. Instead she tapped it impatiently on her lap and looked straight into middle distance with her chin up, as if defying anyone to try to speak with her.

  “Ah. You have espied my daughter. I challenge you, young man. If you can get her to stop fidgeting and dance, you will be a better man than any here!”

  “She does not look like a girl who wishes to dance, madam. She looks like a girl who wishes she were in her room with a book and a cup of chocolate.”

  “You see! I knew you were the right sort of man. You understand her completely. Perhaps she will talk to you. She is overeducated. You may have a great deal in common. I should warn you, she is practically affianced to a young man who is not here, but I cannot have her ignoring everyone all night. Do be a dear and bring her out o
f herself a bit.”

  Stanimir could feel the eyes of the girl’s mother on his back as he walked across the room. He had thought he understood the reason for the invitation he had received. He had assumed they were trying to unload a reluctant girl onto a suitable young man. He was relieved to learn that his only obligation was to entertain her. He took a chair and pulled it up next to her.

  “I have been sent to try to get you to dance. I can see already it will be futile. Stanimir Aptekar.”

  “I know who you are. We met when we were children.”

  “Did we? I feel as if I should have remembered someone like you.”

  “If you are going to indulge in fatuous flattery, you can take yourself off. You are just like all the others. Pretty, ignorant, bound like sheep for your military careers.”

  “I didn’t mean it as a compliment, though I thank you for yours. I don’t think I have been called ‘pretty’ before. No, I meant to say that you are like an Amazon. I imagine you must have been fierce as a little girl.”

  For the first time the girl turned to him.

  “My name is Tatiana Danilovna. I was studious as a little girl. The ferocity is recent, now that I understand how the world is. You see, look around you. This is yet another evening designed to bring suitable families together by sacrificing their children into marriages, the only function of which is to ensure that land stays in the hands of the nobility. It doesn’t matter to them that they live on the backs of the oppressed.”

  “I see,” said Stanimir, smiling. “But you are determined to resist and throw your lot in with the oppressed?”

  “Now you laugh at me. You know, I’m surprised they sent you over and have not realized the danger. Mother wants me to marry Arkady Orlov. He is out of the country, thank heavens, otherwise I would be stuck with him all evening. She must be hedging her bets.”

  “I wish you every happiness in advance. What danger has she not realized?”

  “That you are not stupid. Let us astonish them all. Take me to dance. I will smile and laugh, but I will be telling you that all this,” she waved her fan to take in the entire glittering scene as she stood up, “is about to end.”