Olsky stepped to the window, looked out. He had recently taken to shaving his head, as if to make himself look older, more experienced. He ran a palm self-consciously over his skull. His wife had pleaded with him to let the hair grow back. She said she didn’t want to wake each morning and find an egg on the pillow next to her.
“It’s pleasant here,” Olsky said. “Greenery. Fresh air. Very nice.”
What had Olsky really come here for? And why so early in the day? Greshko surveyed the Chairman’s face. Unmarked by experience, the old man thought. How could such a face frighten anybody? To run the organs you needed presence, you needed to be able to instil awe in other men. If Olsky had presence, if he had charisma, it was of a kind Greshko couldn’t possibly understand. He was even a teetotaller, for God’s sake, which fitted very nicely with Birthmark Billy’s anti-vodka crusade. But what the General Secretary didn’t realise was that vodka was the fuel of Mother Russia. To take vodka away, to reduce its production and price it beyond the means of a worker, was a natural disgrace, like yanking an infant from its mother’s tit. But none of the new gang had any affinity for the heart of the country, at least not the way Vladimir Greshko, a poor peasant boy from the Stavropol Territory, perceived it. What did they know about the unending struggle against the bitter climate and a countryside racked by famine in the 1930s? They were all college boys, chicken-hearted, cologne in their armpits, educated by the benefits of a Revolution they were now attempting to dismantle. Ingrates!
Thoughts of Olsky provoked rage. What made things worse was that Greshko, at the time of his abrupt removal from office, had come into possession of information which alleged that Olsky had investments in Western European money-markets held, of course, in fictional names, dummy corporations and the like – but if the allegations were true, what kind of Communist did that make Stefan Olsky?
Greshko wished he’d been able to present this information to the Politburo, which would have been distressed by the furtive capitalism of Comrade Stefan, but by the time he decided to do so it was too damned late. All the doors had been slammed shut in his face with a finality that even now sounded through his brain. Too slow, old man, he thought. And perhaps just a little too complacent. But he still had the information, and a time might come when it would prove useful. One of the lessons of his long life was that you never threw anything away.
Olsky turned from the window and smiled. He had dark eyes and high cheekbones and a wide mouth that was rather pleasant and generous. “I imagine it could get lonely here,” he said. “You’re lucky to have a great many friends, Vladimir.”
“I’ve been blessed,” Greshko remarked. What was Olsky driving at? “I’m not completely forgotten by my old comrades.”
“Some of whom are very dedicated to you. Some of whom travel considerable distances to visit you,” Olsky said.
“Only to pay their last respects, Stefan.”
Olsky had always found Greshko to be slippery and devious. There was a certain charm about the old fart, which Olsky acknowledged rather grudgingly, although he’d never been a fan of Greshko’s way of running the organs – autocratic, secretive, possessive. Olsky had heard Greshko referred to within the Politburo as King Vladimir, and not always jokingly.
Like a monarch, Greshko had ruled the KGB as if it were a court, with courtiers who curried favours and engineered palace intrigues in an atmosphere of distrust and malice. What underlay this regal technique of management was paranoia and fear – which had also forged durable loyalties between Greshko and many of his former subordinates, a fact that troubled Stefan Olsky. He didn’t intend to run the organs the way Greshko had done. He believed in inter-departmental cooperation and an open-door policy – concepts that were not readily grasped by the old guard, who grumbled and complained at every little change and sometimes even reminisced openly, brazenly, about how things had been different under the control of General Greshko. It was going to be difficult and slow, and very demanding, to change the KGB.
“Is that why you’ve come, Stefan?” Greshko asked. “To pay your last respects?”
“Not entirely. The fact is, some of your visitors … disturb me, Vladimir.”
Greshko smiled. “Don’t tell me you spy on me?” he asked in mock horror. He knew that some of the foresters who worked around Zavidovo sent information back to Moscow about who had been seen in the vicinity, what they’d done, where they’d gone. During his own tenure he’d received information from the same men who nowadays provided the service for Olsky.
“Reports have a way of reaching me,” Olsky said. “Rumours are like homing pigeons.”
“And what do you hear, General?”
“Some of your friends have nostalgic longings. Some of them belong to certain organisations, Vladimir, that call themselves by such names as ‘Memories’ or ‘Yesteryear’ – consisting of men who have a dangerous yearning for the way things were. War veterans. Factory managers. Party members. And they have some sympathetic ears inside the Central Committee. Obstructionists, Vladimir. People who cling to the past.”
“I can’t be held responsible for the sympathies of my friends,” Greshko said. “People are slow to change their ways, Stefan. Give them time. Sooner or later, they’ll get used to this new Russia you’re building.” This new Russia. Greshko had uttered these words in a way that was almost sarcastic.
“What about you?” Olsky asked. “Are you getting used to it?”
“I’m dying,” Greshko answered. “I don’t have time to get used to anything.”
Olsky was quiet a moment. The old boy could put on a good act, he could smile and look altogether innocent, but Olsky was wary. “There’s talk of a conspiracy, Vladimir. I hear rumours in Moscow. I hear them too often.”
“Conspiracy!” Greshko laughed, a rich, hearty sound. “Listen to me, Stefan. A few old friends get together here and there. They talk about the old days. They drink vodka, get sentimental, they weep a little. Where’s the conspiracy in that? One of the first lessons you must learn is that Moscow has a hidden rumour factory. My advice to you, comrade, is not to listen. Or if you must listen, be selective.”
Olsky walked back to the window. He had been Chairman for only five months now and the last thing he needed as he reorganised State Security was a conspiracy of hard-liners, diehards, old reactionaries whose imaginations could carry them no further than the idea that the greatest of all Russian leaders had been the murderer Stalin. Rumours, whispers, shadows – sometimes Olsky had the feeling he was listening to voices inside a dosed room, voices that fell silent as he approached the door. He turned his face once more to Greshko. Even sick and dying, the old man managed to give off a glow that suggested residual power. What you had to remember about Greshko was that he still had friends in high places, that when you approached him you did so cautiously.
“Is that why you came here?” Greshko asked. “To warn me about the company I keep?”
The atmosphere in this room was cloying. Olsky was anxious to go, to get inside the car and have his driver return him to Moscow. That night he’d promised to take his wife, an amorous woman called Sabina, to a new drama at the Sovremennik Theatre. For some reason, perhaps because of their air of freedom and licence, experimental plays always excited her, an excitement she brought back home to the bedroom. Olsky never tired of his wife’s advances.
“There’s one other thing,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been conducting an inventory, Vladimir. Of files. Computer data. Current cases.”
An inventory. Greshko thought how sadly typical it was of Olsky to make the organs sound like a damned haberdashery. “And?”
“A certain file is unaccounted for, Vladimir. I don’t have to remind you of how serious that is.”
“You don’t have to remind me of anything.” Greshko thought of the documentation he’d removed and he felt a quick little shiver of tension. “Clerks and computer operators are notoriously slipshod. They’ve probably mad
e some kind of idiotic mistake.”
Olsky was silent a moment. “We were able to establish that the missing file was that of somebody called Aleksis Romanenko, First Party Secretary in Tallinn. Whoever removed the file forgot to delete the name and number from the central directory.”
Damned computers, Greshko thought. He’d never really grasped all this new technology. He wondered if this was something that should worry him. Did it matter that Olsky knew Romanenko’s file had been removed? Probably not. So long as he didn’t know what was in the file, then it wasn’t worth bothering about.
“What makes you so sure that the file was removed, Stefan? Sometimes there are glitches, and computers destroy their own data. Or so I’ve heard.”
“True,” Olsky said. “But in this particular instance there was a date when the file disappeared. The computer recorded the date automatically, which it would not have done if the program were malfunctioning. So I’m led to believe the material was deliberately taken.”
“By whom?” Greshko asked.
Olsky shook his head. “I have no idea. I thought perhaps you might be able to throw a little light on the matter. You had charge of the files at the time when this particular data was taken.”
“One file among hundreds of thousands? Are you serious? I’ve never even heard of this fellow – what did you say his name was?”
“Romanenko.”
Greshko looked incredulous. “Really, Stefan. What’s so damned important about one missing file in any case? What’s such a big deal that the Chairman himself has to worry about a trifle like this?”
Olsky went to the door, which he opened. He looked across the kitchen at the Yakut woman, who was stirring food in a saucepan over the wood stove. She turned her face, regarded him briefly, then looked away again.
Olsky said, “Normally, it might mean nothing. But Romanenko was assassinated yesterday.”
“Assassinated?”
“In the circumstances, the missing file struck me as an odd coincidence.”
Greshko placed his hands together on the surface of his quilt. “Ah, now I understand your puzzlement.” He tapped the side of his skull. “The name means nothing to me, but if I remember anything, I’ll be sure to get in touch with you. The trouble is, my memory’s like some damned dog that won’t come when I call it. I’ll try, though. I promise you. I’ll try.”
“I’d be grateful,” Olsky said. There was a long pause before Olsky looked at his watch. “I have to return to Moscow.”
“Of course,” Greshko said.
“Goodbye, Vladimir.”
As he stepped out, Olsky watched Greshko’s face, which in shadow appeared enigmatic. But perhaps not. Perhaps there was some other expression barely apparent in the shadows, a hint of amusement, of pleasure, like that of a man enjoying some hugely private joke.
Olsky had no illusions about the way Greshko despised him. He left the house and stood for a moment under a large oak, which shielded him from the morning sun. He listened to the drone of flies, the cawing of rooks, the sound of a horse whinnying in the distance. Then he looked in the direction of his car, wondering if it had been a mistake to come here in the first place. Simple vanity – was that it? Had he wanted the old man to see that the organs of State Security were at last in strong young hands? That the dried-out old ways were inevitably passing and a new generation was changing things? To impress and perhaps worry a sick old man – was that why he’d mentioned conspiracy and his knowledge of Greshko’s friendships? If so, he’d underestimated the former Chairman, who wasn’t likely to be in the least concerned by references to intrigues and acquaintances of dubious loyalties. A dying man was beyond ordinary fears.
Olsky moved out from under the tree. When he reached his car, he looked back at the cottage. No, he thought. It was the missing file that had really brought him here from Moscow, a file whose removal could have been achieved only by Vladimir Greshko himself or by somebody who’d been given that authority by the old man.
It was strange, he thought, how the old man hadn’t asked a single question about Romanenko’s assassination – no interest in place and time, no interest in detail, the means the assassin had used or if he’d been apprehended. Absolutely nothing.
Either Greshko didn’t give a damn about the killing or else he’d already learned the details of Romanenko’s murder from another source. If the latter was true, then he’d been lying when he’d denied ever having heard of Romanenko.
Olsky got inside the car, settled back in his seat and closed his eyes, unable to shake the feeling that Greshko, in his wily way, had been playing a game with him for the past thirty minutes, a game based on subterfuge and concealment. And Olsky felt the frustration of a man trying to introduce new rules when certain players stubbornly prefer sticking, no matter what, to the old ones.
Ten minutes after Olsky’s departure, Greshko spoke into the telephone. “Has Epishev gone?”
“He left five hours ago, General,” Volovich replied. “On the first available flight.”
Greshko set the receiver down. He looked at the calendar on the wall. There were now four days left. Sighing, longing to smoke one of the cigars his physician had denied him, he tried to content himself with squeezing a small rubber ball he kept in the bedside table. It was a poor substitute for drawing rich tobacco smoke deep into one’s lungs. By God, how he would have loved to light one! He tossed the stupid ball aside in a gesture of contempt, then he opened the flask that contained the special mixture.
He sipped, thought of Olsky, smiled. It was fascinating to watch the new Chairman fish in waters too deep for him ever to penetrate. You’re keeping the wrong kind of company, General Greshko. A certain file is missing, General Greshko. Wipe my arse for me, General Greshko.
Greshko laughed aloud. He would love to nail Olsky, to crucify that shaven-headed upstart, to see him hung out to dry like a bundle of wet kindling.
Four days. He corked his flask, knowing he could live that long.
7
London
Kristina Vaska was amused by Pagan’s apartment. She wandered through the rooms slowly, thinking disorder was almost a law of nature here, from the untidiness of the bedroom to the flaky state of the bathroom, where towels and discarded socks formed a small, lopsided pyramid. But Jesus, there was something touching in all this mess, something that, in spite of herself, provoked a maternal response. It was an easy reaction and she didn’t trust it. If Pagan couldn’t look after his domestic life by himself, why should she even think of doing it for him? She’d long ago given up the notion that there was something engaging about men who needed to be looked after. Like careless boys, they couldn’t fend for themselves – but she was damned if she was going to find such helplessness attractive. Pagan was already appealing enough in his own hesitant way. He didn’t need the assistance of charming ineptitude.
In the bedroom she came across a silver locket that hung from the lampshade by a thin silver chain. On the back of the ornament were the initials R.P. She fingered the item for a time, wondering about the initials. Somebody P. Somebody Pagan.
In the drawer of the bedside table she solved the problem. She found a framed photograph of a woman, a lovely woman with an intelligent face. Across the bottom of the picture were the words With all my love, Roxanne, September 83. Our Third Anniversary. Kristina Vaska put the photograph back and wondered what had become of Pagan’s wife that she was nothing more than a picture stuffed in a drawer and a locket hung from a lampshade.
She crossed the bedroom and opened a closet, where several suits and sports coats hung on a rack. This was obviously Frank Pagan’s neat corner, his tidy place. The suits and jackets were enclosed in transparent plastic bags, set aside from the general chaos of the apartment. An island of order. The suits were good ones, well-tailored in a modern way, and some of the sports coats were, well, slightly ostentatious. There were also several shirts whose patterns might have been designed by a coven of drunken Cubists. Frank Pagan
was clearly a man of some vanity who tried to keep in touch with sartorial trends. On the bottom of the closet were shoes, most of them casual slip-ons, all neatly aligned.
She shut the closet and sat on the edge of the bed, staring through the open bedroom door into the living-room, where a stack of long-playing records was arranged against one wall. The first thing she’d done when Pagan had left was to go through the collection of albums, because she believed you could learn about a person from his or her choice of music – a theory tested by Pagan’s collection, which consisted entirely of what she considered noise. Every record was early rock and roll, ranging from well-known stuff like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, to material she found obscure, Thurston Harris and the Sharps, Freddy Bell and the Bellboys. What could she learn about Pagan from this assortment except that he liked loud simplicity and indulged in massive, possibly lethal, overdoses of nostalgia?
She rose, wandered back into the living-room. Clues to a man’s life, she thought. The music. The prints on the walls which were mainly old concert posters – The Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium, Fats Domino at the London Palladium. As if they’d been hung by a hand other than Pagan’s, perhaps that of the absent Roxanne, there were also delicately faded prints depicting scenes of 19th century English country life. It was quite a contrast between the rowdy and the bucolic.
She walked to the window, where she parted the curtains and looked down into the street. Across the way was one of those quiet squares that proliferate in London, a dark area of trees beyond the reach of streetlamps. Branches stirred very slightly in the soft night breeze. She imagined incongruous animals foraging for food out there – a badger, a field mouse, creatures disenfranchised by the city. Then she moved toward the sofa and lay down, closing her eyes.
When she heard the sound of Pagan climbing the stairs, then the twisting of the key in the lock, she sat upright. He came inside the living-room with a vaguely unsettled expression on his face, like that of a man who suspects he’s stepped inside the wrong apartment. She was amused by his awkwardness, by the way her presence in his territory affected him.
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