Document Z

by Andrew Croome

  The doctor said, ‘No.’

  She was escorted by Kovalenok from the room.

  Some hours later, a second doctor came. He was no one she recognised, younger than the first, blond near to orange hair and large hands like a farmer’s. He delivered the second shot into her opposite arm and on the certificate his signature was an indecipherable mess.

  She knew that the couriers had arrived. Vislykh came and said that Kislitsyn, also, would be escorting her home.

  Why? She wondered whether Moscow was afraid that the Australians had got to him as well.

  It was left to Masha to tell her that the next day would be the last. The two women spent the night in the duty room. Evdokia thanked Masha for everything she had done.

  ‘Don’t look so distressed,’ Masha said. ‘I promise it will be fine in Russia. It will be alright and you will see. Here, now. Write for me once more the address of your family, and Ivan and I will visit and life will have gone on.’

  At 9 a.m. on the nineteenth, Generalov called her to his study. She could not tell whether the pity in his voice was mocking.

  ‘I don’t need to remind you that the couriers are armed,’ he said. ‘After Darwin, you will stop in Jakarta, then Singapore. In these airports, you will play cards and laugh. You will be tourists travelling. This way you will not attract attention.’

  ‘My salary,’ she interrupted.

  The ambassador stared.

  ‘You must pay my salary. Until I cross the frontier I am still considered as officially on a posting. I am owed my full salary, my travelling expenses and the addition of twenty-five per cent in Australian pounds.’

  ‘Comrade—’

  ‘Pay me these amounts.’

  He coughed. ‘The instruction from Moscow is that you will receive such payments there.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you did not tell me?’

  ‘I have had more pressing concerns.’

  She did not know whether to believe him. Then he told her to see Vislykha. The woman would hand over Volodya’s uncollected salary, accounted to the day he left for Sydney. Evdokia thought this a good sign. They weren’t trying to say Volodya hadn’t been doing his job.

  Downstairs, two cars were parked behind the embassy. Kislitsyn and Kovaliev were loading one with her trunks. The two couriers and Vislykh were standing with the other. She was ushered into the second, the Cadillac, and she sat for fifteen minutes before Kovaliev took the first car towards the gates. She didn’t see the crowd but she heard them, a small chorus of shouts. She waited in the Cadillac for a further fifteen minutes before Zharkov and Karpinsky got in. They said hello but nothing else. Soon, Sanko started the car and at the last second Vislykh got in beside her and slammed the door. They raced through the gates. She was shocked at the crowd’s size, the mob they’d grown to—maybe thirty or more individuals with cameras or microphones or fierce looks. The car bounced over the kerb onto the avenue. The crowd was scattering when she turned to look back.

  At the beginning, all she thought of was a car accident. That Sanko might errantly tip the wheel into the oncoming Easter traffic. Vislykh was handing her a handkerchief, offering comforting words that she didn’t fully listen to. He put a cup of brandy in her hand, which she drank, and then he was pouring vodka.

  How many hours to Sydney? The airport was on the southern side. The road turned and dipped and turned. She looked through the window at the passing country. She knew she was going to be ill before she was. The Cadillac made a forced stop outside Collector. She crossed towards some trees and was sick in a shadow. Then she stood for a long time, holding the cloth to her mouth, her nose filled with the smell. Vislykh watched her, leaning against one of the car’s doors. She had another brandy and the Cadillac took off.

  The men conferred about the flight time—whether or not they were late. The consensus was they weren’t. Even so, Sanko took the road faster. She asked for water but there was none. She asked for the radio and was told it didn’t work. She had some idea that there was something public about all this. A sense of apprehension that permeated the car. Most likely, people were angry about the espionage, the undermining of democracy that she’d helped. It wasn’t a matter of success or failure but of appearance and intent. They were right to hate her. Who was she to come here and engage in such acts?

  The car whistled on the road. She was carrying her small handbag and that was all. They passed the intersection for the Wombeyan Caves Road.

  It was dark when they hit Sydney’s outskirts.

  20

  Bialoguski sat in his Holden on a badly lit street, parked at the higher end outside Lydia Mokras’s flat. Her light was on, the one that lit both the kitchen and the lounge. He’d seen her shadow just now. She was alone.

  He listened to the radio. He saw no reason to be annoyed that Petrov had defected through Security without him. That was their business. That was the official part and there was no reason for Bialoguski to be there. He wondered how the Russian had felt, crossing that boundary, the boundary, the world-sized hinge. Like a warrior? A hero? A miscalculating fool?

  When the news had broken, Bialoguski had begun to prepare the ground for his inevitable and irrevocable exposure—all the while playing his hand perfectly until the last. When Pakhomov and Plaitkais had come to his surgery searching for their man, the doctor had ensured he was out. When Evdokia called to say Volodya was missing, he’d carefully cultivated the impression that he was leading the hunt himself. He’d dragged Lily Williams mysteriously from a dinner party, demanding that the secretary of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism tell him when she’d last seen the VOKS representative. He’d whispered the conversation conspiratorially, as if Petrov’s absence were a grave secret, hardly known by those who knew. Then he’d got Jean Ferguson of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society out of bed, in her dressing gown, and interrogated her suspiciously about Petrov’s whereabouts, the man’s movements and demeanour, the clothing he’d last been seen in. Jean had reacted weirdly, highly uncomfortably, as if he might be threatening her sexually. That pleased him. He’d told her that the embassy was worried. They’d put himself and Pakhomov on the case. Would she put the word out amongst the Sydney left?

  It was cleverness on his part. Fooling them at the last. When they discovered the truth, they’d be awe-struck. Which was why the next day he bought a gun, ringing Howley and demanding the permit, fearing either the embassy’s or the left’s reprisals. Reluctantly, ASIO organised it with the New South Wales police. He went to a pawn shop in Kings Cross and paid forty pounds for a .32 calibre revolver and an ill-fitting shoulder holster. He then registered both with a sergeant at Special Branch.

  The meaning behind the gun was that he was officially sanctioned. It was the state saying, you have served us loyally and therefore earned protection from our enemies. He liked to look at himself in the mirror with the weapon underneath his clothes.

  Lydia was in the kitchen, her silhouette visible through the glass. He crossed the street carrying a document bag and ascended the stairs at the flats. She wanted to know who it was. He announced himself and was surprised when she asked what he wanted.

  ‘Let me in,’ he said.

  There was a pause while Lydia took her time, finally opening the door in a pink woollen jumper and, he was fairly sure, no bra. She stood with the door at her hip as if she didn’t want him inside.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘You can’t invite me in?’

  She looked at him. Stepped back.

  ‘I’ll have a drink,’ he said, taking a seat on the couch.

  Lydia took her time opening a bottle of beer.

  ‘He doesn’t know anything about you, does he?’ Bialoguski asked. ‘No compromising information, I mean.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Petrov!’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘The defector.’

  ‘Yes. Are you afraid?’

  ‘What would I have t
o be scared of?’

  ‘He might have information on you.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘There’s nothing he could have.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Only I think Vladimir had the impression you were collecting political intelligence.’

  She put a glass of beer in his hand.

  ‘That would be all it was,’ she said.

  ‘An impression?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would it just be an impression?’

  ‘Because,’ she said.

  ‘Because you’re not a spy?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m not.’

  ‘Only you gave me that idea.’

  Lydia shrugged.

  ‘Sit here,’ he said after a time. ‘Sit on the couch.’

  She did.

  ‘What if Security believe his story?’ he put to her. ‘Perhaps Petrov will tell them what he thinks.’

  ‘But will they believe him? The drunk.’

  Bialoguski smiled. ‘They might deport you.’

  ‘They can’t. I’m resident.’

  ‘That won’t stop them. At the least, I’d say you’d lose your job at the hospital. I think you need someone to vouch for you. A person whose opinion Security will trust. Perhaps someone who’s been given reason to protect you.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Michael?’

  He laughed. ‘I want to know what it was all about. If you’re not a spy. I mean the day at the harbour and the photographs we took.’

  ‘You were there. You tell me.’

  ‘If Security asks, what should I tell them?’

  ‘Asks who?’

  ‘Myself.’

  She had slippers on, he noticed. Peach-coloured.

  ‘Where is your boyfriend tonight?’

  ‘I work too much. We broke up.’

  ‘Your wish?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  ‘You know, I’m going to be famous soon.’

  She met his eyes, her head slightly angled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will be in the news. You may hear some things about me that you did not suspect.’

  ‘Have you been charged?’ she asked.

  He looked at her.

  ‘Your abortions?’ she whispered.

  He half-grinned. ‘They are not my abortions. And no, not that.’

  ‘Why?’

  He said nothing for a moment, then reached into the document satchel he’d brought. From inside, he drew a nine-by-six-inch photograph. It was a portrait of himself in a bakelite frame. He’d autographed it, under the glass, in thick pen. He gave it to Lydia. She took it with two hands and held it on her lap. He leaned across to kiss her. Instantly, she put a hand out and began to laugh. Her mirth shocked him and he recoiled.

  ‘What is this picture, Michael? A souvenir?’

  The laughter made him angry. ‘You’re not going to know me soon,’ he spat. ‘You don’t know me already. When you hear the news, this picture is what you will have.’

  ‘Are you aware that you are mad, Michael? Do you know that you aren’t normal?’

  He took the revolver slowly from the holster and held it flat in his open palm. He was looking at the gun and not her. He waited for her to say something though he knew she wasn’t going to. After a time, he stood and collected his satchel from the floor.

  The street outside was as he’d left it. Except Lydia had killed the light. He imagined she was watching him, her fingers on the fold of the curtain, using the darkness of the flat to keep from his sight.

  A dog barked hesitantly. He put the car in gear and drove. At the first intersection, he touched his hand to the gun once more. The cold metal calmed him. The gun was a cooling secret—a secret that knew everything was changing. Petrov had defected, and the doctor had given his life—his left-wing life—to see it happen. He was supposed to have wanted this all along, coaxing the man across. Why then did he feel so strangely uncertain? And why so hopelessly unenthused?

  21

  At Mascot airport, the police could do nothing. They were too few, too unprepared. They stood on the apron, cudgels against their thighs, lost men, a row of doomed figures, sweat glimmering on their necks.

  Behind them, the BOAC Constellation stood like an idol in the arc light. Before them, the crowd was hundreds strong, a piping sea of night breath, a slowly rising voice.

  Two lone placards: WE WANT A FREE CZECHOSLOVAKIA and REDS = PIGS.

  Press bulbs knifing at intervals through the darkness, casting white chrome impressions on the terminal’s outer shell.

  The crowd were becoming bold. A man in a woollen vest was giving a speech from on top of an oil drum, punctuating his oration with karate-chop actions at the plane.

  The Russians emerged from the darkness at the edge of the terminal, a gang of five, Mrs Petrov at their centre, grey suit, red bag, white gloves. The men holding her arms looked straight from a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda: brutal, thugfaced killers in long coats, one thick-bodied and dumb-looking, the other a scheming Machiavellian rat.

  The crowd thought the men were dragging her, pushing her, physically compelling her to move. They swept towards them, shouting, appealing, a clarity of purpose developing when the violence started to come.

  In the Constellation’s cockpit, the pilot’s radio was saying, ‘Speedbird . . . Speedbird . . .’, and he listened, watching the Russians and the knot of demonstrators around them advance. ‘Speedbird . . . be advised of your Soviet passengers approaching . . .’ The towerman’s voice was nervous, shaky. The pilot watched two policemen jog towards the plane, shoes shining in the lights. The noise of the crowd intensified. There was a mob behind the Russians, either side and in front. They were coming close.

  The steward came into the cabin to say that several people were under the plane, the wings and the fuselage. ‘Speedbird, do not start, do not start,’ said the towerman.

  The stairs were rocking. The pilot saw them shift, roll, come back into place. The Russians were up or halfway up. In the crowd, there seemed to be a protest within the protest— a group of men, a rough element pushing and grabbing; the majority simply yelling, content to stand by.

  The pace of the Russians’ boarding seemed a surprise. A few seconds where he thought things might go either way. Then the crowd’s noise drifted into a lull. They began backing off. They were walking slowly, but away, only the slightest signs of an intent to linger. Soon, they were where they’d started, by the terminal, and they looked primed by a certain satisfaction, an almost glow, the energy released when an electron falls one level to the next.

  ‘Clear,’ said the pilot’s radio, and he was glad to hear it as he began again his pre-flight check.

  Shrinking constellations. As Sydney’s lights contracted below them the forces in the plane felt world-shaking.

  Kislitsyn was telling her, ‘Stop crying.’

  She took his handkerchief and kept sobbing. He glared at her, but she had her reasons. Returning to the USSR as a victim. Being punished, horribly, for doing nothing wrong.

  It occurred to her that for the last fifteen days she really hadn’t been thinking straight. She still wasn’t thinking straight. The evidence was she had one shoe, and on the tarmac just now she’d almost been broken into pieces.

  The plane was levelling out. She stood and walked down the aisle. The ladies lounge was a small room with an actual lounge chair. It had a mirror and an adjacent room with a toilet. Evdokia looked at herself, the dishevelment, and a voice asked, ‘Are you alright?’

  It was the hostess. Black-haired with thin features, she wore a uniform with a hat. She was looking at the passenger, concerned.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Evdokia said.

  ‘Would you like water? Would you like my shoes?’

  She examined the woman’s
feet. They looked big. She tried the shoes on. They were far too large.

  The hostess said, ‘Keep them. You’ll need something when we land in Darwin.’

  Darwin?

  The woman saw her confusion. ‘To refuel.’

  She returned to her seat. Incredibly, the couriers were both sleeping. Kislitsyn gave her a beer and four cigarettes. He was looking out the window; just blackness out there. He lit her cigarette and told her it would be alright in Moscow. She would live in her old apartment with her mother and she would go back to her old job, the way things were before. She knew the idea was ridiculous. ‘You are always the professional,’ she said, and he protested, but she was on her feet again, heading for the ladies lounge.

  The hostess was there with the steward. The steward asked her: ‘Do you want to stay in Australia?’ She wasn’t expecting the question. She looked into his face. It wasn’t a query born simply of kindness. His tone said, I have the power to get this done.

  ‘I want to see my husband,’ she said.

  ‘But do you want to stay?’

  She took a small glass of water. ‘I am scared,’ she said. ‘The men who are with me—two of them are armed.’

  ‘They are armed now? On the plane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The steward looked down the aisle.

  ‘They have revolvers,’ she said. ‘They are dangerous men. They are here to protect me by force.’

  ‘Do you want to stay?’ the steward asked again.

  ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at him and then at the hostess. She began to nod, not totally sure what the nodding would mean.

  She returned to her seat. Kislitsyn was now sleeping. Eight hours to Darwin. Longer into a headwind. She made an attempt to sleep. They offered her one of the Constellation’s beds but she refused. She wanted something to focus on. She put her mind on Tamara, regretting immediately that she hadn’t bought either her sister or their mother new coats. She shook Kislitsyn’s arm and asked him if there was time for shopping in Darwin, or did the vendors take Australian pounds in Singapore? He looked at her as if she were a crazy person. Maybe she was a crazy person. If she was, it was because of what they had done to her.