'Come on in, Charlie.' He liked the way the man straightened in his chair, left the newspaper folded on the coffee table, pushed up his tie before entering the inner sanctum. Take a chair, and what can I do for you?' It was a good office for talking. Parker Smith had the rank and the Civil Service grading to be able to choose, within a stipulated budget, his colour schemes - kept them soft, a gentie sky blue and a rich cream, full length net curtains, two quietly abstract paintings, and a sprouting philodendron in the corner; none of your Annigoni prints of HM in Garter robes, nor any 'Myself Meeting Winston Churchill' photographs.
'It's this, sir. Something or nothing, I'm not sure yet, but could be amusing. I put in a 'B'
category to you this afternoon, about Kiev. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered you . . . It's just that a policeman has been shot, and there's silence in the local rags and on the wireless. External picked it up and pushed it in my direction. If the Soviets had been trumpeting it I wouldn't have bothered. But they haven't, and that's what made it a bit unusual to me. Seemed it could mean there's something political there.'
'I read it,' said Parker Smith. 'What's the source evaluation?'
'Not bad. One of the businessmen's pick-ups from a long- termer, passed on by the handlers.
We've had this chap's stuff before, and not had reason to doubt it.'
Parker Smith bowed his head faintly in acknowledgment. One of the crosses the Department had to bear was that its source of hard news came more often than not courtesy of the active wing of SIS that occupied floors below.
There's not much to add to the report I handed in, except that a bit more has come in from the Moscow end. It's a bit convoluted, but it's more fast. Seems a British student on exchange post-grad studies at the University got into a bit of a panic, left his passport on a bus in Kiev, and rang into the Embassy in Moscow for guidance. Seems he told them that the talk there was of truck-loads of militia moving into the city late this afternoon and that there'd been an attack on a policeman. It's very fresh this: he was only talking to the Embassy a couple of hours ago. He said all this was mixed up with a rumour running the rounds at the University, and only a rumour, that a Jewish youth had been taken into custody. The kid said that the students were saying all these three factors were related. He's just an ordinary student, nothing special, not one of ours. But it all comes at the right time to go with the other stuff.'
' Interesting, Charlie. But still doesn't up it to "A" category.'
'Be pretty hard for anything the bloody dissidents do to manage "A" quality, sir.'
'But it's nice to know. Nice to know the bastards have their own little bit of Belfast. I don't envy the little blighters up the sharp end if they get their hands on them.'
That's not really why I want to see you this evening. It's just that if what we have already is genuine, then we could be into something much deeper.' Parker Smith was listening. It was what he wanted to hear, what the Department existed for, drew the Treasury funds to discover. 'Ever since I came to work here it's struck me that one day the Soviet Jews are going to get lively.
We've been through all the primary stages - press conferences, hunger strikes, trying to stir the pot up to get themselves shipped out to Israel, the botched-up job of the Leningrad hi-jack when they didn't have a gun between them and were riddled with informers and didn't even make it on to the plane before they were picked up. We've had all that kind of thing, but that was the older generation at work. It's the same the world over. All these things start with the thinkers and not the hard boys running the show, and they're too fragmented to have any unity, and there's failure.
But there comes a change, when the toughies get involved. I've damn all of nothing to base this on, but if you have - and it's only an assumption - but if you have a specific target - shooting, and you have troops coming in - paramilitary anyway - and you have a Jewish boy picked up, then you have a pattern. There's a load of "ifs" about the whole scene, but should there be the connection that I'm drawing, then things could get very interesting.'
' I think what you're saying, Charlie, is that it doesn't really matter how the Ukrainians and the Georgians and that crowd up in the Baltic spend their evenings, but that if it was Jewish, then the flavour would be richer, the spices would be in the pot. We'd have an international scene.'
'Something like that, sir. And I thought you'd like to know.'
The conversation was over. Anyone else and Parker Smith would have given him more encouragement, but it didn't work like that with Charlie Webster. Always at his best when he had to convince people, and seemed to lose interest once he had. Strange chap, not really part of them, but a good man to have around.
Charlie let himself out and walked back to his own office to collect his coat and briefcase. The bag had nothing in it beyond the morning paper, and he'd long done the crossword, but his wife liked him to carry it, had the EIIR monogram on it and she liked that to be seen. Couldn't take any of the office papers home - all classified and restricted - but he liked to humour her. He'd be in time for the 8.52 from Waterloo,
C H A P T E R F O U R
A tin of stewed meat, sliced open and the contents eaten cold and messily, dribbling on to their shirt fronts, and a loaf of bread were their food as the two men waited out the night hours in the forest hut. They also had a litre of beer to wash it down with, to deaden the taste, but this they left unfinished. They needed a clear head in the morning, David had said, and Isaac had watched as the screw-top was replaced on the bottle-head. But the beer had been good, had chilled their bodies and smoothed their throats, sore from their incessant talking. Like talismen they had laid out, where both could see them, their achievements of the afternoon. Close to David's right hip lay the bundle in which he had brought the guns, the protective wrapping artfully pulled back so that the metal shapes could be properly admired. By Isaac's crossed ankles was the thin paper envelope that bore the Aeroflot insignia, and in which were placed the strips of paper, printed and ballpen-scrawled, that were their tickets to Tashkent. Both packets were worthy of study, comprising the power and the subtlety necessary for their escape. And what awaited them now was nothing as tangible as they had accomplished, just a promise: Yevsei's promise.
With the end of the meal they were left with nothing to succour them but the sight of each other's face, the sound of each other's words. Frequently Isaac looked at the door, as if anticipating that it could open without warning, that the girl would be back, spilling out her success. It was irritating to David, who preferred to keep his own company, and who sat quite still, breaking the mood only once to throw the empty meat tin into a darkened corner, far into the shadows made by the single, flickering candle.
'How long do you think, how long till she comes?'
David shrugged, disinterested.
'Can she come in the night?'
'You know the bus times as well as I do. There is no other way she can reach us.'
' It's just this waiting. Everything we have done today, and still not knowing whether it's meaningless ..
"There is nothing we can do but wait.'
'Doesn't make it any easier.' Isaac laughed, nervous, cramped.
'Why should it be easy?'
' I didn't say it should be easy. I just meant . . ?
'There is nothing in a flight such as ours that can be easy. If it were then there would be many like us. We would not be alone.'
David spoke with almost a drawl, his eyes closed, seeming to ignore Isaac.
' Is that why you began? Is that why you started, because it wouldn't be easy?'
'Someone had to, after everything that our people have gone through
'
'But that's just jargon, David.'
'The flight had to be started ..
'More jargon.*
' If you didn't believe in it why did you come? Why are you part of us?*
'Different to the words you use, a different reason. Revenge, perhaps - revenge for what has happened.'
/>
'We are no different. We are of like mind, the same body. We hate with the same depth.'
Isaac shifted his position, mindful of the nails in the floor board, poorly hammered and whose heads bit at his buttocks.
'What was your vision of victory, David?' He saw the other man start, the eyes flash, a warning curl of anger at his mouth.
'What do you mean?"
'A campaign must have an aim, there must be a possibility of victory. If we are to fight them ...'
'We have hurt them - is that not enough?'
' It's never enough, just to hurt. We could go on hurting them for weeks and months and the achievement would be nothing.'
'You think that it's nothing we have achieved? A policeman shot, an organization formed, a commitment, and you call that nothing?' David stared at Isaac, intense, chin jutting, spitting out his words.
' It was a start to something.' Isaac sought to catch a tone of reason and rationality. 'But it could not be the end. You must
have thought of how what we did would develop, lead on. I can't find the words to express quite what I want to say . . . Just that-what did you hope for, what did you expect?'
'You say to hurt them is not enough. Well, who else has hurt them? Tell me that. Who else has filled their coffins? Has wounded and angered and insulted them? And what would you have us do? Send another telegram to the President of the United States? Call a press conference for the foreigners to attend and tell them our problems? Sit down in the street and wait for the militia to carry you away? Does that hurt them? Has anything changed in the years of the passive people, the clever people, those who relish the banner of "non-violence"? Have they won any battles? Do visas flow because their names are broadcast on the outside radio? Does it, shit. They win nothing, only a mindless and valueless moment of attention before they are forgotten and taken to rot in the camps.'
Startled and quieter, fearful of the passion that had been laid before him, Isaac said, 'But you knew, David, you knew that it could not just continue. They have organized themselves, they will sense they have a target. You yourself have said that in all probability they have taken Moses. If we cannot escape then they will close around us ...'
'They would never take me.'
'But is that what you foresaw? David, is that what you thought would happen, that one morning they would surround us ...?'
'They would never take me.*
Isaac was shouting now, changing his voice, believing he had secured the truth. It's a bloody death-wish, isn't it? You want to play the martyr. Spread out like a hero, and your name on the song sheet. Is that what you want, a tree on a hill outside Jerusalem ...'
' I don't want to die.'
'. . . and a crowd of people to come each Shebat, and stand in silence ...?'
' I don't want to die.'
'. . . the weeds will grow over you. You'll be nothing, just a bloody symbol. Is that what it was all for, to satisfy your bloody death-wish?'
'The door, Isaac. It's behind you. You can open it, you can walk through it, you can walk away, make your own path.'
Isaac looked into his face, blinked at the unmoving eyes of the friend he had known since he played with a tennis ball in the dust of his street. Saw that the composure had taken root again, and would not falter whatever the provocation he offered.
Tm sorry, David. I mean it, I'm sorry."
Just a whisper, competing with the light wind in the high trees. 'If you think it has been easy, Isaac, it is because you have not listened, you have not watched.'
For many minutes neither spoke, both their faces in shadow, so that neither could sense the brooding mood that gripped them. When would the girl come? thought Isaac. How much longer?
Would she come in darkness and in secrecy or in the public light of dawn? They'd be able to read it, written over her, whether she had succeeded or failed them. They wouldn't need words, or explanations: they would see it in her face. David had won his battle, had found the guns, and Isaac had fulfilled his share. Was she capable, the girl, of meeting her commitment? Hours Isaac had spent with her over the last years, and yet he hardly knew her, understood little about her.
Just the facade, not why she was a part of them, not why she had cradled the policeman's gun in the brief moments she had handled it, or why she had declared her intention to execute a man who was unknown to her, or why on this evening she would be wheedling her sexuality on a stupid, oafish youth. What did she owe them, that she risked her life to be part of a strange and demented crusade, a witness to David's death-wish, an accessory to Isaac's vengeance? He'd noted that she kept silent through David's monologues, seldom joined the others in questioning, seemed to float with them, a piece of driftwood. It would be different and straightforward if she were David's girl, but the moments, hidden or open, of gentle affection were not present - not that he had seen, anyway; never entwined fingers, never the hidden jokes and intimacies of lovers, nothing to give them away. But she was not relegated to the role of follower, to provide the boys of the group with the services they needed; she was an equal, as much a part of the 'programme'
as he, Isaac, was. And now they depended on her: there was no flight without her, no salvation. If she failed them it would be the police cells and the beginning of David's yearning for the martyr's lime pit, and the end of Isaac's vengeance. He pictured her in his mind.
The awkward and ungainly chopping stride that was too long for a girl that cared to draw attention, the teeth that were too prominent, almost like a rabbit's, the hair that was not tended, the clothes that were husbanded. It was difficult to imagine her in David's front line, fighting his battles, setting out for combat where the intellectuals of their people had lost their way.
What would they do if they had not won Yevsei, if there were no escape?
It was a hot, perspiring night, but Isaac shuddered, and hunched forward with his body as if to draw towards himself the fragile heat of the shrinking flame.
Rebecca was haggard with exhaustion by the time she reached the hut. It was the first light of morning, Wednesday morning, the day they had chosen for the break-out. The previous night she had spent without sleep. It had been too late by the time that she had ditched Yevsei Allon to get the bus that went far out of the city to the forests, too dangerous to go home in case the police and militia should come. So there was nothing left for her to do but walk the streets, fearful of passing cars, anxious over the noise of footsteps behind, shrinking into shadows and finally collapsing, dazed and nervous, to a park bench. She had taken the first bus of the day out, and then stumbled the long walk through the trees to the hut that had been silent and had seemed deserted till she had knocked softly and said her name and heard the movement inside that told her that Isaac and David were there.
The relief had swept over their faces when she had said flatly, 'It's all right, hell do it. Someone
- it had better be me - has to take the parcel to him at noon. He thinks it is books he is handling.
But he'll do it.' Then she had added, 'And you have the guns?'
David had unwrapped them, and laid them out on the floor, and she had seen the killing weapons, and the skin on her face had compressed together.
' Isaac and I will have these,' said David, handling the submachine-guns. 'We understand them.
You can have the policeman's pistol. It is enough for you.'
'Where did you get them?' Rebecca asked, wonder in her voice, built from the uncertainty she had felt through the evening and the night that even if Yevsei agreed to handle the package there might be nothing to give him.
There is a man who is known to me. In his own way he fought the pigs, but many years ago, and he is now old, and has no need of these things. He would wish them to be used for the purpose that he once had them. He gave them to us.'
'And I have the tickets,' said Isaac, pride on his face, ignoring that he had told her his triumph the previous evening. 'I thought there would be difficulties, but there were none,
and the seats are confirmed. We are going tonight to the West, Rebecca. Tonight we sleep in peace.'
And they stood together in the centre of the small room, holding each other close, kissing each other's faces, and there were tears on their cheeks, and they clung hard to each other's bodies, willing the strength they needed.
'But we were four, we must not forget that,' Rebecca said finally. 'We must not forget Moses.
Wherever he is, whatever they have done to him. If we weaken now we betray him.'
She had changed their mood, bringing a sombreness to them all. Like abandoning the wounded in battle, thought Isaac, to leave their friend. But what alternative was there? They were turning their backs, though, however they disguised it. David said, 'Rebecca, you must sleep now. If you don't you will be useless to us, half awake. You have time - three hours, four hours - before we go to the airport.'
On the floor she tossed and turned the minutes away, striving for comfort on the uneven boards, and her dreams were of the guns, and the bullets and the blood they might spill. She was alone while she slept, unaware that the others had gone, surreptitiously and with care to their homes and to hers, and that they had collected the personal identity cards that David decreed should not be carried on their persons, but which they would need at the airport. Work and school and the morning shopping rounds had emptied the houses, and they came and went unobserved by their families.
It was Isaac who had remembered that they must produce the cards at the barriers at the airport Luigi Franconi had lost his suitcase. Or rather the porter's desk at the Hotel Kiev had lost it. All the cases of the delegation had been put outside the room doors, as requested, and had been taken downstairs by the service lifts; all had appeared again beside the main swing doors to be loaded on to the airport bus - all, that is, except the case of Luigi Franconi.
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