‘I’ll tell you,’ Leonov said. ‘It’s brought us homes, food and money.’
‘Jesus—what food and what homes. That is with the exception of yours if you’ll forgive me.’
Boris’s blue eyes frosted. ‘The Revolution has also brought us power, and above all it’s brought us pride.’
The Canadian’s wife joined them and said to her husband: ‘I think it’s time we went home, dear. The baby-sitter won’t stay all night.’
‘She’ll stay,’ said the Canadian. ‘Do you realise this son of a bitch has just insulted Canada?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to.’
The woman returned to her side of the room where the talk was of maids and pregnant nannies.
Leonov poured more drinks. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the Revolution,’ he said. ‘You seem to forget what came afterwards. Isn’t history a compulsory subject for diplomats in your country?’
‘Christ,’ said the Canadian. ‘I hope we’re not going to have the bit about fighting a war after the Revolution. It was a world war, you know. Not just Germany versus the Soviet Union.’
‘You have no idea what war is,’ Leonov said.
Randall touched Mortimer’s hand. ‘When you’ve been in the Soviet Union as long as I have you won’t want to hear this particular one any more,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘I’ve been here long enough to hear it a dozen times already,’ Mortimer said. ‘The trouble is that it’s true.’
‘It may be that the world’s round,’ Randall said. ‘But you don’t want people to keep telling you about it.’ He shook Harry’s shoulder. ‘Come on Harry, time to go.’ Harry, who had been sitting on the sofa, stood up and glared round him as if he had just uttered a provocative statement instead of a snore.
They said good-night to Leonov and the Canadian, and to Harry Green and the diplomats half-heartedly trying to break-up the brawl.
‘You do not have to go already,’ said Leonov’s wife. ‘Stay a little longer. Have another drink.’
Betty Hellier remembered that she had forgotten to worry about anything for five minutes. ‘We must get back, too,’ she said. ‘What’s the time? Midnight? For heaven’s sakes we must fly. I don’t trust that nanny of ours in her present state—if she’s in any state at all, that is.’
‘But the party is breaking up so soon,’ said Leonov’s wife. She glanced nervously across the room at the men. ‘Please stay a little while longer.’
‘It’s been a great evening,’ Randall said. ‘But we really must go.’
Just then the Canadian aimed a punch at Leonov. ‘No bastard says that to me,’ he said. Leonov didn’t bother to move: the punch missed and the Canadian fell across a coffee table snapping its frail legs. He lay there for a few moments and then stood up, gazing with interest at a fragment of broken wine glass sticking out of the palm of his hand. ‘Gee, I’m sorry, Boris,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have had that happen for the world.’
Leonov kicked the broken pieces of the table and brushed his fair hair back from his forehead. He seemed quite pleased with himself as if some objective had been achieved. ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ he said with his slight American accent. ‘It was as much my fault as yours. I shouldn’t have provoked you. After all you are my guest.’ He turned to his other guests. ‘It might be an idea,’ he said, ‘if this little incident was forgotten. After all none of us wants any inquests. Agreed?’
They all agreed.
‘Thanks, Boris,’ the Canadian said. ‘That’s pretty big of you.’
As they all walked out in the snow Leonov stood at the door with a smile on his face as if he had just won a parlour game.
Next day it occurred to Harry Waterman that he did not know how to contact Grechenko; although he knew that, in an emergency, you could always contact a secret policeman by telephoning Lubyanka. He decided to wait a couple of days before calling on Richard Mortimer and that evening he went to the beer hall.
Yury Petrov was there drinking alone and scribbling on a scrap of paper. ‘We don’t see much of you these days,’ he said. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself?’
‘Marsha’s not been well,’ Harry lied. ‘You know how it is—you can’t go out boozing when the wife’s sick.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Petrov said. ‘Nicolai and I have missed your stories about the camp.’
‘You’ll have to go on missing them,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sick and tired of talking about the bloody place.’
‘You’re a changed man these days, Harry. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’s the matter. Why should there be?’ He handed Petrov a grimy rouble note. ‘Look here Yury, buy us a couple of beers and stop asking questions. I’m bloody exhausted after all the housework. I’d no idea what it was like. You’ve got to face it, Yury, we don’t know what work is.’
‘You don’t know what work is, Harry.’ Petrov remembered the camp. ‘At least not these days.’
They drank their beer and sat looking at each other as conversation dried up with the emptying of the glasses.
‘I’d better get back to the wife,’ Harry said.
‘I must get back too. I have an early start in the morning. Come, we will leave together.’ They walked into the street.
‘Where’s your cab?’ Harry asked.
‘Just down the road. Harry, there’s just one thing I’ve got to say before we go.’
Harry looked enquiringly into the sad aesthetic face lit by the street lamp.
‘I’m afraid it’s the end of a friendship,’ Petrov said.
‘What the hell are you getting at?’ Harry asked.
‘It’s just this—if you’ve got anything to tell Grechenko just let me know.’
Harry stared at him and a terrible sickness gathered inside him. ‘You?’ he said.
Petrov smiled sadly. ‘Have you anything to report?’
‘Did you know I didn’t kill that soldier?’
‘Maybe soon you will go home,’ Petrov said. ‘Just think about that. Now, have you anything for Grechenko?’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘You can tell him to go and —— himself.’
‘I won’t,’ Petrov said, ‘because you and I are old friends.’
Harry spat into the gutter. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘tell him that I’ve made contact with someone on the British Embassy.’
‘Is that all, Harry?’
‘That’s enough, isn’t it? Now go back and write one of your poems about it you treacherous bastard.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was as if the roof of a prison had been lifted. The sky was suddenly blue instead of grey and sunlight and warmth filled the winter penitentiary that had been Moscow.
As spring arrived, the city became awash with water. Roadside battlements of soiled snow crumbled, gutters ran with swift streams, ponds formed in the streets. The river broke up and ice floes chased each other joyfully towards the sea. The whole capital gurgled and chuckled with the sounds of winter melting.
In the parks the forgotten yellow grass uncurled to be dyed green, and sunlight hovered among the buds and salad shoots of the trees.
Spring also thawed the frozen spirits of the people. They put aside shapkas and felt boots, the prison garb of winter, and put on flat caps and sensible shoes. Outside Metro stations women sold mimosa flown up from the South and queues formed outside the glass booths on the pavement to buy glasses of fizzy drink, prozhki, ice-cream and thin bars of chocolate.
Throughout the winter hardly a motor-cycle had been seen. Now, wheeled from cellar and balcony, they back-fired their way down the broad highways spewing water and slush behind them. Cars were stripped of their canvas coats, pushed, kicked, dismantled and threatened with the scrap heap before emitting their first blue-breathed cough. Out came cycles, track suits, tents and guitars.
From the Dynamo and Lenin stadiums came the derisive starling-whistles of the crowds as their teams eased wi
nter from their joints and the soccer season got under way. From the Palace of Weddings came the strains of ‘In the Mood’ and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ as the marriage season got under way. In Gorky Park the old men emerged from the stalemate of winter to play chess again, warming arthritic hands in the new sunlight, offering gambits, rehearsed for five months, with poor chipped pawns.
Overnight a new nation emerged from its chrysalis and only its newspapers and politics remained the same.
For a while there were still showers of thick wet snow which melted swiftly in the water, and at night the water froze making the dim streets more treacherous than they had been all winter. Then finally the sunlight settled and the birds began to nest in the cherry trees outside the city.
Spring arrived noisily at the diplomatic compound in Kutuzovsky Prospect. Long tubes of ice clattered down the broad drainpipes, wads of snow plunged from the rooftops. The water sucked and gurgled by day; the ice cracked underfoot by night.
The ice-rink vanished, the playground reappeared, broken glass glinting in the dirty sand. Nannies and black mammies took up their old places calling to the paddling, Wellington-booted children as if they were always on the point of drowning.
As they had waited for the snow in the autumn so the foreigners seemed to have been waiting for the thaw. From a crowded flat spiced with a winter’s cooking on the tenth floor an Indian diplomat’s wife fell to her death. Those who saw her fall said that at first she seemed to float as the breeze billowed her blue and gold sari. She broke her spine and all her limbs but didn’t die until she reached the hospital.
Maids stripped the paper strips sealing the windows and spring-cleaned with reluctance.
In one apartment high up in the block passions or lusts stirred by the release from winter brought another tragedy. A young girl fell from a window; unlike the Indian woman she died as she hit the pavement. But it was believed in many Western circles that the fall was neither accidental nor with suicidal intent. The apartment was inhabited by some Middle Eastern diplomats. It was rumoured that she had dived from the window to escape their attentions; or perhaps been pushed when their demands became excessive. Some said that she had been sent there by the Russians with the familiar motive of subversion through sexual indulgence, and that when her mission had been about to succeed she had panicked, like a frightened young animal that is being hunted, and fled blindly towards the window. Only the diplomats really knew the truth. And they flew home next day.
In a flat below Richard Mortimer a boy or a youth began to rave in French. Mortimer never discovered who he was or which flat he lived in. But he heard the shouts quite distinctly, as if they were rising through a hollow wall. The cries were wild and piteous and he pictured the boy starved, tormented and chained to a wall. He knocked at several doors and reported the cries to the commandant. The commandant was sceptical—he had seen other young diplomats go to pieces in his compound. No one else heard the shouts and Mortimer began to doubt their existence himself; then one evening he heard them again; but he was alone and he said no more in case it was reported to the embassy that within six months of arriving in Moscow he was beginning to hear things.
At the embassy the restlessness was not entirely due to spring because the Foreign Secretary was visiting Moscow to meet Kosygin and Gromyko. Before one of his visits everyone except the Ambassador, who had seen many Foreign Secretaries come and go, was on edge. During his previous visit he had introduced a catch-phrase ‘It’s off to the Yemen with you’—and there were those who were still wondering if he had meant it.
A few days before he was due to arrive Mason said: ‘It seems an admirable time to visit Leningrad, Richard. Want to come along?’
Once upon a time Mortimer would have been overjoyed at an opportunity to visit Leningrad. But now it was spring and he was in love and he no longer wanted to go. But because it was an order and not an invitation he went.
As the night train to Leningrad eased its way out of the station a woman came into their compartment serving glasses of milkless tea and slices of bread smeared with caviar. They bought glasses of tea and Mason carefully closed the door behind the woman.
The thought of being away from Moscow filled Mortimer with despair. He sat on the edge of his bunk and watched Mason tasting the tea as if it were vintage wine. He would, he decided, do his best to enjoy the trip. ‘What’s the business you’ve got to do in Leningrad?’ he asked.
Mason looked appalled. He put down his tea on the bedside table and put his finger to his lips, shaking his head. ‘One thing about Russia,’ he said, ‘is that the trains are always on time.’ He began to search the compartment, rifling the two narrow bunks, tapping the panelling and peering into the spacious luggage compartment above them.
He made Mortimer feel very naïve, but at the same time Mortimer suspected him of even greater naïvety. He wondered if there was anything that he could say that would not provoke a rebuke.
Mason found nothing in the compartment and returned to his tea. ‘You go to the bathroom first,’ he said.
‘All right,’ Mortimer said. He took his toilet bag and walked down the corridor. The woman attendant didn’t return his smile. A big-bellied Russian whom Mortimer had noticed in Army colonel’s uniform at the station emerged from the toilet, the fly of his striped flannel pyjamas gaping wide. The corridor was wide but the colonel filled it and Mortimer squeezed uneasily past.
He washed in scalding water, brushed his teeth and panicked when he thought for a moment that he couldn’t unlock the door. Back in the compartment Mason had taken off his grey diplomatic uniform; underneath he wore woollen pants down to his ankles. He caught Mortimer looking at them in surprise. ‘Everyone should wear them,’ he said. ‘If you keep your legs warm everything’s warm.’
Mortimer hoped that Mason would go to the toilet while he undressed. Mason took off his pants revealing winter-white gooseberry legs. He put on pale blue pyjamas piped with dark blue braid and a silk Paisley dressing gown. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said and let himself furtively out of the compartment.
Mortimer undressed hurriedly and climbed into the narrow bed. He glanced briefly at a pamphlet about Lenin provided free by the State railway. He tried not to think about Nina and wondered instead about the clandestine activities of some of his colleagues.
He knew from the documents that he had accidentally seen that two junior members of the staff were working for intelligence; this had surprised him because, although they were built more like policemen than diplomats, they did not appear to be particularly intelligent. He also knew that a member of the political staff, a studious man in his thirties, was in charge of the intelligence operation. In addition to these men there were the Service attachés—the official spies who were never surprised if they were expelled at times of diplomatic crisis; but, as far as espionage was concerned, they were not taken seriously by either the British or the Russians. It seemed to Mortimer that there was an element of pantomime attached to any activity in which they were involved, particularly when they were on show in their ceremonial uniforms. Recently the Russians had drugged one of them in a hotel in Minsk and rifled his possessions. The Russian protest alleging espionage and the British protest over the indignity suffered by the attaché had crossed; both had soon been forgotten. Ansell and Farnworth would have liked you to think they were agents; God help Britain, Mortimer thought, if they were. And God help Britain if Mason was involved.
When he returned to the compartment Mortimer looked at him speculatively. There were unsuspected sides to his busy, suspicious character. At a Christmas party, for instance, he had given a passable imitation of the Foreign Secretary, pointing at the more sensitive members of the staff and chanting, ‘It’s off to the Yemen with you.’
‘Right,’ said Mason, ‘let’s get our heads down for a few hours. Or do you want to read for a while?’
Mortimer looked at the pamphlet on Lenin. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’s extraordinar
y comfortable in here, isn’t it?’
‘Better than British Railways,’ said Mason. He switched off the light. ‘Good-night, Richard.’
‘Good-night, Henry,’ said Mortimer and hoped that such familiarity would not upset Mason.
He listened to the rhythm of the wheels on the rails, slower and steadier than the rhythm in Britain. The night train to Leningrad. It was as majestic and dependable as any night train should be. He parted the curtains and gazed at the forest, still clouded with snow in the dark depths, slipping past. The grind of wheel against rail, only a few feet beneath him, coaxed him towards sleep. And when his willpower was weakened Nina returned to him.
What would Mason say, he wondered, if he awoke him and said: ‘By the way, Henry, I’m in love with a Russian girl.’ What would any of them do? It was still only an indiscretion, not a crime. But why had it happened to him? Perverse reaction to all the unsolicited advice he had received? No, there were no such neat reasons for loving someone. Unbelievably he had committed the one indiscretion they had warned him about even before he left Britain: he had formed an association—as counsel would put it—with a Russian girl.
In fact he had not even told Nina that he loved her; although he was sure that she knew. So the only evidence against him was imprisoned within himself. As far as anyone else was concerned—and he hoped that included Randall—he was merely taking Russian lessons with a pretty Russian girl. If his need for her ever faded then only he would ever know that he had once become what they called a security risk. But he knew that there was little chance of that need fading. He would be insane to ruin his career by making public his love; but he was aware that love and temporary insanity were close neighbours. Was he then to spend the rest of his days in Moscow discussing Russian grammar twice a week with the girl he loved?
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