‘The little restoranchiki are all up the side, look,’ I said proprietorially. ‘And if the place I took you the other night was a province of Little Russia, this is the heartland … look, Tsarskaya Okhota is the third one up.’ I took her hand. ‘How did you know Plevitskaya would be singing tonight?’ I asked.
There was no response; no words, no squeeze of the hand. With my lover’s antennae, I felt her withdraw, and didn’t know why. I glanced at her. She looked uncomfortable.
‘There was a poster,’ she said in the end, biting her lip.
There was a poster for these shows at ROVS. I’d seen it myself, on the lobby door. But it was in Russian. She’d never have been able to understand it.
‘It was in Russian … I didn’t understand it, but I recognized her picture. General Skoblin explained and wrote it all down for me,’ she added. ‘It was his idea.’
Having never much liked Skoblin, I wasn’t too sure I wanted him to be involved in this idea.
‘You’ve met General Skoblin, too, then, have you?’
I was about to ask, ‘Well, where?’ when she came to a decision. She turned around to face me, took both my hands in hers, and said, in a breathy rush, ‘Look, I met him this morning at ROVS. We got chatting. And, before you ask, I was there because I went to try to talk to your father. I just saw him, having a smoke in the courtyard. I couldn’t resist. And I know you didn’t want me to do that and told me not to try. And I’m sorry.’
She was staring up at me as though she’d committed some dreadful crime; as though she thought I’d just walk away. She was so beautiful, with that imploring look in her eyes.
‘You were quite right,’ she went on. ‘He didn’t want to talk to me at all. I started wishing I hadn’t started trying about half a minute after I did start trying. But it was too late by then. I had to go through with it. I’m sorry. Really I am.’
She’d understood, then. She’d realized the futility of approaching him. Nothing terrible had happened. I could stop worrying about her and Father.
I kissed her, right there and then, in the street. I couldn’t not.
‘Ach, you won’t help grief with tears,’ I whispered through the thump of blood as we came up for air. Smiling forgivingly down, swept away on my wave of desire, for nothing mattered except this, surely, and whatever difficult little exchange they’d had would get forgotten soon enough …
She laughed a little, and raised her mouth to mine again.
The next time she pulled back, she was laughing more, and flushed, with pupils dilated at the astonishing wantonness of this public kiss. ‘People will be looking,’ she whispered, though something in her breathy voice suggested she didn’t altogether mind. I’d never been part of the sexual frenzy of night-time Paris before, never thought of it without the most extreme disapproval, and it wasn’t even night-time now, for God’s sake, but I was almost ready to suggest just forgetting Plevitskaya and going back to Evie’s apartment right there and then when, in something much more like her ordinary voice, Evie added, ‘Shouldn’t we go to the restaurant?’
I nodded, slightly shocked by the ease with which I’d let myself be carried away.
We separated. I ran my hands through my hair and composed myself. We walked up the side of the cathedral.
‘I’m so relieved you aren’t angry,’ she said, slipping an arm through mine so I could feel the whole length of one side of her pressed against me, and the whole tumult started again. ‘I thought you might …’
I turned towards her, but she laughed and drew her head back, out of reach of the kiss I’d intended.
‘… be furious,’ she finished, slightly teasingly.
That she could say that fearlessly, and that I could smile back without anger, felt like a new kind of intimacy. We were on unknown territory. But we were there together, growing in confidence.
We stopped in the doorway.
She was wearing a light fawn coat. I drew it off her. Every touch was a delicious torture, and every breath deeply felt.
She laughed up at me, dazzling with relief. ‘Because, my God, your father was so shockingly right-wing when he got angry, and I’m afraid I did make him angry, though it was the last thing I meant to do, I promise,’ I heard her saying. ‘He started calling all Grandmother’s poor young artists degenerates and delinquents from the dustbins of Europe … and Bolsheviks, and Jews.’
The coat was off, and in my hands. And, now we weren’t touching any more, I did hear the next thing she said, loud and clear. She giggled, a bit miserably. ‘He got really quite Herr Schickelgruberesque, you know?’ she said, and did a little mocking Hitler salute-and-moustache gesture with her hands.
It struck me like a blow, her mockery of Father. It was unbearable. After all, the thing I’d wanted to avoid had happened. She’d seen just what I hadn’t wanted her to see in him. And she was laughing about it.
Worse. She wanted me to laugh with her.
The darkness came rushing in, a wave of rage that felt terrifyingly like tears about to pour down my cheeks. If it had been earlier in our relationship, or if she’d been someone else, I might easily have howled, ‘Don’t dare call my father a fascist!’
But I couldn’t, now, with her. I didn’t know what I could do.
I thrust the coat into her hands. ‘I have to go,’ I said. And I ran.
PART FOUR
The Red Russians
28
Skoblin was smiling sympathetically as he drove through the summer night in the Cadillac and listened to his wife in the passenger seat complaining about the lack of audience at that evening’s restaurant show.
Things were going so well, suddenly, with his own career that, for once, he was able to feel genuinely sorry for his poor Nightingale.
In two days’ time, if everything went according to plan, he’d be the head of ROVS.
As he cruised forward, feeling the restrained power of the engine, enjoying the polished walnut and the comforting smell of soft, expensive leather and car fumes, he felt, expansively, that he wanted his wife to have something to be happy about, too.
‘I think you’ll be surprised by someone in your audience tomorrow,’ he said.
She eyed him. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Who?’
‘The American girl who’s moved in upstairs,’ he said, and even if he couldn’t make his quiet voice ring out it still vibrated with the pleasure of a conjuror pulling a rabbit from a hat. ‘Constance Sabline’s grand-daughter. She came into the office today. We had a chat. I sang your praises. She promised she’d come and hear you, either tonight or tomorrow.’
He could sense Nadya’s interest. That made him feel so unexpectedly tender towards her that, when he spoke again, he further softened her formal first name, Nadezhda, into a still more affectionate diminutive.
‘She was very friendly, you know, Nadyen’ka. It seems she’s taking the business of winding up Constance’s affairs very seriously. She’s not leaving Paris yet. She said she’d asked the servants to stay on till Christmas. Well, all Americans love Paris. So, if we get a proper chance to talk to her, I think we should explain about the recording Constance was doing for you, and see if she would want to finish it off in her grandmother’s place? It would be a shame to let all your work go to waste.’
‘Oh!’ he heard, and in her voice was the sound of hope returning. ‘Ask her home,’ he said. ‘If you can. Light the samovar, give her zakuski, sing her sad songs. Do what you have to do. Persuade her.’
It was an entirely selfless impulse, his wish to get the American girl to take her grandmother’s place in paying to promote Nadya’s career, he told himself as he negotiated the turning towards Ozoir-la-Ferrière, and their little house with the Russian birch trees his wife had planted in the yard. He was feeling rather proud of his altruism.
He no longer had any personal reason to need recording equipment and engineers in the apartment above ROVS. Just one week of listening in to what went on in that office had proved to the
visitors from Moscow that it was he, Skoblin, who really organized everything down there. They’d soon seen that he’d been right all along to say that Miller was a useless, lazy old buffoon, always sneaking off for lunches or shutting himself away for long, long solitary strategy sessions – which everyone knew were just naps, really. Even the secretaries laughed at their boss, behind his back. The men from Moscow had heard all they wanted even before Constance Sabline had so unexpectedly keeled over, forcing the sudden withdrawal of the editing equipment from her flat.
All the same, he genuinely hoped the girl would now step in and pay up. If she did, he could surely find a way to get the recording machinery back and have some other engineers edit it, in the weeks to come. Nadya deserved a bit of hope.
His wife had been good about agreeing to help him with this career plan. Even though she hadn’t looked shocked, she must have been scared when he’d first explained as she packed for her New York trip. But she hadn’t backed out, even when the thing got closer and the men from Moscow, once here, had (after listening to what went on inside the ROVS office for themselves) definitely decided to back him. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to help his cause and charm them. She’d even managed to look and sound convincingly enthusiastic about the crazy job the Muscovites were now assigning to her – the job of providing him, Skoblin, with the kind of far-fetched, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction alibi that those proletarian-intellectual spooks from Moscow were so keen on. Privately he’d thought the whole idea quite crazy, and it had showed. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Nadya’s acting ability, he might have slipped up and lost their favour. Yes, she was actually putting herself out for him, for once, his Nightingale. And he was feeling kindly disposed towards her, and wanted to reciprocate, so would help her carry on with her singing.
His wish to be head of ROVS had been growing inside him for many, many years. It was an emotion, more than anything else: the remnants of his long-ago, boyish hero-worship of General Vrangel’, that long, straight, utterly noble man, who, before he’d had to cut his losses and organize what they still called Vrangel”s Fleet to get the last hundred thousand White soldiers away from the Bolsheviks, had raised him, Skoblin, to be the White Army’s youngest general. He had wanted to inherit that mantle ever since. He wanted to become the incarnation of that charisma. He wanted to be the man who conferred blessings, to stand in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in front of the massed ranks of men in uniform and take their salutes. He wanted to wear, not Miller’s absurd opera-general uniform – which was for the cavalry snobs of the Preobrazhensky Regiment only – but the sombre Circassian coat the first, nobler, ROVS leader had preferred. It consumed him, that longing.
He should have got the job seven years ago, when Kutyopov had disappeared. As Nadya had always loyally said, it was only cruel fate – in the shape of that whispering campaign in the Paris Russian press – that had robbed him of it, and made that pompous, stodgy fool Miller seem a safer candidate. Skoblin had insisted on the rumours being put before a ROVS court of honour, which had eventually exonerated him, because the case against him was, when it came down to it, only hearsay; but what comfort was that when the damn-fool judgement had come too late? The job had been Miller’s by then, even if the old buffoon had given him the number-two post and, magnanimously, allowed him to do all the real work. To this day, Skoblin couldn’t bear to pick up the Posledniye novosti newspaper, which had accused him, so stridently and repeatedly, of being a Soviet agent.
But he didn’t rage any more. He just smiled, and kept his thoughts to himself. They’d accused him of being a Red; well, then, they only had themselves to blame if he’d secretly become one. Now he was about to have the last laugh.
Skoblin’s chance of revenge had come right in the middle of his despair. No one – not even Nadya – knew that, a few years back, when the storm was still raging around him, a quiet, polite man called Kovalsky had visited Paris from Moscow. He’d invited Skoblin out to an expensive restaurant and, over cigars and brandy, had listened sympathetically. With an uncharacteristic frankness born of misery and one too many liqueurs, Skoblin had explained the wrong direction ROVS had taken by appointing Miller, and the man had nodded with understanding. He’d been understanding, too, when Skoblin had complained about his wife’s decreasing earnings and reckless spending. And he’d sympathetically shaken his head and ordered more brandy when Skoblin had told him about the little farm he’d brought outside town in the hope of becoming a winegrower if all else failed, though this was losing money, too.
And then he’d given Skoblin a letter, and sat, gently smiling, while Skoblin read it.
Everything about that letter had been astonishing. For one thing, Skoblin had had no idea that his mop-headed little brother, Petya, who’d stayed at school in Moscow years ago, had later gone into the Communist secret service. In fact, he’d had no idea that Petya, or anyone else in his family, was even still alive. And, for another, there was a salary attached to the offer Petya, or rather Moscow, was making: a lump sum of five thousand francs, and a monthly stipend big enough for him to stop worrying – almost – about Nadya’s spending.
And so, for the past few years, Skoblin had done two jobs. As ROVS security chief, he’d sought out secret contacts within the Deuxième Bureau, the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo, and the Sicherheitsdienst. And, in his other role, he’d used those contacts to provide dossiers needed by the Soviet NKVD.
Sometimes, too, he’d passed Moscow information about the rare acts of sabotage Miller got round to organizing. Miller himself barely seemed to notice that none of these acts worked, or that the agents he sent out were – always – arrested.
And Skoblin hardened his heart. He’d earned his car, all right (no one had ever even asked how he afforded his beloved banana-lemon Cadillac; he supposed they thought the Nightingale’s concerts paid for everything.) Lovingly, he patted the wheel. But now there was more in store.
Play your cards right, the gentle Kovalsky had said, all those years ago, and, who knows? One day, Miller might go the same way his predecessor did …
And now, finally, it was about to happen.
Moscow’s men were primed and ready. Their arrival was his reward for the last damning ‘red dossier’ he’d managed to get the Germans to put together, on Tukhachevsky, just before the Soviet Marshal’s high-profile trial and execution in Moscow in June. Or, maybe, the reason for their arrival was that the new big man in the Lubyanka, Yezhov, was preparing for war in Europe, and wanted to be sure there would be no surprises from the little White Russian organization in the West.
Skoblin frankly didn’t care why. He was just happy they were here, and in such numbers. Even so, they were keeping things simple. The Muscovites called him Farmer. He called them Duplus (the crab salesman), Finn and Swede (the pair organizing transport in and out of Paris, and surveillance) and Alexander and Veletsky. These were the men who would be waiting behind the green door, in two days’ time, with the chloroform pad and the ropes …
Duplus had selected the anonymous-looking house attached to the green door, which was owned by the Soviet embassy, and which was located as far as possible from anywhere the White Russians ever went to in Paris. He’d told Skoblin to get Miller there, the plan being that they would first meet on foot, a good hour’s walk away, at a very different sort of rendezvous in the lovely, leafy, shop-free, traffic-free, café-free calm of Passy.
For the Muscovites couldn’t do their job alone. Miller was too canny – or lazy – ever to leave the ROVS chancellery without his taciturn son or some other guard. The Muscovites needed Skoblin to winkle their target out.
Of course, Miller trusted Skoblin, and would probably have gone with him willingly enough if he had simply asked him out for a walk. That, in fact, was what Duplus was expecting. But Skoblin had already had enough questions asked about his loyalty to last him a lifetime. This second disappearance would cause more fuss than even the kidnapping of Kutyopov. If he were to take over Miller’s job, t
his time he’d have to be seen to be above reproach.
So he’d taken the trouble to dream up the idea of a phony letter from the Abwehr – a nice touch, that; Miller’s dream come true – and got Duplus (who he knew was in reality State Security Major Semyon Spiegel-Glazer, of Jewish–German extraction, who was pretty good at German, since it was his first language) to write the letter.
He’d told Miller to destroy the letter, but he knew Miller wouldn’t. The man was a sentimentalist with no tradecraft, and the smug way he kept patting the right-hand pocket of his jacket showed he’d kept the letter on him ever since he’d first received it. Skoblin would make sure, when the time was right, that that letter got dropped. And, when the police found it, the trail would lead everywhere but to Skoblin or the Muscovites.
When Miller stepped out with him on Wednesday morning to meet the Abwehr men, he’d be worriedly running over his best German phrases in his mind. And then, ba-boom! Skoblin nearly laughed at the shock the boss he so resented would get.
Skoblin knew, in some buried place inside himself, that these thoughts would have shocked Vrangel’, had his hero the general come back from the dead and learned of them. But, he told himself, truculently, times change.
These days, when he looked at the careworn reflection he saw in the mirror, Skoblin found he didn’t much care whether the price of running the White Russian army was betraying it, in private, to the Reds he was supposed to be fighting.
All he wanted was to stand at the front of his men, in the cathedral, wearing Vrangef’s uniform, bowing as he received the archpriest’s blessing on the White Army’s behalf and leading the bass voices in praising God. He just wanted to drive, in a proper car (already paid for using his second salary) to a proper apartment (which would be the next bonus he would offer himself, once he was boss) and know that everything depended on him – the same set of banal, normal desires that, he now knew, also motivated most of the supposed Jewish–Bolshevik enemies in Moscow, including his own brother Petya.
The White Russian Page 20
