Moskva

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘Tom Fox,’ he said eventually.

  It was the young woman on the desk. She had a call for him.

  ‘She’s very insistent that she speak to you.’

  ‘She?’ He was sounding drunk even to himself.

  ‘Yes, sir. She says she’s your wife.’

  The woman dropped out of the call and Tom suddenly had silence and distance and the sound of expensive shoes shuffling and fury held tightly in check. A clock was ticking in the background and he knew instantly where Caro was. In the drawing room of their house, using the telephone on the Victorian card table. There was a comfortable chair nearby but he could tell that she was standing up.

  ‘Caro?’

  ‘How could you? How could you be that stupid? How could you be that cruel?’

  ‘What am I meant to have done?’

  ‘What am I meant to have done?’ Her mimicry was brutal. She did anger well, Caro. It was rare for her to show more than irritation, but when she did she meant it. Tom stopped halfway into the chair and stood instead. This was plainly going to be a standing kind of conversation.

  ‘You know perfectly well what you’ve done.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, Charlie. What possessed you?’

  ‘You said I should call him more. You said I should make an effort.’

  ‘Don’t you dare make this about me. You called him. You had him dragged out of bed for no reason. He’s in floods, damn you. Matron’s put him in the sanatorium for the night and she’s going to keep an eye on him herself …’

  You had to be really sick to be sent to the sanatorium. Mumps, measles, misery. The infectious diseases. The ones that could spread.

  ‘You’ve always been useless.’

  ‘Caro …’

  ‘Bloody useless.’ She was shouting so loud she could probably be heard next door, and the house was detached. ‘Fatherhood’s not that hard, Tom. Other men manage it. At its most basic, all you have to do is provide and protect. No one’s asking you to do more. No one’s ever asked you to do more.’

  They both knew Caro’s money did the providing.

  His salary was good enough. But it was nothing like good enough for the house and schools and life that Caro had wanted for herself and her children. She’d probably have forgiven him if he’d made general. She’d have liked that. Her grandfather had been a general. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘I drifted …’

  ‘You drifted?’

  ‘Caro, I wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘Why? Why did you want to talk to him on a week night, an hour after lights out? What was so important you called him from Moscow to make him cry? In God’s name, what did you actually say to him?’

  ‘I told him I loved him.’

  For a moment there was silence.

  ‘You did what?’ Her voice was different, almost soft. She stopped shouting and he heard the chair creak as she sat down. He did the same.

  ‘Why?’ she asked finally.

  Flipping open Beziki’s file, Tom looked at one of the photographs and shut it again. His heart was in his mouth and his chest was tight; his shoulder hurt like hell, but that wasn’t why he had to set his jaw to stop the tears falling. There were conversations you had when you got together, others you should have along the way, some you never manage. But apparently there were also conversations you had to have when things were ending.

  It was too late to save his marriage. Even if he’d wanted to, and he wasn’t sure he did, he was pretty sure Caro didn’t. He’d lost the war, probably before they’d even fought the first battle. But some truces were better than others.

  ‘Tom … Are you still there?’

  ‘Still here,’ he said.

  ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I never told Becca I loved her. Not once.’

  ‘She knew.’

  ‘I never said it, Caro. I never said “I love you”.’

  ‘I’m not sure parents do. Not like that. Children know though.’

  Did they? Tom wasn’t so sure.

  ‘But it wasn’t enough,’ he said. ‘Was it?’

  The air chilled and before she could snap back, he said, ‘I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me. I should have said it and it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want Charlie … In case anything happens … I don’t want Charlie …’

  ‘What do you mean, if anything happens?’

  ‘It’s messy. At this end. It’s really messy. I’ve got myself into something.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘That’s the point. I don’t know.’

  ‘I thought you were just writing a paper. Isn’t that what you do for the MOD? Research things and write papers? Recognize patterns before others can see them. That’s why you’re over there, isn’t it?’

  ‘My job sometimes gets more complicated.’

  There was silence at the other end, not cross or irritated, just watchful. He wondered about all the things she wasn’t saying.

  ‘Those long research trips …’

  ‘Weren’t always to the places I said they were.’

  ‘Tom.’ Caro sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s different this time?’

  ‘The Soviets have borrowed me to help with something.’

  ‘I didn’t know that was even possible.’

  ‘Things are changing.’

  Maybe too fast. Certainly faster than some people on both sides like.

  Beziki had talked too much about Stalingrad for it to be simply the alcohol. Stalingrad had been playing on Beziki’s mind. So had Berlin. The man had been about to kill himself. Tom didn’t doubt that this was what he’d interrupted by hammering on the window of the restaurant. On the verge of suicide, surely you thought about the things that had brought you there? Stalingrad … and Berlin.

  The link was there and it mattered.

  Tom twisted the bezel of the signet ring Caro had bought him when they married round to the side. A reminder to ask her for a favour if the time seemed right. He’d been wondering who could help him with an answer. It was obvious.

  Caro’s father.

  The old bastard knew everyone.

  Although Tom couldn’t imagine why her father would help him.

  ‘Tom … Are you still there?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Look, an English girl’s gone missing in Moscow. They’re keeping this out of the papers but it makes sense for both sides to talk.’

  ‘That’s where you come in?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  Caro’s voice was wary. ‘You think she’s dead?’

  ‘I hope not. But I’m scared she might be.’

  ‘This is about Becca, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s how it started,’ he agreed. ‘Now, if she is still alive, I just want to stop this one dying. There was a girl yesterday morning, a different girl. They shaved her head and left her naked and frozen in a park. I was at her autopsy.’

  ‘Jesus. How old?’

  ‘About Becca’s age.’

  ‘Tom …’

  ‘I know, I know. I should step back.’

  ‘You’re not ready for this.’ Her voice softened. ‘It’s been hard for all of us. I should have realized it’s been hard for you too.’

  ‘A man I really liked killed himself tonight.’

  ‘Dear God … Are you allowed to talk about it?’

  ‘Best not. You’re in the drawing room.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She sounded surprised, not suspicious.

  ‘The Georgian carriage clock. I can hear it ticking.’

  ‘It is distinctive, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah … Can you do me a favour?’

  ‘What?’ She went from relaxed to on edge.

  ‘Look, your father’s on the Intelligence Committee. Ask him if there’s anything I should know about Edward Masterton’s time in Berlin. He was there after the war in the sector we inherited. Can he check what the lord chancellor has on file to do with
those days. Your father won’t want to do it. Largely because it’s for me, and I don’t blame him. But say it matters … Well, it may.’

  ‘Tom. Berlin was forty years ago.’

  ‘I know it’s …’ Another set of tumblers fell into place and Tom sucked his teeth. Christ, he could be such a fool. ‘Oh fuck,’ he said.

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just … Of course it is.’

  ‘What’s Berlin got to do with this girl?’

  ‘Everything. Nothing. I’m not sure any more. But I know there’s a forty-year block on releasing some intelligence documents.’

  ‘1945 to 1985. They’ll be released already.’

  ‘Caro, it’s forty years, plus one for safety. Otherwise, release December in January and it’s still only thirty-nine …’

  Tom might not be making sense to her, but he was making sense to himself, which made a change. What did Sir Edward have on one of the Soviets? More to the point, what did that man have on him?

  ‘Can you mention the forty years to your father too?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah …’ Tom hesitated.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘We’re over. Aren’t we?’

  ‘I could be cruel,’ she said. ‘I could say we’ve been over for years. But I don’t think I want to. Not now. I would have said that before we talked. Now I’m not sure it’s even true. But yes, I think we’re done.’

  ‘Thought so. Look, I’m sorry for calling Charlie. You’d better be the one to tell him we’re divorcing. I probably shouldn’t call the school for a while. And I’ll sign the papers. You get them ready and I’ll sign them. All right?’

  ‘Send me the name of your solicitor.’

  ‘One solicitor is fine. I’ll sign whatever you put in front of me.’

  ‘Tom, come on …’

  ‘I don’t want the house. I’m not interested in your money.’

  ‘I know,’ she said with a sigh. ‘That’s always been one of the problems. You’re sure about us only having one solicitor?’

  ‘Of course. I trust you.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Her voice was amused. ‘Now I can’t possibly shaft you.’

  ‘There’s always that.’

  They muttered their way through kind goodbyes, kinder than their goodbyes had been for years. Both sad. Both of them knowing, Tom imagined, that the putting down of the receiver ended one stage of their lives and began another more thoroughly than signing papers ever could.

  40

  The Oak Tree

  The bed was a mess. One of them, probably Sveta, had had the decency to strip the bottom sheet and put it on the cotton cycle in the Candy in the kitchen. It had been spun but was still damp when Tom got back to his flat around noon. So he looped it between two chairs like a makeshift tent, and that made him think of Charlie, which didn’t help.

  The rest of the flat was suspiciously clean.

  Everything in the kitchen had been washed and put away. The bath had been wiped down and was free of suds. That said, both Tom’s towels and his bathmat were sodden, most of the loo roll was gone, his champagne had been drunk and the bottle was missing. So they’d either taken it as a souvenir or dumped it with the rubbish outside.

  Talking to Caro had thrown him.

  Much of his protective anger was gone and without it he felt unshelled, rolled by events through the grit of his misery. In part through desperation, in part because he couldn’t put it off any longer, he made himself a jug of coffee using the real Colombian he’d brought from London, ripped open a fresh packet of papirosa and borrowed the cracked saucer from under the cactus for an ashtray. Then he put Beziki’s file on his living-room table, laid the photographs out like cards, with their backs to him, and began with the bank statements.

  Beziki had kept money in the Bahamas.

  The idea that a Soviet gangster would have a Western bank account stunned Tom but it was the truth. The man had also had accounts in Prague, Budapest and West Berlin. The money he had with the Royal Bahaman was several times Tom’s salary. He checked the figure again to be sure. And having made sure, he slid that bank book and that one only into his pocket, leaving the others where they were.

  It was slow going sorting through the rest.

  Beziki’s handwriting was atrocious and he’d kept all the accounts himself. You would, wouldn’t you? Tom thought. This wasn’t simply extortion and money laundering. This was extortion and money laundering in a country where both were punishable by death.

  From a land deed on file it looked as if he’d owned a farm in Latvia and a vineyard in Georgia. Tom hadn’t even known private citizens could own land in the USSR. Account books for the farm and vineyard came next. Money in and money out, money loaned to neighbours and money repaid, rates of interest, new loans opened, old loans closed. A list of restaurants and companies in Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi came after that. Money loaned and money repaid. Sometimes, increasingly often, simply money paid in. Money went in monthly, the same sums every time. Occasional red dashes indicated a sum not paid. An occasional line through a name indicated an account closed. It was dark by the time Tom finished with the bank statements, land deeds and the flimsy little account books with their spidery notation, obviously written by someone who came to literacy late.

  A brown envelope held pages torn from notebooks, mixed in with badly typed forms and reports, some so old they related to the secret police in the days, immediately after the Revolution, when it was still known as the Cheka. Most were later, though.

  They all related to the Tsaritsyn Monastery.

  It took Tom an entire packet of papirosa to translate the comments about traitors, kulaks, recidivists and duty done, and work out what was actually being said. In the late twenties and early thirties, in the aftermath of a failed kulak rebellion, the monastery had been a clearing house for those involved, the families of those involved, those who might have known those involved.

  The net widened.

  The numbers killed ran into hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Brothers were forced to kill brothers, sons their fathers, daughters their mothers. Those who refused died with those they refused to kill. The descriptions were cold, almost clinical. The state was diseased.

  Stalin’s purges were at their height.

  They had a duty to reduce the contagion.

  Two supposedly trustworthy locals carried out the work of organizing the slaughter. An ex-officer of the Imperial Veterinary Service, Pavel Nikolayevich Dennisov, and his ex-sergeant, Aslam Arkanovitch Kyukov. In time they had proved themselves untrustworthy and had been dispatched in their turn.

  Tom read the two names again.

  To find a Dennisov or a Kyukov might mean nothing.

  To find both, linked like this … He needed to see what else, if anything, he could discover about the place. The last piece of paper was a newspaper clipping, yellow with age, ripped in two and glued together. The monastery was to be bulldozed and an orphanage built on its ruins.

  Tom almost left it there, but then he made himself start on the photographs.

  The first showed Gabashville’s boy dead in the ruined house. The curtain covering him had been yanked back and camera flash bleached his features.

  The next showed him post autopsy, the Y-shaped incision across his chest sewn clumsily shut, the bullet wounds clearly visible. The photograph was official, or copied from an official one. Autopsy notes were glued to the back.

  I should have realized it’s been hard for you too.

  For you too. He’d given no thought to how grim it was for Caro.

  Other, older photographs followed. An old man with a young boy. Two serious and thickset women on a fur rug in front of a fire with a wall of books behind. A girl, with ribs like a rack of lamb, with a girl younger still. A poster above the bed showed the older girl in Giselle.

  Tom went back to the first and looked more closely.

  Not at what was being shown,
an old man in a leather chair, smoking a cigar, while a naked boy knelt in front of him. He looked at the background: high ceiling and tall windows, paintings of windblown steppes and photographs of men in uniform. The commissar’s generation or the one below.

  And if it wasn’t taken in the House of Lions, then it had been somewhere similar. There were a handful of others like this, some old, some new. One showed a young, smiling Vladimir Vedenin. There was a photograph of his father too, smiling across a cafe table at a young blonde girl Tom found unsettlingly familiar.

  If the photograph hadn’t been old, he would have said he’d seen her recently.

  Trying to work out where gave Tom such a headache he washed down a handful of codeine with bad East German beer, and topped the painkillers off with a couple of sleeping pills. Then he made himself drink a pint of water against tomorrow’s hangover and went to bed early, betting against sleep. He lost.

  When the phone rang at dawn, Tom ignored it. He ignored it again when he was down to the dregs of his morning coffee and Beziki’s photographs were spread untidily across the table in a fan in front of him. The same boys, the same old men, the same girl across a cafe table. If he stopped now, he’d find excuses to avoid looking at the last few.

  The photographs in this envelope were older than the rest, smaller in format and taken with a 35mm fixed-lens camera, a good one. There were twenty-four shots, with the negatives included. The two yellowing strips of celluloid were so friable their perforated edges had begun to break away.

  The first photograph showed the Reichstag, the streets around it bombed back to ruins, seven very young soldiers and a boy clutching a sniper’s rifle in the foreground. The men had forage caps, the boy a cloth budenovka with the flaps tied up. It wasn’t hard to recognize Beziki in the skinny urchin grinning for the camera.