Bearpit (27 page)

Yuri stared down at the picture of the man he'd watched escort Caroline from the advertising agency. The inscription said: ‘To Carro, from Peter'.

Looking up at him, Caroline said: ‘What are you grinning at?'

‘Nothing,' said Yuri, returning the photograph. ‘I didn't know that I was.'

‘I told him I'd met you.'

‘Told him what?' The question only just stopped being abrupt.

‘That I had a new guy who was a journalist. He asked what the magazines were but I couldn't remember.'

Dangerous, thought Yuri. Like coming here at all. So why had he, without a proper, professional, KGB-approved reason? He said: ‘What does Peter do?'

‘Cameraman at Universal Studios.'

‘Does he visit often?' queried Yuri cautiously.

‘Once or twice a year.'

Hardly likely to be a problem, Yuri decided. No more than the problems he was creating for himself, anyway.

He said: ‘I still haven't got anything in. Do you want to go out to eat?'

‘No,' she said positively.

‘What then?'

‘You really want to know?'

‘I really want to know.'

‘I want to go to bed and eat you.'

Which she did. Fleetingly Yuri wondered if he would have the difficulty with Caroline that had embarrassed him with Inya, but he didn't. The first time was hurried in their eagerness for each other, like before, but the next time it was slower and better and she screamed out when she came, driving her nails into his back, scratching him. Afterwards they lay quietly, locked together and unspeaking, her head against his chest.

It was Caroline who spoke first. She said: ‘You sure you're not married?'

‘I told you I wasn't.'

‘I know what you told me.'

‘So what sort of question is it?'

‘The sort of question that a girl asks a guy when she wants to be sure.'

Unseen above her, Yuri swallowed. He said: ‘No, I'm not married. And I'm sure about it.'

‘Good.'

‘Why good?'

‘Just good.'

‘Isn't this conversation getting a little heavy?' he said.

Instead of replying, she said: ‘How long are you back this time?'

‘It's not definite,' said Yuri, avoiding again. He was glad her posturing with the cocaine appeared to be over.

‘I want it to be a long time.'

Yuri thought he heard a telephone ringing in the apartment below but decided he had to be mistaken. He said: ‘Maybe it will be.'

‘Stay with me tonight? Sleep I mean.'

‘If you'd like me to.'

‘I'd like you to.'

They made love once more, before they slept, and during the night Caroline awakened him and they made love again. He said: ‘You're going to exhaust me,' and she said: That's what I'm trying to do, tire you out so you won't have the energy to go with any other girls.'

Yuri had the account already prepared when he entered the United Nations the following day, the explanation that he'd gone to check the apartment and encountered a neighbour again, smiling expectantly when Granov hurried towards him, serious-faced.

‘Where the hell have you been!' demanded the
rezident
before Yuri could speak. ‘We've tried everywhere to find you!'

‘What is it?' said Yuri.

‘Your father's dead,' said Granov.

Panchenko stared at the scraped and dented wing of the car and the gaping emptiness, where the light had been, remembering Malik's stumbling, last-minute attempt at avoidance and how he'd had to twist the wheel to hit the man and by so doing made it impossible to avoid the glancing collision with the wall. Nothing more than a minor problem, he decided: now that he had taken the investigation away from the civilian militia there was no danger of any damaging inquiry. Still essential that he take precautions. Repairs through the Directorate motor pool were logged and he had to avoid official records. So it had to be a back-street, no-questions-asked garage: from those same KGB records he wanted to avoid, Panchenko knew the name of every one. But first the car had to be cleaned: there was a surprising amount of blood.

22

The sleet started as the cars approached the Novodevichy cemetery, neither snow nor rain, just adding wet to the cold and making everything greyer. The colour – or lack of it – was one of Yuri's most positive impressions: dark cars, dark-clothed men, dark-earthed burial place. Even the sprigs and flower arrangements on the other, existing graves seemed withered and old, bleached of any brightness.

The uncertainty at the line-up to the grave was not from any respect for the man they had come to bury but one of protocol because Victor Chebrikov was attending. The KGB chairman chose his own place actually alongside Yuri: earlier the man had nodded, once. Yuri knew that anything further, like conversation, had to be initiated by Chebrikov, so he didn't speak. He supposed the man's presence indicated a great honour in memory of his father, like his signing the obituary in
Pravda.
It seemed immaterial. The self-awareness surprised Yuri. Very recently being in the presence of Victor Chebrikov would have mattered to him a very great deal.

The cortege set off through the graveyard with appropriate slowness and Yuri, who had never before been in a Soviet cemetery, became conscious of the size and ornateness of the burial place. The markers were nearly all elaborate slabs of stone or marble and many were fronted with huge, glass-protected photographs of whoever had died: the monument to a bemedalled soldier whose name Yuri could not read was actually in the shape of the five-pointed stars which adorned the Kremlin towers. More important in death than in life, thought Yuri.

Except in his case, he decided, in immediate and necessary contradiction. The formation at the graveside put Chebrikov and Yuri directly opposite the other mourners, with the coffin in between, and Yuri gazed across the separating gap at six expressionless men for whom he was sure the ritual was a required political act, like putting their names as well to the
Pravda
report. Apart from Chebrikov the only other people he knew were Vladislav Belov, director of the American section through which he worked and Victor Kazin, from the inquiry. He'd spoken only to Belov, who had mumbled regret and at once shown up the insincerity by hurrying on immediately to practicalities. Because of his father's rank Yuri would be allowed to retain Kutuzovsky Prospekt until he could arrange the disposal or storage of his father's possessions, but the Lenin Hills dacha had to be vacated at once, that afternoon if possible. He would, of course, be allowed to remain in Moscow for a few days. Completely missing was the reaching-out attitude of their previous encounters.

Yuri was only passingly interested in his division chief, his concentration entirely upon the twitching, grossly fat Victor Kazin. His initial, extraneous thought was not of what had happened to his father and of this man's part in it but that his mother – any woman – could have gone to bed with such an ogre. Yuri thrust it aside, annoyed. That was past and this was present. He accepted now that he had been wrong in dismissing his father's talk of killing. Belov had talked of a hit-and-run accident being investigated by their security division and Yuri knew that security division to be headed by the man against whom his father had also warned. The bastards had killed him.

Kazin was gloating. So much so that as they filed into the cemetery a few moments earlier he'd abruptly had to bring himself up short, conscious that he was smiling his satisfaction. And there was every reason for satisfaction. He'd only thought of Malik's death as removing the potentially disastrous threat. Definitely not beyond: not of being summoned before Chebrikov, as he had been the previous day, and told that the experiment had been abandoned and that he was once more sole head of the First Chief Directorate.
Everything!
reflected Kazin, bursting with excitement: he'd achieved everything! More, even, if more were possible: not only had he defeated Malik but he had emerged unchallengeable. It was very difficult not to smile; not to laugh aloud.

The son was very different in appearance to the father. Shorter, slighter and definitely of the necessary Western appearance. Kazin, who recently and sometimes worryingly experienced difficulty in remembering precisely the chronology of events, particularly those affecting the now dead man, tried to recall a previous reflection about the son, relieved when it came. Like father like son: that was it. Except that they were not alike, physically. Not important. Still the bastard son of a bastard father. And he
had
been a bastard, the person whom the inquiry had proved to have interceded in Afghanistan: caused most of the difficulty in the first place, in fact. Maybe not in the first place, Kazin corrected, straining again for the right chronology: but definitely someone who had brought about a lot of trouble. If it hadn't been for his interference, the Afghanistan entrapment would have worked. And there would not have been any condemning, although now thankfully forgotten, inquiry. Deserving of punishment then; thoroughly deserving. Like father, like son.

The idea came to him complete, without any need for refining consideration, and Kazin needed every degree of control he possessed not to smile this time, in anticipation. It was perfect: absolutely perfect. Destruction of the younger Malik and further, positive, proof to the Americans that Yevgennie Levin was a genuine defector. It was almost the moment anyway to disclose to the chairman the complete details of the Levin operation. It was going to be an impressive coup, to mark the resumption of his absolute and proper control of the Directorate. Kazin turned to look further along the line towards the head of the American section. Could he trust Belov to initiate the idea he'd just had? The man would object, he guessed: argue there was no reason to provide further proof to support Levin, like he'd argued against triggering the defection while the girl was still in the Soviet Union. Kazin decided he wasn't sure about Belov any more; not as sure as he had once been. Better to set it up himself. There would even be some vicarious pleasure in personally briefing Yuri Vasilivich Malik. Like father, like son. To be removed, like father; permanently.

Belov was conscious of Kazin's attention and answered the look, but Kazin turned away immediately. Belov accepted it had been fortunate that he'd been kept at arm's length by Vasili Malik. If the dead man had responded to the obvious invitations, Belov knew he'd be in a bad position: more so now that Kazin had been reconfirmed in the previously shared leadership, entrusted with unfettered and unquestionable control. Lucky then: but still uncertain. Kazin had survived the political jungle of Dzerzhinsky Square by judging, practically instinctively, his supporters and his opponents. So Belov anticipated the man would be conscious of his distancing himself, particularly after the inquiry. For some time he was going to have to take every precaution, every care: at least until the Levin operation was disclosed and he was identified as its architect. Maybe then he'd be less exposed. Belov felt a stir of relief: that couldn't be much longer. A month or two, hopefully.

The coffin was lowered unsteadily into the grave, almost disappearing by the time it reached the bottom. Yuri watched its descent, wondering what was being buried with it. His safety, he decided; the protection the old man had always given him in place of love and of which, until recently, he had been so absolutely unaware. So what did he feel? Hardly sadness: not the grieving-son-for-lost-father sort of sadness. Their relationship had never been one for that sort of emotion. Hadn't had time to develop, in those last few months of vaguely proper awareness. Regret, of course, but not the normal regret in such circumstances, either. It was for himself that he felt sorry. At the complete knowledge, yawning before him like the visible hole that was now being filled with sticky black earth, that for the first time in his life he had no one to look after him in perhaps the most bizarre environment in the world, fulfilling perhaps the most bizarre function in the world: that people he was sure – he
knew –
had killed his father now controlled him, as a puppet master controlled a marionette. And that there was nothing whatsoever he could do to protect himself, to avoid jumping when a string was pulled. Or to prove the truth about what had happened to the old man. At last Yuri accepted the sensation he had so rarely known in the past and so far always refused to acknowledge, because this time it was stronger than it had ever been before and he could not ignore it any more. He was frightened; very frightened indeed.

A trowel was handed to him, to make the token gesture, which he did and then moved away from the graveside. Chebrikov was already ahead, striding more quickly now, and Yuri accepted that the chairman's presence had been as symbolic as that of the others and that there was to be no conversation between them, not even an empty phrase of sympathy. As he followed, Yuri supposed he would have to consider a headstone. He decided at once against anything as ostentatious as the majority of the monuments. For the first time he realized his father had been buried separately from his mother. When she'd died, the man had not occupied such an exalted position, he guessed: so she hadn't qualified for a place in Novodevichy. Where, he wondered, was her resting place? So much he didn't know; would never know.

‘You are to remain in Moscow for a few days?'

Yuri turned at the question, startled to find himself addressed by Kazin. Despite the cold and the continuing sleet, the man's face had a glisten of perspiration. ‘I am being allowed to settle my father's affairs, Comrade First Deputy,' he said with strained politeness. Less than a metre separated them, Yuri judged: irrationally he wondered if he could reach out and throttle the other man before there could be any intervention. Yuri gripped and ungripped his hands, annoyed at the reflection: he was thinking like the plots in those absurd adventure series on American television.