Document Z (19 page)

‘I've been sacked,' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Generalov has dismissed me as his assistant and the embassy accountant.'

She told her husband about the Moscow cable, avoiding the word ‘recalled'. ‘ “Come to Moscow as fast as possible”— instructions to that effect.'

‘He can't sack you! Who does this man think he is?'

‘He is at ease, as he tells me. He looks like a man who is safe.'

‘Well.'

‘What about Moscow?'

‘Is Kislitsyn there? What does he say?'

‘Everything is falling apart.'

Silence.

‘My eyes are deteriorating,' he said. ‘Quite suddenly. I am having medical attention and the doctor says it is not a sensible thing for me to fly.'

‘Oh?'

‘We'll cable this opinion.'

‘A delaying tactic.'

‘Moscow won't send a man blind.'

She listened to him breathe. ‘What would we be stalling for?'

‘Oh, anything. Something. Let's not be fatalistic.'

‘I don't know.'

‘I've done some good work up here, Doosia. We can smooth things over with the Centre. Get them behind our cause.'

‘Smooth things over. Delay things. What do you think is going to change?'

‘It is a good country this, don't you agree?'

‘Where are you?'

‘The Oriental Hotel.'

‘Are you coming home?'

‘I'll go to the doctor.'

‘Go to the doctor and then come home.'

‘Yes. Okay. Alright.'

‘I'll continue going to work,' she said. ‘Upstairs.'

‘Alright. It will be alright. This is a good country, isn't it?'

‘Come home. Be careful.'

‘Yes. Yes. Alright.'

12

B
ialoguski rang the
Sydney Morning Herald
from a phone box on Victoria Road, asking to speak to any journalist with a special interest in world or national affairs. They put him through to a man named Clean. He listened closely to the man's voice, trying to make a political assessment.

‘Listen,' Bialoguski said. ‘Are you a man of the left or the right?'

‘What's that matter?'

‘Answer.'

‘Left, right—I'm too bloody busy.'

‘Left or right?'

‘Let me refer you. We've got both kinds of bastard here.'

‘Look, I need a journalist who's not a communist.'

‘If there's one thing I'm not.'

‘Alright.'

He told him he was a Security agent, recently retired. He wanted to write an exposé based on his penetrations. He wanted to forensically describe the activities of the New South Wales communist front, its various organisations, the Peace Movement. There were respectable doctors and lawyers and scientists sinking in the shit of Marxist philosophy. People having their pockets cut open and their cash funnelled in unsavoury directions. He had documentary evidence. Hard facts. Names. He would write these articles anonymously and he would be paid. If they needed proof of his Security connections, he could provide the names of men who would vouch for him. The best idea, he thought, would be to pen the articles under a pseudonym, something suitably heroic and metaphysical: T.J. Shawl or K.K. Ghost. The articles could be used as the basis of news stories, but the articles themselves had to be the magazine type with illustrations and a hard, black edge. There were further options. A series of articles on the Soviet embassy. He had a direct connection to revelations about the activities of Soviet diplomats and embassy personnel.

‘Who am I speaking with?' asked Clean.

‘For the moment I'm just a man calling from a phone box.'

He mentioned the name Petrov; the names Pakhomov, Vislykh, Generalov. Said there were underhand goings-on he could expose. Front-page news.

‘Hold on,' said Clean. ‘How can we meet?'

‘I'll call you,' said Bialoguski. ‘For the moment I am simply interested in your interest.' He disconnected.

Arriving at Cliveden, it was a shock to find Petrov on the doorstep. The Russian looked drunk and sulky, mostly wretched. The weather was much too warm for an overcoat, but Vladimir's hugged his body all the same.

‘I need to see Beckett,' he said.

Bialoguski felt his dark mood. They went upstairs. He poured them drinks and they sat.

‘Bastards,' Petrov spat.

‘What's wrong, Vladimir?'

The man jerked a newspaper from his pocket and thrust it under Bialoguski's nose. ‘Look at this,' he said.

It was an article. Life in Russia. The day-to-day starvation of the masses; the overbearing fear of the purge.

‘Lies?' suggested the doctor.

‘No,' said Petrov. ‘It's all true. Except really it's twice as bad!'

Bialoguski looked at him carefully.

‘Come on, Doctor,' the Russian went on. ‘I think you know. You are clever enough to realise we are suffering terribly. Maybe you believe in dialectical materialism, but about the ruthless conditions in the Soviet Union you are smart enough to know.'

‘What is this, Vladimir?'

The man pointed to Malenkov's bulbous, dual-chinned face. ‘This man and his clique, they live like the czars. It is as plain as day. Their cars and their food and their houses. But you go to Russia and say something against them, they'll cut your head off.'

‘Go on!'

‘They will. Just see what they will do to this bastard Beria! And how many people did Beria kill?'

‘You're drunk, Vladimir.'

‘The Russian people are ruled at bayonet point.'

‘A Soviet diplomat saying this.'

‘It's true, Doctor. Power-thirsty bastards at the helm and anyone who stands up gets shot. That is the Russian way.'

Bialoguski refilled his glass, doing his best to feign surprise.

Petrov went on. ‘And who do they think they are fooling? Conditions in the Soviet Union—the foreign diplomats see things for themselves. Why don't we just live and let live? Open our frontier to all comers!' He breathed heavily, shook the ice in his glass and snarled. ‘Doosia has been sacked,' he said. ‘Gener-alov doesn't have the authority but that doesn't stop the prick. It's no good. You try to be honest and good and not put people in, but that is exactly the display of weakness that makes you the target. We should kill ourselves and save them the trouble. Doosia is making an attempt to fight back, but they want blood. You can't argue truth to power. There is no case. This is how we live. It's madness. We can't beat the determination of this pack of bastards. They have long since forgotten what they even had against us.'

‘You know what you're talking about,' Bialoguski said. ‘You know more than I.'

Petrov looked at him. ‘I've been recalled. They want me to book air tickets home immediately. I need to see Beckett about my eyes. Can you book me in with him?'

‘Of course.'

‘I tell you. Better to work in Australia on the roads than to live daily in fear for your life.'

‘A cigarette?'

‘I'm jealous, Doctor. You go wherever you want. Do whatever you like.'

‘Oh.'

‘You must think I am an atrocious drunk.'

‘I don't know the pressure you are under.'

‘You're a friend, Doctor. We honest types have the worst of it.'

Bialoguski struck a match. ‘Do you mean that?' he asked. ‘You would rather work on the roads?'

Petrov nodded, not meeting his eye, looking at the Poynters' floor.

Bialoguski told him the roads were for dimwits. ‘There are better opportunities,' he said. ‘As it happens I'm scouting at the moment for myself. Business investments. I've had some Ampol exploration shares that have come good. Eight or nine hundred pounds—more if I hold on. I might buy a share in the Adria. No joke. There's also a farm I'm looking into. A chicken operation that's on the market at a good price.'

‘A chicken farm?'

‘That's right. I don't know anything about farming, not like you, Vladimir, but we could partner. Much better than the roads.'

He had the man's attention now.

‘Investments?' said the diplomat. ‘You've never mentioned this.'

‘I've only just found out about the shares. Listen. Someone in your position, Vladimir . . . with a plan and the right contacts . . . I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to hang around.'

‘Hang around.'

‘That's right.'

‘Well.'

‘If it's so bad, bugger them.'

‘I don't know.'

‘If it's so bad.'

‘It might take some organising.'

‘You could show them. Tell the truth. Explain how it is first-hand.'

‘That would really put them in it.'

‘That's right.'

‘We'd need to be careful.'

‘Tight-lipped, you mean?'

‘That would be it. Getting the process right.'

‘The process, exactly. I could be your agent, Vladimir. If you trust me. In truth, I don't know much about your country. I went through Moscow once. I don't tell people that fact but I'll tell it to you. It was 1941 and it was snowing. Maybe it is unfair to judge, but my impression of that city was huge buildings looming over a populace that couldn't see them, such was each individual's concentration on their own affairs. That was what it was. Grand architecture and grey-coated ghosts. Two cities, completely separate. One city for the rulers and the other for the starving hordes. Nothing in between.'

The Russian was filling his glass again. ‘I am in between,' he said. ‘That's who's in between. Doosia and I are the Soviet middle class.' He laughed.

Bialoguski thought they were getting somewhere. How hard to push it?

‘With the right contacts,' the doctor said.

‘They'd shoot me. The Russians. Quick as look.'

‘You could just disappear.'

‘That's right. Disappear.'

‘Something to be arranged.'

‘They'd kill me. Not give it a second thought.'

‘You'd be gone. We can talk to the people who can turn you into a ghost.'

Petrov gave a nervous laugh.

‘What about Evdokia?' Bialoguski asked.

The diplomat looked at him. ‘This might be the problem,' he said.

‘Oh?'

‘Convincing her. She suffers here. I have no family in Moscow, you see.'

‘I could talk to her.'

‘No. I will do it. It would have to be a delicate thing.'

‘The farm.'

‘Yes, the chicken farm. That would be a life!'

‘That's right. You wouldn't have to put much down. Managing and part-owning. Maybe you buy me out down the line.'

‘These people? These contacts?'

‘I think I know how to get in touch. It might be a process. Perhaps we should start now so that the whole thing is not dramatic.'

Petrov pushed his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘You don't know about Russia, Michael.'

‘No, of course not. I'm a theoretical socialist so in reality I have no idea.'

‘The horrors that happen.'

‘I'm prepared to believe whatever you say.'

‘You would be a good bridge. With these government people.'

‘I could negotiate. I think they would see me as a realistic person. A Macquarie Street doctor. I could see what they are prepared to put on the table. Not even use your name.'

‘A chicken farm.'

‘That's right.'

‘Let me think about it.'

The Russian stood up with a sudden jerk, headed for the bathroom. Bialoguski sat for a moment, thinking. It took him some time to realise that Petrov's small suitcase was sitting on the floor. He eyed it. He thought about its contents—what Vladimir might secret in there that he couldn't fit inside his wallet. Letting the impulse carry him, Bialoguski hurriedly ripped some phenobarbital from his medicine chest. He crushed a tablet and sprinkled its powder into the Russian's drink.

‘Let's eat here tonight,' he told Petrov when the man returned. ‘I'll drive over to the Adria. Get us something.'

Petrov swilled the liquid in his glass. ‘Alright,' he said, finishing it in a gulp. ‘But afterwards, I have to go.'

‘Go? Where to?'

‘I need to be back in Canberra. Things keep happening while I'm not there.'

‘I think you should stay, Vladimir.'

‘I'll have dinner with you but I have to go. I need to get out of this city.'

13

D
arkness, loud and punched out. The highway everywhere like an echo. Petrov slowly came to realise that he was in it.
On
it. No longer inside the car but sitting here on the road, holding his knees, the Skoda in front of him and on fire. Engulfed by flames. Ablaze.

He felt damp. What time was it? His right arm touched all the parts of his body, searching for blood. There was blood— dark shrieks of it on his clothes.

Was it someone else's blood? Had he hit someone on the road?

The smoke carried the choke of burning oil. He went from sitting to lying flat. He'd crashed, that much was obvious, but he couldn't remember anything, his body numb from the impact, his feelings about things darkly void.

How did he get to the hospital? The doctors put him in a room and one of them asked, ‘What hit you?'

‘A truck,' he replied. ‘A truck out of nowhere.'

He sat on the bed while a nurse attended to his face. She told him there were bits of windshield embedded in his skin.

He couldn't remember the car going over. Perhaps something
had
bumped him. Hadn't he passed a panel van at some point? Or had something mechanical failed in the car?

This was a way they might think of to end his life! The thought was like a cold nugget and he held it in his hand.

Doosia came and took him home in the afternoon. She was good to him, his wife. He thought they were at their best together whenever catastrophe or heartbreak struck. Irina's death. The series of operations Evdokia had endured in Sweden. They might not have the most tranquil of marriages, but he thought they were experts at bonding through crisis.