Document Z (20 page)

She made him an early dinner and cut the chops so he could eat them with a fork in his one good hand. They sat on the back porch. She went to the bathroom and while she was gone he got the Nagant and put it behind the cushion of his chair.

Kislitsyn came with Vislykh. They stood over him as if he was an invalid. Vislykh asked where the wreck was. The police wanted the embassy to contract a tow truck, but he thought Sanko could use the utility. Petrov looked at him sadly. He told him the car was completely melted. He doubted it still had tyres.

Kislitsyn accepted a glass of lemonade. He said that Gener-alov was asking about the Skoda's insurance.

‘The papers are in my desk,' said Petrov. He realised almost immediately that he might not have renewed the policy for 1953.

Later, Doosia ran a bath. The water felt good against his bruises, whole muscles in his legs the colour of a plum. He drifted, waking with a stiff neck to add to his physical complaints.

The police couldn't charge him with anything. He was a diplomat. He could be as rude and evasive as he liked. He told them he'd been fishing. They seemed fixated on the question of what he'd really been doing on that particular stretch of road.

He telephoned the Mutual Life and Citizens Insurance Company. He told them of the accident and they checked the policy. Expired, they said. But he'd sent a cheque! June or maybe July. They hadn't received it, they said. Which bank and what cheque number? Was he sure? The file showed that they'd sent him two reminders.

He walked stiffly from his upstairs office to the downstairs toilet. What was a two-year-old Skoda worth? He lit a cigarette and sat. What fresh havoc would Generalov be permitted to unleash?

Howley looked at the photos of the crash. The cauterised ruins of a Skoda on a road siding. He read the notes of interview with the driver, Third Secretary Vladimir Petrov, Soviet Embassy, Canberra, by W. J. Osborne, senior constable at the scene.

Subject claims to have been clipped by ‘red truck'; will not
divulge origin or destination; states reason for travel as fishing
trip; cuts and abrasions, severely bruised buttocks and legs. I have
made close inspection and there is no evidence of damage consistent
with Skoda having collided with another vehicle
.

Howley rang the senior constable and introduced himself. Osborne said the car had been towed. The scene was empty space now. Not worth the visit.

‘Special interest in Petrov?' he asked.

‘No.'

He stood at his window to think. Intelligence analysis. Soviet spymaster destroys his Skoda at about sunrise on the Sydney to Canberra road. Assess the security implications and file a report in point form.

He needed the inside story. The doctor would know by now. He was coming around to the idea that perhaps cutting Bialo-guski loose hadn't been the brightest plan, when the phone rang, confirming it.

URGENT

Telephone message for: Director General, ASIO.
From: Michael Howley
Copy to: B2, HQ,
ASIO RD, NSW

Bialoguski has informed that Mrs Petrov has got the sack
from her job at the embassy and that she and her husband
wish to defect. He is willing to assist and bring them to us
if we will take him back into his former work, otherwise he
will take them to the newspapers.

14

‘T
here's some kind of edge,' Evdokia had said. ‘There's some kind of invisible edge out there and I think we are going over.'

She told him about the crash. Told him that, in the aftermath, Petrov was suffering bouts of anxiety, his hands shaking.

‘I don't know what to say, Evdokia.'

‘You're his doctor, Michael. Can't you supply him with something? Medication?'

‘I'll give him a check-up.'

‘He wants to visit you,' she'd complained. ‘One day out of hospital and straightaway he wants to get on a train.'

Bialoguski was reporting this to Michael Howley, sitting in the Security man's Austin, parked in a street alongside Centennial Park. ‘Petrov is teetering,' he said. ‘He's worried. Paranoid. Given the right circumstances, I can convince him to defect.'

‘The right circumstances,' Howley repeated.

‘You have to understand, you're dealing with a man who's only known totalitarian rule. He can't approach you. He can't know how you'll react. You're a security institution so he thinks you'll probably kill him. That or leave him in place, which he doesn't want. He won't be able to stand things as a double. What he really wants is out.'

‘What are you suggesting?'

‘Let me take him to someone. A public figure for whom he has respect. This person will be an intermediary, someone who will vouch for your organisation and whom he can trust to broker a deal.'

They had just arranged Bialoguski's claim on his backlog of expenses. It was only fair, Howley had said, when the doctor had continued his work in Security's absence. It was clever too, Bialoguski knew, giving him a lump sum as an apology without setting a precedent.

‘I've got him interested in a chicken farm,' he said.

‘What's that?'

‘A plan for his future. Something that appeals to his underdeveloped Siberian brain.'

Howley was wearing a jacket that the doctor quite liked, brown, and with a brown tie. The Security man lit a cigarette and said, ‘There are some conditions. Under no circumstances can we be seen to provoke. We can't push buttons. We need proof he's coming freely. It's got to be a political defection.'

‘Highly political.'

‘I chose freedom, etcetera.'

‘Proof can be very complex. Did you ever study mathematics? This will be something you'll need to consider ahead of time.'

‘He tells you things, does he? His intentions?'

‘He attempts to mask them but they're peeking through.'

‘Can you record him?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd like to have his innermost thoughts on tape.'

‘Okay.'

The Security officer reached over Bialoguski's shoulder, retrieved a small satchel from the back seat. ‘This is a device,' he said.

‘A gadget?'

‘It engraves soundwaves onto wire spools.'

Bialoguski put the device in his lap. It was a cream box, six inches by four inches by two inches thick. There were wires, a small microphone and a metal button. There was a small linen bag that looked as if it attached to a belt.

‘It works as follows,' said Howley. ‘Pin the microphone behind a button on the inside of your shirt. These leads run to the microphone. The unit hangs tightly against your right groin. Its range is good. You switch it on and off here, with this button by the microphone.'

‘Ingenious.'

Howley raised a finger. ‘The unit makes a noise, a soft humming sound. For this reason, be careful how you use it. Cars are best. The target won't hear anything over the engine.'

‘I'll drive him somewhere.'

‘Lead him onto the subject. Don't press too hard but find a way. We need evidence of his sincerity and the voluntary nature of his action.'

‘The recorder straps to the groin. Why?'

‘You have forty-two minutes of wire. If you're going to change spools, be sure the recording head is up. Press the new spool onto the spindle until you hear the click.'

‘Get his intentions. Etch them onto wire.'

‘Don't bait him. Just lead him there. Most importantly, understand that the government won't be providing political asylum unless the Petrovs are brought to
us
.
We
give out the tickets; not the newspapers, certainly not the Yanks. The Petrovs must come directly to us so we can keep them safe. If bad things happen between their defecting and their reaching us, those who had vouched custody will be held to account.'

‘Is that right?'

‘There might be a bonus in it,' Howley suggested slowly. ‘Something in the order of one thousand pounds.'

Bialoguski went home after their meeting and paced the flat wearing the gadget. He practised walking and standing, casual movements of the type one performed during conversation. He stood in front of the mirror. The gadget was a tool and a mental alertness, an opportunity to better understand one's physical self. It felt like a book under his balls. It posed questions about who he was, what his voice was like and how his body worked. It gave him beyond-normal powers and it asked him to perform himself.

After a few hours' rehearsing, he thought he had its wearing pretty much under control.

According to the map the chicken farm was twenty or so miles from Sydney, near a place called Castle Hill. Petrov agreed to visit. He wanted a glimpse of things as they might be.

Bialoguski drove. The day was patchy, clouds blowing across the face of the sun. Bialoguski was looking at him strangely and he realised he was fidgeting, unclasping his seatbelt then clipping it up again.

‘Let's have a beer,' he told the doctor, opening the two bottles he'd brought for the journey.

‘I've told these people your name is Peter Karpitch,' Bialo-guski said. ‘I've said you are inspecting the farm's condition because I am not experienced.'

The farm was called ‘Dream Acres'. The owners were Eleanor and Max, the doctor's former wife's sister and her husband. Bialoguski said that Eleanor had a low opinion of him, but that Max, a Sydney dentist, still repaired his teeth at cost.

A dirt road led to the farmhouse from the front gates. Bialoguski parked and they got out. Petrov wanted a cigarette straightaway. The country looked good. Every other breath, he dragged its smell through his nostrils.

Max turned out to be a slight man who looked nothing like a farmer. They toured the farm first, all five acres, accommodation, Max said, for five hundred birds. Not much was being maintained. Bialoguski leaned against a fence and the fence came down.

‘It's the dentistry,' said Max. ‘With a job in the city it's just too hard to keep up.'

They walked and looked, going boundary to boundary. Petrov began to see things—new sheds for the birds, a small run for a horse. Eventually, they returned to the farmhouse. He was happy to see there'd be a good view of approaching cars.

The furniture indoors was heavy and old. Eleanor told them that meat, milk and groceries could be delivered to the house.

‘That's good,' Petrov joked. ‘You could stay here and never leave.'

Bialoguski asked Max what terms he was thinking.

‘Oh,' said the dentist. ‘Four thousand pounds. Three thousand cash.'

‘Three thousand, eight hundred,' the doctor shot back. ‘Two five in cash.'

Petrov saw Eleanor wince.

‘Well, that would be alright,' said Max. ‘If you're prepared to do the deal.'

The doctor turned to him. ‘What do you think, Peter?'

Why did Bialoguski want to go so fast? Petrov said nothing and shrugged.

Later, in the car, he told Bialoguski that Max was useless; that with a few months' hard work the farm could be made to deliver a return.

‘Let's make an offer then,' Bialoguski said. ‘I'd be buying but it would be your project. We can make a deal between us.'

‘Let's wait a while. Let's just see,' he said.

‘It's a good prospect though, isn't it? It's good land. It meets the criteria.'

Petrov didn't say he was interested in a second set of criteria: what kind of refuge it made.

‘Tell Evdokia,' said Bialoguski. ‘It would be a good life, I think.'

Petrov got into the ophthalmologist's examination chair. It was important that he convince Beckett to make a ruling against his travel.

‘I am having trouble again with blindness,' he said. ‘Perhaps the macular star is back?'

Beckett put the pen-light to his eye.

‘Oh, and I have a flight booked. Would you advise against flying in such a state?'

The surgeon swung an apparatus across the chair, adjusting the machine's chin rest so his patient could comfortably peer in. ‘I'm not sure I see anything,' he said after a time.

‘Oh, I assure you, it's like an explosion on my vision.'

Beckett toyed with some settings on the instrument. ‘Are you going back to Moscow?'

‘I am scheduled.'

‘I don't know that I would want to go back. With all the changes taking place there. Beria.'

Beria? Petrov sat still. What did an Australian ophthalmologist know about that?

‘It is my duty,' he said.

‘Don't you like this country?' Beckett's tone was calm and seemed naive. Petrov couldn't see his face because the penlight was back in his eye.

‘It is a fine country,' he said eventually. ‘Plenty of food. Plenty of everything.'

The surgeon brought another instrument from the far side of the room and changed its lens. ‘Why don't you stay here?' he said as he worked.

Petrov was surprised. He stiffened warily in the chair. ‘It is my duty to go back,' he said.

The surgeon shrugged. ‘If I were in your place, I'd stay here.'

He examined the eye again. Petrov sat thinking about whether the man's words were scripted. Whether this was innocence or some type of structured plot. After a time, he told Beckett that something like what he was proposing would be very hard.

The surgeon reached for a pair of glasses and gave them to Petrov to sit on his nose. ‘Not if you know the right people,' he said. ‘It is traditional that the diplomatic corps look after other diplomats who are in difficulty.'

Petrov said nothing.

Beckett told him, ‘I have friends who know about these things. You just need to be helped by the right people.'

He switched the glasses for another pair. Petrov stared at the eye chart on the wall. He wasn't sure what this was. Some kind of trick? An entrapment? Surely Beckett wasn't secretly left wing? He looked like a conservative, spoke like a conservative. No, this couldn't be a provocation. It was a lone anti-communist trying to sway him; a religious man or a naive liberal. That, or this actually was a rehearsed and orchestrated sounding, a Security agent testing him out, giving him a way to fly the coop. Beria! That had been a savvy thing to drop.