Document Z (24 page)

Petrov grimaced.

‘Oh,' he said. ‘My wife is uncertain. She has her family in Moscow to think of. I would say she is fifty-fifty.'

Laughter once more. When he said fifty-fifty, he sounded like an Australian.

‘You have discussed it?' asked Howley.

‘Oh, yes. She knows the dangers of returning. I think perhaps I can bring her round.'

‘Would she expose you?'

‘Expose?'

‘To your ambassador. Your embassy.'

He shook his head. ‘That is unlikely.' He hesitated. ‘Though not impossible.'

‘What would happen?' asked Howley.

‘If she told them?'

‘Yes.'

‘If they knew anything of this, they would shoot me.'

Silence.

‘How much money?' Bialoguski said again.

Howley looked at him. He said it was difficult to say. It might depend on the nature of any business Mr Petrov wanted to start. Perhaps somewhere in the orbit of ten thousand pounds.

The doctor nodded. ‘And the costs for protection? Of course Mr Petrov is not expected to pay for these.'

Howley leaned back. ‘Tell me, Bialoguski,' he said, ‘what is your involvement here? In our files you are listed as a communist sympathiser. You are associated with the left wing in Sydney. With the peace movement and other radical groups. That is dangerous. Should we trust your discretion in matters as important as this?'

Bialoguski looked shocked.

Petrov laughed. ‘I will vouch for him,' he said. ‘I will say he is alright.'

‘Are you certain?'

‘Yes. The doctor is a good man. He is just looking out for my rights.'

Howley smiled. ‘Alright,' he said. ‘Now, of course, in return for asylum . . .'

‘Yes,' said Petrov. ‘I know what it is you want. I will tell you about the Soviet government. The work in this country they are carrying out.'

‘That will interest me greatly.'

‘Yes.'

‘That is what I would like to know.'

‘And I will tell you. After I have come.'

‘Can you give me any idea of what I can expect to learn?' Howley asked. ‘I may have to make special arrangements if your information or story is of great importance to me.'

Petrov knew the underlying question was whether or not he was MVD. ‘I know your position,' he said. ‘I can tell you what you want to know.'

Howley pressed: ‘Can you tell me whether you know of any Australians who have passed on to the Soviet people information about their country that could affect its security?'

Petrov smiled. ‘I don't know them all. No one does. But I know some. I will tell you what they do. Not yet, but once I have come.'

Bialoguski got up to make sandwiches. He said there was salami and cheese and no one objected. While he was in the kitchen, Howley gave Petrov a number he could ring: fl2962. They would use codenames. Petrov would be Peter and Howley, George. Petrov took the number and placed it in his shirt.

‘When will you come?' asked Howley.

‘Not for a time. My successor arrives on the third of April in Sydney. I will come here to meet him. I won't go back.'

‘I have the request here. The letter you can sign. Your application for asylum.'

‘Hold on to it.'

‘You can do this now. You can leave tonight if you would like.'

‘Not yet.'

‘It won't be dangerous, staying on?'

‘It will be alright.'

‘You're certain?'

‘It will help you. In the meantime, I will get all I can for you. Things that will interest you. Physical things, documents to confirm what I have already in my head.'

The man seemed pleased. ‘Of course,' he said. ‘Proof.'

‘That's right.'

‘But you know the risks. You must decide what you will do.'

‘The risks, that's right. It will be careful work. The systems are complex but there are certain weaknesses to exploit.'

‘What will happen? What will your embassy do once you're across?'

He was feeling better, the nervousness departing. Control was taking its place. Really, defecting was just like running an operation, only this time he'd succeed.

‘They will report it to the police,' he said. ‘They will tell the police I am missing and ask their help to find me.'

‘The police won't find you. We'll make sure of that.'

‘Generalov will see your Minister for External Affairs and perhaps write to Mr Menzies asking where I am. The embassy will suggest I have suffered an episode of mental weakness. They will mask their attempt to locate me behind concern for my safety, an unbalanced man, sick in the head and in need of help. Once they conclude I have defected, they will accuse me of some offence. They will say I have stolen an amount of money. I have embezzled funds and am on the run. They will do anything not to make it a political event.'

‘We might prepare a statement for you: “I no longer believe in communism”, something to that effect.'

‘Alright.'

‘Can we meet tomorrow? Should we see each other somewhere and make sure the doctor isn't there?'

The voice from Flemington announced a pause for the news. Petrov's gaze went to the kitchen. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I think the doctor is just looking out for me.'

They agreed to meet in the morning. When Bialoguski returned, the Security man stood to go. The doctor showed him to the door, and Howley wished them a good evening. Bialoguski killed the radio and they watched him leave from the window. The car passed beneath them and disappeared.

‘Sandwiches,' said Petrov. ‘We should go out. The Adria perhaps.'

‘Always the Adria! Why not the Roosevelt?'

The next morning he was beset by a strange sense of unreality. Of two realities, perhaps. He was a loyal MVD officer and a loyal husband. Then he was a defector and a traitor, and now a hero to new friends. Bialoguski was the only bridge. Heading for Kings Cross, it didn't occur to Petrov that these two worlds had inevitably to meet.

The Potts Point post office was part of the Cahors building on Macleay Street. He sat in the park opposite, well back under a tree. He looked for surveillance and convinced himself that a man on the far side, who was reading while two children played in front of him on the grass, was a Security plant. Someone in the windows as well, perhaps, the Cahors building stretching nine storeys high, modern curves, a pho-tographer with a good lens, marking him out. He felt a sudden pang of fear. What did they already know about him? What catalogue of photographs of his behaviour did they have? A rush of distrust pulsed through him.

In the very next moment, Michael Howley appeared from behind him. Completely disconcerting that he was able to sneak up. The man crossed the street, stood for a moment outside the doors of the building and went in. Petrov followed.

Surfaces of wood veneer. The lobby carpet was tan-coloured, a pattern of interlocking leaves. Howley had ascended the stairs. The two men stood silently on the first-floor landing, waiting at the shaft for the lift.

The flat on the seventh floor had a minimum of furniture. Petrov assumed there were microphones in the walls.

‘Drink?' Howley asked. He was holding a fresh bottle of scotch.

‘Yes, alright.'

There was no ice. They sat on a lounge and Howley handed Petrov a soft leather bag.

‘Five thousand pounds,' said the ASIO man. ‘I would suggest you put four thousand in the safe at the house where we will be staying, and that you keep one thousand to purchase clothes or other personal things.'

‘This is for when I come?'

‘For the moment you break from the Soviet Union.'

‘You have that letter?'

‘I'll be carrying it at all times.'

‘I return to Canberra tonight.'

‘Alright. I'll come with you. I'll stay there until you defect.'

No. He didn't want them on him. ‘It will be alright,' he said. ‘I'll come to you in Sydney. April third.'

‘If your embassy becomes suspicious . . .'

‘It will be alright. I can manage.'

‘Won't you need a quick way out?'

‘No. They are idiots at the embassy. I will get what documents I can and then I will be done.'

The man refilled their glasses. It was Bell's Special, Petrov saw. Howley pressed him again about the spies. He asked whether Petrov was prepared to say anything now.

‘Yes, I will tell you something general,' he said.

‘Can you tell me two things?' Howley said. ‘Who are the persons in Australia who give secret information to the Soviet government? Will you be able to show me copies of the reports?'

The man's face was compelling. Petrov felt the need to confess; a divulging force taking hold in the room, microphones in the walls, an honest face wanting to know. He could see himself now. Months of this. Years. Men questioning him in solemn and eager tones, alert to the utterances and the inferences that lay behind. How long would it take them to unravel him—a life that was his life but also one of secrets that they dearly wanted to hear? He would need to form some kind of strategy for the way he would play along.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I do not have the names of all of them. I know some of them. I will get copies of the reports.'

‘Tell me. Who are they? Where do they work?'

‘Later. Details later.'

‘Are they in government departments?'

‘Some,' Petrov said. ‘I would say that during the war there was a very serious situation for you in the Department of External Affairs.'

‘External Affairs men giving reports to the Soviets?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are they still doing it?'

‘Not much now. They are very frightened.'

‘They are still there?'

‘One is there.'

‘You know who he is? You know what he was doing in the war?'

‘Yes, I know.'

‘You know the Soviet official who received the reports?'

‘I know.'

‘Was the local Communist Party active in this?'

Petrov paused. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘You know the Party members involved?'

‘Yes, I know.'

Howley's face remained bland. Petrov wondered whether this was news to the Australian, or did they have their own sources and so already knew? Parts of the Communist Party were Security and vice versa. The organisations leaked into one another. Unknowable. Impenetrable.

It occurred to him to ask just how many men in Security knew of his plans. Howley said it was himself and his boss, the organisation's head and a few trusted men.

‘Alright,' said Petrov.

He looked at his watch, wondering if he should get an earlier flight. The other world. There was a second-hand car in Acton that Generalov was insisting he buy. He stood to go.

‘My wife,' he said on his way to the door. ‘If she does not stay, there can be no publicity for my story. Not until she has left Australia. They might kill her here if it is published.'

Howley hadn't moved. Was watching him from the chair.

‘Do you think there will be a war soon?' he asked.

Petrov smiled slowly and opened the door.

‘No, not yet,' he said, and made his exit for the hall.

17

S
he crossed the park between the Melbourne and Sydney buildings, Civic noticeably unpeopled, green expanses, dirt expanses, commerce in stasis, and she walked towards J.B. Young's. It was the beginning of March and the idea of home was taking on physical dimensions. Moscow. A hammered-out feeling in her stomach. She tried to picture the new apartment where her family had moved: Varsanofievsky Pereulok, dom 6, kvartira 6. Two rooms, Persian carpets on the floors. The old furniture that would be unfamiliar now, pulled from the arrangements and zones that identified it, given new and strange existence. She was bracing herself in a way. Preparing for this inconsequential shock in preference to contemplating her and Volodya's fate—a thing so arbitrary, she'd decided, it could be anything from death by vanishing to a promotion and letter of congratulations.

She stood looking at the kitchen utensils. Peelers, cutters, articles for washing up. She was putting together a chest of these items. Gifts for the most part, but also a supply of their own.

She thought about unlucky friends and colleagues, the state they'd fallen into once ejected from the Party and the rul-ing systems, the squalor that beset them, the manual jobs, the queuing and the struggling for basic things—shoes and eggs and an hour to sit down. Was she really going back?

She sat in the front passenger seat of Volodya's new car.

‘What about Jack?' she said.

‘Jack?'

‘What will we do with Jack?'

‘Oh.'

‘You could give him away. Give him to a boy on the street.'

They were crossing the river, bending a way through Parkes.

‘You don't seem worried,' she said. ‘Don't you care what will happen to your dog?'

King George Terrace, parliament going by. ‘Yes, I am worried for Jack,' he said. ‘Jack is the most innocent victim of all.'

She looked at his hands on the wheel and the gearshift, the nervous grip she thought she saw there, the concentration etched on his face. ‘Maybe you could give Kislitsyn the dog,' she said.

‘I'll ask him.'

‘That is what Jack needs. He's a dog for a man. It is in his breeding and demeanour. The way he thinks. How his impulses are wired. Philip will make him have more respect for things than you.'

‘I'll ask.'

‘He'll take him.'

‘He may refuse. If he won't take him, we'll just set him free.'

She laughed. ‘Set him free! We're not talking about a wolf. You think he can fend for himself?'

‘No?'

‘No. Impossible. If you drop him in the bush, he finds his way home. If you disappear without warning, he just waits at the house until he dies.'