Document Z (28 page)

V. Petrov

What announcements? The ambassador was staring into his desk.

She said, ‘I can't tell you whether the words are his, but the handwriting is a definite match.'

‘It's very short.'

‘Yes.'

‘Not many long letters are written at gunpoint.'

‘No.'

The ambassador handed her a second letter. It was a prepared reply. She would copy it into her own hand. She read the letter and he watched her.

She said, ‘I won't write this. I will write my own letter. Maybe I will borrow from your letter, but I won't sign anything that isn't my own.'

He seemed to be expecting this. He pointed to the typewriter.

She sat and wrote a page that wasn't really for her husband but for the trial she might have in Moscow. She said his letter was forced. She suspected he had been kidnapped. The Australians must have learnt of his imminent departure and decided to act. She hoped they would release him. She hoped the diplomatic efforts underway would have some effect. She told him she was trying to be strong. She needed to reach Moscow, leave this country, go somewhere where she would be safe. She told him to think of her.

Taking her lead from the ambassador's letter, she said that given the circumstances it was not possible that they meet.

Generalov read what she'd written, gave a grunt and she left the room.

Two days later, the ambassador summoned her once more. He and Kovalenok stood each side of the desk. Her letter was there between them, unsent. They said nothing at first. Perhaps Moscow had denied permission for her missive to be dispatched.

Kovalenok put a pen and a page typewritten on embassy stationery before her and asked her to read it. It was another letter from herself to her husband, far shorter this time, just a simple paragraph:

Dear Volodya,

I have received your letter. My meeting with you under the
conditions proposed by the Australian Department of External
Affairs is impossible, as I am afraid to fall into a trap.

E. Petrova

‘No,' she said.

Kovalenok frowned. ‘What is no?'

‘No, I won't write this.'

The two men looked at her.

‘You must,' said Generalov. ‘It is not we who have penned this letter. It is Moscow.'

She shrugged.

‘What is wrong with it?' said Kovalenok.

‘I won't say it, that is all.'

Kovalenok indicated that she should sit. Evdokia refused. He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head.

‘Sign the text as it stands,' he said. ‘It will reach your hus-band faster.'

‘Do I care when it reaches him?'

‘You are his wife.'

‘That is not what is at issue.'

Kovalenok put his fingers on the page. ‘Captain,' he said, ‘you must understand that this is Moscow's text. We simply do not have permission to change it.'

It took her a moment to realise he was addressing her by her MVD rank.

‘I have no orders,' she said. ‘No orders concerning this note have been given to me.'

‘The instruction is implicit,' said Kovalenok.

She shrugged once more.

‘I'm sure you have been thinking about the law,' he said. ‘There are special laws in these situations and obviously you must know. There will be a trial when you return. Believe me that what happens now may influence the proceedings. What can happen? Camps and possibly even execution if it is judged that your husband, in this affair, has left of his own accord.'

She said nothing.

‘You are going home very shortly, Evdokia Alexeyevna,' Generalov put in. ‘The opportunities for you to demonstrate your allegiance are vanishing. You should sign and we will testify that you were eager. Alright?'

She looked at the note. ‘Alright,' she said. And picked up the pen.

Whole days passed where she hardly left the room. She sat looking through the window, watching the sway of trees in the wind or simply staring into space. Masha brought her some books—novels and biographies—but they sat unread. She began to sleep oddly, snoozing for hours in the afternoons and waking at 3 a.m. Kovalenok started to insist that she walk each day in the embassy's grounds. He escorted her, tried to involve her in a taste experiment he was conducting, smoking his way through different brands of Australian cigarettes. They were careful to keep clear of the fences and the front gate. Soon, she found herself looking forward to leaving for Moscow, regardless of what fate might bring. The solitary days added together and she was ready for anything to give.

Inoculation. A doctor came and she was taken to a room upstairs and given injections. Cholera and smallpox. She needed certi-fication to travel. Smallpox was one shot but cholera was a two-stage affair. ‘Next week we will inject you with the second half,' said the doctor.

She looked at Vislykh, who was observing, and said that there might not be time for that to occur.

‘That's right,' said Vislykh. ‘Can we not simply do it now and issue the certificate?'

The doctor shook his head. He was a white-haired man of about fifty and had, she thought, a successful practice on the street near the hospital. Vislykh appealed to him, saying the travel was an emergency—could he not issue the certifi-cate and she would have the second shot somewhere along the way?

The doctor said, ‘No.'

She was escorted by Kovalenok from the room.

Some hours later, a second doctor came. He was no one she recognised, younger than the first, blond near to orange hair and large hands like a farmer's. He delivered the second shot into her opposite arm and on the certificate his signature was an indecipherable mess.

She knew that the couriers had arrived. Vislykh came and said that Kislitsyn, also, would be escorting her home.

Why? She wondered whether Moscow was afraid that the Australians had got to him as well.

It was left to Masha to tell her that the next day would be the last. The two women spent the night in the duty room. Evdokia thanked Masha for everything she had done.

‘Don't look so distressed,' Masha said. ‘I promise it will be fine in Russia. It will be alright and you will see. Here, now. Write for me once more the address of your family, and Ivan and I will visit and life will have gone on.'

At 9 a.m. on the nineteenth, Generalov called her to his study. She could not tell whether the pity in his voice was mocking.

‘I don't need to remind you that the couriers are armed,' he said. ‘After Darwin, you will stop in Jakarta, then Singapore. In these airports, you will play cards and laugh. You will be tourists travelling. This way you will not attract attention.'

‘My salary,' she interrupted.

The ambassador stared.

‘You must pay my salary. Until I cross the frontier I am still considered as officially on a posting. I am owed my full salary, my travelling expenses and the addition of twenty-five per cent in Australian pounds.'

‘Comrade—'

‘Pay me these amounts.'

He coughed. ‘The instruction from Moscow is that you will receive such payments there.'

‘Is that true?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you did not tell me?'

‘I have had more pressing concerns.'

She did not know whether to believe him. Then he told her to see Vislykha. The woman would hand over Volodya's uncollected salary, accounted to the day he left for Sydney. Evdokia thought this a good sign. They weren't trying to say Volodya hadn't been doing his job.

Downstairs, two cars were parked behind the embassy. Kislitsyn and Kovaliev were loading one with her trunks. The two couriers and Vislykh were standing with the other. She was ushered into the second, the Cadillac, and she sat for fifteen minutes before Kovaliev took the first car towards the gates. She didn't see the crowd but she heard them, a small chorus of shouts. She waited in the Cadillac for a further fifteen minutes before Zharkov and Karpinsky got in. They said hello but nothing else. Soon, Sanko started the car and at the last second Vislykh got in beside her and slammed the door. They raced through the gates. She was shocked at the crowd's size, the mob they'd grown to—maybe thirty or more individuals with cameras or microphones or fierce looks. The car bounced over the kerb onto the avenue. The crowd was scattering when she turned to look back.

At the beginning, all she thought of was a car accident. That Sanko might errantly tip the wheel into the oncoming Easter traffic. Vislykh was handing her a handkerchief, offering comforting words that she didn't fully listen to. He put a cup of brandy in her hand, which she drank, and then he was pouring vodka.

How many hours to Sydney? The airport was on the southern side. The road turned and dipped and turned. She looked through the window at the passing country. She knew she was going to be ill before she was. The Cadillac made a forced stop outside Collector. She crossed towards some trees and was sick in a shadow. Then she stood for a long time, holding the cloth to her mouth, her nose filled with the smell. Vislykh watched her, leaning against one of the car's doors. She had another brandy and the Cadillac took off.

The men conferred about the flight time—whether or not they were late. The consensus was they weren't. Even so, Sanko took the road faster. She asked for water but there was none. She asked for the radio and was told it didn't work. She had some idea that there was something public about all this. A sense of apprehension that permeated the car. Most likely, people were angry about the espionage, the undermining of democracy that she'd helped. It wasn't a matter of success or failure but of appearance and intent. They were right to hate her. Who was she to come here and engage in such acts?

The car whistled on the road. She was carrying her small handbag and that was all. They passed the intersection for the Wombeyan Caves Road.

It was dark when they hit Sydney's outskirts.

20

B
ialoguski sat in his Holden on a badly lit street, parked at the higher end outside Lydia Mokras's flat. Her light was on, the one that lit both the kitchen and the lounge. He'd seen her shadow just now. She was alone.

He listened to the radio. He saw no reason to be annoyed that Petrov had defected through Security without him. That was their business. That was the official part and there was no reason for Bialoguski to be there. He wondered how the Russian had felt, crossing that boundary,
the
boundary, the world-sized hinge. Like a warrior? A hero? A miscalculating fool?

When the news had broken, Bialoguski had begun to prepare the ground for his inevitable and irrevocable exposure—all the while playing his hand perfectly until the last. When Pakhomov and Plaitkais had come to his surgery searching for their man, the doctor had ensured he was out. When Evdokia called to say Volodya was missing, he'd carefully cultivated the impression that he was leading the hunt himself. He'd dragged Lily Williams mysteriously from a dinner party, demanding that the secretary of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism tell him when she'd last seen the VOKS representative. He'd whispered the conversation conspiratorially, as if Petrov's absence were a grave secret, hardly known by those who knew. Then he'd got Jean Ferguson of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society out of bed, in her dressing gown, and interrogated her suspiciously about Petrov's whereabouts, the man's movements and demeanour, the clothing he'd last been seen in. Jean had reacted weirdly, highly uncomfortably, as if he might be threatening her sexually. That pleased him. He'd told her that the embassy was worried. They'd put himself and Pakhomov on the case. Would she put the word out amongst the Sydney left?

It was cleverness on his part. Fooling them at the last. When they discovered the truth, they'd be awe-struck. Which was why the next day he bought a gun, ringing Howley and demanding the permit, fearing either the embassy's or the left's reprisals. Reluctantly, ASIO organised it with the New South Wales police. He went to a pawn shop in Kings Cross and paid forty pounds for a .32 calibre revolver and an ill-fitting shoulder holster. He then registered both with a sergeant at Special Branch.

The meaning behind the gun was that he was officially sanctioned. It was the state saying, you have served us loyally and therefore earned protection from our enemies. He liked to look at himself in the mirror with the weapon underneath his clothes.

Lydia was in the kitchen, her silhouette visible through the glass. He crossed the street carrying a document bag and ascended the stairs at the flats. She wanted to know who it was. He announced himself and was surprised when she asked what he wanted.

‘Let me in,' he said.

There was a pause while Lydia took her time, finally opening the door in a pink woollen jumper and, he was fairly sure, no bra. She stood with the door at her hip as if she didn't want him inside.

‘What?' she asked.

‘You can't invite me in?'

She looked at him. Stepped back.

‘I'll have a drink,' he said, taking a seat on the couch.

Lydia took her time opening a bottle of beer.

‘He doesn't know anything about you, does he?' Bialoguski asked. ‘No compromising information, I mean.'

‘Who?'

‘Petrov!'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘The defector.'

‘Yes. Are you afraid?'

‘What would I have to be scared of?'

‘He might have information on you.'

‘Does he?'

‘You tell me.'

‘There's nothing he could have.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Yes, I'm sure.'

‘Only I think Vladimir had the impression you were collecting political intelligence.'

She put a glass of beer in his hand.

‘That would be all it was,' she said.

‘An impression?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?' he asked.

‘What do you mean?'