Document Z (31 page)

‘We will go right now to Government House.'

The call disconnected. Petrov was looking at him.

‘She's staying,' Leo said.

‘She is?'

‘They are taking her from the airport now.'

The defector grinned, looking like a man released. ‘That is it then,' he announced. ‘A new life together, free from the demons and the bastards. Shake my hand.'

Carter did. Petrov burst out the back door and stood looking at the trees up on the hill. Shadows running westerly. He put his hands on his hips, staring.

Leo hit the pins again and found B2. He explained the facts as they stood; heard the relief in B2's voice. He explained that he'd employed flash priority and that Petrov's name had been freely used. As such, they needed to entertain the notion that safe house two was blown. He was already packing up, he said. If required, they were ready to go.

Outside, Petrov was breathing freely, his girth visibly expanding as he sucked on the air. He looked gripped by his success, enamoured of it, in command of it, held high by its promise.

Leo pitied him.

22

N
ow would the pain begin? Now that she was a murderer of the worst possible kind. She sat on the veranda of Government House, a long, white-painted building with the appearance of a farmstead, set on grass and fronting the sea. Leydin's wife, Millie, was fetching her a drink. They had driven straight here from the airport in a saloon car. Everyone was being friendly, Millie Leydin especially, which she appreciated, a woman helping her out. She was trying to put on a good display—a happy demeanour, suitable to the recently doomed, now saved.

There were children here, the Leydins' and another family's, playing at the edge of the garden, shaded by palms, their voices warm and slow.

This was more how she'd first imagined the country would be.

Millie Leydin sat the drink in her hand. Something dark with ice, a straw and broken mint. The Security man—Barrington, his name was—came from the veranda's end. He told her a plane had been booked for that evening. His superior would be coming up.

‘With my husband?' she asked.

‘No,' he said. ‘Mr Petrov will remain at the secret location.' She nodded. She wanted to speak to Volodya but at the same time she was happy to avoid it. That way, she could attempt to forget that she was a person who held the souls of others in her orbit and whose choices had consequences. Even now her family were probably being detained. She pictured the chain of events: Kislitsyn to Generalov; Generalov to Prudnikov's office, hastily writing his cable, squirming already to absolve himself of blame; the Foreign Department quickly to Moscow Centre; the Centre to one of its squads and the squad racing by car to Varsanofievsky Pereulok, dom 6; her mother and sister and frail father either at home or not at home; the squad seizing them instantly, or waiting behind the door to do so on their return. The breaking of bones and lives.

‘Are you alright?' Millie asked.

‘Oh, yes. I am grateful to be here with you all.'

Leydin asked whether she would listen to a news broadcast. At the eastern end of the drawing room she sat by the radio. The voice announced that Mrs Petrov had decided to stay. She had chosen freedom at Darwin and her decision had set the free world cheering. There was an interview with a man who had been at Mascot airport. He said Prime Minister Robert Menzies was to be congratulated. That was exactly how he said it: Prime Minister Robert Menzies. She sat listening to the story of herself for the first time. At each heralding of her bravery, of the triumph of love over cruelty, she became further convinced of her family's fate. What a horror she was. What a reprehensible thing she had done, putting her life above their own.

Barrington came to the drawing room and alone saw what was happening. He asked if she would take some air on the veranda. They went there and smoked cigarettes. The veranda had a series of shutters that opened and closed and he set them carefully, angling out the sun.

That afternoon, Michael Howley arrived. He had brought a letter.

Dear Doosenka,

I am waiting here to see you as soon as possible.

This letter is in the hands of Mr Howley, who is the main
man responsible for Australian Security and who is personally
responsible for my life here and your life. He is a very good
man. We must trust him, and we will trust him for the rest
of our lives.

You decided very well. You are very brave. We have to show
that Generalov is not a truthful man.

And so, my dear, I wait impatiently for you. When you are
with me, we will have a very good and happy life.

I am always yours,

Volodya

The mention of Generalov hurt. What was Volodya doing writing about his battles with that man while her family was in the basement at Dzerzhinsky Square?

She went to bed early and found it vile how well she slept. She put it down to the tiredness, the drama and its draining effect. She ate breakfast feeling guilty. She was glad to feel that way.

Afterwards, Michael Howley approached. He was sorry. His organisation had tried but failed to have her baggage retrieved from the plane at Singapore.

‘That is alright,' she said.

She wondered whether his politeness was a prelude to upcoming hard interrogations about her activities and then some kind of trial.

The children played in the sun. Millie Leydin gave her a bag of clothes, mostly tan-coloured. They had tea together and put brandy in it. She became certain that Millie's friendliness was false. It was simply the woman's role to keep her calm.

They went to the airport again at 4 p.m. They wouldn't take her through the public terminal. A car took them over the tarmac to the aircraft.

The plane was another Constellation, in all appearances the same as the first. Howley stood one side of Evdokia and Barring-ton the other. They had given her a low-fitting hat and driving glasses. Everyone on the plane knew exactly who she was.

The noise inside the plane was conic. She watched the country out the window. The hostess was offering chicken sandwiches.

She asked if they were going to Melbourne. Howley said they were going to a safe house near Sydney.

‘Welcome to Operation Cabin 12. There will be a woman there,' he told her. ‘We've already assigned her to the house.'

She wanted to know when Howley had first met her husband.

‘Oh,' he replied. ‘That might be a question best discussed with him.'

Formal but friendly, she thought. Was that how these people had decided they ought to be?

They landed at the aerodrome in darkness and she slept through the descent. A few minutes after they'd awakened her, she was sitting in the rear of a large black limousine.

The woman from the safe house had come to meet her, a thin woman with a small mouth and lines around her smile who introduced herself as Elizabeth or Lizzie.

The drive was north, over the Harbour Bridge. Evdokia thought the car was moving unnecessarily fast. On the far side, they swapped vehicles in an underground car park behind a picture theatre. The house they eventually pulled into was double-storeyed with a twin garage at the front. They zipped into the space and the doors came down.

She climbed the stairs and the first person she saw was Volodya. He was standing in the centre of the dim room, his form lit scarcely by a lamp.

This is a film, she thought. This is a film and it is going to end.

He came towards her and she struck him. It wasn't something she had planned. She just swung. Her fist connected with the skin of his neck and made an impotent slapping sound, infuriating in its lack of effect. Volodya raised a hand, protectively, anticipating further attack. She launched at him again. She thought the feelings of betrayal were going to turn her inside out.

He was gripping her arm. She withdrew it, yanking herself off balance. He tried to hold her but she wasn't having that.

‘Let go,' she snarled. ‘Let me go.'

He said something.

She pulled herself away, yelling. ‘Coward. Bastard.'

She tripped over, fell in front of everyone to the floor. On her knees, Volodya's hands under her arms. It took strength to stay down.

‘Fucking coward. Fucking defect.'

Volodya wasn't going to let her go. She wanted to be left alone to lie here on the floor, but he wouldn't let it happen in front of them all. She stood, pushed his hands away, asked where the basin was.

Elizabeth led her there. The woman gave her a small towel, wetting it first under the tap.

‘What do you think of me?' Evdokia asked.

Elizabeth presented a box of tissues. ‘I think you are very brave,' she said.

Why did everyone believe that?

‘Are you an intelligence officer?' Evdokia asked.

‘Actually, I've been seconded from the secretarial pool.'

The woman suggested she have some rest, recuperate after the plane flight. They went to the bedroom. Twin windows faced the ocean. On a chair, one of Volodya's shirts.

Evdokia sat on the bed.

‘Will you fetch my husband?' she asked.

The woman closed the door as she left. She might have nodded but Evdokia purposely kept her head down, avoiding the pitiful, sympathetic gaze. It wasn't rudeness if you did it to save yourself. Any look of condolence would have had a crippling, near-unbearable effect.

The questions came in volleys: questions that he didn't want to answer; indeed, could not answer. Evdokia was determined. Light in the room from the bedside lamp, shadow-making.

‘What was supposed to happen to me? The woman married to the defector?'

He raised his hands as if to calm her.

‘What was your plan for my future? What vision did you have in mind?'

‘Doosia, I wanted you to have plausible denial. To be able to say you knew nothing and save yourself that way.'

She scoffed. ‘Why not say you were happy to send me home in ruins? If not dead, then destroyed.'

‘That is not true,' he said. ‘Are you denying that in Moscow we would be on the pyre?'

‘But whose fault is that?' she said. ‘And now it is not us but my family who will burn.'

‘The Party won't do that,' he insisted. ‘Not with the world demanding news of their plight.' He tried to hold her hand. ‘Listen,' he said quietly, ‘let's not argue. I know this was a diffi-cult choice for you. Harder for you than for me, as someone without a family.'

‘Without family?' she said. ‘But me.'

‘Well.'

‘Did you think I would betray you? Expose you to the ambassador? Was that it?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then you were just a coward to go without saying goodbye.'

‘Doosia, I am telling you. I wanted to give you plausible denial.'

‘What is that? It's some concept you've invented in your head. Don't play me for a fool. I'm not your agent in the field.'

She turned her back on him and looked out the window.

He felt angry. Was it not enough that they were together now? What about sympathy for him? Did she not realise how instrumental he had been in getting her out?

‘Look,' he said, ‘let us concentrate on the future. It is a remarkable thing that you and I have done.'

‘And what have we gained for it?' she asked. ‘For this remarkable, irreversible step?'

‘Our freedom,' he said. And he could see that she nearly laughed.

After consulting both Howley and Gilmour, he tried to avoid spending time with her alone. The theory was, she needed some space to adjust. He'd been a half-nervous wreck himself.

Because it was her nature to be joyfully polite in new company, the safe-house team organised activities, beginning with dominoes, which they played on a small table in the side yard—Howley, Carter, Evdokia and Elizabeth—with Gilmour taking photographs using a Minox, the device intended to inject a little humour and, Petrov hoped, a degree of perspective into the affair.

The weather deteriorated. Each morning brought less sunlight than the day before, and each afternoon a harsher, more cooling breeze, until on the Friday evening an electrical storm fired white lightning at the bay and rain came down in waves.

During this time the press coverage was immense. Articles explaining in every aspect the international importance of this event. Reporters discovering elusive details about their former lives. How Vladimir Petrov had spent his leisure time hunting and fishing. Which Canberra stores Evdokia Petrova had shopped in. There were articles about the top diplomats at the embassy: Generalov's biography; Lifanov's. It was obvious the reporters had little to go on. They printed strange accounts of telephone conversations with unnamed persons at the embassy, exchanges in muddled English, nonsensical.

He made sure Evdokia saw these reports. It was important that she realise she was being accepted as Australian.

A telegram arrived:

+ PROUD OF YOUR BRAVE ACTION HAVE URGED AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT GRANT YOU CITIZENSHIP PROTECTION AND FINANCIAL SECURITY CONFIDENT OTHERS WILL FOLLOW YOUR EXAMPLE + IGOR GOUZENKO

He read it twice to Evdokia. He wanted her to understand what he had always hoped: that in coming across they might join something—a splinter group housed by intelligence agencies across the globe; the gang of defectors, perhaps a modest force in the world but a small and nevertheless real community wedged between two great and global powers.

Evdokia read the message. She said Gouzenko sounded mad; that the telegram read as though he was listing grievances, speaking in a back-handed way to the Canadians. Petrov stared at the note. Maybe, but he didn't think so.

Then pictures of Jack appeared in the
Herald
. The dog Vladimir Petrov had left behind. He found Howley and Gilmour smoking by the back door and demanded again that some rescue attempt be made.