Document Z (8 page)

He counted the men at the table. Felt certain they were speaking Hungarian.

The band started another song, people dancing at the foot of the stage. He saw Mrs Klodnitsky, the club's president, approaching him. She was too thin, he thought, and had a nose like a bird.

‘Good evening, Doctor,' she said, holding a champagne flute, smiling. He was the toast of the club at the moment, a Macquarie Street practitioner whom they all thought respectable and politically sound. Mrs Klodnitsky had taken to suggesting he run for the club's committee.

He stood and gave what he hoped was a charming bow.

‘Are you interested in drama?' she asked.

‘Drama. Oh.'

‘I am trying to organise a circle for the study of the new Russian writers. I think it will attract some intellectuals to the club. Are you persuaded?'

‘The new Russians?'

‘That's right. Bela Weiner has agreed, and Lydia Mokras also. I would like some men to be involved. A drama circle.'

He looked into the crowd. ‘Lydia Mokras?' he asked.

‘Have you not met?' Mrs Klodnitsky said. ‘Lydia is new to Sydney, a member for a few months now. It's rumoured that her father is an important colonel for the MVD in Moscow.'

He attempted to look impressed.

‘Let me introduce you,' she said.

They walked through the smoky drift that engulfed the tables. She led him to a table at the edge of the dancers where a woman, who couldn't have been more than twenty, was sitting with two men. The first of these men was Ivan Pakhomov, the Soviet Tass journalist based in Sydney, and Bialoguski admonished himself for not realising the Russian was at the club. The second man was round, almost barrel-shaped, a little floppy at the edges, neatly dressed, smoking a cigarette and staring at the room through black-rimmed spectacles.

‘Lydia, this is Doctor Bialoguski,' said the chairwoman.

‘Please,' he announced, leaning down to take the girl's hand, ‘my name is Michael.'

Lydia smiled. Pakhomov invited the doctor to sit. Mrs Klod-nitsky declared she would fetch the table some champagne.

‘How is your boy, Ivan?' Bialoguski asked Pakhomov.

‘He recovers well.'

‘That's good news.'

‘Are you a medical doctor?' Lydia asked. She wore a small hat, and underneath it he saw blonde hair. A broad face, but attractive.

‘That's right,' he said.

‘Do you have rooms?'

‘Yes.'

‘I must visit you. I have a complaint with my ear.'

‘It will be this band.'

‘The doctor does house calls too!' said Pakhomov. ‘Very good.' The Russian gestured to his friend. ‘Doctor, this is Vladimir Petrov. He is VOKS, the embassy's new cultural representative.'

They shook hands. Bialoguski went to say something, but Lydia interrupted.

‘Will you be joining our drama circle, Doctor? Mrs Klod-nitsky has told me about you. She says we need some good members. You don't look like the kind of man who's regularly here.'

He asked what she meant.

‘Oh, I mean that you appear sure of yourself. Radically. Many of the men this place attracts seem raggedy to me.'

‘Raggedy?'

‘Yes. They are communists but of the type who wear scrappy jackets and seem to carry chips on their shoulder about some fact or other. They're easy to set off. They want to argue about politics, but once you do they get angry and close up. My experience anyway.'

‘You speak excellent Russian. Are you Russian?'

‘Maybe.'

‘I hear you have relatives in Moscow.'

‘Yes, I have an uncle there.'

‘And are you a communist?'

She looked at him as if he were strange. ‘Of course,' she said. ‘I believe the revolution in Australia is, at maximum, five years away.'

Mrs Klodnitsky returned with the champagne. Bialoguski opened the bottle and poured. ‘Why don't you make the toast, Lydia?' he asked.

‘To Soviet planes on our runways!' She raised her glass.

They drank. The man named Petrov grinned and seemed to be enjoying himself. Bialoguski leaned towards him. ‘Mr Petrov, how are you finding Australia?'

‘Oh, very warm.'

They laughed.

‘You are the VOKS man,' said Bialoguski. ‘Has someone shown you the club's library?'

‘Yes. I am going to arrange for more journals. Science and literature. Full colour. Perhaps even some medical texts.'

‘I would be interested.'

‘Alright.'

Bela Weiner went past, drawing two boys with her to the dance floor. Lydia Mokras looked at them all watching her, then leaned forward suddenly. ‘Doctor,' she said, ‘it must be a discreet profession you are in.'

‘Discreet?'

‘Yes. People must trust you. You must keep secret what ails them.'

‘I suppose.' He smiled.

‘Do you have a car, Doctor?' She was looking at Petrov as she said this.

‘I do,' Bialoguski replied.

‘That's interesting. I will keep that in mind. Are you much of a photographer?'

He looked at them both. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I have an old Pentax I used to use.'

She smiled and nodded, and he was sure she was smiling and nodding at Petrov. Slowly, the night wore on. He purchased the table a second bottle of champagne and, at Pakhomov's urging, made blunt criticisms of the band. Lydia kept asking him questions, raking his personal history in a way he thought was too interrogatory to be without purpose, Petrov listening the whole time. Near the end of the evening, the girl departed the table for the bathroom, and Bialoguski was left alone with the two Russians.

‘My knees,' said Petrov.

‘Your knees.'

‘There is an ache they have. Here, in the joint.'

‘An ache.'

‘Yes. Some kind of pain.'

‘I will look at it.'

‘Not now. I think perhaps I should visit you professionally. Sometime soon.'

‘I have a card.'

The Soviet accepted it, placed it carefully in his breast pocket. Then he stood and looked at Pakhomov, who an-nounced they would leave. Bialoguski followed them to the bar, where he ordered a beer, said his goodbyes, and waited for Lydia Mokras.

She never returned. He waited until closing time, wondering how she'd escaped the club, chatting here and there with a few people who knew him, making mental note of the things they said, writing everything down a short time later, regardless of its Security interest, onto a leather-bound pad he kept for the purpose in the glove box of his car.

‘Kings Cross,' the driver announced.

Buildings lit up at night, a huge sign, ‘Capstan', cheering from a rooftop. Petrov had heard from Zizka there was a witch out here. There was a sex witch who had a cult of worshippers, hedonistic black magicians, sex acts performed in ritual circles by occultists or sex barbarians posing as occultists. It was a flat somewhere in the Cross, sorcery and spiritism, corrupt as Berlin. People in masks, arranging their bodies in dark and elementary geometries, lowly chanting rites with their sex organs exposed.

Petrov asked insistently, but the taxi driver knew nothing about this. Gave him instead the address of some kind of club. He would go there later tonight. He wanted a drink in his hotel room first. He'd had a few beers at the Russian Social Club, but that was work. He'd needed to watch his behaviour under Pakhomov's nose.

His room at the Oriental looked onto the fire escape of the building next door. He found the bottle of brandy he'd bought at the terminal at Mascot and drank straight from it.

His mission was to report to Sparta on the state of the club. That doctor, Bialoguski, looked like an interesting prospect. A man in his position would be a good source of information, even a good agent perhaps. Petrov supposed he should sketch the night's events on a piece of paper—the personalities, the conversations—but he couldn't be bothered. Instead, lamplight and this brandy. The sounds of traffic and the skip of city voices through the open window.

The girl, Lydia, seemed a player. Pakhomov had introduced them, whispered that she had some kind of intelligence con-nection, maybe the Czechs; or was she even, he'd suggested, a
novator
—an agent on their own illegal line? Petrov had laughed. He'd said that as far as he knew there were no illegals incoun-try. But the girl did seem mysterious: she knew her politics, appeared overly connected for someone who claimed to have been in Sydney only six months. Someone to keep an eye on. He would ask Moscow Centre what they knew.

Down on the street, the air seemed warmer and people were walking unsteadily or in loud groups. At the address the taxi driver had offered there was no signage, simply a staircase leading down to basement rooms. He could hear the dull and muffled sound of music. He stood near the doorway, his thumb clipped into his belt, finishing his cigarette, watching people go by, hunting for any shadowy figures that weren't passing as much as staying, noticing nobody before going down.

A Sunday afternoon at home; Bialoguski trying to write his violin concerto. It was music about two lovers. He had a beginning and a middle, now he was looking for things to go wrong. It had to be a case of fate conspiring, only he was stuck, couldn't think. His ideas were somewhere else, possibly ahead or behind him, which was why he had coffee brewing and why he was wearing a fez.

The doorbell rang. Lydia Mokras in a raincoat: Ta da! ‘Hello, Doctor,' she said.

Bialoguski wondered how she'd found where he lived, but guessed it wasn't an A-1 secret. His first reaction to women alone on his doorstep was to get his doctor's case. Instead, they sat together on the couch. Lydia had a smile that wouldn't disappear.

‘You have a beautiful flat,' she said, studying a page of score.

‘Is it raining outside?'

‘Hmmm?'

‘Your coat.'

‘I wanted something dark.'

She was more blonde than he remembered. Small hands and smaller shoes. Under her coat was a blouse so drab it was definitely Russian. He pictured them lovemaking, her wearing nothing but the blouse, on the Poynters' U-shaped lounge.

‘I am here to invite you to dinner,' she said. ‘Myself and Vladimir Petrov at the Adria Café.'

First she was Lydia Mokras with connections in Russian intelligence; now she was Lydia Mokras, Soviet embassy go-between. She removed her coat. On the blouse, just over her left breast, was a large white flower, crepe paper and plastic.

Turn the dinner down, he told himself. As if I can take it or leave it. As if eating with spies is a bore.

‘That would be delightful.'

She was pleased. He decided her head was fishbowl-round, and got up to put a record on the gramophone. When he came back, she was pointing a camera at him.

‘Happy birthday,' she said.

‘Oh?'

‘It's a gift.'

‘What is it?'

‘A 35mm Russian Leica.'

He took it from her to inspect. She was not lying. The camera's top plate was crystal clear: ‘Manufactured Kharkov, NKVD.'

‘It's not my birthday.'

‘Who says?'

The coffee pot was howling. He stood with the Leica to his eye, peering down the finder.

She wanted to photograph military installations. Okay. They drove to Beacon Hill. Bialoguski felt somewhat invincible, thinking about a surprise arrest and an overnight stay in a holding cell. To their captors he'd bark on about his rights. Away from Lydia, he'd dress down some shithead military policeman for disrupting a Security operation.

She loaded the camera on her lap with her knees showing. He thought it no accident; that was the kind of effect he had on women, at least those who were slightly unhooked. The landscape was prickly. Hard rocks sprouting grass. Some construction was happening: fibro cottages or their empty shells, earth-moving machines with their dirt-pulling teeth. The radar station was on the hilltop. Bialoguski thought it looked like the conning tower of a battleship. There'd be men inside, scopers, short-sighted operators with caffeine addictions and polished hair. He wondered at what point he should stop the car; or did spies just drive right up?

LOOK OUT. NEXT LEFT.

They pulled into a flat picnic area right below the target. He slammed the door hard, like a fearless tourist admiring the ten-mile view. Lydia wasted no time pointing the Leica. Snap. She had him stand with the station in the background. Snap, snap. He took the camera from her and they did the reverse. Snap. Nothing happened, but then what did they expect? They walked obliquely from the lookout, circumnavigating the hilltop. They tried to project the idea that they were an ordinary Sunday couple. Lydia took him by the arm.

‘Let's drive to Mascot,' she said. They did. Snap.

‘There's a US warship in the harbour,' she said. There was. Snap.

They needed fuel. She insisted on giving him money, reimbursement for his costs. The afternoon was ending. She suggested they see a film and lie low. She bought them tickets to
The Day the Earth Stood Still
and they sat at the rear of the cinema and watched an alien named Klaatu warn America about atomic power. The message was find peace or be destroyed. Afterwards, they returned to his flat and had a glass of wine and went to bed much faster than even he thought warranted. As it happened, this release occurred in the maid's room, not the lounge. When the act was over, Lydia lay smiling. ‘There's something about you,' she said.

Night had arrived. He went to the lounge room and drew the Poynters' curtains and then went to the bathroom, and then came back and got into bed and asked what their photography was for.

‘I won't lie,' she said.

He asked whether she was engaged in espionage. Whether she was an agent for the Soviets.

‘I won't lie,' was all she said.

‘I'm married,' he told her. ‘Separated, however.'

She looked at him. She broke open the back plate of the camera and removed the film.