Dr Berlin (17 page)

Berlin was full of questions. What did Pountney think of John Kennedy? Was he a serious presidential candidate or a playboy? Would the Democrats really nominate him? How close were the British to the Americans? Was the so-called special relationship between the two countries real, or simply a convenient piece of propaganda with which to threaten the Soviets?

Pountney was giving his opinion when an older man, small, with thinning spiky grey hair and a long beaky nose, approached Berlin. He reminded Pountney at once of a character from a children’s book. Mr Weasel, perhaps? He muttered a brief apology in Russian to Pountney and then spoke to Berlin, who bent down to hear what he was saying. Pountney remembered a brief glimpse of the man’s hand resting momentarily on Berlin’s arm. It was larger than his physical size suggested, swollen and deformed, as if it had been made without bones, a parody of what a hand should be. Was this Wiley’s man, Radin? He dismissed the thought and returned to Berlin’s questions.

The bell rang for the second half of the concert. Annabel returned with a shriek and dragged Berlin off with hardly an apology. ‘You’re not going to escape me this time, darling. I’m having you all to myself for the rest of the evening.’

‘I have enjoyed our conversation,’ Berlin said, smiling warmly. ‘We must meet again some time.’

Pountney took his seat once more. ‘I often wonder,’ his neighbour, an ageing member of the British Embassy, whispered as the musicians took the stage, ‘whether Annabel gets to sleep with her trophies, or whether the relationships are purely platonic. I’ve always imagined making love to Annabel would be like riding a fire engine on its way to a fire.’

At the last moment Pountney saw the small Russian squeeze past others to sit directly in front of him, his arms folded, concealing his hands from view. At some point in the recital
the Russian rested them briefly in his lap. Pountney saw their odd pancake-like shape, the splintered, discoloured nails, the misshapen fingers, the scars over the joints on the knuckles, the inflamed, puffy surface of the skin. He had the impression that his hands were hot, as if they’d been roasted. From what he could see, few bones had been missed, suggesting that the damage had been inflicted deliberately and precisely to create a maximum of pain and permanent disability. He noticed that, when each piece ended, the Russian did not clap or use his hands in any way. He nodded his head in appreciation. This was Radin all right: it had to be. And he was sitting less than three feet away.

*

A month later, very late at night, Pountney received a phone call in his apartment.

‘Is that Mr Pountney? The English journalist?’ His caller was a woman with limited, halting English.

‘Yes. Who am I speaking to?’

‘I have little time. Listen please. Today was killed Kyrill Radin, son of Viktor Radin. Kyrill is pilot on MIGs. He tries to make new world speed record. Now he is dead. You know Viktor Radin? He is Chief Designer of Russian spaceships. Kyrill is much-loved son. It is new tragedy for man who has already suffered much. Now he only has daughter, Olga. The father is good man. Not what you think. Thank you.’

His mysterious informant rang off. Pountney had received calls like this before, though usually from men. A woman was unusual. News was given to him anonymously in the hope that he would report it. It was without exception propaganda, and the method a transparent attempt by the authorities to control what appeared in Western newspapers. This, for reasons he found himself unable to explain, felt different.

Two days later he heard from a contact at the embassy that a Soviet pilot had been killed on a test flight of a new fighter. The plane had gone through the sound barrier and then had
suddenly spiralled out of control before crashing into the ground and exploding. The name of the pilot had been withheld. In a small way Pountney had his first scoop.

*

The snow was falling heavily. Pountney, muffled against the cold as much as to hide his identity, stood beside a gravestone and watched as the coffin was lowered into the ground by four members of what he presumed was Kyrill Radin’s squadron. They were too far away for him to make out the insignia on the shoulders of their greatcoats. Towering above them was the formidable figure of Marshal Gerasimov. He saw the grieving family staring down into the grave, the man he now knew was Radin with his arm round a weeping young woman he guessed was his daughter. A few paces away, an older woman stood by herself, presumably Radin’s wife – estranged wife? As far as he could tell she did not appear to be crying. Perhaps this was one tragedy too many in a life full of sorrows. Perhaps she had no more tears left to cry.

The daughter threw the white flowers she had been carrying onto the coffin and turned away. Radin was searching for something in his pocket. He appeared increasingly agitated at his failure to find what he was looking for. His daughter spoke to him, taking his hand in hers, and put her face into her father’s chest. He held her tightly. At first Pountney thought the father was supporting the daughter. But as they walked slowly away from the graveside, he saw that it was the Either who was crying openly and the daughter who provided comfort. His wife, if it was his wife, a stiff, upright figure, followed a few paces behind.

If Pountney stayed where he was, the grieving family would have to pass directly in front of him. The temptation, despite the numbness in his feet and hands, was too great to resist. He remained fixed to the spot, a solitary mourner in a field of the dead.

The group was a few feet away when Radin stopped. He
pulled off his glove and put his hand into his overcoat pocket. Clumsily he drew out a large white handkerchief and put it to his eyes. As he did so, his scarred and broken fingers lost their grip and the handkerchief fell to the ground at Pountney’s feet. Pountney picked it up and returned it to Radin. For an instant their eyes met, and he saw the expression of inconsolable grief in the Russian’s face. He knew unequivocally that Radin’s heart was broken, and he found himself touched by his sorrow.

He followed them at a distance out of the cemetery. Radin shook hands with the officers who’d attended his son’s funeral, and spoke for a few moments to Marshal Gerasimov, before walking towards an official car. How terrible, Pountney thought, to lose your only son, for the child to die before its parent.

‘Wait. Wait, please. I must speak to you.’

He turned. An old woman, dressed in black, was hobbling towards him. She was holding out her hand.

‘You dropped this back there. I saw you do it. Please. This is yours.’

He held out his hand towards her. She gave him something metallic. He thanked her. Then he opened his hand. He was holding Kyrill Radin’s cap badge.

*

This is madness, Pountney tells himself again, freezing to death to do something I don’t have to do. He has repeated the same phrase a hundred times, but it makes no difference. He doesn’t have to do this but he can’t give up. Some nagging part of his conscience won’t allow him to keep the cap badge. He must return it to its rightful owner.

The street lights gleam dimly in the dark. Pountney shivers. It wasn’t difficult to find out where Radin lived. He followed father and daughter home after the funeral. But it took him a week to build up the courage to call on them. How to get into the apartment building? The entrance hall is under the
watchful eye of an ancient witch who seems never to sleep. He’s got no chance of slipping past her on his way to the lift. His only hope is to attach himself to a small group of two or three people as they enter the building, and trust that he can get into the lift before his presence is noticed. That demands patience. Well, being patient is what he’s good at.

He looks at his watch. He has been waiting in the shadows for more than two hours. He stamps his feet to keep the circulation going. Twenty minutes later three men approach the building. One presses a bell and pushes the main door open. Pountney pulls his hat down over his face, slips out of the shadows and quickly follows them in. He crosses the hall as one of them nods in greeting to the witch. They wait at the lift, agonising seconds while it slowly completes its grumbling descent to the ground floor. Pountney is the last to enter. He pulls the iron grille of a door tightly shut. Someone stabs the button for the fourth floor. He touches six. The lift begins its slow ascent. So far so good.

He gets out at the sixth floor and waits. The lift descends at once in answer to a summons from below. The uncarpeted landing and corridors are deserted. Pountney walks quietly down the stairs to floor five. Radin’s apartment is number 14. The sign indicates that 14 to 18 are to his left. He hears the mechanical grunts and growls as the lift ascends once more. He retreats up the stairs to avoid being seen. The lift stops at Radin’s floor. A man gets out, walks the few paces to number 14, rings the bell. The door opens. Pountney hears an exchange in Russian. The door closes. Radin has a visitor.
Damn.

He can’t stay where he is. He must find somewhere to hide. He walks down the corridor, past number 14, looking for a door without numbers – a janitor’s room, a store cupboard, anything. He finds an unlocked room and goes in. He sees a large lagged water heater with a stopcock. If he keeps the door ajar, he can watch the entrance to Radin’s flat at the end of the
corridor. He waits. An hour passes. It is warm in the cupboard, and feeling slowly returns to his frozen body.

It is well after ten when he hears Radin’s door open. He listens. There are hushed voices. The man emerges – he wears the uniform of an air-force officer – and waits by the lift, repeatedly pressing the bell. It doesn’t come, and after a time he decides to take the stairs. Pountney waits five minutes. Then he steps out of his hiding place and knocks on Radin’s door. Mr Weasel – Professor Weasel – answers.

‘Professor Radin?’

‘Who are you?’

Radin looks up at him, realises he has never seen Pountney before, and immediately moves back into his apartment, trying to push the door shut with his feet as he does so.

‘Please. I am not what you think. I would like to speak to you. Please.’

‘I do not wish to speak to anyone.’

In that instant he sees the desperation in Radin’s eyes. He is still lost in grief at the death of his son. Pountney feels an overwhelming compassion for the man.

‘I have something for you.’

The door shuts. He hears bolts snap tight. Somewhere deep in the building an alarm sounds. Moments later the security forces arrive. Pountney has just enough time to conceal Kyrill Radin’s cap badge in the lining of his coat before he is arrested.

*

Pountney’s career as Moscow correspondent for his newspaper was seven months old when it was brought to an abrupt and unexpected end with his arrest on charges of spying. For four desperate days he was held in a Soviet prison, half starved, hardly allowed to sleep between interrogations, set upon by his fellow inmates on one occasion and beaten up, afraid that any trial would make a mockery even of Soviet lip-service to the idea of a judicial process, that he would be found guilty, as his
jailers jeeringly told him, and either shot as a spy or sentenced to a lengthy period of imprisonment in a Siberian camp.

During the days of his incarceration, a deal was brokered in London between Gennady Koliakov and Hugh Hart, who had got to know Koliakov in Budapest shortly before the Hungarian uprising. In return for concessions to the Russians that were never revealed, charges of spying against Pountney were dropped. He was found guilty of the lesser charge of actions incompatible with his status as a journalist and expelled. By agreement the Soviet authorities let it be known that Pountney been arrested travelling without official permission outside the cordon sanitaire that limited the free movement of all non-Soviet personnel to within a narrow radius of Moscow. It was a lie Pountney was more than willing to support in exchange for his freedom. Twenty-four hours later, he was back in London, the news of his return a brief headline in his own paper. It had been, he admitted breathlessly to Hart, ‘too close a call’. He’d done Moscow. He was never going back.

*

‘Have a look at this and tell me if you recognise anyone.’

Hugh Hart nods at the waiter. He should go ahead and pour. Looking at the label on the bottle – a ’58 Sancerre – Pountney knows the lunch isn’t for old times’ sake. Hart doesn’t order wine like this usually. He’s after something, all right. He produces a large brown envelope from his briefcase, and extracts from it a black and white print which he hands to Pountney.

‘Be prepared. It may bring back unhappy memories.’  

The photograph has been taken from a distance with a long-range lens, and judging from the angle probably from a first-floor window. It must have been magnified a number of times before the print was made, which explains the grainy tones and lack of definition in some of the detail. Despite that, the centre of the image is clear. An old man is sitting hunched
in a wheelchair, a rug over his legs, shaded by the overhanging branches of an oak tree. He has a cigarette clamped tightly between his lips. His hands, Pountney notices, are tucked out of sight under the rug.

‘It’s Radin all right,’ Pountney says. ‘No question.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘What about the other man? Recognise him?’

Jacket off and sleeves rolled up, a tall man, many years Radin’s junior, is lying on the grass beside the wheelchair, propping himself up on one elbow. He too is smoking.

‘Yes,’ Pountney says. ‘Strangely enough, I do. I met him at a concert in Moscow once. Annabel Leigh was draped all over him. We had a talk in the interval. Intelligent man. Spoke very good English. I liked him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Andrei Berlin. Am I right?’

‘You’re the one who’s talked to him, Gerry. I’ve never seen him before.’

‘He is a historian. Teaches at the university in Moscow. Annabel told me so.’

‘This Annabel Leigh woman – can she be trusted to get things like that right?’