Red to Black (35 page)

F
INN SAID HE WOULD CALL
twice a day until he returned. We waited, Willy and I, for three days without a word from him. On the third day, we were sitting in the restaurant, looking out to sea, and our conversation had dried up. Everything that could have been said about Finn had been said. We’d exhausted every possible explanation for his disappearence and an air of panic enveloped me.

Finally, sighing, Willy got up from the table and went into his hut. After a while he emerged with an envelope and gave it to me.

‘Finn asked me to give you this,’ he said. ‘But only in an emergency.’

I seized the envelope out of his hand, angry that it had taken him so long. Inside was a letter giving me directions, and a key, to the pink house.

So here I am, in the pink house, having reached the end of Finn’s handwritten books and sitting down again in the cellar with its
smoky oil burner and its secrets that nobody wanted. I’ve found nothing that tells me where he is now or why he disappeared. These secrets, they are what my life has become. They are so useless.

I am counting up the times when I believed I could have turned Finn away from his course and in my head I’m back in Moscow, at the Baltschug Hotel, hearing Finn say, ‘Come with me, Anna. I want you to come with me.’ And me replying, ‘Ask me something else.’

But finally I came to him, I let go of the past, and we had an agreement; I’d changed, I’d made the leap, and I thought he’d done so too. But it seems he’d gone back, that he was unable to let it all go. And now he’s disappeared.

Willy also had his instructions from Finn, it seemed. He’d gone to Paris. There, through some channel of his working life, whether past or present I don’t know, Willy contacted an officer inside the French intelligence service, the DGSE.

It was established that Finn had gone to Luxembourg. On the first night Finn had arranged to call me, Willy found that an Englishman answering to Finn’s description stayed at the Bretonnerie Hotel, in the Marais district of Paris. There was an ‘incident’–beyond that, the French intelligence officer wouldn’t expand. The hotel was sealed off by the security services and remained so. The Englishman’s room was examined down to every last thread in its carpet. Men in protective suits tested the bedsheets and pillow cases, the curtains, the shower-head over the bath, the bottles in the mini-bar–everything. Again, there was no explanation for this that Willy could find. Finn was nowhere to be found.

And that was just last night, when I spoke to Willy from a call box in Tegernsee.

I’m wondering how much time I’ve got left, who else will find the pink house, and when will they find it. I gather up Finn’s books and I eventually find the microfiches that Dieter gave Finn six years before. They are hidden behind a stone in the wall of the cellar. I put everything into a bag I’ve brought, turn off the oil heater for the last time, and ascend the wooden ladder stairs to the sitting room. I throw the bag down on the floor and close up the metal doors, pull the false wall with its false fireplace across the front of the metal doors and rearrange some ornaments on its mantelpiece that have fallen over in the movement.

I have Finn’s record, and I have the microfiches that Dieter told Finn people would kill for.

I feel a sense of urgency now. I have to get out of here. For someone will find the pink house soon, either from Finn’s or from my side, of that I’m certain. Whichever side it will be, the result will be the same; the evidence will be destroyed and anyone in possession of the evidence will be destroyed with it.

I walk quickly upstairs and throw the few belongings from the bedroom I’d brought with me from the beach hut into another smaller bag. I dust the surfaces of the room, the banisters of the staircase as I walk back downstairs, all the door handles, the fireplace, the kettle and the cup, the whisky bottle and the glass. I dust everything I’ve touched for prints and then I am ready to leave. And at that point, when there’s nothing left to do to distract me from myself, I break down and cry. Finn has gone.

And as I’m crying, I suddenly feel a fear, a presence. There is something in the house. Is it too late? Have they come? I break off from my tears and look around, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. And when I half turn, over to my right and standing in the middle of the doorway to the kitchen, I see there is a man.

I look all around the room in total shock, then through the window, looking for the blue police lights or men surrounding the house, German back-up for their Russian friends. But there is no
body, just this man. I’m frozen in the chair, I’m waiting to die. But the man doesn’t move.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I say. ‘I’m pregnant with Finn’s child.’ It’s as if I’ve given up. As if this will be a defence against them. To myself I sound completely lost.

‘I know,’ the man says, but he doesn’t move towards me, or take his eyes away.

I look at him more closely. He knows? He is a Russian. Yes, I’m sure he is a Russian. He’s smartly dressed, he has an easy air of wealth. His hair is black like mine and is thick and short and parted like some thirties movie star’s. He has a tanned face. His hands are manicured, his skin is polished and clean, the skin of a non-smoker, I think. Will he kill me with those manicured hands? I have no strength at all. But if I can find my strength, I know I can kill this man.

‘You know me, Anna,’ he says, ‘and you don’t know me.’

I look at him harder, but it isn’t true, I don’t know this man.

‘I’m Mikhail,’ he says.

I sit in shock, speechless.

He walks slowly, unthreateningly, across the room, keeping well clear of the space I’m occupying and sits in a chair opposite me across from a low table. He reaches into the side pockets of his jacket and pulls out two plastic cups, a yellow one and a blue one, the type that pack neatly into a picnic basket. He puts them on the table and then reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a silver flask. He unscrews the top of the flask and pours a generous measure for me.

‘A favourite,’ Mikhail says. ‘Basilica vodka from Georgia.’

‘I’m pregnant,’ I say again. It sounds so foolish, and I wipe my face and feel my strength returning.

Mikhail waits. Then he pours two drinks to show that we are sharing whatever he’s brought in the flask. He seems to sense my
reluctance and drinks from my cup too. Then he raises his own cup between us.

‘To your child, then,’ he says.

I pick up my cup and we toast his children and my unborn child and all children.

He refills the cups and lifts his again for another toast.

‘And to Finn,’ he says. ‘Himself, in some ways, a beautiful child.’

And I hear myself repeat it. To Finn. And I drink to the bottom of the cup and cry inside.

A toast is the Georgian way of expressing more than a thousand words can ever express. It is a method of communicating the impossible in that country.

And then Mikhail downs his empty cup. He puts his hand inside his jacket again and withdraws a long dagger from a pocket, but I sit there with no thought of running. Just for a moment, I actually want to be released.

But Mikhail puts the knife on the table between us. It is a
kidjal,
a Caucasian dagger, and it has an inscription on it.

‘Pick it up. Look at it,’ Mikhail says.

I do so, and written on the blade is an inscription. ‘I will protect you, both in the day and in the night,’ it reads.

‘Finn gave it to me,’ Mikhail says. ‘It is the dagger’s word and it is Finn’s word. He kept his word. And now I want you to have it. It’s now my word. I’ll keep my word to you too, Anna.’

Mikhail stands up and puts the flask and the cups back into his pockets. I pick up the dagger and place it in my bag and do up the zipper.

‘We must go,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how much time we have.’

He leads the way through to the kitchen and the back door and looks out over the lake. I follow him with the bag of Finn’s books and the microfiches.

I’ve never opened the back door out from the kitchen, I don’t
know how Mikhail got to it, but I see there’s a lawn outside the door that leads down to the lake.

When he seems satisfied with his observation, he opens the door and we walk down the lawn to a small launch tied to a post. He takes my bags and places them gently next to the seat that he guides me to. Then he gets into the launch himself and starts an outboard. I untie the painter from the post and the boat swings around gently with the motor idling and then he accelerates away from the pink house across the lake. I look back at the widening wake, and the pink house disappearing into the distance.

We reach the other side. He ties the boat up and puts my bags on to a jetty as I climb out. He lets me carry them then, so that I know he isn’t going to take them away. Then we walk up the jetty and to a lock-up garage on the far side of the road. Mikhail lifts the door and unlocks a green car, a Cherokee Jeep, I think, inside the garage, and he opens the passenger door for me.

The back seats are folded down and Finn is lying with his eyes closed on what seems to be an inflatable camping mattress and he is covered up to his neck in blankets. I see a drip attached into his arm and smell morphine.

As Mikhail moves the car away from the kerb I see him look back across the lake and I follow his gaze. On the far side, where we’ve just come from, the lazy blue light of a police car is slowly passing along the road that runs by the edge of the water.

‘We must go,’ he says.

I look down at Finn and I see that he is alive.

‘Why isn’t he in hospital?’ I demand. ‘Why is he lying in this damn car!’

Mikhail doesn’t reply.

‘Are we going to hospital?’ I hear the edge of a scream in my voice.

‘He has a few hours, Anna.’

‘Get him to a fucking hospital, then!’ I scream at him, leaning
over the front seat in rage. But he drives into the gathering dusk and I don’t know where we’re going.

‘Finn stayed at a hotel in Paris,’ he says at last. ‘Days ago, eight, ten- I don’t know. He hired a car. French police and security have taken his room to pieces and found nothing. That’s because what they were looking for was in the car. They, our people, put a nerve agent on the steering wheel. We don’t know what nerve agent it is. Even if we did, it was too late by the time I found him. If there is an antidote, we won’t be able to find it. He knew that too. He asked me to bring him here.’

I don’t say anything, but sink back on to the floor next to Finn and watch his upturned face and listen to his laboured, infrequent breathing.

‘If he wakes, use the time well,’ Mikhail says.

We drive in silence, in darkness. I am lying next to Finn, sometimes on one elbow looking at his face, sometimes on my back, like him, looking at the roof of the car. We might both have been corpses then.

‘What happened?’ I say after I don’t know how long. We are passing under some street lights, I am on my back, and the lights are beaming through the window, illuminating the interior of the car like a lethargic stroboscope.

‘He told me he went to see the man Frank.’ Mikhail pauses.

‘Yes?’

‘It was to confront him.’

‘About what?’

‘Finn told me he’d looked back over months, over years, and found a pattern. The photographs you told him about, the ones they showed you in Moscow…On all the occasions photographs were taken, since Geneva, Frank was the link. In Geneva he was there. In France, he was there. In Basle, when you and Finn were
taken together at the railway station, the only other person who knew you’d be there was Frank. Finn had telephoned him, if you remember. I think he telephoned Frank back then to confirm his suspicions. To see if there’d be a photograph. And there was.

‘He tried to forget this, Anna. He tried to forget because he was genuine about finishing with all of this, about putting it behind him and making a life with you. But one thing he couldn’t forget was four years ago, in Luxembourg, and the boy’s death. When he left the boy’s flat, he’d been meticulous, he knew his job. And he knew that he wasn’t observed entering or leaving the building. Knew as far as anyone can know, anyway. But with all the other evidence, the photographs, he knew that Frank also was the only person who knew he’d seen the boy. He was certain of that. And therefore he was certain that Frank was the cause of the boy’s death. He couldn’t forget that. He couldn’t let that go. He had to hear it from Frank himself. That’s why he went to Luxembourg. That was the loose end he had to tie up. He couldn’t let it rest.’

I lie silently and put my hand under the blanket to hold on to Finn’s hand.

‘So Finn hired a car in France and drove to Luxembourg. He didn’t tell me what happened between him and Frank. But he left the hired car in Luxembourg and took a train out, following all the field rules. He hired another car when he thought he was clear. But somehow they kept a tail on him, he didn’t know how. During the night in Paris, they got to the car in the underground car park where he’d left it, over a mile away from the hotel. That’s how it happened.’

I stay silent. I don’t know where anything goes from here. And I think that soon I will be the only person alive who knows who Mikhail is.

‘He knew he was ill the following night, but he didn’t know why,’ Mikhail said. ‘His heart was weakening already. He knew they’d got him.’

‘And you found him.’

‘Eventually.’

I didn’t ask Mikhail how he could find Finn when I couldn’t.

Finn died during that long night in the back of the car. He didn’t regain consciousness.

T
HERE IS ONLY
one photograph of Mikhail in the public domain, and in it his face is so obscured that you’d have to know it was him in order to identify him. He is hidden behind the face of Vladimir Putin.

The picture was taken at a small service in the Kremlin’s Orthodox chapel on an afternoon in late 2004. Mikhail is in the pew right behind the President; only his ear and a small fraction of his face are visible. He is in a place of high honour in this picture. Yet Mikhail is a minor official in the Railways Ministry in Moscow, on the export side, but he uses this cover to travel widely in Europe for his real work: overseeing the continent’s SVR presence. Mikhail is at the centre of power. He was there at the heart of Department ‘S’ before Putin, and he has risen with Putin from the beginning of Putin’s own rise to power. Mikhail is everything that Finn said he was, and that Adrian denied.

In the summer of 2007 the Service held a memorial service for Finn, six months after his death. I received an invitation from
Adrian, via the roundabout mailing route that Finn had set up and which still seemed to be working. Once in a while, Willy picked up Finn’s mail from a box Finn owned in Monaco.

But I didn’t go to Finn’s memorial. It wasn’t a service for lovers or wives, it was a service designed to draw a veil over how they’d treated Finn in life, not in order to respect him in death. I believe Finn was awarded some posthumous honour to complete the fiction.

Our son was born a few weeks later. We called him Finn, Willy and I, and Willy was his ‘father’, he told me, in all but fact. He said that his family lived long and that he would live to see my son grow into his twenties. He would take care of me, he promised, as a father, as a friend, and as a guardian.

Willy and I married, in order for me to have a new name and French nationality, and despite the fact that Willy was always trying to get me to meet men my own age. It was a marriage of convenience, between friends. It was from necessity but it was a bond of sorts too.

In the spring and summer of 2007, Putin railed against the West. He cut off oil supplies to the EU country of Estonia, under the pretence of a broken pipeline, but in reality in revenge for the Estonians removing a memorial to Russian soldiers, Estonia’s oppressors and occupiers. Russian jet-fighters buzzed European airspace and Putin announced a new weapons’ build-up; what used to be called an arms’ race.

The Europeans reacted feebly; America stood up to Russia. The Europeans became more and more afraid of Russia and its oil supply. Its leaders and former leaders cosied up to the Kremlin, either for personal gain or out of fear. And Putin, like Peter the Great in his written military statutes, now ‘answered to nobody in the world’.

And Adrian, I thought, was right. The power of America would take care of its own, and if you were lucky enough to be able to hang on to America’s coat-tails, it wasn’t such a bad place to be.

We, Willy and I, and other emigrants from the East whom we met from time to time in Paris, seemed to understand this better than Western Europe’s complacent or corrupt indigenous peoples.

Finn’s romantic view of what was right, and what was actually possible, was designed for some other kind of world. But eventually, what broke Finn was his inability to change. I finally found the power to choose what was good, what was right, for me. But Finn could not quite bring himself to say: ‘I’m on my side.’