The Best of British Crime omnibus (7 page)

'A fair sample is sufficient,' Potts said with complete seriousness. ‘I've found something else that may surprise you. Double beds are almost unknown in Russia. There's no room for them because of the overcrowding.'

‘That's right,' I said, ‘they won't fit in the passages.' I looked at him curiously. The material he was collecting might be so much lumber, but his initiative was admirable. ‘Of course, you know what'll happen to you – one of these days you'll be picked up and charged with espionage. Housing conditions fall under the heading of economic secrets and you can get ten years for extracting that sort of information from Soviet citizens. So can they for giving it.'

‘Really?' Potts looked worried. ‘That seems rather absurd.'

‘Everything's absurd,' said Waterhouse. ‘Which reminds me, how are the mice, Mr Potts?'

‘Very bad indeed,' said Potts. ‘I estimate that they've increased by fifty per cent in the past week.'

‘I thought the hotel people lent you a trap,' said Jeff.

‘They did, but they took it away again. They said there was a man on the third floor who also had mice, and that as I'd caught two and he hadn't caught any, it was only fair he should have a turn. So now I've applied for the hotel cat.'

'What do you mean,
applied?'

‘Just what I say. I had to make a written application to the hotel manager in triplicate, and I got a reply on hotel notepaper saying that the application would be sympathetically considered and that if it were approved I'd be issued with a permit.' He shook his head in perplexity. ‘They are extraordinary people.'

We hooted with laughter, as much at his expression as at his story. Presently Jeff said, ‘You know the delegation's here, do you, John?'

Waterhouse gave him a slightly pained look, as though the suggestion that a piece of news might have escaped him were bad form. Not only did he know of the delegation's arrival, but it turned out that he knew several of the members quite well. He'd met Schofield in 1942 at the time of the supply mission, and Bolting when he'd been an accounts clerk at the Embassy, and he'd actually travelled to Kuibishev with Mullett in the great evacuation.

‘Not
a very nice man,' said Waterhouse regretfully. ‘Dangerous, too. He set a lot of people on the wrong road back in the ‘thirties. There's a young fellow at the Radio Centre who took Mullett's advice and came out here to work and has regretted it ever since. Can't get back now, of course – and I imagine he's far from being the only one who was led astray. By the way, you know we're going to be invited to accompany the delegation on its rounds?'

‘Invited?' said Jeff. ‘I didn't know they had a word for that.'

‘They have when they want something, dear boy. They want this delegation to go over with a bang – you can see that by the build-up they've given it in their own press and radio. Now they want us to toddle round and pick up the pearls of wisdom that fall from their lips.'

‘Yeah? They've got a hope! I can just see my Chief's face if I cabled five hundred well-chosen words on a peace-loving visit to a kolhoz.'

‘An emotional view, Mr Clayton. We don't have to file stories. We shall get some excellent meals.'

‘Sure, and have to listen to a lot of hooey,' said Jeff disgustedly. ‘What about you, George? Are you going to tail along?'

‘I think I might,' I said. ‘I feel as though I've read the first chapter of a serial story, and I'd rather like to know what happens next. There's a friendly type called Cressey I want to keep an eye on for one thing – and the unfriendly ones intrigue me. I don't see that we can lose anything. You might even get a chance to speak to a Russian.'

‘You think so?' Jeff put down his glass. ‘Bud,' he said, ‘you've got me really excited.'

Next morning, after breakfast, I tried to draw up some sort of a plan of work. I had no expectation that the Press Department would give me any assistance, but the usual motions had to be gone through, if only for the record. Besides, you could never be
absolutely
certain. Russia's relations with Britain at that moment were perhaps just one shade less bitter than her relations with the United States, and the Soviet Foreign Office was quite capable of marking the difference by a modest show of favouritism. Soviet officialdom could be incredibly small-minded at times. I hadn't forgotten how, during the war, the assumed postponement of the Second Front had coincided with a sharp curtailment of theatre tickets and other small concessions to correspondents.

Anyhow, just on the off-chance I drew up a careful list of requirements. I wanted to see someone at two or three of the Ministries; to be given some figures about housing, wages, prices, and taxation; and to visit a number of institutions. It was routine stuff – the sort of thing that every incoming newspaperman asked for. I also made a private note of things I intended to do, irrespective of official sanction. I was pretty sure I could still move around in shops and markets, parks and places of entertainment, without being spotted as a foreigner, and you could learn quite a bit from casual conversations. I also had one or two old addresses that I thought I might telephone later on. It seemed unlikely that I should succeed in renewing past contacts, but again the attempt had to be made.

Having prepared the ground for what in any western country could have been a fruitful tour of duty, I went off to pay my respects to the Ambassador. He gave me a glass of excellent sherry and I gave him a description of the delegation, which seemed to cause him some wry amusement. Then I went on to see the head of the Soviet Press Department and collect my press card.

I'd taken the precaution of ringing up beforehand and making a firm appointment, but there were wearisome formalities to be gone through before I could even enter the Foreign Office building. It was necessary to call at a neighbouring ‘security' building and get a temporary pass from a shaven-headed, steely-eyed man who worked behind a grille, and there was a queue of about twenty intimidated Russians already lined up there, patiently waiting on the bureaucrat's pleasure. Bracing myself, I marched to the head of the queue, apologised to the man who stood there, and rapped sharply on the grille, which had a board across it. ‘Shaven-head' whipped the board away, stared at me much as the workhouse master must have looked at Oliver Twist, and told me curtly to fall in line. When he put the board back I rapped on it again, and some extremely nerve-racking exchanges followed. In the end, after claiming a close, personal acquaintance with the whole of the Politburo and losing my temper in a highly undignified fashion, I got the pass. It was a routine I'd always hated, but it was unavoidable unless you were prepared to stand about for half a day, as the Russians were.

When I was finally shown up to the Press Department, Ganilov kept me waiting for nearly three-quarters of an hour. That was routine, too – one of the thousand and one small things calculated to induce in any normal newspaperman a sense of intolerable exasperation. I sat down in the familiar press room, now peopled with only the spirits of the past, and wondered how I'd ever managed to endure two years of it. What a fund of goodwill towards Russia, I reflected, had drained away over the years in that unsympathetic annexe.

Ganilov came out at last, and extended a clammy hand. He was a big, ungainly man of forty or so, with a mop of black hair, hunched shoulders and peering eyes distorted by thick lenses so that you couldn't see his expression or have the least idea what he was thinking. He led the way into his well-appointed room, indicated one of two leather chairs, and offered me a cardboard-tipped cigarette. He asked me in excellent English if I'd had a good trip, said that he was glad I'd decided to pay another visit to the Soviet Union, and indicated that he'd be pleased to place all the usual facilities at my disposal.

He was completely deadpan, and so was I. I produced the list I'd prepared and he put the paper close to his eyes, his pink lips moving as he read, and then he sat for a while nibbling his finger-ends.

‘It's a little difficult just now,' he said. ‘You see, everyone is very busy. The Ministry of Agriculture is preparing for the spring sowing, the Housing Commission has just launched a new programme… Yes, it will be difficult. However, I will certainly do what is possible. Meanwhile… ' he reached for a typed sheet… ‘you are invited to accompany Mr Mullett and his delegation on their visits. As you will see, they propose to cover a great deal of ground. For the foreign press, this is a unique opportunity.'

I glanced at the paper. The programme was certainly an extensive one. None of the items in the itinerary was particularly original, but the delegates were going to see more in a fortnight than a correspondent could normally hope to see in a year.

‘Unfortunately,' I said, ‘Mr Mullett and his activities are not very popular in England.'

Ganilov indicated that he understood the difficulty. ‘However,' he said, ‘facts are facts whatever the composition of a particularly delegation. I am sure you will find much to interest you – and much to write about.'

I smiled. I felt we understood each other perfectly.

The next few days were among the busiest I've ever spent in the Soviet Union. On the first evening, I attended a great ‘peace' rally at the Bolshoi Theatre. The delegates were all up on the stage with the Party ‘big-shots; and the auditorium was packed with hand-picked representatives from various Soviet bodies. The organisers had managed to create the atmosphere of a great occasion. A massed band played stirring British and Soviet tunes – not omitting
Men of Harlech!
– and the air was hot with the floodlights of cinema cameras. Press photographers kept bobbing up towards the speakers and it was clear that the features of the delegates were going to become very familiar to the Russian public. On this occasion, it was Tranter who was given most of the limelight. He limped to the microphone with a sort of shy smile on his face and seemed quite overcome by what is known in the Soviet press as ‘stormy applause.' His line turned out to be sweet reasonableness and brotherly love. All the peoples of the world, he said, craved for peace, and so there was no earthly reason why we shouldn't have it. All that was necessary was that we should try to see each other's point of view and be ready to compromise and not let our statesmen drag us into adventures. The audience vociferously cheered the sentiment that they should restrain their statesmen! I thought of all the hard work that Tranter must have put in on behalf of his peace society back in England, and felt almost sorry for him. Far better if he'd devoted his philanthropic energies to something practical, like homes for the aged.

The other speeches were a little briefer, but there were a great many of them, both Russian and English. Perdita's few barbed words had a good reception. Islwyn, impassioned and dramatic in the spotlight, appeared to have forgotten that peace was in the object of the meeting and gave a remarkable exhibition of verbal paranoia. Mrs Clarke was confident and strident and I quickly raised my earlier view of a possibly over-generous nature. On the platform she was a termagant, and her shrill, vulgar voice set my teeth on edge. Bolting, on the contrary, was controlled and persuasive. Whereas the others had all needed the services of a translator, he spoke, to my surprise, in almost perfect Russian and got an extra cheer for it. He looked most distinguished in his well-cut clothes and snowy linen and I wondered how he managed it on an M.P.'s salary. The Professor wasn't called upon, and neither was Cressey.

It was Mullett who, in spite of his cloth, struck the harshest note of the evening. He had the Communist clap-trap off by heart, and spat out phrases like ‘imperialist warmongers' with real venom. There must have been a lot of rancour in his soul, and I suppose the applause he got was balm. When all the talking was over, resolutions were put and carried with the customary unanimity and the delegation, having earned its supper, was taken off to a banquet at the Moscow Soviet. I went back to the hotel and tried, without much success, to interest Jeff in the proceedings. He said he had to draw the line somewhere and he drew it at Communist ‘peace' meetings.

The next day was a busy one for all of us. First thing in the morning we accompanied Mrs Clarke and Perdita and a strong VOKS contingent to a new housing estate. Mrs Clarke asked an enormous number of questions and took copious notes for the report she would be making to her Co-op women. Perdita hung back rather superciliously and preferred to talk to Mirnova. Halfway through the morning we linked up with Cressey and Tranter and toured a chocolate factory. Jeff had by now become converted to the view that these visits were worth while, for when the delegates were carrying on their interviews with the help of Tanya and Mirnova, we managed to have some useful chats with isolated Russians who in the ordinary way wouldn't have dared to open their mouths to foreigners.

On the Tuesday we were all taken out in limousines to a collective farm on the Mozhaisk
chaussee.
It was a sunny day with only about ten degrees of frost, and walking around in the sparkling snow was most enjoyable. Mullett was very hearty, and in the course of the morning drank seven glasses of warm milk to show goodwill. Then, at about four in the afternoon, we were invited to one of those enormous Russian meals where the unwary eat steadily for an hour and are just sitting back with a sigh of repletion when the main course is brought in. Some of the delegates were beginning to have a slightly congested look, but they could still break into an argument at the least provocation. At our end of the table a warm discussion developed about a case, reported in that day's
Komsomolskaya Pravda
, of a boy – a member of the Young Communists – who had won public acclaim by denouncing his father as a ‘social fascist.' Thomas was all for it – ‘the cause must come first,' was his view – and so was Perdita. Schofield made some remarks which suggested that he thought moral considerations almost irrelevant against the general background of the cosmic plan. Mullett hummed and hawed, but was inclined to agree that it was impossible to have too much ‘Socialist vigilance' in a revolutionary period. Mrs Clarke also favoured what she called ‘vigilance,' but for children to spy on parents was apparently not in the Co-op tradition and she didn't hold with it. Bolting looked as though he didn't care much either way. He seemed to find the whole delegation mildly entertaining.