The Defector (25 page)

“An American graveyard,” Sasanov said.

“Not Europe, or the East. We’d have those fall into our hands as soon as America was destroyed. China could be subdued in a conventional war. We would have all the mastery we wanted, and across the Atlantic there would be this huge poisonous continent, where there was no life of any kind. Teaching a lot of men to climb assault courses isn’t going to stop that.”

“I suppose not,” Kidson agreed.

“What’s going to prevent it happening?” Sasanov frowned, swigged at his drink.

“Encirclement of the Soviet Union,” he said.

“In the air, on the land and in the seas. Close to the heart of the country. That’s what America and the West are trying to achieve, isn’t it? But they’re losing. They’re losing the game.” Kidson said, “Political weakness, economic recession, oil, inflation. We know all the arguments, but we’re not getting many answers at the moment. We need answers and very soon, if you’re not going to be proved right. And I take it you don’t want to be, or you wouldn’t be here.” It was the first time Kidson had stepped into his real role.

“No,” Sasanov said.

“I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want our political system to win. And I don’t want to see even one stray nuclear bomb fall on a Russian city.”

“You can do a lot to avoid that possibility,” Kidson said.

“And you’ve had plenty of time to think about it. Even a little insight into living in the West. We’re keeping our side of the bargain and you’ve said you were ready to keep yours. Are you?”

“Yes,” Ivan Sasanov said.

“I am ready now. I will start with your team as soon as they like. But one question-where is Vina Graham?” Kidson was prepared for this.

“She leaves England this evening,” he said. It was a lie, because at the moment she was in the language centre practising her German. But Sasanov wouldn’t want to hear the truth. He needed a catalyst to set the scene for his betrayal of his country and his past. His face changed for a second; the meaning was difficult to assess. It became a heavy mask again. He finished his vodka.

“When do we begin,” he said.

“I want to begin today.” Kidson got up and rang through on the internal telephone. He muttered into it, and Sasanov didn’t bother to listen. He looked up at the Russian and nodded before he put the receiver down.

“Downstairs in the conference room at three o’clock,” he said. The Bear Restaurant is situated outside Moscow near Zhukova. It is built on the lines of a log cabin and it lies in a wood away from the main roads. Security patrols operate in the woods and round the rough country roads leading in and out of the forest. The Bear is patronized only by privileged members of the Party hierarchy and the senior officers in the KGB. It is not frequented by the artists or scientists, who have a special venue of their own, some thirty miles away in the heart of another forest. The dachas of the elite are within the same fifty-mile radius, divided into compounds. The members of the Politburo have luxurious country dachas all closed off into one select area; the Chairman of the Praesidium lives in a mansion in the woods, strongly guarded and secluded from public gaze. He can be approached by his intimates in the Politburo, but his privacy is as absolute as that of the Tsars. The invitation to Irina Sasanova was delivered to the University and the messenger waited for her reply. It came during her break for lunch, when she was sitting on her own as usual, trying to eat the unappetizing food. When she was called out and given the envelope, she started to tremble and could hardly open it. The messenger, a KGB private in civilian clothes, stared woodenly ahead of him. He was accustomed to frightened people. The note inside was in Volkov’s own hand.

“I would like to talk to you about your mother. Come to dinner with me this evening. Tell my driver and he will collect you after classes. Volkov.

P.S. Wear something pretty; we are going to a special place.” She folded the note and took a deep breath to steady her nerves.

“Thank Comrade General Volkov,” she said.

“I’ll be very happy to accept.” She hurried back to the flat as soon as she was free.

“Wear something pretty. We’re going to a special place.” For a moment she wondered if that last line were not a vicious joke, and the special place might have a horrible significance. She had heard her father say that Antonyii Volkov had sadistic tastes. She felt faint with terror at the idea. Then she calmed herself and reasoned that the note meant what it said. He had been very friendly to her when she came to his office. Irina was not a fool, although she was shy. She knew instinctively when a man was being more than friendly. She’d seen her father’s dreaded chief smiling at her and glancing at her legs. She had thrust the unpleasant thought aside; now it returned and she considered it. She shuddered. Then she began to look through her wardrobe to find something suitable. The same man came to the flat at precisely seven in the evening. He wore the green and red flashes of the military arm of the KGB. She wondered whether Volkov would be in the car, but she was alone in the rear. The evening was delightfully warm and she gazed out of the window at the countryside as they left Moscow behind. The summers were hot and dry, but the green forests stretched invitingly across the rosy skyline: there was a light peculiar to the Russian summer, soft-hued and misty, like a water colour She felt moved by her country’s beauty. Her parents used to talk about it with their friend Jacob Belezky. She recoiled from the thought of him, but his words came back to her, overheard one night when they were all_ arguing and drinking, and she was reading in her room.

“Russia survived the Tsars. She survived the German invasion. Brezhnev and Kosygin and the KGB may rape the Russian people, take away our human rights, persecute and punish us, but Russia will bury them as she’s buried every tyranny in the end. ” And then her father, warning him, pleading with him to be careful. And not succeeding. She remembered feeling so frightened she put her hands over her ears and stared at her book so as not to hear any more. Memenev had died in the psychiatric hospital. The tragic sequence was her father’s disappearance, the months of fear and isolation and then her mother’s arrest. She began to cry when she thought of her mother, and wiped the tears away quickly, looking anxiously into her mirror to see if her eyes were red. Volkov might be able to help her mother. Not might, could, if he could be persuaded. All she had to do was tell him about Poliakov and the message from her father. He would exchange one woman for a university tutor who was in contact with the defector in the West. And not just the tutor but all the others who formed links in the chain leading to her father. They turned off the main road into the minor road that ran through the forest; the car was checked by two guards who stepped out, and then immediately waved on. It came to a halt outside the one storey building built of logs; lights beamed through the windows, there was a tinkle of music in the air. She got out, straightened her skirt and tucked her bag under her. arm. She walked up the short flight of steps and went inside.

“Now,” Volkov smiled, ‘what do you think of this place? Isn’t it nice? ” Irina couldn’t disagree.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. It was decorated in a rich style which was quite new to her. Red plush seats and gilded mirrors, coloured glass lamps on every table, and fresh flowers.

A man dressed in old-fashioned peasant costume wandered through playing a balalaika. That was the music she had heard. The exterior had seemed simple, even rough. Inside, it was so luxurious that she couldn’t help looking round at everything. The tables were full; men were dining with welldressed women, their clothes brought from the special shops reserved for the KGB, where goods from the West were stocked exclusively for the elite. The food was excellent.

“It’s so kind of you to bring me here, Comrade Volkov,” she said. He smiled again. He looked less daunting in casual clothes, a little younger.

“It’s not kind at all,” he said.

“You’re a charming girl, my dear. I’m pleasing myself as much as you. Besides…” He poured wine into her glass and filled his own. She had drunk very little in spite of his prompting.

“Besides,” he went on, ‘you’ve had a miserable time this last year, haven’t you? ” She nodded, not knowing what to say.

“And all through no fault of yours, that’s what is so unfair about these family situations. I haven’t mentioned Fedya Pavlovna because I didn’t want to spoil your evening.” She glanced up at him, nakedly afraid.

“What’s happened to her? Oh, please, Comrade, tell me.”

“Now, my dear, calm yourself. Nothing has happened to your mother. Fortunately for her, she is under my protection. So she is quite unharmed. “

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she whispered. She blinked away tears.

“Where is she? Can you tell me?”

“Of course I can,” he said gently.

“She’s still in the Lubyanka. Waiting for a decision to be made. My decision, as it happens. ” He saw the anguish in the girl’s face, and felt a tremor of excitement. She was very fresh and young.

“Please,” she said, ‘don’t punish her. Whatever she did, it wasn’t meant. She’s not a clever person, Comrade Volkov; she wouldn’t mean to commit a crime. ” He frowned, pretending to be stern.

“But she did commit one,” he said.

“She told a deliberate lie. She lied about your father’s health. As a result he was allowed to go abroad, and we know the result. He killed himself. I find it very hard to forgive her. Your father was not just one of my colleagues, you know. He was my friend. ” She gazed into his eyes, fixed by them as if she were a rabbit frozen by the stare of a stoat; she accepted the lies with her own eyes, blinking and submissive. Her father had never been a friend. Her mother hadn’t lied about anything except a corpse which Volkov knew was a fake. If he got the slightest whiff of insincerity from her, her mother was lost. And her mother was being put forward as part of a bargain not yet explained. But a major part of it, she knew, consisted of herself. She lowered her head, and fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. Volkov watched her with satisfaction. The rabbit simile had occurred to him, and it suited her. Pink and white, with the pretty blue eyes and hair like ripe wheat. A soft, yielding little rabbit. He reached over and laid his hand on her bare arm.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured.

“I’m not a hard-hearted man. You’ll find that out. I’ll get you a little Polish brandy;

that’ll make you feel better. ” A waiter appeared, and he gave the order. The glasses were brought immediately. There was no delay, no sullen service in the Bear. That was the lot of the tourists and the ordinary Russians who tried eating in Moscow restaurants or hotels. Volkov let her sip the brandy. He lit a cigarette.

“You want to help her, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“I’ll do anything.”

“She spoke very well of you,” he said thoughtfully.

“She was very anxious about your reaction to what she’d done. She said you were a devoted Party member. You are, aren’t you, Irina?”

“Yes,” she said again.

“Good. I didn’t need to ask. We know these things.” He touched her arm again, and this time he stroked it.

“When we’ve finished our brandy we’ll go for a little drive. I’ll show you my dacha. It’s not far from here. You don’t mind getting back a little late, do you?”

“No, not at all, Comrade Volkov.” She gave him quite a bright smile.

“Not Comrade,” he said.

“Antonyii - when we’re alone.” He didn’t touch her in the car. The journey took just over twenty minutes.

A security man was on duty outside the dacha. The moon was up and she could see it was a single-storey white-painted bungalow, surrounded by bushes and screened by a belt of pine trees. It was much larger and its garden area much bigger than their old dacha. That had been taken away as soon as her father went missing. He led her inside and the room was well-lit and furnished with the latest Swedish sofas and chairs. A picture above the fireplace wouldn’t have found favour with the Academy of Soviet Art. The signature below it was Chagall. Volkov had a taste for decadent art. He came towards her and took her in his arms.

“You’re a very pretty girl,” he murmured.

“I like you, Irina. Do you like me?” Rather to his disappointment there was no fear in her face when she answered! “Yes, I do like you, Antonyii.” He began to kiss her, and without even being asked she unhooked the back of her dress and pulled it off. Not quite such a rabbit after all, he thought as he put her on the sofa. Frightened at first, but quite steely when she’d made up her mind. A little more of a challenge than expected. She might last longer than they usually did. He was surprised to find that she was a virgin. At 4. 15 on the Thursday afternoon, during office hours in the trade section of the British Embassy in Moscow, Michael Barker collapsed at his desk. He was a junior trade secretary who had been in his post just over a year. He complained of chest pains and pain down the left arm;

the Embassy doctor was called, and amid a lot of flurry and telephone calls to the Head of Chancery, it was announced that Michael Barker had suffered a minor coronary. He was taken to his quarters, a nurse installed, and arrangements made for him to be flown home as soon as possible for rest and treatment. The Ambassador dropped in to visit him in bed, and commiserated; the Embassy doctor took a second ECG and pronounced him well enough to fly home. The Soviet authorities were notified, and after a lapse of forty-eight hours, during which time Barker was put on the BA flight to London with a nurse in attendance, the Soviet Foreign Ministry was informed that his place on the staff would be taken by a Mr. Jeremy Spencer-Barr. Mr. Spencer-Barr’s credentials were duly checked up and found to be impeccable. He was on the Foreign Office list and had been employed in trade for the past two years since leaving the United States after a course at Harvard Business School. His background was copybook upper-class; relatives and sponsors in the Establishment. His name was put on file. The following day Elizabeth Cole was relieved of her post and sent back to London. An Embassy leak let it be know that she was said to be in touch with dissidents. The political wing of the KGB, which was integrated with the military wing, raked back over their records of Elizabeth Cole, and discovered something sinister in her weekly trips to Gum and the same cafe. Angry directives were issued to watch every move made by whoever replaced her.