The Envoy (26 page)

The other photographs arrived at the embassy late the next
afternoon
. Those photographs – the ones taken by the U2 flight – were hot stuff too. Too hot to be despatched in a diplomatic pouch. They were sent via a military courier who carried the photos in a locked briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist. The courier, a bespectacled Signal Corps second lieutenant with acne, was sitting outside Kit’s office with a marine guard. The marine was chewing gum; the courier was reading the poems of William Carlos Williams.

Kit spread the aerial reconnaissance photographs on his desk and read the NSA analysis that came with them. It was the most highly classified intelligence material that he had ever been allowed to see. He felt his fingers tingle and burn when he touched each glossy print. It was the first over-flight of the Soviet Union using the new Kodak cameras. The target of the spy flight was an installation in the Central Volga region five hundred kilometres north-east of Moscow codenamed Arzamas-16, a city so secret that it didn’t even appear on the map.

The photos were of such high quality that Kit could actually see the multiple barbwire fences, the watchtowers and distinguish the different types of Soviet Army trucks. He looked again at the NSA commentary:
outer defensive ring is twenty-five miles from
centre
and guarded by Russian Army paratroopers … inner defensive rings patrolled exclusively by Minister of Interior troops
. In other words, KGB. The installation itself was so secret that even crack Soviet soldiers were not allowed access.
The spaces between the multiple fences are plowed and patrolled regularly
. The ploughing – ‘plowing’ – was a nice security touch. It enabled patrols to easily detect footsteps and a breach of security. ‘How,’ said Kit, ‘how the fuck did they do it?’ He went through the photos again. The area was heavily wooded and there was considerable evidence of
logging
. Kit wondered what happened to the logs. Were they used for fuel? Pulped for paper – or milled for building material? A picture started to form in Kit’s mind. Or were the logs …? How much, after all, did it matter? Then Kit remembered the last thing that Vasili had said to him: ‘We are soldiers in an inhuman war.’

Jennifer met Kit at Wickham Market station; she was driving a new car, an Austin Devon A40, and wearing a white linen skirt. She looked pretty fine: pregnancy made her blossom even more. Kit put his bags into the boot: the door opened downwards and formed a neat platform. ‘It makes a handy picnic table,’ said Jennifer.

‘What happened to the Hillman?’

‘It was wrecked.’

‘Who was driving?’

‘That information is classified.’

Something in Jennifer’s voice told Kit that there was more to it, an awkward side she didn’t want to talk about. He let it go. ‘I’m looking forward to getting out on the river. I hate being cooped up in London when the weather is like this.’

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Selling secrets to the Russians and blackmailing homosexuals.’

Jennifer laughed and gave her cousin a little slap on the hand.‘Can’t you ever be serious?’

‘Half serious, maybe.’

‘The problem with you, Kit, is that we never know which half to believe.’

‘Maybe I should start taking transparency pills so you can see into my mind. But could you endure such horrors?’

‘Nonsense, you’re all sweetness and poetry. You have no dark secrets – it’s just a front you put on.’

‘Let’s make a deal, Jennie, I’ll start taking those transparency pills if you do too.’

Kit sensed something tighten in his cousin. Then she laughed again. ‘I’m not sure it would be a good idea. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.’

Kit looked out the car window. The lane was blowing white with the fine lace of cow parsley; just before the forest there was a field scarlet mad with poppies. Kit watched a roe doe flee from the poppy field by leaping over a wire fence into the tangled darkness. ‘Not wanting to hurt,’ he said, ‘is not the same as not hurting.’

‘Sorry, Kit, I didn’t quite catch that.’

‘It’s nothing. I was just mumbling inanely to myself – like my mom when she can’t find her reading glasses. How’s Brian?’

‘He’s been very busy lately. There seems to be a big problem on the island – I think there’s a construction project behind schedule.’

Kit suddenly flashed back to the briefing he had received from S2 intelligence at Bentwaters airbase. It was about the strange things that the Brits were building on Orford Ness Island. How had the aerial photo analyst described them?
These structures are not meant to withstand a nuclear strike from the outside, but they are meant to
… Vasili’s melancholy story was starting to make sense. Poor Boris.

Jennifer dropped Kit at Orford Quay and tried to help him carry his bags to the pram dinghy he used as a tender. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll get all muddy.’

‘I like mud.’ She kicked off her shoes and started to hitch up her skirt to undo her stockings.

‘Don’t, Jennie, people are looking. Think of Brian’s reputation.’

She let her skirt down. ‘I’m glad you didn’t say mine. But you will take me for a sail sometime.’

‘Any time.’ Kit sat on the boot door to pull on his wellies and watched a heavy lorry laden with cement roll on to one of the landing barges that ran as ferries between the quay and Orford Ness.

‘The locals don’t like it,’ said Jennifer, ‘all that construction work means a lot of heavy traffic through the villages. Brian gets some strange looks when he goes to the pub.’

‘Maybe it’s his Mancunian accent.’

‘You’ve noticed? Not many Americans pick up the differences. They think all the English speak either Cockney or posh.’

‘It’s my job to know one native tribe from another.’

‘And you love it. Peter admired the way you picked up
languages
. In one of his letters he wrote about how you entertained your Vietnamese hosts by telling a funny story in their language and imitating the local peasant accent.’

‘But Peter didn’t tell you that I practised the story for an hour beforehand with an interpreter. It was all an act to make the British general think we knew the local situation better than we did. Just another cheap trick of the trade.’

‘I wish you weren’t so self-critical. I’ve always admired you.’

Kit felt his temples throb and his face turn red. The
late-morning
sun was high in the sky, the river behind her a blinding silver frame. He wanted her so much that he thought his chest would burst. He finished doing up his sea boots and carried his bags to the dinghy. When he had finished stowing his things, he turned around. Jennifer was still standing by the car. He went back. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘my dinner jacket and shirt are going to be a bit crushed.’

‘Let me do some ironing for you.’

‘No, I prefer going to these things looking like a tramp. I like looking worse than the Russians. It gives me a chance to tease them about aping capitalist manners.’

‘And not getting it right.’

‘What a snob you are, Jennie.’

‘I get it from you.’

‘You get it from your mom.’ Kit kissed his cousin, went back to the dinghy and pushed it into the water. Jennifer was still there waving as the tide swept him past the quay. Three more cement lorries rumbled down to the slipway hiding her in their shadows.

Kit thought that sailing to an Aldeburgh Festival concert by yacht would be a pretty classy way to arrive. In the early evening, after he had picked up a mooring near Slaughden Quay and started changing into black-tie dinner dress, he saw that others had the same idea. There were four other yachts with distinguished gentlemen who all looked like Harold Macmillan. Each of the Macmillans was struggling to do up a bow tie. Whenever
someone
they knew sailed past they called out, ‘Air, hair lair.’ Kit loved it – and every time he spotted a champagne cork arcing over the moorings, he called out, ‘Air, hair, lair,’ too.

The main part of the music programme was devoted to the three great Russian cello sonatas by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov. Kit loved the Prokofiev. The music started like a runaway freight train about to go off the rails. Throughout the concert he kept his eyes on Natalya Voronova and wondered how exactly she fitted in. She was an attractive woman with thick black hair and pale skin who played with utter passion and
intensity
. She frightened him. Kit knew that she would be shadowed by KGB minders and that it wouldn’t be easy for them to talk at the reception afterwards. Even if she wanted to talk – maybe she was KGB herself. Most people had the wrong idea about how the Soviet surveillance system worked. They imagined slab-faced KGB thugs holding exquisite dancers and sensitive musicians on a tight short lead while they toured the West. It wasn’t like that. The KGB minders were themselves talented and experienced
performers
. KGB shadows could have angelic faces and long fine
fingers
just like anyone else.

The piece that Kit had liked least was the Rachmaninov – and, oddly enough, he was the only composer of the three who had made his life in the West. Perhaps Vasili was right: Russians lose their soul when they leave Russia. That, thought Kit, was the good thing about being an American. If you wanted to find your soul, the best way to find it was to get the hell
out
of the country. They all did it: Whistler, Henry James, Josephine Baker, Eliot, Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald – even the Duchess of Windsor. And when they did go back, they usually killed
themselves
or ended up, like Pound, in St Elizabeth’s insane asylum. Pound, thought Kit, had got off too lightly. The poet should have been shot for turning traitor and siding with the fascists. Still, there’s nothing wrong with being a traitor if that’s what you think you’ve got to do – but in the end, they have to shoot you and you shouldn’t complain. The rules are clear and simple.

After the concert, Kit walked along the beach to the Wentworth Hotel for the reception. The beamy fishing boats were pulled up high on the shingle. There was little wind and the low breakers seemed to be grumbling to themselves while they turned and washed the smooth stones. Out to sea there was nothing except the green and white lights of a ship creeping south – and, every six seconds, the ghostly loom of a light vessel below the horizon. Kit remembered being on the same beach on the same spot with Jennifer the year before. He reached out and tried to touch her essence – as if it could be left behind in the night sea air. Other voices – Slav and Saxon – skipped over the beach from the hotel terrace. Kit crunched over the shingle towards the lights.