The Russia House (22 page)

‘And this is Alina,’ she replied, amazed that she could speak at all. After that she didn’t care. He’s alive. He hasn’t been arrested. They are not beating him. They have not tied him to a wooden horse. She felt lazy and bored. He was alive, he was speaking to her. Facts, no emotion, his voice at first remote and only half familiar. Backwards and forwards, only facts. Do this. He said this. I said this. Tell him I thank him for coming to Moscow. Tell him he is behaving like a reasonable human being. I am well. How are you?

She rang off, too weak to talk any more. She returned to the lecture hall and sat on a bench with the rest of them, reaching for breath, knowing nobody would care.

The boy in the leather jacket was still lounging on the bench. She noticed his bent nose again, perfect yet off-true. She remembered Barley again and was grateful for his existence.

He lay on his bed in his shirt-sleeves. His bedroom was an airless box hacked from a grand bedchamber and filled with the water-chorus of every Russian hotel, the snuffle of the taps, the trickle of the cistern from the tiny bathroom, the gulping of the huge black radiator, the groan of the refrigerator as it flung itself upon a fresh cycle of convulsions. He was sipping whisky from a toothmug, pretending to read by the useless bedlight. The telephone lay at his elbow, and beside the telephone lay his notebook for messages and great thoughts. Phones can be alive whether or not they’re on their cradles, Ned had warned him. Not this one, it isn’t, thought Barley. This one’s dead as a dodo till she rings. He was reading wonderful Marquez but the print was like barbed wire to him; he kept stumbling and having to go back.

A car went by in the street, then a pedestrian. Then it was the turn of the rain, cracking like tired shot against the window panes. Without a scream or a laugh or a cry of anger, Moscow had returned herself to the great spaces.

He remembered her eyes. What did they see in me? A relic, he decided. Dressed in my father’s suit. A lousy actor concealed by his own performance, and behind the greasepaint nothing. She was looking for the conviction in me and saw instead the moral bankruptcy of my English class and time. She was looking for future hope and finding vestiges of a finished history. She was looking for connection and saw the notice on me saying ‘reserved’. So she took one look at me and ran.

Reserved for whom? For what great day or passion have I reserved myself?

He tried to imagine her body. With a face like that, who needs a body anyway?

He drank. She’s courage. She’s trouble. He drank again. Katya, if that’s who you are, I am reserved for you.

If.

He wondered what else there was to know of her. Nothing except the truth. There had been an epoch, long forgotten, when he had mistaken beauty for intelligence, but Katya was so obviously intelligent there could be no problem this time of confusing the two qualities. There had been another epoch, God help him, when he had mistaken beauty for virtue. But in Katya he had sensed such iridescent virtue that if she were to pop her head round the door at this moment and tell him she had just murdered her children, he would instantly find six ways of assuring her she was not to blame.

If.

He took another pull of Scotch and with a jolt remembered Andy.

Andy Macready, trumpeter, lying in hospital with his head cut off. Thyroid, said his missus vaguely. When they’d first discovered it, Andy didn’t want the surgery. He’d prefer to take the long swim and not come back, he said, so they got drunk together and planned the trip to Capri, one last great meal, a gallon of red and the long swim to nowhere through the filthy Mediterranean. But when the thyroid really got to him Andy discovered he preferred life to death, so he voted for the surgery instead. And they cut his head off his body, all but the vertebrae, and kept him going on tubes. So Andy was alive still, with nothing to live for and nothing to die of, cursing that he hadn’t done the swim in time, and trying to find a meaning for himself that death wouldn’t take away.

Phone Andy’s missus, he thought. Ask her how her old man is. He peered at his watch, calculating what time it was in the real or unreal world of Mrs. Macready. His hand started for the phone but didn’t pick it up in case it rang.

He thought of his daughter Anthea. Good old Ant.

He thought of his son Hal in the City. Sorry I screwed it up for you, Hal, but you’ve still got a bit of time left to get it right.

He thought of his flat in Lisbon and the girl crying her heart out, and he wondered with a shudder what had become of her. He thought of his other women, but his guilts weren’t quite up to their usual, so he wondered about that too. He thought of Katya again and realised he had been thinking of her all the time.

A tap at the door. She has come to me. She is wearing a simple housecoat and is naked underneath. Barley, she whispers, darling. Will you still love me afterwards?

She does nothing of the kind. She has no precedent and no sequel. She is not part of the familiar, well-thumbed series.

It was Wicklow, his guardian angel, checking on his ward.

‘Come on in, Wickers. Care for a spot?’

Wicklow raised his eyebrows, asking has she phoned? He was wearing a leather jacket and there were drops of rain on it. Barley shook his head. Wicklow poured himself a glass of mineral water.

‘I’ve been running through some of the books they pushed at us today, sir,’ he said, in the fancy tone they both adopted for the microphones. ‘I wondered whether you’d like an update on some of the non-fiction titles.’

‘Wickers, date me up,’ said Barley hospitably, stretching himself on the bed again while Wicklow took the chair.

‘Well there is just
one
of their submissions I’d like to share with you, sir. It’s that fitness handbook on dieting and exercises. I think we might consider it for one of our co-production splashes. I wondered whether we could sign one of their top illustrators and raise the Russian impact level.’

‘Raise it. Sky’s the limit.’

‘Well I’ll have to ask Yuri first.’

‘Ask him.’

Hiatus. Let’s run that through again, thought Barley.

‘Oh, by the way, sir. You were asking why so many Russians use the word “convenient”.’

‘Well now, so I was,’ said Barley, who had been asking nothing of the kind.

‘The word they’re thinking of is
udobno
. It means convenient but it also means proper, which must be a bit confusing sometimes. I mean it’s one thing not to be convenient. It’s another not to be proper.’

‘It is indeed,’ Barley agreed after long thought while he sipped his Scotch.

Then he must have dozed because the next thing he knew he was sitting bolt upright with the receiver to his ear and Wicklow standing over him. This was Russia, so she didn’t say her name.

‘Come round,’ he said.

‘I am sorry to call so late. Do I disturb you?’

‘Of course you do. All the time. That was a great cup of tea. Wish it could have lasted longer. Where are you?’

‘You invited me for dinner tomorrow night, I think.’

He was reaching for his notebook. Wicklow held it ready.

‘Lunch, tea, dinner, all three of them,’ he said. ‘Where do I send the glass coach?’ He scribbled down an address. ‘What’s your home telephone number, by the way, in case I get lost or you do?’ She gave him that too, reluctantly, a departure from principle, but she gave it all the same. Wicklow watched him write it all down, then softly left the room as they continued talking.

You never know, Barley thought, steadying his mind with another long pull of Scotch when he had rung off. With beautiful, intelligent, virtuous women, you simply never know where they stand. Is she pining for me, or am I a face in her crowd?

Then suddenly the Moscow fear hit him at gale force. It sprang out at him when he was least expecting it, after he had fought it off all day. The muffled terrors of the city burst thundering upon his ears and after them the piping voice of Walter.

‘Is she really in touch with him? Did she invent the stuff herself? Is she in touch with someone different, and if so who?’

8

In the situation room in the basement of the Russia House the atmosphere was of a tense and permanent night air-raid. Ned sat at his command desk before a bank of telephones. Sometimes one winked and he spoke into it in terse monosyllables. Two female assistants softly put round the telegrams and cleared the out-trays. Two illuminated post-office clocks, one London time, one Moscow time, shone like twin moons from the end wall. In Moscow it was midnight. In London nine. Ned scarcely looked up as his head janitor unlocked the door to me.

It was the earliest I had been able to get away. I had spent the morning at the Treasury solicitors’ and the afternoon with the lawyers from Cheltenham. Supper was helping to entertain a delegation of espiocrats from Sweden before they were packed off to the obligatory musical.

Walter and Bob were bowed over a Moscow street map. Brock was on the internal telephone to the cypher room. Ned was immersed in what seemed to be a lengthy inventory. He waved me to a chair and shoved a batch of incoming signals at me, scribbled messages from the front.

0954 hrs Barley has successfully telephoned Katya at October. They have made an appointment for 2015 at the Odessa tonight. More.

1320 hrs irregulars have followed Katya to number 14 so-and-so street. She posted a letter at what appears to be an empty house. Photographs to follow soonest by bag. More.

2018 hrs Katya has arrived at the Odessa Hotel. Barley and Katya are talking in the canteen. Wicklow and one irregular observing. More.

2105 hrs Katya departs Odessa. Summary of conversation to follow. Tapes to follow soonest by bag. More.

2200 hrs interim. Katya has promised to telephone Barley tonight. More.

2250 hrs Katya followed to the so-and-so hospital. Wicklow and one irregular covering. More.

2325 hrs Katya receives phone call on disused hospital telephone. Speaks three minutes twenty seconds. More.

And now suddenly, no more.

Spying is normality taken to extremes. Spying is waiting.

‘Is Clive Without India receiving tonight?’ Ned asked, as if my presence had reminded him of something.

I replied that Clive would be in his suite all evening. He had been locked up in the American Embassy all day, and he had told me he proposed to be on call.

I had a car so we drove to Head Office together.

‘Have you seen this bloody document?’ Ned asked me, tapping the folder on his lap.

‘Which bloody document is that?’

‘The Bluebird distribution list. Bluebird readers and their satraps.’

I was cautiously non-committal. Ned’s bad temper in mid-operation was legendary. The light on the door of Clive’s office was green, meaning come in if you dare. The brass plate said ‘Deputy’ in lettering to outshine the Royal Mint.

‘What the devil’s happened to the need-to-know, Clive?’ Ned asked him, waving the distribution list as soon as we were in the presence. ‘We give Langley one batch of highly sensitive, unsourced material and overnight they’ve recruited more cooks than broth. I mean what is this? Hollywood? We’ve got a live joe out there. We’ve got a defector in place we’ve never met.’

Clive toured the gold carpet. He had a habit when he was arguing with Ned of turning his whole body at once, like a playing-card. He did so now.

‘So you think the Bluebird readership list too long?’ he enquired in the tone of one taking evidence.

‘Yes, and so should you. And so should Russell Sheriton. Who the devil are the Pentagon Scientific Liaison Board? What’s the White House Academic Advisory Team when it’s at home?’

‘You would prefer me to take a high line and insist Bluebird be confined to their Inter Agency Committee? Principals only, no staff, no aides? Is that what you are telling me?’

‘If you think you can get the toothpaste back in the tube, yes.’

Clive affected to consider this on its merits. But I knew, and so did Ned, that Clive considered nothing on its merits. He considered who was in favour of something and who was against it. Then he considered who was the better ally.

‘Firstly, not a single one of those elevated gentlemen I have mentioned is capable of making head or tail of the Bluebird material without expert guidance,’ Clive resumed in his bloodless voice. ‘Either we let them flounder in ignorance or we admit their appendages and accept the price. The same goes for their Defense Intelligence team, their Navy, Army, Air Force and White House evaluators.’

‘Is this Russell Sheriton speaking or you?’ Ned demanded.

‘How can we tell them not to call in their scientific panels when we offer them immensely complex material in the same breath?’ Clive persisted, neatly letting Ned’s question pass him by. ‘If Bluebird’s genuine, they’re going to need all the help they can get.’

‘
If
,’ Ned echoed, flaring. ‘
If
he’s genuine. My God, Clive, you’re worse than they are. There are two hundred and forty people on that list and every one of them has a wife, a mistress and fifteen best friends.’

‘And
secondly
,’ Clive went on, when we had forgotten there had been a firstly, ‘it’s not
our
intelligence to dispose of. It’s Langley’s.’ He had swung on me before Ned could get in his reply. ‘Palfrey. Confirm. Under our sharing treaty with the Americans, is it not the case that we give Langley first rights on all strategic material?’

‘In strategic matters our dependence on Langley is total,’ I conceded. ‘They give us what they want us to know. In return we are obliged to give them whatever we find out. It isn’t often much but that’s the deal.’

Clive listened carefully to this and approved it. His coldness had an unaccustomed ferocity and I wondered why. If he had possessed a conscience, I would have said it was uneasy. What had he been doing at the Embassy all day? What had he given away to whom for what?

‘It is a common misapprehension of this Service,’ Clive continued, talking straight at Ned now, ‘that we and the Americans are in the same boat. We’re not. Not when it comes to strategy. We haven’t a defence analyst in the country who is capable of holding a candle to his American counterpart on matters of strategy. Where strategy is concerned, we are a tiny, ignorant British coracle and they are the
Queen Elizabeth
. It is not our place to tell them how to run their ship.’