Knowing that she would not be visiting that evening, Yuri decided to follow a hunch on his new chief suspects in Semyon’s death. After work, he left the power station and joined the miners coming off shift, as they made their way to the bathhouse. Yuri went inside and took his turn at the showers. The water ran black off the hairy miner beside him. Then he headed to the sauna. The heat hit him in a rush as he opened the door. Inside, he spotted the three of them, as usual, talking conspiratorially in a corner on their own.
‘My Lithuanian friends,’ Yuri said. ‘Long time no see. How is the mine treating you?’
‘It is breaking our backs,’ said the short one.
The tall one stayed silent for a moment, looking him in the eye. He was, Yuri guessed, trying to figure out what his angle was. He planned to reveal that later. When he did, of the three the tall one would be the one to be careful of.
‘What can we do for you, Yuri?’ the tall one asked, when he had finished staring. ‘We don’t normally see you in here with the little people.’
‘Oh,’ said Yuri. ‘Semyon has been on my mind a lot lately. I know they said it was an accident, but I don’t believe that and neither do you. I wanted to see if you had come up with any more ideas.’
‘Terrible business,’ said the short one.
‘You mean apart from thinking you did it?’ asked the tall one.
‘Yes, apart from that,’ said Yuri.
‘Maybe we still think that,’ said the tall one.
They all smiled, although it was already an old joke. Yuri’s money was on the tall one having done it. Or maybe all three together.
‘I have some new information,’ he said, ‘regarding Semyon and the three of you. I think you might find it interesting.’
The tall one looked around to see whether other miners might be eavesdropping.
‘You’ll come for a drink after, Yuri,’ he said.
He had been dry for less than a week and he felt like saying no. But he wanted to follow this and see where it led. At least he would not run into Anya at the bar, so there was a good chance she might not find out. Yuri agreed and left the sauna first. He showered again to get rid of the sweat. As he was dressing, the other three passed the changing-room doorway on their way to wash. Yuri had not liked the looks the tall one had been giving him earlier. He decided he had better swing by his apartment on the way to pick up some means of protection.
The glass bar was empty when he arrived, but it would fill up soon enough after dinner. Yuri wanted the security of extra people around. He heard the door opening behind him, and the tall one walked in on his own. He got himself a drink at the bar and joined Yuri at his table.
‘So, what’s this new information you were on about?’ he asked.
‘Your friends aren’t joining us?’ Yuri asked.
‘No. They’re tired. They had a long day.’
Yuri wondered if the other two were outside, lying in wait. For once, he wished the bar was crowded.
‘Go on. I’m listening,’ said the tall one.
‘What do you think of informers?’ Yuri asked.
‘Informers.’ The Lithuanian almost spat the word. ‘I think they should have their tongues cut out. And that’s when I am feeling generous. Why do you ask?’
‘Because our mutual friend Semyon was one.’
The man looked at him with what seemed like genuine surprise. He leaned back in his chair and took a slow, deliberate sip from his glass.
‘How do you know this?’ he asked. ‘What evidence do you have? You can’t just go around making accusations like that against people. Especially the dead. Not without evidence.’
‘I read some of his reports,’ said Yuri. ‘From his personal KGB file. He has been an informer for twenty years.’
The man’s eyes widened. He turned around as two miners entered the bar. They sat at the furthest table away from them. The Lithuanian moved closer and lowered his voice to a whisper.
‘You read his file? How? Maybe you are working for them too?’
‘Let’s just say I didn’t get it legally,’ said Yuri.
‘You still have it then?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Yuri, even though it was still under his bed. ‘I had it for a while. Long enough.’
Yuri kicked himself. He had not foreseen that the whereabouts of the file would be important. He had lied badly, and the man knew he had it now.
He wasn’t sure yet how smart this guy was, but he was intelligent enough to know that Yuri held all the cards. And he didn’t like it.
‘So he wrote stuff about me?’
‘Yes. You and your friends. I was in there too. He was a busy boy, Semyon. Quite the writer. I obviously gave him too much spare time.’
Yuri allowed him a moment to digest this information.
‘You don’t seem too surprised that he was an informer.’
The tall man shrugged. ‘I’m not as good a judge of character as I used to be. But I thought he was one of us. A patriot. Not a dirty Russian lackey.’
‘You never can tell,’ agreed Yuri.
‘What did he write about me?’
The more the man spoke the stronger his tone became. He did not seem to care any more that the other drinkers might overhear. Yuri had told him too much already, and he was looking for a way to gain the upper hand.
‘Well, you can imagine,’ said Yuri. ‘Pretty much everything you ever said to him since you got here is in that file. You call it patriotism. The KGB has another word for it. I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested already.’
‘They can’t prove a thing,’ the man blurted out, too loudly. The other two drinkers looked over briefly and went back to their conversation.
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘For what? The file? I’m not here to blackmail you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Then why are we both here?’ he asked.
Yuri was here to see whether the man had known what Semyon was up to. But from his reactions he was pretty sure he had not. He regretted having mentioned the file to him at all. From the look on the Lithuanian’s face, he was not going to let it go.
‘I just thought you should know, that’s all,’ said Yuri.
He made his excuses soon afterwards and left. The Lithuanian was not happy letting him go, but the bar was half full now, with too many eyes and ears.
Yuri had made sure not to get drunk. He expected he would need his wits about him before the night was over.
It was three in the morning when he heard his apartment door being tampered with from the outside. Here was the answer to his earlier question. The Lithuanian was not going to win any prizes for brightness. He entered silently and walked towards the bed. In his hand he was carrying a wooden club. Yuri wondered whether he was going to wake him and demand the file, or hit him and search for it himself.
He watched the club being raised, silhouetted against the moonlit window. Then it came down hard on where his head might have been on the pillow. At the same moment, Yuri jumped up from the chair he had positioned behind the door. Before the man could turn, he stabbed him in the arm with a two-inch blade. His original intention had been just to threaten him, but that plan had changed when he saw what the Lithuanian was prepared to do to his skull. The man dropped the club and held his arm, which was pouring blood.
Yuri held the blade against the man’s cheek.
‘I told you I didn’t have the file. It’s back where I found it,’ he lied. ‘If you really want it, you can ask our KGB friend for it. And if you ever come back to visit me again, I will use this on your throat. Now get out.’
The Lithuanian did not say a word. He just left, still holding his arm. There was only one way to deal with men like him. He was afraid of Yuri now.
Before he met Anya the following evening, Yuri brushed his teeth a half dozen times, trying to eradicate any lingering smell of booze. When they kissed he watched her reaction, but she seemed not
to notice anything. They made love in his apartment. An act that sobriety and familiarity had enabled them to refine into something approaching an art. Hers was a body he knew well but never tired of.
Afterwards they chatted about this and that, but he could see that tonight she was bored with his company. He racked his brain for an interesting subject but nothing came. Finally, he decided to mention an idea that had been on his mind.
‘Maybe we could come up with a way to extend your contract so that you could stay on here.’
She had said to him, after the episode at the school, that she did want to keep her job.
But now she laughed at the suggestion. ‘I am not staying here. Wild horses couldn’t make me. Once I meet my contact—’
This row had been brewing for a long time and Yuri finally let loose.
‘I’m not listening to you any more about your ridiculous contact. Is there really someone you are supposed to be meeting, or did you just make all of that up? Because that’s what I believe.’
‘You think I’m crazy, is that it?’ she asked, her nostrils flaring.
‘Honestly, I don’t know. You tell me. I don’t know what to think. But if you want me to stick around much longer you better give me something right now, because I’ve had enough.’
He meant it and she could see it in his eyes. She paused for a moment, then sat up in the bed with the sheet wrapped around her.
‘I haven’t told anyone this before. I’m telling you now because you are the only one I trust.’
Yuri watched her and stayed silent.
‘Six months ago, I received a letter in my apartment in Moscow. Unmarked. No stamp. It was his handwriting. My husband’s. After five years of silence, he was making contact with me. He wrote that he had wanted to bring me with him at the time of his defection, but they wouldn’t let him, the English or the Americans, I don’t know which. But now they said they would take me to the west too, if I came here to Pyramiden.’
Yuri tried to hide his disappointment. She was here to leave, and he was not part of the plan. All this could have been plucked from her imagination. But as much as he wanted it to be a lie, he reckoned she was telling the truth.
‘And you believed him?’ he said. ‘About wanting to take you with him, back then. It’s easy for him to say it now.’
Anya shrugged and shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to believe. Why would he say it now if he didn’t mean it?’
‘And why here?’ said Yuri. ‘Why Pyramiden? Surely there are easier ways.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Anya. ‘I assumed they had some way out from here. But I’ve been here three months, and nothing. Where is my contact? Why doesn’t he show himself?’
‘Is this what you really want?’ Yuri asked. ‘To go there and be with him?’
‘I think so … I am not sure about anything any more! But that’s why I came here. They arranged it all. That’s the part I don’t understand. If there was to be nothing, then why bring me all the way here?’
Yuri was too angry to think about what she was saying. She had not mentioned their relationship once in all of this, as though it had not happened.
‘He left you!’ he reminded her. ‘For five years, without a word.’
‘I know,’ she said, nodding. ‘But what if what he says is true? That he couldn’t take me. He’s still my husband.’
‘You want to be a traitor, like him?’ asked Yuri.
‘I am not a traitor. I don’t know anything that they don’t know already in the west. I haven’t worked in a secure department since he left. I have no secrets to sell. It’s not about that.’
It all seemed so far-fetched to Yuri. He had never heard a story like it. As with everything, he tried to analyse it logically.
‘So why now? Why is he contacting you now?’
‘I was being watched for a long time. Everyone knew that. They thought I was in on it, they couldn’t understand why I was left behind. I couldn’t understand it either. But maybe it was only possible to contact me now, when they have stopped watching.’
‘So he writes to you and you decide to drop everything, and do what he asks, just like that?’
‘What everything? I have nothing. I am a school teacher. A bad one at that. I have no friends, no life, nothing.’
‘And he’s going to give you all that back?’
‘I know he cannot fix everything. It’s too late for that. But haven’t you ever dreamed of going to the west? Even just to see something different. To experience a different life.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I like it here, in the middle. This is my different life.’
She smiled at him and touched his cheek.
‘You are the only person I know who actually likes the Arctic. Everyone else just does it for the money. But you can’t get enough of it. Why?’
‘It’s clean. And empty.’
‘Now there you go again, why do you like empty places?’
Yuri shrugged.
‘You don’t like people very much, do you?’ she said.
‘I don’t need other people,’ he agreed. ‘I prefer to be on my own. Except when I’m with you. But it seems you don’t feel the same way.’
‘It’s not like that,’ said Anya. ‘Meeting you was unexpected. I didn’t plan for this to happen between us.’
‘But it has,’ he said. ‘Does it change anything for you?’
She paused, then shook her head.
‘But if I’m not going anywhere, as it seems, and I am to be stuck here, then I’m glad it’s with you.’
Yuri stood up and walked to the window. Across the square, in the light of a street lamp, he saw Catherine returning to Paris. She waved at a man who had just left her. Yuri caught sight of him just before he disappeared around a corner. It was Grigory.
‘I am not stuck,’ said Yuri. ‘I want to be here. I’d like you to stay with me. I don’t want you to go. Especially to a man who obviously doesn’t love you like I do.’
‘You love me,’ she said, apparently surprised. ‘Since when?’
He turned to look at her.
‘For quite a while. I thought it was obvious.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not to me. You might have considered mentioning it.’
‘Would it make a difference? I’m serious. I’m asking you to stay, and to forget about this man.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’
Anya stayed the night, and they made love again. But it was different, as though she was doing it out of sympathy rather than passion. His head told him to walk away before he got hurt even more. But he wanted her. And the pain, however bad it might get, did not matter. It was ironic, he knew. Since he first got here, he had counted down the days of every relationship he had, knowing he would be free before too long. And just when he had lost the desire to be free, the woman he had set his sights on only dreamed of escape.
The next morning, Yuri went to work early. But he had no interest in doing anything. He sat thinking about what had happened the night before. He had not lost his temper with Anya. But now, in a split second, he exploded in a rage, attacking one of the metal and glass control units. He pummelled the glass with his fists, smashing them. And he left large dents in the lower part of the metal with kicks from his work boots. The storm subsided quickly, when his knuckles started to bleed. He was just catching his breath when Catherine entered. She looked down at the shattered glass on the floor and the bashed metal on the cabinet. This particular unit was not going to work again for a while.
They stared at each other for a moment, neither knowing what to say. Then they both surveyed the damage. Catherine turned, hung up her coat and grabbed a broom and pan.
‘I get like that too, sometimes,’ she said. ‘I wish I could do some smashing as well.’
‘Be my guest,’ said Yuri. He took the sweeping brush out of her hand. ‘My mess.’
Now that Yuri and Anya knew where they stood, sobriety seemed pointless. So they be
gan to drink together again. Alcohol and sex became their routine, in that order. Not so much drinking that she caused herself trouble at work. But as close to that limit as she could get. Likewise, Yuri drank to lighten his mood, willing himself not to take their relationship seriously.
When he was sober, another factor weighed on his mind. As had been proven by Anya’s personal experience, when someone defected, the person left behind paid a high price. Everyone knew that they were a couple. No one knew that he was just a stopgap for her until she was reunited with her husband. If she did manage to defect somehow, what would happen to him?
However, as the days passed without incident, Anya’s suggestion that she had been dragged to Pyramiden for nothing seemed to become a stronger possibility. None of it made much sense to Yuri. And the more Anya tried to find the logic in it, the more irritable she became. And the harder she drank.
‘You think it’s funny what they’ve done to me, don’t you?’ she said late one night, her body gently swaying, her eyes unfocused.
‘No, I don’t think it’s funny,’ he said.
‘But it makes you happy?’
‘Yes, it does,’ he admitted. ‘The more time I get to spend with you the better. Although I prefer you when you’re not so drunk and bad-tempered.’
Anya’s drink spilled as she waved her glass at him.
‘You don’t want me to be happy. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘I think you would be happy if you stopped looking for what you are missing, and if you just lived for now.’
‘It seems like I don’t have much choice, do I? But I’m damned if I am going to pretend to be happy about it.’
When she had calmed, and was sitting in a chair, Yuri said, ‘Tell me again how you come to be here.’
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘My husband wrote in his letter that a plan was being put in place, and if I followed it, he would know that I wanted to be with him. Nothing happened for two months, and then the official letter came to say I had gotten the job here.’
The Reluctant Contact Page 11