In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  He remained unnoticed by his father, who came in with his head down as if in shame and began to pray urgently.

  “Vati.”

  The old man began to tremble uncontrollably. “I thought you’d gone.”

  “Couldn’t. I must talk to you and Yelena. Now.”

  “You can’t. I can’t contact her. I don’t know how. But maybe she’ll be in touch with me later today.”

  “Can I wait in your home?”

  “No, no. That’s out of the question.”

  “What then?” People began to glance at them.

  “Go back to your hotel. I’ll be in touch.”

  “No good. I think they’re looking for me.”

  “Why?” His face was withering, Rust would have sworn. A furrow a second, and the skull shrinking, too. It was pointless to tell him what had happened. The old man would only hear the wind howling through the camps.

  “Don’t worry.” He touched the cold hand. The choir sang more loudly. Rust felt the richly robed priest’s eyes on him and began to genuflect with his father. They were holding hands. For the first time, physical contact came naturally. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them anything. Nothing about you. Or the others.”

  “You will.” Down on their knees. “If they catch you, you will.” Up. “You’ll tell them everything.” Crossing themselves. And again. “Everything you know.” On their knees again. “Everything they want you to invent for them.” Up again. The censer was swinging wildly. The sweet smell enveloped them. Like the sound of breaking teeth, it made Rust’s stomach turn. The Virgin stared at him impassively. She was a cold lady. Or immune to suffering by now. The old man watched Rust as if seeing a ghost. Or someone just on his way to the interrogation room. “Stay here. And wait. Just wait.”

  Rust nodded. And genuflected. He wished he knew how to pray. And to whom.

  *

  It was noon when a first secretary of the American embassy identified Holly’s body. His statement was seconded by the young widow. They were asked to read the crumpled, blood-soaked letter that had been found under the body at the scene of the crime. The police offered them sympathy. The letter had to be held as evidence. Together with the butcher’s knife.

  “Do you recognize the handwriting?”

  “I think so,” Jill said, sobbing. “But I don’t understand … can’t understand at all. If anything, he was always prejudiced against homosexuals. It was so stupid. He had these outbursts … degenerates, yes, that’s what he called them.”

  The remark was noted with great care. “Prejudice may just be a sign, even the giveaway of latent homosexuality,” the policeman tried to commiserate.

  “You’re crazy!” she cried and looked for support toward the diplomat, but he turned away. He was, of course, suspicious of the police, the murder, the circumstances, everything and everybody in Moscow. But, sadly, he had to suspect Holly, too. Who could one tell what was in a man’s heart? He, for one, had never fully believed in the clearing system, and even polygraph tests had made mistakes. Young Jim Holly. Who could have guessed?

  Jill dried her eyes and asked to see the body once more. She ignored the terrible injuries and concentrated on the face. She began to look more puzzled and insulted than heartbroken. Dear Vassily. Your Jimmy. He had never let her call him Jimmy. Undignified name, he would say. Her eyes filled up with accusation.

  *

  Frequent genuflecting helped a little to keep warm, but after seven hours in the empty church, Rust knew no effective ways to keep the cold out of his bones. If the devil offered him a place in hell he would have said yes, readily. And when a beggar woman offered him a bowl of watery soup he could not say no even though he suspected it might be drugged to make his arrest easier.

  In the early afternoon he tried to generate and build up some heat in a corner, but the cold of centuries was oozing from the walls. For the umpteenth time he decided to count slowly to one hundred and leave if his father or Yelena still failed to appear by then. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one … hundred. That’s it. Unless he gave them another fifty. Fifty and no more.

  “Come on,” Yelena whispered. “You’ll have to crouch on the floor of the car and keep quiet if we’re stopped.” Her cab was parked right at the door. A sheet of newspaper was stuck, accidentally, to the number plate. Or was it there to prevent him from seeing the number? Better that way. If they catch you, you’ll tell them everything, he remembered his father’s words. He got in fast, ducked, and enjoyed the warmth of the rug with which she covered him.

  He watched her ankles, her heels planted firmly on the floor, her feet working the pedals. No spikes this time. Flat, drab shoes hiding the elegant arch of her feet. Sensible clothes, too, come to think of it. Nothing tight-fitting, nothing revealing. Dull, dark colors. Rough, fluffy textile. And her hair was also different, Rust remembered. Severely combed and in a knot at the back, hardly the thing to flutter freely in the wind when she would shout, “Dynamo, Dynamo!” Odd. Today there were no flags or pictures in the cab, he was sure. Why? Or why were they there the first time? Only to give him and his father something, something misleading, to remember if they were caught?

  “Here we are.” The car stopped. “Please keep your eyes down and let me lead you.”

  They were still holding hands when the door closed behind them. It was the room where they had talked before. “What went wrong?”

  “I did. I passed your message and the letter to the embassy.”

  “You’re a fool.” She did not sound angry. “I told you not to.”

  “You couldn’t expect me to act like a puppet and see snoops and conspirators everywhere.”

  “Why not? That’s life.”

  “Only here.” She looked hurt. As she had when he had called her a traitor. He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She freed her hand. “You may even be right.”

  He told her how he had contacted the embassy, what he had told Holly, why they had arranged a second meeting at Holly’s request, and how they had been picked up at Lomonosov.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my fault. I had no right to use you. Or any other bystander. But I had no choice. At least I couldn’t see one. We were desperate. I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

  “You didn’t. You gave me a dud.”

  “It was a precaution. I was planning to give you the real message after Customs clearance at the airport.”

  “After Customs? How?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Somehow.”

  “I almost died for that little precaution. And Holly did.”

  “I’m sorry. But at least they still don’t know whether you really had some evidence about the missiles or not.” She thought for a second. “But you did tell Holly that more evidence would come to you in Florida, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, and I told him the date.”

  “They’ll try to search your place.”

  “Who? How?”

  “They’ll do it. Somehow.”

  “They’ll find nothing.”

  “No. But they won’t stop looking for you. And your father.”

  “How would they know about him?”

  “It’ll take time. At least a month. That gives us a chance.”

  “How’s he?”

  “Like me. Worried.”

  “About me? That’s nice.” His knees twitched under his weight. He had hardly slept since the Bolshoi.

  “You’d better sit down.” And when he started toward the window, she warned him not to look out. “It’s safer not to know where we are.”

  “Sure. And … I’m grateful. Can I spend the night here?”

  “You must. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be off in the morning.”

  “Where to?”

  “Odessa, I guess.”

  “You’ll never make it. You’ll never make it beyond the boundary of this town. You don’t
know what it’s like out there.”

  “Don’t I?” His dependence on her irritated him. “I got away from them, didn’t I?”

  “What happened?”

  “Is it wise for you to know?”

  “I haven’t got a choice. Otherwise I can’t help.”

  They sat down. He was shivering. She fetched the mg from the car and put it on his back. “Your clothes … it’s all wet.”

  “Stop fussing. It’s my angelic face that brings out the mother instinct.”

  She laughed: around his deep-set, tired eyes, the barbed wires of two days’ stubble looked anything but angelic. He told her what had happened. She laughed again when he mentioned the water wagon and the spraying of the militia. But he felt ashamed of his subconscious adjustment to the country’s climate: in his account, he made no reference to the Latvian’s cooperation and sympathy. Details were not essential for her to know — but a potential risk to the man.

  “You were clever. And lucky,” she said.

  “As well as brave, handsome and lovable.”

  “Yes, all that, and a fool.” She looked at him straight, then turned away. “I’ll have to go and get you a few things.”

  “Stay.” He was afraid. Not so much of capture as of loneliness, waiting, uncertainty, and, above all, passivity.

  “I must get you some food, a razor, a jug of water and a bucket. There’s no kitchen, no toilet, no bathroom here. It’s all communal, and although most of the house is empty, I don’t want you to leave this room at all. Besides, I’ll have to sort out what I can do for you. I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “No you’re not. You thought it was important. You were saving the world. With a flaming sword and Ukrainian pepper vodka.”

  “Don’t joke about it. It’s the truth.”

  “Can’t the truth be funny?”

  “No … ” She hesitated. “Not in my country. Jokes revealing the truth can be funny. Not the truth itself. It’s too often too sad.”

  “So? Don’t you have the urge to laugh at funerals?”

  “I do, but not because they’re funny. It’s to make the pain and tension bearable.”

  “And what else do you think makes me joke about your truth, your aims, your ideals and care about peace?”

  She answered with a slow smile, walked over to him and kissed him with the embarrassed hurry of a young girl. “Don’t go away.” And she was through the door.

  He heard the lock click. Twice.

  *

  Hal “Jus’-juice” Sheridan loved Rust’s rocking chair. It broke the monotony of boredom, and right now he would have sworn that it was even better than television. He decided to buy one. Only it must be a little stronger. Rust’s chair squeaked too much under his weight. The room swayed gently, and he felt randy. Of course. The rocking reminded him of the Japanese girl in the boat near Nagasaki. She was sweet and sad and silent, and he boasted to friends that she fucked with the abandon of an atom-bomb survivor. He knew then that he ought to stay in Japan. He did not. It was a mistake. The sky was full of stars, and the boat and the whole universe pitched and tumbled slowly. And there was none of this awful creak. He brought the chair to a sudden halt. The creaking continued. It must be the stairs. He was about to get up and investigate when the voice stopped him.

  “Stay put, fatso.” It was a young crewcut. In a tailored suit.

  “You mean it?”

  “CIA. Miami station.”

  “Oh yeah?” Hal heard someone moving behind him, so he did not want to be rash. Two men would not be too many to deal with if he picked the right moment. “You have means to prove it, I guess.”

  “That’s right.” The young man reached into his right inside pocket, produced a gun and fired four times.

  Hal collapsed in a fast-growing pool of blood.

  Within the next fifteen minutes, Hal regained consciousness occasionally. For only a few seconds each time. His vision was blurred. His ears told him that the men were ransacking the house. Looking for something. Strange. He hadn’t known that Rust kept anything valuable in the house. Luckily, he passed out again when the two men returned to the room. One of them kicked his head, and his reaction was no more than what could be expected from a corpse.

  Half an hour later he was found by Jake Schramm, who had come to the house after Elliott Repson’s phone call to investigate whatever happened to Rust. Schramm rushed the big man to the hospital and swore heartily all the way: “Stop bleeding all over my car, you fucking fat slob.”

  *

  Yelena returned with a tatty brown suitcase.

  “You locked me in when you left.” Rust was furious.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I could have broken down that door anytime.”

  “But the extra effort would have reminded you to think again before leaving the room.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders. She winced as he shook her. “I asked for help, not protective custody.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And no mothering.”

  “It’s not the maternal instinct you bring out in me.”

  “Good.” His hands went up to pull her head, crushing his lips on hers. She did not resist. Her lips were closed, but she let them part under the pressure of his tongue. No resistance and no response. She stared at him as if trying to cool him in the bright pools of her unblinking eyes.

  “Better now?” she said.

  “Oh sure. Thanks for the quick relief, nurse.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be that.”

  “Oh no. No. Just emergency treatment. Anything to calm your patient. Thanks. I’ll be glad to reciprocate any time.” She tried to hold him, but he moved away. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  She opened the suitcase and took out some Russian clothes. “You must change and eat, first.”

  “You’ll have to get used to answering instead of telling me things if we want to get on while we’re forced to be together.”

  “Okay. I’ll try. Especially because we’ll be here all night.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “You didn’t answer.”

  “I think I’ve found a way to get you out of Moscow.”

  “What way?”

  “Is it — ”

  “What way?”

  “An ambulance will pick you up tomorrow. It’ll fly the yellow flag of contagious disease. Even if it’s stopped, it’s unlikely that anyone would risk taking a closer look at you.”

  “Clever. Why not tonight?”

  “Do you mind spending the night with me?”

  “Why — not — tonight?”

  “Because it’s safer to move in daylight. Everybody and everything look more suspicious at night.”

  “And where did you learn that bit of tradecraft?”

  “One hears about such things.”

  “Can they take me to Odessa?”

  She shook her head. “The journey would be too long and too dangerous. Besides, you’ll leave Moscow eastward. That’s the least likely route for a foreign fugitive.”

  She produced a chunk of cheese, greasy sausage, black bread, a bottle of fine Georgian brandy and the inevitable cucumber from the suitcase. “Help yourself.”

  “I presume you have some bright idea how I could leave the country.” She nodded, took a big gulp of brandy, wiped the bottle on the inside of her wrist and handed it to Rust. “How?”

  “Do you insist?”

  He hesitated, then changed the question. “How long will it take?”

  “A few days. You must be well prepared. Not only to get out of Russia, but also to get into America.”

  “You mean that I haven’t got my passport? No trouble at all. I just — ”

  “Go to the embassy? I mean any embassy, when you’re out of Russia?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Even your suspicion must have its limits somewhere,” he said.

  “Please yo
urself.”

  “You trust me, for instance.”

  “Mainly because I have no choice. And you have a long tail over here.”

  “You mean my father?” He drank.

  “Yes.”

  “You wouldn’t do anything to him.”

  “Others might. Besides, you’ve always been a sucker for a good cause.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know.”

  While she sliced some cucumber and offered it to him, using her palm as a tray, he tried to decide how hard to press her for answers. It was obvious that she must have some important position or well-placed, influential friends to plan his escape, arrange his exit from the country and even contemplate helping him to enter the United States. All this would increase the likely value of her information. For the first time he felt that he might really have a historical role to play. Skepticism, his old and loyal traveling companion, came to his rescue fast. Historical role? That’s a good one. It amused him. That sweet kid with the brandy and cucumbers casting him in a historical role. The word “sweet” triggered off a series of association reflexes. The sweet smile of Julia-Rosa. Her list. Powdered candy. Porokhovyye konfety. Holly saying porokhovyye konfety in Cuba would be deadly.

  She reached for the bottle and took another big gulp.

  He smiled. “Take it easy. That brandy is sweet but strong. It may weaken you.”

  “How would you know? You’re not drinking.” She downed some more.

  “One of us must stay sober. Might as well be me.”

  “If you say so,” she whispered huskily and watched him lean toward her. Then, slowly, her eyelids grew heavy and her lips parted.

  Rust’s face was only a couple of inches from hers. He paused. Her warm breath touched his skin. It was a tremendous temptation to forget about risks and reality, abandon the prospect of a straight and perhaps satisfying screw for the chance of getting really involved, for the second time — and again in Russia. But it was the wrong time. And the wrong place. And she could only get hurt. And he wanted to and did believe that it was not in self-defense, too, that inch by inch he began to pull away from her.

  She was still waiting. But the pause was too long. Her eyes opened and questioned him. He answered with a more puzzled than puzzling smile and picked up the bottle. He drank slowly, for pleasure, not thirst, and reduced the brandy by a good two fingers.