by John Lawton
§57
Wilderness realised he could set his clock by Kostya. If not always punctual, then predictable. He was at the White Nights when Wilderness walked in.
They had dinner together. The tourists milled around. Most of them seemed to prefer being outside with a good chance of seeing the northern lights, but there weren’t half as many as there’d been in June. Lapland was about to enter the temporal equivalent of no man’s land.
Kostya had stopped looking around. He might even have relaxed.
They talked about their childhoods—Wilderness took the attitude that the KGB were rubbish if their file on him hadn’t mapped out his ragged years in Stepney and Whitechapel—and talked freely … of death and poverty and theft.
All the same, he was struck by the contrast. Throughout the starvation years, the purge years of the 1930s, Kostya had led the privileged life of the child of a high-ranking party member—no holes in his trousers, no shortage of shoes and, above all, no father to beat the living shit out of him on a whim. First in Leningrad and then in Moscow, as the great purge, the Yezhovshchina, left the Party looking gap-toothed and moth-eaten and the survivors moved inward and upward. His mother’s career prospered under the patronage of Krasnaya, and as long as Krasnaya was safe so were Kostya and his mother.
“If we had a god, Krasnaya would be my godmother.”
Wilderness did have a godmother. He just couldn’t remember who it was. Some aunt out in the wilds of Essex? One of those pinafored, flour-dusted, hairnet and safety pin, needle and thread old gypsies out beyond Epping? Certainly no one as glamorous—was that the word?—as Krasnaya. He could still see that poster in his mind’s eye. One of the London galleries had included it in an exhibition of Soviet art about ten years ago. Along with all the miners, factory workers and tireless peasant harvesters—pick-axes, hammers and sickles—there was the warrior goddess with baby and Fedorov machine gun. The unflinching gaze of Krasnaya, her eyes locked onto infinity and the promise of an attainable, socialist future. And the boy in the crook of her left arm—no more than three or four, his eyes equally unflinchingly looking out at the observer.
If a Frenchman had painted the poster Krasnaya would have had one breast, or possibly both, exposed. But this was Mother Russia.
When they’d finished their meal, Kostya put a folded newspaper on the table—yesterday’s Paris Herald Tribune.
“Enough for ninety-six. Can you manage ninety-six?”
“I think so. Sales going well, are they?”
Kostya said nothing to this, but, thought Wilderness, if he’s trying to kid me they’re all given away in Rayakoski in the interest of boosting morale among the Ivans, silence will not work. He’d bet on half the bottles finding their way to Leningrad or Moscow, to the tables of the privileged, the “class” to which Kostya belonged.
“I think we can,” he said. “We’ll land at noon. On the dot.”
After Kostya went up to bed, Wilderness hung around outside till midnight to see if he came out again. He didn’t, but by midnight Wilderness was fed up waiting and went to bed anyway, none the wiser as to what Kostya was up to. It occurred to him to come straight out and ask him. But there was something of the hermit crab about Kostya. One alarming note, one wrong word and he’d be back in his shell.
§58
Wilderness borrowed a pair of overalls, which might have been white ten or twenty years ago, and flew with Bruce to the far side of the lake.
He’d seen Hamburg and Berlin from the gun turrets of Lancasters, flown with pilots only too willing to scratch the chimney tops to show him the ruins and show off their skills—but he’d never flown as low as this. Bruce skimmed the water like a flat stone thrown as they flew down the inlet, pulled up to the treetops where it narrowed, and dropped the Beaver down to the water again as though eighty-foot pines were no more than sheep hurdles.
He looked at his watch as they splashed down. It had taken just seventeen minutes.
Out of the trees crawled a battered Russian World War II half-track—a ZiS 42. Wilderness had seen plenty of those in Berlin—a half-destroyed half-track had sat in Unter den Linden for the best part of two years until someone thought to have it dragged away.
It crunched to a halt at the end of a makeshift jetty, everything beneath it crushed out of existence. Two of Kostya’s men got out, a corporal and a private.
For a second the corporal looked at Wilderness as though he might ask a question, query his presence, thought better of it and just barked at the Ivan to unload the vodka.
It was all over in five minutes—no more than a dozen words uttered by either side, Wilderness’s grasp of their language all but superfluous, and as the half-track backed away Wilderness stood by eight shit bags, looking towards Mother Russia and wondering.
“Chatty lot, aren’t they?” Bruce said. “I know what you’re thinking and the answer’s no.”
“Really?”
“You’re thinking we could take a stroll in the woods, have a peek at Russia, maybe stick a foot over the line … see if it feels any different … like testing the bathwater with yer big toe. Forget it, Joe. All it takes is one idiot with a Kalashnikov.”
Wilderness knew Bruce was right, and the world was full of lone idiots armed with a Kalashnikov or an M16. But this was Russia—the be-all and end-all of his job for twenty years. An interest rather than an obsession, but compelling nonetheless. And this might well be as close as he’d ever get. He imagined it was how astronomers felt, gazing at the moon and knowing they’d never get there.
§59
They’d been back the best part of an hour, more beer, more complaints, but more of the great pacifier—money—when Pastorius drove up.
“I kept an eye on your Russian as long as I could. He checked out, drove north. I didn’t follow. I don’t think he spoke to a soul, and the man on the desk says he neither made nor received any phone calls. You were the last person he spoke to and I fear you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“You’re telling me you believe him?”
“I’m saying no such thing, but since we have no evidence that he is spying then all we have to go on is your knowledge of him. Quite simply, based on past experience, would you trust him?”
Wilderness thought about this. It was a straightforward question without a straightforward answer. To say simply “He’s Russian” seemed inadequate if acceptable enough.
“I … we … me and Frank Spoleto … got scammed by his mother during the airlift back in ’48. Frank took it personally, but then he always does. It was a few hundred dollars, no more. Kostya had nothing to do with it. She set him up as surely as she set us up. If I’d not been there Frank would have thumped three hundred dollars’ worth out of Kostya’s hide. I paid Frank off, but he wouldn’t do business with Kostya again. I did, occasionally. Nothing went wrong. But it was only a matter of months before the whole racket went tits up. Frank and I were pulled out of Berlin. Until now I’d no idea what had become of Kostya. He didn’t show up in any Berlin or Moscow reports that crossed my desk. His mother did, but then she was the rising star of the KGB.
“If I’d heard that Kostya had quit the KGB and become a schoolmaster or a wages clerk, a poet or a composer, I’d be less surprised at that than at him making officer and political commissar. He was, he still is far too nervous. In a sense he’s too nice … I’ve never been able to imagine him hitting anyone, let alone shooting anyone. Kostya was born to be anonymous. But he’s like Christopher Robin or Lon Chaney Jr.—no one was ever going to let him be anonymous. He is forever his mother’s son. I like Kostya. I might even trust him. I’d never say that of his mother.”
“Fortunately we are dealing with the son.”
“A small mercy.”
“Unless of course his mother is back in Moscow pulling the strings.”
“This, whatever it is, is far too small to interest her.”
“But, as you said, ‘She set him up as surely as she set us up.’ ”
“So what now?”
“Now? We show another bloody film and I crawl back into Helsinki by way of every one-horse town in Finland that’s put itself on the embassy’s list.”
“For which we will be eternally grateful.”
“Shut up, Niilo.”
§60
Alfie was a hit. The sad but funny tale of a man utterly devoid of self-knowledge, a 1950s wide boy adrift in the London of the 1960s, uncomprehending as the city and its values change around him, armoured and immunised by a well-honed, conscience-denying philosophy that two hours later leaves him back at square one.
It left Wilderness wondering what might have become of him if Burne-Jones and MI6 had not “rescued” him. He was in the RAF, although he’d never wear a blue blazer with RAF wings on the breast pocket as Alfie did. And he’d been a London wide boy, a thief rather than a conman, but a skilled thief. He might have gone on making a living robbing the rich to feed … himself. And, God knows, MI6 had made enough use of his skills at safecracking and burglary.
Wilderness felt sorry for Alfie.
There but for the grace of Burne-Jones.
Momo and Bruce loved Alfie.
His last sight that night was of them pissed as farts, lobbing empty beer bottles into the lake and tunelessly singing over and over again,
“Wossitallabout
wossitallabout
wossitallabout
Alfeeeeeeee?”
§61
Wilderness saw no reason to go into the office. Given a choice between a grim apartment and a grim office, he chose the apartment. Difference? A kettle and packet of Co-Op tea, considerately packed into his suitcase by his wife.
But the telephone rang.
“Did you mail off more you-know-what in the diplomatic bag yesterday?” asked Janis Bell.
“Yep.”
“You’d better come in. She’s asking for you.”
“I can read lists of touring Morris dancers and lecturers on the English water colourists at home if you just drop them off.”
“Actually, the next tour is ‘the English Folk Movement of the early Twentieth Century,’ Vaughan Williams, Delius, and Cecil Sharp.”
“Hours of harmless fun.”
“All the same you have to come in—or she’ll make my life hell.”
§62
Janis Bell showed him into Burton’s office with a look of contrived neutrality. It was almost as though they’d never met. Not a nod, not a wink, thank God. But if Janis was his coconspirator it was because she had chosen the role herself.
“It pains me to tell you this,” Burton began. “But it looks as though you were right.”
She shoved a teleprinter decode across the desk to him.
Parcel from agent most valuable.
Request more from same source.
Top priority.
But there was not a hint as to what in six shit bags had proved valuable.
“Read it? Good. Now, get out.”
In the outer office, Janis Bell handed him the Week in Culture.
He shoved it unread into his pocket and made his way down to the cypher room.
“Don’t tell me,” Chaplin said. “Your grandmother just died.”
“No, it was the family dog.”
“Fido?”
“Rover. I’ll just jot down a quickie for you, Charlie. Won’t take a minute.”
Wilderness to Eddie:
—What was on the bog paper?
The Replies:
—About seven-eighths of a detailed plan for the New Year Red Army exercises in Murmansk and Soviet Karelia. With clear indication that it is just another exercise not you-know-what.
Wilderness agreed with the anonymous assessor. It was “valuable.” Every year in the DDR, the joint forces of the Warsaw Pact staged military exercises all around Berlin. And NATO never knew whether it was exercise, dress rehearsal or prelude to invasion.
—Anything else?
—They’re still working on it. That and the package that arrived this morning. They’re both pleased and annoyed. Pleased to have the intel, annoyed at how they get it. Your name would be mud here if it weren’t shit. But I suppose you’re earning your keep.
§63
Wilderness drove Professor Joan Cooper LRAM to small towns in the west and found that he had quite a taste for Delius, who had previously played only to his deaf ear. Professor Cooper was good company, but he knew in his bones it would be a mistake to get to like this aspect of the job—to fall for your own cover.
Ten days … or maybe two weeks later—he was losing track of time, as each day and each town began to blend into the other, and the cover swallowed him alive—he was back in Paradise Apartments.
When he opened the door to Janis Bell, she was clutching neither wine nor films, but a sheaf of paper.
She knelt on the floor, on the patternless rug in eight shades of brown, and spread out her pages.
“Shall I begin at the end?” she said.
“Why not.”
“That chap from the Supo who told you you were in the town where nothing ever happened was right. There’s nothing going on north of Rovaniemi that the Russians won’t know about. It’s all too … easy. My conclusion is …”
Her hand slapped down firmly on a bundle of paper.
“The only thing worth spying on in Lapland is you.”
This had occurred to Wilderness.
“I’m the reason Kostya is out in the open, but I don’t think I’m the reason he’s there. I’ve heard your summing up … give me the arithmetic.”
“I did what you asked. I looked for anything that might be worth their attention. I ruled out forestry and agriculture right away. Industry? They mine significant amounts of copper and nickel. Again … how could that be a secret worth spying on? It isn’t. But … statistics … Finland produces more refined nickel than any other country on Earth … far more than is mined … so it’s an importer of nickel … and hence probably the world’s biggest smelter of nickel.”
“Where? All over the country?”
“Nope … just a couple of sites … one in Harjavalta … that’s in—”
“Satakunta … about five hundred kilometres from Lapland.”
“Ah, you know it?”
“I was there last week. They loved Elgar.”
“OK. Searching for sarcasm but can’t detect any. Shall I continue?”
“Please do.”
“I asked myself, again, what might be worth it? What might be secret? This is what I came up with … just after the treaty with the Russians Finland developed a rapid smelting process … patented in 1949 … extended to cover improvements in 1963. It’s that process that’s made Finland top dog in refined nickel. And I think this might be it.”
She sat back, heels tucked under her backside, looking just a touch smug.
“Let’s have a drink,” Wilderness said.
When she’d got a glass of Moldavian claret in her hand he said, “A couple of smelting plants, you said?”
She set the glass down and scrabbled among the pages.
“Yes. The other’s at … er … I seem to be missing something.”
“No matter.”
“I’ll remember. It’ll come to me.”
“It doesn’t matter. And there’s a reason it doesn’t matter. You said the process was patented.”
“Yep. Twice.”
“Then anyone who wants to know how rapid smelting works doesn’t need to spy. They can go to the patent office and ask to see the application. It isn’t secret, just protected.”
“Yes. Protected—under international law so they can’t just steal it!”
Wilderness said nothing. Just looked at her and waited.
“Oh God. I’ve been a complete bloody fool, haven’t I? Does Russia give a flying fuck about international law?”
“Let’s come at this sideways. You have your finger on the rig
ht page but not the right picture.”
“Sorry, Joe. I’m not following you here.”
“My man back in London, Eddie, gave me a hit list of current Russian shortages … vodka, bog paper, nickel and copper were all on the list … and I find myself wondering. Paper, vodka … nickel. How do these all connect?”
“Rock, paper, scissors would make more sense. Oh God, please get me another drink.”
“Of course—and I’ll ask Eddie in the morning.”
§64
Wilderness to Eddie:
—Why are copper and nickel down?
The replies:
—Earthquake collapsed half a dozen copper mines somewhere near the Mongolian border last autumn. Altai? Anyway, it was big. Richter 7.6. This January an explosion at Pechango near Murmansk took out one of their biggest nickel mines. Cause unknown. It used to be part of Finland. On older maps it’s still Petsamo. If you want my two pennorth it’s a blip. They’ll fix it.
—Can you look into production? Annual stats et al?
—As if I’d nothing better to do.
§65
The next few runs became little short of domestic—almost conjugal. Having exhausted their life stories, Joe and Kostya took to playing chess after dinner in the bar at the White Nights. Three times out of four Kostya won. Wilderness reassured himself that it was Russia’s national game, tempting the delusion that he might win at something more English such as darts or soccer and knowing full well he wouldn’t. He could kick arse at three card monte, but you only played that with a mark and whatever Kostya was he wasn’t a mark.
As Kostya’s hand hovered over a bishop, Wilderness got fed up waiting and asked, “What are you up to?”
“I’m about to put you in check. Mate in three, I think.”