by Dick Francis
‘Mind if I tag along?’ Frank said, shovelling in the last of my lunch. His face looked utterly guileless, and I understood the full beauty of his method of working. If following a person might raise their suspicions, tag along in full sight.
‘Pleasure,’ I said. ‘Meet you in the lobby, in half an hour.’ and I vanished as soon as he’d started his specially ordered double portion of ice-cream. It would take a good deal to shift him before he had finished it.
I made fast tracks out of the hotel and along to the main Post Office, which was conveniently nearby.
Telephoned to the Embassy. Reached Oliver Waterman.
‘This is Randall Drew,’ I said.
‘Where are you calling from?’ he said, interrupting.
‘The Post Office.’
‘Ah. Right. Carry on, then.’
‘Have there been any telex messages for me, from Hughes-Beckett, or anyone in London?’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘There was something, I think, my dear chap. Hang on…’ He put the receiver down and I could hear searching sounds and consulting voices. ‘Here we are,’ he said, coming back. ‘Got a pencil?’
‘Yes,’ I said patiently.
‘Yuri Ivanovich Chulitsky.’
‘Please spell it,’ I said.
He did so.
‘Got it,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘There isn’t any more.’
‘Is that the whole of the message?’ I asked incredulously.
His voice sounded dubious. ‘The whole message, as received by us from the telex people, is “inform Randall Drew Yuri Ivanovich Chulitsky”, and then there are a few numbers, and that’s all.’
‘Numbers?’
‘Could be a telephone number, perhaps. Anyway, here they are: 180–19–16. Got that?’
I read them back, to check.
‘That’s right, my dear chap. How’s it going?’
‘Fair,’ I said. ‘Can you send a telex for me, if I give you the message?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I think I should warn you that there’s a spot of trouble brewing on the international scene, and the telex is pretty busy. They told us pretty shirtily just now not to bother them with unessentials like music. Unessentials, I ask you. Anyway, my dear chap, if you want to be sure your message gets off, I should take it along there yourself.’
‘Take it where?’ I said.
‘Oh yes, I was forgetting you wouldn’t know. The telex machine is not here in the Embassy, but along with the Commercial section in Kutuzovsky Prospect. That’s the continuation of Kalinin Prospect. Do you have a map?’
‘I’ll find it,’ I said.
‘Tell them I sent you. They can check with me, if they want. And I should stand over them, my dear chap. Make yourself a bit of a nuisance, so they send it to get rid of you.’
‘I’ll take your advice,’ I said, smiling to myself.
‘The British Club is along there in Kutuzovsky Prospect,’ he said languidly. ‘Full of temporary exiles, wallowing in nostalgia. Sad little place. I don’t go there much.’
‘If any more messages come for me,’ I said, ‘please would you ring me at the Intourist Hotel?’
‘Certainly,’ he said civilly. ‘Do give me your number.’ I stifled the urge to tell him I’d given it to him twice already. I repeated it again, and wondered whether, by the time I left, he would find his office scattered with small pieces of paper all bearing the same number, which he would peer at with willowy bewilderment while smoothing back his grey-winged hair.
I rang off and debated whether or not to lose Frank there and then, and make tracks for the telex: but the message would keep for an hour or two and wasn’t worth the stirring up of trouble. I hurried back to the Intourist, went upstairs, came downstairs, and strolled out of the lift to find Frank waiting.
‘Oh there you are,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d missed you.’
‘Off we go, then,’ I said fatuously, and we walked out of the hotel, down into the long pedestrian tunnel which led under The Fiftieth Anniversary of the October Revolution Square and up into a cobbled street with the red walls of the Kremlin away to the right.
On the underground way he gave me his thoughts on Comrade Lenin, who was, according to Frank, the only genius of the twentieth century.
‘Born, of course, in the nineteenth,’ I said.
‘He brought freedom to the masses,’ Frank declared reverently.
‘Freedom to do what?’ I said.
Frank ignored me. Somewhere under the wet and woolly sociological guff which he ladled so unstintingly over the Wilkinsons and me, there had to be a hard-core card-carrying fully-indoctrinated communist. I looked at Frank’s angular, pitted face framed in a long striped college scarf, and thought he was marvellous: he was giving a faultless performance as a poorly-educated left-wing encumbrance of the National Union of Teachers, so convincing that it was hard to believe he was acting.
It flickered across my mind that perhaps Ian Young was wrong, and Frank was not K.G.B. after all: but then if Ian was what I thought, he would be right. If Frank were not K.G.B., why should Ian say he was?
I wondered how many lies I had been told since I had arrived in Moscow: and how many more I had yet to hear.
Frank more or less genuflected on the threshold of the Lenin museum, and we went inside to have our ears bent about the clothes, desk, car and so on that the liberator of the masses had personally used. And this was the face, I thought, looking at the prim little bearded visage reproduced without stint on paintings and posters and booklets and cards, who had launched a million murders and left his disciples bloodily empire-building round the world. This was the visionary who had unleashed the holocausts: the man who had meant to do good.
I looked at my watch and told Frank I’d had enough of the place; I needed some fresh air. He ignored the implied insult and followed me out, simply saying that he had visited the museum every time he’d been to Moscow and never tired of it. Easy enough to believe that that, at least, was true.
Stephen, back from lunch and an unmissable tutorial, was waiting, as arranged, outside. He had arranged, that is, to meet only me. Frank was surplus to requirements.
I introduced them without explanations. ‘Frank Jones… Stephen Luce;’ and they disliked each other at once.
Had they been dogs, there would have been some unfriendly sniffing and a menacing show of teeth: as it was, their noses actually wrinkled. I wondered whether Stephen’s instinctive response was to the real Frank, or to the cover Frank: to an individual or to a type.
Frank, I supposed, merely guessed that any friend of mine was no friend of his; and if Ian were right about him following me, he had certainly seen Stephen before.
Neither of them wanted to say anything to the other.
‘Well, Frank,’ I said cheerfully, hiding my amusement, ‘thank you for your company. I’m off now with Stephen for the rest of the day. See you at breakfast, I guess.’
‘You bet.’
We turned away, but after a step or two Stephen glanced back, frowning. I looked where he did: Frank’s back view, walking off.
‘Haven’t I seen him before?’ Stephen said.
‘Where?’
‘Couldn’t say. Yesterday morning, up here in the Square, maybe.’
We were walking along the side of Red Square, towards the GUM department store.
‘He’s staying at the Intourist,’ I said.
Stephen nodded, dismissing it. ‘Where to?’ he said.
‘Phone box.’
We found one and inserted the two kopeks, but there was no answer from the number Misha had given us. Tried again, this time for Yuri Ivanovich Chulitsky. Same result.
‘Telex in Kutuzovsky Prospect,’ I said. ‘Where do we get a taxi?’
‘The metro is cheap. Only five kopeks, however far you go.’
He couldn’t understand why I should want to spend money when I didn’t have to: incredulity halfway to exasperation filled his eyes and voice.
I gave in with a shrug and we went by metro, with me battling as usual against the claustrophobic feeling I always got from hurtling through mole-runs far underground. The cathedral-like stations of the Moscow metro seemed to have been built to the greater glory of technology (down with churches) but on the achingly long and boring escalators I found myself quite missing London’s vulgar advertisements for bras. Ritzy, jazzy, noisy, dirty, uninhibited old London, greedy and gutsy and grabbing at life. Gold coaches and white horses along the Mall instead of tanks, and garbage collectors on strike.
‘Do the dustbin men ever strike here?’ I said to Stephen.
‘Strikes? Don’t be silly. Strikes are not allowed in Russia.’
We finally resurfaced, and after a good deal of asking and walking, arrived at the Commercial section, which was guarded as before by a soldier. Again we talked our way in, and, by following Oliver Waterman’s advice and making a nuisance of myself, I persuaded the inmates to telex my message, which was: REQUEST DETAILS OF LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF HANS KRAMER. ALSO WHEREABOUTS OF HIS BODY. ALSO NAME AND TELEPHONE NUMBER OF THE PATHOLOGIST WHO DID THE AUTOPSY.
‘Don’t expect an answer,’ I was told brusquely. ‘There’s all hell breaking loose in some place in Africa which is choc-a-bloc with Soviet guns and so-called advisers. The telex is steaming. The diplomats have priority. You’ll be way way down the list.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said, and we trudged our way back to the pavement outside.
‘Now what?’ Stephen said.
‘Try those numbers again.’
We found a glass-walled box nearby and put the kopeks in the slot. No answers, as before.
‘Probably not home from work yet,’ Stephen said.
I nodded. At four in the afternoon the daylight was fading fast to dusk, the lighted windows shining brighter with every minute.
‘What do you want to do now?’ Stephen said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Like to come up to the University, then? We’re not all that far away, actually. Nearer than to your hotel.’
‘No hope of anything to eat, there, I suppose?’ I said.
He looked surprised. ‘Yes, if you like. There’s a sort of supermarket for students in the basement, and kitchens upstairs. We can buy something and eat in my room, if you like.’ He seemed doubtful. ‘It won’t be as good as the Intourist Hotel, though.’
‘I’ll risk it.’
‘I’ll ring up and say you’re coming,’ he said, turning back to the telephone box.
‘Can’t we just go?’
He shook his head. ‘In Russia, everything has to be arranged first. If it is arranged, it is OK. If it’s not arranged, it’s irregular, suspicious, or subversive, and what’s more, you won’t get in.’ He fished around for another two-kopek piece and put it to good use.
Coming out of the telephone box and saying my visit was fixed, he began planning a route via the metro, but I was no longer listening. Two men were walking towards us, talking intently. From thinking there was something familiar about one of them I progressed by a series of mental jumps to realising that I knew them both.
They were Ian Young and Malcolm Herrick.
8
They were, if anything, more surprised to see me.
‘Randall!’ Ian said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘If it isn’t the sleuth!’ Malcolm Herrick’s English voice boomed confidently into Kutuzovsky Prospect, scorning discretion. ‘Found Alyosha yet, sport?’
‘Afraid not,’ I said. ‘This is Stephen Luce. A friend. English.’
‘Malcolm Herrick,’ said the Moscow correspondent of The Watch, introducing himself, shaking hands, and waiting for a reaction. None came. He must have been used to it. ‘Moscow correspondent of The Watch,’ he said.
‘Great stuff,’ said Stephen vaguely, obviously not having read a word from the Herrick pen.
‘Are you going to the British Club?’ Ian asked. ‘We’re just on our way there.’
His watchful eyes waited for a reply. There were some replies I saw no harm in giving, and this was one.
‘I came to send a telex,’ I said. ‘Oliver’s suggestion.’
‘The snake,’ Herrick said unexpectedly, narrowing his eyes. ‘He usually gives messages for the telex to the guy in the hall.’
‘And the guy in the hall relays them to you?’ I said.
‘Sources, sources, sport.’ He tapped the side of his nose.
Ian was unmoved. ‘If an answer comes,’ he said to rne, ‘I’ll see that you get it.’
‘I’d be grateful.’
‘Where are you going now, sport?’ Malcolm said, loud and direct as always.
‘To the University, with Stephen, for tea.’
‘Tea!’ He made a face. ‘Look, why don’t we meet later for a decent meal? All of us,’ he added expansively, including Ian and Stephen. ‘The Aragvi do you, Ian?’
Ian, who had not reacted visibly to the original suggestion, seemed to find favour with the choice of place, and nodded silently. Malcolm started giving me directions, but Stephen said he knew the way.
‘Great then,’ Malcolm said. ‘Eight-thirty. Don’t be late.’
The faint drizzle which had persisted all day seemed to be intensifying into sleet. It put, anyway, an effective damper on further conversation in the street, and by common consent we split up and went our own ways.
‘Who is the man who looks Russian?’ Stephen asked, ducking his head down and sideways to avoid the stinging drops. ‘The one imitating the Sphinx.’
‘Let’s get that taxi,’ I said, waving to a grey-green car coming with the green light shining for availability in its windscreen.
‘Expensive,’ he protested automatically, slithering into the back seat beside me. ‘Ve vill have to cure this disgusting bourgeois habit.’ He had a rich way of imitating a Russian accent while sardonically putting forward the Russian point of view. ‘Vorkers of the Vorld unite… and go on the metro.’
‘Caviar is immoral,’ I said dryly.
‘Caviar is not bourgeois. Caviar is for everyone who can scrape up a fortune in roubles.’ He considered me, relapsing into ordinary English, ‘Why did you say caviar is immoral? It’s not like you.’
‘Not my idea. A friend’s.’
‘Girl?’
I nodded.
‘Aha,’ he said. ‘I diagnose a rich middle-class socialist rebelling against mummy.’
‘Not far out,’ I said, a touch sadly.
He peered anxiously at my face. ‘I haven’t offended you?’
‘No.’
I got him to ask the taxi driver to stop by a telephone kiosk, and to wait while we tried our numbers again. There was still no answer from Misha, but the second number was answered at the first ring. Stephen, holding the receiver, made a brief thumbs up sign to me, and spoke. Listened, spoke again, and handed the receiver to me. ‘It is Yuri Ivanovich Chulitsky himself. He says he speaks English.’
I took the instrument. ‘Mr Chulitsky?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘I am an Englishman visiting Moscow,’ I said. ‘My name is Randall Drew. I have been given your name and telephone number by the British Embassy. I wonder if I could talk with you?’
There was a longish pause. Then the voice at the other end, calm and with an accent that was a carbon copy of Stephen’s imitation, said, ‘Upon what subject?’
Owing to the meagreness of the telex bearing his name, I couldn’t entirely answer. I said hopefully, ‘Horses?’
‘Horses.’ He sounded unenthusiastic. ‘Always horses. I do not know horses. I am architect.’
‘Er,’ I said. ‘Have you already talked about horses to another Englishman?’
A pause. Then the voice, measured and still calm. ‘That is so. In Moscow, yes. And in England, yes. Many times.’
Bits of light began to dawn. ‘You were at the International Horse Trials? At Burghley, in September?’
The pause. Then, ‘At many horse trials. Septem
ber… and August.’
Bingo, I thought. One of the observers.
‘Mr Chulitsky,’ I said, persuasively, ‘please may I meet you? I’ve been talking to Nikolai Alexandrovich Kropotkin, and if you want to check up on me, I think he will tell you it would be all right for you to talk to me.’
A very long pause. Then he said, ‘Are you writing for newspaper?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I telephone Nikolai Alexandrovich,’ he said. ‘I find his number.’
‘I have it here,’ I said, and read it out slowly.
‘You telephone again. One hour.’
The receiver went down at his end with a decisive crash, and Stephen and I went back to the taxi.
Stephen said, ‘When we get up to my room, don’t say anything you don’t want overheard. Or not until I tell you it’s OK.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m a foreigner. I live in the section of the University reserved for foreign students. Every room in Moscow which is used by foreigners should be considered bugged until proved different.’ The University building, of vast blocks of narrow windows punctuated by soaring fluted towers, like an immense grey stone blancmange, looked from its hill to the river and the city centre beyond; and on the far bank lay, spread out, the Lenin stadium, where the Olympic athletes were scheduled to run and jump and throw things.
‘How will they manage with the whole city full of foreigners?’ I said.
‘Apartheid will prevail.’ The Russian accent made it a wicked joke. ‘Segregation will be ruthlessly maintained.’
‘Why did you come to Russia?’ I said, ‘feeling as you do?’
He gave me a quick bright glance. ‘I love the place and hate the regime, the same as everyone else. And nowhere’s a prison when you can get out.’
The taxi shed us at the gate, and we walked to the foreign students’ entrance, a door dwarfed by the sheer height of the adjoining walls. Inside, coming down to human scale, there was a dumpy middle-aged woman behind a desk. She looked at Stephen with a lack of reaction which meant she knew him, and then at me; and she was out of her seat and barring my way with the speed of a rattlesnake.
Stephen spoke to her in Russian. She dourly shook her head. Together they consulted a list on her desk; and with severe looks she let me through.