by John Lawton
“We can talk now,” she said.
With one hand he held the glass of delicately scented tea, the right amount of hot water, the kipyatok, added to the dark, overbrewed tea concentrate; with the other he pointed at the ceiling and described circles in the air.
“Oh,” she said. “The house isn’t bugged. They stopped bugging me in 1949. I’m a spent force. No use to them and so no threat.”
“My dacha is bugged, so’s my Moscow flat. They have a minimum level of decency—they don’t put microphones in the bedroom.”
“If you’re still bugged, then you still matter to them. There’s something they still want from you.”
“They know everything. I was interrogated every few weeks until earlier this year. Two clowns called Blodnik and Bolokov. I couldn’t have made up names like that if I tried.”
“Ah … I got Tosca and Ronin. They weren’t clowns.”
She had her back to him momentarily, thumping a cushion into shape. Then she turned, sat, and gestured to him to sit on the other end of the sofa.
“Little woman? Eyes like conkers … rather well …”
He described the arc of Tosca’s bosom with his right hand.
“Ah. You’ve met?” Voytek said.
“Oh yes.”
“She was your London control?”
“Oh no. That was ‘Peter.’ I didn’t meet Major Tosca until I was on the run. She was my first interrogator. Brighter than all the others put together. I rather liked her.”
“I see.”
“And you didn’t like her?”
“I had … have … very mixed feelings. She rescued me from the Nazis. But then she made me a Soviet spy and put me into London. I have reasons to be grateful and reasons to resent her.”
“I still see her from time to time. I often think she misses London as much as I do. We have a drink together and reminisce.”
Voytek had paused. The needle pulled suddenly from the groove.
“I’m not sure I’d want to.”
“I find I can talk to anyone with approximately the same memories I have. There are times I think I’d relish a chat with a chap from Nottingham or Derby and I’ve never been to either. Desperate, isn’t it?”
“Of course … I’m not tied to this house or to Moscow or even to Russia. I can travel. All the Warsaw Pact countries, and the neutrals too … Sweden, Switzerland … Austria. I suppose I’m not desperate.”
“I can’t go anywhere. Would you believe I’m still a secret? The British may be ninety-nine per cent certain where I am, but Moscow won’t tell them. It reinforces my isolation. I’d love to come clean, to be able to say ‘Guy Burgess is alive and well and living in Moscow.’”
“And what would that gain you?”
Burgess could feel tears gathering.
“Letters,” he said softly. “My mother would have an address for me. She’d write me letters.”
He paused as one lonely tear ran down his cheek.
“And I would write back.”
§37
Moscow: Район Хамовники улица Большая Пироговская 53-55, квартира 68 1956
It pained him to heft his bitch tits—all the same, he did so two or three times a week. Usually in front of a full-length mirror. The true reflection of the most distorting aspect of his nature—vanity.
His London controller, “Peter,” on one of his fleeting visits back to Moscow, had been the first to point out that he was putting on weight.
“Well, if the fucking diet here wasn’t so fucking stodgy I fucking wouldn’t be, would I?”
“Still dreaming of London’s restaurants, Guy?”
“I close my eyes and I can still smell Wheeler’s fish soup. I can taste the Arbroath smokies in Simpson’s. I could reach out and touch the filet mignon at the Ritz.”
And then his new suit had arrived from Savile Row, with a polite note from his tailor, “Sir, we note the change from 32 waist to 34. If you would be so good as to advise us of any further changes.”
It was tempting to write back and say he now dressed to the left, but what was the point? They’d never get the joke. What, indeed, was the point of anything?
Burgess was not a happy man. Those fleeting moments when happiness seemed possible, tangible, only heightened his frustration. Such as the day his harmonium arrived from England.
Tom Driberg had shipped it for him. Along with most of his books. A sentimental, self-deceiving man—and Burgess was both—might be able to recreate the illusion of the flat in Bond Street. But every so often, or a hundred times a day, he’d find himself looking out of the window at the Novodevichy Cemetery, next to the Orthodox convent, and no illusion of home could sustain itself with such a view. Not that he disliked the cemetery. With hours to kill he often killed them there—he’d drift from Chekhov’s tomb, to Gogol’s, to Bulgakov’s (not that he’d read a word of Bulgakov), to Nadezhda Stalin’s, and on … and on … to Sergei Eisenstein’s. He’d sat through Oktober and Battleship Potemkin, and quite enjoyed both. He’d tried sitting through Ivan the Terrible and failed utterly to enjoy it or stick with it to the end.
He’d have felt better if the harmonium had worked, but its lungs were shot, its leather bellows perished.
The arrival of his books, however, had revived his “frenetic bibliomania.” He’d felt an acute sense of loss without them. He tried to feel lucky, feeling no more lucky than he felt happy; after all, he’d known people who really had lost their books during the Blitz—blown up and burnt up, nothing left but ash. His pal Duncan (or was it Denis? Couldn’t have been much of a pal) sitting over breakfast in the Ritz one day in 1941, tearfully drawing up a list of lost books, then producing, wrapped in a damp, snotty hanky, the charred corner of a book.
“Oxford English Dictionary,” he said. “Volume 12: Supplements. Page 381. It’s all that’s left.”
Trying for uplifting levity, Burgess had said, “Fond of 382, were you?”
And Duncan (or Denis) had wept buckets into his pre-porridge Scotch and soda.
There was his copy of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, a tale of pointless love for a worthless woman, which had fired and fuelled his adolescence. His copy of Walter Sickert’s essays, edited by Osbert Sitwell—newish, only a few years old, but it had become one of his most treasured books.
But … but … but the one he really missed was: Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.
He’d had the newest, updated edition, dating from 1949. It had a column and a half just on the word “Bum
“Bum-clink”
“Bum-perisher”
“Bum-feagle”
It had been a treasury of delight in the English language, a riot of filth and double entendre, and his favourite bedtime reading. Almost made insomnia worthwhile.
Even more on cock.
“Cock-maggot (in a sink hole)”
“Cock-quean”
“Cock-smitten”
And the classic, the timeless entry:
“Fucked, more times than I’ve had hot dinners, she’s been.”
The taxonomic pleasure of typing a line like that. He wondered how Partridge had ever been able to type such a line and keep a straight face.
The possibilities, the endless possibilities for insult. Oh, to have it back again. To be at large in a country where few, if any, spoke English, armed with the thinking, drinking man’s bible of abuse. He’d give up his hand-annotated two volumes of the Selected Marx and Engels and throw in his copy of Murchison’s The Dawn of Motoring too just to be able to refresh his reservoir of insults from Partridge. But—he’d left it in Washington. Not happy. Philby had promised to ship it. He never had. Not lucky.
But … but … but there were now regular letters from his mother.
§38
Moscow: у$$. Петровка
Институт Паганини
It was the interval.
Miss Voytek had invited him to
a recital at the Paganini Institute, a chamber venue that reminded him more than a bit of the Wigmore Hall—tasteless shades of brown more than compensated for by the acoustics.
He’d enjoyed the first half. Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata. Voytek on piano and some young Russian bloke … Rostripov? Rostropich? … on cello. He wasn’t sure what an arpeggione was, but had vague memories of something that looked like a cross between a cello and a guitar. No matter, it had been a treat. The second half was new stuff. Prokofiev. He thought he might sit it out in the bar and then go through the motions of congratulation with Voytek and Rostripthing. All artists were readily flattered. As long as he smiled and enthused, he’d get away with it.
A big man, a fat man, fatter than he was getting, was looming up above.
“Mr. Burgess?”
Burgess just looked at him.
“Jack Dashoffy. US Embassy.”
“Come to see if I have horns and a tail?”
“May I?”
Dashoffy gestured at the chair opposite.
“I’d say it’s a free country, but you’d just laugh.”
Dashoffy grinned, sat, held out a hand Burgess did not shake.
“I suppose you’re a cultural attaché?”
“Correct. Culture, Information, and Arts.”
Burgess began to crack up.
“Ah … I was with the Baked Beans and Chips for a while.”
“That so? I did a spell in radio too.”
“Cheese, Burgers, and Sausage?”
“Nah—No Bum Cheques. How long can we keep this up?”
“I think we just shot our bolt. Tell me, how are things in Culture, Information, and Arts?”
“Well, we’re on the road to forgiveness.”
“For whom? The British? For what? Suez?”
“No—I was thinking of you.”
“I did nothing, you know. Nothing at all.”
“Really? All those unpaid speeding fines from your time in Washington?”
Burgess giggled.
“Uncle Sam sent you here to collect on my speeding tickets?”
“Of course not. In fact, Uncle Sam didn’t send me at all. This is just me. On my own.”
“You’re that curious?”
“I’d love to know.”
“I’d love to tell. A weight off my mind. But I won’t.”
“Aw. C’mon. Spinach In Seattle would never know.”
“I prefer to think of them as Shit In Sawdust.”
“Just so long as we know who we’re talking about.”
“We do. But I’ve no reason to trust you.”
“No. You haven’t. But maybe we could horse trade.”
“We could?”
“Depends entirely on what you want? I could get you things from England. Y’know, things you might be missing.”
“I have all my books. I even have my harmonium. My account at my tailor is still active—I get a new suit every so often. New ties in Eton stripes when I can’t scrape the congealed egg yolk off the old one any longer. And my mum writes twice a week. The only thing I really want I doubt you’d give me.”
“And what would that be?”
Burgess lowered his voice to a stage whisper.
“To go home.”
“Aw shit. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.”
“All the same, there are things I miss.”
“OK. Such as?”
“I miss the little things. The trivia. The unimportant things. In England I missed the important things—ideas.”
And as he said it, he realised he had said it before. Yesterday? Last week? Last month? And that he would be saying it the day he died.
“Ideas might be the other thing I cannot give you.”
“No matter. I have an idea. The biggest idea there is.”
“Which is?”
“Russia.”
“Aw shit. I was afraid you’d say that.”
“On the other hand …”
“I’m listening.”
“A small tin … or perhaps two … of Patum Peperium …”
“What?”
“They call it the Gentleman’s Relish. Although they let rogues like me eat it. Can’t get it in Mother Russia for love or rubles.”
“Let me write that down … Pat … Pat …”
“Patum Peperium. They make it from anchovies. You might try Fortnum’s.”
“Gotcha. Consider it done. I’ll set my old pal Joe Wilderness on to it. He’s a regular at Fortnum’s. It’ll be in the bag from London next week. Then maybe we could talk again.”
“Of cabbages and kings?”
“Nah—let’s stick to Shit In Sawdust.”
§39
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
At Novodevichy, walking the long aisles between the dead. Three tins of Patum Peperium nestling in the pockets of Burgess’s jacket.
“I thought you said you lot were in a mood to forgive?”
“We are. The problem isn’t Washington. It’s London.”
“Bugger.”
“Have you made any approaches to them?”
“No. It’s only been a matter of weeks since the Russians agreed to let us, I mean me and Maclean, go public. Prior to that no one in London officially knew where I was. We held a farce of a press conference, you probably heard about.”
“Of course. It’s what enabled me to approach you without, how shall I put it? … incident.”
“Any approach by me would have been impossible. I was the invisible man.”
“Things may change. In time, things may change. Give it a while and ask. You get nothing if you don’t ask. I can’t ask on your behalf. That really would be an incident.”
“Meanwhile, I could die waiting.”
“We all might die waiting for something. However … I do have some good news. Your friend Tosca got out.”
“Out? You mean defected?”
“I’m not sure I do mean that. She’d been in one of those KGB Little Lubyankas they have dotted all over town for weeks and the spook gossip is she escaped in transit to some other prison. Sometime in the last month.”
“Escaped where?”
“I don’t know. But the only way is west, isn’t it?”
§40
Peredelkino: May 1956
Voytek did not know how to take the news. Regret was part of it, relief another part—and the sum a wish that she’d said goodbye.
“I gave her a note for Troy. Must have been a couple of years ago,” Burgess was saying. “You know, just on the off chance.”
“Off chance of what? Her getting out? Her reaching London? Her surviving?”
“No, the off chance of her bumping into Troy.”
“Bump? I didn’t even know they’d met.”
“Oh yes. Didn’t I tell you? She used to talk about him. She did a couple of years undercover in London during the war. Met him then. They were … well, you know …”
“I don’t know anything. You’re saying they were lovers? When?”
“In ‘44, I think. They met a few weeks before Moscow pulled her out.”
“You knew her there too? I thought you met her here?”
“Good Lord, no. One Russian spy knowing another? Only if there was a purpose and in this case there was none. No, I met her here. I’m certain I told you—she managed some of my de-brief. I think our masters thought she had a handle on London … or something.”
“Yes, you did tell me that. How could you not tell me about her and Troy?”
“Dunno. I suppose it’s not the kind of relationship that’s ever interested me. You know … men … women … women … men. Even the gossip’s second rate.”
“Suddenly I feel as though I’m part of a conspiracy.”
“Well … we both are, aren’t we? It’s called Russia.”
“I meant one I didn’t know about. Not a Soviet conspiracy … they’re ten a penny … a divine one. The gods playing games with us.”
She fel
l silent. Burgess had a high tolerance of silence, but this one had gone on far too long.
“Tell me,” he said
“I was musing. Pointlessly.”
“On what?”
“Where is Troy? Where is Tosca? Will she ever find him?”
IV
Gus
§41
Vienna: May 1956
Gus Fforde was a rogue. A rogue, a wag, and an old friend. He and Troy and Charlie Leigh-Hunt had been schoolboys together. Charlie was the leader, Troy and Dickie Mullins very much the NCOs, and Gus the inspired, reckless subaltern. It was Fforde who had taught Troy how to disable a car by shoving a potato up the exhaust, how to blow out the down-pipe on a lavatory cistern with guncotton so that the next poor sod to flush the bog got a free shower, and how to catapult stink bombs in chapel. Of these, Troy had only found the first to be of any lasting value.
Fforde was also First Secretary at Her Britannic Majesty’s Embassy in Vienna, capital of the newly reconstituted Austria. The Austrian democratic government was only weeks old, the Russian and American troops that had been in the country since 1945 having departed a matter of months ago.
Troy wondered, as he had so often, what outlet life as a British diplomat provided for the inherent anarchist in Gus. A world that revolved around gin and tonic, fours at bridge, and constant glad-handing could hardly satisfy the need to create chaos in a man happier knocking up home-made bombs.
“A passport, you say?”
“Yes, Gus. For my wife.”
“She’s not English, then?”
“Of course not.”
“Okey doh. And when did you get married?”
“Tomorrow. You can be a witness if you like.”
“Freddie, there wouldn’t be anything … how shall I say? … untoward about this, would there?”
“Untoward, no. Downright dodgy, yes. In need of discreet assistance from an old friend, yes.”
“Quite,” said Fforde. “What are old friends for? Now, I’ll need a name and some sort of identification.”
Troy slid Tosca’s passport across the table to him. Her real passport. One of her real passports. The real American one.