That was the moment when she knew for certain that something of Julia was still alive in this apartment: her spirit, her personality, her love for Eva were still there, protecting her. The doubts that had built up over the previous weeks receded. The other Julia, the woman who had gone to Moscow without telling her, who had deceived her in ways she found impossible to understand, was vanishing in the presence of these familiar reminders – her furniture, her pictures, her books. Eva had been touched by her unseen presence. She felt her uncertainties falling away and Julia’s resolve passing to her. Opening up the apartment for Martineau was right. Julia had come to her aid once more. It was like old times.
*
‘Damn.’
He felt the razor nick his skin and a moment later a thin line of blood trickled down his chin. Bloody hell. He finished shaving quickly, washed his face, dabbed cold water on the cut (a deep nick, what had he been thinking of?) and stuck some cotton wool over it to stop the bleeding.
The telephone rang. ‘I’ve been summoned to the Ministry.’ Archie was in executive mood. ‘I expect to be told officially they’re going to bring Leman’s trial forward. I’ll be back by ten-thirty. Could we have a word then, Bobby?’
Out of the question. ‘That’s going to be difficult, Archie.’
‘We’ll need to get our thinking caps on smartish if we’re to do anything for the poor sod.’
Randall said nothing. Silence was his way of expressing displeasure.
‘How about later on then? Twelve? Twelve-thirty?’
‘Do my best. No promises.’
‘I need a word, Bobby.’ It was as close to an instruction as he could give. Randall liked arrangements to be definite, hated uncertainty. Well, this time he’d have to lump it. He had more important things to attend to.
‘If I can make it, I’ll be there. You can count on that.’
‘All right, old boy.’ Did he detect resignation in Randall’s voice, or was that his imagination? ‘See you later. Thanks.’
He tore the cotton wool off his chin too sharply and started the bleeding again. He looked in the mirror and saw a spot of blood on his shirt front.
‘Damn.’
*
Voices on the landing outside. Male voices and the distinctive tread of male feet. (Heavy boots? Or was that her fevered imagination?) She held her breath. She couldn’t make out what was being said. She crept to the door and, kneeling, looked through the keyhole. Whoever was there had gone. She could see no one. False alarm. She stood up, feeling dizzy. Where was Martineau? She looked at her watch. It was still early, she couldn’t expect him to arrive before the time she had set. She went back into the sitting room and stood by the window anxiously watching the street below. What she was looking for she couldn’t say.
*
The street was crowded. He heard voices all around him, the exchanges of everyday life. No crisis visible here, nothing to suggest this country was about to explode. Yet in a week or two these same people might be lying dead on these same pavements. Suddenly Martineau felt an overpowering sense of responsibility for them, that he single-handedly had to save their lives. For one extraordinary moment he wanted to stop them as they passed, shake their hands, kiss their cheeks, reassure them that he was doing everything in his power to help, that he would protect them until there was no breath left in his body.
The emotion passed and some kind of balance reasserted itself. How could he be responsible for people he didn’t know? His job was to gather information, report accurately and truthfully what was happening in Hungary, and to send it on to London so that those who were wiser than him could take the necessary policy decisions.
But even as he said that to himself, he knew that his connection with these people, this beautiful city, this country, went much deeper now. Eva and Dora had seen to that. They had made him a part of their lives. Through them he shared their hatred of those who occupied this land and their refusal to accept the wrongs that were imposed on them by the Soviet-inspired government. He must continue the fight on their behalf to do whatever he could, within the limitations of his own powers. If their lives were in danger, then he must save them.
*
She hears the key in the lock. She doesn’t move. The front door opens. Light from the landing floods the dark hallway briefly, then is obscured by the outline of a man entering the apartment and closing the door carefully behind him.
‘Eva?’ A whisper, no more. ‘Eva?’
‘Bobby.’
In the half-light she feels him reach out for her. She throws herself into his arms. He is hers again. Her exile is over.
*
They made love with an intimacy they had not achieved before. The barrier that had prevented them telling each other about their lives had been removed the moment Martineau opened the door of Julia Kovacs’s apartment. The disguises they had assumed when they’d first met were gone. In their place was a silent acknowledgement that there were no more walls, no more secrets between them, no parts of their lives they had to conceal any more. The last shreds of cover had been torn away and they faced each other as they truly were, though not a word had yet been spoken. Lovers liberated from the deceits they had practised on each other to preserve their love. Lovers to whom the ability to love had been miraculously returned.
*
The afternoon sun illuminated the bedroom. A slight breeze came in through the open window and ruffled the curtains. Miles away, or so it seemed, he could hear voices in the street, but these were other lives, other dramas; they had nothing to do with him. At the embassy Randall would be waiting for him, looking at his watch, wondering what on earth he was up to, cursing his non-appearance. At this moment his life was here, in this room, with this beautiful woman whom he had claimed once more. What he had dreamed of had happened.
‘I cried for days after you left,’ Eva said, suddenly reaching out for him. ‘I tried to hide my tears from Dora but she guessed. So I had to invent a quarrel to explain why you weren’t there any more. She talked to me so seriously, urging me to make it up with you. She could not understand why I wouldn’t do so.’
She lay, arms above her head, her body exposed to him. She was as beautiful as he remembered, only now there was another side to it. Their time apart had moved their love forward; the manner in which they had rediscovered each other had pushed it into a new dimension.
‘Whose apartment is this?’ he asked, unable to repress his need to know that it was safe. ‘Have you borrowed it from a friend?’
‘It belonged to someone who died,’ she said.
‘What happened?’ He knew before he had finished the sentence that it was a question he should never have asked. He could feel the shiver run through her body. He touched her hand. ‘I’m sorry. Forget I said that.’
She didn’t want to answer but she had to. How can lovers have secrets?
‘Julia Kovacs was my great friend. She was arrested one night and taken away. I never saw her again.’
‘Are you sure she’s dead?’
‘Those who never return are always dead.’ She lay back on the pillow, her eyes closed. ‘We spent the evening together. We’d had supper. It was late, nearly midnight. We were finishing a bottle of wine and then I was going home. We’d been listening to a new Frank Sinatra album she’d got hold of from somewhere. She was reading to me, a passage from a book by Albert Camus. Suddenly the doorbell rang.’
Martineau took her hand. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
She stares at him, unseeing, unhearing. She is back in the apartment on that fateful night.
‘She put down the book and looked at me, surprised. It was very late for someone to drop by. She went to open the door. I remember the doorbell ringing again. Then there was a scream. I ran out to see what had happened. She was being dragged down the stairs by two men. I tried to go after her but I was held back. I called her name again and again, but she never looked back. Then she was gone. She always said the apartment wo
uld be mine when she died. She had no one else to leave it to, no family, no husband. No one knows it’s mine, not even Dora. This is the first time I’ve been back since that night.’
‘How long ago did this happen?’ he asks.
‘Towards the end of March, more than a year ago.’
A year ago.
A simple phrase that explains so much. What had Cars well said? ‘Without warning, a year ago everything comes unstuck. Either she falls out of love with the system or she’s under instruction to distance herself from it. Within a few weeks she’s detached herself from all her Party activities. That raises questions. Has she been instructed to infiltrate local groups known to be hostile to the government? If she has, we must assume she’s working for the AVH.’
Now we know why, Martineau wanted to shout. Now we know what happened. There was no sinister interpretation in her actions. The regime had murdered her friend and she had stopped believing in communism. It was all falling into place. A senseless, brutal, unexplained killing had broken her faith, destroyed her trust, pushed her beyond the reach of the dogma, the rhetoric, the lies and deceptions, the stultifying, numbing emptiness of the system. They were on the same side now. That much was clear. She was his, truly his, for ever. She had to be. He felt secretly triumphant.
He leaned over and, smiling, put his hand against her face.
*
The water burst out of the shower, ice-cold. Eva screamed, bending low, her arms across her breasts so the cold jet sprayed over her back. Martineau gently pulled her arms away, making her stand upright with him, drawing her towards him. Then he kissed her and slowly the water warmed up.
‘If you leave me again I will die,’ she said.
*
‘After six years in Moscow, we all came back full of enthusiasm to build a new country,’ Eva was saying. ‘We were fervent in our creed. We believed in the idea of a socialist future, that it was possible to make the world a better place. That’s what we wanted. That’s what we were going to do with our lives.’
She had talked about the years in Moscow (‘We were students, stranded when the war broke out, unable to go home. We lived in hostels – I shared a room with Julia’), her success at swimming (‘I discovered a world where I could be better than almost anyone else. I’d never felt that before – winning was intoxicating, especially beating the Russians. I had a rival. Talia Osanova. She was the champion before I arrived. I displaced her. She really hated me’), bringing up her daughter, her friendship with Julia (‘I don’t think I would have survived without her; she was the most wonderful friend anyone ever had’).
Nothing unexpected, nothing revelatory. Martineau was mystified. Surely after all the restraint of their previous relationship, there had to be more. Then he became aware that she was finding her voice. She was searching for a way to tell him what she wanted him to know, that there were secrets in her mind that were fighting to get out. There was more to come, he was certain, but it was not time yet. He had to be patient.
*
‘We were in Moscow at the same time, do you realize that?’ he said. (Was the apartment bugged? Were there listening devices inside the vase of flowers, under the pillow, concealed in the mattress or the bedside light? It was too late to stop now. He no longer cared. He trusted her and that was that.) He had promised himself he would tell her the truth.
He described his war, the years in Moscow, how he found Peter the Great, how it all turned sour when he discovered the Soviet double-cross, how in the bitter aftermath in London he fell from grace (‘I suppose someone had to be sacrificed, the pity was it had to be me’), the years of exile, the unexpected return to Budapest.
‘How much longer will you be here?’ she asked suddenly.
‘I finish at the end of December,’ he said without thinking.
She let out a cry and threw herself on him, holding him tightly. ‘Is that all the time we have, Bobby? Only a few more months?’
Martineau was horrified. Hardly had they found themselves again than a sense of an irrevocable ending was introduced into their relationship, the time when he would be recalled to London at the end of his posting. As he held her in his arms there was nothing he could say to comfort her.
She murmured, ‘They cannot have you back. You’re mine now, mine for ever. I will never let you go. Never.’
14
1
Koli’s voice on the telephone is faint and distant, as if he is on the moon, not half a mile away, but his sense of caution is unmistakable. ‘I have found someone who may be able to help,’ he tells her. ‘But you and I need to meet first.’
He is waiting for her as she’d known he would be. She leans forward to kiss him. Despite the warmth of the evening, his cheek is cold. She senses the tension within him.
‘What is it, Koli? What’s up?’
‘There is something I ought to tell you.’ He lights a cigarette. His hand is trembling. ‘I don’t know if it has any connection with what’s happened to Dora. I imagine it hasn’t. But you ought to know anyway.’ He looks away for a moment and then he tells her: ‘Alexei’s in Budapest.’
She doesn’t remember feeling anything at that moment. Later, thinking about what Koli has said, she invents the idea that his words made her react as if she had been held down in a bath of ice-cold water. She shudders, catches her breath and recovers. In fact it is worse than that. Her muscles freeze. She has a spiralling sensation in her arms and legs, her stomach falls away, for a moment the restaurant seems to spin around her. She is shocked, frightened, alone, standing on the edge of memories she imagines she has buried years before.
‘How do you know?’ She hopes her voice sounds normal.
‘How do you think I know?’
He has never told her directly what he does but she has never had any doubts. He had gone to the High Diplomatic School in Moscow as soon as they’d finished university. But he was no more of a diplomat than Martineau. (Officially, of course, that was his cover and for the last two years he had been working in the Soviet rezidentura in Budapest.) He was a solitary, reclusive man; you seldom met him with others. She doubted that he had any friends in Budapest apart from her. He had a watchful nature. He missed nothing. Martineau had some of those characteristics too. They were both in the same business.
‘How long has he been here?’
‘A few days.’
‘Is he staying long?’
‘I imagine that depends on what happens.’
He means, it depends on whether the people take to the streets or not.
‘He wants to see you.’
‘Oh no, Koli,’ she says, freezing again. ‘I beg you, no. Anything but that.’
She has not seen or heard of Alexei since that terrible night all those years ago, in another time and another life. The last thing she wants is to be brought face to face with her memories.
‘Then he will do nothing. He made that clear.’
She is floating above them, and there below her are Koli and Alexei using long hooks to pull her back to their world from which she so desperately wishes to escape.
‘I’m being given no choice, am I?’
‘None,’ he says with a finality that terrifies her.
Alexei’s hook has fastened on her and he is bringing her in. Her past has caught up with her.
2
The note was waiting for him when he returned home. It proposed a place, a date and a time, nothing else. It was unsigned. The cheap paper he recognized as Soviet, itself enough of a signature to confirm the invitation was genuine. Should he go, or should he ignore the renewed approach? It didn’t take much persuasion to make up his mind. Koliakov’s purpose in telling him about the new relationship between the Soviets and the Egyptians before the news broke had been to gain his trust. There could only be one reason for that. He had something more important to tell him. The restaurant was, appropriately enough, in Moscow Square. The table, Hart discovered when he arrived, had been booked in his name. He sat dow
n and waited.
‘A small precaution, using your name, for which I beg forgiveness,’ a voice said behind him. ‘My friend, it is good to see you.’
A beaming Koliakov ordered wine and recommended dishes from the menu with which he appeared to be familiar. ‘I hoped you would come. I felt certain you would.’
‘Is this a good place to meet?’ Hart asked, not meaning that at all. Behind them, a gypsy band had struck up a czardas, the lead violinist leaning into his instrument and gazing round at his audience.
‘If you mean, am I safe from the prying eyes of my colleagues, the answer is yes. They seldom come to this side of the city to eat and never as far as this. But it would not matter if they did see us together.’
Hart was baffled and said so. Koliakov appeared to be amused by what he dismissed as Hart’s innocence. ‘I have informed my superiors that a British diplomat has invited me to dinner. Now you understand why the table was booked in your name. This meeting has been cleared at the highest level.’
‘Will you write a report afterwards?’ Hart asked only half seriously. ‘Will you tell your people what I ate and drank?’
‘Naturally. My superiors are very demanding. They will want to know the name and address of the restaurant, whether you have given me any gifts, what we have talked about. I assume it is the same for you.’ This with a smile. ‘Should we make notes now, do you think, or shall we trust to memory?’
He pulled out a notebook and a pencil – it was clearly from this notebook that he had torn his invitation. ‘You chose the cold beetroot soup, I think.’
Hart laughed. The man couldn’t be all bad. He had a sense of humour. He allowed himself to relax a little. He listened while Koliakov told him what he knew about Hungarian wine.
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