“You suspect me?” Kazantsev spread his hands. “I’m a journalist, not an actor.”
“You’re a spy.”
“I’m not an actor.”
“All spies are actors.”
“If I’d known the first thing about this, trust me, you would have been able to tell.”
“You really didn’t know?” Herbert realized too late that this was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Never ask a question to which one would only get one answer; it was a waste of everybody’s time. “All right,” he continued. “Stensness drowned in the Long Water, right by where we just met, sometime last night.”
Kazantsev took a sip of his whiskey; neat, no ice. Like all good Russians, he regarded diluting spirits as sacrilege. His eyebrows lifted a fraction: Go on.
“You met Stensness there last night,” Herbert said.
Kazantsev paused for a moment, no doubt wondering how much to tell Herbert, and how much he already knew; then shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No. I didn’t meet him there last night.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s not.”
“Then why did you break into his house this morning?”
“I was supposed to meet him by the statue at six thirty. But he never showed up.”
“How long had you known him?”
“About two hours.”
Two hours, Herbert thought. “Where did you meet him?”
“At the Biochemical Conference.” The only answer he could have given.
“Your name’s not on the list of delegates.”
“I wasn’t a delegate. I’m press.”
“Izvestia wanted a story about the conference?”
“Izvestia want stories about everything.”
“How did you meet him?”
“He approached me and suggested an appointment.”
“Professional, or personal?”
“Professional, of course. He told me he had something for me.”
“He didn’t tell you what it was?”
“No.”
“But if you made the rendezvous, he would give it to you?”
“That was the implication, yes.”
“You’d never met this man before, and he gave you a meeting point in the park, in the fog, and you went along without question?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“What if it had been a hoax?”
“What if it had? What would I have lost, apart from an hour of my life?”
“How did you know his name?”
“He had it on his conference badge.”
“And his address?”
“Everyone’s badge had their name and institution. I rang King’s this morning after he had failed to show up, and asked for his home address. Then I went up there.”
“And broke in.”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove that it wasn’t.”
The lock had not been forced; Herbert remembered that; he’d checked when he’d picked the lock. But of course if Kazantsev was a Soviet agent, he too could pick locks—certainly bog-standard domestic locks—in his sleep. No chance of proving it either way.
“It’s still trespass, locked or not.” Kazantsev shrugged; Herbert continued. “Why did you go up there?”
“I was looking for what Stensness might have wanted to talk to me about.”
“You go to such lengths on all your assignments?”
“Not at all.”
“Then Stensness must have made whatever he was offering sound very tempting.”
“He did.”
“What did he say?” Herbert asked, already knowing and fearing the answer.
“He said it was something which would change the world.”
Herbert spent another hour questioning Kazantsev, and in that time he managed to break him down not an iota.
Of course Kazantsev’s story sounded ludicrous, and of course every instinct of Herbert’s cried out that Kazantsev was a spy; but, knowing what he knew, and more precisely what he did not know, there was no way Herbert could prove that Kazantsev was lying.
Herbert took his questioning round in circles, asking Kazantsev the same thing several times to see whether he slipped up. He came at the problem from different angles, sometimes ruminating for minutes as his thoughts meandered, sometimes jabbing with a quick surprise thrust. Every time Kazantsev answered firmly, concisely, and, most importantly, without contradiction.
Stensness had approached him at the conference and arranged the rendezvous, presumably because Kazantsev’s badge had identified him as an Izvestia correspondent.
Kazantsev had gone along to the statue at the agreed time, six thirty.
Stensness had not shown up.
Kazantsev usually waited no more than fifteen minutes at an appointment. If someone had not shown up by then, he left. Because of the fog, he had given Stensness an extra five minutes before leaving.
This morning Kazantsev had rung King’s and obtained the Highgate address—the English were so trusting, unlike the Soviets, who did not even have phone directories—and that was where Herbert had run into him.
Herbert did not mention the Coronation; better not to let Kazantsev know what he knew, or at least what he suspected. Besides, what would he get apart from a denial?
Herbert felt as though he were in a maze; everyone could see what was happening bar him, blundering around like a blind fool.
Outside the pub, Herbert gave Kazantsev back his wallet—a man needed money, after all, even one born and raised in the workers’ paradise—but kept his accreditation, partly to retain some leverage over him and partly to be bloody-minded. He also kept open the possibility of charging Kazantsev with trespass and assault on a police officer.
The accreditation would be returned and the charges dropped, he said, if Kazantsev could remember anything further which might help Herbert with his inquiries.
“If I could help you, Inspector, believe me, I would,” Kazantsev replied.
“Really?”
“Of course. I am a serious admirer of England and the English. In my short time here, I have come to love your country. London impresses me with its gravity and variety. London is wise; London always comes with a subtext. I love Marks and Spencer, a cheap, democratic shop, not charging the earth like Harrods. Perhaps Mr. Marks was really spelt with an ‘x,’ yes? I love Berry Brothers, the best wine shop in London, where the prices are lower than in Moscow, and so is the water content in the bottles. I love going to the cinema and seeing the screen gradually disappear in the smoke from all the briar pipes, especially during the last sitting, after which retired colonels from the colonies leap from their seats and bellow ‘God Save the Queen.’ All these things I love. So of course I would help you. Of course.”
Herbert didn’t have enough time to go home and make it to Hannah’s on time, so he headed straight for Soho. It should have been a quick hop east on the Central Line, but the fog was causing havoc. Herbert jumped train after spending ten minutes stationary at Oxford Circus with no word as to what was happening, and resolved to walk the rest of the way, but he got his bearings wrong on leaving the station, and before he knew it he was at Piccadilly Circus.
Piccadilly was lined with girls too young and pretty to be tarts, but tarts they were, their mothers lying in wait beneath darkened porches behind. Swarthy men glided from girl to girl with more menace than charm; the foot soldiers of the Messina brothers, Maltesers who ruled the West End prostitution racket with razors.
The fog was making even London’s most colorful areas seem monochrome. Light from the vast neon billboards of Piccadilly Circus groped weakly through the gloom, embers from a blazing riot of brand names: Guinness, Bovril, Vortix Vermouth, Everready, Swallow Raincoats.
Beneath the lights flashing baleful welcomes to the lonely and bored, rent boys negotiated prices with men in curbside cars, engines still ru
nning and exhausts thickening the fog yet further. One young man clambered into a Paramount 10 Roadster; another shook his head and walked away from a Citroen Light 15.
There was a police phone box on the Circus itself; a large blue kiosk topped by an electric light, which in this particular instance was flashing to indicate that the officers on patrol should make contact with their station.
Herbert opened the door and stepped inside. The interior was as spartan as he had expected: a stool, a table with a telephone, a brush, and a duster, and an electric fire which looked far too small and inadequate ever to require the services of the extinguisher beside it.
The telephone was linked directly to the local sub-divisional police station; in this case, the one at Savile Row. Herbert picked up the receiver, waited until the connection was made, identified himself, and asked to be transferred to New Scotland Yard, Murder Squad.
“Murder Squad.” It was Veal’s voice.
“Veal, it’s Smith.”
“Hello! I hear you’re the sunshine boy.” There was no trace of sarcasm in Veal’s voice, as there would have been in some of the others’. Veal was the most sanguine and cheery of all Herbert’s colleagues, the one best at putting people at their ease and, not coincidentally, the one who could always be relied on to winkle information out of a suspect.
“For the moment,” Herbert said.
“Enjoy it while it lasts. What have you got?”
Herbert recounted the salient points of his conversation with Kazantsev.
“Tyce will want to know why you didn’t arrest him,” Veal said, when Herbert had finished.
“It’s lucky Tulloch’s not in charge, then. For attacking two police officers, he’d want him hung, drawn, and quartered.”
Veal chuckled laconically. “And the rest.”
“I didn’t arrest him because I’ll get more out of him this way.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m never sure. But that’s what I believe, yes.”
“Then that’s what I’ll tell Tyce.”
“Thanks.”
Herbert hung up, stepped out of the police box, spent a few seconds ensuring that he had orientated himself correctly this time, and then set off down Shaftesbury Avenue.
Frith Street loomed at him from the gloom, a left turn into another bank of gray. Number 14 had doorbells but no intercom. Herbert rang three times before he heard from inside the sounds of feet descending the stairs.
“Herbert?” Hannah asked from behind the door.
“Yes.”
She fumbled with locks and latches, and opened the door.
“You found it,” she said, smiling a searchlight-bright display of teeth and presenting her cheek for a kiss. “Come in.”
Hannah lived on the top floor, in a small flat made smaller by the number of people there. Herbert counted at least ten, all young, mostly male, and all conversing in a strange, slightly guttural language that he was unable to place but which he fancied came from Eastern Europe—a conjecture reinforced by their Slavic features, and of course by Hannah’s own accent, too.
There were questioning cries in the guttural language. Hannah replied in the same tongue, presumably explaining who Herbert was, for when she had finished the others turned and smiled their welcome at him.
The air in the flat was as thick as the fog outside, a blend of cigarette smoke and rich smells from the kitchen. Herbert felt a curious mixture of self-consciousness and relief; the former because he was so obviously the outsider in this group, and the latter because at least now he wouldn’t be left alone with Hannah, groping for conversation.
“It’s Shabbat,” Hannah said.
“You’re Jewish?”
“No, I just want to party on a Friday night.” She laughed, but without cruelty, and the sarcasm in her voice was instantly diffused. “Of course I’m Jewish. You never meet a Jew before?”
“Of course I have.” Herbert did not like to say where.
“Well, then. Now it’s Shabbat. Oh!” Hannah opened a drawer, brought out two candles, set them in candlesticks already on the table, and lit them. For a moment, Herbert was surprised by her dexterity, and then realized that perhaps it was not so difficult on home turf; he could probably have found most things in his flat blindfolded, too.
Herbert opened his mouth to inquire about the candles, and Hannah answered his unasked question. “For the start of Shabbat. Sunset, so I should have done it hours ago. You light them only when you can see three star in the sky, but people say the fog is bad, so we might have one week without Shabbat because we cannot see three star. For me, I never see three star. Or two star, or one star.” She laughed again, quite the happiest person he had met all day.
“You joke about being blind?” Herbert said.
Hannah looked at him as though he were the stupidest man on earth. “Of course. I joke, or I go mad. Being blind is better than being mad, no?”
Herbert thought back to the grim resolve that Hannah had shown in the Long Water that morning—that morning, was that all it was? It seemed they’d known each other much longer—and realized that her jokes about blindness were a veneer, genuine but thin, plastered over the deep vein of cripple’s anger within. She might laugh about her sightlessness to stop herself going mad, but laughter did not equal resignation. On the contrary, she channeled her rage, fueling the determination of her independence.
“You have a nice day?” she asked, lengthening the indefinite article slightly, so that it sounded more like aw.
“Oh, you know. Got chased round Highgate by three guys. Hid in a cemetery. Had a fight with a Russian. The usual things you do on your birthday.”
It had slipped out, as though made word against his will. He hadn’t meant to tell her.
“Is your birthday?”
“Yes.”
“How many years?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Thirty-five is good age. Enough experience, enough energy.”
Herbert doubted both, sometimes.
He expected her to ask whether he had nothing better to do than dine with a stranger on his birthday, but instead she said simply, “All this, you do for the dead man, yes?”
“Yes.”
Hannah put her hands on the back of a chair and sat gracefully.
“What language are you speaking with those men?” Herbert asked, also sitting—though, he could not help feeling, with slightly less poise than she had exhibited.
“Hungarian.”
A plate of food appeared in front of him, smelling more delicious than anything he could remember eating. “You’re from Hungary?”
“Yes.”
“Your English is very good.”
“You lie, but thank you.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“My English is OK. I understand you, you understand me. I listen to language more than others perhaps, than people with sight. I hear vocabulary, grammar, accents. But I speak Hungarian translated to English, not English. You understand?”
Herbert nodded, a motion which for Hannah his silence gave away.
“Imagine me like radio,” she laughed. “On radio, you can’t see. So is no help, to nod or shake head.”
“Yes,” Herbert said, knowing, or at least hoping, that Hannah was laughing with him rather than at him. “I understand.”
Someone put a plate in front of her. Without a trace of self-consciousness, Hannah bent her face to the table and sniffed around the entire circumference, seeing—discovering, more accurately—what was where. Whoever had served her knew her needs, Herbert saw; the food was arranged as though on a clock face.
He looked at his own plate. There were mushroom pancakes, liver with figs, wild rice and mashed potatoes, apricot chicken, and cabbage nut salad. To procure all this, with rationing still in force, Hannah, or her fellow Hungarians, must have been even more resourceful than he had thought.
“Let’s eat,” Hannah said. “For Shabbat dinner, everything can wait.”
Not everyone approved, of course. No boarding-house seemed complete without a sign on the door proclaiming: No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.
Herbert wondered how many of Hannah’s friends he had watched, questioned, or otherwise checked up on during his years in Five. The service as a whole had interviewed almost a quarter of a million Eastern European refugees in the past couple of years, of which three thousand were earmarked for immediate internment should there be war with the Soviet Union.
Perhaps some of them were working with MI6, too. It was an open secret in the intelligence community that Six were spiriting Hungarian dissidents across the border into the British zone of Austria, where they were giving them resistance training in preparation for a future uprising against the Soviet occupation.
“You ever have matzo?” Hannah asked.
“Never.”
“Here.” She handed Herbert a piece of what looked like rough biscuit. “The first time I ever have it, a rabbi on a park bench give it to me. You know what I ask him? ‘Who write this rubbish?’”
She laughed again, loud and infectious. If Herbert could have bottled even a fraction of her joie de vivre, he felt, he could have cured half the capital’s ailments in a stroke.
It took him a moment to get the joke, and then he was laughing with her.
He wondered, too, whether this type of joke against her blindness was, in addition to what he had noticed before, some sort of defense mechanism against unwanted sympathy, or perhaps Hannah’s way of testing people out and seeing what they were made of when it came to sensibilities and sensitivities.
Herbert ate fast, ravenous for such amazing food and unable to follow the conversation which babbled around him. Hannah, in contrast, lingered over each mouthful, smelling it on her fork, holding it in her mouth, chewing copiously before swallowing.
“Hannah Mortimer isn’t a very Jewish name,” Herbert said when she had finished.
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