She had told me so much but not the secrets I wanted to know. Had she taken off her clothes and swum naked in the sea? Had he watched her in the half-light, water falling off her soft brown skin like diamonds? Had he reached for her hand in the cold of the night and had she let him into her bed because she felt sorry for him? Whatever Tanya said the questions remained, the ghosts of an imagined past haunting me, destroying the present and my happiness. My obsession was forcing me to make an enemy of the woman I loved.
*
The telephone rang.
‘May I speak to Mr Stevens?’ It was a woman’s voice, hesitant and deeply accented.
‘Speaking.’
‘I am Ruth Marchenko. You are Goffrey’s son?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have found you. Good.’ It sounded as if she was reading from a badly written script. ‘I would like to arrange a meeting with you.’
‘With my father.’
‘No, first I wish to see you, please.’
‘When do you suggest?’
‘I have not much time. This morning?’
‘Very well. Where?’
She gave me an address. ‘There is a garden opposite. Please meet me there in half an hour.’
‘How will I recognise you?’
She laughed at that. ‘I have grey hair,’ she said. ‘I am small and I am Russian.’
She was right. I recognized her at once. She was a small woman, her long grey hair drawn back from her face in a bun. She wore glasses and a shapeless cotton dress.
‘There is a bench,’ she said. ‘Let us sit and talk for a moment.’ She looked nervously around her.
‘Were you followed?’ I asked.
‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘They will want to make sure I speak to you.’
She tried to make light of it but I could see in her expression that she was afraid.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I asked myself the question you asked me. How will I know you are Geoffrey’s son? But there is no question, is there? You look so like him.’
Her skin was fair and unlined and she had dazzling blue eyes. There was a kind of simplicity in her expression, a lack of guile, that I took to instantly. She was not a beautiful woman. But there was something about her, a vigour that was enchanting. I wondered what my father had thought of her all those years ago, whether he too had felt the power of her attraction.
‘Has your father arrived in Helsinki?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have arranged to meet. Perhaps he has told you that.’
‘Yes,’ I lied. There was no point in telling her that my father didn’t even know of my presence in Helsinki.
‘This is the address.’ She took a piece of paper from her handbag. ‘Please ask him to be there tonight.’
That was twenty-four hours sooner than Monty had anticipated. I had very little time in which to change my father’s mind and at that moment I had no idea where he was.
‘What time?’
‘Nine o’clock.’ She stood up. ‘Thank you.’
‘I have some questions,’ I said.
‘I can say nothing.’ Once more I saw the fear in her eyes and the furtive look over my shoulder. ‘You must know that.’
‘Why do you want to meet my father?’
‘Please. I cannot stay.’
She tried to walk away but I held her by the wrist.
‘Five minutes,’ I said. ‘That’s all the time I need.’
‘I cannot say anything in five minutes.’
‘Then answer my question.’
She stared at me. ‘If you are here to stop him seeing me, then you must break the promises you have made. Your father will come to no harm. I promise that. But I must see him. I cannot tell you why but we must meet. You must let that happen.’
‘Will you be alone tonight?’ She had started to walk away. ‘Will there be others with you when you meet my father?’
‘In our country,’ she said quietly, standing close to me, ‘we are never alone. But we are used to that. Tell your father not to be afraid. He will come to no harm. I give you my promise. But please, bring him to me tonight. I am sorry. I have no more time now. You look so like Geoffrey. I could never have mistaken you for someone else.’
*
Through binoculars, I watched the main steps leading up to the glass doors of the science labs. For an hour or more there had been no movement, except for a woman carrying a bowl of flowers down to a waiting delivery van. Now there was a flurry of activity as the doors burst open and the delegates emerged from the lecture hall and began to disperse for the day. After twenty minutes I caught sight of my father. He lingered on the top steps for a time, talking and laughing, then linked arms with an elderly white-haired man and together they walked down the steps to the street. I saw him stop, take out a pocketbook, write something in it, nod to his acquaintance, shake hands and set off towards the centre of Helsinki.
I caught up with him within a couple of minutes.
‘Father.’
‘Good God! What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been speaking to a friend of yours. Someone from your past who’s looking forward to seeing you. Ruth Marchenko.’
‘How do you know about her?’ He looked shocked.
‘Monty Lybrand gave me an introduction.’
‘Are you working for Monty now?’
I could have been talking to a stranger. My father had not shaken my hand or greeted me in any way. He looked as if he had been trapped and was frantically searching for a means of escape.
This was a situation beyond his experience and he had no idea how to cope with it. I felt a moment’s sympathy for him. I must have been the last person he was expecting to meet in Helsinki.
‘We can’t stand here in the street,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we find somewhere where we can have a drink.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Ruth says your meeting’s fixed for nine tonight. She’s given me the address.’
‘Let’s get a drink.’
I led my father silently through the crowds to the Esplanadie. We sat at a table in the open air and drank beer. In the bandstand naval musicians from one of the visiting Soviet warships were playing Russian folk songs. A young sailor with a wonderfully deep voice was singing of disappointed love. At the front of the audience two young girls held flowers and gazed up at the singer. It was early evening and the heat of the afternoon had not yet dispersed. My father removed his jacket and loosened his tie. There were beads of sweat on his brow.
‘What does Monty know about Marchenko?’
There was an anger in his voice which told me he’d been shaken not just by my presence but by Monty’s involvement in all this.
‘He said your reason for coming to Helsinki was to meet her.’
‘How does he know that?’
‘He’s paid to know things people don’t want him to know. He doesn’t tell me where he gets his information from.’
‘Has he sent you to spy on me?’ he asked bitterly.
‘I’m here to help you.’
‘I don’t need help. Yours or anyone else’s. God knows what you’re doing here but I wish you weren’t.’
All his years of enmity towards me, of disappointed hopes, of breakdowns and false starts in our relationship were brought together in that single sentence. He told me what both of us had known for so long but never dared say to each other. I was not the son he wanted, nor he the father I needed; he did not know me nor I him. We were strangers to each other and would most likely remain so. It was a frightening admission of the truth that we had always avoided. The summer air cooled suddenly around me and I shivered.
There was a burst of clapping as the Russian sailor ended his song. He bowed shyly to his audience. The two girls ran forward and gave him their flowers, kissing him as he bent down to take them. The young sailor looked embarrassed and uncertain, the colour in his cheeks rose and he hurried off the dais. There was laughter and more clapping, and calls for him to return to sing again
. The sounds of people around us enjoying themselves defused the awful moment.
How our lives are balanced on chance. If the song had not ended when it did, what might we have said or done that we regretted later? We had confronted each other for a moment but we had drawn back from open hostility. We remained trapped, as we always had been, in a long cold war.
‘Tell me about Marchenko,’ I said.
‘Why?’
I chose to ignore the aggression in his voice as he struggled to build his defence.
‘Why are you meeting her here?’
‘She said she was going to be at this conference and suggested we meet.’ Then, as an afterthought: ‘We haven’t seen each other for years.’
‘What’s the meeting about?’
‘You can tell Monty it’s a reunion. A meeting of old friends. Nothing more sinister than that.’
I went to get him another drink. When I returned he said, ‘I met Ruth Marchenko years ago, in the Netherlands. We were working in the same field. We corresponded a bit over the years, then the war came and I heard nothing more from her. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, she got in touch again.’
‘You can’t believe Marchenko made contact out of the goodness of her heart,’ I said, trying to keep my temper. ‘Nor is she here on her own. You may not be able to see her puppetmasters but they follow her wherever she goes. I don’t know of anyone who’d accept this meeting as simply a reunion between old friends.’
Except you, was the implication. I wondered if he could hear what I hadn’t said.
‘Ruth would never get involved with people like that.’
‘How can you be sure? She may have no choice.’
‘I know the woman, you don’t.’ He was trying to reassert himself, to regain his traditional ascendancy over me.
‘The Soviets live by different rules, Father.’
‘The differences are much exaggerated.’
‘Ask her to describe the compromises she has to make to survive,’ I said, my anger slipping out of control. ‘How much of her life she keeps secret, even from those closest to her. Get her to tell you the price of dissent and whether she has ever paid it. If you live in the Soviet Union, you’re part of the Soviet system. That’s unavoidable.’
He turned away. I didn’t know if I had struck home or if he was irritated with my response and was rejecting my script. Behind us, the band was now playing Russian martial music. The crowd was dispersing, showing its feelings by moving on, an act neither of protest nor of acceptance, but a quiet, dignified assertion of freedom. I admired the subtle, unhurried way they defined their independence against their overbearing neighbour.
‘Monty and his people don’t want you to meet Marchenko.’
‘You’re their errand boy, are you?’ I was too angry to say anything. ‘It’s none of their damn business what I do.’ He had raised his voice and the people at the next table stopped talking and looked at us.
‘That’s why they asked me to make it mine.’
‘It’s none of your business either.’ He was hurling his anger at me but it was falling short of its target.
‘You could be walking into a trap. You could be in danger.’
‘I’m going to see a scientific colleague I haven’t spoken to for years. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I trust Marchenko.’
‘You may be wrong to do so.’
‘You’ve no grounds for saying that.’
‘Marchenko works on the Soviet nuclear programme. You work on the British programme. You meet secretly in Helsinki. Can’t you see what could be made of that?’
‘I’m not interested in what other people think.’ There it was again, the unconquerable superiority of the academic, his hubris against my experience, the eternal, unwinnable contest. ‘Anyway,’ he added slyly. ‘No one knows about our meeting.’
I’d lost patience. I couldn’t believe in his naivety. If this was his defence, it was best to destroy it at once.
‘Everyone knows about it. The British. The Russians. The Finns, probably. You’ve been under surveillance for weeks, Father. They’ve read your letters, listened to your telephone calls, they can tell you what you’ve done every hour of every day better than you can, I expect. There isn’t a moment when someone isn’t watching you.’
The enormity of what I had said stifled his reply. He sat there gazing at me in incredulous silence.
‘Monty and his lot think you’re giving nuclear secrets to the Russians and they’re looking for evidence to trap you. If you meet Marchenko, they’ll have it.’
Silence still. I pressed home my advantage.
‘The Soviets are no different. A leading British nuclear scientist, here in Helsinki – home territory for them – takes Marchenko’s bait and walks straight into their embrace. What a coup. They won’t believe their luck. They’ll whisk you out of Finland, parade you in front of the world’s press in Moscow and dress up their kidnap as a defection from the West.’
I’d gone on too long. I’d given my father a chance to find a defence.
‘Can you find it in your heart to believe that sometimes the worst won’t happen, that there is some scrap of decency left in the world? Or has your association with Monty and these appalling people led you to think badly of everyone?’
‘I know the Russians, Father. I’ve lived alongside them for too long not to know what they’re capable of. You can’t judge them as you’d judge me because they don’t recognize the same rules. You may not like that but it’s true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’
‘Helsinki is not Berlin.’
‘Where the Soviets go, Berlin and all its madness follows.’
‘I don’t accept that.’
‘This is a dangerous place, Father, and you’re on your own here. You’ve got no friends and maybe a lot of enemies. Listen to me and get out before it’s too late.’
‘You make it sound as if war had already been declared.’
‘You’re caught up in a game with very high stakes. You and I don’t matter, we’re victims of their paranoia. When you’re up against people without scruples, the innocent always suffer. I don’t want to see that happen to you.’
He put his head in his hands. I knew that gesture. It was not capitulation, it was a sign of uncertainty. I kept going.
‘Don’t see Marchenko,’ I said. ‘Don’t go anywhere near her. Leave her alone. Go home now, before it’s too late.’
‘If she’s in trouble, I’ve got to help her.’
‘Who says she’s in trouble?’
‘She does.’
‘How do you know she’s telling the truth?’
‘Why would she do otherwise?’
‘She may be working against you.’
‘I won’t have it, Danny. She’d never do that.’
‘How long since you saw her last? Fifteen years? The world has changed since then. Maybe she has too, maybe she’s a different woman now. Maybe she’s been trapped by the Soviets. Have you thought of that? Maybe she’s doing this against her will.’
‘I refuse to believe anything like that of her.’ It was not stubbornness I was up against. The reality of Marchenko’s life in Soviet Russia lay beyond his imaginative reach. My father defended Marchenko’s innocence and good faith because that is how he knew her to be. ‘I’m seeing her because I agreed I would. I won’t go back on my word.’
I knew then that no argument I could put up would shift him from his position. The meeting would go ahead as planned. I had lost, and so had Monty. I prayed my father wouldn’t be a loser too.
‘I can’t let you go there by yourself.’
‘You’re not coming with me.’ I was surprised by the speed and vehemence of his reply. ‘I’m seeing her alone.’
‘I’ll take you there and I’ll wait for you.’
‘Ring this number.’ He was writing on one of the mats our beer mugs had been standing on. ‘Talk to Jamie Laurentzen. He�
��ll remember you. Tell your story to him. See if he believes you.’
It was a glimmer of hope. I took the beer mat from him gratefully.
*
If Laurentzen was surprised at my presence in Helsinki he certainly didn’t show it. The car-mad Finn I saw now was little different from the man I remembered: tall, gaunt, eyes set deep in his head, a cropped beard, always with a pipe in his mouth. Only his colouring had changed. The hair cut close to his scalp was now white, his beard more white than grey and his skin a darker brown than I had known it.
‘Do you remember my MG, Danny? Now that was a car. I sold it when I left Cambridge. That was the last time I cried.’
I remembered exhilarating afternoons roaring round the byways of the Fens and narrow Cambridge streets, scaring the locals out of their wits. I was too young then to be frightened.
Laurentzen now had a white, pre-war Mercedes convertible and the top was down. He proudly explained its finer points to me, opening the bonnet to show me the polished cylinders and making me listen to the engine.
‘Is that not the sound of pleasure, Danny?’
I asked him if he knew that my father was in Helsinki.
‘His name was a late addition to the list of delegates to our conference. I was pleased to see it.’
‘He hasn’t got in touch?’
‘He is much in demand. I am sure he will make contact when he has a moment.’
Laurentzen smiled sadly, as if his experience of human nature gave him little to hope for. His disappointment was deep. I told him about my father’s planned meeting with Marchenko.
‘Do you have the address where they are to meet?’ I gave it to him. He shook his head. ‘This is the home of a known communist sympathizer. Quite unsuitable. I think we should surprise our Soviet friends with a small change of plan, don’t you?’
He roared with laughter at that, stuck a huge pipe in his mouth and drove off with a squeal.
‘What acceleration,’ he shouted above the roar of the engine. ‘Are you impressed?’
*
‘Is she with you, Jamie?’ my father asked, his voice full of anxiety. These were the first words these two men, once close friends and collaborators, had spoken to each other in ten years.
Making Enemies Page 36