The Bearpit

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘How the hell could Chernov have been withdrawn without your knowing?’ demanded Kazin.

  ‘Malik withheld notification of authority until Chernov was back. Had him taken directly to Dzerzhinsky Square from the airport.’

  ‘It is a problem,’ conceded Kazin. ‘A serious problem.’

  Panchenko snorted an empty laugh, openly careless of Kazin’s superiority. ‘Serious! You’re damned right it’s serious! It could be disastrous…’ The pause was achingly posed. ‘… Disastrous for both of us…’

  Still not the time for correction, thought Kazin; but then it had not been on the previous occasion, either. As insistent now as he had been then, Kazin said: ‘Tell me everything, from the very beginning: nothing left out.’

  Panchenko did, from the discovery of the recall notice and the coincidence of Chernov’s almost immediate approach, and throughout Kazin listened head slightly bowed but surprisingly – illogically – all the time conscious of the flow of people in the street outside, funnelling white-breathed towards the underground station. Small people with small fears, he thought, almost enviously.

  ‘How could Chernov have told a story so different from yours?’ Kazin said when the security chief finished.

  ‘How could he do otherwise?’ came back Panchenko, as irritated by that remark as he had been by the earlier reflection. ‘It was to avoid any contradiction that we had him posted to Kiev!’

  ‘I never imagined Malik would be this determined,’ said Kazin, reflective again. But why not? Hadn’t the misshapen pig been this determined when he’d returned from Stalingrad, the whey-faced, bemedalled war hero, to discover his wife didn’t love him any more?

  I love you.

  Leave him then.

  I can’t, not like he is now.

  You must.

  I can’t!

  Momentarily Kazin closed his eyes, shutting out the memories. Urgently he said: ‘So what was Chernov’s impression? Why did he think he was being questioned at all?’

  Panchenko replied carefully. He said: ‘Chernov talked of a lot of files and documentation on the desk. And said Malik kept making notes. Chernov felt it was an official inquiry: Malik is reassigning him to Moscow to be available for more questioning.’

  ‘And Malik knows the rest of the squad were drafted away from Moscow?’ demanded Kazin, wanting absolute clarification.

  As he spoke, Kazin shifted, needing movement against the cold, and Panchenko followed him, so that they resumed in the same position as that in which they had earlier been talking. Panchenko said: ‘Chernov was quite explicit about it. Said Malik asked him if he knew of the transfers, which he didn’t of course. And then queried if Chernov had requested his move.’

  ‘Any indication of the others being recalled?’

  ‘No,’ said Panchenko at once. Just as quickly, he said: ‘But then we didn’t know about Chernov until it had happened, did we?’

  ‘You could specifically inquire,’ suggested Kazin.

  And have my name upon an incriminating document, thought Panchenko. He said: ‘What legitimate reason would I have for doing so?’

  Kazin again avoided a direct reply. Instead he said: ‘So Malik has brought back to Moscow a man who’s given an account different from yours. And might possibly interrogate the others. But so what? Every recollection has to vary.’

  ‘Can you take the risk of his probing until he finds the evidence you know is there to be found?’ asked Panchenko.

  So much about this encounter appeared a repetition of the first, thought Kazin, recognizing the qualification. Responding to it and wanting to correct the imbalance in their positions, he said: ‘No, I don’t suppose I can take that risk. I don’t think that either of us can take that risk…’ Now he staged the artificial pause. ‘But my understanding was that the evidence, such as it is, incriminates you?’

  ‘I was following your orders, not Malik’s, in doing what I did that night at Gogolevskiy Boulevard,’ insisted Panchenko.

  ‘I don’t remember anything being written down: any provable documentation,’ said Kazin with ominous mildness.

  For a long time Panchenko stared unspeaking across the narrow space separating them. ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Kazin, with forced patience. ‘I don’t think you do see. Perhaps I was wrong, a few moments ago, in trying to minimize the dangers. Something has to be done, to protect us both. Permanently to protect us both. But before we consider that, let’s consider something else that would be wrong. It would be a very stupid mistake for us to fall out: to start making threats against each other. I think you are dependent upon me and I am dependent upon you. Have I made myself clear?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Panchenko. In the half light the man’s expression seemed something like a smile. ‘What can be done to protect us both? And permanently?’

  Once more Kazin wished there had been an opportunity, an hour at least, for more consideration. He said: ‘Something very permanent.’

  There was no expression resembling a smile upon Panchenko’s face now. His voice cracking with the strain, the man said: ‘You can’t seriously mean that!’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Panchenko. The words still groaned from him.

  ‘We can’t go on, always threatened like this,’ urged Kazin.

  ‘How!’

  ‘An accident.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You did it before.’

  ‘Which is why I don’t think I can do it again.’

  ‘Disastrous,’ said Kazin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your word,’ reminded Kazin. ‘You said the continuing investigation could be disastrous. And it will be.’

  Panchenko shuddered. Weakly he said: ‘I really don’t think I can. Not again! There must be some other way.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ insisted Kazin.

  ‘Mine is always the risk, never yours,’ protested Panchenko.

  ‘You’re trained, I’m not.’

  ‘It can’t be another shooting.’

  ‘I said an accident.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. It has to be soon. Before he has time to dig any deeper.’

  ‘The last time,’ said Panchenko, an insistence of his own.

  ‘There won’t again be the need,’ assured Kazin. And if there were Panchenko would have to obey whatever order he was given because he was not in a position to do anything else. Despite which, once Malik was out of the way, Kazin determined to disassociate himself from Panchenko. Not discard him, of course: appear to remain his advocate, in fact. But to limit their contact and association. Panchenko had been useful this time and doubtless would be again but it would be wrong for the man to imagine any permanent situation. Kazin had not enjoyed having so openly to concede the dependence.

  ‘You know you’re telling me to kill a First Chief Deputy of the KGB, don’t you?’ said Panchenko.

  Kazin shook his head across the tiny pavilion at the security chief, inwardly contemptuous of the man’s almost catatonic demeanour. Most definitely limited contact in future, he thought. He said: ‘I’m telling you how to save yourself from destruction. How to save us both.’

  Panchenko, who had feared the other man might become suspicious at the almost awkward repositioning when he’d shifted in the cold, decided he had been wise to equip himself with the sound equipment and the directional body microphone to record everything that had been said between himself and Kazin. He tried to think if there were anything he had failed to manipulate on to the tape and decided there wasn’t. He said, finally for the benefit of the recording: ‘I obey your orders, Comrade First Chief Deputy.’

  Natalia’s maternal grandmother lived on the outskirts of Mytishchi, in a forever stretching development of identical high-rise after identical high-rise. It was a neglected estate. The elevators were invariably broken and the smell along the therefore necessary stairways, cavernous by design and dark from the further neglect o
f unreplaced bulbs, was of sour damp and even sourer cooking. But it was an unshared apartment and therefore luxurious by Soviet standards and so from the moment of Levin’s defection the old woman and the girl had lived in daily apprehension of eviction. So when the official envelope was delivered both were initially too terrified to open it, staring fearfully at it on the table between them, as if in some way it were contaminated. It was Natalia who moved at last, the bravery of youth coming slightly ahead of the resignation of age, and when she read its contents the girl’s bewilderment deepened.

  ‘I can write,’ she announced simply. ‘The Foreign Ministry are permitting us to exchange letters.’

  ‘Nothing about having to get out?’ demanded the old woman, unimpressed and still suspicious.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she insisted. ‘Retribution is always exacted against the families of traitors.’

  Natalia winced at the word but didn’t challenge it. She said: ‘Being able to write is practically a favour.’

  ‘It is a favour,’ insisted the old woman. ‘That’s what doesn’t make sense.’

  Natalia sat for a long time, paper and pen untouched before her, trying to envision an ordinary sort of letter and then decided that nothing she wrote could be ordinary and that it was ludicrous trying to formulate any normal sort of correspondence. At last, almost impulsively, she snatched up the pen, scribbling hurriedly.

  ‘My Darling Mamma and Papa and Petr,’ she wrote, lower lip trapped between her teeth, ‘I love you so much and thought you loved me and so I cannot understand why you have abandoned me…’

  Inya suggested the United Nations Plaza, because it was the hotel closest to the UN building from which it got its name and because, she said, it epitomized the glamour and glitter of New York. Yuri agreed, really uncaring at the choice. When they settled in the cocktail bar, he decided it was well chosen anyway.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Very glitzy,’ said Yuri. It was a new word he was trying out.

  ‘Very much New York?’

  ‘Very much New York,’ he agreed. She really did have a spectacular body. So why wasn’t he more interested than he was?

  ‘I have a question,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are Russian?’

  ‘You know I am.’

  The woman giggled and said archly: ‘No, it’s ridiculous.’

  Yuri thought it was, too, but was curious at his irritation. This was seduction coquettishness, the familiar pre-mating ritual, and before he’d always accepted its necessity without impatience. So what was different this time? Forcing himself into the expected response he said: ‘Go on: what is it?’

  Inya sniggered again. ‘You know what they say about Russians, at the United Nations?’

  ‘What?’ he asked expectantly.

  ‘That you’re all spies!’

  She put her hand to her mouth, as if shocked by her own outrageousness, and Yuri hoped it was all worthwhile when they finally got to bed. It was, he reflected, still a useful test of sorts: not so many weeks – even days – ago a challenge like this would have tightened him like a spring. Tonight he just smiled back at the woman, quite unworried. He said: ‘Do they?’

  ‘So are you?’

  Was there an aphrodisiac for her in the knowledge? Yuri said: ‘Of course I am. Everyone knows that!’

  ‘Now you’re mocking me!’

  He pointed towards the olive in her drink and said: ‘That’s a bug recording everything we say.’

  ‘You are mocking me!’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ said Yuri. ‘All Russians are spies and we’ve got snow permanently on our boots and we eat children and we can hardly wait to press all those red buttons to launch the missiles at America. The only reason we haven’t fired them already is that we’ve got so many they’d all collide with each other and explode over Minsk.’

  Inya laughed, genuinely enjoying herself, and said: ‘OK, so I apologize. You’re not a spy. I was curious, though, that you seemed to have more freedom than a lot of other Soviets in the building.’

  Yuri experienced a slight stir of unease, wondering at the extent of the talk about him. He said: ‘Can’t you guess the reason?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m so unimportant I’m not worth worrying about.’

  ‘I don’t think you unimportant,’ said Inya heavily, moving on to another part of the ritual.

  ‘I don’t think you are, either,’ said Yuri, another matching response.

  Yuri guessed she expected to go at that moment but although he was impatient with this untouching foreplay he found himself strangely – inexplicably – reluctant to move on to what was the purpose of their being together anyway. Conscious of her surprise he suggested they remain in the bar, which really did epitomize the glamour of New York, like the staggering view of the Manhattan skyline from the River Cafe. Yuri wondered what Caroline Dixon was doing at that moment. And with whom. He forced the conversation and the lightness, making Inya laugh at least, and insisted on a further drink, aware as he did so of her curiosity.

  She lived downtown, so he’d booked at Harvey’s, and as the cab took them there Yuri thought of the last time he’d travelled in this direction and with whom. Throughout the meal Yuri feigned interest in her stories of Scandinavia and United Nations gossip – concentrating momentarily to isolate the hint to pass on to Granov that Smallbone, the head of their section, had homosexual inclinations – and felt another positive reluctance when he could not any longer delay their leaving.

  Inya had a loft on a secluded street near Gramercy Park and so they walked. As they set out Inya slipped her arm through his and Yuri was given another reminder of another time.

  Her room was high, with a view of the river, and decorated and furnished in stark Scandinavian attractiveness, contrasting blacks and whites and light furniture and a lot of space. Yuri was later to realize how hard she tried. She served chilled aquavit and put a soft jazz combo on a player, and when he kissed her – the ritual continuing – she came back at once, actually leading, which until this moment Yuri had always found arousing. Her body was as lithely exciting as he had imagined it would be and her breasts wonderful. She knew and tried every lovemaking trick and technique and throughout it all he remained limp and flaccid. He brought her off, of course, with his hand and tongue but he knew she had expected more, like he had of himself.

  ‘You do not like me?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not attractive?’

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘Drink,’ he lied. ‘Too much to drink.’ Would Caroline be with her three-buttoned advertising executive, he wondered.

  Bowden drove in his battered, muddied car, with Petr beside him and Levin and Galina in the back.

  ‘The grand tour!’ he announced.

  No one made any reply.

  Levin noted the road was numbered 202 and saw signs to places called Woodville and Bantam and Grappaville before they entered an obviously preserved township which Bowden identified as Litchfield. He said it was named after a town in England, but spelled differently, and pointed out the curious verandahs around the tops of some of the colonial-style houses, which he called captain’s walks, and explained they were traditionally to give the wives of sail-masted, whaling seafarers vantage points to watch for the return of their husbands. Appearing to enjoy the role of historical guide, Bowden pointed out the house in North Street once occupied by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, whom he smilingly named as the American chief of intelligence during the war of independence from England. On the way back to the safe house Bowden pointed out the still scarred and in places naked hills, where an infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars had a few years before destroyed huge tracts of Connecticut forests.

  Throughout it all Levin sat forward, intent upon his surroundings and possible landmarks.

&n
bsp; So did Petr and for the same reason, although he was as careful as his father to disguise his interest.

  20

  Finally it had all emerged so easily, reflected Vasili Malik: so stupidly, incriminatingly easy! And now he had them! Panchenko definitely. And Kazin as well. Not so definitely but enough: enough to convict them both. But this time he had to move more carefully than before. He’d failed once by initiating a premature inquiry and he did not intend losing the second opportunity by making the same mistake. And he was being more careful this time. Like establishing his own duplicate records, strictly illegal though it might be, of everything he uncovered, to prevent any later interference or change. And the forensic evidence, or rather lack of it, was unquestionably sufficient to reinvestigate Panchenko’s account of the supposed suicide because if Agayans had killed himself the way Panchenko recounted there would have been extensive powder burns to the head, where the gun had been held close. Which there weren’t. Any more, any longer, than there was still in secure custody the alleged suicide weapon. Which further forensic and ballistic examination had intriguingly discovered, before its disappearance, had fired the same-calibre bullet as the type of weapon officially issued to Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko. One of the first actions when the inquiry was reconvened would be to seize Panchenko’s gun for comparable ballistic assessment against the fatal bullet. And prove, as he could from official records, that Agayans did not have a gun of his own. This time they wouldn’t escape: he had them!

  Near the centre of the city Malik dismissed his driver, as he habitually did every night, to walk and to think on the final half mile home but again habitually he did not set out at once in the direction of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Instead he turned towards Red Square, striding in his uneven gait in head-bent thought, oblivious to the cupolas and the onion domes of St Basil’s or the cloud-reflected scarlet stars blazing from the Kremlin towers.

  Malik doubted the contradictions of the rest of the squad would be as telling that those which Chernov had already disclosed. It would be a week, possibly longer, before they arrived in Moscow. And take perhaps a fortnight after that to cross-reference the interviews for further disparities. Frustrating but necessary, he decided, aware that he had reached Novaya. This time, once and for all, he was going to rid himself of Victor Kazin. After so long, he thought. And breaking the promise to Olga, who’d begged and pleaded in those last, pain-racked days for him once again to become friends with the man. An impossible promise, he thought; one she should not have sought. Malik stared around, recognizing the Ulitza Oktyabrya and aware he’d practically completed the square.