Document Z

by Andrew Croome

  Bialoguski refilled his glass, doing his best to feign surprise.

  Petrov went on. ‘And who do they think they are fooling? Conditions in the Soviet Union—the foreign diplomats see things for themselves. Why don’t we just live and let live? Open our frontier to all comers!’ He breathed heavily, shook the ice in his glass and snarled. ‘Doosia has been sacked,’ he said. ‘Gener-alov doesn’t have the authority but that doesn’t stop the prick. It’s no good. You try to be honest and good and not put people in, but that is exactly the display of weakness that makes you the target. We should kill ourselves and save them the trouble. Doosia is making an attempt to fight back, but they want blood. You can’t argue truth to power. There is no case. This is how we live. It’s madness. We can’t beat the determination of this pack of bastards. They have long since forgotten what they even had against us.’

  ‘You know what you’re talking about,’ Bialoguski said. ‘You know more than I.’

  Petrov looked at him. ‘I’ve been recalled. They want me to book air tickets home immediately. I need to see Beckett about my eyes. Can you book me in with him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I tell you. Better to work in Australia on the roads than to live daily in fear for your life.’

  ‘A cigarette?’

  ‘I’m jealous, Doctor. You go wherever you want. Do whatever you like.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You must think I am an atrocious drunk.’

  ‘I don’t know the pressure you are under.’

  ‘You’re a friend, Doctor. We honest types have the worst of it.’

  Bialoguski struck a match. ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked. ‘You would rather work on the roads?’

  Petrov nodded, not meeting his eye, looking at the Poynters’ floor.

  Bialoguski told him the roads were for dimwits. ‘There are better opportunities,’ he said. ‘As it happens I’m scouting at the moment for myself. Business investments. I’ve had some Ampol exploration shares that have come good. Eight or nine hundred pounds—more if I hold on. I might buy a share in the Adria. No joke. There’s also a farm I’m looking into. A chicken operation that’s on the market at a good price.’

  ‘A chicken farm?’

  ‘That’s right. I don’t know anything about farming, not like you, Vladimir, but we could partner. Much better than the roads.’

  He had the man’s attention now.

  ‘Investments?’ said the diplomat. ‘You’ve never mentioned this.’

  ‘I’ve only just found out about the shares. Listen. Someone in your position, Vladimir . . . with a plan and the right contacts . . . I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to hang around.’

  ‘Hang around.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘If it’s so bad, bugger them.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If it’s so bad.’

  ‘It might take some organising.’

  ‘You could show them. Tell the truth. Explain how it is first-hand.’

  ‘That would really put them in it.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We’d need to be careful.’

  ‘Tight-lipped, you mean?’

  ‘That would be it. Getting the process right.’

  ‘The process, exactly. I could be your agent, Vladimir. If you trust me. In truth, I don’t know much about your country. I went through Moscow once. I don’t tell people that fact but I’ll tell it to you. It was 1941 and it was snowing. Maybe it is unfair to judge, but my impression of that city was huge buildings looming over a populace that couldn’t see them, such was each individual’s concentration on their own affairs. That was what it was. Grand architecture and grey-coated ghosts. Two cities, completely separate. One city for the rulers and the other for the starving hordes. Nothing in between.’

  The Russian was filling his glass again. ‘I am in between,’ he said. ‘That’s who’s in between. Doosia and I are the Soviet middle class.’ He laughed.

  Bialoguski thought they were getting somewhere. How hard to push it?

  ‘With the right contacts,’ the doctor said.

  ‘They’d shoot me. The Russians. Quick as look.’

  ‘You could just disappear.’

  ‘That’s right. Disappear.’

  ‘Something to be arranged.’

  ‘They’d kill me. Not give it a second thought.’

  ‘You’d be gone. We can talk to the people who can turn you into a ghost.’

  Petrov gave a nervous laugh.

  ‘What about Evdokia?’ Bialoguski asked.

  The diplomat looked at him. ‘This might be the problem,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Convincing her. She suffers here. I have no family in Moscow, you see.’

  ‘I could talk to her.’

  ‘No. I will do it. It would have to be a delicate thing.’

  ‘The farm.’

  ‘Yes, the chicken farm. That would be a life!’

  ‘That’s right. You wouldn’t have to put much down. Managing and part-owning. Maybe you buy me out down the line.’

  ‘These people? These contacts?’

  ‘I think I know how to get in touch. It might be a process. Perhaps we should start now so that the whole thing is not dramatic.’

  Petrov pushed his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘You don’t know about Russia, Michael.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m a theoretical socialist so in reality I have no idea.’

  ‘The horrors that happen.’

  ‘I’m prepared to believe whatever you say.’

  ‘You would be a good bridge. With these government people.’

  ‘I could negotiate. I think they would see me as a realistic person. A Macquarie Street doctor. I could see what they are prepared to put on the table. Not even use your name.’

  ‘A chicken farm.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  The Russian stood up with a sudden jerk, headed for the bathroom. Bialoguski sat for a moment, thinking. It took him some time to realise that Petrov’s small suitcase was sitting on the floor. He eyed it. He thought about its contents—what Vladimir might secret in there that he couldn’t fit inside his wallet. Letting the impulse carry him, Bialoguski hurriedly ripped some phenobarbital from his medicine chest. He crushed a tablet and sprinkled its powder into the Russian’s drink.

  ‘Let’s eat here tonight,’ he told Petrov when the man returned. ‘I’ll drive over to the Adria. Get us something.’

  Petrov swilled the liquid in his glass. ‘Alright,’ he said, finishing it in a gulp. ‘But afterwards, I have to go.’

  ‘Go? Where to?’

  ‘I need to be back in Canberra. Things keep happening while I’m not there.’

  ‘I think you should stay, Vladimir.’

  ‘I’ll have dinner with you but I have to go. I need to get out of this city.’

  13

  Darkness, loud and punched out. The highway everywhere like an echo. Petrov slowly came to realise that he was in it. On it. No longer inside the car but sitting here on the road, holding his knees, the Skoda in front of him and on fire. Engulfed by flames. Ablaze.

  He felt damp. What time was it? His right arm touched all the parts of his body, searching for blood. There was blood— dark shrieks of it on his clothes.

  Was it someone else’s blood? Had he hit someone on the road?

  The smoke carried the choke of burning oil. He went from sitting to lying flat. He’d crashed, that much was obvious, but he couldn’t remember anything, his body numb from the impact, his feelings about things darkly void.

  How did he get to the hospital? The doctors put him in a room and one of them asked, ‘What hit you?’

  ‘A truck,’ he replied. ‘A truck out of nowhere.’

  He sat on the bed while a nurse attended to his face. She told him there were bits of windshield embedded in his skin.

  He couldn�
��t remember the car going over. Perhaps something had bumped him. Hadn’t he passed a panel van at some point? Or had something mechanical failed in the car?

  This was a way they might think of to end his life! The thought was like a cold nugget and he held it in his hand.

  Doosia came and took him home in the afternoon. She was good to him, his wife. He thought they were at their best together whenever catastrophe or heartbreak struck. Irina’s death. The series of operations Evdokia had endured in Sweden. They might not have the most tranquil of marriages, but he thought they were experts at bonding through crisis.

  She made him an early dinner and cut the chops so he could eat them with a fork in his one good hand. They sat on the back porch. She went to the bathroom and while she was gone he got the Nagant and put it behind the cushion of his chair.

  Kislitsyn came with Vislykh. They stood over him as if he was an invalid. Vislykh asked where the wreck was. The police wanted the embassy to contract a tow truck, but he thought Sanko could use the utility. Petrov looked at him sadly. He told him the car was completely melted. He doubted it still had tyres.

  Kislitsyn accepted a glass of lemonade. He said that Gener-alov was asking about the Skoda’s insurance.

  ‘The papers are in my desk,’ said Petrov. He realised almost immediately that he might not have renewed the policy for 1953.

  Later, Doosia ran a bath. The water felt good against his bruises, whole muscles in his legs the colour of a plum. He drifted, waking with a stiff neck to add to his physical complaints.

  The police couldn’t charge him with anything. He was a diplomat. He could be as rude and evasive as he liked. He told them he’d been fishing. They seemed fixated on the question of what he’d really been doing on that particular stretch of road.

  He telephoned the Mutual Life and Citizens Insurance Company. He told them of the accident and they checked the policy. Expired, they said. But he’d sent a cheque! June or maybe July. They hadn’t received it, they said. Which bank and what cheque number? Was he sure? The file showed that they’d sent him two reminders.

  He walked stiffly from his upstairs office to the downstairs toilet. What was a two-year-old Skoda worth? He lit a cigarette and sat. What fresh havoc would Generalov be permitted to unleash?

  Howley looked at the photos of the crash. The cauterised ruins of a Skoda on a road siding. He read the notes of interview with the driver, Third Secretary Vladimir Petrov, Soviet Embassy, Canberra, by W. J. Osborne, senior constable at the scene.

  Subject claims to have been clipped by ‘red truck’; will not divulge origin or destination; states reason for travel as fishing trip; cuts and abrasions, severely bruised buttocks and legs. I have made close inspection and there is no evidence of damage consistent with Skoda having collided with another vehicle.

  Howley rang the senior constable and introduced himself. Osborne said the car had been towed. The scene was empty space now. Not worth the visit.

  ‘Special interest in Petrov?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  He stood at his window to think. Intelligence analysis. Soviet spymaster destroys his Skoda at about sunrise on the Sydney to Canberra road. Assess the security implications and file a report in point form.

  He needed the inside story. The doctor would know by now. He was coming around to the idea that perhaps cutting Bialo-guski loose hadn’t been the brightest plan, when the phone rang, confirming it.

  URGENT

  Telephone message for: Director General, ASIO.

  From: Michael Howley

  Copy to: B2, HQ,

  ASIO RD, NSW

  Bialoguski has informed that Mrs Petrov has got the sack from her job at the embassy and that she and her husband wish to defect. He is willing to assist and bring them to us if we will take him back into his former work, otherwise he will take them to the newspapers.

  14

  ‘There’s some kind of edge,’ Evdokia had said. ‘There’s some kind of invisible edge out there and I think we are going over.’

  She told him about the crash. Told him that, in the aftermath, Petrov was suffering bouts of anxiety, his hands shaking.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Evdokia.’

  ‘You’re his doctor, Michael. Can’t you supply him with something? Medication?’

  ‘I’ll give him a check-up.’

  ‘He wants to visit you,’ she’d complained. ‘One day out of hospital and straightaway he wants to get on a train.’

  Bialoguski was reporting this to Michael Howley, sitting in the Security man’s Austin, parked in a street alongside Centennial Park. ‘Petrov is teetering,’ he said. ‘He’s worried. Paranoid. Given the right circumstances, I can convince him to defect.’

  ‘The right circumstances,’ Howley repeated.

  ‘You have to understand, you’re dealing with a man who’s only known totalitarian rule. He can’t approach you. He can’t know how you’ll react. You’re a security institution so he thinks you’ll probably kill him. That or leave him in place, which he doesn’t want. He won’t be able to stand things as a double. What he really wants is out.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Let me take him to someone. A public figure for whom he has respect. This person will be an intermediary, someone who will vouch for your organisation and whom he can trust to broker a deal.’

  They had just arranged Bialoguski’s claim on his backlog of expenses. It was only fair, Howley had said, when the doctor had continued his work in Security’s absence. It was clever too, Bialoguski knew, giving him a lump sum as an apology without setting a precedent.

  ‘I’ve got him interested in a chicken farm,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A plan for his future. Something that appeals to his underdeveloped Siberian brain.’

  Howley was wearing a jacket that the doctor quite liked, brown, and with a brown tie. The Security man lit a cigarette and said, ‘There are some conditions. Under no circumstances can we be seen to provoke. We can’t push buttons. We need proof he’s coming freely. It’s got to be a political defection.’

  ‘Highly political.’

  ‘I chose freedom, etcetera.’

  ‘Proof can be very complex. Did you ever study mathematics? This will be something you’ll need to consider ahead of time.’

  ‘He tells you things, does he? His intentions?’

  ‘He attempts to mask them but they’re peeking through.’

  ‘Can you record him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to have his innermost thoughts on tape.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The Security officer reached over Bialoguski’s shoulder, retrieved a small satchel from the back seat. ‘This is a device,’ he said.

  ‘A gadget?’

  ‘It engraves soundwaves onto wire spools.’

  Bialoguski put the device in his lap. It was a cream box, six inches by four inches by two inches thick. There were wires, a small microphone and a metal button. There was a small linen bag that looked as if it attached to a belt.

  ‘It works as follows,’ said Howley. ‘Pin the microphone behind a button on the inside of your shirt. These leads run to the microphone. The unit hangs tightly against your right groin. Its range is good. You switch it on and off here, with this button by the microphone.’

  ‘Ingenious.’

  Howley raised a finger. ‘The unit makes a noise, a soft humming sound. For this reason, be careful how you use it. Cars are best. The target won’t hear anything over the engine.’

  ‘I’ll drive him somewhere.’

  ‘Lead him onto the subject. Don’t press too hard but find a way. We need evidence of his sincerity and the voluntary nature of his action.’

  ‘The recorder straps to the groin. Why?’

  ‘You have forty-two minutes of wire. If you’re going to change spools, be sure the recording head is up. Press the new spool onto the spindle until you hear the click.’

  �
��Get his intentions. Etch them onto wire.’

  ‘Don’t bait him. Just lead him there. Most importantly, understand that the government won’t be providing political asylum unless the Petrovs are brought to us. We give out the tickets; not the newspapers, certainly not the Yanks. The Petrovs must come directly to us so we can keep them safe. If bad things happen between their defecting and their reaching us, those who had vouched custody will be held to account.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘There might be a bonus in it,’ Howley suggested slowly. ‘Something in the order of one thousand pounds.’

  Bialoguski went home after their meeting and paced the flat wearing the gadget. He practised walking and standing, casual movements of the type one performed during conversation. He stood in front of the mirror. The gadget was a tool and a mental alertness, an opportunity to better understand one’s physical self. It felt like a book under his balls. It posed questions about who he was, what his voice was like and how his body worked. It gave him beyond-normal powers and it asked him to perform himself.

  After a few hours’ rehearsing, he thought he had its wearing pretty much under control.

  According to the map the chicken farm was twenty or so miles from Sydney, near a place called Castle Hill. Petrov agreed to visit. He wanted a glimpse of things as they might be.

  Bialoguski drove. The day was patchy, clouds blowing across the face of the sun. Bialoguski was looking at him strangely and he realised he was fidgeting, unclasping his seatbelt then clipping it up again.

  ‘Let’s have a beer,’ he told the doctor, opening the two bottles he’d brought for the journey.

  ‘I’ve told these people your name is Peter Karpitch,’ Bialo-guski said. ‘I’ve said you are inspecting the farm’s condition because I am not experienced.’

  The farm was called ‘Dream Acres’. The owners were Eleanor and Max, the doctor’s former wife’s sister and her husband. Bialoguski said that Eleanor had a low opinion of him, but that Max, a Sydney dentist, still repaired his teeth at cost.

  A dirt road led to the farmhouse from the front gates. Bialoguski parked and they got out. Petrov wanted a cigarette straightaway. The country looked good. Every other breath, he dragged its smell through his nostrils.