Document Z

by Andrew Croome

  The woman said, ‘They want to know whether you’d like to talk at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Elizabeth poured her a juice and told her about the questions that had come by wire overnight. Cryptic lists from the British and the Americans, from the French and the Swedes and other places. Names—there were a number of countries who wanted to know about missing men, missing families of men and missing activists. A lot of people seemed to have vanished recently in Egypt. There were questions of history also, about massacres and war crimes, Katyn Forest, various prison camps.

  ‘I think you will be asked everything,’ said Elizabeth. ‘The political mysteries of our times.’

  Evdokia buttered more toast.

  ‘Of course, the CIA and MI5 have asked to interview you personally,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘This will be your choice, down the road.’

  Evdokia had the feeling there was something she wasn’t being told. They were holding something back. A part of the process not yet named, a secret they thought she might resent.

  ‘My husband has Jack,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yes. A policeman in Canberra collected him from your house. He was tied at the back there. He had a bucket of water and seemed alright. They’ve given him to us to look after. Mr Howley thinks he’s too famous, for the moment, to come here.’

  Evdokia turned her ear to the lounge room. Volodya’s voice seemed happy and cooperative. She was jealous suddenly.

  ‘No news yet of your family,’ Elizabeth said.

  Outside, the morning sky was grey light, overcast, the noise of bird life in the air. They sat with cups of tea on the balcony and waited. When eleven o’clock came, Howley invited her downstairs. He gave her pencil and paper and asked for drawings of the control structure of the MVD.

  ‘Write in Russian,’ he said. ‘Saburov can translate it.’

  She put herself at the bottom and sketched up and across. The end product was a mess, departments and sections linked in wayward trees. It was supposed to look mechanical, Moscow’s secret apparatus, highly structured and well defined.

  ‘We’ll draft a diagram,’ said Howley. ‘You can correct it and we’ll add to it over time.’

  She described her history in intelligence. Her recruitment and beginnings in the Anglo and Asian sections, her learning of Japanese.

  He wanted to know about Rupert Lockwood: Voron. She described the encounter in general terms: the typewritten documents, the pleasantries exchanged. Howley wanted details. What pages or passages did she see him type? What brand of caviar was it that he received? She knew the specifics weren’t meant to test her. Howley was already believing everything she said.

  ‘What are these facts for?’ she asked. ‘You are going to arrest him and make charges?’

  Howley looked at her. ‘In the end that will be up to the government,’ he replied. ‘Our job here is simply to get the evidence and the information straight.’

  Is this it, she thought. Are they going to ask me to testify in open court?

  ‘It’s possible,’ Howley admitted when she pressed. ‘But the more you can remember, perhaps the less you will be needed. Whatever facts you provide, we may be able to confirm them in other ways.’

  Erase myself, she thought. Give them everything and so avoid appearing in public—the worst of fates, further endangering everyone I know.

  They spoke for five hours, not stopping for lunch and finish-ing only when Howley thought they should. By the session’s end, she had given up more details of Russian code systems than she thought she knew. Howley seemed pleased. An hour later, under the pretence that the two events weren’t related, he gave her a Grace Bros catalogue.

  ‘We’re making arrangements to get you a wardrobe,’ he told her. ‘The store has agreed to see you after hours any time this week.’

  She flicked through the pages. The world seemed suddenly very small.

  24

  Time now to reinvent the self. He moved out of Cliveden, renting a small one-bedroom flat in Paddington with white walls. He sold his Holden and, using the bounty ASIO had paid on Petrov’s defection, bought a Ford Custom Sedan, an American car with ivory duco.

  To furnish the flat, he purchased a second-hand armchair. He bought a wooden school desk, a typewriter, a lamp and an ashtray and he set himself up in the middle of the lounge. He got his notebooks, everything he’d recorded as a secret agent, and placed them in a neat pile. He poured a glass of whisky, sat his loaded gun on the desk, stared at the keys in front of him. Time to write the book. My Life Drawing Soviet Defectors Over the Line. It would be a composition of careful construction, not unlike his music, he thought. To begin, he needed a tone, a pitch, a theme inside the words. He crafted a sentence in his mind: a description, as it happened, of his own appearance.

  He saw Petrov again. They met at a safe house in the Cahors building under Leo Carter’s supervision. The Russian was noticeably fatter. He was sweaty and uncommunicative. They drank beer and didn’t say much. The Petrov in Bialo-guski’s book became more rotund, more incapable.

  He gave his first two chapters to Security, typing the drafts using carbon paper. He’d had to agree to it being vetted. It didn’t worry him. His plan was to get Security’s approval, insert his condemnations of their various petty behaviours afterwards as a surprise assault.

  Whenever he left the flat, he carried the revolver. He took it shopping. He took it to the races. At the surgery, he kept it in a desk drawer, the first and second chambers empty so it wouldn’t misfire and bullet a patient.

  The Royal Commission began: an inquiry into Soviet espionage in Australia, charged with uncovering means and extent and especially the involvement of any Australians. Judges Owen, Philp and Ligertwood were entitled to pursue this inquiry in whichever way they saw fit. Witnesses would be compelled to appear. Lines of investigation would stem from Petrov’s documents: the letters written to him by his Moscow command.

  There were other documents too. Document H: a slanderous catalogue of the members of the press gallery written by an as yet unnamed citizen for the benefit of Soviet intelligence. Document J: a ‘malicious foulness’ of a typescript written inside the Soviet embassy by another Australian citizen in an act of ‘beastly cowardice’ designed to dodge defamation laws. ‘Document J appears,’ said Mr Windeyer, counsel assisting the commission, ‘to be a farrago of facts, falsities and filth.’

  On 29 May 1954, Labor, under the leadership of Doctor H.V. Evatt, lost the federal election. The popular vote was won, but not the House. Just five weeks after Evdokia’s defection, Robert Menzies returned for a third term. People claimed that it had been the Petrovs’ defection, igniting fears of spies and Reds like a magnesium flare, that had cost Labor dearly.

  Bialoguski was surprised when John Rodgers, director of Australia-Soviet House, rang him at the surgery and wanted to meet. They had lunch at Ling Nam’s, a Chinese restaurant in King Street, and discussed strategies that the Communist Party might use at the commission. Rodgers was certain that, due to his friendship with Petrov, Bialoguski would be called. The doctor pretended to be unsure.

  ‘Petrov was a drinker,’ said Rodgers.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘And a womaniser. A bad one. A shameless, womanising drunk.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘What’s most important is the destruction of this bloke’s credit. This is the biggest battle for the Party since Menzies tried to ban it. Petrov will name names. But we all know what he was like. If the question of his drunkenness comes up, if his unwelcome attentions to women come up . . . We’re just suggesting that you cast doubt by testifying to his habits.’

  ‘Petrov is a traitor,’ said Bialoguski. ‘Of course I want to help in any way I can.’

  The commission hearings in Sydney were swamped by protesters. Some waved placards and a few wore papier-mâché masks. Bialoguski, a hat pulled tightly over his head, watched with subdued
amusement as a huge, drunken incarnation of Menzies walked bellowing up the steps of the High Court to be threatened at its doors by a constable with a cudgel.

  Vladimir gave his initial evidence over four days. It was revealed that the author of Document H was Fergan O’Sullivan, Doctor Evatt’s young press secretary, who, though repentant, was very quickly sacked.

  When Evdokia took the stand the press remarked upon how educated and attractive she was. Asked who had written Document J, she stepped from the witness box, paced the front row of the gallery and pointed a finger at Rupert Lockwood, announcing his name.

  Bialoguski eagerly awaited his own appearance. It had been revealed now that he was no ordinary, left-leaning doctor but instead a careful and deliberate agent working for the Security service. He practised for his turn, anticipating how the communists would go after him. But before he could appear, events turned strange. Doctor Evatt demanded that Document J be subjected to expert analysis. He was concerned about the way the document was organised, and seemed to be suggesting that certain elements had been inserted.

  Bialoguski watched in disbelief as Evatt’s theory emerged. It seemed the Labor leader believed that a conspiracy had taken place. At best, Document J had been altered by unnamed forces for the purposes of smearing his staffers and, by extension, Evatt himself. At worst, the whole document was a fabrication, the cruel work of an expert forger, brought into existence for debased political ends. A plot existed, but Evatt was cautious, never fully revealing its shape. Indeed, as the commission progressed, the plot seemed capable of instant transformation, huge twists and turns around the evidence. Empirical facts were in one breath relied upon and in the next breath questioned. The central issue became: was Document J a forgery or was it not? If it was a forgery, who had done the forging and why?

  Bialoguski was not amused. Evatt was putting Lockwood, his staffers and himself at the heart of the story. From what Bialoguski could glean, Document J was a pissy little rant, nothing to do with anything. Now it was stealing the show.

  He finally entered the witness box. He testified about his double life, the sacrifices and the deceptions. He spoke about his relations with Petrov, the final steps that had led to his defection. Ted Hill, the de-facto solicitor for Australian communists, tried to paint him as a mercenary, a man for hire, paid according to the value of the information he could unearth. Bialoguski denied it. Hill suggested that the doctor was duplicitous. An interesting charge, said Bialoguski, given that that had been his job.

  ‘You have shown interest in the Soviet Union, support for the Soviet Union, have you not?’ Hill said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were never a member of the Communist Party?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘However, you did belong to the Russian Social Club?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you belonged to various peace movements?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And in each of these bodies to which you belonged, to whose aims you pretended to subscribe, you made some close friends, did you not?’

  ‘I made some acquaintances.’

  ‘You made some friends?’

  ‘Not in my mind.’

  Hill paused. ‘Why did you join Security’s service?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Duty, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s a strange occupation, is it not?’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘I take it you dislike communism?’

  ‘I think it is bad for Australia, yes.’

  ‘But why spy? You say it has cost you a lot personally. Why did you involve yourself to such extremes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say extremes.’

  ‘Other people might think so. Devoting your life, as you tell us you have, in this way.’

  ‘Somebody has to. Somebody needs to stand at the cold edge.’

  ‘But why you? That is what I am asking.’

  It made Bialoguski uncomfortable that he had no answer. Not, at least, an answer that he was happy with. He would have liked some event in his life to summon, to point at as explanation. The death of his father, perhaps, or of a beloved brother, or a young wife; a motivating tragedy for which communism’s bastardry was to blame.

  ‘I don’t understand your question, Mr Hill,’ he eventually said. ‘I would say that it was irrelevant.’

  Hill had a last assertion. ‘Isn’t it true that you, Doctor Bialo-guski, conspired with the Petrovs to manufacture Document J?’

  Bialoguski groaned. It was exasperating how the commission had been hijacked. It suited the Communist Party, he supposed, to so muddle the evidence with doubts, perceived contradictions and lunacies, thus affording any real proof of espionage the cover of a general circus.

  He wrote on. He spoke to Clean at the Sydney Morning Herald, who said the paper would carry extracts. He met with a representative from William Heinemann. The publisher was interested, offered him a small sum that afternoon to have first option on the final product. Bialoguski explained that a secret second version was in the pipeline—one dealing in detail with Security’s foolish ways.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said the publisher. ‘Whatever you want to write.’

  One morning, in his flat, he accidentally shot a wall. The gun went off at his desk and the bullet travelled through and into the corridor outside. He retrieved it, returned to the armchair and sat, prepared to concede it was perhaps time to ditch the revolver. Ostensibly it was for safety, but, reluctantly, he knew it was for more. The gun was a way of living. Not in a dying-by-the-sword sense, but in the way it was a secret, a hidden thing, a sort of power over those who could not suspect it.

  He had thought he was adapting to his new, open life, the life lived whole, but was it just that he’d found his old habits again in this gun?

  It was not something he could readily explain to himself, but in truth he had been feeling, since Petrov’s defection, somehow rejected. It was a foolish emotion, not unlike the feeling he’d had when he’d been booted from the orchestra. He knew it was a preposterous sentiment when nothing of the sort had occurred, but there it was: he felt wilfully discarded. Somehow excluded by the world.

  Three months later, he’d finished The Petrov Story. He particularly liked its concluding chapter, a piece of political analysis in which he called Doctor Evatt an opportunist and accused him of using the commission to divert attention from his own electoral failings.

  There was also his final word on the Petrovs. Their future would depend on themselves, he declared. Whether they had the moral courage to know in their hearts that they had done the right thing. Whether they had sincerity of purpose in accepting what their new life would offer.

  Sincerity of purpose. He didn’t quite know what he meant by it, how precisely it applied to the Petrovs, but he liked the sound.

  When extracts of the book appeared in the Herald, he expected business at the surgery to pick up. If anything, it dropped off. It was frustrating. All he’d given these people, this nation, and now they could read about it and still he was out of favour.

  For a month or two, he turned inward. He rehearsed his violin intently, an element of himself he’d been neglecting.

  In December 1955, he found himself in the Spring Street offices of the Orient Line. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Get out of Australia. Temporarily. Permanently. What was keeping him here, really? A dying medical practice, a measure of notoriety, a licence to carry a weapon?

  He spoke with the director of entertainments.

  ‘I want passage to London as a professional passenger. I can give lectures. I can be charming at dinner. I can even play as a guest in your band, should you like.’

  The director looked up from flipping through the pages of Bialoguski’s book.

  ‘The Petrov spy,’ he said.

  ‘And I want only passage, not payment. It’s a good deal for you since the ship will sail anyway.’

  Michael
Howley wished his former agent luck. He said Bialoguski had played an essential part in securing the defections of the Petrovs and he thanked him for it. He said also that it was perhaps best not to say goodbye to Vladimir and Evdokia. Difficult times at the safe house, he explained.

  Instead, Bialoguski wrote a short farewell note to Vladimir, signed but undated, to be handed to the man whenever Security saw fit. He had intended to finish it with a joke, a parting piece of wit between friends, but as he stood with his hand over the paper, waiting for inspiration, he drew a complete blank. Try as he did for several minutes, absolutely nothing came to mind.

  1961-1996

  25

  The New TRUTH

  The Independent Newspaper

  Melbourne, January 21, 1961

  WE FIND PETROVS!

  ‘I WISH I WERE DEAD.’

  The secret is out; the Petrovs are found. For the first time their story of six fear-filled years is told. And TRUTH tells it!

  ‘NOBODY COULD DREAM OF OUR MISERY’ By Bill Wannan and Norma Ferris

  THIS WEEK we tracked down Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, the Russian diplomats who made world headlines when they defected and won political asylum in Australia in 1954.

  For six years their hiding places have been known only to the Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) and a few top security guards.

  What are they like now, the Petrovs?

  How have the years of hiding and subterfuge affected them?

  We can tell you.

  The Petrovs are lonely, scared people, still dreading an attack from Russian agents.

  ‘No one could dream of our misery . . . I wish I were dead,’ said Mrs Petrov . . . Mr Petrov shuffled up looking grey, older than his age and tired . . . ‘Quiet, please, somebody is near . . . I don’t trust them,’ said Mrs Petrov . . . Mr Petrov walked quietly away.

  Tears welled in Mrs Petrov’s eyes.

  ‘I am frightened,’ she said. ‘How? How? How did you find us?’ she kept asking.

  We couldn’t tell Mrs Petrov that. We wouldn’t tell anyone. But it was along a trail to a holiday resort that we are satisfied no one else will be able to follow.