Too disturbed to sleep, she got out of bed, wrapped herself in her dressing gown and watched the dawn come up over the roofs of Cambridge. Somewhere in the distance she heard a clock strike five.
2
Kate had never warmed to the Polish girl. She was knowing and overconfident, and frequently criticised the playing of the other students. It was a surprise when, one morning, Agniewska suggested they practise together. Despite herself, Kate agreed. It would have been churlish to refuse. Her own playing had never been the butt of any of Agniewska’s comments. The experience proved to be exciting. They had played a series of cello pieces with piano accompaniment with real enjoyment.
‘We must do this again,’ Agniewska had said. A week later she suggested they repeat their experiment. By this time a few of the other students had spoken to Kate.
‘We do not trust her,’ they said. ‘Be careful.’
Kate took this to mean that they were jealous of her ability, and ignored their warning. Agniewska was unquestionably one of the best musicians at the Conservatoire. She was benefiting from the experience. Each week they played together, discussed the music and parted. Nothing unusual occurred.
‘She is watching you,’ Kate was told when her friends asked how the practice had gone, and Kate had reported positively. ‘Waiting to choose the right moment.’
The right moment for what? she asked. No one had a convincing explanation. Kate waited. Nothing happened, and she forgot the warnings. Then, one morning, as they were clearing away their music stands, Agniewska asked, ‘Have you heard about Vinogradoff?’
The Conservatoire was full of gossip. Kate assumed she would be told how Vinogradoff had scored a triumph at the expense of one of his rivals.
‘He is being investigated.’
‘Investigated?’ Kate was incredulous. ‘What for?’
‘Maybe it is not true,’ Agniewska said.
‘What have you heard?’
‘You are his pupil. Perhaps it is better if I say nothing. I do not want to upset you.’
‘Tell me what you know.’
Agniewska closed the door and came and stood close to Kate. She spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Apparently he has composed some music which the censor has judged to be subversive. There is a rumour that some of our students have been to his flat to perform for him. That is what drew the attention of the authorities.’ She smiled. ‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Vinogradoff is establishing himself as an international artist. He would hardly risk that kind of freedom, would he?’
‘How can music be subversive?’ It was no good asking Agniewska such a question. She would only reply with the official answer.
‘Music that undermines our moral beliefs is always subversive.’
Keep off politics. That was the advice she had followed until now. She had to control her instinct to argue the case. ‘What I meant was, how could Vinogradoff do such a thing? He’s so’ – she was suddenly lost for words – ‘so mild.’
‘It is the mild ones you must watch out for.’
‘What has he written?’ Kate asked.
‘I do not know exactly. Has he not mentioned it to you? Has he never asked you to play some of it? You go to his house for lessons. You would have the perfect opportunity. No one would be able to hear you.’
If this wasn’t an interrogation, it was the next best thing. Her friends had been right. Agniewska was an informer. Kate should not have disregarded their greater experience.
‘I am here to learn the cello,’ Kate said stiffly. ‘Vinogradoff would never ask me to play any of his own music – presuming of course that he has written any, and he has never told me that he has. We agreed the pieces I would study before I came to Moscow. Nothing has changed. I would not let it change.’
There was nothing more to say after that. They put away their instruments in silence. It was the last time they practised together. The question on Kate’s mind was, should she tell Vinogradoff or not? In the end, she decided it was not her business. She had no evidence that the Polish girl was acting on anyone else’s behalf. She said nothing. For all she knew it was a case of deliberate provocation. Agniewska had wanted something from her and had failed to get it. Kate experienced a brief moment of triumph.
3
Koliakov looked at his watch. It was too early. He would wait until dark. He would not telephone to say he was coming. He didn’t think her telephone was bugged, but it was better to take no risks. He sat in a café in Victoria Station for an hour and had a cheerless plate of bacon and eggs and a milky cup of tea. He read the evening paper from cover to cover. As soon as it was dusk, he took the Circle Line to South Kensington. He emerged from the rumbling depths of the underground to find that it was now fully dark. He walked the rest of the way, doubling back on himself to make sure he was not being followed.
All the time the tumult in his mind beat like a drum, its rhythm driving him relentlessly forward against the lights that seemed to explode in his face from street lamps, shop windows and passing cars. These lights were his enemy now, each reflection a beam that was trying to blind him so that he would never find the girl. He was surrounded by hostile forces whose sole purpose was to prevent him from doing what he had to do. He shielded his eyes with his hand and struggled on, fighting the storm in his mind.
To his surprise the front door was unlocked. All he had to do was push it open. The living room was a mess: bottles and glasses were everywhere, on the window sills, the mantelpiece, the floor, any available surface. He saw wine stains on the carpet and on the furniture. Cushions had been thrown on the floor. He righted an overturned chair. He saw full ashtrays and he smelled the stink of dead smoke and cheap scent.
‘Georgie?’
There was no answer. He was sure she was there, he could sense her presence.
‘Georgie?’
He went upstairs. The curtains were pulled in the bedroom. When were they ever open? One dressing-table lamp was on. She was lying on the bed, an orange paper streamer tied around her hair and a pair of white high-heeled shoes, at least two or three sizes too big, on her feet. Otherwise she was naked.
‘Alexei?’
Someone – he could not believe she could have done this herself – had drawn on her skin all over her body in lipstick the impressions of kisses, small rosebud lips in clusters on her neck, round her breasts, across her stomach, at the tops of her thighs, there was even one large smudge between her legs.
‘What have they done to me, Alexei? I feel so ill.’
There were bruises on her arms and body, and a swelling on her temple. She had been attacked, but by whom? A lover, perhaps? There was never any tenderness in her lovemaking. Tenderness was a world that had passed her by without touching. Reality for her was tricks and pretence. Perhaps the games she played had got out of hand.
‘Help me, Alexei. Help me, please.’
He heard her appeal. The burning pain in his mind faded, the drumming dimmed and an unexpected calm spread over him. He no longer saw a poor imitation of Eva, or the cold heart of a woman who sold herself for money. Whatever he may have felt about her, this woman on the bed was young and frightened and in desperate need of comfort. If he helped her, he might smother the demons that lived in his conscience and attacked him for not rescuing Eva from Abrasimov. He found a blanket by the foot of the bed and covered her.
‘Tell me what happened.’
He knelt by the side of the bed. She spoke slowly and with difficulty, as if she had been drugged. ‘There was a party last night. The bell went after midnight. These two men were at the door. They said they’d been invited. I thought they were friends of friends. I let them in. When everyone had gone, they came out of the kitchen and attacked me.’
Her pupils were huge and unfocused. She wasn’t drunk, though there was an empty champagne bottle by the bed. She had taken something else. He knew she used Benzedrine but this was different, as if she were being slowly anaesthetised in front of him.
‘What did the
y do to you, Georgie?’ he asked quietly. ‘Try to tell me.’
Her eyes were rolling now, and she was speaking so quietly that he could neither hear nor understand. He held her cold hand against his cheek and saw the speck of blood on her arm and the mark on her skin. He knew at once that she had been forcibly injected, though he had no idea what with. What if she’d been given an overdose of some drug?
‘I’ll call an ambulance.’
‘Alexei!’
Suddenly she sat up, tears bursting from her eyes, a scream of pain torn from her lips. She clutched her stomach and writhed in agony. ‘I’m hurting, Alexei. I’m hurting so bad.’
He tried to take her in his arms, but she screamed as if the touch of his fingers was burning her. He had the impression her body was on fire, inside and out. Suddenly the screaming stopped. She opened her eyes very wide in surprise and stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she fell back against the pillow. He reached for the pulse in her neck. There was no movement. She was dead. Someone had done his job for him.
4
Hart had returned home late and exhausted from the office. It had been an uneasy day. The morning had lost its shape almost as soon as he arrived – there was no news from Pountney and he couldn’t reach him on the telephone – and the afternoon hadn’t ended much better. Within the last hour he’d received a report that told him little he didn’t already know. Dr Berlin was a Russian academic from the Institute of Contemporary History in Moscow, author of a number of books, one of which, Legacies of History, had been published in translation by Fischer Stevens. He had been invited by the Blake-Thomas committee of the University of Cambridge to give three open lectures over a period often days. His first two days in London had been organised by his publishers, who had arranged interviews with the press and radio. When asked about the current crisis in West Berlin he had declined to comment, claiming that he was an academic, not a political visitor. He had now arrived in Cambridge, where he was expected to stay for twelve days before returning to Moscow.
Was it possible, Hart wondered, that Berlin might be some kind of messenger, bringing from Moscow an offer to negotiate over Germany? Secret information that might allow the world to draw back from the edge of war? Possible but unlikely, he concluded. The man, as he himself had made clear, was a university teacher. Hart doubted that he would have political contacts, at least not at the level required if he was to be entrusted with an important message from, say, the Politburo or a senior member of the armed forces. A little digging around in the Registry established that Berlin had received his invitation to speak long before the current crisis in Germany had begun to simmer. His arrival in Cambridge now was little more than coincidence.
None the less, as a precaution, Hart had ordered twenty-four-hour surveillance on the Russian from the moment of his arrival. If there was a motive for his visit other than the one he had declared, then his behaviour might reveal his intentions. So far, the watchers had seen nothing.
*
Pountney telephoned at six-thirty to say that since his meeting with Koliakov, he’d not had a peep out of him. He didn’t answer his phone calls and he wasn’t at work. The embassy explained his absence by claiming he was unwell. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that Koliakov had disappeared into thin air. Worse, the deadline he’d given him had been and gone without a murmur from the man. What was he to do?
‘He’ll turn up,’ Hart insisted. ‘Keep after him until you get an answer.’
‘Can’t you get your people on to him?’ Pountney pleaded. ‘They’re better at this sort of thing than I am.’
‘If the Soviet Embassy isn’t worried about his whereabouts, we’re powerless,’ Hart replied. ‘You’re all we’ve got right now.’
‘I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.’
*
The train was late and crowded and he had to stand from Waterloo. He turned over the pages of his evening paper with difficulty. There, facing him, was a photograph of a man in his early forties, dark-haired, aesthetic-looking – Andrei Berlin, the caption told him, the Soviet historian. The article, by the Literary Editor, discussed Berlin’s standing among historians. Hart skipped these paragraphs and went to the end of the article.
It was clear that Dr Berlin was reluctant to answer any political questions. Instead, we discussed the prevalent attitudes towards the West in Moscow today, particularly how the increase of tension over the future of West Berlin was seen by the average Muscovite. Berlin considered his reply. ‘Of course there is tension,’ he said. ‘In such a situation, how could there not be? No civilised person wants to go to war. Our people are not belligerent. They have sons and daughters and worry about the future, like anyone else. Perhaps if the voice of the people could be heard, then we would all be sure of a peaceful solution to this crisis.’
Hart didn’t wait to get to Richmond. He got out at Putney and caught the next train back to Waterloo.
5
Berlin’s lecture had drawn a larger audience of dons and undergraduates than Marion had expected. From her vantage point at the back of the university church, she was able to see Michael Scott and Bill Gant. They had both avoided her before the lecture began, Michael Scott looking sour and disdainful, while poor Bill was more drained and exhausted than she could believe. Not that their feelings mattered. Her preoccupation was to ensure that the evening was a success, and that allowed her little or no time to worry about either of them.
At the drinks party afterwards, in a room in the Senate House, she was thanked repeatedly for ‘putting the Blake-Thomas lectures back on the map’. Shyly, she replied that it was not her doing: they owed the success of the evening to Dr Berlin.
‘Take the glory while it’s offered, my dear,’ the Master of St Catherine’s said. ‘Too few of us ever sip that cup. Enjoy it while it lasts, which is never for long.’
‘I congratulate you, Marion.’ Michael Scott’s smile, she noticed, did not spread beyond his eyes. ‘A veritable succès d’estime. But a little word in your ear. Beware folie de grandeur. There are still two more lectures. Plenty of time for your good fortune to go into reverse.’
‘A splendid occasion,’ Geoffrey Stevens grinned. ‘You must be very pleased.’
‘I’m more relieved than anything,’ Marion replied. ‘I had this recurring dream that no one would turn up.’
‘When news of this evening’s success gets out, it’ll be standing room only next time, you mark my words.’ Stevens laughed. ‘There’s nothing so sweet as blacking the opposition’s eye, is there?’
‘I’m ashamed to say I agree,’ Marion said.
‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ Stevens protested. ‘It was a fair fight and you won.’
‘You gave me the courage to go on,’ she said, taking Stevens’s hand in hers. ‘I was near to throwing in the towel that day I came to see you.’
‘That’s not how I remember it,’ Stevens replied. ‘Now,’ he added, pointing her towards Berlin. ‘Go and rescue your Russian, Marion. If you ask me, he looks as if he’s had enough of being harangued by Colin Whitley.’
As she went to find Berlin, a fellow historian from Girton came up to her and said, ‘He’s so dishy, darling. You are lucky. If you don’t want him, pass him on to me.’
*
Throughout the evening, Marion had been attentive, introducing Berlin to a list of academics whose names he soon lost track of, and occasionally protective: she had rescued him from being bored to death by an opinionated don, who seemed intent on explaining to him how communism would ultimately fail because of the inherent flaws in its system, though what those flaws were he appeared unable to say. She had stood beside him for no more than a few seconds at a time. Like a butterfly, she had fluttered all evening, just out of reach.
He was aware too of the congratulations showered on Marion. Again and again he saw people shake her hand or kiss her. Why should she be congratulated? Perhaps his invitation to speak had not had an easy passage t
hrough the Blake-Thomas committee. Perhaps her support for his candidacy had attracted opposition. He saw Marion in a new light. She was a determined woman who knew her own mind and was prepared to fight an established opposition for what she believed in. Who of those present tonight, he wondered, looking around the room, had voted against him?
He had watched Marion throughout the evening. He had seen her changing moods, vivacious one moment, solemn the next, diplomatically seeing to her guests while supervising first the drinks and then the dinner. He admired her energy and sparkle. Most of all he had been beguiled by her eyes, by those wonderful if rare moments when she took off her glasses to smile reassuringly across the table at him. It was as if they had already established their own private language of conspiracy.
Towards midnight, when only a few guests remained, she asked if he wanted a taxi to take him back: he must be exhausted by his ordeal. No, he replied. It was a lovely night. He preferred to walk. The exercise would do him good. He had dearly wanted to ask if he could accompany her home, but he was never alone with her for long enough.
‘You’ve made a lot of friends tonight,’ she said, resting her hand on his arm. Once more he felt that sense of conspiracy between them. ‘An exhausting but wonderful evening. I haven’t been as nervous as this since the day I took my finals. It’ll all be much easier next time. I hope you’re pleased.’
‘How could I be otherwise? I am overwhelmed by your kindness. Everyone’s kindness.’ He was aware that a small group had gathered round him. The prospect of intimacy with Marion vanished. ‘Goodnight to you all. Thank you. Thank you.’
He bowed to them and they burst into spontaneous applause. For one terrible moment he thought he might cry.
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