Captive of Desire

by Alexandra Sellers

  Laddy ran up the stairs, expecting to find evidence of mice or a leaking pipe, to meet a flushed-looking Margaret waiting for her at the top. “Ben’s asleep,” she whispered. “I don’t want him to wake.” And she led the way to her sitting room, the room that had been Lewis Penreith’s study.

  The room had originally been designed as the master bedroom of the house; it had a large walk-in closet in which her father had kept his filing cabinets. The door to the closet stood open, a bucket of soapy water beside it, and a bottle of lemon oil.

  “I’ve been giving the woodwork a good scrub-down,” Margaret said, closing the door to the hall as she spoke. Then she walked over to the closet door. “It’s the oddest thing.”

  She bent down to the edge of the door towards the bottom. “Look at this,” she said. “Did you know it was here?”

  It was a solid oak door, like all the doors in this magnificent old house—or so Laddy had always thought. She watched, riveted, as Margaret ran her hand up the bottom of the edge and a portion of the edge slid up, exposing a hollow.

  Laddy gasped and crouched down near the door. The gap was eight or nine inches high, and ran in for an inch or two.

  “No, I’ve never seen it before,” she exclaimed. “How strange!”

  Margaret looked at her for a moment. “There’s something in there,” she said.

  Suddenly Laddy’s heart was thumping. She looked closer and almost fainted. The bottom of the door must be completely hollow, for what she saw was the edge of a dusty oilskin envelope.

  With the help of a knife and some ice tongs, they eventually pulled out two oilskin-wrapped packages of the kind she had seen her father pack into his case in foreign hotel rooms the world over. She knew without looking what they contained, but mesmerised, she opened them there on the floor, surrounded by the bucket and lemon oil, the knife and the ice tongs.

  “What language is that?” Margaret asked, her shrewd, lined face alert as the manuscripts were exposed.

  Laddy lied, “I don’t know. Something Slavic, I think. I suppose it’s some manuscripts my father never had translated.” She spoke lightly, ignoring the powerful thumping of her heart, the fear that suffused her. She jumped up. “Well, isn’t that fascinating! I never knew he had that hidey-hole. I guess I’d better turn these over to someone.”

  By the time she got downstairs she was shaking. She locked herself in the sitting room and sat down to open the packages again.

  The language was Russian. Lewis Penreith had seen to it that his daughter had been able to speak and write some of that language, although she had never become fluent, as he had. One glance at the top page of that dirty, much-handled manuscript told her the name of the author: M. Busnetsky.

  She was looking at her father’s death warrant. This was the reason for the last trip he had taken. To get these manuscripts, so that one day Mischa Busnetsky would be free.

  It was as though lightning struck her. Clutching the packages to her chest, almost sobbing, she rushed to her bedroom, where her father’s filing cabinets still stood, and pulled open the top drawer. Feverishly, she searched the B’s, once, twice, three times. Then she went through all the drawers, with a desperate cold precision.

  It was twenty minutes before she closed the last drawer, and then cold chills began in her spine. The file on Mischa Busnetsky was missing. They had found the file, three years ago, but they had not found the manuscripts.

  Now she knew the truth, and now she was filled with a pain and anger unlike anything she had known before. Now she could put a name to those nameless people who had killed her father; now the suspicion was a fact. A deep, burning hatred for those who had taken the life of the most dedicated, intelligent man she had ever known flamed through her.

  It was only with the sharp edge of reason that she had prevented herself from blaming the man for whose future freedom her father had traded his life.

  The next day she had requested a copy of the picture of Mischa Busnetsky from the Herald picture library and put it in her father’s filing cabinet. But she had never looked at it again. She was afraid to.

  Laddy reached deep under the pile of cushions she sat on and felt for two near the bottom. Yes, they were still there; if she squeezed hard she could feel the resistance in the centre of the cushions.

  She should have given the manuscripts to the ICF three months ago. There were other publishers in her father’s field who would have jumped at the chance to publish them. Her father would have wanted that.

  Instead, she had hidden them in the only place she could think of—she had cut open two of her foam-filled cushions and stitched them up again with the manuscripts inside. And every day she had told herself she must speak to someone about the manuscripts, get them into safe hands.

  They were her last link with her father. She had not been able to let them go. She did not let herself feel that they were also her last link with Mischa Busnetsky.

  But now she would put them into Mischa Busnetsky’s own hands, and perhaps she would be able to stop thinking of her father and the fact that he had died for the sake of the papers stitched up in her sitting-room pillows.

  And perhaps, seeing Mischa Busnetsky again, she would be free of him, perhaps the memory of that night would lose its potency....

  Laddy sighed and got up, picked up the coffee cups she and John had used and moved into the kitchen. The sink and table were still piled with dishes, and she tied her faded full-front apron over her beautiful burgundy caftan and set to work.

  Well, there was one thing you could say about washing dishes, Laddy thought as she filled the sink with hot soapy water, it didn’t require brainpower. It was a great time for thinking about other things.

  John, for instance. She was so concerned with Mischa Busnetsky that she had forgotten John. Tonight she had been hoping the jinx would be broken at last. Tonight she’d thought John might tell her that he loved her. Instead he.... Laddy froze, her hands in the warm water.

  But he had told her he loved her. He had said, “I adore you and love you and I fancy you like mad.” And that declaration had gone by her as though he had said it was going to rain tomorrow. Why? Why had it seemed unimportant, when it was something she had been waiting and hoping to hear?

  She knew why. It had seemed unimportant because she had been thinking of Mischa Busnetsky.

  John Bentinck had no more power to move her than any of the others.

  Chapter 4

  Laddy was met with a chorus of greetings as she entered the arrivals area of the airport at nine o’clock the next morning and walked over to the corner the press seemed to be commandeering. She returned their greetings and sat with a smile. Many of those present were reporters and photographers she knew well from similar occasions, and everyone was cheerful and friendly. She looked around. It was a very large group, all the wire services and several foreign papers and television networks were represented, but even so, it would grow. In the next hour, before the flight arrived, the ranks would swell significantly, so it looked as though Mischa Busnetsky might have a small army to greet him.

  She would not get anywhere near him this morning. Of course, that in itself was not important. She couldn’t in any case have talked to him privately. But she must make very sure she knew where he was intending to go, so that she could get in touch with him later.

  “Does anybody know where he’ll be going?” she asked Larry Hague, a reporter from one of the broadsheets whom she knew well and with whom she often traded information.

  Someone picked it up on her other side. “If so, no one is saying.” Well, that was nothing new. She ought to have done some phoning last night.

  The talk among the reporters covered a variety of topics in the news but mostly centred on dissidents and exiles. Several people here, some of whom knew Brian March much better than they knew Laddy, since they tended to specialise in Soviet affairs, were talking about the progress of the SALT talks and discussing the likelihood of success with varying degr
ees of cynicism.

  Laddy left them to it after a few minutes and strolled around the airport, looking for the signs that would tell her which exit had been marked out for Busnetsky’s use. She found it without trouble, cordoned off, with a number of security men and others, casually dressed, who were obviously plain-clothes men.

  Laddy approached one of the men standing near the rope barrier that had been set up.

  “Laddy Penreith, Evening Herald,” she introduced herself to the young man with close-cropped hair. “You’re waiting for Mikhail Busnetsky?”

  “Yes, we are.” He was friendly, if taciturn.

  “Do you know if the flight is on time?” she asked.

  “So far we haven’t heard anything to the contrary.”

  “Who is accompanying Mr. Busnetsky on the flight?” Her questions might not be answered, but she had to ask.

  “Well, of course there will be security people,” the man said, which meant Secret Service. He excused himself as his communicator bleeped. He listened and talked for a moment but did not use the excuse to leave the rope where she was standing, so when he had restored the little machine to his belt, she tried again.

  “What’s his final destination in England?”

  “I couldn’t say, miss.”

  “Do you know if he has any friends, anyone from England, traveling with him?”

  “I couldn’t say, I’m sure.”

  Which didn’t mean he didn’t know. Laddy chatted casually with the man, hoping he might inadvertently drop some information, until John Bentinck came up to her. He had a large leather shoulder bag and a camera slung around his neck.

  “I think I’ve spotted the pickup car,” he said in her ear. “Want to come and look?”

  Laddy checked the time. Still half an hour till ten o’clock, and she didn’t seem to be getting anything out of the security man. “Let’s go,” she said. She had to get some lead in case Mischa Busnetsky’s destination was not publicly revealed.

  John pointed out the car in the parking lot as they stood at a distance and pretended to be deep in conversation.

  A man sat at the wheel and smoked, while another hovered in the background, wandering around the cars in the vicinity and giving them what appeared to be casual glances but were more likely solid appraisals. He surreptitiously spoke into his hand from time to time.

  It looked as though John had found the car that Mischa Busnetsky would be taking from the airport.

  “Did you get the license number?” Laddy asked.

  “Haven’t been close enough.”

  Laddy took out her notebook and wrote down the make and colour and other details of the car, but it was going to be difficult to get close enough to see the license plate.

  “John, could you get a telephoto picture?” she asked. The signs were that Busnetsky was going to try to avoid the press, that he would jump into this car and disappear. If Laddy and John were too obvious now, it was quite possible someone might come and escort them back to the arrivals area. They would have to work quickly.

  “I can try,” John, said. “Stand in front of me.”

  The problem was that the long telephoto lens would be very obvious. Protected from sight of the occupant of the car by another parked car and by Laddy, John fitted the lens, then dropped the camera into his shoulder bag, the cord still wrapped around his wrist. Talking together, they walked till John found a direct angle to the car that didn’t block their view of the license plate. He knelt and rested the bag on the asphalt, pulled out the camera and, holding it at chest level, shot several times, adjusting the focus fractionally between shots.

  It took him less than the time to tie a shoelace. He dropped the camera back into the bag and stood up. “Are you sure you got it?” Laddy asked.

  “Pretty sure,” he replied. “Do you want to try moving closer?”

  But it was nearly ten. Planes were landing all the time; there was no way of knowing whether the Zurich flight had come in. “Let’s get back,” she said.

  By the time they got back to the arrivals area where the media people had been sitting, the area was deserted. “Let’s go,” said John, and they set out at a trot for the cordoned corridor Laddy had found earlier.

  The corridor was packed with people, all obviously from the media. Television and still cameras jostled for position with tape recorders and notebooks, and a loud hubbub filled their ears. There would be no getting near Mischa Busnetsky this morning.

  She was warned of his imminent arrival by the sudden increase in the noise and activity in the corridor; people around her began pushing to get closer to the ropes.

  Her heart in her mouth suddenly, she craned to see past the moving heads and caught sight of a close-cropped head above them, and then Mischa Busnetsky came into her line of vision.

  He was absolutely gaunt. Totally unrecognizable as the man in the photo, the man of her memory. His facial bones were almost painfully prominent, his cheeks hollow and his eyes burning, even from that distance. He was very tall, and a new overcoat of obviously Western origin hung loose on his thin frame.

  People crowded at the ropes, and those closest to Busnetsky began to call out questions. “Mr. Busnetsky, how does it feel to be free?”

  “Mr. Busnetsky, Mr. Busnetsky, how many political prisoners would you estimate there are in the Soviet Union?”

  “Do you plan to make your home in England, Mr. Busnetsky?” The hubbub became cacophony.

  Mikhail Busnetsky stared at them all with the pained horror of a man who had seen them before, behind other faces, in other guises; then for a moment he was terrifyingly like that old picture, for the same look of resigned acceptance of the power of fools crossed his features. Then he shut their presence out of his mind and continued his painstaking progress along the cordoned-off passageway, ignoring them.

  At that moment a television cameraman dodged the security man near him and ducked under the rope in front of Busnetsky for an unrestricted shot, and suddenly everyone was surging forward, under and over the ropes. As Busnetsky went down the staircase that led outside, the body of press people followed. They surrounded him now, pushing mikes and cameras into his tortured face.

  Laddy and John were swept up in the crowd; they couldn’t have stopped their forward motion.

  “Are you getting this?” asked Laddy, who had never seen anything like it.

  John, who had not stopped shooting since the first man had broken through the cordon, was turning his camera in all directions. He knew exactly what she meant. Not pictures of Busnetsky, but of his welcome. Pictures of a sick man being given no more quarter by the newshounds than he had been by his oppressors.

  The force of the crowd had carried Laddy closer to Busnetsky when they reached the pavement, and here he turned as though at bay. His face was tortured, ill, but suddenly she saw in it some remnant of the man she had met that evening in Moscow, and in that moment Laddy knew with sickening clarity that if she spent her whole life pushing his face out of her mind, she could never forget him. She was seized with a desperate urgency to touch him, to speak to him, to learn whether this dreadfully sick man still had the power to remember her face and a night that had changed her forever, and she began to push her way through the crowd like an animal fighting for survival, until she stood on the pavement almost next to him.

  But when she looked up at him it was as though she had run into a brick wall. His eyes burned into hers, accusing, condemning, like a trapped animal facing its captor.

  “Mischa,” she whispered, but in the cacophony that assailed his ears, he could not possibly have heard it.

  “Please leave me alone,” he said in weary torment, and she thought he was looking right at her, speaking to her. There was no recognition in his eyes, and Laddy knew in a blinding blast of pain that there never would be.

  The car pulled up behind him, and Mikhail Busnetsky turned and climbed into the back seat. Laddy watched as though her eyes were glued to him, immobile in the sea of humanity tha
t surged and swelled around her. Half a dozen reporters were sprinting for their cars parked nearby, and Laddy, who had parked her own car very close to this point in preparation, knew somewhere in the dim, still-functioning recesses of her mind that she ought to be doing the same. No word had been given of Busnetsky’s destination, and this certainly meant that he was going to ground.

  But she couldn’t move, and so it was that the blonde woman who had remained unnoticed in the mad rush to Busnetsky had to brush past Laddy to get into the car after him. She wore a white coat and sunglasses, and she muttered a low “Excuse me,” as she passed; then the door was slammed shut and the grey car pulled away. As it roared down the road towards the underpass, other cars moved out in pursuit, and Laddy watched as the television cameraman who had begun the mob pursuit, dedicated to the last, leapt into the road to film the progress of the speeding car.

  By the narrow underpass another car pulled smoothly out as Busnetsky’s car passed, then stalled for a moment, blocking the way. To a chorus of irate honking the driver started the car again, but the few moments of delay gave the nondescript grey car the time it needed to disappear. Watching, Laddy wondered whether anyone would think to follow the car that had blocked the road.

  “Who was that blonde?” several people asked at once. No one had got a word out of the obviously sick man—no one except Laddy—and some of the reporters were mildly cursing Busnetsky for being “uncooperative.”

  No one knew who the blonde woman was, and no more time was wasted in talking. The few security people about were assailed with questions, while other journalists dashed back inside the arrivals building to the telephones.

  Laddy stood on the pavement without moving. Her mind was churning. She knew the blonde woman. Somewhere deep in her mind that quick glimpse of the face behind dark sunglasses had touched a chord. She had met that woman somewhere in the past.

  While she sought an unoccupied phone booth, John pulled the film from his camera and looked around for the messenger who was waiting to take it back to the Herald. With luck they might make the early-afternoon edition, so when he found the orange-helmeted young motorcycle driver, he thrust the film into the boy’s pouch and pushed him into a run.