The Unfortunate Englishman

by John Lawton

  He hesitated but knew in his bones he would ask.

  “When you came back to the hotel in January . . . the night you brought me here. You said you were looking for me . . . were you looking for Glendinning?”

  She said nothing. Put down the cup and stared at him.

  “You said, ‘I wanted him to get me out.’”

  “Yes. I did say that. We want to leave. Me, Anfisa. To go West. He is MI6. He said he could get me out. I don’t know how. I assume he has . . . ways. MI6 must have ways.”

  “Tanya. He’s not MI6. He sells ball bearings to tractor factories.”

  “Why would Glendinning tell me he was MI6, if he wasn’t?”

  “To get you into bed?”

  She glanced down into her cup, momentarily avoiding his gaze.

  “No. I told you. He said it . . . after.”

  “Then, I would imagine . . . I would imagine he was trying to frighten you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We’re all different, aren’t we? Maybe scaring you after he’d had sex with you was part of the sex.”

  “You are certain he was lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they wouldn’t send two of us on the same mission.”

  “Oh God, Geoffrey. I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  §51

  A dull day at the ministry. A handshake and a bustle-by from Comrade Koritsev, and entrusted to the care of Third Assistant Deputy Undersecretary Dumsky and the laboured, uninspired interpretation of Andrei Semyonovich. Between them they negotiated the transport of 3.75 tons of indium by rail from half a dozen sites in the Soviet Union to East Berlin, where it would be handed over to representatives of New Caledonian Ores, transferred by road down the Helmstedt autobahn to Hamburg, and thence by ship to Greenock on the Clyde, a few miles from NCO’s Scottish headquarters.

  The manifest was full and guileless. It pleased him, made him feel vindicated, to note that among the starting points for shipment were both Sillamäe and Chelyabinsk. The loads would be combined in Minsk.

  Masefield handed over a banker’s draft for a daunting sum of ­money—the highly sought-after foreign currency—but it was a daunting amount of indium. Over four tons of a metal no one yet knew what to do with, stockpiled against man’s powers of invention. It might be his “cover” but it was in its own right a commercial coup that would undoubtedly result in a hefty bonus. Bugger vodka, this called for scotch.

  Back at the Muromets he chalked up the ridiculous price of a large single malt on his slate, sniffed, savoured, and gulped. It was a synthetic, almost petroleum taste on the tongue. He asked the bloke behind the bar to show him the label—StrathMcTavish. He’d never heard of it. It looked as fake as it tasted. They might as well have called it Isle of Sporran. No matter, it was the occasion that counted.

  He looked around the bar. Another bunch of English, French, German . . . whatever . . . hearties on the usual trade mission, hell-bent on a piss-up and a foreign fuck their wives would never get to hear about. All under the tender care and sloppy surveillance of Intourist. He’d not yet spoken to any of them.

  Tanya Dmitrievna was picking her way between the tables, answering questions, scribbling in her notebook, fending off the odd feel-up as though it simply hadn’t happened, to end at the bar, next to him. Which of these bastards had bet on her this time?

  “Mr. Masefield. Welcome back. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “You seem to have plenty to do as it is, Tanya Dmitrievna.”

  She glanced around. Smiled a smile as fake as his whisky.

  “Ah. Just my little flock.”

  She dropped her voice.

  “There is only me.”

  “Eh?”

  “No one else has been assigned to you. Just me. No one will be watching us. Come to my apartment at seven.”

  And back to normal.

  “Well, if there’s anything at all, I shall be here just after breakfast every day. I bid you good night.”

  Shortly after seven he followed Tanya Dmitrievna up the stairs above the restaurant and into her sitting room.

  He’d be able to tell them apart. He was now so familiar with the broken beauty of Tanya Dmitrievna’s face that no other would ever fox him, but he had to admit the woman seated at the dining table was pretty much her double.

  “Geoffrey Stefanovich, my sister Anfisa Dmitrievna . . . and the person I love most in life.”

  “Delighted,” Masefield said, waiting to see if she remained formal or whether she would bounce up like a Jack Russell with a continental double-cheek kiss. She didn’t.

  Tanya Dmitrievna drew tea from the small, brass samovar for the three of them and he sat clutching a pleasingly warm glass of tea in its silver cradle.

  Ice to break.

  “Do you also work for Intourist, Anfisa Dmitrievna?”

  “No. I am work at Ministry of Defence.”

  A stiff silence followed. Masefield wondered whether to continue in Russian or English. Her English was clearly not as good as her sister’s and if she really was the “person I love most in life” then she surely knew that he was a spy and that he probably spoke Russian.

  “Geoffrey Stefanovich, my sister has an idea she would like to put to you.”

  “Of course.”

  Masefield nodded in the direction of Anfisa Dmitrievna.

  “To leave. To leave for ever. I . . . we . . . I . . . wish to be deserter.”

  “Defector,” he said. “Перебежчик.”

  “Ah,” she said, as though weighing up the word.

  “And you want me to get you to the West?”

  Tanya Dmitrievna cut in, “No. That was Glendinning’s lie and my fantasy. It was nonsense. We have found a way. A better way.”

  “A way?”

  “A gang. A gang who will get us to Berlin for money. Criminals, but what else would you expect? And in Berlin we walk to the West.”

  “It would be much easier on your feet to use the S-Bahn.”

  Masefield grinned, but neither sister shared his levity. It was not a joking matter.

  “In which case, how can I help? There must be something I can do or you wouldn’t be telling me.”

  “I work Ministry of Defence. I give you papers. You pay.”

  “You’ll spy for England?’

  The sisters looked at each other as though he’d said “fuck” out loud. Then at him, and said simultaneously, “Yes.”

  Then Anfisa Dmitrievna continued alone, “These men give us fake papers, passports and permits to leave Russia. One thousand British pounds . . . each.”

  “If,” said Tanya Dmitrievna, “we can amass two thousand pounds . . . you and I could meet in Berlin. No more looking over our shoulders. We would be . . . together.”

  The appeal was direct. The pause was emphatic. “Together” . . . lovers . . . man and wife? It occurred to Masefield to ask if that was what she really wanted, but he didn’t. He allowed his head to rule his heart.

  “What papers?”

  “I am section deputy. Many things pass across my desk. Papers that I must notes make for section chief . . . papers from inside ministry, papers from other ministries . . . from . . .”

  Her English dribbled down to zero. She threw half a dozen rapid sentences at her sister so quickly Masefield caught fewer than half the words.

  “My sister says,” Tanya Dmitrievna said, “that papers arrive from Defence Industry, from Material Resources, from Atomic Energy and sometimes from Trade. All marked ‘Secret,’ and that there are many times, often towards the end of the day, when she is alone in the office.”

  “And you would bring me these papers?”

  Anfisa Dmitrievna almost dropped her glass in shock.
r />   “No . . . no . . . no . . . I could not . . . we are searched . . . I would . . . be shot!”

  Tanya Dmitrievna stood over her sister and hugged her.

  “No. Don’t say such things.”

  “But . . . but I cannot take . . . ”

  “We will find a way.”

  Now she looked at Masefield across the top of her tearful sister’s head.

  “Won’t we, Geoffrey?”

  §52

  Tanya Dmitrievna did not speak of it again. They made love in a flurry of sweet nothings in two languages. The hard somethings went unspoken.

  They lay in spoons, one hand upon her backside, the other stretched out across the pillow.

  The luminous dial of his watch read 2:30. He saw the sitting room light as a sliver under the door. It came on; it went off. A few seconds passed, then the door opened and she slid into the drawer, another spoon curving into the curve he had made with Tanya Dmitrievna.

  Anfisa’s hand reached for his cock, coaxing the spent vessel back to life. He squirmed, rolled on to his back as Tanya Dmitrievna stirred. And while Anfisa Dmitrievna slowly jerked his cock Tanya Dmitrievna cupped his balls. And when he came, two spunk-wet hands slid across his belly to touch his face—and four Russian lips whispered exotic nothings in his ears.

  §53

  At breakfast.

  “I have it,” he said. “A camera. I shall give you a miniature camera. You have only to get it into the ministry once. After that you just hide the camera and bring me the film.”

  “How big is this camera?”

  “It would fit into the palm of your hand.”

  “And the film?”

  “A cartridge. No more than inch or so long. Easily hidden.”

  Anfisa nodded, sipped at her Fortnum’s finest Blue Mountain.

  Tanya Dmitrievna said, “And the money?”

  “Cash?”

  “You think a Russian gangster deals in anything else?”

  “I can get cash, of course I can get cash, but I have to ask my people. There’s bound to be a going rate for this sort of thing.”

  “Your people?”

  “Back in Berlin.”

  “Oh . . . of course . . . I see.”

  He hadn’t a clue what Radley would say to this, no idea how much he’d pay, only that he wouldn’t turn down the chance.

  That afternoon, ahead of the usual drinks o’clock in the Muromets bar, he took the fire bucket into his room, carefully counted out the fag ends and tipped the contents onto a spread newspaper.

  The Minox was intact. A little metal mummy in a tomb. He’d picked up a couple of spare cartridges in Berlin. They were surprisingly easy to buy. A bit like walking into Harrods and asking for the spies’ supplies department. And just as easy to conceal. He could bring in two or three every trip, and be fairly confident of going undetected.

  §54

  Paranoia is like a twitch, he concluded. A facial tic that you cannot control. Across Pushkin Square and Gorky Street he found he could not refrain from looking around except by an act of will that was all but vocal, the voice in his head telling him “Stop it.” He was, logic chimed, no more at risk that he had been any other day on any other visit. But the camera in his pocket rang as loudly as a passing fire engine. He was surprised that he was the only one who could hear it.

  Near the southern end of Malaya Bronnaya, he stood momentarily on a corner and looked back. How does one spot a man tailing? Brown had never bothered to tell him this. And to ask felt like asking how to tell a policeman from a postman—and why broadcast his innocence to a hard man like Brown?

  There were people drifting everywhere, most in the typical Moscow posture of head down and eyes averted. All of them and none of them might be following. From what he’d seen on his first trip, the KGB tails were obvious to clumsy.

  “Stop it,” said the voice in his head, and he did. He walked on in the direction of Patriarch’s Ponds and looked straight ahead.

  What had Brown said? “Regard every Russian you meet as a spy” . . . “Sex is a quagmire: blackmail is the KGB’s strongest weapon and yours is discretion.”

  Of course Tanya Dmitrievna was a spy. That was a given. They had each lain their cards on the table, as it were. Anfisa Dmitrievna was not a spy—he was about to make her a spy. And sex was not a quagmire . . . it was bliss. He had never felt so loved. He had never felt loved at all until now. And discretion? He would be the epitome of discretion.

  §55

  “Is like toy.”

  “I suppose it is rather, but it’s really a precise instrument. German invention, Latvian engineering. Watch.”

  Masefield turned on the table lamp and turned off the room light. Opened a book at random and set it in the half moon of light cast by the lamp.

  “That’s all you need. I could get a flash attachment, but this is better and easier. You take the cord . . . see . . . and use it to set the distance between the camera and the page.”

  Anfisa Dmitrievna copied his movements.

  “OK. I get it.”

  “And now press the button between the eyepiece and the lens.”

  The merest click.

  “Is that it?”

  “Almost. To move the film on you just close and open the case . . . so.”

  A louder click.

  “You can take thirty-six photographs on a roll, rather quickly I would imagine.”

  Anfisa Dmitrievna looked at him quizzically.

  “Why ‘imagine’? Have you not used camera before?”

  It was his weakest moment. It felt amateurish to admit it, but he felt he had no choice.

  “No . . . no. I haven’t.”

  “So . . . I am . . . what you say . . . guinea pig?”

  “Oh, we’re all that,” he said.

  Tanya Dmitrievna came in from the kitchen and set tea in front of them. No quietly stewing samovar—Masefield found he hated Russian tea, and had willingly donated his packet of “travelling tea” to her kitchen cupboard—instead a brown, stripy teapot such as might be found in a million working-class homes in England, and a waft of PG tips as she lifted the lid and stirred.

  “Who talks of pigs?”

  “No matter,” said her sister.

  “Monkeys,” Masefield said.

  “Pigs? Monkeys? Do we run a zoo here?”

  “I was about to say . . . at home they advertise this tea with a troupe of performing monkeys.”

  “Amazing,” Tanya Dmitrievna replied. “And they say capitalism is decadent.”

  §56

  No more creeping to the bed. He rolled between them and lay like the Constant Tin Soldier in Hans Christian Andersen’s cutlery drawer. He had never felt so loved nor so twice-loved.

  §57

  London: April 28

  In the years he had worked for Burne-Jones, Wilderness had bumped into Jack Dashoffy dozens of times. They’d first met in Berlin in 1947. Jack Dash, as he was known, was a breed of American that Wilderness thought quite common, the dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile. Odd in a man of largely German and Hungarian descent, odder still in a CIA agent. Nonetheless, Jack loved all things English from royalty to rose-pattern, ornamental tea caddies. Wilderness was not Jack’s kind of ­Englishman—that was Burne-Jones—but they got along well enough in that they each recognised the limited value of secrecy and were prepared to swap notes from time to time.

  One sunny afternoon in April Jack sought him out in London. Wilderness did what was expected of him and offered tea at Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly. Jack could bask in an Englishness that Wilderness found utterly alien. Wilderness would simply listen in the hope that Jack’s natural indiscretion would lead somewhere. The speed with which Jack got to the point surprised him all the same.

  “The summit’s on.”

 
“What summit?”

  “The one Khrushchev wouldn’t have with Ike after the U-2 thing.”

  “He’ll have it with Kennedy after the cock-up at the Bay of Pigs?”

  “He’ll have it with Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs. It’s being set up for June, in Vienna.”

  “And you’re on the team?”

  “Yep. And so could you be. I can get you clearance . . . of sorts.”

  “Of sorts?”

  “You won’t be in the room with JFK and Khrushchev. But I can get you an embassy pass on the Company, you’d be in on briefings and anything I can tell you short of treason. Day one, Mr. K meets Mr. K at the residence.”

  “Residence?”

  “Our ambassador’s official home in Vienna. Still US territory, but not the embassy if you see what I mean. Lends a little informality to something that couldn’t be informal if it sat on the can and strained to gut busting. Day one is OK, you’ll be with me. Day two is their call. Most likely they’ll shift the whole three-ring circus to their own embassy. Nothing I can do for you there, but stick with it. We’ll see how it all rolls out.”

  How it all rolls out? Burne-Jones would kill for this. To be second fiddle at a summit conference when the most they could ordinarily expect was the back row of the choir.

  “And you might find it handy to be genned up. JFK’ll be in London for talks with Prime Minister Macmillan as soon as it’s over. You’ll be ahead of the press releases. That’s all I can guarantee you. You’ll know what’s going on ahead of the New York Times and whatever lies the Commies decide to print in Pravda.”

  “All the truth that fits.”

  “You said it, kid.”

  “Any expectations, Jack?”

  “Expectations? Nah. Wishes? Sure. I wish that we could come out this year of unstoppable crap storms into a world that isn’t about to boil over like Mother Murphy’s chowder.”

  Wilderness wondered what most might. How would President Kennedy get on with First Secretary Khrushchev? He’d followed Khrushchev’s career since the late forties, when he ruled the Ukraine, and he’d watched him oust every other rival to succeed Stalin. John F. Kennedy? Kennedy appeared to have come out of nowhere. A brief spurt of national attention as he lost out in the 1956 nominations for vice president, and then the merest pause before a roller-coaster campaign for the presidency itself, seeing off Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, and finally Richard Nixon.