‘There you are,’ Ansell said, ‘the commandant did know what film was showing—he’s showing his displeasure.’
In the car Diana said: ‘I hope you didn’t mind me saying that about your leave, Richard.’
He experienced a sudden tenderness for her clumsy loyalty ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he said.
‘And you don’t mind me taking some leave at the same time? Because if you do it doesn’t matter at all. I can take it some other time.’
He stopped the car and stroked her hair. ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he said.
‘I know it was very presumptuous of me. I just did it on the spur of the moment. Then I thought, gosh supposing he doesn’t want me. Because you have been terribly quiet and distant lately, Richard.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Sorry that he had hurt her and might hurt her again. He felt much older than her tonight.
‘That’s all right then.’ She nestled up to him and he put his arm around her.
‘You’re a wonderful girl,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you in Moscow.’
‘Gracious,’ she said, ‘you sound as if you’re saying good-bye.
Perhaps he was, he thought. And it suddenly seemed as if he was in the process of winding up his affairs. He wanted to thank her for her friendship—and for her generous body—without being dramatic.
He leaned over and kissed her. A warm, dry kiss. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘For what?’
Everything sounded stilted. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just thank you.’
The fog had lifted in the evening and the moisture left behind had frozen overnight. The streets and rooftops were rimmed with hoar frost, as thick as a first scattering of snow, and the branches of the trees, almost bare of leaves, were sheathed in white. The sky was cold and blue, the air barbed and brittle, the sunlight brave and weak.
They walked across Red Square feeling their shoes slip on the sugar-lump cobblestones. An artist sat in the middle of the square painting the Kremlin, trying to mix sunshine and jewelled lights on his palette. Tourists peeped at colour transparencies of the square at a stall beside St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Inside the Kremlin walls Russian sightseers prowled warily among the halls and cathedrals, hardly able to believe that they were allowed to inspect Stalin’s fortress. The domes absorbed the sunshine and glowed with it.
‘Now,’ Nina said, ‘why have you brought me here?’ Her gaiety did not ring true. ‘You have been most mysterious. I come back after being ill and you immediately want to take me round the Kremlin.’
‘I wanted to speak to you,’ he said. ‘It was impossible in the flat.’
‘What did you want to tell me?’ The brittleness left her voice and she said: ‘I have missed you. I have missed you very much.’
They stopped beside the massive broken husk of the Tsar Bell. Could she not be truthful with him? Was her brother so very much more important than her lover? Lover … the word was a misnomer. There had only been a kiss, a little understanding, the warmth of sharing; nothing more.
‘I missed you,’ he said. She wore a dark blue coat and a blue scarf over her hair. She was not beautiful; she was gracious and warm, and her neck beneath the corner of the scarf was so slender, so vulnerable.
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Do you want me then to tell you the history of the Kremlin?’
A hundred yards behind them a burly man in a belted raincoat consulted a guide book. Mortimer was not sure if it was the same man he had noticed in Kutuzovsky when they left the apartment together.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to hear about the Kremlin.’
‘Then what is it you want to talk to me about?’
‘Do you think that man in the raincoat has been following us?’
Nina glanced behind her. ‘No, I do not think so. It seems to me that it is now you who are imagining things.’
‘You were quite apprehensive yourself the last time we went out. Your fears seem to have been dispelled by your illness.’
Already, he thought, the conversation was out of control. It had an ugly will of its own.
‘You seem to be accusing me of something.’
If she suspected that he was accusing her, then this was the moment for her to tell him the truth. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said. ‘Let’s move on and see if he follows us.’
They walked on across the gold and ermine setting beneath the ice-blue sky. They stopped near the armoury where thrones and crowns and treasures given to the Tsars were kept. There was no sign of the man in the overcoat. They walked on to the new Palace of Congress, all glass and metal, and there was still no sign of him.
‘I do not understand,’ she said. ‘You do not seem very pleased to see me.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ he said. Only when she was gone would he find the right words.
‘I feel that you are about to say something terrible.’
‘I am about to say something that we both know.’
He knew that he was about to extinguish all hope of their love developing. He accepted that now: the system had won.
‘What is this thing that we both know?’
‘I would like to know one thing,’ he said. ‘Did you love me that day we went into the forest?’
Weariness had settled on her face. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I loved you.’
‘You were not told to love me—as you have been now?’
‘I was not told to love you.’ She looked at him with a tired, hopeless face.
‘That’s all I wanted to know.’
‘I do not know who told you,’ she said. ‘But it is true that I have since been told to keep contact with you, as they put it. I did not know what to do. I had my brother to think of. And I knew that if I told you there was no hope because you would have to tell the people you work for. I did not know what to do. There was nothing that I could do.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I love you.’ He kissed her gently and briefly.
‘It is hopeless then?’
He nodded and walked briskly away past the offices of the men who ruled his affairs and the affairs of the girl in the blue headscarf alone in the sunshine; the men who tried to rule the affairs of the world.
Two men tried to warn Richard Mortimer that afternoon. They met on the stone stairs leading to his apartment because once again the lift wasn’t working.
‘Hallo,’ said Harry Green. ‘Are you by any chance going where I’m going?’
‘I’m going up to Richard Mortimer’s apartment,’ Randall said.
‘So am I. For the same reason, I suppose.’
‘Look, Harry,’ Randall said. ‘I’ve been in this game long enough not to fall for gambits like that.’
Green stopped breathlessly on a landing two floors beneath Mortimer’s apartment. ‘As we understand each other,’ he said, ‘I might as well tell you that I’m on my way to warn him that he’s in trouble.’
‘Naturally you’re not going up there to get a few quotes before the story blows?’
Green smiled and lit a cigarette. ‘As a matter of fact I am,’ he said. ‘I also feel sorry for the poor bastard.’
‘He seems to attract that sort of feeling.’
‘What do you know about all this?’ Green asked. ‘I promise you I won’t do anything about it unless anything breaks officially. Then I’ll have to.’
‘I like you, Harry,’ Randall said. ‘But I wouldn’t tell you a Goddam thing.’
‘Okay. I’ll lay my cards on the table then. All I know is that he’s been a little too friendly with a Russian girl. But the girl appears to have been working for our friends. He discovered that she was playing a double game and told her to push off today. Now Mason and company have got hold of it and there’s one hell of a top-secret flap on about it.’
‘Not so secret that you don’t know about it,’ Randall said.
‘Or you for that matter. How did you hear of it?’
<
br /> Randall shook his head wearily. ‘When did you last reveal a source of information?’
‘About a year ago, as a matter of fact,’ Green said. ‘To Richard Mortimer.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Randall said. ‘Let’s just say I’ve got contacts. The fact remains that I’ve got much the same story as you. I wanted to warn him before Mason and some of his comedians got at him. I figured they’d take such a long time trying to make up their minds what to do that I could reach him first and soften the blow.’
‘They’re frightened the Russians are going to pull some big propaganda stunt. Did you know they snatched a picture of him kissing this girl this morning—in the Kremlin of all places.’
Randall looked at Green with some admiration. ‘I’m ashamed to admit it,’ he said, ‘but you seem to have got better contacts than I.’
Mortimer answered the door to them. He greeted them cheerfully and invited them inside. He was listening to a Tchaikovsky symphony on his record player. ‘It drowns the sound of the voice,’ he said.
‘What voice?’ Green asked.
‘The French voice,’ Mortimer said. ‘Here, listen.’ He turned down the volume. ‘Can you hear him?’
‘I can’t hear a damn thing,’ Randall said.
‘And I suppose you can’t see those shadows on the ceiling either?’
‘No,’ Green said, ‘I can’t see any shadows.’
Mortimer began to laugh and Randall had to slap him hard before he stopped.
When Harry Waterman arrived to warn Mortimer that he had lied to the Russians about his association with Nina Bashkirova Mortimer had been taken away to the home of the British doctor inside the British Embassy. Harry, who had decided—after several sleepless nights—that he could alert Mortimer without Grechenko knowing, walked slowly down the stone stairs and out into the fading daylight.
FIRST SNOW
The first snow of winter fell in the evening. At Sheremetievo Airport a breeze whisked it across the tarmac into miniature drifts as the Aeroflot TU 104 bound for London waited at the end of the runway for permission to take off. Although it was warm on the flight deck the pilots shivered with the knowledge of the winter ahead, of the blizzards and ground-ice that would delay them and divert them to other airports.
In the cabin the British Embassy doctor sat down beside the patient. He was sorry for the poor devil; but he was also grateful to him for having the breakdown that had enabled him to take an unexpected couple of days leave in London. He waited anxiously for the aircraft to move forward and accelerate because even now no one seemed to know what the Russians proposed to do about Richard Mortimer. Although it did not look as if they intended to exploit his foolishness.
The doctor looked anxiously at Mortimer who was staring out of the window at the snow dancing into the light from the darkness. He had decided that it was better for him to travel this way rather than on a stretcher with all the additional drama involved, and he had given him an injection to steady him.
The Russian sitting beside them handed the doctor his copy of the Moscow evening paper. ‘You would like to read it?’ he asked.
‘No thank you,’ said the doctor, and hoped that his neighbour would not be talkative.
‘And your friend? Perhaps he would like to see it.’
‘As a matter of fact we’ve both read it,’ the doctor said.
The Russian took off his spectacles and polished them. ‘My name is Andrei,’ he said. Andrei Maisky. I am going to work for Intourist in London. I hope we will become good friends on this flight.’
The doctor smiled non-committally.
‘I used to work in Khabarrovsk. A town which has been built from nothing. I can tell you a lot about Khabarrovsk. But perhaps you can tell me something about London?’
‘Not very much,’ said the doctor who was a Cockney. ‘I come from Liverpool.’ He turned to his patient. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Mortimer said in a toneless voice.
The doctor pointed out of the window. ‘It’s snowing,’ he said.
Mortimer said: ‘It was snowing the night I arrived.’
The airliner trundled forward and gained speed. A slight lurch and they were airborne. Briefly they saw the brooches and strings of lights of Moscow through the falling snow. Then they were in the clouds on their way to London.
Luke Randall left the balcony at Sheremetievo, brushed the snow from his coat and thought: ‘And that leaves you, you poor bastard.’ He went to the bar and ordered a small carafe of vodka to prepare himself for the winter that was just beginning to arrive outside.
Along the embankment by the bridges the snowploughs met again. On Red Square they prepared for a rehearsal of the fiftieth anniversary parade which was to be bigger than ever before with fine new rockets and men and women dressed in clothes and uniforms from the Revolution. Elsewhere armies of women thankfully got out their spades to begin scraping clean the pavements at fifty roubles a month.
Harry Waterman was in the beer hall when the first snow began to fall. He was very drunk and when he saw the flakes touching the window he immediately began to recall winters in the labour camp. But his neighbour wasn’t interested and turned his back. Yury Petrov was dead, of Nicolai Simenov there was no sign.
Harry was so drunk that when he tried to recall Grechenko’s words that afternoon they skipped away from him like the snowflakes outside. All he was left with was the essence of the brief conversation: there had been a blunder over the Richard Mortimer plan and as far as Nikita Grechenko was concerned Harry Waterman could rot in the Soviet Union for the rest of his life.
Harry shook the vodka bottle over his beer but the bottle was empty. The smell of the river and the hooting of the ships at the London docks receded for ever. They had double-crossed him. Harry rose to his feet. ‘—— you Russian pigs,’ he said. ‘—— the lot of you.’ He smashed the empty bottle against the wall.
One of the waitresses twisted his arm behind his back and propelled him up the worn steps where the snow was already gathering in the corners. She pushed him, without effort, so that he skidded along the pavement before falling.
When he stood up he thought he saw the lights of an aircraft through the falling snow. He walked unsteadily along searching the dark sky for the light which had disappeared. He was sure the aircraft was on its way to London. He stepped into the path of a cab which knocked him aside ripping the jacket off his back. The driver of a Moskvich saw his body falling and braked; but his wheels skidded on the new snow and passed over Harry Waterman.
As he died he thought of the black box locked in the bottom drawer of the dresser. He did not think of the house where he was born, of the pub sign swinging in the breeze, of the smells and sounds of the river. They were all there in the box.
His mind was suddenly clear of hatred and resentment and there was no time to consider his treachery. When they unlocked the box they would find the evidence of his patriotism. ‘We never guessed,’ they would say. Red, white and blue fused and darkened. He wished he had polished the cap badge once more.
As the snow settled on his thin body one of the eye-witnesses remarked on the old scars on his back.
Nicolai Simenov who liked to be knowledgeable said: ‘Yes, he got those in a labour camp.’ Then he dodged into the beer hall because the snow was falling on his new overcoat and, although a lot more snow would fall on it before the winter was over, there was no sense in exposing it unnecessarily.
In his smart flat Nikita Grechenko hummed to himself as he cleaned his skis and checked his guns. Soon he would be out hunting in the white taiga—a healthy, man’s world.
He thought briefly about the day’s work. The Mortimer ruse had been a fiasco. But that was none of his business: he had done what they had asked him. It was typical of the way that particular department worked, furtively and haphazardly, that the project should have been bungled. And now the girl’s brother was to be arrested and tried—a
small and spiteful revenge.
Grechenko didn’t think about his interview with Harry Waterman because to him Harry Waterman was so contemptible and of such little significance that he was not worth thinking about. He heard his boys come in and, with a smile of anticipation on his face, he picked up the two pairs of skates which he had bought them that afternoon.
In Harry Waterman’s flat his wife Marsha finished sealing the windows with paper. ‘There,’ she said, ‘Harry will be pleased when he sees what I’ve done. He does so hate the cold.’
Her mother switched on the television. ‘I don’t know why he can’t seal them himself,’ she said. ‘He’s a useless washout if you ask me.’
‘Harry’s a very clever man,’ Marsha said. ‘He just hasn’t had the chances. They took ten years of his life away remember.’
‘They should have taken more.’
‘Anyway,’ Marsha said, ‘there’s no point in arguing about it. I’ve got to get his dinner ready. He hinted the other day that he might be able to get exit visas for both of us to visit his home in England.’
On her way to the kitchen she noticed that the bottom drawer of the dresser was open. Inside was a black box with the key still in the lock. No one, she thought, could have resisted such a temptation. She chided herself for her weakness and determined never to tell Harry that she had pried into his secrets. She was disappointed at the contents of the box—and relieved at the same time that Harry had nothing more sinister to hide from her. She fingered the cloth of the ribbons and wondered about the powdered soil in the matchbox. Then, because it was beginning to tarnish and she sensed that Harry would not like it that way, she rubbed the fragile cap badge on her apron. Immediately it shone with a bright lustre in the way of metal that is accustomed to being cared for.
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