‘My wife was an ice skater. Famously beautiful. She died young.’
‘How did you know what I was thinking?’
The minister smiled. ‘You looked at me, you looked at him, you looked momentarily puzzled. It wasn’t hard to follow.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘I’ll remember you knew I was looking for the boy.’ Vedenin hesitated. ‘She’s young, that English girl you keep staring at. Pretty, admittedly. But young. You know whose stepdaughter she is, of course?’
‘I take it you do?’
‘What do you find so interesting?’
The dinner jacket, the shaved sides to her head, the irrationality of my anger at the graze on her wrist …
‘It’s hard to say.’
‘You mean you won’t. “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” You know who said that?’
‘Churchill. About Russia.’
The minister smiled. ‘What are you doing in Moscow?’
‘I’ve been exiled.’
‘Really?’ Vedenin looked intrigued.
‘Well. Someone thought it would be useful if I was out of the way.’
The Russian laughed. ‘Your queen offered Ivan the Terrible refuge once. Did you know that? He wanted to marry her. She refused but said if he ever got into trouble at home he could come to live in England. So you see, the ties between our countries are historic and strong. If a little fractious, in the way of all families. Especially those where the members haven’t been talking for a while. And that, to answer your question, is why I’m here. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’ The minister swept the ballroom with a sharp gaze, looking for more than his son this time.
A Soviet colonel in dress uniform nodded and slid across to a general, who glanced at Vedenin and nodded in turn. The man the minister didn’t look at, the one not in uniform, the one who’d been watching Vedenin’s son earlier, didn’t catch anybody’s eye. He still managed to disengage himself from an elderly Indian diplomat though. And he reached the door ahead of his principal. He was the one who’d checked for the exits, windows and light switches earlier. The one Tom Fox recognized as a younger version of himself. The one he’d have worried about, if worrying about these things was still in his job description.
With the Soviets gone, the party relaxed.
Someone turned the lights down and the music up and a woman began chivvying couples on to the dance floor. Most were embarrassed but well aware there were still two hours to midnight. Abba gave way to Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart to Hot Chocolate … Not really Tom’s kind of music. He was thinking about going back to the balcony when he saw the ambassador lean in to the woman and mutter something. There was a manicured look about her as if she’d wandered in from Chelsea, and now found herself living in a Georgian rectory somewhere in Wiltshire and regretted the move.
She frowned but headed for Tom all the same.
‘It’s always hard,’ she said, ‘when you first arrive. If you don’t know anyone. We’re a friendly bunch really. Edward says your family will be joining you later.’
‘Possibly.’
Her smile faltered.
‘My wife’s having Christmas with her parents and Charlie’s back at school on the seventh. I might try to get back for half-term if I can.’
‘Charlie’s your son?’
Tom nodded.
‘Anna,’ she said, putting out her hand.
‘Lady Masterton?’
‘I prefer Anna.’
Her grip was as strong as her gaze was unfocused. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you glancing at my daughter earlier.’
‘Her dinner jacket is an interesting touch.’
Anna Masterton winced. ‘She’s cross with me.’
‘You in particular?’
‘Everyone really. It’s a difficult age.’
‘Seventeen?’
Anna Masterton didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled. ‘Is that what she told you? She’s sixteen next month.’
‘What’s she furious about?’
‘Lizzie went to Westminster for sixth form and Alex wanted to go too. Lizzie’s her friend. My husband wouldn’t let her. So now it’s a battle. An East German girl she met at the pool was having a party tonight. Edward said she had to come to this. Now he wants to drive out to Borodino, stay a few nights and walk the battlefield. Alex says he can’t make her. You can grin, but it’s bloody tiring.’
She spoke with the fierce intensity of the quietly drunk.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Tom agreed.
Anna Masterton shook her head, quite at what Tom wasn’t sure, and forced a smile more appropriate to an ambassador’s wife at an official function. ‘You’re a Russia expert, Edward says.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘But you did lots of preparation for your visit here?’
‘I rewatched Andrei Rublev.’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘Isn’t that the strange black-and-white film with naked peasants in a forest setting fire to everything?’
‘Tarkovsky. 1966. It opens with a pagan festival.’
‘I thought Russia was Christian by then?’
‘Double faith,’ said Tom. ‘It’s called dvoeverie. Think of it as dual nationality for the unseen kingdoms.’
‘This is your area?’
‘That, and recognizing patterns in things. I’m here to write a report for the Foreign Office on religion in Russia.’
‘Isn’t that rather academic?’
‘If faith can move mountains, why shouldn’t it bring down a government?’
She looked round, realized her Soviet guests really had gone and lifted another glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.
‘Do we want to bring their government down?’
‘Your husband’s more likely to know that than me.’
It wasn’t the real reason he was here, of course. He was here to keep him out of trouble. How much trouble he was in was being decided back in London. Meanwhile, to give his bosses a break, he was here.
Having made enough small talk to give him a headache, Tom pleaded the need for air and another cigarette. Skirting the dance floor entailed endless ‘excuse me’s as he made his way round the edge of the chocolate-box ballroom, with its white panels and gilding. As he went, he wondered what Caro was doing, then wished he hadn’t.
It would be teatime back home. She’d be on the sofa between her parents most likely, a fire already blazing in the hearth. The black-and-white portable wouldn’t be turned on until later. And even then it would have the sound down so no one had to pay it any attention until the chimes. Charlie would be getting ready for bed.
A brief protest at not being allowed up, then sleep and, with luck, no dreams.
A year from now …? His boy would still be in bed come New Year’s Eve. Probably still protesting, but not fiercely enough to make a difference. And Caro? Whoever’s bed she climbed into, Tom doubted it would be his. So why not give her what she wanted? It would be best for the boy. That was what she kept telling him. Charlie needs to know where he stands. ‘Bitch,’ Tom muttered.
‘Hey, that’s rude.’
It was the girl who’d begged a cigarette.
Tom blinked, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said that’s really rude.’
‘I wasn’t talking about you, obviously.’
‘Obviously …’ She did a passable imitation of Tom’s irritation.
‘People are watching,’ he said.
‘You think I care?’
‘No, I think that’s what you want.’
Her hair was wilder than before, her dinner jacket too tight to button. She’d folded up both sleeves since he last looked. Close to, he could see she was younger than he’d imagined. Her gaze found Sir Edward in the crowd and she smirked. ‘I’m going to tell my stepfather about you.’
Tom grabbed her as she turned.
The bones in her damaged wrist felt frighteningly fragile. Out of the corner of his
eye, Tom saw the black woman he’d talked to earlier heading towards him and let the girl’s wrist drop. Her mother wasn’t the only one drunk around here.
‘Roll your sleeves down,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Or roll them up, let your parents see and have the damn argument. You’re obviously desperate for a fight.’
‘He’s not my parent.’
‘Whatever.’
Beneath her cuffs, not quite visible and not quite hidden, raw welts crossed both wrists. A blunt knife would do it.
‘What’s it got to do with you anyway?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Wrist to elbow,’ he said. ‘Wrist to elbow. If you’re serious.’
3
Sadovaya Samotechnaya
Shrugging himself into his Belstaff, Tom left the party through high gates between wrought-iron railings mostly hidden by frosted trees. He made a point of nodding to the militsiya sergeant stamping his feet on the pavement outside. Brown coat, peaked cap, cheap boots, Makarov in a brown-leather holster.
Same poor sod as earlier.
Taking the metro would cost five kopeks, and the stations had such elegance they put London to shame, but Tom wanted to walk and if the little Russian assigned as Tom’s KGB shadow had to walk too, that was his bad luck.
From his pocket, Tom pulled a rabbit-fur cap bought that afternoon. It was second-hand and split along one edge. Cramming it on to his head, he lit a Russian cigarette and checked his reflection in a car window, flattering himself that he was safely anonymous, as drably dressed as those around him.
Just north of the Bolshoi and south of the Boulevard Ring that ran round inner Moscow, what Tom thought was a scraped-together mound of snow on the steps of a church shivered, and he stepped back as the mound shook itself from white to black, recently fallen flakes scattering to reveal an old woman.
A red scarf was tight around her head. She looked for a moment puzzled at where she found herself and then shrugged and examined the man in front of her with bright eyes. ‘American,’ she announced.
Tom shook his head.
‘Ah, he speaks Russian. Well, perhaps he knows the odd word.’ She looked beyond Tom to the crossroads, which was empty except for Tom’s shadow a hundred paces away, pretending to tie his shoe. Early twenties, skinny and rat-faced, he was putting in time as a pavement artist on his way to a nice warm desk from which he could order others to trawl around in the cold. Tom waved and received a scowl in reply.
He’d expected Soviet tradecraft to be better.
‘Here.’ The old woman offered Tom what looked like a sliver of ivory.
It was an angel carved from wax. Squat and moon-faced, unnervingly ugly, with a bent wing.
Distractedly, Tom dug into his pocket for change. He shook his head when she pushed the figure at him. ‘Sell it again,’ he suggested.
‘That would be bad luck.’
Her accent was hard. She might be southern, to judge from her leathery face and the sharpness of her cheekbones. Georgian? Azerbaijani? Tom’s Russian was too rusty for him to place her. He was pleased enough to understand the words.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Why?’ Tom demanded.
‘I was being polite.’
Despite himself, Tom grinned.
‘See. That’s better. Can you spare one of those?’ She nodded at the burned-out papirosa in his fingers. And taking one for himself, Tom gave her the packet. As he was leaving, she called after him.
‘If not American?’
‘English …’
‘Covent Garden. The Royal Ballet. Sadler’s Wells.’
Hard walking on slippery pavements brought him to the Garden Ring and the Sadovaya Samotechnaya block for foreigners that stood in its shadow. As he approached, a black cat hurried between ruts in the snow, dodged round the KGB man guarding its entrance and mewed for the gate to be opened.
‘He lives here?’ Tom asked the guard, who did his best not to be shocked that Tom spoke his language.
‘I’m not sure he has papers.’
Tom laughed.
The man couldn’t help glancing beyond Tom to his shadow, who was now pretending to admire a bronze statue of a Soviet youth in gym shorts holding the hand of a girl in a summer dress. When the boy felt he’d admired the statue for as long as was believable, he knelt and tied his shoelace for the fifth time that evening.
Tom could lose him easily.
But the Committee for State Security would assign someone better. Then, when Tom really needed to shake free – if he ever really needed to shake free – it would be harder.
‘Where’s a good place to drink?’
‘Everywhere is closed.’
‘It’s New Year’s Eve.’
‘In Moscow, bars close at eleven.’
‘Tovarishch. Comrade … Don’t be ridiculous. It’s New Year’s Eve. There must be a bar open somewhere in this city.’
The KGB man sighed.
Lights still shone in at least half the flats overlooking the bleak street, but its cafes and shops were firmly shut. He’d just decided he must have overshot the address he’d been given – along with a warning about foreigners not necessarily being welcome, New Year’s Eve or not – when a man shouted from a concrete walkway above, and a familiar noise brought Tom up short.
He knew the sound of a door being kicked open.
He’d heard enough of that in Northern Ireland. Usually, though, the kick came from outside. This time … Tom heard the door slam into a wall and saw a man’s body tumble down the concrete stairs to land in a sprawl.
Behind him stamped a broad-shouldered man in his twenties, his torso bare except for a stained singlet. What Tom noticed, though, was his leg. It was missing, its replacement constructed from the leaf spring of a vehicle. Having dragged his victim to his feet, the man hurled him into a bank of snow and finally noticed Tom watching.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘You,’ Tom said.
The man considered that.
‘Do I look like I play Abba?’ he asked furiously. ‘I mean, really? The Beatles, if you must. The Stones, back when they were good. New York Dolls. The Cramps. The Ramones. But Abba?’
‘Always hated them,’ Tom said.
‘You lost?’
‘Who isn’t? No. I’m looking for a bar.’
The man jerked his head towards the stairs down which the drunk had been thrown. ‘There are worse ones than mine. Not many, mind you …’
‘I’m not that choosy.’
The upstairs bar had a long length of battered zinc against which a dozen men leaned. Another four formed a queue behind a fifth, who stood in front of a computer monitor with a filthy screen. The fifth man was battering a keyboard as he tried to twist the shapes that rained from above. When he mistimed a move, falling blocks built up and his screen filled. Cursing, he stepped aside for the man behind to take his place.
‘Tetris,’ the bar owner said sourly. ‘Worse than heroin.’
‘Where did the computer come from?’
‘The army.’
‘Do they know it’s gone?’
‘They’ve probably replaced it.’
The man who’d just lost his game yelled a food order.
Instead of answering, the one-legged man took himself behind the zinc and vanished through a curtained gap in a wall of records. Mostly albums, although a row of 45s sat high up. He returned with a bowl of red cabbage, which he thrust at the loser with a shrug that suggested personally he wouldn’t eat it. Then he headed for a battered turntable on a shelf attached to the record wall.
‘Any requests?’
There was silence from the room.
‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘“Sympathy for the Devil”.’
The barman stared at him.
‘Could have been written about any of us,’ said Tom. ‘Apart from the bits about wealth and taste.’
Straight after came ‘Stray Cat Blues’.
‘To Behemoth,’ said the one-legged bar owner. ‘Sadly absent.’
Then the man put away Beggars Banquet, pulled out David Johansen and played ‘Frenchette’ twice before lowering the needle on to a badly scratched 45 of The Damned’s ‘New Rose’. In between, he served flasks of vodka and iced bottles of Zhigulevskoe lager to a slowly dwindling crowd that finally comprised only a hard core of drinkers and those too drunk to find the door.
There were no seats in his bar, no tables.
His customers were restless and cheaply dressed and stank of the vinegary cabbage ferried endlessly from the kitchen. Sweat, vodka and cigarette smoke soured the room. Anyone who believes vodka doesn’t smell hasn’t sweated it out. After a flask and a half, Tom finally cracked and asked for a bowl of whatever everyone was eating.
The bar owner shouted and a whey-faced teenager came in from the kitchen. She scowled at the owner, looked over at Tom and her eyes flicked towards the papirosa he was lighting. Tom realized it wasn’t the cigarette that attracted her.
It was the flame …
The cabbage she dumped at his elbow was sweet and sour and tasted of raisins. Its welcome warmth reminded him of hunger. Of being cold and fed up, cold, fed up, wet and hungry. Without thinking, he went to the window and stared down at his KGB shadow. The man was stamping his feet in a doorway, his donkey jacket wrapped as tightly round him as it would go. Cold nights in dark doorways.
Worse nights in the wastes of a Belfast multi-storey.
The wind blowing through him, whistling between his ribs, while he pissed in a milk carton and shat in a supermarket bag, waiting for a man who didn’t show and men who wanted to kill him, who did.
There’d been women over there. When the nights were darkest, they’d put warmth in his bed. Only one of them had realized it wasn’t the sex he needed. She’d cradled his head as he cried through a long December night, and never referred to it again. That was ten years ago. Her man came out of prison eventually. Around the time her son went in.
‘Who is he?’ the bar owner asked.
‘KGB. My shadow.’
‘You American?’
‘English.’
Moskva Page 2