The woman gave a cry, and Freddie felt his collar being stripped roughly from his neck. “What have we here?” she said triumphantly. And then turning to Podgornin, she waved the bulky collar in his direction, as if confronting a malefactor with the evidence.
She put a finger to her lips and mouthed the word “silence”.
Podgornin looked flushed and confused. Freddie lay where he was. Nobody moved.
Chapter 57: Freddie de la Hay’s Fate is Determined
Nor spoke. Lying motionless on the rug, Freddie de la Hay noticed that all human eyes in the room were fixed on him – the worst of all possible situations for a dog. Embarrassed by this attention, he closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again, the unwelcome human interest would have passed. But it did not, and was still there when he opened them again.
At first, Podgornin said nothing as the woman flourished Freddie’s collar at him. But then he raised a hand to quieten her and observed laconically that all dogs have collars – perhaps she did not know that.
“Yes, all dogs have collars,” she whispered. “But do all dogs have collars as heavy as this one?”
He did not have time to answer the question before she reached for a letter opener on the table and started to unpick the stitching in the leather of the collar. Within a very short time, the first of the wires started to be exposed. This was the signal for the other two men to turn and stare accusingly at Podgornin. For his part, he stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and tried to snatch the collar from the woman. She resisted.
“It’s probably just one of those behavioural devices,” he said, ignoring her gestures to silence him. “They put them in collars so that the dogs can be given an electric shock if they bark too much. Surely you’ve heard of those things.”
She was still busy exposing the inner part of the collar. She found a battery, which she detached and waved in Podgornin’s face, and then the transmitter itself, a small bundle of electronics that slipped out of its container and into the palm of her hand. Having detached the battery, she felt free to speak at normal volume.
“So, Anatoly, here is your behavioural device. Ha! And let’s take a look at what this says.” She peered at an inscription on the casing of the transmitter. Property of MI6.
“MI6!” she exclaimed. “What do you say to that, Anatoly? Our old friends – right here in the flat, courtesy of you. Well done!”
“Show it to me,” he said. “You can’t be sure …”
She passed the transmitter to him. “See? There it is – clear as daylight.”
Podgornin examined the transmitter, and then looked reproachfully at Freddie de la Hay. “MI6? Why would they put their name on it? No organisation would be so stupid as to do that. This is a joke, something from one of those novelty stores.”
“Don’t underestimate the peculiarity of the British,” said one of the men. “It’s perfectly possible that their security people put their names on their transmitters. It’s probably part of their perverse sense of play.”
The other man agreed. “Yes. It’s the same as using flies when you know that the real way to catch the fish is with a worm. Stupid people.”
Podgornin looked at the ceiling. “Unless they want us to think they’ve been bugging us. That may be why they put Property of MI6 on the transmitter. They might have thought that we would discover it and then think that they—”
“Why?” snapped the woman. “Why would they want us to think that they have been bugging us, when they have?”
One of the men had an idea. “Perhaps they want us to think that they think that we think that they think that we think they’re bugging us. That way we’ll think that—”
“Quiet!” said the woman. “I think that you think—”
“I don’t think anything,” shouted Podgornin, interrupting her. “Except this: this is the thing I think …”
He stopped, and they all stared at him, including Freddie de la Hay, who was relieved that attention seemed to have shifted from him.
“What do you think, Anatoly Mikhailovich?” asked one of the men.
Podgornin glared at the woman. “I think this,” he began. “I think that we have been listened to. So I think, therefore, that we are compromised. Our entire effort – all the work we’ve done – has been compromised.”
“And it’s your fault,” said the woman, glaring at him angrily.
“I do not think fault comes into it,” said Podgornin. “Every one of us in this room – and I mean everyone – has at some point or other compromised security. Yes, I mean it. You, too. Which of us can hold our hand up and say that he – or she – has not at some point in his career – or her career,” this accompanied by a glance in the woman’s direction, “committed some little act of carelessness that has compromised security? I cannot say that. Nor, I think, can any of you.”
There was complete silence. One of the men looked briefly at the other, who averted his gaze. Each heart – such as it was – was laid bare by Podgornin’s frank words.
“Very well,” said the woman. “So what do we do now?”
“We disperse,” said Podgornin. “We leave the country, as provided for in our dispersal plan. And we start now.”
One of the men got up from his chair and looked at his watch. “There’s a flight to Moscow …”
Podgornin held up a hand. “We go through France,” he said. “It’s all in the plan.”
The woman suddenly pointed at Freddie de la Hay. “And him? What do we do about the dog.”
“Shoot him,” said one of the men. “They won’t like that.”
“Yes,” said the woman.
Podgornin looked at Freddie, who looked back up at him with dark, liquid eyes. “He’s innocent,” he said.
“Of course he’s innocent,” said the woman impatiently. “But that’s not the point, is it? The point is to get the message back to them that if they use animals in this way, this will be the consequence. They won’t like it. Dmitri is right – we need to show them.”
Podgornin looked again at Freddie de la Hay. “I will deal with him,” he said. “Leave it to me. I brought him here, and I shall deal with him.”
How?” asked the woman. “You tell us, Anatoly. How?” Her manner was entirely rude and aggressive, and, unlike the others, she did not address Podgornin by his patronymic.
“I shall give him something,” he said. “I shall take him to a place where they will definitely find him and I shall administer something lethal. You leave it to me.”
The woman looked doubtful. “The whole operation ruined by a dog,” she said.
“As in Shakespeare,” said one of the men.
“It was a horse,” said Podgornin. “The king needed a horse, not a dog.”
“This is no time to discuss literature,” said the woman. “It’s time to act.”
“We are all actors,” mused Podgornin.
“What do you mean by that?”
He said nothing. He lifted up the now transmitter-less collar and approached Freddie de la Hay. Freddie watched him warily.
“Come along, my boy,” Podgornin said quietly. “Come here. Come to your uncle Anatoly.”
Chapter 58: Caroline Turns to Jo for Advice
For Caroline, it was a time of reappraisal. Her frank discussion with James, during which he had dashed such hopes as she had been harbouring for a romantic relationship, had been painful. She liked James, whose company she found both amusing and undemanding. They could talk together about anything and everything; he was considerate; he was understanding; they laughed at the same things. Now he had closed the door on anything more than a friendship between them, and she felt a curious emptiness that bordered on numbness.
It was not that James had gone away or refused to see her any more, as can happen when a romance comes to an end; it was not like that. He was still there, and he still wanted them to be friends. But after his declaration that their relationship had no chance of becoming a physical one
, she felt that they were both on a path that led nowhere: a cul-de-sac.
She wanted to talk to somebody about this, but who? Many people have a friend at work whom they can confide in, but Caroline worked for Tim Something, the photographer, who employed nobody else. She wondered whether she could talk to Tim, but decided against it. One could not talk to a man about this, or not to most men; one could certainly talk to James about such questions, but then one could obviously not discuss this particular case with him. No, it would have to be a girlfriend, and there, Caroline had to admit, she had a problem.
Caroline was not one of those women who had difficulty in forming friendships with others of her sex. She had been reasonably gregarious at school and university, but since she came to London she found that she had not kept up with the friends she had made in those days. Her school friends had certainly drifted off – or she had drifted off from them – and although she occasionally saw members of her circle from university days, a number of them had become either engaged or even married, and this had resulted in another form of drifting apart. The world, she decided, was designed for couples; a discovery that the recently divorced or widowed also often reported. Couples might protest that this was not true, but it was something that Caroline was beginning to feel herself. And now she was in need of friends to discuss the very social isolation that came from not having friends.
Of course there were her flatmates in Corduroy Mansions, and in normal circumstances who better to turn to than a group of female flatmates? But circumstances were not normal, because again Caroline felt that she had drifted away from the other three. She had never been particularly close to Dee, and recently, of course, Dee had lied to her about having dinner with James. This meant that she could definitely not discuss James with her. And even if she did, Dee was so obsessive that any discussion would probably end up being diverted into a conversation with a nutritional bent.
No, Dee would not do, which left Jo, her Australian flatmate, whom she had barely seen for weeks, and Jenny, who had spent the last two months in Mexico with a software engineer from Sheffield. The software engineer was working on a contract in Cancun and Jenny had gone with him. They had received a few quite lengthy emails from her, saying that the two of them liked Mexico a great deal and were thinking of staying. George, the software engineer, had taken up scuba diving and Jenny was thinking of doing so too. They were both learning Spanish, and George was almost fluent, having previously done an A Level in the language at school. They had made numerous friends and George’s hair had been bleached by the sun. “I have a whole new life,” Jenny had written. “When I think of what I put up with when I worked for Oedipus Snark, it makes me sick. I wasted all that time when I could have been here, learning to scuba dive and having my nails painted.”
“She never had her nails painted in London,” Dee had said at the time. “She’s changed, and that’s not the letter of somebody who’s coming back. She’s finished with London.”
Caroline had agreed. Jenny had paid three months’ rent in advance before she left; in another month they could let her room again.
If she could talk to neither Dee nor Jenny, that left Jo. Jo at least was approachable, and seemed the type to listen. So Caroline waited in the kitchen, flicking through a magazine, hoping that she would hear the sound of a key in the front door that would signify Jo’s return from the gym.
She waited an hour or so before her flatmate returned, coming into the kitchen in a light blue tracksuit with a sweat band round her forehead.
“Hello Caroline. Haven’t really seen you in a while. How are you doing?” Jo asked.
This was Caroline’s opportunity. “Not so well.”
Jo frowned. “Not so well? What’s the problem? Going down with something? There weren’t many people at the gym, you know – I think there’s a bug doing the rounds.”
Caroline shook her head. “No. I’m not sick.”
“Well, you look a bit crook to me.” Jo used the Australian expression; Caroline had heard it before and knew what it meant to be crook. No, she was not crook – at least not in the physical sense; the emotional sense might be another matter.
“I don’t think I’m crook,’ she said. “I’m just … Well, James and I are splitting up.”
Jo sat down opposite Caroline. She peeled the headband off her head, releasing her hair. “Oh. So that’s it. Boyfriend trouble.”
Caroline nodded gloomily. It was so clichéd, this whole thing. Boyfriend trouble – what a cliché.
“Except I didn’t think he was your boyfriend,” Jo said. “You know what I mean?”
Caroline looked at her indignantly. “I don’t, actually.” She felt loyalty to James. What did Jo know about his inclinations? There were plenty of straight men who were artistic – a bit camp, even – and why should she not think that James was one of these. It was a blatant case of prejudice.
“Well, he doesn’t strike me as the sort to have a girlfriend,” sad Jo breezily. “I thought that you and he were just friends. Know what I mean?”
Caroline could not constantly say no, she did not know what Jo meant. Of course she knew what the other woman meant.
“It’s not like you think,” she said. “He’s not gay. He’s … he’s … Well, he’s nothing in particular.”
Jo was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “I see. So you and he are not … you know, actually sleeping together?”
Caroline shook her head. “No. And he doesn’t want to.” She paused. “I’m so miserable, Jo, I really am. And I’m so confused. I love James. I love him, and he’s not interested in me.”
She started to cry. Jo reached out and took Caroline’s hand, and held it in silence. She caressed it, gently, and her touch was warm and reassuring.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh. That’s bad luck, Caroline. Rotten luck. But that’s the problem with men. They’re not really interested in us – not really. They use us. But that’s all.”
Caroline sniffed. Jo handed her a tissue, which she used to blow her nose. “I don’t know if all of them do. Some, maybe. Not all.”
Jo shook her head. “No,” she said. “All of them, Caroline. All of them use us.”
“But how has he used me? I don’t see how you can say James has used me? If anybody’s used anybody here, it’s … it’s me. I’ve used him.”
“He’s used you subtly,” said Jo. “And that’s often the worst way of being used. You don’t know it, you see, and then you realise later that you’ve been used. And that hurts – it really hurts.”
Chapter 59: The Reassurances of Home
“So what do I do?” Caroline asked. “What do I say to him?”
Jo shrugged. “I don’t see that you need to say anything to him. I thought you had gone over that ground. He’s told you what he feels – or doesn’t feel, in his case. So now you both know and you can move on.”
“Move on?” People always talked about moving on, but Caroline wondered precisely what was involved in moving on. She assumed that you had to have somewhere to move to before you actually moved on; where did she have to move on to?
There was a faint smile on Jo’s lips as she said, “I take it that you’re sure about yourself?”
Again Caroline was puzzled. “Look, I’m sorry, you must think me really stupid, but I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What I mean,” said Jo, “is this: are you sure that men are where you’re at?”
“That men are where I’m at?”
“Yes. Do you like men? Are you sure?”
Caroline looked at Jo. “What about you?”
“This isn’t about me,” said Jo quickly. “It’s about you. I’ve already moved on. You’re the one who’s to decide whether to move on or …”
“Or stay where I am?” Was that the alternative to moving on? she wondered.
“Yes, that’s about it.” Jo paused. She was watching Caroline closely. “There are alternatives, you know. You don’t have to stay in the place you’re a
t.”
Caroline thought quickly. No. Female solidarity was important, and sustained a lot of women – but she did not want to be too solid.
“I don’t think so, Jo,” she said quietly. “I know that for lots of people, that’s … well, that’s where they’re at. But I don’t think so. Not in my case.”
Jo looked down. “Fair enough. In that case, just give it time. Move on, and wait.”
Caroline was intrigued. Moving on and waiting seemed to be a new option.
Jo explained. “Be single. There’s no pressure. Enjoy your life. Wait for somebody else to come along. He will. Eventually.” She paused. “Does that make sense to you?”
Caroline nodded.
“And here’s another bit of advice,” she said. “You’ve got a home, haven’t you?”
“You mean parents? All of that?”
“Yes, all of that. Your olds. People forget about them, but they’re always there, aren’t they? Go and chill with them.”
Caroline resisted an urge to laugh. The idea of chilling with her parents in Cheltenham … And yet, and yet …
“I’m not sure if they do chilling,” she said. The picture came to her of her mother, with her pearls and her county attitudes. And her poor father, with his utter certainties and his tendency to talk in platitudes. There was a vague sense of failure there, which was strange, as in many terms he had succeeded, certainly by the standards of those with whom he mixed. Neither of her parents had moved on, she decided. They were both still in the place they were at.
“It’s hard for me to get back home,” said Jo. “When I was at uni over in Melbourne and my folks were back in Perth, you couldn’t go back for the weekend. But sometimes you could go for a week, maybe. I remember feeling really bad once. Something had happened. Something messy and I felt all raw inside. You know that feeling, when everything is just pointless and you feel that you’re on the edge of a void – a void of meaninglessness? That feeling?”
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