‘Nothing more?’
Valentina knew that her daughter tried never to lie.
Natasha said, ‘There are many attractions.’
Valentina knew then that her intuition was right: a man was involved. Tomorrow they would go out together and talk. Under the cherry blossom in Potomac Park. If the riots were over.
Natasha elaborated hastily about the educational advantages of Washington. ‘Do you know what their adopted flower is?’
Valentina said she didn’t, wondering who he was.
‘The American Beauty Rose. Isn’t that lovely?’
Valentina agreed.
‘And their tree. Do you know what their tree is?’
No, Valentina admitted, she didn’t.
‘The scarlet oak.’ She laughed nervously. ‘That should please you, Mother.’
They looked at each other through a curtain of dishonesty.
Natasha changed tactics. ‘How is the Soviet Union interpreting these riots? We never seem to say much about race riots. I wonder why.’
‘They are America’s problem.’
‘I thought we made capital out of America’s problems.’
‘Not this one. It has no place in our scheme of things.’
‘I should have thought it would,’ Natasha mused. ‘After all, it’s class struggle, isn’t it. And that’s what Socialism is all about. Or perhaps,’ she pondered, ‘it’s merely part of the development of democracy.’
‘It’s the birth of a revolution,’ her mother said.
‘It’s very confusing.’ She’d regained her confidence. ‘And I think other Soviet citizens would find it a little confusing too. I wonder if we keep so quiet because we really …’
Again her mother warned her, holding up her hand, anticipating the rash questions of immaturity. ‘I’m going to phone the Embassy,’ she said. ‘He may be hurt.’
Her daughter leaned forward and embraced her. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘I know,’ Valentina said, stroking her hair. ‘I know.’
They heard a key in the lock and from the livingroom Vladimir’s voice calling their names.
He ate his stew hungrily, mopping up the gravy with hunks of black bread. They might not have as much money as Western diplomats but, with wives like Valentina, they could make a meal last a week, like French peasant women with their stock-pots. From the cornucopia of American food they preferred hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks and lamb chops: they disliked the cheese, sausage and bread—particularly the bread.
His two women watched him while he ate, waiting. Like the good Russian women they were—always make sure your man has a full belly. Stuff him with bread and potatoes before pleading for money, making love or launching an attack. Ah the women of Russia, shovelling, brick-laying, breeding, feeding, shouldering the work of a nation which had lost a generation of men, with grace in their souls and eyes if you looked for it. Fighting their own sex war like the women of America: If man and wife went out to work why should only the wife cook and clean? Why should the wife wash and scrub on holidays while the husband paraded in the park? All they sought was chivalry: but the Kremlin was a man’s club.
He mopped up the last shred of steak and Valentina said, ‘Well?’ He had only told them that he had become involved in a riot.
‘A little tea, perhaps?’
‘Very well.’ She went to the kitchen, allowing one more small delay.
He felt content, a soldier returning. To his daughter he said, ‘And how is my little girl?’
‘Why did you allow it to happen, Father?’
‘First,’ he said, ‘my tea.’
‘Mother was nearly out of her mind. She was going to call the Embassy.’
He spread his hands, the errant youth, and sipped his tea, making a business of it.
Valentina said, ‘You were very stupid, Vladimir.’ Classically, he thought, anger would now replace concern.
‘I wanted to be part of it.’
‘Part of it? Why? It’s none of our business.’
‘It’s everyone’s business,’ Vladimir said vaguely.
‘You are jeopardizing your position.’ She remembered the bugs which weren’t confined to foreign premises. ‘But let’s talk about it later. Tomorrow perhaps …’
‘Why not now?’ He considered the tactic with surprise; then understood and was angry. ‘I’m free to do what I please. To say what I please.’ But was he? ‘If you must know I went to the ghetto with a German newspaperman.’ Surely they hadn’t bugged his own home … but if they had they would record that with approval. ‘That’s part of my job. Meeting foreigners,’ he added for the sake of his daughter. He found himself addressing the microphone which he was convinced didn’t exist. Such is our upbringing, the heritage of Beria. ‘The German’s name was Richter, Helmut Richter, and after what happened this evening I’ve established a strong link with him. The camaraderie of shared danger.’ A good phrase.
Natasha said, ‘You could have been killed. You didn’t stop to think of mother. Or me.’ Indicting the entire immature male sex.
He tore off the dark jacket that had made him seem like an undertaker among the lunchtime slacks and sweaters. The shoulders were sprinkled with ash and dust; also a crusty blob that might have been blood.
Natasha leaned across the table and touched his hair—which had grown a little more fashionable since his arrival, longer but rebellious at the neck where it had flourished free from a lifetime of clipping. You’re hurt,’ she said.
‘A scratch.’
Valentina examined the cut; a sliver of glass, probably, from the smashed champagne bottle. She bathed it and dabbed it with antiseptic. ‘It will be all right.’ Anger stepped briskly forward again. ‘Why, Vladimir? You are a diplomat not a bloodthirsty hooligan.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘such hooligan behaviour. Such a degenerate.’
She shook her head vigorously and put her finger to her lips.
‘I can speak in my own home!’
Natasha, the diplomat’s daughter, said, ‘I think you should go to bed now, Father. Perhaps mother is right …’
‘Neither of you understand, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ his daughter replied. ‘Perhaps I do …’
Valentina said, ‘Do you, Vladimir?’
He lit a cigarette—American and roasted. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’ But she was right, of course, he didn’t understand. Not really. Disgust. Involvement.
‘I don’t understand,’ Natasha said, ‘why the Soviet Union doesn’t make more of these troubles. It’s a weapon for them, surely. To show the world how the black man is treated by a democratic nation.’
Guiltily, Vladimir wondered how a black population would fare in Moscow. Some black students had returned to Africa complaining bitterly of indignities allegedly suffered there. He sensed impending danger in the trend of Natasha’s thoughts. He, too, held up his hand, put his fingers to his lips, feeling foolish. ‘Perhaps,’ he decided, ‘you are right. I should go to bed.’
‘Such foolishness,’ Valentina muttered.
Perhaps she was right.
At the dressing table, wearing flannel pyjamas and a coarse dressing gown tied with a cord, Vladimir Zhukov brushed his hair energetically.
Valentina took the comb from her hair and, wearing a yellow cotton nightdress bought in a moment of weakness, climbed into her bed.
Vladimir brushed on.
‘You need a haircut,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t have worn it like that in Moscow.’
‘I’m not in Moscow.’
‘You’re becoming very Americanized, Vladimir.’
‘In this dressing gown? These pyjamas?’
‘No, in your ways. Your talk. Your mannerisms. The other day I heard you say five bucks instead of five dollars.’
He laughed. ‘Stop nagging. If they want me to mix with Western diplomats then I’m bound to become a little Westernized. It’s only on the surface,’ he assured her.
‘Are you sure?’<
br />
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘But you’re so impressionable. I worry about you, Vladimir. And about Natasha …’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I worry about her, too.’
‘We shouldn’t have brought her here.’
‘What should we have done, then? Left her in disgrace in Alma-Ata with the newspapers ridiculing her?’
‘I suppose not. But she has been telling me things today. Just before you came home.’
‘What sort of things?’
Valentina shook her head. ‘Not now.’
Such prudence was ridiculous, Vladimir thought. If his superiors were eavesdropping they would pick up the implications. Implications more suspect than the truth.
As he put down the brush he noticed a drawer slightly open in the dressing table. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I thought we had lost the key to his.’ He opened it and took out a pad of lined paper, the top sheet half-filled with Valentina’s writing. ‘What’s this?’
She was beside him closing the drawer. ‘It’s nothing. Just a letter I was writing. I found the key this afternoon.’ She moved a little closer. ‘Come to bed, Vladimir.’
He felt her breasts through the yellow cotton. Heavy and luxurious, not like Helen Massingham’s. Mother Russia. Her belly thick and warm. Battle-scarred and baffled, the warrior allowed himself to be comforted.
13
IT had been a bad day for lady spies, the ambassador thought, knotting his silver tie and taking a sip from the glass of J and B on top of the bathroom cabinet beside his tablets and throat spray. (The Scotch he needed because the reception was being given by the Czechs and at this deteriorating stage of relations he would need a nip to his charm.)
First of all the F.B.I. had photographed an Australian girl handing over documents to a Cuban in a bar in Yonkers or Queens or somewhere. (Which means they would have reached us eventually via Havana.) The girl’s loyalties were confused, her competence suspect—her bed-worthiness vouchsafed by ninety-eight diplomats, agents, Government staff, politicians and one cab driver whom she hadn’t been able to pay.
She was a dark, freckled girl: you imagined her striding through the surf on Bondi beach, hollow-bellied and athletic, a strong swimmer who still had to be rescued by lifeguards. She had a beautiful expressionless face and a discordant voice.
Ambassador Zuvorin who had met her on the cocktail circuit had never quite fathomed her; and speculated that this was because her depths were so shallow that they were unfathomable.
Perhaps she even thought she was working for the Cubans with whom America had no diplomatic relations. Had considered that the poor little offshore island which seemed to suffer from a chronic shortage of razor-blades was getting a raw deal. Although why an Australian should take such an interest in Fidel Castro’s sugar plantation was beyond analysis.
Unless she imagined she was collecting information about Cuba—and every other nationality that she had bedded—for the Australians acting, perhaps, on behalf of the British.
It was very complex. And, like many apparent complexities of espionage, Zuvorin suspected that the key was the naïveté of the girl, as pure—not pure perhaps—and as simple as the driven surf.
Certainly all the information she had passed to the green-jacketed comrades in Havana had been worthless. This the ambassador knew. Likewise he believed that the men who claimed to have slept with her hadn’t imparted any secrets; otherwise they wouldn’t have boasted about it. It was said on the Martini rounds that one Congressman, assisted by a surfeit of alcohol, had successfully accomplished an all-night filibuster with her.
In my youth, thought Zuvorin …
His wife called from the livingroom of their home in the Embassy. ‘What country are we visiting tonight, darling?’
‘Czechoslovakia,’ he said, returning to the middle-aged present.
‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘How are we to conduct ourselves?’
‘With charm as always. But a little more sternly than usual. A little ice in the caviar.’
‘Is there going to be trouble in Prague?’
‘It looks very much like it.’ Which meant more double-talking in the American capital which had warmed to him—and he to it.
‘A pity,’ she said. ‘I like the Czechs.’
‘I’m afraid that is beside the point,’ said her husband.
He adjusted his charm in front of the cabinet mirror. Always a Russian, almost a Westerner. If only the enemy were still the Germans.
He took his drink into the livingroom. His wife was there, adjusting her necklace of Baltic amber. Plump but infinitely gracious: his strength, his love.
‘Are you drinking already? I hope that doesn’t mean you are going to have your usual two drinks on top of that. You know what the doctor said.’
‘Only one drink with the Czechs. I don’t want to stay there too long anyway. It might be a little embarrassing.’
‘You’ve had a hard day,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’
‘No more than usual.’
‘I suppose these terrible riots have made it difficult for you.’
‘Not really.’ Riots there had been before; in many countries. He assimilated them with ease: they occupied a small place in diplomatic negotiation—except, perhaps, when they were organized and financed at embassy level with flags and transport. Instant riots, the Americans called them; presented like amateur theatricals for the press and TV cameras. Or when they threatened to get out of hand as these had done. But now the immediate danger had passed: there would be no civil war yet. Of far greater moment were the burgeoning Vietnam peace talks in Paris. And Czechoslovakia.
She didn’t inquire any further: she had learned when to stop.
He swirled the smooth pebbles of ice in his glass, thirsting for another Scotch. Instead he poured himself a ginger ale, taking the precaution of identifying it to his wife.
But it had been a trying day. Because the other lady spy in the limelight was a Russian.
She worked as a secretary. In her thirties, attractive in a Russian sort of way. Comely but indifferent to the sophisticated techniques of the Washington beauty parlours which made fortunes from the society hostesses. She knew her powers: she knew that the weak men of the West liked to boast that they had seduced a Russian.
But today a magazine had printed an article with pictures speculating about her activities. ‘The Red Mata Hari.’ And Zuvorin had summoned Mikhail Brodsky to his office to inquire why the girl’s activities had been allowed to get so blatant. To expend some of his accumulated dislike of the other powers that existed alongside him.
Also to ascertain more clearly just who was the boss at the Embassy.
First point to Brodsky. He had suggested that they adjourn to the bug-proof chamber and Zuvorin had gone along with him.
Within the steel wallpaper Zuvorin lit a cigarette—one of the six permitted per day—and said: ‘Why could you not have been a little more subtle about it, Brodsky?’
Behind the gold-rimmed glasses the pale eyes stared, assessed. I am the K.G.B. resident: you are the ambassador. But just who in the Kremlin are your latest friends?
Brodsky’s hesitance encouraged Zuvorin. He wondered what the hell he was doing treating a third secretary almost as an equal. He who held the top diplomatic post in the world outside Moscow. It was ludicrous. But the shadow of a police tyranny lingered beyond the deaths of its leaders. ‘Well?’ he prompted.
Brodsky shrugged without apology, but warily. His whole existence was wariness. ‘I can’t control the speculation of the sensational Capitalist Press.’
‘Of course you can’t. But on this occasion they seem to have been pretty near the truth.’
Brodsky said, ‘So you knew she was a spy?’
‘Don’t be insolent, Brodsky. I’m the ambassador and you are a very junior diplomat.’
Brodsky pondered this, thin fingers coiling and uncoiling a lock of soft hair above one ear. Zuvorin wondered if he were a homosexual. Probably no
t: Brodsky’s satisfaction was intrigue and furtive power.
Brodsky said, ‘I didn’t mean to be insolent. I merely wondered how you knew that this girl was engaged in such activities. Such matters are surely outside your responsibilities …’
Wearily Zuvorin realized that Brodsky was speculating whether he had his own contacts in the hierarchy of the K.G.B. Possibly at the summit of the security organization.
‘Comrade Brodsky,’ Zuvorin said. ‘It is not for you to decide what my responsibilities are.’
Brodsky crossed his legs, examined a pointed black toecap. ‘I was merely wondering …’
‘Then please don’t.’ Zuvorin decided to press home the attack. ‘In the future I suggest that you exercise a little more restraint when issuing your instructions’—not orders, that acknowledged too much authority—‘to members of my staff. Also I suggest that you be more discreet in the reports that you send back to Moscow.’ A suggestion, the product of a lifetime of verbal jousting, that he knew the content of Brodsky’s reports. I don’t, thought the ambassador, but I’ve got a very good idea.
‘I have my work to do,’ Brodsky sulked.
‘So have we all, Comrade Brodsky. It is my task to see that each of us carries it out competently. It is my view that your competence of late is open to question.’
Brodsky staged a small rebellion. ‘I take my orders from Moscow. You know that.’
‘You also take your orders from me. And if you continue in this vein I shall make it my business to see that very shortly you will be back in Moscow to accept those orders first-hand.’
Brodsky sulked some more. Uncertain. Trained to suspect everyone.
The ambassador stubbed out his cigarette with regret. Five more to go and a Czech reception to cope with in the evening. But he could not let up now. ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘how are the new duties of Comrade Zhukov working out?’
Brodsky looked perturbed. ‘Comrade Zhukov is a worthy member of the Party. He carries out his duties admirably. What more can I say?’
It was not difficult, Zuvorin thought, to alarm Brodsky. After all, if Hoover were right and eighty per cent of all Soviet personnel were spies, the odds against successfully naming Zhukov as one of Brodsky’s cohorts were small. ‘Tell me about his duties, Comrade Brodsky.’
The Red House Page 18