The Red House

by Derek Lambert

  Brodsky’s sinus seemed to fill as he concentrated. He fished out his white plastic inhaler and plugged each nostril with it. Time to think. Finally he said, ‘He is expected to meet people. To make contacts, to socialize. We are not very strong in that department. With the exception of yourself that is.’

  ‘Is that all he has to do—meet people?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Brodsky tuned in. ‘Just the same as the diplomats from other countries. We have to mix and we have to listen. More and more is being achieved these days away from the bargaining table. Through junior diplomats, through journalists …’

  ‘Comrade Brodsky,’ Zuvorin interrupted, ‘you don’t have to lecture me on the current trends of diplomatic procedure. What concerns me is the fact that your own peculiar responsibilities seem to be affecting the normal running of the Embassy.’

  Brodsky squeezed the bridge of his nose where it was dented by his professor’s spectacles. ‘I think perhaps that my responsibilities and your responsibilities have the same end in mind.’

  ‘I am fully aware of our joint responsibilities,’ Zuvorin replied. ‘I was present at the last Party Congress in Moscow,’ he deliberately reminded Brodsky. ‘What alarms me is the way in which subversion and infiltration and diplomacy are becoming one.’ Which was not quite true: they always had been one. It was Brodsky who concerned him, his furtive authority and his pollution of good Russians. Men like Zhukov. ‘Why is Comrade Zhukov’s daughter over here?’

  ‘Because Zhukov wanted it. It is an encouragement to him to work even harder for the cause.’

  For your cause.’

  ‘For our cause.’

  All this, Zuvorin knew, would be transmitted to Moscow where it would be digested and used according to Zuvorin’s latest rating assessment at the Kremlin. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Brodsky himself had bugged the F.B.I.-proof room. ‘And how much progress has Comrade Zhukov made in cultivating Western contacts?’

  ‘He has done surprisingly well. Our Capitalist friends seem to like him.’

  ‘Does that surprise you, Comrade Brodsky? Is there any reason why a Russian should not be liked?’

  Brodsky blocked a nostril. ‘Uh-huh. No reason at all. It was merely that we socialize so little that it is difficult to assess our popularity.’

  Zuvorin chuckled. ‘That is very simple to assess: we are unpopular. Comrade Zhukov is accepted because he has a likeable personality. Also because he is a novelty—a performing seal, as it were. Also because our Western friends see him as a possible entré to our affairs. You are, I presume, aware of that aspect of Comrade Zhukov’s socializing?’

  ‘Of course.’ Brodsky’s confidence rose and fell like the Capitalist stock market. At this moment it was in the ascendant. ‘I’m very well aware of that. In fact it’s interesting to observe the identities of those who have been detailed to approach Comrade Zhukov.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Brodsky frowned and polished his spectacles, deliberating whether such information was for release. Zuvorin watched him polishing, searching for some snotty little compromise. I am very fortunate, he thought, that I was retained for majestic dishonesties at four-power level. Better to exchange lies with a president than to feed on human weakness. The firm, knowing handshake of falsehood! He doubted whether Brodsky trusted himself: one day he would pick his own pockets.

  Brodsky said, ‘Henry Massingham of the British Embassy has gone out of his way to cultivate Zhukov.’

  ‘Which surprises no one,’ Zuvorin said. ‘And Mrs Massingham. What part does she play in this?’

  ‘The usual,’ Brodsky said, replacing his gold-rimmed armour.

  ‘You realize, of course, that Zhukov is a happily married man?’

  ‘So?’

  No, Brodsky wouldn’t have taken such a point. Not for Brodsky the great Russian tradition of family life with the babushka nodding gummily in the corner and the cherished children dotingly stuffed with candy. The ambassador admired Zhukov, sensed much of himself in the man. A patriot not equipped for this complex role. Zuvorin also feared for him: a man of such sensibility was ill-fitted to evaluate the reports of Kremlin policy that reached the American press.

  Zuvorin said, ‘So it doesn’t bother you that you may break up a marriage, a family?’

  ‘There must always be sacrifices. You yourself know that. But in any case his wife is well aware of the complications that may accompany her husband’s new duties.’

  A tiny pain wandered across the ambassador’s chest. Mikhail Brodsky, with all your furtive knowledge of motive and weakness, how little you know women. That is your weakness: the weakness of a sexual neutral. ‘I am glad to hear it.’ Scepticism lost on Brodsky. ‘Have you ever considered what other effects this sort of life might have on such a man as Zhukov?’ Immediately he sensed that this was a mistake.

  ‘You are surely not suggesting that Vladimir Zhukov is the sort of man who could be influenced favourably by Western decadence?’

  ‘On the contrary I am wondering what sort of effect your intrigues might have on a man of principle.’

  But Brodsky didn’t believe him. ‘But you need have no worries in that direction. His parents are still in the Soviet Union. We have his daughter under constant surveillance. And we have great faith in his wife, a devout patriot and servant of the Party,’

  ‘Nicolai Grigorenko didn’t seem to have his daughter under constant surveillance. Can you be sure that his successor is more competent?’

  ‘I have assigned a good man. He reports back daily.’

  Zuvorin inserted the doubt which men like Brodsky always accept. Rat poison, he thought. ‘I’m sure he reports daily. He doesn’t want to be sent back to the Soviet Union in disgrace like Grigorenko.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ And again, ‘Uh-huh.’

  Zuvorin decided to end the meeting while Brodsky’s stock was in decline. He stood up. ‘And now, Comrade Brodsky, I have more important matters to attend to.’

  Brodsky replaced the cap on his inhaler. ‘I have noted your remarks.’

  ‘And I trust you have noted my remarks about this magazine article. Please make sure that in future this woman operates with a little more discretion otherwise the Americans will be demanding her return to Moscow. And then we shall have to demand the removal of some wretched woman in the American Embassy in Moscow. It is a tedious process, harmful to diplomatic relations. And’—he tossed in a last grenade—‘please see to it that the next attempt to infiltrate a man across the Canadian-American border at Niagara is executed with a little more professionalism. Last week the United States Immigration stopped one of your men although he had Canadian number plates and said he was Canadian. He had to pretend he had left his Canadian passport behind and had to go back to collect it. It could have been highly embarrassing.’

  ‘That is not my responsibility,’ Brodsky said.

  Which indeed it wasn’t. But it illustrated the extent of the ambassador’s knowledge. A small triumph of diplomatic technique over pedestrian cunning.

  They closed the doors and the locks were resealed with wax.

  But, sipping his ginger ale, the ambassador still debated within himself the reception that would be accorded the interview when Brodsky transmitted it to Moscow (which he probably had already done). Although, he told himself, I have no cause to worry: I am the ambassador. Then he thought: But Khrushchev presumed he had no cause to worry …

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ his wife said.

  Three years to go before honourable retirement. And you could never tell what was happening in the hierarchy of the secret police—an essential arm, he conceded dubiously, of a State only fifty years old.

  When he had been a boy it had been the Cheka—the ‘All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the struggle against Counter-revolution and Sabotage.’ And then the G.P.U.—the State Political administration. Then the O.G.P.U. Then almost immediately the O.G.P.U. became part of the N.K.V.D.—the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.
And, such are the essences of intrigue and blackmail, the most competent exponents of the black arts surfaced at the top. Yeshov, followed after his execution, by Lavrenty Beria—Russia’s Himmler. Joyfully Beria isolated his secret police machine from the N.K.V.D. and it was called the N.K.G.B. After the war, in which the rival Gestapo of Nazi Germany was exterminated, Beria’s thugs operated under an organization nicely called the M.G.B.—Ministry of State Security.

  Stalin died, Beria was executed. Terror was diluted in the form of the present K.G.B. Diluted but not dissolved. Beria left behind him many heirs. Men like Mikhail Brodsky flexing their talents of intrigue and blackmail in case one day circumstances went their way: the same way that had enabled Beria to reach the summit of tyranny.

  But I am the ambassador.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ he said to his wife, ‘we must go.’

  He took a pill and swallowed the last of his ginger ale.

  Zuvorin was on his third Scotch of the day and his seventh cigarette. One too many of each. The day had been unsatisfactory and the reception was in keeping with it.

  Three more years of these, Zuvorin thought. With luck! Usually he extracted modest enjoyment from the various reactions to his presence—acknowledging that it was the Kremlin and not his personality that made them react. (In many American minds the Kremlin was still an Alcatraz in which the criminals had seized power.) The Eastern European diplomats excessively polite, unctuous even, nationalism camouflaged by diplomatic manners and fear; the American Communists for whom the ambassador had the least respect because most of them were failures within their own system seeking salvation and vicarious importance through the true revolutionary Socialism of the Soviet Union; the begging emissaries of jungle states seeking Russian arms, Chinese labour and American money; the jocular American statesmen—all foreigners tried jocularity for openers when dealing with sinister Russians—who insulted your beliefs with an isolationist guffaw; the duty C.I.A. agent using someone else’s invitation; the Washington wives acting on husbands’ instructions and sometimes coy motives of their own.

  But tonight the escapist pleasures of observing human endeavour given voice by alcohol were marred by the atmosphere. In Czechoslovakia the mood was rebellious and the mood had reached this outpost of Czech soil.

  At the moment Zuvorin was being accosted with jocularity that was icing up a bit by two Senators whose sons were on an exchange visit to Czechoslovakia. Zuvorin welcomed them because he wanted to avoid unpleasantness with any cocky Czechs who in six months’ time would be totally subservient once again.

  They talked in Senate voices treating all the world’s problems like Chicago graft. Currently the Chinese problem.

  One, a crusading white-haired cherub from the Midwest, said, ‘Chairman Mao’s really got you guys by the balls. What the hell’s going on in the Kremlin? Mao tells you what a load of punks he thinks you are and all you do is fire off a note or two. Even his soldiers bare their asses to your comrades across the river. And what do the Soviets do? Nothin’. Then Mao’s Red Guards make a rumpus in Red Square. Red Square of all places—right under the windows of the Goddam Kremlin. And still nothing happens. But when it comes to putting Czechoslovakia in its place I guess you won’t be so cautious, eh Mr Ambassador?’ He chuckled to indicate that this was bluff, locker-room stuff.

  The other senator, a sad man with a buttery southern voice, said, ‘I don’t think you should be quite so facetious about it, Joe. There’s one helluva war brewing up between Russia and China while we’re all breakin’ our necks over Vietnam and Israel. The biggest war I guess the world has ever known if they ever get at each other’s throats.’

  The cherubic senator who had demanded neat Scotch in preference to the ‘gnat’s piss’ being served on trays observed that it might not be such a bad thing for the West if the Soviets and the Chinese knocked each other cold. So anyway, what was the Kremlin going to do about it?

  Zurovin, who had considerable respect for the strident liberties of Congress asked, ‘What would you have us do, gentlemen? Start a war that might make the whole globe radioactive? Or maintain our responsibility to mankind just as we did in the Middle East last year. If we had responded to the pleas for armed intervention when Israel attacked Egypt then we would now be engaged in World War III.’ He left Vietnam alone; just this time. ‘In any case, perhaps it would not be such an ideal situation for the West if the Socialist powers were to negate each other. After all, it is always argued that the foundation of justice in a democracy is the system of parliamentary opposition. Perhaps the same applies to the world.’

  The senator with the mint-julep voice said, okay, but the way things were going Peking was just biding time while it developed sophisticated nuclear weapons.

  ‘Son of a gun,’ said the slightly tipsy cherubim. ‘The way things are going the Soviet Union and the United States will be allies fighting the yellow peril. What would you say to that, Mr Ambassador?’ His shrewdly-pouched eyes hazarded a guess that Zuvorin had formed quite an attachment for the enemy capital.

  Mikhail Brodsky, Zuvorin thought, would give his gold-rimmed eye glasses to hear my answer. ‘An interesting speculation.’ The melodious laugh reached at least a couple of women. ‘But, as you Americans say, strictly for the birds.’

  ‘Jeezus,’ said the cherubim. ‘How’s about that?’

  The ambassador, skilled in the art of cocktail-party movement, excused himself from the Senators with regret. Diplomatic exchange was a formula: Congress was a language. Equally he enjoyed talking to New York cab drivers.

  Wearily he promised consideration—the euphemism for shelving—for more aid to Tanzania. The fund-seeker respectfully drew his attention to American imperialist intentions in other parts of Africa. But what he really meant was: Give us some more roubles or we’ll strike another bargain with the Chinese. The black blackmail.

  He moved on from Africa to the inevitable confrontation with Czechoslovakia.

  The other participants were a first and second secretary from the Czech Embassy, a Canadian from the Cultural section, Vladimir Zhukov and his new playmate Henry Massingham.

  The Canadian was saying, ‘No free people has ever voted for Communism.’ He stared challengingly at Zuvorin. But the ambassador was curious to hear how Zhukov handled himself.

  Zhukov took the cue. ‘In the first place you are quite wrong. In the second place you should never generalize. Every day Socialism is gathering strength in your free countries. In France, Italy, all over South America, Africa. Even in Iceland. It is the inevitable outcome of the class struggle. It can be restrained for only so long. Your Senator McCarthy knew that. As is well known he acted through fear. As is well known that was a blatant suppression of freedom.’

  The Canadian, chunky with lumber-jack muscle sagging with culture, switched his offensive. ‘Svetlana Stalin didn’t seem to agree with you. What do you think of her, by the way?’

  ‘She is a traitor,’ Zhukov said simply.

  Not bad, the ambassador thought. A bit Tass-like, but not bad.

  The Czechs, who looked like twins, downy and blinking, came in from the far corner. ‘Socialism and freedom can live together,’ one of them said. ‘Side by side,’ echoed the other. After that their voices seemed inseparable. ‘We in Czechoslovakia are proving this very truth. There is a new liberalism abroad encouraged by the enlightened leaders of our own Party. The principles of Marxism-Leninism will survive.’ Then they went too far for the ambassador. ‘But we will exist as a nation and not merely as a lackey of the Kremlin.’

  The ambassador led them out of earshot of the Canadian and Massingham who was reticently anxious not to offend any of his new contacts.

  The twins looked at him, blinking.

  ‘You will do,’ said the ambassador quietly, ‘as you are told.’

  Zuvorin put down his empty glass. Glanced at his watch. Signalled to his wife. Ducked the Canadian’s next offensive. Exchanged coldly cordial farewells with the Czech Ambassador.


  To Vladimir Zhukov, he said, ‘Enjoy yourself.’ And squeezed his arm to indicate approval.

  By the time he had reached the door he had declined two invitations from eager hostesses. Let Zhukov accept them, he thought.

  At the door he took a last glance around. Vladimir Zhukov had been disengaged from the group by Helen Massingham. She was standing very close to him, making wand-like motions with her cigarette holder, flirting with her breasts.

  She looked very confident, Zuvorin thought. Very proprietorial. The implications depressed him.

  14

  ONE storm finished the cherry blossom. Now they lay thick and wet on the ground, afloat on the flat waters of the Tidal basin, a butterfly season dead.

  But central Washington, its riots spent, bloomed in the manner for which it had been designed. The fertile scents of rain on dust were followed by the classy perfumes of spoiled botanic flowers. The cathedrals and museums of administration opened their windows and breathed with relief; summer cumulus began to assemble grandly overhead.

  On Capitol Hill the elected rulers who had been in session for sixteen throat-relaxing months smelled the spring and applied themselves, like restless students on the last class before vacation, to a tax on corporations and individuals aimed at raising $10 billion. On the lawns outside couples courted with historic elegance and consummated with contemporary haste in apartment buildings across the Potomac.

  But for Natasha Zhukova and her American young man there was no fashionable scurry into bed. Between them there existed barriers of dictates as delicate as gauze, as tough as plate glass. So they kept company with unworldly Brontë hesitancies: a droplet of lavender water on the big bedding handkerchief around them.

  Natasha Zhukova eluded her tail with slippery ease in the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel. She shrank like an anemone into the hotel bookshop and watched him blunder past, desperation sweating his face.