‘And us, Vladimir. What about us? You’re the first man I’ve met since I was in my teens to whom I feel really attracted.’
Zhukov stood up and kissed her, opening strawberry-tasting lips. ‘We’ll work something out,’ he said.
She picked up the phone and called the willing cuckold. Half an hour later the phone rang. Zhukov picked it up and heard his daughter’s voice. The relief seemed to reach every part of his body and he grinned fiercely at the telephone. ‘Where are you?’
‘At Charlie’s apartment. What is it, Father? What’s happened?’
He told her most of it, all that she had to know. ‘Wait there—I’ll be round in half an hour.’ He hung up.
‘Make it an hour,’ Helen Massingham said.
He turned round. She was quite naked, legs apart, like the expensive slut she was.
‘All right,’ he said.
There were strangers in Charlie Hardin’s apartment block that night that caused some comment from the other residents. Strangers walking thoughtfully in the corridors, strangers resting in automobiles in the parking lot. They watched Vladimir Zhukov with exaggerated unconcern as he walked past the fountain in the garden and waited for the elevator in the lobby.
In the apartment he embraced Natasha, his daughter. The only positive product of his life.
The apartment had two other occupants. One a neat middle-aged man who looked as if he had stepped out of a tailor’s shop-window; the other burly, crew-cut and smoking a pipe.
‘Please,’ Zhukov said, ‘I should like to be alone with my daughter and my future son-in-law.’
The two men looked at each other unhappily. The one with the pipe who said his name was Walden said they sure had a lot to discuss.
‘Later,’ Zhukov said.
The other man who turned out to be Charlie Hardin’s father said, ‘Are you really coming over to us, Mr Zhukov?’
‘I said we’ll talk about it later.’
Walden said, ‘Neither of you need have any fear. We’ll give you every protection the United States can offer.’ Zhukov felt the eagerness in his handshake.
Then there were the three of them. Charlie Hardin said, ‘A drink, sir?’
‘I’ve had enough. But one more won’t do any harm.’ He took the Scotch and said, ‘Do you love her?’
Hardin nodded. ‘I do, sir.’
‘You both have a lot of trouble ahead of you. But you realize that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. We realize it.’
Hardin and Natasha stood close together, hands finding each other.
Natasha said, ‘But you, Father. What about you and mother? You know I can’t stay unless you do as well.’
‘We’ll join you,’ he said. ‘First I have to collect some things.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
He looked at Charlie Hardin and approved. As honest as life allowed. A little too important, perhaps, a little too sold on the sporting, labour-saving, monied values of the system; a university product and a little smug with it. But nothing that Natasha his daughter couldn’t handle.
In fifteen years time, he thought, they will have one house, two cars and three children.
Father and son-in-law shook hands. Father and daughter embraced once more and he held her for a moment. Then he winked at her because he couldn’t speak and left the room to talk with Wallace Walden.
They sat at a table in the lobby while Zhukov told Walden what he had to do. ‘Get Natasha out of here first thing in the morning. Get her as far away as possible—Alaska if necessary. But act quickly—there aren’t all that many green M.G.s in Washington and they’ll trace it.’
Walden agreed. ‘And you, Mr Zhukov, when do you intend to join your daughter?’
‘Obviously it will have to be as soon as possible because my people won’t let me out of their sight once they realize that my daughter has gone.’
‘This has been a great victory for the future of international understanding.’
‘A great victory for the West, you mean. A victory over the Red Menace, eh, Mr Walden?’
Walden shook his head. ‘That’s the way it might seem initially. But it will all be part of the levelling process. If two Russians of the calibre of yourself and your daughter prefer the West then the equation balances just that little bit more.’
‘Ah,’ Zhukov mused. ‘The equation. You are trying to solve that one too, are you Mr Walden?’
‘All my life,’ Walden said.
‘And do you think the equation can be solved?’
‘I’m an optimist, Mr Zhukov.’
‘Perhaps one way of helping to solve it would be if you defected to the Soviet Union.’
Walden laughed uneasily.
21
THE next morning, while Valentina frantically called the Embassy and the police in search of her daughter, Zhukov began to pack. Methodically and deliberately, like a housewife making the beds after her husband has deserted her.
With care he folded his expensive mohair suit tailored for spying. And his new shirts and a silver tie bought sale-price at Garfinkels. Thoughtfully he regarded his bowl of match-books, then slid them into the wastepaper basket.
Outside the sun was molten red behind the mist and he believed that he could smell bonfire smoke.
‘Vladimir,’ she said, ‘why are you packing?’
‘I think you know.’
‘I want to try and explain, Vladimir. But now we must think only of our daughter.’
Gently he told her about Natasha. ‘And now I am packing to return home to Russia with you my wife because that’s where we belong.’
It seemed to be going smoothly. It was 10 a.m. and the black bulletproof Lincoln supplied by the C.I.A. and driven by an F.B.I. getaway chauffeur waited outside Charlie Hardin’s apartment block, engine throbbing powerfully. Plain-clothes men loitered around the lobby, outside the entrance and beside the wind-scattered fountain, as unobtrusive as football players at the ballet.
The Lincoln was to take Natasha Zhukova and Hardin to the National Airport where they would catch an executive jet to Newark. Another car would take them to a hideout overlooking the Hudson in upstate New York.
Hardin and the girl came out together, ducking their heads into the rinsing wind. They sat in the back, close together: already feeling like bit players in a big production.
The F.B.I. driver said, ‘Okay?’ He looked Italian and everything about him was quick; his thin hands, his speech, his driving.
The C.I.A. guard beside him—fair and Germanic with a schoolboy face—said, ‘Okay. It doesn’t look like they traced the green M.G.’
But they had. A couple of minutes before.
The grey beetle Volkswagen was parked fifty yards down the road. The driver told his companion to radio the Embassy. ‘Where are they heading for?’ the voice at the other end asked.
‘We don’t know yet.’ Five minutes later he said, ‘It looks like the National Airport.’
The voice said, ‘That’s what we thought. Our man there reports that there’s an executive jet waiting on the runway and a lot of unusual activity. We’re on our way.’
The F.B.I. chauffeur drove with disgust, fingers tapping on the wheel, foot restless on the accelerator. ‘So why get me on a job like this?’ he asked. ‘Why waste a car with two four-barrelled Holly carbs, modded heads, the works …’
The guard glanced in the side-mirror and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘That’s why,’ he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the three Volkswagens coming up behind them in attacking formation.
‘Jesus,’ said the driver. He shoved his foot on the accelerator, his fingers still light at the base of the wheel.
They had crossed the rain-feathered river. Not far to the airport. Most of the traffic was heading into the city, each car winged with spray. The whole wide road was aeronautical this morning: the wet sky pressing down, the jets lowering themselves from its base and feeling for the ground, t
he runways ahead; the black Lincoln airliner being buzzed by the Volks fighters.
Ahead lay a single line of traffic spread across the lanes. Then a long clear stretch before the airport. The Volkswagens behind were separated from the Lincoln by another formation of cars with careful drivers.
The guard, eyes cornflower blue in his college face, turned round. ‘Better keep down, ma’am. And you, Mr Hardin. They say the glass is bullet proof, but who knows with some of this Soviet hardware …’ He took a Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster.
The Lincoln lunged forward but the cars ahead didn’t. The driver pressed the power-brake too hard and they skidded, nudging a ceremonial Cadillac, full of outrage, before straightening up.
The F.B.I. driver took it out on the horn. But horns only sharpen outraged perversity: the single line of cars rode firm.
Behind them the fighters were weaving between the passenger craft and you expected to hear them open up with cannon at any moment.
All the time the driver talked, using words like chewing gum. ‘No sweat,’ he kept saying. ‘No sweat. But those babies can shift in traffic. They’ve got 1500 engines in those, disc brakes on the front wheels, acceleration like a rocket taking of. And their cornering will make old lady seem like a double-bed.’
The guard was radioing Washington telling them to move at the airport. But there wouldn’t be time—they all knew that.
Sitting on the floor, Hardin managed a smile at Natasha. She managed one back. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, hand tight around his fingers, hair touching his face.
‘I don’t always travel like this,’ he said with another actor’s smile. He was astonished at their insignificance, like rare drugs being rushed to an emergency.
The driver took the Lincoln through a reluctant space in the cars ahead, nudging the Cadillac again and touching fenders with a Buick. Rain bowled across the clear stretch of highway; a jet felt its way out of the clouds.
But the fighters were with them now, two taking the line of traffic on the outside, one stalking the Lincoln from behind.
‘Now we can show ’em,’ the driver said. ‘Now we can show those babies. Now we’re on the straight.’ But as he stared through the windscreen-wipers a grey Volks got in front, just. ‘No sweat,’ said the driver.
He swung to the left but there was a Volks there, too. And to the right. The three of them taking the Lincoln into land. Each had a driver and a passenger, faces blurred behind the streaming windows.
The guard lowered the window and the car gulped in wind and rain. He held his Smith & Wesson without conviction, wondering about shooting Soviet diplomats.
The driver said, ‘It was the traffic that did it. The Goddam traffic. They couldn’t have touched us on the open road.’
The grey Volkswagen in front was braking, slowing them all down. The other two began to bump the Lincoln; the first two bumps not synchronized; the third giving them a squeeze.
The guard said, ‘Why don’t you knock the bastards out of the way. You’re big enough, for Chris’ sake.’
‘Because we’ve got to turn here.’
The two accompanying Volks swung out and back again, testing the bullet-proofing. The leader had come down to forty and was still slowing.
‘What the hell are they trying to do?’ the driver asked.
Hardin said, ‘Trying to stop you.’
‘So they can grab the girl,’ the guard added.
‘Here we go,’ said the driver, swinging the Lincoln down the airport exit, bouncing one of the Volks out of the way, the leader still in front.
The leader was braking hard, trying to stop and block them. But there was plenty of space now, approaching the terminal buildings, and the Lincoln found a lot of it, accelerating so that it was level with the grey Volks. Then ahead. There was a lot of surprise around them as they headed towards the entrance to the tarmac.
But the barrier was closed. Beside it a man in a shiny raincoat waving his arms as if he were parking an aircraft. The driver kept the horn going, swearing as he slowed down and the escorts caught up.
Finally the man in the raincoat understood. He went for the barrier and they got through grazing a fender. The escorts too.
Ahead a Boeing trundled towards its lot, fresh from the sky, serpent face inquisitive. But there was no executive jet on the pre-arranged take-off position.
Hardin sat up, keeping Natasha on the floor. ‘The wind’s changed,’ he said. ‘It must be the other end of the runway.’
‘That’s what the guy at the barrier was trying to say,’ the guard said.
‘No sweat,’ said the driver. ‘I always wanted to be a pilot.’
The Volks made one last effort, banking around the Lincoln, snapping and worrying. But they were on the runway and the Lincoln was accelerating towards the point-of-no-return. 100 m.p.h. More. ‘Wow,’ said the driver. ‘Flaps down. Or is it up?’
Lights flashing, sirens wailing. A shadow came out of the clouds, hesitated, disappeared again. They thought they heard a couple of shots: they couldn’t be sure. Behind them the Volkswagens became little bugs again.
The executive jet was waiting at the far end of the runway. Hardin bundled Natasha up the landing steps; the door shut ponderously.
The Volkswagens stopped and lot of Russians got out. One with a nasal voice, gold-rimmed spectacles and a woolly scarf began to shout. ‘I demand in the name of the Embassy of the Soviet Union that you let Natasha Zhukova free. This is a gross violation of our liberties …’
The eager little jet moved away.
‘Stop.’ The Russian tried to run in front of the plane but the guard restrained him. There were lots of cars encircling them now. The other Russians had given up. But this one continued to kick and struggle, almost petulantly within the ball-player grip of the guard. A white nasal inhaler fell out of his pocket and the guard, still holding him with one arm, bent down and put it back in his pocket.
By mid-afternoon the stories and pictures were in many evening papers in the United States. And, according to edition times, getting published in countries all over the world with the exception of the Soviet Union, mainland China and lesser members of the Communist bloc.
Protest notes were delivered, audiences sought. In Massachusetts Avenue the pundits speculated on the outcome of the incident. A kidnapping, according to the Soviets, a romantic defection, according to the State Department leaks.
The old hands speculated that, within a month, it would be forgotten. Like Czechoslovakia.
They kept Vladimir Zhukov and his wife for another three weeks in case they could use him to get his daughter back. But she had vanished in the Indian forests that shoulder the fat curves of the Hudson somewhere between West Point and Sing Sing.
And soon they heard that she had married.
The car taking Vladimir Zhukov and his wife to the airport proceeded smoothly down New Hampshire Avenue. Zhukov tried to retain last impressions in the album of his mind, but they wouldn’t stick.
River beaches and ski-tracks leading the way through silver birch and pine. The forests content in their loneliness: the beaches robust with muscular happiness.
East equals West—but not yet.
At an intersection he asked the two silent guards if he might be granted a last request. They shrugged and accompanied him into the drugstore, not quite holding his arms.
He took a basket-on-wheels and filled it with goods from the Capitalist storehouse. Frosted pop tarts (Dutch apple flavour), waffle and pancake syrup, imitation crumbled bacon, instant mashed potato puffs, lemon-flavoured iced-tea mix with sugar added, Kosher dill chunks, hot-dog relish, creamy garlic dressing, lime body rub, self-heating shaving cream, anti-static rug spray and a canister of frozen pink lemonade.
And an electric can-opener for Valentina.
Who is the enemy?
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The Red House Page 31