Chapter 45
Vienna, Soviet Sector, 25 April
General Serov and I have fought together, did you know that, Comrade Zhulianov? You will have to pass on my greetings when you return to Moscow. Cigarette? Of course.
The head of the Military Secret Services in Vienna maintained a superficially friendly tone, just enough to avoid creating a bad impression.
Having responsibility for the Eastern sector of the city, I must advise you against walking around the city. We are still at the front here, there are spies everywhere, and the Americans are always trying to infiltrate us. For your own safety, and for the purposes of secrecy, it would be better if you stayed in your hotel, Comrade Zhulianov.
He immediately noticed that people lowered their eyes as he passed, then turned surreptitiously to peer at his back. Everyone looked at him, but it was General Serov’s shadow that they saw cast on the wall.
I will ensure that you want for nothing. If you need anything at all, my assistant will be at your disposal.
The hotel was an old Jugendstil building that had been requisitioned by the army. The officers and the diplomatic corps lived on the floor where he was staying.
For reasons of security, Comrade, as you well understand.
He couldn’t blame them for their circumspection, but at the same time he felt uneasy, he imagined them all there with their ears pressed to the walls of the old room. And perhaps that wasn’t so far from the Schwindsuchtstrasse. He remembered the motto of his professor at the High Schooclass="underline" ‘Only friends have bigger ears than the enemy.’
He put his few clothes in the wardrobe, changed his shirt and went downstairs.
The other man already sitting waiting for him. They shook hands. The man introduced himself as Kaminsky. They ordered two coffees.
He looked like a post office clerk. A fat man with a receding hairline and heavy-framed glasses. Secret agents were like that. In that job, the less conspicuous you were, the better it was for everyone. Zhulianov had known a few of them in Berlin. ‘Vague stains on an urban landscape’ was what his colonel had called them. Grey, apparently pointless lives that would never arouse suspicion. No sentimental bond, no friendships beyond the cordial relations of good neighbours, walks in the park, stale dinners and a larder full of tins.
Kaminsky spoke in a low voice, articulating his words, eyes fixed on his steaming cup.
‘I’ve been asked to give you the coded orders,’ and from under the table he handed him a large yellow sealed envelope. ‘Inside you will find the new documents as well, a railway ticket and a boarding card. You will have to travel to Venice by train. There you will embark as an ordinary seaman on the Varna, a Bulgarian merchant ship. Did they give you a password in Moscow?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must use it only at the moment of embarkation, with the commander of the vessel. He will ask you for it as you hand him the second envelope. If anyone else does, no matter who they may be, kill him and consider the mission abandoned.’
He said it with absolute calm, almost indifference.
‘Is that all clear?’
Zhulianov said that it was.
‘Fine. My task finishes here. Goodbye, and good luck.’
He got to his feet, they shook hands and he set off with short, quick footsteps.
He hadn’t even touched his coffee.
He spent the evening locked up in his room studying. So much to commit to memory: a new name, date of birth, a brief biography, the details of his itinerary. It took him two hours. On the Bulgarian vessel he would meet the other components of the mission: three exiled Yugoslavians with an expert knowledge of the region. Some hard men who, in 1949, had escaped from Goli Otok, where they had been interned as supporters of the Cominform. They had reappeared in Bulgaria, and the Ministry had picked them up in passing. Memorising the biographies took him another two hours. The years of training at Politics School made the task easier.
He still didn’t have the details of the mission itself. They must be inside the envelope he would give the commander of the vessel.
He gathered together all the documentation and burned it in the fireplace, one page after another.
Then he got dressed, performed three sets of press-ups on the carpet, and went to bed.
He had a long day’s train journey ahead of him.
Chapter 46
Bristol, 25 April
The greatest density of piliferous follicles per square centimetre of facial epidermis is recorded on the upper lip. The least, on the cheek. The type of beard and the frequency with which it requires to be shaved depends in part on anthropometric factors. Put bluntly, some races are hairier than others. Caucasians, vulgarly called ‘white’, are the most hirsute. Amongst these people, the beard reaches its maximum density at the age of about thirty-five.
Within film-going memory, Cary Grant had never displayed a beard longer than a twelfth of an inch. Among the sixty or so films in which he had appeared, the ones in which he did not appear perfectly shaven could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Each of those films coincided with a return of Archie Leach and his searing proletarian sarcasm. It’s difficult to cope with your traumas when you’re busy spying on Hollywood’s Nazis.
In The Talk of the Town, 1942, the Caucasian Grant — at the peak of his own piliferous productivity — played the role of Leopold Dilg, a trade unionist unjustly accused of homicide, who escapes prison and hides in the home of a fastidious law professor.
And after that came None But the Lonely Heart, 1944, practically a session of self-therapy. The head-to-head clash between Cary and Archie, as orchestrated by Clifford Odets. The story of the unemployed cockney Ernie Mott and his bitter, belated reconciliation with his mother after years of separation. (‘Did you love my old man?’ ‘Love is not for the poor, son. No time for it.’)
And then in the unsmiling city of Bristol, escorted by Her Majesty’s grey-suited servants, once again there are two of you.
Two, because you’re ‘Mr Grant’, the one who is obliged to camouflage himself lest anyone recognise him, but you’re also Archibald Alexander Leach, the one paradoxically free of camouflage, authorised to breathe, you’re the one singing silently to yourself the words of Anything Goes:
‘The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today. ’
You’re the one walking the streets of your birthplace, preparing to see Elsie once again.
Your mother.
Elsie, who still calls you both ‘Archie’.
Elsie who talked to herself, washed her hands repeatedly, stripping off layer after layer of skin with a hard-bristled brush, and asked everyone and no one where her dancing shoes were.
Elsie, whom your father Elias had placed without your knowledge in a psychiatric clinic. The Country Home for Mental Defectives, in the crumbling suburb of Fishponds, the terminus of one of Bristol’s tramlines.
You were nine years old. ‘She’s gone to the seaside, to Westonsuper-Mare, for a few days’ holiday.’
When did you work out that she wouldn’t be coming back? When exactly did you conclude that your parents had separated, that your mother had abandoned you?. Archie?
Elsie, just one pound a year to keep her in a state of filth, nonexistent hygiene, aggressive nurses.
Elsie, twenty pounds in all, until the death of her husband and the letter dispatched by an English lawyer.
Elsie, alive. Fifty-seven years old.
December 1935.