‘By the way, said Lucas, ‘forgot to mention it, but tonight’s “do” is an all-English affair, which is to say that we all have to speak English.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Good question. The fashion, I suppose; the Akhmerova regards it as sophisticated — also she wants to deliver a pretty speech in English when she collects her pot at Cannes. Why do you think I’ve been invited to the party? The famous have always considered it chic to associate with low life; and what could be more seamy than an elderly English traitor?’ Lucas paused and his tongue sucked wistfully at his false teeth. ‘I don’t care,’ he said finally. ‘The drink’s free and you never know your luck. With my advancing years and doubtful past, I’m cultivating a shady sex appeal. Who knows, eh, Peter?’
‘Who knows?’
Yelena Borisovna Akhmerova occupied an apartment at the Visotny Dom among the generals and the Party stars. There was music from the interior and the door was opened by a lackey in a white ducktail who took their coats and introduced them to the waiter who attended to their orders. From the visible bottles Kirov noted a dreary preoccupation with imported Jack Daniel’s, Cutty Sark and Gordon’s gin. The music was a bland Swedish rock band singing English songs. Kirov was reminded again of Scherbatsky’s watch.
‘Yelena Borisovna, may I introduce my friend, Pyotr Andreevitch Kirov.’ Lucas’s voice fell as his natural shyness came out. Stripped of his duffel coat, he revealed an old tweed jacket and a green cardigan with football buttons.
‘Helena,’ his hostess corrected him and her cool eyes appraised Kirov. ‘I’m pleased you could come to my little soirée, Peter — or should I call you “Pete”?’
‘Peter.’ Kirov returned the stare, penetrating the translucent glaze of her make-up. The brilliant green eyes had an unnatural offset look — contact lenses he supposed. Her face was locked immobile in its beautiful structure, so perfect that it might have shared the designer label of her shimmering blue-green dress.
‘Peter it is,’ she agreed and then quickly passed him into the crowd, leaving Neville Lucas standing in the shadows by the door with a grin of idiocy pasted to his face.
Kirov took a glass of pepper vodka and found a place where he could detach himself and survey the company. The apartment suffered like Viktor Gusev’s from a surfeit of random wealth. Even at the level of Yelena Akhmerova the acquisition of goods was an affair of chance, different from the struggle of ordinary citizens only in the value of goods obtained. So an icon of the Kiev school hung uncomfortably on the wall next to a lithograph of a strange sunlit house from which the people had disappeared, and the antique mahogany furniture jostled for space with the tubular-framed chairs.
Except in one quarter the conversation was in a hubbub of bad English. A man with a bushy Old Believer beard, a peasant blouse and soft-topped boots clung obstinately to Russian and talked about Soloukhin and Vasili Belov and the ‘Slav Soul’. Lucas identified him as the poet Valentinov. He was speaking to a film director whom Kirov knew from the days when Lara had made a point of attending the best parties, where members of KGB foreign departments were fashionable for their cosmopolitan, even liberal manners, a taste shared by certain Washington parties where the presence of KGB was also fashionable though less explicit. He recalled that Washington too could suffer from wealth without taste, but it was able to resolve its problems by engaging interior decorators. ‘I came home to a shambles,’ an American once told him. ‘I thought my wife had hired an interior decorator. Thank Christ we’d only been burglarised.’
‘Peter, may I introduce you to Teddie?’ Yelena Akhmerova said.
‘Hi, Pete, can I freshen your drink?’ said Teddie.
‘Teddie lectures at the Institute for International Relations. Neville tells me you used to be in Washington. Teddie knows all about America.’
Teddie wore a pale pastel shirt and slacks and a pair of Gucci loafers and Kirov caught the whiff of KGB as tangy as aftershave. A foreign-intelligence analyst from the First Chief Directorate and as suave as they made them.
‘Helena is a great kid, don’t you think?’ Teddie said.
‘A great kid,’ Kirov agreed. Teddie carried on in the same vein, larding his conversation with American slang. You could date an agent’s foreign postings from the slang he spoke. Yatsin, the Washington Resident, had confided that the US Residency had given up the old KGB habit of referring to the office in Dzerzhinsky Square as ‘Moscow Centre’ — ‘It was getting to sound like a shop that sold designer espionage.’ Teddie used words that Kirov found unfamiliar. He had visited a different America.
‘Don’t mope, old man.’ Neville Lucas nudged him affectionately. He had found a companion, a younger version of Yelena Akhmerova who had not yet achieved the sophistication of knowing who was important. The girl hung on his arm and interrupted.
‘As famous spy, Neville, you know traitors Burgess and Maclean?’
‘Don’t hang on my arm, there’s a dear,’ Lucas said gently. ‘Burgess and who? Were they important?’
‘You are joking me, Neville!’ she laughed.
‘Probably.’ Lucas patted her bottom. ‘Run along and see if you can find me some bottled beer, Guinness preferably, but anything else will do. Actually I did meet Guy Burgess once,’ he said to Kirov. ‘The British press said I was part of that gang, “the Fourth Man”, but that was all balls. Burgess was a queer and Maclean was an awful snob. Neither of them would talk to me. “A snivelling little cipher clerk” they called me, which wasn’t so far from the truth. I never met Kim Philby. I wrote to him once, but he returned my letter. He’d never heard of me — he thought I was a bloody visiting journalist! But, as I say, I did meet Guy Burgess once — at a party. He did me the honour of throwing up all over my suit. My only English suit. It was a hell of a job to get it cleaned.’ He thought for a while and added, ‘Hey ho! Who cares, eh, Peter?’
‘I’d better be on my way.’
‘Actually it’s a bloody miracle she’d ever heard of Burgess and Maclean; she must be a history student. Don’t go, old man.’ Lucas put a hand on Kirov’s wrist. ‘Come and meet George.’ He indicated a settee where a man with slow, patient eyes was watching them.
‘Peter, this is George Gvishiani. Peter — George. Can I leave you fellows to get on with it? A word, Peter: George doesn’t speak un mot of English.’
‘I — try — little,’ said the stranger and he gave a meek, appealing smile. He extended a hand to offer a seat. ‘Please — seated.’
Kirov took the seat. The record changed to a slow love song. George Gvishiani, in his brash blue suit with a rose in the lapel, beamed at a couple of girls who were dancing a slow rumba barefoot on the carpet. Neville Lucas sailed past with his girl in one hand and a bottle of Zhigulevskoy in the other.
‘I — love — girls,’ Gvishiani said hesitantly.
‘You know Yelena Borisovna?’ Kirov said in Russian.
His companion turned his eyes away from the girls.
He laughed. ‘I thought I’d never hear Russian spoken again!’ There was no meekness or appeal in that sound; evidently they were side-notes reserved for embarrassment, and it occurred to Kirov that, had the conversation continued in English, their deceptive tone would have coloured its interpretation. Gvishiani was a more robust character, a small, heavy, dark, intense man, bandit-faced and wearing good manners like a Sunday suit. ‘Here, have a drink!’ said Gvishiani and he passed a bottle of dill vodka that he had been keeping secreted by the side of the settee.