‘Perhaps.’
He left her and pushed a way through the crush of guests, past the General now standing in his socks with his arm draped over his partner’s shoulder and his fingers spinning coils in her long hair. He shouldered aside the poet with the Old Believer beard and opened a door. It was the kitchen. Radek was there, helping himself to some satsivi courtesy of George Gvishiani who came from that neck of the woods; a cigarette with a column of ash dangled over the food.
‘Petya!’ he said. He had a sly, drunken grin. ‘Fuck your mother, what a bunch of creeps! Have a drink!’ He slopped some Scotch into a dirty glass and pushed it down the breakfast bar. He ignored Kirov and at the same time addressed him; he babbled something about Grishin and then about Lara. ‘What sort of bedroom tricks does she do? Hey, don’t give me that shiny look, it’s an honest question! Where are you going?’
‘I was leaving.’
‘Aw, c’mon, Petya, stay for a drink. If you don’t like Scotch, there’s a bottle of Tvishi here somewhere.’
Kirov turned away but Radek was still pursuing the idea of conversation. He said, ‘The Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring. Why Jewish? You still haven’t answered that one. Don’t go, I’m being serious, why Jewish?’
Neville Lucas was on the other side of the door, bumping his way into the kitchen with an empty glass.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked benevolently.
‘Why did you invite me here? So I would meet Lara?’
Lucas came over solemn. ‘As God is my witness, Peter, I didn’t know that she would be here.’ He brightened up. ‘Come on — forgive me? I’m your friend.’
‘Sure you are.’
He found a bedroom and a mound of winter coats. The room was faintly lit by a table lamp. The coats were heaped about the floor and a half-naked couple were lying peaceably on the bed smoking. The man was thin, his bony chest divided by a line of hair. The woman lay on her back in the ruck of her skirts, her blouse undone and her large breasts hanging splayed and flaccid. The air was spicy with the smell of Afghan hash. The man wore high-top boots, probably a returning soldier.
Kirov took his coat and returned to the press of the party.
‘Leaving?’ Yelena Akhmerova enquired speculatively.
George Gvishiani asked the same question. ‘I’m going too. Why don’t I give you a lift? We’ve both had a bit to drink, but I’ve got a car and a driver.’
Kirov accepted the offer. Gvishiani got his own coat and they descended to the street where the Georgian whistled up a black Volga.
‘How about a nightcap?’ he proposed. ‘Away from the freak show?’
The car took them to the Intourist, where Gvishiani was familiar with the hotel and known to the barmen. He found a table and drinks, and sat opposite Kirov, the bright blue of his bad expensive suit stamped against the backdrop of the other customers.
‘So,’ he began in a meditative good humour. ‘What do you think of our Yelena Borisovna and her parties? Not your style, am I right?’ Kirov made no reply, which Gvishiani took as agreement, fiddling with the rose in his buttonhole and continuing in the same tone. ‘An imitation of a Western hostess, I think, though I don’t know. I’ve never been to the West, but I guess you have.’
‘Have I?’
‘The cufflinks.’ Gvishiani flicked a careless finger at them. ‘Silver and amber — from Sweden?’
‘Finland.’
‘Ah, of course. But still the West — the Promised Land.’ This observation caused him to muse. ‘It’s pitiful really, when there are so many opportunities here — if you know how to use them.’
Failing a reaction, Gvishiani made a few more remarks in the same oblique manner, so that Kirov had a sense of fingers playing delicately over the strings of some instrument, waiting for the resonances of the response.
‘Yelena Borisovna thinks that she is being fashionable — what do you think?’
‘Fashions change.’
‘Yes. And we shouldn’t be deceived by the surface, by the trinkets, however modern they may appear. I daresay the Tsar’s court appeared to be the height of fashion until the moment that the Revolution overtook it.’ Gvishiani looked up from his drink directly into Kirov’s gaze. ‘And now we have Gorbachev, virtue and abstinence,’ he said. ‘Is it a change, do you think? Or are we just shuffling the trinkets?’
‘I have no opinion.’
‘No?’ Gvishiani looked for the time from the bar clock. His face was changing from good temper to seriousness. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. He moved to stand up, thought of something and, leaning forward, said, ‘When times are changing, it’s useful to have friends and influence. Do you need friends and influence, Pyotr Andreevitch?’
When Gvishiani was gone, Kirov turned to the girls in the bar. Out of an obscure anger he took one home for the night.
CHAPTER FIVE
He sat by the bed waiting for daylight. The floor was strewn with clothes — his — the girl’s — and books of poetry: the volume of Walt Whitman given to him by the traitor Oleg Ouspensky; the slim book of verse by Osip Davidov which he had taken from the apartment of Irina Terekhova before her defection. Treachery left poetry behind like calling-cards.
The girl stirred in her animal sleep. She had made a nest of the bedclothes and lay face down with her blonde hair sprayed over the pillow and the freckles of her pale shoulders as dim spots. He had no recollection of her appearance, no memory of any conversation. She had no history.
He made some coffee and put on a tape to fill the apartment with Mozart, and when he returned to the bedroom she was sitting up with the pillows plumped and the sheets arranged. She had neat breasts with button nipples coiled by small springs of hair, and a flat belly streaked faintly with stretch marks meaning that somewhere there was a child. But he didn’t want to think about the child, so he excluded the possibility.
‘I’ll fix a cab for you,’ he told her and hoped she would not speak.
‘Thanks,’ she said, looking past him at the furnishings which to her seemed more important. ‘You live well,’ she commented.
‘I’ll go and arrange the cab.’
He made her some breakfast which she ate in silence, devouring the kitchen with the food. He left some money on the table, which disappeared while he went to the bathroom. She asked whether she would see him again and he said no. She looked disappointed, so he gave her a maybe, and was touched when she seemed pleased. He held the door of the cab open for her and she thanked him again.
At the office he took care of some paperwork that had nothing to do with the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring. Now that Viktor Gusev was dead, the antibiotics business could conveniently be left to Bakradze and the boys from Petrovka. Bakradze urged him to do it. The lawyer called and repeated with the same innocence that he thought their relationship had unintentionally soured. He used the word ‘relationship’, which Kirov remembered from his days in Washington where ‘relationships’ — so his American friends told him — were more tangible than diamonds.
Bogdanov turned in late, looking tired and worn. He went to sleep with his head slumped over the rubbish on his desk. Radek stuck his nose through the door looking for a shot of vodka to kill his hangover. He asked, ‘Why Jewish?’ — and had a fair shot at dying of laughter. His hangover meant he preferred gossip to work. Kirov was glad when Grishin called him to his office. The interview wasn’t planned. Grishin appeared merely to want to chat. Perhaps it was one of those days when something in the air makes work impossible. Grishin rambled about improving the morale of the department by more social contacts after hours, then distractedly enquired about the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.