They took their seats. In the darkness of the cinema the screen flickered and swam with images. The room itself was small and stacked with dusty boxes and a debris of spools and broken equipment. Its shabbiness reminded Kirov of the porno houses off New York’s Times Square that Yatsin used to favour. Yatsin had his dreams. ‘Let’s go inside, Petya. Just to take the weight off my legs.’ He wore elasticated stockings that stilled the throbbing of his veins.
The screen flickered. A black and white interior came into vision. The bedroom in Viktor Gusev’s dacha. Items of clothing strewn on the bed. Pieces of figures — an arm — a leg — people on the edge of the camera’s field. No sound. Bogdanov complained, ‘Why didn’t that stupid bastard, Dubanov, take the tapes as well?’ Yet without the sound the pictures had their own slow rhythm.
The man appeared first, a bare torso, a forearm, his back to the camera, firm and well muscled. His body was naked but for leather bracelets and anklets. His head was entirely covered in a velvet mask.
‘Christ!’ murmured Bogdanov. The man’s hand beckoned, extending itself towards a figure out of sight. ‘Please God it’s a woman!’ The body swayed to unheard music.
The woman was fair and smooth and masked. Her anonymous body was an abstraction, a flow of shapes and shadows and planes of light, infinitely plastic in the imagination. She moved gracefully across the camera and held a pose, her back towards the viewer, the shallow valleys and contours of her flesh hazed and shaded. On her left shoulder blade was a dark mole, and this slight blemish was her only individuality.
‘Go on,’ said Bogdanov to the man. ‘Get stuck in!’ He waited in anticipation.
The man beat up the woman ferociously.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The day that Kirov was inducted old Chestyakov gave his speech. It was full of high purpose: the KGB was the active conscience of the Party, the sword and shield of the Revolution. Above all the KGB functioned at the core of the Party’s morality.
It was possible to be cynical about such statements, remembering that Chestyakov and a bunch of his retired cronies laid about the food and liquor after their descent from the dais to hobnob with the recruits and told various stories ranging from the salacious to the sadistic once they had a few drinks inside them. But that would be to ignore a part of the truth. Those like Kirov who were there, fresh and green and smart in their new uniforms, were conscious of their own election. They were told — and they knew — that they represented the nation’s best. It was inconceivable that they did not exist to achieve something worthwhile.
‘Let me give you a practical tip,’ Uncle Kolya said.
After the presentation and the congratulations the General took Kirov to the Berlin restaurant. He had primed the waiters to give good service and they fell over themselves to be helpful. The Berlin was an old-fashioned place with a fountain and gilded mirrors and music to match; and since it was highly rated by foreigners and the waiters spoke English there was a hubbub of foreign voices in the background, so that if you wanted to you could imagine yourself somewhere else. And of course you were. The KGB was somewhere else.
‘…practical tip.’ Uncle Kolya fiddled with a piece of bread as if the subject were too difficult to broach openly and it came to Kirov fleetingly that the old man wanted to talk about women. He had tried to years before, failed and ended feebly with, ‘Always take precautions, Petya — do you understand me?’
‘Conspiracies,’ the General said. ‘Plots. Stay away from them!’
‘I will,’ Kirov promised faithfully, and heard the older man murmur in a dissatisfied way that he was not following the point.
‘There are no new conspiracies, only continuations of old ones. New bits get grafted on and old bits seem to die away, but it’s all the same story. Nothing new ever happens. Nothing old ever really goes away. It can always come back.’
Kirov supposed Uncle Kolya was drunk since what he was saying was largely irrelevant and in any case not true. Uncle Kolya caught something of his reaction.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Kirov reminded himself that it was the day of his induction. Perhaps Uncle Kolya had been thinking of his own. He had joined the KGB on the same day as Kirov’s father, which was why they had been friends and loyal to each other. Kirov raised a glass to toast them all, living and dead.
‘Don’t try to understand,’ the General said regretfully. ‘Just remember. You’ll never understand what is behind it all. Conspiracies are not meant to be understood!’
Those were the words. They were burned on Kirov’s memory. He wanted to ask more, but Uncle Kolya brushed aside his question and proposed a toast to his future. Later, when he tried to revive the subject, he found the question could not be raised. The words had become a secret, and had therefore never been spoken.
Kirov was certain that Viktor Gusev was a blackmailer. He was not the man in the film. Viktor was a voyeur not a participant. Despite his illegal wealth he was a spectator of his own possessions, not a true owner; never at ease with them; struggling to acquire a sense of style, to read and understand the books and culture he had access to. Nadia Mazurova was right: Viktor remained at heart a poor boy from the provinces. He had never possessed her except as an ornament, as remote from him as the pair of porcelain figures stolen from his dacha.
Which left the question: who was the man in the film?
Who was the girl?
He asked Bogdanov to stay in the office and confirm the trace on Orlov, the former pharmacist at the Kremlin hospital now believed to be somewhere in the north working on a nature reserve. He took Tumanov with him and together they drove to Lyublino where Nadia Mazurova had moved back into the women’s hostel. It was a four-storey dun-coloured building in a pot-holed street of apartment houses with a school and a militia station at the corners. The warden was a fierce elderly woman who kept watch from a booth by the keys and the mailboxes. She stopped the two men and told them that male visitors were not allowed; and, when Kirov insisted, she directed them into a lounge where there was a television set, a table-tennis table and some worn-out furniture scattered with magazines. Nadia Mazurova joined them there.
Her manner was calm and she bade them good morning, but her eyes were bright and her gaze was penetrating. She was wearing a skirt and a striped blouse. Her hair was bundled into a damp turban.
Kirov invited her to take a seat. She accepted and with a show of care folded her elegant legs and placed her hands in her lap while Kirov watched her impassively. He cleared his mind of thoughts to be free for impressions. Contemplating this interview it seemed to him that it had no true agenda, since an agenda supposed some knowledge of the subject. Instead of which he had only facts without meaning and a sense of her opposition.
‘I’m surprised to see you again,’ she began.
‘Really? I thought you would have expected me. Our conversations so far have been — unproductive.’
‘I’ve tried to co-operate.’
‘Have you?’
‘I thought so,’ she answered but she didn’t look at him. There was music somewhere and the voice of the warden yelling, ‘No loud radios! What do I tell you? No loud radios! There are people trying to sleep!’ Tumanov was unwrapping a piece of gum.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Viktor’s dacha?’ Kirov asked.
‘His dacha?’
‘You had a key for it. It was one of the three you had on you when we first met. A key for the hostel; a key for Viktor’s apartment — and there was a third key: that was for Viktor’s dacha, wasn’t it? Get me some cigarettes,’ he said to Tumanov.