‘Here, try this,’ Radek passed a half-litre bottle of spirit. Kirov refused it.
‘What is it you want to talk about?’
‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself?’
‘I’m enjoying myself. Why did you invite me here?’
‘It’s what friends do, isn’t it? Look, have a drink.’
Radek took a hefty pull from the bottle and offered it again. He smiled beneath the cold glitter of his eyes. Why are you apologising? Kirov wondered. After his drink Radek was staring about him at the sun and the trees. He began a story about winter when he was a child: it was all gone, where did it go to? Friendship carried its burden of responsibility and guilt which perhaps explained why Kirov preferred the company of strangers. He supposed that Radek was feeling guilty about Lara and found that he didn’t care.
‘Here, have you seen this?’ Radek fished inside his backpack and came out with a newspaper. ‘Today’s — read it — I’ve marked the article.’ It was a copy of Pravda, and he held it out straight-armed as if it were a gun.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Read it.’ He tapped the page. The apologies were gone and Radek looked as smug as a well-fed dog. Kirov took the paper. It was open at an inner page and an article was ringed. The heading was: ‘Advances in Soviet Medicine’. Three columns of bland prose. Radek pointed out the piece: ‘Third paragraph from the end.’ Kirov turned to it and read:
No review of Soviet advances in the techniques of renal surgery would be complete without praise for the achievements of the late Academician I.A. Yakovlevitch. A good Communist, he left the USSR for personal reasons but remained at heart a Soviet citizen. The stresses of his personal problems may have contributed to his death and his loss to Soviet science. One of the benefits of perestroika should be the lessening of such tensions so as to allow our men of science to continue their contribution to the modernisation of our national life.
‘Let’s go on,’ Radek said and he took the newspaper back. He indicated a gap in the trees off the ski-track and headed in that direction where the ground was more broken and the going difficult. Kirov followed into the crackling silence of the forest and the cold uncertainties of the winter sun.
They reached another clearing heavily shadowed by trees. The spoor of a fox crossed the sea-grey covering of snow. Radek paused again for breath.
‘Well?’ he asked. He began to remove his skis. ‘Take the weight off your feet. Let’s relax and have a bite to eat.’ He removed his backpack and fumbled among the zippers of his fancy ski-suit for some cigarettes. In his borrowed glamour he bore an air of adolescent insecurity; if you didn’t know his history you could feel sorry for Radek. He fingered the cigarette nervously and then laughed. It was a pitilessly ironic laugh; if he had been asked, Kirov would have said that Radek lacked either the insight or the humour for it, but evidently he was wrong.
‘How do you know of Yakovlevitch?’ he asked.
‘He’s on the agenda of the Rehabilitation Committee. That’s where this little story got itself authorised. Ah — I see Grishin hadn’t told you.’
‘He mentioned the name.’
‘But did he tell you that it was up before the Committee?’
‘We didn’t get round to the subject.’
‘No? Why do you think that is?’
Why indeed? Kirov tried to think back to that day at Grishin’s dacha, remembering the other man’s difficult, impenetrable mood. He talked about Yakovlevitch but didn’t explain that the surgeon had figured in the famous quarrels by which the Committee was known. Why not? Because he thought I already knew? Kirov registered Radek’s amusement — not that: there’s got to be more. Because he thought I had fed Yakovlevitch’s name to the Committee.
‘Didn’t you think that business went on while you were in Washington?’ Radek’s voice was taking a sinister tone from his efforts to be friendly.
‘Tell me.’
‘That was when the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring was being put together — oh no, not your version but the other one, hand-crafted by Andropov himself. I helped Grishin put together the case against Yakovlevitch. Not that I had responsibility for it — that was Grishin’s: it went with the glory and I was only a humble mechanic, if you must know. But it was obvious, even to me, that the Yakovlevitch case was bound to come up again for reconsideration. Given our new relations with Israel and the fact of the next round of arms-control negotiations with the Americans, the rehabilitation of a dead Jew has got to be the cheapest available method of demonstrating the sincerity of glasnost.’
Kirov nodded as sagely as a drunk. Among the other things he had not expected was that Radek would get smart, but here he was delivering neat analyses you couldn’t argue with. Kirov decided he deserved Radek as the price of ignoring him.
‘Grishin is finished.’ Radek used the heel of his boot to draw circles in the snow and stared at the results. ‘He’s too old, too tired, too — implicated. This Yakovlevitch business will finish him. A sacrifice has got to be made. Someone in the KGB has to assume the responsibility if the point is to be proved.’
Where did you get that last bit of piety from? Kirov would have laughed but there was an earnestness in the other man that commanded a perverse respect. He had beaten Grishin. No wonder that the latter had been distracted. He knew the danger he faced once the Yakovlevitch case was reopened.
‘You still haven’t explained why you invited me here.’
Radek looked up sharply. He put away philosophy and turned to business. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Grishin is out. I want his job. I deserve his job.’ He was still shuffling emotions like a deck of cards — slyness, sincerity, sentiment, cynicism. He wants friendship and he hates me. Kirov thought back to the night when he had disturbed Special Investigations in their search of the files. They had not checked any belonging to Radek. He must have already delivered his files on Yakovlevitch to the Rehabilitation Committee.
Radek reached out and picked up a small branch that had fallen into the snow. A twig, sharp as a spine, pierced his thumb but he ignored it and a small flow of blood fell drop by drop onto the white snow. ‘Grishin is a relic, an old Stalinist. Did you know he cut his teeth working for Beria? Whatever happens, he has to go.’
But not without a fight. There was the missing piece. Kirov couldn’t imagine Grishin unaware that there was a move against him. It wasn’t possible to suppose he had reacted passively while Radek conspired to destroy him. And yet Yakovlevitch was going to be rehabilitated. Because Grishin got the wrong target. He thought I betrayed him to the Committee. And Grishin did what?
He gave me the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.
‘I want your support for my promotion,’ Radek said evenly. ‘I’m not trying to do you down, Petya. I could — but that’s not what I want. As Chief I’d still need your help.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know you do.’ Subtlety was in sufficiently short supply that Radek couldn’t forgo it by losing him. Not that he’d shown too much of it lately. But then even Grishin had fallen for Radek’s simplicity. Which raised the question: how did Radek intend to hold him to this new arrangement?
Radek was strapping his skis back on. He caught Kirov watching him and threw a winning smile in his direction as between pals playing the same game. Still confusing his cues. Doesn’t know whether to recruit me or frighten me. Radek said, ‘I’m heading back.’ He was standing in his skis and fixing his pack.