‘You must be insane!’ Grishin snapped. ‘I’m under investigation!
‘I don’t have many choices. Like you I have to rely on my friends.’
Grishin was not disposed to argue that proposition. With a shrug he became calm and self-possessed and enquired, ‘What do you want?’
‘Help. What do you want?’
Grishin shook his head and, finding a vacant chair, settled into it and composed himself with a what-happens-next? expression on his face. His wife squatted beside him. He looked sourly at her, but eased when he saw her look of luminous happiness. He stroked her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, addressing his visitor.
‘For what?’
‘You know for what.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I was confused.’
‘You thought that I was responsible for provoking the investigation into the Yakovlevitch case?’
Grishin shied from the directness of the question. He confined himself to saying, ‘It was logical.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kirov reassured him. He had in mind his father’s betrayals and in turn the betrayal of his father by Beria among Uncle Lavrenti’s many betrayals. It was the way things were. You couldn’t quarrel with it.
‘Where do we go from here?’ Grishin asked.
‘Tell me about the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.’
Grishin laughed. It was a bitter laugh. He let it flow out until it went on too long and became embarrassing. He squeezed his wife’s hand and kissed her cheek then threw a long look of curiosity at Nadia Mazurova. And then he returned to Kirov, his face as sick as tallow beneath his round rosy cheeks. ‘Do you honestly believe I understand it?’ he began with a long slow sarcasm. ‘It isn’t a thing — at least, not a single thing. It’s like’ — he was searching for a word — ‘putty. All the children are allowed to play with it, and, as long as you have it, you can make what you want out of it. Do you follow me?’
‘What’s your version?’
‘You know my version.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘It’s the same story that Radek gave the Rehabilitation Committee. Andropov asked me to put together a scenario that implicated Yakovlevitch and a group of senior Jewish doctors in the illegal trade in antibiotics. That’s all there is to it. You want to know if it’s true? The answer is: No. It’s a fabrication: no doctors, no Jews, no conspiracy. We made the whole thing up because at the time it was convenient.’
‘And Andropov’s own version?’ Kirov asked. ‘He had a different version, didn’t he? What was it?’
‘He didn’t tell me. He took the KGB and he played with the bits like a musical instrument, one department doing one thing, one department doing another. He could do that because he ran the business.’
Kirov nodded understandingly. He understood that Grishin was being evasive. Partly a matter of guilt, he supposed. Partly it was that there were some things that were not supposed to be talked about but merely hinted. The secret world had its own version of prudishness. ‘But you found out,’ he said, and Grishin admitted that was so.
‘Later — when Andropov had died and the thing was unravelled. It was Stalin, Beria, the Doctors’ Plot, all over again. This time Yakovlevitch and his friends became poisoners. They were plotting to kill Andropov and the beneficiary was going to be Chernenko. Andropov would unmask the plot and Chernenko and the rest of the old Brezhnev gang would be off the Politburo and into retirement if they co-operated — and something else if they didn’t. Do we have to go into this? It didn’t happen. Andropov died.’
‘Or was murdered.’
‘He died!’ Grishin affirmed vehemently. ‘There was an investigation by GRU when Chernenko got wind of what was happening. Everyone was cleared. There was no murder!’
‘If you say so,’ Kirov agreed.
‘Damn right I do!’
The force of the reply puzzled Kirov. Then an idea came to him, which was obvious enough, or would have been if the Ring did not cloud everything. ‘Is the Committee moving to involve you in Andropov’s death?’ When he received no reply he knew it was true and that Grishin had been wrestling for his life to explain the ambiguous structure of fact that had been created. He glanced at Ludmila Fillipovna who was sitting on the floor with calmness wrapped around her. He looked to Nadia. She had abstracted herself as if the things that men did to each other in their violence and ambition did not concern her.
‘And you?’ Grishin snapped back almost jovially. ‘What’s your version?’ There was a note of scorn, an implication that Kirov had pursued a children’s tale. ‘Did you solve the mystery of Viktor Gusev?’
‘Most of it.’
‘Well?’
‘Viktor was the Moscow distributor for a drugs racket operating out of Tbilisi. The boss is a local gangster called Georgi Gvishiani. The drugs are packaged to appear to come from Bulgaria, but they don’t. Some of them are produced at a factory in Tbilisi; but, because demand is so high, the Ring smuggles in additional supplies from Turkey through Batumi. I don’t know where these extra drugs originate but they are organised by an American by the name of William Craig —’ Grishin stopped him.
‘How did Craig become involved?’
‘I’m not certain until I see his file. He has some expertise in pharmaceuticals production and was selling his company’s secrets illegally. He helped to set up the factory in Tbilisi and defrauded his company of the licence fees that should have been paid. While he was in Tbilisi he fell in with Gvishiani and the two of them devised the scheme — probably with some help from the local military, since there is a second installation on the same site that seems to be Army-run. The whole racket is tied to dealing in diamonds. Viktor bought them from a jeweller called Ostrowsky and the Ring used them to pay for the drugs it was importing — and it probably keeps some of the profits in the West. The diamonds have two advantages. They’re easier to carry out of the country than the mass of small bills that the Ring gets from its customers. And secondly, the price the diamonds fetch in the West is substantially higher than their cost here, so the conversion makes the overall scheme more profitable.’
‘Clever.’
Kirov felt that Grishin wasn’t really interested. This interpretation of the Ring was as tawdry and shabby as the goods you could buy in the stores — but to Kirov it also had the same authentic Russian feel; it couldn’t be dismissed. He said, ‘But there’s still one more version, isn’t there? What does Ferenc Heltai’s version look like?’
Perhaps it was guilt; Grishin’s face flickered with sadness and regret. Kirov thought calmly: I used to be his protégé and he sacrificed me to protect himself. He could understand why and it did not bother him. It was this fact of not caring that had become the mystery.
‘I don’t know Heltai’s version,’ Grishin answered.
‘But you knew he was dangerous.’
‘I knew he had killed Academician Yakovlevitch. After the collapse of the plot, I had to keep an eye on Yakovlevitch because he knew, and he could tell. So when he was given an exit visa, it was clear to me that it couldn’t be the real thing. No one was going to allow him to start talking. I suppose Heltai was chosen for the killing because he had already become involved and because he knew something about poisons. Maybe that’s all Heltai’s version is. Maybe he simply has a brief to stop the stories surrounding Andropov’s death from getting out.’