‘My mother became the leader of the community,’ he resumed. ‘She was a tyrant. My father was weak, resentful, humiliated and did nothing to protect me at all. He became an alcoholic eventually and left the island. That was when I was about seven. I haven’t seen him since. Then, slowly, an elite formed in the community, as it does in any community. In this case it was made up of the members who controlled the supply of drugs, mainly hashish in the beginning, then heroin. Opium for the people.’
We walked back to the fire and Finn raked it over unnecessarily. No spark could have lit anything on that bitter day. Then he put his arm around me and we walked back up the fishing track we’d found to get down to the lake.
‘But when I was twelve, I was saved. My uncle, my father’s elder brother, came to Ireland and took me away,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how he managed it, it was totally against my mother’s will. I expect it involved money. I went with my uncle to Cambridge and began school for the first time, proper school. My uncle was a biochemist at Cambridge University, my aunt taught Buddhism. For a while after they took me away, people from the community hounded us. They wanted me back and it was frightening. They came to the house outside Cambridge, sending my aunt and uncle threats and hate mail. But they tired of it and disappeared from my life. So my uncle had me educated. I won a scholarship to Cambridge. I haven’t seen my mother since I was twelve. She disappeared to South America, I believe.’
We arrived at the wooden house and Finn hugged me for a long time before we entered. When he pulled away he couldn’t look at me and I knew he’d told me something very painful to him. I think it was the first time I felt I loved him.
It was getting dark outside the windows at the Forest. I realised it must be late. But Putin’s head of intelligence showed no signs of urgency. A bottle of vodka had finally arrived, apparently to placate the General, but Patrushev’s fondness for our national drink is well known.
We could hear the traffic on the motorway into Moscow and I thought of Barvikha, which lay not far away in the forest in the opposite direction to the capital. I’d said I would meet Nana there, but she was used to me breaking arrangements.
Suddenly Patrushev shot a question at me.
‘And did they?’ he asked. ‘Did they destroy Finn’s self-belief at the commune?’
‘In a somewhat misleading way, I’ve never met anyone with more self-belief,’ I said. ‘He has a certain confidence that finds it unnecessary to display self-belief in public at all. It is a peculiarly English assumption, in my opinion. He demonstrates self-belief without there being any outward signs of it. I would say that his regular undermining of himself, for example, of his background and of his country is a supreme sign of self-confidence. He told me that ever since the shouting when he was six, conflict, anger and aggression have all left him cold.’
‘And all the time Finn kept something of himself back from them,’ Patrushev said.
‘I think so. Certainly since I’ve known him, apart from that one conversation he seems to have placed his childhood in a sealed room. Either that or he has come to terms with it.’
‘He’s had psychiatric help, perhaps. Maybe he’s been in therapy?’ Patrushev said.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’
Yuri sneered and knocked back the full glass of vodka that Patrushev had just poured. I admit it was strange to hear Patrushev utter the word ‘therapy’. I wanted to smile, but stopped myself. Finn liked to call the repressive political measures of Putin’s regime ‘theraputin’.
Patrushev filled my glass and those of the others.
‘What was his relationship with his uncle and his aunt?’ he said as he was pouring the vodka.
‘Gratitude, certainly. Respect, duty. He keeps in touch with them, sees them regularly when he’s in England. His uncle is retired from a professorship—’
‘Yes, yes. In biochemistry. But love, does he love them?’
Kerchenko looked shocked that the word had come up a second time in a single day.
‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ I said carefully.
‘He’s a man independent of love,’ Patrushev said, and I wasn’t certain whether it was a question or not.
‘He told me that he loves Russia,’ I volunteered.
‘Ah,’ Patrushev exhaled and unclasped his hands and leaned back for the first time in the broad armchair. ‘The English are the most fatally romantic people on earth. They’re always falling in love with other people’s countries. A symptom of something or other, eh, General?’
Kerchenko didn’t know what he was talking about.
Patrushev leaned forward again.
‘So, Finn has no parents to speak of,’ Patrushev summed up. ‘He doesn’t love the people who raised him as their son, he runs from woman to woman during all the time we’ve known him, and he loves an abstract Russia.’
I didn’t reply, knowing now what was coming.
‘And now he says he loves you,’ Patrushev said, rolling his tanks gently on to my lawn.
‘He says so,’ I said, emphasising my doubt about it.
‘Apparently Finn doesn’t tell women he loves them in order to get them into bed,’ Patrushev said knowledgeably. ‘Apparently he doesn’t need to. We know that from several sources before you. And besides,’ he said, looking at me in a strangely aggressive way, ‘he’d already got you into bed, hadn’t he? So why did he tell you he loved you? What do you feel, Anna?’
‘Perhaps he told me because he knew he was going to lose me,’ I said, ‘and it brought out the romantic in him. In my opinion, Finn is the sort of man who tells you he loves you as consolation for him leaving you.’
I instantly regretted my reply.
‘But he told you three days before he left Moscow that he loved you,’ Patrushev snapped immediately. ‘If he knew he was leaving you, he would have told you that too, surely.’
‘Then perhaps I’m wrong about my previous thought,’ I said, and felt the ground slipping under me. ‘In that case, my guess is that he must have known he was being recalled, or something of the kind. But he couldn’t tell me for security reasons.’
‘We believe he left in an unplanned way,’ Patrushev said sharply. ‘He was bundled out of Moscow by his people. That’s true, isn’t it?’ He looked at Yuri.
‘He was practically frog-marched,’ Yuri said.
Patrushev swung his head back at me. ‘So it’s odd, isn’t it, that he knew he was leaving, even though it was unplanned. He tells you he loves you because he knows he’s leaving. That is very plausible. But how does he know he’s leaving?’
Patrushev leaned across the desk and fixed me with his stony eyes.
I had nothing to say. I was trying to recover myself.
‘Perhaps the whole thing is a set-up,’ I repeated. ‘The British want us to think they’ve sacked him.’
‘Perhaps so,’ he said.
‘Why would they do that?’
But Patrushev ignored my question.
‘Do you believe he loves you, Colonel?’ he asked, for the first time using my rank rather than my name.
I felt the other three focusing their gaze on me.
‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘Yes I do,’ and I surprised myself by saying it. Suddenly, I felt light and happy, and as if the men in the room were from some other, unreal time and place.
Patrushev suddenly dismissed Kerchenko and the two officers.
It was very late by now, I don’t remember what time it was, and I wanted to get away and to go home to Barvikha. But Patrushev showed no sign of leaving when the others had gone and suggested that the two of us have something to eat in the building. I felt uncomfortable that the night might be taking a turn for the personal. He couldn’t take his eyes off me and I now regretted wearing the clothes intended to disturb the General.