‘You could specifically inquire,’ suggested Kazin.
And have my name upon an incriminating document, thought Panchenko. He said: ‘What legitimate reason would I have for doing so?’
Kazin again avoided a direct reply. Instead he said: ‘So Malik has brought back to Moscow a man who’s given an account different from yours. And might possibly interrogate the others. But so what? Every recollection has to vary.’
‘Can you take the risk of his probing until he finds the evidence you know is there to be found?’ asked Panchenko.
So much about this encounter appeared a repetition of the first, thought Kazin, recognizing the qualification. Responding to it and wanting to correct the imbalance in their positions, he said: ‘No, I don’t suppose I can take that risk. I don’t think that either of us can take that risk…’ Now he staged the artificial pause. ‘But my understanding was that the evidence, such as it is, incriminates you?’
‘I was following your orders, not Malik’s, in doing what I did that night at Gogolevskiy Boulevard,’ insisted Panchenko.
‘I don’t remember anything being written down: any provable documentation,’ said Kazin with ominous mildness.
For a long time Panchenko stared unspeaking across the narrow space separating them. ‘I see,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Kazin, with forced patience. ‘I don’t think you do see. Perhaps I was wrong, a few moments ago, in trying to minimize the dangers. Something has to be done, to protect us both. Permanently to protect us both. But before we consider that, let’s consider something else that would be wrong. It would be a very stupid mistake for us to fall out: to start making threats against each other. I think you are dependent upon me and I am dependent upon you. Have I made myself clear?’
‘I think so,’ said Panchenko. In the half light the man’s expression seemed something like a smile. ‘What can be done to protect us both? And permanently?’
Once more Kazin wished there had been an opportunity, an hour at least, for more consideration. He said: ‘Something very permanent.’
There was no expression resembling a smile upon Panchenko’s face now. His voice cracking with the strain, the man said: ‘You can’t seriously mean that!’
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Panchenko. The words still groaned from him.
‘We can’t go on, always threatened like this,’ urged Kazin.
‘How!’
‘An accident.’
‘No!’
‘You did it before.’
‘Which is why I don’t think I can do it again.’
‘Disastrous,’ said Kazin.
‘What?’
‘Your word,’ reminded Kazin. ‘You said the continuing investigation could be disastrous. And it will be.’
Panchenko shuddered. Weakly he said: ‘I really don’t think I can. Not again! There must be some other way.’
‘There isn’t,’ insisted Kazin.
‘Mine is always the risk, never yours,’ protested Panchenko.
‘You’re trained, I’m not.’
‘It can’t be another shooting.’
‘I said an accident.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. It has to be soon. Before he has time to dig any deeper.’
‘The last time,’ said Panchenko, an insistence of his own.
‘There won’t again be the need,’ assured Kazin. And if there were Panchenko would have to obey whatever order he was given because he was not in a position to do anything else. Despite which, once Malik was out of the way, Kazin determined to disassociate himself from Panchenko. Not discard him, of course: appear to remain his advocate, in fact. But to limit their contact and association. Panchenko had been useful this time and doubtless would be again but it would be wrong for the man to imagine any permanent situation. Kazin had not enjoyed having so openly to concede the dependence.
‘You know you’re telling me to kill a First Chief Deputy of the KGB, don’t you?’ said Panchenko.
Kazin shook his head across the tiny pavilion at the security chief, inwardly contemptuous of the man’s almost catatonic demeanour. Most definitely limited contact in future, he thought. He said: ‘I’m telling you how to save yourself from destruction. How to save us both.’
Panchenko, who had feared the other man might become suspicious at the almost awkward repositioning when he’d shifted in the cold, decided he had been wise to equip himself with the sound equipment and the directional body microphone to record everything that had been said between himself and Kazin. He tried to think if there were anything he had failed to manipulate on to the tape and decided there wasn’t. He said, finally for the benefit of the recording: ‘I obey your orders, Comrade First Chief Deputy.’
Natalia’s maternal grandmother lived on the outskirts of Mytishchi, in a forever stretching development of identical high-rise after identical high-rise. It was a neglected estate. The elevators were invariably broken and the smell along the therefore necessary stairways, cavernous by design and dark from the further neglect of unreplaced bulbs, was of sour damp and even sourer cooking. But it was an unshared apartment and therefore luxurious by Soviet standards and so from the moment of Levin’s defection the old woman and the girl had lived in daily apprehension of eviction. So when the official envelope was delivered both were initially too terrified to open it, staring fearfully at it on the table between them, as if in some way it were contaminated. It was Natalia who moved at last, the bravery of youth coming slightly ahead of the resignation of age, and when she read its contents the girl’s bewilderment deepened.
‘I can write,’ she announced simply. ‘The Foreign Ministry are permitting us to exchange letters.’
‘Nothing about having to get out?’ demanded the old woman, unimpressed and still suspicious.
‘Nothing.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she insisted. ‘Retribution is always exacted against the families of traitors.’
Natalia winced at the word but didn’t challenge it. She said: ‘Being able to write is practically a favour.’
‘It is a favour,’ insisted the old woman. ‘That’s what doesn’t make sense.’
Natalia sat for a long time, paper and pen untouched before her, trying to envision an ordinary sort of letter and then decided that nothing she wrote could be ordinary and that it was ludicrous trying to formulate any normal sort of correspondence. At last, almost impulsively, she snatched up the pen, scribbling hurriedly.
‘My Darling Mamma and Papa and Petr,’ she wrote, lower lip trapped between her teeth, ‘I love you so much and thought you loved me and so I cannot understand why you have abandoned me…’
Inya suggested the United Nations Plaza, because it was the hotel closest to the UN building from which it got its name and because, she said, it epitomized the glamour and glitter of New York. Yuri agreed, really uncaring at the choice. When they settled in the cocktail bar, he decided it was well chosen anyway.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Very glitzy,’ said Yuri. It was a new word he was trying out.
‘Very much New York?’
‘Very much New York,’ he agreed. She really did have a spectacular body. So why wasn’t he more interested than he was?
‘I have a question,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You are Russian?’
‘You know I am.’
The woman giggled and said archly: ‘No, it’s ridiculous.’
Yuri thought it was, too, but was curious at his irritation. This was seduction coquettishness, the familiar pre-mating ritual, and before he’d always accepted its necessity without impatience. So what was different this time? Forcing himself into the expected response he said: ‘Go on: what is it?’
Inya sniggered again. ‘You know what they say about Russians, at the United Nations?’
‘What?’ he asked expectantly.
‘That you’re all spies!’
She put her hand to her mouth, as if shocked by her own outrageousness, and Yuri hoped it was all worthwhile when they finally got to bed. It was, he reflected, still a useful test of sorts: not so many weeks – even days – ago a challenge like this would have tightened him like a spring. Tonight he just smiled back at the woman, quite unworried. He said: ‘Do they?’