‘So are you?’
Was there an aphrodisiac for her in the knowledge? Yuri said: ‘Of course I am. Everyone knows that!’
‘Now you’re mocking me!’
He pointed towards the olive in her drink and said: ‘That’s a bug recording everything we say.’
‘You are mocking me!’
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ said Yuri. ‘All Russians are spies and we’ve got snow permanently on our boots and we eat children and we can hardly wait to press all those red buttons to launch the missiles at America. The only reason we haven’t fired them already is that we’ve got so many they’d all collide with each other and explode over Minsk.’
Inya laughed, genuinely enjoying herself, and said: ‘OK, so I apologize. You’re not a spy. I was curious, though, that you seemed to have more freedom than a lot of other Soviets in the building.’
Yuri experienced a slight stir of unease, wondering at the extent of the talk about him. He said: ‘Can’t you guess the reason?’
‘What?’
‘I’m so unimportant I’m not worth worrying about.’
‘I don’t think you unimportant,’ said Inya heavily, moving on to another part of the ritual.
‘I don’t think you are, either,’ said Yuri, another matching response.
Yuri guessed she expected to go at that moment but although he was impatient with this untouching foreplay he found himself strangely – inexplicably – reluctant to move on to what was the purpose of their being together anyway. Conscious of her surprise he suggested they remain in the bar, which really did epitomize the glamour of New York, like the staggering view of the Manhattan skyline from the River Cafe. Yuri wondered what Caroline Dixon was doing at that moment. And with whom. He forced the conversation and the lightness, making Inya laugh at least, and insisted on a further drink, aware as he did so of her curiosity.
She lived downtown, so he’d booked at Harvey’s, and as the cab took them there Yuri thought of the last time he’d travelled in this direction and with whom. Throughout the meal Yuri feigned interest in her stories of Scandinavia and United Nations gossip – concentrating momentarily to isolate the hint to pass on to Granov that Smallbone, the head of their section, had homosexual inclinations – and felt another positive reluctance when he could not any longer delay their leaving.
Inya had a loft on a secluded street near Gramercy Park and so they walked. As they set out Inya slipped her arm through his and Yuri was given another reminder of another time.
Her room was high, with a view of the river, and decorated and furnished in stark Scandinavian attractiveness, contrasting blacks and whites and light furniture and a lot of space. Yuri was later to realize how hard she tried. She served chilled aquavit and put a soft jazz combo on a player, and when he kissed her – the ritual continuing – she came back at once, actually leading, which until this moment Yuri had always found arousing. Her body was as lithely exciting as he had imagined it would be and her breasts wonderful. She knew and tried every lovemaking trick and technique and throughout it all he remained limp and flaccid. He brought her off, of course, with his hand and tongue but he knew she had expected more, like he had of himself.
‘You do not like me?’
‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not attractive?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘Why then?’
‘Drink,’ he lied. ‘Too much to drink.’ Would Caroline be with her three-buttoned advertising executive, he wondered.
Bowden drove in his battered, muddied car, with Petr beside him and Levin and Galina in the back.
‘The grand tour!’ he announced.
No one made any reply.
Levin noted the road was numbered 202 and saw signs to places called Woodville and Bantam and Grappaville before they entered an obviously preserved township which Bowden identified as Litchfield. He said it was named after a town in England, but spelled differently, and pointed out the curious verandahs around the tops of some of the colonial-style houses, which he called captain’s walks, and explained they were traditionally to give the wives of sail-masted, whaling seafarers vantage points to watch for the return of their husbands. Appearing to enjoy the role of historical guide, Bowden pointed out the house in North Street once occupied by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, whom he smilingly named as the American chief of intelligence during the war of independence from England. On the way back to the safe house Bowden pointed out the still scarred and in places naked hills, where an infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars had a few years before destroyed huge tracts of Connecticut forests.
Throughout it all Levin sat forward, intent upon his surroundings and possible landmarks.
So did Petr and for the same reason, although he was as careful as his father to disguise his interest.
20
Finally it had all emerged so easily, reflected Vasili Malik: so stupidly, incriminatingly easy! And now he had them! Panchenko definitely. And Kazin as well. Not so definitely but enough: enough to convict them both. But this time he had to move more carefully than before. He’d failed once by initiating a premature inquiry and he did not intend losing the second opportunity by making the same mistake. And he was being more careful this time. Like establishing his own duplicate records, strictly illegal though it might be, of everything he uncovered, to prevent any later interference or change. And the forensic evidence, or rather lack of it, was unquestionably sufficient to reinvestigate Panchenko’s account of the supposed suicide because if Agayans had killed himself the way Panchenko recounted there would have been extensive powder burns to the head, where the gun had been held close. Which there weren’t. Any more, any longer, than there was still in secure custody the alleged suicide weapon. Which further forensic and ballistic examination had intriguingly discovered, before its disappearance, had fired the same-calibre bullet as the type of weapon officially issued to Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko. One of the first actions when the inquiry was reconvened would be to seize Panchenko’s gun for comparable ballistic assessment against the fatal bullet. And prove, as he could from official records, that Agayans did not have a gun of his own. This time they wouldn’t escape: he had them!
Near the centre of the city Malik dismissed his driver, as he habitually did every night, to walk and to think on the final half mile home but again habitually he did not set out at once in the direction of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Instead he turned towards Red Square, striding in his uneven gait in head-bent thought, oblivious to the cupolas and the onion domes of St Basil’s or the cloud-reflected scarlet stars blazing from the Kremlin towers.
Malik doubted the contradictions of the rest of the squad would be as telling that those which Chernov had already disclosed. It would be a week, possibly longer, before they arrived in Moscow. And take perhaps a fortnight after that to cross-reference the interviews for further disparities. Frustrating but necessary, he decided, aware that he had reached Novaya. This time, once and for all, he was going to rid himself of Victor Kazin. After so long, he thought. And breaking the promise to Olga, who’d begged and pleaded in those last, pain-racked days for him once again to become friends with the man. An impossible promise, he thought; one she should not have sought. Malik stared around, recognizing the Ulitza Oktyabrya and aware he’d practically completed the square.
Malik looked for and found the cross street for the shortcut to pick up Kutuzovsky Prospekt, stumping off with his mind filled again with the past and its part in the present. There was still no hate. Not for what happened before nor for what he believed Kazin had attempted, since Malik’s transfer to the First Chief Directorate. He was actually surprised, disappointed even, wanting the consuming emotion he had once known: shouldn’t he, of all people, have found that easy! He should, but he didn’t. All he wanted was to be rid of the man, to remove an irritation.