Inside the train, Flitlianov’s two security men were awake — looking and listening, plumbing the silence for the slightest sound or movement: one in the corridor standing next to Flitlianov’s locked compartment; the other scanning the deserted platform on the other side of the tracks.
A minute passed. The militiamen shifted their feet discreetly. The guard checked his watch with the official at the far end of the platform. At the opposite end, in the cabin of the leading engine, a man was talking easily to the driver.
‘Of course, Comrade,’ the driver said, ‘I knew your father. When I worked the Southern Region — the Yalta — Moscow line — he was Engineer-in-Charge: a very fine man, a great man.’
In front of them as they spoke, half a mile away, the engine lights of the Moscow sleeper appeared, two long brilliant beams, fanning out over a carpet of snow, rounding a curve. It glided towards them against the wind without a sound.
‘It’s an honour to meet you, Comrade,’ the driver went on as the express passed their cab, drawing into the station. ‘I’ve greatly enjoyed our talk. Though you know as much about the railways as I do myself, if I may say so.’
‘My father taught me everything — never stopped talking about it. I take no credit for it. He was the real railway man.’
‘Indeed, indeed.’ They shook hands firmly, warmly, full of old memory. Then Alexei Flitlianov took his briefcase and climbed down onto the tracks between the two trains. He rounded the last carriage of the Moscow-bound sleeper and confronted the guard who had just got down from it, showing him his identity card. The man saluted promptly.
‘My reservation please. For Moscow. It was booked last night — joining the train at Morivinia.’
‘This way, sir. I’ll get the attendant at once.’
Flitlianov climbed up into the last carriage where a compartment had been reserved for him. The attendant opened the door.
‘Some tea, sir. Or some coffee? We have some coffee.’
‘Something stronger, please. If you have any. It’s cold.’
‘Certainly, sir. At once. Do you have anyone travelling with you?’
‘No, no one.’
Flitlianov turned towards the curtained window. The wheels of the Leningrad sleeper moaned briefly as the brakes were released and the train drew out of the station. Two minutes later his own train left and the attendant arrived with a half bottle of export vodka and a glass on a little tray.
By eight o’clock he was back at the Moscow terminus — just in time to catch the morning express to Leningrad. And by five that afternoon he had crossed the bridge onto Nevsky Prospect and was walking towards the Hermitage Museum.
He met Yelena downstairs in her office of the Exhibition and Loans department in the basement of the building, posing as the curator of a distant museum come to the Hermitage to choose some paintings for a provincial exhibition.
They walked along the basement to the new storage room, a long, specially lit and heated chamber. Here they inspected various paintings from the several thousand available, stored in lines, each canvas suspended over the floor in sliding racks, marked alphabetically after the artist, so that any work could be reached almost immediately by pulling the open crates out on their runners into the wide central aisle. The room was empty, smelling slightly of warm turpentine, and there was the vague sound of machinery somewhere. But none the less, Yelena spoke briskly and officially.
‘All the same, it seems to me, for a proper balance, you need some of the moderns — even if you’re not going beyond 1900. You should perhaps acknowledge the beginnings of the movement…. The Impressionists, of course. But none of our major examples is available, I’m afraid. A Manet perhaps. We have a sequence of his “Seine at Marly” paintings — one of those we could spare.’
‘Yes,’ Flitlianov said uneasily. ‘And what about Modigliani?’
‘Really outside your period altogether. Though we have some exceptional examples.’
They moved half down the chamber to the racks of the middle letters: Manet, Matisse, Modigliani.
‘Let me show you some in any case.’
She pulled a rack out gently, the first open crate sliding forward, a canvas stored on either side. And then another one. And a third, so that the central aisle was now partly blocked and they were hidden from the doorway. They stood facing a large Modigliani nude.
‘Well?’ Yelena inquired in a true voice, turning away from the dark glamour of the picture, the rose thighs, the incisive outlines of body and crotch.
‘Yes,’ he said simply, suddenly tired, gazing at the nude, a weary business man in a strip club. ‘Yes, it’s now.’
‘Everything is ready. A few details, that’s all.’
‘Passports, exit visa, money?’
‘You prepared it all yourself, Alexei. It’s all here. All you have to do is sign and pre-date your own authority for this man.’
‘And the London paintings will be the first trip out of here — the Baroque exhibition?’
‘Yes, you’re lucky. Thursday morning. The exhibition ends today. There’ll be two days packing. Then they go direct to London, part of the weekly cargo flight, an Ilyushin 62.’
She pulled the Modigliani over to one side and replaced it with another canvas, an early Matisse.
‘Cubist. Not for you at all.’ She changed her tone again. It was formal, almost scolding. ‘But effective. I like his invention — and his restraint. They balance out. With Picasso the same thing gets out of hand — too wild and no control.’
‘Stop it, for God’s sake.’
They looked at each other, both suddenly angry: tongue-tied, so much to say, and no time now, or place, to say it — resenting their shared experience because they could no longer acknowledge it. So they felt guilty as if they had carelessly broken their affair themselves some time before and had met now with only the blame to apportion.
‘You’ll have two days to wait. The room is ready.’
Two men appeared at the far end of the aisle, a young man and someone much older, balding with glasses. The young man had a clip-board and pencil in his hand.
‘The deputy curator. They’re preparing an Old Master exhibition — Titian, Tiepolo, Vermeer, Velazquez: they’ll be coming past us. Let me do the talking if they stop.’
But they stopped some distance in front of them, pulling a rack out early in the alphabet.
‘Boucher, Botticelli,’ Yelena said brightly. ‘We’re all right. Yes, the room: you know it. The old varnishing-room. There’s food. And water from the sink. It’s kept locked, used as a paint and chemical store-room now. They have to come to my office for the key. And there’s still an internal telephone, so I can warn you. Everything is there, as we arranged: the suitcase on top of the cupboard on the left. The suit is inside, hanging with a lot of old overalls. And the papers are taped underneath the cupboard: two passports — the Russian and the Lebanese, your new KGB identity card and the money, twenty-five thousand dollars in travellers cheques. I have your exit visa here, stamped last week and dated for travel on Thursday. All you do is sign it.’
The two men had finished with Botticelli and had now begun to move down the aisle towards them.