The Cathedral itself was small, a cluster of brilliantly coloured and encrusted onion-shaped domes on stalks of different height, like a fantasy castle out of Disney. Snow lay on the onions now, dimming the blues and greens and golds that sparkled on the picture postcards, but I stood there wondering how a nation which had produced a building of such joyous, magnificent imagination could have come to its latter-day greyness.
‘Ivan the Great commissioned that cathedral,’ said a voice behind my right shoulder. ‘When it was finished he was overwhelmed with its beauty; and he put out the eyes of his architect, so that he should not design anything more splendid for anyone else.’
I turned slowly round. A shortish young man stood there, wearing a dark blue overcoat, a black fur hat, and an unexpectant expression on a round face.
Round brown eyes full of bright intelligence, alive in a way that Russian faces were not. A person, I judged, whose still soft outlines of youth hid a mind already sharply adult. I’d had a bit of the same trouble myself at the same age, ten years or so ago.
‘Are you Stephen Luce?’ I said.
A smile flickered and disappeared. ‘That’s right.’
‘I would rather not have known about the architect.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t like horror movies.’
‘Life is a horror movie,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see Lenin’s tomb?’ He half turned away and pointed an arm to the middle distance, where a queue were waiting outside a large box-like building halfway along the Kremlin wall. ‘The Cathedral isn’t a church now, it’s some sort of store. You can go into the Tomb, though.’
‘No, thank you.’
He moved off, however, in that direction, and I went with him.
‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to one side of the Tomb, ‘is a small bust of Stalin, on a short pillar. It has recently appeared there, without any ceremony. You may think this is of no great note, but in point of fact it is very interesting. At one time Stalin was with Lenin in the Tomb. Revered, and all that. Then there was a spot of revisionism, and Stalin was the ultra persona non grata, so they took him out of the Tomb and put up a small statue outside, instead. Then they did a spot more revisionism, and removed even the statue, leaving nothing but a curt plaque in the ground where it had been. But now we have a new statue, back on the same spot. This one is not the old proud glare of world domination, but a downward-looking, pensive, low-profile sort of thing. Fascinating, don’t you think?’
‘What are you reading at the University?’ I said.
‘Russian history.’
I looked from the rebirth of Stalin to the dead cathedral. ‘Tyrants come and go,’ I said. ‘Tyranny is constant.’
‘Some things are best said in the open air.’
I looked at him straightly. ‘How much will you help me?’ I asked.
‘Why don’t you take some photographs?’ he said. ‘Behave like a tourist.’
‘No one thinks I’m a tourist, unless having one’s room searched is par for the packages.’
‘Oh gee,’ he said quaintly. ‘In that case, let’s just walk.’
At tourist pace we left Red Square and went towards the river. I huddled inside my coat and pulled my scarf up over my ears to meet the fur hat I had bought that morning, following Natasha’s instructions.
‘Why don’t you untie the ear-flaps?’ Stephen Luce said, untying a black tape bow on top of his own head. ‘Much warmer.’ He pulled the formerly folded-up flaps down over his ears, and let the black tape ties dangle free. ‘Don’t tie the tapes under your chin,’ he said, ‘or they’ll think you’re a pouff.’
I pulled the flaps down and let the tapes flutter in the wind, as he did.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.
‘Come with me to see some men about some horses.’
‘When?’
‘Mornings are best, for horse people.’
He took a minute over replying, then said doubtfully, ‘I suppose I could cut tomorrow’s lecture, just for once.’
How like Hughes-Beckett, I thought sardonically, to equip me with an interpreter whose time was measured in lunch hours and missed lectures. I glanced at the round, troubled face in its frame of black fur, and more or less decided then and there that my whole mission was impossible.
‘Do you know Rupert Hughes-Beckett?’ I said.
‘Never heard of him.’
I sighed. ‘Who was it who wrote to you, asking you to help me?’
‘The Foreign Office. A man called Spencer. I know him. They are sponsoring me, sort of, you see. Through college. The idea being that eventually I’ll work for them. Though I might not, in the end. It’s all a bit suffocating, that diplomatic waxworks.’
We reached the approach to the bridge over the river, and Stephen threw out an arm in another of his generous gestures.
‘Over there is the British Embassy,’ he said, pointing.
I couldn’t see much for snow. I took off my glasses, dried them as best I could on a handkerchief, and enjoyed for a minute or two a clearer look at the world.
‘Turn off right at the far side of the bridge,’ Stephen said. ‘Go down the steps to the other road running beneath it, along beside the river, and the Embassy’s that pale yellow building along there, giving a good imitation of Buckingham Palace.’
I told him I was going for a drink with the cultural attachés and he said the best of British luck, and not to miss seeing the Ambassador’s loo, it had the best view of the Kremlin in the whole of Moscow.
‘I say,’ he said, as we went on over the bridge, ‘do you mind telling me what you’re actually here for?’
‘Didn’t they say?’
‘No. Only to interpret, if necessary.’
I shook my head in frustration. ‘Chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. Looking for a rumour called Alyosha. Some say he doesn’t exist and others that he doesn’t want to be found. All I have to do is find him, see who he is and what he is, and decide whether he poses any sort of threat to a chap who wants to ride in the Olympics. And since you asked, I will now bore your ears off by telling you the whole story.’
He listened with concentration and his ears remained in place. When I’d finished he was walking with a springier step.
‘Count me in, then,’ he said. ‘And hang the lectures. I’ll borrow someone else’s notes.’ We turned at the end of the bridge to go back, and between the snowflakes I saw his dark brown eyes shining with humorous life. ‘I thought you were here just fact-finding for the Games. In a general way, and semi-official. This is more fun.’
‘I haven’t thought so,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Ve have vays of making you sit up and enjoy yourself.’
‘Ve had better have vays of keeping it all very discreet.’
‘Oh sure. Do you want the benefit of the immense experience of a lifetime of living in Moscow?’
‘Whose?’ I said.
‘Mine, of course. I’ve been here eleven weeks. Lifetimes are comparative.’
‘Fire away,’ I said.
‘Never do anything unusual. Never turn up when you’re not expected, and always turn up if you are.’
I said, ‘That doesn’t sound very extraordinary.’
I received a bright amused shot from the brown eyes. ‘Some English people touring here by car decided to go to a different town for a night from the one they had originally booked. Just an impulse. They were fined for it.’
‘Fined?’ I was amazed.