I sighed a little and looked at Ian Young. ‘And you?’ I said.
‘I’ve looked too,’ he said. ‘There isn’t a trace.’
There seemed little else to say. The party broke up, and I asked Waterman if he could telephone for a taxi.
‘My dear chap,’ he said regretfully. ‘They won’t come here. They don’t like to be contaminated by stopping outside the British Embassy. You can probably catch an empty one on the main road, if you walk along to the bridge.’
We shook hands at his outer door, and, again swathed in overcoat and fur hat, I set off towards the guarded gate. It had stopped snowing at last, which improved the prospects slightly. Ian Young, however, called out after me and offered a lift in his car, which I gratefully agreed to. He sat stolidly behind his steering-wheel, dealing with darkness, falling snow and road-obscuring slush as if emotion had never been invented.
‘Malcolm Herrick,’ he said, still dead-pan, ‘is a pain in the arse.’
He turned left out of the gate, and drove along beside the river.
‘And you’re stuck with him,’ I said.
His silence was assent. ‘He’s a persistent burrower,’ he said. ‘Gets a story if it’s there.’
‘You’re telling me to go home and forget it?’
‘No,’ he said, turning more corners. ‘But don’t stir up the Russians. They take fright very easily. When they’re frightened they attack. People of great endurance, full of courage. But easily alarmed. Don’t forget.’
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘You have a man called Frank Jones sitting at your table at the hotel,’ he said.
I glanced at him. His face was dead calm.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Did you know he was in the K.G.B.?’
I copied his impassiveness. I said, ‘Did you know that you are going a very long way round to my hotel?’
He actually reacted: even went so far as to smile. ‘How did you know?’
‘Went on a bus tour. Studied the maps.’
‘And does Frank Jones sit with you always?’
‘So far,’ I said, nodding. ‘And a middle-aged couple from Lancashire. We sat together by chance at dinner yesterday, our first night here, and you know how it is, people tend to return to the same table. So yes, the same four of us have sat together today at breakfast and lunch. What makes you think he is in the K.G.B.? He’s as English as they come, and he was thoroughly searched at the airport on the way in.’
‘Searched so that you could see, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ I said, thinking. ‘Everyone on the plane could see.’
‘Cover,’ he said. ‘There’s no mistake. He’s not sitting at your table by accident. He came with you from England and he’ll no doubt go back with you. Has he searched your room yet?’
I said nothing. Ian Young very faintly smiled again.
‘I see he has,’ he said. ‘What did he find?’
‘Clothes and cough mixture.’
‘No Russian addresses or phone numbers?’
‘I had them in my pocket,’ I said. ‘Such as they are.’
‘Frank Jones,’ he said, driving round back streets, ‘has a Russian grandmother, who has spoken the language to him all his life. She married a British sailor, but her sympathies were all with the October revolution. She recruited Frank in the cradle.’
‘But if he is K.G.B.,’ I said, ‘why do you let him... operate?’
‘Better the devil you know.’ We swung into yet another deserted street. ‘Every time he comes back we are alerted by our passport control people back home. They send a complete passenger list of the flight he comes on, because he always travels with his business. So we scan it. We get someone out pronto to the airport to see where he goes. We follow. Tut tut. We see him book into the Intourist. We drift into the dining-room. If it’s safe, he also sits with his business. We see he’s with you. We know all about you. We relax. We wish Frank well. We certainly don’t want to disturb him. If his masters discovered we knew all about him, next time they’d send someone else. And then where would we be? When Frank comes, we know to pay attention. Worth his weight in roubles, Frank is, to us.’
We went slowly and quietly down a dark road. Snow fell and melted wetly as it touched the ground.
‘What is he likely to do?’ I said.
‘About you? Report where you go, who you see, what you eat and how many times you crap before breakfast.’
‘Sod,’ I said.
‘And don’t ditch him unless you have to, and if you have to, for God’s sake make it look accidental.’
I said doubtfully, ‘I’ve had no practice at this sort of thing.’
‘Obvious. You didn’t notice him follow you from your hotel.’
‘Did he?’ I said, alarmed.
‘He was walking up and down the Naberezhnaya waiting for you to come out. He saw you drive out with me. He’ll go back to the Intourist and wait for you there.’
The lights from the dashboard shone dimly on his big impassive face. The economy of muscle movement extended, I had noticed, throughout his body. His head turned little upon his neck: his hands remained in one position on the steering-wheel. He didn’t shift in his seat, or drum with his fingers. In his heavy raincoat, thick leather gloves, and fur hat with the earflaps up, he looked every inch a Russian.
‘What is your job here?’ I said.
‘Cultural assistant.’ His voice gave away as little as his face. Ask silly questions, I thought.
He slowed the car still further and switched off the headlights, and, with the engine barely audible, swung into a cobbled courtyard, and stopped. Put on the handbrake. Half turned in his seat to face me.
‘You’ll be a few minutes late for dinner,’ he said.
5
He seemed to be in no hurry to explain. We sat in complete darkness listening to the irregular ticking of metal as the engine cooled to zero in the Moscow night. In time, as my eyes adjusted, I could see dark high buildings on each side, and some iron railings ahead, with bushes behind them.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
He didn’t answer.
‘Look...’ I said.
He interrupted. ‘When we get out of the car, do not talk. Follow me, but say nothing. There are always people standing in the shadows... if they hear you speak English, they will be suspicious. They’ll report our visit.’
He opened the car door and stood up outside. He seemed to take it for granted that I should trust him, and I saw no particular reason not to. I stood up after him and closed the door quietly, as he had done, and followed where he led.
We walked towards the railings, which proved to contain a gate. Ian Young opened it with a click of iron, and it swung on unoiled hinges with desolate little squeaks, falling shut behind us with a positive clink. Beyond it, a curving path led away between straggly bare-branched bushes, the dim light showing that in this forlorn public garden the snow lay greyly unmelted, covering everything thinly, like years of undisturbed dust.
There were a few seats beside the path, and glimpses of flat areas which might in summer be grass; but in late November the melancholy of such places could seep into the soul like fungus.
Ian Young walked purposefully onward, neither hurrying nor moving with caution: a man on a normal errand, not arousing suspicion.
At the far side of the garden we reached more railings and another gate. Again the opening click, the squeaks, the closing clink. Ian Young turned without pause to the right and set off along the slushy pavement.
In silence, I followed.
Lights from windows overhead revealed us to be in a residential road of large old buildings with alleys and small courtyards in between. Into one of these yards, cobbled and dark, Ian Young abruptly turned.