Again I went with him, unspeaking.
Scaffolding climbed the sides of the buildings there, and heaps of rubble cluttered the ground. We picked our way over broken bricks and metal tubing and scattered planks, going, as far as I could see, nowhere.
There was, however, a destination. To reach it, we had to step through the scaffolding and over an open ditch which looked like the preliminary earthworks of new drains: and on the far side of the mud and slush there was a heavy wooden door in a dark archway. Ian Young pushed the door, which seemed to have no fastening, and it opened with the easy grind of constant use.
Inside, out of the wind, there was a dimmish light in a bare grey entrance. Gritty concrete underfoot, no paint, no decoration of any kind on the greyish concrete walls. There was a flight of concrete steps leading upwards, and, beside them, a small lift in an ancient-looking cage.
Ian Young pulled open the outer and inner folding metal gates of the lift, and we stepped inside. He closed the gates, pushed the fourth floor button, and forbade me, with his eye, to utter a word.
We emerged from the lift on to a bare landing; wooden-floored, not concrete. There were two closed doors, wooden, long ago varnished, one at each end of the rectangular space. Ian Young stepped to the left, and pressed the button of a bell.
The hallway was very quiet. One could not hear the sound of ringing when he pushed the button, as he did again, in a short-short-long rhythm. There were no voices murmuring behind the doors. No feet on the stairs. No feeling of nearby warmth and life. The lobby to limbo, I thought fancifully; and the door quietly opened.
A tall woman stood there, looking out with the lack of expression which I by now regarded as normal. She peered at Ian Young, and then, more lingeringly, at me. Her eyes travelled back again, enquiringly.
Ian Young nodded.
The woman stepped to one side, tacitly inviting us in. Ian Young went steadfastly over the threshold, and it was far too late for me to decide that on the other side of the door was where I had no wish to be. It swung shut behind me, and the woman slid a bolt.
Still no one spoke. Ian Young took off his coat and hat, and gestured for me to do the same. The woman hung them carefully on pegs in a row that already accommodated a good many similar garments.
She put a hand on Ian Young’s arm and led the way along the passage of what seemed to be a private flat. Another closed wooden door was opened, and we went into a moderately-sized living-room.
There were five men there, standing up. Five pairs of eyes focused steadily on my face, five blank expressions covering who knew what thoughts.
They were all dressed tidly and much alike in shirts, jackets, trousers and indoor shoes, but they varied greatly in age and build. One of them, the slimmest, of about my own age, held himself rigid, as if facing an ordeal. The others were simply wary, standing like wild deer scenting the wind.
A man of about fifty, grey-haired and wearing glasses, stepped forward to greet Ian Young and give him a token hug.
He talked to him in Russian, and introduced him to the other four men in a mumble of long names I couldn’t begin to catch. They nodded to him, each in tum. A little of the tension went out of the proceedings and small movements occurred in the herd.
‘Evgeny Sergeevich,’ Ian Young said. ‘This is Randall Drew.’
The fiftyish man slowly extended his hand, which I shook. He was neither welcoming nor hostile, and in no hurry to commit himself either way. More dignity than power, I thought: and he was inspecting me with intensity, as if wishing to peer into my soul. He saw instead, I supposed, merely a thinnish, grey-eyed, dark-haired man in glasses, giving his own impression of a stone wall.
To me, Ian Young at last spoke. ‘This is our host, Evgeny Sergeevich Titov. And our hostess, his wife, Olga Ivanovna.’ He made a small semi-formal bow to the woman who had let us in. She gave him a steady look, and it seemed to me that the firmness of her features came from iron reserves within.
‘Good evening,’ I said, and she replied seriously in English, ‘Good evening.’
The rigid young man, still tautly strung, said something urgently in Russian.
Ian Young turned to me. ‘He is asking if we were followed. You can answer. Were we followed?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you think so?’
‘No one followed us through the garden. The gates make an unmistakable noise. No one came through them after us.’
Ian Young turned away from me and spoke to the group in Russian. They listened to him with their eyes on me, and when he had finished they stirred, and began to move apart from each other, and to sit down. Only the rigid one remained standing, ready for flight.
‘I have told them they can trust you,’ Ian Young said. ‘If I am wrong, I will kill you.’
His eyes were cool and steady, looking unwaveringly into mine. I listened to his words, which in other contexts would have been unbelievable and embarrassing, and I saw that he quite simply meant what he said.
‘Very well,’ I said.
A flicker of something I couldn’t read moved in his mind.
‘Please sit down,’ Olga Ivanovna said, indicating a deep chair with arms on the far side of the room. ‘Please sit down there.’ She spoke the English words with a strong Russian accent, but that she knew any English at all put me to shame.
I walked across and sat where she pointed, knowing that they had discussed and planned that I should be placed there, from where I couldn’t escape unless they chose to let me go. The deep chair embraced me softly like a bolstered prison. I looked up and found Ian Young near me, looking down. I half closed my eyes, and faintly smiled.
‘What do you expect?’ he said.
‘To learn why we are here.’
‘You are not afraid.’ Half a statement, half a question.
‘No,’ I said. ‘They are.’
He glanced swiftly at the six Russians and then looked back, with concentration, at me.
‘You are not the usual run of bloody fool,’ he said.
The rigid young man, still also on his feet, said something impatiently to Ian Young. He nodded, looked from me to the rigid man and back again, took a visible breath, and entrusted me with a lot of dangerous knowledge.
‘This is Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov,’ he said.
The rigid young man raised his chin as if the name itself were an honour.
Ian Young said, ‘Boris Dmitrevich rode in the Russian team at the International Horse Trials in England in September.’
It was a piece of information which had me starting automatically to my feet, but even the beginnings of the springing motion reawoke the alarm in all the watchers. Boris Dmitrevich took an actual step backwards.
I relaxed into the chair and looked as mild as possible, and the atmosphere of precarious trust crept gingerly back.
‘Please tell him,’ I said, ‘that I am absolutely delighted to meet him.’
The same could obviously not be said for Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov, but I was there from their choice, not my own. I reckoned if they hadn’t wanted to see me pretty badly, they wouldn’t have put themselves at what they clearly felt was considerable risk.
Olga Ivanova brought a hard wooden chair and placed it facing me, about four feet away. She then fetched another and placed it near me, at right angles. Ian Young took this seat next to me, and Boris Dmitrevich the one opposite.
While this was going on, I took a look round the room, which had bookshelves over much of the wall space and cupboards over the rest. The single large window was obscured by solid wooden cream-painted shutters, fastened by a flat metal bar through slots. The floor was of bare wooden boards, dark stained, unpolished and clean. Furniture consisted of a table, an old sofa covered with a rug, several hard chairs, and the one deep comfortable one in which I sat. All the furniture, except for the two chairs repositioned for Boris Dmitrevich and Ian Young, was ranged round the walls against the bookshelves and cupboards, leaving the centre free. There were no softeners: no curtains, cushions, or indoor plants. Nothing extravagant, frivolous, or wasteful. Everything of ancient and sensible worth, giving an overall impression of shabbiness stemming from long use but not underlying poverty. A room belonging to people who chose to have it that way, not who could not afford anything different.