‘Get him to drop us before we reach the address,’ I said. ‘We don’t want him undoing the good work by reporting our exact destination.’
A large tip on top of the big fare cured most of the driver’s grumbles, but wouldn’t, I guessed, keep his mouth shut. He sped off back to the brighter lights as if glad to be rid of us. But no black cars, or any others, passed or stopped. As far as we could tell, we were on our own.
We stood in an area which was being developed. On each side, end on to the road, were ranks of newly-built apartment blocks, all about forty feet thick and nine storeys high, clad in grey-white pebbledash and stretching away into the darkness with ranks of windows front and back.
‘Standard issue housing,’ Stephen said. ‘Egg boxes for the masses. Six square metres of floorspace per person; the maximum regulation allowance.’
We walked along the slushy pavement, the only people in sight. The block we were currently passing was unfinished, with its walls in place but empty holes for windows. The one after that, although still uninhabited, had glass. The one after that looked furnished, and the one after that had residents. It proved also to be where we were going.
A last look at the street showed no one taking the slightest notice of us. We wheeled into the broad space between the two blocks and discovered from the numbers that the entrance we wanted was the second door along. We went towards it without haste, and stopped a few paces short.
We waited. A minute ticked past, and another. No Misha. With every lungful the wet freezing air chilled from the inside out. If we had travelled all this way for nothing, I thought, I would be less than amused.
A voice spoke softly, from behind us.
‘Come.’
9
We turned, startled. We hadn’t heard him, but there he stood in his leather coat and his leather cap, young and neat. He made a small beckoning movement with his head, and turned on his heel. We followed him out into the street, along the pavement, and round into the space between the next two blocks. He made steadily for one of the entrances, and in silence we traipsed in his footsteps.
Inside, the brightly lit and warm hall smelled of new paint. There were two lifts, both not working, and a flight of stairs. Misha addressed himself to the stairs. We followed.
On the landing above there were four doors, all closed. Misha continued up the stairs. On the next landing, four identical doors, again all closed. Misha went on climbing. On the fourth floor, we stopped for breath.
Between the fifth and sixth floors we came across two young men struggling to carry upwards an electric cooker. They had ropes and protective wadding around it, and leather straps with carrying handles to help them, but they were both sweating and panting from exertion. They stopped work, with the cooker poised precariously half on and half off a step, to let us pass. Misha said something which sounded consoling, and on we went at a slower and slower pace.
It had to be the ninth floor, I thought. Or the roof.
The ninth floor. Misha produced a key, unlocked one of the uninformative doors, and led us in.
The apartment consisted of kitchen, bathroom, and two meagre rooms, and was almost unfurnished. There were some rather gloomy green tiles in the kitchen, and nothing much else; certainly no cooker. The bare necessities in the bathroom. Bare floors, bare windows and bare walls in the two rooms, with two wooden chairs and a table in one of them, and the frame of a bed in the other. But, like everywhere indoors in Moscow, it was warm.
Misha closed the door behind us, and we took off our hats and coats. Misha swept an arm around, embracing the flat, and Stephen translated what he said.
‘It is his sister’s flat. When the flats are ready, the people on the list draw lots for them. His sister and her husband drew the ninth floor, and she hates it and is very depressed. They have a baby. Until the lifts are working she will have to carry the baby and her shopping up nine floors all the time. The cooker for the flat is provided, but it has to be carried up, like we saw the others doing. All the furniture has to be carried up, by friends.’
‘Why don’t the lifts work?’ I said.
Misha said (via Stephen) that it was because the caretaker said the interiors of the lifts would be damaged if people used them for taking up cookers and furniture, so the lifts would not be switched on until all the flats were furnished and occupied. It seemed monstrous, but it was quite true.
‘Why don’t they put an extra, temporary, lining inside the lifts, and remove it later?’ I said.
Misha shrugged. It was impossible to argue, he said. The caretaker would not listen, and he was in control. He gestured to us to sit on the chairs, and he himself perched half on and half off the table. He was thin but strong, fit rather than undernourished. The vivid blue eyes in the tanned face looked at us with more friendliness than in the morning and reinforced my belief in his brains.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, I go. I speak again.’
‘Tell Stephen in Russian,’ I said. ‘It will be easier for you. And you can say more.’
He nodded a shade regretfully, but saw the sense of it. He spoke in bursts, waiting for Stephen to catch up, and again nodding as he heard his intentions put into English.
‘Later, after we had gone,’ Stephen translated, ‘Nikolai Alexandrovich, Mr Kropotkin, had more visitors; your friend the English journalist, Malcolm Herrick, and someone who sounds like the Sphinx. They came together. Mr Kropotkin got Misha to repeat to them what he had just told us. Misha thinks that Mr Kropotkin knew the Sphinx quite well...’
‘His name is Ian,’ I said. ‘And yes, they had talked together before.’
‘Mr Kropotkin thinks you need help,’ Stephen went on. ‘He sent Misha to fetch his little book with telephone numbers, and he telephoned to several people to ask if they knew anything about Alyosha, and if they did. to tell him, and he would tell you. Boris Dmitrevich Telyatnikov, who is one of the possible Olympic riders, came in the afternoon to see the horses, and Mr Kropotkin asked him also. Boris said he didn’t know anything about Alyosha, but Misha thinks Boris was worried.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Carry on.’
‘Practically everyone in Moscow who has anything to do with the Olympic equestrian games now seems to be looking for Alyosha.’
‘My God,’ I said.
Misha looked a little anxious. ‘Nikolai Alexandrovich help,’ he said. ‘You save horse. Nikolai Alexandrovich help.’
‘It is kind of him,’ I said dazedly.
Stephen listened, and reported. ‘The Sphinx... Ian... told Mr Kropotkin that once you had found Alyosha and talked to him, you could go home. Mr Kropotkin said, “Then we will find Alyosha for him. He saved our best horse. Nothing is too much”.’
‘My God,’ I said again.
‘According to what Mr Kropotkin told everybody, the horse swung unexpectedly in front of the horse box as it approached. The driver had no time to swerve, but you rescued the horse.’
‘Is that what Misha thinks?’ I said.
‘Niet.’ Misha understood and was positive. ‘Driver go... boom.’ He smashed his fist unmistakably into his hand.
‘Did you know him?’ I asked.
‘Niet. No see.’
It was the horse box, Misha told Stephen, in which he and the chestnut and another horse were to travel the next day to Rostov. When he had led the chestnut back to its stable, the horse box had been parked in its usual place. Mr Kropotkin had felt the engine, to make sure it was that horse box which we had seen, and yes, the engine was warm. No one could be found who had driven it. Mr K’s view of things was that the driver was ashamed of his carelessness and afraid of being disciplined.