Stephen himself had planned to spend the day between lectures and Gudrun, but had said he would be near the telephone from four o’clock onwards, if I should want him. It frankly didn’t seem worthwhile for me to traipse up to the University, or for him to come down, to decipher Misha’s bits of paper, without first seeing if it could be done by wires; so I rang him.
‘How’s it going?’ he said.
‘The walls are whining.’
‘Oh cripes.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘if I spell some German words out to you, can you tell me what they mean?’
‘If you think it’s wise.’
‘Stop me if you don’t think so,’ I said.
‘OK.’
‘Right. Here goes with the first.’ I read out, letter by letter, as far as I could judge, the three lines of German handwriting on one of the cards.
Stephen was laughing by the end. ‘It says “With all good wishes for today and the future, Volker Springer”. That’s a man’s name.’
‘Good God.’
I looked at the other cards more attentively, and saw something I had entirely missed. At the bottom of one of them, signed with a flourish, was a name I knew.
I read out that card too, letter by letter.
‘It says,’ Stephen said, ‘ “Best memories of a very good time in England. Your friend...” Your friend who?’
‘Hans Kramer,’ I said.
‘Bull’s eye.’ Stephen’s voice crackled in my ear. ‘Are those by any chance Misha’s souvenirs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Autographs, no less. Anything else?’
‘One or two things in Russian. They’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.’
‘I’ll be with you at ten, then. Gudrun sends her love.’
I put the receiver down, and almost immediately the bell rang again. A female English voice, calm, cultured, and on the verge of boredom.
‘Is that Randall Drew?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Polly Paget here,’ she said. ‘Cultural attaché’s office, at the Embassy.’
‘How nice to speak to you.’
I had a vivid picture of her; short hair, long cardigan, flat shoes and common sense.
‘A telex has just come for you. Ian Young asked me to phone and tell you, in case you were waiting for it.’
‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘Could you read it to me?’
‘Actually, it is complicated, and very long. It really would be better, I think, if you came to collect it. It would take a good half hour for me to dictate it while you write it down, and to be honest I don’t want to waste the time. I’ve a lot still to do, and it’s Friday evening, and we’re shutting down soon for the weekend.’
‘Is Ian there?’ I asked.
‘No, he left a few minutes ago. And Oliver is out on official business. There’s just me holding the fort. If you want your message before Monday, I’m afraid it means coming to get it.’
‘How does it start?’
With an audible sigh and a rustle of paper, she began, ‘Hans Wilhelm Kramer, born July 3rd, 1941, in Dusseldorf, Germany, only child of Heinrich Johannes Kramer, industrialist...’
‘Yes, all right,’ I said, interrupting. ‘I’ll come. How long will you be there?’ I had visions of uncooperative taxis, of having to walk.
‘An hour or so. If you’re definitely coming, I’ll wait for you.’
‘You’re on,’ I said. ‘Warm the scotch.’
Having grown a little wilier I engaged a taxi to drive me to the far side of the bridge, pointing to a street map to show where I meant. The road over the bridge, I had found, extended into the Warsaw highway and was the road we had taken to Chertanovo. In another couple of days I would have Moscow’s geography in my head for ever.
I paid off the driver and stepped out into the falling snow, which had increased to the point of flakes as big as rose petals and as clinging as love. They settled on my sleeve as I shut the taxi’s door, and on my shoulders, and on every flat surface within sight. I found I had stupidly forgotten my gloves. I thrust my hands in my pockets, and turned down the steps to the lower road, to turn there along to the Embassy.
It had seemed to me that I was unfollowed and safe; but I was wrong. The tigers were waiting under the bridge.
They had learned a few lessons from the abortive mission in Gorky Street.
For a start, they had chosen a less public place. The only sanctuary within running distance was now not the big bustling well-lit mouth of the Intourist Hotel, but the heavily-closed front door of the Embassy, with an obstructive guard outside at the gate.
They had learned that my reflexes weren’t the slowest on record, and also that I had no inhibitions about kicking them back.
There were still only two of them, but this time they were armed. Not with guns, but with riot sticks. Nasty hard things like baseball bats, swinging from a loop of leather round the wrist.
The first I knew of it was when one chunk of timber connected shatteringly with the side of my head. The fur ear-flaps perhaps saved my skull from being cracked right open, but I reeled dizzily, bewildered, not realising what had happened, spinning under the weight of the blow.
I had a second’s clear view of them, like a snapshot. Two figures in the streetlights against the dark shadows under the bridge. The snow falling more sparsely in the bridge’s shelter. The arms raised, with the heavy truncheons swinging.
They were the same men: no doubt of it. The same brutal quality, the same quick ferocity, the same unmerciful eyes looking out of the same balaclavas. The same message that human rights were a laugh.
I stumbled, and my hat fell off, and I tried to protect myself with my arms, but it wasn’t much good. There’s a limit to the damage even a riot stick can do through thick layers of jacket and overcoat, so that to an extent the onslaught was disorientating more than lethal, but bash numbers three or four by-passed my feeble barriers and knocked off my glasses. I stretched for them, tried to catch them, got hit on the hand, and lost them entirely in the falling snow.
It seemed to be all they were waiting for. The battering stopped, and they grabbed me instead. I kicked and punched at targets I could no longer properly see, and did too little damage to stop the rot.
It felt as though they were trying to lift me up, and for a fraction of time I couldn’t think why. Then I remembered where we were. On the road beside the river... which flowed along uncaringly on the other side of the breast-high wall.
Desperation kept me struggling when there was absolutely no reasonable hope.
I had seen the Moscow River from several bridges, and everywhere its banks were the same. Not sloping grassy affairs shading gently into the water, but grey perpendicular walls rising straight from the river bed to about eight feet above the surface of the water. They looked like defences against flooding more than tourist attractions: designed to keep everything between them from getting out.
I clung grimly to whatever I could reach. I tore at their faces. At their hands. I raised from one of them a grunt and from the other a muttered word in a language I didn’t recognise.
I didn’t rationally think that anyone would come along the road and beat them off. I fought only because while I was still on the road I was alive, but if I hit the water I would be as good as dead. Instinct and anger, and nothing else.
It was hopeless, really. They had me off my feet, and I was being bundled over. I carried on with the limpet act. I pulled the knitted balaclava clean off one of them, but whatever he might have feared, I still couldn’t have sworn to a positive identification. One of the streetlights was shining full on his face and I saw him as if he’d been drawn by Picasso.