‘Deciphering the chemical junk?’ he said.
‘Trying.’
‘How’s it coming?’
‘I don’t know enough,’ I said. ‘Look... when all this was written in Russian and German, was it translated? I mean... are you sure that this is what was meant?’
‘It wasn’t translated,’ Stephen said. ‘It was those letters in that order, but written in formal German script... the sort you see in books. The Russian script version was more or less phonetically the same, but there are more letters in the Russian alphabet, so we adjusted the Russian letters to be the equivalent of the German... was that all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You see here where it reads “antagonist”?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Was that word translated into Russian or German? Or were the letters a n t a et cetera written in German script?’
‘It wasn’t translated, as such, because antagonist is much the same word in all three languages.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Is that of any help?’
‘Yes, in a way,’ I said.
‘You amaze me.’
We buttered and shared the hamburger buns and drank some more tea, and I coughed on and off with an ominous hollowness.
After that I cadged a sheet of paper and wrote the long row of letters into sensible words, adding a few reasonable-looking decimal points. The revised effort read:
etorphine hydrochloride 2.45 mg
acepromazine maleate 1.0 mg
chlorocresol 0.1—
dimethyl sulphoxide 90
antagonist naloxone.
Stephen looked over my shoulder. ‘That, of course,’ he said, ‘makes a world of difference.’
‘Um,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Would you do me a favour?’
‘Fire away.’
‘Lend me an empty tape for your recorder, and another one with music on it. Or rather, two empty tapes, if you have them.’
‘Is that all?’ He sounded disappointed.
‘That’s for starters.’
He rustled around and produced three tapes in plastic boxes.
‘They’ve all got music on,’ he said. ‘But you can record on top, if you like.’
‘Great.’ I hesitated, because what I wanted him to do besides sounded melodramatic; but facts had to be faced. I folded the list of chemicals in half and gave it to him. ‘Would you mind keeping that?’ I made my voice as matter-of-fact as possible. ‘Keep it until after I’ve got home. I’ll send you a postcard to say it’s OK to tear it up.’
He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t see...’
‘If I don’t get home, or you don’t get a postcard from me, will you send it to Hughes-Beckett at the Foreign Office. I’ve put the address on the back. Tell him that Hans Kramer had it, and ask him to show it to a vet.’
‘A vet?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yes, but...’ He realised exactly what I’d said. ‘If you don’t get home...’
‘Yeah... well... fourth time unlucky, and all that.’
‘For heaven’s sake.’
‘Do you have lectures on Saturdays?’ I said.
His eyebrows vanished upwards under his hair. ‘Is that a general invitation to put my head in the trap alongside yours?’
‘Probably just to make phone calls and tell taxis where to go.’
He gave an exaggerated shrug and a large gesture of surrender, and put on an expression of ‘ve have vays of not believing a vord you say’. ‘What first?’
‘Ring Mr Kropotkin,’ I said. ‘And if he’s in, ask if I can come to see him this morning.’
Kropotkin, it seemed, was not only in but anxious. ‘He says he’s been trying to get you at the hotel. He says to arrive at ten o’clock, and we can find him inside the first stable block on the left, on the racecourse.’
‘Fine...’ I blew a cooling breath on to my hot, swollen fingers. ‘I think I’ll also try Ian Young.’
Ian Young was back on British soil and seemed to take a while to realise who he was talking to. He was feeling fragile, and no one, he said eventually, with a mixture of misery and admiration, could drink like the Russians; and please would f not talk so loudly.
Sorry, I said, pianissimo. Could he please tell me how best to make a telephone call to England. Try from the main Post Office just round the corner from my hotel, he said. Ask for the International operator. He was discouraging, however, about my prospects.
‘Sometimes you can get through in ten minutes, but it’s usually more like two hours, and with the new flap going on this morning you’ll be lucky if you get through at all.’
‘Newer than the dust-up in Africa?’ I said.
‘Oh sure. Some high-up guy has defected. In Birmingham, of all places. Shock, horror, drama, and all that. Is it important?’
‘I want to ring my vet... about my horses,’ I said. ‘Could I get through from the Embassy?’
‘I doubt if you’d do any better. There’s no one like the Russians for blank obstruction. Brick wall specialists, the Russians.’ He yawned. ‘Did you get your telex last night?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Make the most of it, I should.’ He yawned again. ‘Do you feel like swilling the hair of the dog with me? Round about noon?’
‘Don’t see why not.’
‘Good... Go past Oliver’s office, and past the tennis court... and my flat’s in the row at the back of the grounds, second door from the left.’ He put down the receiver with all the gentleness of the badly hungover.
The snow had temporarily stopped, though the sky was a threatening oily yellow-grey and the air cold enough to freeze the nose’s mucus lining in its tracks. I started coughing and gasping for breath before we’d gone a hundred steps, and Stephen thought it extraordinary.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, his own lungs chugging easily away like an electric bellows.
‘Taxi...’
We caught one without much difficulty, and immediately, within its comparative warmth and with the help of the pocket bronchidilator inhaler I kept in my pocket like loose change, my chest stopped its infuriating heaving.
‘Are you always like this when it’s cold?’ Stephen said.
‘It depends. The river didn’t help.’
He looked mildly anxious. ‘You caught a chill? Come to think... it’s not surprising.’
We stopped twice on the way. The first time, to buy two bottles of vodka; one to give to Kropotkin and one to keep. The second time to buy me yet another hat to top off my assorted clothing, which now consisted, from the skin outwards, of a singlet, shirt, two sweaters, jacket, and Stephen’s spare coat, which was a size too small and left my forearms sticking out like an orphan.
The main roads had already been cleared of the overnight snow, but the Hippodrome itself was white. There were horses there all the same, exercising on the track, and even one or two trotters pulling sulkies. We paid off the taxi practically at the stable door, and went inside to inquire for Kropotkin.
He was waiting for us in a small dark office used by one of the trainers of the trotters. There were heaps of tyres everywhere, which seemed stunningly incongruous in a stable until one remembered the sulkies’ wheels, and apart from that only a desk with a great deal of scattered paperwork, and a chair, and large numbers of photographs pinned to the walls.
Nikolai Alexandrovich cordially grasped my hastily offered left hand and pumped it up and down with both of his own.
‘Friend,’ he said, the heavy bass voice reverberating in the small space. ‘Good friend.’
He accepted the gift of vodka as the courtesy it represented. Then he set the chair ceremoniously for me to sit on, and himself lodged comfortably with his backside half on the desk. Stephen, it seemed, could stand on his own two feet: and, via Stephen, Kropotkin and I exchanged further suitable opening compliments.