Stephen said, ‘I know of a letter which was supposed to come to Moscow by diplomatic bag but ended up in Ulan Bator.’
‘So helpful.’
‘They say the Lubianka goes down seven floors underground.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘Don’t go,’ he said.
‘Come to lunch in the Intourist Hotel,’ I said. ‘They have pretty good ice-cream.’
Yuri drove round a white corner at speed and corrected the resultant skid with a practised flick.
‘Yuri,’ I said, ‘did you deliver a page of Malcolm’s notebook to Mr Kropotkin? ’
The ash fell off his cigarette. His upper lip did a positive jig.
‘I thought it must be you,’ I said. ‘You said you talked to him at Burghley, about buildings. If one could disentangle the writing on the back of that piece of paper with the help of blue filters, would it be notes about buildings?’
He was silent.
‘I’ll not speak of it,’ I said diffidently. ‘But I would like to know.’
There was another of the long familiar pauses, and in the end he said, ‘I think paper not help,’ as if it excused his action in delivering it.
‘It helped very much.’
He moved his head in a way that I took to mean satisfaction, though I guessed that he still felt uneasy about allying himself with a foreigner. I wondered how I would feel if I were helping a Russian investigator and was not sure that anything he discovered might not be to the detriment of my own country. It made Yuri’s dilemma most human, most understandable. And he was another, I thought, to whom I must do no harm.
Even at that hour on that day, there was a dragon on guard inside the door: short, dumpy, female, and stolid. She showed no pleasure at all in letting us through.
We shed our coats and hats. Everywhere in reception areas in Moscow there were acres of rails and hangers, and to every acre, a man in charge. We took our numbered discs and went through into the lofty ground floor hall. Hall as in large meeting area, not as in entrance passage.
I had seen it two days earlier, passing through to the restaurant. Yellowish parquet floor, lightweight metal and plastic armchairs, and upright boards in loose groups, which divided the space like random screens. Pinned upon these with colour-headed drawing pins were large matt-Hirfaced blown-up photographs of recent architectural activity.
Yuri led the way round one set of screens and arrived at an open central spot.
There were three of the light armchairs grouped round a low-table there; and on one of the chairs, a man.
He stood up as we approached.
He was of about my own height. Solid of body. Immensely well groomed. Dark hair sprinkled with grey, smoothly brushed back. About fifty, perhaps. Chin freshly shaved, everything immaculate. He wore understated spectacles and an elegantly cut business suit. The impression of power was instant and lasting.
‘Major-General,’ Yuri said deferentially, ‘this is Randall Drew.’
We exchanged a few preliminary courtesies. He spoke perfect English with only the ghost of an accent; and his voice was markedly urbane. Rupert Hughes-Beckett, Soviet version, I thought.
‘I would have asked you to come to my office,’ he said, ‘except that on Sundays it is not fully staffed, and perhaps here also we will be less interrupted.’
He waved me to one of the chairs, and sat down again himself. Yuri delicately hovered. The Major-General suggested pleasantly, in English, that he should go and organise some coffee, and wait for it to be made.
He watched Yuri’s obediently departing backview, and then turned to me.
‘Please begin,’ he said.
‘I was sent to Moscow,’ I said for openers, ‘by the British Foreign Office, and by the Prince.’ I gave the Prince his full title, because I guessed that even to a good son of the revolution the fact that I was on an errand for the monarch’s cousin might pull some weight.
The Major-General gave me a placid stare from uninformative grey eyes.
‘Please continue.’
‘My brief was to find out if John Farringford... Lord Farringford, the Prince’s brother-in-law... would be likely to be involved in a damaging scandal if he should come to ride in the Olympic Equestrian Games. There was some mention of a certain Alyosha. I was to find and interview this Alyosha, and see how the land lay... Er... am I making myself clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ he said courteously. ‘Please go on.’
‘John Farringford had indiscreetly visited several rather perverted sexual entertainments in London with a German rider, Hans Kramer. This German subsequently died at the International Horse Trials, and people near him said that in his last few breaths he distinctly said, “It is Alyosha”.’ I paused. ‘For some reason that I cannot understand, a rumour arose that if Farringford came to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting. The implication was clear that Alyosha would cause trouble. It was this rumour which led the Prince to ask me to look into things.’
‘I follow,’ he said slowly.
‘Well... I came,’ I said. A couple of coughs convulsively squeezed my chest. There was a well-known slow fever stoking up in there, but for that day at least it would be manageable. The next day, and the next and the next, would be a matter of luck. I girded up at least the mental loins.
I said, ‘I found I was not investigating a minor muckheap, but something a great deal different. I asked to see you today because what I discovered was a terrorist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games.’
He was not surprised, and Yuri, of course, must have told him that much in order to persuade him to meet me. Not surprised, but unconvinced.
‘Not in the Soviet Socialist Republics,’ he said with flat disavowal. ‘We have no terrorists here. Terrorists would not come here.’
‘I’m afraid they have.’
‘It is impossible.’
I said, ‘If you encourage a plague, you must expect to catch it.’
His reaction to this unwise statement was an ominous stiffening of the spine and a raising of the chin, but at least we advanced into a territory in which he was prepared to face the possibility of pus on his own doorstep.
‘I am telling you this so that you can avert a disaster in your capital,’ I said neutrally. ‘If you don’t wish to hear me, I’ll leave now.’
I didn’t move, however, and nor did he.
After a pause he said, ‘Please proceed.’
‘The terrorists aren’t Russians, I’ll grant you that,’ I said. ‘And, so far as I know, you only have two here at present. But I think they live here all the time... and no doubt at the Games they would be reinforced.’
‘Who are they?’
I took off my glasses, and squinted at them, and put them on again.
‘If you keep a check on every foreigner who lives here in your city,’ I said, ‘you should seek out two men of between twenty and thirty years old, one of whom has today a badly bruised or broken wrist, and the other a damaged face. They nay in addition have other bruises and cuts. They have sallow skins, dark eyes, and dark curling hair. I could if necessary identify them.’
‘Their names?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘And what could they hope to achieve?’ he said, as if the whole idea was ridiculous. ‘It would be impossible for them to rake hostages in this country.’
‘I don’t think they mean to,’ I said. ‘The trouble with taking hostages is that it involves so much time. Time while the demands are delivered and discussed. Time, which means feeding the captors and the hostages, and sewage, and absolutely mundane things like that. The longer it goes on, the less chance there is of success. And the world has grown tired of these threats, and a great deal tougher. It’s no longer seen as sense to release imprisoned terrorists to save innocent lives, when the released terrorists simply go out and kill a different lot of innocents. And I agree with you that a mass kidnapping here would be smartly stepped on by your comrades. But these men didn’t mean to kidnap, they meant to kill.’