‘Do you have a hat?’ Natasha said, solicitously. ‘It is cold outside. You should have a fur hat.’
I had already had a taste of the climate in the scamper from aircraft to bus, and from bus to airport door. Most of the passengers seemed to have sprouted headgear on the flight and had emerged in black fur with ear-flaps, but I was huddled only into my fluffy scarf.
‘You lose much body-heat through the head,’ said Natasha seriously. ‘Tomorrow you must buy a hat.’
‘Very well,’ I said.
She had splendid dark eyebrows and creamy white skin, and wore smooth pale pink lipstick. A touch of humour would have put the missing sparkle into her brown eyes, but then a touch of humour in the Soviets would have transformed the world.
‘You have not been to Moscow before?’
‘No,’ I said.
There was a group of four large men in dark overcoats standing by the exit doors. They were turned inwards towards each other as if in conversation, but their eyes were directed outwards, and none of them was talking. Natasha and Anna walked past them as if they were wallpaper.
‘Who asked you to meet me?’ I asked curiously.
‘Our Intourist office,’ Natasha said.
‘But... who asked them?’
Both girls gave me a bland look and no answer, leaving me to gather that they didn’t know, and that it was something they would not expect to know.
The car, which had a driver who spoke no English, travelled down straight wide empty roads towards the city, with wet snow-flakes whirling thinly away in the headlights. The road surfaces were clear, but lumpy grey-white banks lined the verges. I shivered in my overcoat from aversion more than discomfort: it was warm enough in the car.
‘It is not cold for the end of November,’ Natasha said. ‘Today it has been above freezing all day. Usually by now the snow has come for the winter, but instead we have had rain.’
The bus stops, I saw, had been built to deal with life below zero. They were enclosed in glass, and brightly lit inside; and in a few there were groups of inward-facing men, three, not four, who might or might not be there to catch a bus.
‘If you wish,’ Anna said, ‘tomorrow you can make a conducted tour of the city by coach, and the next day there is a visit to the Exhibition of Economic Achievements.’
‘We will do our best for tickets for the ballet and the opera,’ said Natasha, nodding helpfully.
‘There are always many English people in your hotel visiting Moscow on package holidays,’ Anna said, ‘and it will be possible for you to join them in a conducted tour of the Kremlin or other places of interest.’
I looked from one to the other and came to the conclusion that they were genuinely trying to be helpful.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but mostly I shall be visiting friends.’
‘If you tell us where you want to go,’ Natasha said earnestly, ‘we will arrange it.’
My room at the Intourist Hotel was spacious enough for one person, with a bed along one side wall and a sofa along the other, but the same sized area with twin beds, glimpsed through briefly opened doors, must have been pretty cramped for two. I also had a wide shelf along the whole wall under the window, with a telephone and a table lamp on it; a chair, a built-in wardrobe, and a bathroom. Brown carpet, reddish patterned curtains, dark green sofa and bedcover. An ordinary, functional, adequate hotel room which could as well have been in Sydney, Los Angeles or Manchester for all its national flavour.
I unpacked my sparse belongings and looked at my watch. ‘We have arranged your dinner for eight o’clock,’ Anna had said. ‘Please come to the restaurant then. I will be there to help you plan what you want to do tomorrow.’ The nursemaiding care would have to be discouraged, I thought, but, as it was no part of my brief to cause immediate dismay, I decided to go along meekly. A short duty-free reviver, however, seemed a good idea.
I poured scotch into a toothmug and sat on the sofa to drink it; and the telephone rang.
‘Is that Mr Randall Drew?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Come to the bar of the National Hotel at nine o’clock,’ said the voice. ‘Leave your hotel, turn right, turn right at the street corner. The National Hotel will be on your right. Enter, leave your coat, climb the stairs, turn right. The bar is along the passage a short way, on the left. Nine o’clock. I’ll see you, Mr Drew.’
The line clicked dead before I could say, ‘Who are you?’
I went on drinking the scotch. The only way to find out was to go.
After a while I took out the paper Hughes-Beckett had given me, and because the telephone seemed to be connected directly to an outside line, I dialled the number of the English student at the Russian university. A Russian voice answered, saying I knew not what.
‘Stephen Luce,’ I said distinctly. ‘Please may I speak to Stephen Luce?’
The Russian voice said an English word, ‘Wait,’ and I waited. Three minutes later, by what seemed to me a minor miracle, a fresh English voice said, ‘Yes? Who is it?’
‘My name is Randall Drew,’ I said. ‘I...’
‘Oh yes,’ he interrupted. ‘Where are you calling from?’
‘My room at the Intourist Hotel.’
‘What’s your number? The telephone number, on the dial.’
I read it out.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’d better meet you tomorrow. Twelve o’clock suit you? My lunch hour. In Red Square, in front of St Basil’s Cathedral. OK?’
‘Er, yes,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Have to go now. Bye.’ And he rang off.
It had to be catching, I thought. Something in the Moscow air. I dialled the number of the man concerned with training the Soviet team, and again a Russian voice answered. I asked in English for Mr Kropotkin, but this time without luck. After a couple of short silences at the other end, as I repeated my request, there was a burst of agitated incomprehensible speech, followed by a sharp decisive click.
I had better fortune with the British Embassy, and found myself talking to the cultural attaché.
‘Sure,’ he said in Etonian tones, ‘we know all about you.
Care to come for a drink tomorrow evening? Six o’clock suit you?’
‘Perfectly,’ I said. ‘I...’
‘Where are you calling from?’ he said.
‘My room at the Intourist Hotel.’ I gave him the telephone number, unasked.
‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Look forward to seeing you.’
Again the swift click. I finished the scotch and considered the shape of my telephone calls. My naïvety, I reflected, must, to the old hands in the city, have been frightening.
Anna waited, hovering, in the dining-room, and came forward as I appeared. Unwrapped, she wore a green wool suit with rows of bronze-coloured beads, and would have fitted un-remarkably into the London business scene. Her hair, with a few greys among the prevailing browns, was clean and well shaped, and she had the poise of one accustomed to plan and advise.
‘You can sit here,’ she said, indicating a stretch of tables beside a long row of windows. ‘There are some English people sitting here, on a tour.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now,’ she said, ‘tomorrow...’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said pleasantly, ‘I thought I would walk around Red Square and the Kremlin, and perhaps GUM. I have a map and a guide book, and I’m sure I won’t get lost.’
‘But we can add you on to one of the guided tours,’ she said persuasively. ‘There is a special two-hour tour of the Kremlin, with a visit to the Armoury.’