Bearpit (25 page)

‘Now you're mocking me!'

He pointed towards the olive in her drink and said: ‘That's a bug recording everything we say.'

‘You
are
mocking me!'

‘I'm telling you the truth,' said Yuri. ‘All Russians are spies and we've got snow permanently on our boots and we eat children and we can hardly wait to press all those red buttons to launch the missiles at America. The only reason we haven't fired them already is that we've got so many they'd all collide with each other and explode over Minsk.'

Inya laughed, genuinely enjoying herself, and said: ‘OK, so I apologize. You're not a spy. I was curious, though, that you seemed to have more freedom than a lot of other Soviets in the building.'

Yuri experienced a slight stir of unease, wondering at the extent of the talk about him. He said: ‘Can't you guess the reason?'

‘What?'

‘I'm so unimportant I'm not worth worrying about.'

‘I don't think you unimportant,' said Inya heavily, moving on to another part of the ritual.

‘I don't think you are, either,' said Yuri, another matching response.

Yuri guessed she expected to go at that moment but although he was impatient with this untouching foreplay he found himself strangely – inexplicably – reluctant to move on to what was the purpose of their being together anyway. Conscious of her surprise he suggested they remain in the bar, which really did epitomize the glamour of New York, like the staggering view of the Manhattan skyline from the River Café. Yuri wondered what Caroline Dixon was doing at that moment. And with whom. He forced the conversation and the lightness, making Inya laugh at least, and insisted on a further drink, aware as he did so of her curiosity.

She lived downtown, so he'd booked at Harvey's, and as the cab took them there Yuri thought of the last time he'd travelled in this direction and with whom. Throughout the meal Yuri feigned interest in her stories of Scandinavia and United Nations gossip – concentrating momentarily to isolate the hint to pass on to Granov that Smallbone, the head of their section, had homosexual inclinations – and felt another positive reluctance when he could not any longer delay their leaving.

Inya had a loft on a secluded street near Gramercy Park and so they walked. As they set out Inya slipped her arm through his and Yuri was given another reminder of another time.

Her room was high, with a view of the river, and decorated and furnished in stark Scandinavian attractiveness, contrasting blacks and whites and light furniture and a lot of space. Yuri was later to realize how hard she tried. She served chilled aquavit and put a soft jazz combo on a player, and when he kissed her – the ritual continuing – she came back at once, actually leading, which until this moment Yuri had always found arousing. Her body was as lithely exciting as he had imagined it would be and her breasts wonderful. She knew and tried every lovemaking trick and technique and throughout it all he remained limp and flaccid. He brought her off, of course, with his hand and tongue but he knew she had expected more, like he had of himself.

‘You do not like me?'

‘Of course I do,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm not attractive?'

‘You're beautiful.'

‘Why then?'

‘Drink,' he lied. ‘Too much to drink.' Would Caroline be with her three-buttoned advertising executive, he wondered.

Bowden drove in his battered, muddied car, with Petr beside him and Levin and Galina in the back.

‘The grand tour!' he announced.

No one made any reply.

Levin noted the road was numbered 202 and saw signs to places called Woodville and Bantam and Grappaville before they entered an obviously preserved township which Bowden identified as Litchfield. He said it was named after a town in England, but spelled differently, and pointed out the curious verandahs around the tops of some of the colonial-style houses, which he called captain's walks, and explained they were traditionally to give the wives of sail-masted, whaling seafarers vantage points to watch for the return of their husbands. Appearing to enjoy the role of historical guide, Bowden pointed out the house in North Street once occupied by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, whom he smilingly named as the American chief of intelligence during the war of independence from England. On the way back to the safe house Bowden pointed out the still scarred and in places naked hills, where an infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars had a few years before destroyed huge tracts of Connecticut forests.

Throughout it all Levin sat forward, intent upon his surroundings and possible landmarks.

So did Petr and for the same reason, although he was as careful as his father to disguise his interest.

20

Finally it had all emerged so easily, reflected Vasili Malik: so stupidly, incriminatingly easy! And now he had them! Panchenko definitely. And Kazin as well. Not so definitely but enough: enough to convict them both. But this time he had to move more carefully than before. He'd failed once by initiating a premature inquiry and he did not intend losing the second opportunity by making the same mistake. And he
was
being more careful this time. Like establishing his own duplicate records, strictly illegal though it might be, of everything he uncovered, to prevent any later interference or change. And the forensic evidence, or rather lack of it, was unquestionably sufficient to reinvestigate Panchenko's account of the supposed suicide because if Agayans had killed himself the way Panchenko recounted there would have been extensive powder burns to the head, where the gun had been held close. Which there weren't. Any more, any longer, than there was still in secure custody the alleged suicide weapon. Which further forensic and ballistic examination had intriguingly discovered, before its disappearance, had fired the same-calibre bullet as the type of weapon officially issued to Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko. One of the first actions when the inquiry was reconvened would be to seize Panchenko's gun for comparable ballistic assessment against the fatal bullet. And prove, as he could from official records, that Agayans did not have a gun of his own. This time they wouldn't escape: he had them!

Near the centre of the city Malik dismissed his driver, as he habitually did every night, to walk and to think on the final half mile home but again habitually he did not set out at once in the direction of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Instead he turned towards Red Square, striding in his uneven gait in head-bent thought, oblivious to the cupolas and the onion domes of St Basil's or the cloud-reflected scarlet stars blazing from the Kremlin towers.

Malik doubted the contradictions of the rest of the squad would be as telling that those which Chernov had already disclosed. It would be a week, possibly longer, before they arrived in Moscow. And take perhaps a fortnight after that to cross-reference the interviews for further disparities. Frustrating but necessary, he decided, aware that he had reached Novaya. This time, once and for all, he was going to rid himself of Victor Kazin. After so long, he thought. And breaking the promise to Olga, who'd begged and pleaded in those last, pain-racked days for him once again to become friends with the man. An impossible promise, he thought; one she should not have sought. Malik stared around, recognizing the Ulitza Oktyabrya and aware he'd practically completed the square.

Malik looked for and found the cross street for the shortcut to pick up Kutuzovsky Prospekt, stumping off with his mind filled again with the past and its part in the present. There was still no hate. Not for what happened before nor for what he believed Kazin had attempted, since Malik's transfer to the First Chief Directorate. He was actually surprised, disappointed even,
wanting
the consuming emotion he had once known: shouldn't he, of all people, have found that easy! He should, but he didn't. All he wanted was to be rid of the man, to remove an irritation.

He wished now he had not told Yuri: could not understand why he had. It had always been a promise to himself – and to Olga who had never known the baby was to be a boy – that the child should never know. It had been a mistake, a ridiculous weakness to blurt it out.

At least, Malik tried to reassure himself, Yuri did not know it all. Nor would he ever know.

The cross street by which Malik was limping to regain the broader thoroughfare to Kutuzovsky was dark and ill-lighted, hardly more than an alley, and enclosed in himself as he was Malik was abruptly disorientated. His first outward impression was of light going to darkness, which could not be right because it was already night and therefore dark. His continuing reaction was that he'd suffered some optical aberration, having come so recently from such a highly illuminated highway into a street sombre in comparison. And then he realized, further confused and not understanding, that it was not an optical aberration at all and that behind him a vehicle
had
entered the alley with its lights full on. But that now they were extinguished, plunging the car into an indistinguishable gloom, so indistinguishable that it was difficult to delineate it as a car at all: certainly it was not possible to see precisely where it was or guess the direction it was taking. And clumsy as his injury made him, it was quite impossible for him to attempt to get out of the way.

The following seconds – those last, brief seconds – were a chaos of thoughts too quickly brought together to form any cohesive sense. There was the horror of an approaching black mass and the recollection of a conversation with Yuri, about killing, which he knew the boy had not believed, and an instant fear of pain, of agony, and then there
was
agony, a searing, tearing anguish which incredibly – miraculously – lasted only seconds, hardly sufficient for the scream blocked in his throat to burst out. He had the disembodied sensation of being thrown against something solid – a wall, his mind was clear enough to guess – but there was no fresh jab of hurt. Rather he was suffused with a feeling of heat, a warmth almost too hot to bear. Black was crowding in and he did not feel himself fall, although there was another sensation of hardness and the black became blacker and he thought it was the vehicle again, because there was an enormous, crushing pressure, which was the last conscious awareness that Vasili Dmitrevich Malik had before he died.

There had been a shouted argument between Levin and the boy after Bowden's warning of Petr's refusal to cooperate with his tutor and another yelling dispute when Bowden reported no improvement after a fortnight, and Levin was worriedly aware that the hostility hardening between himself and his son was stretching to create a deeper division between himself and Galina. He was desperate for something with which to break down the barriers and so he was fervently grateful to Proctor for delivering at once the letter from Natalia. He bore it like a talisman before him into the kitchen in which it had become their custom to live, in some unacknowledged preference to the other, more comfortable rooms of the safe house.

‘From Natalia!' he announced.

For the first time since that outburst on the night of the defection Petr's attitude faltered in his inability to control the excitement at contact from his sister. Father and son deferred to Galina to open it. Levin discerned almost at once Galina's near-tearful collapse and Petr's instant retreat behind the accustomed wall of antagonism when the boy became aware of the effect upon his mother.

Galina tried her best at control, unspeakingly handing the letter to Levin, whose own eyes misted when he read it and who then gave it, again without speaking, to the boy.

‘Abandoned!' accused Petr, the letter half read, at once picking up Natalia's accusation.

‘I have not abandoned her!' said Levin. He knew it was quite the wrong reaction but felt a boredom at the persistently repeated defence.

‘Convince her!' sneered the boy.

‘We've written to do just that.'

‘I bet that'll be a terrific comfort to her.'

‘Don't you realize what this correspondence means, you stupid little idiot!' exploded Levin, exasperated.

Petr smirked, happy to have angered his father. ‘Why don't you tell me!'

‘It means she's not being victimized …' Levin snatched the letter back, gesturing to the address. ‘She's being allowed to stay where she is, without any pressure being exerted upon her … she's being allowed to write to us and we are being allowed to write to her, in return.

Which is a concession which further indicates that no pressure
is
going to be imposed upon her …'

‘Big deal …!'

Levin lashed out, stopping the renewed, Americanized sneer. It was an unthinking action, fury moving him, shuddering both at what he'd done and at the physical pain as the flat of his hand slapped against the side of Petr's face, which whitened and then almost at once reddened, at the force of the blow. The boy's eyes flooded at the pain and he clamped his lips between his teeth, literally biting against a breakdown. Just one tear escaped, meandering lonely down his cheek, and Petr ignored it, pretending it wasn't there.

It was Galina who was openly crying, the sobs groaning throughout the room and careless of the FBI-approved staff who remained quiet and apparently embarrassed near the stove area. Galina rocked back and forth, physically holding herself, saying ‘No, oh no!' over and over again.

‘Don't question me!' hissed Levin to the boy, inwardly conscious of the danger of an anger he'd been trained always to subdue. ‘Don't question me or treat me with contempt or doubt it when I say that a way will be found for Natalia to come here, to us!'

For several moments Petr remained staring at his father, arms tight to his sides against the impulse to reach up to the sting in his flushed face.

‘Fuck you!' he said at last. And he intended to, thought the boy: he intended to fuck his father completely for what he'd done to wreck the family as he had.