Moskva (44 page)

Alex had a bath on the plane.

She hadn’t known planes could have baths. This one had a bath and not just any bath. It was an iron bath held up on legs that ended in lion’s claws. The plane also had a shower and two round basins side by side, in front of a real mirror, not one of those slabs of silvered glass you found screwed to the wall of lavatories in ordinary planes. She’d asked how long she could take. The Russian girl told her to take as long as she liked, and then glared at her brother and Major Tom from the embassy, daring them to disagree.

‘Whose plane is it?’

‘Everyone’s,’ her brother said. ‘It belongs to the people.’

He said it in such a way, and with such a twist to his lips, that Alex didn’t know if he was joking.

‘Go,’ the girl said.

Alex went and lay in hot water up to her chin for an hour.

She would have emptied the bath and run another if Major Fox hadn’t knocked to tell her they’d soon be landing. He said that Yelena, who had to be the Russian girl, had found her something to wear, since she thought Alex wouldn’t want to put back on the shirt she’d been wearing. She was right.

Alex wondered how Yelena knew.

Dismissing the thought, as she’d been dismissing all thoughts of what happened on the roof, Alex opened the bathroom door a little and found a neatly folded dressing gown outside.
So that was how she came to land in Sebastopol, wearing a man’s silk dressing gown, heading down the steps from the plane with it flapping round her knees, while hard-eyed young men in smart uniforms stared straight ahead.

A long, low black car had been parked near the plane, with a chauffeur, or perhaps a soldier, waiting by the rear door. He opened it as Alex approached.

‘I thought we were going home?’ Alex said.

‘We have something to do first,’ Major Fox told her.

There was something affectionate in his gaze, as if he felt he knew Alex well, for all she didn’t really know him. He might be an uncle she rarely saw, an old friend of her mother’s, something like that. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘We have to go to a banquet. Are you going to be all right?’

‘You mean, can I manage to be quiet, not draw attention to myself, remember that I’m not meant to drink alcohol, and only speak when I’m spoken to?’

‘Something like that.’

Alex rolled her eyes and wondered why he grinned.

The meal was in full swing when Tom stepped back to let Alex and Yelena enter. Dennisov waved Tom on and shut the door behind them all. From the look of the tables, with their platters of food, picked-at plates and dozens of guests wearing expressions that suggested they’d long since reached capacity, the eating part of the evening was nearly over.

The smoke from candles mixed with that from cigars, and from logs and pine cones smouldering in a fireplace far more modern than Tom had expected. He thought of dachas as wooden. Official ones being perhaps a little grander than private ones.

This one, from what he could see of it on arriving, was made of sandstone, possibly concrete, the National Theatre
in London, if someone had welded circular balconies to one edge so that they hung in space like parked flying saucers.

‘You all right?’ Tom asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Alex replied.

Tom realized it might not be the first time he’d asked.

She wore a simple white dress, with complicated embroidery across the bust, also in white so it could only be seen when light caught it. Her shaved head was hidden beneath a blue scarf, tied at the back.

‘A woman’s waving,’ she said.

Pushing back her chair, Wax Angel examined Dennisov crossly, nodded to Yelena and kissed Alex on both cheeks. ‘Such a commotion you’ve caused.’

When Alex blushed, Wax Angel laughed.

‘If you can’t cause a commotion at your age, when can you?’

She indicated the seat beside her and Alex sat, Dennisov taking the place on Wax Angel’s other side, leaving Yelena and Tom to take seats opposite. Food appeared instantly, helpings of lamb plov with rice, onions, carrots and spices. Looking up, Tom realized Dennisov’s plate was untouched.

‘I can’t see Sveta,’ he said.

‘You go off to get yourself killed,’ Wax Angel said. ‘You take your sister instead of my granddaughter, your sister who has no training. And you expect Sveta to be here to greet you? Sveta refused to come.’

‘She should be here.’

‘Yes,’ Wax Angel said angrily, ‘she should. Instead she’s in Moscow, for all you know crying herself stupid because she believes the idiot she loves is dead.’

‘I’ll telephone her.’ Dennisov scraped back his chair.

The people at the tables nearby stilled and soldiers in smart greatcoats standing round the walls looked over. ‘Sit,’ Wax Angel said firmly.

Dennisov sat.

‘I’ve telephoned already. She hates you. I’m to make sure you know that.’

Into the silence that followed, Alex said, ‘Doesn’t Gorbachev have a dacha near Moscow?’ Yelena looked grateful.

‘A small one,’ said Wax Angel. ‘Two storeys with a green roof, tin cupolas and a terrace overlooking the Moskva. Too small for a dinner this size.’

‘You’ve been there?’ Alex asked.

‘Before it was his.’ Wax Angel squinted at the tables overflowing with drunken, increasingly noisy guests. ‘Still, I doubt that’s the real reason we’re here. The little dacha is where he goes to think, where he goes to feel safe. There are people here Gorbachev wouldn’t want through his door. There are people here the devil wouldn’t want.’ Reaching for her glass, she downed a shot and sighed in satisfaction as Stolichnaya hit her throat and she inhaled the fumes.

‘Don’t let me get drunk,’ she said.

‘You’re drunk already,’ said Alex, then looked worried in case she’d been rude.

‘That isn’t drunk,’ Dennisov said. ‘That’s barely started.’

Pushing aside her plate, Wax Angel reached into the middle of the table, snuffed out a white candle and removed it from its holder, smoke curling like a pig’s tail from the wick as she put it carefully in front of her.

‘You have a knife?’

She tested the blade of Tom’s lock knife against her palm, then cut away an inch from the top of the candle where the wax was still warm. Closing her eyes for a second, she opened them again and began carving with practised ease, curls of wax filling her plate like wood shavings as she released the figure from its prison.

The sword took a while to appear, then an upraised arm,
followed by a woman’s head and shoulders, her flowing hair and her other arm, which pointed down. Her body came next, barely hidden beneath her robes. She leaned slightly forward, pitched on the edge of movement, the muscles of her legs tensed, one foot angled to the ground.

Feathered and intricate, her wings were the last things Wax Angel carved. They were tight to her back and on the edge of being unfurled, the carving being circumscribed by the shape and thickness of the stolen candle.

‘That,’ said Wax Angel, ‘is how she’s meant to look.’

Those seated at the top table looked across to see why Alex and Dennisov had started clapping, and the commissar caught Wax Angel’s eye across the room and smiled.

He’d been watching.

‘We’ll get you home tomorrow,’ Tom promised Alex.

‘Do my parents know?’

Tom wondered if Alex realized how she’d just referred to Anna and Sir Edward. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the commissar telephoned them earlier.’

‘How are they?’

‘I’m told your mother cried.’

Alex bit her lip, and Wax Angel lifted a freshly filled vodka from Dennisov’s fingers and put it in front of Alex, grinning when Dennisov opened his mouth to protest and Alex gasped as the alcohol hit her throat. ‘Have another,’ she suggested.

Tom shook his head and the old woman chuckled.

‘What are you, her father?’

‘She already has one of those.’

Alex looked across at him and there were tears in her eyes.

Their plates were taken away and sweetmeats were served. Tom imagined that they’d just skipped several courses, going
from first to last and missing out those in the middle. He wasn’t upset by that, and from the look of them neither were the others, although Alex tore at a bread roll with the quiet savagery of someone who’d gone without food for too long. Looking up, she found Tom watching.

‘You all right?’ she asked.

Tom nodded. He was too.

‘Remember this,’ Wax Angel told the girl.

The old woman stared round the room with a quiet intensity, almost as if trying to fix in her memory who was here, where they sat and what they were wearing.

The top table was full of old men, with one slightly younger man in the middle. The President’s face had started appearing in newspapers in the West almost as frequently as it did in the Soviet Union. There were younger men at other tables. Men in uniform and men in suits. A few women. Not as many as Wax Angel would have liked, Tom suspected. Not as many as there should have been.

Alex said, ‘Are you expecting something to happen?’

Wax Angel wrapped her arm round Alex, and after a moment’s hesitation the girl leaned into her hug. ‘No,’ Wax Angel said, ‘I’m not. That’s the beauty of it. This is not the night Stalin fell ill. No one is expecting anything to happen at all.’

She raised her vodka glass.

‘We have your Englishman to thank for that.’

Sveta met them off their flight from Sebastopol, Dennisov walking straight into a slap so hard it echoed off the VIP section’s tiled walls.

‘How dare you not take me?’

Whatever he said in the fierce embrace that followed killed her fury, and when Sveta hugged Yelena in turn, it was more protective than anything else.

Wax Angel and the commissar simply smiled, turning their attention to Yelena when she said she wanted to go home. Sveta tried to insist that she travel with them, but Yelena was firm about taking the bus.

She intended to go food shopping before returning to the bar.

Wax Angel wished her luck with that.

Now Tom and Alex were in the back of a Zil, with Sveta up front and Dennisov stubbornly riding rearguard on a borrowed Ural behind. Their little cavalcade stopped twice. The first time at a Beryozka shop so Alex could buy
matryoshka
dolls for her mother, a carved wooden bear for her father, and a red scarf to hide her hair until it grew back. She was hoping to find one with a hammer and sickle in the corner.

Since Alex had no hard currency, Tom had to lend it to her. It was the kind of teenage lend where both sides knew the money was never coming back. Buying the presents had been his suggestion so that seemed entirely fair. And he was
glad Alex had liked the idea, because he needed a few words with Sveta, and for that Alex needed to be out of the way.

‘Did you know what Dennisov intended?’

‘Who said he intended anything? My grandfather merely fixed the helicopter.’

‘And the strange gun?’

‘The commissar was shocked to find it missing.’

‘I bet … So, why didn’t he ever move against the general himself?’

He watched Sveta wonder if she should answer. ‘You realize,’ she said finally, ‘that General Dennisov died after a long battle against cancer fought with the bravery you’d expect from a Soviet hero? TASS is preparing a broadcast to announce his death. As soon as that’s done, Leningrad’s Channel 5 will start work on a documentary for broadcast in his adopted city … His funeral will be televised.
Pravda
will run an obituary.’

‘And London will block any of the Berlin reports that mention General Dennisov by name from being released under the forty-year rule.’

‘I have your word?’

‘Yes,’ Tom said, hoping that Caro’s father could deliver.

‘It’s complicated … The general had a letter Khrushchev sent to my father. The first line says, “I’m relying on you
.
”’ Sveta hesitated. ‘It was written in late February 1953 and hand-delivered. My father met with General Dennisov first thing next morning.’

Tom felt the last bits of the puzzle slot into place.

Sveta nodded, her eyes on the driving mirror.

‘Stalin went to a banquet the day after, watched a film, retired to his dacha at Kuntsavo and went to bed. That place is the size of a hotel. Beria was there, Khrushchev and Golubtsov too. All of them. Where you found Golubtsov
père
,
you found Dennisov. No one dared disturb Stalin when he didn’t appear for breakfast. My grandfather arrived that night, insisted on paying his respects and discovered the Boss on his bedroom floor, in a puddle of piss. No one can even agree whether he was alive or dead. It was three days before they announced that the Great Leader was no more.’

‘How close did we just come to history repeating itself?’

‘Very,’ Sveta said. ‘Only this man is a good man.’

‘And your grandfather wouldn’t give his permission?’

Sveta shrugged. ‘Anything else?’

Tom checked that Alex wasn’t on her way back.

‘Who was really behind her abduction?’

‘I think it went like this. Gorbachev wants to know whether the old guard will stand by him. My grandfather promises they will. Alex falls in love with one of Vedenin’s staff. Vedenin doesn’t know that, but his son, Vladimir, does … When General Dennisov finds out, he sees an opportunity. He objects to Gorbachev being given the top post. He objects to the suggestion that we negotiate with the West. He objects to anything that doesn’t put one of his allies in the top job.’

Tom waited.

‘Taking Alex muddied the waters and gave the general leverage when it came to protecting his reputation. Those Berlin papers were dangerous. Your friend Beziki messed everything up by grabbing the girl after Vladimir Vedenin died. He must have known what he was bringing on himself.’

‘But he had the photographs.’

‘In the end, they weren’t enough. The general was dying. He hated how Russia was changing. And he wanted his reputation protected. Alex’s father could provide that. I’m sure you’ve worked out that Sir Edward already knew exactly what the general and Kyukov were capable of …’

‘Christ,’ Tom said.

‘Your God, not mine. Sir Edward is very English.’

Tom waited for her to say more.

‘You don’t like him,’ Sveta added. ‘We know that. But he’s a good man, for an Englishman.’ She shrugged. ‘My grandfather considers him to be one anyway. Soon London will ask if he thinks our offer is a ruse.’

‘What offer?’

‘To begin to embrace democracy.’

‘Is it a ruse?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sveta looked briefly troubled. ‘My grandfather says we can’t afford to keep fighting the West. So we’re going to do a terrible thing to you. We’re going to take away your enemy, come in from the cold.’ She shrugged. ‘We tamed the tundra, defeated the Nazis almost singlehandedly and put the first satellite into space. I don’t see why democracy should be so hard …’

‘You know I’ll report that?’

‘I’m counting on it. We might have lost the Cold War. You know I’ll deny saying that. We intend to win the thaw.’

‘You never were Vnutrenniye Voiska were you?’

Turning, Sveta reached out to offer her hand. ‘Colonel Milova,’ she said, ‘KGB. At your service.’

‘Colonel?’

‘There are some benefits to a happy outcome.’

‘As well as a sense of pride in having done your duty to the state?’

‘That too,’ Sveta said.

The buildings of the Garden Ring swept by and the Zil passed through red lights with traffic police holding back the cars that would have gone on green. They were nearing the embassy when Tom remembered something. ‘If you want your cassette back, Dennisov has it. Your books too.’

‘You found the stuff in my wardrobe?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All of it?’

‘Badges, cassettes, Davie’s postcard, books, your poems …’

Alex groaned. ‘No one else read them, did they?’

‘Only your mother.’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’ Alex drew up her knees, hugging them to her chest. She was chewing her lip as she stared past Sveta to the road beyond. ‘You are joking. Aren’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t worry.’

‘Wouldn’t
worry
!’

‘She said no one who’d actually had sex could possibly have written them.’

Alex’s expression passed through hurt, anger and outrage to eye-rolling contempt in seconds. ‘Shows what she knows.’

Tom wasn’t sure he was meant to hear that.

‘Can I ask a question?’ she said.

He nodded.

‘What do I tell them?’

‘What do you want to tell them?’

‘Nothing,’ she said firmly. ‘They’ll only fuss.’

‘That’s their job,’ he told her and she made a face at him too.

Leaning forward, Tom asked Sveta to take a long way round.

So Sveta turned into a backstreet, weaved her way between parked cars and slowed in a little square, still white from that morning’s snow. She brought the Zil to a halt outside a glass-fronted bakery that looked shut. Vanishing inside, she reappeared with a brown paper bag. ‘Dennisov’s favourites.’

Maybe she was going to call him that for ever.

‘You can have one now.’ Pulling a sticky pastry from the bag, Sveta handed it to Alex, who examined it doubtfully. Politeness won.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And one for him. Now I shut this.’

A glass wall rose inside the Zil and immediately descended for Sveta to add, ‘So you can talk,’ in case that wasn’t obvious. As she pulled away, the Ural fell into position behind and Alex put her pastry on the seat beside her.

‘You’ll upset her if you don’t eat it.’

With a sigh, the girl took a bite.

Drifts were piled up on both sides of the main road, and a snowplough stood abandoned in a slot reserved for traffic police. Well-wrapped women, with headscarves to protect them from the wind, and zinc scrapers with wooden handles, cleared pavements. Office workers went to their jobs. Night workers came home. A stall in a tiny park had a queue for hot tea. Children skated on a small lake watched by babushkas, Prokofiev blaring from speakers hung on the trees. The whole city moved like slightly faulty clockwork. And Tom realized that he’d grown to like the place.

‘You’re not listening,’ Alex protested.

‘I was thinking about Sveta’s grandfather.’

‘That’s probably better than thinking about Sveta. Oh, don’t look so shocked. It’s obvious. Do you mind about …?’

‘Dennisov? I think they’ll be good together.’

‘I loved him, you know. Well, I thought I did.’

They weren’t talking about Dennisov now, obviously.

‘Do you think he ever thinks about me?’

Tom thought of Kotik, burned to death in the warehouse, his hands wired behind his back and Alex’s jade ring on his finger. The boy he’d seen at the New Year’s Eve party watching over Vedenin.

‘No,’ Tom said firmly, ‘I don’t imagine he does.’

Alex bit her lip and stared out of the window.

‘What should I do?’

Tom thought of all the things he could and should have said to Becca, and realized he should probably stop linking Alex and Becca in his head like this. Alex didn’t need it and Becca deserved better.

‘Be kind.’

She glanced at him.

‘You’re bright, talented, opinionated …’ He liked that she didn’t try to deny it, blush or nod in agreement. She simply waited, looking slightly watchful. Then she waited some more when he couldn’t find the words. ‘You can afford to be kind.’

‘Be kind how?’

‘Be the person they think you are. Just this once.’

She nodded to herself, then nodded to Tom and tapped on the glass screen as if Sveta were a real chauffeur rather than a Soviet officer with a grandfather in the Politburo. ‘Could I go home now?’

Sveta grinned.

The huge wrought-iron gates on Maurice Thorez Embankment were already open. The Soviet guard outside came to attention and the British guard stepped back to let the black Zil enter, but Sveta drew up outside.

‘Please,’ Alex said. ‘They’ll want to meet you.’

‘No,’ said Sveta. ‘It’s not appropriate and this is better. This gives you time to check through your lies. It also gives them time to see you coming.’ She inclined her head towards Sir Edward and Lady Anna, who stood awkwardly on the steps. ‘What advice did he give you?’

‘Be kind to them.’

Sveta shrugged. ‘I’ve heard more stupid suggestions.’

Opening her own door, she climbed out and opened Alex’s for her. Then she surprised Tom by hugging the girl and whispering something.

Alex stepped back.

‘All right?’ Sveta said.

‘You think so?’ Alex asked.

‘I know so … Now, go.’

Sveta watched her head for the gate, then nodded for Tom to get back in the car and reversed slowly until they were in a position to watch the reunion. Tom didn’t know what to expect. He wasn’t even sure what he hoped for, other than that neither side said something stupid. He needn’t have worried.

Alex looked at her mother and closed the gap between them at a run, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Anna Masterton’s arms came up from instinct and tightened in turn as Alex leaned into her and the sobs took hold.

They stood locked together, Sir Edward looking on so awkwardly that he seemed almost grateful when Tom swung open his door and went over to him.

‘I was asked to give you this, sir.’

Sir Edward took the very small, very ordinary envelope, which the commissar had handed Tom before saying his goodbyes, and extracted a sheet of yellowing paper, skimming it once, then reading it more slowly. His face was haunted and when he looked up Tom realized there were tears in his eyes.

‘You’ve read it?’

‘Of course not, sir.’

‘It’s a love letter.’ He looked at Anna Masterton, then at Alex. ‘Written a very long time ago, a very long time ago indeed.’

‘In Berlin?’

‘Yes, in Berlin.’

‘You were in love with a German girl?’

The ambassador shook his head.

‘A Russian girl?’ Perhaps Tom sounded too surprised because Sir Edward glanced across at him and his mouth twisted. For a second, the sadness threatened to spill over and then he was in control again.

‘Not a girl,’ he said.

He said it so quietly he might have been saying it to himself.

Just inside the gate, Alex and Lady Masterton were locked in an embrace so tight it looked as if it could never be broken. Whatever they were saying to each other was private. They both seemed to be in tears.

‘How’s my daughter?’

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Tom, wondering if Sir Edward realized what he’d just said. ‘That is, I think she’ll be fine. I’m sorry, sir, I hope I’m allowed to say … you might want to go easy on her for a while.’

‘Did they …?’

Tom shook his head. ‘She’s been treated carefully.’

The ‘treated carefully’ bit was a lie and he imagined the man knew it. But it was up to Alex how much she wanted to tell them, how much she wanted to keep to herself.

‘I’m told …’ Sir Edward looked at Tom. ‘London say you offered yourself as a swap.’ When Tom didn’t deny it, he nodded to himself. ‘Who enticed her away?’

‘The boy in question is dead.’

‘Vedenin’s son?’

‘No, sir. A friend of his. It might be best not to …’

‘Mention his death to my daughter?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He was good at clipped, Sir Edward. At home with words stripped so bare all the meaning resided in the spaces. Tom was coming to realize there was more to the man than he first thought.