The Russia House (27 page)

‘Well it’s the nearest you’ll ever get to immortality, sport, so I should shut up and enjoy it,’ O’Mara advised.

I interposed myself like somebody separating belligerents in a family row. If Wintle could just expand a little on the interviewer’s rather bald account, I suggested. Maybe flesh out one or two of the Soviet scientists whose names are listed on the final page, and perhaps throw in some account of the Cambridge team while he was about it? If he wouldn’t mind answering just one or two questions which might tilt the scales?

‘ “Team” is
not
a word I would use in this context, thank you,’ Wintle retorted, pouncing on the word like some bony predator. ‘Not on the British side anyway.
Team
suggests common purpose. We were a Cambridge
group
, yes. A
team
, no. Some went for the ride, some went for the self-aggrandisement. I refer particularly to Professor Callow who had a
highly
exaggerated opinion of his work on accelerators, since refuted.’ His Birmingham accent had escaped from its confinement. ‘A very small minority
indeed
had ideological motives. They happened to believe in science without borders. A free exchange of knowledge for the common benefit of mankind.’

‘Wankers,’ O’Mara explained to us helpfully.

‘We’d the French there, Americans galore, the Swedes, Dutch, even one or two Germans,’ Wintle continued, oblivious to O’Mara’s jibe. ‘All of them had hope, in my opinion, and the Russians had it in bucketfuls. It was us British who were dragging our feet. We still are.’

O’Mara groaned and took a restorative pull of gin. But Ned’s good smile, even if a little battered, encouraged Wintle to run on.

‘It was the height of the Khrushchev era, as you will doubtless recall. Kennedy this side, Khrushchev that side. A golden age was beckoning, said some. People in those days talked about Khrushchev very much as they talk of Gorbachev now, I’m sure. Though I do have to say that, in my opinion, our enthusiasm
then
was more genuine and spontaneous than the so-called enthusiasm
now
.’

O’Mara yawned and fixed his pouchy gaze disconcertingly upon myself.

‘
We
told them whatever
we
knew.
They
did the same,’ Wintle was saying as his voice gathered assurance. ‘
We
read
our
papers.
They
read
theirs
. Callow didn’t cut any ice, I’m bound to say. They rumbled
him
in no time. But we’d Panson on cybernetics and
he
flew the flag all right, and we had me.
My
modest lecture was quite a success, though I do say it myself. I haven’t heard applause like it since, to be frank. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still talk about it over there. The barricades came down so fast you could
literally
hear them crashing in the lecture hall. “Flow, not demarcation.” That was our slogan. “Flow” wasn’t the word for it either, not if you saw the vodka that was drunk at the late-night parties.
Or
the girls there.
Or
heard the chat. The KGB was listening, of course. We knew
all
about that. We’d had the pep talk before we left, though several objected to it. Not me, I’m a patriot. But there wasn’t a blind thing that any of them could do, not
their
KGB and not
ours
.’ He had evidently hit a favourite theme for he straightened himself to deliver a prepared speech. ‘I’d like to add here that
their
KGB is greatly misjudged, in my opinion. I have it on
good
authority that the Soviet KGB has very
frequently
sheltered some of the most tolerant elements of the Soviet intelligentsia.’

‘Jesus – well don’t tell me ours hasn’t,’ O’Mara said.

‘Furthermore I’ve no doubt whatever that the Soviet authorities very
rightly
argued that in any trade-off of scientific knowledge with the West, the Soviet Union had more to
gain
than
lose
.’ Wintle’s slanted head was switching from one to another of us like a railway signal, and his upturned hand was resting on his thigh in anguish. ‘They had the culture too. None of your Arts-Sciences divide for
them
, thank you. They had the Renaissance dream of rounded man, still do have. I’m not much of a one for culture myself. I don’t have the time. But it was all there for those who had the
interest
. And reasonably charged too, I understand. Some of the events were complimentary.’

Wintle needed to blow his nose. And to blow his nose Wintle needed first to spread his handkerchief on his knee, then poke it into operational mode with his fingertips. Ned seized upon the natural break.

‘Well now, I wonder whether we could take a look at one or two of those Soviet scientists whose names you kindly gave to Major Vauxhall,’ he suggested, taking the sheaf of papers I was holding out to him.

We had arrived at the moment we had come for. Of the four of us in the room, I suspected only Wintle was unaware of this, for O’Mara’s yellowed eyes had lifted to Ned’s face and he was studying him with a dyspeptic shrewdness.

Ned led with his discards, as I would have done. He had marked them for himself in green. Two were known to be dead, a third was in disgrace. He was testing Wintle’s memory, rehearsing him for the real thing when it came. Sergey? said Wintle. My goodness yes, Sergey! But what was his other name then? Popov? Popovich? That’s right, Protopopov! Sergey Protopopov, engineer specialising in fuels!

Ned coaxed him patiently along, three names, a fourth, guiding his memory, exercising it: ‘Well now, just think about him a second before you say no again. Really no? Okay. Let’s try Savelyev.’

‘Come again?’

Wintle’s memory, I noticed, had the Englishman’s embarrassment with Russian surnames. It preferred first names that it could anglicise.

‘Savelyev,’ Ned repeated. Again I caught O’Mara’s eye upon him. Ned peered at the report in his hand, perhaps a mite too carelessly. ‘That’s it. Savelyev.’ He spelt it. ‘ “Young, idealistic, talkative, called himself a humanitarian. Working on particles, brought up in Leningrad.” Those were your words, according to Major Vauxhall all those lifetimes ago. Anything more I might add? You didn’t keep up with him, for instance? Savelyev?’

Wintle was smiling in marvel. ‘Was that his name, then? Savelyev? Well I’m blowed. There you are. I’d forgotten. To me he’s still Yakov, you see.’

‘Fine. Yakov Savelyev. Remember his patronymic?’

Wintle shook his head, still smiling.

‘Anything to add to your original description?’

We had to wait. Wintle had a different sense of time from ours. And to judge by his smirk, a different sense of humour.

‘Very sensitive fellow, Yakov was. Wouldn’t dare ask his questions in the plenum. Had to hang back and pluck your sleeve when it was over. “Excuse me, sir, but what do you think of so-and-so?” Good questions, mind. A very cultural man, too, they say, in his way. I’m told he cut quite a dash at some of the poetry readings. And the art shows.’

Wintle’s voice trailed off and I feared he was about to fabricate, which is a thing people do often when they have run out of information but want to keep their ascendancy. But to my relief he was merely retrieving memories from his store – or rather milking them out of the ether with his upright fingers.

‘Always going from one group to another, Yakov was,’ he said, with the same irritating smile of superiority. ‘Standing himself at the edge of a discussion, very earnest. Perching on the edge of a chair. There was some mystery about his father, I never knew what. They say he was a scientist too, but executed. Well a lot were, weren’t they, scientists. They killed them off like fruit flies, I’ve read about it. If they didn’t kill them, they kept them in prison. Tupolev, Petliakov, Korolev – some of their greatest stars of aircraft technology designed their best stuff in prison. Ramzin invented a new boiler for heat engines in prison. Their first rocketry research unit was set up in prison. Korolev ran it.’

‘Bloody well done, old boy,’ said O’Mara, bored again.

‘Gave me this piece of rock,’ Wintle continued.

And I saw his hand, upward on his knee again, opening and closing round the imaginary gift.

‘
Rock?
’ said Ned. ‘Yakov gave it to you? Do you mean music? No, you mean a geological sample of some kind.’

‘When we Westerners left Akadem,’ Wintle resumed, as if launching himself and us upon an entirely new story, ‘we
stripped
ourselves of our possessions.
Literally
. If you’d seen our group on that last day, you would
not
have believed it. We’d our Russian hosts crying
their eyes
out, hugging and embracing, flowers on the buses, even Callow was having a weep if you can believe it. And us Westerners unloading everything we had: books, papers, pens, watches, razors, toothpaste, even our
toothbrushes
. Gramophone records if we’d brought them. Spare underclothes, ties, shoes, shirts, socks, everything except the minimum we needed for our decency to fly home in. We didn’t
agree
to do it. We hadn’t even
discussed
it. It happened
spontaneously
. There was some did more, of course. Particularly the Americans, being impulsive. I heard of one fellow offering a marriage of convenience to a girl who was desperate to get out. I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t. I’m a patriot.’

‘But you gave some of your goodies to Yakov,’ Ned suggested, while he affected to write painstakingly in a diary.

‘I started to, yes. It’s a bit like feeding the birds in the park, handing out your treasures is. You pick the one who’s not getting his share and you try to fatten him up. Besides, I’d taken to young Yakov, you couldn’t help it, him being so soulful.’

The hand had frozen round the empty shape, the fingertips striving to unite. The other hand had risen to his brow and taken hold of a sizable pinch of flesh.

‘ “Here you are, Yakov,” I said. “Don’t be slow in coming forward. You’re too shy for your own health, you are.” I’d an electric shaver in those days. Plus batteries, transformer, all in a nice carrying case. But he didn’t seem to be that comfortable with them. He put them aside, sort of thing, and kept shuffling about. Then I realised he was trying to give something to
me
. It was this rock, wrapped in newspaper. They’d no fancy wrapping, naturally. “It’s a piece of my country,” he says. “To thank you for your lecture,” he says. He wanted me to love the good in it always, however bad it might sometimes seem from outside. Spoke a beautiful English, mind, better than half of
us
. I was a bit embarrassed, frankly, if you want to know. I kept that piece of old rock for very many years. Then my wife threw it out during one of her spring-cleans. I thought of writing to him sometimes, I never did. He was arrogant, mind, in his way. Well a lot of them were. I dare say
we
were in
our
way, too. We all thought science could rule the world. Well I suppose it does now, though not in the way it was meant to, I’m sure.’

‘Did he write to you?’ said Ned.

Wintle wondered about this for a long time. ‘You can never tell, can you? You never know what’s been stopped in the post. Or who by.’

From the briefcase I passed Ned the bunch of photographs. Ned passed them to Wintle while O’Mara watched. Wintle leafed through them and suddenly let out a cry.

‘That’s him! Yakov! The man who gave me the rock.’ He thrust the picture back at Ned. ‘Look for yourself! Look at those eyes!
Then
tell me he’s not a dreamer!’

Extracted from the Leningrad evening paper dated 5th January 1954 and reconstituted by Photographic Section, Yakov Yefremovich Savelyev as a teenaged genius.

There were other names, and Ned took Wintle laboriously through each one of them, laying false trails, brushing over his tracks until he was satisfied that in Wintle’s mind at least Savelyev meant no more than the rest.

‘Clever of you to hide your trump in the middle of your hand,’ O’Mara remarked as, glass in hand, he walked us down the drive to the car. ‘Last time I heard of Savelyev he was running their testing range in darkest Kazakhstan, dreaming up ways to read their own telemetry without everyone reading it over their shoulder. What’s he up to now? Selling the shop?’

It is not often I take pleasure in my work but our meeting and the place had sickened me, and O’Mara had sickened me more than both. It is not often that I seize someone by the arm either, and have to recoil, and loosen my grip.

‘I take it you have signed the Official Secrets Act?’ I asked him quietly enough.

‘Practically wrote the bloody thing,’ O’Mara retorted, very surprised.

‘Then you will know that all knowledge that comes to you officially and all speculation based upon that knowledge are in the perpetual property of the Crown.’ Another legal distortion, but never mind. I released him. ‘So if you like your job here, and you are hoping for promotion, and if you are looking forward to your pension, I suggest you never think of this meeting again or of any name associated with it. Thank you so much for the gin. Goodbye.’

On the journey back, with the identification of Bluebird confirmed and phoned ahead of us in wordcode to the Russia House, Ned remained withdrawn. Yet when we reached Victoria Street he was suddenly determined not to let me go. ‘You stick around,’ he ordered me, and guided me ahead of him down the basement steps.

At first glance the scene in the situation room was one of purest joy. The centrepiece was Walter, poised like an artist before a whiteboard as big as he was, drawing up the details of Savelyev’s life in coloured crayons. If he had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat and smock, he could not have looked more rakish. Only at second glance did I recall my eerie apprehensions of that morning.

Around him – which meant behind him, for the whiteboard was propped against the wall beneath the clocks – stood Brock and Bob, and Jack our cypher clerk, and Ned’s girl Emma, and a senior girl called Pat who was one of the mainstays of Soviet Registry. They held glasses of champagne and each of them in his different way was smiling, though Bob’s smile was more like a grimace of pain suppressed.