Читать книгу Angels in the Snow - Derek Lambert, Derek Lambert - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

The first few days of Richard Mortimer’s Russian experience surged swiftly past, time unheeded, appreciation at night dulled by cocktail and dinner parties. Everything was somehow as he had expected it, except the melting of the snow by day and the autumn fogs that blurred the afternoons and thickened the nights.

The embassy was as he would have expected it had he thought about it. Dignified and self-effacing outside; rich and brooding inside. Militiamen saluting and noting his new face at the gates and Kensington trees, just waiting there, with barks flaking and last leaves falling.

Across the river from the embassy stood the Kremlin. Stalin’s Kremlin in his mind. Mulled red walls embracing spires and domes, theatres, residences, halls, cathedrals. Stalin and the Kremlin: the names fused into an awesome entity. And here he was gazing upon it, working opposite it; he Richard Mortimer late of Dulwich, Cambridge and the Foreign Office. ‘I am here,’ he thought. ‘In Moscow. Beside the Kremlin.’

Inside the embassy the walls were made of dark carved wood. The building had been owned by a sugar baron in the days of splendour and poverty before such barons had fled or been put to the sword and all their sugar distributed among the people. On his first day there he saw a middle-aged man in grey walking down the broad stairs with his hands behind his back. The man looked at him without interest and vanished down the corridor, bright shoes treading lightly on the carpet.

One of the men at the reception desk said: ‘Your new boss.’

‘Was that the Ambassador?’

‘That was his nibs all right.’

Richard Mortimer hesitated. He wanted to what what the Ambassador was like, but he wasn’t sure how to conduct himself with the men at the desk. They treated him without deference, without familiarity. He imagined them describing him as ‘a cocky young bugger’ and flushed at the thought. ‘What’s he like?’ he asked.

‘He’s all right,’ they said.

The Ambassador summoned Richard Mortimer next day. He sat behind his desk in the corner of his tall, spacious study; languid, shrewd, peering into retirement, remembering elegant occasions on shaved lawns beside indigo seas, relishing his ability to parry the Kremlin’s matchet diplomacy with rapier subtlety that was the envy of other ambassadors. He looked curiously at Mortimer who looked as gauche as he had once been.

‘I gather you are a cricketer,’ he said.

‘I played a bit, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘You won’t get much chance to play cricket here. Do you ski?’

‘Not terribly well. I never really got further than the nursery slopes.’

‘That’s all right. It’s mostly cross-country ski-ing here. At least you don’t break your leg. And then there’s skating. A lot of the junior staff go skating. And they play a game called broomball. Rather like hockey only it’s played with brooms.’

The Ambassador stopped talking and gazed across the dying garden. Mortimer desperately searched his mind for an adequate reply. ‘I expect I shall like that,’ he said.

‘You’ve got to have some sort of relaxation,’ said the Ambassador. ‘It’s vitally important. How’s your Russian coming along?’

‘Not too bad, thank you, sir. I can read a bit. I just need practice talking to Russians.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t get an awful lot of practice. You’ll meet a few Russians at parties and official functions. But most of them want to practise their English.’

‘I expect I’ll manage to meet a few socially,’ Mortimer said.

The Ambassador sketched a Union Jack with a slim gold pencil on his pad. ‘I think you’d better talk to Mason about that,’ he said; and diverted the trend of the conversation. ‘You’re not married, I gather.’

‘No, sir. I haven’t had any time for that sort of thing.’ Everything he said seemed to crystallise into incongruity.

‘Every diplomat should marry. Not necessarily when you’re as young as you are. But certainly before you’re thirty.’

‘I expect I’ll manage that. I realise that a good wife is a tremendous asset.’ He was annoyed to hear himself saying what he thought the Ambassador would like to hear.

The happiness of the Ambassador’s marriage was a wonderful and self-evident phenomenon envied by friends and enemies. He had married young and taken his bride to a succession of steamy outposts where the character of potential ambassadors is tested and jealousies and gossip thrive as lushly as lilies, and unworn clothes become mildewed within a week. Their experiences had deepened their love which had transcended the marriage experience of the majority and become a distillation of trust and devotion. And when young diplomats and their wives lay in bed blaming Moscow for the friction in their marriages one or the other would point out that the Ambassador and his wife had jointly conquered far worse hardships.

The Ambassador said: ‘I think you have the makings of a good diplomat. But never be too obvious.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Now at least we know each other’s faces. We’ll have another chat soon. Mason will look after you.’ He turned to the garden where the roses had cringed, at the touch of frost, into ragged balls like ladies’ handkerchiefs crushed in the hand.

In the lobby the men at the reception desk in their homely suits watched him as they would watch a passing car. He smiled at them and they nodded. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. They nodded again.

The embassy reminded Mortimer of his public school. Certain places such as dollar bars and Russian homes were tacitly understood to be out of bounds; games were not compulsory but if you didn’t ski, skate or play tennis in the summer you were unsociable; any individuality was synonymous with eccentricity which was noted by the security officers; the non-diplomatic staff had much the same standing as the bursar’s clerks; obscenity met with a reproof and junior diplomats were kept in their place.

Henry Mason, a first secretary in the political section, laid down the rules for Mortimer in his office.

‘Always travel with someone,’ he said. ‘Especially on the trains. That’s when they try to compromise you. And never stray outside the forty kilometre area.’

‘How do I know when I’m outside it?’ Mortimer asked.

‘You’d know soon enough. The militia would nobble you. The answer is not to go more than thirty kilometres unless you’re going to the airport or somewhere special.’

‘But I can visit other parts of Russia, can’t I? Leningrad for instance. I thought I’d like to go there.’

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ Mason said. ‘With permission of course. We might send you up on some sort of job when you’ve learned the ropes. But you’ll have to go with someone of course. Even then I expect you’ll be followed. I went to Kazan the other week with a chap from the Canadian Embassy. We were followed everywhere we went.’

‘I didn’t realise it was quite as bad as that,’ Mortimer said.

Mason nodded. He had a keen, refined face, silken hair receding at the temples and bristles of virile hair in his ears. He always spoke with great intensity. ‘And steer clear of the Press as much as possible. Leave them to us older chaps. We know how to handle them. They’re only interested in bad news anyway.’

‘They warned me about the Press at the FO,’ Mortimer said. ‘Are there many British correspondents here?’

‘The Times, Telegraph, Express, Mail and Reuters have staff men. Not bad chaps but they’re inclined to make mountains out of molehills. In any case they have a briefing with the Minister once a fortnight. He tells them all he thinks they should know. Would you like another cup of tea?’

‘No thank you,’ Mortimer said. He wondered if there was much that he should not do.

‘And of course don’t get involved with any Russians. You’ll find they’re very friendly people but it doesn’t pay to get too close to them.’ He paused. ‘You’re not married, are you?’

Mortimer thought: Here it comes. ‘No,’ he said.

‘I don’t quite know how to put this,’ Mason said. ‘But it is my duty and I’m sure the Ambassador would want me to mention it. Avoid the Russian girls like the plague. You’ll probably have a few approaches made to you. Be polite but firm.’

Mortimer said: ‘Everyone has been on to me about this. I don’t understand really. Obviously I’m not going to get tangled up with a beautiful spy. But haven’t there been lots of cases recently of Englishmen marrying Russian girls?’

‘Not diplomats,’ Mason said. ‘Journalists and businessmen and people like that. Not diplomats.’

‘But it isn’t a crime to go out with a Russian girl, surely.’

Irritation sharpened the intensity of Mason’s voice. ‘It may not be a crime,’ he said. ‘It’s just not done. Now perhaps you could look through these and mark up anything you think might interest us.’ He handed Mortimer a stack of provincial editions of Pravda.

Later Mortimer asked Giles Ansell, with whom he shared an office, if Mason was inclined to exaggerate the hazards.

Ansell said: ‘He’s obsessed with them. He’s not really a diplomat like the rest of us. He’s a political animal. Knows what they’re saying in the Kremlin before they’ve said it and all that. Absolutely fluent in Russian. But he’s so bloody good at his job that he gets passed over as far as promotion is concerned. Or at least he thinks he does. The trouble is all the intrigue and whatnot that he studies has got into his blood. He sees a spy at every corner.’

‘But is he right about not going out with Russian girls?’

‘It’s up to you, old boy. I personally wouldn’t say no to banging a Russian bird. It would be one for the old memoirs.’

‘Then why don’t you go out with one?’

‘Because my wife wouldn’t approve,’ Ansell said gloomily. ‘You must come round to dinner one evening this week. Anne likes a bit of company.’

They were interrupted by the sound of excited voices in the lobby, a rare phenomenon in the British Embassy. Ansell went out to find out what was happening.

When he came back he said: ‘Quite a flap on.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘A Russian tried to defect to the embassy.’

The wife of a diplomat on the way to the embassy to take her husband home to lunch had stopped at traffic lights across the bridge. As she was about to drive away a middle-aged Russian who had been lounging against the railings pulled the door open and sat down beside her. ‘British Embassy,’ he said. ‘British Embassy.’ And handed her a piece of paper with a message scrawled on it in broken English. It was a plea to be given asylum; the secret police were after him and he had a message for Winston Churchill. When she slowed down as if to stop the man became hysterical and mimed the action of cutting his throat.

‘So what did she do?’ Mortimer asked.

‘She got as far as the embassy gates and shouted to the militia outside. They carted him off still clutching his piece of paper.’

‘Poor chap,’ Mortimer said. ‘What do you think will happen to him?’

Ansell put two fingers to his temple. ‘Dosvidaniya,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t she have brought him inside? After all we would have granted him political asylum if he’d jumped ship in London.’

‘Far too risky,’ Ansell said. ‘There would have been a hell of a rumpus. He was obviously as nutty as a fruit cake and in any case how would we have got him out of the country? Apart from that he might have been a phoney sent in so that the Russians could accuse us of subversive activities. No, she did absolutely the right thing. Didn’t panic and used her common-sense. Quite a girl.’

The wife was reported later to have said that the Russian’s breath had upset her more than anything. She was concerned about his fate but what else could she have done?

Hugh Farnworth, the extrovert first secretary in charge of security, passed word around the departments that the incident should be underplayed to the point of extinction. In particular no one should mention it to the Press.

When Ansell drove him home Mortimer wondered if the grey Volga two cars behind was following them. They drove beside the Kremlin wall, turned left at an irritable policeman on point duty, passed the Lenin Library and the Kremlin Hospital. The homeward crowds skipped across the street daring the cars to run them down or waited in resentful huddles at the crossings glowering at the drivers, shuffling their feet towards the tyres. They poured down the metro stations, fought their way into the buses, queued for the evening papers with their predictable headlines. Pale, headscarved women and weary men heading for cramped flats where together they would make the bed and cook the meal and watch television and go to bed and get up and go to their respective jobs.

A big woman carrying a bulging string bag walked in front of the car. Ansell braked. ‘Bloody peasant,’ he said. The woman walked on as if she were crossing an empty field. ‘There’s all hell to pay if you hit one of them. And it’s always your fault. I sometimes think they want to be knocked down by a Western car.’

They turned into Prospect Kalinina where acetylene welders were dripping sparks from the girders of new apartment blocks on to the old tenements below. Over the winding river once more, wispy with mist, past the battlements of the Ukraine Hotel, past the Dom Igrushki toy shop where children gazed at the poor toys in the windows. At the third militiaman along Kutuzovsky Prospect Ansell made a U turn.

They followed a Mercedes and a Peugeot into the car park, ‘I thought about getting a bigger car,’ Ansell said. ‘But what’s the point of getting anything decent? It would only be wrecked by these peasant taxi drivers.’

A group of Cubans in Army battle-dress slouched past.

‘Not as popular as they used to be,’ Ansell said. ‘They reckon Castro’s got a bit too big for his boots.’

‘Why on earth are they dressed up like that?’

‘Heaven knows. Perhaps they’re the only clothes they’ve got. They sleep a dozen to a flat, you know. And they won’t let anybody in. I think they’re just ashamed of the way they live.’

An African parked his car so that it blocked two others. He walked away looking pleased with himself, incongruously elegant in a slim-trousered suit and a snap-brimmed hat.

It was almost dark now, the air smoky and iced and hostile.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ Ansell asked.

‘Nothing very much. I thought I’d write a few letters and have an early night. I haven’t been to bed before one since I arrived.’

‘What about taking in a flick at the American Club with us? If we can get a baby sitter that is.’

‘I didn’t know you had a baby,’ Mortimer said. ‘You don’t look like a father.’

The remark seemed to please Ansell. ‘A little girl,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy a film? You might as well be introduced to the American Club. Dreadful place, really. But it serves a purpose. Especially if you’re a bachelor.’ He winked at Mortimer. ‘What about it?’

‘All right,’ Mortimer said. ‘I’ll write my letters now.’

But he didn’t finish the letters because he had a visitor.

He was interrupted by a ring at the door. A loud, drilling ring that startled him. He thought immediately of the warnings about attempts to compromise him.

A slim girl in a grey woollen dress stood at the door. She said breathlessly, ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you and I wouldn’t have dreamed of disturbing you normally but I’ve locked myself out and I wondered if I could use your phone.’

The warnings were lodged in his mind like repetitive advertising. ‘I’m awfully sorry but I don’t know who you are,’ he said. He was ashamed of his clumsiness.

She flushed. ‘I’m from upstairs. I know we haven’t been introduced and I wouldn’t have disturbed you if I hadn’t been desperate.’

An American journalist who lived two floors above Mortimer walked down the stairs. He saluted the girl. ‘Hi there,’ he said.

‘Hallo,’ she said. She turned back to Mortimer. ‘The lifts aren’t working. You’ll get used to that after a while. There’s a man next to us who’s got a heart complaint. He’s terrified of going out in case the lift breaks down while he’s out and he has to walk up the stairs.’

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mortimer said. ‘I didn’t realise you were in this block. Come in and use the phone by all means.’

She stood in the lounge looking uncertainly around. ‘It’s a very nice flat,’ she said. ‘You have very good taste.’

‘The furniture was here when I arrived. It’s not bad but it isn’t what I would have chosen. I prefer old things.’

‘So do I,’ said the girl.

‘Then you don’t really like it,’ Mortimer said, remembering how Randall had tricked him into admiring modern art.

‘I think it shows very good taste—if you like modern furniture. Like you I prefer something more mellow.’

He watched her while she telephoned. Reddish hair unswept making the back of her neck look vulnerable, innocent somehow. Thin fingers with nails painted pink. Calves of her legs strained as she bent to replace the receiver. He hardly heard what she said on the phone.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘It was very kind of you.’

‘Would you care for a cup of coffee? Or a drink perhaps?’

She hesitated. ‘No thanks. I haven’t really the time. Someone is coming with the key.’

After she had gone her perfume lingered in the flat.