Читать книгу Angels in the Snow - Derek Lambert, Derek Lambert - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThen one day the snow didn’t melt during the day and winter was finally buttoned down over the city. Sometimes the snow fell in soft Christmas flakes which the wind blew into blizzards, but mostly it fell without hurry, thinly and relentlessly, smoothing the countryside and calming the city.
Machines cleared the Moscow streets piling the snow in the gutters or spewing it into the river, but the roads were soon covered again with more snow mashed and stained by the traffic. And all the time the women scraped away with their broad shovels, as inexorably as the falling snow. Muscovites untied the ear-flaps on their shapkas, shrank deeper into their overcoats and steamed in the hot shops like racehorses after a gallop.
In Gorky Park the tenacious old chess players finally resigned and left the open-air boards near the big wheel. Motorists covered their cars with tarpaulins and left them to be awoken in the spring. On the outskirts of the city wooden cottages became igloos and life was arranged around the stove: in the new flats it continued as before around the television.
Weather prophets studied birds and berries and clouds and prophesied a long hard winter; they prophesied one every year and were never wrong. The cold beckoned death and many people died by its blade; it equated birth with death by dispatching couples early to bed in over-crowded flats and cottages. From the white streets the living rooms of old wooden tenements, jungled with potted plants and creepers, looked as if they were filled with green water.
Many people welcomed winter. Skiers flying from the artificial jump on the Lenin Hills; skaters in the parks, old men frozen beside holes in the ice hooking fish from the quiet depths and memories from the turbulent past; children who were now towed on toboggans instead of being pushed in prams. Only the city’s pigeons and sparrows seemed totally unaffected by the new season which had arrived and intended to stay.
Foreign diplomats and correspondents reacted according to their experience of Russia, and their experience of hardship which in most cases was limited. Some newcomers, self-conscious about their fur hats, boasted that they could do without them until the pain in their ears conquered pride. One Frenchman whose pride was unquenchable was taken to hospital where the lobe of one frost-bitten ear was removed, a deformity which he subsequently attributed to a sniper’s bullet in Algeria. The diplomats skied and skated and sometimes spied, attended each other’s somnolent dinner parties, haunted the Bolshoi Theatre, anticipated leave and new postings and went to Helsinki to have their teeth fixed. The British Ambassador went cross-country ski-ing every weekend, the American Ambassador attended more poker schools because they took his mind off non-proliferation and he usually won, and the Chinese Ambassador went home to Peking.
In the bedroom of his flat Luke Randall made love to the tourist from New York with enjoyment and detachment. The detachment enabled him to prolong the sexual act and satisfy many women who, with bleak pride, had professed frigidity. There was little ardour involved, merely clinical expertise. Only once had there been a woman who aroused in him the tenderness and cruelty of passion; but she had derided the inhibitions which she had released, and now she had left him.
The woman in his arms said: ‘Let me do that.’ She unhooked her brassière, paused for a moment and then removed all her clothes except her pants.
‘Why leave those?’ he asked.
‘Because when you take them off I shall be able to tell myself that you seduced me.’
Fifteen minutes earlier, he reflected, she had been asserting her independence from men. She was smart, about thirty-five, and ran her own employment bureau.
After the cocktail party he brought her back to his flat for coffee and she said: ‘I hope you don’t think this means I’m going to go to bed with you.’
Randall closed the door and said: ‘As a matter of fact I do.’ She was too old for flirting: so was he.
He kissed her nipples into life. She sighed and called him by his first name as if they had been lovers for years. He examined the nipples in his detached way and decided that at some time in her life there had been a baby. He moved to her belly, not as firm as it had seemed, to the point where you sometimes forgot to whom you were making love.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No you mustn’t.’ But he did and the sighs became moans. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘Oh Christ.’ She cried out in victory because he was there, cried out in defeat because she had let him. And he wondered as he had wondered before at the debasement of lovemaking.
He climbed past her breasts again and looked into her eyes. She turned her face into the pillow. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Now.’
‘In a minute.’
‘No now. Please now. —— me now.’
And he smiled because she would never admit—might not even believe—that she had used such a word.
He entered her and almost immediately she cried out in her climax. And later cried out again so loud that he kissed her mouth to keep her quiet. Then kept on until he had finished.
‘God,’ she said, ‘that was wonderful.’
‘It was great,’ he said.
‘It was disgraceful, really,’ she said. ‘I’d only just met you.’
‘Don’t fret,’ he said. ‘You wanted to and I wanted to. We were attracted.’
‘It was beautiful.’
‘It was enjoyable.’
‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘you’re a cold fish. Now I come to think of it you were pretty cool just now. Cool and competent.’
‘I enjoyed making love to you,’ he said. Couldn’t they ever leave it at that? There had been no beauty, just the contortions of sex.
‘Did you? Did you really, Luke?’
‘Of course I did. Wasn’t it obvious?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I was too bound up with my enjoyment. Selfish, I suppose. Was I good, Luke?’
Jesus, he thought; but he didn’t want to hurt her. ‘You were great,’ he said. ‘Just great.’
‘I’ll never forget it. Making love with a man called Luke in the shadow of the Kremlin. I suppose you’ve made love to lots of women here.’
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.
‘I don’t mind. A beer perhaps. Don’t be too long.’
He took as long as he could and returned with a beer and a Scotch. She had put on her pants and brassière and repaired her face. ‘When will you be in the States again?’ she asked.
‘God knows. Next year maybe.’
‘You’ll look me up, won’t you?’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘But it won’t be the same. You know that, don’t you?’
She sipped at her beer. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it never is. You must know that.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’
‘How much longer are you here for?’
‘Intourist are taking us to Leningrad tomorrow. But I don’t have to go.’
‘You go,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful city.’
‘I wanted to go—until tonight.’
‘You go just the same.’
‘So it meant nothing to you?’
You could hardly tell a woman that at the critical moment you had been trying to pretend that she was your wife. Truthfully he said: ‘Of course it meant something.’
‘It did to me, too. It was beautiful.’
He felt tired and a little sick. He yawned. ‘I have to be up early in the morning,’ he said.
‘Can I stay the night?’ Pride and composure had evaporated: she was a successful middle-ageing woman frightened of loneliness.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I wish you could. But you have to watch your step here. We’re not in Miami. I’ll drive you back to the National.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get a cab.’
‘You might try and get a cab but I doubt whether you’ll succeed. Get dressed and I’ll take you back.’
‘So that’s all it was.’
‘All what was?’
‘A one-night stand. An easy lay.’
‘You know it was more than that.’
‘Balls,’ she said.
‘I hope you don’t talk like that to your staff.’
‘I talk to them how I please.’
She took her clothes into the bathroom and emerged the efficient businesswoman, independent of men.
Outside the thin snow fell calmly and steadily. He dusted it from the windscreen and rear windows of the car and opened the door for her with determined good manners.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re a perfect gentleman.’
The wheels spun and then gripped. The militiaman who had booked them in booked them out. A few hundred yards down the road Randall stopped the car.
‘You’re not going to do the whole thing in reverse, are you?’ she said. ‘The sex first and then the necking?’
He laughed. He had misjudged her: there would be no dramatic last scene. ‘The letter,’ he said. ‘Could I have the letter please.’
She opened her handbag. ‘I’d almost forgotten all about it. Would you have picked me up if it hadn’t been for the letter?’
He leaned across and kissed her lightly. ‘Of course I would,’ he said. ‘You’re the sexiest broad in town.’
She accepted the mood. ‘From what I’ve seen in Moscow, mister, that ain’t saying much.’
They drove through the phantom streets to the National Hotel on the corner of Gorky Street and he went up with her in the ornate, antique lift to her room. On the landing a suspicious woman in black sat at her desk and glowered at them. If he stayed in the room longer than five minutes she would be at the door. He was grateful for her presence.
‘Good night,’ he said outside the door.
‘Good night,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything. Don’t say anything else. We’ve been through enough clichés tonight to last us both a lifetime.’
‘I was only going to say that if ever I was out of a job I’d come to your agency.’
She said: ‘There’s only one Goddam job you’re fit for. And I’d supply the references.’ She shut the door.
The woman at the desk looked at him speculatively wondering if he could have got up to anything in three minutes flat. These Americans.
He felt sad for the woman he had just ushered into the loneliness of a hotel room. He walked down a flight of stairs and headed for the dollar bar.
The bar with its gold-papered walls, cafeteria tables and awkward blonde barmaids with bouffant hair styles was occupied by a Swedish ice hockey team. They had lost a match that evening with the Russians and were taking their revenge on the bar.
It was one of two bars in town which stayed open late at night for the purpose of relieving foreigners of as much hard currency as possible. The other was at the Metropole Hotel and visitors could never decide which of the two was the more depressing. They usually nominated the Metropole because at least the National had barmaids who flirted grotesquely as they served the wrong drinks and bar girls who put in an appearance on such noisy nights as this.
Randall ordered a straight whisky and watched with resignation as the barmaid topped up his glass with Narzan. Why, he wondered as he had wondered many times before, did they always make such a Goddam mess of everything? They had sent the first man into space and they would land the first man on the moon but they couldn’t organise a booze-up at a brewery.
At the bar sat the usual assortment of nationalities. Arabs and Africans on begging missions puzzled that they were not overwhelmed by the friendliness they had expected from a people who, at long range, seemed so intensely interested in their welfare; Western businessmen suffocated by Soviet bureaucracy by day and drowning themselves in whisky by night; some journalists chatting to a Liberal Member of Parliament from Britain who, although uninvited, had been waiting for a fortnight to see Kosygin; the duty KGB man drinking a beer and trying to listen to the few languages he could understand. Tonight, though, everyone listened to the Swedes because it was impossible not to listen to them.
The Swedes were tall and much thinner than they seemed, padded and pugnacious, on the ice. They all spoke English without the letter J; as they downed vodka they became increasingly outspoken about the Russians’ hockey tactics.
One of them approached the Liberal MP. ‘You Russian?’ he demanded.
The sad, noble face looked dismayed. ‘Good Lord no,’ he said; and smiled at the journalists because he knew the incident would be reported in their gossip columns.
‘You German?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ He was hurt that his nationality was not immediately apparent in the cut of his decently shabby suit and his amused nonchalance. ‘I’m English.’
‘English?’ The Swede seemed surprised. ‘You don’t play ice hockey?’
The MP seized his opportunity for some gentle humour. ‘Not ice hockey. But I used to play hockey in my younger days. It’s much the same, isn’t it, except that it’s not played on ice?’
The Swede said: ‘You try to be funny?’ One of his front teeth was broken and one eye was closing from a recent blow.
‘Good Lord no. I just thought the rules were much the same.’ He removed the smile to indicate that he was not being funny. He was conscious that he was not impressing the journalists to whom he had been trying to explain Kosygin’s reluctance to see him.
‘Yust the same,’ said the Swede, ‘I think you are trying to take the piss.’ He tossed back a vodka. ‘You see? I speak very good English.’
‘Very good indeed. I wish I spoke Swedish as well.’
‘You speak Swedish?’
‘No, I wish I did.’
‘It is very good language. Not like Russian.’ He spat.
The MP looked increasingly uneasy. He stretched and yawned. ‘Time I turned in chaps. I’ve got an early start in the morning.’
‘The Russians are pigs,’ said the Swede. ‘They play dirty.’ He pointed at his broken tooth. ‘See that? That’s how dirty they play.’
‘I’m told the Canadian professionals are the roughest players, the MP said.
The Swede considered the point. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they are rough. But, Yesus Christ, they are not dirty like these Russians.’
The MP stood up and eyed the doorway. He was saved by a Russian tart, very drunk, who prodded the Swede in the chest and said: ‘You buy me whisky then we dance.’
The Swede examined her. Ruined bouffant, blood-stained handkerchief wrapped round her hand, black dress tight round her big buttocks. He seemed to forget his hatred of the Russians. ‘First we dance,’ he said. ‘Then we drink whisky.’
The MP strolled as nonchalantly as possible through arguing Swedes to the door.
‘A few paragraphs,’ said one of the journalists.
‘It’s all right for you,’ said another. ‘You get paid extra for stuff in the gossip column.’
Randall felt the envelope in his pocket and wondered about its contents—and Washington’s choice of couriers. A long time ago, before the belated acceptance of ciphers, Washington had used couriers extensively; then, while still using the diplomatic pouch, the CIA had relied principally on codes. Now they seemed to be favouring couriers carrying coded messages. The courier was usually the American tourist whom the Soviets would be least likely to suspect. But all methods of secret communication tended to fall into a pattern which could be spotted if they were used too often. Anyway, Randall thought, this was the first time they had used a frustrated widow; he hoped they would persist with the system for a while.
The Swedes were dancing energetically with the whores who had only recently returned to the bar. A few months previously there had been a purge. The Soviet Press had maligned the girls for indulging the tastes of decadent Westerners and one girl had been sent to a labour camp after a well-publicised trial.
Randall had never been sure whether any of them were genuine whores. Perhaps some were; the others were used by the State to extract information and opinions from Westerners. If this were so the outrage of the Press had been spurious and the convicted girl was probably living in comparative luxury in a closed city as far away from Moscow as possible. But, whether they were employed or self-employed, the girls went about their trade in grotesquely amateurish style. However Randall knew from experience that most espionage was amateurish on the grand scale.
At the bar and on the floor, half a dozen girls cuddled, squeezed, kissed and cajoled as if they had taken a correspondence course on their profession. They had also made the mistake of drinking as much as their quarry and they smelled of the sweat that was staining their dresses.
A tourist from the same party as the widow said: ‘Do you fancy any of those broads, Mac?’
‘Not tonight,’ Randall said. ‘And what’s more I don’t fancy having my nose busted by a Swedish ice hockey player.’
‘If you paid enough I guess it would be okay.’
‘What—with a Swedish ice hockey player?’
‘No, a girl. If you told her you’d pay a lot of dough you could arrange a rendezvous later.’
He was short and fat and damp.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Randall said. ‘Hold on to your money.’
‘You speak with some authority, friend. Do you do a lot of business in Moscow?’
‘Quite a bit,’ Randall said.
‘Then perhaps you can help me.’
The KGB man eased himself along the bar.
Randall said: ‘I will if I can. What part of the States are you from? And what brings you here at this time of the year?’
‘I’m from Chicago,’ said the fat man. ‘We came in the fall, Flora and me, because it was cheaper. We’d promised ourselves a really big vacation for years. We always reckoned on going to England, but some of those Limeys are so Goddam stuck-up. Then we saw this movie, Doctor Zhivago, and Flora said to me, “Why not Russia? Why don’t we go to Russia?” At first I thought it was a crazy idea. Then I thought, why not? After all we hear so much crap about the Iron Curtain. And, boy, would I have something to talk about back at the club. I mean it’s not everyone who goes to Russia, is it?’
‘No,’ Randall said. ‘It isn’t. How can I help you?’
His companion looked around furtively and the KGB man edged down the bar another foot. ‘I can see you’re a broad-minded man,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
The fat man sniggered. ‘Broad-minded about broads, I mean.’
‘You could say that,’ Randall said.
‘Then what’s the best way to go about laying a Russian doll?’
‘The usual way, I suppose.’
‘But where do I find ’em? And what’s the best approach?’
‘This place is as good as any,’ Randall said. ‘You’ve just picked a bad night.’
‘I came in last night and the joint was empty.’
‘It must have been an even worse night.’ Randall finished his whisky; it was 2 a.m. ‘What about Flora?’ he asked. ‘Does she have any firm views on the subject?’
‘Jesus, don’t talk about her,’ the fat man said as if she were on the point of returning to the bar. ‘She’s a great little wife. It’s just that I had a bet with a few of the boys back home that I would lay a Russian broad. I guess I don’t want to lose my dough.’ He shuddered. ‘But don’t talk about Flora in the same breath. It ain’t respectful.’
‘Can’t you just kid them along that you won the bet?’
The fat man looked reproachfully at Randall. ‘That wouldn’t be honourable,’ he said. And added slyly: ‘Have you had any experience with these Russki broads?’
‘No,’ Randall said. ‘It’s not advisable when you’re in business.’
‘No, I guess not.’ He pondered, then brightened. ‘But it must be okay for a tourist. And to tell you the truth I fancy them.’ He pointed at the girls hugging the unresisting Swedes. ‘Look at those asses. I’d sure like to get my hands round those.’
Randall said: ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Will you? Will you really?’
‘I’ll get one sent round to your room.’
‘Jesus, don’t do that,’ said the fat man. Then grinned shakily. ‘Don’t make jokes like that,’ he said. ‘I got a weak heart.’
‘Okay,’ Randall said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll fix it. Just one word of advice.’
‘I’m always willing to listen to advice.’
Make sure you don’t catch Russian pox. It’s worse than any other kind.’
Randall stood up and the envelope fell out of his pocket. The KGB man picked it up and handed it to him.
‘Spaseeba,’ said Randall, feeling his stomach contract.
The KGB man smiled pleasantly. ‘Pazhahlsta,’ he said.
‘Hey,’ said the tourist as Randall headed for the door. ‘What do you mean? How would I know if I caught it?’
Randall turned. ‘It has the same effect as frostbite,’ he said.
In the foyer downstairs Swedes argued with the cloakroom attendant. On the pavement outside Swedes argued with cab drivers and the girls they had picked up.
As Randall climbed into his Chevrolet a girl came over to him and said: ‘You a Swede?’
‘No,’ Randall said. ‘American.’
‘Okay,’ said the girl, ‘let’s go. I like Americans. Swedes … Poof.’
‘Sorry,’ Randall said. ‘Not tonight.’
‘I like you. Let’s go.’
All he needed, he thought, was a currency spiv buying dollars and the evening would be complete.
‘Go back to your Swede. They’re nice guys really.’
Stiff blonde hairs stuck out from under her fur hat and she smelled of whisky. Silent men stood watching in the snow.
‘You have twenty dollars?’
‘No,’ Randall said.
‘Fifteen?’
‘No.’
‘You give me ten dollars. Okay let’s go.’
‘Goodnight,’ Randall said. He let the clutch out gently so that she didn’t lose her footing. He sensed the disappointment of the watchful men. Police, ponces, blackmailers. Whoever they were they would have liked to see Randall take the girl away. As he drove away she walked unsteadily back to the gesticulating Swedes.
The night looked soft and blurred but the air was sharp. Randall breathed deeply and felt it catch in his lungs. It felt clean, as if it had travelled far over frozen seas and white resinous forests.
Back in the apartment he decoded the letter. It was a message reminding him that, as a CIA agent in Moscow, he should not confine himself to seeking the secrets of the Kremlin. The United States was also interested in the intentions of other powers in their dealings with the Soviet Union; in particular those of France who was openly flirting with Russia and, of course, Britain whose policies, if not necessarily perfidious, were usually devious and often incomprehensible. The message pointed out that foreign diplomats, sharing the common bondage of life in Moscow, might talk more freely and indiscreetly than they would in friendlier capitals.
The message reached the point in the last paragraph. It was Randall’s task to investigate and assess British policy and intentions.
He burned the message over the toilet. It was, he thought, all so juvenile. A few officials, their bureaucratic inclinations given licence by the demands of secrecy, revelling in the dispatch of every mundane coded instruction. He considered his new orders and decided that there was little to them. If at any time he had been presented with an indiscretion by a British diplomat he would automatically have sent it to Washington.
On the table stood two glasses, one with a lipstick imprint on the rim. He wiped it clean, undressed and went to the bed where three hours earlier he had made unimpassioned love to a lonely woman. He hoped that by now she was asleep in her room across the frozen city.
