Russian Hide-and-Seek

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE HEAD OF OPERATIONS

1 Col-Gen V. S. Alksnis (‘Michael Mets’)

2 Brig Ch. I. Kluyev (‘Aram Sevadjian’)

3 Lt-Col Y. N. Tchernyavin…

That was enough for Theodore for the moment. He had stopped dead on catching sight of the first name, or rather the first supposed pseudonym; a small bespectacled man carrying a tattered parcel had barged into him, apologised lavishly and not been noticed doing either. Alexander saw that clouds had moved over the sun in the short time since he entered the Jolly Englishman. The streets were littered and grimy; every few metres there was a broken paving-stone or a pot-hole filled with rubble that had strayed over the road-surface. People were hurrying home mostly as single individuals, heads down, silent, looking neither to right nor to left. Everything was normal, in fact.

‘Come on,’ said Alexander.

‘Where are we going?’

‘We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to walk the streets, keeping with the crowds. It’s probably the least suicidally dangerous place. I take it Mets is our leader?’

‘I don’t know for certain; I strongly suspect so. Nina and I talked to him for a second in your garden the night we were engaged. I thought he was drunk and Nina thought he was frightened.’

‘Well?’

‘Wouldn’t you be frightened if you had an important job under Vanag?’

‘Naturally I would,’ said Alexander a little irritably, skirting a pile of empty tins and shoddily-lettered cardboard containers outside a soft-drinks shop, ‘but I’d be even more frightened if Vanag was after me. Look, Sevadjian gave me the job of getting that list himself.’

‘He had no alternative. It was a decision of the committee.’

‘Did he support it? Was there a vote? And don’t forget he had an alternative – killing me before I was within a kilometre of the list.’

Theodore had slowed in his walk and was further studying the document in question. ‘Well, things aren’t as bad as they might have been,’ he said as he refolded it.

‘How’?’

‘You and Nina and Elizabeth don’t appear.’

‘Better not tell Nina you checked that.’

‘Aram a brigadier in Intelligence… It must be a trick.’

‘I hope so.’

They turned right into Abington Street and began to move past the ruins of the great shopping-centre, not the result of any concerted effort, just vandalism and the passage of time. Here the passers-by moved slowly for the most part: housewives facing a long walk home, idly chattering groups of schoolchildren, strolling whores. A black Jaguar carrying some high official, perhaps from out of town, perhaps from London, weaved its way among the horse-traffic. After a few metres Alexander put his hand on Theodore’s shoulder and halted.

‘Let’s go back,’ he said. ‘I know what to do.’

‘I wish I did,’ said Theodore, turning. ‘It doesn’t seem to me to make much difference whether it’s a trick or not. Either way we’re hopelessly exposed.’

‘Not necessarily. I’ve had longer to think about this than you have. It does make a difference, perhaps a big difference. If that list is genuine, we are well and truly done for. If it’s a fake, aimed at setting some of us against others, it need mean no more than that they’ve correctly identified a number of our leaders. They may still know everything, of course, but there may be things, quite important things, they don’t know. For instance, although they know about me…

‘How?’

‘Oh, Theodore. They get word a chap’s trying to get hold of a list of their agents, never mind the reason he gives. What would you have thought’? Or at least gone along with to be on the safe side’?’

‘Then she…’

‘Yes. She believed it, I’m sure. She’d believe anything. No, that’s not quite right. The little bit of wiring that enables you to decide what to believe and what not to believe somehow got left out of her. Together with numerous and extensive other bits.’

‘Well, maybe. But it still can’t have been a plot from the start. You and I had hardly spoken by the time she made her dive at you.

‘No, we all underestimated her, including Sevadjian. It was just a sort of joke on her part. She was stirring things up by telling her husband what she and I were up to and then doing just as he said. Holy Christ, I’d punish her now if I had the chance. Anyway: this is all assuming the list is a fake. If it’s genuine they don’t know about me through her…

The two parted momentarily to allow plenty of room for an unshaven, ragged man with a bottle who was coming towards them in a series of arcs. When they were side by side again, Alexander, who seemed to Theodore almost to be enjoying himself, went on as before, ‘… but they still know about me because they know about everybody. And either way, alas, they know about you too. But one thing they don’t necessarily know – if the list is a fake – is when we’

He stopped in the middle of the pavement and stared at Theodore with what anyone might have said was real consternation. Theodore made a puffing noise.

‘No more shocks, for heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could stand another.’

‘That silly bugger of a CO of mine.’ Alexander got moving again. ‘He summoned me this afternoon and gave me a rather cryptic warning. A good half of my mind was on Mrs K, and so I assumed he was warning me off her – not bad advice when you come down to it – and was being cryptic because the subject embarrassed him. But then he said something I didn’t really take in till just now. When I said, quite falsely as you understand, that of course I’d do as he suggested and drop her – no, not drop H YE R, drop the enterprise or the involvement or something – he said he was glad I was getting out in time. Before what happened? Now with Mrs K, after you’ve decided to follow her up, which admittedly might be thought a bad move and also irrevocable in a sense, you just get more of the same, well no, not the same, but roughly similar. It would only be not in time, too late, if I ran away with her, something of that order, which needless to say I never contemplated. Or if her plan for our next meeting included me cutting her head off, which wouldn’t surprise me totally, but I don’t see how Colonel Tabidze could have heard about that. And then -yes! Afterwards we chatted with his wife for a couple of minutes, and he said he and I had had a good talk, and she had no idea what it had been about. Now you’ve only met them a couple of times, haven’t you’? but can you imagine him warning me off Mrs K without his wife not only being a party to it but probably drilling him in what to say? He was being cryptic because he was leaking a deadly secret at great risk to himself, the old idiot. And the secret isn’t that they know about me, though I think it does rather prove that, don’t you? No, Theodore, the secret is that they know when. They know about Sunday.’

They had made their way back to the Jolly Englishman, from which came voices raised as before in professionally-simulated amateurish song. Theodore fancied he also heard a faint roll of thunder. He looked a little distractedly at a passing boy and girl, then at Alexander again. What made the fellow so cheerful, so obviously in good form in these unencouraging circumstances? Was this what was meant by being at one’s best in a crisis? How could he know? – he had never been in a crisis before. He said in a helpless sort of way,

‘What are we to do? Give up?’

After a small hesitation, Alexander said violently, ‘No, we can’t do that now. My advice to you is to take that list to the most senior member of the organisation whose name isn’t on it. I’m certain as I can be that it’s a fake, but we daren’t take the risk of letting anyone see it who’s on it, like Sevadjian. Now from the way Tabidze was talking, they’ve decided to wait for us to move, to reveal and incriminate ourselves. The only thing to do is seize the initiative by moving when they’re not expecting it. Added to which they may change their minds and pull us in at any moment.’ He glanced at the dial on his wrist. ‘I’m advancing zero fifty-two hours. I’ll see you at the rendezvous at seven o’clock.’

Theodore literally gasped. ‘You’re mad. How could I warn people in the time? And ours isn’t the only revolution, you know. Even if we-’

‘You’d better get a move on, hadn’t you?’

‘But this is… What chance do you think you’ve got?’

‘About none. But I must try it. Any other way we have no chance at all.’

‘Assuming all your deductions are correct. At least wait till we’ve consulted somebody.’

‘I’ve decided.’ Alexander’s manner had changed to a heavy obstinacy. ‘This is the only thing to do.’

Squaring his shoulders, he moved off. Uncertain, fearful, exasperated too, Theodore could still not forbear from calling ‘Good luck’ after him. He turned at once and came back and the two young men embraced warmly.

‘You’re a good pal, old boy,’ said Alexander.

‘And the same to you with knobs on.’