Russian Hide-and-Seek

7

When his day’s work was done, Ensign Petrovsky walked slowly across the park to ‘B’ Squadron mess. This was a small farmhouse built about the middle of the nineteenth century. On the ground floor there was a dining-room just big enough for the seven officers and up to three guests, a comfortable, low-ceilinged ante-room with a small bar in one corner, and an extensive kitchen and attachments. The upper floors provided good accommodation for the squadron commander, Major Yakir, and for his second-in-command, and accommodation for five subalterns. As one who slept out of mess except when too drunk or lazy or cross with his family or disinclined to face the weather to ride home, Alexander had the worst bedroom, according to him at his own wish, but in fact the major had so ruled without consulting him.

This evening, as on all such evenings, his standard-dress uniform, the military equivalent of a lounge suit, had been laid out on his cot by a brother-officer’s batman in return for money. He showered in the tiny second-floor bathroom, put on the uniform and went down to the ante-room, feeling, after his varied and strenuous day, as well physically as he had ever felt in his life. His mental and emotional states were hardly if at all more complicated: Theodore Markov was coming over that evening – was due shortly, in fact – and he knew he would be able to think of plenty of things to say to him.

A pleasant breeze was fluttering the blue-and-white gingham curtains of the ante-room. As Alexander came in, a handsome dark-haired young man of about his own age looked up from the long chintz-covered sofa that faced the window, his expression changing from a sullen gloom to a rather rigid cheerfulness. There was an empty glass on the arm of the sofa beside him.

‘Good evening, Victor, how are you making, old chap?’

‘Hallo – would you very kindly get me a vodka? I’ll pay you for it. The major kicked up a bit of a fuss about my mess bill last month.’

‘Kind words of good advice would be wasted on you, would they?’

‘Completely, I’m afraid.’

‘Then I’ll save my breath.’ Alexander turned to the under-corporal mess waiter. ‘A vodka and a beer.’ Tonight was not an occasion for drinking deep. When the time came he signed the chit, carried a glass of dill-flavoured Ochotnitscha across to the other officer and took a thirsty pull at his own lager. This resembled only very generally the sometime product of the Northampton brewery whence it came, a famous drink made to a Danish formula under Danish direction and enjoyed all over what had been the kingdom. ‘We’ll call that six hundred quid.’

‘I’ll give it to you tomorrow; I seem to have left my cash upstairs. And it’ll be easier to settle up all at once.’

‘What? Oh, you mean you’d like another one.’

‘For the time being, yes.

‘Is this just on general principles, or has something out of the ordinary come up?’

‘Both, really,’ said Victor, at once reverting to his gloomy manner. ‘All days stink, but today stank specially.’

‘I thought all days did that too.’

‘That pig Ryumin – he told me this morning that if I didn’t pull myself together, as he chose to call it, he’d apply for a posting. I’d been giving him more or less a free hand with the troop, I thought that’s what somebody in his position would like, after all he’s been a sergeant longer than I’ve been commissioned, and now he says the troop is the worst mounted in the regiment and it’s all my fault. And before he’d finished one of my corporals came into the office and he didn’t stop.

‘That was very wrong of him.’

‘It was all very wrong of him. Dear God, perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps he was quite right. I can’t wait to get away from this vile country.’

‘Are you joking? It’s a beautiful country. Just look out of the window.’

‘Everybody’s miserable.’

‘Nonsense, that’s just how you’re feeling yourself at the moment. When you’re in the right mood you’ll see there’s nothing wrong with the place at all.’

‘Alexander, not everything done and said is because of someone’s mood. Sergeants don’t have moods.’

‘Of course they don’t; what do you think makes them into sergeants? With us, you’ll find moods are about as good a way of looking at things as any. You’ve finished that one too, I see. Why not have another? On me this time. – Ah, Boris, you’ve turned up at exactly the right moment as usual. What can I get you to drink?’

The newcomer was thirty years old, with close-cropped hair and a face that would have served unimprovably as the model for the Russian entry in some illustrated catalogue of racial types. Each epaulette of his standard-dress jacket, which was of inferior cut and material to those of the other two, bore a pair of nickel bars enclosing a rhomb, for this was the lieutenant-commissary of the squadron. He answered Alexander’s question in a deep, deliberate voice, and hesitantly. ‘It’s most kind of you, but do you think you should? The major doesn’t approve of treating.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t really mind as long as it isn’t flaunted in front of him. Come on.

‘Oh, very well. I beg your pardon, Alexander, I mean of course thank you very much. I’ll have a beer.’

‘Two beers, corporal, and one Ochotnitscha. Large. -Actually this is early for you, isn’t it, Boris?’

‘I suppose it is, yes.’

‘It shouldn’t be. What I mean by that is that you ought to give yourself more time off; I’ve told you before.’

‘I’m grateful that you bother about me, but this is just when I can’t, with George on leave.’ The commissary referred to the second-in-command.

‘No, you can’t. I think everybody else I know could quite easily. It’s a good job the army’s too stupid to realise what you’re worth, or you’d shoot up to colonel-general and we’d never see you again.’

Boris sent Alexander a devoted look that made Victor want to kick them both. The trouble was that Alexander would kick back painfully and Boris would not kick at all, would do nothing except look noble and guileless. Luckily there was no time for these feelings to rankle very much, because just then one of the camp guard brought a guest to the front door of the mess building.

In a moment Theodore had come into the ante-room, trying with fair success to hide his feelings of constraint. By nature he was quite at ease in most social encounters, but he had discovered early that the Commission aroused little in the way of amiability or respect among the civilians of the administration, and had not yet had enough experience of the military to know whether they were any better disposed. As it soon turned out, none of the three officers to whom Alexander introduced him – the third had followed him in almost directly – had as much as heard of his and his superiors’ business. That third, in his mid-twenties and already running to fat, made a rather disagreeable impression with his loose mouth and habit of twisting it in a smile or sneer for no perceptible reason. He was called Leo, Alexander alleged, adding that it was all first names in the mess, except of course for the major, and shortly afterwards that, with one man on leave and another serving as officer of the day, the company was now complete, except again for the major. Neither of these additions proved fully accurate, for when Major Yakir in due course arrived he had with him another civilian whose name, first or last, Theodore for one never learned. Host and guest were remarkably similar to look at, both short and stout, both all but bald, both heavily moustached, guest however blemished on the right cheek by a purple birthmark that host lacked. Neither seemed to have much to say to the four younger men.

At dinner, Theodore was placed between Alexander and the ensign called Victor. Asked how he had made the journey from Northampton, he answered truthfully enough (though perhaps in needless detail) that he had come on one of the power-assisted bicycles scantily available to members of the Commission for recreational purposes. A discussion of fuel policies and prospects naturally followed. Alexander committed himself to the opinion that the new synthetics were proving ruinously expensive to produce, that Moscow was at its wits’ end and that mechanical transport would soon run down, perhaps even by the end of the decade, and Victor agreed with him. All this was said quite roundly and openly, as was natural, even to be expected; nobody thought anything of such talk these days. Actually it might have been that Victor did not so much agree as find it convenient to behave in one way or another while he drank. On his other side, Leo seemed to be thinking along these lines, to judge by the contemptuous glances he sent his colleague’s way, unless these were in some way mechanical. Boris the commissary, on Major Yakir’s left, said little and drank less; the major was silent, nodding now and then at what his guest, inaudibly to the others, was saying. When the mess waiters had taken away the dishes, Leo said in a loud teasing voice,

‘Does anybody fancy a small portion of gambling tonight?’

It was instantly clear to Theodore that this remark was not to be taken at its face value and that its true meaning must at all costs be kept from the major. A glance at Alexander showed him to favour saying nothing. Victor spoke after a short silence.

‘All right, I’ll give you a game if no one else will.’

‘Are you sure you really feel like a flutter?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Very well, on your own head be it. Alexander, are you going to take a hand?’

‘No thank you, Leo, I have my guest to consider.’

‘He’s more than welcome to join in.’

‘I couldn’t allow it, he has an appalling head for cards.’

‘I suppose we must let him off, then. But you’re with us, Boris?’

‘I’m sorry, I have some things to clear up before the morning.’

‘You always have some confounded excuse. I reckon you’re afraid. Of losing your money.

‘You know it isn’t that,’ said Boris in a hurt voice.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Victor indignantly. ‘The thing is that they don’t gamble in Kursk, and what they don’t do in Kursk must never be done anywhere. That’s it, isn’t it, Boris?’

For a moment Boris’s heavy features showed him to be on the edge of changing his mind. Then he shook his head energetically. ‘No, I must go and work.’

‘Spoil-sport,’ said Victor. ‘Well, it’s just you and me then, Leo.’

The major looked up at that point and said, ‘You may take tea,’ evidently a form of words permitting junior officers to leave the table.

‘Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.’

Leo, Victor and Boris rose, clicked their heels and departed. Theodore had started to follow their example, but Alexander put a hand on his arm, saying they had some wine to finish. After a minute or two Major Yakir and his companion also left and Alexander dismissed the remaining waiter.

‘Well?’ asked Theodore.

‘When it’s really dark, Victor and Leo will go outside and shoot at each other with old-fashioned revolvers.’

‘Shoot at… At what range’?’

‘Oh; thirty metres? Twenty metres? It’s not certain death at any one time – you don’t show yourself, not deliberately at least: you call out and the other man fires at your voice. But they’ll go on till somebody’s killed, one of them or a passer-by.’

‘Where do they do this? The sound of the-’

‘Silencers. I went with them once; I thought it was a joke. It was no joke. There were four of us, me and those two and the other subaltern, the one that’s on duty. The first time I shouted I was standing at the corner of a building in deep shadow. One bullet hit the wall beside me and a splinter cut my cheek and I heard another go past about shoulder-high and less than a metre away. I started running and I didn’t stop till I was back in the mess. If that’s cowardice then I’m a coward.’

Theodore shook his head. ‘Only a fool goes looking for danger.’

‘You may be wondering why they don’t kill somebody every night if the shots they got off at me were average. I was so naive I hadn’t realised that when they put you on your honour to keep stock-still after you’ve shouted you aren’t meant to take it too literally. But when I found out my mistake I didn’t try it again. I’m worried about Boris. He’s just the sort to take it literally for however long is sufficient. Of course they may never talk him into it, his training and temperament are dead against anything of the sort, but he has this obsession about being smart and dashing which Victor works away on. Victor-he’ll be out there soon, blazing away. At least Leo’s sober. Which is worse, I suppose.’

‘Why don’t you tell your major?’

‘They put me on my honour for that as well, before they explained the game. Some game!’

‘Anonymously?’

‘They’d still know it was me. I’m worried about the major too, in a different way. You don’t know him, but he has plenty to say for himself as a rule, and he seems to like all of us, even Leo. Well, you saw him keeping his mouth tight shut, and I don’t know whether you noticed the look he gave me when he said good night, but it wasn’t friendly, whatever else it was.

‘Perhaps he resented having to put up with that guest of his.’

‘Poor Major Yakir,’ said Alexander. ‘He’s always having to return hospitality he never wanted in the first place.’

Just as he finished speaking the door opened abruptly and the man with the birthmark came in and walked straight across the room to where he had been sitting at table. As he moved he spoke in a monotonous voice and with a perceptible accent, Theodore thought Czech or Polish. ‘I am sorry to come bursting in on you like this, gentlemen, but I foolishly left my spectacle-case behind, at least I think I did. Ah yes, here it is under the table by my chair. What a relief. And now I apologise for this intrusion and I leave you in peace and again I wish you good night.’

‘Good night, sir.’

The door shut with some emphasis.

‘Do you think he heard anything?’ asked Theodore.

‘What if he did? Let him fuck his mother.’

‘By all means, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be the end of him.’

‘What?’ said Alexander rather crossly.

Without answering, Theodore got to his feet, overturned the chair lately occupied by the man in question and began closely examining its legs and the underside of its seat.

‘How romantic.’ Alexander sounded amused now. ‘Enemy agents planting concealed microphones. Or is it time-bombs? It really takes me back. Admit it, Theodore: you made the last part of your journey here by parachute.’

‘It’s no joke, I’m afraid. There is a risk that Vanag’s men are taking an interest in me, a slight one, but it’s there. Well, this thing’s clean.’

‘What about the table?’

‘He didn’t touch the table, I was watching. I’d better check the floor.’ And Theodore went down on his hands and knees and peered at the rug.

Alexander sniggered. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t take this seriously. Hidden microphones in a-’

‘Can you suggest what he was doing if he wasn’t planting something?’

‘Fetching his spectacle-case.’

‘Don’t talk balls.’ Apparently the rug was clean too. ‘All right, fetching something else that wasn’t his spectacle-case.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Theodore, frowning and staring.

‘It’s the only other possibility.’

‘But what could he have been fetching?’

‘I don’t know. That’s your department. Why might Vanag’s men be interested in you?’

‘Last night a girl in my section was arrested. I know her because she’s in my section. Nothing more. What she’s supposed to have done, whether she did it, even who arrested her – very likely the ordinary civilian police, not the Directorate at all – everything else: no information. But there is that possibility. Nothing more than that.’

‘I see.’

Theodore produced his pipe and looked at it without friendliness. ‘I must give this up; it’s much too expensive. Are you the junior officer here?’

‘Yes, to Victor by six weeks,’ said Alexander in a serious, literal-minded tone, one he maintained when answering subsequent questions. His manner was that of a witness intent on establishing the truth and altogether without parti pris. If he suspected that some of the information he gave was already known, he betrayed no sign.

‘But you have men under your command?’

‘Yes, so have we all except Boris. A Guards squadron is in effect a double squadron, with four troops. 5 Troop is the senior; Leo’s lot. That’s a rifle troop, though what they carry isn’t exactly rifles. 6 and 7 are the same.’

‘Which is yours?’

‘8. 8 is a cannon troop; there’s one in every squadron. But what we… have isn’t exactly cannon.’

‘What, then?’ asked Theodore, pressing down the tobacco in his pipe.

‘Projectile-launchers, eight of them, designed to operate singly or in pairs. They can destroy any visible man-made object, and quite selectively too, with the improved sonar sight.’

‘My dear Alexander, should you be telling me this?’

‘Oh yes. If there were such a person as somebody wondering whether it might be a good idea to fight us or neutralise us, which I’m sure there isn’t, it would be very useful to us for him to know the fire-power he’d be facing. It’s official policy not to be excessively discreet in these matters.’

‘What if I were such a person? Mightn’t I try to steal one or more of your contrivances?’

‘If you succeeded, which would be very unlikely indeed, you would still be unable to load, aim and fire it, because you haven’t had the necessary special training, which is extremely hard to come by. You couldn’t even arm one of our projectiles.’

‘That’s a relief. The whole thing is a responsibility, though, and you the junior officer. Was it because of…?’ said Theodore, and stopped.

Alexander laughed heartily. ‘My father’s position? Well, in a way, though it’s complicated. There may be a shake-up soon, if Victor finally decides to get himself posted home.’

‘Is it as easy as that? A home posting on demand?’

‘After two years, yes, virtually. I’ll be eligible myself in a couple of months. But then I have a home posting already:

England is my home.’

‘Then you’ve no desire at all to go back.’

‘For me it wouldn’t be back, Theodore. I’ve spent no more than a quarter of my life in Russia, and most of that was either as a young child or on visits that were too short for me to settle down. You don’t settle down anywhere when you’re being trained. I’m a stranger there; I have no responsibilities there.’

‘You speak as if you have responsibilities here, or…’

‘I consider I have. All of us have, by virtue of the position we hold in this country.’

‘You consider in other words that you owe the English something. I wonder how much, and how far you’d go to see that that debt was repaid.’

‘It’s not easy to be definite about the first part; you can’t measure an obligation. But perhaps what I say about the rest of it will be enough. I’d go as far as might prove necessary.

Theodore struggled to control his breathing. A delicious excitement, compounded of joy and fear, possessed him. In one sense this was the highest point of his life so far; in another, he would have given everything good that might happen to him in the future not to be where he now was. The heat had gone; very soon it would be quite dark and, presumably, Leo and Victor would go out and start their shooting. But they were a long way from Theodore’s mind; he stared at the patched yellowish tablecloth, the wine-bottle with its would-be elegant label, his glass, empty, Alexander’s glass, still a quarter full, the purple arc where the base of Victor’s unsteadily-held glass had rested. These sights had a portentous quality, as if something – an explosion, an earthquake -were about to change them altogether, or more like the furnishings of a dream, which themselves carry such significance. It was half a minute before Theodore realised that he was waiting for some sound – a footfall, the striking of a clock – to mark the stillness. This idea seemed to him absurd, puffed-up; he started to speak at once.

‘You remember when we were talking last night and I was trying to get you to admit you’d fucked Mrs Korotchenko, and I made you swear by the honour of…’

‘Of my country and my regiment and my family. So?’

‘You swore falsely then. But over the question of being put on your honour not to tell your major about these shooting affairs – well, you haven’t. You implied that you’d like to, but couldn’t think of a way of doing it that didn’t point to you. Do you really expect me to believe that? Somebody with your low cunning, as you called it? No, you’ve kept quiet because you’d given your word of honour.’

‘What of it?’ said Alexander irritably.

‘Just, how do you resolve the contradiction? Not caring about the honour of your country and the others but very tender about your own.

‘Of course, you’re an intellectual, aren’t you, Theodore? I keep forgetting. It takes one of your sort to see a contradiction in what an ordinary person would regard as a simple difference. Swearing falsely by my country’s honour doesn’t hurt my country; it doesn’t even get to hear about it. I benefit to the extent that I encourage belief in my assertion and no one suffers. But if I’m on my honour not to tell what I know and then I tell, people suffer – from severe disciplinary action -and at best I suffer loss of esteem. Which is different, you see.’

‘Yes, I do see.’ Theodore had been listening so attentively that his pipe had gone out; he relit it. ‘I see that it’s very plausible. Till I remember another difference, between the chance of losing my bars of rank and the no less likely chance, in the end, of losing half my head. Then I see there’s an inconsistency somewhere after all.’

‘Are you saying I ought to go to the major in spite of everything?’

‘No I’m saying that for you to be put on your honour overrides everything. So I don’t think you were quite honest with me when you said just now that it was because you were naive that you stood still after calling out to Leo and the others. It was really because you’d been put on your honour not to move.’ Busy with his pipe, he missed the oblique look and very slight smile that Alexander gave. ‘And you withdrew at that point because you’ve have had to go on standing still the next time and the next, if there’d been a next. Very sensible behaviour.’

‘Oh, rubbish, man. Listen, I’ve just thought of something you said last night. After you’d had me up before your court of inquiry about Mrs Korotchenko you congratulated me for something like steadiness under fire – thank you very much -and also apologised for having had to do it. I forgot to ask you what the devil you meant by that.’

‘You’ll soon see. Now, Ensign Petrovsky, I put you on your honour not to tell anybody what I’m going to tell you. I know already, having carefully tested you, that you’re very resistant to ordinary interrogation, no one of course being in the least resistant to extraordinary interrogation. All I ask is your word not to say anything voluntarily.’

‘You have it. You also have my congratulations, not for steadiness under fire but for making me believe in that arrested girl for nearly a minute.’

‘No longer? Now let me begin with a question. You said a moment ago that to repay the English what you feel you owe them you would go as far as might be necessary. If killing became necessary, would you lend your hand to that?’

‘Yes,’ said Alexander without hesitation.

‘Including your friends here? Including the major? Including your men?’

This time it took a little longer. ‘Yes.’

‘Very good. I now invite you to… What was that?’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘It probably wasn’t anything. I’m sorry, Alexander, but I have an aversion to going into these matters except in private; it’s become second nature. Is there anywhere else we could go? Your bedroom’?’

‘My bedroom is overcrowded with just me in it. We could… Ah, I know the very place.’

‘Before we go, could I possibly have a drink? A serious drink? I can’t think why, but I suddenly feel like one.’

The ante-room was deserted. Alexander poured two glasses of Johnnie Walker Black Label and made out the chit. He stood facing Theodore, who winked and said resonantly,

‘Welcome to the Northampton Music Society!’

‘Success to all its concerts!’

They drained their glasses and, as if drilled beforehand, looked at each other, hesitated briefly and threw them into the empty hearth. They then embraced.

‘Ought we to have done that?’ asked Theodore, nodding at the scattered fragments. ‘Your servants aren’t going to have much fun clearing it up.’

‘Oh, they have a couple of English chaps in for all that kind of thing,’ said Alexander, picking up a pair of cushions from the sofa. ‘Come along – let’s have the rest of your story.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Outside. Where else?’

‘I’ve just thought we stand a chance of getting shot if we go out there.’

‘Not near the mess. If they’re going to shoot anybody, on the whole they’d be quite satisfied if it wasn’t Major Yakir having an outdoor pee.’

In the open the air was still and pleasantly warm and carried a faint odour of dry vegetation. The moon shone brightly and up and down the park windows were lit up, many of them uncurtained and shining out on to the nearby grass. Three uniformed figures were running down the steps of the main house, their footfalls on the stone just audible at this distance. Alexander led the way to a small Doric temple built nearly two centuries earlier and closely copied from a Hellenistic original at Pergamum in Asia Minor. The designer had made two visits there to ensure the accuracy of his reproduction.

‘What is this?’ asked Theodore as they passed between the central columns of the portico.

‘Some kind of summer-house, I imagine, It’s certainly the place to come on hot days.’

Indeed, pleasant warmth almost at once gave place to pleasant coolness. A couple of metres inside the temple proper the floor rose in a high step, high enough to provide, with the necessary aid of a cushion, an unluxurious seat. The two were in shadow here, but strips of moonlit pavement lay all about them. What they would have called weeds, what others would once have called camomile and pimpernel, grew in the spaces between the stones.

‘From what you were saying to your father,’ began Theodore, ‘I gather you want England to be given back to the English in one piece, so to speak, without any phases or probationary periods or conditions; is that correct?’

‘Yes – unless it’s done like that it’ll never be done at all.’

‘Good, that’s the essential first step. So they must be put in full political control at a stroke. And someone must put them there. Someone must take the power away from where it is now and give it to the English. And whoever does that must be Russian – the English can’t come to power by themselves; they’ll follow, but at the beginning they can’t lead. It was with this in mind that Group 31 was founded in Moscow four years ago. Its first task was to get as many of its men as possible into the Cultural Commission and to try to win over the remainder. This has been spectacularly successful. Today two-thirds of the personnel are either of us or actively on our side, including all the section heads and deputies, and the remainder, including Commissioner Mets, are not expected to give any trouble.’

‘Are you saying that the whole Commission and the whole of the New Cultural Policy for England are nothing but a front for a revolutionary movement?’ Alexander sounded sceptical.

‘Certainly not, it’s all quite genuine. The two go together. We’ll go on with our work after we’ve put the English in control.’

‘If they want you to.’

‘I’m sure they will. They must. If I may continue, we’ve infiltrated all the departments of the administration. The civilian police have been particularly responsive – they’re underpaid, they get no privileges and of course they hate Director Vanag – and their support will make our job almost easy. They’ll simply arrest everybody on the other side who matters.’

‘What would you bet that Vanag’s men haven’t got your side infiltrated to hell?’

‘I thought it was your side too, Alexander.’

‘I’m sorry: our side. I have to ask these…’

‘No, no, you’re absolutely right to be cautious. Anything’s possible, but the tentative view of our leadership is that no infiltration has been suffered as yet. All right, you can’t prove a negative; even so, there is one striking and suggestive fact. What does a wise man do when he’s moving about among his enemies? He keeps looking over his shoulder to see if he’s being followed. Well, we’ve been looking over our shoulders, and there’s nobody there. Not one of us has noticed the slightest sign of unwonted interest in him, as it might be hearing by chance that somebody has been round the place asking questions. And we think we know the reason. Naturally we’ve been keeping a close watch on certain of Vanag’s men and listening to what they say in the pubs. The position seems to be that they’re so disaffected that if they should notice anything of what’s going on they wouldn’t follow it up and they wouldn’t pass the information to their superiors, who would only use it to advance themselves. Something of the sort may already have…’

He stopped speaking as a sudden uproar broke out in one of the buildings further down towards the road. What sounded very much like female voices rose in protest, in mutual hostility, in fury; male ones remonstrated, tried to pacify, tried to quieten. Shrieks followed, then a bump as something fell and a crash as something broke. Men began to shout.

‘Are they allowed to bring women in?’ asked Theodore.

‘Certainly not, but nothing’s done about enforcing that rule unless something like this happens, a case of the old army don’t-let-me-catch-you understanding. But now I’m afraid the guard’ll have to intervene.’

The noise continued, though not so loud or so near that it would have hindered their conversation, had they wanted to resume it; instead, both watched intently. The resemblance between what they saw and a stage performance was increased by their view of it framed between two of the pillars of the temple and by the intensity of the moonlight, which seemed to have grown since they had come out of doors. Behind the upstairs windows gesticulating human figures, some of them partly nude, came into view, milled about or grappled with one another, and vanished. Once, the shape of a man moved rapidly backwards across the entire breadth of the visible space, no doubt as the result of some blow. Sound effects included the smashing of glass, twice repeated, and a periodic thumping like the driving-in of nails with a heavy mallet. Little groups of men from other buildings were strolling over for a closer view, and there was something of an audience when four of the guard arrived under an NCO and shortly afterwards dragged off three women, all by now weeping loudly. The NCO stayed a moment to bawl promises of retribution at the occupants of the offending house, and then he too was gone.

‘What will happen to those girls?’

Alexander made a disdainful noise. ‘Girls? They’ll be thrown out of the main gate when the, guard have finished with them.’

‘That seems a bit harsh.’

‘Not a bit of it; they’re lucky it’s a fine night.’

‘How will they get home?’

‘They’ll probably pick up a horse-bus. Why all the concern? They’re animals. How do I know? Because those fellows down there are no better and no worse than my fellows, and any female who’ll fuck any of my fellows has got to be an animal – anyway I hope she is for her sake. You were saying, about the… revolution.’ He brought the word out with an air of surprise.

‘Yes.’ It took Theodore nearly half a minute to collect his thoughts. ‘Well… on the night of 21st September, the last night of the Festival of Culture, when there’ll be celebrations and attention will generally be distracted, we strike. We seize the broadcasting station, the post office, the administration buildings and the other nerve centres. And we arrest Vanag and all his staff and other prominent figures, including I’m afraid your father, but he’ll be well treated and very soon confined only to his house and its grounds, which is no extreme hardship.’

‘No great matter if it were. Meanwhile I’m subduing the rest of the regiment single-handed. Lucky you happened to find me, isn’t it?’

‘We had and have something up our sleeves for the whole regiment, including you. Just before we move a fake message from London reaches your colonel telling him to confine all troops to quarters. At the same time we cut his communications with Northampton. Then at H-Hour two of us release TK into the park.’

‘Almighty God! How did you get hold of that? And the impellor?’

‘From Moscow,’ said Theodore lightly. ‘We’re constantly in receipt of deliveries of cultural equipment and stores.’

‘You know, Theodore, if the 4th were the only troops in England the thing might conceivably work.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m so taken up with our local movement I forgot to tell you. We here are just part of an organisation that covers the whole country, the whole EDR. Surely you knew at least that the Festival was a national affair.’

‘No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about any of it. And if there’d been the slightest whisper in the regiment I’d have heard.’

‘The Guards’ morale is known to be high. And in rural districts like this one the military are isolated, impossible to mix with on any scale. It was decided that outside the larger towns, where circumstances are different, the safe course was to leave them alone and then neutralise them.’

‘With certain exceptions.’

‘You’re special, Alexander, you must admit. Son of the Controller, lover of the Deputy-Director’s wife – when are you seeing her again, by the way?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.

‘We’ll come back to her in a minute – and now somebody with the means of blowing up half England. We have to have you.

‘What would you like me to blow up?’

‘One can’t say yet. You must just be ready, prepared. You’ll be able to lay hands on some of those projectiles?’

‘With everybody else knocked unconscious for twelve hours I should be able to manage it, yes.’

‘What chance have they got of reaching their insufflators in time?’

‘None whatsoever. One whiff and you collapse, so suddenly that there’s often a high casualty-rate from men injuring themselves as they fall. Anyway, that’s what the manual says.’

‘Excellent.’

After a brief pause, Alexander said, ‘Of course, fighting off the entire Russian army and air force the next day will stretch me somewhat.’

‘There I go again. I should have said much earlier that there’s to be a change of government in Moscow timed to coincide with all this.’

‘A coup in Moscow? Sweet Jesus! We’ll be having the Martians in next.’

‘A change of government is how it was described to me. The new leaders will be favourable to an autonomous, neutralised England. That’s all I know.’

There was a longer pause. Alexander could be heard rubbing his cheek or jaw. In the distance a pane of glass broke suddenly and violently.

‘Our friends. At least they’re presumably still alive as I speak. Well, Theodore, I think this scheme has some very interesting possibilities.’

‘Then you’re still with us now you know more about us?’

‘Yes,’ said Alexander’s voice firmly out of the darkness.

As when he was relighting his pipe, Theodore did not see his co-conspirator’s expression. This time it was accompanied by a slight lift of the shoulders.