Document Z (4 page)

‘You need some insurance,' he said. ‘There is a man coming this weekend.'

‘An agent?'

‘He is a communist, a journalist who wants to help. I have asked him to give us something useful on the political scene, things the newspapers don't print. You handle him. He needs somebody who speaks English. We will put your name on the reports for Moscow.'

The breeze picked up. There was raucous barking from inside their house as they approached. Jack was growling, knowing it was them but putting on a show. When they got to the front door, Volodya tapped the glass, sending the Alsatian into an overblown spin, his whole body leaping like a jackrabbit. Whenever the dog's hips wobbled, Evdokia thought they were on the verge of giving way.

Volodya went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Evdokia sat down at the bureau, reached for some paper, switching on a lamp.

The fish goes to rot, beginning at the head.

Voron. When the agent came to the embassy's front gates Evdokia recognised him straightaway. Rupert Lockwood, journalist and writer of the Australian left. His hair seemed tidier than usual, thin with little grey streaks. He had a high forehead and intent black eyes, and, in a V-necked cardigan and pinstriped jacket, looked decidedly middle-aged.

She led him to the prepared room. There was a round table at its centre holding a water jug, an ashtray, a stack of paper and some pens. She'd hung a picture of Stalin with clenched fist on one wall and in the other was a window. Lockwood stood at the table and set down his briefcase. She told him that the Soviet Union appreciated his presence here today.

‘Wait,' he said. ‘Is there no typewriter?'

She should, of course, have thought of that. What was a journalist without a typewriter? The only English machine in the embassy was in the commercial section, a battered Royal whose capital A strike rarely worked. She went to fetch it. When she returned, he was staring out the window, watching the children playing in the orchard. He'd placed a chair opposite his at the table. Evidently, she was to watch him work. He began slowly but quickly moved to a pace, smoking and typing with a serious look, like a man at a boxing match with money invested, cigarette stubs piling up, the air in the room becoming increasingly thin. Each page he finished, he gave to her.

She read that before the war the Japanese had established a large espionage network in Australia, including the Japan- Australia Association and the Australia First Movement.

She read that the clique that ran the
Bulletin—
a notorious anti-Soviet and anti-worker magazine—were actually Japanese agents. The managing editor of the
Daily News
was a drunk and a homosexual. He was also a Chinese agent, though completely open to bribes.

She read that all US government agencies in Australia were espionage agencies. The CIA operated extensively. She read that US spies had infiltrated Melbourne's communist circles under the pretence that they were CP of USA, only to appear, after Pearl Harbor, in GI uniform. She read that these spies were now working in the progressive trade unions, doing their best to turn the tide.

She read that the American advertising agency J. Walter Thompson watched the Australian press for the FBI. It was a certain fact that someone from the Thompson offices wrote the right-wing gossip rag
Things I Hear
. W.C. Wentworth, the Australian equivalent of Senator J.R. McCarthy, took direction from this same US agent. Wentworth's organisation, named Political Research, bought Security dossiers from a corrupt officer at four pounds, four shillings a piece; and under his direction Catholic priests met regularly with members of the political police in a café called Mario's, opposite the office of the
Sydney Sun
.

The information had an intensity that surprised her. Hard to reconcile it with the sparse world of Canberra.

Lockwood was looking at her, perhaps seeing something of her thoughts. He announced that he would mark the manuscript with symbols, creating footnotes on his sources for each page. The process took an hour. When it was over, she gave him two bottles of USSR vodka and a tin of caviar. He refused at first, but she insisted.

The next day, he came again, typing twenty or more pages before the Underwood's ribbon depleted and he said perhaps it was time to go. She gave him the same gift, but he would only take the vodka. She also offered him cash.

‘Oh, no,' he said.

‘Please. It is not a payment.'

‘The vodka is sufficient.'

‘We understand you are not interested in money. This is simply to refund your expenses, the hotel room and the train pass. The embassy cannot have you out of pocket.'

Lockwood paused a moment, checking his watch and then some papers in his jacket. Eventually he said, ‘Fair enough,' and took a portion of the money, perhaps only a third of the total sum. Then he and Evdokia shook hands, and he left in darkness, this time via the embassy's rear door.

Upstairs, she, Volodya and Kislitsyn sat down and read Lockwood's document twice. She forwarded it to Moscow and, two weeks later, the Centre replied by cable.
Congratulations.
Keep a close watch on Voron with a view to acquainting him
more fully with our work.

Volodya was happy. Such praise was hard to find. They drank two beers on the back porch, rugged up in a blanket, rain rocketing through the yard.

4

B
2 kept an office on the top floor, at the opposite end of the building to Colonel Spry's. On the door was an embossed plate: DIRECTOR COUNTERESPIONAGE. He was seated there now, in his reading chair, a comfortable and heavily stained lounge that he'd had since university. Around him, the chaos of the room sprawled in all directions: memoranda, scribbled notes, cuttings from the
Sydney Morning
Herald
and the Melbourne
Truth
, layers of reports written by his section officers, telephone messages typed by the secretarial pool, carbon-copied sets of the working Russian files, ten-year-old issues of the
Government Gazette
. The office felt like you didn't want to smoke in it, which was how B2 wanted it to seem. He was a literary man, after all, the author of two books of poetry and he had an order going here, a product of history and connective patterns only he could decode. The cleaning staff had long learned to stop coming.

On the walls were maps: Sydney, Melbourne, London, and a particularly large one of the USSR, placenames in Cyrillic, repeated underneath in English, pins showing the known birthplaces and life trajectories of the men, and some of the women, today residing at the Soviet embassy in Canberra. It was in front of this map that B2 sat examining Michael Howley's latest report. He thought it was a fair bet that one of these new Russians was Sadovnikov's MVD replacement and he was trying to think up some way to tell. Petrov, Kharkovetz, Kislitsyn, Koukharenko? An MI5 memorandum he had on the subject of identifying intelligence workers was, he thought, particularly unimaginative, its only interesting analysis a statistical measure of the number of confirmed MVD and GRU men per embassy vocation. VOKS—the Soviet cultural organisation—seemed the most popular cover for the MVD, at least in the United States and Britain. Other suggestions were less helpful: look for men with excellent English, for example, or men with the ability to drive motor cars. Spry was in America this week, meeting today or tomorrow with J. Edgar Hoover. B2 wondered whether the FBI would lend them their analysis instead.

He looked at the photographs of Philip Kislitsyn that MI5 had sent. He read and re-read the background histories and service records of the newcomers where recorded. He got out pins and stuck them to the map. Then he stood back from the map and looked.

Nothing jumping out.

He thought perhaps they needed some better sources. Perhaps someone they could place a little closer to these men.

On his desk was a small stack of incidental reports from the subversives section, occasions where their agents had come into contact with proper Soviet personnel. What was the name of that chap of theirs—the New Australian doctor, who seemed to know Pakhomov quite well?

Michael Bialoguski. Top-secret source Crane.

Crane said he treated Anna Pakhomova, wife of Tass correspondent,
for a urinary tract infection at her home. Flat reportedly
filthy, infested. Personally sighted adult bedbug, recently satisfied,
moving along a blanket's edge.

B2 thought for a moment. He picked up the internal rig and made a call one floor below, to the office of the director of subversives. When the man came on, B2 got to the point quickly, asking what he knew about Crane.

‘Oh,' the director said, ‘I know he comes with certain difficulties.'

‘Do you think he's reliable?'

‘I'm not aware.'

‘You think he's a mercenary?'

‘He doesn't work for king and country.'

‘Because he's a Pole?'

‘Because he's a mercenary.' The voice on the line slowed. ‘Actually, I believe we may drop him.'

‘Any reason?'

‘He's often very insistent that his salary is disproportionate.' ‘Is it?'

‘His information is second-rate.'

‘He's not Party?'

‘He attends meetings of the satellite groups. Peace Council. Various charities and committees.'

‘The Russian Social Club, I see?'

‘That's right.'

‘Perhaps we'll take him.'

‘If you like,' said the director. ‘My advice would be to get him off balance and see how cheaply he'll come along.'

‘Secrets in his blood, do you think?'

‘The world grows strange. I guarantee Crane sees people following him and habitually stops in front of shop windows.'

‘You think he lies in bed mouthing his codename, pondering its meaning in a thousand different contexts?'

‘Why we gave it to him. Why we author the codes and the agents don't. Is this a new approach for you?'

‘I'm seeking someone closer,' said B2. ‘A source we can talk to firsthand.'

‘Find someone good to manage him, my suggestion.'

‘I'm going to give him to Michael Howley. Would you mind loaning me his file?'

They disconnected. B2 leaned back into the depths of his chair. He worried at times about how he was perceived by the other directors. They had military and police backgrounds. He was a poet. He worried they didn't understand his utility in the field of counterespionage; why Spry had recruited him, an interpreter of words. He wasn't one of them, but he hoped they understood him and didn't some-how think him weak.

They drove through Queanbeyan just as the sun was coming up, Petrov and Kislitsyn in the embassy's black BMW with Petrov's rifle, a few spare fishing rods, a set of crayons and an easel. Crisp air shot through the car. They slowed coming into town, and Kislitsyn thought to maybe make a phone call, so they stopped at the post office and he stood in the booth with the receiver to his ear and watched the road. Nothing came.

They left the highway for a dirt track four kilometres out. Farmland of some type, a frosty carpet catching some heat and glistening. The road crested and Petrov stopped. Kislitsyn popped the bonnet and feigned an examination of the engine. Both watched the road and nothing came.

In the next gully the road forked, and they followed left and saw a rail line in the distance. They came to it and found that the road dipped under the line, which ran above them on a bridge. They nosed off and got out. The bridge was made of greying sleepers and ironwork and there was the red globe of an ants' nest on the northern embankment.

‘Here,' said Petrov.

‘Where are we, the Sydney line?'

Petrov struggled up the southern embankment to inspect the bridge. Some of the overhead sleepers had dry cracks, fissures that ran deep into the wood. One had cracked remarkably, and after a splintered opening was a hollow cavity. He brushed out some cobwebs, thinking them a good sign. Kislitsyn threw him a matchbox and a cigarette packet. Both could be stuck straight in.

‘What do you think? Alright?'

‘Yes, alright.'

They drove on, Kislitsyn taking note of the odometer. The road became more worn, centred by a stretch of wild grass, and eucalypts appeared. Petrov pumped his window down to catch the strange smell. The car reached a river and they followed the bank. They stopped at a willow tree, got out the rod and rifle and began to walk. Eventually they came to a grey gum that was peeling; in its base was a blackened hollow. Petrov examined the hole.

‘Alright?'

‘Yes, alright.'

They drove back towards the highway. To be sure, Petrov parked the car again on the hill crest and Kislitsyn popped the bonnet and watched the road. Nothing came. He put the bonnet down and Petrov started the car again, only now the engine seemed unwilling to kick over.

‘Is it flooded?'

‘What's flooded? No, it's okay.'

Petrov twisted the key. The engine whirred but didn't catch. Kislitsyn opened the bonnet and this time the look was real.

‘Try again,' he said.

‘Do you see anything?'

‘Where's your foot? Put your foot on the gas.'

‘It's on. It's down.'

‘I can't see anything. Take it off.'

‘Anything now?'

‘No. Try again.'

Petrov twisted the key. Nothing. They swapped roles.

‘It's not happening.'

‘Hit the alternator with a wrench.'

‘The alternator or the carburettor?'

‘With a wrench.'

‘It's no good.'

‘I'm on the gas. Do you see?'

‘Nothing.'

Kislitsyn sighed. He pulled his tall frame out of the driver's seat. ‘This is Vasili Sanko's fault. What system of maintenance does he have for these cars?'

Looking downhill, Petrov suggested a push start. He got into the driver's seat and Kislitsyn re-tied his shoelaces and put his jacket in the back. Then he put two long arms on the car's rear end and kicked into the dirt. The car took the hill quickly, Kislitsyn sprinting behind, Petrov twisting the key and pumping his foot. The engine kicked once but didn't catch. The car coasted ghostly to the sound of road noise until it hit the flat and all momentum tapered off. They were thirty metres from the highway. Now Petrov pushed and Kislitsyn drove but the car registered no response. They pushed the car to the highway and the hard shoulder. That at least might cover their tracks.