Dr Berlin (28 page)

What had she been thinking, he wondered, as she posed for him? Did she know that his dearest wish was to photograph her naked? All she had to do was slip the straps from her
shoulders and peel off the wet costume – an act that would have taken a moment. Then she would have been standing before him as he wanted her, and he would no longer have had to use his imagination. But she never did take her costume off for him. She never thought of him in that way. That was his tragedy.

He felt a sudden wave of revulsion surge through his mind. How could he imagine for a moment that the girl in the mews cottage was like Eva? What could have possessed him? She bore only the slightest physical resemblance to the woman in the photograph: she had the same colour hair perhaps, the same triangular shape to the face, but that was all, and it wasn’t enough. She was a parody of Eva, her skin too pale, her legs too thin, her smile too closed and her eyes – couldn’t he have seen that when he first met her? – her eyes were dull and lost, closed doors concealing nothing but a terrible emptiness. How could he have touched her, imagining he was touching someone else? How could he have defiled himself so easily? He felt physically sick with self-disgust. Why had he deceived himself?

He remembered Pountney’s expression when he had talked of the girl, how pleased he’d been when he had given his ultimatum – silence for information. Pountney had imagined he would respond to such a crude proposal because an exchange like that was the language of his craft. Well, the Englishman was wrong. He had no intention of entering into any negotiation with him. If Pountney thought he would become their creature, they had seriously underestimated him. Seeing the girl was a bad mistake, he couldn’t deny that, and his weakness gave Pountney the upper hand. Now he would have to rely on his own inventiveness to extricate himself from a trap of his own making.

Berlin raced up the stairs, only halting briefly outside the door of their room to listen for voices. There was no sound. He let himself in.

‘Kate?’

She was curled up on the bed, hands clasped to her mouth, eyes red, pale face streaked with tears. She was shaking uncontrollably. She tried to speak to him but her shivering was so strong she could say nothing intelligible. He attempted to reassure her, telling her not to speak until she felt better. She was to nod her answers.

‘Did they hurt you?’

Her eyes swam with tears. For a moment he feared she had been beaten or worse, and his anger rose like a storm, but she shook her head and murmured, ‘No. They didn’t touch me.’

He made her as comfortable as he could, covering her with a blanket, rubbing her hands to bring back some warmth. He ordered tea and held the cup to her lips to prevent her shaking hands spilling it over the bed. After a while she fell into a nervous sleep, her body twitching under the blanket, while she murmured words whose meaning he couldn’t catch. At one point she hummed a tune he didn’t recognise.

He looked at her and wanted to cry. Her innocence had a dark shadow over it now. She had seen for herself that bullying, brutal side of his country that he had worked so hard to conceal from her. She had been frightened in a way she could not possibly have imagined and that he had never felt able to warn her about.

She
was
our
friend
,
our
hope
.
She
could
have
told
the
world
that
we
are
not
the
beasts
we
are
thought
to
be
.
Now
we
have
lost
a
friend
,
and
destroyed
a
small
chance
to
change
the
world
’
s
perceptions
of
us
.
How
foolish
,
how
wrong-headed
our
judgements
are
.

He lit a cigarette and waited by her side as she slept.
Outside, the sky darkened as the clouds moved in and snow began to fall again.

*

For a moment Kate thought the knocking was in her dream but it persisted, more urgently now and louder, and she knew it was real. She got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and opened the door. Three men burst in, one racing past her into the room, the other two taking her by the elbows and dragging her backwards. The door was kicked shut and locked. She was thrown onto the bed, too frightened to scream.

‘
What
did
they
want?
’
Berlin
asked
quietly
,
as
soon
as
she
was
awake
.

‘
They
asked
me
where
you
were
,’
she
replied
.

‘
Did
you
tell
them?
’

‘
How
could
I?
You
never
told
me
where
you
’
d
gone
.’

‘
What
did
they
ask
you?
’
He
was
sure
they
wouldn
’
t
have
stopped
at
that
,
not
when
they
knew
they
had
her
for
an
hour
and
a
half
before
he
was
due
to
return
.

‘
Stupid
questions
.
What
I
was
doing
in
Moscow
.
Why
I
had
come
here
.
Nothing
really
.’

He
looked
at
the
pale
,
frightened
figure
on
the
bed
and
knew
that
something
terrible
had
happened
that
she
was
concealing
from
him
.

‘Where is he?’ Her captor spoke in Russian.

‘Who?’ she answered foolishly.

‘Your boyfriend.’ The man’s face was threateningly close to hers and his breath smelled sourly of cigarettes. She saw his pock-marked skin and its awful yellow colour, stained brick red where the irritation was alive.

‘He is giving a lecture,’ Kate replied.

‘There is no lecture,’ the man with the sour breath told her, ‘and there never was. At this moment your boyfriend is answering questions.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We have plenty of time to talk. We won’t be disturbed.’

He lit a cigarette and stared at her. She saw no humanity in
his eyes, only a terrifying emptiness as if conscience and compassion had been burned out of him. There was no quality within him she could appeal to.

‘Do you know what he is being questioned about?’

‘How can I?’ she said.

‘His relationship with you. Do you know why?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ She felt very cold. She began to shiver.

‘We have evidence that you are a British spy.’

‘I am a music student,’ she said, trying to sound defiant but aware that her voice was hardly above a whisper. ‘I’m studying the cello under Vinogradoff.’

‘That is your cover. We know you are an agent of British Intelligence, and that you are here to steal secrets from the Soviet Union.’

‘Did they ask you about me?’ It was her turn to ask questions now.

‘No,’ he replied. If it is to succeed, the lie must always be close to the truth. ‘It was some ridiculous alert about security.’

He
was
breaking
his
own
rules
.
Would
she
believe
him?
Somehow
he
feared
not
.

‘It was madness to bring her here.’ The man’s voice declared neither mockery nor surprise. He had no interest in Berlin. He was here to perform a function. Berlin said nothing. ‘Did you imagine you would get away with it?’

Berlin felt the gun being prodded into his side. He remained silent.

‘You cannot behave in this way. The risks are too great.’

What difference does my relationship with this English girl make? he wanted to ask. As if he could read his mind, his interrogator continued: ‘The girl draws attention to you. Her presence could lead to speculation about your connection to us. We can’t risk any disclosure about our relationship with you. The Department still believes you have a value worth protecting. Your actions are thoughtless and stupid.’

The idea of the girl as a threat was nonsense and they both knew it. He could guess what was coming next.

‘They must have asked you why you had come to Moscow?’ Berlin said.

‘I told them about the Conservatoire.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing that mattered. They frightened me by being there. They seemed so heartless, so brutal.’

He was sure they had made terrible accusations against her. What he hadn’t expected was that she would hide them from him.

‘You are an English spy,’ the man with the pockmarked face shouted. ‘Make it easy for yourself. Tell us what we know to be true.’

‘Go to the Conservatoire,’ she repeated. It was all she could think of to say. ‘Ask Vinogradoff. He will tell you that I am his student. I came to Moscow to study with him.’

She was crying now, any pretence of bravery long gone. She wanted Berlin here to make this horror end. But she knew he wouldn’t come. Somehow she would have to get through this nightmare on her own.

‘Did they ask you questions about me?’ Berlin asked gently. She was grasping his hand as if she were terrified that at any moment he might slip from her grasp, never to be seen again. ‘Try to remember.’

‘They asked few questions,’ she replied. ‘They went round and round in circles. They were trying to trick me into saying something I didn’t mean.’

‘Is this the bed you share with your Russian lover?’ She turned away, defiantly refusing to answer. ‘Is this the bed where you fuck your Russian boyfriend?’ he shouted at her, his face inches from hers.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Answer my question.’

For a moment Kate was too frightened to speak. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

The man turned to his companions and they laughed our loud. She felt an icy terror spread through her veins. Once more her interrogator walked round and round the chair she was sitting on, until she thought she would go dizzy.

He bent over her again, bringing his damaged face as close to hers as he could without touching. ‘Is he your first man?’ he asked.

Kate said nothing. He twisted her face towards him.

‘Answer me when I talk to you. Is he your first man?’

‘Yes.’ Very quietly.

‘Does he fuck well, your Russian boyfriend?’

She was crying too much to answer. Once more her interrogator circled the chair until she had recovered her composure.

‘We have a present for you. Would you like a present from us? Would it make you feel better?’

‘I want you to go.’

He took out a small tape recorder from his briefcase and plugged it in. ‘You will like this,’ he said. ‘It will bring back happy memories.’

The interrogator switched on a machine. For a while the tape ran silently. Then there came sounds of movements, muffled laughter, two voices, both distant and indistinct.

‘Do you recognise yourself?’

She heard her own voice murmuring over and over again,
Andrei
,
Andrei
. There were murmurs from Andrei that she could not understand but which tore into her heart – something so pure was being spied on, eavesdropped, used against them.

‘Turn it off,’ she shouted, ‘turn it off.’

Berlin was standing by the window. It was dark outside. Weeping clouds scraped the rooftops of the city and the snow fell heavily. He felt numbed by what had happened. He knew these people. He had associated with them for years. They were the agents of an authority fearful of threats to its power, though it would never admit to that. They were licensed to terrorise and kill and they had turned their brutality onto an innocent girl. Nothing in her experience can have prepared her for such an encounter. What could they have told her that she now felt unable to tell him? He felt sick. In one encounter the two sides of his life had collided and the girl was suffering. He should never
have brought her here. He had made a terrible mistake. What damage he had done to her he could not imagine.

‘They must have said something else.’

‘What they told me was unimportant.’

‘I have listened to the tape a number of times,’ her interrogator said. ‘I would describe it as a rare pleasure. My only regret is that we do not have it on film. Listen. We have more.’

This time it was different, and she felt a brief moment of relief. She heard a voice like hers but it was not hers, talking about her conversations with someone called Radin, reporting on plans for manned space flights. Then another voice, like Andrei’s but not his, asking technical questions about rocket engines, payloads, phrases that the real Kate would never understand in ten lifetimes.

‘Do you recognise yourself?’ the Russian asked.

‘That’s not me. That’s not my voice.’

‘You are in bed, fucking your Russian boyfriend, you are asking him questions and he is telling you secrets which you will give to your contact at the British Embassy.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ she said, trying to sound brave.

‘This tape is sufficient evidence,’ his interrogator replied. ‘You will be arrested, tried, and found guilty of anti-Soviet activity. The punishment for that is ten, fifteen years in a labour camp. We will not expect you to serve out your time with us. After some months, we will release you under pressure from the British Government. A magnanimous gesture, in the interests of good diplomatic relations between our two countries. During your imprisonment, you will meet with an accident. Your hands will be scalded. We will be unable to get you to a suitable hospital in time. That will have put paid to your dreams of playing the cello in the concert halls of the world.’