High Jinx (15 page)

A separation of two months was for Alice as heavy a privation as it was for Alistair. Since that summer before the war, she had come to think of him as something of a flower she was herself responsible for nurturing. She had presided over his formal initiation into manhood. She had enlisted him in the great struggle for the world. And she had found herself in the company of a man who year by year, month by month, almost day by day, suggested the towering limits to which one human being could go. Her little eighteen-year-old, whom she had taken from museum to museum, now a Nobel Prize winner! Now the instrument of the most formidable intelligence breakthrough in history!

She went happily into the bathroom. He drew down the blinds in the bedroom and moments later was waiting for her in bed. She came to him, and he wondered whether it was possible that she could have added to her inventory of knowledge of how to pleasure him. She was resourceful, and adamant, and adoring; and she whispered, as they locked together, her devotion to him, to his great genius, to the great debt the world owed to him; and he knew bliss, unaware whether what he heard in his ears or what he experienced in his loins gave him the greater pleasure. Soon, he moaned. And she fell silent, her lovely, loosened head of hair on his chest.

Fleetwood looked at her and reflected that she was a very special vessel of delight. She managed a fluent combination of talents, he thought. She knew how to appeal to his mind, by saying things he liked to hear—liked to hear them because after all they were true: he was a scientist, and he knew as a scientific fact that he was abnormally good-looking, and very probably a genius. And then she had a true appreciation of his body. The combination of skills she used, with her hands, her lips, her breasts, were perfect orchestrations of a tribute to his remarkable body. Yes, Alice Goodyear Corbett was really quite remarkable, a refreshing contrast to the perfumed mini-delights he satisfied himself with in London. And then, behind it all, they had the spiritual bond in common, that great and exciting struggle in which they had joined against Western hypocrisy.

It was very nearly too much, Sir Alistair thought contentedly as he reached over and turned on the bed light. It was twenty minutes to eight.

‘I have ordered dinner for the usual time. A dinner fit for a queen. Fit for you, my dear Alice. My dear Alice Goodyear Corbett. I am glad that I do not remember the name of that Russian yokel you are married to.'

‘Ah, my darling. That is, really, a professional relationship. Not to be mentioned in the same breath with yours and mine.'

When the doorbell rang, she rose and went into the bathroom.

Fleetwood let the waiter into the large living room adjacent to the bedroom. After the dinner, he poured them each an aquavit and then said, ‘All right now, Alice Goodyear Corbett. What is going on?'

She was grave now, as she began.

Although she had been in the company of the head of the KGB a total of four times, starting when Alistair Fleetwood had confided to her what he thought he could accomplish, she was always terribly nervous in his presence. And when, three days ago, she had been instructed to go to him at midnight, she found herself wondering whether he might actually have in mind something—personal. The idea of anything personal with Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria did not appeal to her, ‘not one little bit, Alistair.'

But just in case, acknowledging the realities—that if he was determined to take her, she could hardly resist the head of the KGB—she went to him after taking a hot shower, using some perfume, and taking precautions.

‘I mean you can never absolutely tell. But on my way to the Kremlin I reminded myself that he likes routinely to keep very late hours. Between you and me,' she said to Alistair, ‘it is quite widely thought that he does this because Stalin always did it, and of course there are those who believe—I would not mention this to anyone but you, my darling—that he would not mind stepping into Stalin's shoes, in case, for instance, Malenkov failed, or whatever. Anyway, I was told to be there at midnight, I got there at eleven-thirty, and he called for me at one-fifteen!'

‘And then?' Alistair Fleetwood asked, anxiety audible in his voice.

‘And then he came quite quickly to the point.'

‘Which is?'

‘Well, Lavrenti Pavlovich says that an agent of his in whom he has supreme trust has told him there are reasons to believe that counterrevolutionary activity is being conducted by a highly placed Soviet official. But someone so highly placed—he did not, of course, disclose the name—that the KGB cannot proceed against him as it would against ordinary suspects. Nothing like tapping his telephone or surveying his mail, that kind of thing. Apparently this official gets most of his communications right through the Kremlin coding machine. And it is an urgent matter of state security to detect him in this pursuit. Lavrenti Pavlovich told me'—Alice's eyes were wide open, her grave face very grave, her voice now lowered so that Alistair had to strain to hear her—‘told me that this official could be a mortal enemy of the Soviet State.'

‘Mortal enemy? How can there be a mortal enemy, dear Alice? There is no such thing as a “mortal” enemy of history. It is history that is working on our side. There can be
setbacks
—of course. But nothing
fatal.
Nothing
mortal.
'

‘Well that was the word he used—
smertel'nyi,
which is the Russian for “mortal,” “fatal”—'

Fleetwood interrupted her. ‘Dear Alice, do you not suppose I now know why I have been summoned?'

‘Of course, dear Alistair. And the question is, can you supply a Zirca for Lavrenti Pavlovich?'

Fleetwood sighed. ‘My darling, it is most awfully intricate. You know that I had to put it together myself. I must have spent—oh, two hundred hours on it. The parts alone need to be hand-made. The testing, the refining, the fine-tuning …'

‘He said to tell you that the entire resources of the Soviet State are at your disposal.'

‘The entire resources of the Soviet State wouldn't save me five minutes' work.' Alistair Fleetwood seldom passed by opportunities to acknowledge the singularity of his achievements. Normally in the course of drawing attention to himself, he would not disparage the Soviet Union, but the scientist in him had just now been provoked. ‘Those chaps—' he said heatedly, ‘Tamm, Sakharov, Cherenkov, Frank—have become very skilled in manufacturing hydrogen bombs, and I am aware that they are working on a missile, and perhaps one day, not far away, a satellite. But they are heavily dependent on Western scientists, people like me—well, there aren't, exactly, “people” like me, except Einstein, Teller, Oppenheimer maybe. Yes, people like us. But you know, on the whole, Soviet scientists have not yet learned how to make, well, shredded wheat. Help
me
with a Zirca? Help Michelangelo paint a ceiling?'

‘Oh darling, we rely on you so heavily. But I must tell you that Lavrenti Pavlovich stressed that there is nothing more important than this mission. Your contribution could be critical, he said. I will avoid using the word you say is anti-Marxist, but suppose that he is correct, and that this counterrevolutionary official could deal us a devastating blow.' Alice Goodyear Corbett was becoming fiery in her delivery. Alistair Fleerwood remembered how, twenty years ago, lecturing to the young Cambridge socialists, she had spoken of Leon Trotsky. ‘You will do it, won't you, Alistair?'

‘There is an obvious alternative, Alice. Quite obvious.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Use the one that is already made.'

She drew a deep breath. ‘I have to admit, I had not thought of that.'

‘Well, you should think of that. Especially since as we both know, we are not even acting on the information we are currently getting.'

‘That doesn't mean it isn't valuable.'

They spoke, probed; and left it that she would return and make the counterproposal.

‘But what if Lavrenti Pavlovich says he can't spare the existing model?'

Alistair Fleetwood sighed. ‘I suppose I would need to reorder my schedule for the next month or two.'

Alice Goodyear Corbett embraced him.

‘But understand, you are seriously to raise with him the alternative.'

‘I promise.'

‘Do you promise to make me go to sleep tonight blissfully?' The Nobel laureate adopted the manner of a ten-year-old boy asking for a lollipop.

Alice Goodyear Corbett led him by the hand to the bedroom.

15

The Prime Minister sat stiffly in the back of the Rolls-Royce. His Foreign Minister was seated next to him. They drove through St. James's Park toward the Palace. He made an idle observation about the weather (it was sunny and warm, and Dahl Breckenridge observed that it was sunny and warm) concerning which the PM took no notice. Anthony Brogan knew that the session with Queen Caroline would probably be the most painful of any of the weekly meetings since he became Prime Minister. He knew, moreover, that the Queen did not welcome third parties at their meetings. Even so, his bringing Breckenridge along was bound to ease his burden, which was why, through the Queen's aide, he had solicited her agreement, perfunctorily granted, on the constitution of this particular meeting. There were moments with the Queen when it was very nearly impossible for the PM to say
anything.
Breckenridge was a phlegmatic type and was sure, when heavy weather came, to calm things down in his own unexcited, unexcitable way.

The Prime Minister's car advanced through the Main Gate, as usual. The inspector poked his head towards the window, saluted, and waved the car on into the inner courtyard.

They emerged, the steward opened the King's door, and they moved into the antechamber. The Queen's equerry bowed slightly, said good morning, and led the two top officials of the government up the staircase to the Queen's Audience Room. While they walked, Dahl Breckenridge said something complimentary about the Palace decorations. Once again the Prime Minister did not comment, so they continued the rest of the way to the Queen's Audience Room in silence.

Queen Caroline rose as they were ushered in.

She was wearing a deep-blue long-sleeved dress and a light pigskin belt. Her familiar pearls caught the sunshine coming in from the window facing the courtyard. With her left hand she held her poodle, Furioso; with her right, she shook hands with her ministers, then motioned them to sit down in the two leather-bound armchairs. She sat opposite them in the larger chair, putting her dog down on the empty seat.

She ignored her Foreign Minister. ‘I suppose, Prime Minister, that you will remark on the excellence of the weather, on the grounds that otherwise I might not have noticed it?'

‘Well, ma'am,' the Prime Minister made an earnest effort at geniality, ‘it would be positively—
ungrateful
—not to mention such weather, wouldn't you agree?'

It was immediately obvious that carefree remarks about the weather were not being received this day at the court of Queen Caroline. She looked vaguely out of the window, stroking her dog. ‘Interesting formulation, that. If I say that I
do
agree—that it would be ungrateful not to mention the weather—then I am acquiescing in an implicit agenda. Am I correct? One begins by saying good morning. One moves next to the question of the weather. That is convention. Conventions are necessary, I agree. But to invest in conventions an extra meaning, as you have just now done, Prime Minister, by suggesting that to do otherwise than to express one's gratitude for such weather is disdainful …?'

She turned and stared at him, and then smiled, picking up the dog and massaging his arched head. ‘Disdainful towards the God who willed us this good weather? It is always appropriate to express our gratitude to Him. But since it is unlikely that He was the efficient cause of today's weather, then we are being grateful to what? To a chance concatenation of elements over which we have no control, and which are in any case insensible to any gesture of approval or disapproval from us.'

The disconcerting thing about Queen Caroline when she went on one of these jags, the Prime Minister ruminated, was that she managed it all without malice. She was amusing herself, working her resourceful mind, draining the meeting of the kind of routine which so many of her predecessors (he had gathered) had invested it with. There was no alternative other than to wait it out; and it was dangerous, very, very dangerous, to let the mind wander: she demanded exact attention to what she was saying …

‘On the other hand, if I
disagreed
with you, you would harbour in your mind—don't contradict me now, Prime Minister—you would harbour in your mind the suspicion that your sovereign is simply insensible to the episodic niceties of nature. That would undermine me in your eyes. Obviously I would not wish to be a party to any attrition of my own reputation with my own Prime Minister, now would I? Would you?'

Anthony Brogan sighed. But that sigh was not detectable. Visibly, he smiled, and chuckled a little bit, and said nothing. It would be over soon, this—rite of passage—that so regularly preceded the matters of state, which were the staple of the weekly meetings.

‘But let it pass, let it pass, Prime Minister. Yes. It is indeed a beautiful day. And I trust you are feeling well.

‘Oh, speaking of feeling well, I cannot imagine that British farmers are feeling well, on receiving the news that you plan to cut farm subsidies. Doesn't it appear to you awkward, not to say wrong, to cut farm subsidies so soon after cutting the tax on luxuries? I acknowledge that ours is a Conservative government, but I shouldn't think it likely that it would continue for very long in power if you give the impression that you are engaged in transferring income from poor farmers to rich diamond merchants?'

The Prime Minister carefully explained that the luxury tax was being reduced from 75 per cent to 50 per cent, while farm subsidies were being reduced by a mere 16 per cent. The Queen listened, put the dog down, then smiled in the way she so often did, as a punctuation mark indicating that she was prepared to move on to the next matter at hand.