Secret Kingdom (32 page)

‘What name?’

‘Julia Kovacs.’

*

Is this wrong? Tell me.

She put the key in the lock and went in, fearful that opening the door might release a gale of memories, spinning her fragile emotions helplessly out of control. But nothing happened. No spectral wind
knocked her off her feet, no ghosts appeared to taunt her. She stood in the darkened hall, alone and unharmed. It was still the same apartment and she knew her way around it blindfold. Nothing had changed since she had last been here. Except it was lifeless. Abandoned. Unlived-in. There was no energy in the atmosphere because there was no Julia. Her presence and the life she brought, her laugh, her endless wish to share her enthusiasms with you, all these were missing, even the smell of her incessant cigarettes. No danger from the past because nothing of Julia remained.

Tell me, Julia. Is what I am doing wrong?

A shaft of light pierced the gloom where the morning sun burst through a gap in the curtains, illuminating a table on which a book lay open and face down. She picked it up. Camus’s
La Peste.
In the last weeks of her life (though at the time she had no idea that these were the last weeks of her life) Julia had discovered France, existentialism, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Malraux, Camus, the songs of Juliette Greco, and was promoting them as if no one had heard of them before. She had been reading out a passage to Eva on that last evening. No one had touched it since that heartbreaking night.

*

In the painful months that followed, she had left the apartment locked. Remembering how it was when Julia was alive gave her a lifeline that helped her cope with the shock of Julia’s disappearance. It meant there was still a chance that something of her was left that she could discover and cherish when finally she did have the strength to open the door and go in. It was an evasion, she knew that, but necessary if she were to keep her sanity. In the early days there were many occasions when, desperate and tearful, she had stood on the landing outside the door, key in hand. Then her courage had deserted her and she had retreated down the stairs. The flat remained untouched. It had become her own secret shrine to Julia’s memory.

She justified her decision to enter the flat now because she had at last found a need for it that could be satisfied in no other way. No one knew she had the key. It was as safe a place as she could imagine. If Martineau arrived at the appointed time, then she would know that what she was doing had Julia’s approval. She felt her
energy return. Her period of mourning was over. That was what Julia was telling her.

She pulled the curtains and opened the windows. The sharp light of morning breathed some kind of life into the rooms once more. The apartment was larger than her own, and furnished with a lighter and more distinctive touch. She had always envied Julia’s ability to make anywhere she lived unmistakably her own. She dusted and swept the carpets. She put the flowers she had brought into a vase. She plumped the cushions on the sofa. She left the copy of
La Peste
where it was, opened at the page Julia had been reading.

She went into the bedroom. There was a large double bed. Eva had always teased Julia about this. The only mystery in their relationship, the only secrets they never shared, were about Julia’s relationships with men. She took sheets from the cupboard and held them against her cheek for a moment before making the bed, wondering why she was doing this. She wasn’t going to sleep here. But the act was necessary if she was to complete her sense of ownership of the place, however temporary that might be.

There must be no rooms into which Martineau can’t go.

That was Julia speaking. When Martineau comes, she was saying, you must hold nothing back. There can be no barriers between you any more. This time he must know everything.

She smiled to herself. It had always been like this. All her indecisions, her insecurities, all those doubts she had poured out about love, becoming a mother, looking after her parents when they got old, her fights with her brothers, the future of socialism; Julia had always been there to tell her what to do, how to think. It was happening still. Julia had the answers she needed.

That was the moment when she knew for certain that something of Julia was still alive in this apartment: her spirit, her personality, her love for Eva were still there, protecting her. The doubts that had built up over the previous weeks receded. The other Julia, the woman who had gone to Moscow without telling her, who had deceived her in ways she found impossible to understand, was vanishing in the presence of these familiar reminders – her furniture, her pictures, her books. Eva had been touched by her unseen presence. She felt her uncertainties falling away and Julia’s resolve passing to her. Opening up the apartment for Martineau was right. Julia had come to her aid once more. It was like old times.

*

‘Damn.’

He felt the razor nick his skin and a moment later a thin line of blood trickled down his chin. Bloody hell. He finished shaving quickly, washed his face, dabbed cold water on the cut (a deep nick, what had he been thinking of?) and stuck some cotton wool over it to stop the bleeding.

The telephone rang. ‘I’ve been summoned to the Ministry.’ Archie was in executive mood. ‘I expect to be told officially they’re going to bring Leman’s trial forward. I’ll be back by ten-thirty. Could we have a word then, Bobby?’

Out of the question.
‘That’s going to be difficult, Archie.’

‘We’ll need to get our thinking caps on smartish if we’re to do anything for the poor sod.’

Randall said nothing. Silence was his way of expressing displeasure.

‘How about later on then? Twelve? Twelve-thirty?’

‘Do my best. No promises.’

‘I need a word, Bobby.’ It was as close to an instruction as he could give. Randall liked arrangements to be definite, hated uncertainty. Well, this time he’d have to lump it. He had more important things to attend to.

‘If I can make it, I’ll be there. You can count on that.’

‘All right, old boy.’ Did he detect resignation in Randall’s voice, or was that his imagination? ‘See you later. Thanks.’

He tore the cotton wool off his chin too sharply and started the bleeding again. He looked in the mirror and saw a spot of blood on his shirt front.

‘Damn.’

*

Voices on the landing outside. Male voices and the distinctive tread of male feet. (Heavy boots? Or was that her fevered imagination?) She held her breath. She couldn’t make out what was being said. She crept to the door and, kneeling, looked through the keyhole. Whoever was there had gone. She could see no one. False alarm. She stood up, feeling dizzy. Where was Martineau? She looked at her watch. It was still early, she couldn’t expect him to arrive before the time she had set. She went back into the sitting room and stood
by the window anxiously watching the street below. What she was looking for she couldn’t say.

*

The street was crowded. He heard voices all around him, the exchanges of everyday life. No crisis visible here, nothing to suggest this country was about to explode. Yet in a week or two these same people might be lying dead on these same pavements. Suddenly Martineau felt an overpowering sense of responsibility for them, that he single-handedly had to save their lives. For one extraordinary moment he wanted to stop them as they passed, shake their hands, kiss their cheeks, reassure them that he was doing everything in his power to help, that he would protect them until there was no breath left in his body.

The emotion passed and some kind of balance reasserted itself. How could he be responsible for people he didn’t know? His job was to gather information, report accurately and truthfully what was happening in Hungary, and to send it on to London so that those who were wiser than him could take the necessary policy decisions.

But even as he said that to himself, he knew that his connection with these people, this beautiful city, this country, went much deeper now. Eva and Dora had seen to that. They had made him a part of their lives. Through them he shared their hatred of those who occupied this land and their refusal to accept the wrongs that were imposed on them by the Soviet-inspired government. He must continue the fight on their behalf to do whatever he could, within the limitations of his own powers. If their lives were in danger, then he must save them.

*

She hears the key in the lock. She doesn’t move. The front door opens. Light from the landing floods the dark hallway briefly, then is obscured by the outline of a man entering the apartment and closing the door carefully behind him.

‘Eva?’ A whisper, no more. ‘Eva?’

‘Bobby.’

In the half-light she feels him reach out for her. She throws herself into his arms. He is hers again. Her exile is over.

*

They made love with an intimacy they had not achieved before. The barrier that had prevented them telling each other about their lives had been removed the moment Martineau opened the door of Julia Kovacs’s apartment. The disguises they had assumed when they’d first met were gone. In their place was a silent acknowledgement that there were no more walls, no more secrets between them, no parts of their lives they had to conceal any more. The last shreds of cover had been torn away and they faced each other as they truly were, though not a word had yet been spoken. Lovers liberated from the deceits they had practised on each other to preserve their love. Lovers to whom the ability to love had been miraculously returned.

*

The afternoon sun illuminated the bedroom. A slight breeze came in through the open window and ruffled the curtains. Miles away, or so it seemed, he could hear voices in the street, but these were other lives, other dramas; they had nothing to do with him. At the embassy Randall would be waiting for him, looking at his watch, wondering what on earth he was up to, cursing his non-appearance. At this moment his life was here, in this room, with this beautiful woman whom he had claimed once more. What he had dreamed of had happened.

‘I cried for days after you left,’ Eva said, suddenly reaching out for him. ‘I tried to hide my tears from Dora but she guessed. So I had to invent a quarrel to explain why you weren’t there any more. She talked to me so seriously, urging me to make it up with you. She could not understand why I wouldn’t do so.’

She lay, arms above her head, her body exposed to him. She was as beautiful as he remembered, only now there was another side to it. Their time apart had moved their love forward; the manner in which they had rediscovered each other had pushed it into a new dimension.

‘Whose apartment is this?’ he asked, unable to repress his need to know that it was safe. ‘Have you borrowed it from a friend?’

‘It belonged to someone who died,’ she said.

‘What happened?’ He knew before he had finished the sentence
that it was a question he should never have asked. He could feel the shiver run through her body. He touched her hand. ‘I’m sorry. Forget I said that.’

She didn’t want to answer but she had to. How can lovers have secrets?

‘Julia Kovacs was my great friend. She was arrested one night and taken away. I never saw her again.’

‘Are you sure she’s dead?’

‘Those who never return are always dead.’ She lay back on the pillow, her eyes closed. ‘We spent the evening together. We’d had supper. It was late, nearly midnight. We were finishing a bottle of wine and then I was going home. We’d been listening to a new Frank Sinatra album she’d got hold of from somewhere. She was reading to me, a passage from a book by Albert Camus. Suddenly the doorbell rang.’

Martineau took her hand. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’

She stares at him, unseeing, unhearing. She is back in the apartment on that fateful night.

‘She put down the book and looked at me, surprised. It was very late for someone to drop by. She went to open the door. I remember the doorbell ringing again. Then there was a scream. I ran out to see what had happened. She was being dragged down the stairs by two men. I tried to go after her but I was held back. I called her name again and again, but she never looked back. Then she was gone. She always said the apartment would be mine when she died. She had no one else to leave it to, no family, no husband. No one knows it’s mine, not even Dora. This is the first time I’ve been back since that night.’

‘How long ago did this happen?’ he asks.

‘Towards the end of March, more than a year ago.’

A year ago.

A simple phrase that explains so much. What had Cars well said? ‘Without warning, a year ago everything comes unstuck. Either she falls out of love with the system or she’s under instruction to distance herself from it. Within a few weeks she’s detached herself from all her Party activities. That raises questions. Has she been instructed to infiltrate local groups known to be hostile to the government? If she has, we must assume she’s working for the AVH.’

Now we know why, Martineau wanted to shout. Now we know
what happened. There was no sinister interpretation in her actions. The regime had murdered her friend and she had stopped believing in communism. It was all falling into place. A senseless, brutal, unexplained killing had broken her faith, destroyed her trust, pushed her beyond the reach of the dogma, the rhetoric, the lies and deceptions, the stultifying, numbing emptiness of the system. They were on the same side now. That much was clear. She was his, truly his, for ever. She had to be. He felt secretly triumphant.

He leaned over and, smiling, put his hand against her face.

*

The water burst out of the shower, ice-cold. Eva screamed, bending low, her arms across her breasts so the cold jet sprayed over her back. Martineau gently pulled her arms away, making her stand upright with him, drawing her towards him. Then he kissed her and slowly the water warmed up.

‘If you leave me again I will die,’ she said.

*

‘After six years in Moscow, we all came back full of enthusiasm to build a new country,’ Eva was saying. ‘We were fervent in our creed. We believed in the idea of a socialist future, that it was possible to make the world a better place. That’s what we wanted. That’s what we were going to do with our lives.’