Secret Kingdom (33 page)

She had talked about the years in Moscow (‘We were students, stranded when the war broke out, unable to go home. We lived in hostels – I shared a room with Julia’), her success at swimming (‘I discovered a world where I could be better than almost anyone else. I’d never felt that before – winning was intoxicating, especially beating the Russians. I had a rival. Talia Osanova. She was the champion before I arrived. I displaced her. She really hated me’), bringing up her daughter, her friendship with Julia (‘I don’t think I would have survived without her; she was the most wonderful friend anyone ever had’).

Nothing unexpected, nothing revelatory. Martineau was mystified. Surely after all the restraint of their previous relationship, there had to be more. Then he became aware that she was finding her voice. She was searching for a way to tell him what she wanted him to know, that there were secrets in her mind that were fighting to
get out. There was more to come, he was certain, but it was not time yet. He had to be patient.

*

‘We were in Moscow at the same time, do you realize that?’ he said. (Was the apartment bugged? Were there listening devices inside the vase of flowers, under the pillow, concealed in the mattress or the bedside light? It was too late to stop now. He no longer cared. He trusted her and that was that.) He had promised himself he would tell her the truth.

He described his war, the years in Moscow, how he found Peter the Great, how it all turned sour when he discovered the Soviet double-cross, how in the bitter aftermath in London he fell from grace (‘I suppose someone had to be sacrificed, the pity was it had to be me’), the years of exile, the unexpected return to Budapest.

‘How much longer will you be here?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I finish at the end of December,’ he said without thinking.

She let out a cry and threw herself on him, holding him tightly. ‘Is that all the time we have, Bobby? Only a few more months?’

Martineau was horrified. Hardly had they found themselves again than a sense of an irrevocable ending was introduced into their relationship, the time when he would be recalled to London at the end of his posting. As he held her in his arms there was nothing he could say to comfort her.

She murmured, ‘They cannot have you back. You’re mine now, mine for ever. I will never let you go. Never.’

Koli’s voice on the telephone is faint and distant, as if he is on the moon, not half a mile away, but his sense of caution is unmistakable. ‘I have found someone who may be able to help,’ he tells her. ‘But you and I need to meet first.’

He is waiting for her as she’d known he would be. She leans forward to kiss him. Despite the warmth of the evening, his cheek is cold. She senses the tension within him.

‘What is it, Koli? What’s up?’

‘There is something I ought to tell you.’ He lights a cigarette. His hand is trembling. ‘I don’t know if it has any connection with what’s happened to Dora. I imagine it hasn’t. But you ought to know anyway.’ He looks away for a moment and then he tells her: ‘Alexei’s in Budapest.’

She doesn’t remember feeling anything at that moment. Later, thinking about what Koli has said, she invents the idea that his words made her react as if she had been held down in a bath of ice-cold water. She shudders, catches her breath and recovers. In fact it is worse than that. Her muscles freeze. She has a spiralling sensation in her arms and legs, her stomach falls away, for a moment the restaurant seems to spin around her. She is shocked, frightened, alone, standing on the edge of memories she imagines she has buried years before.

‘How do you know?’ She hopes her voice sounds normal.

‘How do you think I know?’

He has never told her directly what he does but she has never had any doubts. He had gone to the High Diplomatic School in Moscow as soon as they’d finished university. But he was no more of a diplomat than Martineau. (Officially, of course, that was his
cover and for the last two years he had been working in the Soviet
rezidentura
in Budapest.) He was a solitary, reclusive man; you seldom met him with others. She doubted that he had any friends in Budapest apart from her. He had a watchful nature. He missed nothing. Martineau had some of those characteristics too. They were both in the same business.

‘How long has he been here?’

‘A few days.’

‘Is he staying long?’

‘I imagine that depends on what happens.’

He means, it depends on whether the people take to the streets or not.

‘He wants to see you.’

‘Oh no, Koli,’ she says, freezing again. ‘I beg you, no. Anything but that.’

She has not seen or heard of Alexei since that terrible night all those years ago, in another time and another life. The last thing she wants is to be brought face to face with her memories.

‘Then he will do nothing. He made that clear.’

She is floating above them, and there below her are Koli and Alexei using long hooks to pull her back to their world from which she so desperately wishes to escape.

‘I’m being given no choice, am I?’

‘None,’ he says with a finality that terrifies her.

Alexei’s hook has fastened on her and he is bringing her in. Her past has caught up with her.

The note was waiting for him when he returned home. It proposed a place, a date and a time, nothing else. It was unsigned. The cheap paper he recognized as Soviet, itself enough of a signature to confirm the invitation was genuine. Should he go, or should he ignore the renewed approach? It didn’t take much persuasion to make up his mind. Koliakov’s purpose in telling him about the new relationship between the Soviets and the Egyptians before the news broke had been to gain his trust. There could only be one reason for that. He had something more important to tell him. The restaurant was,
appropriately enough, in Moscow Square. The table, Hart discovered when he arrived, had been booked in his name. He sat down and waited.

‘A small precaution, using your name, for which I beg forgiveness,’ a voice said behind him. ‘My friend, it is good to see you.’

A beaming Koliakov ordered wine and recommended dishes from the menu with which he appeared to be familiar. ‘I hoped you would come. I felt certain you would.’

‘Is this a good place to meet?’ Hart asked, not meaning that at all. Behind them, a gypsy band had struck up a
czardas
,
the lead violinist leaning into his instrument and gazing round at his audience.

‘If you mean, am I safe from the prying eyes of my colleagues, the answer is yes. They seldom come to this side of the city to eat and never as far as this. But it would not matter if they did see us together.’

Hart was baffled and said so. Koliakov appeared to be amused by what he dismissed as Hart’s innocence. ‘I have informed my superiors that a British diplomat has invited me to dinner. Now you understand why the table was booked in your name. This meeting has been cleared at the highest level.’

‘Will you write a report afterwards?’ Hart asked only half seriously. ‘Will you tell your people what I ate and drank?’

‘Naturally. My superiors are very demanding. They will want to know the name and address of the restaurant, whether you have given me any gifts, what we have talked about. I assume it is the same for you.’ This with a smile. ‘Should we make notes now, do you think, or shall we trust to memory?’

He pulled out a notebook and a pencil – it was clearly from this notebook that he had torn his invitation. ‘You chose the cold beetroot soup, I think.’

Hart laughed. The man couldn’t be all bad. He had a sense of humour. He allowed himself to relax a little. He listened while Koliakov told him what he knew about Hungarian wine.

‘Shall we come to the point?’ Koliakov said half an hour later. ‘Is it not time to remove our masks?’

‘I’m not with you.’

Koliakov emptied his wine glass.

‘You are not a diplomat, my friend. That is your cover. You are an intelligence officer. You are recently out of training school in
New Maiden, and Budapest is your first posting. You are here to learn the ropes, as you British call it. You do not have to tell me if I have hit the bull’s eye, but I know I am right.’

Koliakov poured himself another glass of wine. He had drunk most of the first bottle and was now well into the second. So far it appeared to have no effect on him at all. For a man so thin that was surprising.

‘So who am I? You are curious, no doubt, to know more. Like you, my diplomatic role is a cover. I work for the KGB.’ He raised his glass to toast Hart. ‘We are both in the same business, though on different sides. I believe it is important we should get to know each other, enjoy each other’s company. Who knows? There may come a time when our lives depend upon it.’

What do you do when a Soviet agent rumbles your disguise and tells you so? The New Maiden syllabus, surprisingly, didn’t stretch as far as that, perhaps because it was something that wasn’t meant to happen. Denial was out of the question. Better treat it lightly. You might learn something that way.

‘What gave it away? The cloak or the mask?’

Koliakov slapped him on the back affectionately. ‘I love the English,’ he said, laughing. ‘You take nothing seriously.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘You must not worry that your cover is blown. What does it matter? We are all blown after a few weeks in a foreign country. I hope in my quiet way I might have merited a little curiosity from the British. Perhaps a modest file in your famous Registry.’ He leaned forward, staring into Hart’s eyes. ‘We must not allow the facts of our professional lives to spoil our dinner. For tonight the Cold War is suspended. Friends for an evening, yes?’

Koliakov raised his glass to Hart. ‘A truce?’

‘Yes, of course.’ What else could he say? ‘A truce.’

They talked after that, not about secrets or betrayals but about themselves. Koliakov, Hart learned, had been in Budapest for two years.

‘I prefer it to Moscow. Anywhere is better than Moscow. I was born in Leningrad. You understand the reason for my hostility to Moscow. But the Hungarians are a vulgar people, do you not find that? One tires so quickly of their peasant culture. I prefer to eat without the indigestible accompaniment of a gypsy band.’

His happiest time, he said, had been his last post, three years in
New York. That explained his accent. ‘What a city. What a people. There I was a correspondent for Radio Moscow. That was my cover. I was engaged in active measures,’ which he described as ensuring that the Soviet Union was portrayed favourably in newspapers and on the radio.

‘It was not real intelligence work, you understand,’ he said. ‘My job did not call for the proper exercise of the skills I have acquired.’ What those skills were, he didn’t say. ‘I had wanted to be posted to the United Nations but sadly I was not successful. Promotion in the Soviet Union is dependent more on whom you know than on merit. My contacts were not of sufficiently high calibre to allow me to win my case. Still, I had three years in New York. For that at least I must be thankful.’

They were the last to leave the restaurant. Even the musicians had packed up their instruments. Hart was exhausted but exhilarated, though for reasons he was hard put to define. He had been made no offer, told no secrets, nor asked for any. But he knew more about his opponent than he had ever dreamed he would.

Koliakov got to his feet. He paid the bill and refused a receipt. He caught Hart’s surprise.

‘It is so bourgeois to ask for a receipt, do you not think?’

They stood on the pavement outside the restaurant waiting for a taxi.

‘May I drop you?’ Koliakov enquired. ‘I have a car.’

‘I’ll walk,’ Hart said. ‘Clear my head a bit.’

‘Goodnight, my friend. I have enjoyed this evening. We must do it again before long. Next time we will speak Russian together. We will talk about Martineau’s mistress. Yes? The one he shares with our General Abrasimov.’

‘I hope I am not disturbing you,’ he says in Russian. ‘May I come in?’

He greets her as if they are friends who meet regularly. There is nothing in his manner to suggest that more than sixteen years have passed since they last had any contact with each other.

‘Of course.’

His hair is grey now but still as thick as she remembers, his skin the same deathly pale; only the shadows under his eyes are darker, and there are deep lines on his cheeks and around his mouth where before there were none. His face has coarsened with age and his body is wider and heavier. He looks older than she expected, but there is no question about the strength concealed beneath the immaculate general’s uniform. That impression of power contained within him is just as she remembers. Even now she senses its whisper of attraction.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘Do you have whisky?’

‘I have some beer.’

‘Thank you.’

She goes into the kitchen to fetch the beer from the fridge and a glass of mineral water for herself. Alexei is walking slowly around the room, inspecting her photographs, her books, all her possessions with the air of a man conducting an inventory. He picks up a framed photograph. It is the picture taken on Margit Island. ‘I take it this is Dora.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Who is that with her?’

‘Julia Kovacs.’

He frowns, as if he is trying to remember who she is. ‘What happened to Julia?’

‘She died last year.’ Is it possible that he can know nothing about her death? ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

If his surprise is an act, then it is convincing. He doesn’t ask how she died. Is his lack of curiosity because he already knows the answer?

‘Dora is sixteen now?’

‘Yes. Sixteen.’

‘A young woman already. How quickly it all passes.’ He has his back to her and he is looking through the photographs once more. ‘Almost the age you were when we met.’

Suddenly the dam bursts in her head and there is nothing she can do to stop the memories of that time in Moscow flooding her consciousness.

She is in hospital. She does not know how long she has been there. From time to time doctors inspect her, prod her, take her pulse, her blood pressure, draw off samples of her blood, press her stomach. The baby is well, they
say. That at least is something. Nurses change the dressings on her wounds and sponge her body. She doesn’t want to eat, but she must, the nurses tell her, for the sake of the baby. They give her pills and she sleeps much of the time. She no longer knows who she is. Her mind is blank. She thinks of nothing, not even the baby, though she feels it flutter into life once or twice. She says little. She has instructed the doctors and the nurses that she will not see Alexei. She gives no reason. Only Koli and Julia are allowed into the ward.

Koli comes when he can. Julia is there every day. She remembers waking one day and seeing Julia leaning over the bed. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she says.

Nothing is lost over time, she realizes. What you bury when you forget is only in a shallow grave.

‘Ah, your great moment.’ He has stopped in front of the framed Olympic poster. He stares at the white silhouette of the Greek discus thrower superimposed on an impression of Big Ben and other London landmarks (she wonders if Alexei knows it is Big Ben). ‘You were always a wonderful swimmer, and you triumphed. What was the name of your great rival? Tall girl, from Volgorod, wasn’t she?’

‘Talia Osanova.’

‘Osanova. She hated you, I remember. Did she get a medal in London too?’

‘She wasn’t in the Soviet team. She was too old to compete by then.’

‘Her presence would have made no difference. You were always better than she was.’

He sits down on the sofa. ‘May I?’ He has taken out a gold cigarette case.

‘Of course.’ He smokes cork-tipped Western cigarettes, Peter Stuyvesant. How does he get hold of them?

‘I thought it best to wait until Dora went out.’

Half an hour earlier Dora had been summoned unexpectedly by one of her teachers for a meeting at school. Alexei must have manufactured this absence. No doubt he knows just how long she will be away. Everything he does is calculated to the last detail. She wonders if there are any limits to his power.

‘Koli has told me about Dora’s exam results. Her disappointment is understandable. She is serious about becoming a doctor, I take it?’

‘Very serious.’

‘Is she good enough?’

Eva is startled by his question. If he has spoken to Koli, then he must know why Dora failed. ‘According to her teachers she is, yes.’