The Longest Pleasure (23 page)

'What relationship?'

Galitsin smiled. 'We are going to have a relationship, Nancy. It is inevitable. I could not keep my hands off you, now.'

"You're doing a pretty good job.'

He got up, returned to the sofa, knelt in front of her. He parted her legs, buried his face in the softness he sought, felt the strong muscles closing on his neck. Her fingers rippled through his hair.

'I don't love you, Alexander Petrovich. I don't think I'm the loving kind. But God how I want you! I realised that on my drive back to London the other night that if I didn't have you I'd regret it the rest of my life. Have you ever known that about a woman?'

Galitsin raised his head. 'Not before you. But it is something that I have felt since I saw you sitting in that comer, at Hastings. But this is not just you and me; This is Helena, and perhaps your friend Shirley, as well.'

She kissed his mouth, held him for a long while. 'It's your girl friend, too. If you walk out I will splash it all over the front page of every newspaper in. London. Then there will be no risk of her answering the advertisement.'

'Were I a cynic I would say that is your only reason for bringing me here.'

'I've told you why I brought you here. But a scoop like that would do me a world of good.' She got up, went to the stairs. 'And believe me or not, I'd also like to get you out of the mess you're in, Alexander Petrovich.'

He watched her legs disappear, put the guard in front of the fire, picked up their drinks and followed. Nancy Connaught lay on the bed, her hands beneath her head. She was naked. Her skin was the palest he had ever seen, paler even than Kirsten Moeller's, and dotted with freckles. There were even freckles on the huge, pink-tipped breasts. He wondered if Helena would look like this, before Tigran Dus. He could not imagine Helena naked. He had never thought of her naked. But his decision was made. And yet the blame had to rest with the woman. Because he was a human being, he supposed, and a coward. He gave Nancy her glass. 'You are forcing me to choose between Irena and Helena. Between my happiness and my sister's misery.'

"Do you really believe that, Alex? Where would be the point in harming your sister? Oh, I can see that she makes a useful threat. But if you opt out, you opt out. You Russians never struck me as being vicious.'

He kissed her stomach, moved up and down the brown dots. 'Opt out? What strange words you use. The Soviet Union is my country, Nancy. You are asking me to betray my people, my ideals...'

'I like that. What you're doing, I mean.' She pressed his head into her breasts, hugged it tight. 'You are growing on me, Alexander Petrovich. I could just adore you. Bite, Alex. Please bite.'

He bit, and she shivered. 'You wish to mother me. Women always wish to mother me. Soviet Russia is my mother.'

She threw him on his back, leaned over him, dragged her nipples up and down his face. 'Keep going, darling. If I give you another hour, you'll have spouted all the claptrap you've contracted for the past thirty years. Listen to me, I'm not talking about Brother Bruin, or Uncle Sam, or old John Bull. That stuff is for politicians. I'm talking about people. About you. You're too darned nice, too sincere and too thoughtful, to be a soldier. You're hot a murderer, and they're trying to make you one. That will be the end of Alexander Galitsin. You'll be a number on their files, an agent. And I'm talking about your friend Irena. She's going to die too, you know. You love her, and you'll be kissing her into her grave.'

'She will not answer the advertisement.'

'Then they'll think of something else. Oh, sure, maybe they'll do that anyway, but at least you won't be a part of it.'

'And you are not also thinking of yourself, Nancy?'

'I haven't denied it. But I can help you, Alex. I know the right people. I'll get you asylum, either here or in the States. Sure I want a bit of butter on my bread, but I won't run out on you.'

All that remained was the act of will, the saying of the word, the decision. The last of all decisions? Or the first of a whole series of decisions, each more damning, more frightening, more absolute than the last?

'And what do I believe, Nancy? How do you take a man's mind and tune it like a radio ?'

'Try believing in freedom.'

'And that is not claptrap?'

'Not my sort of freedom. I believe a man, or a woman, should be free to live as he pleases, to die as he pleases, when he pleases. He should be free to eat and drink and smoke himself into an early grave, or starve himself ditto. He should be able to screw whenever he pleases, whoever he pleases, providing the attraction is mutual. He should have the opportunity to earn a great deal of money, and the right to five like a pauper, if he chooses.'

You are beginning to sound like an anarchist' You mean I'm beginning to sound like an anarchist should. But nowadays even
anarchists have rules and regu
lations, codes of behaviour and codes of discipline. Oh, I'm not going to pretend I'm popular. In the U.K. I'm regarded as a complete nut. But the important thing is, they let me get on with it.'

'We have people like you in the Soviet Union. The state ignores them too.'

'Arguing with you is bloody difficult The difference is just a shade, but it's
there.
In the Soviet Union you can opt out, fine. And that's it, so long as you keep out of trouble. Here I can opt out, and still find a publisher for my stuff, it it's good enough. Got it?'

Galitsin sighed, pulled her close, buried his fingers in the softness of her buttocks. He wanted to hurt her, to break her confidence. But her response was pure pleasure.

'I do not know, Nancy. I am not good at making decisions. I have never had to make them before. I know that I am a very poor soldier. Yet I am a Hero of the Soviet Union. I know that I have not the stomach for this business, but I do not know what I can do about it. I don't know what to do about you. I do not think I could love you; you frighten me too much. But I want you. I do not really mind if you make capital out of me. But I know it would be wrong. I know how wrong it would be for me to betray Helena. But you are right in thinking that I cannot go on working for Tigran Dus. Sometimes I think I am going mad. This last week I have tried to play chess and forget what is happening. Now you have made it impossible for me to forget it any longer.'

Then why not let me tell you what to do? At least until you find your feet'

'And what would you say, now, Nancy?'

'I would say, move that finger just three-sixteenths of an inch to the right, sweetheart'

Alan Shirley wrote in his diary: 'Page
7
,106,
7th
January,
1958.
So Alexander Galitsin has disappeared. Predictable? Or planned? And now Tigran Dus is here. A gentleman to be watched. But then, so is Galitsin.

'And so is Nancy. I wonder what the little fool is really up to. I imagine she is doing the Good Samaritan bit, and is being take for a ride, or is she really much more than she seems? How odd if all these months she has been using me for Washington, instead of vice versa. How tragic that this business should make me suspicious of everyone. And how much of my suspicion is dictated by jealousy?

'In any event, she must know that I know where she has him. Is she waiting for me to come running ? And how long will the F.O. leave it in my hands? Damn and blast Galitsin. Damn and blast Dus. And damn and blast that sexy little red-head.'

4

The Traitor

It
occurred to Galitsin that there is no beauty to equal that of the sea. It lacked the colours, the varieties, of sunset, the prismatic faultlessness of a snowscape. But in its subtle variations of blues and greens and browns and purples it showed a mastery of colour superior to anything achieved by Picasso at his best, and in its restlessness, its changing moods, it was more emotional, more passionate, than the most aware of women. He wondered how much of life he had missed, through not discovering the sea until after the age of thirty?

'What do you think about when you stand at the window?' Nancy Connaught placed the tray on the bedside table, poured coffee.

'I think how beautiful all of nature is.'

'You should have been an artist
.
Or at least a photographer.' She handed him his cup, sat on the end of the bed to drink her own. 'You'll have to do something.'

He sipped, lay down. 'When?'

'Soon.' She took off her dressing gown, climbed over him. In her view of the world there was no division of labour. If she had given herself to him, then equally he had become hers. Now she set about arousing him with a gentle insistence which satisfied him as much as it obviously delighted her. 'What do you imagine is happening out there?'

'I prefer not to think about out there.'

"You.
even have the mind of an artist. They're always trying to forget that the world exists. It's not so easy for us hicks. Do you know, this last week is the first I've spent since high school without opening a newspaper? My God, somebody could have dropped a bomb.'

She took off her glasses, lay on his chest, kissed each eye, his nose, his chin, his mouth, tucked her face into the side of his neck and gave herself
.
Up
to long shudders of passion. She was as unlike Irena as it was possible to imagine. Where Irena had wanted activity, Nancy desired passivity. And yet, strangely, Nancy needed the man, where to Irena he had been only a pleasant accessory. In that sense, Galitsin supposed, Nancy was as much a prisoner as any of the people she affected to despise. But for that very reason she was the more attractive woman. What treachery! But it was too true to be denied. With Nancy it was possible to share. With Irena Szen, however complete the physical sharing, he had always felt a guest.

Now she lay still, an exhausted succubus. 'And we could be the only two people left in the world,' he said.

'Eh? Oh, you mean the bomb. Would you like us to be? the only two people in the world ?'

'No.'

'You'd like your friend Irena to be around too, I guess.' 'Her. And others. It would be too unfair upon all the others.'

'You're a nutcase, Alexander Petrovich. Do you think about Irena, a great deal?'

'I have thought about her very little this past week.'

'Bully for me. Well, it's time you started again. And about all those others, too.'

'Why?'

‘
Because, sweetheart, today's the day the garage said the car would be ready. And they couldn't have timed it better, as we're nearly out of food, which isn't very important, and we're all out of bourbon, which is catastrophic. And then there's all those minor problems, like your being a deserter from the Red Army, or from the Fourth Bureau, or whatever, not to mention a political refugee, not to mention a traitor, not to mention a renegade spy, not to mention an illegal immigrant to this country. Which, granted the peculiar British outlook on these things, is probably the most important of all, at this moment. I'd say at least half the policemen in the U.K. are looking for you right now. Plus one or two K.G.B. types. Fortunately, while the police probably know
where
to look, and won't, the heavies don't have a clue.'

'I
don't understand. You say the British police know where to find me?'

Your Ukrainian hackles are showing, sweetheart. I meant that someone in a position
to
tell the police where
to
look knows where you are.'

Your friend, Mr. Shirley?'

'That's right.
He'll
know there's nowhere
else
I
could
have taken
you.'

'But
he
has done nothing about
it,
for
a
week?'

You're safe. And your boys have chosen to play it right down.
So
long as the Russian Embassy hands out that story about your being ill, Alan will wait to hear from me. But he won't if this thing breaks. He won't be allowed to.'

Galitsin scratched his head. 'I do not understand any of this. I can understand Rauser saying that I was taken ill and so was unable to fulfil my programme. I understand that he is probably searching for me. But I do not understand why you have done nothing about that newspaper story you wish. And if, as you say, I am an illegal immigrant, and this man Shirley knows where I can be found, and still has not come for
me
... am I that valuable to the British?'

'Who knows? I'll" bet you're going to be that embarrassing to the Russians. As for my newspaper story, that's coming along nicely, in here.' She tapped her forehead, got out of bed, began to touch her toes.