Red Star Burning

30

They’d kissed but perfunctorily, acquaintances rather than husband and wife, and afterward remained standing although not together, Radtsic staying close to where he’d greeted Elana just inside the door, Elana, still wearing the vivid red dress, wandering aimlessly around the conservatory like a disappointed prospective buyer.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Radtsic, breaking the awkwardness.

“It was my duty to come but I didn’t want to,” said the woman. She stopped close to a corner of the windowed room, frowning up at a roof joint. “They’ll be listening to everything, I suppose?”

“And filming,” confirmed Radtsic. “What’s happened to Andrei?”

“There were always three Russians in the room. After Andrei’s outburst they asked him to go with them, so they could protect him. They asked me, too. I refused. The French officials there asked Andrei if he wanted to go with them. He said yes, at once, and left with them. They would have been your people, wouldn’t they: FSB?”

“Yes,” Radtsic confirmed again. “What did Andrei say to you before he went?”

“Just repeated that he never wanted to see or hear from us again. That we were dead to him, both of us.”

“He’s my son: supposed to respect me and do what I tell him!” It was a plea, not an angry demand.

“He’s a man: a young one but still a man,” corrected Elana, finally slumping into a overpadded, solitary positioned easy chair making it impossible for Radtsic to sit close to her. “He doesn’t respect you anymore, Maxim Mikhailovich. He hates and despises you. And now me, for coming here to you.”

“Do you hate and despise me?”

“I’m not sure, not yet,” admitted Elana, with brutal honesty. “I do know I don’t want to be part of any of this. But I know even more than I’ve ever known anything in my life that I never wanted to lose my son, which is what you’ve made happen.”

“You don’t understand what-”

“Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t understand!” stopped Elana, giving way to shouted anger. “I understand every fucking thing you’ve made me do and with which I went along because I am your wife! And while I don’t know yet if I despise and hate you, I do know that I despise and hate myself for doing it, for allowing it to happen.…”

Radtsic began to move toward her but Elana started up, moving away from him. “I don’t want you near me. What will happen to Andrei?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me!” she erupted into almost screaming frustration. “He’ll be punished for what we’ve done, won’t he? Become a nonperson at the age of nineteen. How do you feel about that, Maxim Mikhailovich? You proud about destroying your only son?”

“Stop it, Elana!” demanded Radtsic, matching her anger. “You know why I had to do this. How everything would have worked if Andrei had done what he was told instead of babbling about kidnap, giving the French the legal excuse to hold you-”

“He didn’t say we’d been kidnapped!” halted Elana.

“You?” questioned Radtsic, uncertainty lessening his anger. “But you knew…?”

“I didn’t say it either. Neither of us said we’d been kidnapped.”

“Stop wandering about!” ordered Radtsic, loudly. “I need to know what happened: how it happened … if there’s a way of getting him back.”

Elana hesitated, seemingly unsure, but went back to the overstuffed armchair. “I can’t answer your question: don’t have any answers.”

“Tell me from the beginning, from the time you arrived in Paris.”

Elana frowned in recollection. “I did everything you told me. I went to Andrei’s apartment direct from the airport. Yvette wasn’t there. Andrei and I ate dinner at a cafe quite close. Everyone knew him: I was very proud at how popular he was. I didn’t meet Yvette until the second night. I like her. That first night he kept asking why I’d come so unexpectedly, almost without warning. I decided against telling him outright: I wasn’t sure how he’d react. I told him my coming was part of a surprise: that together we were going London to meet you and that you had something very important to tell him.”

“You didn’t say anything, hint even at a defection?”

“I’ve just told you I didn’t,” said Elana, irritably. “He seemed so happy, so confident. Even a hint would have been a mistake. I wanted to get Andrei here first.” She smiled, wanly. “I was the one guilty of kidnap. I expected him to be more excited at my arriving and of our coming on here. I thought it might have been to do with Yvette: not wanting to leave her, I mean.”

“But he agreed to come?” said Radtsic.

Elana nodded. “But without much enthusiasm.”

“How did you explain being escorted, by English people?”

“He only ever met two English people, Jonathan Miller and his partner, whom I only ever knew as Albert. Remember, Andrei never knew precisely what you did: the position you held. Just that it was something important and very high in the government. I told him you were in London with a Russian delegation for an internal conference and that you’d arranged for us to get to London on a plane taking some people from the British embassy. I told Miller and his partner, so they wouldn’t make any mistakes on our way to the airport. Andrei didn’t like either of them. He was rude when he met them.”

“You think he suspected who they were?”

Elana shook her head. “Although he didn’t know exactly what you did, he did know how powerful you are.” She hesitated. “How powerful you were. And he was used to your going away, without any explanation.”

“He didn’t questioning it?”

“After the awkward restaurant meeting with the British he said he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t travel on a normal flight.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was how you wanted it. He never challenges you, does he?”

“Not until now,” corrected Radtsic.

Elana looked up to the conservatory corner she’d examined earlier. “I don’t like being listened to.”

“I’m going to have to cooperate to get Andrei back. I don’t understand how you came to be intercepted or how-or why-the kidnap claim came to be made.”

Elana stared at her husband for several minutes. At last she said: “Maxim Mikhailovich, you’re not making sense! You were always going to have to cooperate, tell them everything for us to be accepted: protected as we’ll have to be protected for the rest of our lives. And we can never get Andrei back. He’s gone: we’ve lost him forever.”

“I won’t lose him. I’ll do a deal.”

“What deal? With whom? You ran away from Russia because you were going to be purged: what do you imagine would happen to you if you changed your mind now and we went back? You’ve got nothing with which to negotiate with the British. To keep us safe you’ve got to tell them everything. Andrei won’t come. Stop fantasizing, accept reality. And that reality is that you’ve made a terrible mistake and wrecked the family.”

“What if Andrei accepts reality and recognizes he’s made a terrible mistake: changes his mind?”

“What do you imagine the reaction would be to his going up to the commandant of whatever Siberian gulag he’ll be sent to and saying he doesn’t like it there and wants to come to England after all!” derided Elana.

“He won’t be sent to a Siberian gulag: things aren’t like they were, in the old days. There’s law and Andrei hasn’t broken any law.”

There was another long silence before Elana said: “If there’s law that’s got to be followed, how could you have been purged? You didn’t break any law.”

“What I’ve done, all my life, isn’t governed by any law,” said Radtsic, in subdued reflection. “There has been a terrible mistake. But I didn’t make it: wouldn’t have made it because I knew everything, devised it all, and could