There was a moment of silence and then the boy tried to turn in the front seat, arms flailing. ‘Defector!’ he shouted. ‘Traitor!’
The man beside him easily but carefully encompassed the boy in the already outstretched arm. He said: ‘Easy does it, kid. Easy does it.’
‘I brought a photograph,’ announced Galina, broken-voiced. ‘I brought a photograph of Natalia.’ Now that it no longer mattered, she wept uncontrollably.
It was to take five days of frantic but unsuccessful searching through New York by a United Nations rezidentura frightened of recrimination before the defection of Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin was reluctantly admitted to Moscow.
9
Determined against any provable association with Panchenko, whom internal, record-keeping security would have had to vet before admission to his office, Kazin decreed their contact be made outside the Directorate building. And insisted, too, that for such a meeting Panchenko wear civilian clothes. There was too much braid and colour in the uniform: too much chance of being remembered by someone. Kazin had not considered the circumstances of where and why it might be remembered. Desperately he was trying to be as protectively careful as he could. In everything. He still knew so little!
Kazin selected the Marx Prospekt because normally it was busily congested, wanting his to be one car unnoticed among so many. Ironically, adding to his frustration, there was not much traffic because the evening rush was unaccountably light. He drove slowly and in the ordinary lane, tonight keeping away from the restricted central path reserved for government officials. Usually Kazin enjoyed the privilege, disregarding speed limits or traffic signals, always confident of the permanently placed militia stopping any traffic to ensure his unhindered progress.
He slowed further approaching the Lenina metro station, isolating the waiting Panchenko well before he reached him. The man’s military bearing was obvious without the identifying uniform. He was wearing a grey suit and carrying a dark-coloured topcoat, maybe grey again or blue, and appeared discomfited, as if he were without any clothes at all, shifting from one foot to the other and gazing around, embarrassed. Or perhaps, corrected Kazin immediately, it had nothing at all to do with his unaccustomed dress. Perhaps the man was simply frightened, as Kazin was.
Panchenko saw him while the car was still some yards away. Kazin pulled against the kerb without the need positively to stop, just brake sufficiently for Panchenko to open the door and get in: the door was still not fully closed when Kazin moved off again.
‘I thought this was best,’ said Kazin. It was difficult to remain apparently calm: the questions and demands churned in Kazin’s mind. To avoid unsettling the other man it was vitally important not to sound as desperate as he was. Certainly important for Panchenko never to suspect that Kazin might be trying to distance himself by this unrecorded – but more important, absolutely deniable – meeting.
‘Yes,’ accepted Panchenko shortly. He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, using the movement of wiping his nose to cover clearing his forehead, and Kazin knew the security man was sweating.
‘There were no problems at the metro?’ Kazin did not really know what he meant by the question: he was simply holding back, refusing to hurry. He was perspiring too, and glad he could grip the wheel so that the unsteadiness did not show in his hands.
‘There are big problems,’ announced Panchenko.
This was how the conversation had to begin and to continue, with Panchenko and not himself showing the anxiety. Kazin said: ‘Tell me. Everything.’
‘Humiliated,’ complained Panchenko, almost petulantly. ‘The fucker humiliated me.’
Kazin pulled off the Marx Prospekt on to Kalinina to gain a quieter thoroughfare where he would not have to concentrate so much upon the traffic about him. This was not how he expected the account to come from the other man, but the outburst was important. It was precisely the way the security chief had to feel about Vasili Dmitrevich Malik. Kazin said: ‘I need everything from the very beginning: everything in its proper sequence.’
After compiling two official reports with the hostile interview in between, a chronological recall was easy for Panchenko. Kazin turned off Kalinina to an even lesser used road, putting the Kremlin monolith actually behind them. More questions crowded in upon those he already wanted to ask but he rigidly maintained the private control, saying nothing, knowing it would be wrong to break the narrative. This fury the man had to release, as a safety valve: he could be stoked again if hatred were necessary for anything further.
‘See!’ demanded Panchenko. ‘Humiliated! Like I said, the fucker humiliated me!’
‘Oh, he did,’ agreed Kazin, jabbing the exposed nerve. ‘He most certainly did: you’ve an enemy there, Lev Konstantinovich. A very bad enemy.’
‘And he’s got an enemy in me,’ said Panchenko, with exaggerated, almost childlike bombast. ‘He doesn’t know how bad.’
Good, thought Kazin, recognizing the attitude; very good. He said: ‘Tell me what really happened. Then we’ll decide the problems.’
‘I had no time to prepare: the time I needed to make plans,’ began Panchenko, the defence as rehearsed as the earlier account. ‘You said there would be time to set everything up carefully…’
‘I know that,’ encouraged Kazin reassuringly. ‘There’s no criticism.’
‘I was bewildered by the call to Gofkovskoye Shosse. More so because it was Malik, not you. When you told me to kill him, as we’d planned, I discovered Agayans had left the building and that the car was logged to his apartment, on Gogolevskiy…’
‘So that much of your account is completely accurate?’ interrupted Kazin. It was vital to know what could be relied upon and defended and what could not.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Panchenko. ‘The assembly of the squad, too. Although they were not the people I would have taken with me if I’d had the time properly to choose… we met at Verdandskovo: that’s accurate, too. A major – Chernov – a corporal and two rankers. And Agayans did answer the door in his nightclothes.’
‘Nine o’clock and he was in bed?’ queried Kazin, remembering the doctors’ reports of sleeplessness.
‘There were a lot of pills on the side table in the bedroom. He saw me looking and said the doctors had recommended he try to sleep earlier, using them. Complained it wasn’t working.’
‘Did you tell Malik this? Put it in either report?’
‘Of course not!’ said Panchenko irritably. ‘The story of my being in the bedroom has got to be that I surprised him in the act of suicide, hasn’t it!’
Who the hell did Panchenko think he was, addressing him like that! Kazin controlled any reaction. Wrong to focus upon the wrong person. Malik was the target: always had been. Why, agonized Kazin, had he done what he did that October day in Stalingrad! Why hadn’t he let the bastard bleed to death! He’d thought Olga was sure by then, as sure as he had been of her. Kazin supposed he’d done it to prove just how much he loved her. Poor Olga: poor darling, confused, uncertain Olga. Sidestepping both his recollections and Panchenko’s petulant anger, Kazin said: ‘We’ve moved ahead.’
‘And he appeared surprised, too,’ continued Panchenko. ‘Almost like he regarded it as some sort of joke. I couldn’t understand until later. Then I remembered his slow reaction in the bedroom. And the pills. He’d already taken his tranquillizers…’ Panchenko sniggered to himself and Kazin looked curiously across the car at the man. Panchenko went on: ‘It must have been the tranquillizers. They were what made everything that much easier.’
‘Something else only you and I know?’ demanded Kazin. He was driving parallel with the river now, only vaguely aware of the direction in which they were travelling.
‘Who else could be told!’ demanded Panchenko, still showing irritation. ‘I didn’t know anything about pills at the beginning, of course. So I was apprehensive: I knew those initial moments were the greatest risk. When he might say something involving you…’
‘And he didn’t!’ seized Kazin. It was the most important question of all, the cause of the fear lumping inside him like a weight, pulling him down.
‘No,’ confirmed Panchenko and just as Kazin was about carelessly to release a sigh of relief he added: ‘Not
